by Gurley, Jan
Great. I was now officially the Viola of my family.
***
Sunday I stayed away from the computer, not able to bear the idea of seeing the picture Celia sent. Call me a coward, but I just wanted one more day to pretend it hadn’t happened. I waited until what I thought would be suppertime at the Petruchio-Bullard residence, used our home phone so the number would show up blocked, and dialed. When the answering machine kicked on, I felt shaky with relief, and put the last of my nerves into saying quietly, at the beep, the way I’d practiced it, “Mrs.BullardthisisKatecallingyoubackbye.” And hung up. With any luck she wouldn’t find it until after ten.
So, okay, I am a coward. I admit it.
***
Monday I got to the circle before dawn, not sure if anyone else would show. My brown baby-tree now seemed to creak whenever the breeze shifted branches. I flopped, arms out, chest down on the stump, and closed my eyes.
When I opened them the sun was up, my heart felt at peace for the first time in weeks.
Then I sat up.
Everyone was there, including Drew. And Bianca. And Celia.
I felt suddenly naked.
“What? Is there some crisis?”
People looked at each other. Celia said, “Can somebody give her a tranquilizer or something?”
Viola, of all people, patted Celia absently on the knee, “She’s got a lot on her mind. It takes a lot of energy to keep secrets.”
Greenbacks coughed, looked away, made exaggerated stretching movements. Celia narrowed her eyes at me. “What secrets?”
I said, keeping my voice as level as I could, and giving Viola a stun-gun-quality, incapacitating glare, “I said, is there a crisis? Is that why you’re all here?”
Gonzo said, “No crisis, but Celia and I have that photo shoot for the Dean today. And, um, I wanted to bring it up with everyone, because, well, we don’t have to look for the camera any more, right? But what do I use for the shoot?”
Okay, I admit it. I was distracted. While Gonzo talked, I looked sideways at where Drew sat, noticing the way the early morning sun made the skin on his forearms glow, wondering if it was really possible that he’d held my hand for hours, and whether that kiss could have really felt the way I remembered it.
I looked up at silent faces staring at me, and, as though Gonzo’s words just now filtered into my head, I suddenly realized, from the way Gonzo sat by himself, away from Celia, what he must be talking about. I narrowed my eyes at Celia. “You did return the kissing camera, didn’t you?”
There was gasp. Silence.
Bianca said, smiling with her lips pressed together, flashing dimples that I didn’t know she had, “You just said ‘kissing’ camera.”
“I did not! I said missing camera.”
“You did too. You said kissing.”
There was a horrified moment when I realized everyone was smiling at redwood needles on the ground between their shoes. Drew, most of all.
“Never mind,” I practically shouted. “Did you return the camera, Celia, or not?”
“You know, I do a lot for you people.” Which I took as proof she’d never returned the camera. I couldn’t believe it.
“You had better get that camera in, Celia, or you’re the one who’s going to be in major trouble.”
Celia said, “Who would care? None of you would band together to do anything, not for me.”
“How about if you don’t put us to the test?”
“You mean, just return it? Just like that?” I realized that Celia hadn’t returned the camera because she didn’t trust us. Not any of us, not even Gonzo. Celia didn’t want to lose her hold over us.
“Yep. Today, when you and Gonzo do the shoot.”
“Why would I do something like that? None of you even talk to me.”
I wanted to shake her. Couldn’t she see Gonzo, his head bent forward? Couldn’t she see that what she said must hurt his feelings?
Drew stood up, brushing off his trousers. He walked over to where Celia sat, her back straight as a pole leaning against the tree trunk. He put a hand down for her and she stared at it. Looking away, she finally took it and he tugged her up. “You want never-ending conversation? Get Kate angry. Works every time for me.”
Celia gave an embarrassed laugh.
Helena said, “Nope, she doesn’t get the easy way out. Here’s the deal, Celia. I’m thinking that because you didn’t return that camera, you’re stuck with lunch-duty for the whole gang. Every day this week. Everyone agree?”
It seemed a bit of a shock to me — particularly because I wasn’t sure if Celia already knew about the fact that we rotated lunch duty weekly. But, typical Helena, her idea was an extremely efficient solution to multiple issues. Lunch, getting Celia more involved in the group, helping Gonzo. And I was trying to not be controlling, so I let it go. Besides, there was a chorus of yeahs.
Celia looked stunned. “But I can’t cook. My mom would never help.”
I said, “Well, then you’ve got at least two choices. Ask Gonzo to give you a hand. If you’re nice, I bet he will. He’s good at that stuff. Or,” I said, trying to paint the choice in as stark a set of terms as possible, “you could go and buy a twelve-dog carrier pack every day. From Gremio.”
No one looked more nauseated at that thought than Celia herself.
Everyone stood and laughed and picked up bags and walked off. Gonzo stomped across the field first, and I wasn’t sure he was going to forgive Celia right away. She’d really hurt his feelings in front of everyone else.
I just hoped to God Celia returned that camera. To me, it was like a loaded pistol, floating around loose.
A brown twig, larger than any of the others I’d ever seen spontaneously fall, whirligigged its way to the ground.
That’s when I realized Drew wasn’t in the group crossing the field. He leaned a shoulder against a tree, in shadow. I picked up my bag.
“Okay,” I said, “so I got the message. Maybe you got something out of,” I swallowed, “the, you know, kissing thing.”
“No.” Drew came close, looking down at me with that gleam in his eyes. “It was sheer torture.”
He’d done that thing only guys do. Today he’d worn his rugby shirt to school, like he didn’t care if people had seen him in it just two days ago. I nodded at his chest, “A girl would never do that.”
“Wear the shirt again?”
His fingers trailed down my upper arm to my hand. I was finding it hard to focus. “Hey, I just wish it was colder.”
“For the jacket?”
“Seemed cruel to leave her at home.”
“Her?”
He flashed white teeth at me, “Definitely.”
I had a mental image of him imagining the coat wrapped around him. Probably it wasn’t sane to feel a stab of jealousy. “It’s the right thing,” I said, snippy, “she needs cloistering.”
He raised an eyebrow and leaned in, my eyes closing instinctively, his lips a brush against mine, then nothing — him waiting. A boom boom gong pounded in my head, warning of disaster to come. I shouldn’t be doing this, I should be telling him something, no wait, I wasn’t supposed to tell him — what was it? — it was for his own good. Way in the distance I heard the bell ring.
There was some reason I was supposed to care about that bell. Wasn’t there?
“Dang. Missed my chance,” he said, “to do some self-sacrificing,” and stepped back, lifting his bag. “Got to get going.”
“You do?”
“The Fitz. English. Can’t be late.”
“You can’t?”
He threw an arm that felt like a sack of bricks across my shoulders, towing me across the field with a half-smile on his face.
“Remember? We’re doing Wodehouse,” he said.
I jerked to a stop, panic fluttering and flapping like Gremio’s fly-swat. “Am I Jeeves, or am I Wooster?”
“We’ll find out. I think you’re Jeeves.”
***
I would
like to say, with some dignity, that I regained myself within moments. That, however, would be a lie. I spent the day staggering in a fog — steamy thoughts alternated with bone-chilling mists of anxiety, enveloping me back and forth like battling storm fronts.
Third period Mrs. Broadstreet announced in psych that our projects were due in two days. What project? On the way out, I asked Drew and he said, not meeting my gaze, “You know. That thing.”
“What thing?” I didn’t get his reluctance to tell me. “And speak in words of two syllables or less, my brain fell out some time on Saturday.”
We stood in the hallway, Greenbacks collecting for brunch. Drew put his arm on the wall above my left shoulder, and I jumped as though it was Band and the cymbals came in a measure early.
“And don’t stand so close,” I said, “I can’t think.”
He stepped back with a smile on his face and I realized all the Greenbacks were unnecessarily busy unwrapping tired old blah snacks that seemed to have become suddenly as fascinating as a Gonzo-surprise.
I frowned. “Where’s Gonzo?”
Phoebe, for some reason, glared at Helena, who stared down and dug deeper into a tiny clear sandwich bag of goldfish. “Gonzo and Celia had a big fight. On the way into first period.”
I felt my heart plummet like an action-film elevator when the cable gets cut. It was like I knew there was a foundation-shattering crash at the bottom of this.
I said, my voice low, “What happened.”
Phoebe kept glaring at Helena, “Celia asked him, in front of all of us, in this weird voice that didn’t sound AT ALL like Celia, all nice and sweet, if he’d help her make lunches.”
I couldn’t seem to breathe. “And?”
Phoebe finally looked at me and gave a big sigh. “Gonzo said that since everyone knew she clearly had a thing for some guy named Gremio, she should ask him.”
My voice sounded hollow, like it came from the bottom of a deep, deep shaft. “Oooh. Nooo.”
Phoebe cocked an eyebrow at me and gave me a shockingly preppy, “Yuh. And that’s when Celia looked at all of us standing in a circle, her face all red and blotchy and she said, ‘How desperate and stupid do you think I am? You really think you guys could trick me into being some pathetic little cook for you all week?’ And stomped off.”
I lifted a hand to my open mouth.
Drew said, like maybe it was best to distract me at this point, “The psych project’s those names we chose out of the box.”
Great. This on top of everything else. Gag-me-with-a-spoon Freud, and I had two nights to pull it off.
Viola said, “Tell Kate what you got, Drew.”
Drew gave Viola the most thunderous death-glare I’d ever seen. But she just smiled and bit into her cracker.
“What?” I said, thoroughly confused, psych project issues crowded out of my brain by thoughts of poor Gonzo and poor Celia and (urg) how Celia must have felt when Gonzo accused her of having a crush on Gremio. That, alone, was enough to make anyone blow.
What would Celia do? She still had the missing (not kissing) camera. Would she get revenge by taking it to the office and saying Drew had it?
“Go ahead,” Viola said to Drew in a gentle voice, “Tell Kate.”
But he surprised all of us by stomping off, wordless, leaving me standing in an insta-freeze cloud of anxiety.
***
Today’s Tweets: Psychology class. Drew keeps other students on task. Still allows room for uncertainty and individual expression. Who knew?
***
No one had food for lunch. But that wasn’t, by far, the worst of it.
Gonzo sat with rabbit-red eyes, off by himself. If anyone orbited near him, he shot the idea of joining him down with a laser-glare of pure, blinding fury.
Outside the circle were more stakes driven into the ground. This time they were tied to each other with twine, outlining for us all the rigid shape of the future University snack shack.
The construction people learned from the last time they put up stakes — these were deeper. It took us all lunch, and many splinters each, for us to extract thirty-seven of them.
The recycling bin’s lid wouldn’t close.
It’s hard to take Mrs. Gleason after that kind of lunch break. She said, looking at a class roster, “Oh, how lovely! It’s time for our favorite football player to give us his speech for this unit!”
The entire class turned to stare at Drew. He sat slouched in his chair. Arms crossed, chin down, legs out front. When Mrs. Gleason spoke, it was like a tentacle wrapped itself around his ankles and began to pull him under the linoleum floor. Down, down, down. And he wasn’t fighting it.
Mrs. Gleason came and stood beside him. “Andrew, dear, posture is very important in making a good first impression. Up up!”
She pinched the fabric of his upper sleeve between two fingers and pulled it out into a triangle. He stopped his descent, turned his head and stared at her hand holding his sleeve. I suddenly realized that Mrs. Gleason had years of experience getting teenaged boys to stand up in front of a class and talk. Kind of made me shudder to think of the willpower and deviousness her kind of career required. Given the assignment, high school public-speaking teachers could probably have the Middle East sorted out before finals.
As the tense impasse continued, Mrs. Gleason said, “I’m surprised at you, Andrew, being coy like this,” (he flinched at the word, “coy”). “You were so great the first time you spoke in class,” (he flinched at the memory). “And if there’s anyone who’s going to be speaking a lot in their future career, it’s you!” (he looked like he’d been sucker-punched by the mental image of a never-ending series of Mrs. Gleason public-speaking experiences).
Drew was down for the count and he knew it. He slowly pulled his ankles free of the invisible tentacles, shifted up in his seat and stood. Mrs. Gleason held his little triangle of sleeve in her pinched fingers all the way to the front of the class.
“Oh, goodie!” she said, “I’ll just choose a topic for you, shall I?” and without waiting for an answer, she pulled a folded piece of paper out of her Garfield ceramic cookie-jar topic-holder. She unfolded it, said, “This is such a wonderful topic for someone like you, Andrew. Lets you stretch your wings a bit!”
She set the timer for five minutes, stage-whispered, “Now remember your structure: topic sentence, three points, conclusion!” She looked at the paper and said, “Your topic is…are you ready? Are you sure you’re ready? I’m just kidding you! Okay, here it is. It’s Cosmetics. Go!”
Have you ever seen someone walk on stage, in front of a packed auditorium. Maybe they’re wearing a sword, or carrying a butler’s tray, or standing on a taped X on the ground. And then a spotlight hits them. Their thoughts are turned inward, like all the other actors, and you see this initial movement of facial muscles, like they’re about to speak, but then, whoom. Stage fright. In an instant, like someone’s thrown one of those giant switches that resets the power, every brain cell scrambles. You can see it happening. Eyes wake and stare into the audience, the face loses all tone. Arms wilt, legs wobble. As the ominous silence stretches, getting tauter and tauter, the audience begins to twitch and shift, as though thousands of people are repressing the urge to shout “Wake Up!” but nothing stops the process, the eyes burn hotter and brighter, sweat starts to bead, and the face gets slacker and slacker until…
Ding.
“O — kay!” says Mrs. Gleason, “Not as good as your first effort, Andrew, but our motto is every experience is a learning experience!” She walked him back to his seat, still with the pinched triangle of sleeve, like it was a tiny cloth leash. “My tip for you next time is one word. Enthusiasm! It makes such a difference! If you charge into your assignments with enthusiasm, the momentum is your friend! It can start you going and keep you going.” She added, with an evil glint in her eye, “I’m betting we won’t be making that mistake again, now will we?”
For the rest of the class, no matter whose name was called,
or what topic was chosen, their speech was an incoherent, but extremely enthusiastic, babbling.
***
Today’s Tweets: Drew gives improv talk in Speech. Creates in the minds of his audience an unforgettable, haunting image.
***
Walking to tutoring, my steps got slower and slower. I didn’t even want to think about what it would be like, 45 minutes of being forced into that tiny cube with Drew.
My faint hope that Drew would still be stunned and recuperating from the horror of Mrs. Gleason crumbled. Except for muttering, “That woman is more evil than any coach, ever,” plus a tendency, because of the adrenaline overload, for his left leg to seize up, and a slight pallor to his skin, Drew seemed to have shaken most of the predictable after-effects in less than an hour. Which was a record for Academy students.
Outside tutoring hall, Tio wore a new pair of heavy-fabric baggy jeans and a faux-graffiti-ed tee-shirt, both clearly not from the boys’ department. And, in the bright sun, I saw stubble on his upper lip. Also a dime-sized patch on his cheek, like a seedling clump that would gradually spread in a few years into a lawn of shaved stubble. His forehead still seemed too big for his face and I realized his eyebrows had recently become sluggish, fat caterpillars.
“Yes?” he said to me, sharply.
Caught in the act, I had a momentary panic. Then I flicked my upper lip, like Tio had something hanging there. He wiped his lip with the back of his hand, looking grateful to me for letting him know. I felt a stab of guilt and caught Drew staring at me, that half-smile on his face.
“Yes?” I said to him, sharply.
Drew smiled wider, but before he answered, a teensy Uni girl, who looked like she really should be in sixth grade instead of ninth, grabbed my elbow and dragged me a couple of steps away. She had a thickly lip-glossed smile that didn’t reach her eyes. A horde of Uni-girls, all young, watched us from eight feet further along the path. She, clearly the spokesgirl for them all, said to me, “What’s his name?”
