The Ordinary Life of Emily P. Bates (17 page)

              Finn sat up suddenly. “Shannon? What are you doing?”

              “No.” I leaned forward, intrigued by the promise of good gossip.

              “She said –”

“Shannon! Don’t!” Finn nearly came out of his seat, his face suddenly desperate. I stared at him in alarm.

Shannon ignored her brother and charged onward. “She said that Finn is so in–”

             
BANG!

We all jumped as a sound like cannon fire exploded through the cafeteria. A couple of trays hit the floor with a loud clatter that sounded like pin drops in comparison to the explosion. Teachers rushed from their posts around the room in the direction of the blast, and aside from the noise of their scrambling, the entire room was dead silent for a full minute and half.

              And then the fire alarms went off. An awful noise that shrieked, wailed, and clattered all at the same time. The racket was even more deafening than the initial explosion.

It wasn’t until the cloud of billowing white smoke started wafting around the corner into the cafeteria, though, that people began to panic.

              “Holy
shit
!” I stuttered in shock, but didn’t make a move. The rest of the students were pushing towards the door that lead from the cafeteria into the courtyard outside, their frantic shouts almost louder than the fire alarms now, but I remained exactly where I was until I felt a hand close around the back of my shirt. My collar constricted around my throat and someone jerked me backwards towards the door.

              “Move, Emily!” Finn’s voice cut through the general panic that flooded the room.

              “It’s okay! It’s not a fire!”

But Finn didn’t listen and his vice grip on my collar made it difficult to fight with him. I looked over and saw that his other fist had closed around Shannon’s upper right arm. She didn’t even look like she wanted to complain, though. She was peering curiously over her shoulder at the expanding cloud of smoke as we were dragged outside by her obnoxiously strong brother.

              “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Shannon whispered to me as soon as Finn had released us outside. We were surrounded by a sea of students, every single one of which was freaking out. The frigid wind whipped my hair into my face and I shivered involuntarily. My coat was still draped across my chair in the cafeteria. Shannon crossed her arms across her chest and huddled next to her brother for warmth. He put his arm around her protectively.

              “Jeff and Tom!” I said suddenly. “I
knew
there was something off with them this morning!”

              “Who?” Finn asked.

              “Jeff and Tom from Lit class,” I said. “Their experiment exploded this morning, just like that one, but smaller. And they left out their stuff at the end of class.”

              The smoke was drifting out of the doors and over the courtyard now, and people began making the most ridiculous faces. I started laughing, and I wasn’t the only one. Several people were chuckling and grinning now, though they all looked a little nauseated too.

              “Oh!” Shannon covered her mouth and nose with both hands. “What
is
that?”

              “It’s a stink bomb!” I exclaimed, laughing out loud now through chattering teeth. “The nerds made the world’s biggest stink bomb in
chemistry class!
”

              Finn was grinning now, too. “She’s right. That’s exactly what it is.” Several teachers could be seen dashing out of the school with their hands over their faces. They looked furious
--
every last one of them. Well, except for Mr. Lankford, who was trying very hard not to laugh.

              “They had to have snuck back in the lab during lunch,” I said, covering my mouth and nose with the collar of my shirt.

              “Well, well,” Shannon said. “I have to say I’m a little impressed.”

              “Yeah,” I said. “Who knew?”

              We were all allowed back inside
an hour
later, though nobody wanted to go in. The entire building smelled like a rotten tomato left out in the sun too long. The teachers threw open the windows even though it was bitingly cold outside, and everyone huddled closer to the fresh breeze, wrapping their coats tightly around their bodies. I think the debate team had class outside that afternoon.

              Jeff and Tom were caught almost immediately. They didn’t even try to hide their involvement in the whole thing, and they were right not to. The instant that bomb went off, they became two of the most popular kids in school
--
just because they were nerdy enough to be able to halt the education process in its tracks for a full hour. Too bad they were expelled until the next semester and they couldn’t enjoy their sudden fame until January.

              They hauled Jeff and Tom out of the building and sat them on one of the benches to await the police. The principle stood by them, preventing anyone from getting too close, but the entire school crowded around them anyway, jockeying for the best position to see exactly who had done the dirty deed.

              “Why’d you do it?” someone shouted as the police car pulled up in the parking lot.

              They both just grinned like mad scientists happily awaiting their doom at the hands of a mob. Tom took a deep breath and calmly said, “George Bernard Shaw once said, ‘If you can’t get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you’d best teach it to dance.’”

              I don’t think anybody but me and Finn got the reference.

              That afternoon I got to Lit class long before Finn, which was unusual. Because Jeff and Tom had already been escorted from the premises by the police, I was the only one at our table. That was all right by me. Those two had always made our class a little awkward. Who knew what it would be like when they returned to class in January?

              I sat there alone for one long minute, waiting impatiently for Finn to arrive so that I would have someone to talk to. I started looking through my bag for my notebook and my pencil just to have something to distract me from the awful smell that still permeated everything in the room. I found my last pencil in the very bottom, the lead broken clean off.

              “Great,” I muttered, shoving my bag into the floor. I got up and walked over to the pencil sharpener by the door. My pencil was already sharpened so short that it was difficult to write with, but I stuck it into the sharpener anyway.

              “Come on, Finn! Don’t be mad at me!”

              “I can’t
believe
you were gonna tell Emily about me and Margo!”

              I froze when I heard my name and pressed closer to the wall. Shannon and Finn were standing just outside in the almost emptied hallway, and their hushed voices carried easily through the open door. They couldn’t see me pressed against the wall like I was, but they would know I was eavesdropping the second that Finn came inside.

              “I was mad, okay? I was mad at you! You deserved it!”

              “But Emily doesn’t! She’s screwed up enough without having to worry about me, too.”

              “I said I was sorry,” she said.

              “
I’ve already told y
ou to stay out of this one,” Finn warned her.
“
I mean it. You’ve done enough damage as it is. Promise me.”

              “I promise. I’ll stay out of this one,” she said obediently in a low voice.

              “What’s going on?” Ms. Walsh’s voice joined theirs suddenly, and though I couldn’t see her either, I knew she must have just stepped up to the door. “Class is about to start, Finn. Let’s go.”

              “Crap!” I darted across the room to my seat and made it just before Finn and Ms. Walsh stepped into view. I could just see Shannon walking away down the hall as the bell rang. She would be late for her last class.

              “Hey,” Finn said, lowering himself into his seat opposite me.

              “Hey.” I had to force the words out of my mouth. He couldn’t think that I was mad, or else he’d know I had been eavesdropping. How dare he say that I’m screwed up? How is his life any more organized than mine? And what the hell was going on with him and Margo?

              “All right, class, take out your pens. It’s pop quiz time!” Ms. Walsh sounded far too excited about her little announcement, but I didn’t comment on it like I usually would have. I reached into my bag for my pencil, but suddenly realized that I had left it sticking in the pencil sharpener near the door.

              Crap. I couldn’t go get it or Finn would know that I had been standing there. Ms. Walsh had already gotten to our table and tossed two quizzes into the middle of it, so I didn’t have time to get it anyway. I screwed up my courage and forced myself to ask Finn for an extra pen, which he handed over indifferently.

              “No talking,” Ms. Walsh reminded us as she returned to her desk.

              No problem.              

Fourteen

              “Come
on
, Mom!” I called from the front door. “We’re gonna be late!”

              “We are not!” Her voice echoed down the hall from the bathroom.

              “Yes we are and it’ll be your fault!”

              “Be nice to your mother,” Dad shouted from his office. I could see him easily through the open door; his fingers were a blur on the keyboard of his laptop. Supposedly he was writing a sequel to
Mouth, for Goodness Sake
, but I couldn’t imagine what he possibly could have missed the first time around.

“All right, let’s go,” Mom said, emerging breathlessly from the hallway. She was still pulling her dark hair back in a pony tail as she stalked toward the door. The faded old smiley face T-shirt she was wearing was stretched tight across her expanding belly. I frowned.

“You and I should go shopping for maternity clothes, Mom,” I said.

She looked up at me, a little taken aback at the concern in my voice. “Sure,” she said. “Yeah, we’ll go this weekend. I don’t think I’ll be able to squeeze into these jeans much longer.”

“Okay, but let’s go now. I don’t want to miss my appointment.”

“Fine, fine.” She hurried over to Dad for a quick kiss before following me out of the door.

“Do you want me to drive?” I asked.

“You can drive when we take your car, Emily,” she said, reaching for the driver’s side door.

“I’m not sure that’s fair. We never take my car.”

“It’s perfectly fair,” she said, but she paused with one hand on the door handle, the other on her head.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“Yeah, just a headache.” She shook her head and got inside.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to drive?” I asked.

“You drive your car, and I drive mine.” She looked at me smugly just because she knew there was nothing I could do about it. I think she enjoyed that fact a little more than was strictly necessary.

It took all of two minutes to cut through the plaster twice, once on each side of my arm, and free my wrist for the first time in eight weeks.

I grimaced when I saw my poor left arm. It was shrunken and emaciated and my skin was mottled and crusty. The worst part, though, was the hair. Instead of being short and unnoticeable, the hair was long and thick like the hair on a gorilla’s arm might be.

“Aw, sick!” I exclaimed, revolted by my own arm.

Mom and the nurse both started laughing, then. “What did you expect, Emily?” Mom asked, hiding her mirth under her hand. “It’s been a cast for eight weeks!”

“I know, but still!” I frowned at my left wrist. “How long before this goes away?”

“Just use some lotion or baby oil for a while. It should clear up.” The nurse smiled in a patronizing sort of way. “Now let’s have a look, shall we?”

I held out my arm and she experimentally bent my hand backwards a couple of centimeters. “Does this hurt?”

“A little, yeah.”

She bent it the other way. “And this?”

I winced under the pressure. “Ow, yes! Stop please!”

She smiled and patted my hand gently. “It will get better pretty quickly. Just be sure to do your exercises every day.” She grabbed a couple of papers from a shelf on the wall and handed them to me. They were detailed instructions on doing a few at-home physical therapy exercises. She walked me through them, demonstrating on my arm. “The important thing is to push until you feel pressure, but not pain. Okay?”

“Yeah,” I said, cradling my arm.

“Good. Then you’re free to go.” She smiled and helped me down off of the table.

“Just in time for calculus,” Mom said with a smile, and I groaned. Mom reached for the two pieces of my cast lying on the counter after the nurse disappeared. She put the two halves together and studied it as we walked out of the room and down the hall towards the front desk. “You know, I don’t think I’ve read most of these little quips,” she said thoughtfully.

“This is my favorite one,” I pointed at the Shel Silverstein poem that Finn had written on it the very first day.

Mom grinned. “Yeah, I’ve read that one. Who wrote this one?” She pointed to a quote by Maya Angelou.

“Finn.”

“What about this one?”

“Finn again.”

“And this one?”

“That was Bill.”

She grinned, and pointed to the little green apple near the palm. “And who did this one.”

“Finn did.”

She looked at me, one eyebrow raised. “How many of these quotes did Finn write on here?”

I looked down at the cast. Almost every bit of white spaces available was covered in cramped writing and doodles. “Probably about seventy percent of them.”

“Hm.” She held it up so that she could read it a little easier.

“What?”

She shrugged. “Nothing. Just curious. Ha! That’s a good one.” She held it up so that I could read: “Political correctness is tyranny with manners. Charlton Heston.”

              I grinned. “Yeah, Finn’s got a bit of an issue with the politically correct.”

              “I see,” she muttered meaningfully.

              “What, Mom?” I asked, but she just shrugged and refused to elaborate.

              After we’d signed the relevant paperwork, Mom and I piled into the car. She backed out of the space and pulled out onto the main road.

              “School’s the other way,” I said, confused.

              “Yeah, but lunch is this way.”

              I was suddenly very suspicious. I peered at her through narrowed eyes. “But we don’t have time.”

              “Nah,” she shrugged. “We’ve got a whole hour to kill before the dreaded calculus is over.” She looked at me and grinned. “Who’s the best?”

              “You are!” I said. “No question.”

              “You know, it’s not really worth it to go to school just for a couple of hours, though. We could just go home and have sundaes for lunch.”

              I couldn’t believe my ears. “You know I’d love to, but I’ve got a test in civics today.”

              “So blow it off. It’s not every day that you get your cast off.”

              “What’s with you today, Mom?” I asked. “Did you hit your head this morning rolling out of bed?”

              “Maybe.” She sounded rather miffed. “If I had, you’d feel so guilty for being such a jerk about it.”

              “But you didn’t, so I don’t.”

              “All right,” she said in mock disappointment. “I’ll take you to the house so you can get your car after lunch.”

              “No, no!” I disputed. “I’d rather make up a civics test and have sundaes for lunch. Besides, the school still smells like rotten eggs.” I didn’t bother mentioning how little I was looking forward to seeing Finn in Lit class. Mom didn’t need to know about his suspicious conversation with his sister.

              “Great!” she smiled. “Let’s go to the store, then. We need a couple more things before we can make sundaes.”

              “Like what?”

              She shrugged. “Nothing big. Just ice cream, chocolate and strawberry syrup, cherries, bananas, whipped cream, and pecans. And some of those long glass bowls made especially for banana splits.”

              I laughed and settle back into my seat. “Maybe I should break my arm more often.”

              “Maybe.”

Shannon came over that night after supper on the pretence of bringing me my calculus assignment. I knew good and well that she’d had some other reason for knocking on our front door that night, but I didn’t care enough to ask just yet.

“You could have just called,” I told her as she handed me the paper with the assignment written on it. “I don’t even have my book with me.”

“That’s okay,” she said, producing her own text book from her bag. “I’ve got mine. I’ll help you.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Okay.”

“What are you waiting for?” she asked. “Let’s go.” She turned me around and pushed me towards the stairs and my bedroom. When we got there, she went straight to my closet to drag out the plastic drawers that contained my nail products.

“Have you already done this?” I asked, holding up her book.

“Yeah. Page 208.”

“Great, thanks.” My words were heavy with sarcasm. I settled myself on the floor as Shannon started perusing through the nail polish and opened the book to the right page. Wonderful, more related rates problems.

“So you kept your cast, right?” she asked, eyeing my long sleeves. It wasn’t exactly cold, but my arm still grossed me out. “Was your arm gross? I heard that the hair grows a lot when you’ve got a cast.”

“Yeah, it was pretty nasty.”

“Let me see!”

“No. It’s really unpleasant.”

“Come on!”

“I can’t do this assignment if you’re going to be bothering me the whole time,” I told her with a glower.

Her eyes narrowed. “What’s wrong?” she asked warily.

I looked up at her, dropping the book to my lap with a plop. “What’s going on with Finn and Margo?” I asked, though I knew she wouldn’t answer.

She looked down at her hands, her eyes wide. “Nothing. Why?”

“Don’t give me that crap, Shannon,” I said, leaning in. “You were going to tell me something yesterday before the nerd bomb went off, but you never finished. Then Finn yelled at you because you were
going
to tell me something. And then he said that I was
screwed up
enough! What’s going on?”

She looked at me, a pleading look on her face. “You heard that?”

“Yes, I did!”

“Well then you also heard me promise not to get involved.” She looked down at her hands again.

“You’re my best friend, Shannon!” I cried. “We tell each other everything!”

“Yes you are my best friend, but Finn is my brother! He made me promise to butt out, and that’s what I’m going to do. If you want to know what’s going on with him, you should just ask him yourself!”

“Fine! Let’s go.” I started to haul myself up off of the floor, but Shannon was on her feet in a flash.

“He won’t tell you!” she said. “He’ll just say that you’re imagining things and that I’m being stupid. He’s the most freaking noble person we’ll ever know, and he’s more stubborn even than you are!” I glared at her, but didn’t move to get up again. “He won’t give in. He won’t let you think there’s anything wrong if he can absolutely help it.”

“Well there
is
something wrong,” I said. “And if it’s wrong enough to screw me up more than I evidently already am then I think I have a right to know about it!”

“You’re not screwed up, Emily!” Shannon rolled her eyes, exasperated. “That’s not what he meant!”

“Well then what did he mean?”

“He’s just worried about you, that’s all. He’s worried that you’re stressing out about this whole Ethan thing and he doesn’t want to add to it.”

“How could his relationship problems stress me out more?” I asked, getting more and more annoyed by the minute. “And how come you get to know what’s going on? You’re stressing out about Charlie still!”

“I’m his sister, Emily,” she told me. “I’m always around. I pick up on things, hear things. I just figured the whole thing out.” She hesitated, then added, “Plus Margo told me a couple of days ago. Well, confirmed it, really.”

“Well, are Finn and Margo still together? Surely you can tell me that much.”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think so?”

“I’m not sure. Neither of them has given me a definitive answer. I can say, though, that if it’s not over yet, it will be in a couple of days.”

“Days?”

“Or hours.”

“Talk about your failed experiment.” Sudden pity for my two friends seemed to quench the worst of my own irritation. Unfortunately now I had no idea who had ended (or would end) the relationship, so I didn’t know who to feel bad for.

Shannon moved back to the bed, but didn’t resume snooping through my nail polish. We both sat in silence for a few minutes, both of us a little overwhelmed by our argument.

It was Shannon who finally broke the silence. “So, did you keep the cast or not?”

“Yeah, it’s on that shelf, there.”

She got up and went to take it down. “Good. There’s a lot of good advice on this thing.” She settled down on the bed and turned my cast over in her hands.

I glanced up at her, feeling a little standoffish. I didn’t like that feeling. “So, has Charlie proven his love to you yet?”

She shrugged. “Not yet.” The look on her face told me this wasn’t a pleasant subject either, so I dropped it.

Fifteen

The next day I did my best not to avoid Finn. His “screwed up” comment still stung a little, but I had to take into consideration that he thought Ethan was the one screwing me up. Even so, I couldn’t make myself say much to him during breakfast or lunch. Margo didn’t sit with us either time, so I could only assume that the relationship was finally over. I glanced over at her, trying to see if she looked overly upset, but she was just laughing and talking with Jessica and Rusty like it was any other day.