Luv Ya Bunches

by Lauren Myracle

  Modessa nods at Tate-Tate. “Okay, Tate-Tate, let’s do it.”

  She throws Tate-Tate into the air. Tate-Tate goes up, up, up . . . and then down, down, down.

  Splat.

  The class laughs. Modessa is pleased in her cooler-than-thou way.

  “I never said she was any good,” she says.

  “I’d like to see you put a tad more effort into it next time, Modessa,” Ms. Perez says dryly. “Clean up your mess and return to your seat.”

  See? Katie-Rose tells Ms. Perez mentally. Told you she was a bad egg.

  “Who’s next?” Ms. Perez says, scanning the room.

  Katie-Rose’s arm zings back into the air. Her fingers stretch yogalike to the ceiling, as do her eyebrows.

  “Katie-Rose,” Ms. Perez says.

  Katie-Rose hops up and goes to her cubby. Modessa’s back there, too, dumping Tate-Tate’s remains into the trash can. Poor Tate-Tate, Katie-Rose thinks. She didn’t deserve to get Modessa as a trainer.

  Katie-Rose wiggles her backpack out of the cubby, unzips the main portion, and pulls out Potato von Schnitzel-Fritzle (who goes by Carl).

  She makes sure Carl’s little knitted hat (made from a sock) is in place, then grabs his sled (an old toy truck borrowed from Max) and several rubber bands to get him strapped up.

  “Oh my God,” Modessa says, hovering behind her.

  Katie-Rose rolls her eyes. Yes, I put effort into my presentation. Yes, I enjoy school. So?

  Except, the next thing she knows, Modessa is shoving her aside—what the . . .?—and snatching her backpack.

  “Hey!” Katie-Rose exclaims.

  Modessa marches to Ms. Perez’s desk, holding Katie-Rose’s backpack by the top loop like it’s a dead rat. She thunks it on Ms. Perez’s desk.

  “Look inside,” Modessa commands. “Just look.”

  Katie-Rose is baffled. Yasaman glances at her, her expression a question. Katie-Rose lifts her shoulders.

  At the front of the room, Ms. Perez frowns and pulls open the front of Katie-Rose’s backpack. She peers inside.

  What did I do? Katie-Rose wonders. Did I forget to turn something in? Am I not allowed to have gel pens?

  Ms. Perez lifts her head and looks at Katie-Rose, who gets a bad feeling in her stomach.

  “Katie-Rose?” she says in a tone no teacher has ever used with her.

  “Y-yes?” Katie-Rose says.

  Modessa takes over, thrusting her hand into Katie-Rose’s backpack and pulling out a red-and-orange bobble-head turtle. She holds it up for everyone to see.

  “Katie-Rose stole Camilla’s turtle!” she accuses. Katie-Rose’s arms go slack, and she drops Carl and all his equipment. “Katie-Rose is a thief!”

  break, and she and Modessa are off by themselves, and she can’t. Stop. Crying.

  “I just . . .” Milla breaks off. Ack, it’s like she’s some baby who can’t control her own emotions.

  She squeezes her fingers tight around Tally the Turtle. Tally is safe. Tally is back. Tally is solid and real and here in her hand. That’s what she needs to remember.

  Still . . .

  “I don’t understand why,” she says, finally getting the sentence out with only a little wobbling.

  “No one does, sweetie,” Modessa says. The two of them are hiding inside a pink-and-white plastic playhouse, which is against the rules since older kids aren’t supposed to be in the preschool area. But the preschoolers are taking their naps, and the pink-and-white playhouse is the safest place Milla can think of.

  Its refrigerator is stocked with plastic hamburgers and pickles and hot dogs that come out of their buns. There’s no running water, but there’s a sink. There are chunky blue shutters on the windows, and Milla remembers being a preschooler and pushing the shutters open so that the playhouse could serve as a snack shack. Kids would place their orders from outside the window, and Milla would put a cookie or whatever on the thick windowsill and say, “Here you go, ma’am. Would you like some lemonade to go with it?”

  The lemonade was sand scooped into a cup.

  “Obviously, she’s obsessed with you,” Modessa says.

  “Huh?” Milla says. She kinda went into her own world there for a sec.

  “Katie-Rose,” Modessa says, giving Milla a strange look. She stretches her legs out so that they’re flush with Milla’s. Their feet nearly reach the opposite wall of the playhouse.

  “But what I don’t get,” Modessa goes on, “is why she thought stealing your turtle would bring you two closer.”

  Milla doesn’t respond. When Modessa first returned Tally, Tally was cold. Milla sandwiched her in her palms while Modessa relayed the whole sordid Potato Olympics story, and by the time Modessa was done, Tally was warm again and felt almost alive.

  “Katie-Rose has never stolen anything before,” Milla says.

  “That you know of,” Modessa points out.

  “Maybe she just found her,” Milla says. “Maybe she found her and was going to give her back to me, but just hadn’t gotten a chance yet.”

  “Hmm,” Modessa says. She drums her fingers on the playhouse’s pretend-wood floor, which, like the walls, is made of white plastic and doesn’t look like wood at all. “Well, did you see her today? Before Potato Olympics?”

  Milla’s face falls. “In the hall as I was going to class, yeah. And . . .”

  “And what?”

  “And she smiled and said ‘hi.’” She looks at Modessa imploringly. “Why would she be all nice like that if the whole time she had Tally?”

  Modessa opens her mouth, then shuts it and shakes her head. Whatever mean thing she was going to say, she’s bitten it back, and Milla is grateful.

  “Listen,” Modessa says. “The thing is . . .”

  Or maybe she’s going to say it now, Milla thinks.

  “What?” she says.

  Modessa tilts her foot so that her black sandal touches Milla’s white sneaker. “Katie-Rose, she’s always been . . . well . . . a foster friend anyway, right?”

  Milla’s face heats up. Modessa made that term up last year to describe girls who hung around and hung around because they didn’t have friends of their own. Girls you were nice to—girls Milla was nice to—but who just didn’t belong.

  Katie-Rose was more than a foster friend at Pioneer Camp, Milla thinks. More than a foster friend in the computer lab yesterday.

  “I wonder if she just wanted a part of you,” Modessa says. She watches Milla carefully. “Because she wanted to be your friend so bad? And you . . . well, you know. It’s not like you opened up the welcome wagon for her.”

  Milla’s tears start up again.

  “I’m not saying it’s your fault. I’m totally not saying that,” Modessa says.

  “You didn’t want me to be nice to her!” Milla says.

  “I didn’t want her to be a Panda,” Modessa corrects.

  But isn’t that the same thing? Milla wonders. Can you be nice to someone and still have a not-so-secret secret club that you don’t let them into?

  Tears roll down Milla’s cheeks, and she is tangled and confused and lonely and bad.

  Modessa hugs her, which means a lot, because Modessa as a rule doesn’t go for touching. “Milla . . . do you want me to get Katie-Rose back for you?”

  Get Katie-Rose back? Milla thinks foggily. Her brain plays with the words, because they mean such different things depending on how you interpret them.

  Get her back: make her pay.

  Get her back: find her and return her.

  But Milla knows which meaning Modessa has in mind. She sniffles and says, “No. I mean, thanks . . . but no.”

  Modessa awkwardly pats Milla’s shoulder, while Milla holds Tally tight.

  straight to her computer.

  No, that’s not true. As soon as Yasaman gets home

  • and takes off her hijab

  • and fixes Nigar a snack

  • and unloads the dishwasher for her mom

  • and cleans out Blackberry�
��s litter box

  • and starts a fresh load of laundry

  • and serves her mother a small cup of strong Turkish coffee while her mother sinks onto the sofa and allows herself a small break for her soap opera . . .

  After doing all that, then Yasaman marches straight to her computer.

  “Thank you, Yasaman,” her mother calls as Yasaman heads upstairs. “You are my melek.”

  “You’re welcome,” Yasaman calls back.

  In her bedroom, Yasaman powers up her computer. She logs on to BlahBlahSomethingSomething.com and opens her journal. Post an Entry? is one of the options. All riled up inside, she clicks Yes.

  I don’t like mean people, she types. Mean people should go away and never come back. Mean people should remember that there are BIG HORRIBLE THINGS IN THE WORLD ALREADY, like starvation and lost pets and captured soldiers being tortured. They should remember that and not make the world WORSE.

  Yasaman pauses, paralyzed by the awareness of how much she’s saying from her heart. It can be dangerous, speaking from your heart.

  But it can be even more dangerous to turn away from your heart, she reminds herself. Anyway, she’ll set this journal entry to “private,” meaning that she’ll be the only one able to see it.

  Modessa did something bad. She made everyone think Katie-Rose stole Tally the Turtle, but I know Katie-Rose didn’t.

  Yasaman remembers Milla’s tear-swollen face at pickup, how she wouldn’t make eye contact with anyone. She remembers how scared Katie-Rose looked as she said, “Camilla, no, you’ve got to believe me!”

  And then Modessa appeared by Milla’s side, and Quin was right behind her, and they squeezed Katie-Rose out without touching her or talking to her and acknowledging her existence.

  Yasaman repositions her hands over the keyboard.

  I know Modessa had something to do with it, because I heard her and that new girl talking in the bathroom. They were talking about Milla and Katie-Rose. And Tally the Turtle.

  Did Modessa plant the turtle in Katie-Rose’s backpack to frame her?

  Or, wait. Did the new girl do it?!!!

  Maybe . . . but only if Modessa told her to, Yasaman suspects. She flashes back to what she overheard in the bathroom:

  “What worries me is that she’s just not making good decisions,” Modessa said to V. The “she” they were discussing was Milla. “I mean, she was talking to Katie-Rose. She was laughing with Katie-Rose! The very day after Katie-Rose called me . . . what she called me!”

  Yasaman understands why Modessa got mad when Katie-Rose called her “Medusa,” and the possibility of Modessa trying to get revenge doesn’t surprise her. She expected it, to tell the truth. But was Modessa so heartless that she’d blame a robbery on her? Was V so heartless that she’d go along with it—if she had anything to do with it?

  To Yasaman, all interpretations seem ridiculous. Ridiculous and even . . . pathetic, so maybe she has it all wrong. Especially since by blaming Katie-Rose for stealing Tally the Turtle, Modessa wasn’t just hurting Katie-Rose. She was hurting Milla, too. Definitely hurting Milla.

  Yasaman takes a breath.

  Everything Allah created is good, she types. The bad in the world comes from the bad that’s inside humans. From Shaitan, the devil.

  Yasaman’s fingers hover over the keyboard, because there’s more she wants to say. Then she sticks them under her thighs, because saying it—typing it—would make it more real than if she just . . . doesn’t.

  There’s a knock on Yasaman’s door. It’s a politeness knock, since closed doors aren’t allowed in Yasaman’s house.

  “Yasaman?” her little sister says.

  Yasaman clicks Save as Private, puts the computer to sleep so that nothing’s visible on the screen, and swivels in her desk chair.

  “Hey, Nigar,” she says. She forces a smile. “Come on in.”

  Nigar does. She’s so adorable, her almost-four-year-old sister who’s a “big girl now” because she goes to preschool. Her hair is in glossy pigtails tied with pink bows, because Nigar loves bows. Just last night Nigar proudly told Yasaman and her parents that she is known in her preschool class as “the girl who always wears bows.”

  “It’s my trademark,” Nigar said, and their dad laughed. Nigar has beautiful hair, so why not wear bows? She’s not old enough to don a hijab.

  “Will you play with me?” Nigar asks Yasaman now. Nigar’s voice is sad, which sends warning bells dinging and blaring in Yasaman’s head. Nigar is made of sunshine. She’s hardly ever sad.

  “What’s wrong?” Yasaman asks. She pulls Nigar onto her lap. Such a sweet, warm, cinnamon-smelling girl, her sister. “Did something happen at school?”

  “I don’t like Rivendell,” Nigar says.

  “Yes you do. You love Rivendell.”

  Nigar wiggles to get better access to Yasaman’s hair, which she finger-combs. Nigar loves playing with Yasaman’s hair. Yasaman loves it, too. It makes her feel like a chimp having the nits picked out of her fur . . . but in a good way.

  “Nigar?” Yasaman says, regarding her sister from behind the locks of hair Nigar has pulled in front of Yasaman’s face.

  Nigar strokes and separates. Her expression is forlorn. But she doesn’t respond, and Yasaman doesn’t push it. Nigar will speak when she’s ready.

  kitchen. Her mother used to use them when she cooked, which Violet thought was funny. She’d laugh as her mom snipped florets off a head of broccoli, and her mom would laugh, too. “What?” she’d say. “It’s easier than using a knife.”

  But Violet isn’t borrowing (stealing?) the kitchen shears to make a side of steamed broccoli. Anyway, is it “stealing” to take the shears from the kitchen? No. Is it “stealing” to spot a toy turtle in the school hallway, pick it up, and then—eventually—put it back down beneath a sofa cushion?

  Violet hates Modessa for accusing Katie-Rose of being a thief. Hates her. She hates herself, too, for the role she played in letting it happen. If I had just given Tally back to Milla on Monday . . .

  Someone, probably Quin, made a sign today and taped it to Katie-Rose’s locker: IN THE OLDEN DAYS, THIEVES HAD THEIR HANDS CUT OFF, it said.

  Violet checked to make sure no one was watching, then ripped it off and threw it away.

  Now, Violet takes the scissors upstairs to her bedroom. She stands with them in front of her mirror. Why? Because, as a person, Violet sucks. She could have kept all this from happening, but she didn’t . . . and if she’s that ugly on the inside, she might as well be ugly on the outside.

  (stop it. you’re acting crazy.)

  And that’s a surprise?! Craziness runs in your blood, stupid.

  Her mom went crazy, kinda, and now she lives in a nice little ward with nice little locks on the nice little doors. If she earns enough points, she’s allowed out on the nice little lawn to play croquet. If she earns even more points, Violet might get to play croquet with her one day. Happy happy joy joy.

  (miss you so much, Mom. miss you so—)

  Violet slaps her own face. She slaps it hard. She grabs a chunk of her hair, lifts the scissors, and opens the blades. Hungry, hungry hippos, she thinks absurdly.

  “Violet?” she hears. Her dad’s home from work.

  Do it, she tells herself. Her heart pounds. There are fast breaths in her chest.

  “I brought us a home-cooked meal,” her dad says. His feet thump the stairs. “Well, close to home-cooked. I found a place called the Supper Fork. Every day, they whip up something fresh.”

  Do it. Chop off your hair, ugly girl.

  (no)

  “Does lasagna sound good?” her dad asks. He’s at the top of the stairs. He’s almost to the bathroom. “I also got garlic bread and a side of broccoli.”

  LIKE BROCCOLI, SEE? DO IT.

  (no! stop yelling at me!)

  Her dad raps on her door. “Vi?”

  She puts down the scissors and whips around, just as her dad sticks his head in the room.

  “I got chocol
ate lava cake, too,” he says. He grins, strides across the room, and gives Violet a hug. “How does that sound?”

  Violet breathes in the pine tree smell of his after-shave. She squeezes him tight, tight, tight.

  Her dad chuckles. “Wow, you must really be sick of burgers.”

  “I am,” she says. It comes out a little hiccupy, and her dad pulls her closer.

  “Aw, Violet,” he says, all laughter gone. He sways with her in his arms. It’s like being rocked. After a minute, he steps back, takes her chin, and tilts her head.

  “I’m so glad you’re my girl,” he says, and Violet can see it in his eyes, can see his crazy-fierce love for her that will never, ever go away.

  Violet tears up. This is what she needed, she realizes: not to wallow in self-hatred, but to remember that she’s lovable. And if she’s lovable, that means there’s beauty in her somewhere, even if it’s been sort of . . . shriveled up lately.

  Beauty is as beauty does, however. That was something her mom liked to say.

  Violet presses back into her dad’s chest. As he wraps his arms around her, she makes herself a promise: Tomorrow at school, I’ll find a way to make things right.

  the Refresh button for the gazillionth time. Please please please. Yasaman hasn’t been online for the last hour, and if Yasaman’s giving her the silent treatment, too, then Katie-Rose will die.

  A spinning circle appears on the BlahBlahSomethingSomething.com homepage to let Katie-Rose know that, yes, the page is being refreshed. When the spinning circle disappears, the homepage is exactly the same. There is no cheerful message reading, “Yasaman is online!”

  “Ag,” Katie-Rose’s babysitter says. Her name is Chrissy, and she goes to high school with Yasaman’s cousin, Hulya. She’s giving herself a manicure while watching a rerun of Ugly Betty on her own laptop. “Boo. Bad!”

  Dully, Katie-Rose looks over at her. “What’s wrong?” she says.