Vibes (8 page)

Oh. That's what's different. She's not exhausted.

Instead of her usual scrubs she's wearing a nice skirt, stockings, blue leather pumps, and a silk blazer. She looks skinnier. Somehow the skirt hides her thick legs and the blazer shapes itself to her waistline. Her eyes look really huge and black because she has actually put on makeup. She never used to wear makeup because she says it can interfere with the sterile environment of the operating room. She's even wearing lipstick, so her lips look a lot fuller than usual. She looks good. She almost looks pretty. Suddenly I see why people expect me to take it as a compliment when they say I look just like my mother. Maybe to them, it is.

"Did you order dinner?" she asks.

I shake my head no. For the first time in over two years, I feel like wrapping my arms around her neck and letting her hug me. But I haven't let her hug me in a long time and I'm not about to start now. She stands in the hallway pulling off her shoes and then her stockings, and then she walks into the bathroom calling over her shoulder, "What do you feel like tonight? How about steamed Chinese vegetables? Or I hear there's a new Indian place that delivers. We can do that, as long as you don't order anything too greasy."

"Dad's coming home," I say.

I wait, standing in the living room. She slowly comes back out of the bathroom, one hand frozen in the process of pulling pins from her hair. She drops her hand and her hair twirls into a curl and rests on her shoulder as though it is suddenly overcome with emotion. Her oval face becomes very sharp. "What?" she says, despite the fact that her voice has cracked down the middle.

"Dad's coming home. Next Thursday."

She stares at me, her lip hanging to show her bottom teeth. "How do you know?"

"Aunt Ann came by."

"Well, he's not staying here."

I remember what Aunt Ann said, and I panic. "But we have to show him we forgive him so that he won't be afraid of us and he'll stay!"

Mom's dark eyes travel my face. There is such pity in the way she looks at me, I don't even have to read her mind to know she's thinking,
Poor Kristi.
But thinking this only seems to make her angrier. Slowly she walks to the couch and sits down, her fingers pushing at her temples, rubbing, rubbing. She closes her eyes and breathes in through her nose and out through her mouth, but this seems to make her feel weak, and she bends over to hold her head between her knees like you're supposed to do if you feel like passing out.

She stays like that a long time, then straightens back up and grabs the phone. As she dials she pats the cushion next to her. I tiptoe over and sit by her, which is quite unlike me, but I feel like we're in battle conditions and the couch is our foxhole. I swear, I even smell smoke.

"Hello, Ann?" Mom says. "Yes, Kristi just told me ... No, I'm not mad. I just need to know his plans ... Of course this isn't your fault—we're all just doing the best we can ... Ann, I need you to calm down for a second and just focus, okay?...Is he staying with you?...Well, can he? Because I'm just not ready to have him—...I see. Okay ... Yes ... Only if
Kristi
wants to. I don't want anyone talking her into anything, do you understand me?...Ann, no matter what you do, things will take their natural course ... Well, at this point, I don't know what to hope for."

Listening to their conversation is like listening to bombs going off, one by one. With each explosion the sound gets closer and closer. There is so much noise in my mind, I can't tell if the bombs are in my thoughts or in Mom's. Maybe they're in both.

I desperately want to go find my earphones and put on Maria Callas at full volume, but I can't make myself get off the couch.

I barely notice when Mom hangs up and puts her arms around me.

I don't even care that she's squishing my face into her armpit.

We sit like that until our stomachs rumble, and then we fix organic peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and watch the end of
Terminator 2: Judgment Day,
and then we drive to the all-night market and buy two pints of all-natural ice cream, strawberry for her and double fudge chocolate chip for me, and we each eat an entire pint in the car, and then we come back home and realize that somehow we're still hungry but all we have is whole-wheat bread and organic goat cheese she bought at the farmers' market, so we fry up grilled cheese sandwiches, and they're crispy and salty and comforting somehow. We don't talk about Dad or Aunt Ann or anything. We barely talk at all. We watch the news until we are both so exhausted that we can't keep our eyes open. I fall asleep on the couch, and she falls asleep on the recliner. In the morning we both feel completely ill, and we look like someone parked a Sherman tank on our faces, our hair sticking up in every direction. Mom goes to the shower, but she doesn't sing at all. Usually she sings. I go to my room and take my daily bubble bath, but I don't break down and I don't cry.

I'm glad I don't cry. But I don't know why I don't. It seems strange to me.

Today is Friday, and that means we have Processing during the last few minutes of school. It's a bizarre ritual that entails people saying whatever is on their minds, and everyone in the school is supposed to listen with an open heart. If I possibly could, I would keep my earphones on, but Betty Pasternak is sitting right behind me and she expects me to listen.

Gusty is sitting across the room from me with his legs crossed and his elbows on his knees. I try to search his thoughts to see if he's still mad at me, though I'm not completely sure what I did to make him mad, unless the "impervious to false flattery" thing was insulting or something. Evil Incarnate is whispering at him and he nods, but he seems to be looking for someone, because his eyes are trailing along the crowd. When he sees me, his eyes stop and he kind of straightens up. I know I should look away, I really should, but I can't stop looking at him. He doesn't seem mad. But he doesn't seem happy. Or neutral. I listen for his thoughts but there's so much else happening in the room that I can't get a read on him.

Finally he tilts his head to one side and raises his hand in a kind of wave. I nod at him. By now Evil has found who he is looking at, and her eyes fix on me with dark hatred. I look away. Sometimes I just don't have the energy to return the nastiness I receive. Especially knowing that my dad is coming back in six days after being gone for two whole years. This thought alone drains me of energy, leaving barely enough to keep my heart beating.

Brian walks to the center of the circle, the usual seething smile on his weirdly wide face. Today he is holding a big yellow bell, and he swings it in an arc. It makes a rude clanging noise, and everyone stops to look. Once the room is quiet Brian laughs and says, "Do you like my new bell? This is the attention bell, and from now on, when you hear it, that means it's time for our meetings to begin, okay?"

"Okay," Jacob Flax says.

Some people snigger. Gusty doesn't, though.

"Who wants to start off this week's Processing session?"

Gusty raises his hand, but Brian doesn't see him and calls on one of the guys on our lacrosse team instead. The guy stands up and announces, "I think our fall dance should be a costume party this year, and we should have it on Halloween since it falls on a Friday anyway."

Brian raises his eyebrows as if this were the most brilliant idea since Newton discovered gravity. "Okay, I like it. Are there countersuggestions?"

A girl with long black hair and light blond roots raises her hand. "I think everyone should come as vampires!"

The whole room erupts into a million pointless conversations about the pointless Halloween dance, and Brian starts ringing the bell as if he were calling the entire solar system to attention. "Calm down, everyone! Let's put it to the ballot box and we'll vote on it, okay?"

This shuts everyone up.

"Does anyone have anything else to share?"

Gusty raises his hand again and this time Brian sees him. "Gusty, what's on your mind?"

Gusty stands up. He has one hand in the back pocket of his jeans, and he's hunched over, embarrassed. "Uh, there's someone I just want to apologize to. For some stuff. And maybe we can talk about it later. I just want to say I didn't act very—um—mature and that next time we get together I hope it'll go better."

He sits back down and doesn't exactly glance at me, but his eyes definitely dart in my direction. His thoughts float over to me, gently, and the word,
Okay?
drops onto me like a fluffy white feather.

Yes, he's too gorgeous for his own good, but he's trying to be nice. I look at him until our eyes find each other, and I give him a little smile. He smiles, too, which makes him look simply dazzling.

"Thank you, Gusty." Brian clears his throat. "I hope everyone has gotten a chance to welcome Mallory to our school." With a curl of his wrist he beckons Mallory to the center of the circle. Mallory strides over to stand next to him, his face turning an even brighter red. He hates this. Why does Brian have to single people out? "If you haven't said hello to Mallory, please do. I'm sure he'd like to hear from you." He raises his eyebrows at Mallory. "Do you want to add anything to what I've said, Mallory?"

"Rock on," Mallory says, and then walks back to the perimeter of the room.

The end of Processing is always the same. We have to sing our school song, which is so boring and stupid that I won't bother with the lyrics. Here's a quick paraphrase:
Journeys is great. Freedom lives on. Get to know yourself. Nature nature blah blah. We are all special. Until we meet again. Now let's all go and pick our butts and think about how great our crusty anuses are. Until we meet again.

We all head for the doors, and I'm looking for Gusty because maybe he wants to talk right now, but Mallory catches up with me. "Hey, Kristi, want to come hang out at my house?" I can feel him thinking,
Don't look at her boobs. Don't look at her boobs. Don't look
—but he can't help it. He slops up a huge eyeful. I wait for his eyes to travel back to my face. It takes a very uncomfortable amount of time.

"Uh..." I look through the crowd in time to see that Gusty has just rushed out the front door. I hear his skateboard slap the sidewalk and it speeds away. I try to catch my mind up to him, but he and his thoughts are out of reach.

"Ground control to Major Kristi, do you read?" I see Mallory is looking at me with a dopey grin. "Want to come over?"

I feel my chin tense up the way it does just before I start to cry, but that is obviously the last thing I would ever do over Gusty Peterson. He is a beautiful person, and he is apt to say one thing and do another. Not to be trusted. Beautiful people = BAD.

"I have a better idea," I tell Mallory, and I head for the park.

I walk fast, forcing Gusty and his weird apology out of my mind. I don't need to think about Gusty Peterson because Gusty Peterson doesn't matter to me. He just doesn't.

It's late September by now, and the sun feels farther away. The wind ebbs and flows, and already leaves are collecting at the edges of the schoolyard. As we walk, Mallory has one hand crammed into the hip pocket of his white hemp jeans, and with the other he smokes, jabbing his cigarette between his lips and taking short, violent puffs on it. Something about the way he moves, even the way he holds still, reminds me of a coiled spring, as if a light touch in just the right place could send him bouncing out of control. I like this about him because I feel the same spring inside of me, and I long for someone to come along and trip my wire.

It's better to be with Mallory. He doesn't think I'm sick like Gusty does. I have no reason to think about Gusty. I'm not thinking about Gusty and the way he left without talking to me. Unless—

Of course. I'm so stupid! He wasn't talking to me during Processing at all! How could I be so dense?

But he smiled at me right after. He smiled as though we understood each other.

But then he left without talking to me. He just ran away.

I'm not going to think about this. That's it. I'm through thinking about him.

I mean it.

"So what do you want to do?" Mallory asks me.

"Do you enjoy wreaking havoc?"

"Havoc is my favorite pastime, second only to wreaking."

"Then this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

I lead Mallory to the edge of the Journeys parking lot, where I scoop up a whole lot of the sand and dust that collect near the wall of the school building. I can feel the grit working its way underneath my fingernails. I'm usually a clean person, but I like this feeling anyway. Dirt always feels comforting.

"What are you going to use that for?" Mallory asks me.

"You'll see," I tell him as I slip several handfuls into a plastic bag from a nearby trash can.

I take him down Conway Street because it's lined with huge cottonwood trees and I love the sound of the wind moving through them. I make my mind quiet, and I can feel Mallory's mind is quiet, too, so I don't need my opera. Relaxing is usually the last thing I can do with another person around, and it makes me glad that Mallory moved to our school, because I can sort of relax with him.

Then I feel him thinking about my plump, naked body, and I get a little grossed out.

"So I guess Eva Kearns-Tate is your character ed partner?" I say, to distract him from his lurid thoughts.

"Yeah, she seems cool."

"Just wait," I tell him. "She has a nasty streak."

"Really?" He lowers his eyebrows. "She was really sweet to me."

Everyone thinks Eva is nice because they can't hear her thoughts. She was probably thinking nothing but horrible things about Mallory, and he was blissfully shielded.

We turn the corner and the park comes into view. There's a really strong breeze, so my practical joke should go just fine as long as I'm careful. This one is much more difficult to execute because it relies on a lot of variables. I lead Mallory over to a bench that is perfectly placed behind a big bush. From the path we can't be seen, though we can get little peeks at passersby through the spaces between the leaves. Once they get past the bush, they're in full view. To give Mallory a good show, I'll have to time this very carefully.