“Running away from your problems doesn’t solve your problems.”
That comment hurt my feelings a little bit. Because I thought she was putting way too much emphasis on my problems.
“Go in there and have an awesome day!” My mom lifted up her hand to high-five me, which I really didn’t feel like doing. But I went with the flow. She was trying really hard.
Walking into the school, I kept thinking everybody was looking at me. A few people definitely whispered when they saw me. I worried that they thought I was crazy. That I’d attacked Drea and Hayes for no reason. That I had anger issues. Or maybe some other issues. And I didn’t want anybody thinking that. I wanted them to think of me as a normal person who took pictures.
Walking toward the Yearbook room, I felt my heart beating faster and faster inside my chest. Today was the day. I was either going to quit or stay. And there was no turning back. If I left, this was no longer going to be my classroom. If I left, I wasn’t going to be building the yearbook this year or next. Because I was pretty sure Ms. Kenny wasn’t going to admit a quitter for next year. I took the long way to class, and passed the drama room. The sign-up sheet for the school play was posted and there were a ton of names scribbled on it. I stopped to read it. It was so amazing to me that Derby had figured out a way to remake himself.
When school had started he was a zero. Now he was top dog in Drama. I knew Piper’s magic wish hadn’t made this happen—I knew magic was pretend—but it was really interesting to me that Derby had found his path, just like Piper had hoped. Then, before I could stop myself, I wrote my name down under the Tuesday tryout slot. Because why not? My schedule was really going to be opening up. I was going to need something to do with myself.
“Hey,” a voice behind me said.
I flipped around. It was Leo. For a second I thought it was Hayes and I almost died. Because I just didn’t know what to say to him.
“Bummer about detention,” Leo said. “Totally unfair. I think you had a right to defend your pops.”
And I sort of hated Leo in this moment. For bringing up my detention and my pops. It was like he was a cloud of terrible reminders. So I tried to say something helpful to him.
“You make my life sound awful,” I said.
Then I left him and went to Yearbook. As soon as I walked into the room I felt really anxious. I spotted Venice and I headed straight for her, but Ms. Kenny stopped me.
“Meet me at the craft table,” she said.
Venice glanced at me and mouthed, “You okay?”
I nodded. Not being able to talk or text with her made me feel like I was living in a box or in ancient times. It was lonely.
As I approached the craft table I saw something that surprised me. Tons of my photos were spread out on the table. Everything from the first assembly to the class clubs to the boys’ volleyball team to the What’s Hot portraits. I’d forgotten how many pictures I’d taken.
“You’re a very talented workhorse,” Ms. Kenny said.
I knew what she was doing. She was trying to convince me to stay. I felt so unsure about everything.
“I know you said you wanted to quit,” Ms. Kenny went on. “And if that’s truly what you want, I’m not going to talk you out of it. But I have an offer for you.”
A teacher had never made me an offer before.
“What?” I asked.
“I want to de-task you,” she said.
And that sounded too good to be true. “How will anything get done?”
“Just because you’re good at everything doesn’t mean that the burden should fall at your feet,” Ms. Kenny said. “I’m limiting Javier’s tasking duties. Students are allowed only three tasks a week.”
That sounded too good to be true. I tried to understand how that would work. “What if I finish all three of my tasks by Wednesday? Do I get assigned three new tasks?” Because that was pretty easy math. That would mean I had six tasks. And chances were, under Javier’s supervision, they would continue to inch higher and higher and multiply further.
“You can’t get assigned new tasks until the following week,” Ms. Kenny said.
I licked my lips. Then I chewed on them. That seemed so doable. I looked at Venice. She was working on portrait layout. I was going to miss her so much. Sure, we were in a couple of other classes together. But Yearbook was different. It was special.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “I want to say yes, but I also want my life to feel simpler.”
Ms. Kenny smiled at me. “Take a week. If you feel like quitting in a week, I’ll help you transfer into a study hall.”
Taking a week sounded like a reasonable thing to do. It was like a test period. If things still felt crappy, I could ditch this class. But if I was really starting to love it, then I could stay and keep having fun.
“What do you say?” she asked.
It was a pretty easy answer. “I like the idea of taking a week.”
“Great!” Ms. Kenny said. “Why don’t you go help Venice with layout. Maybe you can work on some captions. No stress.”
And that all sounded fantastic.
“Leo,” Ms. Kenny said, “bring Eli and Javier over. I have some questions about our sponsors.”
And that was an amazing gesture, because it meant that Leo would leave Venice alone for the class instead of hover over and bug us.
Venice gave me a quick hug when I joined her. “I knew you wouldn’t quit. You’d never leave me. I’d never leave you. It’s just how we’re made.”
“Actually,” I said, “I only agreed to stay a week. And I’ll see how I feel then. I might still quit.”
Venice’s face fell in total disappointment. So I gave her some advice. “Stress less and be happier. Maybe I’ll stay.”
“Okay,” she said. “Look at how awesome these portraits look.”
And it was hard to deny that they looked really amazing. Everybody’s eyes were open and looked bright and natural.
“You’ve done so much for the nerds,” Venice said. “Really.”
I was glad Venice felt that way. But I wasn’t totally sure. I felt like I’d done all I could do as far as Yearbook was concerned. But I wasn’t sure if it was enough. If the unpopular kids wanted to change the system and become more popular, they needed to do it without me. Just like Derby. They needed to find their own paths.
I woke to the sound of somebody in my closet.
“Mitten Man, get out!” I scolded. I had never understood his desire to scratch at the back of my closet during predawn hours.
“Shhh, Perry. You’ll wake Mom and Dad.”
Piper. I bolted upright. I couldn’t believe she was here. In my room. With me. Was I dreaming? I pinched myself. Ouch. I was not dreaming.
“Why are you here?” I asked.
“I called Drea and she said she gave you my clothes and I need them back,” she said.
“For Thailand?” I’d started to accept the fact that Piper was old enough to do what she wanted. Even if it meant leaving me.
“Okay,” she said. “If I tell you something, will you promise not to tell Mom and Dad?” She sat down on the end of my bed and squeezed my foot underneath the covers.
“Probably,” I said.
Piper let go of my foot and frowned. “That’s a pretty worthless promise.”
I sat up straighter. “Just tell me.”
She exhaled dramatically and ran her hands through her hair. “They’ll find out soon enough anyway. Okay. Are you ready?”
I swatted her with my pillow. “Spill it.”
“I dumped Bobby,” she said.
She had a big smile on her face when she said this, which didn’t make any sense to me. Because I had figured if those two ever called it quits she’d be sad for a century. I tried to uncover more details.
“What happened? I thought you loved Bobby.”
“I know. Okay. Remember how upset I got with you guys for not changing when I was changing?” she asked.
I totally remem
bered that fight. Because it happened the day she made us throw away all our good food.
“So I realized that Bobby was the real problem. He was rigid and I’m super flex. It was impossible for us to stay together and for me to stay my own person. It’s like he wanted me to become a female Bobby. He wanted to date himself.”
That sounded horrible. “Well, I’m really glad you stayed your own person.” I couldn’t picture Piper as anybody else. And I especially couldn’t picture her as a female Bobby.
The door to my room squeaked open and my mom stood there with crazy hair.
“I am not giving you your passport,” she said, angrily pointing her finger at Piper.
For some reason, this made Piper laugh uncontrollably.
My dad appeared in my doorway, and his hair looked even crazier. “I am standing with your mother on this.”
Piper stopped laughing and went to them and gave them hugs. “Yeah. I took my passport weeks ago. Bobby gave me his dead aunt Bev’s passport and I put it in your file cabinet. I can’t believe you never checked the picture.”
My mother looked horrified.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “She’s not going. She dumped Bobby.”
Piper rolled her eyes. “You didn’t even try to keep that a secret.”
“Good news should never be a secret,” I said.
“By the way,” Piper said, “I’m totally eating crap food again. I actually brought vegetable oil and a bowl of dough. I figured we can make Utah scones. Did we keep the honey?”
I smiled huge when she said that. Because we did keep the honey.
“You guys look traumatized,” Piper said, pointing to my parents.
“It’s been a big week,” my mother said.
“We’re not ever having another week like that again,” my father said.
But I was just so happy with my morning. It was one of the best I’d had in a long time. My mom and dad sat down on my bed with me and Piper. Eventually Mitten Man wound his way into the mix too. And it felt so good to be hanging out and laughing as a family. My mom. My dad. Piper. I was so happy to have them all.
It was a perfect moment. Until I heard the worst sound in the world coming out of my mom’s bathrobe pocket. “Stressed Out” by Twenty-One Pilots. It could only mean one thing: Hayes was calling me. I stopped breathing. My mom lifted up my phone to see who it was.
“I love that song,” Piper said, humming along.
“Okay,” I said, sounding very serious. “Whatever we do, we cannot answer that call.”
“Hello?” my mother said, answering the call. Which really stunned me. Just because I was grounded and had lost full use of my phone didn’t give her the right to answer all my incoming calls. Did it?
“Stop looking so freaked out,” Piper said. “You’re killing the mood.”
While I bet that was true, it was impossible for me to stop looking and feeling horrified. Why would Hayes be calling me? What could he possibly have to say to me that couldn’t wait for a few months or possibly years?
“Yes,” my mother said. “She is here, but she’s grounded.”
My father rubbed my shoulder. “This is the third or fourth time he’s tried to call. It’s the boy who dressed up in your text messages, right?”
“Pops,” I mumbled. “He stapled my pops to himself.”
“Ouch,” Piper said. “He did what?”
But I didn’t have time to explain the Big Boo drama to Piper, because before I could even process what was happening, my mom had handed me back my phone and I was listening to Hayes talk to me.
Hayes: Perry, I want you to know that I feel rotten. Like, worse than a dog.
Silence.
Hayes: Perry? Are you there?
Me: Yeah.
Hayes: What I did to you is probably the crappiest thing I’ve done in my whole life. I’m not sure why I did it. I can’t explain it. Your pops turned me into a different person.
Me: Um, I probably shouldn’t have sent them.
Then I heard some shuffling sounds, like maybe Hayes had dropped his phone.
Hayes: What did you just say?
Me: I said that I probably shouldn’t have sent them.
It was totally awkward talking to Hayes. My mouth felt really dry and my entire family was in the room with me.
Hayes: Wow. You mean that?
Me: Uh, yeah. I think so.
“Is he apologizing to you?” my mother asked. “He said that he needed to make things right. He sounded sincerely upset.”
I nodded and plugged my finger into my other ear. I needed to focus on Hayes, not my mom.
Hayes: Okay. Now I don’t feel totally weird about telling you this.
He might not have felt weird, but I did.
Hayes: I left something for you in your mailbox. That’s it. Bye!
Me: Hayes? Are you there? Hello?
“If you’re done talking, I need your phone back,” my mom said, reaching out to take it. “You’re still grounded.”
“Perry is grounded again?” Piper said, flopping back on my pillows. “You barely got ungrounded.”
“I got detention again too,” I said, joining Piper by my pillows. “But now that I know the ropes, I’m less freaked out about it.”
“Getting desensitized to detention is not a good thing,” my dad said sternly.
He looked so tired standing next to my floor lamp in his giraffe-spotted bathrobe. Life was so unpredictable. Last Christmas, when I picked out that bathrobe for him at JCPenney, I had no idea he’d be lecturing me in it about my second round of detention.
“I really don’t want to talk about any of this. I just want to eat scones and enjoy Piper and feel as happy as I did ten minutes ago,” I said.
“Sounds good to me,” my mother said, smoothing her crazy bed head.
“Let’s get in the kitchen and heat up the oil,” my dad said. “The scones aren’t going to deep-fry themselves.”
As I was trying to figure out a way to sneak out to the mailbox, I felt Piper put an arm around me.
“I know what’s in the mailbox,” she whispered to me.
How was that possible? But instead of asking her, I just stared at her in disbelief.
“Close your mouth,” Piper said. “He left this for you.” She slipped an envelope into my hands.
So then I asked the obvious question. “Why did you take my mail?” Between my mom answering my phone calls and Piper intercepting my private letters, my life felt very violated.
“I did you a favor!” Piper said. “Did you want Mom to find that? Or Dad? If this kid really likes you, you have no idea what could be in there.”
Piper swiped a pot of my huckleberry lip balm from my dresser and took off the lid. It bothered me that she didn’t ask for permission to use it before she slathered it on her lips.
“I think I’m dehydrated,” she said. “My skin feels so dry.”
I could feel my eyes bugging out. How could Piper be talking about her skin moisture levels at a time like this?
“Where should I hide it?” I asked. Because I definitely felt way too scared to read that letter. It could say anything. Anything.
“What are you talking about? You need to stay here and read it. Compose yourself. And then come out and eat scones with us and act totally normal. Okay?”
Okay? Things felt very far away from being okay. The letter felt radioactive in my hands. I didn’t want to read it. It was the last thing in the world I wanted to do.
“I’ll open it later,” I said.
“Dumb move,” Piper said. “I drive back to Pocatello this afternoon. You’re probably going to need my guidance.”
I sighed. I probably would. Boy issues weren’t anything I’d had to deal with before. Trying to solve this problem alone felt like a disastrous move.
“I’ll keep Mom and Dad busy. It’s best to tackle your problems right away. Quit trying to run from them.”
But that felt like an unfair thing to say. Because I didn’t
even know I had this problem until two minutes ago. Piper hurried down the hall and began chatting loudly with our dad about a high-pressure weather system that was bringing a heavy rainstorm into the area. My dad loved talking about the jet stream and storm fronts. If he weren’t a dentist, I could imagine him being a meteorologist.
I slowly closed my bedroom door and sat on my bed. My hands were shaking. Hayes had written my name in tiny letters across the front. Perry. I flipped it over and broke open the envelope’s flap with my thumb. The paper inside looked fancy. It had tiny evergreen trees printed along its top edge. I took a deep breath. And I read what Hayes had written.
Perry, you’re wrong. You don’t know anything about crushes.
My stomach flipped with excitement. Why had my stomach done that? I didn’t like Hayes, did I? What did this note even mean? Did Hayes still like me? And if he did, did that also mean he didn’t like Drea? Wasn’t he Drea’s boyfriend? Weren’t they official? If somebody else’s official boyfriend leaves a letter like this in your mailbox, does it mean he’s a terrible person? Does it mean I’m a terrible person? Or does it mean something else entirely?
I thought of Hayes in his orange T-shirt. PERSEVERE. Maybe his crush wasn’t going anywhere.
“Perry!” my mother called. “We’re debating whether or not to put chocolate chips in the scones. We need you.”
“Coming,” I called. But I thought the answer to that question was obvious. Chocolate chips go with anything. Even a cup of ice.
I folded up the letter and stuffed it under my mattress. I’d never hidden anything under my mattress before. But I’d never gotten a letter from a boy like this before either.
Middle school. It was a giant, never-ending roller-coaster ride of things I never expected to happen. And for some inexplicable reason, knowing this was how it worked, and not knowing how it was going to turn out, made my stomach flip with excitement one more time.
First, I must thank my agent, Sara Crowe, who has sold a dozen novels for me and has helped steer my life toward a place of abundance and happiness, even though it never feels that way during the drafting process. I want to thank my husband, Brian Evenson, who is always willing to lend his writerly talents to anything I’m writing, even grocery lists. And our son, Max, whose interest in dinosaurs and wild boars will most likely creep into my work. My Alcatraz gardening friends have remained present and supportive, even though I’m now far away from the island. I miss you all, especially Kristin Scheel, Tracy Roberts, and Shelagh Fritz. Writer friends always lift me, and that includes Claudia Rankine, Kathryn Davis, Eric Zencey, Maria Finn, and my Rhode Island writing group: Kara LaReau, Anika Denise, and Jamie Michalak. As with the first book, Hanna Jones provides good inspiration. And special thanks to my sister, Julie, and my nieces and nephews for keeping me close to my Idaho roots. Same goes for Mom, Dad, and Doreen. And most importantly, I want to thank my fabulous editor, Wendy Loggia, who never fails to make my work funnier, brighter, and more true. This is the sixth novel she’s shepherded into the world, and they are what they are because of her. If there is such thing as an editor lottery, I won it.
Totally Crushed Page 16
