Peace, Love, and Baby Ducks

by Lauren Myracle

“Nice friend.”

  “Tell me about it. Anna’s taking it too personally, though.” I shrug. “Oh, well. Saturday’s sleepover will cheer her up. You’re bringing all six seasons of Gilmore Girls?”

  “All seven seasons,” she says. She taps her pen against the surface of the computer desk. “I have a better idea for cheering Anna up, though.”

  “Yeah? What’s that?”

  “I think we should help her not fail PE.”

  “Why are you so fixated on Anna and PE?”

  “I am not fixated on her. I’m just worried about her.”

  “Well, why are you worried about her?”

  “Because she seems so depressed all the time, like she’s slipping through the cracks. I have a cousin who slipped through the cracks—started smoking and sneaking out and all that—and she became, like, the class slut. Before that, she was so sweet.”

  “Anna’s not ‘slipping through the cracks,’” I say. “And if anyone should be worrying about her, it should be me.”

  “So are you?” Vonzelle asks.

  “Am I what?”

  She rolls her eyes.

  “Vonzelle, you are an only child,” I inform her. “You have no idea what it’s like to have a sister.”

  “And you have no idea what it’s like not to have a sister.”

  “Huh?”

  “Onlies are lonely, Carly. When I was little, I asked for a baby sister every Christmas.”

  “Aw, that’s so cute.”

  “Cute and sad. For real, can you imagine not having Anna being in your life? Even though she gets on your nerves sometimes?”

  “Sometimes? Try all the time.”

  She eyeballs me. “Get over yourself. Anna needs your help, and you need to step up. That’s what sisters do.”

  “I’ve been helping her my whole entire life. Don’t I ever get to be done?”

  “Nope.”

  “Why not?”

  “You just don’t. And how can you claim you’ve been stepping up your whole life when you’re not stepping up now?”

  Huh. I’m stumped, because I have stepped up for Anna. I know I have. Like with the Percolator—I totally stepped up when he thought Anna had a porn fetish.

  So what’s changed? Why don’t I want to step up for her now, with the Wanker? Why have I gotten stingy when the stakes are even higher?

  You know why, an annoying voice singsongs in my brain.

  No, I don’t, I tell the annoying voice, using the same annoying singsong. Is it normal to have a singsong argument in my own head?

  Why do you care if it’s normal or not? the voice says. You aren’t normal, and you never will be, so just shut up. For your whole life, you’ve been the Almighty Big Sister. First to learn to swim, first to use a tampon, first to start high school. And all the crap that comes with being a freshman? You dealt with it by yourself, while Anna was still a kid making a family tree on poster board. You even helped her with her dinky family tree. You resented it, maybe, but you got off on being the One Who Knew It All.

  (To be fair, you sometimes liked helping her. You weren’t always stingy.)

  Then Anna started high school, and you were all, “Yay! We’ll be equals now!” Only, you didn’t want Anna to be your equal. You wanted to keep being Carly Almighty. So when Anna needed to be saved from Headmaster Perkins, who was there, ready to jump in and save her?

  Bingo! Because by saving her, you could pretend she was still little Anna, even though anyone with eyes could see that she’d outgrown “little” just as indisputably as she’d outgrown poster board.

  Bottom line? Anna isn’t a kid anymore. She’s got curves. She’s got sex appeal. Guys think she’s hot, and girls are crazy jealous of her. They want to see her taken down.

  And guess what? You do, too.

  That’s what’s changed.

  That’s why you don’t want to step up for her with the Wanker.

  Vonzelle is staring at me. “Carly? You look like you’ve just eaten salt.”

  “Do you think I want Anna to fail?” I ask.

  “Do you?”

  No. Yes. Maybe.

  “But if I help her, or try to help her . . . isn’t that, like, disempowering her or something? Shouldn’t she have to fend for herself?”

  “I don’t know. Should she?”

  “You’re not helping.”

  “Ohhh. Sorry. But if I help you, won’t I be disempowering you?”

  I glower.

  She shrugs. “I call ’em like I see ’em.”

  Grasping the edge of the computer desk, I pull my roller chair forward an inch, then push it backward an inch. Forward and backward, forward and backward.

  “I don’t not wish her well,” I say slowly.

  “Wow. I’m overwhelmed,” Vonzelle says. She puts her hand on my chair to stop my rolling. “Just say, for the sake of argument, that you weren’t so balled up inside yourself. Does that mean you do wish her well?”

  “Of course,” I say. And it’s true. Because if there is a part of me that wants to see Anna go down, well, then that’s a part I want to say no to. I get to choose, right? Don’t I get to choose what kind of person I want to be?

  Grumpily, I say, “Fine. What’s your idea?”

  Vonzelle is pleased. “I think you should go to the Wanker and ask him to let Anna redo her dive. Easy as that.”

  “Yeah, sure. Easy as that.”

  “’Cause Anna’s never going to ask him. You know she’s not.”

  “What makes you think Anna would be able to do the dive even if she did get a second chance? She couldn’t do it the first time.”

  “Yeah, because the Wanker’s technique was all about high pressure, and obviously high pressure doesn’t work with Anna. But we could help her, you and me. We could be calm and patient and all the things Coach Wanker isn’t.”

  I gaze out the window that overlooks the lawn. It’s gray and drizzly outside, making it especially cozy here in the media center.

  “Remember that swim class Coach Wanker told us about?” Vonzelle goes on. “For Holy Redeemer employees? Well, my mama’s in that class—”

  “She is?”

  “—and the teacher is Coach Boden, who’s the polar opposite of the Wanker. I know he’d let us come and use the high board if we asked. We could teach Anna ourselves.”

  “Your mom takes swimming lessons?” I repeat. “But . . . you’re a great swimmer.”

  “Because my mom started me early. She didn’t want me growing up scared of the water.”

  “Anna’s scared of the water,” I say.

  “Yep,” Vonzelle says. She lets it hang there. The space she creates is big enough for me to think—again—about how much it would suck to be scared of something like that.

  “All right,” I say in a martyred tone. I stand up. “Let’s go find Coach Boden and the Wanker.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  LUST IS A LOADED GUN

  Coach Boden says sure, we can use the pool during Thursday’s evening swim lesson.

  “That’s so cool,” I tell him. Now that I’ve committed to Vonzelle’s plan, I’m pumped up by the possibility it might work. “We’ll come this Thursday—if Coach Schranker says he’s willing to give her a second chance. Do you know where he is?”

  “Probably in the weight room,” Coach Boden says. He gives me a stern look. “You tell him I’m all for it, you hear?”

  “Yes, sir,” I say, thinking that if we’d gotten Coach Boden for PE, none of this would have even been an issue.

  “Thanks, Coach,” Vonzelle says.

  “Anytime. Say ‘hey’ to your mom for me, Vonzelle.”

  We find Coach Schranker doing bench presses. He’s not teaching a class. He’s just doing his own personal bodybuilding.

  “Um, Coach Schranker?” I say. “Can I talk to you for a second?”

  He glances at me from under the bar, which is loaded with black weights the size of car tires. “What is it?” he says tersely. He strains as he pus
hes the bar up.

  “It’s about my sister. And . . . the, um, high dive.”

  He clangs the bar into the support stand, but keeps his fingers gripped around it. He doesn’t sit up. Perhaps he’s resting, or pondering, or just admiring his biceps, which are pretty spectacular. He’s got serious armpit hair, though.

  Eventually he ducks under the bar, swings his legs around, and regards me, his hands planted on his thighs. He’s wearing an I’ve swallowed-too-many-eggs expression.

  “You know, Carly, I’ve felt bad about that since the day it happened.” He doesn’t make eye contact with Vonzelle, which is creepy. “It’s just . . . I refuse to give anyone special treatment. It doesn’t do anyone any good, I can tell you that right now.”

  “Uh-huh,” I say.

  “That’s the problem with society today. People expect special treatment, and then, when they get it, they can’t understand why they don’t get any respect. Respect has to be earned. You can understand that, can’t you?”

  I scratch my head. I’m not asking him to respect Anna; I’m asking him to let her do the stupid dive again.

  “Coach Boden says we can use the pool on Thursday night, during the staff’s swimming lesson. Vonzelle and I will help her—you don’t have to do a thing.”

  He folds his arms over his Captain Awesome chest and gazes at the far end of the weight room. I get the sense it’s for my benefit, like maybe I’m supposed to think, Coach Schranker is struggling with big issues. Coach Schranker is deep. I’m reminded of Cole’s faraway stares when he plays his guitar, and I’m struck with a disloyal thought. Does Cole make that expression when he’s playing by himself?

  Coach Schranker pulls his focus back to me. “She’ll have to do it in front of me in order to receive a passing grade. I can’t take her word for it, or yours.”

  Of course not, because we might lie even though Coach Boden and the whole swim class will be there to bear witness.

  “Okay,” I say.

  “And I want you to know—I want you to tell Anna this—that I’m making an allowance on this one occasion, because I believe in second chances. But just because Anna . . . just because she . . .”

  I furrow my brow. He’s stammering, and I don’t have the slightest clue what he’s trying to spit out.

  He pulls back his shoulders. “Anna is an attractive young lady,” he says stiffly. “No doubt she uses that to her advantage—but not with me. Do you understand?”

  Something hard and cold kicks in, and it takes extreme will-power to cover what I’m feeling. “Thank you so much, Coach Schranker.”

  When we’re away from the weight room, I say furiously, “I can’t believe that man. I can’t believe him.”

  Vonzelle nods, but in a way that suggests she can . . . and does.

  “Anna’s fourteen,” I say.

  “I know.”

  “He shouldn’t be noticing what an attractive young lady she is. That’s sick! And then punishing her for it?”

  “I know,” Vonzelle says again.

  “Bad Attitude Cindy has bigger boobs than Anna, and he didn’t punish her.”

  “’Cause Cindy did the dive.” We exit the gymnasium and head toward Butler Hall. “But I don’t think Cindy’s boobs are bigger. Not anymore.”

  I consider.

  “Holy crud,” I say at last. “If Anna keeps growing like this, I swear she’s going to pop.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  “FOREVER” CAN BE COMPLICATED

  I find Anna during her lunch period—she’s sitting with the band kids, which is strange, because she’s not a band rat—and convince her to go along with our plan. Is she happy about it? No. Am I able to persuade her by reminding her that otherwise she’ll have to take the whole class over? Yes.

  “And . . . it was Vonzelle’s idea?” she says, twisting her shoulders away from the others at her table so they can’t overhear. Not that they’re listening. They’re talking about the drummer from our rival high school and how he supposedly smokes chive cigarettes. Or clove cigarettes. Something.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “Weird,” she says softly.

  So we’re on for this Thursday evening. I’ll tell Mom we’re staying late for a community-service meeting, because there’s no reason to get her and Dad involved till we know the outcome. I’ll remind Anna to bring her hair dryer so she doesn’t blow our cover.

  As I head for pickup at the end of the day, I’m riding high. I’m walking with a bounce and humming to myself and feeling just plain good when Peyton’s voice intrudes into my reverie.

  “Carly! Hold up!” she calls.

  I turn and spot Peyton a couple of yards behind me. She’s with Lydia, and the two of them wave enthusiastically. I wave back, thinking, That’s odd. They’re not really wavers, those two, and anyway, Peyton and I have drifted out of each other’s orbit recently. Drifted all the way into different solar systems, I’d have said . . . and yet there she is. Waving.

  Peyton leans toward Lydia and says something I can’t hear. They both smile at me, and Peyton jogs over.

  “God, it’s been forever since I’ve seen you,” Peyton says, flushed and pretty as always. “Doesn’t it seem like it’s been forever?”

  “I guess.” I tilt my head. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing,” she says, pretending that she’s run over and love-bombed me every day of the last month, and that today is no different from any other. “I’ll walk you to pickup, ’kay?”

  “Okay,” I say. “Peyton—do you have sparkles on your lashes?”

  “Oh my God, it’s changed my life,” she says. “It’s called Glitter Lash Freak mascara. At first I thought it was too disco, but now I wear it every day. The wand’s not like a normal mascara wand. It’s more like a stick. And the tube’s not like a normal tube, either. It’s more . . . skinny-ish. The sparkles themselves are like confetti, and they float in this, like, liquidy clear stuff.”

  She goes on for a while, then eventually runs out of Lash Freak details. Or maybe she doesn’t. Maybe she realizes I’m not quite as into the mascara discussion as she is.

  Is it a discussion if only one person is talking?

  “It’s hard to explain,” Peyton says. “But I love it.”

  “It makes your lashes look wet,” I say. “Like you’ve been crying, only without the actual crying part.”

  “Yeah!” She smiles sunnily.

  “Peyton?”

  She’s all innocence. “Huh?”

  “You want something.”

  “No, I—”

  “What do you want, Peyton?” I laugh to show that I mean this in the most amicable way possible, which I think I do.

  After a moment’s hesitation, she laughs, too. “Okay. Busted. I hear your parents are going out of town this weekend.”

  Aaargh, I think. Anna. Why in the world did she tell Peyton, when we’d already decided we weren’t going to invite Peyton over? Initially, Anna had assumed we would—which made for a weird moment, because I assumed Anna knew we wouldn’t.

  “You guys having a party?” Peyton asks.

  “Ha,” I say. “You know my dad. We’d be killed.”

  We reach the brick wall where kids sit and wait for their rides, and I lean against it. Peyton squints her Glitter Lash-ed eyes. It’s like she’s trying to look inside me.

  “Oh,” she says. “Okay.” She lifts her eyebrows. “Hey—did you hear about Cole and Trista?”

  “Is there something new?” I blush when she giggles.

  “Well, how much do you already know?”

  “That they almost broke up, but didn’t. That Cole may or may not be cheating on her with some girl from Northside.”

  Peyton situates herself against the wall. “Here’s what I’ve heard. He feels penned in by her, and like, he’s in love with her, but he’s not ready for that kind of commitment. And that he did have a fling with some Northside girl, but it didn’t mean anything.”

  She watches my face. “So I�
�d say he’s on the market. Obviously Trista wants more from him than he’s able to give, you know? And guys don’t put up with that for long.”

  My insides are jumpy. Peyton used to step hard on my Cole fantasies, just like Vonzelle. But now she’s acting like she thinks there’s a chance.

  “I think you guys would be so good together,” she says. “I think the only reason he didn’t go out with you instead of Trista in the first place was because you’re more . . . complex than she is. But he needs complex, don’t you think?”

  I don’t know what I think. Well, yes I do. I’m intoxicated by what she’s suggesting. I’m also sweating.

  “Maybe you should have a party,” Peyton says casually. She stretches, reaching her hands high over her head. Her eyes slide to me, and I come to my senses. Visions of parties-gone-bad from scores of teen movies flash through my head.

  “I’m not having a party,” I say.

  “Not the whole grade or anything,” Peyton says. “Just me and Lydia . . . and Cole . . . and maybe Roger?”

  I feel guilty. I should just tell the truth.

  “I’ve already made plans with Vonzelle,” I confess. “She’s sleeping over—we’re going to have a Gilmore Girls marathon.”

  “Oh,” Peyton says in a trying-to-be-neutral tone. “And Vonzelle doesn’t want you hanging with other people?”

  I press my lips together. I’m being played, I’m being played, I’m being played. But old loyalties complicate the dynamic, because Peyton’s been my friend since second grade.

  Mom’s BMW pulls into the pickup line. It’s time for the conversation to be over.

  “Vonzelle doesn’t care who I hang out with,” I say. “She likes all my friends.”

  “So why not have a party? Forget Gilmore Girls. You can watch Gilmore Girls anytime.”

  “Peyon, no. No party.”

  “An intimate gathering, then. Just me and Cole and Roger and Lydia, like I said. And Vonzelle, of course.” She widens her sparkly eyes. “Why not, you know?”

  Yes, why not? Especially if Cole and Trista really are . . . having trouble.

  “Trista’s going to a cheerleading competition,” Peyton mentions, “so Cole’s going to be on his own, anyway. Hanging out with his buds might be the very best thing for him.”