David? Who is David?
Then I hear: “Hey, Ms. Skeleton.”
David Cole? Sari is talking to David Cole? David Cole is talking to Sari?
“So, how’s it going?”
“Good, cool.”
I am dying to turn around. But I don’t dare.
I hear Sari say, “Doesn’t Ms. Brenner bite?”
“Oh, man, she’s a dog.”
There is more discussion of Ms. Brenners similarity to a dog. (Looks, nasty personality, fleas.) I don’t think this is very fair to Ms. Brenner—or to dogs—but I know that if I say a word, Sari will rip me into tiny pieces and feed me to Ms. Brenner.
Finally, Sari says, “Well, I guess I’ll see you around.”
And David says, “Yeah, you might.”
And then he’s gone.
For a few seconds, I stare into my locker, trying to figure out what just happened here.
Finally, I turn around and say, “Sari?”
She’s staring down the hall, even though David is long gone. When I say her name again, she hisses, “Shh.”
“Sari? What is going on?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Without me, she starts walking, running down the stairs like she’s late for something. Except school’s over and there’s nothing to be late for.
I race after her, follow her out of the building.
For two blocks, Sari walks straight ahead, pretending like she doesn’t even know I’m there. I fall in step next to her, pretending like nothing weird is going on. Then, when we are far enough away from Eldridge for it to be safe, I say, “Don’t tell me you like David Cole.”
“I don’t.”
“You can’t like David Cole.”
“I don’t like’ David Cole.”
“Yes, you do. And you can’t because he’s with Thea Melendez.”
“I don’t like’ David Cole,” says Sari stubbornly. “I am madly, psychotically in love with David Cole.”
I stop. Don’t even think about it, just … stop dead. And stare.
I do not have a clue what to say.
When your best friend tells you she is madly, psychotically in love with one half of the longest-running official couple in the school, what can you say? Do you point out that David is a senior and Thea is a senior and that Sari is seriously outranked? Do you remind her of the time David presented a dozen roses to Thea in the middle of class? Do you recall how Thea sang “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” directly to David at the Winter Wonder show?
People don’t even laugh at David and Thea when they do these things. People think it’s nice, romantic. That’s how much of a couple they are.
David and Thea are gods. Acknowledgment of beings as low as we is strictly forbidden.
Finally I say, “I don’t get it.”
Sari sighs, flops her arm in the air. “Get what?”
“The point of being in love with David Cole. I don’t get it.”
“Love doesn’t have a point,” says Sari. “It just is.”
“But David is madly, psychotically in love with Thea.”
“That’s what you know,” snaps Sari.
Why is that what I know but not what Sari knows? That’s what I want to know.
I ask her, and she says, “I’m not just going to blurt out the details of my personal life to you.”
Okay, now I want to scream. I want to say, Why not? Why is now so different from all those other times you made me listen to every single detail of your oh-so-precious personal life? Why is suddenly talking to me the worst, stupidest thing you could do?
But in the end, all I say is, “Well, gee, then I guess I’ll just have to go slit my wrists, I’m so disappointed.”
“Oh, please.” Sari sighs.
Sari is my best friend in the whole world. She is the greatest person in the world. But sometimes it’s a problem: Sari thinking that she has a life and that I don’t.
Only because we have been friends forever, we keep walking.
A few blocks later, Sari says, “I’m sorry.”
I shrug. “It’s okay.” Meaning: I could not care less. Hence you have not hurt me. Hence I don’t care if you apologize or not.
“No, it’s just … I’ve never felt like this before, and I’m really freaked out.”
I glance over at her; she looks upset. I nod, a sign she can go on.
“It’s intense,” she whispers.
“Uh-huh.”
“I don’t know what to do.”
I’m about to say, There isn’t anything to do. David’s with Thea, but I stop myself in time.
That’s the reality.
But I don’t think Sari wants to hear that right now.
5
—Hollow Planet: Desert of Souls “Talk.” Listening to the chatter, Rana raged inside. All these creatures ever did was talk. As if talk were action, as if talk were food. As if simply by talking about it, you could make it so.
Here’s another thing I want to know: Who thought up the idea of having midterm exams around the holidays? It totally sucks. How can you get into the Christmas spirit with doom and disaster hanging over your head?
There are only twenty-three days until Christmas. Only twelve days until my first midterm.
I have not bought a single present. I have not studied for a single second.
Here’s what I have done: listen to Sari talk about David.
If you think it’s easy being the best friend of a woman who’s madly, psychotically in love, think again.
Every day, I get a David update. Did Sari see David or did she not see David? If she did see David, where did she see him? Did they speak, did they not speak? If they did not speak, was it because he was with Thea? And if they did speak, then it’s a five-hour session in which every word, every syllable, is dissected for some hidden meaning that says, Sari, I love you passionately. Be mine.
Sometimes I wish we were back to when Sari wouldn’t tell me a thing about it.
I don’t know about Sari, but I’m not sure that I can survive this obsession. I am in danger of going deaf. My neck is tired from nodding. My vocabulary has shrunk to “Uh-huh” and “I can totally see that.”
Like, right now, my arm is in serious danger of withering and falling off. Why? Because Sari is gripping it like she’s hanging off a cliff and her life depends on it.
David Cole has just come into the lunchroom. Sari’s following him with her eyes, like she can force him to look at her through sheer willpower.
She whispers, “Here, look over here. …”
But David doesn’t look over here. Instead he goes over to “his” table, the big one in the corner where the soccer crowd hangs.
And sits down right next to Thea.
Sari drops her eyes, tries to pretend she wasn’t watching. So she misses David giving Thea a huge kiss on the neck.
To me, David and Thea still look like they’re the official couple of Eldridge Alternative. Of course, as Sari said, that’s all I know.
She still hasn’t told me the reason she knows any different.
And what I’m worried about is that there isn’t any reason. That Sari’s got an enormous crush on a guy who barely knows she’s alive.
David’s a senior. He goes out with Thea Melendez. Why would he want to date Sari?
Sari and I are supposed to be studying for exams right now. But forget it now that David is here. Sari’s got her math book open, but she keeps looking up to see if David’s looking at her.
Guess what? He’s not.
Well, I’ve lost Sari as a study partner, so I might as well get started. I get out my notebook. Just then, Erica Trager and her little crew invade the table next to ours. Erica, of course, is talking nonstop in this obnoxious voice, like everyone in the lunchroom just has to hear what she has to say.
“The units are going to be away.” (“The units” is Erica’s oh-so-cute term for her parents.) “So it’s going to be the most amazing New Year’s party ever. I’m having ev
erybody come….”
I could not care less about Erica’s amazing New Year’s party. So I put my hands over my ears and stare down at my notebook. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice Sari still looking over at David. It’s been three days since the last David sighting, a week and a half since he said “Hey” to her in the stairwell.
And that was after we spent twenty minutes waiting for him to pass by so Sari could “accidentally” bump into him.
She looks so sad, I can’t stand it.
I put down my pen. “You know what? I need to do some serious present buying.”
This gets her attention. Sari loves shopping. She says, “Me too, totally.”
“Want to go this weekend?”
Sari nods. “Absolutely. Only, when I get your present, you’ll disappear, right?”
I grin. “Same for you.”
Then she asks, “Do you think I should get something for him?”
“Who?”
“Him.” Saris annoyed. Like with a billion Hims in the world, I should just know who she’s talking about.
The sick thing is, I do.
I shake my head. “No.”
“How come?”
I don’t know what to say. I mean, if Sari doesn’t know why she shouldn’t go around buying presents for other people’s boyfriends, I don’t want to be the one to break the bad news.
Instead, I say, “Well, what would you get him?”
Sari frowns over at the other table, where Thea is getting up. “I don’t know. It has to be something cool, but something he cannot show Her.”
That’s another thing that’s happened since Sari fell madly, psychotically in love with David: Thea is no longer Thea. She is now the evil Her.
I ask Sari if 10:00 is too early to start shopping. She says that’s good.
So we leave it at that.
Actually, I’m hoping not to buy Sari’s present. What I would really like is to give her that portrait of her I started on the last Saturday before school.
One small problem: I have done no work on it whatsoever.
That afternoon, in art class, I get out her picture and stare at it. I don’t see how I’m going to be able to give it to her in a few weeks. It’s a squiggle, that’s all it is. I don’t even see what I was thinking when I made it.
I hate it when something I do is no good.
I’m trying to decide if I should rip it up and start all over again when Stella Rothstein stops by my stool and looks over my shoulder.
All she says is, “Hmm.”
Which, of course, is code for: This sucks.
I haven’t decided yet what I think about Stella Rothstein. She has her pluses and minuses. A definite minus is that she wears these long, floaty skirts that are just too Look, I’m an ARTIST for words. But so far, she doesn’t act like that. She doesn’t gush like some art teachers I’ve had; in fact, she doesn’t talk a whole lot. Like the first time she had us work on the vanishing point, I drew this corridor and filled it with blood-soaked demons. She gave that one a “Well” with a nod. Which, I think, meant she liked it.
Now she’s frowning down at my picture of Sari like she’s trying to figure it out.
“It’s a portrait,” I say, helping her. “The beginning of one.”
“Okay.” She nods once, doesn’t take her eyes off the picture.
I fight the impulse to put my arm over the drawing. I expected Ms. Rothstein to sort of laugh, say, Okay, this is a … nose? A leg, what? But she’s taking it seriously, and for some reason, that’s freaking me out.
Finally I tell her, “I don’t think it’s very good.”
“All right. How come?”
Because it’s obviously not, I want to say. Instead, I say, “It doesn’t look like anything.”
“What do you think it should look like?”
“Like the person.”
Ms. Rothstein sticks her tongue in her cheek, rocks her head from side to side. “So, what does the person look like?”
“Well, she’s got a face, for one thing.”
“Yeah, okay. What does she look like?”
I stare at the picture for a long moment. “I can’t totally remember.”
Ms. Rothstein is about to say something when Carey Phillips calls out a question from the other side of the room. Saying she’ll be back, she goes off to help him.
She doesn’t come back. And I don’t do anything else with Sari’s portrait, except decide I’m going to have to get her a present after all.
But at the end of class, when everyone else is gone, she says, “Know what I’d do with that one?”
No one has ever told me what to do with my drawings before. “What?”
“I’d put it aside. Let it sit.”
I nod. Ms. Rothstein starts gathering up pens and brushes and putting them back in their jars.
She says, “You know, I’m teaching a class next semester on portraiture. You should sign up for it.”
I nod. I am definitely going to try and get into that class.
The night before our big shopping expedition, I make out my list. It’s pretty short this year, which is good because I have no money.
Here’s my list:
DAD-Big new book on Vietnam.
MOM-New Tracy Chapman CD
NOBO-Pup Pops in assorted flavors.
SARI-“Women Who Love Men Who Don’t Love Them”
I don’t think I’ll really have the guts to get Sari that book. But I like to think I will.
At 9:30 in the morning, as I take the bus to meet Sari downtown, I am totally psyched.
By 11:00 I am totally frustrated.
Sari mopes all through the first store while I buy my dad’s book. Then she sighs and droops all around Pet Palace. She won’t even help me decide if I should get Nobo a grape-flavored Pup Pop or a peanut-butter flavored one.
When we leave Pet Palace, I say, “Okay, where to?”
Sari shrugs.
Clearly, I have no choice. If I want Sari to behave like a living, sentient being, there’s only one thing to do.
So I do it. “You want to look for something for Lord God Cole?”
Sari’s eyes light up. “Can we?”
I nod. Deranged with excitement, Sari drags me off to one of those trendoid gadget places. You know the ones, where they have voice-operated electric can openers for a thousand bucks.
Nothing in this place costs less than fifty dollars. As we wander past the glass cases, I think she can’t really be thinking of spending all that money on David Cole. He’ll laugh in her face.
Unless, unless … she knows he won’t. But how can she know that?
Because I want to find out just how crazy she is, I point to a watch that costs five hundred dollars and say, “That’s cool.”
Sari wrinkles her nose. “Yeah, but he’d have to hide it from Her.”
As we wander over to the stereo department, I say, “Sar? Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Did you and David …?” Argh, how do I put this? “Did something happen at the Halloween dance?”
Sari doesn’t say anything. She just stares at the stereos. Meanwhile, my mind is reeling with possibilities. What can I say? I have this very lurid imagination.
“Sari?”
“No. I mean—” She stops, like she’s trying to decide what really did happen. “Nothing happened happened. But something happened.”
I nod like this makes total sense.
“I mean, all we did was talk.”
I nod again, feeling like some creepy talk-show host. I half expect to see under Sari’s head: SHE’S IN LOVE WITH ANOTHER WOMAN’S MAN.
“But … I don’t know. I don’t know how to explain it. He was talking about how people have these expectations of you, these preconceived notions of who you are, and how that can be really limiting.”
“And he was talking about Thea.”
“Well, yeah, I thought so. She wants them to get engaged before they go to college. H
ow sad can you be?”
“And did he say he liked you?”
Sari gives me this look. “It was kind of obvious.”
In the end, we don’t find anything for David Cole. Everything’s either not cool enough or so cool that Thea would notice it. By this time, I am so exhausted, I keep checking my pulse to see if I still have one. On the bus, I hold my shopping bags in my lap and wonder if I can fall asleep on them.
We are halfway home when Sari asks, “Are you going to Erica Trager’s New Year’s party?”
Now it’s my turn to give her a look. “Yeah, right after I gouge my eyes out with a fork. Are you kidding?”
I hate Erica Trager. Which means I don’t spend a lot of time in her company. Which means there are a million things I’d rather do—like tiptoe across nails—than go to her party.
All of which Sari knows. So why is she asking me if I’m going to Erica Trager’s party?
“Because I’m going,” she says. “And I want you to come with me.”
“Why?”
“Because …,” she starts, then sighs. “Look, never mind why—just come. Please?”
She’s staring at me, waiting for my answer.
I say, “David Cole will be at this party.”
Sari says, “Ye-ah,” in that voice I hate, the voice that says, I know all about the world and you don’t.
“That’s why you want to go.”
Sari nods.
“I have to see him alone,” she says urgently. “Away from school … away from Her.”
“But won’t Thea be there?”
“She’s going to be in Florida to see her grandparents. Please come, please.” Sari’s grabbing my arm. For a weird moment, it feels like she’s going to cry. “I can’t let this not happen. This is so important to me.”
I want to tell her she doesn’t need me, that I’m totally irrelevant here, that probably seeing her with me will be enough to put David Cole off for life.
But I know what she means. You need your friends when you’re doing the riskiest thing you’ve ever done.
Besides, after the Halloween disaster, I did sort of promise Sari I might go to a party with her.
I say, “I have to ask my parents.”
Sari shrieks with happiness. “No, you don’t. Just tell them you’re staying over at my house.”
I can’t do that. I don’t know why not, I just can’t. It’s not that I’m so afraid of getting caught. It’s just that I don’t like to lie to my parents. I have a few times, and it always feels like there’s something bad between us, like we’re living in different worlds.
The True Meaning of Cleavage Page 5
