Blackbird Fly (3 page)

Alyssa's jaw dropped. She looked back and forth between me and Jake.

I prayed for a giant earthquake to crack open the ground and pull me down, deep into the earth. I wanted to bolt and run and hide forever.

“Apple's on the Dog Log?” asked Alyssa.

A swell rose from deep inside my chest.

Jake shrugged.

Gretchen looked at her hands.

Even Braden and Lance weren't saying anything.

“What number is she?” asked Alyssa.

“I don't know,” mumbled Jake.

A few seconds passed—seconds that felt like a thousand lifetimes—before Gretchen finally broke the silence.

“Is anyone else coming over, Alyssa?” she asked.

“Yeah, is anyone else coming?” said Braden. He turned to Alyssa and pulled his cap down low. It cast a shadow on his face, hiding his pockmarks.

Lance stood up and walked to the cooler on the other end of the patio. “Yeah, Braden,” he said. “Your mom.”

Braden stole Lance's seat and smiled like he'd just won a victory. We all watched Lance walk back, waiting for the confrontation we knew was coming. Everyone was smiling—everyone but me. I pressed my lips together tight. It seemed like everyone had moved on from the Dog Log, except for Alyssa, who turned away every time I looked at her.

When he got back with his soda, Lance glared down at his seat and said, “Get up.”

Braden smirked. “Make me.”

Lance set down his soda and wrestled with Braden until the legs of the chair scraped against the concrete. Gretchen squealed and jumped up as they shoved their way in her direction.

“I told you to get out of my seat!” said Lance, his face red and laughing. He had Braden in a headlock.

Braden struggled. His cap fell off, exposing a hat-head of sandy-brown hair. He flailed his arms. “Don't make me sit next to the dog-eater!” he hollered.

Jake thought it was so hysterical, he almost fell out of his chair. I wanted to stand up and tell all of them about what he'd been like on that bus ride—how he looked at me with big, scared eyes after he'd gotten sick and how I had to find his cell phone in his backpack, the one his mom gave him for emergencies, and how I walked to the front of the bus to tell the teacher what happened. I wanted to tell them that I whispered it to her so he wouldn't be embarrassed and that I stood a certain way in the aisle so the other kids wouldn't see the mess he'd made.

“Sit next to her—she might eat your little pup!” Jake hollered.

Alyssa looked straight at me, so I smiled and tried to laugh to show that none of it bothered me, but I couldn't really laugh, because an enormous lump had formed in my throat. I swallowed it away and listened to the sound of the blood rushing in my ears—
tha-thump
,
tha-thump
,
tha-thump
.

Gretchen moved next to me in a puff of vanilla perfume and Pantene shampoo.

“You can have my seat, Lance,” she said.

Finally Lance sat back in his seat, and Braden sat where Gretchen had been. Everyone talked about how the school year was going, the homerooms everyone was in, the teachers they liked and hated. Everyone agreed that Mr. Zervanos—or Mr. Z, as we all called him—was their favorite teacher. Then Gretchen and Alyssa talked about Tuesday's swing-choir auditions, because Mr. Z was in charge of them.

I wanted to try out for swing choir, but my mom
wouldn't let me, so usually when the subject came up I felt a twinge of jealousy, but right now all I saw were the words
Dog Log
in my head, like a bright neon light.

“Swing choir?” Jake scrunched his nose. “What is that anyway?”

“It's just for our grade,” Gretchen explained. “It's a performance group that puts on shows, like musicals and stuff.”

“That sounds like the gayest club in school,” said Jake.

Alyssa stood up. “Let's go to the woods,” she said, nodding toward the trees that lined the Tates' unfenced backyard. Everyone else stood up too—first Jake and Alyssa, then Lance and Gretchen and, slowly, Braden and me.

Alyssa looked at me the same way my fourth-grade reading teacher used to when I got answers wrong.

“You need to stay here, Apple,” she said. “Just in case my mom comes out.”

Lance smacked Braden on the back and said, “You stay here too. Keep her company.”

“No way,” said Braden. “I'm not hangin' out on some sorry-ass porch waiting for Alyssa's mom just so you retards can make out in the woods.”

Jake leaned over and whispered something to Braden. They both laughed.

My feet felt like two big blocks of cement.

“What am I supposed to say if she comes out?” I asked.

Alyssa grabbed Jake's hand. Backing away, she said, “Just tell her we went to Claire Hathaway's house.”

“Ooh, Claire Hathaway!” said Braden. “I wouldn't mind taking her for a walk in the woods.”

Claire Hathaway was a cheerleader with soft, red hair and big, green eyes. She lived down the road.

I watched them cross the yard. Gretchen looked back once. Alyssa did too. She waved, but I didn't wave back. Once they were finally in the trees, I stepped off the porch and walked around the Tates' house and down the sidewalk until I reached my shrub. I put on my backpack and got on my bike. I pedaled fast,
then faster. My bike chain rattled, but I didn't care. I didn't even ride around the cracks in the sidewalk—the ones that looked like they'd been pushed up from the center of the earth—I just kept pedaling and pedaling until the back of my neck burned with heat.

The bike chain broke as soon as I pulled up to my back porch. I hopped off and let my bike fall to the grass in a loud
clank
.

When I came through the door, my mom looked up at me from the sofa, where she was reading a fashion magazine. She smiled and blinked at me. I thought about Jake and his Chinese eye slits. I thought about the Dog Log.

“No fun being alone, huh?” she said.

I went straight to my room, shut the door, and sat on my bed. I closed my eyes tight and imagined myself walking down the hallway and into the living room. I imagined myself standing in front of my mother and looking into her dark, slanted eyes.

“Dog-eater,” I said.

A
t the beginning of every school year at Chapel Spring Middle, a group of guys comes up with a list of the ten ugliest girls. They call it the Dog Log. The names on the list are half mystery and half public. Heleena Moffett and Martha Leibovitz were on it every year. At the beginning of school last year, Alyssa and I had talked about the Dog Log and what we would do if we were ever on it.

“I would transfer schools,” Alyssa had said. She was on the swing of her front porch with one leg dangling down. We were both eating bologna sandwiches—no mustard, lots of mayo, with the crusts taken off the bread. “I would never show my face at school again.”

“You don't have to worry,” I'd told her. “You would never wind up on it anyway. You're too pretty.”

“I wouldn't end up on it because no one even knows who I am,” she'd said.

I told her she was lucky. She was new, which meant she could be anyone she wanted. She could reinvent herself completely. After that she was quiet for a while. I waited for her to tell me that I was too pretty for the Dog Log too, but she didn't.

I turned on the Beatles'
White Album
, collapsed on my bed with my backpack still on my shoulders, stared at the ceiling, and listened to “Blackbird.” I closed my eyes and imagined I was flying away, just like the
bird in the song. I imagined it was a thousand years in the future and the Dog Log didn't matter. But then I opened my eyes and it
did
matter. My cheeks were wet, and my eyes burned. I slipped off my backpack and went to my mirror to see what a girl who is considered one of the ugliest girls in school looks like.

My head was round and red when I was born. That's why I'm called Apple. My real name is Analyn Pearl Yengko, but in the Philippines no one calls you by your real name. Filipinos are known for giving funny nicknames, some of which don't make any sense. My mother's name is Amihan, but everyone calls her Glo.

My eyes: slanted and dark. Not American.

My hair: black, straight, and thick, but not silky.

My body:
palito
. Too skinny, with no curves anywhere.

Everything about me was Filipino. Everything about me said DOG-EATER and DOG LOG. Even my house. My mother was in the kitchen again,
heating up leftover
pancit
for dinner. I could smell it.

I went down the hall with my eyes still burning. My mother was pulling the bowl of noodles out of the microwave. I opened the refrigerator to get a soda—the generic brand of Coke that just said
Cola
on the side.

“Can't we ever eat something normal?” I asked.

“What you mean?”

“Can't we just order a pizza? Why do we always have to eat stuff like this?” I shut the fridge and motioned to the
pancit
.

My mother raised her eyebrows and looked down at the noodles. “You always eat
pancit
.” She put the bowl on the counter and pulled plates out of the cabinet. “Pizza is too expensive and isn't good for you. That's why American children are so fat—they're always eating pizza. If I spent all my money on pizza like Americans do, I'd have none left to send back home.”

She was always sending money back home. That's
why she bought the cheapest brand of everything. That's why I never got name-brand jeans like Alyssa did or designer backpacks like Gretchen had.

“If you care about back home so much, why did we come here?” I mumbled.

But my mother didn't hear me.

And even though the
pancit
smelled just like it always did, and I wanted to eat a bowlful, I said, “I don't want any of that stuff. It stinks, and it's gross.”

She sighed and turned around to face me. “
Ay, sus.
What's wrong with you today, Apple?”

“I don't want to be called Apple anymore.” The can of cola felt like a cold, heavy brick. I didn't even really want to drink it. I don't even know why I'd come into the kitchen. “I want to go by my real name.”

A bunch of lines crinkled across my mother's forehead. “Why? Nothing's wrong with your name. It's a good name.”

“It's not even a name,” I said. My chest ached. I wished I could throw the drink at my mother.

My mother frowned. “Your father gave you that nickname.”

I thought of my father's name written in black marker on
Abbey Road
. When you write your name on something, it means it's really important to you, so it must have been one of his most prized possessions. I always thought that meant he was creative and smart. But if he was so creative and smart, why did he give me such a stupid nickname? Did he ever think about how it would make
me
feel? Did he ever think about how
my
name would look when I had to write it on things?

I swallowed. “I don't care.” And why should I? The only pieces of information I had about my father besides the tape were a few fuzzy memories and a postcard from our island in the Philippines, and that's not really information; it's just a picture of where we lived. There aren't even any people in the picture. Just a white sandy beach and blue water. My mother's always saying that she moved
us to America to have a better life, and I still haven't figured out how Chapel Spring, Louisiana, is better than a white sandy beach. When we first moved here, I'd stare at the postcard and imagine my mother and father holding hands and standing with their feet in the water, but now I keep it in my nightstand under a pile of old notebooks. What's the point?

My mother frowned. “You don't care?”

“No.”

“What would your father say?”

I could see the remembering in her eyes—about how I used to ask her to tell me the story of the day I was born, and even though I felt a tug at the remembering look, I didn't care. I liked that she was frowning. She needed to frown. It was her fault I was on the Dog Log—she's the one who moved me here; she's the one who was really Filipino.

“He's dead, remember?” I said. The coldness of the soda can numbed my fingers. “And you're not the
one who has to go to school with a stupid name like Apple.”

The words came out of my mouth, one after the other. The air suddenly became heavy.

“Okay,
Analyn
,” my mother said, and she turned around to put my serving of
pancit
back into its leftover container.

I went to my room and pushed everything away—my mother's remembering look, my father giving me a funny nickname in some village on the other side of the world, the way I felt standing on Alyssa's porch, the words
dog-eater
and
Chinese
and
Dog Log.
I stared at my reflection in the bedroom mirror again and listened to the Beatles sing “Don't Pass Me By.”