You Can't Sit With Us

by Nancy Rue

  It was brilliant.

  As for Coach Zabriski, he called me out of sixth period and stood me in the hall outside Mrs. Bernstein’s door and told me if I ever got on his equipment again without him or Mrs. Z there, he would own me. Whatever that meant, and whatever it was, I was sure he didn’t actually mean it. Not after he said, “I guess since you climbed the wall and hung up there for an hour, I should pass you.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “Get back to class,” he said. “Oh, and, Hollingberry.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “You’re a brave kid.”

  He went off whistling without his whistle. I didn’t cover my ears.

  The two other changes were the things I really, really loved.

  One happened that afternoon, when we all met at Tori’s with Lydia. Shelby and Evelyn could only stay until five, so we basically gave them a crash course in upholding the Code.

  “Maybe we won’t have to use it now that Kylie and them are pretty much gone,” Shelby said. Her nice lips were not in a bunch. She was cute when she smiled.

  “Hmm,” Lydia said. “Take a look at the Code.”

  We all looked at our copies.

  “Is there anything on there that says we shouldn’t just practice every day, even if there are no bullies?”

  We all shook our heads.

  “Besides,” Tori said, “Heidi and Izzy and Riannon will be back before school’s over.”

  Ophelia flopped her braid over her shoulder. “I don’t think they’ll be so tough without Kylie.”

  “Whether they are or not isn’t the point,” Lydia said. “They might not change for a long time. If ever.”

  “We just change,” I said. “Into who we are.”

  Evelyn stared at me.

  “Problem?” Lydia said to her.

  “No. I hope this doesn’t sound bad, but I just didn’t know you were that smart, Ginger.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “I sort of kept that a secret.”

  After the two of them left, the rest of us gathered around Tori’s kitchen table like we always used to, and her chocolate lab, Nestlé, put his head in my lap—sort of like he’d missed me too—and Lydia sat on a big thick book that Tori’s father wrote so she could be level with the rest of us.

  She folded her fingers in a neat stack. “Is there anything that anyone wants to say?”

  “I’m glad you’re back, Ginger,” Winnie said.

  “Totally,” Tori said.

  Ophelia’s eyes got huge. “It was so hard. Sometimes we would just sit here and go, ‘Why did she leave us?’ ”

  “Phee,” Tori said.

  “What?”

  “She doesn’t need the drama queen version.”

  Ophelia sighed. “Some other time, when it’s just us,” she said to me. “I know you appreciate the deep emotions.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I guess I do.”

  “We should both be in drama club next year. We can when we’re in seventh grade.”

  “Speaking of next year,” Mitch said. “Kylie and the Pa—her friends made the cheerleading squad, but they all got kicked off.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Lydia said. “But let’s not relish their bad situation.”

  “It’s hard,” Ophelia said.

  Lydia smiled at us with her orange slice smile. “Nobody said this was going to be easy. We just have to keep trying and praying.”

  Lydia drove me home, and it was cool to see her high car seat and the special handles she had so she could drive even though she was a Little Person. I didn’t focus on that too much though because she had other things for us to talk about.

  Well, one thing.

  “I think you’ve completed almost all your steps, don’t you?” she said.

  I counted them off. “Find a one-line assertive response. Do things to avoid being the target. Find a place for yourself. Stop blaming God and look at what God can do.” I looked at her pretty profile. “How did you know I did that last one?”

  “It shows on your face. And the way you hold your shoulders. You don’t look like you’re carrying three people’s backpacks anymore.”

  “Did I look like that?”

  “You did. And you’re praying?”

  “Yes, ma’am. It’s different than I thought praying was supposed to be. Colin and I were talking about it, and he prays like I do too.”

  “Love it,” Lydia said. “Now, how about the fifth step?”

  I sighed and blew my bangs up. “Love my enemy?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Do I have to do that?”

  “Jesus says you do. That’s where all the rest of the Code comes from, so we can’t leave that out just because it’s too hard.”

  “The Code comes from Jesus?”

  “It’s all in the Gospels. But don’t change the subject. Can you love Kylie?”

  “You mean, like be her BFF?”

  “I do not. I love her, but I wouldn’t trust her any farther than I could throw her.” Lydia chuckled. “And that wouldn’t be very far, obviously.” She pulled up to the downtown stoplight and glanced over at me. “How can you tell that I love Kylie?”

  I considered that. “Because you wouldn’t let us talk bad about her back at Tori’s.”

  “Right.”

  “And you would rather see her get changed than get punished.”

  “Correct.”

  I was quiet with that until Lydia pulled up in front of our house. Then I said, “I do all that.”

  “Yes, you do.” Lydia unbuckled her seat belt so she could turn sideways to look at me. “There’s something else that I’m just going to tell you because you probably can’t see it yet. Kylie brought out the best in you in the end.”

  I thought of myself telling Kylie how it was, there in the booth in my lip gloss dress, without crying or whining or feeling all sorry for myself.

  “You see it now, don’t you?” Lydia said.

  I nodded. “So that means I love her?”

  “There’s one more part. You need to return evil with good by forgiving her.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  Lydia laughed and reached over and patted my hand. “That gives us something to work on. You go in and enjoy your evening with your family. I’ll see you next week.”

  Suddenly I didn’t want to get out of the car and go in the house. But I did. I didn’t realize I was headed for the other good thing that had changed.

  When I got inside, the lamps were on instead of the overhead light and there was a candle burning in a jar on the table and I could smell something amazing that I never smelled before in our kitchen.

  Jackson stuck his head out into the dining area. “About time you got home. We were gonna eat this without you.”

  “What is it?” I said.

  “Sit,” Dad said. “Are your hands clean?”

  I looked. “I guess so.”

  I sat in the chair I used when we did sit down at the table together and saw that the paper napkins were folded and we were using real plates. Was it somebody’s birthday and I forgot?

  The amazing smell wafted out of the kitchen and onto the table on a platter in front of me. Three big pieces of meat steamed beside three potatoes wrapped in silver foil and a pile of what I only knew was asparagus because I’d seen it in a magazine.

  “Eat this and you get dessert,” Dad said.

  “I’m not supposed to tell you this, but it’s strawberries and whipped cream,” Jackson said.

  “Big Mouth,” Dad said to him. “Let’s pray.”

  We bowed our heads and Dad prayed, and I have to admit I didn’t hear all of it because I was in shock. I did get in a silent, Thank you, God. You really do care about us, don’t you? at the end.

  The food tasted even better than it smelled, but I could only eat half of mine because my stomach got full so fast.

  “You haven’t been eating enough, that’s why,” Dad said. “That’s gonna change.”

  I d
idn’t want to ruin the mood by asking if we could eat healthy instead of junk food. I decided that could wait until later. After the whipped cream.

  We took our dessert to the living room, and that’s when things really, really changed.

  I expected Jackson to go off to the cave with his plate and Dad to turn on the TV. But Jackson sat on the floor and put the bowl beside him like he suddenly couldn’t eat either, and Dad patted the couch beside him for me to sit there.

  “Think it’s time we cleared something up,” he said.

  “About what?”

  “About your mother and how she died.”

  I stuck the spoon back in my strawberries. Don’t tell me, I wanted to say. If something really awful happened, please don’t tell me.

  “Jackson knows this because he overheard me talking to someone a couple of years ago,” Dad said. “Only I didn’t find that out until after your presentation.”

  I looked at Jackson. He shrugged.

  “It’s time for you to know the truth.” Dad put his arm on the back of the couch and scrubbed at his face with the other hand. “There was no one else in the car with your mom that night. I don’t think I ever even said that. Somehow you both got that idea, and I didn’t do anything to clear that up. It seemed like you would handle it better if it was someone else’s fault.”

  “It was her fault?” I said.

  She was drinking? No. Not after all this. No.

  “She was coming home from work,” Dad said. “Late at night, after she worked a double shift. We don’t really know for sure what happened. From what the police could tell, she probably fell asleep at the wheel. She hit a tree. Died right away.”

  I looked down at Jackson again. Tears made little trails down his face, and he didn’t wipe them off. Dad had them in his voice. I was the only one who wasn’t crying.

  Why would I cry? None of the bad things were true. Nobody did anything wrong. God didn’t choose for her to fall asleep. She just worked too hard, just like Dad, to take care of us.

  Dad nudged my back. “You okay?”

  “I am,” I said.

  “Think now we can move on a little better. Now that’s not all balled up in here.” Dad tapped his chest. “We can do more things as a family.”

  “Can I ask a question?” I said.

  Jackson groaned. Dad threw a sofa pillow at him.

  “Two questions, actually.”

  “One.”

  “Even if you get sad again about Mom, you’re not going to let Grandma take us, are you?”

  Dad stared at me until I thought his freckles were going to pop off. “What in the world ever gave you that idea?”

  “She did. That day in our old house, when she said she would take us if you didn’t get out of your black hole.”

  “You heard that?”

  “I was kind of behind the couch.”

  “What a little sneak!” Jackson said.

  Dad put his hand up to him. His eyes were firm. Not mad. Just like, Hear me and hear me good.

  “Listen to me, both of you,” he said. “I had a hard time when your mom died. I still do sometimes. But I will never, ever neglect you so that somebody else can take you away from me. Are we clear?”

  “You actually thought that, Freak Show?” Jackson said. “We haven’t even seen Grandma in, like, five years.”

  “Never mind,” Dad said. “What’s your second question?”

  “This oughta be a beauty,” Jackson said. But he was grinning, and his voice was relieved. And I was the Freak Show?

  “Question two,” I said. “What are you going to do about what Kylie and her sister did to your van?”

  Dad chewed at his freckled lip. “Thought about that a lot. If I tell Mr. Steppe what his daughters did, he won’t believe me. Not right now anyway.”

  “He’d fire you,” Jackson said.

  “I already have other jobs lined up. Here. In Grass Valley.” Dad picked up his bowl and stirred the whipped cream around. “Think I’ll wait until it might do some good. That okay with you two?”

  “Fine with me,” Jackson said. “I like the new paint job better anyway.”

  Dad looked at me.

  “They brought out the best in you,” I said.

  He nodded like I just said something really smart.

  So yeah, that week my life changed. I could tell it from my list of Things People Don’t Know About Me, because the important people knew them all now. And I could tell it by my list of Things Other People Think About Me, because they didn’t match what I knew about me, so I could throw it away. And I could tell it from my list of Things I Didn’t Say because I had said the one thing that mattered.

  No, not everything was different now. But what was really different was going to stick. Because what was different . . . was me.

  Who Helped Me Write

  You Can’t Sit With Us

  It takes more than just the author (me!) to write a book. These are the people who helped me get Ginger and the Tribelet’s story as right as it can be:

  Mary Lois Rue, who let me stay with her in Grass Valley and made it come alive for me. She’s my mother-in-law, the other Mrs. Rue.

  John and Amy Imel, my brother-in-law and sister-in-law, who told me what it was like to grow up in Grass Valley, California. (And fed me wonderful food . . .)

  My prayer team—Janelle, Barb, Lori and her family, Connie, and Crystal—who prayed when it was hard to write about girls being mean to each other.

  My editors, Amy Kerr and Tori Kosara. (We call her “the other Tori!”)

  All the people who have written books and made films about the problem of bullying. And all the bloggers and website folks who kept me up to date. We call them the SNOGS! (SO Not Okay Group Support)

  My fellow J.R.R. Tolkien lovers—Barb Quaale, Janelle Baldwin, Joyce Magnin, Marijean Rue, and Melody Dobbins—who cheered me on as I read The Lord of the Rings trilogy for the very first time so that those could be Ginger and Colin’s favorite books.

  Marijean Rue, for letting me borrow a line from her unpublished novel. “I’m mistress of my own tongue, not yours” originally came from her brain!

  And especially the Mini-Women on the Tween You and Me blog, who bravely shared their stories with me. They’re the ones who showed me that “sticks and stones can break your bones, but words can break your heart.” Come join us by clicking on the Tween You and Me blog on my website, www.nancyrue.com.

  You Can’t Sit With Us is only one of three books that will make up the Mean Girl Makeover trilogy. If you would like to help with the last book by sharing your story of being the victim of bullying or your experience as a bully, please email me at nnrue@att.net.

  You can also be part of the solution by joining the SO Not Okay Anti-Bullying Movement. Just go to www.sonotokay.com.

  Blessings,

  Nancy Rue