Grady's face fell and he released my wrist.
I felt terrible. "We can still be friends, right?" I said hopefully. I couldn't believe it, but Jesus freak or not, I liked Grady.
"Yes. Of course. And I'll work on the group Mary. I'll make it something we both could be proud of."
Ugh. This was headed off in entirely the wrong direction. "I'd better go."
"Goodnight Mary."
As soon as I walked in the door, my eyes shot over to my mom's desk. No one there. I threw my backpack in the corner of the room and loaded instant messaging on my mom's computer. There was a little ball icon next to Kaia's name. I clicked on her and typed furiously.
"YOU ARE AN EVIL BITCH"
Seconds later, her reply popped up. "Baby forgive me for I have sinned."
"I WILL DESTROY YOU"
"Are you going to smite me?"
"Dammit Kaia," I typed back, "do you know who was there?"
I waited a few seconds for a reply, but when one didn't pop up immediately, I started typing again. "Amy Yates. And all of her backup dancers."
She responded immediately. "Oh shit. I really am sorry. I had no idea."
I'd been hunched over the keyboard, typing like a monkey on crank. Now I sank into my mom's swivel desk chair. "Grady thinks I had a bad time because the group's not pious enough," I typed.
Kaia sent back a smug looking emoticon with a halo over its head. I started to type the sordid details when the back door smacked open and my mom came in, freezing when she saw me at her desk. I quickly X'd out of the instant messenger, losing my story in progress.
My mother's nostrils flared. "What are you doing? Get off my computer."
"I have to check my email."
"I'm sure you do, now that you're Miss Popular. Your dance card must be filling right up. Move it."
I went to pull at my hair self-consciously but there was nothing there, it was still in the tight ponytail. I removed the hair band and let it fall down over my shoulders. Oh my god, my scalp ached, but I felt better having some hair to tug on while I talked to my mom. "It's not about cheerleading. It's about driver's ed. There's some law that says they have to let me take it, but I'm waiting for them to tell me if it's going to be before or after school."
"Oh." My mom cocked her head and considered it, her need to control me obviously warring with her desire for a chauffeur. She'd never gotten her driver's license. But since none of my siblings had either, she still didn't have anyone but my dad to cart her around, and he was never home. Mom bit her lip. Ultimately her greedy side won. "Fine. Check your email. But make it quick."
My fingers tapped in my webmail username and password. I kept my eyes on my mother to make sure she didn't sneak around to steal my password. But of course she didn't. She's not that interested. Mom turned away and started rummaging around in the freezer, probably looking for a wayward pack of cigarettes. She kept them in there to stay fresh, but at the rate she smoked them, there was no way those babies were ever getting stale.
My eyes skimmed over my new messages, weeding out the obvious junk and skipping over the ones I could read in the library tomorrow. There were three from Kaia in response to the email I'd sent her about Derek. Oh god. My heart dropped into my feet again, but this time it wasn't Derek's kisses I was remembering, it was the horrible conversation about him that Amy Yates and those bitches had made sure I'd overheard at youth group. I tossed my head. Shake it off.
There! A message from tlawson hung out near the bottom of the list. I opened it up and mentally pumped my fist in the air. Evening driver's ed. Every night at six o'clock, starting next week. Perfect.
I shut down my email and rose from my mother's desk. As soon as she heard the chair squeak, she swooped in from the kitchen and started fretting over her desk, repositioning her mouse pad ever so slightly and blowing on her keyboard, as though I'd left some sort of powdery residue behind. She'd toss things wherever and flick crap all over the rest of the house, but her little internet cubby had to be freaking pristine. Whatever. She was cackling to herself over something she saw online as I walked through the family room toward my bedroom.
"Holy hell, what are you wearing?"
Christ. Time for round two. I stopped and faced Phoebe. "It's my cheerleading uniform," I said defiantly, lifting my chin in the air a notch.
But she surprised me…she didn't go on the offensive. She tucked a lock of her dishwater blonde hair behind her ear and cocked her head at me. "You're a cheerleader?"
"Yes."
"I didn't know you had it in you."
"Well, I guess I do." I stood with my arms crossed over my chest, resisting the urge to yank on the ends of my hair. "You have an issue with that?"
Phoebe shrugged and looked mildly interested, which, for her, was a big deal. "Hmm. No. That's fine. Just fine," she repeated as I relaxed and continued the short walk across the room. "Hey, Baby?"
"Yeah?"
"I've been meaning to talk to you. I'm getting real sick of Monica's shit."
So, it was time for the annual room flip. Once a year, Phoebe would have a cow over something and Rachel and Monica would trade rooms. Rachel was hardly ever home anymore, but when she was…well, maybe it would work better to have Monica in my room this year. Phoebe'd never talked to me about it though. It just happened.
"Um, okay. I guess I'll ask Monica which bed she wants when she moves in." Maybe she'd take the one by the window.
"No, Rachel's a gigantic pain in the ass. I want you to move in with me."
"Huh?" I put my hand against the wall, not exactly to steady myself, but a good stable wall under my hand couldn't hurt matters any. "Me?"
"Yeah, you. You can move your stuff now, just toss Monica's junk in your old room. If you see anything of hers that you want to keep, you might as well take it. I'll back you up."
"Are you serious?"
"She's not home. It's a good time to do it."
I nodded and made my way down the hall. This was too weird, but I wasn't going to make a stink about it. For one thing, Phoebe was at the top of our totem pole and arguing with her was pointless. For another, her room was way bigger than the one I shared with Rachel. And for another…well. I didn't need to think about that other reason I didn’t want to share a room with Rachel. The first reason alone was enough. But I wasn't going to keep anything of Monica's. Had Phoebe even looked at Monica? She was half a foot shorter than me and outweighed me by at least fifty pounds.
I had hardly anything of value, so I went to Phoebe's room first and took Monica's stuff out of her side of the closet. I put it in my old closet and transferred the five cheer uniforms that had been hanging there to my new room. I looked at them hanging up, then took them off the rod and placed them carefully under the bed. For some reason, that felt safer, and I'd learned to trust my instincts in this house. Rachel's clothes filled all the dresser drawers in my old room, so I'd kept my stuff in a beat up plastic laundry basket, which I moved to the foot of my new bed. I stared at the jeans and t-shirts for a couple seconds, then threw caution to the wind and hung everything up. I changed into a long t-shirt and shorts, and put the cheer uniform I'd worn today under the bed too. Next I stripped both beds, old and new, and traded the sheets. Beyond that, there wasn't much else to do. I had no electronics, no CDs. The couple of books I scored here and there always vanished within days of bringing them home. I did have a little bit of makeup. I put that under the bed along with my cheer uniforms.
The work was good for me; it gave me something to think about besides what I'd heard at Grady's youth group, but I finished quickly and before I knew it I was sitting cross legged on my new bed, staring at a tattered old poster of Vin Diesel on the wall. He had a tattoo of three X's on the back of his neck, and of course that reminded me of Derek and the conversation about him that was now burned into my memory.
Dammit. Amy Yates and her friends had stuck to me like glue at first, not talking to me, but making snide remarks that I couldn't help but
overhear. The last thing I needed was to get into a shouting match and have Grady come running over to see what was going on with sweet little "Mary," so I kept my mouth shut.
So I'm sure, to Grady, it looked like the cheerleaders were all hanging out together, all BFF's. He kept catching my eye and waving or smiling at me, clearly believing I was having a great time. I think Amy and her friends must have noticed my connection to Grady too, because eventually they backed off. And that's when things got real crappy. Some group leader had put us to work assembling school supplies for a kids' charity thing. I was putting pencils and crayons in plastic bags and handing them down the line while the other girls talked. I tried to tune them out, but when Amy mentioned her boyfriend's name, my ears pricked up. Kaia's story was still so fresh in my mind.
"Chase's parents are out of town this weekend. He's going to take the boat out on Horseshoe Lake. You want to come Ashley?" Amy didn't make any effort to lower her voice this time, since her statement didn't include the "C" word and it wasn't directed at me.
"Sure!" Ashley chirped. "Can I bring Clint?"
"Yeah. Actually you have to. It's couples only. Sorry Hannah, I guess that leaves you out." From the corner of my eye, I saw Amy smile at the girl with the long red hair. Sorry my ass. Amy's insincerity shone like a traffic light.
"Oh I'll be there," Hannah replied. "Derek called me, like, half an hour ago. He misses me sooo much. He practically begged to come over tonight. You know he wants to get back together."
I froze, holding a pencil so tight I was surprised it didn't snap.
"What did you tell him?" Amy asked.
"I left him hanging," Hannah said. "I'm gonna tell him he can, of course. But I'll let him sweat it out a while longer."
Derek wasn't exactly a unique name. It could totally be a different Derek.
"God, Hannah, don't wait too long," Ashley said. "Some other girl will be all over that."
"Did you see he got a tattoo?" Hannah asked. "Fucking sexy."
I swallowed hard. Probably the same Derek. Mechanically, I went back to putting school supplies in the bags and shoving them down the table at Amy and company. I was a faster worker than they were. About fifty bags were piled in front of Amy. None of the girls had even noticed that I'd stopped working briefly. I shot a glance over at them with each bag that I stuffed.
Amy had an interested look on her face. "A tattoo? No, I didn't know. What's it of?"
"A four leaf clover, on his neck," Hannah said.
Definitely the same Derek.
"On the back of his neck, like a girl?"
Hannah scowled at Amy. "Of course not. It's on the side, like he's not afraid of anyone seeing it."
"What's it mean?" Ashley asked.
"Mean?" Hannah replied, confused. "It's not like it's a Chinese symbol or something. It doesn't mean anything."
Amy took one of the pencils out of the bags and tapped the eraser against her teeth, then shrugged one shoulder. "You know Hannah, it's probably just a booty call."
"No way." Hannah said, shaking her head vehemently. "You should have heard him. I'm his whole world. He wouldn't even look at another girl." She flipped her long red hair over her shoulder and put her hand on her hip. "Yeah, I'll take him back, but he's gonna squirm first. After that, if he wants to tap this ass, I'm all in."
Hannah shook her hips and all three of the girls laughed. I don't know what the look on my face was, but it couldn't have been good. Lucky for me, Grady had walked by just in time to catch the "tap this ass" comment. His eyes met mine, and he took me by the arm, leading me away.
"I'm sorry Mary," he said in a low voice. "I think they only come because their parents make them. Let me find something else for you to do."
"Can you just take me home?" I was surprised by how tiny my voice sounded. I hardly knew Derek. Obviously. Sure, our bodies might have fit together real nicely in that closet, but wasn't I the one who'd shoved him away? Yes I was. And rightfully so, as it turned out. He had a girlfriend.
Grady glanced at all the activity around us, obviously torn.
I looked at my shoes and muttered, "never mind."
Grady took my hand. "Come on Mary. Race you to the car."
Dammit, if we could get past the fact that he'd want to burn me at the stake when he found out I was a total heathen, Grady would have been, like, the nicest boyfriend ever.
I was roused from my reverie when the bedroom door smacked open. Monica stood there, all five-foot-one of her, eyes blazing and chin jiggling, ruddy spots standing out on her cheeks. "Get the fuck off my bed, Baby."
Lazily, I gave her the finger. "Your bed's in Rachel's room."
She screamed with rage before wheeling around and stomping away. I could hear Phoebe's wheezy laughter all the way from the living room.
7
When my alarm went off at five-thirty the next morning and I stumbled over to my closet, there was nothing there. I stared at the empty hangers for a while before I remembered that I'd put my cheer uniforms under the bed. So where were my jeans and t-shirts?
I got down on my hands and knees and snagged a skirt and top from under the bed, then grabbed a pair of socks from the laundry basket at the foot of my bed, carrying them with me into the bathroom. I took the hottest shower I could stand.
Pulling my still-wet hair back into a ponytail, winding the hair band around and around until I couldn't get it any tighter, I opened the door to find Joe waiting outside. This was going to be an annoying routine.
"Sorry about your stuff," he said as he slipped past me.
"What?" But Joe had already clicked the door shut and locked it.
How would Joe know my clothes had vanished? I had a sinking feeling in my stomach. I walked woodenly over to my old room and cracked the door open. Two empty beds. Not a surprise about Rachel, she always stayed out all night. But Monica? She never got up before noon. She was hiding.
I turned around and canvassed the house, looking for my clothes. Had Monica bleached them or something? They weren't in the tiny laundry area. I didn't really have to tiptoe around my mom in the living room. She'd fallen asleep in front of the TV, and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song was so loud, it gave me plenty of cover.
As I made my way to the kitchen, I realized that the television had also drowned out the sound of the dogs. I looked out the window over the sink and bit my lip. My mother's three Rottweilers lay in their fenced enclosure, snapping at each other and writhing around in a torn up nest of what had been my jeans and t-shirts. As I watched, Felony took a scrap of denim in his mouth and shook it violently, gnawing on it, working his teeth until foam sprayed through his jowls. Monica had obviously dipped my clothes in something that the dogs couldn't get enough of. They were utterly destroyed. If it weren't for my cheerleading uniforms, I'd have no clothes at all.
I knew I should grab something for breakfast, but my stomach twisted at the thought of food. Joe appeared in the kitchen, his backpack slung over his shoulder, his arms full of maroon and gold material. "I took these out of your room. Monica wouldn't check under the bed while you were in it, but these uniforms would be gone by the time you got home tonight. If they won't all fit in your locker I wouldn't mind giving you some space in mine."
I nodded wordlessly, and took my uniforms from him.
"Now that Phoebe's decided you're relevant you're really in for it," he said.
He moved silently to the front door, opened it a crack, placed his fingertips on the top of the door, and quietly eased it open. It always squeaked shrilly when I came and went, but now it didn’t make a sound.
"How did you?" I whispered, but Joe put his finger to his lips and motioned me through the door. Once I was down the front steps, he joined me on the scrubby lawn.
"Let's meet Kaia out in front of Mrs. Dutton's house," he said.
Joe loped with long strides across the lawn to our neighbor’s house. I could barely keep up, weighed down by all my uniforms. I tripped over the garden hose that lay
limply in the patchy grass, and accidentally kicked not one, but two discarded aluminum cans. Joe gave me an exasperated look.
"I'm not feeling so ninja today," I muttered.
We stood on the street in front of Mrs. Dutton's funny little cottage-style house to wait for Kaia. I could still see our shabby turquoise mobile home, but we were definitely out of earshot. "How did you open and close the door without it squeaking?" I asked.
"Put just enough pressure on the top of the door when you're opening it and it doesn't make any noise. Too much or not enough and it won't work. I'll teach you tomorrow."
"What other tricks do you have up your sleeve?"
"Let me put it to you this way. I saw Phoebe asleep just a few minutes ago when I rescued your uniforms. But do you know when the last time she saw me was?"
I shook my head. "No idea."
"Last Thanksgiving."
"Are you serious?"
Joe nodded. "Almost ten months. I've turned it into a game, just for the hell of it. I know I'll lose eventually, but I really enjoy playing."
We were quiet for a couple of minutes and I kicked at a rock in the road. Damn, I was bound and determined to ruin these blindingly white shoes. "Joe?"
"Yeah?"
"Yesterday, when I saw you in the hall outside our bathroom, I actually thought how weird it was that I never see you. Have you been avoiding me too?"
Joe dipped his head and swallowed, his Adam's apple moving visibly in his throat. "Yeah."
"So why are you helping me now?"
"For the same reason Phoebe's trying to collect you." He shrugged. "Of course, my motivation is completely different."
"And I still don't know what you're talking about."
"What do you think of me, Tawny?"
I shook my head at him. "Let's get one thing straight. That whole Tawny thing was a mistake. I really don't want to be called that. For now, call me Barbie."
He raised his eyebrows, the expression on his face so comical that I laughed a little myself, which felt good. The knots that had formed in my stomach when I saw the dogs destroying my clothes started to loosen a little.
Say My Name Page 5
