Still a Work in Progress (10 page)

“You guys should probably go back out. Your rides might be here.”

“Be good,” I say, setting Curly on the floor. She shakes herself like a wet dog, then walks over to the Tank and rubs against his legs.

“Crazy cat,” he says. There’s a catch in his voice, as if he got choked up.

Lily hooks her arms through mine and Ryan’s. “My heroes,” she says. It’s embarrassing, but also feels kind of nice. I look over at Ryan, who has a huge grin on his face. Too bad Lily is dating the pole dancer.

As we climb the stairs, Sam and Molly start toward us. “What happened?” Sam asks. Their cheeks are bright red, which, according to Sam, means that they’ve been kissing a long time.

“My heroes saved Curly,” Lily says, letting go of our arms. “She got stuck in the ceiling, but they got her out safe and sound.”

Sam looks impressed. We all go back out and sit on the steps. Molly sits on the one below Sam and leans back against his legs.

Ryan takes one look at them and rolls his eyes so hard, I think they’ll get stuck up there. “Get a room,” he says, annoyed. It’s his new phrase whenever they so much as hold hands.

They ignore him.

“Noah!” Emma yells from the passenger side of our car as my mom pulls forward. “C’mon!”

“Hey, Emma,” Ryan calls to her.

Emma waves and gives him her “I’m so cute, of course you have a crush on me” smile.

“See you guys tomorrow,” I say.

Lily stands up when I do and gives me a hug. “Thanks for saving Curly.”

“Um, no problem,” I say awkwardly.

“Hey, how come you didn’t hug me?” Ryan asks.

“I was waiting to hug you good-bye. Stand up and I’ll hug you now if you want.”

Ryan jumps up, and Lily throws her arms around him. He smiles at me over her shoulder.

“Get a room,” I say.

“Ha, ha.”

“That was a nice hug,” Emma says when I get into the car.

“Is everything OK, honey?” my mom asks. “Why was Lily consoling you?”

“She wasn’t consoling me — she was thanking me for helping Curly get unstuck from the ceiling.”

“Stupid cat,” Stu says.

“She was probably trying to catch a mouse or something. She’s not stupid.”

“They need to find a more humane way of keeping the mouse population down,” Emma says. “They should get some have-a-heart traps. If all the parents knew about Curly’s real purpose, they’d have a fit.”

“What do you mean her real purpose?” my mom asks.

“She’s the school assassin,” Emma says.

“No, she’s not!” Harper says. “She’s the school therapy pet.”

“She’s both,” I say. “And don’t tell anyone, Harper, or you could get her in trouble.”

“I don’t know about this . . .” my mom says.

“What’s there to know?” I ask. “Why is everyone so against Curly?”

“She
kills
things,” Emma says.

“It’s not very hygienic,” my mom adds.

“What if she gets rabies?” Harper asks.

“You can’t get rabies from mice,” I say.

“How do you know?” Emma asks.

“Have you ever heard of a rabid mouse?”

“That doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”

“You seem awfully attached to that cat,” my mom says.

“She’s a good cat — that’s all. You guys are overreacting.”

After we drop off Harper and Stu, Emma turns around in her seat to talk again.

“Sadie’s older sister told me she thinks Sadie has a crush on you.”

“She has a boyfriend,” I point out.

Emma shrugs.

“Sadie is so cute!” my mom says. “I love her hair.”

“She has a boyfriend,” I point out again.

“Apparently that’s just for convenience.”

“She was making out with him behind the storage shed. That doesn’t seem like convenience.”

“Where were the teachers when this was happening?” my mom asks.

“Never mind,” I say.

“Maybe she just kisses him for fun,” Emma says, ignoring my mom. “It doesn’t mean she likes him.”

“Really, Emma,” my mom says. “I doubt Sadie is like that.”

“Like what?”

“You know what I mean,” my mom says.

Emma turns back around to face my mom. “No, I don’t, Mom. Why don’t you explain?”

“Can we stop talking about this now?” I ask. I can tell by the tone of her voice that Emma is about to get preachy about girls and double standards.

I see my mom purse her lips in the mirror, as if she’s forcing herself to stop talking in order to avoid a fight with Emma. It seems like the two of them are at each other more and more lately.

Emma deliberately shifts her body away from my mom and stares out the window.

We drive the rest of the way home in silence.

As soon as I get my homework spread out on my desk, Ryan texts me.

I call him.

“Why are you so excited that Lily likes you if you don’t even know if you like her?” I ask.

“It’s just nice that someone finally likes me, I guess.”

“Someone
did
like you, remember? Molly? And you hid from her for days. I can’t get those hours of my life I wasted with you in the bathroom back, you know.”

“It wasn’t
hours.
”

“Any time spent in the bathroom is multiplied by seven. It’s like dog years. Only a million times worse, because they are
horrible
years.”

“Fine. Sorry.”

“So, are you going to hide from Lily or go after her? You are aware that she’s actually dating the pole dancer. Right?”

“Well, yeah. But that’s not gonna last. She just said yes to him because she had fun at the dance with him. He mostly disgusts her. She just forgot.”

“Why do you sound so miserable again?”

He’s quiet. “Am I shallow?”

“No. You’re emu.”

“E
mo.
”

“Right. That.”

“I don’t actually think I am anymore. I’ve discovered I’m not really all that sensitive.”

“I’ve noticed,” I say. “But at least you’re nice to Curly.”

“She seems to be the only person who doesn’t annoy me lately.”

“Except that she’s not a person.”

“Ugh. I know! That’s probably why. Can you imagine if she was a person? She’d be awesome.”

“Except a human who catches mice with her teeth and claws and then tortures them before killing and eating them would be pretty creepy and gross.”

“True. And a human would look really stupid in those vests.”

“Do you think cats can get rabies from killing mice?”

“Do mice get rabies?” Ryan asks. “I’ve never heard of a rabid mouse, but a little mouse zombie frothing at the mouth would be amazing. That would make the best movie ever.”

I move over to my bed and lie down. Up on my ceiling, there are little gray marks from the time Ryan, Sam, and I bounced a Super Ball off the wall and tried to catch it from our sleeping bags. I think we were eight or so. That was a fun night, until my mom came up to check on us and had a fit. She told me we were going to have to paint the ceiling as punishment. We were all set to do it the next weekend, too. But the next weekend is when the Thing We Don’t Talk About happened, and my mom forgot all about the ceiling. And for a while, all about me.

“Hey,” I say. “I need to get back to my homework.”

“OK. See you tomorrow.”

I hang up and stare at the ceiling again. In the next room, I can hear Emma’s music playing just loud enough to be annoying but not loud enough for my mom to make her turn it down.

Emma is into old songs that were popular a long time ago. Songs by the Smiths, the Cure, the Clash, and a bunch of other bands I don’t really know. It’s all a little angry and a little pumped-up and a little sad. She’s so serious about everything she does. Like it all has to have a
purpose.
Even her music inspires her to be a certain way, like angry or pumped-up or sad. She gets so into the things she listens to and reads, but I think sometimes they make her do crazy things, like making the
Lord of the Flies
list. And whenever I hear certain songs she’s playing, I know what mood she’ll be in. Lately she’s been listening to a lot of angry stuff. I can tell it’s putting her in a bad mood. I can also tell that it has my parents worried, even though no one really talks about it. No one talks about anything around here, except my parents when they think I can’t hear them. They’re always talking in worried whispers that get too loud the angrier and more worried they get. Lately, they seem to be getting worse.

I pat my bed and let the Captain jump up. He licks my arm and makes a happy slobber sound. Sometimes I think the Captain is the only one in this family who remembers that I need some attention once in a while, too. He says “You’re welcome” by letting off a doozy. Sometimes I really can’t win.

On the last day of school before Thanksgiving, the Tank makes us clean out our lockers. Small Tyler wanders around helping everyone else, because ever since the Locker Juice Incident, he’s refused to use his locker and carries everything he needs in his backpack. As a joke, someone put an official-looking notice on his locker door that says
HAZARDOUS MATERIALS,
and it hasn’t been opened since.

Curly wanders the halls, pouncing on crumpled-up balls of paper. She’s wearing a vest with turkeys on it.

“What happens to Curly during break?” I ask Lily, who knows everything.

“She’s going home with Ms. Cliff,” Lily says. She sneezes.

“Are you really allergic?” I whisper.

“Don’t bring it up,” she whispers back. She bends down to pet Curly.

It’s funny: I never really thought of Lily as the kind of person who would be protective of a skinny little cat, especially after what happened to the mouse. I guess it just goes to show that you can think you know someone, and then they do something totally unexpected and everything changes. Part of me really hopes she breaks up with Zach and asks Ryan out.

Sam and I finish up pretty fast, so we offer to help Ryan. At first he acts all grouchy toward us, which is getting tiring. Then Sadie and Tate walk down the hall holding hands, and Sadie says hi to me but not to Sam or Ryan.

“You should definitely ask her out,” Sam says. “She obviously likes you.”

“Did you not notice the hand-holding?” I ask.

“I already explained that.”

“But it made no sense.”

Ryan slams his locker hard. “This school is ridiculous. No one is going out with who they really want to.”

“I am,” Sam says.

“You don’t count.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just forget it,” Ryan says. “Whatever.”

We go outside and sit on the steps.

“What are you guys doing over break?” Sam asks us.

Ryan shrugs. “I have to go to my grandparents’ with my dad. My mom’s all upset about it, but my dad says she gets me for Christmas vacation, so she has nothing to complain about. They treat me like some kind of decoration they each think looks better at their house.”

“I thought you were Jewish,” Sam says.

“Only half. My mom’s Jewish and my dad’s an ex-Catholic. He calls our winter break Christmas vacation just to annoy my mom.”

“It still sounds better than my vacation,” Sam says. “My parents invited my grandparents to stay with us, and I have to give up my room for three days. My grandpa is really old and forgets where he is half the time and says stuff like, ‘Ella’— that’s my grandmother’s name —‘who is that boy at the end of the table?’ And then my grandmother will start to cry and then my mom will start to cry and he’ll say, ‘Ella, why is everyone crying? Did someone die?’ And my mom and grandmother will just cry harder, because it’s kind of like my grandfather is the one who died, even though he’s still alive.”

“Jeez,” Ryan says. He picks up a pebble off the step and tosses it. It bumps down the steps and disappears. “Please tell me your vacation is better than ours, Noah.”

“Not really. Emma will probably make some kind of scary tofu mold in the shape of a turkey that no one will eat, and then fight with my parents about whether they can offer guests real food, like actual turkey and gravy.”

“Emma sure is intense,” Sam says.

“That’s one way to describe it.”

Ryan elbows Sam to be quiet, since they both know Emma is more than intense.

“Molly invited me to her house, but my parents won’t let me go,” Sam says. “They say it’s not normal for a middle-school kid to spend a holiday with his girlfriend.”

“Well, yeah,” Ryan says. “I mean, you just started going out. You’re not exactly engaged.”

“It feels like a long time for middle school,” Sam says.

“Middle-school time is like dog-year time,” I point out. “You’ve got to multiply it by seven.”

“This doesn’t count,” Ryan says. “That only applies to misery.”