Spectacle (A Young Adult Novel)

by Angie McCullagh

  He emitted an animal-like cry of frustration. “I didn’t mean nothin’. God! What a bitch!” he yelled. But he left.

  Trix got up slowly. She kicked the empty can so it rang against the metal lockers. Why did this stuff happen to her? Nothing so shady would ever happen to Emily. Did Trix put out a vibe that said, White trash! Hurt me. I’m used to it?

  Grinding her teeth, she went into the bathroom, peed, and splashed her face with steaming hot water. She put her smock on and went out onto the floor again, the smell of chemicals and sound of whirring, clacking machinery greeting her.

  She wanted a new life. She was sick of this one. All she needed was a plan, some way to transport herself out of the doldrums she was stuck in and to an existence with a little more sparkle.

  14. If I Could Chat with Anyone, It Would Be You

  ONLINE SHOPPING FOR jeans didn’t really work. Not in Emily’s opinion anyway. She needed to try the jeans on. Look at her butt in a three-way mirror. See if they clung to her just enough, but not too much.

  That morning she was at one of the household’s two computers (there was Melissa’s laptop, which she had taken over, and a full Mac upstairs in a small loft just off the stairway landing). She browsed sites she knew sold extra long jeans and put the clothes on virtual models, but, when it came down to it, she couldn’t submit the order.

  She clicked over to her Facebook page. She didn’t log on everyday. The updates were mundane, the cliquishness like an extension of school, right there in the kitchen.

  But Facebook was necessary. If not for Facebook, she’d be completely clueless at school, listening to other kids talk about links or videos she didn’t understand because she hadn’t checked her news feed.

  This time she saw she had two friend requests waiting.

  The first was from a girl, Julia Noma, who’d gone to Whitman Junior High with Emily, but then had moved to Wyoming. Accept.

  The second … and her heart started thumping faster … was from Ryan.

  She squeezed her eyes closed and told herself, Big deal. Big deal. So he wants to be your Facebook friend. He’s probably friends with everybody.

  She went to his profile page. Three hundred and eighty-two friends. Of course.

  Favorite movies: Napoleon Dynamite, The Bourne Trilogy, School of Rock, O Brother, Where Art Thou?.

  Okay, so he had decent taste in flicks.

  Favorite music: (Please no rap, no rap, no rap, she thought.) Cake. White Stripes. Beck. Coldplay. Death Cab for Cutie.

  Favorite books: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Anything Nick Hornby, Choke by Chuck Palahniuk, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers.

  She sat back in her chair. So much of what he liked was what she liked. God.

  She read his favorite quote: “Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them.” –Leo Tolstoy.

  Emily quickly looked to see if Trix was online. She wasn’t.

  She wrote her an email: Ryan just friended me on FB!!

  Then she deleted it. She didn’t want Trix to know that Ryan’s friend request was important to her. She didn’t want to give Trix reasons for not-so-covert glances at school or the possible slippage of Trix’s tongue.

  She was just about to log out of Facebook when the chat window opened. And there was Ryan’s photo—a black and white shot of him holding skis—next to his name.

  She read: Emily, my new friend. Thank you.

  She typed back: How could I not?

  Ryan: You could’ve refused.

  Emily: Why would I?

  Ryan: You could’ve sent me a personal message that said, ‘I’m not friending you, lameass.’

  Emily: If u were, in fact, a lameass I might have.

  Ryan: So your opinion of me is one notch above lameass?

  Emily: Maybe a notch.

  Ryan: Relief.

  There was a long pause, where Emily reread their exchange.

  Emily: What are u up to today?

  Ryan: I just helped my dad fix the garage door. Now I’m drinking lemonade and looking for new music on iTunes.

  Emily: Bon Iver?

  Ryan: I’ll check it out. What about u? U finish that homework for Johnson’s class?

  The dark thought that maybe Ryan was trolling for homework help struck her and she recoiled from the screen. People more or less knew what kind of grades everyone else earned. So, he probably had a good idea that Emily was up there near the top of the heap.

  She didn’t want that to be true, that he was using her. She decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.

  Emily: Theater of the Absurd assignment? No. But it shouldn’t take too long. U?

  Ryan: Did it Friday afternoon. H8 having that stuff hanging over my head.

  Emily: I know what you mean. Yet, I let it hang. Am lazy.

  Ryan: I find that hard to believe.

  Emily: It’s true.

  Ryan: Okay, gotta split. A bunch of us r going to Myrtle Edwards Park. You know, before the weather turns to complete crap.

  Emily stifled her disappointment. She pounded out: Which should be any day now.

  Ryan: Any minute.

  Emily: Have fun!

  Ryan: U too. Doing whatever you’re gonna do this afternoon, I mean.

  Simultaneously, they wrote “Bye.” And she logged off and jumped away from the computer, as if spending more time on it would tarnish the chat she’d just had with Ryan.

  Melissa strode into the kitchen, still in her running spandex. She mopped sweat from her forehead and said, “You look spooked.”

  “I just,” Emily started, faltered, then tried again. “I just don’t know what to do about jeans.”

  Melissa took a long drink from her metal water bottle. “How about if you and I go shopping?”

  Shopping with Melissa wasn’t on Emily’s list of desired Saturday activities. “Where?” she asked, doubtfully.

  “Pacific Place?”

  The risk of running into people she knew at Pacific Place was too high. “Southcenter?” Emily suggested. It was farther away and had more stores.

  “Really?” Melissa said. “That’s way down there.” She took another drink, then said, “Unless—oh. That’s your point.”

  Emily looked up at her.

  Melissa said, “Okay. Southcenter. Just let me shower and grab a bite to eat.”

  “We could get something down there,” Emily suggested.

  Shaking her head, Melissa said, “Unless I can get tuna on rice cakes with a kale smoothie chaser, I think I’ll eat here.”

  “Nasty.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” she started upstairs. “Just wait until you’re in your late thirties. You’ll start doing whatever you can to slow it down.”

  Emily knew she’d never resort to eating like that. Where was the joy in tuna and kale?

  Besides, late thirties? She couldn’t even wrap her mind around mid twenties. Where would she be then? Grad school? Dating? Would she have a boyfriend, or be left behind while all her friends furiously got married and popped out babies?

  “Never!” she called after Melissa. It was going to be Pop-Tarts and peanut butter and jelly the whole way through.

  15. Home Alone

  TRIX FELT LONELIER than ever.

  1. Her mom was out with the Octopus guy again.

  2. Trix had, of course, no boyfriend to occupy her.

  3. And virginal Emily was being all high and mighty, texting that she was going to lay low and have a quiet night at home.

  Trix lay on her bed, smoking cigarette after cigarette, too despondent to even get up and turn on the TV.

  She needed to diversify. Emily couldn’t be her only/best friend. They were growing too far apart.

  She thought about how they’d first started hanging out in seventh grade. Emily, tall and rangy, was sitting in the cafeteria eating an apple and reading a book. Trix was new to the school, having just transferred up from Fife.

  Three girls, now kno
wn as the Farkettes, were across the table from Emily, ganging up, asking if she played basketball or volleyball, and telling her she looked like a walking toothpick.

  Trix hated seeing anyone picked on. She was the type to collect strays and try to protect them. She approached the group. Emily looked up at her with hopeful, fearful eyes, unsure if Trix was there to join in the abuse or befriend her.

  “What’s wrong with being different?” she yelled at April Kinsmith, the trio’s clear ringleader. Trix hadn’t quite honed her rhetorical skills into the jagged barbs they would become. “You want everyone to look like you three? I can’t imagine a more boring world.”

  Emily had given her a nervous smile. “It’s okay,” she said.

  “No, it’s not. These girls need to learn how to treat people. And how looking like a bland middle school clone isn’t what anyone should strive for.”

  “Coming from you,” April said, “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  True, Trix was wearing her faux-snake skin heels, super-flared jeans, and a purple peasant top covered by a velvet shrug. But she loved that outfit. “Get over yourselves,” Trix said. Then to Emily, “You ready?”

  Emily wrapped her apple core in a napkin, closed her book, and followed Trix out onto the school’s lawn. It was spring term and kids were playing hacky sack and lying on the grass soaking in as much sun as possible before clouds rolled in again.

  “Um, thanks,” Emily said. “I think.”

  “You think?”

  “I was doing okay. But I appreciate your trying to help.”

  “Doing okay? They were all over you like dogs on a dead squirrel.”

  “Well, I mean, I was using my obliviousness strategy.”

  Trix cocked out her undeveloped hip and said, “It wasn’t working. They needed verbal bitch slaps.”

  Emily laughed and Trix did, too.

  After that, they began seeking each other out at lunch and soon, outside of school. Over the last few years, their friendship had morphed into what it was now. Trix wondered if it had run its course.

  David the cat was curled up on Trix’s feet. She sat, grabbed the flea comb off her chipped dresser, and began to rake it across his back. Every time she found a flea, she flicked it into a bowl of soapy dishwater she’d been keeping next to her bed for drowning purposes. She’d discovered an odd satisfaction in hunting down the fleas and killing them.

  Her thoughts drifted to Ryan. Quirky, handsome Ryan. While Trix snagged all the skeeves who just wanted to hook up and throw her away like a snotty tissue, Emily got Ryan. Or was on her way to getting him.

  David yowled and hissed. Trix realized she’d been pushing down too hard on the comb. She let up and tossed it back onto her dresser.

  Why couldn’t she just walk away from this and let Emily live a little? Why did Trix have to begrudge her?

  Because she’d liked Ryan for so long. And she was insecure. She hated feeling she wasn’t worth as much as Emily because Emily’s dad had money and she was blooming into this pulled-together, statuesque beauty and a normal guy liked her.

  The question was, could Trix stop herself from trying to destroy what her friend had?

  16. First Date

  ON MONDAY NIGHT, Sam, the tall guy from the party, called Emily. She answered her cell, already knowing it was a Sam Stone, but pretending she didn’t. She let him explain himself, how they’d met.

  “Oh, right,” she said. “Hi.”

  “How’s your week going?” he asked.

  “Well, considering we’re only one day in, I’d say fine.”

  He asked about classes. About what public high school was like, if it was true that CHS had its own bowling alley.

  “No,” Emily said. “That’s a rumor.”

  “Oh.” He sounded disappointed. “I was hoping I could talk you into showing it to me.”

  Her mind suddenly spun fast. He was going to ask her out. Of course he was. Why else would he have called?

  Yet, despite her desire for interaction with the opposite sex, she found herself shrinking away from the idea of spending time with him. Alone.

  How would she handle this? She could lie and say she had a boyfriend. She could flat out say, “No, thanks.” She could pretend to be sick.

  Then the question came, “So, think you’d be up for a movie or something Friday?”

  Emily thought of Ryan and how she wished he were the one on the other end of the conversation. Ryan McElvoy who was a good couple inches shorter than she was. Right.

  “A movie?” she said.

  “Yeah. The new James Bond.”

  “James Bond?”

  “I’ve seen it twice and it’s awesome. You game?”

  Emily frantically racked her brain for an excuse, but in the end, she squeaked, “Okay.” Her first date. At sixteen. And not with someone she would’ve chosen. But, as Trix would say, Chalk it up to experience. God knew Emily needed some.

  That week flew by in a blur of homework, strained run-ins with Trix, and a walk through Fremont where Emily took tons of photos and, later, spent hours editing them on the computer.

  When Friday night rolled around, she searched hard for something decent to wear. For almost an hour she tried on shirts and shorts and skirts and a pair of khaki pants that had fit the fall before, but now made her look like a geeky ten-year-old boy whose mother forgot to go shopping.

  She turned around and around in front of her full-length mirror and swore and threw clothes in a pile next to her closet door.

  Finally, she settled on a denim skirt that hit just below midthigh, black tights and her favorite black Banana Republic sweater that was stretched out and faded, but super comfy.

  When she trotted downstairs, wearing more eyeliner than usual and some actual lip gloss, her dad saw her and said, “Good God.”

  Horrified, Emily ducked into the bathroom and slammed the door. She sat on the toilet, head in her hands.

  She heard Kristen tell their dad to leave her alone.

  After a few quiet minutes, Emily eked the door open, grabbed her backpack, and ran out of the house.

  “Be back by eleven!” her dad called from the living room.

  At seven o’clock, the streets were already close to dark. The bus, when it came, was lit inside and looked like a traveling airport terminal, full of people reading and waiting, bored stares plastered across their faces.

  Normally Emily would read too, would pull out whatever book she was required to make it through for English Comp. But she couldn’t focus, so she just gazed out the window.

  When she met up with Sam, he gave her a once over and led her into the theater. Emily couldn’t help wishing he were Ryan. Ryan, with that introspective something that made her swoon.

  During the movie’s funny parts (and there were only a few), Sam treated her to his explosive ra-ha-ha-ha laugh that made Emily want to sink down in her seat. Except that there was no legroom. And her knees already jostled his. Which she hoped he didn’t take as a sign of interest on her part.

  Afterward, they walked to a bar called Dynamite that Sam swore he could get them into. She didn’t have the crazy, try-anything rush she sometimes got when she was out with Trix and in a good mood and high on the city and her youth, but she decided she may as well see the night through.

  Dynamite looked more like a vintage clothing store than a club. Mannequins stood in the windows wearing gold lamé, tall boots, and feather boas.

  Emily and Sam sat on retro acrylic stools and drank a beer at the glass and chrome bar. Sam made a joke and laughed his ra-ha-ha laugh.

  And then he did it. His lips pressed against Emily’s and they were watery and thick and cool.

  His tongue, fat and slimy, pushed past her teeth and wiggled like a thick worm trying to dig a hole.

  Her first instinct was to pull away and wipe her mouth, but she forced herself to sit there and take it. To experience it.

  Later, on the way home, Emily called Trix who churlishly assured her that
if the kiss was that gross, Sam didn’t know what he was doing.

  Emily noticed that Trix was doing a lot of long inhales and exhales on the phone and guessed what she was up to. “Are you smoking again?” she asked.

  Trix had smoked a lot when they were freshmen. But that next summer, after her mother had been diagnosed with early-stage emphysema, Trix had decided cigarettes were beneath her and, to Emily’s relief, quit.

  “I’m a teenager! I’m just experimenting. Jesus!”

  “Well, just … don’t. Don’t get yourself hooked. You’re better than that.”

  Trix took another long drag and said, “Am I?”

  17. Mean Girls

  EMILY AND TRIX hated their gym teacher, Ms. Stark.

  The woman was teeny. Four foot ten, which, in itself, was fine. But she was also wispy as a dandelion stem, mean, and thought it was her job to make a spectacle of Emily.

  During the volleyball unit, for instance, she instructed Emily to demonstrate a serve. A serve that didn’t make it to the net the first four times she tried. Finally, on the fifth hit, red and humiliated, Emily knocked the ball over.

  Trix had watched, feeling cooler toward Emily than she ever had, and a little smug that Emily was making a fool of herself. She knew it was terrible of her, but couldn’t make herself stop smirking.

  Ms. Stark, whom Emily and Trix had dubbed Fark because it was fun to derisively roll the word off their tongues, commented on Emily’s height constantly, calling her Stretch, Tall Drink, Amazon, and Sasquatch.

  Emily couldn’t think of anyone who made her more uncomfortable.

  Besides maybe the Farkettes: Vanessa Beam, Kennedy Furukawa, and April Kinsmith, a trio of bi-otch who lived to fling their bodies around the smelly gym and make life hell for anyone not up to the same tasks.

  Emily and Trix sat against the wall in PE that afternoon, actively disregarding a gymnastics unit in which everyone was expected—just because Fark used to be a gymnast herself—to learn cartwheels and handstands and walkovers. Emily couldn’t manipulate her body into any such formations.