Get Real (2 page)

“What'd you tell Mom?”

“About what?”

“About why we need a screwdriver on a yucky Sunday night.”

“Oh, I just said we were taking it to my house, so my mom could borrow it—that she couldn't find hers.”

Jil and I both snort at the same time. What a joke!

Her mom's house would make the Library of Congress look disorganized. Everything in it is so neat, it wouldn't surprise me if she had ten screwdrivers, each lined up according to size, shape, and color, all in their very own drawer. Yellow plastic handles on the right, gray rubber handles on the left. None of them sticky.

Jil is so lucky.

I look up at the street sign. Way up. That's when I realize there's no chance that either of us can reach it.

“We need a ladder,” says Jil, reading my mind.

“Right,” I answer, “and a big megaphone to announce to every passing car that we're swiping a street sign.”

“What we're doing is
not
the same as stealing!” Jil hisses at me. “Didn't I already explain?”

“Yeah, I know. We're doing the city a favor. But we're still going to look like crooks if we haul a ladder out here.”

Jil and I both stare up at the tall sign. Tiny pellets of ice sting my face. The rain has changed to sleet.

“If I bend over, you can stand on my back,” says Jil.

I think about that solution for all of two seconds. I'm bigger than Jil. Not fat, but solid. Five feet, eight inches. Jil is barely five feet, and thin, like the post we're gaping up at, only with curves. My mom thinks she's
as cute as a button.
Boys think so, too.

What boys think about me—if they think about me—is that I'm taller than they are.

If anybody stands on anybody, I'm going to be the one stuck on the bottom. Me—Dez. The pillar. Sturdy. And sometimes stupid.

I bend over. “Climb on up.”

“Are you
sure?
” asks Jil.

“Just do it,” I groan, even though I'm pretty positive that I don't want her Gore-Tex boots grinding into my back. My quilted nylon jacket is water resistant, not waterproof, and I'm already half soaked.

Jil's coat is made of warm down, 100 percent waterproof, Patagonia's finest Arctic-expedition weight. She could camp out here until spring and never feel a chill.

“Thanks, Dez,” she says, scrambling up onto my hunched-over back, then pulling herself up straight with the signpost. “You're the best.”

“No kidding,” I mutter back.

We both giggle.

Even when we're both stupid and miserable, Jil is my best friend, and I am hers.

I try to keep myself level by placing my hands on my legs, elbows slightly bent, and pushing hard against my thighs.

Jil's a lot heavier than she looks.

“Stand still!” I hiss.

“Sorry.”

Now she's pinching the skin around my shoulder blades with her complicated boot treads. Sleet is pelting against the back of my neck, slipping down, and melting under my sweater.

“What're you doing?” I scream.

“I can't reach it,” she whimpers.

“Stretch!” I yell. I feel her boots pinch the skin around the top of my spine, and wonder if she will sever all my nerve endings and paralyze me for life.

An icy gust of wind whips through every layer of clothing I'm wearing. I might as well be naked.

“The screwdriver!” she shouts. “It won't work. There's no slot—”

“Car!” I yell, standing up straight.

Jil crashes to the ground beside me. I lose my footing and fall on top of her. Something rips. A low, dark sports car streaks by—a piercing missile of light that vanishes into the darkness.

Jil doesn't move.

“Are you all right?” I ask, rolling off her, panicked.

No answer. Then I hear her groan and slowly push herself into a sitting position. She's rubbing her head.

“Fool!” She spits the word into the night.

“I'm so sorry,” I apologize.

“Not
you,
” she moans. “That moron going sixty on an icy road. I hope he gets a ticket.”

I laugh, relieved.

“A wallet,” she says, out of nowhere.

“A wallet?”

“Yeah,” she says. “Graham is getting a wallet for Christmas.”

We sit under the street sign and laugh hysterically as the stinging sleet turns into tiny flecks of soft snow. I pat my hands over my jeans, searching for what tore, but everything seems to be in one piece.

I'm so cold, though, that I'm numb all over, except for my back. It still hurts where Jil clogged across it. But weirdly, I'm happy to be sitting here in a freezing, wet heap with her, watching the snow fall.

Somehow, even though snow is just as cold as sleet—and colder than freezing rain—it feels better. Cozier.

“It's beautiful,” says Jil.

I purr a little
umm
of agreement, and open my mouth to catch the quiet flakes on my tongue.

We're both silent for a long time. I'm thinking how amazing snow is. Wishing Durham got more than two or three decent accumulations every year. Listening for the occasional
ticks
of sleet mixed in. Hoping for no school tomorrow.

I wonder what Jil is thinking.

“Dez,” she says, so softly I have to lean closer to hear, “there's something really important I have to do.”

Uh-oh. It's her so-solemn-that-it's-scary voice. I bet she's pulling on her earlobe. Any second now she'll say,
Dez. You have to help me.

This calls for an instant subject change. “So,” I blurt, “what time is it?”

Jil pushes the button that lights her watch and squeals, “Oh my God! I'm late!” She hops up, brushes snow off her pants, and says, “Gotta go. I'll call you tomorrow!”

I watch her sprint for home, her surprised shriek still echoing in my ears. But deeper inside my head, I hear the other voice, the one that was as serious as a cemetery. The one that said,
Dez. There's something really important I have to do.

Chapter Three

Before I went to sleep, I set my alarm clock for six
A.M.
, in case of snow.

Dad'll wake up early too. Without turning on a single light in his bedroom, he'll click on the TV.
Ping!
Even from my room across the hall, I'll hear it pop on with that little electronic twang. He'll lie there half-asleep, scratching his bristly red beard and watching to see if Carrington Middle School scrolls across the bottom of a screen that's glowing spooky blue in the early-morning dark.

If he sees my school, he'll nudge Mom; then they'll both sit up and watch the day-care closings. If La Petite Academy shows up, I'll hear their low planning voices, deciding whose schedule can best be rearranged to stay home with Denver, my little brother.

But I'm awake this early for a different reason. A reason so secret that I would never even tell Jil, because best friend or not, she would think it is way too weird.

I am awake to see the snow.

Not to see
if
it snowed. And not to let out a tiny whoop, yawn, and crash back into bed to sleep late—like normal thirteen-year-old girls do.

No. I set my alarm clock so I can see the snow before anyone else does. To see the downy cover that drifts over my front yard and actually lights up the darkness with its smooth white shine. I want to see it before Denver plows into it and fills it full of footprints and snow angels. And ruins it.

I want to see it neat.

The way I keep my room.

Sometimes I wonder how I can even be related to Mom, Dad, and Denver. The three most un-neat people in the history of the world.

Slobs.

Don't get me wrong. I love my brother.

And for parents, mine are okay.

But … sooo embarrassing.

I pull the cord slowly to open my curtains. My room has a picture window that takes up most of one wall and looks out onto our front yard. To me, it's a real drum-roll moment, like when the curtains part at the beginning of a play and there's a whole new world hidden behind them. A room filled with soft, rich, velvet furniture, smelling of pipe tobacco. Or a big city square crowded with old-timey streetlights and boys in knickers waving newspapers and shouting, “Extra! Extra! Read all about it!”

I smile at the scene opening outside my window.

Snow.

Clean. White. The ground completely covered. At least four inches worth. The bushes have huge cotton-ball clumps on top. And best of all, there's a flat river of ice-milk where the street should be.

No school. For sure.

I climb back into bed, hug my knees to my chest, and look out at how perfect it all is. I figure I have at least thirty minutes before Mom grabs a broom and whacks all the snow off the bushes, so the weight of it won't bend and break the branches of her boxwoods.

I wonder if I'll need to babysit. Mom and Dad would never make me watch Denver all day, because I can't.
Like a tiger in your tank,
says Mom. Or,
if he were any busier, he'd be twins.

Nobody, except parents or experienced professionals, can handle Denver all day.

But they might need me for an hour or two. Dad teaches Eighteenth-Century Lit and Epic Poetry at Duke. Between classes he shuts himself inside his campus office, surrounded by a million little scraps of scribbled-on white paper, and translates poetry from Latin or Greek or Gaelic or something. He turns it into English that still doesn't make sense.

Mom's an environmental scientist who does a bunch of different things. Some days she wears steel-toed boots and a hard hat and runs groundwater pump tests. Other days she puts on nice clothes and meets with developers and industries. Her favorite job is wading around in rubber boots doing what she calls pond research. I call it pond slime–search.

Anything outdoors makes her happy. Since it snowed, though, she probably won't work outside, and she may have to put on her good clothes, look professional, and meet with money-crazy clients. That's the part of her job she hates.

I watch the whiteness glow even whiter as it slowly gets lighter outside, and hope that I can spend most of my day at Jil's house. She lives three streets over. No distance at all if I cut through two backyards. But because of the snow, I'll stick to the streets. I hate messing up someone else's smooth yard as much as I hate it when Denver wrecks my own.

Jil's house is amazing. It's three times bigger than mine and has a basement with a pool table, a zillion video games, and a refrigerator full of Dr. Pepper, Mountain Dew, root beer, Evian—you name it. It also has built-in stereo speakers, a giant plasma TV screen, and more DVDs than I can count. In the living room, there's a black grand piano so shiny that I can see my face in it.

But those aren't the main reasons I hang out there.

Honest.

I hang out there because I love how neat it is. Everything in order. Or filed away. Labeled. And because my house gives me a headache.

I wait until I think Jil's got to be awake—around ten o'clock—and then I call her. Denver has been up long enough to watch one episode of
Dragon Tales,
two
Blue's Clues
videos, and turn our beautiful front yard into a crime scene of snow abuse.

Mom has run four dryer loads of the same wet snow-suit, made two batches of snow cream, and heated up one monster pot of hot chocolate.

Denver is small, but major.

Jil answers her phone on the fourth ring.

“You awake?” I ask.

“Yeah,” she lies.

“Get up!” I yell.

“Okay. Okay. Okay. Hold your horses.”

“You sound like my mother.”

“I like your mother,” she mumbles sleepily.

“Me too,” I say. “Sometimes.”

I mean, what's not to like? If only she weren't so messy and so … so … I have to search for a word to describe my mother.
Blah,
I think. That's it! She's just so
blah.

“Now, get up!” I shout at Jil.

“You want to come over?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Now.”

I click off the phone and grab my coat, which is still damp from last night. Dad has morning classes, so he's gone, but he'll be back by one o'clock. Mom has to leave by noon to meet a client. That means I have Denver-duty for the lunch hour in between—which gives me two whole hours at Jil's house.

“Isn't it beautiful?” says Mrs. Lewis, opening the front door after I ring the bell. “But so cold.” She hugs herself and shivers, her laugh soft and welcoming, like music. “Quick, come inside.” She touches my sleeve, then tugs me into the warm house.

“Yes.” I totally agree. The snow is beautiful. But so is she. Smiling, friendly, and looking perfect, even in a bathrobe, fluffy slippers, and zero makeup.

“Snow day,” she explains, sweeping her hand over her not-dressed self. She points to the stairs and adds, “Jil's upstairs.”

I hurry up the stairs, straight to Jil's room. For an hour, I watch her brush her teeth, comb her hair, make her bed, and eat a bowl of Rice Krispies with big, juicy red strawberries sliced all over it. Then she has an English muffin spread with homemade fig jam. Her refrigerator is always filled with colorful ripe fruit, even in winter. Her pantry shelves look like a magazine ad for healthy living.

The food at
my
house looks like the packaged stuff that comes in cheap gift baskets. No kidding. Moldy beef sticks, imitation garlic cheese spread, and tiny little sample jars of orange marmalade.

I hate orange marmalade. If you ask me, it tastes like barely sweetened ear wax.

“Let's play ‘Chopsticks,'” I beg.

Lately, I have fallen in love with the piano at Jil's house. We play duets on it. Easy, kid ones like “Chopsticks.” But I want to learn a real song. Something serious and symphonic that will convince my parents that I deserve a piano. And lessons.