Being Mary Bennet Blows

by Mary Strand

  Purchase complete, I walked out of the store feeling a little brighter. As if I hadn’t just drawn another detention for ditching Mr. Gilbertson’s class. As if I wouldn’t be torpedoed by Mom and Dad the instant they got home. As if I hadn’t lost Josh as my Physics partner and, more important, as the very first potential friend I’d ever had. For about twelve minutes.

  I wandered around the mall a bit longer until I started to see kids who looked like they went to my high school. When I saw someone who almost looked like Josh, I turned and practically ran in the opposite direction, then took the first exit I found and sprinted to the Jeep.

  Time to go home and face the music.

  Sure enough, Mom was waiting at the front door. At four in the afternoon, when she should’ve been at work. Based on the hands jammed on her hips, she wasn’t waiting for someone else.

  “Hey, Mom.”

  “I can’t believe the calls I keep getting from Mr. Paymar. About you, of all my girls! One thing I’ve always said about you, Mary, is that you’re a good girl. Like Jane, but, of course, not exactly like Jane. No one can be like Jane. But you study, you play piano, you don’t get into trouble.”

  “Unlike, say, Lydia?”

  She glared at me but hardly paused for breath. “And now look at you. Mr. Paymar wants to see you in his office first thing tomorrow morning, and your Physics teacher called, too.”

  “At work?”

  “I happened to come home early today. I had a court hearing that lasted longer than I expected.”

  Anyone else would’ve stayed later at work, I thought, but it didn’t seem like a smart thing to mention to Mom right now. She looked like she could spit. Like, in my face.

  “Sorry to hear it, Mom.” I pushed past her using a bit of my elbow, the way Liz did to anyone who got in her way, and headed to the stairs. “I’ve gotta study.”

  Mom’s heels followed me along the hall. “Don’t you try to ignore me. And how do you know what to study when you keep skipping all your classes?”

  I sighed but kept going, up the stairs now, without turning around to face her. “I don’t keep skipping classes. I just had to leave my last class today. I was, like, sick.”

  Sick to death of Josh Lawton and all the freaking idiots in my class who kept making fun of me, but still. If I hadn’t left, I might’ve barfed all over the room. I think that has to be the definition of sick.

  From the momentary silence behind me, I must’ve thrown Mom for a loop. Only temporarily. “Sick? Mr. Paymar didn’t say you were sick. You didn’t go to the nurse’s office.”

  I was almost to the top step, and ten feet down the hall was freedom. My room. Mom never went in there; the last time she had, she’d wrinkled her nose and called it squalid. Sure, it’d been last winter and Boris had hacked up a few hairballs on the rug and Mom had been off her meds, but whatever worked to keep Mom out of my room.

  “Like I said, Mom, I was sick. Really sick. I was much closer to the parking lot than to the nurse’s office, and I was afraid I was gonna heave if I had to walk all the way there.”

  “Mary, please don’t say heave.”

  “Okay. Barf.”

  “Mary!”

  “You know what I mean. I was sick, okay?” I was at the door to my room now, and I pushed it open a crack. Messy, yes, squalid, no, but I wasn’t in a hurry to change Mom’s opinion. She might start visiting. “And I’ve gotta study.”

  Mom came to the threshold but no farther. “If you’re sick, why didn’t you come straight home?”

  Crap. Excellent question. “I went to the drugstore? To get, uh, medicine?” Whew.

  Mom frowned at me. “Then where is this medicine?”

  I rolled my eyes, even though she’d nailed me and had to know my excuses were getting more lame by the minute. Mom is sharp in court, even if she does let Lydia pull fast ones. “I took it already.” She squinted at me, obviously trying to figure out how far to take her little interrogation. I held a hand to my stomach, trying to look sick. “I mean, I couldn’t afford much, so I got the smallest size and, um, stuffed it in my backpack.”

  I tossed my backpack on my bed, hoping she wouldn’t actually step into my room. Papers and books were all over the floor and desk and half of my bed, and a random assortment of clean and dirty clothes warred with each other for the remaining space. At least I didn’t eat in my room, the way Lydia and Cat and even Liz sometimes did.

  Mom pursed her lips as she stared at my backpack, finally shrugging. “I’ll talk to your father when he gets home, and I think he’ll have something to say.”

  Well, raise the flag. The only daughter Dad actually talked to was Liz, and maybe Jane on rare occasions, so I was probably safe until tomorrow morning. I had a feeling Mr. Paymar wouldn’t be quite so easy. And when it came to bad news, my instincts were usually dead-on.

  Sometimes parents can surprise the hell out of a girl. In a good way.

  Unfortunately, boys never seem to.

  I pranced into Mr. Paymar’s office on Tuesday morning before first period, handed his secretary a note from my dad saying that I got sick yesterday afternoon and desperately had to leave school Right That Moment, and pranced back out. Well, okay. I don’t prance. But, still, it was great.

  And all because Charlie showed up at our house last night, by himself, just to see Jane.

  I mean, not that Dad would give a rip. But it freaked out Mom, who still thinks she can beat Jane Austen at her game, and while she was going apoplectic I asked Dad to write the note. After all, I said, Mom had written a billion notes just like it on Lydia’s behalf. Although that’s probably why Lydia ended up in reform school.

  Amazingly, Dad wrote it—while he smoked a cigar in the living room instead of, say, drinking a vegetable smoothie. His so-called healthy lifestyle had a few logic gaps, but I didn’t say a word. He was saving my butt with that note.

  And I was home free. Even Mr. Paymar, who acts more like a warden than a principal most days lately, isn’t likely to fight with Mom and Dad. Mom is a litigator, although mostly just in family court. She might sue him.

  Still feeling good from my victory, not to mention my brand-new, bright-yellow socks, I approached my locker with a few minutes to spare before first-period English. Josh was standing by my locker. My head almost snapped off my neck.

  Even more so when I saw he was with another girl.

  Just like that, my dad’s note actually spoke the truth. I was sick. Right down to the toes of my stupid yellow socks.

  But geez. Hadn’t Josh already humiliated me enough? I mean, not that I liked him that way, and not that he was making out with the other girl or anything, but his locker wasn’t anywhere near mine. Obviously, he must be standing there with her to taunt me. Except . . . the girl wasn’t all that. Big boobs, possibly aided by Kleenex or a fancy bra, but a bit chubby and with shortish curly hair kinda all over the place. Basically, the exact opposite of me. Was that Josh’s point?

  When I got within ten feet, they took off. Josh didn’t look at me, but I could swear he’d seen me coming down the hall.

  I glanced up at the hallway clock. Whipping open my locker, I dumped out my backpack and tossed everything but my English stuff inside my locker. Then I ran, praying I’d make it to English class on time. Mr. Paymar would be only too glad to give me detention. After all, I wasn’t a cheerleader.

  The final bell rang just as I slid in the door of English class. Josh was sitting in the desk right behind mine, as always, but next to the girl he’d been talking to by my locker, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t her assigned seat. I slunk to my own desk, feeling like Josh and his new girlfriend were staring at me and maybe even whispering about me, but I didn’t give them the satisfaction of looking.

  I might be a loser, but I didn’t have to be pathetic.

  “Mary? Mary Bennet?” Mr. Skamser was staring right at me, and I jumped.

  “Here?”

  A few laughs greeted my ears. From right behind me.

>   Even Mr. Skamser smiled, and that didn’t happen a lot. “Thank you, but I’ve already noted attendance. What I asked was whether you’ve discerned yet what the core conflict for Demian might be.”

  “Uh . . .”

  My mind went blank, even though I’d been rereading various parts of Demian at breakfast this morning, just so I’d be ready for class. All I could picture, as Mr. Skamser stood there staring at me, was Josh and that girl standing by my locker, Josh and that girl sitting behind me, Josh . . .

  Mr. Skamser gave me his usual long-suffering sigh, but I wasn’t an exception. At least five kids earned one of his sighs in every class. “Perhaps it might help if you look through your book to jog your memory. You do have your book with you, don’t you?”

  “Sure.” As I stared down at the notebook and English textbook and pens on my desk, my breath caught in my throat. Mr. Skamser wasn’t calling on anyone else, just standing there staring at me, probably counting the seconds until he could sigh at me again.

  All thoughts of Josh flew out the window as I looked again at my desk. No Demian. Had I actually forgotten it at home? Was Mr. Skamser ever going to stop staring at me?

  Even as I realized the cold truth—Demian was sitting at home on the kitchen table, where I’d been reading it this morning before school—I frantically scoured my brain for even the tiniest scrap I might offer up to Mr. Skamser. I’d read beyond the pages he assigned for today, because the book was so disturbing, in a good way, and I’d thought about it as much as I could when not distracted by the fact that Josh had somehow managed to make my life even worse than it already was.

  I had to give Josh props: it was a difficult feat.

  Now he was sitting next to that girl, probably waiting impatiently for the end of class so he could take her in a dark corner somewhere and lock lips or whatever guys and girls did in dark corners, and in the meantime he was probably staring at me and smirking. I was the joke of the school, and he’d finally figured it out.

  “Mary? You do have the book with you, don’t you?” Mr. Skamser was sitting on his desk now, bony legs crossed one over the other and somehow twisted up like a very skinny pretzel.

  I finally looked up at him and shrugged. “Sorry. I guess I forgot it at home.”

  Another sigh. My second of the day from the same teacher, and it was only first period. Come to think of it, Mr. Paymar was probably sitting in his office right now, sighing over the excuse note Dad had written.

  “I’ll have to mark you down.” He shook his head. “I admit I’m surprised, Mary. I thought you were a much better student than this.”

  Snickers floated over at me from several directions at this point, including behind me. I felt myself flushing, but I kept my butt parked right where I was. There were limits to how many excuse notes Dad would be willing to write for me, and I had a hunch I’d already hit his limit at one.

  As I sat there, numb, Mr. Skamser pointedly ignored me and asked the other kids in the class about their thoughts on Demian, even though I’d actually read the assignment, unlike at least half of them, and I did actually have an opinion—I mean, an opinion besides the evil one I was harboring right this moment about Josh. But why had I gotten so flustered? Mr. Skamser didn’t have to know I’d forgotten my book. Or I could’ve told him I’d read it but forgotten my book, so he wouldn’t think I was just trying to skip out on the assignment.

  Weird. I’ve never been good at social stuff—understatement of the year—but I always aced my classes, and even aced talking to teachers. So far I was oh-for-two on English and Physics, I could pretty much expect failure in Gym class, and it was only the second week of school. I drummed my fingers on my desk, wondering exactly how I was going to blow it in AP Calculus.

  This was turning into the weirdest, and worst, year of my entire school life. For me, that said a lot.

  “Mary? Mary Bennet?” I slowly lifted my head to look at Mr. Skamser as his voice—and my name—grated on my ears. “Do you think you get a free pass in English today just because you ‘forgot’ your book at home?”

  He even made little quote marks in the air.

  Another ripple of laughter greeted me, along with the usual first-period yawns.

  I frowned. “Uh, no. Of course not.”

  A whisper came from somewhere to my right. “Ass-kisser.”

  Mr. Skamser sighed. “I asked whether you think Demian defied authority just because he was a teenager.” He shook his head. “Perhaps, in ignoring me altogether, you were simply answering by giving an example of exactly what teenagers do.”

  “No?” Or should I have said yes? I tensed, wondering what to say, and realizing I hadn’t thought of Demian as a teenager. I mean, not like a teenager today. He was such a weird guy. Well, maybe a special weird guy, trying so hard to figure himself out that he did really stupid things.

  I knew the feeling.

  “You think of Demian as a special weird guy.” Mr. Skamser nodded, then shushed the kids who laughed, as I felt myself flushing scarlet.

  I said that? I was just thinking it! Argh!

  “An interesting answer, Mary.” Mr. Skamser jotted something in his notebook as I stared at him and wondered if I’d said anything else I didn’t remember. “Perhaps you’re not a lost cause.”

  “Yeah, she is.” Some guy said that in a loud voice from the other side of the room, and several kids laughed again. Jesus. Mr. Skamser frowned at the guy, but I didn’t look.

  Why bother? After all, the guy was right.

  I sat by myself at lunch. Same old, only with the ugly new twist that everyone seemed to be noticing me now. Looking at me, whispering, sometimes even pointing. The old Mary Bennet had always been considered a loser, but at least I was pretty much ignored. That was before Josh noticed me. As a result, so did the rest of the school.

  Even Cat looked over at me, alone at a huge table with my pathetic bologna sandwich, and giggled.

  I hadn’t had a peanut butter sandwich since the roller coaster disaster.

  On the good-news front, if there was one, I hadn’t heard anyone mention Lydia since the first few days of school. Cat seemed to be hanging out with their old group of friends, as far as I could tell, so Lydia wasn’t affecting her social life or reputation. But Lydia also wasn’t affecting mine. I was doing that all by myself—with the help, I reminded myself, of Josh Lawton. Jerk.

  He was sitting on the other side of the cafeteria, I noticed out of the corner of my eye, with a group of what looked like skater dudes and a few girls, but not the one I’d seen him with this morning. He wasn’t looking at me, and I tried not to let him see me peeking at him.

  I focused on my bologna sandwich, chewing as fast as I could so I could scoot out of the cafeteria in record time and hide in the media center for the duration of lunch period. Most of the seniors hung out outside, in the commons area, but in clusters that screamed out which clique they were in. Woodbury isn’t exactly a hotbed of gangs in the usual, scary-big-city sense of the word, but it’s filled with cliques. Cliques of kids who hang out at DQ or the Mall of America and make fun of Mary Bennet.

  “Bummer that you forgot Demian at home.” As the body accompanying Josh’s voice dropped down into the chair next to me, my mouth hung open. In a very unattractive way. “Skamser was pretty brutal.”

  I shrugged as I tried to slide my tongue surreptitiously around my teeth to check for stray food particles. “I actually read the assignment.”

  I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I mean, what do you say to the guy who made you the big joke of the whole school? And why was he talking to me now? Trying to make it worse? I didn’t think it was possible.

  “Heard you got sick yesterday.”

  Yes. Sick of Josh. I eyed my bologna sandwich for a long, mildly queasy moment before turning back to him. “I heard you got a new Physics partner.”

  He held up a hand. “It’s not like—”

  “No, it’s exactly like that.” I brushed off his sputtered exp
lanation. “You and Kyle. There’s nothing wrong with my ears or, for that matter, my brain. I get it.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  I glared at him. “Look, I’m not stupid, okay? You and your buddies can make fun of me all you want, and you can be a jerk to me just because you’re pissed that I—”

  I broke off, refusing to relive the horrifying moment on the roller coaster, and not exactly eager to mention the big barf to anyone who might be listening in. At least I hadn’t been teased by other kids about that yet, although I wondered why not. Josh would’ve told at least Kyle by now, because that’s what guys did: joke about girls, especially weird girls like me.

  Josh just sat there, staring at me, maybe not wanting to mention the big barf any more than I did. After all, he’d had to wear it home.

  “Anyway.” I set my sandwich down, no longer hungry. In fact, I felt sick to my stomach. “You didn’t have to ask me to be your partner, but it would’ve been nice if you hadn’t turned it into a big joke. I get enough of that as it is.”

  “Yeah, I was wondering why. I mean, you’re so smart.”

  I shook my head. So Josh hadn’t been nice after all. He’d just wanted a brainy partner to help get him a good grade. “It’s okay. Really. But do me a favor?”

  He nodded, waiting for my request.

  “Don’t do me any more favors.”

  I rolled up the dregs of my sandwich, stuffed them in my paper lunch bag, and tossed it at the nearest wastebasket. It missed. Screw it. I grabbed my backpack and—

  Oh, wait. I’d forgotten my great idea. I reached into my pocket for cash and the crumpled sheet of paper I’d scribbled on yesterday, my hands shaking a bit as I wondered whether I was out of my mind to do this. No, I had to. I counted out some bills, then laid them and the sheet of paper on the table in front of Josh.

  He stared down at it all. “What’s this for?”