“Homeschooled?” asked Lydia.
“No. Though my school was in a house—on campus.” My head tipped in the direction of the college. “It was run by a bunch of grad students from the School of Education. Sort of an experimental research program, until they shut it down.”
This description seemed to give them pause.
“Not because there was anything weird going on,” I said quickly. “It was mostly unstructured time and talking about your feelings.”
“Sounds very evolved,” Arden said.
I shook my head. “Our feelings about whatever pedagogical method they were using that week. But on the plus side, we got to do a lot of independent study. Reading and such.”
“So that’s how you know so much,” Arden mused.
“Mostly about nineteenth-century novels. That was my area of concentration.”
“Yeah, but there’s so much wisdom in books.” Arden tapped her forehead. “And you have it all up there, ready and waiting. Super useful.”
“Oh boy,” Lydia sighed. “Here we go.”
“What?” Arden was the picture of wounded innocence.
“You sure you want to jump on this bandwagon? I’m still traumatized from when you made me KonMari my underwear.”
“I’m just saying it’s interesting, is all.”
Interesting. I savored the word.
“Did any of your friends come over from your old school?” Terry asked.
I hesitated. “No. I—there’s no one.” When I looked up, expecting to see derision on their faces, Arden’s eyes had a sheen of wetness.
“That is so sad. You went through your whole first day alone?” She pressed her hand to mine. “I would have died. You are so brave, Mary.”
Whatever response I might have made was interrupted by the buzzing sound emerging from Lydia’s bag. “My mom’s running late,” she reported, glancing at her phone. “I have to walk Muffin.”
“I’ll tell Morrison we’re ready for a ride.” Picking up her own phone, Arden tapped out a message. “One more week and he’ll be back in his dorm. It’s going to be so nice when a bag of tortilla chips lasts more than ten minutes at our house.” She looked up from the screen. “What’s your number, Mary?”
“I . . . don’t have a phone.” My parents weren’t technophobes, exactly, but they had informed us in no uncertain terms that they couldn’t afford data plans for a family of seven. That wasn’t the sort of information I felt like volunteering.
“Thanks for the advice,” Terry said with a shy smile.
Lydia jerked her chin at me. “Yeah. Allegedly, and all that, but you made some good points.”
The bell over the door jangled as a red-faced Marco staggered inside, a tower of books balanced between his arms.
“I made it,” he panted, stashing the reading material behind the counter. He straightened slowly. “Whoa. Customers.” He looked questioningly at me. “Friends of yours?”
I hesitated. Saying no would sound like I was repudiating them, while claiming them as friends would be presumptuous—however much my heart swelled at the thought.
“Yep,” Arden answered for me, with another of her easy smiles. “Coming, Mary?”
Dear Diary,
When my parents decided to name all their kids for someone from the life and works of Virginia Woolf, I’m guessing they didn’t expect to have four daughters. Mary is clearly an afterthought—the kind of name you give someone when you’ve already used up the good ones.
Sometimes I worry it marked me for life. Why couldn’t I have been the firstborn, or a twin, or as tough as Cam, or the only boy? A name like Jasper Orlando is wasted on my little brother.
M.P.M.
Chapter 5
Dinner that evening was a sweaty affair. The windows had been thrown open to admit the purple dusk and chanting cicadas, and also because my parents didn’t believe in air conditioning.
All seven of us were home, filling the long oval table. Mom and Dad sat at either end, with my four siblings arrayed around them: twins Addie and Van, the Shakespeareans, now in their second year at Millville College; athletic Cam, whose hair was the same burnished gold as the twins’ but worn short so it couldn’t be used against her on the field hockey pitch; and my brother Jasper, the baby of the family. The din of so many forks and knives made it easy to retreat into the privacy of my own thoughts, which were currently stuck on the incident at Toil & Trouble.
I was still bemused by my own daring in following Arden and the others to her brother’s car. It was as though she’d said, Lifeboat, Mary? and I’d leaped at the chance, even though I could easily have walked the few blocks home.
Hopefully I’d acquitted myself in a reasonably normal fashion when we parted ways. At the time, I’d been too caught up in seeing my house through their eyes. The peeling paint on the porch, the patchy lawn: they’d seemed so much starker in the harsh light of afternoon. While Arden in particular had exclaimed over the quaintness of the neighborhood’s cobblestone streets and whimsical pastels, I wondered if that was a euphemism for poor.
Not that the disparity of our financial situations really mattered, compared to the gulf in social standing. What had been an epic encounter to me was likely a minor blip to girls like that, who met new people all the time.
Using the edge of my fork, I nudged the chicken and broccoli closer to the mound of brown rice, hoping to imbue the gooey mass with a little flavor. This was a typical late summer meal: a little too good for you, as our parents tried to compensate for all the times during the academic year when they had essays to grade and lectures to prep—the hummus months. I thought I was doing a good job rendering myself invisible without being too conspicuous about it when Jasper suddenly piped up.
“What’s up with you, Mary?” Although he’d spoken through a mouthful of rice, the words seemed to hover in the thick air, drawing everyone’s attention.
“Nothing,” I said stiffly, shoving a bite of chicken into my mouth.
“Nothing as in nothing, or nothing you want to share?”
All at once I was grateful for the stifling temperature, which meant my face was already flushed. Had Jasper heard about the Anjuli incident? I couldn’t think of a way to find out without showing my own hand, and I had no intention of discussing the subject with my family, despite the fleeting satisfaction it would have given me to tell my parents how very wrong they’d been. Piling their pity on top of my humiliation would be too bitter a pill.
“Can you pass the salt, please?” Addie asked our mother, who was seated closest to the shaker.
“Try behind the dresser,” she replied without lifting her head.
“Thanks, Mom,” Jasper said. “Very helpful.”
She gave a vague mm-hmm in answer. Jasper waggled his brows in my direction, an invitation and a dare. I wasn’t feeling especially playful, but pride demanded I make an effort.
“We’re only going to read books by men in English this year.” When there was no reaction, I added, “White men.”
The room fell silent, all of us watching our mother.
“Addie and I are thinking of branching into musicals,” Van announced, picking up the baton. “From the greater Disney canon. Lots of princesses and uncomfortable shoes. Retrograde fantasies about marrying up. Magical domestic objects.”
“Is that so,” Mom murmured, aiming a forkful of broccoli in the general direction of her mouth. A second later, we heard the telltale rustle of a turning page.
Since Van had spoken for both the twins, as was her wont, Cam launched the next volley. “I broke my leg at practice.” She slid a glance at our mother, whose expression remained placid. “The bone is jutting out of my thigh.”
Dad tried to frown at us, though from the way his mouth squeezed in and out like an accordion it seemed he was having trouble mustering the necessary solemnity. He leaned as far sideways as the narrow-backed chair allowed a man of his girth. “What are you reading, dear?”
“Hmm?” Mom blin
ked at him, lifting the magazine from her lap and flipping it around so the rumpled cover faced us. “The new New Yorker came. I didn’t want to get behind.”
“That’s from 2007,” I pointed out.
Her lips pursed. “Must have been a good one.”
As if we ever got rid of any printed matter. No doubt she’d stumbled across the magazine on her way to dinner, fingers reaching for it without thought, like scratching an itch.
“So Mary, you were telling us about your first day of real high school,” Jasper drawled. My brother was like a dog with a bone when he had an agenda. Since I had no idea why he was pressing this particular issue, aside from an uncanny instinct for human weakness, I settled for giving him an all-purpose scowl.
“Is it the full teen movie experience?” he continued, unmoved. “Football and cheerleaders? Getting pumped for the big dance? People randomly breaking into song?”
“Honestly, Jasper,” our mother chided. “You’re rotting your brain with that tripe.”
“Give me some credit,” he said, waving his fork. Grains of rice scattered, and I mentally double-checked it wasn’t my night to clear the table. “I also play video games.”
“I always thought of high school as more Macbeth,” mused Van, who liked to talk about that part of her life (two whole years ago) as though it were a sepia-toned photo in a dusty album. “Speaking of which, you’re still going to help with auditions next weekend, right, Mare-Bear? Not too busy with your new life?”
“Ha,” I said weakly. “Of course I’ll be there. But . . . what do you mean about high school being like Macbeth?”
“Spineless men, conniving women, political infighting, a creeping sense of dread—all that jazz,” Van replied with an airy flap of the hand.
Addie gave a delicate shudder then cast a worried look my way. “There were a lot of great things about it, too.”
“Millville High is an excellent school,” Dad observed, as though we’d been discussing its academic reputation. I slanted him a doubtful look, which he failed to notice. It would be a long time before I trusted my father’s opinions about high school again.
“And Mary’s so easygoing.” Addie sounded too chipper, overcompensating for her twin’s bluntness. “All that angst will be like water off a duck for you.”
I goggled at her. A swan would have been one thing. And what did that make everyone else? Humans, presumably, enjoying their complicated lives on dry land while I paddled in circles, quacking to myself. Maybe one of them would throw me a few crumbs. With a sinking feeling, I realized I must be the only member of the family who thought of me as a main character in her own story, as opposed to a background figure in the lives of more exciting Porter-Malcolms.
“It comes from being the middle child,” our mother opined, stroking the underside of her chin. “That’s why I wasn’t worried about Mary starting a new school.”
“But I’m not the middle child,” I said when no one else pointed out the fallacy of this argument. “Four is not the middle of five.”
Then again, perhaps tellingly, there wasn’t a name for my place in the pecking order. Penultimate? That was only marginally better than second-to-last.
“It’s a state of mind,” said my father. “You’ve always been even-keeled. Content to go along with the crowd.”
Jasper dabbed a few grains of salt from his plate before licking them off his finger. “She doesn’t seem that chill to me.”
“Of course she is,” Addie protested. Next to our dad, she was the family member most likely to smooth ruffled feathers, whereas Van more closely resembled our acerbic mother, and Cam and Jasper shared a certain unflappable cool. I was . . . not quite in any of those camps.
“Not that you should feel tied down,” Mom said with the too-casual air of someone pretending not to tell you what to do. “People grow and change during adolescence, as they should. To be honest, I’m not sorry you’ve been pushed out of the nest. It was time for a challenge.”
“I thought she should have transferred last year.” Van stifled a yawn. “Broaden her horizons.”
“Mary doesn’t have to do things the same way we did,” Addie countered. “She made her own choice.”
“Or did she?” our mother asked, wagging a finger.
Addie shrugged. “All her friends were staying behind. It’s completely natural for Mary to want to be with them.”
“Sometimes past associations hold us back. Nostalgia can be a trap. Don’t confuse loyalty and sentimentality,” Mom spoke in her most oracular tone, as though dispensing obscure bits of wisdom from a mountaintop grotto, but we all knew she was talking about Anjuli.
I fought the urge to bang my forehead against the table. “That won’t be an issue anymore.”
“Out with the old, in with the new.” Dad raised his glass to me.
The problem was that the old in this equation was me, since I’d been jettisoned like so much trash. My family’s helpful advice only served to remind me of that fact. It was like the time I’d had my wisdom teeth removed. I wanted to pack the wound with gauze and forget it was there, not poke around to find out exactly how much it could hurt.
Jasper cracked his knuckles. “I’m going to go nuclear when I get to Millville High. This year is just a warm-up for the real action.”
Sadly, I suspected he was right. Between the curls and the big dark eyes, he’d always gotten away with murder around people who didn’t know him well enough to be on their guard. Plus, he had a cool name, which probably counted for a lot. No one would spurn Jasper on his first day.
“And we all live in fear of that day,” our mother chided. “Did you find the copy of Death in Venice I left you?”
“The one on my pillow? Yes, yes, I did. Even though I’m just a boy, it turns out I’m not blind and dumb.”
Dad raised both hands in a conciliatory gesture. “Jasper, you know we have faith in your intellectual potential. A number of men have made important contributions in serious fields of study. If you work hard, there’s no reason you can’t keep up with the girls.” Dad pretended not to see our mother’s dubious expression.
Yarb the cat, whose name came from our father’s favorite Gogol novel, yowled from the next room, a long and variegated complaint.
“I’ll let him out.” I jumped up before anyone could revisit the subject of my ex-friend, new school, or social prospects therein.
Dear Diary,
Confession: I never reread the depressing parts of books. The first time I’ll make myself slog through the wretched childhoods and tragic mishaps, but once I know about the floods and bankruptcy and scarlet fever, I skip straight to the first signs of hope, like when the orphan gets a bit of bread, or the hero and heroine exchange meaningful glances.
I wish there was a way to do that in real life. Flip a few pages and boom! Everything’s better.
M.P.M.
Chapter 6
It’s a big place.
No one knows who you are.
As long as you keep moving, who’s to say you don’t have scores of friends waiting around the corner?
This was my internal monologue as I walked to my locker the next morning. Meanwhile, another voice sang counterpoint:
Everyone else has friends.
The reek of loneliness is rising off you like a noxious cloud.
People are staring.
The internal clamor made it difficult to concentrate on anything else, including the sound of my name. In the time required to pause, play back the tape in my head, and confirm that yes, someone had been calling “Mary,” my brain conjured a vivid fantasy. Anjuli, waiting with a penitent expression. When I turned around, however, it wasn’t my former friend.
“Arden,” the other girl reminded me.
As if I could have forgotten, even without the scarlet locks. It was almost funny that she thought me less likely to remember her than she was to remember me. Not that I was in the mood to laugh.
“Guess what?” she asked, with an air of b
arely suppressed excitement.
I could only shrug.
“We watched the movie.” Arden held out her phone; with a flick of the finger, the image on screen sprang to life. Figures in ball gowns and filigreed uniforms advanced and retreated, spinning in circles. I spotted Anna and Vronsky right away. She was all in black and he was staring wolfishly at her.
Another tap of the finger and the scene froze. “You were so right. Starts off super-hot, turns into a major downer.” She glanced both ways to be sure no one was listening. “Just like certain guys at this school.”
I smiled faintly, part of me still on tenterhooks. Was that all she’d wanted to say? As she slipped her phone back into a slim vermillion purse, I regretted the dowdiness of my backpack, which until that moment had seemed de rigueur for a high schooler.
“Anyway, we wanted to know what you’re doing for lunch.”
“Lunch?” I parroted, as though I’d never heard the word.
“We were thinking somewhere downtown.” Arden leaned toward me, lowering her voice. “Since we can’t speak freely here.”
“Sure,” I said, feigning nonchalance. One advantage of growing up with three older siblings was that I’d had lots of practice pretending to know what people were talking about.
* * *
We ended up at a pocket park between the yarn shop and a Himalayan restaurant. Since Terry and I had packed our lunches, Arden and Lydia grabbed pita wraps to go. Sitting on facing benches in the dappled shade, the humid air lightly perfumed with the scents of cooking oil and spices, I resisted the urge to pinch myself in case the whole thing was a mirage. I’d fully expected to spend this part of the day huddled between shelves in the school library, utterly alone.
“So,” Arden began, dabbing at the corner of her mouth with a paper napkin. “We’ve been thinking. It’s a new year. The perfect time to make some changes.”
I waited for the axe to fall. Actually, Mary, we’ve decided you’re an idiot, who knows nothing. What were the odds of two lunchtime rejections in a row? I wasn’t sure why they’d felt it necessary to invite me here to sever a connection that was tenuous at best, but at least they’d had the courtesy not to dump me in front of the entire school.
By the Book Page 4
