The Ordinary Life of Emily P. Bates

by Anna Cackler

  “Oh no,” I breathed.

  Shannon’s eyes were as big as punch bowls as we rounded the corner and saw through the glass front doors of the school. A florist truck was idling in the front drive and the delivery man was still unloading bouquet after bouquet of roses, lilies, daisies, carnations, even sunflowers into the front hall just outside of the office door. The entire hallway was crowded with every sort of flower you could think of.

  Principal Davis was outside, too, yelling at the delivery man. We couldn’t hear what she was saying, but her wild gray hair was flying everywhere and her hands were slicing through the air like machetes.

  The delivery man kept unloading the flowers, shaking his head and looking like he would be just as happy dumping all of the flowers in a dumpster as delivering them in the hall.

  “What is all this?” Shannon asked, her hands over her mouth.

  I stepped over to the nearest bouquet and pulled off the large, red card. I read it aloud. “Shannon. Forgive me. Love, Charlie.” I picked another card from another bouquet. “Shannon, Forgive me. Love, Charlie.” I grabbed another card, then another, then another. Dozens, maybe even a couple of hundred cards in all. I turned back to Shannon, my hands full of the little red cards. “They all say the same thing. How did he afford all this?”

  She still stood with her hands over her mouth. The bell rang, but neither of us moved. Principal Davis came storming in behind the delivery man, who seemed to finally be bringing in the last load.

  “I’ll say it one more time! Take it all back! We can’t accept it here!” she bellowed at the deliveryman. Her hair floated around her red face like a weird, smoky halo. He just put down the last bouquet and brushed past her.

  Shannon just shook her head. The halls were beginning to fill up and people were trying to navigate through the maze of flowers.

  “Someone please get these out of here!” Nobody moved. Principal Davis yanked open the glass door to the office and shouted, “Call Charlie Hamilton to the office immediately!”

  Soon traffic stopped altogether and everyone just started staring at Shannon and at all of the flowers. They were everywhere. Nobody could get through. At this point nobody wanted to get through. This was a wonderful excuse to hold class up for the second time in a week. I looked up and spotted Ethan in the crowd. He wouldn’t look at me, but he couldn’t get through the crowd and away from me either.

  At some point in all the confusion the final bell rang, but nobody noticed it. No wonder Principal Davis was so mad.

  I turned to face Shannon again, and stopped dead.

  Charlie was standing right behind Shannon, a look of pure bliss plastered across his handsome face.

  “Shannon?” I whispered, stepping up to her. She hadn’t noticed Charlie yet.

  Her hands finally fell away from her mouth, and her cheeks flushed scarlet. “That jerk!” The words rushed between her teeth with an angry hissing sound. “That total, moronic, stupid, jerk!”

  Relief swept through me. Thank heaven! She hated the snake!

  Charlie’s face fell, but only slightly. “Shannon?” he asked.

  She turned slowly on the spot and glared at him.

  “I love you.” Charlie didn’t sound so sure of himself now. “Will you forgive me?”

  “Mr. Hamilton you have some explaining to do!” Principal Davis had reappeared and was marching in Charlie’s direction. “What is the meaning of all of this?”

  “I’ll tell you!” Shannon exploded. “It’s a class one ass doing his best to make up for something that he can’t make up for after he’s already been told by three, count it, three people not to even bother!” She stalked right up to Charlie and jabbed a stubby fingernail under his nose. “It’s over. Leave me and my friends alone!” She dropped her hand. “Let’s go, Emily!”

  “Coming!” I dropped the little red cards and followed my friend. The cards slid across the floor in all directions and we tramped right through them. I couldn’t help but grin to myself. Wait until Finn hears about this.

  “Move people!” I shouted as Shannon and I shoved through the crowd towards Calculus class. “Liberated woman coming through!” Everyone crushed against the wall to let the pair of us through. I caught Ethan’s eye on our way through. He was grinning again, but not for me. This one was for Shannon on her very own personal Independence Day. I liked that grin. It wasn’t charming. It just was.

  But then he saw me and his smile faded. Now there were two dead weights in the pit of my stomach. One for the new baby, and one in honor of my word vomit. They clanked against each other and made me want to curl up under my covers at home.

  Shannon and I were the first ones to class. People began filing in behind us and soon the entire room was full of awkward silence. Everyone was pretending not to stare at Shannon, but there was no denying it. Everyone wanted to know what had just happened.

  Shannon was all glares. I was surprised that random objects and people around the room didn’t arbitrarily burst into flames. Pretty soon everyone got the hint and went back to their own business.

  “Shannon?” I asked. She turned her fiery glare to me and my mouth snapped shut immediately.

  Ethan took his usual seat behind me. I turned to sneak a peek at his expression, but it was normal. He grinned at me when he saw me looking, and even though his smile wasn’t as broad as usual, it was still his smile.

  In the end, neither of us said anything at all. Ethan turned and started chatting with Max Grover on his right as if nothing were out of the ordinary.

  I turned back to face the front, feeling uneasy. Everything seemed to be all right, but we all knew that it wasn’t. I had ruined our easy friendship with one quick bout of word vomit.

  Now I was really going to fail calculus.

  Sixteen

  Shannon refused to speak about what we came to call the Flower Incident. She never mentioned it again and made it very clear that no one else should do so either. I filled Finn in on the whole thing the next day during Lit class. He hadn’t heard a thing about it from his sister. He was shocked, but pleased.

  “At least now I know that Shannon can take care of herself,” he said.

  “Did you ever doubt it?”

  “Emily, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Shannon has never been much for practicality.”

  “I guess not,” I said.

  Life seemed to return to normal after that. Aside from Mom still being pregnant, everything had reverted to the way it was before school started. Finn, Shannon and I were our own little group again with Shannon as our only link to the rest of the school. Margo was still friendly enough with Shannon and me, but we never saw her anymore except in passing. I didn’t hear from Ethan again. Shannon told me at one point that he’d even stopped talking to her during Spanish class.

  “I think he took the whole thing a little harder than he lets on,” she said one day at lunch. Finn didn’t comment, but kept his focus on his copy of Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card.

  “I don’t want to hear that,” I said, effectively moving the conversation on to other topics.

  Mom’s ultrasound on November thirtieth went without a hitch, though the doctor told her she was gaining too much weight. I was very glad I wasn’t present for that throw-down. She and Dad decided to stick to their guns and refused to know the sex of the baby. Everything looked healthy and happy on the little black and white photograph, though I wouldn’t have known just by looking. I couldn’t see much at all on the stupid thing, but I put on a good show of excitement anyway.

  The old familiar weight had returned to my stomach now that all of the other stupid little dramas of everyday life were no longer distracting me. Just seeing Mom getting so big so fast was unsettling. It was like an approaching doom in the form of poopy diapers and screaming babies, though fortunately Mom herself seemed to be handling the pregnancy pretty well. I suppose my worries were based more on paranoia than reality.

  Before I knew it, it was December. Christmas
was coming, and with Christmas comes three weeks off of school. Three weeks free of calculus. Three weeks free of seeing Ethan and feeling guilty.

  I was glad when it was finally over. It was Thursday, our last day. All of our tests and term papers had already been done and turned in, and the stress was melting away. I got up early that morning and flipped the TV to the weather channel. They’d been promising snow for days now, and I was hoping against hope that today would be the day. The sky was gray and low, and the air was bitingly cold. I wrapped myself up in a sweater and my heavy overcoat and layered on the scarves and gloves before trudging out to the car. Oscar’s heater had stopped working a couple of weeks previously, so I was stuck with bundling up.

  By the time I’d arrived at the school, my teeth were chattering uncontrollably. I pulled into the only spot left and grimaced. I was parked right next to the fateful red Chevy truck. I would have to hide out inside for a while after school to be sure that I didn’t meet Ethan on our way out.

  “Are you ever going to give up the abominable snowman look?” Finn asked, pushing a package of sausage biscuits across the table to me as I sat.

  “Never,” I said. “You think it’ll snow today?”

  “You ask that every day,” Shannon said.

  “Yes,” Finn answered.

  “And you say that every day.” Shannon fished through her purse and produced a hair brush. She ran it through her long hair and tied it back with a flourish. I watched her enviously. My own mucky brown hair was pulled back into a messy knot. It wasn’t even one of those knots that are made to look messy on purpose. It was just messy.

  “Well today I mean it,” Finn said, snapping shut his book and setting it aside. He looked up, his eyes wide. He looked as if he’d never seen the cafeteria before and its appearance was mildly surprising. “Have the walls always been so bland looking?”

  “Yes,” Shannon said.

  “What’s the occasion?” I asked, pointing at the closed book on the table. The cover stated plainly, Don Quixote - Cervantes.

  “Huh?” he looked at the book. “Oh, I finished it.”

  Shannon and I shared a confused glance, and then I looked back at her brother. “Then why aren’t you in the library getting a new one?”

  “Because I don’t feel like it. What’s it to you?”

  “Nothing.” I put on my best innocent face and shoved a sausage biscuit into my mouth just as the bell rang.

  I spent the entire day staring out of the window, just wishing for it to snow. Because it was our last day in class, every teacher was hosting his or her own Christmas party. I had borrowed Finn’s book that morning, but I couldn’t get into it. One could take only so much insanity as a form of entertainment before going insane oneself. In the end I just reverted back to staring out of the window.

  Ms. Walsh, true to form, was holding her own Christmas party during class. She passed out easy little assignments for us to do just to pass the time, but really we were all just sitting around, eating sugar cookies and drinking sodas.

  Finn and I spent the entire time tossing gum drops across the table into each other’s mouths. Nobody paid any attention to us, as usual, but we kept each other entertained.

  “Why did we even come to school today?” I asked, taking careful aim with a purple gum drop.

  “Because the man said we had to.”

  “Screw the man.” I opened my mouth wide and he tossed one in easily.

  “That’s the right attitude!” he said. I threw a candy across the table and it landed squarely on his tongue. “Blech! I told you no green ones!”

  I laughed. “You saw it coming. You didn’t have to catch it.”

  “Yeah, screw the man,” he grumbled under his breath. “Screw you is more like it.” He tossed another and I had to lean pretty far to the right to catch it.”

  “Shut up.”

  He shrugged, but didn’t say anything.

  “By the way, you were wrong again. It didn’t snow.”

  “Ah, but it’s only three o’clock.”

  I smiled. “Yes, three o’clock on the last day of school.”

  “Don’t sound too excited. You’re going to be so bored you won’t know what to do with yourself. You’ll be wishing for school to start again.”

  “So you say.”

  “What’s your favorite part of Christmas?”

  “Dinner,” I replied without hesitation. “Christmas dinner. Though it’s not as good as Thanksgiving dinner.”

  “What a lame answer,” he said, scowling.

  “It was a lame question.”

  “You may as well have said ‘the quality family time that only Christmas can really inspire!’” He forced his voice up several notches in an airy, lovey-dovey sort of way.

  “No, because then I’d have said that. I like the dinner.”

  “Pig.”

  “Jerk.”

  He grinned as he caught another gum drop without effort. “Touché.”

  “Thank you.”

  “So what if your Crazy Aunt June shows up to Christmas dinner? Is it still your favorite?”

  I paused, thinking hard. “Yes, but Crazy Aunt June is definitely a downer.”

  He started laughing. “Do you remember the time she ruined your dad’s Fourth of July cookout by making you and Shannon sit for hours while she beaded your hair?”

  “I try not to.”

  I tossed another gum drop, but he missed it because he was laughing too hard. “Hey now! Pay attention!”

  “Sorry!” He was still laughing, though, and I couldn’t help but grin, too.

  The bell rang then, making us all jump. “Have a great break, everybody!” Ms. Walsh called over the general racket. Nobody bothered to return the sentiments.

  Finn and I began following the crowd outside, but I stopped short, remembering the red truck next to my own lime green eyesore outside.

  “What is it?” Finn asked, looking back.

  “I don’t want to go out there yet,” I said, pushing myself against the wall to get out of the current of students anxious to leave the building.

  He pressed his way through the crowd to stand next to me. “Why not?”

  “Because I had to park next to Ethan this morning. I don’t want to run into him.”

  A hard look passed over Finn’s face. He gripped my arm just above my elbow and steered me back toward the cafeteria. “Come on, we’ll wait in the library.”

  “Thanks.”

  The library was completely empty. There was a big sign on the door demanding that all students return their books before leaving for the break. “Oh, so this is why you didn’t get a new book this morning,” I said as Finn pushed the door open, pointing at the sign.

  “No, I didn’t get a new book because I didn’t feel like it.” He turned and gave me a stern look. “Just like I told you this morning.”

  “Fine. Whatever.” He dropped his bag on the nearest table and went over to the new arrivals on the far wall.

  “Hey, check it out! They’ve got your dad’s book.”

  “Really?” As I crossed the room, I glanced out the window and froze. Outside, the front lawn was completely obscured by a curtain of thick, white snowflakes the size of my fist. “Finn! Look!”

  He turned and looked where I was pointing, and a ghost of a grin flashed across his wide mouth. “See? I told you.”

  “Yes, you certainly did!” I grabbed him by the hand and pulled him back out of the library, through the front doors, and out into the falling snow. He followed without complaint.

  “Oh, it’s so beautiful!” I cried, spreading my arms wide to take it all in. I had left my coat and gloves in the library, but I didn’t mind the cold so much just then. I looked over at Finn. He had his hands shoved into his pockets, his shoulders hunched against the cold. He was grinning ruefully at me, though, and didn’t seem to have any intention of dragging me back inside. “Isn’t it beautiful?” I asked him.

  He smiled at me. “Beautiful.”


  The ground already had a thin layer of white. It would definitely stick, then. Too bad it couldn’t have come a couple of days earlier. Then we could have missed school.

  “Oh, I love this!” I dropped to the ground and lay there on the freezing earth, watching the snow fall around me while my shirt soaked up the melting snow. Finn came over and stood next to me, putting his hands behind his head with a contented sigh as he looked up into the white sky. In the distance I could hear screams and shouts of delight of the other students on the other side of the building. I didn’t care about them, though. They didn’t matter. They couldn’t touch us here. Me and Finn were in our own little world. Our own perfect little snow globe.

  “Oh I needed this,” I said with an easy smile. “It’s amazing what snow covers up. It makes everything good again.”

  “Hm-hmm,” Finn agreed. “’Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.’”

  I lifted my head to look up at him. “What’s that from?”

  “Its one of the psalms,” he said, squinting up at the sky. “I can’t remember which one.”

  “I didn’t know you were religious.”

  His thoughtful gaze fell to my face. “One doesn’t have to be religious to appreciate good poetry. The Bible really is a fascinating read for the most part.” I stared at him for a few moments, not satisfied. Finally he gave up and went on. “I’m Catholic, remember?”

  “Yeah, but you guys never go to mass. And you’re always ranting about the idiocy of organized religion.”

  He shrugged and squinted back up at the sky. “Religion and Faith are two completely different concepts.”

  “Oh.”

  “And we only ever went to mass because Mom made us. She was the religious one.” He sighed and sat down next to me. “Shannon used to try to make us find a church here, but Dad wouldn’t have it. She eventually just gave up.”

  I looked up at Finn’s solemn face with its halo of snow and wished I had a camera. “Do you miss her?”

  “Yeah. All the time.”

  “I’m really sorry.”