“I see. Nice pajamas, by the way.”
My face got hot. They were nice pajamas, but that is not the point. By now it was almost every other time that I saw Tate, I was dressed somehow strangely. Why he couldn’t be there when I looked nice at the War and Cheese, I don’t know.
“Thanks,” I mumbled. Ginny, meanwhile, had launched herself forward and apprehended our fugitive.
“Bad kitty,” she said, as if those words meant anything to Kit Marlowe. “Very bad.”
She shook a finger in his face. Tate straightened up. He was also wearing pajamas, which made me even more embarrassed than the fact of my own pajamas. I had no idea why.
“Hey, so, my mom said she saw you the other day,” he said. “At some wine-and-cheese thing?”
“Oh,” I said, as noncommittally as possible. Ginny imperceptibly lowered the volume of her cat scolding.
“Yeah,” Tate said. “She said your house is cool.”
My house, at that very moment, was swarming with flies.
“It’s not,” I said quickly. “I mean, it’s nothing special. There’s nothing to see.”
“Oh,” Tate said. “Well, anyway, she said it was nice to talk to you.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.” Tate put his hands in his pajama pockets and nodded again. “Yeah, sure. Uh, are you . . . around later? Like at home?”
“Don’t come over,” I said, probably too fast. Tate shook his head.
“Oh, yeah, no, I . . . never mind. I just, uh . . . I told my mom you were helping me with English.”
“I figured that out,” I said.
“Yeah,” Tate said. “So maybe . . . can you, actually? Like, she’ll pay. And you make all those notes in your books and stuff.”
The Senior Tea. I could not believe he remembered. And I could not tell him those were Ginny’s notes. My heart sank.
“So okay?”
“PLUUUUM!” Ginny bellowed from the sidewalk. “The cat is literally clawing the skin from my body.”
She flailed around with a belligerent Kit in her arms.
“I, uh, have to go,” I said to Tate. “I’m sorry.”
“Okay,” Tate said. “Here.” He held out his phone. “Give me your number?”
Without pausing to think, I punched it in, and said goodbye again, and jogged back to the sidewalk, and scooped Kit away from Ginny, and together we retreated home.
“What was that about?” Ginny said incredulously. “Did I just see you talking to Tate Kurokawa for a nonzero amount of time?”
“I was apologizing,” I said. Ginny scoffed.
“Good,” she said. “He’s loathsome.” She stared Kit right in his beady eyes. “Never, ever abandon us again, cat. Understand? You’ll leave us bereft.”
That Monday, it was impossibly cold, and as I bundled my outdoor layers over my indoor layers in the Gregory School vestibule, I contemplated the opportunity before me.
In books, when confronted with the eventualities of abject poverty, young women most often end up shipped to obscure relations, marrying rich, or becoming governesses. We did not have obscure relations, only the cousins in Erie who believed a little too fervently in Jesus, and sending me and Ginny off to live with Aunt Linda and Uncle Phil would probably do very little to solve the problem of our mother’s mortgage. Marrying rich sounded noble and selfless and possibly involving elegant dresses with ruffles. Unfortunately, fictional young women are always meeting eligible wealthy bachelors because they’re going to balls all the time, and no one in the Blatchleys’ immediate social circle gave balls per se. Probably the closest thing I’d ever attended was the Gregory School Senior Tea—or worse, the War and Cheese—and look how those had ended. Rather than a fading annuity from a lapsed estate, we had sporadic event-planning checks and routine social embarrassments.
But I did, now, kind of, have the potential to become a governess. Of sorts. For actual money.
I tied my scarf around my neck with resolve and headed out into the freezing December afternoon.
“Today’s the day,” Ginny said, when I got into the car. She had on a giant knit hat, and her cheeks looked almost blue in the weak sunlight.
“What day?”
Before Ginny could answer, there was a dreadfully loud rap at the window. Charlotte was crouched by the passenger-side window, waving frantically. Sometimes we gave her a ride home, which Charlotte always promised to reciprocate, or give us gas money, but never seemed to actually remember to. Today she had on a cream-colored sweater under a puffy navy vest, like the kind you’d go duck hunting in.
“Hey, beautiful,” Charlotte called through the glass. “Ready to take hold of our futures?”
“Plum, get in the back,” Ginny said.
“But—”
“Go.” Ginny shoved me, and I tumbled out of the driver’s side door and practically into Charlotte, who did not look pleased.
“Um, excuse you?” She laughed, then slid herself in and situated her massive tote bag of books at her feet. Ginny revved the engine and backed us out of Jesus Is the Way Christian Church and onto the street.
“God, it’s freezing in here,” Charlotte said, rubbing her upper arms.
“Maybe that’s because you’re not wearing a coat,” I pointed out. Ginny glared. Charlotte acted like I hadn’t said anything.
“Is your heat on?”
“It’s broken,” Ginny explained. “Sorry, I’ve been bugging my mom about it forever, but you know how she is.”
Charlotte made a little humming sound in the back of her throat, a humming sound I did not care for. “Oh. God, I’m so nervous. Aren’t you nervous? I’m nervous. God.”
“Yes,” Ginny said. “I’m nervous.”
“I need a hit of Juul,” Charlotte said. “You want?”
“Vape?” I was aghast. This time, Charlotte heard me.
“Not in the car,” she drawled, then went sickly sweet. “Okay?”
“Vaping is gross,” I said. “And it causes lung cancer and emphysema, just so you know. There is scientific proof. Which I know you care very deeply about.”
Charlotte set her jaw. “You know what? People who vape are sick of hearing that. Right, Gin?”
“I don’t vape,” Ginny said.
“You did once.”
“You did?” I cried.
“Okay, but once,” Ginny said. “It was after the SATs. Don’t tell Mom.”
“Why not?” I said. “She’d probably join you.”
“Gin,” Charlotte whined, unable to be excluded for the conversation for a full thirty seconds. “My place first?”
“Yeah, for sure,” Ginny said. Indignantly, I kicked my backpack farther into place under the seat and pulled out my phone for a distraction. But shockingly, there was a new message, one not from Ginny, Mom, or Almost-Doctor Andrews, the only three people who ever texted me.
hey its tate
My chest constricted. Another message pinged.
so my mom actually wants you to tutor me if thats cool haha
But no, yes, that was right. I was going to be proactive in the pursuit of my dream career—namely, governessing.
Hi, I wrote back. Okay. I can do that.
“I’m just, like, I don’t even know,” Charlotte was saying. “My odds have got to be so good, right? I mean my admissions interview went really well, and—”
“Did you wear the blazer?”
“No, it ended up looking too grandma. I did the purple V-neck.”
“With the hoop earrings?”
“Yeah,” Charlotte said. “Wait. Was that too trashy?”
“Depends on how low you had the V-neck pulled,” Ginny said.
“Oh my God,” Charlotte moaned. “Fuck.”
We had reached the end of Charlotte’s street, a line of newish houses constructed in blocky piles of geometry with sand-colored stucco and no charm to them whatsoever. They cost a fortune.
“One second,” Charlotte said, clambering out of the car, toward the tr
easure that awaited her just on the other side of her mail slot.
“Don’t open it!” Ginny yelled after her. She spun back to me.
“Plummy.”
I snapped my head up from my phone, where the typing dots had come and gone, come and gone almost three times. “Cripes. What?”
“My stomach hurts.”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t take advanced calculus.” Ginny looked out to where Charlotte was clipping back down her driveway, an envelope in hand. “And I didn’t even do an alumni interview.”
“Nor do you own hoop earrings,” I pointed out. Ginny cackled.
“Why do you even want to study science, Gin?”
“Because it makes sense.”
“For you? No offense, but I’m not sure it does.”
“No, I mean science makes sense. There are rights and wrongs. Things are solvable. It’s just very . . . tidy. I don’t know.” Ginny traced a finger around the inside of the steering wheel. “Life’s frustratingly ambiguous most of the time. We don’t need more people musing about that. We need answers.”
We sat in silence for a beat.
“Not to discourage you, Plum,” Ginny said suddenly.
“What?”
“You’re a muser,” she said. “You’re going to end up majoring in whatever will let you write in that notebook all the time like Harriet the Spy.”
“I am not,” I said quickly.
“Got iiiiiiit!”
Charlotte slammed the car door with gusto. “Let’s roll, bitches.”
Five minutes later we pulled into the driveway at Haven Lane, setting the dogs barking madly. Ginny flung open the car door, followed immediately by Charlotte, followed slightly more slowly by me.
“I think we could be roommates,” Charlotte was saying, “but my mom says it’s good to branch out. And maybe we’ll want to live in different dorms, you know?”
Ginny said something I didn’t hear, because I was staring at my phone. The typing dots bloomed again at the bottom of the messages. Typing. Typing. Typing. Then, finally:
cool just let me know when your free
Good Lord. No wonder Tate needed an English tutor. He was a grammar moron.
Any evening this week, I wrote back, then wondered if perhaps I should’ve feigned a fuller calendar for the sake of appearing in-demand as a tutor. But it was too late, because Tate had already replied.
tmw night?
Fine, I wrote back.
k see you then
Of course. A peach. How droll. I pocketed my phone and stepped through the back door.
The dogs had stopped barking. Ginny already had her coat off, her hair a wild frame of static after her knit hat. She was clutching a piece of paper, looking from whatever was written on it to Charlotte and back again.
Charlotte’s face was slack.
“Seriously?” she was saying softly. “What are you even going to do, Gin?”
“Char, just—” Ginny said, and then, all at once, Charlotte’s expression sharpened into fury.
“No, fuck this,” Charlotte said. “Fuck this.”
She pushed past me with an actual push, catching me right on the shoulder, and the back door slapped behind her. Outside, a noise came—a yell, or a sob, I couldn’t tell.
Instantly I knew what had happened.
“Ginny,” I said. “Ginny, I’m sorry. You’re brilliant; you know that? You’re an actual genius.”
She looked so pale, practically eerie, with her hair standing up in the air, and I almost told her. I almost told her what Dad had said. But I couldn’t. Not quite.
“No,” Ginny whispered. “I got in.”
“Oh,” I said. “Oh. And Charlotte was . . .”
“Wait-listed.” Ginny set the letter on the table. We stood in silence for a moment, except for the hissing of the Franklin stove.
“You’re just glad I got in somewhere because now you know I’m leaving,” she said at last.
“No,” I said, even though that was partially the truth. “I meant what I said.”
“Well, thanks,” she said. “I’m glad at least one person thinks so.”
She fell forward and buried herself against me, hands folded up between our chests, and started to cry.
I awoke Tuesday morning with a cold feeling in my stomach—dread, perhaps, or just a seeping-in of the actual cold that was penetrating the stone walls of 5142 Haven Lane from every angle. Ginny, somehow, was flung out on the mattress—my mattress—next to me.
“Ginny!” I shrieked sleepily, if such a thing is possible, and scared Kit Marlowe from his curled-up place on the headboard. Ginny moaned and nuzzled into a pillow—the good pillow, I noted, which she must have snatched from under my head.
“I was overwhelmed, Plummy,” she mumbled. Her hair fell over her eyes, like how we used to comb our hair forward and pretend to be Puddleglum the Marsh-wiggle from Narnia, who, for some reason, we had conflated with Cousin It from the Addams Family.
Downstairs, Mom was reading the New Yorker in her robe and sighing into a cup of coffee.
“Don’t worry!” She waved the magazine. “I stole it from work. That’s better, right?”
I gave her a look that said, Not exactly, but I’ll take petty theft over wasting money when the cartoons are free online.
I prepared a single slice of toast, which piqued Gizmo’s interest such that he wedged his can-opener nose between my legs and the counter.
“There’s coffee,” Mom said. “And eggs. The girls are laying like crazy.”
“No, thank you,” I said. I was jittery enough. My phone had received no new messages, and I had no desire to reach out for confirmation. I would let the question of tutoring hang, waiting for a sign. I would not think about it too much.
Ginny slumped in, and I expected some dramatic proclamation about her feelings, or at least some affected moaning. But she simply poured herself a travel mug of coffee and took two placid bites of a store-brand granola bar.
“It’s freezing in here.”
“I know.” Mom rose. “I asked Almost-Doctor Andrews to split some more logs, but he must’ve left early for campus. Which, speaking of, I’ll be out late for a studio crit, so just order something for dinner.” She went to her purse and rummaged. “Shit. Does either of you have any cash?”
“I’ve got it,” I said, thinking of the fifty dollars that I already had and the forty—well, thirty, since I’d been overpaid—dollars that would soon be mine. “I’ll take care of it tonight.”
“Let’s go, Plum.” Ginny jammed on her hat and grabbed her backpack, the trash can swishing as she chucked the rest of her breakfast.
We didn’t stop for Charlotte, and so, we got to school early.
The school day passed eerily fast, catapulting toward the afternoon in a string of unremarkable classes and an even less remarkable turkey sandwich I’d made last night and no irksome invitations from Jeremy to play Dungeons and Dragons. My heart was skittering, irritatingly enough, but I commanded my body to calm itself. There was no way I’d be able to focus if I succumbed to apoplexy. For all my scrupulousness in my reading, I had very little idea of the practical realities of governessing. Jane Eyre wasn’t exactly a how-to manual. (Ginny, when she was little, had insisted that there was a book called How to Kill a Mockingbird, which our father had found endlessly amusing. “As if Harper Lee were an avid sportswoman,” he’d say. “She and Capote with shotguns behind a duck blind.”) And Ginny was right: English wasn’t like math, where there was always a formula, always a correct answer. It was subjective, which was both its beauty and its curse. I, being no genius, was not at all confident in my ability to telegraph the intricacies of Jane Eyre, The Great Gatsby (our second book of the year), and Frankenstein (our third book of the year, although we hadn’t finished it yet), and someone who thought your was the proper contraction of you are might be too far gone. Also, all my clothes were stupid and my sweater looked dumb.
When we got home,
Ginny unzipped her coat, then rezipped it immediately.
“Jesus,” she said. “Why aren’t there more logs?”
“I guess Almost-Doctor Andrews didn’t get a chance,” I said. Usually he was back by the afternoon, but who knew what mysterious obligations a life of academia entangled him in. Ginny wilted.
“I’ll go,” I said. A little cardiovascular work splitting logs would surely calm my nerves.
I bundled back up and grabbed the ax from where we left it leaning against the chicken coop. Splitting logs was extremely satisfying: set the log on the stump, hoist the ax, and thwack. It made one feel mighty and self-sufficient, like Laura Ingalls Wilder. As I swung and thwacked, I imagined myself making jams, putting up pickled eggs for the winter, sewing us new Christmas dresses out of calico. Laura was always too nice to Mary, if you asked me. If Ginny went blind from fever, I’d let her figure things out on her own. Or I’d describe them for her, maybe, but she would owe me.
Triumphant, logs split, I replaced the ax and carried my bounty to the kitchen, where I dumped the logs in their place beside the stove. All the swinging and thwacking had made me hot.
“There’s no food in the fridge,” Ginny said. “Except some mustard and two eggs. Also, your phone’s been buzzing like crazy.”
I scrambled to pick it up.
hey come over whenever
It was obvious who it was from, although I had not yet saved his number as a contact. Too late, I realized I was sweating heavily. I stripped off my scarf, but it didn’t seem to do much. Was whenever truly whenever? Maybe I’d have time to take a shower (something I would never take for granted again).
“I’m going to take a nap,” Ginny announced. “Get me tikka masala when you order, okay?”
“Okay.” As I was staring at the message, the dots appeared. Then:
actually can you come now theres a sixers game at 6
Still more dots.
and i know you would hate to miss your boys
I fanned myself in a desperate attempt to lower my body temperature and dug through my backpack for all the requisite books. It was too late to cancel—it’d be rude, and also, I could not pick up tikka masala for Ginny, samosas for me, and palak paneer for Mom, and leave a reasonable tip and have any actual money left over without Tate’s mom’s forty dollars. No—thirty dollars since I’d gotten ten extra. So instead, I set out without my coat, thinking the fresh air would naturally freeze away my sweat.
Ordinary Girls Page 11
