My Invented Life (21 page)

Talk to me, talk to me, talk to me, I plead to the wall between us. Sierra said the broken glass means that some part of my life is out of whack. And that part is this strange disconnect between Eva and me. But I don’t know how to cast off the bad juju. How do I get my sister back?

Soon she’ll dance off to college, start a career in a distant city, get married to someone I can’t stand, have sticky babies, and send me a lousy e-card once a year on my birthday. I should go to her room right now and shake her till she talks. My favorite Ouija Web site might tell me what to do. As I type
why
, a banner slides across my screen, a ghostly answer to my prayers.

I’m in love with Carmen. Will you help me Slim?

I banner her back.
YES!!!!

I
knew it, I knew it
, and I knew it some more. I’m not as delusional as everyone gives me credit for. But when I throw myself through Eva’s door—after her banner we’re so beyond knocking—she’s not there. I search under the bed and behind the curtains. Her cell is off too. That’s just as well because answering my thousand and one questions will take more minutes than her plan can handle. Where is she?

I hop on one foot and deny my teeth the food they crave—my new fingernail extensions painted to look like miniature zebras. After that I go to the office to ask Mom.

“Where’s Eva?” I say as if it doesn’t matter.

She looks up from her work. “With Bryan.”

I resist the obvious retort.
That was so last week. Don’t you read the paper?
But it’s not her fault that she revolves in a different orbit than we do. “So why aren’t you making her go to school?” I ask.

“She said she’d be home by ten.” That’s when I notice the sign blinking on Mom’s forehead:
NOT UP FOR DISCUSSION
.

“Well, good night,” I say.

“Good night, sleep tight, don’t let the alligators bite.”

I go back to my room. Bouncing on my mattress helps to settle me down. My sister likes a girl. Like likes. True, she lied to me all this time. But the new-and-improved Roz understands why. I haven’t always been on her side lately. But I’ve matured since last summer. I’m finally the type of girl who can keep a secret or two. More or less. I know how to be a good friend. I still don’t have the best taste in boys, but two out of three beats zero out of three. And I forgive her because:

She trusts me now. FINALLY.

She asked for my help.

She called me Slim.

Besides, I relish the romantic assignment to reunite star-crossed lovers. It’s like courting Eva’s ex-boyfriends, only better because I like Carmen more. Romantic frippery is one of my strong suits. In the end the princesses will live happily ever after in the castle. Of course, I’ll have to slay a certain very short dragon first.

Unfortunately, I fall asleep before Eva returns home from “Bryan’s house.”

Wednesday morning, Eva comes into the kitchen dressed for school, and my excitement jumps upward to Level Orange. Sadly, I can’t ask her a single question about last night because Mom happens to be in the kitchen with us. And really I should wait until Eva volunteers the information herself. Then a miracle happens when Mom offers to drive us.

“Roz and I are walking to school together,” Eva says, heading out the door. Her girly-girl broomstick skirt and
tunic top shimmer like jewels in the outside light. I scoop up her hand and walk with her in silence. It’s so hard to keep quiet, I feel like Hercules on one of his tasks for the gods.

“Marshmallow got your tongue?” she says after torturing me for two blocks by not speaking. “You’re curiously uncurious.”

“I was trying to be the new Roz. But now that you’ve introduced the topic . . . when did you know?how did you know?who was your first crush?have you ever kissed a girl?what else do you do?what do you call yourself?bi or lesbian?who else knows?are you planning on telling the parents?did Bryan suspect?what really happened between you and Andie?did you know that over a thousand species of animals practice homosexuality . . . ?”

“Enough!” she says quickly. “That’s too many questions, Slim.”

I revel in the new nickname even though I came up with it myself. “Tell me what you want to,” I say.

“Okay, I’ll tell you something. But it doesn’t answer a single one of your questions. It’s about when you found the tampons in my room.”

I slip on a wet patch, and she tightens her hand to steady me.

“I really did lie to make you feel better,” she says, “but there’s more to it.”
Pregnant pause
. “Mom made such a big deal out of me getting my period.
You’re a real woman now
. But I hadn’t mastered being a girl yet. I wanted to postpone the whole thing. I already knew I was different from other girls.”

I drape my arm over her shoulder. “We’re all different. In some way or another. Take me.”

“That’s true. Still, you’re pretty great . . . most of the time.” Her grin says she’s (mostly) teasing.

“You’ll be calling me better than great when you’ve heard all the details of Operation Seduce Carmen.”

Eva groans. “You’re scaring me.”

“Does Carmen know you like her?”

“Yes.” Our shoes crunch on cold gravel as we cut through the park.

“Like like?”

“I’m guessing so.” Eva picks up the pace then, and I’m forced to drop my arm from her shoulder. “I kissed her. The day before our fight at tryouts.”

She’s a little ahead of me now, so I can’t see her face.

“Any tongue?” I ask. Tact will elude me my entire life no matter how tirelessly I pursue it. Admittedly I’m not trying that hard at the moment.

Eva turns around and swats me with her bag. “It freaked us both out, I think.”

“Did it feel weird?”

“It felt . . . right. That’s all I’m going to say about it. Now tell me about your covert operation.”

“Step one,” I say. “Nostalgia. Do something to remind her of one of your P. Tom escapades.”

Eva stops walking and looks at me. Her face is flushed. “Carmen told you?”

“I found out. She carries the wrappers with her everywhere. That’s a good sign.”

Eva relaxes a little. “What else?”

“We can work on it tonight after rehearsal. So who was your first crush?” I ask.

No answer. I decide not to take her reticence personally.
We have all the time in the world to discuss details. Still, silence was invented for me to fill with chatter. “I remember mine,” I say. “Jake French with the chin dimple. I probably told you about him a dozen times.”

“Alyssa Todd,” she says at last. “The girl who wore horseback-riding clothes all the time.”

We’re a block from school now, and since I don’t want this conversation to ever end, I shorten my steps considerably. “I remember her. She had enormous hair.”

Eva shifts her bag to the other side. “I used to daydream about braiding it.”

“But you wrote stink about her in your di—” I stop myself almost in time.

Flight attendant:
Miss, you’re allowed only one carry-on.

Me:
This is my carry-on. This other bag is for my big mouth.

Eva’s expression reads smug. “That’s because you read my decoy diary.
Today I woke up and brushed my teeth. Then I got dressed and went to school. Ran into Shay from Spanish class
. Sound familiar?”

I’m not the only Peterson with a touch of the serpent. “So what happened?” I ask.

“Nothing. I kissed Alyssa’s brother in the shed one time.”

“So you really do like boys?”

Despite my ever-shrinking step length, we’ve arrived at school. She stops walking, and I’m grateful. “All that stuff you said about dashboards and falling in love with whomever?” she says.

“Yeah?” BlueDragon runs over to greet us like we were lost for weeks in the Arctic tundra.

“Dead on. I’m so mad you figured it out first.”

Eva loves me despite my big mouth and spying ways. Bliss. Even the fresh muddy paw prints on my pants don’t upset me.

The obstacle to all my romantic schemes towers under me. She points toward the freezer. “Bring out five trays of lasagna,” she says. I steal glances at her while I work. There’s less than a zero percent chance she doesn’t know about Carmen’s orientation. She
is
omniscient after all.

“What do you think of Jonathan?” I ask as I whisk past her.

“I don’t.”

“You don’t what?” I say, dropping a tray of lasagna on the counter next to the ovens. “Approve of him as boyfriend material?”

Felicia snorts. “He’s not her boyfriend.”

So the whole decoy boyfriend scheme failed. I think up a way to keep her talking without showing my hand, searching for a daisy to shield my next question.

“He’s not her boyfriend now. But you wouldn’t disown her if he was, would you?”

She narrows her eyes in a way that says shooting flames are in my future. I back up a few feet.

“I would never disown her. But I might ground her till her wedding day.”

I scurry off to fetch another load from the freezer. Felicia won’t allow poor Carmen a boyfriend, let alone a girlfriend.

When I deliver the next batch, she hands me a nail file.

“What’s this for?” I ask. I imagine some new ordeal, an
enormous kitchen device that can only be cleaned with the tiny scraper at the end.

“For your nose.”

My hand jumps upward.

“File it down so you can’t poke it where it doesn’t belong.” She laughs. I laugh too, although more from nervousness than enjoyment. “Stop bothering me now.” She sends me off with one of her patented slasher-movie smiles.

During a break in rehearsal, I drag Jonathan to the bathroom for some privacy and lean against the door so no one else can enter. “Eva could waste away from unrequited love.”

“You’re talking about Carmen?”

I knew he knew. Everyone knew. Except me. “Help me get them together,” I say.

“You make the dinner reservation, and I’ll play the violin for them.”

“You play violin? I didn’t know that.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know.” He rinses his hands at the sink and twirls the paper towel handle. I laugh. He doesn’t know everything either, like that the dispenser has been empty since the Clinton administration.

“They’ll have to keep their love a secret from Felicia.”

“Tough assignment, Pixie.” He dries his hands on my shirtsleeves.

I still have her nail file in my pocket to remind me of this fact. But should Carmen ruin her life to please her mom? Still, I’m wise enough to change the subject, a sore topic of conversation for Jonathan, given how his parents are behaving.

“After Touchstone, what next?” I say. “Macbeth? Hamlet?”

“I don’t want no whitey role.” He does the cool-black-dude hand thing.

“But you’re half white.”

“I’m black. See?” He shakes his Afro at me.

“That’s denying half of yourself.” The handle turns. I lean against the door with all my weight. “We’re talking in here,” I shout.

“It’s like this,” he says patiently. “If you’re bisexual, are you half heterosexual? No way.” The intruder pounds relentlessly. “You’re a homo.”

“Who are you calling a homo?” I ask, though he does have a point. The door cracks open an inch despite my best effort. Three bodies come flying in. “Office hours are over,” I say.

“Do you mind staying after?” I ask Carmen when we finish the last scene of the day. “I want to go over my notes with you.” I flatter her unmercifully for several minutes to put her in the best mood possible. After that, I take the plunge. “Eva asked me to give you this.”

Carmen’s eyes widen when she sees the pink envelope and bouquet of flowers. Her bottom lip trembles.

“And I have a little gift for you, too,” I say. “You can play Rosalind on our second weekend. I’ll do Phebe instead.”

She sucks her lips inside her mouth. “Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind,” she says. Translation? She mistakes the nature of my devious machinations, having no idea to what lengths I will go for Eva’s sake.

“I’m keeping the opening weekend for myself,” I say.

She wrinkles her nose. “Why would you share the lead with me at all?”

“You’re my friend, remember?”

While she’s still dazed and confused by this bizarre turn of events, I drop a final hint.

“Promise me you’ll call Eva.”

She hides her face in her hands then. “I don’t know if I can,” she wails into her palms.

I meant to bring up Felicia, ask Carmen how much she knows and about her views on sexuality. But the scene has not unfolded like I planned it. I stuff the nail file deeper into my pocket.

The long day before opening night has arrived. AT LAST. The sun is barely up, and already I’m busy plotting details. There are bumper stickers to print, items to buy, and secrets to spill, all before homeroom. When I go to the kitchen for breakfast, Mom looks me up and down.

“Save your strength for the play,” she says.

“I am.”

She slops yogurt into the blender and sprinkles it with oat bran, protein powder, and flax seed. “Revenge is only skin deep,” she says. She must be an FBI agent by night. Otherwise how would she know?

“What are you talking about?” I say.

“Your aura. It reminds me of the day you trashed Mrs. Halsinger’s yard.” The grind of the blender drowns out my protest.

Mrs. Hell-stinger can best be summarized as the Living Dead masquerading as a fourth-grade teacher. My mantra that year was Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle, but
Mrs. Hell-stinger wouldn’t accept any homework on previously used paper. So I dumped a wheelbarrow full of garbage on her lawn and planted a sign on the summit that read
OUR FUTURE WITHOUT THE THREE R’S
.

Blender off.

“She wouldn’t—” I attempt to say.

Blender on.

I politely drink the smoothie, despite the abundance of particulates at the bottom. Mom offers me seconds, which I refuse, making choking noises and begging for water. There are limits to good manners. When Mom unplugs the blender, I seize my chance.

“You’re right,” I say when I’m halfway out the door. “But sometimes you have to squeeze a few lemons to get lemonade.”