Saving Montgomery Sole (4 page)

 
Why the lyrics to our cheer are called lyrics even though it's just
Jefferson High!

Although I do think it would be cool to study something that actually raises spirits.

 
Chanting?

*   *   *

After the rally, I had math, which is never fun. Mr. Deever is the sweatiest person on the planet. One day he's just going to melt into a puddle in front of us like that guy in
X-Men
.

Second period. English.

As soon as I sat down, Mrs. Farley announced we were doing group work, which meant I had to spend the whole period with Madison Marlow and the Parte twins, Cat and Miffy. Who
immediately
, upon hearing my name lumped with theirs, rolled their eyes and shook their platinum-blond ponytails in unison. I combed my hair over my face.

Great.

“Oh my God,” I heard Madison whisper. “Is she wearing farmer pants?”

I looked down. My overalls were looking a little worn-more-than-once. Not that that was any of Madison's business.

“They go with her Def Leppard T-shirt,” Cat snickered.

Def Leppard?
I looked down.

It's Death Cab for Cutie, idiots
, I wanted to scream. Not exactly the same thing. Of course, it's hard to scream something at someone when you're in the process of scooting your desk over to join her group.

Since fourth grade, Madison Marlow and the Parte twins have basically been the heads of the Aunty blond mafia. Madison's mom runs just about every group (gardening, bridge, ladies' softball, scrapbooking, felting, knitting, ladies' chess, and Pilates) in Aunty. So Madison had no choice, clearly, but to be the same way and run everything at Jefferson, a dictator in short shorts and too much mascara.

It tells you something about the student population, I think, that they've surrendered power to someone who once said, out loud, that girls who don't wear bras are prone to depression.

Mrs. Farley asked us to look up examples of irony and foreshadowing in
The Outsiders
.

We didn't even get to irony.

Four minutes in, Madison took charge.

“We have to look for dark things,” she said, flipping through her book, using her ridiculous fake nails like tiny spatulas.

Dig. Flip. Dig. Flip.

“Right! It's totally night at the beginning of the book, I think,” Miffy offered.

“Wait,” I cut in, turning to Miffy. “What's that got to do with foreshadowing?”

My assigned group threw ice-cold girl glares.

“Foreshadowing has nothing to do with night,” I explained—I thought, hopefully.

Silence.

“It
doesn't
,” I said.

“Um, I didn't say it did,” Madison hissed, waving her nails so close to my face I could smell the epoxy. “We're looking at, like, dark things that show that things are going to get … bad. And, um, guess what. As Miffy knows, night is dark.”

“God, Montgomery,” Miffy huffed, rocking back in her seat and flicking her ponytail over her shoulder like a weapon.

I squirmed in my desk, my student-issued classroom torture device. Cat coiled the end of her ponytail around her index finger.

“Foreshadowing doesn't have to be dark,” I said finally. It felt like I was squeezing the words out of my eyeballs.

“Hey,” Madison snapped. “There's no need to be rude!”

“I'm not being rude. I'm being right!” I could feel my cheeks glowing red. I'm sure I was flushing like crazy. I probably looked like a raspberry.

“Excuse me. Can I just say? A shadow is
dark
.” Cat sniffed, looking at Madison.

“That's totally true.” Madison nodded.

“Uh,
hello
, I know that,” I said, my face exploding. “What I'm saying is, that doesn't mean foreshadowing has to be dark!”

Honestly!

Mrs. Farley stopped writing on the blackboard and looked over at our group. Someone else on the other side of the classroom coughed.
“Whi-itch.”

“Whatever,” Madison sneered. “Let's just work without her.”

And they scooted their chairs closer together and bent their heads toward each other so I could just hear them whispering.
“It's like, ‘Oh, I'm so cool, look at my T-shirt, I listen to alternative music.'”

I could feel my stomach pinching together like someone was using it to make pizza.

As a kid, I thought girls being mean was the only way to get a stomachache.

Screw them. I inched my chair over in the other direction and held my book in my lap so I could be as far away from them as the class rules of “group work” allowed.

“Does anyone have any examples?” Mrs. Farley asked, pacing up the aisle. “Anyone? No? Not even one? Nice work, guys. Okay, it's homework, then.”

The bell rang.

“Class dismissed,” Mrs. Farley sighed.

Just to make sure I really got that feeling-like-a-busted-up-sandbox-toy vibe, after lunch, I ran into Matt Truit.

Matt is one of the most popular boys at Aunty, even though he just transferred here last year. He is the biggest jock there is, the best football and basketball player of all time, irresistible to all women. Also, he is a jerk.

So Thomas and I were walking down the hall to class, talking about whether or not it would be cool to go to Disneyland for my birthday, which is maybe out of the question because we'd probably have to rent a hotel room since it's really far. Thomas thought we should try to hitch to Vegas or something. Which is probably also out of the question but still fun to talk about hypothetically. And we bumped into Matt. Or Thomas did. And Matt spun around and said, “I thought you gays, I mean, guys, were supposed to be light on your feet.”

Thomas and I kind of simultaneously froze midstep.

And Matt smiled. This stupid, big, puffy lip smile. This smile like an old pizza crust. And he said, “
Joke.
”

I felt Thomas's hand on my back, and we started walking again.

“Jerk,” I whispered.

“I know, I know.” Thomas breezed past the lockers, head held high. “Let's go, Monty, heel, toe, heel, toe, nice strut. This is the scene where we march off into our futures. Cue bell.”

And right on cue, the school bell screamed.
BRRRRRRING!

Thomas ran off to gym. I ran to bio, just in time to find out that I'd failed my test because I drew a plant cell instead of an animal cell.

“Seriously?” I groaned to myself.

Clearly displeased with our overall cell ignorance, Mr. Jenner took a swig from his massive coffee thermos and said, “Okay, let's go through our answers. Eyes front. Mr. Tanner, I'm talking to you
. Mr. Tanner, this class is not a party for you to meet girls!
”

In history, Mrs. Dawson had the flu, so we watched some ancient DVD of a BBC production of
King Lear
. What that has to do with ancient China, which is what we're studying, I'm not sure.

Then I was supposed to have study hall, but I kind of wandered the halls for a bit, feeling a little lost, until I ran across Naoki heading into the library for her English class.

I told her what had happened with Thomas and Matt. She frowned. “Poor Thomas,” she said.

“Matt is, like, ‘Oh I'm so funny,'” I spat. “Like that guy even knows what a joke is. That guy is as funny as…”

“A rock?” Naoki offered.

“That would be an insult to rocks,” I said, thinking of the cool white surface of the Eye of Know.

“Rocks
are
pretty great.” Naoki paused, tracing something in the palm of her hand. “It's too bad Matt isn't the person you thought.”

Which is Naoki's nice way of saying, or remembering, that I once had kind of a thing with Matt Truit.
Briefly
had a thing with Matt Truit.

“There should be an actual foreshadowing technique that lets you avoid this stuff,” I said.

“Maybe there is.” Naoki patted my shoulder with her scarf. “Healing scarf touch,” she explained.

“Uh, thanks.”

Naoki smiled encouragingly. Which made me think maybe I was looking like a basket case. Which I am not. I straightened, crossed my arms over my chest in order to look casual and in control.

“Hey,” I said. “Did I tell you I ordered this thing on the Internet yesterday? The Eye of Know. We're going to wield it and use it to see beyond.”

The word
wield
clearly peaked Naoki's interest. “We're going to wield the Eye of Gnome! That's fabulous!”

“The Eye of
Know
,” I said. “
Know
, like with a
k
. Like
knowledge
.”

“Oh,” Naoki breathed. “Oh, I haven't heard of that one.”

“But you've heard of an Eye of
Gnome
?”

I must have said it really loudly. There was a shuffling inside the library. “Naoki,” a soft librarian voice called, “please take your seat.”

“Crap,” I said, stepping back. “I should go.”

“Do you want to go walk in the sun later?” Naoki asked, stepping one toe through the library door. “We can talk about the Eyes?”

“No, it's okay,” I called, walking backward down the hallway. “See you later.”

Slumped over in study hall, I realized the only thing that could save me on a day like this was frozen yogurt.

 

3

Before Yoggy was Yoggy, it was this antique shop owned by a woman who always wore pink tracksuits and told her customers that the place was haunted. Mama Kate went there all the time because she likes old things like candlesticks and lace doilies. While she shopped, I sat at the front and grilled the woman about the ghost.

It used to make me crazy that she couldn't be more specific.

“What's her name?” I would ask.

“I don't know, dear,” she'd say, needlessly dusting the very old things in the shop.

“But it's a girl?” I'd push, watching the dust spray up and land back on the glass or wood she was cleaning.

“It's a feminine spirit.”

I considered this. “When she talks, can you hear it in your brain or your ear?”

“You buying anything, little girl? Or just riling up an old woman for kicks?”

Clearly this was just laziness on the old lady's part because I can go online and in two seconds find, like, intensive documentation people have done all over the world of the different paranormal spirits inhabiting their houses and other buildings. I could go online right now and buy a Spirit Tracker if I was so inclined. There's a guy in Iowa who sells them for, like, a hundred bucks (plus shipping). Last year I found this one site where this guy had a twenty-four-hour webcam of his haunted closet (although I watched for about three hours nonstop once, and I didn't see anything).

Whoever bought the place and put up Yoggy clearly repurposed some of the art and decor from the antique shop. The place is covered in a mishmash of old posters from the fifties to the nineties. Thomas, when he's accompanied me to get a treat, says the place feels a little sacrilegious.

“You mean, like, haunted?”

“Ugly, Monty.
Ug-ly
.”

Tiffany, who is both the manager and the only person who works at Yoggy, is sort of my adult best friend. She looks kind of more like a mountain lion than a person. She has big dreads, which I normally don't like on not–African American people, but on Tiffany it looks kind of scary in a good way. She's got all these thick black tattoos on her forearms. On one hand is a hammer and on the other is a fountain pen. On her back is a picture of a woman holding a sign that says “No justice, no peace.” Tiffany wears tank tops even though it's always freezing at Yoggy. Tiffany used to be a master's student in Women's Studies in Michigan, but then she said she decided the whole thing was useless and too expensive. Also, her boyfriend ran off to India with a skinny yoga instructor … named Tiffany.