7 Clues to Winning You (7 page)

Ms. Franny shook her head. “Better not be, or I’ll have to call up my old friend Joey Gambino.” She winked and placed her knobby index finger beside her nose. “I’m connected, you know.”

I got up to straighten up the knickknacks around the room. “You’ve mentioned it before.”

“About a thousand times,” Ms. Eulalie added under her breath. Then louder, “Watch that figurine, girl. My Josephina
gave me that for my seventy-fifth birthday. God rest her soul.” Ms. Eulalie had outlived all four of her children.

I planted one hand on my hip and cocked my head at her. “And you’ve mentioned
that
about a thousand times,” I teased. Ms. Eulalie was a robust woman. Her muscles might have slackened and left her skin looking slightly deflated, but there was no mistaking that Ms. Eulalie’s body had once been stout and strong.

“Now, tell us what happened. Was it a boy, baby?” Ms. Eulalie gave me a knowing look.

“Actually, it was,” I said. “His name’s Luke Pavel and he’s this jerk senior at Ash Grove who hates me for absolutely no reason besides the fact that I’m the principal’s daughter and I used to go to Meriton.” I’d already told them the whole moving and switching schools story.

“Pavel?” Ms. Franny said with a
humph
. “Is he
Polish
?”

Ms. Eulalie snapped, “You are the biggest racist I ever met in my whole living life.”

“Calm down, Rosa Parks. I didn’t say anything bad about Polacks, I just asked about his heritage.”

“See? You just called the boy a ‘Polack’!”

“That’s not racism!” Ms. Franny cried. “That’s bigotry.”

“Dear, sweet Jesus, why’d you put me in this room?” Whenever Ms. Eulalie’d had enough of Ms. Franny, she’d start praying to the ceiling. “I been good to you my whole life, so why, Lord, why? What terrible thing did I do to deserve this? Whatever it was, Jesus, please forgive me. Or call me home and end my misery.”

“Yes! Pick that last choice, Jesus!” Ms. Franny interjected.

“Don’t you get involved! Don’t you go trying to queer things ’tween me and Jesus.”

Ms. Franny tried to rise up out of bed. “Oh, so it’s ‘queer’ things, is it?” She had a grandson named Darren who was a highly successful dancer-slash-choreographer on Broadway. Ms. Franny was fiercely protective of Darren’s sexual orientation. “How dare you use that word!
Now
who’s the bigot?”

“I don’t mean it in that sense!” Ms. Eulalie waved her hands like she was erasing the air. “You know that I don’t mean it that way, woman. Now close your mouth and let baby girl talk!”

They both shut up and looked at me expectantly. I began the story and told them every detail, from last year’s scavenger hunt to my conversation with Dad barely half an hour earlier, including how I thought I’d convinced him to cancel the Senior Scramble and possibly the yearbook. They sat silently, even after I finished. “What?” I asked them. “What’s wrong? You guys have a look.”

Ms. Eulalie clucked and shook her head. “You going about making friends the wrong way, sugar.”

“I’m not trying to make friends,” I said. “I’m trying to stand up for myself and for other victims of bullying.” It had sounded rehearsed. Maybe because I’d said it to myself so many times.

“Oh, that’s horseshit,” Ms. Franny said.

“Watch your language, you hussy!”

Ms. Franny went on like she hadn’t even heard Ms. Eulalie. “Don’t try to blow smoke up our asses, cupcake. We may be old, but we’re not stupid.”

Ms. Eulalie straightened her pajama top and nodded slowly. “Mmm-hmm.”

“What do you mean?” I think, deep down, I already knew.

Ms. Franny leaned over and snatched her knitting out of the wicker basket on her bedside table. She unwound the baby-blue yarn from the needles and set into knitting a row. The aluminum needles clacked together rhythmically. “What I mean is, you’re not interested in standing up for any victims. All you’re interested in is getting even.”

“That’s right.” Ms. Eulalie rocked back and forth slightly. She drummed her fingertips together in her lap. “Ain’t nothing good going to come of that.”

I couldn’t stand the thought of Ms. Eulalie and Ms. Franny thinking I was a spiteful person, even though I recognized the complete hypocrisy in that. I tried to deny it, though. My feelings had been hurt, I explained, and I was only looking for justice.

They saw right through me.

“You done got justice mixed up with revenge, baby girl,” said Ms. Eulalie. “You need to stop and think on things for a spell.”

“Now, Blythe, we’re all in favor of being strong and not letting bullies win,” said Ms. Franny, “but you’re going about it all the wrong way. What’s the best-possible situation that could come out of this? You think everyone’s going to realize they were wrong, call you a hero, and throw you a ticker-tape parade?”

“Mmm-mmm.” Ms. Eulalie closed her eyes and calmly shook her head. “Lord, no.”

Ms. Franny’s hands moved the yarn and needles like a
shuttle on a loom. “Here’s what’s going to happen, best-case scenario. So make sure this is what you want. The seniors won’t like you because you ruined their turn to be on the fun end of the stick for a change. The juniors won’t like you because you came out of nowhere and took away a tradition they’ve been waiting for all year. The sophomores won’t like you because they know they’ll never even have a chance to look forward to it. And the freshmen won’t like you because freshmen do what everyone else does.”

“But …” I began.

Ms. Eulalie pointed her finger up in the air to stop me. “Oh, she ain’t done.”

“She’s not?” I said.

“No.”

I searched Ms. Franny’s expression for confirmation. She kept her eyes on her knitting. “No, I’m not. That was the best-case scenario. Now here’s the worst. All of that stuff still happens but on top of it, your father loses his job, your brother has to live down your reputation when he gets to high school, and you continue to get bullied, more than before. But that isn’t even the worst of the worst.”

“It isn’t?” I asked. “What’s the worst of the worst?” I was thinking maybe she meant I would get beaten up or something equally horrific. But I was wrong.

“The worst of the worst,” Ms. Eulalie answered, “is that everyone finally come to realize that the biggest bully of all is you.”

Her words halted my breath. That couldn’t be true. Could it?

Ms. Franny stopped knitting mid-stitch and peered over the stilled needles at me. “That’s the worst,” she said. She waited a moment, and then her hands went back into motion. The needles clicked and clacked.

“So what am I supposed to do?” I asked. “Dad always said that the only way to stop a bully is to stand up to him.”

“Standing up to a bully,” Ms. Franny said, “is not the same thing as becoming one.”

“Amen,” Ms. Eulalie agreed. “You have to try to find a peaceful, non-violent resolution. You know, back in Birmingham, Dr. King said—”

“Oh Christ, here we go again.”

Ms. Eulalie slapped both hands down on her mattress. “I already said! Don’t you take the Lord’s name in vain!”

“Aw, somebody make her stop. Make her stop!” Ms. Franny threw her head back on the pillows. “I can’t take it anymore!” She grabbed both knitting needles in one fist and pretended to stab herself repeatedly in the neck.

“Ladies,” I implored, “please!” I heard shoes squeaking on the floor behind me and knew who it was before I even had to look: Darlene, the head floor nurse. She was overweight, middle-aged, and seemed to have gotten sick of nursing about twenty years ago. I never had a conversation with Darlene where she didn’t complain about something. She was that type of person.

“What on EARTH is going on in here? Why do I have to come in here every SINGLE day?” She glared at me. “And why is it always worse when YOU’RE here?”

Ms. Franny bolted upright and brandished her knitting needles like a sword. “You lay off her!”

Darlene sneered and hitched her thumb at the door behind her. “Blythe, go in the common room and call bingo. They’re ready to start. Go on.”

Ms. Eulalie started humming a hymn, which is what she does when she’s trying to bite her tongue. Ms. Franny doesn’t even bother trying. “You are such a sad and hateful woman; you know that, Nurse Ratched?”

Darlene sneered. “Oh, ha ha ha.” She’d been called the name of the evil, sadistic nurse from
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
many times, especially by Ms. Franny.

Darlene smiled snake-like. Slit-eyed and all. Her hands clenched the hem of her Snoopy scrub top. “Watch out, or I might forget your Oxycontin.”

“Ha!” Ms. Franny laughed. “As if I don’t already know that you’re stealing it to sell to drug addicts on the street. Got to buy yourself some more fake fingernails and stripedy hair color, huh? Well, here’s a little secret for you, darling. Fancy striped hair doesn’t make you look any less rotund!”

As Ms. Franny spoke, Darlene’s eyes seemed to swell out of her bulging, crimson cheeks. She pursed her lips into a tight, wrinkled bud. She clearly had zero experience with the lady look.

Ms. Eulalie hummed louder.

Darlene growled through gritted teeth, “BL-YTHE?” When she was really livid, Darlene added syllables to words.

I slid off Ms. Franny’s bed. I didn’t want to leave and go call bingo, but Darlene had the authority to fire me from volunteer work. I didn’t want that. So I kissed the ladies and followed Darlene through the door. Two steps out, I heard
Ms. Franny start up again back in the room. “Talk about a bully,” she said. “Well, thanks a heap, Ukulele. Fat lot of good your peaceful, non-violent humming did to help me out …”

Darlene’s white orthopedic nursing shoes squeaked so loudly that I couldn’t make out another word. I felt like a scolded child following her down the hall, but she wasn’t the type of person who would walk beside you, either. She always had to be a step or two in front. I sped up and tried to walk next to her just to see if she’d turn it into a race, but she veered off toward her desk.

The common room could seat about a hundred people, but there were only maybe fifteen white-haired bingo players there. Actually, fifteen was a pretty good turnout. One time, I called six games of bingo for one lovable old woman. She had the time of her life. She just couldn’t believe she’d won six bingo games in a row.

So fifteen was a decent number of players. I just wished they’d all sat up front near where I stood and pulled each ball out of the wire barrel. Instead, the people were scattered throughout the room, and I had to call each ball several times, yelling as loud as I could until everyone finally heard me. By the time I’d called four games of bingo, I had pretty much lost my voice. I had very little hope that I’d be able to tell Tara the saga of my day.

“GOD, YOU SOUND LIKE YOU’VE BEEN SMOKING KITTY litter or something,” Tara said.

“I had to call bingo,” I rasped. “They decided to be extra deaf today.”

“How dare those old bastards!” Tara teased. “So it was a craptastic day at Ass Grove, huh?”

“Pretty much.”

“Then ice cream for dinner, it is. It’ll be good for your throat too. Come on. I’m buying.”

I tried to object, but Tara shushed me and dragged me over to Baskin-Robbins, where we each got a chocolate chip cookie dough sundae.

“It’s just as well that you can’t talk,” Tara said, “because I have some stuff to tell you. Remember how we thought Jenny Pritzkey was faking having her period because she was actually pregnant?”

I shoved a huge spoonful of ice cream in my mouth and said, “Yearagh.” My mother would’ve been mortified.

Tara pointed her long pink spoon at me. “Well, you are not going to believe this.”

From here, she launched into a long, convoluted tale of
Jenny Pritzkey’s spring break pregnancy scare. I won’t go into the boring details. It was pretty dull even for me, and I know Jenny Pritzkey. I pretended to hang on every word of Tara’s, though, because there’s nothing she likes more than to spread good gossip, and there’s nothing I like more than Tara. So she talked and I listened. In every close friendship, there is one talker and one listener. It didn’t take a genius to figure out which was Tara and which was me.

To tell you the truth, I really hadn’t been looking forward to rehashing the drama of my day for the third time, so I was grateful to have the sordid tale of Jenny Pritzkey’s tardy period to fill out the conversation.

When I got home a couple of hours later, Mom was cleaning the cabinet under the kitchen sink and Zach was doing algebra problems at the table.

“You got homework already?” I asked. “On your first day?”

“Hi, sweetie,” Mom called from under the sink.

Zach flicked his pencil up and down like a seesaw. “No big deal,” he said. “We did this stuff last fall at Meriton.”

Mom sat up. “You’re kidding?” She sloshed her rag in the bucket of sudsy water beside her, wrung it out, and ducked back into the cabinet.

“Hilarious as that is … no,” Zach said. “Works for me, though. I’m gonna cruise through the end of the year.” He scribbled an answer. “More time for gaming.”

“You already play video games far too much,” Mom said inside the cabinet. Zach rolled his eyes and made a “blah blah blah” gesture, opening and closing his hand like a mouth.

Mom scooted out and pointed to a spray bottle on the
counter by the stove. “Pass me that bleach spray, will you, Blythe? There’s some kind of stain under here I can’t get out.” She arched her back and winced.

“Seriously, Mom,” Zach said. “Why don’t you just hire somebody to clean?”

Mom wiped the sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand. She hadn’t thought to take off the gold and diamond watch that Gran and Granddad had given her for her fortieth birthday. And her manicure was destroyed. “Maids cost money, Zach.”

“Yeah, but don’t you have like a gazillion dollars in a trust fund from Gran and Granddad?” Zach asked, finishing a problem in about five seconds.

I handed the bleach spray to Mom. She gave Zach a sly grin and said, “And would you like me to spend it all before you have a chance to inherit it?”

Zach stared at her for a few seconds and then said, “Get back to scrubbing, woman.” He and Mom shared a laugh and she went back inside the cabinet to launch her bleach attack.