“It’s weird to be on the phone with Meghan,” Shelley says. “To hear her voice but not see her at the same time. I don’t know which I like better, her face or her voice.”
“Well, guess who called me last night.”
“You’re kidding. That’s why the exclamation points?”
“We’re rehearsing together.”
“Rehearsing? Are you really rehearsing, or is it like . . . a thing?”
“It’s a definite thing. What’s going on with Meghan?”
“I . . . don’t . . . know. Hmm.” It’s an old Shelley habit. The more excited she is about something, the more she wants the other person to drag it out of her. But Dani really should give the time to Shelley, because Dani’s had crushes before that they talked about lots. There was Joshua Sandy, whom she kayaked out to the float with every night at summer camp. And Alan Diaz, whom she started dating when his family was already planning to move to Washington, DC. But Shelley has never had a girlfriend to talk about—at least, not officially.
“I don’t know,” Shelley says. “I’m going to become her friend and see if anything develops. That’s the mature way, right? But . . .” She pauses again, waiting for Dani to prod her with questions.
“But what?”
“But if I want to be more and she doesn’t, I don’t know if I can deal with it. I mean I’m excited about getting to know her, but I don’t know how much I should stick my neck out.”
Alex clicks the mouse loudly.
Not at all, Dani thinks. She wants to warn Shelley to be careful, but she doesn’t want to seem too critical of Meghan. So she can’t say anything. Dani wonders how many times she’ll go through that circle of thoughts, over and over. She wants to say, “I would hate to see you get hurt,” but then couldn’t Shelley say the same thing to her? Any time you really like someone and let them know it, you run the risk of getting hurt.
Alex thumps Dani’s leg with the soles of his sneakers. When she says “Ow!” he looks the other way as if it was an accident. His sneakers have lights that flash when his feet move.
“I have to go,” she tells Shelley. “I’m on the clock. I should feed my friend here.”
“You’re so conscientious. When I babysit my brother I barely look at him all night. I have him trained to heat Hot Pockets for both of us.”
“You’re not getting paid.”
“Not directly, no.”
“Indirectly?”
“I use babysitting to blackmail my parents when I want to stay out late.”
“This weekend should have some staying-out-late opportunities.”
“So where are you and Gordy rehearsing?”
“Oh, stop it! What’s with that tone?” But Dani’s smiling. She’s grateful that Shelley brought Gordy up again. Maybe her relationship is not so rare, so hidden, so one-of-a-kind, but still, it’s hers, her personal feeling that should not be scoffed at or broken, that she clutches like her own baby bird egg.
“Yeah, right, rehearsing. He is pretty hot.”
“Well, it sounded really innocent. He has this old-fashioned niceness about him . . .”
“So where?”
“His house.”
“Everyone says his dad is rich. A lot of his customers, whatever you call them—”
“Clients.”
“Are musicians, like really famous ones.”
“That’s what my mom says. But look, I should probably—ow.”
“I’ll let you go then, little mommy. God, you’re such a Girl Scout. I’d go crazy putting in the hours you do. See you in class, okay?”
“Okay. Bye.
“What?” Dani says, realizing she hasn’t heard Alex.
“We bought Louie a hockey stick. It’s in his toy box.”
“Oh.”
Alex grasps her ears and presses his nose against hers, turning into a cyclops.
“You look funny,” he says. “You’re my favorite person in the world.”
Dani’s mind starts to go to the bad place again. She had thought that wouldn’t happen today, because she was so happy. But then Shelley said how good Dani was, and Dani felt bad because Shelley had no idea what Dani sometimes thought about when she came to this house.
Yes, her mind is going to that place again, even though when she arrived she was a normal, dopey girl falling in love. She wonders if she’s on the verge of something happening. She pictures Alex’s face, this face that’s pressed against her, all over the TV and the newspapers. His darling face. Oh God, she couldn’t bear it. If precious, adorable Alex were dead, and if she were the one who killed him . . . What would the headlines say?
MAYHEM IN HAWTHORNE HOME
SITTER STABS TOT
POLICE: TEEN WENT “BERSERK”
EMTS: “IT WAS A BLOODBATH”
NEIGHBOR: “WHO COULD HARM AN ANGEL?”
Dani’s heart starts to pound. All the details are so real. It feels like it could happen. It feels like it might happen. Except that she doesn’t want to kill Alex. So why does she keep picturing his death?
“You’re my favorite,” he says again.
“Don’t say that, Alex,” Dani says. She scoots out from under him, off the chair. “I’ll start dinner.”
“Okay,” he says, meaning it isn’t okay. He scowls and drops his head on the keyboard, careful not to hit any keys.
She leaves him alone and finds chicken tenders in the fridge and a can of corn on the pantry shelf. Why does Mrs. Alex keep buying corn if Alex doesn’t eat it? I’ll have to bribe him to eat this, she thinks. She hopes there are Popsicles. Unless Alex is already dead. Is it possible that she already killed Alex but forgot? Did she go into some kind of trance she has no memory of? And is he lying on the floor right now? That’s impossible, right? Or is it?
She checks the living room. Alex is alive, arranging his plastic animals in a circle around the ottoman.
He scowls. “Are you done yet?”
“Back in a minute,” she says.
All she wants is to protect him. Who would want to kill such a great kid? she asks, echoing the neighbor in the imaginary news headline. She finds the three big knives and puts them in the craft box and locks the garage. Enough craziness, she decides. I need to tell somebody.
part 2
LINES AND CIRCLES
17
“How hard would it be to find another sitter?” Dani asks Mrs. Alex that night. “I mean, if I had other commitments?” Dani tries to sound causal, but desperation tightens her face.
“What other commitments do you have?” Mrs. Alex asks. She pries off her heels in the front hall. “Is somebody offering you more money?” She tries to sound casual too, as if nothing is at stake, although Dani knows she must be surprised and hurt.
“It’s not that. Just . . . school and stuff.”
Mrs. Alex straightens. Without her shoes, she’s four inches shorter than Dani. “All right, Dani. I won’t lie to you. It would be difficult. You would be hard to replace.”
Come on, come on, get me out of here, Dani’s mind says. Come on, it can’t be that difficult. She tries not to look impatient.
“I guess I should be flattered,” Dani says. It seems the perfect thing to say, balancing kindness and persistence. “I am flattered. But maybe if I could find a replacement—a friend from tennis, or someone else at school . . .”
“I could find someone, sure, but not anyone that Alex likes as much as you—that we both like as much as you. Who could deal with my disorganization? And you’ve never said one thing about it.”
“It’s not so bad.”
“Are you looking for a raise? Is that it?” She looks the way Dani’s mother looks when she starts to talk about money. They’re single women who don’t want people putting one over on them.
“No, I don’t need a raise.”
“We might be getting an increase at work. If I do, you’ll get an automatic increase, too. How does that sound?” Mrs. Alex hangs her cell phone holder, keys, and work ID on pegs
inside the door. She’s trying to become more organized. She buys books about organizing. But things stay put for only a day or two before joining the disorder. Dani can almost hear the disorder churning, like the rotating bin on a garbage truck.
Dani nearly laughs. The money’s not it. She can get money anytime she wants from her mom. Dani would almost pay Mrs. Alex to let her go, no more questions asked, no cajoling or convincing. But she can’t think of another tactic.
“I don’t know what I’m talking about. It was just a hypothetical.”
“You look really tired, sweetheart,” Mrs. Alex says. “I’ve never seen you so wiped out. School okay? Not too much partying? It takes one to know one, you know. Want a ride home? It’s so late.”
“I’d rather walk and clear my head. I have my phone. I’ll tell my mom I’m en route.” Dani picks up her bag.
“You wouldn’t quit without giving me plenty of notice, would you?”
“I don’t know if I will quit. It sounds like you need me not to.”
“I do. And it would kill Alex.”
It would kill Alex. How casually people said awful, terrible things. Her leaving wouldn’t kill Alex. But it would mess up his life. And Mrs. Alex’s, too.
How long will this go on? Dani wonders. Dani had walked around the house with her hands squeezed together. She had checked on Alex ten or twelve times, locked up the knives, put them back before Mrs. Alex came home, and changed the TV channel every time something nasty came on. In the last ten minutes she felt a huge sense of relief, because Mrs. Alex would be home and Dani would be glad to see her, to tell her everything’s all right, to sign off on Alex, and to quit and never spend a night like this again.
18
“Hey, Shell. Do you ever have . . . weird thoughts?” Dani asks. They’re eating lunch in the courtyard.
“My whole life is one weird thought,” Shelley says. She offers Dani shoestring potatoes and a tub of tuna salad. “Isn’t everybody’s?”
“No, I mean icky weird thoughts. Something bizarre and random that you wouldn’t want to think of.”
“Here’s an unexpected thought, Dani: I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
A bump in the road. But Dani is prepared. She knew she would have to work up to this conversation. She psyched herself up during biology lab while staining slides with Jess Blodgett. I’m going to talk to my best friend, Dani told herself. I will sit down with my best friend and tell her what’s bothering me, and see what she thinks.
Dani dips a potato in the tuna. She chews as if a new idea has captured her mind and she’s deciding what to say next. But in fact she rehearsed every word.
“I mean, you get a thought about something you might do . . .” Chew, chew, swallow. “Then you wonder, Oh my God, what if one day I really did that? What if I couldn’t help myself?”
Shelley swats an ant off the leg of her jeans. “For example?”
Dani leans on one elbow. She makes herself smile like she’s saying something ridiculous.
“Like when we’re rehearsing and Mr. Gabler is standing there teaching us our parts and jabbering on about something, do you ever get the urge to reach out and grab his testicles?”
“Ew! EEEEEEW!” Shelley nearly spits her potatoes. She stares at Dani with her mouth open, the way someone looks hanging over the toilet after throwing up. Then she yells again.
“Ew! Ew! Mr. Gabler’s?”
“Mr. Gabler’s testicles,” Dani says. She still hopes that this can go her way.
“Don’t say that! Don’t say that! Don’t say that!”
“Somehow I didn’t expect such a strong reaction.” Dani can barely hear herself through the yelling.
“Ew! Ew!” Shelley drops the can of potatoes on the ground and shakes her hands around her head in a shivery way, like she’s touched something contaminated.
“Please don’t scream just because I mentioned Mr. Gabler’s testicles.”
“Aaaah! You keep saying it. Do not say ‘Mr. Gabler’ and ‘testicles’ in the same sentence. Not even in the same conversation! In the same life! In the same world!”
“But I mean, you know how he wears those pants that are that shiny material, nylon or polyester or something, and in some places they’re really worn out, and you can see the outline of . . .”
“I know, Dani. I know. I’ve seen it. And I don’t want to think about it! Now shut up. That is nasty.”
“Okay, it is nasty. I agree with you.”
Dani lays down her food and squeezes her hands together. Other kids in the yard have stopped talking and are watching Dani and Shelley. Malcolm Pinto leans against the wall by the plants, picking tobacco from his teeth.
“That’s right,” Shelley says. “Now look around. Everyone’s staring at us.”
“No, they’re just staring at you. Could you please keep your voice down?”
“Ew! Ew! Now I can’t eat.” Shelley jams the potatoes and tuna into her backpack. She purses her lips and stares at Dani for a minute, sizing her up. “So, now that the cat’s out of the bag, have you had weird thoughts about any of our other teachers? Ms. Martin, for example, or Dr. Chang? Do you want to grab any part of them?”
“Not really.” Dani laughs.
“ ’Cause I sure don’t!”
“But now that you put the idea in my head, maybe I will.”
“Well, if you’re going to subject them to an undies critique, why don’t you hit Ms. Martin next? I sometimes find myself transfixed by that, you know, uniboob of hers.”
“I think I know what you mean,” Dani says. “One, where there should be two. Can you open those potatoes again?”
Shelley makes a face like she’s been hypnotized. “Maybe you could get a weird thought or urge, before she walks into the classroom, to write on the board ‘Buy a new bra.’ ”
“Or what about over on the side where she writes the vocabulary words for the day? I could get an urge to add ‘lift’ and ‘separate.’ ” Dani plays along, even though Shelley’s making fun of her.
“Mr. Gabler, huh?” Shelley muses. “You have the hots for him.”
Dani notices that the other kids stopped paying attention when she joined the joking. They seemed to have a sixth sense for the truth, a focus on the moment when Dani was most uncomfortable. So she backed off the subject. But she has gotten nowhere, and now she’ll have to start over.
“No, I don’t have the hots for him.” She holds the potatoes far from Shelley until Shelley looks apologetic.
“Oh God, Dani. Now I have this totally unwanted image of Mr. Gabler in my mind, thanks to you. I don’t know how I can get through rehearsal next time. I’ll keep thinking about . . . what you said.”
“I’m sorry,” Dani says. “I know it’s weird, but I thought . . . I thought you might relate.”
“Well, I honestly don’t relate. I don’t at all.”
Dani finishes the tuna while Shelley watches the other kids. “Peanut butter cookie?” Dani asks, taking a foil-wrapped package from her knapsack. “With chocolate pudding? They’re homemade by Beth.”
“Maybe later. Save one for me.”
“Okay,” Dani says. “I’ll surprise you and put one in your locker. Hey, let me ask you something else. Do you ever find yourself thinking, for no particular reason, about hurting another person?” She squeezes her hands again. She doesn’t know whether to adopt a light tone or to sound serious.
Shelley positions her pack as a pillow. “Someone you’re mad at? Do what we did in summer camp. Covertly feed the object of your hatred an entire package of Ex-Lax.”
“But I don’t think I really am mad at the person, see?”
“Ex-Lax completely leaves the system within twenty-four hours.”
Shelley stretches on the bench with one hand resting on her abdomen. Since she started texting Meghan all the time, she seems to move differently. Shelley has a really solid body. Malcolm is staring again.
“I mean, what if you didn’t want to hurt them at all?�
�� Dani says. “If you just thought about it?”
“Then make an effigy and stick pins in it. Safe, fun, and cathartic. And if anything bad does befall this person, hey, it’s probably a coincidence.”
Dani dips a cookie into the pudding. “Hey, do me a favor, girlfriend?” she asks. “Don’t tell anyone what we just talked about. I feel like such a jerk.”
“Two peanut butter cookies.”
“Deal.”
“What conversation?” Shelley says. “It never happened.”
19
“I heard something weird today and I don’t know what to make of it.” Malcolm and his dad are driving to their favorite hardware store to look at grills for Father’s Day.
“What’s that, son?”
“It’s about Strawberry Shortcake.”
“What’s that little cutie up to?”
“She told Baby Dyke she had an urge to grab the music teacher. Mr. Gabler.”
“Grab him how?”
“I’ll let you guess. Hint: There are two of them.”
“Not his twins? His boys?” Michael lowers his sunglasses and peers at Malcolm.
“That’s right.”
“Wow,” Michael says, stopping at a traffic rotary and tapping the wheel. “Let me digest that for a second.”
“I was kinda surprised. Did you ever hear of a girl getting the urge to grab a guy’s nuts?”
“Not since I married your mother.”
Malcolm laughs and nearly drops his soda, although the joke makes him a little uncomfortable. No matter how funny his dad is, Malcolm doesn’t feel entirely right hearing intimate sex things about his mother.
“Gotcha,” Michael says, handing his son a wad of napkins. “A beautiful young girl like that wanting to grab the teacher’s jewels? I knew I went into the wrong line of work.” He looks to see if he got another laugh. “Do you think this teacher and Strawberry Shortcake are having some kind of affair? That might be legal, depending on her age, but it would be unethical. I would want to report that. He would lose his job.”
“I don’t imagine so. He’s kind of your average middle-aged guy. He looks kind of like a eunuch.”
Things I Shouldn't Think Page 5
