Among Friends (7 page)

I had my hair cut. It’s very short, and where it used to be limp now it’s soft and wispy. I like it. It made me feel all excited to look in the mirror and see it: fluff instead of draperies. People are saying nice things. Maybe they’re just being polite. But even Paul Classified commented on it, and I know Paul C. well enough by now to know he wouldn’t rouse himself from silence just to lie about somebody’s hair. So it must look good.

Hillary and I went to Jennie’s gala event because it
would have been very hard to explain to our parents why we weren’t there. A hundred people all hugging and congratulating Jennie. I took it for about ten minutes and left. It’s a rerun: Jennie’s a hit, Hill and I get jealous, Jennie goes on being a hit, so Hill and I walk out on her.

My little brother Trip’s birthday party was the other day. He had his four best friends over and Mom took them skating and then they came home for cake. This four-layer cake she made herself, which she hasn’t done in years, not since she went back to work, and immediately there is the problem of how do you cut a cake for five kids?

I think that’s what Jennie is.

A birthday cake cut by an unfair mother.

I, Emily, got a sliver of cake and none of the really good icing. Hillary got a reasonable-sized piece, but nothing to write home about. Jennie got all the rest of the cake: the good flowers on top, the icing ribbons on the sides, and the thickest filling.

Oh, it’s so unfair!

And the worst of it is, I’m a worse person. I’m not as nice as I was last year!

Closing night.

Awesome.

Applause.

Flowers from the cast.

A huge party at our house afterward: cast, orchestra, stagehands, teachers, and all their families and dates. Food, rock music, dancing, Christmas carols, and more food.

Mother bought me a splendid skirt: slippery shiny Christmas plaid to the floor, with a sexy, clingy black top and a wild crazy necklace, like a tree of silver and gold, and my earrings falling down to meet it—stars for me and my tree.

But what good is a perfect dress if Paul Classified doesn’t see me in it?

What good is the best pageant and the greatest party if Emily and Hillary don’t come?

You would think that joy could be shared more easily than anything else. After all, joy is the loveliest emotion. But joy is very difficult to hand around. You can’t fling joy into the air like confetti and expect your friends to toss it with you when they don’t have any of their own.

How did Mary the Mother of Jesus manage not to cry?

Or maybe she did cry. The Bible leaves out all the interesting parts. Did Mary cry forever? Did all the brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews of Jesus cry forever? Or did they bury him and get on with it, making supper and being carpenters?

I’m not even religious. I think the whole thing is a bunch of hooey. I have Christmas pageants on the brain.

I need more money! I’m going to work a few evenings a week at McDonald’s again.

An article about Jennie was in the paper Sunday. A full page of photographs of the pageant. Jennie taking a bow. Quotes from Miss Clinton saying Jennie is the most exciting student to go through Westerly High. The reporter obviously felt Jennie was the most wonderful possible example of young people today. A girl of absolute perfection, he wrote, what we all want our children to strive to be like.

Ugh.

Paul Classified won’t have anything to do with her.

Everybody is getting sort of a kick out of it.

Here’s Jennie, absolutely in love with him, her eyes all wide and starry whenever she sees him—and Paul Classified just stands there looking the other way and looking bored. Paul Classified is thinner. He used to have the perfect body. He doesn’t now.

Catching Paul alone is impossible, he doesn’t
do
alone.

But there are only a few days of school left before vacation and I’m really worried about him.

So I passed him a note in English class.
Dear Paul, I heard about the fight and I’m terribly sorry it happened. Listen, I’m not interfering or anything, but do you have anywhere to go on Christmas? I don’t celebrate Christmas myself, but my mother and my little brother and I always go out for Christmas dinner anyhow, to keep from getting lonely on
everybody else’s holiday, and we would be happy to have you come with us. Love, Emily
.

He picked up his pen to write an answer but he didn’t.

All through English class he stared down at my note. Jennie was very aware of the note and who it was from. Paul’s face was different from usual: not closed off (Hillary says he has military security measures for his own face) but sad and open.

When class ended he drifted in the halls and let me drift up to him. I said, “We’d love to have you, Paul.”

He said, “Thanks, Emily. It was nice of you to think about me. But my family needs me at home.” He touched me—my cheek—and I looked up at him, but he was already going down the hall full speed. I never really thought about it until now, but I don’t think Paul ever touched anybody before.

Just now, writing my diary, I realized something about that sentence. He didn’t say his family would celebrate Christmas. Just that they needed him.

I can’t believe that of all the people in the world, I talked to Ansley Morgan. I don’t even like Ansley. I don’t like her world or her attitudes or her figure. But she apologized to me. She walked right up and said she was sorry about the fight, and that it was her fault and Jared’s, and she would go with me to the principal if I wanted and
get it straightened out. She said they had been playing games with my secrets and it was wrong.

“Yes,” I said, “it was wrong.”

“My journal for English has turned into a confessional,” said Ansley. “You know what I mostly write down? The things I shouldn’t have done.” She slid her yellow hair out of her eyes and gave me a funny look. “I’ve got a really fat entry for you, Paul.”

I shrugged. But I didn’t walk away from her. It’s funny. Ansley is honest. What you see is what you get. There aren’t that many people in the world you can say that about. All of a sudden I envied Jared.

Ansley changed the subject to school sports, and then to weather, and I said suddenly, “You’re the only one who has never quizzed me, Ansley.”

“Because I will never let anybody quiz me, either,” she said, her eyes sparkling so that for one moment she looked like Jennie. “I’m going to keep my smile and my preppy clothes and my money between me and curiosity. You’ve got a right to your privacy, Paul.”

I almost fell off my chair at that one. Maybe she didn’t know Jared was following me.

Then she leaned way forward, really sparkling now, and said in a very teasing voice, “Although there is one thing I’m truly dying to know, Paul.”

“What’s that?”

“What does the ‘R.’ stand for?”

He actually told me. But it was sweet, not horrid. “Revere.” He was named by his real mother—that’s the phrase he used—his “real” mother—for Paul Revere. For the midnight ride of Paul Revere. “She was a real mother,” he said. “She wanted her son to have a midnight ride of his own. Cure cancer or bring peace in the Middle East or discover a nuclear deterrent.”

His mother is dead, I thought, absolutely shaken. It’s grief and despair keeping him so solitary and so hidden. And to think we’ve teased him about all this when he just buried his own mother! I said quickly, “I’m sure you’ll do one of those things, Paul.”

He laughed, choking on his own laugh, and looked away from me, and then I realized it’s not his mother who’s the problem—it’s him! He’s got leukemia or something and he won’t do something immortal because he won’t have time! I grabbed his arm and I said, “Paul, you’re not sick, are you? You aren’t dying or something, are you? You’re all right, aren’t you?”

He gave me a sweet smile, and said, “No, thanks, Ansley. I’m fine.”

Of course now I really
do
want Jared to follow him everywhere and find out what’s going on. Has somebody died? Is somebody dying? What is the midnight ride of this particular Paul Revere supposed to be, anyhow?

O, Ansley Augusta Morgan.

You are bad, bad, bad.

And curious, curious, curious.

And determined, determined, determined.

All day I have thought about stars: real stars—sky stars.

I am so lonely I am the reverse of a star: I am a black hole in space.

In English today I leaned over to Hillary and Emily and whispered, “I just can’t wait for vacation, can you? I can’t wait to go skiing. I heard on the radio they just got seven more inches of snow at Killington.”

Hill was wearing a new sweatshirt with weird little reindeer running after a disappearing Santa Claus. It was not in Christmas colors, but in yellow and lime green and turquoise. You kept staring at it, wondering whether you loved it or hated it. I remember when the Awesome Threesome did all their shopping together: we were never the same sizes, but we could always exchange tops. Last year I would have said, “Hill! It’s crazy! When do I get to wear it?” This year I didn’t even know what stores she liked. I certainly hadn’t gone with her. Killington, I thought, somehow, some way, we’ll put it back together on the ski slopes.