Loving Emily

by Anne Pfeffer

  The bell rings for class. Our group migrates indoors, with me still trapped in the center like the yolk of an egg. As we enter the building, the cluster of people around me finally breaks up, but I’m still not free.

  In front of me is Ballbuster Anderson, our headmistress. She’s really small, but she’s tough as beef jerky. As usual she looks like this butch military official, standing there in one of her weird man suits. It’s navy with brass buttons, but pint-sized. She wears it with a white button down shirt, and something hanging around her neck. A scarf, maybe.

  “Hey, Miss Anderson.” I keep replaying that evening in my mind, like a video, except I keep changing the parts I don’t like. So many small mistakes. If I’d done even one thing differently, he’d be alive. If I’d driven him to the party, the way we planned, he’d be alive. If I’d stayed with him in the stairwell, he’d be alive.

  “Mr. Mills,” she says. “I’ll give you a late pass to class. Tell me what happened.”

  So I do. She listens with this terrible expression of pain on her face. Michael practically had a chair with his name on it in Anderson’s office, getting hauled in regularly for things like cutting class, pranks, or not turning in homework. He used to joke that Anderson was secretly hot for him and looked for excuses to call him in.

  When I finish, she clears her throat, but her voice comes out sounding high and strangled. “Thank you. We’re having an assembly at eleven thirty. You may go to class.”

  As I travel through the now empty halls, I have this weird feeling that I’ve forgotten something that I decided wasn’t important, when in fact, it really was. It’s a strange feeling, and it bugs me. I push the thought away and slide into my seat in English.

  • • •

  After each of my morning classes, I am surrounded. I tell my story over and over. I don’t see Chase at all, but wouldn’t blame him if he kept a low profile. Just thinking of him, I feel the metallic taste of anger in my mouth. Michael was fine before Chase came along.

  At eleven twenty, the loudspeakers announce an all-school assembly in the gym. Unlike most of our assemblies, where the kids are talking and horsing around, we file quietly up into the bleachers and sit down immediately, waiting for Miss Anderson to speak.

  I can’t help scanning the bleachers for Emily, wondering how she’s doing. As if Michael and Chase’s little stunt wasn’t bad enough, to have a kid die on the way home from her party — sixteen has been a real downer for her so far.

  They’ve brought out a podium, which sits reflected in the shiny gymnasium floor. Ballbuster walks in, looking shrunken and tired. From where I’m sitting, I can just see her forehead and some puffs of reddish-blond hair above the microphone. She taps the microphone, testing it, then steps up onto something, because now her face bobs into view.

  “I think you’ve all heard that we have lost a member of our school, Michael Weston.” Miss Anderson stops for a minute to collect herself.

  I wonder what she’s going to say about him.

  “Many here know that Michael was full of high spirits and had his own special way of enjoying life.” A few kids laugh, hearing her say that. “I think a lot of people will miss him, and I know I will.”

  “Dr. Winters and a team of others will be available to meet with students who have questions or concerns. A memorial service is scheduled for Friday. My door is open, and there will be a box by my office for your suggestions on how we might best commemorate Michael’s life.”

  She stands there for a second, then says, “Perhaps a moment of silence would be appropriate.”

  We sit there, motionless, the entire student body and faculty of Pacific Prep. The only sounds are sniffling and blowing of noses.

  “Soldier Rock,” Michael had said to me. Only he and I knew what that meant. If I’d been paying attention that night—really listening to him—I would have realized he needed my help. And he’d be alive right now.

  I look at my hands, wondering if Michael’s here in the gym, watching us. Knowing him, he’d probably be up to no good.

  A strange thought passes through my head. I could just see Michael’s ghost pranking his own moment of silence. I almost tense up, expecting explosives to go off at any minute.

  Wall Art. That was one of Michael’s ideas. We would take firecrackers, insert them into Hostess Twinkies, and explode them against a wall, creating amazing spatter patterns of cake and marshmallow cream.

  But Michael’s ghost isn’t here, or isn’t in the mood to prank.

  Miss Anderson looks up, says, “Thank you,” and dismisses us.

  Chapter 8

  Classes are over, and I’ve somehow survived my first day back at school since Michael died. Now I just have to figure out how to get through the rest of my life. Turning a corner, I walk along a bank of lockers. The place is emptying out as kids go home for the day.

  Ahead of me, I see Emily at her open locker door. Catching sight of me, she straightens up a little and stands, waiting, as I walk up to her.

  “Ryan, I’m so sorry about Michael.” Her voice is as soft as a featherbed.

  I stare at her, like a wounded animal, unable to speak. If I talk, I might start blubbering and disgrace myself.

  “How are you feeling?” she asks. “Are you all right?”

  Everyone else has just wanted the grisly details of Michael’s last moments. She’s the only person today who has cared how I’m doing, not that I deserve any sympathy.

  “I’m okay,” I say. Then, “Well, not really.”

  And just then, Chase wanders by, wearing his usual “nobody’s home upstairs” expression. It’s the first time I’ve seen him today. The sight of him in a t-shirt that says “Party On!” has me clenching and unclenching my fists.

  When he notices us, I almost think for a moment he’s going to turn and run. But he comes up to us.

  “Hey, you guys. How’s it going?” he asks.

  “How do you think?” I say stiffly. Red is running along the edges of my vision.

  “Yeah. Tough break about Michael.” He sniffles, as if he’s congested, and starts with this hacking cough.

  “More like a tough break for Michael. Seeing as how he’s dead and all.” I’m viewing Chase through a haze of red, as my anger builds.

  “Yeah, it sucks that he’s gone.” Chase shifts from foot to foot and moves his shoulders around. “Okay, see ya.” He turns to leave.

  “Excuse me?” It is Emily. “That’s it? After everything that happened this weekend, that’s all you have to say?”

  Chase’s cough is a deep rumble in his chest. He gives us a wary look. “Hey, I didn’t mean to mess up your party. I was just having fun.”

  “At everyone else’s expense!” Emily looks at him like he just crawled up out of a sewer.

  “Well, you don’t have to be a bitch about it,” he says.

  The next thing I hear is a grunt of pain and surprise, along with the sound of bodies hitting metal locker doors. My hand hurts like hell. I’m watching it all from a great distance, a tiny moving picture tinged in red. I’ve somehow pushed Chase against a locker door. I crack my fist into his ribs for what I realize is the second time, and then the third time.

  I want to hurt him—as badly as I can. I pull away from him, then lunge forward trying to body-slam him into the locker again. Chase is a lot heavier than me and is really strong for a guy who looks so out of shape. He pulls back his right fist and clocks me.

  As I reel away from him, hands fall on my shoulders and arms, pulling me backward. I’m ready to attack Chase all over again, but a couple of guys hold me down. I am panting as the red waves in front of my eyes begin to dissolve. I catch glimpses of people around me: Chase, nursing the hand that hit me; Emily, so intense she barely seems to breathe; and Ballbuster Anderson, arriving on the scene.

  “He just went crazy!” Chase says to Anderson. “For no reason.”

  I can still feel my body smashing into Chase’s, hear him hitting the locker with a satisfying groa
n. “He called Emily a bitch.”

  Anderson’s eyebrows shoot up into her hairline. Then she is marching us down to her office. It doesn’t matter that she’s a pygmy—four foot eleven, or something like that. Miss Anderson walks large. I’ve never been to her office before for a discipline problem. I’ve never acted this way in my life.

  “I will deal with you one at a time,” she says. “Mr. Mills, please wait outside until I have finished with Mr. Cavanaugh.”

  It’s almost four o’clock by now. The hallway’s empty, except for Emily, who has followed us and sits waiting for me on the long bench across from the Admin Office door. She wears one of those short, tight skirts that all the girls have and is sitting the way all the girls do, with her knees pressed close together. Her hair’s pushed off her face, which is pale and serious.

  Even in my state of total misery, I think she’s beautiful. I’m afraid she thinks I’m an ass, but then she pats the place next to her on the bench. Like a dog, I scramble over to sit beside her.

  She puts her hand on my arm. “That was …. eventful.”

  “Yeah.” I touch my temple, where Chase hit me and wince. “I don’t usually go around jumping people.”

  “Just people who deserve it, right?” She leans toward me a little, and I catch the scent of lavender. Her eyes sweep my face, taking in my injuries. “You might have a black eye tomorrow.”

  “I feel like an idiot.”

  “Don’t. You were amazing!”

  “Really?”

  Her lips are the perfect shape and color. I can’t stop looking at them.

  My head begins to pound, and suddenly, all I can think of is Michael, taking off on his cosmic rocket ride into death. Inside me, I feel a tearing, as if something huge and made of steel—a battleship or a skyscraper—is being pulled apart.

  And Emily sees the expression on my face and doesn’t ask a bunch of dumb questions about how I feel, but just looks at me, and I say “It’s Michael,” as the pain rips into me.

  She puts her arm around me and squeezes—hard. Her hand, which grips my right shoulder, is surprisingly strong. I can almost feel strength flowing out of her fingers and into my shoulder, straightening my back. I feel myself relax.

  “I miss him,” I say.

  The sympathy in her eyes is like a warm bath.

  If girls were flames, most girls would be a single match, a mere Bic lighter. Emily, on the other hand, would be an inferno—a raging, thousand-acre forest fire.

  Chapter 9

  Chase is completely uninjured by my brutal attack. Miss Anderson gives him a detention period and makes him write Emily a note of apology. As for me, she tells me to sleep a lot this weekend and gives me the phone number for Dr. Winters, the school psychologist.

  “For grief counseling,” she says. “In case you want to talk about it.” I crumple the phone number and toss it the trash on the way to my car.

  By five thirty, I’m pulling up our driveway. The two polar opposite feelings of pounding Chase’s flesh and Emily’s arm around me have left me in a strangely good mood, but tired. I think I could sleep for a week.

  As I leave our garage, Alberto, one of the gardeners, is finishing up for the day. His kid, Hector, is with him. Every once in a while, when his daycare falls through, Alberto brings Hector to work with him. He knows my parents don’t mind.

  Hector is four. He has a toy shovel and rake, with which he is scooping a hole in the dirt by some bushes.

  “Hi, Alberto,” I say, then drop down to squat on my heels as Hector comes running. He has a round baby belly and these perfect, tiny baby teeth that look like the mini-Chiclets we used to get in our Halloween bags.

  “Dude,” he says in his husky four-year old voice. His eyes take in the cut lip and rapidly swelling bump on my temple.

  “Little accident playing soccer,” I tell him. “So, you remember the secret handshake?” I look very serious as I say this, and he does, too. Hector can never remember the secret handshake, probably because it changes every time we do it.

  “No, Hector,” I say, “it’s right fists together, then left fists together.”

  “No, man,” he argues. “First you gotta slap it like you mean it.”

  I hit my forehead, avoiding the rapidly swelling part of it. “How could I have forgotten?” Then I pick him up and swing him around a few times, while Hector yells in delight and Alberto watches, smiling.

  “Later, buddy,” I say and go into the house, where Molly and Maddy are sitting on bar stools at the kitchen island with a plate of cut up apples. They’re wearing the same sad expressions they’ve had since they first heard about Michael, but when they see me, they leap off their stools.

  “Did you have a fight? Did you win?” Maddy is bouncing up and down beside me. She has blonde hair and freckles, while Molly’s dark, like my dad. I was eight when they were born. For a long time, I ignored them, but ever since they saw Michael overdose and almost die, I’ve kind of looked out for them.

  “You poor thing! Does it hurt much?” Molly’s eyebrows come together, and her mouth puckers into a little “O.”

  “I’m fine. I crashed into a guy playing soccer in P.E.”

  “Put this on your head, Ryanito. Then sit down, and the girls will set the table.” Ro brings me a towel with an ice pack in it, and I take a chair.

  “Any chance the rents will put in an appearance?” I ask her.

  “They will come to say goodbye, before they go to dinner.”

  Rosario is taking a roast chicken, surrounded by potatoes and carrots, out of the oven. Molly and Maddy have already laid down just four placemats, for the three of us and Ro.

  They don’t even bother to ask anymore.

  “Ryan,” Maddy complains. “My backhand sucks. Will you help me with it?” She’s into tennis in a big way.

  “I’ve noticed you tilt your head as the ball comes to you,” I tell her. “To judge the shot right, you need to look at it straight on, with both eyes. I’ll show you this weekend.”

  “Well then, you have to do spelling words with me, too!” Molly says. “So I can win the school spelling bee.”

  “You got it.” I touch the ice pack gingerly to my swollen temple

  Rosario serves our chicken and vegetables. We sit at a table in a bay window off the kitchen. Since it’s mid-September and still light out, we can see the garden, the fountains and off in the distance, our tennis court and pools.

  We’ve just started to eat when my parents roll through the kitchen on the way to their real lives. Mom’s got this dress on that’s embarrassingly short, and Dad has these sunglasses that I guess he thinks make him look cool.

  “Mom! Dad! What a nice surprise!” I say in the fake, bright voice that I use for needling my parents. Anger slithers out of my mouth and crawls around the kitchen, like a cockroach.

  “We’re going to a screening,” Dad says. “Then a late dinner.” He takes a closer look at me. “What did you do to yourself?”

  I repeat my soccer story.

  “Thank goodness you don’t play football,” Mom says, making one of her invaluable contributions to the conversation. “Don’t wait up for us.”

  “We wouldn’t think of it!” I use the same bright tone as before.

  Both Dad and Ro have that Not again expression on their faces that they reserve for my sarcastic moments.

  “Ryan, you must respect your parents,” Rosario says after they’re gone.

  “They should stay home once in a while!”

  I’m sure Ro agrees with me, but she keeps it to herself. “Have some juice.” She fills our glasses.

  “You guys doing okay?” I ask the girls. “Have you been thinking about Michael?”

  They nod. “Miss Ellen says he’s gone to a better place,” Maddy reports. “Is that true?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I hope so.”

  They tell me and Rosario about their day. Second grade is hard, because Maddy, who is in a different class from Molly, got the co
ol teacher, while Molly got Miss Cruella. Her real name’s Miss Priscilla. Molly, at age eight, is bitter.

  “So, today,” Molly complains, “Miss Cruella’s yelling at Cameron Fiske, yelling maniacally, but then the door opens and Mr. Palmer walks in, and just like that”—she snaps her fingers—”Miss Cruella starts talking in this fakey, sweet voice, pretending like she was being nice all along.” She sniffs in disgust.

  We talk about ways that Molly can deal with Miss Cruella.

  “Why don’t you just be so bad,” Madison suggests, “that they move you to my class?” She’s struggling to cut her chicken, having a hard time, but refusing our help.

  “Why would they do that?” I ask.

  “Well, I mean, if Miss Cruella doesn’t want to have her anymore.”

  “Mmm, I don’t think it works that way. She’ll just get into trouble.” I hand Molly the juice pitcher, and she fills her glass.

  “Many times,” Ro observes in her accented English, “there are difficult people. With the teachers, you must be polite. You must obey! But, inside,” she points to her chest, “you are yourself! You still have your own mind, your own heart.”

  Molly thinks about it. “But then I’m just copping out,” she says, using an expression she heard in one of Dad’s movies.

  “It’s called playing the game, Moll,” I say to her. “Ro’s right. If you know how to play the game, it means you’re smart.”

  We finish dinner and help Ro clear the table. Ro insists on it, not because she’s trying to get out of work, but because she feels it’s her job to raise us right.

  “I made dessert,” Ro says. “Ryan’s favorite.”

  She sets in front of me a piece of warm apple pie with vanilla ice cream. It’s her homemade pie, the best in the world.

  “Thanks, Ro.” When I take a bite, the flavors of apple, butter, and cinnamon hit me like a surprise. This is the first food that hasn’t tasted like cardboard to me since Michael died. I see him, sitting with me at this table only a month ago. “Do you remember, Ro?” I say.