The Brilliant Fall of Gianna Z. (7 page)

“How’d you know? You weren’t even in class yet when that happened.”

“Word travels fast.”

I’ll say. Ruby never showed up for ninth-period science, but she ought to send me a thank-you note. My tumble into the mulch upstaged her Tuesday panties in a big way.

“I didn’t fall, exactly. I sort of tipped over.”

“Huh, bad connection.” Zig pulls a scrap of aluminum foil from his backpack, tears off a tiny shred, and winds it around the base of the lightbulb. He fiddles with the wires again, and the lightbulb blinks on, Christmas green. He looks up at me and pulls a sliver of red cedar mulch from my hair.

“Hey, don’t throw that out!” I grab his wrist. “Don’t we get extra credit for bark samples and stuff?”

“Seeds, berries, and fruits. No bark. Peeling it off causes damage. Mrs. Loring says we can’t be running all over town killing trees for the sake of an A.”

“Fine.” I dig into the small pocket of my backpack for the half cookie I saved from lunch. The only thing our cafeteria does right is the molasses cookies. I break the half in half and offer a piece to Zig.

“Are you busy tomorrow? Remember we have the day off for that teacher workshop.” He bites into his piece of cookie. “I could help you collect more leaves.”

“I don’t think I can. I’ve gotta go shopping with my mom, and Nonna wants to stop by Mrs. Disilvio’s house if there’s time. Her husband died this morning and she doesn’t have many friends here, so Nonna’s helping her plan the service. They need to pick out a casket.”

“Maybe after school Wednesday then? We could hike again.”

“Great.”

“Cool, it’s a date then.”

“A date?”

Zig looks down at his wires. The Christmas light makes his nose look green. He brushes his hair from his eyes. “I mean, not a date. Just a plan. You know, to finish our project.” Coach blows the five-minute whistle for practice, and Zig looks relieved. “See you then.”

Instead of going inside to get changed for practice, I sit down on the school steps and watch Zig hurry down the street, dry leaves crunching under his maroon high-tops.

Huge maple trees tower over the sidewalk here. Their leaves are almost all bright red now. When school started, they were so green and full of summer. They don’t even look like the same trees anymore. I bend down to gather a few leaves and wonder how something I walk past every day can suddenly feel so new.

I dash inside, change into my shorts and T-shirt, and check my watch. 3:28. Two minutes to spare before cross-country practice. I step out into the sunshine, take my warm-up laps, and join the group already stretching at the edge of the track.

“I bet she was too embarrassed to come back.” Bianca Rinaldi is bending over to stretch her hamstrings. Her blond hair hangs in shiny curtains around her face.

“I’d stay home, too,” says Bianca’s sister Jenny, who is a year younger but wearing the exact same shiny purple warm-up suit with matching earrings. “Kevin Richards drew a picture of a girl in purple underwear and put it up on the bulletin board outside the art room! It had a caption that said, ‘What day is it today?’ ” She laughs.

My stomach tightens when I figure out they’re talking about Ruby and her ripped pants. She must have decided she wasn’t up to facing this crew after she went home to change her pants during lunch.

“I mean, you weren’t surprised when they ripped, were you?” Bianca has turned to stretch her right leg, leaning into a new crowd of girls. “She wears the tightest jeans I’ve ever seen. I swear she’s had that faded black pair since fifth grade.”

“Ummm . . . I’m pretty sure they were garage-sale material even back then.” Jenny takes a swig of her water and pulls her lip gloss from her gym bag to repair the damage from her drink.

“She can’t help it that her family doesn’t have much money.” I say it quietly, but everyone turns as if I’ve shouted in a church.

“I’m sorry, Gianna.” Bianca raises her eyebrows at her sister, and they walk over to me. I should have kept my mouth shut. “You’d know all about garage sales, wouldn’t you? I’m pretty sure I saw your
boyfriend
wearing the pants my dad sent to the thrift shop last month.”

“They’re just so
retro.
” Jenny smiles like she’s invented a new word.

Bianca high-fives her and joins in. “Gianna knows all about retro. Check out her running clothes.” She eyes the
Darn Delicious
Dogs
T-shirt Uncle Bob gave me from his drive-in restaurant. Hers says
Princess
across the front. “Of course, it makes sense you’d have a fantastic sense of fashion, with your parents’ business and all. Do you get to choose the outfits for the dead old ladies?”

Mary Beth has joined the circle now too, wearing the same warm-up outfit in pink. I stand there, trying to think of something, anything to say, when Coach walks by.

“Let’s go, ladies! Get to it!”

Bianca and her clones leave in a cloud of laughter, and I can breathe again. I walk to the building, lean forward and push against it with my hands to stretch my calves. They burn, almost as much as my eyes.

I’d have been fine if I’d kept my mouth shut. Ruby’s underwear isn’t my problem.

But I start a slow jog to warm up, and my brain starts churning again. Ruby and I aren’t best friends or anything, but she’s always been nice to me. She’s a willow—she’s nice to everybody. She doesn’t deserve to be trashed by the sparkle sisters.

I haven’t picked up my pace yet, so Ellen catches up with me on my second lap, starting her warm-up run, too.

“Sorry I’m late. I was printing up brochures about these new water bottles.” She waves one at me. “I’m going to ask Coach if we can get them for the team so people don’t keep blowing through the disposable ones. Want to do a few repeats on the track before we start our route for today?”

“Sure. Which route are we running?”

“Coach’s favorite. Behind the school, over the footbridge, and down Mulligan Street to the old water tower. Then up Stetson Ave, back to school.” Ellen’s falling behind me a little, so I drop back to stay with her.

“Hey.” She turns to me and a drop of sweat falls off her nose. Ellen’s a dwarf mulberry, like Dad. Only shorter. A dwarf mulberry sapling. I slow down a little so she can keep up.

“Did you hear about Ruby?” she asks when she catches her breath.

Not again. I thought Ellen was different from the poison sumacs. I shake my head a little.

“I don’t really want to talk about it.” I pick up my pace.

“But I thought you two were kind of friends.” Ellen speeds up, and I slow down, confused. I’d been expecting more underwear talk, and given what happened earlier, I can’t decide if I want to say I’m her friend or not, even though we’ve been lab partners a few times. It’s not safe to be friends with someone who’s Bianca’s target of the day.

“You heard about her grandmother?” Ellen asks.

“No.” I know Ruby and her mom live with her grandmother. Once when Ruby and I were waiting for Mrs. Loring to hand out the protozoan samples, we got talking and laughing about how much food you have to shove down when your grandma cooks dinner or risk insulting her if you eat fewer than three servings.

“She died.”

I stop running and turn to Ellen. She stops too and nods, her mouth drawn into a grimace. “My mom just told me when she came to drop off my gym bag. It happened right when Ruby was home changing her pants at lunch. Her grandma stood up from the table and started to take her soup bowl to the sink, and she just collapsed. Ruby ran and called nine-one-one while her mom tried CPR. When the ambulance came, the EMT people used those electric shock paddles and everything, but it didn’t work.”

“Wow.” I imagine Ruby watching her mother trying to save her grandma’s life. Watching her fail. I imagine how I’d feel, losing Nonna. How much I’d miss seeing her in the kitchen after school, smelling her fresh warm cookie smells, hearing her soft voice to even out Mom’s crisp, strict one. My throat swells up just thinking about it.

“Come on.” Ellen nudges me. We start our run, and I’m glad she’s there. It keeps me from getting too deep into my head. We talk about the French quiz and the math homework and Miss Mulcahy, the new computer teacher, and how she can walk around in those pointy high heels all day without falling.

When we finish the run, Ellen heads inside to change, and I lean against the warm bricks of the building to stretch. I bend down and reach past my sneakers until the gravel scratches my fingertips. I try to think about geometry and leaves and things, but my mind keeps coming back to poor Ruby.

Ruby, who’s probably further behind on the leaf project than I am now.

Ruby, who missed the review for the math quiz.

Ruby, who has to deal with her too-small, ripped jeans and her purple Tuesday underwear and Bianca’s teasing and Kevin’s mean picture on the bulletin board.

Ruby, who doesn’t have her grandma anymore to tell her it will be all right.

CHAPTER 7

W
hen I open our front door, the smell of burned sugar stings my nose. The door to the funeral home is closed. Dad must be with a client—a living one, not a dead one—so I leave him alone and head up to the kitchen. A sharp gray haze hangs in the air and makes me cough. How come the smoke detector didn’t go off? And where’s Nonna? She should be home.

I drop my backpack, run to the oven, and yank open the door. Black smoke pours out in a monster cloud and burns my eyes. When I stop coughing and wave away enough smoke, I can make out a cookie sheet with sixteen charred black lumps. I grab the oven mitt and pull them out so fast that half go skidding off onto the floor. The tray clatters on top of the stove. Even out of the oven, the cookies keep smoking like crazy, so I grab the sheet again, run out the back door, and drop it sizzling onto the damp grass.

I pull off the oven mitt, my hands shaking, and go back inside.

“Mom?” She’s usually busy on her laptop when I get home, but she doesn’t answer.

“Nonna?” No answer.

I run to the stairs and step on a burned cookie, crushing it to black crumbs. “Nonna!” I call up, but she’s not there either.

Where is everybody? How could the cookies be practically on fire and no one noticed? I need to go get Dad.

I start downstairs, but I hear Nonna’s door open, and when I turn around, she’s stepping into the kitchen.

“Gianna?” She looks tired, like Robert Frost in that picture, but with longer hair and softer eyes.

“Nonna, what happened?”

She waves the smoke from her face. “I think the cookies might be done.”

“Done?”
I stare at her. Nonna has probably made three hundred batches of wedding cookies since she moved in with us. They’re always perfect. Every single batch. It drives Mom crazy. She’s never burned them. Never. Not once.

Until today.

She reaches for the oven mitt.

“Nonna, I already got them out.”

“
Grazie
, Gianna. They were done then?”

“
Done
? They were way past done, almost on fire. Can’t you see the smoke? Didn’t you smell it? How could you not notice?” When Nonna takes a step back, I realize I’m shouting. “Didn’t the smoke alarm go off?” I try to keep my voice calm, but it’s shaking.

“Well, I heard the loud beeper thing a while ago, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. I followed the sound and took out the batteries so it would stop. Then I guess I went in for a little nap.” She yawns.

I can’t stop staring. She heard the loud beeper thing? And took out the batteries?

Nonna tucks a few strands of white hair behind her ear and smooths her skirt. “It’s all right, Gianna. One batch of cookies isn’t the end of the world. We’ll make more. Okay?” she asks. She waits for me to answer.

I take a deep breath and try to make my voice calm for her. “I turned the oven off, Nonna. Why don’t you rest a little more, and I’ll help with dinner when the smoke clears out.”

“And then tomorrow we’ll make more.” She pushes my hair away from my face and looks at me. “You’ll help?”

I nod. “Sure. I’ll help,” I hear my voice say. “It’s not a big deal.”

But it is. Client or no client, I need Dad. As I head downstairs to the mortuary, another burned cookie crunches under my sneaker.