She grabs her pom-poms off a bench and heads out the door just as black-and-white patterns swim before my eyes and my throat closes off. I sink to the floor and pass out.
enlightenment (noun): insight
(see also: turning 15)
19
I NOW HAVE a reputation at school as a badass, thanks to the YouTube stalker, who caught the whole fight with Regina on camera and posted it online.
Or at least, Robert tells me I’m now considered a badass. I have no idea if it’s really true. I’m home in bed with mono, where I’ve been for the past week. And today is my birthday.
Needless to say, I’m not having a party with Matt. But that was a no-brainer from the get-go. It’s my second lame birthday in a row. But, hey, at least I’m not in the hospital anymore.
After my fight with Tracy, Coach Morley found me passed out cold on the locker room floor and called 911. Bobby Passeo, my old pal, came to collect me in the very same ambulance that broke up all the fun at homecoming, and I spent the afternoon in the emergency room, being stuck with needles and having gunk picked out of my arms and legs with tweezers. Bobby stayed until my mom got there, which happened just as the doctor was asking me how long my glands had been so swollen that I could hardly turn my head. “I could see those Frankenstein bolts the second I walked in the room,” he said to my mom, who looked so ashamed that I sort of felt bad for her.
The doctor was surprised that my blood test showed the mono was mild. After Bobby told him I’d been passed out for more than five minutes, he thought I might have to be admitted. I opted not to tell him what had happened in the ten minutes before I passed out, which might have had something to do with my desire to remain blissfully unconscious for a while.
My mom is thrilled—she feels that my having mono explains my uncharacteristically violent attack on a fellow student. At least, that’s what she told Mrs. Chen, who called to “check” on me, or rather, to tell my mom what had been happening in school. While they talked, I imagined Mrs. Chen on the other end of the phone, wearing her Christmas headband with the antlers.
Mrs. Chen said everyone missed me at school and was looking forward to my return, which I thought was pretty funny. I’m sure people couldn’t care less where I am, but there is a part of me that wouldn’t mind walking the halls of good old Union High, enjoying my temporary YouTube celebrity. By now, though, people have probably moved on to something else. I bet the video isn’t even posted anymore—Mrs. Chen’s cyberspies monitor all activity that takes place on the computers, so if students are sending a specific link to their friends using their Union High email addresses, Mrs. Chen finds out about it fast.
The doorbell rings. It’s Robert. He’s stopped by every day this week with my homework, which is really nice and convenient, seeing as how he’s my only friend right now. We’ve talked more this week than in the past few months—I even told him about Regina—but he still hasn’t brought up Jamie. And neither have I.
My mom calls to me, saying that Robert’s coming up, and I attempt to make myself more presentable, which is hard to do when you’re propped up in bed sporting sweats, greasy hair and giant, oozing scabs on your arms and legs.
“Come in,” I say when he knocks.
“Hey. How’s it going?” He takes his usual spot in my old beanbag chair as he digs through his backpack to find my homework.
“Hey, guess what? I think I’m back on Monday.”
“You’re lucky. When I had mono, I was out forever. Stop picking,” he says, looking at my left fingers working away at my right forearm.
“You were out with mono? I thought that was juvie.”
“Ha-ha,” Robert says dryly. “May I remind you that I never did time for my minor infractions?”
“Ooh, ‘infractions.’ That sounds like an AP English word, Robert.”
He rolls his eyes and hands me a bunch of disorganized folders with paper sticking out of them every which way. I start to look through them and then think better of it, dropping the mess on the floor. “I thought you had rehearsal today.”
“Dress rehearsal tonight. Seriously, stop picking.”
“It itches.”
“So put some stuff on it. Do you have it? Where is it?”
I point to my desk, and he grabs the ointment off my laptop. “So how’re final rehearsals going?”
“Ordinarily, high school students should stay the hell away from Shakespeare,” he says, handing me the tube. It occurs to me as I start to put the stuff on that Robert is one of only a few people I would do this in front of. “But I have to admit, things are going okay. Meg Bennett is pretty brilliant as Lady Macbeth. She even makes sense when she talks.”
“And who are you playing again?” I ask, pretending I don’t know as I slather the stuff on my scabs.
He grins, takes a theatrical sip from an imaginary flask and says in a gravelly, old-man voice, “The porter.” The porter is a really small part in Macbeth, but he’s the comic relief in the middle of endless tragedy, and all the upperclassmen in the drama department were super pissed off when Robert got the role. But he deserved the part—people talked about how awesome his audition was for at least a week, and Robert was sort of an underclassman hero for a while there, having scored a victory for all freshmen.
“Are you going to come see it?”
“If Mom lets me out of my bed this weekend. And if you can guarantee me that I won’t have to see Tracy, or anyone else we know.”
Robert shifts around, uncomfortable in the chair. When he finally gets settled, he puffs up his cheeks and lets the air release slowly in a giant sigh. He’s buying time.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing.”
“Something.”
“Yeah, okay, something.” He reaches into his pocket and takes his pack of cigarettes halfway out before he realizes what he’s doing. He shoves it back in, sighs and leans forward as much as he can in the beanbag chair. “There’s a rumor. I don’t know if it’s true.”
“About me?” I brace myself for the worst.
“Actually, it’s the first one this week that isn’t about you. It’s about Tracy. Word is she finally did the deed.”
If there’s one thing that drives home the point that your best friend is no longer your best friend, it’s hearing from someone else that she lost her virginity.
“Seriously?”
Robert shrugs. “That’s what they say. Sorry you had to hear it from me.”
I can’t believe she did it. Even though she knows about Lena. She probably did it because she knows about Lena. And what are the chances that they used condoms? Not as good as the chances that she just went ahead and had unprotected sex out of desperation.
“The other rumor is that he dumped her and is now with Lena.”
I feel sick to my stomach and it’s not the mono. Tracy is now just a notch on Stupid Boy’s swim-team-issued thong, which is probably what he was after all along. “Do you think it’s true?”
Robert cocks his head and pauses for dramatic effect. “Maybe you should call her and find out,” he says with fake innocence.
No. Uh-uh. I am not calling Tracy. Not after what she did to me. How can we even be friends anymore anyway? She’s still on the squad, probably kissing up to Regina, even after I told her what Regina did. Everything is too different now. We’re not even in the same universe at this point. I shake my head.
“What else is going on?” I ask.
“That’s all you have to say about Tracy?” he says, looking disappointed in me. I shrug. “She’s still the same person, Rosie. It’s not like doing it with Matt turned her into someone new.”
“We’re not talking to each other right now, Robert.”
“Because she told Regina that you kissed Forta?”
So he does know. We stare at each other for a few seconds in a sort of standoff. Then I nod slowly.
Robert extracts himself from the beanbag and closes my door. Then he sits in my desk chair, rolling it over to my bed. He leans back, his arms crossed.
“Tell me what’s going on with Jamie—the truth.”
“I don’t know. Honestly. It’s…confusing.”
“He ran across the track the other day like you were on fire or something.”
There’s a look in Robert’s eyes that I’ve never seen before. It’s like he’s closing down, or shutting off. A knot forms in my stomach—I sense something bad is coming, something that I now realize I’ve been expecting for a while. Something that I deserve, if I’m honest with myself.
“People say he’s a player. But you like him. I mean, you kissed him. At least once.”
“People say he’s a player?”
“Yeah, well, he’s been seeing you and Regina, hasn’t he?” Robert says, annoyed by my response. “People think that that’s what the fight was really about.”
“That fight was not about Jamie. It was about Regina saying something about my dad and doing everything she could to make my life miserable this year.”
“All of which she did because you’re after Jamie.”
I start picking again, not able to confirm or deny. This time he doesn’t tell me to stop.
“It’s time for me to go, Rose.”
“Okay. Thanks for bringing my homework.”
He shakes his head. “No, I mean, I’m not hanging around for this anymore.”
I’m still not getting it. “What?”
“It’s just, I really thought that this year, you’d be with me. But you met him. And then homecoming happened, and, so, I just think that…I’ll be your friend, but from afar. Unless…”
“Unless what?”
“Unless you do want to go out with me.”
I look away from him before I can stop myself.
Robert stands up.
“Wait—”
“Look, if you’re going out with Forta, be careful, okay? I don’t think he’s the great guy you think he is.” Robert takes his cigarettes out of his pocket and smacks the package against his hand a few times. “And I really am sorry about homecoming. If I’d known… It doesn’t matter now.” He leans over and kisses me on the cheek. “Happy Birthday, Rosie the Rose.”
“I’ll come see your show this weekend,” I say, surprising myself by sounding a little desperate.
Robert puts an unlit cigarette in his mouth. “It’s cool. You don’t need to,” he answers without looking back as he walks out of my room.
I listen to him going down the stairs, wishing I could go after him but knowing I shouldn’t. Robert is smart to do this—to move on or let go or whatever he’s doing—because he thinks I don’t appreciate him.
I look at the velvet jewelry box on my dresser where the “R” pendant lives—which somehow I could never thank him for, and which I only wore once—and I know that he’s right.
First Tracy, now Robert. How does someone lose her two closest friends in one week?
“Rose,” my mother calls from the bottom of the stairs. “Dinner’s ready.”
The last thing I want to do is try to make conversation with my mom. Once again, it’s just us on my birthday, for the second year in a row. I guess this is how I spend my birthdays now. I drag myself out of bed and make my way downstairs.
All the lights are off in the kitchen, and my mom is standing at the table with a giant chocolate cake covered in candles. Fifteen, to be exact. I can tell just by looking at them that they’re trick candles, the kind that relight after you blow them out. My father loved to put them on our cakes and act surprised when they’d burst into flame again, as if he had no idea how they’d gotten on the cake in the first place.
I expect to feel angry at her for using Dad’s candles. I wait for it, but it doesn’t come. Turns out I think it’s kind of nice that she did that. Surprise, surprise.
“Birthday cake for dinner?” I ask.
“If ever there was a year to do it, this would be the one. Happy birthday, honey,” she says. “Make a wish.”
I usually get stressed out about birthday wishes—choosing the right thing is so much pressure. Too many wishes come into my head at once, and I try to prioritize them and decide which would be the smartest thing to ask for, and then I become totally paralyzed. But this year is different. I close my eyes, and nothing comes into my head aside from the obvious. But since I’m not a three-year-old, I don’t bother wishing that my dad weren’t dead. Instead, I just pretend I wished for something good, and I blow out the candles. Mom turns on the lights and hands me the knife to make the first cut, which, in Zarelli family tradition, ensures that my birthday wish will come true.
“I asked Robert to stay, but I don’t think he heard me,” she says apologetically, as if she knows I’m bummed I don’t have anyone else to spend my birthday with but her.
“It’s okay. He’s mad at me, along with everyone else in the universe.”
I give her back the knife, and she cuts two big, dinner-size pieces for us. We sit at the kitchen table together and each take our first bite at the same time.
“Yum, Mom, this is awesome,” I say with my mouth full. My mother makes the world’s best chocolate birthday cake.
“I’m glad.” She smiles, pleased, and I realize that I haven’t said a single nice thing to her since dad died. Not a single one. “So why is Robert mad?” she asks delicately, as if preparing to hear that it’s none of her business.
“He got tired of waiting for me to go out with him,” I answer.
“He’s just not for you, huh?” I shake my head. “Is there someone else?” she asks.
I can tell by the way she isn’t looking at me that she already knows the answer. I decide to just tell the truth and make it official by finally saying it out loud. It suddenly seems weird to me that I’ve gone this long without doing that.
“I like Jamie.”
“Are you together?”
“No. He’s with that cheerleader, Regina.”
“The one you knocked down?”
There’s something funny about hearing my mom say this, and I grin a little. “Yup. That’s the one.”
“Rose, you know it’s not funny, right? Physically attacking another person is not a funny thing,” she says. If she were talking in her therapy voice, I’d get up and leave the room right now. But she’s not. She just sounds like my mom. “What happened, honey?”
I don’t know if I can explain it to her in a way that she’ll understand, but I’m willing to try, for once.
“Well, Regina made fun of that picture of me at the funeral, and she stares me down all the time, and…I didn’t want to ignore her anymore, I wanted to hurt her. When I fell, something kind of snapped and I had to hit her. I just had to.” I look at my mom, expecting to see anger or disappointment on her face, but she just looks sad, like she feels sorry for me. “Jamie’s the one who saved me from punching her in the face. If he hadn’t been there, I’d probably be suspended right now.”
My mother
nods. “That’s what Mrs. Chen said. But she also said that your extenuating circumstance would have been taken into consideration.”
I wonder how much longer my dad’s death will be considered my “extenuating circumstance.” It occurs to me that he would be a fan of the word extenuating. File that one away, he’d say to me. Good PSAT word.
“Honey, I want to talk to you about your anger.” She watches closely to see my reaction. “I want to talk about Dad. Is that okay?”
My eyes start to tear up, but I nod anyway.
“You’re so mad all the time,” she says, “and I just wonder if you understand why.” She waits for me to respond, but I take another bite of cake instead. “I think you’re mad for the same reason I’m mad. Because Dad is gone.”
It doesn’t seem right to be mad at Dad for getting killed, especially after I went off on Peter for being mad. But it sure would explain a lot of things.
“And I think you’re also angry at me.”
She’s right about that, too.
“When Mrs. Chen told me about the fight with Regina, and about the graffiti that someone has been writing about you, I realized that I’ve been absent. I thought that I was giving you space to deal with your grief, but the truth is, I was taking space to deal with mine. I left you all alone. And I’m so very sorry about that.”
Now the tears start to spill. Mom reaches across the table and wipes them away with a sad smile.
“The other thing I need to tell you is why that happened. The truth is, I feel guilty about Dad’s death. If I hadn’t had such huge concerns about money after he lost his job, he never would have taken that contractor position. And I think I owe you an apology for that, too.”
Now I’m really crying hard. She gets up, comes to stand behind my chair and puts her arms around me.
Confessions of an Angry Girl Page 21
