Chapter 18 #2
“That’s all for now, Hattie. Here’s the schedule for that class you’ll need.
” He goes back around his desk, picks up a slip of paper, and hands it to me.
“You can go back to—what class are you in now, math?” He looks at his computer screen.
“You can go back to math.” I hurry out and duck my head past Ms. Wendy, my face burning with the certainty that she knows everything about why I’m there.
The rest of the day passes in a blur. Somehow my automatic pilot systems get me to all the correct classes at all the correct times, but I don’t remember what happens in any of those classes, and I skip lunch because the one thing I do know is that I definitely do not want to talk about it.
Nonetheless, my mind is filled with questions.
What’s happening to the other kids who got caught?
What is going to happen to the play? What will my parents say?
Why are grown-ups always focusing on the wrong things?
Behind it all lurks this sneaking suspicion that the universe hates me.
After all, how long did it give me to feel good about my eyes before it brought new disaster rolling in? Four hours? What a raw deal.
I’m staring blankly into my locker after the dismissal bell, paralyzed by the mystery of what homework I have and what books I’ll need to do it, when I hear a familiar voice greet me. Amanda. I feel like a caged tiger when they finally lift the iron door. I whip around.
“Don’t talk to me. Don’t even say my name.”
Her mouth drops open and then her brow knits together. “What’s up, Hattie?”
My hands ball into fists. All the little anxious what-ifs filling my body are more than happy to gel together into a white-hot rage. “Like you don’t know. Just walk away before I lose it.”
But she doesn’t walk away. Why would she listen to me when she’s clearly set on controlling everything and everybody? She steps closer to me. “Hattie, is this about the ski trip? It sucks, right? But we’re all in trouble. Myself included.”
“So what, then? You had to throw me under the bus, too? I was right about you and Richard. I knew something was off. And this is—what? Revenge for the fact that I got the tiniest piece of his attention? Or was it just for kicks?” My voice gets higher and higher.
I’m screeching by the end of this rant. Somehow I kept it together in Mr. Pinski’s office, but now all that stored-up emotion is rushing out.
And here comes the stupid climax. “I hate you so much!” I blubber like a baby.
Suddenly, I’m aware that all other movement and sound in the hallway has stopped. Everyone is watching. I would be embarrassed if I wasn’t so pissed off.
Amanda is speechless, her body frozen. I guess she didn’t expect a confrontation.
“I knew I couldn’t trust you. I knew it!” I try to say it in a lower register. It comes out like blubbering with a side of growl.
That statement seems to bring her alive. “Whoa, wait a minute—”
“And this is what I get for letting my guard down with you for one second. It’s not fucking fair!
” My hand flails out when I say this and hits the locker door, banging it shut.
Pain shoots through my knuckles and up my arm, and my brain decides that this, too, is something Amanda has done to me.
It’s all her fault, and I can’t stand the innocent expression she’s trying to pull off for another instant.
“Stop it!” I yell in her face, although even I have lost track of what specifically the “it” is by now.
Some of my spit may have flown out of my mouth and touched her skin because she’s backing up and wincing.
I keep moving forward. I want to unload everything onto her, want to push the uncomfortableness of everything out and dump it on her head.
She’s all the way against the wall when someone grabs my shoulder and spins me around. It’s Asha, who has materialized next to me. She entwines her arm tightly with mine and drags me down the hallway, scooping up my backpack with her free hand on the way.
“Sorry, Amanda, Hattie will have to continue this—this mini scene rehearsal another time. I need her for a sec. Great work, though! Very believable.” She bumps the exterior door open with her hip and drags me into the cold, leaving Amanda with her mouth hanging open in the hall.
“My coat is still in my locker,” I protest, reclaiming my arm.
“That’s what you have to say? You just acted like a fool in there in front of half the school and you’re worried about your coat?”
“It’s cold.”
“What’s going on with you lately?” She seems genuinely concerned about me, looking out for me as usual, being a good friend. But I’m too far gone. Her goodness makes me feel ugly.
“What’s going on with me? What about you? I already have one overprotective mother, you know, I definitely don’t need another.” This isn’t fair, she just did me a solid back there, but I want her to back the fuck up a bit because I hate that she’s watching me unravel.
“Are you going for a world record in picking fights or something?” she says.
“Are you sure I’m the one picking the fight here? You grabbed me, remember? And now you’re interrogating me.”
“Hattie, seriously. I swear, if I had some ice water, I would pour it over your head. Snap out of it. Take some deep breaths or something.”
I’m about to tell her not to patronize me, when she looks back from scanning the pickup line. “Anyway, my mom is here,” she says. Her tone softens. “Come home with me. We’ll hang, we’ll talk, we’ll eat enough buttered popcorn to make the world make sense again.”
“I don’t think I can,” I say, my voice still full of misdirected bitterness. If only I could tell her that the person I’m really mad at is myself. Oh, and Amanda. Ha. Can’t forget about her. “I have to go home and deal with my parents.”
I can see Asha’s desire to question me further playing across her face, but she holds back. Instead, she sighs.
“All right, Hatts. I just don’t love this for us.”
“We’re good,” I say. “Sorry. I was out of line.” I’m trying to emulate her maturity, her calm in the face of chaos. I want us to be good, too.
“You know I love you.”
“I know.” I attempt a casual smile like I’m comfortable.
“Okay, warrior. Try not to eviscerate anyone on the way to the bus.” With that, she turns and walks her long-legged walk over to her mom’s Honda Odyssey with the delicate elegance of royalty as the door automatically slides open to receive her.
She is a shining star and I suck. I am a puddle of guilt and regret.
I’ve shut her out, hidden all the things that are making me me right now away from her.
I need to tell her everything. If only I didn’t hate the everything so much.
The key to communicating with my mother is timing.
It is unwise to tell her anything when she’s just woken up and tired, or when she’s going to bed and is tired.
She’s tired, like, a lot. It’s also not advisable to tell her anything when she’s rushed, busy, or hungry.
Or sick. In fact, I’ve found the best time to talk with her is when she’s folding laundry.
The rhythm of it seems to calm her, like she’s meditating or something.
I don’t know when the best time is to tell my dad something because I try not to tell him anything.
He’s too unpredictable, too rigid, too caught up in his own moods.
But my mom seems to have some secret tactics with him, so I tell her all my mistakes and then wait for her to pass them on, like a depressing game of telephone.
That’s the other key to my parents. Avoidance.
The first thing I do when I get home is dump the contents of my hamper into the washing machine with a couple of detergent pods and start the cycle.
Then I unload the dishwasher and wipe down the kitchen counter, hoping to score some extra points.
By the time my mom walks through the door, I’ve already moved my clothes to the dryer.
I put in three dryer sheets, which I know my mom will say is wasteful, but I can’t resist the smell.
When she hears the dryer singing its little “I’m finished” song, she wanders to the laundry room like a mosquito to a porch light. So predictable.
This is the time I’ve so carefully planned; I won’t get a better opportunity.
But I feel like my pink shag carpeting is quicksand.
I have to steel myself the way we do at the beginning of the summer when we’re jumping in the unheated park pool that’s just been filled with freezing water straight from the hose.
They can find out today from you or tomorrow from the principal.
I lurch forward and careen into my parents’ bedroom, where my mom hovers over a mountain of socks and jeans, startling her. She touches her chest to indicate I could have given her a heart attack.
“Where’s the fire?” she asks, recovering.
“Mom, they might cancel the play because some kids were caught smoking weed which breaks the behavior code so they can’t participate and I broke it too with a beer so you or Dad need to call Mr. Pinski about it in the morning,” I say, all in one breath.
“They might cancel the play?” she asks, stuck on the first thing.
“It’s being discussed. With Mr. Price,” I say.
“What did you do with a beer?” she asks, sort of catching up.
“I drank it,” I say, still agitated and jumpy, as if I’m late to an appointment and I don’t have time for these trivial facts.
“Oh,” she says, perching on the edge of her bed, concern in her eyebrows. She takes a deep breath, slowing my energy. “When?”
“On the ski trip.” I’m tracking her expression, hoping she won’t cry. “I’m sorry,” I say now, feeling present in the room for the first time in the conversation. “It was a mistake.”
“Yes,” she says. She seems unsure of what to say next. She looks in the laundry basket for the answer, then picks up a T-shirt and starts folding again. “Does your father know?”
I bite my lip. “No. Can you tell him?”
She deflates, immediately appearing older, like she’s been folding this particular load of laundry for twenty years.
I’m a real shit. First, I break the behavior code, then I make my mom do my dirty work.
And she clearly hasn’t even recovered from the meeting with Dr. Porter; she looks as dazed as she did last week in Syracuse.
I’m a disappointment on so many levels. But I still wait for her answer.
“Of course,” she sighs. “I guess we’ll discuss what the consequences are after we talk to the principal.”
Consequences. What does she mean? My parents have never been big on formal punishments, but this seems right for a first time.
I deserve it. Besides, where am I going?
I’m apparently no longer in the play, I don’t have a boyfriend, and I’m never getting a driver’s license, so me and these four walls are probably going to get real comfy with each other.
I’ve done what I can now, anyway. There’s nothing left to do except wait to see what Mr. Pinski says, what my parents say, and what’s left of my life after all the adults finish having opinions.