Rodent (13 page)

Will finds his way to my side again. I give up. Let him follow me around. He’ll see what good comes of it. I find him a plate-sized belt buckle on a chewed leather belt and loop it around his skinny waist. Rescue the Stetson from a shelf. Don’t look at Damien.

Today is our last meeting before setting up in the cafeteria. It’s our last time in the prop room. Last time to
wander through Wonderland and have this mad tea party. Today I don’t want to think about anything else. I want to let myself sit close to somebody who wants to sit close to me. Because in thirty minutes it will all be over.

“Do you want to try these on?” I ask Will, pointing to my fancy boots.

He shakes his head. “No, they look good on you.”

“Maybe I’ll wear them to Words on the Wall.”

“Let’s move on,” Zara says, giving us the evil eye. “The Art Club is coming to help us set up on Thursday afternoon during the third and fourth periods and after school.”

Great. Two things that won’t work for me. “I can’t stay after school on Thursday,” I say.

Zara sighs. Stuck with the worst class leader ever. “Why not?”

Too busy selling meth in the parking lot
. Should I have to explain myself to her? “I babysit my brother and sister after school.”
Babysit
. Such a normal word.

She rolls her eyes. Not good enough. “What about Thursday after lunch?”

“Yes, I’ll be there.” The thought of standing around with Ainsley flattens my buzz over finding Will’s arm behind me. He leans back on his palms, long arms spread wide.

Zara runs through the list of supplies she assigned to Amanda and Nimra. Then she says, “We need someone to write the poems on the paper before it gets put up on the wall. The writing has to be big, so you can read it from far away.”
She holds her hands wide to show “big,” in case we didn’t understand.

“I’ll do it,” I say. I am our class leader, after all. And I’ve seen Will’s chicken scratch. I can do my job in a quiet corner and then disappear. “I have decent writing.” If she asks to see a sample, I’m going to kick her in the teeth with these boots.

“Okay.” She scribbles something on her clipboard. “That’s the first thing on the agenda then. Get your poems to Isabelle right after lunch on Thursday. We’ll all meet in the cafeteria.”

She pulls out a sample inkpot, which is made from a spray-painted plastic vase. It looks pretty good, actually. She shows us a few quills, which she made by gluing bright plumes to ordinary pens and markers. As much as she’s a pain in the butt, it’s probably good we have someone in the group like this, who actually gets things done. I imagine asking Mom not to get drunk for a night so I could spray-paint vases, or dragging Maisie and Evan to fifty places on the bus to pick up craft supplies.

Zara wants to talk to Nimra about the Art Club and its plans. The minutes tick by. Yesterday’s ache is gone, but there’s a sinking in my chest as the minutes pass. I lean back until I feel Will’s arm against me, my hair brushing him. I wait for him to shift away. He doesn’t.

I don’t want to say anything—just sit here and feel this, everything here in this circle. In a week, these people will get on with their lives. A few meetings in a closet will be nothing in their worlds of family, vacations, friends, parties. For me, though, it’s been the best time of my life.

I sit, hardly breathing, until the bell rings out in the drama room. It’s done. I give my boots to Damien and leave without looking back.
Goodbye, Will. Too bad we can only exist in Wonderland
.

FOURTEEN

I run into Clara in the library during lunch on Thursday.

“Here you are!” she says. “I just dropped in on a whim. You disappeared for a while.”

Odd. In the last two weeks, I entirely forgot about Clara, my Jane Austen girl. I explain to her about Words on the Wall and the meetings.

“Oh, you’re part of that?” she asks, surprised.

“Class leader.” I can’t help myself.

“Cool.” She lingers another minute, tapping her fingers against the tabletop. Maybe this would be easier in the prop room, wearing overalls and a straw hat.

“I have to meet Emma now—my friend,” Clara says. Yes, I know who Emma is: the one who almost wet her pants when I said hello.

“All right. See you later.” I watch her go, knowing I won’t see her later. Knowing that we never found two building blocks that fit together.

I wait for a minute after the bell goes to give the cafeteria time to clear out. I walk in to see Zara wiping down one of the long tables.

“We’ll cut our paper on this one,” she says. We stand together, hands on our hips, waiting for the rest of the group to show up. Damien’s next, waving from the far door. Then Nimra, Amanda and Will all at the same time. Once we’re all huddled up, Zara explains the process.

“The scroll will be made from five long sheets of paper attached together.” She points to the fat roll of white paper on the table. “Our poems should be staggered throughout the scroll, so we’ll put one on each sheet. One sheet will have two.” Got it. “The Art Club will help shape the paper into the scroll, and they also made the banner for Get Your Poet On.”

Nimra asks, “Are we putting our names with our poems?”

Amanda and Damien say yes at the same time Will, Nimra and I say no. We all look to Zara.

“This isn’t about us being superstars,” I say. As though posting large poems in public makes us superstars in any way. More honest would have been,
Let’s not make ourselves targets more than we already are
.

Zara looks stunned—it’s a question she hadn’t thought of. “I don’t think the organizers typically post their names,” she says slowly. “Let’s leave them off.”

Zara and Nimra roll out the paper along the table, and Nimra uses a tape measure to figure out where to stop. Once they get the sheet cut to the right length, Zara waves me over.

“You’re up,” she says. Then, to the group, “Whose poem is first?” Funny, I thought it would be hers.

Damien lopes over. “Me, pick me!”

We discuss what kind of letters he would like, and I write with a dark-purple marker.

Purple haze, all in my brain,
Lately things just don’t seem the same.

And into the next verse.

“At first I thought about”—he starts to sing—“
I’m goin’ down to shoot my ol’ lady, I caught her messin’ ’round with another man
, but then I decided against it.”

“Good call,” I say.

On the next sheet, Zara’s right next to me. I knew her poem would be close to the top of the scroll. “Here, this is mine.” She hands me a piece of loose-leaf with an Emily Dickinson poem written on it. We pick a thick black marker, and she tells me she wants “elegant” writing. I do a few words in pencil first and get her go-ahead.

Nimra and Amanda agree to share the next sheet, so I put one poem at each end, leaving room in the middle for others to write.

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?

No one’s paying attention as I get the next sheet ready, so I write my own:

How all occasions do inform against me,
And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more…
O, from this time forth,
My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!

I know I probably should have chosen
To be or not to be
…, but I think that one’s been beaten to death with a stick, resurrected and beaten again. Shakespeare definitely isn’t my favorite, but something about the bloody thoughts resonates with me. Like Hamlet and I shared a moment.

Will lingers as I finish, watching me write in bold block letters. As I pull up another sheet, he shifts around, hands in his pockets. When it’s smoothed into place, I turn to him. Last one.

He won’t look me in the eye. Drops a folded paper on the table and mumbles, “It’s a song by Tinderbox Stick Men. My mom listens to it all the time.” He walks away, making himself busy with black vases with pens. Damien’s there, right over my shoulder.

I unfold the frayed paper:

I see through the wall you’ve built:
cracked cinder block and mortar.
I stand waiting, waning,
at the end of your self-exile.
Take a step in my direction.

“Wow, he’s more gone than I thought,” Damien says. Of course he would be there. Of course. “I’m sure this was inspired by mommy.” He cackles in my ear.

Face in flames. Static in my head. I can’t even tell Damien to shut up. I read it again, trying to make sense of the words, the paper hot under my fingers. I go through the motions: pick a pen, pick a script, write it in pencil. I should really call Will over and ask him what he wants, but I have a feeling the earth would open up and swallow us both.

“Are you blushing?” Damien says.

“Would you shut up?” The more angry I get, the more he laughs. And he called
Zara
a yipping poodle?

I pick a dark red and make all the letters different sizes, like a ransom note. Zara wanders over. “Hey, that looks good. Last one?” They’ve been working on attaching all the sheets together, taping them at the back to make one giant rectangle that spills onto the cafeteria floor.

I hear Damien’s voice, deliberately loud, a few tables away. “So, Will. What made you choose that song?” I can’t hear Will’s response. “So, no
particular
reason?” Damien draws out the word. I could kill him. Wrap my hands around his scrawny neck and choke him dead.

“Are you okay?” Zara says. She must have noticed my flushed face.

“Yes,” I say too fast. “What else needs to be done?”

“Well”—she surveys the scene—“we’re just waiting for the Art Club now. The paper’s ready. Pens and vases are ready. Oh, here they are!”

Nimra walks over to greet them as they straggle into the cafeteria. In the middle, a blond head, thick shoulders. I can hear her voice from here.

I had steeled myself for this, but Will’s poem knocked my legs out from under me. I feel like a kid getting off a roller coaster. A flutter of panic rises up. Too much. I can’t do this right now. I snatch Zara’s arm as she starts to walk toward them.

“I’m supposed to see Miss Yee as soon as I’m done here,” I say. Clearly I’m a mixed-up teen who needs lots of counseling. “Do you think you could do without me now?”

She looks at me like I suggested we streak the cafeteria topless. “I guess so.”

“See you at noon tomorrow,” I call after her. That’s when the principal will say a few words to officially open Words on the Wall.

I grab my jacket and bag without looking up. The last thing I need now is eye contact with Will. I’m just about to leave when I turn back. One more thing. I grab Will’s poem off the table and stuff it in my back pocket. Flee, like redheaded Clara.

* * *

“I have a tuna casserole in the oven,” Mom says, practically stepping on me as I walk in the door after school. Maisie and
Evan are loving this new mommy—always around, awake. Standing upright.

I nod. I’ll give her that anyway. I should appreciate her efforts this week, but they just make me nervous. The higher the climb, the farther the fall, et cetera. Ignoring her has become a habit now. I’m not actually sure what she would have to do to make me speak.

Although the bottles disappear from the fridge and cupboard, she doesn’t drink them in front of us. Ever. Maybe it’s the lopsided dollhouse in the corner or the memory of my anger rolling across the floor to meet her.

After Mom leaves for work, I pull out a family tree for my Spanish class. I add Mom and then make up the rest of it.
Madre—
Marnie.
Padre
—Cliff. Well, that actually is my father’s name, but he might as well be fictitious. I only have one picture of him, moving in the background, blurred. His slight hand on his hip. Dark hair. I’m my father’s daughter. Mom doesn’t say much about him, except that they weren’t together long. I think she’s too embarrassed to say it was just a hookup.

When I asked her once if he knew about me, she ducked her head and said,
Yes, he did. But we were so young, Isabelle
. Making excuses. I’m the same age as they were, and I’d want to know my own kid.
I don’t know where he is now
, she’d added.

Whatever. I have enough on my plate without chasing down some deadbeat.

Abuelo. Abuela
. The fiction continues. I only ever hear snatches about my grandparents—“Mom” and “Everett”—
usually said to a chorus of cursing and tipping bottles. When I was Maisie’s age and figured out that other people have grandparents, I asked Mom where mine were. She said they lived far away, and she didn’t see them anymore.

Why?
I asked.
Why don’t you see them?

Ours wasn’t a happy home, Isabelle
, she said. I didn’t ask again.

Tío
. Richie.
Tía
. Better not put down Laina. Mom might see her name and go running for the nearest liquor store. As annoying as this Supermommy stuff is, I’ll take it over her traditional swagger and stagger.

Claude. No way in hell I’m putting his name on anything. I add Maisie and Evan under Mom and Cliff and invent a pair of paternal grandparents. There.

I read a story with Maisie and Evan before bed. Maisie takes the book from my hands and reads the last pages herself. “
And the little star was happy with his new friends
…” I watch her eyes follow the words, her small, sure mouth. Evan climbs in my lap to see the pictures better, resting his head against my chin.

After they fall asleep, I pull down the suitcase from their room and tuck Will’s song between the pages of my notebook. When I’m with Jacquie, and her ape friends close in with their sweaty hands, rubbing up against me—when my elbows come out—then I’ll think of Will.
I stand waiting, waning, at the end of your self-exile. Take a step in my direction.

And I’ll know there’s hope for the human race after all.

* * *

I settle in my camping cot to read for a bit, borrowing Mom’s cheesy romance. One day, when I have a job and my own place, I’m going to buy a real bed. A cushy, soft one that doesn’t make my hip go numb. And I’m going to sleep spread-eagled on it. Take up the whole thing.