up with me would be worse than showing up with a giant jaundiced yellow cockroach.
I drag myself into the living room to watch TV while painting my nails with some gluey red nail polish I discovered under the couch. I try to stop the sad feelings from squirming into my heart, which I picture in the shape of one of the decoration flowers we tacked up in the gym for the Fling: pink and flat and papery, easy to scrunch.
When Mom comes home I feel too stupid to tell her about Ty plus then I’d have to apologize for our fight, even though I wouldn’t call it a fight exactly, anymore. It’s more of that unsure, niggly stage right before a truce. So I stay in my room. But she decides to make dinner and then I have to sit at the table and eat an evil plateful of tuna fish sandwiches and cauliflower. I chew and swallow in silence. Mom reads a magazine. I clean up the kitchen without being asked. The quietness in the apartment hurts almost as much as the imaginary brawling conversations I’m having with Ty Amblin in my brain.
Saturday is opening night for As You Like It .
“Have a good time at the dance,” Mom says as she heads out the door. Her voice isn’t friendly or mean; I could answer nicely or not at all. She really knows how to deliver her lines perfectly; there’s no substitute for that kind of talent. I decide to answer seminicely
“Okay, I will.”
“And are you staying over at Portia’s?”
“I guess so.” It takes every nonbabyish, unselfish feeling inside me to keep from running to the door, stopping her, and pouring out my problems. I really don’t want to be by myself tonight, which now stretches before me in all its miserable, agonizing hours of lying around, flipping through magazines or TV channels, thinking about the dance. “Break a leg tonight,” I add after a second’s thought.
“Thanks.” She smiles, a real smile that might mean we’re on the road to patching things up. But then she opens and walks out the door, locking the deadbolt with a purposeful, leaden clunk that makes me feel like a prisoner. Now I am officially trapped inside my horrible Saturday night.
The phone rings and some cruelly optimistic voice inside me convinces me that it’s Ty. Would I still go to the dance with him, even last minute? No. Yes. No.
I pick up the phone and take a breath.
“Hello?”
“Hi.”
“Oh. Hey, Gary.”
“I just made a beautiful chef’s salad,” he says. “And I thought I could bring you a Breedshow princess-size portion, to give you enough energy for the ball.”
“Oh, Gary, that’s so nice of you,” I say. “But I’m not … it’s just one of those, see I’m not exactly … see Gar, it’s a long story.” I am trying very hard not to sound too pathetic, but I guess I must, because the next thing I know Gary is at the door, holding a bowl of chef’s salad in one hand and half a loaf of his awful health-food-store, honey-sweetened walnut bread in the other.
“I’m in the mood for a long story,” he says, “as long as you have forks.”
The truth is that it’s not a long story at all. It’s a short angry one. I don’t bother to act like Miss Cool when I tell it, like I sort of did with Portia. Gary knows me too well. And then, I don’t know why—mostly I think it’s just because I’m not ready to stop crying yet—but I start talking to him all about Rick Finzimer, and how he manages to crawl his way inside my thoughts more than I’d like him to, these days.
“I can’t help wishing I could pick up the phone and talk to him every once in while,” I say As soon as I’ve said it out loud, I know it’s true. “Like if I ever get a not horrible grade in math, or when I didn’t know whether to get Mom those earrings for her birthday. I guess I want to share life stuff with him. A good time or a bad time, or anything.”
“You know, Wombat, I hope you always know you can rely on me to talk to and do some of that parent duty.”
“Oh, I know,” I say
I drag myself into the living room to watch TV while painting my nails with some gluey red nail polish I discovered under the couch. I try to stop the sad feelings from squirming into my heart, which I picture in the shape of one of the decoration flowers we tacked up in the gym for the Fling: pink and flat and papery, easy to scrunch.
When Mom comes home I feel too stupid to tell her about Ty plus then I’d have to apologize for our fight, even though I wouldn’t call it a fight exactly, anymore. It’s more of that unsure, niggly stage right before a truce. So I stay in my room. But she decides to make dinner and then I have to sit at the table and eat an evil plateful of tuna fish sandwiches and cauliflower. I chew and swallow in silence. Mom reads a magazine. I clean up the kitchen without being asked. The quietness in the apartment hurts almost as much as the imaginary brawling conversations I’m having with Ty Amblin in my brain.
Saturday is opening night for As You Like It .
“Have a good time at the dance,” Mom says as she heads out the door. Her voice isn’t friendly or mean; I could answer nicely or not at all. She really knows how to deliver her lines perfectly; there’s no substitute for that kind of talent. I decide to answer seminicely
“Okay, I will.”
“And are you staying over at Portia’s?”
“I guess so.” It takes every nonbabyish, unselfish feeling inside me to keep from running to the door, stopping her, and pouring out my problems. I really don’t want to be by myself tonight, which now stretches before me in all its miserable, agonizing hours of lying around, flipping through magazines or TV channels, thinking about the dance. “Break a leg tonight,” I add after a second’s thought.
“Thanks.” She smiles, a real smile that might mean we’re on the road to patching things up. But then she opens and walks out the door, locking the deadbolt with a purposeful, leaden clunk that makes me feel like a prisoner. Now I am officially trapped inside my horrible Saturday night.
The phone rings and some cruelly optimistic voice inside me convinces me that it’s Ty. Would I still go to the dance with him, even last minute? No. Yes. No.
I pick up the phone and take a breath.
“Hello?”
“Hi.”
“Oh. Hey, Gary.”
“I just made a beautiful chef’s salad,” he says. “And I thought I could bring you a Breedshow princess-size portion, to give you enough energy for the ball.”
“Oh, Gary, that’s so nice of you,” I say. “But I’m not … it’s just one of those, see I’m not exactly … see Gar, it’s a long story.” I am trying very hard not to sound too pathetic, but I guess I must, because the next thing I know Gary is at the door, holding a bowl of chef’s salad in one hand and half a loaf of his awful health-food-store, honey-sweetened walnut bread in the other.
“I’m in the mood for a long story,” he says, “as long as you have forks.”
The truth is that it’s not a long story at all. It’s a short angry one. I don’t bother to act like Miss Cool when I tell it, like I sort of did with Portia. Gary knows me too well. And then, I don’t know why—mostly I think it’s just because I’m not ready to stop crying yet—but I start talking to him all about Rick Finzimer, and how he manages to crawl his way inside my thoughts more than I’d like him to, these days.
“I can’t help wishing I could pick up the phone and talk to him every once in while,” I say As soon as I’ve said it out loud, I know it’s true. “Like if I ever get a not horrible grade in math, or when I didn’t know whether to get Mom those earrings for her birthday. I guess I want to share life stuff with him. A good time or a bad time, or anything.”
“You know, Wombat, I hope you always know you can rely on me to talk to and do some of that parent duty.”
“Oh, I know,” I say
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