Ordinary Girls

by Blair Thornburgh

  “What happened to your coat?” Tate asked, five minutes later. He was barefoot, again, in sweatpants and a T-shirt that read, TRUST THE PROCESS.

  “Nothing happened to it,” I said. “It’s just at home.”

  “Okay,” Tate said. “Well, come on in.”

  I did. We stood in his kitchen, silent.

  “Uh, I don’t have any pizza bagels, or anything,” Tate said. “But my mom left this.”

  He held out the forty dollars. She must have forgotten that she’d advanced me ten. But I wasn’t about to ask Tate to make change.

  “Thank you,” I said, attempting a businesslike tone of voice. “Shall we get started?” That also seemed no-nonsense.

  “Sure.”

  Tate swung onto a barstool at the countertop. There were three stools. Sitting in the third would leave a decorous amount of space between us, and give hopefully a sufficient radius to distance my sweaty self from Tate. But it also would make it hard to reach him. Not that I was reaching for him, I mean; just that I might have to write on a piece of paper or something that was near to him.

  A drop of sweat rolled down my neck. I put my things in front of the third stool.

  “You gonna sit that far away?” Tate said.

  “Oh, I just . . . I don’t know.” I moved to the second stool. Why was I always appearing at Tate’s house in need of hygienic attention? He was going to think I never bathed.

  Tate was resting a forearm on the counter’s edge. There was nothing in front of the first stool.

  “Where are your books?” I said.

  “Oh,” Tate said. “Yeah.”

  He slid back out of the stool and pounded up the stairs, leaving me to stare at the Kurokawa-Feingold kitchen and at the ticking clock above the sink, which had no numbers and, I am guessing, did not play bird calls to mark the hours.

  Tate returned and threw down pristine copies of Jane Eyre, The Great Gatsby, and Frankenstein. The spines had not even been cracked. I was sure that they did not have Benji’s notes in the margins, either.

  “There ya go,” he said, and climbed back onto the stool. “Now what?”

  I gave him a look that said, You tell me. “What do you need help with? Vocabulary? Reading comprehension?”

  “I mean, all of it, kind of.” Tate propped an elbow on the counter to lean on and began to fidget with a ballpoint pen with his free hand. “The midterm’s coming up, right?”

  As if the Gregory School’s midterms weren’t at the same time every year, just after winter break so that we’d all have a chance to panic properly with our free time. I didn’t really intend to study much, but it wasn’t like in-class essays were difficult. “Right.”

  “Yeah,” Tate said. “So I’ll need help on that, for sure.”

  The pen clicked against the granite as Tate fidgeted. This was becoming maddeningly unproductive. Then, out of nowhere, I was struck by the line of his neck. What about it, I couldn’t say—the way it eased into his T-shirt, the structure of it, just the presence of it. Some boys our age still looked twelve years old, with skinny limbs and round faces. Tate did not.

  The silence had gone on too long. I needed to speak, and take governessly charge.

  “All right,” I said. “Well, how about you write an essay and I can look it over.”

  “A whole essay? Now?”

  “No, just the CliffsNotes,” I said. “Yes, a whole essay. You only get forty-five minutes for the midterm.”

  “What, are you going to time me?”

  I grabbed my phone and held it aloft.

  Tate groaned. “But like an essay on what?”

  “Language and theme,” I said. “In the books we’ve been reading.” That was the whole bent of honors English—language and theme, language and theme, language and theme. I’d had the advantage of knowing this from Ginny’s run-through two years ago, but it was also drilled into us almost every class, which I suppose you’d have to pay attention to know.

  Tate sighed, and took out a pencil, and laboriously put it to paper. Then he must have realized that he’d need to look in a book to write about it, and so he laid Frankenstein flat with one hand and scribbled with the other. I remembered, suddenly, our fifth-grade music teacher, in the recorder unit, when Tate and all the other Loud Fifth-Grade Boys had taken up the alto, had clucked her tongue at their decision. Your hands won’t fit, she had told him. I can see the tendons stretching.

  They weren’t stretching now. His fingers were as long and fluid as his handwriting was bad. I watched, and looked at my phone for the time, and pretended to reread my own copy.

  After twenty-some minutes, Tate put down his pencil.

  “I can’t,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” I said. “It’s just writing.”

  “I can’t write, though,” he said. “It’s hard, Peach. Just, like, figuring it out. I need help.”

  I refused to bristle at the stupid nickname. “What do you mean by help?”

  “Like tell me what to say, and I’ll say it.” He held out the pencil. “Make some notes or whatever.”

  I stared. “I’m not going to write your paper for you. Are you crazy?”

  “Sor-ry,” Tate said, dragging out the second syllable. “My mom said your dad was a writer, so I thought you did that, too.”

  The heat came back into my face, and my whole body. I felt flushed all the way to my stomach.

  “I don’t want to do anything like this,” I informed him. “That’s plagiarism, in case you didn’t know. And if you think I’d cheat on your behalf, then you’re stupider than I thought.”

  It was, in retrospect, a cruel thing to say.

  Tate said nothing. There was a creak and muffled steps upstairs, and a series of thumps brought Benji into the kitchen.

  “Whoa,” he said. “Did I disturb something?” He laughed, as if he had told a joke.

  “Nah,” Tate said, leaning back with a nod at me. “Mom said I need tutoring.”

  “Understatement,” Benji said, swiping a banana from the top of the fridge. “For what?”

  “English.”

  Benji guffawed. “Dude, it’s English. You’re born speaking it. It’s like, the easiest subject. How dumb are you?”

  Tate was still staring at the ceiling. “Pretty dumb, Benj,” he said, a little softly.

  Benji snorted through a mouthful of banana. “Dumb-ass.”

  I continued to say nothing. The stairs creaked as Benji retreated.

  “There you go, Peach.” Tate tipped forward and leaned over the counter. “You’re not the only one who thinks I’m an idiot.”

  He wasn’t meeting my eyes.

  “It’s whatever,” Tate said. “Benji’s right. I suck at this, and you can’t make me better. No offense. It was just my mom.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “I’ll tell her,” he said. “I mean, thanks.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah.” Tate got up. “Don’t worry. You can keep the money.”

  He hadn’t meant it that way. Or maybe he hadn’t. But that last sentence stung.

  “Fine.” My throat hurt to say it. “Good night.”

  Late December had always been one of my favorite times of year, probably because 5142 Haven Lane was so Dickensian. Its banisters were made for evergreen swag, its steeply sloping roof for snow, and its windowsills for candles—although, as I discovered when digging out the Christmas boxes, about half our fake electric candlesticks had dangerously frayed wires, so I had to ration them to only the front side of the house. Our mother, who was nothing of a cook, was a surprisingly cheerful baker, and, when we arrived home after the last day of school before break, she had foregone her usual afternoon nap to pull out all the canisters of flour and sugar and set herself to mass-producing cookies.

  “I could’ve been an excellent trophy wife,” she said, pushing up the sleeves of her peasant blouse and thumping a block of sugar cookie dough onto the countertop. “Staying home and making cookies for t
he Ladies Auxiliary, or whatever.”

  “They’d make you cut your hair,” Ginny said. “And wear a pastel twinset.”

  “I’m surprised they aren’t making you do that already,” I said. “For the silent auction.”

  “God,” Mom said. “Don’t remind me.”

  Flies notwithstanding, the War and Cheese had been such a success for Pamela Wills and her fund-raising efforts that our mother had not only been grossly overpaid but also drafted into planning ArtSong’s annual silent auction in just a few short months. Mom had celebrated by taking a nap.

  Mom stuck out her tongue, and Ginny cackled. Even she was in a good mood. She and Charlotte must have made up, because Charlotte had come over after school with us, and Ginny had plugged her phone into the stereo to blast Handel’s Messiah and was singing along, although not lyrics that anyone, least of all Handel, had ever heard before. Ginny and Charlotte were at the kitchen table, cutting strips for paper chains—well, Ginny was cutting them, and Charlotte was making occasional half-hearted snips—and I was at the kitchen counter with cocoa and Kit Marlowe on my lap. Kit, perhaps overtaken by the Christmas spirit, had become more and more social, although he’d still stalk away if anyone looked at him for too long.

  “Just so we’re clear,” I said, because it seemed like it needed to be said, “I don’t want any presents this year.”

  “Christmas just won’t be Christmas without any presents!” Ginny gasped. Mom and I laughed.

  “You know, I always wanted to try sleeping with a peg on my nose,” Mom said. “But I couldn’t quite figure out where to put the peg.”

  “Please,” I said. “Ginny is the Amy.”

  “Oh yeah? And who are you, Meg?”

  “I’m Jo.”

  “Everyone thinks they’re Jo,” Ginny said. “It’s like how everyone thinks they’re Lizzy and not, like, Mary.” She rolled her eyes and glanced at Charlotte for backup.

  Charlotte looked blank. “What are you talking about?”

  “Little Women?” Ginny said. “You know, the March sisters.”

  “No, I don’t know,” Charlotte said stiffly. “Is everyone supposed to know Little Women?”

  “What? No,” Ginny said. “Sorry. We just . . . bring this stuff up sometimes, I guess.”

  “Mm.” Charlotte toyed with a scrap of paper. “Are you almost ready to go?”

  “One second.” Ginny ran her scissors down one final sheet, slicing out a long red ribbon. “Perfect.” She leaped up. “We’re going out.”

  Mom was muscling over the dough with a rolling pin. “Out where?”

  “Just to Lily’s house,” Charlotte said.

  “Which one?” I asked.

  “Lily Sweet,” Ginny said. “Relax.” She was wearing, I noticed, an actual outfit—black leggings and a big sweater—as opposed to a collage of clothes that did not belong to her. Charlotte had on another of her vests, this one covered in a dust-colored, brushlike fur. The effect was distinctly simian.

  “Just don’t stay out too late,” Mom said.

  “We won’t,” Charlotte said, too nicely. “What time is curfew?”

  Ginny looked at Mom. Mom shrugged.

  “Two?”

  Charlotte, who was stabbing her feet into her boots, gaped. Ginny beamed.

  “Works for me.”

  “All right, then,” Mom said. “Gentle go into that good night, or whatever.”

  “Rage, rage!” Ginny cried, clenching a dramatic fist. Charlotte jerked her gaze up from her phone.

  “That’s from a poem,” I said. Charlotte threw the tiniest glance at Ginny, who went black in the eyes.

  “God, Plum, get over yourself,” she said. “Do you have to be such a show-off all the time?”

  Heat flared in my chest. “But you just—”

  “Whatever, Plum!” Ginny threw up her hands. “It was just a dumb joke. Why do you act like everyone but you is stupid?”

  I gulped, like Ginny had thumped me hard on the back, and looked at Mom. But Mom didn’t seem to have heard. Triumphant, Ginny grabbed the keys from the key basket.

  “Come on, Char. Liebe und Küsse, Mutti.” She ran over and planted a kiss on each of our mother’s cheeks, and then she and Charlotte clip-clopped out the back door, laughing like sleigh bells.

  I blew across the surface of my cocoa, sending little chocolate ripples to the other edge of the mug. Kit mewled and leaped to the floor.

  I didn’t act smarter than everyone else. Did I? I didn’t. I didn’t. Or I did. Maybe I did. Maybe I did, and that in itself was proof of my actual nongenius. No truly smart people make a point of flaunting how smart they are.

  “I think you’re a Jo, Plum.” Mom was picking through the cookie cutters, plucking out only the most non-yuletide shapes: the armadillo, the jack-o’-lantern, the standard poodle. “Maybe Jo by way of Meg. You’re less of a brat than Jo. Hey, speaking of nose pegs, maybe after these cookies, we can try out some face masks. I got samples at Sephora.” She looked up. “Something wrong?”

  “Nothing,” I said. I chewed my lip. “What did Dad used to say about people who didn’t read?” I knew the answer, but I wanted to hear her say it.

  “Oh,” Mom said. “Boring at parties, terrible at crosswords.”

  I sipped my cocoa, sending warmth into my whole body. “Right.”

  “What a snob. Or no, worse.” Mom shook her head, her rolling slowing. “An aspiring snob. Buck was always such a hypocrite.”

  “What?”

  She said it lovingly, smiling. “Oh, your father loved people who didn’t read. When we were just kids, we lived above this sports bar in Somerville—which, by the way, was such a shithole; I think I got a fried mouse in with my mozzarella sticks once, but your father never believed me—and he’d go downstairs and drink beer and eat peanuts and talk to the college kids watching the game until two a.m.”

  “He did?”

  “Of course,” Mom said. “Your father was a huge sports fan. You knew that.”

  I didn’t.

  “We had this fight,” she went on, “because he went out and bought a jersey for . . . I don’t know, whatever team, and I found it when I was doing laundry, and I was furious, because we had a rule that neither of us could spend more than twenty dollars without asking the other one first, and so when I found it, I confronted him, and you know what he said? Oh, I’ve always had that. And he had not always had it! We’d only been in Boston for two months!”

  She paused, theatrically, as if relishing the rare chance to complain about her husband, telling a story she’d thought she’d be telling for the rest of her marriage. I looked into my cocoa.

  “Do we still have it?” I asked.

  “What, the jersey? Why?”

  “Never mind,” I said quickly.

  “I don’t know. You can look for it if you want.” Mom became suddenly intent on her work.

  I didn’t want to. A sports jersey was a pointless reason to open the office. Any reason to open it was pointless, really.

  “What was that place called?” Mom said. “Bumbler’s or Stumbler’s or something. Stub’s?” The dough was now perfect and sandy smooth, a calm continent of butter and sugar. Mom lifted a cookie cutter, then paused. “God, it looks so nice. Almost a shame to cut a big hole in it.”

  “Hark the herald angels si-ing—”

  “No,” I mumbled into my pillow.

  “GLO-RY TOOOO THE NEW-BORN KIIIING.”

  I shoved off all the covers to my bed to find Ginny in her pajamas, hands pressed reverently together in front of her chest, a circle of tinsel jammed on her head.

  “Merry Christmas, Plum,” she said. “We made it.”

  As is customary, we ate cinnamon rolls from a tube and poured orange juice into champagne flutes (Mom’s with actual champagne) and opened the presents I had insisted we not be given.

  “I couldn’t not get my daughters something for Christmas!” Mom tunneled down deeper into the corner of the couch, holding her glass in
the air to avoid spills. “It’s Scroogey. Grinch-like.”

  “Oh boy.” Ginny dumped a bagful of squeezable packets onto the floor. “Sephora samples. However did you know?”

  “Mom.” I set the package in my hand down on the coffee table and shoved away Gizmo and Doug when they immediately trotted over to investigate. “I do not want gifts. I told you.”

  “I know someone who does.” Ginny pulled Kit Marlowe into her lap. “What do you want for Christmas, wittle kitty?”

  “He wants you to leave him alone,” I answered for Kit, and as if on cue, Kit mewled and twisted out of Ginny’s grasp and whisked himself away into the empty library, where no sister could touch him.

  “‘The real present is being together,’” Ginny said squeakily. “‘Cozy and happy and warm in our little house-hole.’”

  Five Little Field Mice at Christmastime was among the treaclier volumes, and Ginny’s twee rodent voice didn’t help things.

  Mom looked put out. “Well, what did you want, Ginny?”

  “Admission to the University of Pennsylvania,” Ginny said, mouse voice gone. “Which I’ve already been granted. So, I don’t know. A new pair of ankle boots.”

  Mom gulped some mimosa.

  “Hello?” A man’s voice echoed in the front hallway in a perfectly timed interruption.

  “In here!” Ginny yelled, so loudly that Mom winced. Almost-Doctor Andrews stuck his head around the corner.

  “Hello,” he said again, and produced a sugared brown loaf of something from behind his overcoat. “Merry Christmas.”

  “Oh, Marcus,” Mom said. “You didn’t have to. I don’t even have a gift for you.”

  “You’ve given me a month’s free rent,” he pointed out. “I think that’s plenty.”

  “What?” Ginny swiveled around to our mother. “When did this happen?”

  Mom sighed. “Thanksgiving, when you were eating your six kinds of pie. Why don’t you just open your present, Plum?”

  Ginny narrowed her eyes, first at my bright-colored package, then at me.