The Total Tragedy of a Girl Named Hamlet (9 page)

“Was it Mauri Lee and Saber Greene, by any chance?” I asked her. She raised her eyebrows at me.

“How did you know?”

My heart sank a little.

“I just guessed.”

I didn’t have time to make it from there to TLC and pre-algebra before the late bell, so checking on Dezzie would have to wait. The whole time Mr. Symphony talked about
x
and
y
as components of a problem, all I could think about were Mauri and Saber. What did they want with my sister?

The class ended, and I realized I hadn’t even written down the homework assignment, let alone taken notes. Scribbling it down from the board, I packed my stuff and tried to catch Dezzie one more time.

I wouldn’t make it to The Learning Center before she left, so instead I went straight to the front office, where Mom would be picking her up. As I came around the corner, I spotted Mom at the end of the hall, brown and gray bun bobbing above the kids’ heads. She was wearing her favorite red cloak—the one with the bells sewn into the front seams. The passing kids shot smirks, chuckles, and funny glances at her.

I stopped so sharply I nearly stepped out of my sneakers. Was it was worth being stared at to approach them and talk to Dezzie? As I weighed my options, Mom moved to one side to avoid a student. She was speaking with someone. Someone short. And then I realized it wasn’t Dezzie. Dezzie was standing next to her and still wearing a grouchy expression.

My mother was talking to another girl. My mother was talking to Saber Greene.

xii

The urge to run as fast as I could in the opposite direction came over me, and I nearly gave in. I even turned around.

What stopped me?

I was too far away for them to notice me in the crush of kids going to lunch. But the hall would empty in another minute, so my spying couldn’t last long. I maneuvered to one side and stood against a row of lockers, head down, peeking at them through a curtain of my hair.

Mom had a huge smile on her face, and was nodding like her head was on a spring at whatever Saber was saying. Saber wore an expression I’d seen many times in class—round eyes, a big smile, face tilted up like she was really interested in the other person—but as soon as the teacher turned his or her back, that face would disappear and a nasty one would take its place. As soon as Mom and Dezzie left, I knew that sneer would appear and whom her lunch conversation would be about—and how funny it would sound to the others at her table.

The crowd in the hall thinned. Should I walk over there, or leave? I needed to make a quick decision, but my feet felt as though they were stapled to the floor. They’d see me soon.

Saber nodded at my mother again, and smiled so wide I was sure the top of her head was going to fall off. I kind of hoped it would.

It didn’t. She smiled and waved at Dezzie too. My mother, in her typical fashion, curtsied her good-bye. Was it possible that Saber’s mouth stretched just a tiny bit wider? She obviously remembered Mom from the Ren Faire. Dezzie and Mom turned to leave, and Saber watched, smile shrinking faster than one of Mom’s wool sweaters in the dryer.

I edged away from the locker and went to the caf. My emotions were as clear as a Pollock painting—a puddle of anger at Saber for mocking my mom, a splash of irritation with Dezzie for being at HoHo to begin with, dribbles of frustration with my mother, her crazy habits, and what would happen if she knew if I could “perform”—everything combined into a messy soup of mad.

Ty, Ely, and Judith didn’t even ask where I had been when I plopped into my seat—since Dezzie showed up, they were used to me being late for everything. I tossed my lunch bag on the table, scowling at it. Saber was a jerk, and I didn’t know what to do about it.

“Hey Ham-let.” Her sickly sweet voice was behind me. I turned, along with Ty, Ely, and everyone else at our table.

“I saw your mom today, when she came to pick up your sister.” Saber said “mom” and “sister” like the words were full of lead—slow and heavy. “It was nice to talk to her. About old times.”

I didn’t speak. If I said something mean, she would use it to mock me somehow. Instead, I bit the inside of my cheek and tried to keep my temper under control. When she saw I wasn’t planning to respond, she continued.

“I really liked her cloak,” she said. “Did she leave her Maypole at home?” I bit down harder to keep my mouth from getting ahead of my brain. In a second, I’d be able to taste blood.

“What do you want?” Ty barked at her. He sat straight as the deck of his skateboard, clutching the back of his chair with both hands.

Saber shrugged. “Just thought I’d let Ham-let know that her mother is very excited to help with our Shakespeare project.” She kept her face friendly and neutral, like she was giving us the algebra homework, but it was a mask.

“Really? She
is
? That is
such
news to me. Wowzers, Saber, you are totally an investigative reporter.” Ely oozed sarcasm from the roots of his dreds. Scowling, Saber flounced from our table.

“Sweet!” Judith cheered, and Ely high-fived across the table.

“Thanks, guys,” I muttered, happy for the help, but embarrassed that I needed backup to clear Saber from our presence. Ty and Ely began dissecting her reaction and his performance.

“Dude, what was she talking about?” Judith asked me, too low for the boys to hear. “Is your mom really coming in to help?” I shook my head.

Some things aren’t worth explaining. And besides, if Saber was right, Judith would find out for herself soon enough.

xiii

When I got home, I found out just how soon that might be.

“I met a girl in one of your classes today,” Mom said over dinner. “Savor, I think her name was? She remembered me from a Faire we did two years ago.”

Dezzie stared straight at her food, acting like she wasn’t at the dinner table. Dad was deep into another stack of sonnets. He barely touched the Cornish hen cooling on his plate. Iago sat in the corner on his purple velvet pillow, waiting for us to finish so he could get scraps—stir-fried in seventeenth-century gravy, of course.

I had no choice but to answer.

“Saber,” I replied.

“Correct. She escorted your sister to the office before lunchtime. Was that not nice of her?”

When she realized I wasn’t going to respond, she went on. “We spoke about the Salute to Shakespeare unit your class is doing. She is very excited.”

“Mmm-hmmm,” I said, putting a forkful of mashed potatoes into my mouth. The less I said, the better off I’d be—I didn’t want Mom to know that I a.) didn’t like Saber and b.) hadn’t actually said anything to my teachers about her offer to help.

“She gave me the names of your teachers, as you seem to have forgotten to contact them on our behalf. She seemed to think they would like having us involved. What do you think, Hamlet?” The look on her face read: “Why did not you give us their names?”

I nearly choked. “She did? Really?”

“I think that is wonderful,” Dad said, finally surfacing from his stack of work. Iago also perked up. “There is much we can both offer, Prudence.” Their faces were mirrors of Elizabethan joy.

“I shall call Mrs. Wimple tomorrow,” Mom said.

Dezzie gave me a quizzical look. I guess the horror I felt on the inside was presenting itself all over my face.

I sunk lower in my seat. First Desdemona, then the English/history class, my reading “talent,” and now my parents—eighth grade was turning into a Salute to Shakespeare, all right. Only the type of salute I wanted to give the Bard would have gotten me in big, big trouble.

After dinner I went to my room, to tackle my pre-algebra homework, followed by Iago. He’s an ex-show dog and the most picky animal I’ve ever met. He’ll only lie on the bed if the sheets smell clean, and refuses to do any “business” unless it’s behind the rosebush in our backyard. As I went through my bag, searching for my assignment notebook, he hopped onto my bed and gave the comforter and pillow a thorough sniff. Deciding that it wasn’t quite right, he jumped down and sat in front of my bedroom door, sighing until I let him out.

“Fine.”

I flopped onto my comforter—the sheets were fresh enough for me—and stared at the ceiling. There was no avoiding it: My parents would be involved with my classes in some way, at some point, this term. And they’d find out about what happened in English.

I’d succeeded in both not reading aloud in class and not thinking about what happened outside of class for the past few days. But it hadn’t made anything go away.

I
hated
Shakespeare. He was responsible for ruining my life. And as far as I was concerned, being able to read his words was no gift. It was just another thing that made me different—what I wanted to avoid at all costs. Dad was always talking about the way people acted in public versus in private—one way was how you were, the other was how you behaved. Of course he had a Shakespeare quote to explain it: “God has given you one face, and you make yourself another.”

The face I’d make wouldn’t involve any of this stuff.

I dug my pre-al book from my bag and stared at the same graph problem for fifteen minutes. It did not improve my mood. We had a test coming up soon, and I couldn’t figure out where
x
and
y
were supposed to go, or what they were supposed to do when they got there. I read the beginning of the chapter, then reread it, hoping that the words would mean something the second time through. No luck.

I tried reading the end of the chapter, but the “helpful hints” weren’t so helpful if you had no idea what they were referring to. Since I’d been preoccupied trying to figure out what to do with Dezzie, I didn’t have any notes from class, either.

A check of the clock. I’d been working on pre-al for forty-five minutes, and was no better off than when I started. I sighed, then dropped my forehead to my desk. There was no option left.

Dragging my feet the whole way, I went down the hall and knocked on my sister’s door. Usually I had no problem asking Dezzie for help, but after dealing with Saber and being wrapped in Mom and Dad’s educational cloak, all because of her, I was in no rush for assistance.

“Come in,” Dezzie said. Her voice sounded strange—kind of like when she had a cold or bad allergies, but I went in anyway.

I liked visiting her room. Everything was always neat and put away, unlike the tangled piles of clothes and books and notebooks that littered my floor. Instead of the action movie posters and collages of my friends hanging on my walls, her room was decorated with a poster of the periodic table of the elements, which she’d memorized at four and a half (why leave it up if you know everything on it?), a chart of the U.S. presidents, and “for a touch of whimsy,” as she said, there was a mobile in the corner dangling symbols of famous novelists—a raven for Edgar Allan Poe, a red letter A for Nathaniel Hawthorne, a ghost for Dickens, and, of course, a quill pen for you-know-who. She’d made it at SMARTS two years ago.

Instead of sitting at her desk, books open and computer on, Dezzie was facedown on the bed, head stuffed under her pillow. Only the back of her shirt and her Care Bears pajama pants were visible. Iago was stretched out at her feet, snoozing. Not an open book in sight. I stopped.

“Dez, are you okay?” The dog opened one eye and gave me a dirty look.

“Fine,” came her little voice, muffled by the pillows. “What do you need?”

I slipped my math book and notebook on the bureau next to her bed. “Um, I was going to ask you for help with pre-algebra,” I said. “I can come back later, if you want.” I’d never seen her like this. Iago, sleep disturbed, stretched and hopped down. He trotted to the door and gave me another annoyed look before leaving.

“That would be fine.” It seemed like the pillow was the one doing the talking. “Congratulations on your stellar reading in English, by the way.” Then a sniffle. Pillows don’t sniffle.

“Uh, thanks?” I said, hoping she wouldn’t tell Mom and Dad and wondering where she heard about it, anyway. “Are you
sure
you’re okay?” I took a step closer to her bed.

“I said I’m
fine
!” she said, much louder this time. I froze. “Just
get out
!” She made this funny gasping noise.

I didn’t move. I could tell she was crying, and probably had been since before I came in, but I didn’t know why, or what to do about it.

Dezzie’s not a crier. Even when she was a little baby, she rarely cried. She didn’t throw temper tantrums when she was two or three, like Ty’s little brother—instead, in a calm voice, she would explain that she wanted to read
that
specific textbook or would ask someone to hold her so she could better see
that
museum piece. I’m the one who’s always battling emotions.

“Do you want to talk about it?” I tried. I stepped closer to the bed.

Silence. Maybe that was a good sign. I perched on the edge, barely putting any weight on the mattress.

Her head popped up from between the pillows. Her round face was covered with big red splotches, curly hair sticking to her forehead in sweaty clumps. She chewed on her lower lip, and her eyes were puffy and pink around the edges. Dezzie, I was both surprised and pleased to see, looked like me when she cried—like a regular, angry, upset kid. I tried not to smile.

“What’s wrong?” I said, using a soft voice.

Her eyes filled with tears. That’s when I noticed that she was clutching Curie, her stuffed rabbit. Curie had been her favorite toy before she learned to read, and sat on a shelf over her desk. It was one of the only “baby” things that Dezzie would allow in her room. As far as I knew, Curie had been sitting in the same spot for nearly six years. This was bad.

“I—I—hate school!” she blurted. The tears overflowed, spilling down her cheeks and dripping off her chin into her lap.

“You could ask Mom and Dad to change your curriculum,” I began. The expression she made would have melted a stone.