The Poison Apples (12 page)

“He must be, like, the best brother ever.”

“I don't know about that.”

“He's, like, really really funny.”

I nodded and got to my feet, slinging my purse over my shoulder. “Thanks for having me over,” I told Jamie, who was curled up in a fetal position on the floor, playing air trombone. “It was fun.”

He blinked up at me. “You're leaving?”

“Family emergency.”

“Well, you should come back sometime.” He propped himself up on his elbow and gazed at me with his big blue eyes. “We can hang out, just the two of us.”

I smiled feebly. “Yeah. Sure. Of course.”

I reached out to put my hand on the doorknob.

“Wait!” Jamie screeched. “Stop!”

I turned around. “What?”

“You can't leave now. My RA is doing the rounds. You'll get caught.”

“You're gonna have to climb out the window,” commented Jules Squarebrigs-Farroway, not taking his eyes off the TV screen.

I stared at them. “Are you kidding me?”

“There's a maple tree right outside. You just climb out and slide down the big branch, and then you—”

“No. No way. I am not climbing down a tree in
this
.” I grabbed hold of my pink angora miniskirt and raised my eyebrows threateningly. Everyone looked unimpressed.

“Don't be a baby, Reena,” said Kristen from the bed. Suddenly there was a weird, urgent look in her eyes—a you-better-not-screw-this-up-for-us look.

“
Fine
,” I said, exasperated, and marched over to the window. I wrenched it open. A late summer breeze came wafting into the room. I stared out into the night. The biggest branch of the maple tree was a long, long leap away.

“It's easier than it looks,” Jamie said, standing behind me.

“Yeah, right,” I said. A flurry of tiny butterflies released itself inside my gut.

He shrugged. “Just, like, sling your legs over, and then if you reach out, like, really far, you can actually grab hold of it.”

“Just do it,” piped up Kristen from the bed.

Painfully, awkwardly, I slung one leg out the window.

“Ack,” I said. “I'm stuck.”

Jamie grabbed hold of my other (bare, I might add) leg and lifted it up and out. One of his hands briefly grazed my thigh.

“Get your hands off me,” I hissed.

“Chill out,” he whispered, and then, suddenly, I was sitting on the windowsill, my legs hanging out above the twenty-foot drop.

“I can't do this,” I announced.

“Just reach forward and grab hold of the branch.”

“Impossible.”

And then Jamie Vanderheep did something unforgivable.

He shoved me.

For a second I was nowhere. The night air rushed around my ears. Time slowed down. I pictured myself falling for hours, days, months. Then I realized I'd stopped falling. My hands were grasping—precariously—the tree branch.

“See?” called out Jamie from the window. “It's easy! Now just put your feet on the branch underneath!”

I breathed in and out, shakily, but I still had the feeling of falling in my body. The sensation was terrifying. It chilled me to the bone.

“HEY!” Jamie yelled again. “ARE YOU OKAY?”

I took another breath, placed my feet on the branch below, and then dropped neatly onto the ground.

“Hey! Reena! Are you all right?”

I looked up at his little lit-up window,.

“GO SCREW YOURSELF, VANDERHEEP!” I yelled.

Then I ran away into the night, my heart pounding.

Maybe, just maybe, I was done being In.

*   *   *

At first I couldn't find him.
Then I saw a pair of New Balance sneakers poking out from underneath a fir tree. A few seconds later, I heard the faint sound of rustling plastic.

Pradeep was always—without fail—eating some horrible form of junk food.

“Yo,” I whispered. “Butthead.”

The sound of rustling plastic got louder. Then a hand extended itself out from underneath the branches. I grabbed it, and it pulled me into a little dark cave hollowed out in the center of the tree.

Pradeep's round face faced mine, illuminated only by a slice of moon peeping through the branches.

“Wanna honey-roasted cashew?” he asked.

“Ew. Gross.”

“Actually, buttface, they're delicious.”

“You're disgusting. What is this place?”

“It's cool, right? Jamal showed it to me.”

“Who's Jamal?”

“My friend. Don't you have any friends yet, buttface?”

“Shut up, butthead. I have plenty of friends. Care to tell me why I'm here?”

Pradeep stared at me ominously, chewing away on his cashews.

“Pradeep.”

He swallowed and cleared his throat. “Okay. It's about Shanti.”

“What about Shanti?”

“She's, um, nuts.”

There was a long pause while I waited for him continue. He giggled, somewhat hysterically.

“Okay, I don't understand. Why is this funny?”

Pradeep bent over and pressed his face into his knees. His shoulders trembled with laughter.

“What the hell is going on?”

He could barely get the words out. “I'm … sorry … it's … it's just … that—”

“It's just what?”

He lifted his face up, wiped the tears from his eyes, and then let out a high-pitched chuckle. “It's just … everything is just, like,
so
screwed.”

“Oh, come on, Deep. It could totally be worse.”

He nodded. “Yeah, yeah, I know … it's just … uh … well, I talked to Mom tonight, and, um … she's, like, freaking out.”

“Why?”

“Ah … she's living with Pria, you know, but she's running out of cash, and she's saying she's gonna have to sell her clothes and stop going to that really fancy hairdresser on Wilshire and—”

“Is that such a big deal?” I interrupted.

“Well, to Mom it is. You know her. She's used to a certain lifestyle.” His eyes narrowed. “And you should talk, Miss Marc Jacobs Shoes.”

I glanced self-consciously down at my pink high heels (now covered in dirt and pine needles).

“Why isn't Dad just giving her a little money to tide her over?” I asked.

Pradeep started giggling again.

“Deep. This is really annoying.”

“I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It's just, uh, it's like I'm so upset I'm not even upset anymore, you know?”

I actually did know. So I nodded.

“The reason,” Pradeep finally said, “that Dad is not giving Mom a little money to tide her over … at least, according to Dad, whom I also talked with tonight … is that he doesn't have any extra money to give. I mean, aside from the money he's putting toward his crazy divorce lawyers.”

“That makes no sense,” I said. “Dad is rich.”

“Yeah. Well. He was. Until…” Another insane-sounding giggle. “Until Shanti decided … that she … that she, um, wanted a penguin.”

I stared at him.

He continued: “You know that documentary that came out last year? About all the penguins and, like, how they have babies and—”

“Yeah…”

“Well, Shanti saw it, and she decided that she wanted, ah, a baby penguin. So apparently Dad made a bunch of calls—”

“You're kidding me. You have to be kidding me.”

He shook his head no, his eyes gleaming white in the moonlight. “Apparently Dad called a bunch of places, like zoos and stuff, and this one zoo in Colorado had an extra penguin. It's not a baby, but—”

“Pradeep. Please tell me this is a joke.”

“No. So Shanti is adopting this penguin, but it needs, like, a really cold, like
arctic
environment … so they're building an addition on the house, this, like, special terrarium or something with ice and water … and it's costing Dad like a million dollars … so,” he finished, almost out of breath, “Dad doesn't want to cut Mom a break and just hand her some cash because he, um, needs all the cash he can get for Shanti's penguin's … home.”

We looked at each other for a long time. I felt the edges of my mouth start to tremble.

“See?” Pradeep whispered. “It's so bad it's
funny
.”

And then we both started laughing. Hysterically. I actually fell over and hit my head on a root. Pradeep spilled his cashews everywhere.

“Oh,” he choked out, while I was convulsing with laughter on the ground, “and one more horrible thing—they're coming.”

“Who? Where?”

“Dad and Shanti. They're coming for Parents Weekend.”

I sat up with a bolt. “No.”

“Yes.”

“They can't be.”

“Wait a second. This is upsetting you more than Mom having a nervous breakdown? That's really weird, man.”

“It's just … they can't come. They can't. It'll ruin my life.”

“Um, Reen? It sucks that they're coming, but it will definitely not ruin your life.”

But I was thinking about Alice Bingley-Beckerman. I was thinking about her smug little face, and her perfectly combed hair, and her perfect New York City parents with their perfect little faces and blond hair, and I was picturing all three of them standing in the middle of our dorm room and laughing at me. Me and my crazy family.

And suddenly the situation wasn't very funny at all.

NINE

Molly

The thing that really broke my heart
was the stuffed animal sitting on her pillow. It was this white bear with beady eyes, and it was holding a plush red heart that said, GET WELL SOON.

It made me feel like she was a little kid or something.

Spencer and I sat with her next to the window and watched the cars drive in and out of the parking lot. The leaves were starting to change their color, and this one tiny maple tree had already turned already bright orange. I held Mom's hand and pointed in its direction.

“Isn't that pretty?” I asked.

It was kind of a dumb question.

But I was having a hard time thinking of smart questions.

She smiled at me with what seemed like great effort. I smiled back and stroked her soft, knobbly hands. My mom has the softest hands in the world. It's weird how soft they are.

“The food is terrible here,” she announced after a long pause.

I nodded eagerly.

Spencer, who'd barely said anything since we arrived, began humming under her breath and tapping her fingers against her chair.

It was the Saturday after the first few days of classes. I'd been friends with Alice Bingley-Beckerman for less than a week, but it had made me realize how important it was, having someone to talk to. It had made me think about my mom sitting all by herself in a white room for months on end. So I'd telephoned Spencer and demanded that she meet me outside Silverwood on Saturday morning. I'd called a cab and Spencer had taken the free bus that lumbered between the small Chesterton County towns at about five miles an hour.

It was the first time either of us had seen Mom since the spring.

All summer, Dad had discouraged us from going—apparently Mom wasn't been “ready” for visitors. But when I asked him to phone the hospital during the past week, they'd said that she was “slowly on her way to recovery” and willing to see guests.

I looked out the window again. A young couple was leaning against their station wagon in the parking lot and kissing. Suddenly I was filled with anger. Why were these people being gushy in the parking lot of a mental institution? Why were they being gushy, period? Life was way too screwed-up to allow for gushiness. I stared at the couple. They looked so small from Mom's third-story window. It made me feel like I could reach out and just … crush them between my thumb and forefinger.

“How are you, Mol?” Mom asked.

I snapped out of my reverie. “Oh. Um…”

“How's school?”

“It's okay. I mean, I'm having a little trouble adjusting, but … it's good. I mean, it'll get better. And the classes are really good.”

Her eyes wrinkled happily. “I'm so glad. And what about you, Spencer?”

Spencer kept staring at the window.

“Spencer,” I said.

She tore her eyes away from the couple in the parking lot. “What?”

“Mom just asked you a question.”

“Oh.” Spencer's eyes flickered guiltily in Mom's direction.

“How are you, darling?” Mom repeated.

Spencer shrugged. “I'm okay. School is dumb. But cheerleading is awesome. And jazz dance. Oh, and baton. Candy is teaching me all these cool new moves.”

I winced. Did she have to mention Candy?

“Did you know,” Spencer continued, growing more cheerful, “that Candy was actually a twirling champion herself in—”

“Okay, enough,” I said loudly.

There was an awful silence. Spencer went back to looking out the window. Mom stared down at her hands.

“Mom?” I finally asked.

“Yes, honey?” she whispered.

“When do you think … when do you think you're gonna get out of here?”

We looked at each other. Her eyes seemed to dull and fade. Almost like my question had made a little part of her go to sleep. I tried to backtrack.

“I mean … not that you know yet … I just thought
if
you knew…”

“I'm not sure, Molly,” she said.

“That's fine. Of course. That's fine.” I stared down at my lap. “It's just … next weekend is Parents Weekend. I was thinking that if you did happen to be—”

Mom stood up abruptly. Her white hospital gown was all wrinkly. She started smoothing it down nervously with her hands.

“Definitely not by next weekend, okay?” She walked over to her nightstand and started fiddling with the dials on the radio.

I swallowed. “Okay. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry for asking.”