Teenie (12 page)

“How did the conversation with your dad go?”

“Fine.”

“Is he gonna let you go?”

I say, “I dunno,” and flip through the pages of the lab assignment booklet. Since Garth dissected the frog all by himself yesterday, today it’s my turn to remove a fetal pig’s liver and heart. I think I’ve read the first page about four times and I still can’t figure out what to take out of my tool kit. I can feel Garth watching me intently.

“Are you sure you’re okay, Martine?”

“Yes. I’m fine.”

“Well, you don’t look fine.” He pulls the pig from in front of me. I don’t protest.

W
henever my mother feels bad, she throws on
The Best of Sade
. I’m on track 13, and I still feel like crap. All around my room are reminders of my ex–best friend. Any picture I can find of Cherise I stuff into a box and put under my bed, right next to the two teddy bears she gave me for Christmas and my birthday. If I still had the clothes she bought for me, I would burn the hell out of them.

I get tired of sitting in my room, thinking about the girl that was formerly my best friend in the whole world, so I go down to the laundry room and do two loads of clothes. I will finish the whites and delicates on Saturday. I figure I might as well get that stuff out of the way, since I have a term paper due and a big exam coming up next week.

It’s not like I can do my schoolwork now anyway. My homework is taking forever to finish. I find myself struggling with questions that I would breeze through if I weren’t so distracted. I’ll get halfway through a response only to realize that I’ve answered it all wrong. I’m just about finished when I see Greg log on to his IM. I wait for him to start the conversation, just like Cherise told me. It’s almost like I’m talking about someone who died, because I know she’ll never speak to me again. As soon as I logged on, she logged off, and probably blocked me in the process. Whatever, who needs her. I block her on my Messenger because I don’t want to hear any weak apologies when she comes to her senses.

I shouldn’t have said anything to Cherise. I should’ve kept my big mouth shut, and everything would be fine now.

A blessing?

I have no idea what he’s talking about but I don’t want to seem like a loser. It doesn’t sound like much. How bad could it be?

I log off and slump in my chair. I can’t figure out what I did wrong today. Am I jealous of what Cherise has with Big Daddy? Maybe a little. No, that can’t be the reason I want her to stop seeing him. I just think that she is in serious danger. Why can’t she see what I am seeing? I wish my mother were around, because I could find a way to talk to her without ratting out Cherise.

“Martine.”

Beresford scares the crap out of me. I’m surprised I didn’t hear his feet plodding up the stairs. “Yes, Daddy.”

“You finish your homework yet?”

“Just about.”

“Good. I want you to show me how to use my labtop again
before dinner. I can’t remember how to get to the newspaper site you showed—Wha wrong wit you?”

“Nothing. I was just trying to … I just need a nap.”

Beresford eyes me for a moment. “I bet that idiot box did burn yah eyeball.”

“Hmm” is about all I can muster.

“You sure you alright?”

I nod my head, but my eyes can’t lie. My dad might not pay that much attention to me, but he can tell that something has me upset and he’s not going to leave until I tell him what it is. He plops down on my desk and waits. I’m trying to think of what to say but I can’t come up with anything. This is one of those times where my loyalty to Cherise is being tested. I think she is going to get herself into a world of trouble. Beresford breaks the ice before I can even figure out what to say.

“Look. Does dis have somethin’ to do with boys?”

My dad has probably been waiting all my life to have this conversation with me. I overheard him talking to my brothers once and he said something about “you only live once” and “get it all out of your system before you get married.” I doubt that he will have the same things to say to me. He sits up in his chair and clears his throat.

“Martine, boys lie. They want dee goodies and they will do and say whatever—”

“Daddy,” I cut him off, “Mommy and I had this talk already.”

“THANK GOD!” He lets out a huge sigh. “So what’s the problem then?”

I hesitate. Once I start talking about Big Daddy, Cherise will never talk to me again, ever. Not like she’s talking to me anyway, but I’d rather her be safe and mad at me than end up in “dee ditch by dee road” that Beresford is always talking about. I decide that I’m not going to tell my father unless he guesses.

We sit there for a while, neither one of us saying a word. This would be so much easier if my mother were around.

“Did you and you mother get into a fight? She did look vexed this morning.”

I shake my head. She probably was still upset about the bags of clothes.

“You vex with me?”

I shake my head.

“Your brothers do something to you?”

I almost nod my head for all the abuse they put me through, but I shake, grudgingly.

My dad seems out of ideas before the lightbulb goes off in his head and he yells, “Cherise! Something happened to Cherise!” The smile on his face from guessing the right answer disappears when he notices my look of concern. “She in some kind of trouble?”

I nod.

“Something happened with she and she mother?”

Shake.

“She failing school?”

Shake.

“Some boy messing with she?”

The look of concern comes back with a vengeance. My dad gets serious.

“Listen to me, sweetheart. If you don’t talk to me, I cannot help you. Tell me what’s going on.”

I can feel my eyes start to water. My dad takes my hand into his as I try to wipe my tears away.

“Martine. What is it?”

I start crying like a baby and tell him what Cherise is doing.

“Where?”

“Penn Station,” I blubber.

“D
o you see her?”

I shake my head at Beresford’s question. He was driving like a maniac on the way to Penn Station. It normally takes us about forty-five minutes to get here from our house but my dad made it in thirty. I have never seen him so anxious, with his eyes darting all over the place and his leg shaking so much he can barely sit still.

My dad’s been clenching his jaw and cracking his knuckles the whole time we’ve been sitting down. I probably shouldn’t have said anything to him. Who knows how
big
Big Daddy is. What if my dad can’t handle him by himself? There are a couple of cops standing near the escalator. I look over at my dad and think about telling him to go ask for help, but I already know better. Beresford wouldn’t ask a cop for a piece of bread if he
were dying of hunger. He has had tons of bad experiences with police. The one that pops into my head is the time he got a ticket when he was just being a Good Samaritan. Beresford tried to throw away a beer can that was on top of a phone booth, and a cop gave him a ticket for drinking alcohol in public.

I turn my attention away from the cops and look around the packed station. There are people hustling all over the place, and it’s hard for me to see much of anything except for bodies zigzagging in front of me. I try to scan as many faces as possible, because I don’t want to miss her. I wish Cherise were a tourist because they are the easiest to pick out of the crowds. They don’t move with the same purpose that New Yorkers do. They’re the people who will walk really slowly, then stop suddenly and look straight up in the air at the ceiling, or the skyscrapers, if they’re outside. I’ve seen more than a few of them get knocked over when they stop like that.

I happen to be focused on a family of tourists when one of them stumbles after being bumped into. Cherise nearly knocks over the mother as she bulls her way through them. She is looking around, and I have to duck my head before she sees me. She spots Beresford before I have a chance to tell him that she’s here. She starts backing away but bumps into a man standing near to her.

He’s holding flowers in his hand, smiling as he gives them to her. When he reaches his hand out to her, she steps back and her mouth and eyes pop wide open. It’s Big Daddy! He’s maybe five foot seven, can’t weigh more than a hundred and forty pounds. He doesn’t look anything like his pictures. He’s at least twenty years older than the boy on Facebook.

I’m not sure what a pedophile is supposed to look like, but if I had to describe one, he sure wouldn’t look like Big Daddy. How dangerous could he be? He literally looks like he could be a mailman or the guy that takes your ticket at the movie theater. I could just pretend that I don’t see them, and Cherise won’t get in trouble.

When I look over at my father, I can tell that he hasn’t seen her yet. There’s something about Big Daddy that seems weird to me. It’s not hot at all in the train station, but he’s sweating like a whore in church, whatever that means. Plus he has sunglasses on, and my mother told me never to trust a man that wears sunglasses indoors.

I tap my father.

“Hmm?”

Beresford follows my eyes and does a double take when he sees Cherise. There’s no way he would’ve recognized her if I weren’t there to point her out. He leaps up from his seat and takes her by the arm. He sits her down and makes a beeline for Big Daddy.

Man, I thought he was mad at Kari and Wazi when they totaled the car, but I’ve never seen him like this. It’s no wonder that Big Daddy turns and starts to walk—no, run—away. My dad goes after him.

They’re too far away for me to hear what’s going on. Seeing my dad standing across from Big Daddy makes it look like he’s in front of a dwarf. Big Daddy is shaking with fear. His head is down and he’s nodding and agreeing with whatever my father is saying. Beresford starts to walk away but then he
turns back to Big Daddy. I can see my father’s mouth moving slowly, and whoa. I think he just said, “If you try to contact her again, I will kill you.”

A moment of silence would be noisier than the car ride home. Everyone’s eyes are forward and no one is saying a word. It’s so tense that I find myself listening to the tires humming over the bumpy FDR Drive.

Before we got into the car, my father pulled Cherise aside for about twenty minutes. She was close to tears and didn’t say much while he was talking to her. They sat down in chairs about ten seats away from mine, so I couldn’t really make out what was being said. I expected to hear more yelling, at least see my dad’s arms flailing while he told her what a dummy she was for endangering her life. I felt sure that he would tell her to come over to me and thank me for saving her. My father didn’t do any of that. He sat with her and reassured her that everything was going to be okay. He was holding her hand and had his other hand on her shoulder. The look on his face was more of concern than anger. I hardly ever see Beresford do anything but yell.