Leonie looks cranky.
“Well, it’s not my fault.”
We both just look at her. She knows she’s being feeble but keeps on.
“My mom smokes. I just take hers. It’s my mom’s fault.”
Which statistically is true. Smoker moms make smoker kids.
However, we are here to rebel against our parents, I think. Which I mention.
It feels good to be on the side where I’m not the one getting picked on.
Leonie looks at me like “Et tu, Brute?” But I’m not being mean; I just think smoking is gross and it makes her teeth yellow.
Oh yeah—and you die.
She shifts so she’s not looking at us and goes on smoking. Beau looks at me and shrugs.
“It’s not like we’ll give up on you, Lee,” he sings to her back. “So you may as well quit.”
“I can’t hear you. I’m looking at the water.” She tosses her shiny hair over her shoulder. It catches the wind and rises, shimmering. I think of that song about the sun floating on a breeze.
Her hair is so pretty that I touch it lightly. The curly waves fall past her waist and sparkle golden red in the sun. She can’t feel my touch through the weight of her mane. Beau regards us, smiling, but then turns his head sharply. I, too, pause and focus.
He’s gone tense, watching and listening. I look to see what he sees.
And here they come. They’re still a little way away on the cobbled lake path. There are a bunch of them, and I know they don’t see us yet because they’re just using their normal deafening grunts, not the special menacing deafening grunts they save for Beau.
“Let’s go,” I say. Beau nods without taking his eyes off them.
We get up to leave, but then Leonie catches sight of them.
“Oh look—those guys are from school!” She starts to wave.
I snatch down her hand and hiss at her.
“Stop! Do you want him to get beat up?”
“They won’t. They’re nice!” She looks at me distractedly. I hiss at Leo a lot.
“No, they’re not! They are not nice to you, though you don’t seem to realize it, or to me and especially not to Beau. Now let’s get gone!” I take her arm. She comes with me reluctantly. We melt back into the brush at the side of the lake and cut back safely to the van.
Homecoming came and went, and I didn’t go and never will and will always wonder about it, so as to have the worst of both worlds. I won’t go to prom either.
But the empty part of me will always wonder. . . .
Oh well; stow that with everything else I have shut down.
It abruptly got dark and cold and wet for winter, like it does here, and we all buttoned up for the rain and wind. Winter coat season and I’m finishing my new one just in time.
I sometimes sew my own clothes. I’m good with mechanical things and also I got so fat after the divorce it became necessary. Luckily I’ve recently shed a few pounds so I can just wear sweats and hoodies again. It’s my uniform: gray sweats and T-shirts and hoodies, usually with the hood up. But I still make my own coats. It’s way cheaper than trying to find a long coat in my size. I always ace home ec, and when I was a freshman I sewed everybody’s projects till I realized it didn’t help; they were still vile to me and I was a tool for sewing for free. So I made some business cards and put them in fabric stores for when someone wanted something made. It’s good money, only kind of hit and miss. I’m going to start a real business when I turn eighteen. I can create just about anything.
The coat I designed this year is like the guy’s in The Man from Snowy River, which was an image that came up when I googled “long black coat”: a man wearing a mid-calf-length black coat with a short cape for the rain. Only I am going to put a hood on my mine also. I’m also going to line it with cinnamon-brown satin because my third-grade teacher once said that was a good color on me. She said it went with my hair (which is uncontrollable and wiry and rust-colored, hence my nickname) and eyes (which are dark brown to the point of coal black). My teacher’s name was Ms. Said and I loved her.
It will be very warm and also a very big wall between me and them. A wall against the world. . . .
Except for maybe Beau and Leonie.
And my mom and Paul.
I never see Paul these days because he has turned into the Karate Kid. He is at the dojo four or five nights a week. He’s moved up a belt color to yellow, which apparently is pretty fast. He says he wants to be a black belt. I say, “Kick on wich yer bad self, bro!”
Same with Mom; she is getting her refresher course nursing certification so she’s all updated and then she’ll be working a part-time job, afternoons till six, as a charge nurse. She says she will go to full-time RN next year, but for now this is good.
She looks so happy. She actually looks younger.
I’m the only grim one stuck here. I stay in my room and brood. I’m too furious to cry.
Frequently I watch TV to kill time, though I always get disgusted and pissed off. Everything is based on being spiteful; everyone is getting crappy random tricks played on them, and the more traumatizing the punking, the better! Or they try to do some idiot stunt and annihilate themselves and we laugh till we wheeze! Is our society losing its grip? As long as someone ends up bleeding and dazed we salivate and howl! Meanness passes for humor.
But why?
Mr. J says we are a jaded generation because of 9/11. We grew up in the shadow of sneak attacks and war, and it has made us expect the worst.
I agree. We have and we do, but that can’t be the excuse for being vicious our whole lives, can it? We have to try again! We have to get our trust back.
And omg, you guys, when I compare what passes for entertainment now to the art and music that came before us, I seize. We (APs) translated Julius Caesar from Middle English last year . . . and I can just see them doing that in five hundred years with some of our immortal twenty-first century verse: “Yo, Big Bootie Bitch, Twerk Dat Bubble Butt All Up in My Grill—Ain’t Axin’ Twyz, Yo.”
Yay, our epoch! I’m so proud of the art we’re making!
And yes, my friends, I do understand that I really am a delicate flower child. A lil’ orchid of sensitivity, tiptoeing through the tulips in a cattle rancher coat. . . .
But seriously, what’s so funny about peace, love, and understanding?
Anyway, I’m still sitting at my desk in my room when I hear some noise and know Paul is home. I go out to see him before he goes to his karate school, his dojo: his home away from home.
I wander into the kitchen.
“Whatcha doin’?”
“I’m starving! I only have fifteen minutes and then I have to go! There’s nothing to eat here!” He’s slamming cupboards and the fridge door. I go over and take the bread out of the microwave that we also use as a bread box.
“Here, I’ll make you some PB&Js.”
“Man, is that all we have? I want some mac and cheese.”
“Sorry, bro. We got your PBs or your PB&Js, and that’s really about it till one of us goes shopping.”
“Which I can’t even do till Mom takes me for my learner’s permit. Or you.”
I make his sandwich without meeting his accusing stare. It’s true; I have been very slow to help him get his permit till I get my car because Mom is already enough competition when I want to use the van.
I am researching a particular model of green car, used, for which I am at least one thousand bucks short, probably three to four months away from being earned by Winters’ Sewing Service.
I stay in the kitchen while he eats and drinks milk from the carton. I tell him to just take it with him, which he does when someone starts honking the horn. It’s already dark out, only a little after five o’clock. He grabs his bag and slams the door.
It gets very quiet. I start turning on lights. Mom will be home after a while.
When we come back from Thanksgiving break, Leonie says she has something really important to tell us. We wait till art clas
s, where we can talk while we work.
“He says he wants to get serious.” And as we have discovered, “he” means Mr. Adkins.
I look at Beau. Neither of us will rat her out, because you can’t, but we have been trying to convince her of how stupid this is on her part and how incredibly immoral on his.
Mr. Adkins. What a douche. She was fourteen when he started asking her to stay after class. I don’t know why he hasn’t gotten caught. Oh, wait! Yes, I do.
Because nobody tells.
Leonie, of course, won’t say anything. I tell her to. I know I should, but she would be so betrayed that I just keep justifying not doing anything and try to get her to tell instead.
I know this is wrong. I know I should tell. I know I should tell. I am going to. I will. But only if I have to. I want her to tell. Soon.
“Did you hear me? I said: He wants to get serious.”
I just look at her. Beau leans in.
“How long have you been seeing him?”
“Forever. We’re in love.” Leonie stares at him coolly.
“That is insane.”
“Beau, you don’t know him like I do. We’re soul mates.” She begins tracing hearts on her paper intently.
Beau looks at me, and we roll our eyeballs at each other, so Leonie has to comment.
“Neither of you can possibly understand him . . . or us.” She glares at me briefly.
“But if you’re soul mates, why are you so secret?” I inquire. “He should want everyone knowing about you . . . it being so cool and eternal and all, right?”
Leonie looks sad for a second. Like maybe she’s brought this up too. Absently, she adds jags on the paper that make all the hearts broken. She sighs.
“He doesn’t want to. He says no one would understand. And you are just proving that. We are like Twilight. We’re like Edward and Bella. Everyone is trying to keep us apart.”
I try not to barf in my hands. Instead, I offer another theory.
“Or maybe he is doing someone else too. That way you won’t know about each other.”
Her face wads up, startled and horrified.
“NO!”
The entire class looks at us and we pipe down in a hurry. Spitballs begin to fly our way.
That. Was. Stupid.
We forgot where we were. In country, as they say when you are at war. Which we are.
At war.
With losers.
Later that afternoon I’m hanging out with Beau in my room.
“In which Mr. Rochester almost bites it in a fire.”
I’m listening to him on speaker with Leo while I do crosswords. He’s faking an English accent. He sounds like a Grey Poupon commercial.
“He does?” Leo’s voice sounds genuinely puzzled.
Beau sighs theatrically.
“Omg, Leo, did you or did you not just read that novel?”
“I totally did, but I didn’t see where there was a fire.”
“Dude, how do you think he got blinded?”
There is silence on the other end for a sec, then:
“Ohhh . . .”
“Did you not get that before?”
“Yeah . . . so that totally makes sense now, how she can marry him and everything now—’cuz the crazy wife died in the fire!”
“Yup!”
“ ’Kay, lemme go write this! Peace!”
“ ’Kay, deuces.”
Beau hangs up and looks over at me. He holds his hand over his heart, histrionically.
“She’s so special.”
I snort-laugh. Hard.
“She is a very special girl.”
“Jane Eyre is hard!”
“Jane Eyre make brain hurt!”
“Aaahhhhhhh!! Brain! Hurt! Ow!” Beau is rolling on the bed. He’s a Gumby.
We are hella funnier than Monty Python!
We continue to chill. It’s dark already.
Leonie had a “date” with some tool from school so she couldn’t join us. She made it home in spite of wherever random destination she’d ended up at. I’d told her I would give her a ride since I’m daring to drive the minivan again, but no, she wanted to go home with this guy—though, of course, she never made it that far.
So she walked home. And remembered her homework and so on . . .
This, however, is actually a huge improvement. I mentioned that it would be completely obvious about their little thang if Leo never did any English homework and still got straight As, so she started doing it just to prove me wrong. Hah!
“We bag on her a lot,” says Beau.
“We kind of do.”
“Too much?”
“Maybe . . . ”
“We are going to be so nice to Leonie for the entire rest of the school year and summer!”
“Except for occasionally—when she can’t hear!” We cackle.
Bonding! It rules. I am hanging out with a friend.
A song we both like is playing and we are distracted. We rattle and hum.
I like how Beau enjoys the old New Wave I play. Retro. It’s what I listen to the most.
He rolls off the bed and comes over to my desk and gives me a little shoulder hug as I sit doing crosswords.
I am taken aback. He is so sweet.
“Gotta go.”
“Dude, wait one second till my mom comes back from getting Paul and I will run you. It’s dark and rainy out.”
“I’ll be okay, Mommy.”
“Seriously. She’ll be home really soon.”
“Rust, I told my mom I’d be back by now.”
“It’s like a mile!”
“I’ll jog! I’m good!”
I stop nagging, but I’m still worried.
He leaves.
I’m sure he’ll be fine.
When I go to school the next morning, Leonie’s full of her secret.
“We are going to get engaged!” Her eyes are glittering pinwheels. She’s on full tilt.
“No, you’re not.” I try for the wet blanket. She glares at me. With ruby red peepers.
She’s very drunk and also high. (Again.) She reeks.
Which makes me add, “Also, I can totally smell you, Skunky!”
We are walking in the hall up to where my locker is when we see a disturbance, which in my disturbing school is really saying something. There is a crowd around the principal and the janitor and the school secretary, who are staring at Beau’s locker.
“Die Fag” has been spray-painted in red.
Almost as red as Beau’s face. He’s standing in front of his locker. He looks dazed.
Sadly, I can believe this. It’s the way these losers roll. Sneaky and cowardly. I cannot count how many notes have been stuck on me. However, no one has spray-painted my locker.
Beau’s locker partner comes up and sees the mess. He’s a quiet guy named D’Shawn.
He’s not quiet now. He shakes his head.
“Oh, hell no! I want a different locker!” He points at Beau. “A different locker partner too! I ain’t getting my ass kicked!”
The principal just crooks her finger to go with her and they all walk away. Beau doesn’t see me or Leonie in the crowd. He goes around the corner with the principal and the others.
Leonie and I stare at each other. Her buzz is harshed.
“This totally sucks!” Her cherry-bombed eyes are wide. “Who do you think did that?”
“Ass-face Nick and his stupid gang, of course.” I feel like snapping him like a twig.
The bell rings and we have to go to our classes.
All day long I’m so obsessed with what is happening to Beau I don’t get much done. He is gone from second period also, which means we won’t know what’s up till art class, at the end of the day.
When I get to class Leonie is already there and she has that intense look on her face that means she has forgotten all about Beau and wants to talk about the horrifying Mr. Adkins, or “Ratskin,” as I call him now.
“I just told him he has got to let me tel
l my mom, and we need to go public with our relationship.”
“That sounds so impressive when you say it like that. I didn’t know you were both running for office! Also: That is so not going to happen. I don’t care what he tells you, he is not going to let you tell. You aren’t even legal! He’s committing a crime. He knows that, and he also knows he’s a complete creep when it gets out. He’s not stupid. Well, he is, but not that way.”
“I don’t know why you hate him so much now. You used to like him a lot!”
“That’s right. I did.”
“Maybe you wish it was you . . .”
I don’t even dignify that with an answer. I do wither her with a look. She tries a different tack.
“It’s no big deal . . . it’s not like I was a virgin before.”
I turn on her then. I have to. I just have had too much.
“Shut up! I don’t care! That’s not the point! He is a douche bag! You’re a kid! He’s in a position of authority and that makes it wrong and despicable!” I spew out words like a wood chipper. “This is a rotten thing he’s done!” I’m so manic I’m sputtering.
Lee looks worried by my vehemence.
“What do you mean ‘position of authority’?”
“Lee, don’t act dumb—because you’re not! He’s your teacher!”
“So? A lot of people go out with their professors!”
He’d obviously told her that.
“They’re in college, and even then they still aren’t supposed to till they graduate!”
“Well, I don’t care! We’re in love! We’re going to get married!” Leonie scowls like she’s going to cry if I don’t let up. So I do. I shut up and pen my disapproval onto my notebook. Deeply and repeatedly.
We sit and pretend to study. The second bell rings and still no Beau.
He isn’t at school. He’s been sent home.
When class is over, I turn on my phone and there’s a text from Beau. I show Leo and she immediately gets worried. We blow off the fact we’re pissed at each other and head over to his house after school. He’s quiet and his eyes are swollen. Leo and I stand awkwardly as I try to get him to talk.
“Is Nick going to get suspended?”
Beau just stares at me. He looks miserable and lost. He shakes his head.
Beau, Lee, The Bomb Page 4
