by Dyan Sheldon
“I can’t believe you didn’t warn her about Geronimo,” Joan said to Marva. “I mean, you can’t blame her for getting a little upset when this owl swooped down on her…” She’d been struggling to look serious, but at the mention of swooping owls she dissolved into giggles again.
Marva widened her eyes innocently. “She must have seen him sitting up there,” she protested. “What did she think he was? A parakeet?”
Tanya flapped behind me some more. “Tweettweettweettweettweet.”
“I told you,” I repeated for about the hundredth time, “I thought he was a carving.”
“What kind of owl is it again?” asked Sue.
Good grief. Trust Sue to be irrelevant. I gave her a look. “Big,” I said. “Very, very big.”
“And anyway,” Marva went on, “the whole thing was Jenny’s fault, jumping around in her seat like that. She frightened him.”
Maria gave me a nudge. “Not as much as he frightened Jenny,” she grinned.
Marva ignored this valid point. She waved a cucumber spear at me. “You’re lucky my brother was so understanding,” she continued. “He really loves that owl.”
I rolled my eyes in mock amazement. “No kidding?” I said. “How can you tell?” You’d think I’d served it for Thanksgiving dinner or something, the way he’d carried on.
Tanya plopped back into her chair. “So I guess this means Marva’s brother isn’t going to help you with Herrera, huh?” she winked.
Now there was a lucky guess. I shook my head. “Not in this millennium.”
“Oh, don’t exaggerate,” said Marva. “He still might come around. Once he was sure Geronimo wasn’t permanently traumatized, he thought the whole thing was pretty funny.” She wiped some cucumber juice from her chin. “At least he told you not to waste time trying to figure out how to free the frogs,” she said. “He didn’t have to, you know. That was a favour.”
Was it my imagination, or was she making it sound like freeing the frogs had been my idea?
“Why not?” asked Sue.
I looked at her again. It was like everyone else was having one conversation, and Sue was having another. “Because they’re dead when they get here,” I informed her. “They used to come still hopping and croaking, but since the time Chris let them loose in the biology pond behind the science building Mr Herrera makes sure they’re all dead on arrival.”
“What a shame,” sighed Sue. “Those poor little frogs.”
“What’s the difference?” asked Tanya. “They’re going to die anyway.”
“Aren’t we all?” asked Marva.
“Ugh,” groaned Maria. “Do you think we could talk about something else while we’re eating?”
“Like what?” Marva grinned in my direction. “Vampire bats?”
You might think so, but diets are a lot like stars.
If you didn’t know anything about stars, you might look up at the sky over your house at night and see the Plough and a couple of other constellations you can’t identify, and figure that’s it. “That’s it,” you’d say to yourself. “There are a few hundred stars in the sky.” Maybe a thousand if it’s a clear night. If you live in a large city you’d probably think there are about two. Two stars, and one of them is a planet. You’d have no idea that the stars stretch on and on forever; billions and billions and billions of stars, in uncounted galaxies and innumerable solar systems, on and on and on.
Well, that’s the way it is with diets. I’d thought there were maybe a couple of them. You know, maybe a dozen or so. I’d figured I’d go to Jones’s Drugstore in Red Bay, where they have a special section just for books and magazines, and I’d buy myself a diet. Then I’d know where I was going, how I was getting there and roughly how long it was going to take. Two Weeks to a Thinner You – that sort of thing. Armed with something in writing, I wouldn’t be as likely to stuff an entire box of cookies in my face every time some owl with a beak like a snow plough and a twenty-foot wingspan tried to land on my head.
It wasn’t until I was actually standing in Jones’s Drugstore, staring at the shelf labelled “Health and Beauty”, that I realized what a mistake I’d made. It was like suddenly finding yourself in deepest space. The diet books stretched on and on for ever; dozens and dozens of diet books, big ones and small ones and ones you could stick in your pocket, on and on and on. What was worse, even though they all had different titles and stuff, they looked sort of the same. Like stars, I guess. They all had some smiling blonde in a leotard jumping for joy on the cover because she didn’t have hips. And they were all recommended by some doctor. And they all had quotes from satisfied dieters on the back. And they all guaranteed a happier and healthier you.
“Good grief,” I muttered out loud, “how are you supposed to know where to start?”
Overwhelmed, I edged over to the magazines. Maybe I could find something there. I was in luck. Every woman’s magazine on the stand had a diet in it, too. “Lose Weight Before the Holidays,” and “Stuff the Turkey, Not You,” they ordered. “Ten Pounds in Ten Days,” and “Get It Off and Keep It Off,” they promised.
I edged back to the books. Fats? Carbohydrates? Calories? I tried to remember what Joan said about diets. All I could remember was that she said you have to have one. I tried to remember something my mother had said about diets. All I could remember were her famous last words, “Tomorrow. I’ll start tomorrow.”
In the end I took something called The Ultimate Dieter. I figured I couldn’t go wrong with something “ultimate” in the title. It had a quote on the front from a doctor who said it was the one diet book you ever needed; and a quote on the back from a woman who said it had changed her life. That’s exactly what I need, I thought. To change my life. And, just to be on the safe side, I bought two magazines as well.
On the way to the cash register to pay, I passed the Hair Care section. I picked up something called Natural Blonde. Why not? I asked myself. If you’re going to improve yourself, you might as well really do it. The box said that by using this product you could gradually transform yourself from mousy to blonde in a few weeks. The box said it was easy, safe and impossible to tell from the real thing. Perfect, I thought. I’ll be the ultimate dieter and a natural blonde.
The woman at the cash register raised an eyebrow when I handed her the book. “Don’t tell me this is for you,” she said with a smile. “Oh no,” I said, smiling back. “It’s for my mother.”
Red Bay isn’t exactly a metropolis. It isn’t even a small town. It’s a village. Being a village means that it doesn’t even have a movie house any more. You have to go to the mall if you want to see a movie. But it does have a main street. And it does have a bay. And it was a really nice October afternoon. If this had been an afternoon last year, Amy and I would have been out on our bikes. But it wasn’t last year, of course, it was this year, and Amy was practising scissor-kicks and splits. I decided to walk down to the bay and sit in the park for a while.
Except for a few squirrels and a couple of mothers pushing their little kids on the swings, the park was deserted. I sat on a bench near the dock and started flipping through the magazines I’d bought. I didn’t really read many magazines, and when I did I usually read science and natural history magazines. You know, with pictures of solar eclipses and mosquitoes and scientists sitting around smiling like regular people, and long articles about what life was going to be like in the future, or used to be like a million years ago, or was like if you were a sea urchin. These magazines were nothing like that. Besides the hundreds of pictures of beautiful skinny women, laughing, they were filled with articles about how to take care of yourself, and improve yourself, and all the things that could go wrong. I’d never realized there was so much to worry about. Soap. Sun. Water. Air. Dry hair. Oily skin. Wearing the wrong colours. Wearing the wrong make-up. Flabby arms. Cellulite. Cellulite! I’d never even thought about cellulite before. “Cellulite and you,” said my magazine. “No matter how young or thin you are, you’re still not safe.�
�� And I’d thought I was!
I was sitting there, reading about the awful things that were going to happen to my thighs if I wasn’t careful, when I heard a hoarse croaking sound. I can remember thinking, That’s funny, I never heard any frogs down here before, but then an article on split ends caught my eye and I forgot about it. The croaking got louder. I didn’t pay any attention. Split ends weren’t the end of it. Stress could make you go bald. Bald! My father was going bald. I read on, to see if baldness was hereditary or not. The croaking got louder. Boy, I thought, this is one big frog. It got louder. It sounded like it was coming from my right. I slid over a little to the left. It got louder. This frog was practically screaming. I slid over some more. I think maybe I said something then. Something like, “Good grief, what kind of frog is this?” And that’s when the frog really started going berserk. I dropped my magazine and jumped off the bench. I’d had enough run-ins with emotional wildlife already this week, I wasn’t about to be attacked by some giant, shouting amphibian.
As soon as I was on my feet, cautiously looking around, the croaking turned to laughter. I froze. The laughter sort of exploded. I walked back to the bench and leaned over. There, squatting behind a tree, was Marva’s brother. He waved. “Rititnitit, frog girl,” he said, grinning.
I couldn’t believe my eyes! I’d barely known the guy for twenty-four hours, and already he’d made a fool of me twice. “You!” I yelled. “What is it with you? Are you trying to give me a heart attack or what?”
He got to his feet, dusting off his jeans. “Did anybody ever tell you you have a very nervous disposition?”
Something inside of me snapped. It wasn’t grown-up. It wasn’t the way you acted in high school. It was probably the sort of behaviour that caused acne and cellulite. Not to mention baldness. If Kim, Amber or Rosie Henley had seen me, they would have known I was a lost cause. But I couldn’t help myself. I had this overwhelming desire to inflict physical violence on Marva’s brother. Without another thought I hurled myself at Chris County. It might have been the second time in two days that he’d humiliated me – but it was also the second time that I’d knocked him to the ground.
* * *
As it turned out, Chris wasn’t that bad, really. He’d seen me sitting on the bench, and had actually come over to apologize for Geronimo’s frightening me. He said that after he’d thought it over, he realized he’d been insensitive to my feelings. “Geronimo can be a little intimidating if you’re not used to him,” he admitted. “Even if you did overreact.”
I don’t know exactly how it happened, but one minute I wanted to hurt him, and the next minute we were lying side by side on the grass, yelling, “Rititnitit rititnitit” and laughing ourselves silly. So we decided to call a truce and go to Roth’s Luncheonette for a soda. “Geronimo’s treat,” said Chris. “I think he owes you that much.”
“There’s only one way to fight Herrera,” he said, sliding onto a stool, “and that’s total open warfare.”
I slid onto the stool next to him. “You mean you think I should shoot him?”
From the other side of the counter, I could see the waitress staring in our direction, thinking about us. For maybe the first time in my life, it didn’t bother me that I was being watched. It didn’t bother me because I knew she wasn’t staring at me. She was staring at Chris. Not only was he very tall and thin with the same bony, sort of striking face and dark eyes as Marva, but he was the only boy in Red Bay who dressed all in black and wore a pony-tail and an earring, a silver bat.
Chris laughed. Marva’s laugh was almost a cackle, Chris’s was rolling and deep. “I wouldn’t do anything that drastic,” he said. “If you only wounded him he’d probably have you thrown in jail. He tried to get me kicked out of school just for putting a couple of frogs into the pond.”
“Forty,” I corrected.
He looked up at the menu on the wall. “Ok, forty,” he admitted. “But they were small.”
I studied the menu in silence for a few seconds, thinking.
“What’s the matter?” he asked. “You changing your mind?”
I shrugged. “Not exactly,” I said. “I mean, I still don’t see any reason why I should have to cut up this frog. It’s pointless – I haven’t changed my mind about that. It’s just that I don’t know if I can really afford to get on Mr Herrera’s bad side. He is head of the department, you know. And I want to major in physics in college. What if I don’t do well in my science courses in high school?”
“Physics?” said Chris. “You want to major in physics?”
I nodded, slowly. “I’m going to be an astrophysicist.”
Except for my father, no one took me very seriously about this. My grandfather was sure I’d grow out of it in time and decide to be a teacher or something. Even my mother thought it was a phase, like wanting to be a fishergirl when I was five. “It’s the most exciting thing there is,” I admitted. “Just thinking about it makes me happy.”
Chris was shaking his head and laughing. I couldn’t believe I’d thought he had a bad attitude.
“This is wild,” said Chris. “I was interested in physics for a long time myself. I’m really into Einstein and Oppenheimer and Schrödinger and guys like that. But then I went back to my first love.”
“Owls?” I ventured.
“Owls, bats, dogs, hippos, sloths, killer whales, frogs…”
“What’ll it be?” asked the waitress.
I almost answered, “Zoologist.” I hadn’t seen her come over.
“I’ll have a double-fudge sundae,” said Chris.
“Hey, wait a minute,” I protested. “I thought Marva didn’t eat stuff like that.”
He pointed to his reflection in the mirror on the opposite wall. “Do I look like Marva?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said, “you do.”
He snapped his fingers. “Ah, but am I Marva?”
We smiled at each other in the glass. Well what do you know, I was thinking, maybe he isn’t as weird as I thought.
The waitress tapped her pencil. “Do I look like I have all day?” she asked.
What the heck, I decided. Tomorrow I’d start my diet. Today I could splurge. “I’ll have a chocolate milkshake,” I said.
Chris said that open warfare didn’t have to involve bloodshed. He said that I should make my formal protest – a peaceful, public demonstration of my beliefs – and that if, in the end, I had to bow to Mr Herrera’s power, at least I could do so with dignity.
“Just because I’ve made an enemy of Mr Herrera doesn’t mean that you will,” he reassured me.
I wasn’t all that reassured. Mr Herrera wasn’t particularly nice to people he liked. “An enemy?” I repeated. “I can’t afford to make an enemy of him.”
“You won’t,” said Chris confidently. “I don’t think Herrera would ever accuse you of having a ‘belligerent attitude’.” The waitress gave us a look as she put down our order.
“Is that what he said? That you had a belligerent attitude?”
Chris grinned. “It was one of the more complimentary things.” He winked. “I guess I’m not very good at bowing to power.”
I could have told him that. Almost anybody at Red Bay High could have told him that. “What else did he say?”
Chris scooped up an enormous spoonful of ice-cream. “Let’s just say that Marva swore that if she got Herrera as her teacher she was going to change her last name so he wouldn’t know we were related.”
“Good grief,” I said. “I guess he really doesn’t like you.”
The smile disappeared from Chris’s face. “He likes me a lot more than I like him.”
Even when he’d been screaming at me about scaring Geronimo his voice hadn’t sounded that hard.
It seemed like a good time to go back to talking about me. “So, what do you think I should do?” I asked. “Bomb the lab?”
He laughed. “My idea’s not quite that drastic.”
Chris’s idea was that I should picket the classroom
on the day of the dissection. I should carry a sign and draw attention to myself. The way he described my protest made it sound as though I’d be striking a blow for academic freedom.
“Hey, I know,” I said, getting carried away. “I could dress up as a frog. You know, to make people really notice me and get my point across!” As soon as I said it, I knew it was a dumb idea.
“What a great idea!” said Chris. “That’s absolutely brilliant. We could get Marva to help us with the costume. She’s very artistic.”
Us? This was getting out of hand. I was always having dumb ideas, but usually no one paid any attention to them. I stirred my milkshake with my straw. “I don’t know about this,” I said slowly. “Maybe I should just cut up the frog and forget about it.”
“It’s up to you,” said Chris. It was the sort of thing my mother always said when she wanted you to know what she would do without actually coming out and telling you. “You should do what you want, but not just because you’re worried about what anyone else is going to say or do.” He paid our bill.
I didn’t know how to explain that I wasn’t like him and Marva, you know, weird and outspoken. I was going on a diet. I was becoming a natural blonde. I was toying with the idea of fitting in. “I’ll think about it,” I promised as we walked up Main Street.
“Passive resistance,” said Chris. “Civil disobedience. Remember Ghandi. Remember Martin Luther King.”
