I Am the Wallpaper (4 page)

I took a deep breath and counted to ten. I didn’t want to make a fuss because I knew I’d never ever hear the end of it. In twenty years, Lillian would probably still tell the story of how I wrecked her wedding day. It was better just to go
along with them. Besides, by now I was feeling kind of funny and light-headed from the champagne, so I didn’t want to fight.

I sat down at the table, crossed my arms and glared at Lillian.

“Thank you, Floey,” my mother said. “That was very adult of you. The caterer will bring the food soon. It won’t be so bad.” She gave me a sympathetic look, and then she and Lillian left to join the other guests.

The sounds of toasting and celebrating reached us from all the way across the house. I hoped Calvin wouldn’t see me back here.

I sipped at the lobster bisque in silence, trying to ignore the children. Aunt Sarah’s two kids, Richard and Tish, were at the table. This was the first time all day that I’d come face to face with them. Even though they were my cousins, I didn’t really know them. The only time we’d ever met was when I was six and they were four and three. Since I’d been steering clear of my aunt all afternoon, I’d also managed to avoid them. Still, they were going to stay with us for three whole weeks, so I couldn’t avoid them forever.

While the other kids talked and laughed with each other, the younger one, Tish, just stared at me. She was ten years old and a real porker. “Is this your room?” she asked finally.

The other children stopped their conversations and turned to listen.

“That’s right,” I said, uncomfortable with everyone gawking at me.

She nodded, glancing around the room. It was hard to tell where her chin ended and her neck began. The girl was an absolute jelly roll.

“How come you’re hardly eating?” asked a little girl with a missing tooth. “Are you on a diet?”

I still felt a little giddy. “What’s it to you?”

She shrugged.

“Know what happens to nosy little girls? The tooth fairy comes in the middle of the night and chops their little heads off, that’s what. So mind your own business.”

The little girl laughed and then so did all the other children. “You’re funny,” she said.

That’s when Tish reached under the table to her lap and pulled up a photograph. “Who’s this?” she asked.

I nearly choked. She was holding up a picture of Wen.

“Hey! Give me that!” It was the picture I’d been keeping next to my clock radio—until two nights before, when I’d hurled it into the trash. The little horror must have fished it out!

She looked hurt but handed the photo to me. “Is he your boyfriend?”

“It’s none of your business!”

“I think he is. Look, he’s the same boy in that picture over there.”

Everybody turned. She was pointing to the photograph of Wen and Azra and me at the Halloween dance the past October. Wen stood in the middle, laughing behind sunglasses and fake whiskers with his arms across both of our shoulders. We were the three blind mice.

I glared at her. “You don’t know anything about me.”

After another uncomfortable silence, I looked down at my lemon chicken and summer vegetables, trying to pretend I was alone in the room.

The big lump across the table from me shifted in his chair. His name was Billy Fishman and he lived next door. Even though he was only eleven, he was already huge, almost mutant-sized. He looked like a side of roast beef with a clip-on tie.

“I know something about you,” he said in a voice surprisingly high and squeaky for such a gorilla.

I waited.

He leaned forward, eyes narrowed. “You go to bed late. You read before you go to sleep. You read a lot.”

“That’s right,” I said, surprised. “How do you know that?”

He looked smug. “I know.”

“How?”

“Easy. My bedroom is right there.” He pointed to one of my windows, the one that looked directly across the lawn to his house.

“So you’ve been
watching
me?”

He smiled.

I didn’t know what to say. I was totally freaked out. I tried to think when he might have seen me and what he might have seen. But there was nothing I could do now. One thing was for sure: in the future I was definitely going to be more careful about lowering the shade.

I went back to eating.

But then Richard said, “I know something else about you.” Unlike his sister, Richard was small, pale and spooky-looking, with bushy brown hair that fell over his eyes. Ma had told me he was having some problems at school and that he didn’t have many friends. Apparently, he’d won some prize at school, something to do with computers. That was all I needed—three weeks with a computer geek.

I kept eating.

“My mother was talking about you. She said I should watch out for you. She said you’re not an especially nice young lady.”

Something in my stomach turned sour. “What?” I asked, looking up from my plate. “Why would she say that?”

He had a sly, devilish grin. “You know why.” He went back to his food without explaining further. He hummed as he cut a bite of chicken and ate it. After he took two more mouthfuls, I was still glaring at him, so he looked over and grinned again. “It was because of that picture you sent,” he said. “You know, the birthday picture.”

I was suddenly gladder than ever that I’d been avoiding my aunt.

“Why is your face turning red?” another kid asked.

Richard laughed. “I know why. She’s embarrassed, that’s why. And she should be.”

“You never saw that picture,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure.

He shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not.”

I wanted to run out of the room, but that would only
make the kids laugh more, so I controlled myself and tried, once again, to concentrate on my food. But before I could bring a single carrot up to my mouth, something hit me in the face. I looked down at the tablecloth. It was a cube of cheese.

The little girl with the missing tooth giggled.

I put down my fork and knife. One after another, I threw five cherry tomatoes at her. The demonic child only giggled more.

Richard tapped me on the shoulder. He motioned for me to put my ear to his mouth so he could tell me a secret. I don’t know why I did it, but I did.

“Nice titties,” he whispered. He posed his arms and face the same exact way I had done in the picture. I couldn’t believe it.

When he started to laugh, I didn’t know what else to do, so I picked up the rest of my salad and threw it at him. He ducked, so most of it missed him. And then he just laughed and picked off the few pieces of lettuce and cucumber that had hit his shirt. Why had I let Azra take that picture? What had I been thinking?

I stood up and left the room, my face probably turning the color of one of Lillian’s elephant-ear wedding flowers. A group of my sister’s friends stood in line in front of the bathroom. Even after I pushed my way through them I could still hear the children laughing.

I searched for Calvin and found him sitting at one of the tables in the living room. Everybody was laughing and having
a nice time. I wished I could have sat there with them. If only I could go back in time to the morning of my birthday, when everything still seemed wonderful.

Behind the happy people eating at their tables, the rain flooded down the living room bay window, distorting everything into slowly twisting blue and green tentacles, as if a huge octopus held me trapped inside the house.

Suddenly, I found myself face to face with Aunt Sarah.

“
There
you are, darling,” Aunt Sarah said. Her deep voice surprised me almost as much as running into her did. She smiled, but she didn’t look friendly. “I was wondering if we were ever going to get a chance to … catch up.”

I looked around frantically for some way to escape, but it was no use.

“Oh, hello, Aunt Sarah,” I managed.

“Hello indeed. I hope you’ve been keeping yourself out of trouble. Have you?”

“I guess so.” I tried to come up with something else to say, but I had a hard time thinking about anything other than that stupid picture. “Aunt Sarah,” I said. “I’m sorry. About, you know, the thank-you card.”

“Thank-you card? Oh, that. Yes. Well. It certainly was … unexpected.”

“I know,” I said, looking at my shoes. “It was kind of rude.”

“Yes, it certainly was. Rude and ignorant. Decidedly ungrateful, too. Do you have any idea how disrespectful it
was? You should just be thankful I never told your mother about it.”

This wasn’t going well.

“When I was your age I would never have dreamt of sending a … an
insult
like that. But I suppose times have changed.”

“Aunt Sarah,” I said, “you should know that it wasn’t actually me who sent that card. It was my friend Azra.”

She snorted, obviously not believing me.

Suddenly the bathroom door opened and Gary appeared next to us. Thank God. I caught his eye and flashed him a please-save-me look. He glanced from me to Sarah and then gave us both a warm smile.

“Floey!” he said. “Just the person I’ve been looking for. We need your help clearing up the tables to make room for dancing.” He turned to Aunt Sarah. “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to steal her away from you.”

Thank you, Gary.

But my encounter with Aunt Sarah wasn’t even the most terrible part of the day. The most terrible part happened during the dancing.

The DJ had set up the sound system in a corner of the living room, but you could hear the music all over the house. Unfortunately, he played Louis Armstrong, the famous trumpet player, and that reminded me of Wen.

I needed to get away from all the dancing couples.

I found myself a relatively isolated sofa in the television
room. Some of Helmut’s German relatives were there, but since their conversations were in German I didn’t need to join in.

A short gray tail stuck out from behind a chair. Like me, Frank Sinatra wanted everyone to go away. I knew this because he
always
wanted everyone to go away. He was a horribly unsociable ferret. He’d hiss whenever anybody came too near him, even Lillian. Anybody except me. For whatever reason (probably because I was the only one who fed him or emptied his litter box), I seemed to be the human he disliked the least. He sat on me sometimes, and let me stroke his fur when it suited him. Anyway, we both wanted to be alone. In that way, we were like soul mates.

Except, as I say, he didn’t exactly like me.

I listened to the babbling of German voices over the old-fashioned music. I’d just finished my second glass of champagne and started another when I began feeling like I was fading into the pattern of gold leaves on the wall behind me.

That’s when Calvin came into the room.

Actually, I’m not sure exactly when he came in or how long he’d been standing nearby, because I’d been daydreaming. Gradually, though, I realized that the room wasn’t nearly as full of people as before. Almost all of the Germans had left to go into the living room for the dancing. Calvin was talking with the last one, a curly-haired tree with a mustache. I reached out and touched Calvin’s leg.

“Calvin?”

“Whoa, hey!” he said, turning around. But then he saw
me. “Floey? Hi! I didn’t see you there. You sure are a quiet one, aren’t you?”

I smiled. We were finally going to chat again.

“So,” he began, “where did they end up fitting you in?”

“Don’t ask,” I said, happy that he seemed glad to see me. With the warm glow from the champagne, I couldn’t help giggling a little. I felt more comfortable now. I decided I loved a boy in a blue double-breasted suit and floral tie.

I stood up. The curly-haired tree left us without a word.

Right then one of the peppier songs ended and a slow, romantic one began. I didn’t know this one, but I liked it.

I worked up my courage. “Want to dance?”

“Uh, I’m not a very good dancer,” he said.

“Oh, come on. I can show you.” I stepped closer, and before I even realized I’d done it, I’d taken his hand. Even at the time I could hardly believe it. I’d never in my entire life been so daring with a boy, especially not a cute one like Calvin. But for some reason the normal, cautious me seemed to have disappeared, or at least faded a little. It must have been the champagne.