From Bad to Cursed (4 page)

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

Lydia’s eyes widened. “Talking to a new student. Making friends. Welcome-wagon stuff.”

“Well, leave my sister alone. Come on, Kase,” I said. All poor Kasey needed was to be endlessly ridiculed by a revolving door of jerks.

“
Or,
Kasey,” Lydia said, “you could come hang with me and my friends.”

Kasey’s mouth did its open-and-shut thing. She didn’t know what to say.

Lydia changed tactics, looking at my table by the window. “Did it really take you this long to find her?” she asked me. “Or did you wait until Mimi attacked to take pity and
condescend
to let her sit with you?”

Kasey’s cheeks were fiery red. After a long pause, her chin lifted in slow motion. “I might go with Lydia.”

“You don’t have to do that,” I said.

Lydia’s head jerked up like I’d hit her. “Oh, please. We’re not good enough for your sister? We were good enough for
you
once upon a time, Alexis.”

“Thanks anyway, Lexi,” Kasey mumbled, slipping her lunch sack back into her book bag.

I watched in silence. Lydia gave her a glittery grin, the kind the wolf wore when he opened the door for Little Red Riding Hood.

“Excuse me.” The voice behind me was soft and hesitant. “Is this table available?”

I looked up to see the awkward girl with the cane standing near us, holding her tray crookedly in one hand.

“Yeah,” Kasey said. “I’m leaving.”

Lydia put on her best poison-strawberry smile and, keeping one eye on me, said, “You know what? Don’t eat alone. Come sit with my friends. What’s your name?”

The girl looked up disbelievingly from under a curtain of slightly greasy bangs. “Adrienne?”

Lydia gave a brisk head-bob. “Come with us, Adrienne. Need help with your stuff?” She lifted the tray from the girl’s hands and headed for the double doors, towing Kasey and Adrienne in her wake like some emo Pied Piper.

I stood watching them until they disappeared into the sunlight. Then I made my way back to my table, feeling stiff and self-conscious.

I’d failed at something, but I couldn’t pinpoint what it was.

“Is Kasey all right?” Carter asked.

“Mm-hm,” I chirped, opening my plastic pudding container. I started shoving food in my mouth so I wouldn’t have to speak.

Inside my head, the thoughts were buzzing fast and furious. And the loudest of them was—when did I turn into
that
girl? The girl who’s too busy with her pack of friends and boyfriend to be nice to unpopular kids? The girl who treats Lydia and her group like they’re a bunch of freaks-by-default?

In other words…when did I turn into the kind of person I claimed to hate?

After the final bell, I texted Kasey:
MEET @ MEGAN’S CAR.

Megan was at her locker, next to mine. “Hey,” she said.

Then Pepper showed up, red hair on skin so pale it was almost blue. At some point she’d been wise enough to give up the idea of ever getting a smidge of a tan. She looked at me and sighed. “So, Alexis,” she said. “I hear my sister lost it during lunch.”

“Yeah,” I said, making a very concerted effort to keep my feelings about Mimi separate from my feelings about Pepper, which had been carefully cultivated over a year of mutually wary good behavior.

Pepper managed to look apologetic. “The timing’s just bad. She had her first drill team practice this morning, and apparently the team’s a joke this year.”

Megan closed her locker. “I’m surprised she even signed up.”

Pepper shrugged. “Well, she couldn’t get a doctor’s note for cheerleading. Because of her arm.” What she didn’t say was:
Because of Kasey.

Megan nodded. She understood. She’d been cocaptain of the cheerleading squad before she’d been tossed into a wall (also
Because of Kasey
). Doctors had told her grandmother that so much as landing a cartwheel wrong would cause Megan’s left knee to explode like a fireworks display. Now she was called a student coach
,
and she helped with choreography and scheduling. But I knew she missed being part of the action.

“Drill team, cheerleading,” I said, stacking my books. “Same difference, right?”

Silence.

“Um, no, Lex,” Megan said, eyebrow raised. “I mean, maybe at some schools, but here…? Not even close.”

I shut my locker. “I get why she’s upset. Just ask her to leave Kasey alone, okay?”

“Yeah, I’ll talk to her,” Pepper said.

“Speaking of Kasey,” I said, “I wonder where her locker is? I’m not even sure if she can find her way out to the parking lot.”

My phone vibrated, and a text message popped onscreen.

WALKG HOME W ADRIEOMF

“Oh, never mind,” I said. “She’s walking home with Adrieomf.”

L
IKE CLOCKWORK
, when Dad got home from work, he parked in the garage, hung his keys on the hook by the door, put away his jacket in the coat closet, and changed into his favorite sweats, which were still an offensively bright shade of orange even after a year of being washed twice a week.

Mom, on the other hand, never changed out of her work clothes before 10 p.m. It was a habit leftover from the time when she ran back to the office at all hours of the night. Since her promotion to VP, she left the running back to her underlings, but the suits stayed on until bedtime. She’d even curl up on the couch to watch a movie in a skirt and panty hose.

Her, dressed for the boardroom. Him, dressed like a highlighter. It gave our daily family dinners a lopsided feel. But I was used to it.

“How was school?” Dad asked. The question was addressed to both of us, but everyone looked at Kasey.

“Okay,” I said, taking a bite of lasagna.

“Fine,” Kasey said. Mom and Dad were still staring at her, so she froze, fork in the air. “What am I
supposed
to say?”

I could practically hear the gears turning in Mom’s head, trying to figure out how to coax some information out of her. I would never have said anything about Mimi, or even Lydia. But Adrienne was fair game.

“Kasey made a friend,” I said. “They walked home together.”

My sister shot me a stormy look, but Mom’s eyes lit up.

“Sweetie, that’s great!” Mom said. “What’s her name?”

Kasey looked at me sideways and breathed in loudly through her nose. “Adrienne.”

“She’s a freshman, right?” I asked.

My sister gritted her teeth.
“Yes.”

“Did you know her at your old school?” Mom asked.

“What is this, an interrogation?” Kasey asked, dumping the food off her fork and setting the fork on the edge of her plate. “She’s normal. She has a dog named Barney and two brothers in college. Her parents are divorced. She and her mom moved here from Phoenix in June. What else do you want to know? Her blood type?”

Dad chewed tranquilly, then swallowed and picked up his water glass. “Well, she sounds great.”

“Alexis, how’s photography class?” Mom asked. I could imagine the line in the Harmony Valley discharge brochure:
Ensure that the patient’s siblings don’t feel over
looked. Try to distribute your attention equally, when possible.

“Oh!” I said.
“Outstanding.”

Her forehead crinkled happily. “Really?”

“Yes, because I’m transferring out.”

“After a week?” Dad asked. “You have to give it a chance.”

“First of all,” I said, “I did. Second of all, it’s not a film class. Ninety percent of the kids are shooting digital. And I don’t have a digital camera.”

“Maybe you should ask Santa,” Dad said.

“I’m sure Santa won’t have room for a camera in his bag,” I said, spearing a bite of cauliflower. “Since it’s going to be filled with a car.”

Dad smirked. “Or maybe eight tiny reindeer.”

I twirled my fork. “Or maybe eight tiny cylinders?”

“Or maybe a bicycle,” he said.

“Great idea,” I said. “Then you could bike to work, and I can drive
your
car.”

Dad laughed, his head tipping forward so the overhead light reflected off his bald spot.

“Any more back-to-school parties?” Mom asked.

Oh, Mom. You give her an inch, she’ll take a road trip. She’d been so astonished by my friendship with Megan and my coupleship with Carter that she expected me to vault to the top of the social standings any day.

“Yeah,” I said. “Megan’s having one Friday.”

Then Mom drew up all of her Mom energy and achieved a perfect Awkward Mom Moment. “And Kasey’s invited?”

Dead silence spread over the table.

Kasey kept a very close eye on her food.

“I’m sure she…must be,” I said.

“Thanks, but I have plans,” Kasey said, her nostrils flaring. “With Adrienne.”

“That’s wonderful,” Mom said, beaming. Dad nodded along. It was a little pitiful, to be honest. “Is it a sleepover or a regular party?”

“I don’t want to talk about it right now,” Kasey said. “I don’t want to talk about anything. I just want to eat. Can you pretend I’m not here?”

Mom’s chest pulled back into her body, as if she’d been punched.

“No problem,” I said. “We survived without you for ten months. I’m sure we can make it through dinner.”

When second period arrived Tuesday, I reported to the library, where I found I was the
only
student enrolled in second-period study hall—and that “study hall” was a euphemism for “help the new librarian organize the whole entire library.”

Arranging thousands of books in numerical and alphabetical order might not seem like a good time, but compared to wandering around campus with Daffodil/ Delilah, it sounded like heaven.

And Miss Nagesh, the new librarian, was practically drooling about having someone to help her. Though, from the way she kept talking about how desperately she’d begged for help, and how great and generous it was of Mrs. Ames to send me, I started to get the feeling I’d been played. Still, I was too relieved to care.

I promised I’d start organizing the next day if she’d let me work on my Young Visionaries contest application that day. Miss Nagesh was all for it.

And as soon as Mom got home from work, I borrowed her car and hit the road.

It was 5:17. The deadline for entries was 6 p.m., and the address was about twenty miles away. Even if I ignored Mom’s “the speed limit is the
limit
, not the starting point” rule, I would be cutting it a little close.

A surge of adrenaline and apprehension buzzed through my body as I glanced at the bag containing my application and portfolio. I wasn’t even sure if you were
allowed
to drop your stuff off in person. The application said, “
SEND MATERIALS TO
…”

The freeway was busy with commuters—impatient, cranky drivers headed for home. When I noticed that it was 5:47 and the exit was still two miles off, I started to worry. I didn’t think I’d win; photography-wise I might hold my own, but get me in an interview and I was sure to destroy my own chances—but I was doing something real with my pictures, for the first time ever. I really wanted to enter, and not just for the money.

I pulled into the parking lot of a sleek glass and steel building at 5:54. I grabbed my bag and headed for the giant metal entry door. Inside, the lobby was cavernous and dimly lit. I approached the receptionist at her huge semicircular desk in the center of the room.

“Hi, I’m dropping off my application for the Young Visionaries contest?”

She spared me less than half a glance. “You were supposed to mail it.”

My breath stuck in my throat.

She pointed toward the endless white hallway to my left. “Down the hall. Suite six.”

I was glad I’d worn a black sundress and blue cardigan instead of just jeans and a T-shirt. Even my shoes were decent—a pair of Megan’s grandmother’s hand-me-down gray suede ankle boots.

The door to suite six was closed, and there was no doorbell or sign, apart from the metal number six. I knocked a few times, but nobody answered.

Finally, I pushed the door open a couple of inches, revealing a miniature version of the main lobby with a partition dividing it from the rest of the office.

“Hello?” I called. No answer.

Off to the side was a table covered in stacks and stacks of envelopes, even a few small boxes. I wandered closer, checking the to on one of the address labels: “Young Visionaries Contest.” I did a quick sweep and guessed there were seventy, maybe eighty entries. Way more than I’d imagined.

I almost turned around and walked out, taking my portfolio with me, but I stopped before reaching the door. I’d already gone to the trouble of filling out the application. Even if they hated my work, even if I was ranked seventy-nine out of eighty, it wasn’t like they’d be rejecting me in person.

I could handle long-distance rejection. I grabbed the padded envelope from my bag and looked at it.

Unopened, it was a pretty good-looking entry, top ten at least. Mom works for an office supply company, so she gets all the freebies she can handle. I’d printed up a nice quarter-page address label with the to address on it and stuck it on a pale blue mailing envelope. And mine hadn’t been knocked around by the postal service.

So I had that much of an edge.

Before I lost my nerve, I dumped my envelope on top of the stack and hurried out to the hall. In the ladies’ room I used a handful of toilet paper to dab the beads of sweat from my forehead and tried to imagine what the judges would think when they looked at my pictures.

I’d lost almost everything in the fire the previous October—not only my camera, but years of negatives and prints. Portfolio-wise, I’d started in November with a blank slate. And now I began to worry that none of it was particularly interesting. It was just stuff I’d found around town, some pictures of my family, and—

That “and” threw my world off balance. The floor seemed to slide out from underneath me.

I shut the water off and raced out of the bathroom, back to suite six.

The door was locked. I pounded on it. “Hello?” I called. “Hello?”

Mid-knock, a woman pulled the door open. She was in her fifties, about my height, and beautiful, with thick, wavy black hair that rested on her shoulders. “Can I help you?”

I glanced past her toward the table where I’d left my envelope.

“I dropped off my stuff a few minutes ago,” I said, “but it was a mistake. I need it back.”

She didn’t move. “Are you Alexis Warren?”

I nodded and stood there panting until she took a step back.

“Come in,” she said, with a sweep of her arm.

I went straight for the table, but the blue envelope was gone.

“It’s over here,” she said, walking to a worktable with a daylight lamp shining down on my portfolio. “It’s the first one I opened.”

“Oh, no,” I said.

The woman gave me a pointed look. “Generally, if you want your work lost in the crowd, you don’t submit it in an eye-catching envelope.”

The book was open to the very last picture, a close-up of the grille of a rusted old car. I’d cleaned the hood ornament and grille until they were as brilliant as the day the car was made, but left the rest of the rust, grime, and cobwebs.

“That’s nice,” she mused. Never before had the word “nice” stung so sharply. What she meant was:
Nice—but forgettable.

But that was the least of my worries. If she’d seen that photo, that meant she’d seen the others. The ones I’d never meant to show anyone—much less a judging panel full of strangers.

I grabbed the book and pushed it back in my tote bag. “I’m sorry,” I said. “There’s been a mistake. I withdraw.”

The woman gazed down at the table where my pictures had been, almost like she was still looking at them. “What a shame,” she said. “All right, then. Good night.”

If she’d pressed for details, I wouldn’t have given them to her. But her easy dismissal bugged me. “It’s just that there are pictures in here I didn’t mean to include.”

She glanced at me sideways. “Which ones?”

“Some that are…personal.”

“All of your photographs should be personal,” she said.

“I guess I could take them out,” I said, “and leave the rest of the book.”

“You’d lose.”

I’m pretty sure my mouth fell open right about then.

“Bring it here,” she said, motioning me over. Something in her manner made me obey. She flipped directly to the first of the photos I would have removed. “Do you mean these?”

“Yes,” I said.

“This is you?”

Yes. It was a self-portrait, taken in a mirror: me sitting next to my new camera as warily as the bride and groom in an arranged marriage. It had taken forever to set up that picture, because my collarbone and wrist were broken. I was all bandaged up; there was a cut on my cheek, and some of my hair had been singed off, but I hadn’t been to the salon to get it trimmed yet. I’d spent a frustrating hour trying to understand all of the camera’s fancy automatic settings, and I still wasn’t sure if I’d gotten it right.

I looked wild, battered, exhausted—but it was a good picture.

She flipped the page.

The two facing pages had pictures of my parents. I’d based them on that old painting,
American Gothic,
of two farmers just standing there. For the first one, I’d made them stand in front of the town house, dressed in their work clothes. It was about forty degrees out, and neither of them had a jacket. Mom is trying to smile through the cold. Dad is stoic, favoring his right leg the way he does when his leg injuries bother him (yet another
Because of Kasey)
. They look miserable but determined.

The second one is the same pose, but they’re standing in front of the burned out shell of our old house. The pillars that once held up the roof of the porch jut out of the ground, looking like they fought their way to the surface, zebra-streaked with ash and scorch marks. Beyond lies all that remained of the grand front hallway—the first couple of stairs, the frame of the basement door, the fireplace against the back wall.