Breaking Up Is Really, Really Hard to Do (12 page)

“I promise. Now what is it? It's really good, isn't it. I can tell.”

“I think you'll find it interesting. A few weeks ago I was browsing through a Web site that had personal ads on it—”

“Oh my god!” Ramona clapped her hand against her mouth in anticipation.

“—And I found an ad from Dan.”

“NO!” Ramona practically screamed. Two women sitting near the fireplace turned their heads.

“Yes. Ramona, it was so amazing. It tells all kinds of stuff about him that you'd never know otherwise And when you read it, it makes you like him even more.” It was kind of a relief to share this with someone who really got it, finally. Holly and Mads thought it was funny, but Ramona knew it was earth-shattering.

“I'm going to die! I'm going to keel over and croak right here on the floor!”

Lina took a moment to let this sink in. She understood. It was big.

“Can I see it?” Ramona asked. “What site is it on?”

Lina hesitated. If Ramona saw the ad she could answer it, too. And that could ruin everything.

“I might show it to you,” Lina said. “But first I have to explain something.”

“Oh my god. You wrote to him! Didn't you! You did! You fiend!”

“I wrote to him under another name. I pretended to be a grad student his age, so he wouldn't freak.”

“Obviously, because if he knew it was you he'd head for the hills,” Ramona said. “So?”

“He wrote back. And we've been writing each other every day since then.”

Ramona's face was frozen in a stalled scream. Lina almost wanted to laugh. She had never made such a big impression on another person before.

Finally Ramona pressed her hands on the table and bowed her head three times. “Lina Ozu, you are a goddess. I'm not worthy. I knew you had it in you! Way to plot and scheme!”

“Thanks,” Lina said.

“You are my superior in every way,” Ramona said. “I can't believe what you've accomplished in such a short time. I'm—I'm flabbergasted. And to look at you—no one would ever guess. I mean, you look so sweet and straight, but you're as devious as the worst of us, aren't you?”

“Well, wait a minute—”

Ramona held up her hand. “No need for modesty. You're with a peer. Listen, you have to come home with me. I want to see that ad. I promise I won't do anything to ruin it for you—I'm way too impressed. But I want to know everything that has happened. And I think it's time you finally sucked it up and came to the museum.”

Lina swallowed. She'd been avoiding the Museum of Dan ever since she first heard about it.

“We're going to print out that ad and put it on the altar,” Ramona said. “Just you and me. We'll do a sacred love ceremony. And you can stay for dinner if you want. What do you say?”

Lina thought about her upcoming date with Dan. She could use all the help she could get—even supernatural help was better than nothing. And she couldn't put Ramona off forever. Someday she would have to see the museum, queasy as the idea made her feel.

“Please, Lina?” Ramona begged. Lina was knocked off-guard by that—it was not like Ramona to beg. “Please.”

“All right,” Lina said. “I'll come. Just let me call my mother.”

“Hi, Dad,” Ramona said to a short, squat man cooking soup in the kitchen. “This is Lina.”

The man turned away from the stove and bowed slightly to Lina. He had a round, genial, bald head punctuated by a black mustache. “Hello, Lina. Staying for dinner?”

“Yes, she is,” Ramona said. She grabbed Lina by the wrist and led her toward the stairs.

“Hope you like bat wing soup!” Mr. Fernandez called after them.

Lina shot Ramona a look. “Is he kidding?”

“Yes, of course he's kidding,” Ramona said. “What did you think, we're really witches or something?”

Well, why not?
Lina thought. With the way Ramona dressed and behaved, her preoccupation with the occult and a dad who looked like the father on the
Addams Family,
it wasn't much of a stretch.

“Where's your mother?” Lina asked.

“Still at work, I guess,” Ramona said. “She sells real estate. A lot of people like to look at houses after work.”

So Ramona's mother was a real estate agent. That burst the gothic image a little bit. Unless her specialty was haunted houses.

“Here it is,” Ramona said. Her room was in the attic. She pushed open the door, which had been painted dark red.

It would have been a sweet attic room in a Victorian house, with eaves and a dormer window, except for the black fishnet curtains, the black walls with glow-in-the-dark occult symbols painted on them, and the giant Deathzilla poster on the closet door. Deathzilla was Ramona's favorite heavy-metal band. Their symbol was a giant fire-breathing metal robot-dinosaur.

There were candles, vases of dried flowers, bowls of mysterious objects scattered here and there, books and boots and scarves on the floor, and an antique vanity cluttered with jewelry and makeup. On the bed, though, strangely, was a pretty pink ruffled cover with nothing Goth about it at all.

Ramona had set up the museum in a corner. A giant pentagram had been drawn in the floor in chalk. Inside it were four big cushions, one for each cult member to sit on, all facing an old oriental screen that had been turned into a shrine. A few pictures of Dan clipped from the
Seer
were tacked to the screen, as well as favorite Dan-graded papers. The memorabilia—the cups, the pizza crust, a baggy with stray hairs, a piece of chalk, a chewed pencil—were arranged on a small table in front of it, with a candle and a vase of flowers. It was very modest and kind of touching in a way. The creepy thing was that if you didn't know what this was supposed to be, you'd think Dan was dead.

“This is where the magic happens,” Ramona said. “Literally.”

“Well, not
literally
,” Lina said. “I mean, real magic doesn't happen here, right?”

“Who says?” Ramona looked defensive.

Lina let it drop. Ramona turned on her computer. “I can't wait to see this ad,” she said. Lina logged on to The List and found Dan's ad. He hadn't changed it since Lina started writing to him. Ramona drank it in.

“Beauregard,” she said. “I wouldn't have picked that name for him. It's so
Gone with the Wind.
”

“I think it's kind of courtly and old-fashioned,” Lina said.

“I'd call him ‘Vladimir,’” Ramona said.

“He's so not a Vladimir.”

Ramona bowed deeply. “You'd know better than I would, my Queen.”

“Stop bowing at me,” Lina snapped. “It makes me nervous.”

Ramona bowed again. “Whatever you say, oh She-Poobah of the Cult.”

“Quit it!” Why did Ramona have to do things like that? Just when Lina felt ready to relax around her, Ramona did little things that annoyed and alienated her. It was as if she felt compelled not to be too likable.

Ramona printed out the ad. “This will become the focus of the shrine. It's the best piece of memorabilia we've got. The Cult is forever in your debt.”

“Ugh. Please.”

“Ramona!” A woman's voice called from downstairs. “Dinner in half an hour!”

“Okay!” Ramona called back. “Mom's home. Come on, lets do the ceremony.” She picked up a pack of matches, more candles, and some incense. “Grab that cloak, would you?” She indicated a satiny green hooded cape draped over a chair.

Lina picked it up. “Why green?”

“It's all I had. Leftover from Dad's Jolly Green Giant costume a few Halloweens ago.”

Ramona lit the candle and set things up. “You sit on that blue cushion and watch,” Ramona said.

Lina sat down. Ramona pinned the printout of Dan's ad to the center of the altar. She knelt on a cushion and bowed before it.

“Daniel Shulman, Daniel Shulman, Daniel Shulman,” Ramona chanted. “Namluhs Leinad, Namluhs Leinad, Namluhs Leinad. We call to you from another world, a world without school, where divisions melt away.”

Oh, I can't take this,
Lina thought. She gripped her cushion to keep herself from running away.

Ramona lit a stick of incense and sprayed herself with some kind of musky cologne. She got to her feet and twirled around three times.

“Let us meet in that better world, free of illusion, more real than this one,” Ramona said. She bowed to the stack of used coffee cups. “We bow to that which your lips have touched.”

Oh, god, get me out of here,
Lina thought.

Ramona bowed to the papers and pencil. “We bow to that which your hands have touched.” She bowed to what was left of the pizza crust, now little more than a pile of crumbs. “We bow to that which your teeth have touched.…”

Lina cringed. But Ramona was so sincere about this. So heartfelt. What made her go through these rituals every week—or was it every day? Did she really think this was going to work?

Ramona put some powder in a saucer, then took a tiny hair from the baggie and stirred it in. She set a match to the powder and it exploded with a pop. “See the light as it burns, See the truth in the fire, You have but two loves, Ramona and Lina, Ramona and Lina, Ramona and Lina…”

Ramona and Lina. Lina wanted to cry out for Ramona to stop. But it would be so rude, mean even.

On the other hand…What would Dan think if he could see her now?

“…We bow to you, our beloved, and plead with Venus, the goddess of love, to grant us your heart…”

He'd think she was some kind of nut. And he'd be right.

18

Beauregard Meets Larissa

To: linaonme

From: your daily horoscope

HERE IS TODAY'S HOROSCOPE: CANCER: You'll come to a fork in the road today. Take it.

L
ina woke up on Saturday morning with a lump in the pit of her stomach. Today was the day—her date with Dan. There were two possibilities. It could be the happiest day of her life. Or the worst.

She had a plan for getting into the city. She'd bike into town and take a cab to the ferry that crossed the bay and docked in San Francisco. Once she was in the city she could get around by taxi, bus, trolley, or BART, the subway system. She'd withdrawn some money from her savings account the day before to be sure she had enough cash. Everything was set. All she had to do now was give her parents a convincing reason why she was going to be gone all day.

“You know, I miss your bangs,” her mother, Sylvia, said by way of greeting when Lina entered the kitchen for breakfast. “And your hair's getting a little too long. We ought to schedule an appointment with Terry soon.”

Terry was her mother's hairdresser. Lina didn't see why she needed to do anything to her hair—it was long and straight and her bangs had grown out months ago. But she supposed she could use a trim.

“All right, Mom,” Lina said. “Maybe next Saturday.” She leaned over to kiss her father, Ken, who was reading the paper and eating a bowl of cereal. “Morning, Dad.”

“Morning, Lina Lolabrigida,” her father said, using an old pet name for her. “I think your hair looks fine.”

“Thanks.” Lina toasted an English muffin for herself. It was all she could keep down, she was so nervous.

“You excited about this afternoon?” Ken asked.

Lina started. This afternoon? How did he know?

“Um, excited?” she said. “What do you mean?”

“The Forbushes,” Sylvia said. She sipped black coffee and ate fruit salad. “I'm sure I mentioned it to you. They're taking us out on their boat today.”

“Looks like a perfect day for it too,” Ken said. “Sunny, light winds from the southwest—”

The Forbushes! They were friends of her parents with two kids, June and Brendan, near her age. Lina didn't remember anything about going sailing with them today. She knew she'd remember if Sylvia had mentioned it. She glared at Sylvia, who refused to meet her eye.

“You never told me about it,” Lina said.

“Yes, I did,” Sylvia insisted. “I'm sure I did. I left a note on your desk at the very least.”

A note on her desk. That old trick. It could have easily gotten lost—if her mother ever really left it. Sylvia was a doctor, and very busy, and sometimes she forgot things. But she hated to admit it. She couldn't stand to be wrong, ever.

“I never saw any note,” Lina said. She looked to Ken for support.

“Sorry, honey,” he said. “I should have said something.”

“Well, I can't go,” Lina said, and in a panic tried to come up with an excuse. It had to be better than the one she'd planned—a day of shopping with Holly and Mads—because that one wouldn't fly. They'd only tell her to cancel it.

“Lina, the Forbushes are looking forward to seeing you,” Sylvia said in that way she had, implying that she would make Lina suffer for disappointing the Forbushes long after the Forbushes themselves had forgotten all about it.

“But there's a big girls’ soccer match today,” Lina said, hoping that was true, in case Sylvia decided to check. “And I've got to cover it for the paper.”

“When will we see your first byline?” Ken asked. Lina had decided against showing them her journalistic debut, “Badminton Smackdown,” for obvious reasons. Luckily, she had a swim team story coming up next week. A real one, not a made-up one about Sean.

“Soon,” she said.

“My daughter the sportswriter,” Ken said. “I love it.”

“She takes after you more every day,” Sylvia said in another typical tone of voice, where it was hard to tell whether taking after her dad was a good thing or a bad thing. What Lina loved about her dad was that he always chose to hear the good thing in his wife's voice, and not the bad. In that respect, Lina
didn't
take after him.

“Anyway, Lina, you're just going to have to find someone to fill in for you,” Sylvia said. “We've been planning this day with the Forbushes for weeks.”

“She can't do that!” Ken said. “What kind of journalist would she be if she skipped a story to go sailing?”

“Thanks, Dad,” Lina said. “It's an away game, in Durban, so I'll be gone all afternoon.” Durban was a town about forty-five minutes away.

“Do you need a ride?” Ken asked.

“I'll catch a ride with the team,” Lina said. Her muffin was ready. She buttered it, spread orange marmalade on it, and took it to her room with a glass of juice. She thought she'd better get out of the kitchen as fast as she could—before Sylvia found a hole in her story.