Читать книгу The Summer List - Amy Doan Mason - Страница 11

4

The Machine

September 2

Casey and I did walk to school together the first morning, just like my mother had commanded back in June. We arranged to meet at the gazebo in the park at 7:45, and everything about it felt strange.

It was strange to see Casey on land. It was strange to see her in jeans. It was strange to see her with her hair brushed.

When I walked over I found her using a stick to pick a tile from the crumbling old mosaic inside the gazebo. “A little first-day-of-school gift for you,” she said, handing me the small green square. “For good luck.”

“Thanks.” I dropped it in my pocket, next to my Ziploc.

We walked up the shoulder of East Shoreline Road to town, Casey kicking pinecones and chattering, asking about every backpacked kid we saw on the way, me dragging my feet and answering in monosyllables.

Her whispered questions started out genuine. “Are they a couple? Is that girl on the bike a freshman?”

When we were so close we could see the brick and white plaster of CDL High through the pines, she finally picked up on my death-row vibe and tried to make me laugh.

About a pasty guy in a skull T-shirt taking last-minute drags off his cigarette—“That’s the school nurse, right?”

About a sour-looking teacher in the parking lot wearing an ankle-length black skirt and a curious, drapey gray cardigan—“Ooh, I like the cheerleading uniforms.”

I could manage only a tight smile.

I’d dressed carefully, in a denim skirt and my blue peasant shirt. As we walked up the broad brick steps together, surrounded by keyed-up, tanned kids, I tucked my blouse in and tugged it out for the hundredth time.

“You look great,” Casey said. “Don’t be nervous.”

“I’m not nervous.”

“Yes, you are. You’re petrified. I’m the new girl. I’m the one who’s supposed to be nervous.”

Then, too soon, we were in the auditorium with the entire school—240 students. A puny enrollment by California standards, but we could still barely hear each other. We had to get our locker assignments and ID pictures, and I was a C and Casey was an S, so our lines were on opposite sides of the room.

“Meet me outside the cafeteria at lunch?” she shouted.

I nodded. We only had two classes together. PE and study hall, both in the afternoon.

Casey started to walk toward the R through Z line. But then she turned back to me and whispered, leaning close, “Is it your boobs?”

“What?”

“Is that what they tease you about?”

“What do you...”

She kept her voice low as the wave of kids parted around us. “You always hunch. You wear those baggy old-man T-shirts instead of a bathing suit. I know you hate school, you’ve been dreading it all summer, and you won’t talk about it. So is that it? Or is there more?”

I managed to look down at my extra-blousy blouse and say, “They don’t help.”

She didn’t laugh. She just squeezed my wrist and said, “I’ll kick their asses if they mess with you. See you at lunch.”

I nodded and let the other kids pour in between us, so relieved I could have cried.

And the morning went fine. My ID picture came out pretty. Not one person called me Sister Christian. Even Pauline, who was of course a frosh cheerleader, was in a big pond now, with diluted influence, and seemed to be more interested in trying to get attention from the upperclassmen than messing with me. We had English together but she ignored me for the whole fifty-five minutes.

I was not Carrie, the hopeless freak with the bible-banging mother. I’d never been close. And by third period I was a little mad that I’d let an idiot like Pauline get to me for so many years.

By fourth period I was almost relaxed.

Then I found out about the rally.

I was in fifth period Spanish, happily conjugating sports verbs (to kick, to run, to swim), when Mr. Allendros said, “Tiempo para ir al gimnasio.”

Time to go to the gym.

It was still half an hour until the lunch bell, so I thought it was part of the lesson until the sophomores started getting up. The other freshmen looked as clueless as me, but we all stood and filed out the door.

“What’s going on?” I said to the girl behind me in the packed hall.

“Pep rally,” she said, her notebook knocking my elbow as she got jostled from behind. “Sorry.”

So I was swept along to the gimnasio, feeling far from peppy.

I hunted in the bleachers for a flash of red hair but I couldn’t find Casey, so I gave up and sat near the door in the first row, hoping I’d at least catch her on the way out. For something called a rally, it was pretty tedious. Announcements about elections, and football tickets, and a fund-raiser over at the skating rink/bowling alley in Red Pine.

And once again, I let myself relax.

Until ten minutes before the lunch bell, when the cheerleaders started pulling kids from the bleachers. There was to be some sort of audience participation to cap things off, and I wished desperately that I’d sat in the top row, far from their perky reach.

They could have targeted the leadership types, but no. They recruited poor Dan Novacek, a boy I’d known since kindergarten who rarely bathed, and Ellie Jacobs, who always wore a fishing cap, and a sweet, gray-bobbed teacher who’d been standing by the exit minding her own business.

Still, I thought I might be safe. The morning had gone okay. I shrank down and sat very still.

But Pauline found me. Pauline, with her new Rachel hairdo and her old taste for cruelty.

She gripped my elbow and I shook her off, smiling wildly, unfocused. But I was pushed, pulled, prodded by others who were relieved they hadn’t been singled out. Until I was onstage.

Not a stage exactly. The gym floor. But it might as well have been the Roman Forum. There were eight of us that the cheerleaders were arranging in various poses. I grasped that we were to act out some sort of cute chain reaction.

I was the first link in the chain. Someone handed me a fake coin the size of a small pizza, made of foam and wrapped in tinfoil. On my left was the teacher, who had to stand with her elbows locked together and her forearms up in a V, making a kind of receptacle. I was to pivot from right to left and set the tinfoil coin in her arms. The teacher/coin slot seemed about as happy about this as I was.

After I gave her the coin she had to shout “Beep” and turn to her left. Dan Novacek, who just for kicks had an inflated inner tube around his waist, had to spin and pat the girl next to him on her head, and she had to toss a football up and catch it. And so on.

When the chain reaction was over the cheerleader at the end yelled, “Go,” and the audience had to shout, “Astros.”

I did my part correctly every time, which wasn’t easy since I was trying to keep my elbows pinned close to my sides to minimize what the bra companies call “wobble and bounce.” The teacher did okay, too, and so did Dan in his inner tube. But the girl down the line kept fumbling the football, and when the crowd half-heartedly yelled, “Astros” the third time, I heard an “Assholes” mixed in.

I wondered where Casey was. Up in the bleachers, pity mixed with revelation. Seeing me clearly for the first time, as a victim. And there was nothing to be done.

We were all rattled, and while the football-tossing girl got it together, two kids at the end of the human contraption kept messing up. So by the fifth time there were almost as many voices yelling, “Assholes” as “Astros.”

It was not how I hoped the day would go.

But as I turned with the weightless coin one more time, praying it would be the last, someone snatched it from my hands.

There was a ripple of confused laughter from the bleachers.

I caught a flash of Irish setter red hair. Casey had stolen the quarter. Casey had mucked up the machine.

She was running around the gym and the crowd was loving it. As if she’d planned it for weeks, she ran to a cluster of basketball players and handed the quarter off to Mitch Weiland, a popular senior. The basketball team never got as much attention as the football team, so this was a stroke of brilliance. He sprinted to the basketball net and inserted the quarter in a gorgeous dunk shot right as the bell rang.

* * *

“What was that?” I said, as Casey and I walked to the cafeteria.

She shrugged. “It was pissing me off. You looked so miserable, it just came to me.”

“You’re crazy.” I smiled.

Later, after Pauline Knowland high-fived Casey on our way to the lunch line, pretending she’d found her improv as hilarious as everyone else, and four juniors asked to sit with us, I whispered, “Thank you.”

“You’d do it for me. We’re best friends, right?”

“Best friends.”