You Can't Sit With Us

by Nancy Rue

  Winnie giggled. It sounded the same as a little silver bell, and I liked it.

  “Okay, I’m ready,” Ophelia said.

  Of course she had to clear her throat one more time. I was about to ask her if she wanted a cough drop.

  Finally, Ophelia started in. “I woke from my sleep—”

  I didn’t hear the rest because somebody grabbed my sleeve and pulled me out of our row of lockers. That somebody was Izzy, and her round cheeks were bright red, which meant she had news. Not good. She wasn’t as gentle as Heidi as she hauled me around the end of the lockers, and all I could see as she dragged me were the Tribelet’s eyes bulging.

  In the next row, Those Girls were all posed around Kylie. They each wore the exact same expression—the way starved-skinny models did in magazines. It was like the more the clothes cost, the unhappier they looked. The models in the Kmart ads always seemed like they were about to say, “Woo-hoo!” even though their outfits were cheap. I should be super-ecstatic because my jeans and sweatshirts mostly came from Goodwill.

  But when Izzy pulled me into the picture, Kylie looked up and actually smiled as she patted the bench beside her. Her deep dimples even showed like little finger-pokes into whipped cream.

  “Come sit by me,” she said.

  “Why?” I said.

  Riannon rolled her green eyes—like, way up into her head—and Heidi covered her mouth with her hand (although I heard her snort). Izzy gave me a shove toward Kylie.

  “Don’t be rough with her,” Kylie said to her. To me she said, “I know I haven’t been that nice to you in the past.”

  Like at all.

  “And since that whole Code thing and all, I thought I should . . . be nicer.”

  I didn’t remind Kylie that she was the only person in the whole sixth grade who hadn’t signed the Code. I did remember to close my mouth.

  “I don’t know what Victoria has told you,” Kylie said, (she was talking about Tori), “but I’m not some monster.”

  “She never called you a monster,” I said, although I’d sure wanted to—like a hundred times.

  But Kylie was still smiling at me. She and Those Girls had been suspended for five days, and, as they had just found out, they’d lost their place as the popular ones while they were gone. So maybe . . . that might have changed them some? If I was going to follow the Code, shouldn’t I sit down and give them a chance?

  So I took a seat on the bench next to Kylie. On the other side of her, Heidi was holding a big, plastic, pink, polka-dot, zippered thing that opened out flat and held more makeup than they had at Raley’s. Not that I knew anything about cosmetics, but yikes!

  “We’re doing makeovers,” Kylie said.

  “And we thought you could use one,” Riannon said.

  Heidi didn’t even try to smother her snort that time.

  Kylie glared at them before she smiled at me again with her perfect teeth showing. “I just thought it would be fun for you.”

  Without waiting for me to say, “Sure,” or “No way!” she pushed my hair back with a headband and went after my cheeks with a big soft brush that had pink powder on it.

  “This will give you cheekbones,” she said.

  Or make me look like Ronald McDonald. Yeah, it was hard to believe she’d changed that much.

  Kylie handed the brush to Riannon and held out her palm until Heidi put a mascara wand into it. It was reminding me of an operating room on TV.

  “Be really still,” Kylie said to me.

  Still? I was suddenly paralyzed.

  “You actually look sort of good,” Heidi said when Kylie was finished with my eyelashes. I continued to hold my breath.

  Kylie held up three tubes. “What color lip gloss do you want?”

  “Go with the Chocolate Shakespeare,” Riannon said.

  “Does it taste like chocolate?” I couldn’t help asking.

  “Of course.” Kylie slathered some on me like she did it all the time. Which, come to think of it, she did. Those girls were always gooping up their lips. I licked mine. It did taste kind of like a Hershey’s kiss.

  “Now, hair,” Kylie said.

  She stood up, brush in hand, got behind me, and took off the headband. I waited for her to yank me bald-headed, but the strokes were soft. Nobody had brushed my hair for me since I was six.

  “We don’t even know that much about you,” Kylie said. “Right?”

  The girls nodded. I looked for eye rolls or lip curls or that thing they did when they were trying—not that hard—not to laugh in my face. But they all looked interested, leaning-in and nodding like they were.

  “Like, for example, doesn’t your mom ever talk to you about clothes and hair and stuff?”

  I felt myself go stiff again. Should I say it? I didn’t tell people because they always acted weird around me afterward. But Kylie was being nice. Maybe nice enough.

  “I don’t have a mom,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “She died when I was in first grade.”

  Everybody’s eyes got bigger. Izzy started looking around like she wanted to escape, as if somebody’s mom dying was contagious. Kylie stopped brushing. I wanted to bite my whole tongue off.

  “That is so sad,” she said. “What happened?”

  Now I wanted to escape. We weren’t supposed to talk about it, Jackson and me. I didn’t know why, and I’d stopped asking because it made my dad get in a bad mood and my brother go further into his cave.

  Kylie came back around to the front of me and straddled the bench. She handed the hairbrush off to Izzy over her shoulder and put her face really close to mine. She was way prettier when she looked all soft like that.

  “Is it hard to talk about?” she said.

  “No,” I said. I actually wanted to talk about it, but nobody would. But to Those Girls?

  Kylie leaned in even closer. She smelled like strawberries. “Do you want to talk about it? I would totally listen.”

  I knew my eyes were bugging out, and I couldn’t help it. Did she, like, read my mind?

  “I’ve had people die in my family too,” she said. “I know I’d get it. I could probably even help you.”

  “She was in a car accident,” I blurted out.

  “I am so sorry,” she said. “Were you in the car with her?”

  “No.”

  “So what happened?”

  “I don’t know that much,” I said. “Somebody else was driving and . . . that’s all I know. My dad doesn’t like to talk about it.”

  Kylie’s blue-and-gold eyes drooped. “That is sad. So that’s why you don’t do the girly thing? Because you lost your mom?”

  “I guess so,” I said. That and the fact that I wasn’t even a little bit pretty, so what was the point? Tori once told me my eyes were like two blueberries, so that might be okay, but other than that, I was short—but not as little as Winnie—and freckly and not skinny like Those Girls (well, except Izzy, who was kind of round). I thought I was sort of smushy.

  “Well, look at yourself now,” Kylie said.

  Riannon stuck a mirror in front of me so I had to look even though I didn’t want to because I was sure she had painted me to look like Bozo. But I wasn’t that bad. I was pinker. Shinier. Fluffier.

  “You should totally do that every day,” Heidi said, her blond streaks shining as she tilted her head. “You look so much better.”

  “And anytime you want to talk to us about your mom, you can,” Kylie said.

  They nodded like they were one person. I started to nod with them, but in that very moment, I saw it. The fast cut of Heidi’s eyes to Riannon’s and back just as quick. The red gathering in Izzy’s cheeks. The gleam of the gold specks in Kylie’s eyes.

  I had just been made fun of—again—and I didn’t even know how it happened.

  Chapter Two

  We had tests in second-period social studies (with Mr. Jett, who doubled as the cafeteria monitor and always looked like a Doberman pinscher to me) and third-period math (wit
h Mrs. Collier-Callahan, who was sort of an old shih tzu) and fourth-period science (with Mr. Vasiliev, who we called Mr. V and who was a very cool Labrador retriever). Whenever I wasn’t filling in blanks and marking true and false, I was thinking about what I blurted out to Those Girls about my mom.

  The whole rest of the day, during lunch and fifth period with Mrs. Fickus (the English teacher/yellow poodle with a Southern accent) and sixth period with Mrs. Bernstein (the Spanish teacher/Chihuahua), I felt funky for the first time in a whole week. You know, like my eyes were all darting around like a squirrel’s. And at lunch I couldn’t eat my peanut-butter-and-pickle sandwich, so I just tore it into little pieces so it would look like I was eating it.

  The Tribelet asked me what was going on.

  MITCH: What’s wrong with you? You’re acting weird.

  TORI: You okay, Ginge?

  WINNIE: Want a cookie?

  OPHELIA: Did Kylie do something mean to you? You’re supposed to tell us, you know.

  But what I wasn’t supposed to do was talk about my mom’s accident, and now I’d done it, and it was tying my stomach into big knots.

  ME: I already opened my big mouth today, so I should keep it shut now.

  THEM: Huh?

  On the walk home from school that day, with Jackson trailing behind me so he could pretend he didn’t know me (because a seventh-grade boy doesn’t want to be seen hanging out with his sixth-grade sister), I didn’t do my usual daydreaming about the crooked little yellow and blue houses built over where gold mines used to be. Instead, I spent the whole time going over the scene with Those Girls about eighty-seven times. I decided maybe by being nice to me they were just trying not to get in any more trouble. Getting suspended for five days was the biggest thing ever, so it must have shaken something up in them, right? If that had happened to me, I would curl up in a ball in the bottom of my closet and never come out.

  Okay, maybe I’d come out to eat.

  Jackson kept the key to our house because Dad didn’t get home until six and Jackson didn’t lose as much stuff as I did. He also got to use the computer first after school. It was new (because my dad said things were going better with his business), and we’d both just gotten e-mail, and Jackson, like, lived on it. When he wasn’t caved in his room like the creature Gollum playing video games. I called him Sméagol in my head. I liked to think of myself as Frodo from The Lord of the Rings.

  “How long are you gonna be on there?” I said to him as I pawed through the snack drawer. We were only allowed to eat stuff out of there when Dad wasn’t home. He got tired of starting supper and finding out Jackson and I had eaten all the ingredients.

  “On where?” Jackson said.

  He reached around me and pulled out the granola bar I already had my hand on.

  “On the computer.”

  “I’m not getting on the computer.”

  “Oh. Why not? You always do. Are you sick?”

  I straightened to look at him, a package of cheese crackers in my hand, which I put behind my back so he couldn’t grab it. Not that he would actually eat it. He was as tall and skinny as I was shortish and . . . smushy. And while we’re on the subject of looks, he didn’t get Dad’s red hair either. His was all thick and blond and wavy like in the pictures of our mom. He even had her eyelashes that almost looked like false ones. Totally wasted on a boy. So not fair.

  “No, I’m not sick,” he said. “I just have other stuff to do. What did you get?”

  “It’s mine,” I said. “What other stuff?”

  “None-of-your-business stuff.”

  “Is it about a girl?”

  Jackson squinted his blue eyes, which were the only feature we both had, so I guess they were like blueberries too. If you can imagine berries that said, “You are a moron.”

  “Yeah, it’s about a girl,” he said. “The chicks are all over me. I’m a total babe magnet. I gotta fend ’em off with a stick.”

  “No, you don’t,” I said.

  “Then why did you even ask me that?” Jackson put up his hand, kind of the way Dad did when he was done answering my questions. “Never mind. You can have the computer for twenty minutes. And don’t mess it up.”

  I didn’t argue with him because, really, I could mess just about anything up. I didn’t even take the cheese crackers with me to the little desk Dad had found a place for in the corner of our tiny dining area. That’s where the computer was, and next to it was a piece of paper with the list of steps for getting on my e-mail. Dad did that so I wouldn’t accidentally erase any of his work stuff. He had his own house remodeling business, which was why we had to move so much. “We go where the work is,” he always said. I wished the work hadn’t been in a dozen different places.

  I had three new e-mails. One was from Tori saying, If you need to talk, call me. The second was from Ophelia, and it was, like, two pages long about how I shouldn’t be like some Shakespeare thing where a guy kept everything to himself and ended up dying, along with everybody else in the play. I mean, huh?

  The third one was from somebody named K4FAIR, and the subject said, Important for Ginger.

  I clutched the mouse like it might get away and tried to remember what Dad said when he sat Jackson and me down and lectured us about Internet rules. Don’t ever open an e-mail from anybody you don’t know was definitely one of them because right after that Jackson said, “Ginger doesn’t know anybody, so that shouldn’t be hard.” I’d jabbed him with my elbow. He’d pretended like I broke one of his ribs. Dad told us both to get serious. So, yeah, I remembered that rule.

  And no, I didn’t know K4FAIR. But, then, I didn’t know the screen names for every girl in my class—just the Tribelet’s. I didn’t even know Lydia’s.

  Wait, could this be from her? She had never e-mailed me before, but she might now. She should be out of rehab after her surgery and maybe she was coming back to work for Tori’s dad again and be our mentor and teach the classes at school for people who didn’t sign the Code or violated it.

  K could stand for Kiriakos, her last name. She was all about people being treated fair. And Important for Ginger would be just like something she’d put in a subject line. I wiggled the mouse. If it wasn’t from her, I’d just close it and delete it. It wasn’t going to jump out of the screen and eat my face . . .

  I clicked it open. And felt my mouth come open so far it was like my jaws didn’t have hinges anymore.

  We’ll find out the whole story about your mom’s accident, Gingerbread. It was totally something bad or your father wouldn’t have told you not to talk about it. Or maybe he did and you’re not telling US. Which is stupid because who lies to us and thinks she can get away with it? We think we know, and it is NOT GOOD. We’ll find out for sure.

  But don’t worry. When we do, we won’t spread this all over the entire school. We won’t tell anybody IF (and you better pay attention here, which you’re not very good at doing) you stop hanging out with Tori Taylor and Winnie George and Ophelia Smith and Michelle Iann. Your little group. But if you keep being with them, EVERYBODY will know how your mother died. And we mean EVERYBODY.

  HINT: It has to do with what everybody knows about getting in a car with someone who shouldn’t be driving.

  We’ll be watching you, so don’t try anything sneaky. Not that you’re smart enough to.

  I knew my face was going blotchy, but I put my hands up anyway to feel the hot spots on my neck and my cheeks and the top of my forehead where the hair started. My face was still all goopy with their makeup, and I scrubbed at it with my fingers. I really thought they’d changed. Was I stupid or what?

  I looked at the red stuff on my fingertips. That wasn’t really the question right now. The question was: What was I supposed to do? What did Dad say? Something like, If you get any e-mail that’s dirty or crude, delete it right away.

  What about something that was totally made up? My mom didn’t do anything she wasn’t supposed to. She would never do that to us. Right? I mean, right? The kno
ts in my stomach got tighter. I didn’t lie to Those Girls when I told them I didn’t know what exactly happened, so how were they going to find out?

  Or what about an e-mail that tried to cut me off from the only friends I had ever had since kindergarten? The only friends.

  I stared at the screen until it got blurry. Should I delete it like it never happened? Or should I tell somebody? But who? Lydia? I didn’t know how to get in touch with her. Tori or Mitch? But wouldn’t they say I was nuts to ever have told Those Girls anything, ever? Should I tell Dad about it maybe?

  “Where are my children?”

  I went into a spasm in the chair. I thought his name and he showed up? Really?

  “Ginger! Jackson! Yo!”

  Dad’s voice coming across the living room was jolly, like somebody playing Santa. He never sounded that happy. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine myself saying, “Let me show you something that’s going to put you in the blackest mood ever.” I couldn’t do it. Just as he got to the dining area, I pushed the cursor up to delete and clicked the mouse. The e-mail went away seconds before Dad’s big freckled hand squeezed my shoulder and let go.

  “Why are you home so early?” I said too loud.

  “Finished the job. Thought I’d take you kids to that hot dog place.”

  “Hot Dog Heaven?” Jackson said on his way down the hall. “Sweet.”

  “Figured we’d go now, before it gets crowded.”

  Any other time I would have already had my shoes half on and charged to the front door. We didn’t go out to eat that often, and Hot Dog Heaven might not sound like that big of a deal, but they made the best dogs I ever, ever had, and all of them were named after actual breeds—like The German Shepherd (which came with sauerkraut). Plus, they had a bajillion different kinds of chips. Besides all that, when did Dad ever come home from work all cheerful like a father on a sitcom? Yeah, any other time, that would have made me babble stuff until Jackson told me I sounded like I’d just sucked on a helium balloon.