The Reinvention of Moxie Roosevelt (12 page)

“Aren’t we supposed to stay on our own halls during study period unless we get special permission?” I asked. It sounded rude, but it was the only thing I could think of to get Kate away from me for a while so I could figure out what to do. Because if I told her flat out that I wasn’t trying to blow her secret in front of Spinky, all I’d end up doing was, in fact, blowing her secret in front of the only girl at Eaton she seemed to really like.

I decided to give the “I’m sticking with your cover story” thing one more try.

“I get it, though, it’s probably really irritating having to hang out in your room. Kate’s roommate is this awful trust fund kid,” I told Spinky.

“I have a trust fund,” Spinky said.

Kate and I both looked at her. I laughed, because I assumed she was joking.

“It’s not that big of a deal. It’s not billions of dollars or anything. It’s from my grandmother. I’m broke at the moment. I don’t come into the coin until I’m twenty-one. I think I’ll get a Harley.”

My face was bright red. I racked my brain trying to remember rude things I’d said about rich people. Had I said any at all, or had I only said those things to Kate? And why had Spinky never mentioned this before? How could Spinky be a DUCKI and a Trust Fund Kid at the same time? The two did not go together. Then again, I’d caught Guadalupe watching
General Hospital
in the TV lounge earlier in the week. How a Hale and Hearty Sports Enthusiast could also be a self-proclaimed soap opera junkie was beyond me.

Spinky shrugged, as if she could read my mind, then bent and picked up the incense burner and began to unravel the gauze sling.

“My grandmother’s hilarious. She’s eighty-eight and still comes to reunions—she and her mom and my mom all went here.”

“Four generations of Spangers?” I asked. She had said something about it, about half the women in her family attending Eaton, but I’d sort of forgotten about it.

“Dempseys and Cornwalls, actually,” she said. “I’m the first to go by Spanger—my mom took that name when she married my dad.”

“Ah, yes darling, the Dempseys of Dempsey Hall,” I joked.

“Yep. Most of the original burned and my great-grand-mother helped pay to fix it, so they named it after her.”

I felt my face flush red again. Huge, stone, gargoyles-and-stained-class Dempsey Hall had been paid for by Spinky’s family? She said it like her great-grandmother had helped fix a log cabin. Dempsey Hall was much . . .
more
.

“So that sucks that you don’t get along with your roommate,” Spinky said to Kate.

“She’s an idiot, but it has nothing to do with her having a trust fund, if she even does,” Kate said to Spinky. “I think that’s Moxie’s hang-up.”

Spinky appeared to be listening, but she was also turning the brass incense burner over and over in her hands with her head cocked to one side.

Uh . . . wait a second. My hang-up? Was she really pinning that on me?

“The problem is always going to be the fire code,” Spinky said, hefting the incense burner up and down in her hands. “What we need is a fireman to consult with.”

“I was just saying that it wasn’t me that . . .” Kate’s voice trailed off.

“Maybe there’s a book on fire codes. Maybe we could Google it,” Spinky said.

Spinky was either being deliberately obtuse or she simply hadn’t heard what Kate had said. I think we both suspected it was the first. I had noticed that Spinky didn’t like conflict of any kind—not even arguing about a band or a flavor of ice cream. She always changed the subject, or agreed with everybody. It was interesting that a girl with green hair who accessorized with safety pins and chains would be constantly avoiding arguments, since she had the appearance of someone who was ready to bring it at a moment’s notice.

I shrugged mentally and shook my head. I couldn’t think about this. Kate’s silent rage was making me highly uncomfortable. There was no way to resolve this situation right now. And if Kate wasn’t going to take the hint to go back to her own hall, then I’d just leave myself.

I took the brass incense burner from Spinky’s hands.

“I’ll run this next door to Haven,” I said. “She might as well hang on to it until you come up with your next plan.”

“Thanks, roomie,” Spinky said. “Tell her I will not give up. I will never surrender!”

“Got it,” I said. “See you later, Kate.”

Kate bent over to tie a shoelace that wasn’t untied, and said nothing.

I walked into the hallway, happy to have an excuse to go into a different room. It was a relief to get away from Kate and the pressures of maintaining my DUCKIness for Spinky under such duress.

Haven’s door was open, so I walked a few feet into her room, then stopped.

Haven was sitting on the floor, Buddha style, her hands together with joined thumbs making an O shape in her lap. An electric candle that flickered just like a real (but against the rules) one sat in front of her, placed next to a little Buddha statue and a picture of the happy monk she called her guru. Her eyes were closed, and her face was blank and peaceful.

So this was meditating.

It was such a contrast to the drama I’d just left in my own room. What I wouldn’t give to have as peaceful a moment as Haven looked to be having right now. To escape, just for a few minutes, from my personalities and my secret discoveries. Maybe I could even meditate away my mounting terror at the approaching New Student Talent Show. But on second thought, I’m not even sure Buddha himself could meditate away that much anxiety.

I would have continued to stand there watching Haven, but it felt like I was intruding on something private. So I placed the incense burner inside the door and quietly backed out into the hallway. I wandered into the hall lounge for a while, and poked through a selection of discarded magazines that various students had left there. Unfortunately there was no
Fabulous
to be had. When I felt like enough time had passed for Kate to have gone, I went back to my room.

Kate had indeed gone, and Spinky was bustling around in her bedroom.

I suddenly felt exhausted. It had been a long day, I had barely eaten lunch or dinner, and Kate’s hostility combined with the huge secret I’d just uncovered had really taken it out of me. I just didn’t have the energy to tell Spinky how stressed out I’d gotten over the looming nightmare of the New Student Talent Show. It could wait.

“Spink?” I called. “I think I’m going to hit the hay.”

She peered out of her room.

“Me too,” she said. “But listen, I got some beta on our roomie. Her name is Dannika Sorenson. She started as an eighth grader last year. Kristen still doesn’t know when she’s going to show up.” Spinky leaned forward.“But listen to this. I heard Dannika was doing an unauthorized experiment in bio last year and there was an explosion that blew out all the lab windows, and all the firemen who came to put it out got chicken pox and nobody could figure out why.”

I raised my eyebrows, unsure how to respond to that.

“Apparently she’s majorly goth,” Spinky continued, “black hair and lipstick, kabuki makeup—the whole nine yards. I will not tolerate any Marilyn Manson posters in my living space, Moxie. Anyway, that’s the skinny. I’m knackered. I’m going to try to get up early and work on my poems.”

Um, wow. “Night,” I said uncertainly, puzzling over this new piece of information. By any of the variety of accounts I’d now heard, the new roommate sounded kind of disastrous. And there was something else. I was surprised the goth thing didn’t appeal to Spinky. Nor would I have pegged Spinky as a Marilyn Manson hater. Even more alarmingly, the roommate sounded like she might complicate my already precariously balanced mix of personalities. Was her DUCKI going to outshine mine?

Spinky’s green-topped head disappeared as she closed her door. A moment later her light switched out.

In my little room, I changed into a long T-shirt and left everything else in a heap on the floor. I got into bed and pulled the blanket up to my chin. September was almost over, and the nights were already getting pretty cold, but I slept with the window open anyway. After only a few seconds staring at the ceiling, I began to drift into that half-sleep place. My brain switch, however, stayed firmly in the On position.

. . . forgot to call Mom and Dad today! Have to remember to call them before breakfast if there’s time . . .

. . . traditional to use a fork or chopsticks with tofu if...

. . . what am I going to do about the talent show? What am I going to do?

. . . totally forgot about the Yankees postgame report tonight . . . maybe Guadalupe won’t see . . .

. . . why should I even bother explaining to Kate when
she’s
the one who . . .

. . . grades too. I’m worried about math, that’s always the one that gets me . . . wonder how much the midterm exam counts for? Are we supposed to . . .

. . . going to be at the talent show and they’ll find out . . .

. . . but can Buddhists dance?

. . . love that animal rights club, if Reagan could just stop asking about . . .

. . . might as well just let her think I’m going to spill her big secret . . .

. . . if only there wasn’t this stupid talent show . . .

. . . going to ruin everything . . .

. . . forgot to tell Spinky about the time my . . .

. . . I wonder if fish can . . .

It went on and on as I tossed and turned, the voices growing louder, arguing with each other, jumping randomly from subject to subject, until I noticed another sound layered on top. I silenced my mind, and I heard a soft, sweet sound in the distance, slightly muffled and wavering, rising and falling, pitch perfect.

Spinky was sleep-singing.

My
Personality Log was beginning to overwhelm me.

In the almost four weeks since I’d started keeping it, there was way too much information piling up. I had actually enjoyed keeping the lists in the beginning, but now just reading over them made me feel queasy. I’d said so many things to so many different people.
I
knew that I was only doing a little harmless personality window-shopping, but on paper my experiment looked . . . not so good. Kind of like the journal entries of a pathological liar.

No one who was not inside my head—meaning everyone—would be able to understand the well-intentioned nature of my storytelling. I was going to have to start eliminating some potential personalities before I made some kind of terrible, cataclysmic blunder. So I decided to give Hale and Hearty Sports Enthusiast one final try. If it didn’t feel perfect, I was going to cross it off the list. Forever.

My original plan was to awaken at dawn on Saturday morning, have some MEG time meditating to make a tiny dent in my talent show stress, then assemble a suitable outfit and head down to the sports field to begin stretching. But I had stayed up late the night before, taking advantage of the free evening to hit the practice rooms and begin work on the final section of Variation 28. When I’d gotten to the music wing, though, I’d noticed the concert-length grand piano in the huge choir rehearsal room wasn’t being used. I can no more resist a Bosendorfer grand piano than I can a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. So I propped open the piano’s lid to get maximum volume and spent I don’t know how many hours thumping out all my favorite sonatas and waltzes while the light fixtures rattled and crystal shattered somewhere in Delaware.

I had gotten back to my room and spent another couple of hours catching up on class reading, including a book of essays by someone named James Thurber that I had to read for EE. When I finally went to bed, I had trouble sleeping. I couldn’t stop obsessing over Kate Southington, sea cows, and the New Student Talent Show, and how one—if not all—of them was bound to ruin my life. My stomach, truth be told, had not been okay for several weeks and even my skinny jeans were getting a bit baggy.