One for the Murphys (10 page)

I look her in the eye. “Take a breath, Witchy Poo, or you may melt.”

She gets really mad and, although she makes me nervous, I hold eye contact. “Did you get in the gene pool with no lifeguard on duty?” she asks.

She has
no
idea. I turn to leave.

“You owe it to me to be here,” she says.

I whip around. “I don’t owe you
anything
!”

“Oh, poor Carley with her perfect little life.”

“What’s your
problem
? I’ve never done a thing to you, but you go out of your way to treat me like garbage.”

“You don’t have that much importance, believe me. Let’s just meet at your house today and finish.”

I am sick of her calling the shots. “No. Let’s meet at
your
house.”

She stiffens. “We can’t meet at my house.”

“Why not?”

She switches her backpack from one shoulder to the other. “We just can’t.”

I can see I have her. “We’re meeting at your house or not at all.”

“My mother is having a meeting there. We can’t.”

“What red-blooded American mother is against homework? Parents live for that stuff.”

She pushes her bangs behind her ear. “Maybe yours do.”

The irony makes me want to laugh, but the look on her face makes me feel sorry for her. A better person than I am would let it go, but I’m curious as to how bad it is. I wonder if Toni and I don’t have some common ground after all. “I told you. Your house or nowhere.”

I call Mrs. Murphy to get permission to ride on Toni’s bus. I follow her off the bus as she turns up the walk of an L-shaped white house with two brick chimneys, black shutters, and a black front door. The dormers on the roof look like little separate houses. It’s like a house you’d see in a movie. What was
she
so upset about?

She unlocks the front door.

“God, Toni. This house is unbelievable.”

“Whatever,” she mumbles.

Looking up at the high ceiling, I ask, “Do you land your plane in here?”

She doesn’t answer.

“Do I need a tour guide to get from one end to the other?”

She grabs a loaf of bread.

“You hungry?” she asks. “I’m having peanut butter and fluff.”

“What’s that?”

“Wow, Connors. You really have been living under a rock, haven’t you?”

Duh.

She slaps something together and hands me a sandwich with white stuff oozing out of the sides. Reminds me of the caulk that Mr. Murphy redid the tub with. “Looks yummy.”

“Just try it.”

“Are you sure you’re not poisoning me?”

She leans against the counter as if she really considers it. “You won’t know until you eat it, now will you?”

I’m surprised at how good it is. Sweet and creamy. “So this is how rich people eat, huh?” I ask, licking my sticky fingers.

“C’mon. Let’s go upstairs,” she says with her mouth full.

“Can I have some milk?” I ask.

“Geez, Connors. Anyone ever tell you you’re high maintenance?”

“Yeah, actually,” I say, remembering that my mother had a much worse way of putting it.

Toni is putting the milk back when a door closes off to the side of the kitchen. “Oh, great,” she mumbles.

A woman comes into the kitchen carrying four shopping
bags. She is tall and pencil shaped. Her hair is wavy and dark and she wears a blue suit. Her teeth are freakishly white.

“Oh, you have a little friend over?”

Toni grunts. “Yeah, we were just about to play ring-around-the-rosy.”

The woman’s face turns to stone. Then she turns to me, scans me, holds out her hand, and says, “Sarah Byars. So very nice to meet you.”

I take her hand, which gives me the creeps. “Nice to meet you too,” I lie.

“Toni,” she says. “Don’t you like the vibrant color of her shirt?” Her voice is sweet, but I get the feeling she could spit icicles. “Nothing wrong with a little color.”

“C’mon,” Toni says, picking up her backpack and heading for the stairs. “We have work to do.”

Toni leads me up to her room. Her carpet is bright green, and the walls are sponge-painted in a similar shade.

“Did Oscar the Grouch explode in here or what?”

She laughs. “It’s green in honor of Elphaba.” She points at me. “And don’t start or I’ll seriously… seriously hurt you.”

I believe her.

Posters of Broadway shows plaster the walls. There’s a pointed witch’s hat on the post of her bed. Her comforter is green and shiny. Okay. She really is obsessed.

She unzips her backpack. She is so much quieter—sadder. She looks upward. “I wanted to do the ceiling green, but my dad said no.”

“You have a dad?” I blurt out.

“Yeah, Connors. I have a dad. Ever take biology?”

“Yeah. I mean, I know that but… I mean…”

Toni piles books on her desk. “What’s
wrong
with you, Connors?”

I shrug, afraid to say anything out loud.

“My dad is awesome,” Toni says, “but he works in Japan mostly, so I hardly ever see him. It’s been thirty-two days now.”

So she counts the days away from her father while I count the days away from my mother.

She looks up at the wall. “He helped me do these walls, even though my mother complained that it didn’t fit the flow of the house.”

“Houses flow?”

“Precisely,” she says, rolling her eyes.

“I’m sorry I forced you to come to your house today.”

She doesn’t say anything, but I catch her glancing at me.

I think she must feel like she’s given something away, bringing me here and telling me about her father. I say, “I promise that we’ll ace this project, okay?”

She half smiles. “Whatever you say, Connors.”

“Whatever I say?”

“Forget it.”

After an awkward silence, I ask, “So, are you in the drama club at school?”

“Oh, you mean the
trauma
club? No way. I go to acting camp in the city, though. Every summer since forever. My dad promises to sign me up with a voice coach, too.”

“Cool.” I sit on her bed and bounce, studying the Broadway posters. “So how many of these shows have you seen?”

“Actually,” she says, looking around, “I’ve seen them all. Fortunately, my mother is all about culture too, so she takes me to all the New York shows. I especially love musicals. They’re all different—like people.”

“I’ve never seen a musical. I mean on stage.”

“You’re kidding!” She clasps her hands and her eyes spark. “Broadway is amazing! There isn’t any other place like it. One of the shows we saw,
The Drowsy Chaperone
, talked about how everything works out in musicals. And it’s the only place a person can burst into song without being labeled a weirdo.”

I want to tell her that anyone bursting into song
would
be a weirdo, but instead I say, “I guess it might be cool to see one sometime.”

“Ask your mom. She’d go.”

I burst out laughing. “Are you kidding me? No way.”

She looks puzzled, so I change the subject. “So,
Wicked
is your favorite?”

“Totally. It’s the best, and Elphaba is my favorite character.”

“You said it’s about
The Wizard of Oz
? I mean, don’t throw a chair or anything, but it sounds dumb.”

“You’d have to see it to understand.”

“Try me.”

She takes a deep breath. “Do you… ?” Her mouth kind of twitches like she can’t decide whether to say it or not.

“Yeah?” I ask.

“You wouldn’t understand. Look at you, for God’s sake!”

“What?” I ask.

“You’re like Glinda.”

I crack up. “The good witch? Uh, I don’t think so.”

She looks sad. “Do you ever feel like you… don’t fit in? Like everyone else gets something you don’t?”

“God, yeah.” She has
no
idea.

“But do you ever think that maybe… it’s not you who is off base but other people? That people label you as something you aren’t?”

“Yeah.” My own voice sounds far away. I think back to all the times people assumed I was dumb because I had mismatched or dirty clothes. My science teacher accused me of plagiarism because my paper was “too good.”

“Well, it’s like that with Elphaba,” Toni says. “She’s ostracized because she’s green. And she’s labeled wicked when she isn’t.”

“I know what it’s like to be labeled like that,” I say slowly. “I met someone once who drew all these conclusions about me based on the clothes I wear. A clone, I think she said.”

Toni lets out a little laugh as if to say, well, what do you know? She folds her arms and leans back against her pillow.

“What?” I say. “Speechless? We should throw a parade.”

“Okay, Connors. I get it.” She sits up fast. “But look at you! I mean, why do you want to look like everyone else?”

“Because I never have before.”

Toni looks puzzled again but says, “Well I, for one, would rather fail miserably at being unique than just be another clone. Like my mother.”

“She didn’t seem
that
bad.”

“She’s like cardboard. Superficial,” Toni says. “Deeply shallow, as they say in
Wicked
.”

“Fully empty,” I add.

She laughs. “Yeah. It wouldn’t matter to her if you were a serial killer as long as you wore the right clothes.”

“So… you think she doesn’t like you?”

She looks shocked but talks fast. “I think I’m the only thing in her life that doesn’t fit the perfect picture, and she wishes that she’d had a different daughter.” Her eyes are wide at first; then she closes them like it hurts to look at anything.

I kind of want to tell her about my mother, but I don’t want her labeling me as the pathetic foster kid. A throwaway; who’d want to be friends with someone like that?

“Hey,” I say to Toni, who now stares at her green carpet. “Is your mom going to be downstairs when I leave?”

“I guess.”

I laugh. “Turn around.”

“Why?”

“Just trust me,” I say. “Turn around and don’t look until I tell you.”

She does. I take off my shirt really fast and put it back on inside out and backward. The tag of the shirt is on the front now. “Okay. Turn around.”

She does.

“Am I ready for one of your mother’s fancy lunches, or what?”

Toni Byars finally smiles.

B
ack at the Murphys’, Daniel is tormenting himself with that basketball again. I’m feeling brave, so I go out.

“Hey, Daniel. How’s it going? How about a little one-on-one?” I ask.

“I’m practicing.”

“No better practice than getting your butt kicked by me, right?”

He glares.

“C’mon. I’ll take it easy on ya.”

“I don’t want to. I’m practicing. Besides, the teams aren’t fair.”

“So what?”

“Go play in the road.”

“Harsh.” I laugh at him. “I’m just trying to help you.”

He grits his teeth. “Leave me alone. No one asked you.”

“Look. You’re a wussy mama’s boy, I know. The truth hurts.”

He stops and turns. “Well, at least I have a mother.” He glares. “Truth hurts, huh?”

He won’t get me with that again. I remind myself not to get mad.

He dribbles but the ball hits his foot and rolls into the grass. He glares at me like it’s my fault.

“Look, Daniel.” I fold my arms. “It just so happens that I was the high scorer on my basketball team back home.” Okay, this is a stretch. But I was pretty good. “I want to help you.”

“Why?” he asks, picking up the basketball.

“I really don’t know. But I am willing to help you if you want. I’d kind of… like a truce, I guess.”

He turns the ball over in his hands. Probably thinking about how he may be making a deal with the devil.

He begins to dribble. I go over, steal it easily, and go in for a layup.

He folds his arms. “Give me my ball back.”

I stand, smiling. “Come get it.”

He can’t get it from me. I dribble and talk to him at the same time. “Look. See how I dribble really close to the ground? You dribble as high as your neck, which screams, ‘Come steal the ball from me.’ Also, it’s harder to control that way. The closer to the ground, the better.”

I hand him the ball. “I’ll try to take it from you now.” I go for the ball but never actually take it. Whenever I move in to get it, he finally learns to shorten his dribble.

When he stops to take a squirt from his water bottle, I ask him, “Doesn’t your dad practice with you? He’s obsessed with sports. He must love this stuff!”

His face darkens. “Not really.”

“Why?”

“My dad loves baseball and wants me to play that, but I just don’t want to.” He looks into my face without hatred for the first time ever. “It’s just that I
love
basketball. I love to watch it and play it. Baseball is boring to me. You stand in the outfield and do nothing for most of the time.” He bounces the ball once. Hard. “Do you know what my middle name is?”

I shake my head.

“Dale. As in Dale Murphy, this amazing baseball player from before I was even born. My name is Daniel Dale Murphy because my father planned, from the time I was born, that I would play baseball. He’s so mad that I don’t. I hate it.”

“He probably doesn’t mind that much. He seems like the kind of guy that would like all kinds of sports—a real jock type. Have you even asked him?”

“My father says that baseball is the thinking man’s game and basketball is for morons. He’s such a jerk about it that even if I liked baseball—which I don’t—I could never play it.”

I am shocked he told me this. I’m even more shocked that the Murphys aren’t perfect after all.

T
oday, we have a social studies field trip to Mystic Seaport. Whatever it is, it sounds better than being in school. I get on a bus, wondering which would be worse, sitting with a jerk or sitting alone.

“Hey, Connors,” Toni calls.

Relieved, I fall into the seat next to her, holding my bagged lunch. I try to hide Mrs. Murphy’s handwriting on the bag. “Carley Connors, Period 1.” I love sitting here, feeling just like everyone else. Normal.

Mr. Ruben steps onto the bus with what looks like a band uniform and a tricornered hat and most of us laugh. “Good morning, ye lads and lasses! As you can see, I am your captain!” he says in a bold voice.