“I’m fine. I’m just tired. It’s been a long weekend.”
“Yes, it has.” She sighed. “We’re so lucky that you’re such a good kid, Janie. I don’t know what we would have done if it had been you in that car.”
I knew that I should tell them I had been at the party, but I just couldn’t. They would make me talk to Officer Russell, and he would be angry that I hadn’t told him at the hospital. Then he would make me answer all the questions that Wayne hadn’t answered, and then Wayne would be mad at me too.
The sky was dark outside the dining room window, even though it was only six. The blue lights from the Christmas tree reflected off the glass. Early December in Jasper was depressing. It was cold outside, but not quite as cold as winter should be. It was the kind of cold that had kids crossing their fingers, hoping for snow by Christmas break, though it usually didn’t come until late January.
My dad cleared his throat. “The funeral is being held Tuesday afternoon. Did you want to go, Janie?”
I looked back at the mashed potatoes on my plate and sighed. “Do I have to?”
“I just thought that you might want to be there for Wayne. You know, if he’s out of the hospital by then.”
I tried hard not to smile. If I knew Wayne, he would fake another coma just to get out of going to a funeral, even if it was Matilda’s. He hated them as much as I did.
When we were nine, my great-grandma Lucinda died in her sleep. She’d had an open casket. During the reception, Wayne and I snuck back into the viewing room and stood over her coffin, thinking that we might have better luck waking her where the doctors had failed.
“Everyone’s so quiet,” Wayne had insisted. “It’s like they don’t want her to wake up. Maybe we just need to make a little noise.” He counted to three and we both shouted, “Lucy! It’s nine o’clock!”
The mail always came at nine in the morning at my great-grandma’s house, and she’d had a fierce crush on the mailman. She’d fan herself with the sale flyers as he left, watching him walk on down to the next house.
We leaned further over the casket, watching for any movement, but the only person we’d roused was one of the ushers sneaking a cigarette by the back door. We both about came out of our skins when he flung the door open and hollered at us.
I really hoped that Wayne didn’t go to Matilda’s funeral. I would feel obligated to go if he did, and then I would have to deal with all of Matilda’s adoring minions who hated my guts as much as she had. Just the thought of them made my stomach turn into a boulder. School was going to suck tomorrow.
“May I be excused?”
My mom frowned at my plate again but nodded. I had really wanted to enjoy dinner. My mom’s casseroles were actually really good, but it was nice to have more than one course on occasion. The only time that happened was when she was good and burned out on casserole baking. Steak and potatoes was one of my favorites too. I took my half-eaten potatoes into the kitchen and washed them down the garbage disposal before heading upstairs to my room.
My parents had finally relented last summer and let me paint over the cotton candy pink walls that had been the sole reason I had stopped having slumber parties in middle school. They weren’t thrilled about the dark charcoal color I had picked out, but it wasn’t so bad after I topped it with a coat of spray-on glitter. Of course, I spent the entire month of June washing the stuff out of my hair. Wayne had called me Tinker Bell for the rest of the summer, until senior year began and he started dating Matilda. After that, he didn’t call me anything.
I flopped onto my bed and sighed, nuzzling into the neon orange pillows and the two remaining stuffed animals that had survived the room makeover, Herbert and Gertrude. They were fluffy white bunnies dressed for a tea party. Herbert wore a little vest with a faux pocket watch, and Gertrude wore a lacey tutu skirt and a flowered headband. Wayne had given them to me on my tenth birthday.
My arm caught the edge of my sketchbook, tucked safely away under a pillow. I pulled it out and skimmed through the hundreds of drawings that made me even more ashamed than the formerly pink walls had. Each sketch was a different rendering of senior prom. Wayne and I were together in every single one. Matilda was featured in a few, but only as something ridiculous or abstract, like a piñata in the fiesta themed prom, or a bubble-headed green alien in the space prom.
I’d started the sketchbook freshman year, around the time that talking to Wayne grew awkward, because I didn’t want him to be my best friend anymore. I wanted him to hold my hand instead of punch my shoulder. I wanted him to bring me flowers on my birthday and ask me to be his date for prom.
The sketches had been typical girl fantasies at first. There was a fairytale ballroom prom and a masquerade prom. During sophomore year, I got creative and added a Gatsby and a Victorian prom. Junior year had been more whimsical, with a haunted house and an eighties flashback prom. But once senior year began and Matilda swooped in to snatch up Wayne and crush all my fantasies, the sketchbook had taken a turn for the worse.
It just seemed so definite that Wayne would be taking Matilda to prom. I kept doodling out our imaginary dates, but they stretched a little further beyond reality now. The fiesta and space proms were just the beginning. There was even a military themed prom, where Wayne and I arrived in a tank and ran over an enemy solider who looked suspiciously like Matilda with a Hitler mustache. I paused on that particular drawing, wondering if I should tear it out of the sketchbook and burn it. The hybrid Matilda guilt chewed at my stomach again, no matter how well I knew that her death wasn’t my fault.
In the end, I couldn’t do it. I left the tank and the Hitler imbued Matilda right where they were. I was beyond mortified by my stalker tribute sketchbook, but it was all I had. It was a journal of sorts, and it was sacred to me, in a weird dysfunctional sort of way. The only other person who knew about the sketchbook was my friend Chloe. She had suggested that I enter some of the sketches in the student art show, and then she went on to say that she also thought I might need a team of shrinks and possibly some electroshock therapy.
As if on cue, my cell phone buzzed on my nightstand. I answered on the first ring. “Hello?”
“Oh. My. God! My mom just showed me the newspaper. There’s a picture of Matilda’s car. It says that Wayne was in there with her. Why didn’t you call me?” Chloe fumed in my ear.
“Sorry. It’s been a stressful weekend. Wayne’s okay though. I saw him this morning.”
“Yeah, well, Matilda is obviously not okay. Did you know her parents are helping organize some anti-teen drinking campaign? They’re going to be giving a speech at the funeral and then another one at the school this week. I betcha ten bucks they mention their resort at least twice.”
“Hmmm.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah. Fine.” The hybrid guilt was stirring again. I needed to figure out what to do about it before I ended up with an ulcer. I didn’t think most seventeen-year-old girls had to worry about ulcers, but I’d heard my dad describe his often enough that I was sure this was what one must feel like.
Chloe was quiet for a minute. “Shouldn’t you be celebrating or something? You know, ding, dong, the witch is dead?”
I sighed. “Wayne is my friend, and that would hurt his feelings.”
Chloe laughed. “I’m not saying that you should go do a Broadway dance number in his hospital room, but you’re alone in your room right now. Aren’t you?”
“Yeah. So?” I sat up on my bed and pulled my knees up under my chin.
“I think it’s perfectly safe and healthy to be relieved that your arch nemesis bit the dust. I mean, she filled your locker full of industrial spray foam. You know it was her. And you definitely know that she was the one who cut out nipple holes in that blouse you left in the girls’ locker room.”
My cheeks felt like they were on fire all over again. “I was just lucky that you had an extra tee shirt in your locker.”
“Janie, all I’m saying is that you shouldn’
t feel guilty for being a little glad about that witch being dead. I know I am, and she didn’t even do anything to me.”
“You’re right. I know. I just... feel wrong about it.”
“Whatever. I’ll see you tomorrow after lunch, right?” Chloe skipped eating lunch with everyone in the cafeteria. She was a real art student, not a poser like me, so she had a little studio cubical in the painting room all to herself. She ate lunch there so she could squeeze in an extra half an hour of work.
“Yeah, I’ll come by and see you before algebra.”
Chloe snorted. “And if you’re not going to celebrate, you better at least not sulk.”
We said our goodbyes and I flipped to a blank page near the back of my sketchbook. I wouldn’t put Matilda in this drawing. I hadn’t picked out a theme yet, but I started with a basic outline of the gym, where prom was held every spring.
A few seconds into the drawing, I had an epiphany. Matilda was gone. Wayne wouldn’t be taking her to prom. The hybrid guilt took a backseat as excitement bubbled through me. It was a slim chance, but it was still there, and it was all I needed.
Hints
Chapter 4
I threw up again before school on Monday. I almost convinced my mom to let me stay home, but I’d told Wayne that I would bring his makeup homework by the hospital. Even though I had my driver’s license, my mom still drove me to school most days. She let me borrow her car on the weekends sometimes, but she needed it to run errands during the week. Today, she needed it to deliver casseroles.
It took a lot more courage than it should have required getting out of the car and walking to my first period English class. I didn’t expect to see Denise, one of Matilda’s top minions, but I should have known she would be ready to turn the tragedy into a limelight opportunity.
Denise and Danielle, or the Double Ds, as they were often called, were little carbon copies of Matilda. If either one of them had an original thought in their blond bubbleheads, they sure had me fooled. They were usually content letting Matilda make the snide remarks and only had to worry about giggling just enough to appease her. Denise’s extra low cut top told me that the competition for who would be filling the shoes of Matilda the Hun was already underway.
“I can’t believe she’s gone. I just don’t know what we’re going to do without her.” Denise sniffled and rubbed at her streaky mascara. It was extra thick today, probably to enhance her performance.
“We’ll get through this together.” Mitch Brown, Jasper High’s star quarterback, rubbed Denise’s back and scooted his desk closer to hers so that he could rest his chin on her shoulder. At least he had the decency to wait until she looked away before stealing a glance down her blouse.
I slipped past them and quickly made my way to the front row desk closest to the window. I could feel their eyes on me. Everyone knew that Matilda had hated my guts. Chloe said it was because she was jealous that I lived next door to Wayne and because I had more history with him. I was pretty sure it was just because she needed someone to torture, and I was an easy target. No one expects the quiet nerd to fight back, and I hadn’t. I bit my tongue. I walked away. My face turned into a tomato, and I fantasized about her demise. It was somewhat of a tradition amongst the nerds.
Denise’s voice dropped down to a whisper, but I caught the words party and chicken and knew they were talking about me. The back of my neck began to itch, but I didn’t move to scratch it. I sat perfectly still and held my breath until the bell rang and Mr. Hammond took up his usual perch on the edge of his desk. He cleared his throat and waited for everyone to settle down.
“By now, I’m sure all of you have heard the unfortunate news that Jasper High lost a student this past weekend.”
Denise sobbed and threw her head down over her arms. Mitch took that as his cue to start rubbing her back again.
Mr. Hammond’s droopy jowls sagged lower as he continued. “There will be a memorial assembly Wednesday afternoon, but if any of you feel the need to talk to someone before then, Ms. Nader will be in her office all day and after school.”
Ms. Nader was Jasper High’s guidance counselor. She had been a bodybuilder in her youth, but she still retained enough muscle and testosterone from her heyday that most students were afraid to even look at her. I wondered what she would have to say about my hybrid Matilda guilt.
Mr. Hammond carried on with class as usual. I hadn’t pegged him as the emotionally stunted type, and maybe he wasn’t. Maybe his disdain for the hormonally challenged student body had finally taken its toll and he didn’t view us as real people anymore.
Denise excused herself to go talk to Ms. Nader, even though everyone knew she was really slipping off to the bathroom to smoke with Danielle, who was more than likely making a scene in her own first period class. Sometimes I wondered what it must feel like, always needing to be the center of attention. Were they incapable of acting like normal human beings? Or did they constantly strive to be the obnoxious way that they were?
When the bell rang, I went directly to my second class, stalling the inevitable run-in with the Ds. They were going to make a scene. I was sure of it. The anxious eyes that followed me through the hallways told me that everyone else was expecting it too. I was just hoping that it could wait until tomorrow. The plan was to survive the day, hide out in the bathroom until the halls cleared, go collect Wayne’s makeup homework, and walk to the hospital. I wondered if the Ds had been by to see Wayne yet. I somehow doubted it. They wouldn’t want Officer Russell to connect them to Matilda or the party.
Second period was my breather from Matilda’s minions for the day. There were only twelve students in Mrs. Roth’s advanced chemistry class. Plus, my lab partner, Lisa Wallace, was an even bigger nerd than me. Somehow, having a pint-sized chemist turn her nose up at my above average intellect always improved my mood. I felt moderately cooler for a whole hour.
My only complaint about my third period history class was Mitch Brown, who liked to gripe on a daily basis about how useless history was to his future NFL career. Fourth period was the longest of the day, since it split the lunch shifts. Half of Jasper High ate before class, and half ate after. Luckily, the Ds were in the early shift. I ate after my fourth period health class, right before algebra. I considered skipping lunch so I could have a longer visit with Chloe, but I changed my mind. My lunchroom companion would be all by his lonesome, and I couldn’t have that.
Eddie Paris was absolutely the weirdest boy I had ever known. He also happened to be my friend, I reminded myself as I watched him ball up the hair he had just scavenged from my hair brush. He slid the brush back across the lunchroom table to me.
“Hair is potent stuff. It’s good for all kinds of Voodoo rituals,” he said, answering my bewildered look with a blushing grin.
Eddie had soft, cocoa colored skin. His mom was white, and his dad had been black, so he had that creamy in-between skin tone that always made me crave hot chocolate. His hair was thick and curly, and it trailed down his temples, just past his ears, in cute little almost-sideburns. If he hadn’t been so nuts, he would have been a shoe-in for the cool crowd.
Eddie held up his new hairball and scratched his head, like he didn’t know what to do with it now that he had claimed it. Finally, his eyes lit up and he fished a plastic sandwich bag out of his lunchbox. He turned it inside out, sprinkling crumbs all over the table, and tucked my hair inside it for safekeeping.
“My great-gramma was a Voodoo queen in Louisiana. Did ya know?”
I shook my head and took another bite of my sandwich.
“Yup, she was the real deal. She could exorcise demons and cast hexes on people. All she needed most the time was a little hair and some chicken blood.”
I rolled my eyes.
“It’s true,” Eddie insisted. “I found all her old spell books in my dad’s stuff after he died.”
Lunch with Eddie was anything but boring. He was a weirdo to the nth degree, but since he was one of the very few people who would actu
ally speak to me after Matilda decided I was a leper, I appreciated his reliably odd company.
Our table was in the far back corner of the cafeteria, near the double doors that led back down the main hall of Jasper High. An inflatable Lancelot on a white horse hovered above us, the proud mascot of the Jasper High Knights. The thing had been there forever, and it was badly in need of a few fresh breaths of air. Lancelot had been the source of full array of corny jokes due to his lance, which had gone from fully erect to slightly droopy as the air seeped from him.
Sitting under the blow-up mascot wasn’t exactly the best way to make new friends, but there weren’t any other open tables, and the jokes eventually got old. The spot did have its advantages, being so close to the exit. It was good for a quick getaway, especially when I was trying to avoid the wrath of Matilda’s toxic tongue.
Eddie cleared his throat and picked at the crumbs on the table. “So, uh, you going to the last football game Friday?”
“Yeah right,” I huffed. “I haven’t been to one all year, and I’m not about to start now.”
“How about the homecoming dance?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Probably not.” Although, it didn’t sound half bad now that Matilda wouldn’t be there.
“Yeah, me neither.” Eddie frowned and raised an eyebrow at me. “We could say we’re going to the dance and go do something else. You know, if you want.”
“I don’t know.” I’d had my fill of risk taking and lying for the time being. Maybe I would try my luck again when I was thirty. That, and Eddie kind of creeped me out. He’d probably want to go tromping through a graveyard. Then I’d fall and sprain my ankle. Or worse yet, we’d get caught by someone like Officer Russell.
“We could go to the movies or the arcade,” Eddie suggested.
“If we’re only going to the movies or the arcade, why would we have to lie about it?”
He shrugged. “I dunno. So we could stop by the dance first, act bored out of our minds, stick our noses up in the air, and say we have better things to do,” he offered.
Crazy Ex-Ghoulfriend Page 2
