Amandine (6 page)

If I hadn’t known beforehand, I might have guessed Roger was Roxanne’s brother instead of husband, or ex-husband, or whatever he was. Like Roxanne, he was spectacled and pointy and small.

“Hi.” Roger’s face twitched, he looked surprised to see me. I noticed he was wearing a scientist’s lab coat. There were smudges of dried red paint on the elbow, giving him the look of a mad scientist who had just finished up some secret bloody experiment. He picked up a plate and loaded it with pasta.

“I told you Delia was coming,” Amandine reminded.

“Yeah, I know, I know. I just forgot.” Roger ate leaning against the kitchen counter, his legs crossed at the ankle.

“That you, Rodge?” Amandine’s mom seemed to have flowed in from nowhere to become the center of the room and everyone’s attention. “Finally. I hope you got what you wanted, after interrupting my entire day.” She kissed Amandine on the top of her head, patted Jin on the shoulder, and didn’t seem to notice me at all.

“Don’t worry about it,” said Roger, serving himself an extra helping.

“We have a guest, Roger,” said Jin, inclining his head toward me. “Easy on the food.”

Roger grunted; his head shook off Jin’s remark like an old horse shakes off a fly.

Roxanne poured herself a glass of soda water and plopped into a seat at the table, her chin in her hands. I watched her. Everyone else was watching her.

“I can’t get the color right,” she said to no one, to all of us. “Too much green, too much white. What does April feel like?”

“You,” said Jin.

I don’t know why, but I blushed.

“She’s talking about a painting,” explained Amandine.

“She’s always talking about a painting,” snapped Roger.

“If you want to tell me I’m self-centered, then come out and say it,” said Roxanne in a voice that was too loud for the room. “Be brave, Rodge.”

Roger looked up at the ceiling and yawned.

“Delia, would you like some more pasta?” Jin offered the cauldron. I twirled a few thick ribbons of pasta onto my plate.

“Can we be excused to watch television?” Amandine asked.

I nodded agreement and set down my fork. I was suddenly, horribly, full. Stuffed.

The television was in what Amandine called the
solarium,
but this was another mostly empty room that was sunk two steps off the living room. A wraparound wall of windows took the place of wallpaper, and the television was propped on one of the deep sills, with pillows and blankets spread out on the floor in front of it. Amandine dropped onto her stomach and groped for the remote control. I dropped next to her. The blankets smelled musty and unclean. I contemplated going upstairs to Amandine’s room to retrieve my sleeping bag, but decided against it. I didn’t really want to wander through this house alone.

From far away, I heard a phone ring, and then I sensed that the other people in the house had crept off in different directions. An hour later, I thought I heard one of the cars pull out of the driveway. Nobody came in once to bother us or disturb us or to remind us to turn off the lights.

When I woke, cramped, to the iced air of early the next morning, the television was still on, muted to an early-bird cooking show. I felt a peculiar pressure and realized that Amandine’s hand had locked itself around my wrist, five skeleton fingers handcuffing me. She was asleep, but I could see by the twitch of her closed eyes that she was having a bad dream. “I dare you, then!” she whispered once. Whether her body was tensed in fear or anger I couldn’t tell.

I didn’t know what to do, so I waited it out. When her grip eased, I tugged my hand away.

There was a small bit of fuzz on her cheek. I suppose I could have plucked it off with my fingers or ignored it, but instead, I leaned over her and lightly blew it into flight.

Amandine’s eyes flew open and she slapped a hand over her nose.

“Delia!” she reprimanded loudly, outraged. “You should know better. Never, ever blow on someone’s face. That is the grossest manners.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean it to be gross.”

“Plus, you have morning breath.”

“Sorry, I said.”

She rolled up onto her side and propped herself up on an elbow, facing me. “Delia, you’re weird,” she pronounced solemnly. “There is something wrong with you.”

And she seemed so sure that it scared me a little. Probably I could have retaliated; there was a lot of weird, wrong stuff about Amandine, too. But to say anything seemed defensive and babyish.

The only thing to do was to smile in what I hoped was an uncaring way.

“How was the sleepover?” asked Mrs. Gogglio, the first thing out of her mouth when she picked me up for school at the beginning of the next week.

“Fine. Not too exciting. We had Italian food.” It had become my stock answer, the one I’d given my parents. Because I had decided not to tell them anything about Jin and the Frightful Fun House, and the fact that we’d had cold leftover pasta and tap water for breakfast. It seemed like a secret and besides, what was the point? All that my parents would do was frown on Amandine and, worse, prevent me from visiting again. I doubted I wanted to, but it was my choice. My secret.

“Funny situation over there.” Mrs. Gogglio’s voice was conversational, inviting me to respond.

I glanced at her. She knew.

“You mean, with that … guy?” I threw and then slackened the line, waiting for her next tug.

“Mmm. Jim.”

“Jin.”

“Right. He lives there, you know. In that guest house or garage, but that’s close as close gets. My friend Nancy Krause takes tickets at the Cineplex, she says they come in every Saturday night. The mother and her beau, and him barely out of some art school in New York City.” Mrs. Gogglio clucked her tongue. “The times we live in.”

“It’s not as bad as it sounds,” I said. “Everyone gets along okay.”

“It’s not natural.”

“He’s nice. Nice means a lot,” I added, borrowing her phrase.

Her mouth pursed into a bud of doubt. But now I was glad Mrs. Gogglio knew about the Frightful Fun House. Otherwise, it all might have felt like a dream, something false and unsettling that I had made up in my head.

She changed the subject by telling me a story about poor old Miss Benedict over at Sunrise Assisted, who kept a box of fabric scraps on her bedside table. The weekend duty nurse accidentally had emptied the box on Saturday, and Miss Benedict had sunk into a deep depression.

“I got the call yesterday,” said Mrs. Gogglio. “She’s been real blue. All that needs being done, I told Jenny—Jenny’s on my routines for the weekend—all that needs being done is to replace the lost scraps with some new ones, you get to be as old as Miss Benedict, it’s not about the actual things themselves, it’s about hanging on to what you think is yours. Gives a person a sense of belonging to the world and vice versa, you see?” I nodded. I could see that.

Spring fitness was scheduled Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons. It was a class designed for the kids who did not play the “real” spring sports, which were softball, track, or soccer. The class was filled with kids like Eddie Patimkin, who used an inhaler, or Marissa Ruiz, who wore a back brace.

I took spring fitness by choice, because being on teams made me nervous, and Amandine took it because of her shinsplints. The class was supposed to satisfy the state physical fitness requirement, but I don’t know how. We were always doing corny activities like square dancing or obstacle-course hopscotch. Things that didn’t feel like sports at all. Still, I hated it—the damp-towel smell of the gym, the itchy nylon shorts we had to wear, the uncomfortable quiver in my stomach that lingered after the exercise was over. My face always heated up when I sweat, too, and Amandine would make fun of me.

“Wee wee wee, all the way home,” was her joke. “That’s you, Delia. “You get as pink as a little piggy.”

When Mom picked me up early that Tuesday for an orthodontist appointment, I was so happy to be getting out of spring fitness that I forgot to tell Amandine. It wasn’t until I was in the car that it hit me.

“I need to go back in,” I said uneasily. “I forgot something.”

Mom’s cheeks puffed in a show of impatience. “Is it absolutely dire?” she asked.

I thought. “I guess not.”

“Because we’re late already.”

“Then forget it,” I said, biting my lip. I didn’t owe Amandine any explanation. She wasn’t my boss. “Let’s just go. Let’s go.”

For once, I had done something right.

“Everything looks wonderful,” said Dr. Ang. She leaned forward across her desk and smiled from Mom to me and back again. Pretty and serene and a little bit remote, she did not seem to be the type to give compliments. But she was the type who had a passion for her job, and she stared admiringly at the X ray as she slid it to Mom. I could tell Mom did not want to linger over the ghostly imprints of my teeth.

“No, no, no,” Dr. Ang reprimanded.
“Look
at it.” She turned her attention to me. “You’ve been wearing the appliance for twelve hours a day, haven’t you?”

I shrugged a yes. I’d hated having braces and welcomed the switch to a retainer, and I took all the precautions that would keep me from regressing to a mouthful of railroad tracks.

“You’ve made fine progress,” said Dr. Ang. “Compared with the previous set of X rays that your dentist in Connecticut sent, it’s remarkable. Remarkable.” My mother’s eyebrows lifted. Now she picked up the X ray and held it at arm’s length, seeking out its hidden value as if she had just been told it was a Frank Lloyd Wright original blueprint.

“Delia’s got a beautiful bite,” said Dr. Ang.

An embarrassed tingling spread through me. It was rare to hear the word “beautiful” in the same sentence as “Delia.” Even as I shrugged and pushed deeper in my chair, I wanted to go find a mirror so that I could stare at my beautiful bite in private.

“I
thought
it was starting to come along,” said Mom.

As we walked out to the parking lot, she tugged a piece of my hair. “Good girl,” she said. “See what you can do when you put your mind to it?”

It was the best my mother could do for a compliment, so I took it as one. I am not one to ruin a happy mood.

The next day, when Amandine was not at my locker and I couldn’t find her at lunch, I figured that she was absent. Entering the gym for spring fitness, however, I was surprised to see her and Mary Whitecomb sitting together on a pile of folded exercise mats and laughing.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

“We’re just doing this skit,” said Amandine. “I’m being Coach Frost and Mary has to rope climb and I’m looking at her underwear.”

“How intellectual.” I rolled my eyes, but my insides gnawed uneasily. “Where’s Jolynn?” I asked Mary.

“Around,” she answered with a roll of her shoulders.

Mary Whitecomb and Jolynn Fisch were another pair of friends who took spring fitness. Amandine and I joined up with them when we needed to be a foursome for square dancing or baton relays. Mary seemed okay, but Jolynn scared me. She had a double-stud nose piercing plus a tongue piercing and wore aluminum-colored lipstick. Every afternoon she sneaked across the highway over to Holy Ghost Prep so that she could ride the bus home with her boyfriend, who was a sophomore there. Mary, who was vastly tall and had an underbite and wore thick scratched glasses, was less intimidating than Jolynn—though she did not seem as interesting, either.

And since when did Amandine do skits with her?

“We made up the skit yesterday,” Amandine said, as if reading my thoughts. “When you were absent.” Her voice was accusing, slightly triumphant.

“Okay,” I said. “Fine by me.”

Then Amandine whispered something in Mary’s ear. I edged away, unsure of what to do or where to place myself. This was my punishment, I knew, for being gone yesterday and not telling her.

Class got worse, as it was one of those rare days when Coach Frost decided to pick out partners himself, separating friends so that kids wouldn’t cheat on that session’s activity, which was a timed calisthenics test. But he paired Amandine and Mary.

My partner was Wendi Squires, who was a math whiz. She wouldn’t round off the times on her stopwatch. “Delia, you can chin hang for eight point one six eight seconds,” she announced. “One point eight three two more seconds would give you a perfect ten.”

“Mmm.” Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Amandine and Mary whispering endlessly in each other’s ear. When I checked on Jolynn, who was paired with Marissa Ruiz, she didn’t seem to care at all.

Suddenly, I found it hard to breathe, and in that moment I also desperately missed Lexi, and the easy friendship we’d shared back in Connecticut. A friendship that skipped across a week easy as checkers or Parcheesi, the same moves every time. Amandine’s friendship was like a game of strategy, and it always reminded me how bad I was at strategy, and how much I didn’t know.

Still, I kept quiet, waited. After school, it was as if nothing had happened. While we waited for our rides, we drew sketches of rotten eyeballs in Amandine’s Ugliest Things notebook. Disgusting drawings were getting easier for me.

I didn’t brave the subject until she called me on the phone that night. And even then I was careful, waiting for the right moment.

“What do you think about that girl, Mary?” I asked.

“She’s all right,” Amandine answered. “She’s kind of a grub, but did you know she’s in a fight with Jolynn? They don’t speak to each other anymore.”

I hadn’t known, but I was used to Amandine noticing everything. “What’s the fight about?”

“Jolynn’s just a boy-crazy slut and Mary’s had enough. I’m gonna ask her to sit with us at lunch tomorrow.”

“Why?”

“Why not? I’ve been thinking, Delia. We really need a third friend. I mean, what happens if I’m absent one day? Who are you going to hang around with?”

I thought about that. I saw myself wandering the halls alone. Sitting by myself in assembly. Pretty awful. But Amandine and Mary were in the same homeroom. What if they got to be better friends and started to share secrets and leave me out of stuff?

“Mary’s dad’s a minister,” I recalled. “And she’s sort of a priss, too, isn’t she?”