Let Me Fix That for You

by Janice Erlbaum

  Harry is too busy phrasing his question to catch this wordless exchange, and I am too oblivious to stop him from asking it. “I mean, I thought maybe … I was wondering … Will you go to the spring dance with me?”

  Oh, no. Oh, no no no no no no no. Oh, please, God, don’t let Harry like me. PLEASE. Please don’t make me hurt his feelings like this. Please don’t let me lose one of the few friends I’ve got. And—oh, dear God—please don’t tell me he was trying to ask me to the dance at Agnes’s science fair, when I walked away before he could finish his sentence.

  I haven’t said a word, but the look on my face must say it all, because I can see the disappointment on Harry’s.

  “Never mind,” he says, blushing furiously as he stands to leave.

  “Wait, Harry…” He pauses to hear me out, but I can’t finish my sentence. Wait for what? For me to fall in love with him? For me to want to go on a romantic date with anybody ever? For time to go backward, so I can run away with my hands over my ears before he asks me out?

  Harry turns away. “Forget it. This was a mistake.” He doesn’t look back as he walks off to his ride.

  I want to go after him, but I know there’s no use. I bury my face in my hands and press the heels of my palms into my eyes and watch the shifting lights and shadows. If only there were someone I could go to who could fix this problem, the way people come to me.

  Taye is the first thing I see when I open my eyes. He’s coming toward me with I need another favor on his face, looking around to make sure nobody’s paying attention as he approaches. I stand to walk away, but he’s already in front of me.

  “Hey,” he says. “I need a—”

  Yeah, you can stop right there. Unless you need an I don’t care—I have plenty of those!—I can’t help you. I’m done for the day. The doctor is out. The store is closed. Cerrado. It’s time for me to get on my bus.

  “Not now,” I say, brushing past him.

  Yet Taye follows me. “But I—”

  Nope. “Not now,” I repeat, louder this time.

  “But—”

  ARGH. Is not now hard to comprehend? Can Taye only hear things when cheerleaders say them? Because I will spell it out for him, dance squad–style. N to the O to the T! N to the O to the W!

  “NOT. NOW. TAYE.”

  My raised voice causes a few looks.

  There’s a flash of panic in Taye’s eyes, then he backs away from me, wrinkling his nose like, Ew, Glad. “Fine, then. Freak.”

  Someone nearby laughs, and it hits me like a punch in the stomach. Taye has just been upgraded from “not now” to “not ever.”

  I go straight to the bus, slip gratefully into a seat by the front, and let my head rest against the window. Once again, people are outside in little clusters, laughing with their friends, and I’m hiding here on the bus alone, because I’m a freak.

  I keep my head against the window as the bus leaves, and it stays there for the whole ride home. Izzy, Taye, and the other sportsballers have a game today, so the bus is only half-full, and it’s quiet enough to think. Quiet enough to hear Taye’s voice saying over and over in my head: freak.

  Everything’s telling me it’s time to get out of the game. It’s not worth the trouble anymore. Schellestede’s on my case, Madison’s gone bonkers, Sophie’s made me an accessory to her crimes, and I’m losing my appetite for other people’s problems. Even worse, I might be losing my touch. I spent literally hours working on a plan to keep Harry from getting hurt at school. And then I turned around and hurt him.

  Hurting Harry—that’s the worst part. I hear Taye’s voice, but I see Harry’s face, turning away from me. Forget it. This was a mistake. Yeah. Mistakes are all I make these days. As hard as I tried, I didn’t make things better for my friend at all. In fact, I actively made things worse. And now I’ve lost the closest thing I had to a partner in crime.

  Some help I am.

  22

  Tuesday Morning

  Dad is in way too good a mood today:

  1.  He’s been singing, and not just in the shower.

  2.  ALL MORNING.

  3.  It’s that corny old song called “Walking on Sunshine.”

  He continues to hum at the breakfast table, in between slurping his coffee. “Hmmmm hmmm hmmm.” Sssslllluurrppp. “And don’t it feel GOOD!” Ssssslllluuuurppp. Mabey looks like she’s going to strangle him. I’m happy that Dad’s happy, but I hope he’s done singing by the time Izzy gets here.

  Mabey flat-out asks him: “Why are you so happy today?”

  Dad puts down his tablet, pleased by the question. “’Cause I look so good in my new clothes. Look, these are my black ‘skinny jeans.’ I can dress them up with a blazer and tie, or I can be casual in them.” He gets up and strikes a catwalk pose. “See?”

  He’s making fun of himself and the whole fashion-makeover thing, but I can tell he is also kind of proud of his outfit. He does look better without the enormous pleated khakis. He looks like a TV dad. Sophie’s right, the sweater-vest makes his shoulders look broader, and the tailored shirt underneath makes him look less stuffy.

  “Which reminds me, I need my hat.” Dad hops up the stairs to his room, singing all the way.

  Mabey and I look at each other, mystified. “Okay,” Mabey says quietly. “I know he likes his new clothes, but what is up with the singing?”

  “I have no idea.” I shrug.

  Agnes has a hypothesis: “I think he’s going to ask out Ms. Rivera.”

  My leg starts jiggling uncontrollably under the table.

  “What?” Mabey hisses, outraged. “That’s stupid, why would you say that?”

  Agnes scowls at the word stupid and answers the question in her haughtiest manner. “Well, for one thing, last night he asked me a bunch of questions about her, like how old she is, whether she has kids…”

  I knew this was going to be a problem. I called it. Agnes should have helped me torpedo their conversation on Saturday, but she was too busy being a gumball mogul. And she sounds pretty unconcerned now, as she continues.

  “And then he said he was going to pick me up from school today instead of Baxter. I think he’s going to ask her then.”

  Yeah, Agnes isn’t sounding nearly as upset as she should, but Mabey makes up for it by being extra-upset. “No way,” says Mabey, teeth clenched. Her leg joins mine at the under-table jiggle party. “He can’t.”

  I hope Mom gets her plane ticket soon.

  Dad’s singing gets closer as he comes down the stairs. He re-enters the kitchen with his new hat sitting at a rakish angle on his head. “This is called a trilby,” he informs us. “Not a fedora. See, it’s got a narrower brim.” He steps back into the hall to check himself out in the mirror.

  “It looks dumb,” mutters Mabey. She slinks away to her room to get her stuff.

  Agnes puts her dishes in the dishwasher and goes to the hall for her shoes and coat. “I like it,” she offers.

  “Thank you,” says Dad, frowning at his own reflection like a tough guy, then raising one eyebrow. He leans in to see his beard better, running a hand over it like he’s rethinking its presence on his face.

  If this makeover gets Dad to shave his beard, it will be worth all the trouble I’ve gone through for Sophie.

  Correction: the trouble I continue to go through for Sophie.

  Finally, Dad tears himself away from the mirror, and he and Agnes depart for her school. “Bye, love you, Mabes Babes!” he calls on the way out the door. “Bye, love you, BunBun!”

  I am so grateful Izzy missed that.

  She didn’t miss it by much. A minute later, Izzy arrives, clutching her cloak around her like Little Fleece Riding Hood. I don’t know how she runs from her place to mine in girly shoes while wrapped in a blanket, but I bet it’s an extraordinary sight. The local kids are going to grow up telling campfire stories about the blue-and-maroon ghost who traveled swiftly over the land after sunrise.

  “Hey,” huffs Izzy, breathless from her worko
ut, as I let her in. “Thanks again for letting me do this.”

  She follows me upstairs to my room and drops her cloak. Today’s blouse is somehow even pinker than yesterday’s, and the skirt is an eggy yellow with tulips on it. I want to look away in self-protection, but I’m mesmerized by the horror.

  “I KNOW,” she says, seeing my face.

  Oops. “Sorry.”

  She sighs, grabbing a sweatshirt and jeans. “Not as sorry as I am.”

  I avert my eyes while she changes her clothes, looking around my side of the room. I try to see it through Izzy’s eyes and I cringe. I’m so basic and boring, with my alphabetized books, my shoes all lined up neatly in a row.

  “Look at you in Disney World.” Izzy’s finished changing, and she’s looking at an old photo on my bulletin board—me, Mabey, and Agnes posing in front of the castle, wearing ridiculous hats. I curse myself for overlooking it when I was purging my room of kiddie stuff. “Wow.” She looks from the picture to me to the picture. “You look so different here.”

  I sincerely hope I’m not turning red. “Yeah. I was eight. And wearing a princess hat.” I take a step toward the door, ready to leave, but Izzy lingers in front of the bulletin board.

  “No, I mean, you look so happy.” Now she’s looking at a picture of the five of us, taken in Grandma June’s backyard, all of us smiling hugely. I’m definitely taking those pictures down ASAP. In fact, let’s get rid of the whole bulletin board. “You never smile like that. You’re always so intense.”

  Intense. I wonder if that’s good or bad.

  Izzy tries to clarify it. “You’re, like, always really focused. Instead of being social, or whatever. You don’t ever just hang out with people. You gotta hang out more.”

  Trust me, I want to hang out. Izzy is so effortlessly popular, she thinks popularity is easy to come by. Like I could be just as popular as her if I chose to be. “People don’t invite me to hang out.”

  She tears herself away from the bulletin board and begins packing up her tulip-covered clothes. “That’s because they’re scared of you.”

  My eyes bug halfway out of their sockets. Izzy has got to be kidding. The only scary thing about me is my morning breath. “Scared of me?”

  “Yeah,” she says, with an implied no duh. “Why are you surprised? You know everything about everybody. You could tell other people their secrets anytime you want.”

  I grimace, nauseated by the very idea. If I gave away people’s secrets, they would all get in trouble, and they would all hate me forever—the exact opposite of what I’m going for. “I would never.”

  “And you have this way of coming up with ideas nobody else would think of,” Izzy continues. “It’s almost spooky. Like when you told me to get clothes from the thrift store to fake out my grandma—how did you even think of that?”

  To be honest, I don’t really know how I think of these things. I’ve been doing it for so long, it feels automatic to me. People come to me with a problem, I concentrate for a few minutes, and I come up with an idea. Izzy’s right—it is almost spooky.

  So I shrug and mumble, “I dunno. Anyway, we should probably get going…”

  Izzy changes the subject as we walk to the bus. Now she’s raving about this video game called Kill War or Death Murder or Homicide Assault or something. “And when you run a guy over with your tank, it’s like a tube of toothpaste: He bulges, and his guts squish right out of his mouth…”

  She continues her bloodthirsty ramblings until the bus comes, then she gets on and throws a few punches at her jackweed friends on her way down the aisle. When she sits next to Jackson, she lifts one butt cheek and rips a massive, burbling fart.

  “FAIRY DUST!” she yells, as everyone nearby pulls the neck of their shirt over their nose to block the stench.

  And that, apparently, is what it takes to be popular.

  23

  Tuesday After School

  This school day would not end. It was eternal. You know how every year of a dog’s life is supposed to be equal to seven human years? Every hour of this day was equal to seven human years. By fourth period, I felt like I was in my forties.

  I couldn’t even look at Harry all morning—meanwhile, Madison couldn’t stop looking at me. At one point, she caught my eye and actually dragged her finger across her throat, which I’m pretty sure is against our school’s aardvark-enforced anti-bullying policy.

  At lunch, I hid in an unlocked classroom, lights off, alert for the sound of potential intruders. I needed to be alone. Every time I saw Rebba-Becky Lewis, or anybody else who looked like they wanted a favor, I ducked, and when I noticed Taye coming toward me between classes, an apologetic look on his face, I casually walked backward into the girls’ room.

  Sophie’s the only one I spoke to. We rendezvoused by the third-floor teachers’ bathroom before eighth period. After another fruitless night trying to think of get-cash-quick schemes, I’d come to the conclusion that she could either (a) try to sell one of her kidneys on eBay or (b) confess to her mom and ask her to front the money.

  “Your mom will forgive you,” I argued. “You know she will. And it’s better than being arrested.”

  But I couldn’t get Sophie to save her own neck. Yesterday in the resource room, I thought she and I had come to an understanding; today she was back to living in her dream world, where she hadn’t done anything wrong. She drew back at the word arrested and made a face like I was being overdramatic. “It’ll be fine,” she said, giving my arm a reassuring pat. “Mistakes happen, the bank could’ve lost it, you never know…”

  Mistakes happen? Seriously? That was her strategy now? “Sophie. Banks don’t lose people’s money. When you put money in an account, it stays there.”

  She rolled her eyes as though I was being difficult. “Well … what if someone raided my account? Like identity theft?”

  I couldn’t even begin to list the ways in which this idea was terrible. And her sudden change in attitude was baffling. Why was she acting like this was no big deal? She was days away from getting in massive trouble. I was sweating several buckets over the punishment she was going to face. How could she be so cool about it?

  “There you are!”

  Carolina appeared at Sophie’s side, giving me a big fake smile. (Hers, BTW, is not the kind of fake smile where you’re actually trying to fool the other person. Hers is a “look at my fake smile” fake smile.) She took Sophie’s arm in hers. “What are you talking to her for?”

  “Decorating,” said Sophie casually. She waved her fingers at me to say goodbye, and Carolina led her away.

  * * *

  Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinally. It’s 3 p.m. I don’t want to deal with anybody who might be looking for me outside, so I don’t go straight for my bus—I dawdle for a while after my last class, lingering in Mr. Radford’s room, taking a long time to pack up my stuff. I get my coat from my locker, and I’m just closing the lock when I see our music teacher, Mr. Gerber, walking straight toward me.

  I don’t know why Gerber would be coming for me, but I can see from his pace that it isn’t good. My heart starts knocking against my rib cage like it’s trying to get out.

  Gerber stops, forehead furrowed, floppy hair sticking with sweat. “Gladys, have you seen Jasmine this afternoon?”

  Knock knock, says my heart, but this is no joke. There is no good reason for Gerber to ask me about Jasmine’s whereabouts. I’m not in the band. I’m not friends with Jasmine. I barely know the girl. I’m just the one who came up with her excuses.

  “No,” I squeak. “Sorry.”

  “She didn’t text you?” he asks impatiently.

  BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG. My heart is now a prisoner banging its metal cup against the bars of my ribs. “No.”

  I hold my phone out to him in case he wants to check, but he doesn’t take it. I wish he would. It’s true: I haven’t seen or heard from Jasmine today. She hasn’t texted me, today or any other day. But I’d still fail a lie-detector test, that’s how scared and
guilty I feel. They wouldn’t even be able to stick the sensors to my skin, I’m sweating so much.

  “So you have no idea where she is right now.” His arms are folded and his expression is dubious. Like everyone else in school, I usually don’t take Gerber that seriously, but he is scaring the actual crap out of me right now.

  I stumble on my words. “H-honestly, n-no, I haven’t seen her. Last time I talked to her was … Thursday morning.”

  Thursday morning, when she needed another emergency excuse for missing band. When she seemed nervous for no reason, and I got a bad feeling about it. Well, that bad feeling is back, and it brought a bunch of friends, and I am now hosting several very bad feelings at once.

  Gerber gives me more side-eye, but I think he can tell I’m sincere. If I knew where she was right now, I would be telling him, that’s how freaked out I am. I want to ask, Is Jasmine in trouble? But the answer is all too obvious.

  “If you see or hear from her,” says Gerber before walking away, “tell her to get to practice today or she’s cut from the band.”

  I stand there in the hall for a minute while my stomach threatens to send my half-digested lunch back up through my esophagus. I need to go catch my bus and ride far away from where I am currently standing, but my concrete legs don’t want to move. It’s only the sound of Ms. Schellestede’s voice coming down the hallway that gets me to spring into action and sprint outside and across the courtyard, throwing myself through the bus door just in time for its departure.

  I can’t catch my breath for the whole ride home, and it’s not just the sprint that has me winded. It’s the pressure. I can’t take it anymore. After my chat with Mr. Gerber, I’m afraid Jasmine might be in real trouble. I know Sophie is. And I’ve been mixed up in their trouble. Which means that some of it could splash back onto me.

  Did I get transported into Izzy’s war game somehow? Because right now, it feels like there’s a tank rolling over me and all my guts are getting squished out like toothpaste.