The Things You Kiss Goodbye (28 page)

“Your mother will be down the hall with the boys shortly,” he warned. “And I will expect to leave on time.”

Great. I was still in my nightgown. Slowly, I pushed away from the table. If he saw me moving maybe he’d leave me alone. I stood at the counter and poured myself a cup of coffee. Bampas gave a small, satisfied nod.

“Fili antio,”
he said.

Kiss it goodbye
.

The words looped through the air like a fireball. I drew a breath.

“
Don’t
say that to me.” My voice crackled. I looked directly at Bampas. “
Don’t you dare
. I am
not
a little girl with scraped knees.”

My father raised his brow and looked away from me.

“No, no! You have to listen,” I said. “I cannot just shut this down. I have lost my love!
Really
lost him!” I chugged a breath into my lungs.
“He is dead!”
I shook my head. “Th-this has never happened to you. Do you want to know how it is?”

Bampas was not looking at me but he had to be hearing.

“I hate waking,” I said. “I’m waiting for the morning that it will feel okay to put my feet out of my bed again. I am pushing and shoving my way through every minute of every day.” I waited in the hush of our kitchen. From my aching throat, I pressed the words again. “He is dead. I’ll
never
get over it. This is not a thing I can just kiss goodbye, Bampas. I won’t get off that easy. I have to feel the whole thing. So
don’t
say that to me.”

My father stood looking down the long road of his own cheekbones into his china cup. He stirred his coffee. The spoon clinked shakily against the porcelain.

Avel trotted in. Momma and Favian followed just behind him. I marveled at them walking through fire like that. They were in a conversation—something about lunch money.

“I need quarters,” Avel strained. “The lunch ladies get crabby about giving change.”

My mother’s open purse dangled from her arm while she fished its depths. Her hair was caught up loosely in a clip with strands falling all around her face.

Meanwhile, Favian overshot his cereal bowl and little sugar-coated balls rolled across the countertop.

“Momma, did you find the quarters?” Avel was focused.

Momma shook her head no. “Dinos, do you have any?” she asked.

Bampas set his cup down with a clank and shoved his hands into his pockets. Happy for a reason not to look at me, I could not help thinking. I watched him pat himself down, his good gray pants staying knife sharp at the front crease. I followed the line down. The toes of his shoes happened to be pointing right at the dark slot beneath the refrigerator.

I went to the pantry and I took out the broom. “Excuse me, Bampas,” I said, and he moved out of my way.

I wound the hem of my nightgown up in one wrist. I
crouched down in front of the fridge and slid the head of the broom underneath it.
Swat-bang, swat-bang
. One, then two, and then two more quarters slid out. Avel scrambled for them as if they’d fallen from a piñata.

I stood still. My family stared. When I tried to move, I accidentally let go of the broom and the handle hit the floor with a loud crack that made all of us jump. Favian and Avel both clapped hands over their ears.

It took me a second to find my voice. “I am walking to school today,” I said.

“Walking? Oh, but it’s so far—there is isn’t time.” Poor Momma was confused.

“I’m walking,” I repeated. “I’ll call you when I get there.” My father stepped forward but before he could say a word I told him, “Don’t follow me.” I held both my palms toward him.
“Don’t.”

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..................................................................

T
HE SCHOOL SECRETARY WAS CHIRPING AT ME
. A
LL
I
HAD
said was “I’m late.” Stating the obvious. My walk had been the right choice—possibly the only way to make the blood move inside of me this morning. Nonetheless, it was an hour past homeroom.

“Okay, so how about I give you this . . .” She drew a yellow pass out of her drawer. In a fluid motion, she checked the clock and scribbled the time on the proper line. Though I was holding my cell in my hand, she said, “And how about I call home for you . . .” She picked up the office phone. “I’ll let them know you are here. . . .”
Chirp
.

It was known, I guess, by school administration that I’d
been through
something
. Nobody harassed me about the classes I was now failing. Maybe it was understood that for now, Bettina Vasilis was just making it through each day.

In clay class, everyone but me had managed to bring up a required vessel—fourteen inches or more. They talked about “tall forms” and every time I heard the words, I dissolved a little more. It was my fault. I wouldn’t get up there on the wheel. I lay on my arm and drew in a sketchbook. I was hung up on little female figures. I had a half dozen pages of them. They looked like wingless fairies or naked witches; I couldn’t decide. But it didn’t matter because they were not
for
anything.

Mr. Terazzi was friendly without bothering me. Bonnie said nothing, but I think she was afraid and guilty still. I didn’t mean to keep her on the hook—I didn’t even blame her. I missed her and I wanted to talk to her. But I couldn’t reach out.

I’d asked to be picked up by my parents every day. Imagine that. Either Momma or Bampas had been fetching me on their way to pick up Favian and Avel. I stayed in the art room after last bell most afternoons, avoiding the basketball jocks until my ride came. It wasn’t that those guys looked for me every day—I am sure I wasn’t worth that much to them. But staying away from the bus circle seemed like an easy move in favor of myself.

One afternoon, Bonnie was loading the kiln in the back while I sat at a desk close to the art room door. I sketched more of my strange womenfolk until I saw the last bus wind its way out of the circle. I packed up. In the hallway, I forced my crooked locker door shut and shouldered my jacket. When I turned around, several of Brady’s teammates were running up at me. One hollered my name. I turned in time to see him holding his crotch and lunging toward me. He grunted, then gasped, and sent a plug of spit into my locker door. A second wad hit my jacket.

“Oh, oh—
oh
—my G-G-God!” he said as if in great relief. “I just had to get rid of that. Sperm pressure’s a killer, man!” He and the others ran down the hall, laughing.

The milky wad clung to the steel door right about eye level, then began to slide down. I felt myself dry heave. I turned toward the girls’ room but caught sight of Big Bonnie standing in the doorway of the art room, a look of pain in her eyes.

“Slobs,” she muttered. She looked down the hall where Brady’s minions had paused to congratulate themselves on being disgusting. “Come back in here,” she said. She glanced at the spit wad on my jacket. “Maybe we could sponge that.”

I followed her inside the art room and over to the big sink. Bonnie started with a paper towel, then wet the sponge. “Hmm . . . think this okay for leather?” I shrugged. She
began to dab. I felt bad. That hocker was nasty. “Are you all right, Bettina? You look like you’re about fall over.” Bonnie reached like she was going to put a hand on my shoulder but she hesitated.

“Actually . . . I don’t feel so good,” I said. I hadn’t eaten all day—stupid—and now I was grossed out. I let myself down onto a stool, and Bonnie slid my jacket off my shoulder. She went after that gob spot with her sponge, brave soul.

In the art room, there are several old mirrors, all rough and spattered with clay and paint. Drawing classes used them for the obligatory self-portraits. I sometimes held my sketches up to the glass to see them reversed and anew. But that day, I was looking at myself. The afternoon light came in through the windows and illuminated me. I was startled. No makeup, which almost knocked me off my perch. Had I not looked into my mirror at home lately? I didn’t look so bad, just different. But my hair—oh, man. I tilted my head trying to see the sides.

Bonnie had come over to stand behind me and together we regarded the girl in the mirror. “Why did you cut it?” she asked softly.

I shrugged.

She began to walk around me. I looked up at her and remembered the day I heard one of the Not-So-Cheerleaders say that I’d be nothing with my boyfriend or my braid. “I
think I just wanted it off,” I told Bonnie.

She reached for a strand. “Do you mind?” she asked.

I sat still. Bonnie drew my hair out through her fingertips. She lifted a corkscrew here, set another one down there like she was rearranging them. “Will you let me trim it?” she asked. “Just to even out the lengths?”

She reached for a pair of art room scissors and gave them a critical inspection. “What do you think?”

“Yeah.” I nodded.

I watched in the mirror while Bonnie worked. She gently pulled the strands up and out, matching the ends. Then she closed the scissors blades across them. Her chapped knuckles brushed my cheek as she came around to the front. “Should I do the bangs a little bit shorter maybe?”

“Sure.”

“You’ve got the best hair,” she said. Gently, she snipped little ends of all the coils. I saw her reflection in the mirror. She was smiling.

“Do you mean I
used
to have the best hair?”

“No. I mean now.” Bonnie set the scissors down and scooted a chair around in front of me. “Bettina,” she said. Her head was low. “Can I tell you how sorry I am? Those guys—the way they’re treating you—it’s my fault.” She began to tear up.

“No. Bonnie, stop.” I could hardly stand it.

“
I
told Brady you were at that funeral,” Bonnie confessed. “It was
me
.” She shook her head.

“I know. It’s okay,” I said.

“I—I felt sorry for him. He waited at your locker every morning. He looked lost. And nobody knew where you were—even the freakin’ rumor mill wasn’t coughing anything out—not at first.” I nodded at that. “So, I finally told him I had seen you at a service. He asked which one. That’s
all
I told him, I swear. I didn’t make anything up.”

“No . . . I’m sure that played out in imaginations. And text messages.”

“I guess.” Bonnie sighed. “Bettina, I admit it, I
liked
having a reason to speak to Brady Cullen. I know it was lame.”

“It’s okay. He would have found out anyway.”

“But there was probably a better way for that to happen.”

“I can’t think of a better way.” I shrugged. I looked Bonnie right in her teary eyes and told her, “I mean that. So don’t think about it again.”

Poor Bonnie. Such a look of alarm crossed her face when Bampas and the high school principal came rushing into the art room.

“Bettina!” Bampas looked like he was about to lose it. “Oh! You are here!” He breathed a huge sigh. “We are running late to get the boys,” he said. He glanced at the principal and added, “My two young sons at the elementary.”

The principal muttered something tranquilizing.

“Yes, yes.” Bampas was beginning to calm down now. He looked at me. “It’s just . . . I was waiting for you in the circle,” he said. He wasn’t usually like this—putting salve on a tense moment instead of thumping it flat with his fist. We’d had a bad morning; maybe he was afraid I’d start yelling at him here in the art room. The principal excused himself, and Bampas relaxed just a hitch more.

“This was really my fault,” Bonnie piped up. “I held Bettina up. I’m sor—”

“No, no,” I said. “There was something stuck to my jacket—something sickening. This is my friend Bonnie, and she helped me clean it up.” I tucked my fingers up to my hair but decided not to mention the new trim. “She helped me,” I said.

Bampas nodded slightly. “Well, do you have your things? We should go now.” He started toward the doorway. I looked down at all my little hair twists on the floor.

“Go, go,” Bonnie said. “I’ll sweep up.”

“Thank you,” I said.

I hooked my jacket on my shoulder and hurried to catch up to Bampas.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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“I
’
M GOING UP TO THE GARDEN
,” I
CALLED INTO THE
hallway from my bedroom door. Nobody answered. “I’m
not
missing,” I added a little louder. Well, at least I had tried.

Beside our semi-frozen swimming pool, I lit Cowboy’s last cigarette. I wasn’t bothering to hide them, and neither Momma nor Bampas had said anything to me.

I sat on the iron bench and pulled my knees up to my chest. From there I could look across the pool and down toward the house. Favian and Avel were having a ferocious, forbidden pillow fight in the lit-up living room below me. I was glad to see it.

Poor Avel had not spent his quarters. He’d brought them to me before supper time, opening his hand and whispering, “These are yours.”

“What? Oh, no! Avel, you didn’t eat lunch?” His eyes had filled with tears and his small face had crumpled. My heart had melted. I’d crushed him in a hug. With all his little bones squeezed up in my arms, he had felt like a big baby bird with finger-tipped wings clutching my back. I had rocked him, trying to keep back all the sobs that wanted out of me so that I wouldn’t freak him out. But in the end we’d both cried. When Avel and I had finally both blown our noses and laughed about our snots, I had called Favian into my room too. I’d told them about Cowboy—the guy in the pickup who’d let us cross River Road with our parfait dishes. They had remembered him. They’d been stunned and sorry.

Now in the garden, I thought back on it and I felt grateful that the boys had, just that once, laid eyes on Cowboy. There were so few stories to tell. I wiped my face with my sleeve and took a hard drag on the cigarette.

Then I saw Bampas. He was squeezing out of my bedroom window, awkwardly lifting his knee to his chest so his foot would clear the sill. What in the world? He looked like a bear in a charcoal-gray man-suit. He took a hop to draw
that second foot through the opening. Never had I seen my father
hop
.
Here comes the anti-Bampas
, I thought. I snorted a laugh.