Spectacle (A Young Adult Novel)

by Angie McCullagh

  Now, the pining for her real mom made Emily lash out at Melissa, “Don’t you ever, you know, indulge in a Pop-Tart? Why are you such a health food Nazi all the time? It’s tiresome.”

  Melissa didn’t seem fazed. “I’m just trying to take care of this family. Lord knows you need taking care of.”

  Emily leveled her gaze at Melissa and said, “I’m sure we’d do just fine.”

  Melissa’s head jerked up, as if she’d just been pricked with a pin, voodoo style.

  The turning of the wheels in Melissa’s brain was almost visible. Ouch. Pretend it’s okay. Emily’s just a kid. Cut her slack. Cut her slack. Cut her slack.

  Melissa continued stirring her steel cut oats.

  Emily said. “I’m being a brat. You can say it.”

  Melissa stirred harder. “You know,” she said. “I do my best around here. I understand the fragile relationship between a stepmom and stepdaughter. I just don’t get why you’re always on me.” Emily thought she heard Melissa’s voice catch.

  Then, as if she were thinking aloud, “Kristen seems okay with me.”

  Emily could smell the fresh mowed grass through an open window. “I don’t get it either.”

  Kristen swooped in then and grabbed an orange from a wooden bowl on the table. She wore a cute, splashy running skirt and a tank top and looked athletically adorable. Tanned, blond, big-boned in an attractive, Scandinavian way.

  “Can I have some of that oatmeal?” she asked Melissa.

  “Yes,” Melissa said, a victorious lilt to her voice. “Yes, you certainly may. It’s just about ready.” She looked pointedly at Emily and raised her brows.

  Emily smirked and said, “I’d still rather have Pop-Tarts.”

  The landline rang and Kristen, being closest, answered. She held out the phone. “It’s Trix. For you.”

  Emily realized she’d left her cell upstairs and that Trix had probably been trying to call her on it. She rolled her eyes.

  Trix said, “Hey. Who was that tall drink of water you were talking to last night?”

  Emily had been so annoyed at Trix for slobbering all over the blond guy, and so distracted by walking to the bus stop with Ryan, she’d forgotten all about Sam. “Oh,” she said. “Just some childhood friend of Jason Bleak.”

  “Did he get your digits?”

  Just then, Emily decided Sam was okay, if only because his interest allowed her to participate in a conversation where her best friend asked if a boy had “gotten her digits.” Wasn’t that what high school girls were supposed to talk about? Supposed to focus on? Not on inches and stretching jeans and runaway moms.

  Suddenly, Emily felt a surge of euphoria. She was a normal teenager, for just that moment. And she had to laugh at Trix—crazy, maddening, Trix. “Yeah, I guess he did.”

  Emily wouldn’t tell her about Ryan. She didn’t want it out there to be picked apart and banged up and analyzed. Not yet anyway. “Promise you’ll never make me go to another one of those things?”

  “Another party? Oh, you’ll go to more parties. There are lots of parties in our future.”

  “How’d it go with Mr. Blondie? You seemed pretty into him.”

  Trix’s voice twisted a little when she said, “Yeah. He’s okay.”

  “You sound weird. Are you all right?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?” Trix sighed. “Except I need to talk. Get some stuff out. Are you free today?”

  “Yeah, I just … I wanted to take pictures.”

  “Meet me at Green Lake,” Trix said. “You can snap away while we walk.”

  Emily agreed, though a little reluctantly. She’d been looking forward to some alone time with her camera. Time to think about last night, to deconstruct her conversation with Ryan, to relive each step between Jason Bleak’s house and the bus stop. But Trix didn’t sound right.

  They planned to meet at one.

  Emily hung up and, while Kristen ate her steel cut oatmeal with flax seeds and kefir, poured herself another cup of coffee.

  11. Regret

  GREEN LAKE WAS crowded, as it always was on sunny weekends. Parents pushed babies in strollers along the concrete path that fully encircled the small body of water. Inline skaters zoomed and weaved, and bicyclists called out, “Coming up on your left!”

  Trix and Emily held coffees as they walked, and every so often, Emily would pull out her camera, squat, and snap a picture of a goose, a kid on a tricycle, or a fisherman.

  Trix was quiet, wobbling a little in her three-inch wedges. She said, “I mean, it’s not that big a deal, right? Everyone does it.”

  A cool breeze ruffled their hair.

  “Right,” Trix continued. “Well, not you. Not everyone. But most of us.”

  Emily knew Trix was being a jerk because she’d done something last night that shamed her. But her words flooded Emily with a feeling she hated: of being the only one. Of being left out of something big.

  “You put out, didn’t you? You did something with that guy you shouldn’t have. And you’re trying to make me feel like the pariah. I can see right through you, Trix.”

  Trix scowled. She hadn’t said it to hurt Emily. More to justify herself. “I didn’t say you were a pariah.” Then, yanked by a grabby jealousy that her friend got to be the “good” one, the one with the fancy house and cute, wholesome boy paying attention to her, she added, “Though if the sneaker fits … ”

  Emily stopped on the path and people streamed around them. Bicyclists glared. If there was one thing she most hated about Trix, it was this: how she tried to deflect her insecurities onto other people, usually Emily.

  Trix added, “If a hottie like that was hitting on you, you’d be all over it, too.”

  A cloud drifted across the sun and Emily felt cold. “I didn’t think he was a hottie. He had hard eyes.”

  “Hard eyes? What the hell does that mean?”

  As angry as Emily was, she sensed that her friend needed her right then. She looped one of her arms through Trix’s and propelled them forward. Trix resisted at first, not wanting to be cajoled out of her anger. She staggered slightly as she pulled back. But then she gave in and walked.

  Emily said, “It means his eyes weren’t soulful. I didn’t see much in them, Trix.”

  “It was dark,” Trix argued.

  “Not that dark.”

  “You were drunk.”

  “One beer?”

  “He wasn’t so bad,” Trix said, but her fight was obviously fading. They went several hundred feet in silence. Then, quietly, she said, “He got up and left right after … we did it.”

  “Where did you … do it?” Emily asked, not at all sure she wanted to know.

  A seaplane rumbled above, heading for Lake Union to the south.

  Trix admitted, “At Jason’s. In a laundry room.”

  “Oh, Trix.”

  Trix started sniffling. “I know. I know, okay? So don’t say it.”

  In that moment, Trix didn’t seem irreverent or daring or admirable at all. She just seemed sad. A girl ditched a few minutes after having sex with a boy she barely knew. Emily muttered, “What a skank.”

  “That’s probably what he’s saying about me right now.”

  Emily had the urge to offer advice like, what goes around comes around. But, frankly, she didn’t have enough experience to say much of anything. She’d never had sex, or even come close. How did she know what it’d be like in Trix’s shoes?

  Instead, Emily asked, “Did you … did he use a … ?”

  “Yeah,” Trix shook her head to banish the memory. “Yeah. He had a condom in his back pocket. Thank God.”

  “Would you have, if he hadn’t had one?”

  Trix wanted to yell, “No! Of course not!” But the fact was, she didn’t know. She got so caught up in moments. Especially if she was feeling good and having fun and basking in someone’s flattery.

  They came upon a family walking four abreast across the trail. Trix and Emily stepped up on the grass to skirt around them.
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  “I want you to be my girlfriend. I like more than your body, I like your mind.” Trix mimicked Devlin, then made a gagging sound. “Please.”

  “Maybe he’ll call,” Emily suggested.

  “No. I could tell. He was done. He got what he came to the party for.”

  Emily felt bad for Trix. Trix had been in this position more than once, and each time she moped for days afterward, feeling slutty and dirty and used. And each time, Emily told herself she’d never, ever get herself in the same situation.

  She did something unforgivable then. She took off her lens cap, crouched and snapped a rapid succession of photos. She had to. Trix’s expression was so wan. So vividly conflicted and sad.

  And Trix responded exactly how Emily expected. She kicked out her foot hard, just missing the camera by a slim few inches.

  12. The Runaway’s Daughter

  THAT NIGHT EMILY dreamed her mom was standing in a bright, wheaty field, wearing a sundress—the kind a little girl might. Her face was generic—all the features in their right places, without forming a recognizable person. Exactly how it was in Emily’s memories.

  Her mother didn’t see her. She just crouched and picked wildflowers—Queen Anne’s lace and black-eyed Susans—while humming a lullaby.

  Emily called to her, waved at her. But her mother didn’t notice.

  As Emily ran toward her, her mother vanished and reappeared further out in the field. A mirage she couldn’t reach.

  When Emily woke, she was moaning quietly, buried under her covers.

  How could she be motherless? How could her mom have painted stars on their car and left her two daughters and husband? And where was she now? Was she even alive?

  It took a while for the intensity of the dream to clear.

  Emily thought of Trix and her sporadic dad who showed up once every few months to take her for a ride in his truck or to dinner at Red Robin. But at least he came around. At least she knew what he looked like and could ask him questions and see the hazel flecks in his eyes.

  Getting out of bed, Emily tiptoed into Kristen’s room.

  Her sister slept on her stomach with one arm thrown over the side of the bed, fingers grazing the carpet. Her blond hair was pulled into a ponytail and she breathed quietly.

  Sitting cross-legged on the floor, Emily watched Kristen. Her room was, not surprisingly, different from Emily’s. Messier, but, at the same time, sparse. Clothes, jerseys, and sneakers lay over her bed’s footboard, and across the floor.

  Kristen’s dresser top was mostly bare, sporting just a softball trophy looped with rubber bracelets. A wilted gerbera daisy hung over the edge of a murky glass of water. A physics textbook laid open.

  Rain pattered on the roof. Emily was actually glad for it. Glad for the excuse to stay in. She knew that soon all their days would be overcast and wet, but, after a sunny Pacific Northwest summer, she was ready. The weather matched her mood.

  “Krissy,” she stage whispered. “Krissy.”

  Kristen stirred, turning her head toward the wall.

  Emily heard the front door open and close and knew it was Melissa, heading out for her morning run.

  She hissed her sister’s name again.

  This time, Kristen, in a gravelly voice, responded, “What?”

  “I had a dream about Mom.”

  Kristen lifted her head and looked at Emily. Less irritated and more sympathetic, she said, “Really? What was she doing?”

  “She was in a field, picking flowers. And humming. I couldn’t get to her, no matter how fast I ran.” It sounded dumb, voicing it. But Emily knew Kristen would understand better than anyone.

  Kristen said, “I’ve had that dream. Except she was at a gas station, filling her tank and buying Doritos and I was locked in the bathroom. The door had a window. I could see her and I was pounding to get out. But she never heard.”

  Emily shivered. She liked her own version of the dream better. “God,” she said.

  “I know.”

  Kristen’s room smelled like dirty laundry.

  “Do you think about her much?” Emily asked. “I mean when you’re awake.”

  Kristen considered this for a minute then flopped back onto her pillow and gazed at the ceiling. “Sometimes. I try not to.”

  “I have been lately. More than usual.”

  “I wonder why.”

  A bird yodeled from outside Kristen’s window. The house hummed—appliances and digital clocks and heaters.

  Kristen said, “Did you know that Mom’s dad was, like, six eight?”

  “I knew he was tallish, but … really?” Emily said. “I wish I remembered him.” Both of her mom’s parents had died too young. In their fifties, she thought.

  They had no photos of them, not even a dusty Polaroid.

  The few pictures they had of their mom were taken in the early nineties. The jeans were high waisted and tapered at the ankles. The hair was still big, left over from the previous decade. And their mom’s face looked squinched and forlorn.

  In one shot, she rested her chin on the top of Kristen’s head and looked into the camera, her eyes swimming in tears.

  In another, she sat at a picnic table with their dad, his arm draped over her thigh as he studied her profile. But she stared at something outside the frame of the picture. Maybe, in her mind, she was already on the road.

  13. Hassled

  TRIX WIPED SWEAT from her forehead and took off the ink-covered smock she wore for her job at the textile-dyeing plant, Frederick Hui. She stuffed the smock into her locker, bought a vending machine soda and sat on the hard wooden bench that served as break room seating. She usually put in about 20 hours a week. Which was the only way she got any spending money for clothes, music, and other necessities. She also had to buy several bags of groceries a month to supplement the meager junk her mom stocked the cupboards with (namely, lots of microwave popcorn). What was left over went into her sewing machine fund.

  Luckily, schoolwork came easily for Trix. She had a memory like a Venus flytrap. Except that instead of grabbing and quickly digesting bugs she swallowed facts whole and never let them go. Otherwise she wouldn’t have been able to pull off her job plus any sort of social life.

  Still, even with her nifty brain, Frederick Hui was a lot of work, and Trix, in that moment, felt overwhelmed. She was tired. Sometimes it seemed she’d lived a long life already, full of regrets and angst and hurt feelings.

  She took a long drag from her soda. She had ten minutes before she had to get back to her shift.

  Originally, she’d taken the job because she wanted to do something related to fashion. And at sixteen during a recession, dyeing fabric was the closest she could get. Someday, she told herself, she’d work with the same fabrics she dyed. She’d drape them over models’ bodies, gathering here, stitching there. Just thinking about the possibility excited her.

  As she imagined her future, Aaron, a guy in his twenties who always had a toothpick in his mouth, came into the break room. He didn’t bother to remove his smock. Instead he sprawled out on another hard bench and groaned.

  Over the top of her soda can, Trix watched him.

  “How old are you?” he asked without looking at her.

  “Thirty.”

  He laughed. “Seriously.”

  She told him her real age.

  “Get out,” he said. “You’re still young. Don’t get sucked into this place. It’s a velvet coffin. A dang velvet coffin. They make it seem all nice and cushy and then they trap you with the money and bonuses and you can’t never get out.”

  Trix thought “nice and cushy” was pushing it. Just look at the barren break room. The money was pretty good though. She made more than most of her friends who worked at cafés or shops.

  “I’m okay,” she said.

  He poked his ever-present toothpick around his molars. “Are you?”

  She shrugged. She wasn’t about to tell Aaron how thrashed she felt. How she wanted to take her next paycheck and get
a nice hotel room with thick walls and a squishy bed and sleep for 24 hours. Maybe she’d take David with her, feed him straight tuna out of a silver dish.

  She thought of Emily and how she got to sleep in a place like that every night. She had a big, mod bedroom done in plum and lime, lush carpeting, and a bathroom with a Jacuzzi. You wouldn’t be able to feel an earthquake in that place. Much less a car rumbling past.

  Aaron raised himself up and asked for a sip of her soda.

  “Get your own,” she said. The last thing she wanted was his cooties all over her can.

  “But I only want one drink. And you have a whole 16 ounces. I can see the condensation there on the side. It’s making me all thirsty.”

  “Do you want to borrow a buck?” she said, getting irritated.

  “No, not really,” he came to her bench and sat down next to her. His eyes had gone glassy.

  A bad feeling rose up in Trix. She tried to scooch back on the bench, but found she was at the very end.

  Aaron leaned in closer. “Just a little sip,” he said and licked his lips. He reached out, but instead of taking the soda, he rubbed Trix’s denim-clad thigh and moved his hand between her legs. She went to jerk away, but he held her down, leg pinned to the bench.

  “I’m so bored here,” he said. “Just give me a little sip. Just a little sugar to help get me through.”

  She held her soda can over his crotch and dumped out the contents.

  “What the hell?” he cried, jumping up and swiping at his pants. “Now I look like I pissed myself!”

  “You’re lucky I don’t report you for sexual harassment, you asshat!” Her heart thumped hard, but she did her best to look cool. She couldn’t let him see that he’d freaked her out.

  “Christ, don’t,” he said to her, his eyes now clear and desperate. “I need this job.”

  “Get out of here,” she said in a low steady voice. “If you ever come near me again or I hear of you pulling this crap on anyone else, I’ll pour a lot more than soda on your dick. And I’ll make it my personal mission to get you canned.”