Encore Edie (3 page)

High school, day one, Tuesday:

“Look,” Sam hisses. “There. There! Don’t look! God!”

“You said look!” I hiss back.

“You are totally embarrassing me!” Sam hisses.

We’re standing in the hallway between periods, watching all the newness: new people, new clothes, new behaviours, new hairstyles, new expressions, new everything. Sam is my best friend. I’m wearing my yoga top and new jeans. Sam is wearing a skirt and sweater. I’ve never seen Sam in a skirt in my life. It’s taken us this long, three periods, just to find each other in the flood.

“What am I looking at, anyway?” I whisper.

“Katie wearing makeup,” she whispers back. “Bye-bye, Elmo.” Katie was in our class last year. Her favourite T-shirt had the front of Elmo on the front and the back of Elmo on the back.

I say, “Bye-bye, Elmo.”

“My mom won’t let me,” Sam says.

“Won’t let you what?”

“Makeup.”

“Why would you want to?” I say. “To cover those disfiguring facial scars? Oops. You don’t actually have any.”

“Grow up,” Sam says.

High school, day two, Wednesday:

“Yes?” Mr. Harris, the drama teacher, says.

I put my hand down. “Please may I go to the washroom?” I say.

“No,” Mr. Harris says.

Everyone looks at me, and then at him, and then at me again. I’m taken aback. No one ever said no in middle school when you had to go to the washroom. “Excuse me?” I say politely.

“No,” he says.

I’m now regretting taking drama. Dexter told me band was for losers, and my brief experience with piano lessons persuaded me music wasn’t for me. And Shakespeare is drama, which sealed the deal. But now here’s this bearded guy not even looking up from his book to deny me my bodily functions. Is he kidding? Is this some kind of drama test? I didn’t know what drama was going to involve, but on this first day, anyway, it involves us sitting quietly and writing a list of our favourite fictional characters while the teacher reads.

“I don’t need long,” I say. “It’s only number one.”

The class starts to laugh. Mr. Harris looks up, finally, and he’s laughing too. “Oh, well, in that case,” he says.

Whatever. I don’t realize the extent of the problem until I get back and someone says, “Hey, Number One. Where’s your list?” And I have to walk up to the front of the room to put my list on top of the pile Mr. Harris collected from the rest of the class while I was out of the room. “Number One, Number One!” people are whispering all around me.

High school, day three, Thursday:

“Wasn’t that girl like wearing that same top like yesterday?” a girl in my math class says. “And like the day before?”

“Ew,” the other girl says.

It takes me to the end of class to realize they mean me.

High school, day four, Friday:

“Edie?”

“Go away,” I mumble.

“Are you okay?”

“Lost my pen,” I mumble. I have my head stuck in my locker. I’ve had my head stuck in my locker for the last ten minutes so no one will see I don’t have anyone to talk to or sit with at lunch. Meanwhile, I’m trying to figure out where to take my sandwich. A bathroom stall sounds about right,
except that’s what got me into trouble in the first place. Now everyone in my drama class calls me Number One and Sam is too mortified to be seen with me. How do I do these things to myself?

“Are you stuck?”

Oh, for god’s sake. “Oh, for god’s sake,” I say, pulling my head out. I’m staring at three strangers, older girls. Two and a half strangers. The half is my sister’s best friend, Mean Megan. I didn’t recognize her right away because she’s gone from having the longest long black hair I’ve ever seen to the shortest short black hair I’ve ever seen. She still looks pretty, only older.

“This is Ruby and this is Bridget,” Mean Megan says to me. To them she says, “This is Edie, Dexter’s sister. Are you going down to the cafeteria for lunch? Do you want to sit with us?”

I say, “What?”

“You know, sit with us,” Mean Megan says.

“Why?” I say. Mean Megan and I have a history, not all good.

“Because you look pathetic with your head sticking in your locker,” Mean Megan says. “Come on.”

In the cafeteria, I act the way you’re supposed to around strange dogs: don’t show fear but don’t make eye contact, no abrupt moves, hands to yourself. Megan and her friends head straight for a table in the middle of the chaos, where spaces for us magically appear. They are popular girls.
Dexter is already there. When she sees me, she hesitates for a minute then slides over. I fit myself in next to her. I’ve never been so grateful to be near her in my life. I eat my sandwich in silence, listening to them talk about their classes and somebody’s party and some band I’ve never heard of that they all love. At the end of the hour Dexter says, “You know you can’t sit with us again.”

The older girls are all nodding, sympathetically but as though to say,
It’s out of our hands.

“This was just for today,” Mean Megan says. “To help you out a bit. After what happened the other day in your class.”

I blush. They heard about that? Other classes heard about that? Other
grades
heard about that? The whole school?

“Oh, yes,” they all say, reading my face, nodding seriously.

“Oh,”
I say.

“You’ll figure it out,” Dex says quietly. “You just need to figure out where you fit in. Join a club or something, make some friends.”

“It’s hard for everybody to start with,” the one named Ruby says to me. “It’ll get better, you’ll see.”

“It can’t get worse,” I say.

“What do you mean, I have to share a bedroom with her?” I ask Mom.

“You don’t
have
to,” Mom says. “But she would like it
very much. Ellie phoned last night and said it’s all she talks about, a sleepover with her favourite cousin.” Ellie and Merry are in Calgary. They’ve been driving a U-Haul across the country and arrive tomorrow afternoon.

“Why can’t Dexter be her favourite cousin?” I say. Sleepovers are giggly and I don’t feel like getting giggly, even with Merry. I don’t feel like cheering up.

“She can sleep in my room,” Dexter says. “I don’t mind.”

“Thank you, Dexter,” Mom says. “That’s very considerate. We’ll explain it to Merry somehow.”

I mumble something.

“What was that?” Mom says sweetly.

I mumble it again.

“Thank you, sweetie,” Mom says. “I knew you’d understand.”

“They’re here!” Dexter shouts. “Edie!”

“I’m on the toilet,” I shout back. Which is sort of true. I’m sitting on the closed toilet seat, reading one of the newspapers Dad is always leaving in the bathroom. The bathroom is the one room in the house where I can lock the door. I have to turn the pages very, very quietly so no one will hear the crinkle and guess that I’m hiding.

“Edie!” Mom says, rapping at the door as she hustles down the hallway. Her voice is excited.

“Edie!” Dad calls from somewhere else in the house.

I ignore them all. In this way I miss the first few moments of the big arrival, everybody standing around in the driveway hugging seventeen thousand times, telling each other how tall/old/skinny they look, Mom probably crying a little and then Dad and Dexter hugging her too and then everybody hugging everybody and saying
Group Hug!
I can see it all in my mind’s eye, and right now I don’t need it.

I hear them move into the house and settle in the living room. There’s a voice in the mix I don’t recognize, a man’s voice, deeper than Dad’s. He says something and they all explode laughing. I try to pick out Merry’s voice, but she’s lost in the general noise. The strange man says something else and they all laugh again. I can’t stand it anymore. I stuff the newspaper in the inch of space between the toilet tank and the counter, flush, and open the door.

“Here’s Edie!” Mom says.

Before I even have time to see everyone in the room, I’m knocked off my feet. You think I’m kidding? You think this is a figure of speech? I am down on the floor, arms and legs all tangled up, barrelled over by someone determined to give me a bear hug. Someone.

“Edie!” Merry says.

We untangle and get up. Then we have to hug all over again. I kiss her on the cheek and she kisses me. I tap her nose with my finger and make a
beep
sound, because it made her laugh the summer we all went camping. She beams. “You tall!” she says.

“She’s a string bean!” the strange man says. Everyone laughs. He’s sitting on the couch with Auntie Ellie, holding her hand. He wears skate shoes and jeans and a T-shirt that says
Friendly Punk
. He has curly hair and glasses and looks as if he might go to university.

I say, “Excuse me?”

“String Bean!” Merry says, clapping and laughing.

Aunt Ellie is up by now and coming to give me more hugs and kisses. “You’re so tall!” she says. “So skinny! So grown-up!”

See? “Thanks,” I say, because what else can I do?

“This is Daniel,” Aunt Ellie says. The strange man jumps up and holds out his hand, so now on top of the hugging and kissing I have to shake hands. He whaps my arm up and down about thirty times, grinning as if this is the happiest day of his life.

“This my Edie,” Merry tells him. That’s what it sounds like, anyway; she doesn’t always speak too clearly. He hugs her and she closes her eyes, she’s that happy with him and me and everyone in the world.