The New Normal (7 page)

eight

When I had told the parents that I would be playing Auntie Em in
The Wizard of Oz
. Their reaction wasn't quite what I had hoped for.

“That's wonderful, honey. When is the play?” Mom asked.

“Congrats,” Dad said.

No high fives. No hugs. No whoops of joy. No champagne. No taking me out for dinner to celebrate. There was none of the enthusiasm and zeal I had imagined. Maybe they just didn't care. I know, I know, there are extenuating circumstances. But the twins
are gone. I'm still alive.

When I opened my locker the next morning, a note fell out of the door.
In big red bubble letters
it said:
YOU ARE WAY TOO UGLY AND STUPID FOR ROY
. STAY AWAY FROM HIM
. I felt a sudden and severe seizing in my chest. I looked around. Everyone was acting normal. Chattering, laughing, zipping and unzipping backpacks. Everyone looked like they belonged there. No one was looking at me. I felt a wave of nausea well up from my guts. All the sounds of the hallway became muffled, and my vision blurred. I slid against the lockers and the floor rose up to meet me. I was dizzy. There was a weird
swish-swish
noise inside my head. Maybe I should start eating breakfast, I thought.

I turned the note over and over in my hands. It was an awful, awful message. Who would write that? It was on the same lined paper that everyone used. There were no other marks on the page. It had been ripped out of a three-ring binder and folded in half, twice. I didn't know what to make of it. I had never gotten a note before. Maybe the person who wrote it had slipped it into the wrong locker. Maybe it was meant for someone else. Maybe it was a joke. Or maybe…maybe someone was supremely and utterly jealous…of me. I didn't know what to do with the note and I didn't want to keep it, so I stuffed it into the recycling bin on my way to math class. I decided to try and block it out of my mind. But I had a little cry in the girls' washroom after math. I couldn't help it. It was just so
hateful
. I didn't do anything to anyone! I didn't do anything wrong. Roy was my friend! Why would someone give me that note? There are truly awful people in this world.

I didn't tell Roy or anyone else about the note. I was trying to learn my lines for the play, keep my grades up, keep my wig on
and
keep my parents from going insane. I didn't need this right now. I hated whoever had written it for making me waste so much time thinking about it. Asshole.

When I got home from school there was a message on the answering machine from Cruisy Chicken, a fast-food restaurant I had applied to. It was the manager, Don, asking if I could come in for an interview on Friday at four o'clock.

I was thrilled. I had an interview, and maybe soon I would have a paying job. But I couldn't go in on Friday at four because I had rehearsal. Dammit. Maybe I should skip the rehearsal. But I couldn't. Ms. Jane had said that if we missed two rehearsals without a doctor's note, we were out of the play. I looked up Cruisy Chicken in the phone book and dialed the number.

“Cruisy Chicken, how do you cockadoodle do?”

“Hi. Um…good. Can I speak with Don, please?”

“Can you hold?”

When Don came on the line, I told him I'd like to come in for an interview but wouldn't be able to make it on Friday.

“No problem. How about next Tuesday?”

“Um, that's not good either. I'm in the school play, and we have rehearsals most afternoons.”

“I see. So when were you planning on working?”

“Weekends?”

“Only two days a week?”

“Yes?”

He sighed into the phone. “Well, then, just call me the next time you
can
make it in and we'll see if we can work something out.”

At chess club the next day, I told Roy I had an interview at Cruisy Chicken.

“Wow, you're lucky.”

“I am?”

Roy's parents wouldn't let him get a job, because they wanted him to concentrate on school. He had already sent out applications to University of Calgary, University
of Lethbridge and University of Toronto, and as soon as he got his marks back from this term, he would apply to the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University. He wanted to study engineering. I don't know what kind of engineering. And I'm not sure Roy knows either. Roy is an only child. He has a lot of pressure on him to excel. I'm now an only child too, but it isn't the same only-ness as Roy's.

“
You know that we are liv-ing in a ma-ter-i-al world and I am a ma-ter-i-al girl…”
I caught myself singing in the shower and instantly felt guilty because the parents were home and could probably hear me. But what's so terrible about singing in the shower, really? Still, I stopped singing and rubbed soap over my hairless head.

I scrubbed my scalp every morning with a loofah, hoping the exfoliation would open up the hair follicles and increase circulation, thus encouraging the hair to grow back. So far, there had been no new growth. Anywhere. I hummed quietly. Somehow, singing was no longer appropriate in our house. I wondered if the three of us would ever get over the death of the twins, or if we were condemned to be sad and un-singing for the rest of our lives.

I left for school earlier than I needed to, just to get out of the house. The sun was rising over the city, and when I looked up, my breath caught in my throat. It looked like the sky was on fire. The entire sky was blood red, leaking out fuchsia at the edges. A pale orange line scored the horizon. A chinook was coming.

The school day went by in a blur, and I retained nothing. Ms. Jane let me leave rehearsal early because I told her I had an interview. I had called ahead to make sure Don was going to be at Cruisy Chicken. I sat on a white plastic lawn chair in his office. He had mud-brown hair and the onset of male-pattern baldness. His forehead was sweaty, and he looked like he ate a lot of chicken. He hardly looked at my face;
his gaze was concentrated on my chest. I don't know why. There's nothing to see there.

“What would you say are your three best qualities, Tamara?”

“It's Tamar.”

“Tamar-ah?”

“No
ah
. Just Tamar.”

He looked down at my application, confusion knotting his brow. “T-a-m-a-r. Tamar. Ah, okay,
Tamar
. Mind if I call you Tammy?”

“Uhhh…” I detested the name.

He ran a meaty palm over his face and through his thinning hair. “So, Tam, what would you say are your three greatest strengths?”

“Um, honesty. Integrity. And…stick-to-itiveness.”

“Okay, great. And what about weaknesses?”

“Weaknesses?”

“Areas for improvement.”

“I guess I can be too blunt, too direct, and sometimes that hurts people's feelings.”

“Okay, anything else?”

“Um…”

“Areas for improvement.”

“Yeah, I'm thinking.”

He rapped his pen against his desk while I scraped my brain for something that wouldn't make me sound pathetic and unemployable.

“I'm not very…sociable.”

“Oh.” He squinted. “How do you feel about working as part of a team?”

“Fine.”

“And you can work weekends only?”

“Right.”

“Do you have reliable transportation?”

“The bus.”

“Right. Well, do you want to try a shift Saturday and see how it goes?”

“As in tomorrow?”

“Yes. Saturday. Tomorrow. You want to work tomorrow?”

“Sure.”

“Super.” We shook hands and he squeezed my hand hard, finally looking me in the eye. He turned to the shelf behind him. “Here's your uniform. It will come off your first paycheck.” He handed me a horrid red visor with a yellow cartoon chicken on it, giving the thumbs-up. I also got a red-and-yellow-striped golf shirt and a nametag that said
TRAINEE
.

I could barely hide my disgust. “And what did you say the starting wage was?”

“How old are you?”

“Sixteen.”

“And this is your first job?”

“Yes.”

“Five forty an hour. Welcome to the workforce.” He pawed my shoulder as I turned to leave.

“Thanks.” I looked at the other workers as I walked out. Everyone was running around, wrapping up chicken, shoveling fries into bags, yelling into headsets, shaking out fryer baskets. No one looked happy. And the place reeked. When I was out on the street, I brought a piece of wig hair to my nose and smelled it. It smelled like a grease trap already, and I had only been in there for twenty minutes. This was going to be a problem. I was only supposed to wash the wig once a week, max.

I got on the bus and hoped there would be a message for me on the answering machine from the manager of the video store.

But there wasn't. Just my dad propped up on the couch, cutting up beer cans with an X-Acto knife and listening to Maury Povich admonish gangster mothers.

“Dad, guess what?”

“Chicken butt?”

“Well, yeah. Sort of.”

“What?”

“I got a job! I start tomorrow!”

“Where?”

“Cruisy Chicken!”

“Do you get free chicken?”

“I don't know.”

“Well, you should work that into your contract.”

“Okay…”

“So, that's good. This is your first job, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, don't make it your last.” And then he turned back to his mountain of mutilated beer cans.

I was too tired to ask what the hell he was doing with the cans. I went upstairs and studied my lines for the play. I wished that my sisters had been there to read for the other parts. The three of us could have acted out all the characters. That would have been a riot.

“TAMAR! PHONE!” My mom was home from yoga.

I went to the parents' room and picked it up. “Got it. Hello?”

Mom listened in for a minute and then hung up.

“Hey, Tamar, it's Roy.”

“Oh, hey. What's going on?”

“My cousin and his girlfriend are coming in tomorrow from Lethbridge.”

“Okay…”

“Yeah. So anyway, we're going glow bowling.”

I said nothing. I saw the horrible note again in my mind.

“You know that one on the Deerfoot?”

“Um…”

“Well, would you like to come with us?”

“Bowling?”

“Glow bowling, yeah.”

“Uh…”

“My cousin will drive.”

“Ah, what the hell,” I said. “Sure, I'll come.”

“Cool. We'll pick you up around eight.”

I hung up and went downstairs. Mom was making broccoli salad, and Dad was getting a beer from the fridge.

“Is it okay if I go to the Glow Bowl tomorrow night?”

“With who?” she said.

“What's that?” he said.

“Roy and his cousins. Glow-in-the-dark bowling.”

“Is Roy your boyfriend?” Mom asked.

“No! Ew!”

“I'm just asking. It's okay if he is.”

“We're not. He's not. He's just a friend who happens to be a boy, okay?”

“Okay.”

“So, can I?”

“I don't see why not. David?”

“Who's driving?”

“Roy's cousin.”

“How old is he?”

“I don't know. Twenty!”

My dad grunted.

“As long as you make sure to call us when you get there and let us know you're okay, and call before you leave and let us know when you'll be home,” Mom said.

“And be home before ten!” Dad said. He hobbled back to the living room, waving a crutch for emphasis.

“Fine,” I sighed.

This is what I will have to deal with for the rest of my life: paranoid parents, crazy early curfews, no driving with anyone under twenty years old and constant interrogation. All because my stupid sisters had to go and die. Frigging idiots.

Don't think that. Don't think that
.
God.
I took a deep breath and held it in. Then, right before my lungs exploded, I slowly, slowly let it out. I went into the living room and gingerly readjusted Dad's leg so that I could sit on the couch with him while he watched the news and cut up cans.

“Dad, what are you doing?”

“Dr. Zwicky said I needed a project.”

“So you're cutting up beer cans?”

“Yeah.”

“That's…interesting.”

“It keeps my mind off the pain.”

“In more than one way…”

He chuckled. It was a rare sound from him lately.

“Two birds with one can, eh?” I said, kicking a can over to his side of the couch.

“Shh!”

“What?”

“What's that noise?”

“What noise?”

“Shh, listen.”

“I don't hear anything.”

He clicked the
TV
off.

A humming sound was coming from upstairs, directly above us. It would stop, then repeat, stop, then repeat, again and again. I closed my eyes and listened for a moment. It was strangely soothing. I opened my eyes and looked at my dad.

“It's your mother. She's doing that yoga chanting thing again.” He reached into the cooler he kept beside the couch, cracked another beer and switched the
TV
back on.

That night I prayed. I prayed that all of my hair would grow back. I prayed that working at Cruisy Chicken would be okay. I prayed that my mom and dad would be okay. It took a long, long time for me to fall asleep. The sky had already begun to lighten when I finally drifted off, and I worried that I would sleep through my alarm and be late for my first real day of work.