Camille McPhee Fell Under the Bus (7 page)

We were sent to the teachers’ lounge to talk to Mrs. Moses. The vice principal called it mediation. Mrs. Moses was very wise. She put the rock on the table in front of us and said that she was going to break it in two so that
we each could have a part of it. That sounded good to me and Penny. Mrs. Moses got a hammer and held it over her head.

“I would expect that the real owner of this little, pink baby rock would want it to remain whole,” she said, looking first at me and then at Penny.

But we both shrugged and told her to whack it.

She seemed really disappointed.

“I guess I’ll cut your precious baby rock in half,” she said, bringing the hammer down hard.

She actually broke it into eight pieces and some dust. Penny took four pieces and I took four pieces and we left the dust and were both happy. I needed somebody as smart as Mrs. Moses to come over here and cut the house in half, or the toilet seat in half, or the hole in half, and fix this situation.

My parents probably would have fought all night. But then I realized something. I considered what was happening between those two to be a “grave emergency.” So I called Aunt Stella.

“Camille, it’s late,” Aunt Stella said. “Does your mother know you’re calling me?”

“No. She’s fighting with my dad,” I said.

“Oh,” she said. “Are you crying?” she asked.

“Uh-huh,” I said.

“I wish I was there,” she said. “I’d give you a big hug.”

“Mom painted the whole house Majestic Eggplant and now Dad is exploding,” I said.

“That doesn’t sound good. But they can’t fight forever. Eventually they’ll stop,” she said.

I thought about telling Aunt Stella that sometimes wolverines didn’t stop fighting until one of them was dead.

“We’re trying to stay out of the hole,” I said. “But Mom bought new carpet. For the whole house. And then she sprung it on Dad like it was a great surprise. But it wasn’t.”

“Oh dear,” she said.

“I think we’re back in the hole again,” I said.

“Camille, you shouldn’t worry about money. You’re ten,” Aunt Stella said. “Do you want me to talk to them?”

“They’re too busy fighting to talk right now,” I said.

“I’m very disappointed in them. They’re adults. They need to keep their domestic problems to themselves,” Aunt Stella said.

“I think they need mediation,” I said.

Aunt Stella laughed. “Who doesn’t?”

“I better go,” I said.

“You can call me any time,” Aunt Stella said.

“But I’m only allowed to phone you if it’s a grave emergency.”

“Camille, you can call me whenever you want. Even in the middle of the night.”

“Okay,” I said. “But that’s usually when I’m sleeping.”

“What I mean is that I’m always here for you,” she said.

And hearing Aunt Stella say this made me feel very good. But it also made me cry more.

After I hung up with Aunt Stella, my parents kept fighting. It was terrible. I had to do something. My entire body was feeling quaking sad. So I ran out of my room and said, “You need mediation!”

They both looked at me. Then they looked at each other. And I thought their faces appeared very ashamed.

“Seriously. It’s very hard for me to hear these things,” I said. “You’re parents, not wolverines.”

Then I went back to my bedroom and I didn’t hear any more yelling. In fact, I heard my mother agree to help my father repaint the house. And I heard my father admit that he actually liked the new carpet. And I heard both my parents come into my room and say that they loved me, right as I was tumbling into sleep.

The next morning when I woke up, the cushioned toilet seat had already been installed. And when I went to school, nobody made fun of me for falling underneath the bus. And Tony Maboney had a temperature and went home early and didn’t feel up to poking me in the shoulder before he left. And in the hallway, Ms. Golden complimented me on my fancy socks because
they had ruffles on them. And during science, as we learned about how air pollutants affect asthma and can also make it easier for people to catch a cold or the flu, that low-hanging hornet’s wire broke and the hornet fell on me.

“It has a dangerous hind end!” I screamed.

“Ah, it broke,” Mr. Hawk said, pulling the insect out of my hair.

And it had! That hornet’s head came right off its body and landed next to my shoe. Also, I kicked it.

And so Mr. Hawk decided to replace it with a neat-looking cricket.

“Crickets don’t sting, right?” I asked. Because I was basically sure, but I wanted to check.

“Right, they sing,” he said.

“Sweet,” I said, staring up at the new bug.

My day kept getting better and better. For lunch, I ate pizza with sausage on it. And when I got home from school, the meditation wall was already repainted a soft white.

“Hi, honey!” my mom said. She had a paint roller in her hand. “I’m priming.”

“Great!” I said.

“Everything will be the color of the meditation wall,” she said. “It’s called Cotton. Do you like it?”

“Very much,” I said.

“Me too,” she said. “And so does your father.”

But I wasn’t surprised. Of course we liked the color Cotton. Everybody likes cotton. Because it’s the type of material that doesn’t itch or melt in the dryer. Plus, when you make it out of sugar, you can eat it at the zoo.

My house felt very wonderful. And then Mrs. Bratberg called and needed a mother’s helper for the next day, which meant more money for my calling card.

As I watched my mother prime the ceiling, I thought about what she’d said about life having ups and downs. Maybe she was right. Maybe life was like a series of mountains. Up and down. Up and down. Maybe somehow all the unfair things and the fair things balanced out.

I walked through my house and fell face-first onto my bed. This was all very marvelous news. In fact, it was so marvelous I thought about calling Aunt Stella and telling her that she had been right. I was ten. I didn’t need to worry about money. Or being in the hole. Besides, the hole must not have been as big as my dad thought. My parents had declared a truce! They didn’t need mediation after all! This made me feel so fantastic that I decided to go for a walk around my house and celebrate. I grabbed a banana and went to the backyard.

“I’m going outside to do some stuff,” I said.

“Wear your gloves,” my mother said. “On your hands.”

This was a good reminder. Sometimes I kept them tucked inside my pocket.

Even though the ground was snowy, I got down on my hands and knees and crawled around like a very thrilled dingo. That’s when I saw something. It was a squirrel. And I’d seen this squirrel before. It had been visiting my window for over a year. It did this for two reasons. One, the squirrel liked me. Two, I often left the squirrel yummy food like popcorn and lunch meat.

That’s when I realized something important. This squirrel probably wanted to be my pet. Because it was always looking for me. I squinted to make sure it was the same squirrel I’d been taking care of all year. I remembered it as being fluffier during the summer. But then I realized that squirrels might not look exactly the same all year long. Because they lived in the wild, and those conditions were severe.

The squirrel twitched its tail. It looked cold. But was I really ready for another pet? What if I found Checkers? Would she get along with my new pet squirrel? My dad had told me that I was never going to see Checkers again, due to the fact that she was in heaven. He was firm on this. But my mother always said there was hope. Sometimes, when this topic came up, my father looked out the window and didn’t say anything else. I guess he didn’t like talking about heaven. Even though, from what I heard, it sounded like a pretty
fantastic place. Except for the fact that you had to be dead to get there. The squirrel stood up very straight and froze. It had cute ears. I decided to name it Rhonda.

Since squirrels are such excellent runners, I stood up too. Because chasing my new pet squirrel Rhonda on my hands and knees would have meant losing my new pet squirrel. She crouched down again. I made sure my gloves were on tight and lifted up my hands. She was investigating something in the low branches of the yew bush beneath my window. I sneaked closer. The cold kept making Rhonda twitch. I knew she would be very grateful to live in my house.

“Rhonda,” I sweetly called. “Welcome to your new, warm home.”

That’s when I learned many terrible things about Rhonda. First, she wasn’t very grateful after all. Second, she was evil. And one of the things that made Rhonda evil was that she was an unkind mammal. Rhonda turned around and ran toward me. She was acting like she wanted to bite me. Maybe to death. That’s when I pictured heaven and ran very fast.

It was awful.

“I don’t want you anymore,” I said. “Go away!”

I hoped the evil squirrel would run up a tree. But it didn’t want to do that. Because it was evil. The squirrel followed me into the front yard. And made barking
sounds. It was a pretty rude squirrel, too. I think I was screaming really loud, because Polly came running over.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“That evil squirrel isn’t grateful at all. It hates me!” I said.

“What evil squirrel?” Polly asked. “Are you playing a game?”

I thought her questions were pretty dumb. First, I was not okay. I was sweating. Second, there was no such game as running away from an evil squirrel. And even if there was, there’s no way I could’ve been playing it, because I was screaming for real, and when I played games, I didn’t scream for real. But when I turned to point at the evil squirrel, it had totally disappeared. I hated that thing.

“It was right there,” I said, pointing to an empty patch of snow. “Look, you can see its tracks.”

“I don’t need to see its tracks,” Polly said. “I believe you.”

Then she did this awful thing. I was totally unprepared for it. Polly smiled at me. I didn’t want her to do that. Why did she think I wanted her to do that? What was wrong with her?

“Do you want to come over and paint?” she asked.

This offer was more awful than the first awful thing and way more awful than that evil squirrel. I didn’t
know what to say. The silence lasted a long time. Her smile melted. Then the sad Polly face I was used to seeing at the bus stop returned.

“Maybe another time,” she said.

I watched her leave. I watched her hurry across my yard and hers. I watched her climb her cement steps and go back inside her house. I watched her stringy-haired head move past her living room window as she disappeared into a room deep inside her home. I let out a big sigh. I think it was mostly filled with relief. I didn’t need a friend. I needed an international calling card. And I hoped that Polly could understand that.

Chapter 10
Avoid the Spark

W
hen I woke up the next day, I couldn’t stop thinking about quarters. I really liked quarters. Maybe
too
much. Because out of the fifty dollars that I’d saved, almost all of it was in quarters. And those things are heavy, and if I was serious about buying an inter national calling card, I was going to need to pay for it in bills. If I didn’t, people in line behind me would hate me. And when people in line behind me hated me, it made me feel rotten.

I thought a good person to talk to about this was
Mrs. Bratberg. Because she was the person who was paying me in quarters. Because I had told her many times that I preferred quarters to everything. I called her on the phone, and she was very nice about my idea.

“I would like to be paid in bills today,” I said.

“Okay,” she said.

“Also, I have too many quarters. I need to turn them into bills.”

“Bring them over,” she said. “I can use them to teach Dustin a practical lesson in math.”

Before I went over to the Bratbergs’, I put all of my change in one of my dad’s socks and put that sock in my coat pocket. I also packed my cooler and said goodbye to my mother.

“Don’t tell your father,” she said.

“I won’t.”

My dad was on a business trip in Utah. Which worked out for me. As I walked over to the Bratbergs’, I did a little bit of looking for Checkers. I also did some looking for that evil squirrel. But I didn’t see either. I also stopped by my mother’s old Chevy, because I had been finding lots of change in there. Mostly in her ashtray.

But I didn’t find any change in there that day. Instead, I found a note:

Camille, stop taking all my change. I use it to pay the parking meters in town. Without any quarters, I’m going to get a ticket.

This note made me feel pretty bad. So I opened up my sock and gave my mom two quarters. Then I found a pen and wrote:

Here you go, Mom. Enjoy my quarters.

When I got to the Bratbergs’, I learned some good and some bad news. First, Brody had a sprained ankle and wasn’t allowed to get out of bed for anything. Except to use the bathroom. That meant I only had to focus on the other two Bratbergs. Then, Mrs. Bratberg told me the bad news.

“Camille,” she said, grabbing her coat. “There’s been an incident.”

“Does that mean you don’t need a mother’s helper today?” I asked. I didn’t understand why she’d put on her coat. I didn’t think their house was cold.

“The post office just called me. I made a mistake on postage, so they’re holding my packages. If I don’t go down there and take care of it right now, my shipments won’t go out today. Do you know what that will do to my seller’s-reputation score?”

“Lower it?” I asked.

“Exactly,” Mrs. Bratberg said.

“So we’re going to the post office?” I asked.

She shook her head.

“Camille, I need to ask you to do something that I don’t normally ask you to do.” She placed one hand heavily on my shoulder.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Just for today, for the next hour, I need you to be more than a mother’s helper. I need you to be a babysitter.”

“A babysitter?” I asked. I didn’t think I’d be one of those until I was in high school.

“You’ve got my cell phone number,” she said, picking up her purse. “What do you think? Can you do it?”