The Girls (6 page)

I'd never thought Maya was anything special in the first place. In the beginning, Candace thought Maya was cool because she'd known girls who'd shot each other, and she'd lived where there were gangs and she couldn't go outside after dark. Whatever.

“Look at me when I'm speaking to you,” my mother said, her voice getting shrill.

I turned and looked her right in the eye, using all my strength to keep my face completely blank. I knew she hated that. We stared at each other awhile and then she said, “You leave me no alternative but to ground you. You're to come straight home from school, alone, until you apologize to both Maya
and
Mrs. Koptiev. Understood?”

I said nothing. That was so unfair! Further proof that my mother had no clue about my life, zero sympathy and subzero understanding of what girls like me have to deal with. She'd never for a second been best friends with someone like Candace.

My mother was always saying how pleased she was that I had a lot of friends and stuff, but she
also
said she didn't think I was a good judge of character. Once she said she didn't know what I saw in Candace!

Didn't she realize that the whole reason I was popular was because of Candace? How could she be proud of me for being Candace's friend and at the same time hate Candace? She just didn't want me to be happy. I bet she's jealous that I was having fun and that I was more popular than she or her beloved Keloryn ever were or could ever hope to be! I knew they'd both be thrilled if I was just another lonely nerd like them. Well, tough.

“IS THAT UNDERSTOOD?” my mother's voice was louder, her face redder. “Answer me!”

I didn't.

“And, as humiliated as I am by your conduct, I will swallow
my
shame and call Mrs. Koptiev myself to apologize. And, of course, I'll make sure you've made your apologies. Needless to say, I do
not
appreciate being put in this position, Darcy.”

My mother was looking right at me, but I knew she couldn't see me. She'd never been able to see me for who I was. When my mother looked at me, I could tell she just saw a blur of disappointment, a blur of all the things she wanted me to be that I wasn't.

She left my room and I crumbled. Now I was grounded—all because of my creepy tattletale sister. I hated her. I reached for the phone to call Candace and tell her what had happened. I wanted to tell her what a witch my mom was. The witch and the snitch—that's
my
family. But then I remembered that Candace was at Sunday school.

I looked across my room at the box of wigs and remembered Candace clowning around, making everyone laugh. As mad as I was at my mom and my sister, I still felt lucky. The witch and the snitch and the whole rest of the world could try all they wanted to destroy me, but I'd always be fine—I had Candace!

M
Y MOM PICKED ME UP alone! The twerps' car seats were empty. Not even my bother was along for the ride.

I tossed my stuff into the trunk and said, “My bag's packed! This is our chance!”

Mom smiled at me, puzzled.

“Our chance to make a break for it!” I explained. “By the time Daddy figures out how to get the twins dressed, you and I could be halfway to Paris!”

Mom laughed. “Well, maybe we have time to stop for a doughnut, at least.”

“On our way to Paris?”

“On our way to Sunday school.”

“Come on, Mom, we could change our names, wear sunglasses. They'd never find us!”

“What's the matter, love?” Mom asked. “Did something bad happen at Darcy's?”

I sighed. “No. Nothing
bad
happened. Nothing good happened either. It was just . . .” I suddenly felt tired. “It was just plain ol' plain.”

How could I explain that sometimes Darcy, Brianna, and Renée felt like leeches? A swarm of parasites, living off my flesh. My mom would say that I should be flattered, she'd say I was lucky to be so important to my friends. My mom lived for other people; she
liked
being needed. At least that's how she acted.

“What did you do? Watch a movie?” Mom asked.

I shrugged. I didn't have to ask what
she
did while I was gone. That was no mystery—she ran after the twerps and folded laundry. I shuddered. What a life! I wondered if Mom ever secretly dreamed about escape. I bet at least once in a while, in her heart of hearts, she wished she could rewind her life, erase the tape, and do it all over differently.

“Nick has a soccer game this afternoon,” she said. “Do you have any plans?”

Oh no, not again. I braced myself and muttered, “No, I don't have plans.” I knew what was coming.

“Then would you mind watching Tess and Beth?”

I moaned.

Mom pretended to ask, but she didn't really ask. If I answered, Yes, I'd
mind
watching the twerps, she'd sigh that sigh of hers and make me feel like a selfish pig. I don't know why her sigh made me feel so guilty. The twerps weren't
my
responsibility. I certainly never asked her to have them.

No fair! No fair! I chanted in my mind. If I'd said it out loud, my mom would have said what she always said: “Who said life was fair?”

Mom couldn't afford baby-sitters to watch the twerps because she didn't have a job. And she didn't have a job because she was home watching the twerps! Round and round it went. It was crazy, a craziness that left
me
baby-sitting for free all the time, like it or not.

“Joanne has the flu, so I told her I'd pick up Jake and take him to the game for her.” Mom looked at me sheepishly. She knew I thought she did way too many favors for her friends. I didn't see the other mothers offering to drive
my
bother to games when my mom was sick. And NO ONE offered to watch the twerps, EVER, except me—not that I actually offered either.

Then Mom said, “I'd take the twins with me, but you know they're all over the place. Last week I missed Nicky's one and only goal because I was busy chasing Tess out from under the bleachers.”

I looked over at her. She'd missed a spot brushing her hair. It was smooth all around except that one snaggly hank in back. And she was wearing a sweat suit again. It made her look like a cow.

Oh no! Was she pregnant? I felt a hot panic burn through me. Not more babies! I whipped my head around and stared through the windshield, fighting tears.

No! She wouldn't do that to me—not
again.
It's just those ghastly sweats, I told myself.

“So, do you want to stop for doughnuts?” Mom asked.

I found my voice and managed to say, “Doughnuts are fattening.”

“Well, there aren't any celery stands open this early,” Mom said. “So what do you think?”

I took a deep breath, telling myself that I was just in a foul mood because I'd stayed up so late. “Mom,” I said, “why don't you shoot those sweats and put them out of their misery?”

She laughed as if I were joking. “I'll just duck down and drop you,” she said, smiling. “I'll circle the block and no one at the doughnut shop will know you even
have
a mother. How's that?”

I rolled my eyes at her and she laughed harder.

I thought of Renée's picture-perfect mother. Hair, makeup, nails, clothes. My mom could be much, much prettier than Renée's mom, if she'd only spruce herself up a bit. But Mom dragged herself out of bed in the morning and pulled on the same sweat suit she'd worn the day before.

Whenever I said anything about the bagged-out knees or the baby-food stains, she just laughed and said something like, “Well, I guess my career as a cover girl is over!” As if caring about her looks would be ridiculous.

But I'd seen pictures of her before she had me, and she was really beautiful. She could have been a cover girl if she'd wanted to. But no, she decided to have babies.
Lots
of babies. I just didn't get it.

Brianna got it, though. The way she coochie-cooed the twerps, I bet she was going to have tons of kids. I could just see her calling on
me
to help the way Mom's friend Joanne was always calling on her. “Candace! I have a cold. Could you drive my kids all over town, then stop and pick up some groceries and fix us lunch?”

I felt my skin get hot. I had no intention of ending up like my mother, Caretaker of the Universe—taking care of everyone but herself. I'd say, “No, Brianna. You breed ‘em, you feed 'em!” I laughed out loud and my mom smiled over at me.

“Nick's game will probably go until about two-thirty,” she said. “But I expect Daddy home by one. So, really, you'll only be on duty about an hour or so. Okay?”

“Whatever,” I said.

“Thanks,” Mom said, patting my leg.

I wanted to say, “Mom! You could have done
anything
with your life! You were so cute! You even got good grades!” But instead I said, “You have a big knot in your hair in the back.”

My mom reached up and raked at it with her fingers. I wondered if she was going to go to my bother's soccer game like that. Probably.

M
Y LITTLE SISTER, LENA, knew something was wrong and was dying to know what had happened. But my folks kept shushing her and sending her out to play with Ann. I could see that Momma was aching for me, and that made me feel even worse. She made waffles, my favorite, but I couldn't eat.

I climbed as high as I could in the persimmon tree out back and wished I could just keep climbing forever, let the world shrink away to nothing beneath me—my house, my school, my ex-friends becoming nothing more than an anthill underfoot. Or that I could just spread my wings and soar away.

My foot slipped and I had a split-second sensation of falling. I caught myself and froze, hugging the trunk of the tree until my heart calmed down.

Then I realized that if I'd fallen, everyone would think I'd jumped. If I'd died from the fall, they'd think it was suicide. The girls would be sure I'd killed myself over
them
! I could imagine how important that would make them feel—that they could hurt me so badly that I'd think my life wasn't worth living. They'd mourn and act sad, but deep inside they'd feel great that they were so powerful.

I climbed down very, very carefully, branch by branch.

C
ANDACE CALLED ME when she got home from Sunday school. She said her mom had taken her bother to his soccer game, leaving Candace on duty with the twerps. She asked if I'd come over and help, seeing as I was their honorary auntie.

I said I'd love to. I loved the twins and I loved, loved, loved Candace's topsy-turvy, noisy house. Candace once said that my house reminded her of an old library. “Not just because of all the books,” she'd said. “It's the dusty old drapes and the whole dark silence.” I'd been hurt, but she was right. Candace always spoke her mind, and she usually said what the rest of us thought but were too timid to say. I admired that about her.

My house
was
like an old library. Not a bustling busy one, though; mine was just quiet. My mom taught microbiology at the university. Dad taught astronomy. They didn't
believe
in TV—as if TV were a religion.

And when I was a baby, when other kids were reciting nursery rhymes, my parents trained me to rattle off the genus and species of all the plants in our yard. When other kids were wishing on stars, I was learning the constellations. And when I started losing baby teeth, there was no visit from the tooth fairy. Instead, my parents had our dentist demonstrate tooth growth on a model of the human jaw.

I knocked on my mom's office door and told her I was going to Candace's. She turned to squint at me over her reading glasses. I thought of the animal game we'd played at Darcy's last night. Mom would be a mole—underground, long-nosed, nearly blind. My dad would be a tall, skinny, silent animal, something even ganglier than a giraffe. An insect? A walkingstick or praying mantis, maybe.

I loved them, of course, and wouldn't really, really want them to be
totally
different. But I didn't want to be like them when I grew up.

My parents' idea of fun was to lug the telescope and microscope out to the godforsaken desert—poke in the dirt all day, peer at the stars at night. It was as if they were at work twenty-four hours a day. My mom said that proved they were in the right careers, getting paid to do what they'd do for free anyway.

But isn't it possible to be a scientist by day, then play slide trombone in a Dixie band or drums in a rock band at night? Watch TV? Be in plays? Have parties with noisy friends on the weekends?

“Did you do your homework, Bree?” Mom asked. I wished she'd stop calling me that baby name, but it was pointless to say so. She hadn't heard me the last nine million times.

When I'd told Candace that I hated being called Bree, she'd wrinkled her perfect nose in sympathy and said, “I don't blame you a bit. Isn't Brie a smelly kind of sticky cheese?”

Candace didn't like being called Candy. But when she said, “Candy rots your teeth,” and flashed her perfect pearly whites, people listened. I'd never, ever heard
anyone
call her Candy twice.

“Oh, by the way,” Mom said, “Maya called yesterday after you left for Darcy's.”

I said a quick prayer that she wouldn't ask me about Maya, and it worked. Mom turned back to her computer and said, “If you're absolutely positive that all your schoolwork is complete, you may go, but be home by dinner.”

I walked the long way to Candace's, so I wouldn't have to pass Maya's house. But when I got to the big stand of shaggy banana trees near the monastery, I remembered her begging me to play in there with her. Maya had wanted to pretend we were apes, or Tarzan or something. I'd thought that was so dorky. And what if someone saw us? I'd die.