Underneath (6 page)

I open my mouth to tell her that she has no reason to be sorry, that nobody has any right to tell her otherwise, when the doorbell rings. Auntie Mina springs to her feet and says, “I should really get going.”

“Mina,” my dad says, reaching a hand toward her. “Stay for dinner.”

She grabs her purse from the back of the chair. “You have company. Plus it's roast chicken night, so we'll have company, too, one of the other VPs in Randall's department. I'll just let myself out the side door. I
loved
the tea.” She gives Mom a kiss on the cheek and says, “I'll call soon.” She hugs me and Dad, quickly, and hurries out the door before we can say more than goodbye. Dad scoots his chair back and rushes after her, looking as confused as I feel, and Mom is frowning, but the doorbell rings again and she hurries to answer it.

Poor Auntie Mina. I wonder what she's thinking, what was going through her head. Why she decided to run off. And I wonder why I didn't underhear anything.

I guess I didn't try.

For the first time, it occurs to me that I could have. Could have tried to find out what she was feeling, deliberately. What she was thinking.

No matter what was going through her mind, I know she's got to be hurting a million times more than I am.

I don't have much time to think about it, because who follows my mother into the room but Antonia in the ample flesh, wearing a yellow tracksuit nearly identical to mine, only hers is adorned with a giant quartz crystal pendant and a silver dragon pin.

“Sorry I'm early,” she's saying to my mom. “I really thought you said four o'clock. I—” Then she catches sight of me.

“Sunny!” she exclaims in a bright, chirpy voice. “Look at us! We're twins.” Her shoulder-length, curly, carroty-orange hair has a white streak in the front where it's starting to go gray, and it's bouncy just like her personality. It makes me ill. And I'm angry, too, because if she hadn't shown up so early, maybe Auntie Mina wouldn't have felt like she had to jump up and leave.

Dad walks back through the side door at that moment. He doesn't look happy, either, and he quickly retreats to his study with his stack of grading.

Antonia turns to my mother and plops a huge macramé bag onto the table.

“Oh, that's really thoughtful of you, Antonia. I hope it wasn't any trouble,” my mom says. Mom looks pleased, but for me, the rest of the evening is a nightmare. I try to bury
myself in my pre-calculus homework when I'm not helping sort through photos. Every time I look at any of the pictures—the ones of Shiri as a kid at tennis camp, dressed up for eighth-grade graduation, or even the horrible one with the two of us as little kids, half-naked in an inflatable pool—I feel my teeth clench and my eyes sting. All those moments are worthless now.

Mom is unashamedly weeping and smiling, sharing every stupid memory that pops into her head, and Antonia keeps doing her thing with heaps of glitter and paper doodads, turning the stacks of photos and digital printouts into a nightmarish scrapbook monstrosity. Mom wields scissors and a glue stick as the two of them chatter away about Shiri, about Mina, and then, after Mom cheers up a little, about other scrapbook ideas and goofy household decorating projects that my dad would surely veto if he were privy to this conversation.

The evening seems endless, but finally Antonia leaves. I try to find my dad to ask him what he talked about with Auntie Mina, if he was able to find out why she left so abruptly, but he's taking a long shower, so I give up and go to bed.

At least I didn't underhear anybody all day. I don't know if I would have been able to handle hearing Auntie Mina. On one hand, maybe it would have helped me understand. Or maybe it would have made me break down completely.

Monday is dismal. The sky is grayish with smoggy haze, and the trees on campus are starting to turn brown, except for the high, soaring palms out by the road. Eddies of fall wind whip a few dry leaves around and bend the palm trees into gentle parallel curves, and my nose itches with flying dust.

My mood feels just as dismal; fragile as the dry leaves. My head aches.

I get through my first couple of classes okay, paying the minimum of attention to get by. Then, in third-period Pre-Calculus, we get our tests back from last week. Scrawled in red on the top of my test is a C+. My stomach drops. The scrawled numbers go blurry as I stare at the page. I do my best to blink the tears back, but I can't seem to control them, so I hurry to Ms. Castillo's desk for a bathroom pass.

When I reach the bathroom, I lock myself into a stall and lean against the graffiti-covered orange wall, my jaw clenched.
It's just a test
.
No, it's more than the test. It's everything.
I stay like that for a few minutes, trying to regain control.

The bathroom door opens and I freeze, holding my breath, tears still sliding down my cheeks and onto my neck. I peek through the crack between the door and the side of the stall. It's Mikaela. She clomps in on huge platform-soled black boots and stops to rearrange her ripped, holey black tights.

Then she goes into one of the stalls to pee. While she's in there, I take a deep breath and go out to wash my face. Mikaela hasn't exactly been
friendly
to me, but she and her Emoville friends have put up with me sitting with them at lunch and have pretty much left me alone, which is what I wanted in the first place. Even the girl who first gave me attitude, Becca, has been pretty nice. Cody got on my case at first for homing in on their lunch spot, but he got over it surprisingly quickly. For a day or two after that, he ignored me; now we seem to have a tentative truce.

He even smiled at me a little when I passed him in the hall after first period today. His smile makes him look like a different person. Less like a conceited jerk. More like a normal human being. Which he is, I guess.

I'm the one who's not quite normal.

I'm still drying my face on a scratchy brown paper towel when Mikaela comes out of the stall. She washes her hands and then stays in front of the mirror to fix one of her springy little braids. My face is more than dry, so I give up trying to hide and, heart pounding, try to sound as casual and normal as possible.

“Hey, Mikaela.” I carefully don't look at her, but stare into the mirror and pretend to squint at a zit on my chin.

“Oh, hey, Sunny,” she says, glancing at me before going back to her braid. She doesn't stare at my red, teary eyes. She doesn't sound scornful. She doesn't sound like anything. Just regular. I mentally sigh with relief. She finishes wrapping the end of the braid in a silver rubber band and starts to head for the door. She passes me on the way, and slows, peering closely at my face. She looks like she's about to say something, but instead she just smiles and says, “See you at lunch.” Then, just as she's gotten past me, her hand shoots out and tucks something into the pocket of my windbreaker. For a second I think I've imagined it.

“Um, yeah … see you then,” I manage to croak out. When Mikaela's gone, I reach into my pocket. Inside is a tissue packet.

I almost feel like crying again. Cassie would have been all over me. She'd have been all “what's wrong, Sunny Bunny?” and “oh, no, look how red your eyes are; we need to get some eye drops in there,” and “let's get you fixed up.” The thought doesn't seem comforting to me anymore. It seems smothering. It seems superficial, like she cared more about how I look than how I feel.

Maybe she did.

Mikaela didn't even
say
anything—all she did was shove Kleenex in my pocket. But she cared enough to not press the issue, and left me alone to sort myself out, which is what I do. I have to.

Next period is tutoring in the library. As usual, nobody seems to require my services. I do notice that one of the guys from Emoville is sitting at a table in the far corner by the window, a guy with nondescript light-brown hair who I think is named David. He's scribbling in a notebook. It's funny; it's like I never noticed any of them before, but now I'm running into Mikaela and her friends all over the place.

It makes me feel less alone.

At one point he looks up and catches me watching. I give him a half-wave, and he kind of half-smiles back and goes back to writing in his notebook. I might as well be friendly since I'm sharing their table every day. I don't want them to drive me out. I don't have anywhere else to go.

“Oh, of
course
you want to read the
Citrus Valley Voice
! Everyone wants to read the
Citrus Valley Voice
! Your mom wants to read the
Citrus Valley Voice
!” Becca says in a high-pitched squeak, mimicking the overenthusiastic office aide who just forced copies of the school newspaper on us.

“We can always use it to start fires, I guess,” this guy named Andy says, with a slightly insane grin.

“Pyro,” I say, absently, playing with the lid of my water bottle. I always kind of liked the
Citrus Valley Voice
, but I'm not going to say so now.

“Just kidding. I won't burn it. But I'm not gonna read it.”

“Seriously,” Mikaela says. “Like we want to read school propaganda
outside
of school. Hey, we should totally start up a competing publication.”

Cody smirks. “Yeah. We could do better. The
Voice
is so full of garbage. It's all about kids who think they're popular, written by kids who
wish
they were popular.” There are sounds of general agreement, and he pretends to flip through the paper. “Hmm. The football team lost. Golly! If they're not careful they'll lose their cheerleading groupies to, like, the swim team.” He puts one hand over his heart and makes a ridiculously pathetic face at me.

Becca snorts. Mikaela and Andy bust up laughing.

I fidget on the hard wooden bench of the picnic table. The reference to swim team makes me feel a little weird. But I know Cody's just trying to make me feel better about the Zombie Squad, so I force a laugh.

I end up getting a coughing fit. Embarrassed, I down the rest of my water and get up to refill my water bottle at the drinking fountain near the parking lot. I'm just turning the corner around the side of the art building when I run into Spike walking back from his car.

I don't feel prepared for this, but he still stops in front of me, running one hand awkwardly through his haphazardly gelled hair.

“Hey,” he says. “How's it going? Sorry I haven't called. I've been … you know.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Me too.” There's a long pause, and I kind of stare past him, out at the cars in the lot, feeling a little guilty. “How is everyone?”

“Oh, fine. Same-old. We miss you on swim team. Coach has Cassie doing the 100-meter freestyle now.”

I grunt. There's a small twinge in my chest when Spike gives me the news, but I try to keep my face neutral. I swallow past what feels like a rock in my throat and ask, “How is Cassie?”

“She's … just Cassie,” Spike says, looking nervous all of a sudden. “She's taking it a little hard that you haven't been hanging out with us. She's been kind of pissed about it, actually.”

“She's taking it hard?” I burst out. “
She's
the one who—” I stop. Spike has no idea. He has no idea I can hear thoughts. He has no idea how angry she really is. Until recently, I didn't either. “I just—I know she's been talking about me.”

“I know, I know. Say no more.” Spike puts out a hand like he's trying to ward off the crazy-chick vibes. “Listen, you know how she says stuff … stupid stuff. She doesn't mean it. When she gets that way, I'm out.” He pauses, smiling sheepishly. “I've been spending a lot of time at the volleyball court lately.”

“She says ‘stuff?'” I say skeptically.

He scratches his neck, not quite meeting my eyes, and changes the subject. “So you started hanging out over here, huh?”

“Yup.” I don't elaborate.

“Um, are you sure you should be …that emo group is a little … ” He trails off.

“A little what?” My voice gets a slight edge to it. I can't help it. “Spit it out.”

“I've just heard things about that Cody guy. I don't know. You might want to watch yourself around him.”

“He's nice,” I say icily, even though it isn't quite true.

“Okay, whatever. You'd probably know better than I would,” Spike says.

“I think I do.” I give him a challenging stare. What right does he have to barge in and tell me my new friends are jerks? Who is he to judge? No matter what else he says to me, he hangs out with the Zombie Squad every single day.

“Well … anyway. I just wanted to tell you.”

“Sure,” I say. There's a pause, and then the bell rings. “I'd better get my stuff.”

“Listen, take care, okay? If you get bored at lunch, come play volleyball with me sometime. I mean it.” Spike gives me an awkward hug and saunters back around the art building toward the patio. I wave in his direction, but instead of retrieving my bag, I stand there for a minute, staring out at the parking lot.

I debate trying to underhear what he thought he was doing just now, but my mind is too jumbled to even consider it. I really don't know if it would work, trying to underhear somebody on purpose.

Anyway, it doesn't matter. I know Spike probably means well, but … I think about Mikaela putting the tissue packet in my pocket, about Cody making stupid jokes to try to make me feel better, and I just know he's wrong.