So Not Okay

by Nancy Rue

  As I watched her do her kind of rocking sideways walk out of the kitchen I thought two things: (A) She would probably be a better friend to Ophelia right now than me, and I never thought anybody could be and (B) her walk looked wobblier than it usually did.

  “I promise.”

  I looked at Winnie and said, “Huh?”

  “I promise to always report to an adult if there’s something we can’t handle.”

  “I will too,” I said.

  Mitch grunted a yes and poked Ginger in the arm. “What about you?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve tried telling a grown-up before and all they say is stuff like ‘What did you do to her first?’ or ‘Why can’t you girls just get along?’ ”

  I wouldn’t have believed that before all this, but I did now.

  “Maybe if we didn’t report what was happening to us but only what was happening to somebody else,” I said. “So like if somebody was threatening to hurt you, I would go get somebody, and if it was happening to me, you would go get somebody.”

  She seemed to consider that. Mitch nodded at me.

  “What?” I said.

  “I always thought you were just book smart,” she said. “But I think you’re pretty smart about a lot of stuff.” She held up a hand to high-five me. Then she high-fived Winnie, which was really pretty funny looking. Winnie started giggling again, and she was still at it when Lydia came back in. She stood behind her chair, peeking over the top.

  “Where’s Phee?” I said.

  “She went home.”

  “Home?”

  “She was upset so she called her mom to come get her.”

  “Why was she upset?” Winnie said, looking suddenly upset herself.

  “She wouldn’t tell me, but I wouldn’t worry too much.” Lydia’s eyes were on me. “She probably just needs some time to figure things out.”

  “That means she’s decided not to be in the tribelet,” Mitch said.

  “For now,” Lydia said.

  I think everything would have crashed in on me right then if my dad hadn’t come in the back door wearing a grin almost bigger than his shoulders.

  “I have great news!” he said and came right to me and put his face close to mine.

  “Granna?” I said.

  “She’s awake,” he said. “Let’s go see her.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Mom and Dad had a different definition of “awake” than I did. From the way Dad was smiling in the car, in spite of the rain pummeling the windshield like icy little fists, and the way Mom looped her arm through mine as we walked down the hospital hall together, I expected to see Granna sitting up in bed telling everybody she didn’t need to be there because she was healthy as a sixteen-year-old.

  They could have told me she’d be flat on her back hooked up to all kinds of weird, beeping, light-up machines. They should have told me she opened her eyes for only about fifteen seconds out of every minute. And that she wasn’t talking.

  I stood next to her bed staring down at the person who looked more like an extraterrestrial than Granna and wished she’d say, “Victoria, my pet.”

  “Talk to her if you want,” Mom said. “She can hear us.”

  “How do you know that?” I said.

  “Watch this.” Dad put his lips close to Granna’s ear. “Mom, Tori’s here.”

  Granna’s eyes drifted open about a thirty-second of an inch, to be almost exact, and then closed.

  “See?” Dad said.

  I wasn’t convinced.

  If all those machines had been hooked up to a stranger, I could’ve gotten into studying them. But since it was Granna they were connected to, they were starting to freak me out. Mom obviously saw that because she looped arms with me again and walked me to a family waiting room at the end of the hall.

  “You all right?” she said when I’d dropped onto a square-looking couch.

  “Kind of,” I said. “Are you sure she’s gonna be okay?”

  Mom sat beside me and brushed the hair out of my face. It dawned on me that while she’d been there taking care of Granna I hadn’t been too good about brushing and flossing and matching my clothes. Her eyes were droopy and baggy, so I figured she was too tired to notice that I wasn’t being a lady.

  “I know it seems like she’s still sick, and she is,” Mom said. “But she’s out of danger. Now she just has to recover.”

  “Is she always going to have those tubes in her nose?”

  Mom lowered her face at me. “Are you serious? Do you really think Granna would put up with that? They’re keeping her sleepy so she won’t rip everything out and announce that she’s going home.”

  “So she’ll be like she was before?”

  Mom nodded. But not before I saw a shadow go through her eyes.

  “She won’t, will she?” I said.

  Again, my mother pushed some hair from my forehead. “We can’t get anything past you, can we, Tor? They won’t know until she’s totally conscious and that could take a few days. But she’s breathing on her own and her heart is beating strong. Those are good signs.”

  All of a sudden it felt like my face was collapsing. Mom pulled me into her chest and held on while she petted my head the way I did Nestlé’s.

  “Go ahead and cry,” she said. “You honor Granna with your tears. God love you, sweetie.”

  As I’ve said before, my family didn’t talk a lot about God. If his name was coming up now, we must really need help. I wasn’t sure how to pray right then. All I could think of was “Our Father who art in heaven,” so I said that in my head.

  I wished somebody could tell me exactly how that could work to fix this.

  Mom took me home so she could shower and go back to the hospital to relieve Dad. Lydia was still there at the house, making a pot of what she told me was cream of potato soup. Ginger was buttering bread, and Winnie was setting the table. Mitch stood at the stove stirring while Lydia sprinkled things into the pot.

  I could feel my face starting to collapse again.

  “I thought you might need your friends around you,” Lydia said. “Nothing like your tribelet in times like these.”

  Ophelia should be there.

  I had to shove that thought away, or there would be no putting my face back together, ever.

  Mom took some soup with her to share with Dad, and our tribelet gathered at the kitchen table. Nestlé lay with his head smothering my feet. He knew I’d be letting him lick my bowl when I was done, but I also decided he knew I was feeling like pieces of me might fall off and he was holding them on.

  “I’m going upstairs to catch up on some work,” Lydia said. “You all holler if you need anything.”

  I wondered how it was okay with my dad that she was spending so much time with us. But I pushed that away too. I was just glad she was.

  Who’d have thought I’d ever feel that way?

  “Do you want to talk about your grandmother?” Ginger said.

  “Not really,” I said.

  “That’s cool then. I hate when people make you talk about stuff you didn’t even get a chance to think about yet.”

  I was surprised, until I remembered about her mom dying. She must know from experience.

  “Then can we talk about what Lydia told us?” Winnie said. “I’m getting it all confused.”

  Mitch half grunted, half slurped. “What’s to be confused about? You got ‘Baby Steps’—that’s ‘start small’ and don’t try to save the whole entire world all at once. Then you got that whole ‘Golden Rule’ thing.”

  “What ‘Golden Rule Thing’?” I said.

  Ginger waved her spoon, launching a piece of drippy potato across the table. “Like ‘do unto others,’ that one.”

  Mitch nodded. “She said that was our rule of thumb.”

  “We could call it the gold thumb.”

  “You mean like a code?” Ginger said to me.

  “Yeah,” Mitch said. “And then you’ve got ‘Save the Tears.’ ”

  “
Don’t cry in front of the Pack when they’re mean to you.” Now it was Winnie who had the cartoon lightbulb over her head. “I get it. So we have a code name for each of the rules.”

  “Don’t forget about, ‘We have to tell an adult if what they do gets out of control,’ ” I said.

  Winnie gave me a little frown. “I think it’s always out of control.”

  “Report Alert,” Ginger said.

  Mitch held up her hand, and for a minute Ginger just blinked at it. It took her that long to figure out Mitch wanted to high-five her. Strange about Ginger: (A) she was way smarter than you thought at first about a lot of things, but (B) she knew hardly anything about stuff friends did. Probably because she’d never had any.

  Jeepers.

  The next day, Friday, started off with waffles that were hot so the butter collected in golden pools in the squares. Mom even warmed up the maple syrup and told me to pour on as much as I wanted. Too bad I didn’t feel like eating.

  “I think Granna’s going to get stronger every day,” Mom said as she kissed me good-bye on the forehead. “You keep thinking that too.”

  I tried. But that wasn’t the only thing killing my appetite.

  I wanted to talk to Phee. I needed to talk to her, or I was going to turn into pieces of confetti. But she wasn’t at our usual place on the second floor by the big window when I got to school. It was the first time that whole year.

  Winnie was there, though. And so was Mitch. They both sat on the floor with their backs to the wall looking at something together.

  Then Winnie saw me and her eyes lit up like a couple of birthday candles. I hadn’t seen that in a long time, so they must be looking at something so cool it took her mind off Phee.

  “She made these,” Mitch said when I joined them and handed me a stack of cards.

  They were the size of the kind you play Uno or Go Fish with. They were even covered in clear contact paper to make them stiff like real cards. On the front of each one was a picture and some words, which she’d obviously made on the computer.

  The one with “Baby Steps” on it had a pair of baby’s shoes.

  For the “Gold Thumb,” there was a big yellow, well, thumb.

  “Save the Tears”: a huge smiley face.

  “Safe in a Group”: a bunch of hands joined.

  But my favorite one was “Report Alert.” That one showed a person running like she was totally on a mission. It actually looked a little bit like Winnie.

  “She made them,” Mitch said again, jerking her head toward Win.

  “Did you high-five her?” I said.

  Winnie giggled. “About twelve times.”

  “Only five,” Mitch said. “One for each card.”

  Mitch got kind of a goofy smile on her face, and it occurred to me that she probably hadn’t had too many friends in her life either before now.

  “This is way cool, Win,” I said.

  I started to hand the cards back to her, but she shook her head. “Those are yours. I made a set for each of us. Ginger too. And Ophelia. Just in case.”

  “She’ll totally dig these,” I said. “And maybe it’ll make her change her mind.”

  “I already tried.” The shine in Winnie’s eyes faded. “She said no.”

  I didn’t know how I could sit next to Ophelia in first period and not say something, but she wasn’t there, and she didn’t show up for any of our other morning classes either. By the time we got to fourth period, I really was turning to confetti.

  “Is she sick or something?” Mitch said, pointing to Phee’s chair when we got together for our fifteen-minute group time.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “I thought you guys were best friends,” Ginger said.

  I felt a couple of pieces of myself fall off.

  “Are we meeting at your house today?” Winnie said, voice wee.

  “Got to,” Mitch said. “We’re reporting our research.”

  “What about Ophelia?” From Ginger’s face, I knew she understood the definition of concerned. I wasn’t sure why. Phee just wasn’t that nice to her.

  “I guess we’ll have to start without her,” I said.

  I was grateful to Mr. V right then for telling us the dates for our presentations were on the board and we should write them down. Like Ginger said, sometimes you can’t talk about stuff you haven’t had a chance to think about yet.

  It was just Winnie and me at lunch, until Mitch joined us. I could tell she had news.

  She pulled a piece of paper out of her sweatshirt pocket and flattened it on the table. “That Kylie chick was passing this around and I got it.”

  “How?”

  “I just grabbed it from Douglas. He barely even noticed. Those boys are about two puppies short of a pet store.”

  Winnie giggled. I didn’t. I was reading the paper on the table, and it was so not funny.

  “Did you read this, Mitch?” I said.

  “Yeah. That’s why I brought it over here.”

  I glanced at the Pack table, where Kylie had obviously broken a nail because they were all hovering over her fingers with files and a bottle of polish that smelled worse than the corn dogs.

  “Don’t let them know you have this,” I whispered.

  “Why?” Winnie said. “What does it say?”

  I pushed it toward her and read it again silently while she ran her eyes down the page.

  We Hate Gingerbread Lovers Club

  If you hate Gingerbread or people who love Gingerbread tell why and you will be a member. You have to make a new reason. You can’t copy somebody else’s.

  That part was typed. Below it were a bunch of lines with numbers beside them, like a test where you had to fill in the answers. A couple of people had.

  1. Gingerbread smells gross. I can’t stand to be near it.

  2. Anybody who likes gingerbread has to be blind. Or stupid.

  3. ONE of the Gingerbread People thinks she’s smarter than everybody else and she’s so not. She’s just conseeded.

  “That’s not even how you spell conceited,” Mitch said.

  “This is about Ginger, huh?” Winnie said.

  “Not just her. Us,” Mitch said before I could stop her.

  Winnie practically dissolved beside me, just like I knew she would.

  “We’re ‘Gingerbread People’?” she squeaked out. “Just because we’re in a group with her?”

  If my heart had been attached to one of Granna’s machines, it would have been beeping all over the place and nurses would have come running. But it was time to tell them.

  “They’re trying to make everybody hate us so nobody will believe our report.”

  Mitch scowled at the paper and said, “Huh?”

  “How do you know that, Tori?” Winnie said.

  “Because. One of them told me if we did our project on mean people, I was ‘dead.’ ”

  Winnie gasped so loud the soccer girls at the other end of the table all looked at us.

  “Don’t have a heart attack,” I said to Winnie. “They’re not really going to kill me.”

  “No,” Mitch said. “You’ll just wish you were dead.”

  “What do you mean?”

  For somebody whose voice you could hardly hear half the time, Winnie was making enough noise to get everybody in the whole cafeteria stretching their necks toward us. I shoved the paper under my lunch tray.

  “It’s just an expression.” I gave Mitch a really hard look. “Right?”

  Mitch just grunted as usual. Winnie covered her face with her little hands. Why did Ophelia have to pick today to be absent? She always took care of Winnie when she started to melt down. I was no good at it.

  But neither was Mitch, and somebody had to do it. Wasn’t that what Lydia was trying to teach us? To be a tribelet who was there for each other?

  I dug into the pocket of my jean jacket and pulled out the cards. I put “Save the Tears” on the table and then poked Winnie.

  She peeked out between her fin
gers. Slowly she nodded and took a bunch of deep breaths.

  “Way to suck it up,” Mitch said. “Good job.”

  Then I put “Baby Steps” on the table.

  “We have to do something,” I said. “Nothing big.”

  “Like go shove that club thing in their face,” Mitch said.

  “Right. We should just . . . just throw it away so nobody else sees it.”

  “They’re gonna wonder where it went.”

  “And they’ll know it was us.” Winnie’s hands were about to go over her face again, so I grabbed one and pressed the “Save the Tears” card into it.

  “I don’t know if I can do this,” she said.

  “You don’t have to do anything,” Mitch said. “Just quit cryin’.”

  Winnie nodded, and I saw her swallow. At least she was trying.

  “Is it time for a ‘Report Alert’?” she said.

  Mitch shook her head. “There’s no names on there. And no teacher’s gonna believe I saw Kylie passing it around. Besides, it’s not like they’re saying they’re gonna do anything.”

  “Okay then,” I said. “I’ll just dump my tray and put this in the trash with it. Meet me at the lockers. We’re gonna make sure Ginger can get her stuff for English, right?”

  Winnie looked like I’d just asked her to throw herself in front of a train, but she nodded. Like I said, she was totally trying.

  I left the table and stood by the trash trying to decide the best way to totally destroy the stupid paper.

  “Are you actually going to dump that tray, Victoria?” said a voice behind me. “Or do you like standing there looking at the garbage?”

  Kylie.

  I closed my eyes. Which card should I go with?

  “Well, it figures you’d want to hang out with whatever smells disgusting.”

  A faint howling began. The whole pack was there, behind me. “Safe in a Group” definitely wasn’t an option.

  “Save the Tears” . . . “Baby Steps” . . . “Gold Thumb.”

  I whirled around. Kylie was still standing there, head tilted so her splashy haircut fell across her cheek like a model in a kids’ clothes catalog.