The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things

by Carolyn Mackler

  The crosstown bus doesn’t come for fifteen minutes, so I decide to walk home across Central Park. The sky is bright blue and there’s a chilly wind slicing down the avenues. I hug my arms across my chest and keep a fast pace.

  Of course, Brie Newhart won an MBS award. She got it for being an overall positive addition to our school. She delivered such a tear-filled acceptance speech — half of which was in French — you’d think she’d won an Oscar. Mademoiselle Kiefer actually gave her a standing ovation.

  They also presented MBS awards for athletics and community service. Every other school does awards in the spring, but Brewster has this theory that if you highlight exemplary talent at the beginning of the year, it will raise the bar for the rest of us slackers. But as I slouched in my chair and listened to how Hannah Hajost built houses for Habitat for Humanity and Kyle Bartz was the Most Valuable Runner on the varsity cross-country team, it only made me want to curl up and take a nap.

  Just when I thought the torture was over, the principal announced that she had some exciting news.

  “One of our sophomores has just won an extremely competitive graphic design award,” the principal said. “Over a hundred high-schoolers submitted designs and the prize went to . . .”

  I held my breath, distinctly remembering that day back in September when Froggy told me about a design competition he had entered.

  “Froggy Welsh the Fourth!” she exclaimed, flapping the sides of her cape like wings. “Please join me onstage for a special MBS award, young man.”

  Everyone applauded, but Froggy was stuck to his chair. After a few moments, Sarah tugged him to his feet and shoved him down the aisle. The principal shook Froggy’s hand and told him to continue making Brewster proud.

  I enter Central Park near the Met. The air is freezing, but I’m pretty wound up, so it feels good to be walking home.

  Making people proud. Is that what life is about? That’s what Mom and Dad told me a few weeks ago. Make them proud. Make myself proud. But I’ve spent my whole life trying to win their praise and where has it gotten me?

  As I walk along the Great Lawn, I pass the bench where I sat the day I ditched school, the day after I found out about Byron.

  Take my brother. He gets kicked out of college for date rape and, as Alyssa Wu pointed out, he still has a great reputation. Or Brie. She acts like a total ice queen and she still wins an MBS award.

  I’m walking faster by this point, my heels clomping against the path. What if for one second I didn’t care what people thought of me? What if I weren’t so eager to please Mom and Dad? What if I didn’t always try to blend in, go with the flow, be the good, obedient girl?

  What on earth would I do?

  As I reach Central Park West, the answer hits me as certain as the gusts slapping my cheeks.

  I’d visit Shannon Iris Malloy-Newman.

  I’d go to Seattle for Thanksgiving.

  There’s a Liberty Travel two blocks from our building. I’ve walked by it a million times, but I’ve never gone inside. As I step through the door, I’m greeted by a bored-looking guy digging through a bowl of Halloween goodies.

  “Hey,” he says as he nibbles off the top of a candy corn.

  I glance at the cardboard witches, the plastic jack-o’-lanterns, the cotton spider webs obscuring posters of Jamaican beaches.

  “How much would a plane ticket to Seattle cost?” I ask.

  He decapitates another candy corn. “That all depends on when you want to go.”

  I rub my hands together. “Over Thanksgiving.”

  He wheels his chair around so he’s facing the computer. I can’t believe I’m here. As he begins typing, I’m tempted to bolt back onto Broadway.

  “It’ll be a minute.” The man pushes the bowl of candies in my direction. “Why don’t you take a seat?”

  I pop a sugary pumpkin in my mouth and settle down across from him. I have to clutch the sides of my chair to keep from running away.

  “Were you thinking Wednesday to Sunday?” he asks.

  That would mean missing a day of school. I’d better not give my parents any extra reasons to say no. “Is there anything that leaves on Thanksgiving Day?”

  “I’ve got a flight leaving LaGuardia at eight-forty-two on Thursday morning. It transfers in Denver, which will get you to the Sea-Tac Airport at two-thirty-five that afternoon.”

  I scoop up a few candy corns and mash them between my molars. “How much is it?”

  “With all applicable taxes, it comes to four hundred and fifty-eight dollars.”

  I’m quiet for a second. That’s nearly half my savings account.

  “Do you want me to ticket it?” he asks.

  “Can you hold it for a while?”

  “Sure,” he says. “But I’d recommend moving quickly because there are only a few seats left on that flight. It’s a holiday weekend.”

  I spell out my name for him and then jog to a nearby Citibank. If I’m going to do this, I’d better do it now. I enter my PIN number and take out five hundred dollars. My hands are trembling as I count out the crisp twenty-dollar bills.

  This is my money, I keep telling myself. Mom and Dad have always said I can do whatever I want with it.

  Twenty minutes later I exit Liberty Travel with plane tickets in my hand. As I walk home, I want to tell every person I pass, I’m going to Seattle three weeks from today! I’m spending Thanksgiving with my best friend! Can you believe it? Can you fucking believe it?!

  I know nothing major has changed. Brie Newhart is still an MBS. Byron will still be moping around the apartment, resisting my parents’ attempts to cheer him up. I’m still wearing Fat Pants with the button open and two inches unzipped.

  No, nothing major has changed.

  But everything feels different.

  I still haven’t told my parents about Seattle. Today is November fifteenth. Six days before Thanksgiving. Six days before I’m scheduled to board a westbound flight. I have to tell them soon. I’ve almost done it about fifty times these past few weeks, but just as I’m readying the muscles in my mouth, I wimp out. I’m afraid they’ll simply say, No, absolutely not, and — by the way — you’re grounded for life. Until I devise a more foolproof plan, I’ve kept it a secret.

  The plane tickets are stashed in my cedar box in my top dresser drawer. Every morning I take them out and hold them in my hands. I do the same thing as soon as I get home from school and right before I go to bed. I doubt I’ll be allowed to actually use the tickets, but it makes me feel better to know that for one brief instant, I was bold and courageous.

  It was a mistake to waste my money on them. An impulse buy. That’s what Mom called it the time she purchased an eight-hundred-dollar dress from Saks. But she went back the next day and returned it. I bought nonrefundable tickets, so I’ll just have to suck up the loss.

  It’s not like I’ve completely given up yet. I’m planning to tell my parents tonight. Everyone will be in a good mood because it’s Anaïs’s twenty-third birthday. Dad is bringing home dessert and we’re going to celebrate in her honor.

  Around 9 P.M. Dad lifts a carrot cake out of its box and sets it in the middle of the table. I poke twenty-three candles into the thick white frosting.

  “Byron?” Mom shouts from the kitchen, where she’s scavenging the freezer for the nonfat sorbet that she’s going to have instead of cake.

  No answer from my brother.

  I add a twenty-fourth candle for good luck.

  “Byron?” Mom sets some mango sorbet on the table. “Don’t you want to come to Anaïs’s birthday party?”

  Byron peeks his head out of his bedroom. “I’m not up for it tonight. Go ahead without me.”

  No one says a word, but it dampens the mood. We light the candles and sing “Happy Birthday,” but the song trails off somewhere in the middle.

  That exemplifies the gloom that’s pervaded our apartment these past few weeks, ever since Byron got depressed again. He mopes around the apartment all day. I don
’t even think he’s lifting weights anymore. It all started when my parents’ lawyer recommended that Byron not go to Paris. Something about how he should give Columbia the impression that he’s remorseful about this incident rather than viewing it as vacation time.

  “Why should Columbia care which continent I’m remorseful on?” Byron asked Mom as soon as he got off the phone with the lawyer.

  I was sitting at my computer, surfing the Web for a site on how to get your parents to agree to something they’ve already nixed. I was tempted to call into the other room, I doubt ANNIE MILLS gets to decide on which continent she nurses her wounded soul.

  I think Byron is also depressed because the reality of his situation is finally hitting him. One day he was Big Man on Campus and now his life has come to a screeching halt. Usually when my brother is home, the phone rings off the hook — friends inviting him to nightclubs, girls asking him to movies, guys organizing an Ultimate Frisbee game. But now, hardly anyone calls for Byron. Mom says it’s because they’re all away at school, wrapped up in their own respective lives. But I think they’ve gotten wind of what Byron did to Annie Mills and they’re as repulsed as I am about it.

  As I lick the cream-cheese frosting off my fork, I review my strategy for telling my parents about Seattle. I’ve decided to take the casual route, so I don’t raise their defenses. As in, Hey, guys, I’m going to Seattle next Thursday morning, the way Dad announces last-minute business trips.

  Mom must have read my mind. She spoons some sorbet into her mouth and says, “Well, the upside of Byron not going to Paris is that the four of us will be in town for Thanksgiving. Too bad Anaïs can’t be here, too.”

  I choke on my frosting.

  “Are you OK?” Dad asks.

  I nod as I chug a glass of milk.

  Mom starts rambling on about how she’s determined to make homemade cranberry jelly and smooth mashed potatoes.

  I help myself to another slice of carrot cake.

  To: citigurl13

  From: goddess_shannon

  Date: Friday, November 15, 9:56 P.M.

  Subject: brainstorm

  Gin—

  Why don’t you tell your parents that you bought a one-way ticket to Seattle and you’re not coming home? That way, when they discover that you’re flying roundtrip, they’ll be so relieved that they’ll allow you to come. By the way, Liam and Nina have offered to call your parents and reassure them that the plan is legit.

  Love,

  Shan

  To: goddess_shannon

  From: citigurl13

  Date: Friday, November 15, 10:31 P.M.

  Subject: re: brainstorm

  Shan—

  If I tell my parents that I’m going to Seattle, I may as well have bought a one-way ticket because there won’t be a home waiting for me after the weekend. Please thank Liam and Nina for their offer, but I’m afraid there’s nothing anyone can do to convince them.

  Love,

  Gin

  P.S. Maybe you should invite Sabrina to Seattle.

  On Monday morning, as I reach into my cedar box for the plane tickets, I pull out the pictures that Byron and I took in a photo booth at Grand Central Station a few years ago. It’s hard to look at us, our arms slung around each other as we cross our eyes and flash our teeth. We’d just come back from spending the night with my parents out in Connecticut. Byron had to return to the city for an early rugby practice the following morning, so I offered to take the train with him and keep him company.

  I tuck the photos back in the box and pull out the plane tickets.

  Ms. Crowley is the only person in New York City who knows about Seattle. I broke down and told her after she grilled me for five lunch periods in a row. She kept commenting that I had a secret smile on my face.

  “Is there a new guy in your life?” she asked last Tuesday.

  “Not a new one or an old one,” I said.

  Ms. Crowley nodded sympathetically. I’d recently told her about Froggy. Not the graphic details, but just that there used to be something going on and now he’ll barely look in my direction.

  “Have you taken up Wicca?” Ms. Crowley asked on Wednesday. “Do you know where rainbows come from? Are you getting a ladybug tattooed onto your ankle?”

  I laughed. “No, no, and definitely no.”

  On Thursday, when I finally told her that I secretly bought plane tickets to Seattle, she said, “You are a brave woman.”

  “Brave enough to throw away five hundred bucks.”

  “Don’t be so quick to doubt yourself, Virginia.”

  “Whatever,” I said.

  When I go to Ms. Crowley’s office today, there’s a Post-it stuck to her computer monitor:

  V—

  Did you tell them over the weekend??

  I’m in a meeting. See you tomorrow!

  E. C.

  I reach into my backpack and pull out my math notebook and a poppy-seed bagel with cream cheese. I’ve just conquered the congruent triangle when the bell rings. I head into the second-floor bathroom to pick the poppy seeds out of my braces.

  As I open the door, I hear puking noises. The toilet flushes and then there’s silence. I’m about to ask if the person is OK when I peek under the stall.

  I suck in my breath.

  High-heeled magenta boots all the way from Paris.

  This is the fourth time I’ve seen Brie Newhart’s boots in this bathroom in the past few weeks. Until now, I’d never really thought about it.

  I stand there for a second, adding two and two together. Second-floor bathroom. Far from the cafeteria. Puking. Skeletally skinny. Feeling faint in gym class.

  Could Brie have an eating disorder?

  I mean, she and the other Bri-girls are always bragging about dieting and exercise, but that’s one thing. Throwing up your tater tots on a daily basis is another.

  I hurry back into the hallway. Maybe I’m blowing the whole thing out of proportion.

  Then again, she did say that if she looked like me, she’d kill herself.

  And I know from Mom that if an eating disorder gets out of control, that’s exactly what can happen.

  I’m still thinking about Brie on the bus ride home from school. I can’t get those vomiting sounds out of my head. I know I have every reason to hate her — she’s gorgeous, she’s popular, she treats me like a pigeon dropping, she used her cell phone to bust Froggy in French class. But I actually feel sorry for her. I mean, we’re on opposite ends of the weight spectrum, but I know what it’s like to hate your body so much that you want to hurt it.

  When I come through the front door, I hear the TV blaring inside. I glance into the living room. Byron is conked out on the couch, his hair oily, his face coated in stubble. He has a half-eaten bag of Oreos nestled into the crook of his arm. I get a pang in my stomach when I remember how we used to split open Oreos, fill them with ice cream, and make cookie sandwiches.

  These are the kinds of things I can only think about when Byron is sleeping. When he’s awake, all I want to do is shake him by the shoulders and ask how he could have treated a girl so badly.

  An hour later I’m sitting on my bed, attempting to concentrate on manganese and titanium and unununium. My chemistry textbook is propped open in my lap. We have a huge test tomorrow on transition elements on the periodic table, but I keep spacing out, wondering if Brie is bulimic, how I’ll tell my parents about Seattle, whether Annie Mills celebrates Thanksgiving even through she’s Canadian, who in their right mind would name a metal “unununium.”

  There’s a knock on my door.

  “Come in,” I shout.

  Mom walks in. She’s wearing a tailored black pantsuit. And she must have gotten her hair touched up today because it’s browner than usual.

  “How was school?” she asks.

  “Fine.”

  “Anything interesting happen?”

  “Not really.”

  “Do you have a lot of homework?”

  “Some,” I say. “Why?”


  “I’m getting interviewed at the Ninety-second Street Y tonight. Would you like to come along?”

  “What’s it about?” I ask.

  “They’re doing a special series about raising healthy teenagers, so it’s mainly geared for parents, how to handle various problems that arise,” Mom says. “I thought it would be nice to bring one of mine along.”

  I’m tempted to ask whether she means one of her teenagers or one of her problems. “What about Byron?”

  “What about him?” Mom asks. “Can you be ready in ten minutes? We’ll grab sushi on the way.”

  “OK,” I say, pushing aside The Study of Matter.

  Just before Mom leaves my room, she glances at me. “Why don’t you change into a dressier outfit? Some press will be there and maybe even a literary agent.”

  “OK.”

  “How about that beige sweater from Salon Z?”

  “OK,” I say again.

  As soon as Mom is gone, I head over to my closet and pull out the beige sweater. Mom is always buying me clothes at Salon Z. That’s the plus-size department of Saks Fifth Avenue. The styles aren’t exactly trendy or hip. In fact, sometimes it seems like I have the wardrobe of a fifty-two-year-old woman.

  As I yank off my sweatshirt, I think about how I don’t care that Mom probably would have brought Byron to the lecture if he weren’t so depressed. And I don’t care that tomorrow’s test on the periodic table will count for 20 percent of my chemistry grade.

  I’m just happy to finally get invited to one of Mom’s events.

  Mom is going to be interviewed by a woman named Joy Lassiter. She introduces herself to me as a television journalist. She has the whitest teeth I have seen in my entire life, like a row of peppermint Chiclets.

  As forty or fifty people file into the small auditorium, a cluster of us mill around near the stage. Mom is talking to a woman who introduced herself as a literary agent and is wearing black leather pants and a black leather jacket. Mom’s face lit up when she heard that. She’s always saying how she wants to write a book about being an adolescent psychologist.