Daisy Lane (31 page)

A few people groaned.

“C’mon,” she said. “It will be fun.”

The first students assigned this activity were theater geeks and got into it. The teacher was beside herself with praise. The next students were less enthusiastic and seemed embarrassed to be in front of the class. Then the horrible thing happened.

“Grace, Charlotte,” she said. “I’d like you two to go next. Charlotte, you will be Harriet, and Grace, you will be Emma. The scene is the one in which Harriet reveals her hopes to marry Mr. Knightly, and Emma is taken aback by her ambitions to marry a man Emma believes is more suited to herself.”

Grace froze in her seat.

“C’mon girls,” the teacher said. “We have several of these to get through. Don’t dawdle.”

Grace turned and looked at Charlotte. Rowan was teasing her, poking her, saying, “Go on Charlotte, do it.”

Charlotte’s pretty face was flushed red, and she looked at Grace with such contempt that Grace felt her face flush as well. They both got up and moved to the front of the class, but stood as far away from each other as possible. The teacher took Charlotte’s arm and pulled her to the middle, then did the same to Grace.

“Alright,” she said. “Charlotte, you’re Harriet; you start.”

“This is so stupid,” Charlotte said.

“Then get it over with,” the teacher said, “so someone else can do theirs.”

Charlotte would not look at Grace; she looked at a point just above her head.

“I want to marry Knightly,” she said.

“You’re not good enough for him,” Grace said. “You’re not rich enough or pretty like me.”

“She didn’t say that in the book,” Charlotte said to the teacher.

“That’s okay,” the teacher said. “You’re improvising. Just go with it.”

“I should be able to marry anyone I want,” Charlotte said. “You’re just jealous because he likes me and not you.”

“You may be pretty on the outside but you’re ugly on the inside,” Grace said. “And that’s where it counts.”

“Says who?” Charlotte said. “Some ugly person, that’s who.”

“You used to be a good person,” Grace said. “Now you’re just shallow and stupid. Why is that? Why is it more important to be popular than loyal to your friends?”

“This isn’t in the book,” Charlotte said to the teacher. “Grace is just insulting me because she’s jealous.”

“This is meant to be an improvisation,” the teacher said. “Keep going.”

“Knightly can marry me if he wants to,” Harriet said. “I don’t want to marry that dirty farmer.”

“How can you treat people the way you do and live with yourself?” Grace said. “Don’t you feel bad about what you did to me?”

“You’re always so negative and depressed all the time,” Charlotte said. “I just got sick of hearing about it. I got sick of trying to cheer you up all the time. You’re like a bottomless pit of gloom.”

“Maybe that’s because my life sucks,” Grace said. “Maybe that’s because my mom killed herself, my grandma died of cancer, and my grandfather hated me. Maybe if you had a heart you would have understood that, and not abandoned me like everyone else I ever loved.”

Grace was crying now. The classroom was so quiet you could hear the teacher talking in the classroom next door.

“I hate you,” Charlotte said to Grace. “I wish I’d never met you.”

Grace grabbed her backpack and ran out of the classroom. She went to the first floor girl’s bathroom, locked herself in the last stall, and cried until she threw up her Christian orange. She slumped to the floor and leaned against the wall, hugging her backpack. Eventually her tears stopped falling and she stopped gasping for air. It was quiet in the bathroom, so quiet that she finally heard someone else breathing in the stall next to hers.

“Who’s there?” she asked.

“‘Sup,” said Stacey.

“What are you doing in here?” Grace said.

“What do you think?” she said.

“What did you eat?”

“Candy bar,” Stacey said. “Okay, it was really, like, two candy bars, and they were, like, really big ones.”

“Why do you do it?” Grace asked.

“Why do you care?”

“I’m your cousin now, remember?” Grace said. “Really, Stacey, I want to understand.”

Stacey was quiet and Grace just let her words hang there, waiting.

“At first it was just to see if I could do it, you know, be really skinny and hot,” Stacey said. “Now it’s just, like, food is so gross, you know? I mean, really, how gross is food, if you think about it? There’s this voice in my head that tells me how fat and gross I am if I eat. All the time. It won’t shut up about it. And I feel really hungry all the time, like, my stomach hurts constantly. Food is all I think about, but then food is so gross, and I hate how I feel when I’m full. It’s just so gross. So I throw it up and the voice shuts up.”

“You know it will eventually kill you,” Grace said.

“I don’t care,” Stacey said. “Sometimes I wish I would die.”

“You might want to go to that camp,” Grace said. “You need help.”

“I’ve been to those camps before,” Stacey said. “I learned some new tricks there, like using the fishing weights.”

“What about the school psychologist?” Grace said. “Maybe you need to talk about this with someone professional.”

“I went to a shrink in Pendleton once,” Stacey said. “She didn’t like me much.”

“Here,” Grace said. “Take this.”

She reached out under the divider and offered Stacey Jessica’s business card.

“This one is really good, and not at all lame,” Grace said. “She really helped me and I bet she could help you.”

“Maybe,” Stacey said as she took the card. “Why are you so upset? Cause your grandpa died?”

“Just life in general,” Grace said.

“I hear ya,” Stacey said. “Life sucks.”

After Grace entered her next class, the teacher handed her a note directing her to go to the school counselor’s office. Grace walked what felt like two miles to the administrative offices, knocked on the door of her grade’s counselor, and heard a faint, “Come in.”

Ms. Pike was sitting behind her desk with her eyes closed and ear-buds in her ears. She seemed to be doing some deep breathing exercises. Grace didn’t know what to do so she sat down in the chair nearest the door and looked around the office.

There were several posters on the walls. One said “If life gives you lemons make lemonade!” Another said, “Do what you would do if you knew you could not fail.” Hanging over her desk was a mobile of butterflies, rainbows and angels twirling in the breeze from the nearby heat vent. “Carpe Diem” was printed on the oversized mug that sat on her desk; there was a tea bag floating in the steaming liquid.

Ms. Pike had on a sweater with big bright daisies embroidered on it. Her blonde hair was cut in a short shag and she wore big daisy earrings. She had on a multi-colored necklace on which glasses dangled against her stomach. She was kind of pretty, thought Grace, in the same cheerful way Kay was. Maybe she wouldn’t be as bad as the Vice Principal seemed to hint she was.

“I’ll be right with you,” Ms. Pike said without opening her eyes. “I’m just finishing up a guided visualization.”

She started to hum a little bit and to Grace’s amazement, she raised her arms and waved them around her head in wafting, looping motions. Then she reached up toward the ceiling, brought them down on the desk top, and opened her eyes.

“That was refreshing,” she said, but then annoyance flitted across her face as soon as she looked at Grace.

“And you are?” she said, and squinted.

“Grace Branduff,” Grace said.

“Why are you here?”

“The Vice Principal sent me,” she said.

Ms. Pike sorted through some files and pieces of notepaper on her desk. She picked up a pink message slip and put her glasses on. She read with a frown and then set the paper back down on the desk. She took a deep breath in through her nose and then blew it out through her mouth. She fixed a kind look on her face that didn’t extend to her eyes and smiled. She tilted her head forward so she could look at Grace over her glasses.

“I’m sorry to hear about your father,” she said.

“My grandfather,” Grace said.

Ms. Pike looked at the paper again and said, “It says here your father just died.”

“My father is alive,” Grace said. “My grandfather died.”

“Oh, well,” Ms. Pike said. “Not so terribly sad then. You expect old people to die.”

Grace didn’t know how to respond to this so she didn’t.

“You teenagers take everything so hard,” Ms. Pike said with a sigh. “When you get to be my age, you realize that death is just one more passage in life.”

Grace felt like she was expected to agree so she nodded.

“Well, let’s look at your file and see who Miss Grace Branduff is and how she’s doing.”

She rooted through a filing cabinet drawer until she came up with a file, then sat it on her desk and flipped through it.

“You’ve done very well on all your state and national tests,” Ms. Pike said. “Your grades are excellent. You have an above average intelligence score but just missed getting into the talented and gifted program. There are no behavioral notes on your record. Have you started looking at colleges?”

Grace shook her head.

“You keep these grades up and you’ll be able to get a scholarship. Where are you thinking of going?”

Grace was tongue-tied. On the one hand she didn’t want to share anything with this weird lady but she had to try to seem normal. She tried to remember what she had heard the girls in the journalism room say about this subject.

“In-state,” she said, “because it’s cheaper.”

“That’s true,” Ms. Pike said. “Let’s sit down again next year and work on those applications.”

She shut the file and Grace thought she was just about to get out of the office without any further trouble.

“Tell me about the fight you had with Charlotte Fitzpatrick in English class today,” Ms. Pike said, and Grace was startled by both the statement and the sly smirk on the counselor’s face. The mask of kindness fell away as Ms. Pike fixed her with a beady eye.

“You didn’t think I knew about that, did you?” she said. “I see all and know all, Miss Branduff. Sometimes I wish I didn’t but that’s my job. You’ve had quite a drama-filled week so far. You blew up at the librarian and Mrs. Lawson, you got into an altercation with her son in the hallway, and now a fight in English class with his girlfriend, Charlotte. If this is because of some crush you have on Mr. Lawson, I have to tell you you’re going about it all the wrong way.”

“I don’t have a crush on Jumbo,” Grace said. “He’s gross, and a bully.”

“Jared Lawson is a fine young Christian athlete and a credit to his family,” she said. “I taught him in Sunday School for ten years, so I should know.”

“He picks on kids smaller than him,” Grace said. “Ask the Vice Principal.”

Ms. Pike waved her hand, saying, “That was all a misunderstanding, some horseplay that got out of hand. Elvis has no business being in school here with normal children; he should be in some special school for children with his problems.”

“Elvis is smarter than anyone in this school,” Grace said. “That’s the only problem he has.”

“I think, Miss Branduff, that you need to watch the back talk,” Ms. Pike said. “I’m beginning to see what the issue is, and why you can’t get along with anyone.”

“Sorry,” Grace said, but it was through clenched teeth.

“So my second theory is that it’s Charlotte who is the object of your affection,” Ms. Pike said. “You can tell me, Grace. I’m not allowed to judge you.”

“I don’t have a crush on Charlotte,” Grace sputtered.

Ms. Pike looked Grace up and down with a raised eyebrow. Grace suddenly felt self-conscious in her clothes, as Ms. Pike seemed to appraise them and make some judgment that found Grace guilty.

“Girl crushes are perfectly normal in girls much younger then you,” she said. “By your age, though, they can tend to mean something much more serious. Have you acted on any of these impulses before?”

“I’m not interested in girls,” Grace said. “Not in that way.”

“I’m not judging you,” Ms. Pike said. “I would just hate to see you go down the wrong path out of curiosity or a lack of adequate parental guidance.”

“I’m not gay,” Grace said.

“You might not even understand what that word means,” Ms. Pike said with condescension.

“I know what it means,” Grace said, thinking of the couple who shared the locker next to her, their passionate fights and the subsequent sight of their entwined feet beneath the bathroom stall door after they made up. She’d never thought there was anything wrong with their preference, but she also knew she didn’t share it.

“I’m not allowed to say it’s a perversion,” Ms. Pike said. “I’m not allowed to say that it’s the kind of thing that will ruin your life and send you straight to hell. I’m supposed to support diversity; I’ve had the training. Personally, I find it disgusting, but I’m not allowed to say so.”