Goodbye Stranger

by Rebecca Stead

  “Why?” Bridge asked.

  “Because.” Em looked at herself in the mirror and blew the bangs out of her eyes. “Then maybe Tab will stop asking me what I think it means.”

  “I don’t know what it means,” Bridge said. “I just know they feel good.”

  Tab and Em glanced at each other. “There’s nothing you’re not telling us?” Tab said.

  Bridge laughed. “Like what?”

  “To tell you the truth, I like them now,” Em said.

  Tab leaned away and looked at Bridge. “I guess they are kind of a ‘statement.’ ” She used air quotes.

  “Great,” Bridge said. “Then let’s put a pin in it. A really big pin.”

  The truth was that Bridge didn’t even think about the cat ears anymore, unless a little kid pointed at her on the street or some jerk said something obnoxious. Tab’s mom said that when people reached out to hurt your feelings, it was because they secretly felt they deserved to be talked to that way. She said that they had “long, hard roads ahead” and that you should just wish them well. Bridge didn’t examine the idea too closely because she liked it and hoped, really hoped, that it was true about the long, hard roads.

  Although she wasn’t so sure about the wishing-them-well part.

  —

  Tab shoved her lunch bag into her backpack. “The whole dead-arm thing was way weirder than it sounds. I might even write a reflection about it, for the Berperson.”

  “But there’s no important feminist message!” Em said.

  “Ha, ha,” Tab said, unwrapping a butterscotch.

  “Sure there is,” Bridge said. “She experienced her body as an object!”

  Even Tab laughed. “She’s gonna love it.” She glanced at Em, who was texting again. “Did you even eat anything?”

  Em shook her head. “Too nervous. I can never eat before I sing. You aren’t nervous?”

  Tab jumped experimentally, landing with flat-footed thuds on the stage. “Nope.”

  “Lucky,” Em said.

  Emily hadn’t said a word about the pictures since the afternoon Bridge had helped her take them almost a month before. Bridge had pretty much stopped worrying.

  —

  When the Talentine show audition notices were passed out, Em had been scornful. “It’s like they’re always trying to control us—that’s what Julie Hopper says. So we have a dance on Halloween that keeps us out of trouble, and we have a talent show for Valentine’s Day to distract everyone from the fact that half of us are total geeks.”

  Bridge had wondered about Em’s definition of a total geek.

  “Or,” Tab had said, “it’s just a fun show. I notice you’re still trying out.”

  “Yeah, well, if it’s where everyone is going to be, I guess I want to be there too. And if you’ve got a voice, you might as well use it, right?”

  Em sang. She sang really well. Tab juggled, not all that well, but a lot better than most people. She’d learned at the circus shed at sleepaway camp.

  —

  Auditions began right after last period.

  “Performers only!” Mr. Partridge told the kids peeking in the auditorium-door windows. “No gawking!” And he knocked on the glass until they went away.

  Every kid who wanted to audition got five minutes onstage. A few of the eighth-grade Tech Crew kids helped plug in the amps and carry microphone stands.

  The three audition judges were stationed just below the stage: the vice principal, Mr. Ramos; the head of the language department, Madame Lawrence; and Mr. Partridge, who stood at the light board, which he’d rolled out on its metal cart.

  The rest of the tech crew was also there. Mr. Partridge had seated them on the left side of the auditorium, in the first two rows of seats. Bridge and Sherm sat next to each other and watched as the kids took turns performing.

  How did people do it? Bridge wondered. Sing all alone in front of everyone? Or worse, dance in front of everyone? One girl, an eighth grader who played the piano, was shaking so hard she had to start four times. After the third mess-up she got up to leave, but all the kids waiting their turns cheered and clapped and wouldn’t stop making noise until the girl, cheeks wet with tears, broke into a smile and sat down again. That time, she got through it.

  Mr. Partridge was right, Bridge realized. This place was different from every other room in the school.

  Still, sitting there, she was getting more and more nervous for Em and Tab. She felt almost light-headed when Tab’s name was finally called.

  She elbowed Sherm. “Here goes nothing,” she whispered.

  “Stop worrying.” Sherm had his notebook out. He’d sketched a neat diagram of the light board and was watching Mr. Partridge flip switches. Occasionally Sherm circled something on his diagram, or wrote a question to himself. It was kind of adorable, Bridge thought.

  “He’s going to teach you all that,” Bridge reminded him. “You don’t have to figure it out yourself.”

  “I know. I’m just getting a feel for it.”

  Tab grinned from the stage. She had two green apples in each hand, which she raised above her head with a flourish. Bridge waved and gave her a thumbs-up.

  Tab’s longest continuous juggle lasted about thirty seconds. She dropped most of her apples at some point, but finished nicely by holding one of them in her mouth while juggling the other three. Then, shifting her juggling to one hand, she took a dramatic bite from the apple in her mouth, made a face like it was sour, and threw it out to the first row, where someone caught it. Then she strolled off stage, juggling with two hands again. Everyone clapped and hooted and stomped. Bridge exhaled.

  “See?” Sherm said. “She did great. That was hilarious.”

  When Em was called, she mounted the stage steps with her head down, glancing up only when she got to the big blue X taped to the middle of the stage floor.

  She looked scared. This was not the same Em who had bounced around up there for the rock-paper-scissors tournament a couple of months before.

  Bridge tried to give her a smile and a thumbs-up, but Em was looking at Mr. Partridge, who had stepped away from the light board to talk up at her. Bridge heard him say quietly, “Shoulders. Smile. Sing to the audience.”

  Em nodded, dropped her shoulders, forced a smile, and sang to the back wall.

  Em’s singing was powerful and sweet and it felt like something she was giving away. Her smile began to look real.

  Bridge glanced at Sherm, who had stopped taking notes and was watching Em with a serious look.

  Bridge whispered to Sherm. “She’s good, right?”

  “Yeah. She is.”

  Everyone went crazy when Emily finished. A couple of kids stood on their chairs and waved their phones back and forth like they were at a concert. Em hugged herself and ran down the steps to her seat. As Em passed, Bridge heard Mr. Partridge say, “Atta girl. That’s the way to do it.” And Em said, “Thanks, Mr. P.”

  Mr. P.

  Mr. Partridge, Bridge realized, was Em’s Mr. P. from the Banana Splits. How had she not known that?

  “But next time,” he called after Emily, “sing to the audience, not to the wall!”

  Bridge felt a ping of jealousy. She had assumed that the Tech Crew kids were Mr. Partridge’s favorites. But he never showed up at their meetings with black-and-white cookies from Nussbaum’s. Compared to waiting in line at Nussbaum’s, it was nothing to order up a couple of pizzas.

  —

  Tab texted Bridge that night:

  Tab: Em is definitely in. She was one of the best. Maybe THE best.

  Bridge: You were really good too! So funny!

  Tab: But Em was amazing.

  SHERM

  November 28

  Dear Nonno Gio,

  I have a decision to make.

  Have you ever heard the riddle about the two brothers standing in front of the two doors? One door leads to heaven, and the other one leads to hell, but you don’t know which is which.

  Thanksgiving was
pretty terrible. The Philadelphia cousins brought apple pie and tried to pretend nothing was different. Mostly we watched football.

  When you called before dinner (I could tell it was you from the way Mom’s voice changed), I went straight into the bathroom and played games on my phone until I was sure you were gone.

  Dad said grace before we ate the same way you always did, but then he made everyone say what they were thankful for. Later I found Na in her room, just sitting on the bed. I’m still getting your texts and chucking them.

  People act like riddles are hard, but real life is harder. In real life, there are always more than two doors.

  I guess I know what I’m going to do.

  From,

  Sherm

  P.S. Two months, sixteen days until your birthday.

  VALENTINE’S DAY

  Adrienne has to get some napkins and stuff from the back room. She asks if you mind standing behind the register for a minute. “You know, so the place looks open.”

  You like standing behind the counter. It reminds you of playing store when you were a kid—you and your sister would line up a bunch of junk on the coffee table in the living room: plastic food from the toy kitchen, some Matchbox cars, a couple of action figures. Your parents would place their orders: spaghetti and meatballs, pancakes, a peanut-butter-and-honey sandwich.

  You remember how your dad liked to ask for a pear-and-lettuce sandwich, how you’d always tell him you were all out of lettuce, and how every single time he would fall to the floor and pretend to cry, just to make you laugh.

  —

  You and Vinny and Zoe used to be the girls in the secret place at the top of the climbing tower with your legs stretched out in front of you and the soles of your feet pressed together to make a star. In middle school, you pooled your money most days after school and shared a slice of pizza and a Frappuccino three ways, giggling and taking turns with the straw. Now all of that feels just as imaginary as those pear-and-lettuce sandwiches.

  Vinny wanted all eyes on her, all the time. She was the one who licked the poison berry juice off her fingers, the one who dared you to steal nail polish, the one who was obnoxious to the lady in the makeup store who told you no more free samples. But Vinny also made you feel as if you were exactly where you wanted to be, if not exactly who.

  When you began to catch glimpses of something different—like that spoonful of cinnamon, and the smile that went along with it—you made excuses for her. That’s Vinny, you told yourself. She doesn’t really want to upset anyone. There’s just that hurt part of her, like some kind of fire that always wants to be fed.

  But another part of you, the part that stayed quiet, began to understand that maybe Vinny, your Vinny, was gone.

  INTRUDERS

  Sherm tapped Bridge on the shoulder as she was walking toward third period.

  “Emily was looking for you,” he said, his face worried. “I think she was crying.”

  “Where?” Bridge said.

  —

  Bridge ran to the auditorium, where she found Em sitting on the floor between rows, her back against a wall and her legs straight out in front of her. She wasn’t crying. It was more like staring.

  “What?” Bridge said. “What happened?”

  Em looked up. “I think I did something really stupid.”

  It had been a weird morning: three kids were called down to the main office during social studies, and then in French they’d had the second intruder drill. Bridge thought that intruder drills belonged to the very small set of things that are even less fun than French.

  “What happened?” Bridge said again.

  Em inhaled. Em exhaled.

  “Say something,” Bridge said.

  “You remember how last time, during the intruder drill, I told you that everyone had to get in the coat closet, and Sara J. and Ellie both started crying?”

  “Yeah.”

  Em took another breath, released it. “So this time, Ms. Madison says, we’re supposed to play telephone.”

  Bridge shook her head. She didn’t know the game. Whenever she discovered something that everyone besides her seemed to know, she assumed they had learned it during third grade, which she’d missed because of the accident.

  “Telephone?” Em said. “Where someone whispers a message to the person next to him, and then that person whispers it to the next person? It’s supposed to be funny because, like, people misunderstand what’s being whispered, and then they say what they thought they heard, and the message gets all mangled.”

  “Em. What happened?”

  “I’m getting to it. So David Marcel is next to me, he’s practically standing on my feet in the stupid closet, breathing all over me, and the ‘secret message’ is coming down the line, and everyone is giggling and going ‘Shhh!’ really loudly. If we’d been hiding from a real gunman, we’d all be toast right now. Anyway, David leans away so Sara J. can whisper in his ear, and then he leans toward me and whispers, ‘You’re a slut.’ And then he cracks up laughing, and stupid Eliza is on my other side going ‘What is it? Come on!’ She’s practically shoving her ear into my mouth because she’s so desperate to know.”

  And then, Emily said, she had busted out of the closet to run to the girls’ bathroom, but the classroom door had been locked for the drill. So she stood there shaking the knob while the teacher patted her back and told her everything was okay, obviously thinking that Em had freaked about the nonexistent armed intruder, who was actually the last person on her mind.

  When the drill finally ended, Ms. Madison sent Em to the school counselor with a note, but Em had just stuffed the note in her pocket and gone to the auditorium, where she found Sherm doing his English homework.

  “David Marcel is an idiot,” Bridge said. “I get that you didn’t like it, but why are you this upset? He’s always saying something idiotic.”

  “Something happened,” Em said. “Something else.”

  Bridge carefully slid down the wall next to her. It was a tight squeeze. “What?”

  “Those pictures we took? I sent one to Patrick. And—I guess he must have showed it to some people.”

  “You said you wouldn’t do anything without telling me. You promised!”

  Em shook her head in slow motion. “It’s like that thing vampires have—glamour? They, like, turn it on you, and you can’t resist, your brain goes fuzzy, and whatever they say seems so right. Do you know what I’m talking about? Do you know what that’s like?”

  “No,” said Bridge. It sounded horrible, she thought. “Do you know how many people he showed it to?”

  Emily shook her head. “No idea. I got two weird comments on my page this morning. I didn’t recognize the names—”

  She pulled her phone out of her bag and held it out to Bridge. Em’s page was mostly soccer-team photos, plus a couple of shots of Sashi, Tab’s cat. There had been two comments posted that morning.

  The first one said UR HOT.

  The second one said CAN I HAZ MORE PICTURES?

  “I thought they were mistakes, like for someone else,” Em said. “Or just—guys being random. But then when David Marcel…” She didn’t finish the sentence.

  “This might be kind of bad,” Bridge said.

  “It’s definitely bad,” Em said. “Absolutely, positively bad.”

  Bridge put a hand over one of Em’s. “So it’ll be a thing, a bad thing, but then it’ll be over.”

  “David Marcel,” Em said. “I can’t believe David Marcel saw that picture.”

  —

  Bridge was doing homework on her bed after dinner when she got a text from Tab:

  CALL ME.

  “Why do you text me to call you?” Bridge said when Tab answered her cell. “Why don’t you just call me?”

  “Emily told me what happened,” Tab said. “I’m really mad, Bridge.”

  “Me too. I hate David Marcel. He’s—”

  “No, I’m mad at you.”

  “Me?”

  “How c
ould you have helped Em take that picture? How?”

  “Me? She was going to take a picture either way!”

  “You don’t know that. If we’d both said no, I bet she wouldn’t have done it.”

  “She was begging. And I made her promise not to send it without talking to me. That was supposed to be part of the deal.”

  “Oh, I get it—so you were going to decide whether or not she should send it? You were, what, thinking it over?”

  “That’s not what I meant. I told her not to—fifty times!”

  “And then you took the picture for her.”

  Bridge didn’t say anything.

  “Em is fragile, Bridge.”

  “Fragile? Which Em are you talking about?”

  But Bridge knew the Em she was talking about. Tab meant the Em who sang to the wall while her legs shook. The Em who never talked about the Banana Splits unless she was bragging about the cookies. The Em who did whatever Julie Hopper told her to do. That Em.

  “You’re lucky we don’t do fights,” Tab said. “Because if we did, we’d be in a big fight right now!” And she hung up.

  Tab had hung up on her. Bridge stared at her phone. Ten seconds later, a text popped up:

  Love you. Still mad.

  Bridge rolled to her back and stared at a small hole in her bedroom ceiling. There had been a screw there once, where a little metal bar hung above her head. She’d used it after the accident, to pull herself into a sitting position.

  Her phone dinged again. A group text from Emily to her and Tab:

  U guys up?

  Tab’s answer popped up right away: Right here!

  Bridge typed: Me too.

  Then she typed back to Tab on the other thread:

  Love you too.

  SHERM

  November 29

  Dear Nonno Gio,

  I had the meeting with Mr. Ramos this morning. He’s the vice principal. It was pretty bad. I had to name names. A couple of hours later, Emily came into the auditorium crying.

  What if I just made things even worse?

  I wish I could see what would have happened if I hadn’t told. You told me once that every time a decision is made, the universe splits into two. So now there’s a universe in which I kept my mouth shut. But I can’t see what it looks like.