Sarah Simpson's Rules for Living (3 page)

I guess it isn't fair to say my whole life changed in seconds. I already knew what my father was going to say. I mean he was packing and everything.

Today I got a letter from my father. It's written on stationery from the Sun Valley Inn and Recreation Lodge, with Jacuzzis in the Rooms. There is a picture of one of the rooms at the top of the page. It has a round bed with an orange bedspread, a big pot of ferns, and a view of mountains. You can just see the Jacuzzi through the open bathroom door, with a lot of fluffy towels piled up next to it and a guest sitting in it. The guest has a sort of boiled-lobster expression and is not a very good advertisement for the Sun Valley Inn.

At the bottom of the page, Kim wrote, “Love from Kim” in pink ink.

I don't see why Sally had to go and tell him that about being upset about the divorce. Besides, how does Sally know whether I'm upset or not?

I'll bet she only wants to teach me how to surf because she hopes I'll get eaten by a shark.

In history class we are reading “Excerpts from
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.
” Benjamin Franklin was a list maker. He once made this list of the things you have to do to become a morally perfect person. Then he would keep track of how he did every day by checking things off in a little notebook.

I am giving Horace the benefit of the doubt on 13 because, just like Socrates, he goes around asking really annoying questions all the time.

Jason Dobbs says that Horace is a jerk.

Horace is in trouble for taking a stand against world hunger. He took this stand at lunchtime in the cafeteria next to the trash bins.

Horace says that every five seconds a little kid in Africa dies of starvation. Horace thinks we should be doing something about it. At the very least, says Horace, we shouldn't be wasting food. A village in Africa could live for a month, says Horace, on the food our school throws away. So he stood by the trash bins and yelled at people. Horace calls this raising consciousness.

Then Mr. Fitzpatrick, who was the lunch monitor and who has one deaf ear from an accident with an outboard motor, finally noticed Horace and made Horace go to the principal's office.

The principal was very nice, Horace said. She sympathizes with his ideals. But she told him to stop the yelling. Yelling is not consciousness raising, she said. It is harassment. Besides it is bad for the vocal cords. Also if you are going to make stands, there are more effective places to make them than next to the cafeteria trash bins.

The principal's name is Gloria Alice Zebrowski. She is short and round and has grayish hair in tight little curls all over her head. When she was a little girl, she had long chestnut-brown ringlets. Ms. Zebrowski comes from New York City and grew up in an apartment building not far from Central Park. But she prefers living in Pelham, except that there's nowhere to buy good bagels.

I know all this because the year before my father left I spent a lot of time in her office because my grades were dropping and I was exhibiting antisocial behavior and Ms. Zebrowski would talk to me and then she would ask if I needed any help and if something was wrong at home.

I always said no.

Then Ms. Zebrowski would say that overcoming difficulties is what makes people stronger and that it's important to hope for the best because then the best has a way of happening.

I don't think that no was exactly a lie. I think I was trying to make myself believe that there really wasn't anything wrong. But I must have known deep down, because Sally and my father weren't talking to each other much and my father was going off on all these “business trips.”

That's how Andrea said it, making her fingers go like quotation marks.

The wife is always the last to know, Andrea said.

Andrea doesn't know what she's talking about. Sally knew what was going on. She just didn't tell me.

The last to know is the kid.

Today at school we talked about superstitions. Superstitions, says Ms. Bentley, are irrational beliefs. Reading your horoscope is a superstition. So is thinking that four-leaf clovers are lucky or worrying about black cats crossing your path or refusing to sit down if you're the thirteenth person at the dinner table. This was our vocabulary word for the day:

Triskaidekaphobia, says Ms. Bentley, is a superstition. Friday the 13
^th
is no luckier or unluckier than any other day.

Three months from today is my birthday. I was born on Friday the 13
^th
. Sally says that goes to show that 13 is really the luckiest number there is, but history is not on her side.

Just because something is irrational doesn't mean it isn't real.

Today we discussed puberty in health class.

Emily Harris is looking forward to puberty. I am not.

Sally says that responsibility is empowering, zits can be controlled by healthy eating habits, underwear can be very cute, and dates and dances can be fun. She says algebra and the adult ticket thing suck.

Sally and I used to play a game in which we'd try to decide who people we knew would be if they were characters in books. Like in
Winnie-the-Pooh,
Sally would be Kanga, because she gets fussy and motherly and gives everybody vitamin pills, and I would be Eeyore, because I'm gloomy and don't have any friends, though Sally says I'm more like Piglet, who is very likable but who worries too much.

I always thought my father would be Tigger because he was always bouncy and fun and energetic and full of things to do. But now I think he's more like Edmund, the selfish brother in
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,
the one who didn't care what happened to anybody else as long as he got lots of enchanted Turkish delight.

My father said he was going to come visit, but now he's not going to after all.

He says Kim needs him. I don't understand why Kim has to need him right now. He's there with her all the time.

If somebody were to drag me off to the Underworld, I'd stay there and never come back, no matter how much they mooched around up above crying over me. But I wouldn't get trapped by a handful of stupid pomegranate seeds. I'd ask for a coconut-almond-fudge sundae.

Everybody is mad at me for telling the truth.

I told George that his mother was not a star. Dead people get buried in the ground, where they rot and turn into dust, and you never see them again, ever.

I told Sally that her life was a lie because she and my father had promised to love and cherish each other as long as they both lived and they didn't.

I told Andrea that those red pants make her rear end look really, really huge.

Everybody hates me. But I think people should face facts and tell the truth and not go around being hypocrites all the time.

The Underworld is behind the upright piano.

Horace and I are spending a lot of time there because the second grade has gotten involved in the play. They are doing a snowflake dance while Demeter mopes around about me going to hell and makes everything winter. All the snowflakes wear white sweatshirts and boings with cut-out paper snowflakes that bobble around when they dance. They look like a lot of short albino beetles.

Horace says his parents lie too. When he was four, he found Bubbles, his goldfish, floating upside down in his bowl. His parents told him that Bubbles was asleep.

Later Horace found out that they flushed Bubbles down the toilet.

Andrea has given her red pants to Goodwill.

George isn't speaking to me. He thinks I'm mean.

Last night Katie Costello had a dream about getting on the school bus and then discovering that she'd forgotten to put on her clothes. She wasn't naked or anything though. She was wearing these very cute pink flannel pajamas.

I had a dream too. In my dream it was one of those really perfect spring days. The sky was pale, pale blue like forget-me-nots, and the daffodils were out all along the stone wall behind our house, dozens and dozens of them, like all these little suns, and in my dream I just knew something wonderful was about to happen. It was that Christmas-morning sort of feeling, all happy and excited, when your blood feels like it's all full of fizzy little bubbles, like ginger ale. So I came downstairs and Sally was sitting in the kitchen in her prettiest dress, the green gauzy one with the embroidery around the hem, with the sun shining all around her, and she smiled at me and said “It's going to be today, you know” and I knew she meant the something wonderful. And then there was a knock on the front door. So I went to answer it and my father was standing there, and he was smiling too, and he said “Hello, pumpkin, I've come home” and in the dream I was so happy that I didn't even care that he called me pumpkin, which I hate.