Encore Edie (5 page)

We’re in the kitchen. I’m getting my lunch ready for tomorrow and she’s rooting through cupboards, making a shopping list. “I hate school,” I say, slapping a pickle into my plastic sandwich box next to my cherry tomatoes. Then I change my mind and plop the pickle back in the jar. What if someone sees me eating it and starts telling everyone I have pickle breath?

“Don’t change the subject,” Mom says.

“What subject?”

“The subject,” Mom says, closing the cereal cupboard, “is you being so rude to Aunt Ellie. What has gotten into you?”

I stare at the bagel I’ve halved, wondering which is more socially acceptable, peanut butter or cream cheese.

“Are you even listening to me?” Mom says.

“Are you even listening to
me
?” I say. “Kids make fun of me. Every day I’m wearing the wrong thing or I say the wrong thing in class or my hair is wrong. And now I have to walk Merry to school and take her from class to class? That’s going to help me fit in?”

“I don’t notice Dexter complaining,” Mom says.

“That is totally unfair! Nobody at school even knows Merry is her cousin! Why can’t
she
walk Merry to school for a change, and then see if she’s still so popular?”

“You know perfectly well why: she goes early to study so she has time for her ballet after school. What do people actually say to you, anyway? Are they bullying you? We can think up some things for you to say back. You have to stand up for yourself, be assertive. The school is very proactive on bullying. Should I make some calls?”

This is so Mom. And the fact is, of course, no one ever has said anything. I just feel them all looking at me, and then looking away, and that’s bad enough. “Never mind,” I say. “Is there any more carrot cake?”

Mom gets it from the fridge and cuts me an extra big piece and smoothes my hair back from my forehead as I try to fit it in next to my bagel. It’s too big.

“It’s too big!” I shout, taking the piece out and dumping it onto the counter. “Why does it have to be so big? Can’t you see the size of the box I’m dealing with here?”

Mom actually flinches back from me as if I’ve slapped her. “Suit yourself,” she says quietly, and leaves the kitchen.

The summer when I was ten, just before we all went camping together, Mom sat me down with books and explained Merry’s condition in genetic terms—the chromosomes, the double helix, all that. Merry had a snarl in her genetic code. A tangle of black wool was how I pictured it, a snarl you could never comb straight no matter how hard you tried. That was why we had to be kind to her, Mom explained, and never be sarcastic, and always share. And I was ashamed: because it was her and not me, because she would never get better, because I pitied her and was afraid of her, and afraid for her, of what the world would do to someone like her if people like me didn’t take care of her. I was afraid of people like me.

Fools Rush In

“Edie!” Dexter shouts from her bedroom.

“Edie!” Mom shouts from the kitchen.

“Edie!” Dad shouts from the den.

I sigh. I’m rehearsing a monologue for drama class, which I have to present tomorrow. For my September monologue—Lady Macbeth’s mad scene—I got a D. Mr. Harris said he couldn’t hear me because I was mumbling. “Loosen up,” he said. So now, for my October monologue, I’ve chosen a passage from
Waiting for Godot
. “Too loud?” I ask Sam.

We’re in my room. Sam lies on my bed giving me pointers while I rehearse. At least we’re talking again. She plays piccolo in the concert band and doesn’t have to take drama. “Maybe a little,” she says. “You know that thing you’re doing with your hands?”

I do the thing I’ve been working on.

“Looks a little weird,” Sam says. “Maybe don’t do that.”

“I’m gesturing! That’s what acting is! Things with the hands!”

“Okay,” Sam says. She doesn’t sound convinced.

“‘Astride of a grave and a difficult birth,’” I say. “‘Down in the hole, lingeringly, the grave-digger puts on the forceps.’” I do the thing with my hands.

“Ew!” my classmates say.

Mr. Harris asks me to stay behind after class.

“I know,” I say when it’s just the two of us. “Another D.”

“You’ve read
Waiting for Godot
?” Mr. Harris says.

Is he making fun of me? I get defensive, sarcastic. “Was I supposed to do
Our Town
?”

“You’ve read
Our Town
?” he says.

He
is
making fun of me. “Whatever,” I mumble to my shoes.

“Everyone else in class adapted characters from their favourite TV shows,” Mr. Harris says. “Half of them pretended to be contestants on
Canadian Idol
.”

He opens a folder on his desk and pulls out something I recognize: my last writing exercise. We had to write a one-page scene involving two characters in conflict, in which neither of the characters can mention what they’re really fighting about. I wrote the scene where Merry invites me over for a sleepover and I say no. I figured no one would see
it but Mr. Harris and he probably wouldn’t read it anyway. Since he already hated me, I figured he’d just give me my D without thinking about it. I didn’t make it that Merry had Down’s, just that she liked me more than I liked her. That was the conflict neither of us could mention.

“I was going to give these back tomorrow,” he says, and turns it around so I can see it. At the top of my page, in red pen, he’s written an A. “Why haven’t you signed up for the school musical yet?”

The school musical is a big deal. It’s held in the theatre, next to the gym, and they have costumes and scenery and spend all year planning and rehearsing and selling tickets to the public. They hold three evening performances and a matinee, and they always sell out. According to the school handbook, the performances are a big fundraiser for various arts programs in the school. In the past they’ve put on
Grease
,
You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown
, and a revue of Beatles songs. The sign-up sheets outside Mr. Harris’s office are already pretty full.

“I’m a terrible actor,” I say.

He shrugs, meaning
That’s true
. Thanks. “Lot of other jobs going, though,” he says, giving me back my assignment. “Think about it.”

Truthfully, as I walk to the special ed class to pick Merry up for our walk home, I’m thinking more about my A. An A and two Ds averages out to, what, a C minus? That’s a pass! Number One is passing drama! Woo-hoo!

Merry’s classroom looks more like elementary school than high school: palmprints and alphabets stencilled on the walls, an aquarium. Her classmates are a girl in a wheelchair, a sad, mute girl, a couple of autistic boys, and another kid with Down’s—a placid brown-haired boy with my cousin’s eyes and smile.
My
classmates are most impressed by the autistic boy with the photographic memory, a tall Korean kid who with patient prompting will recite pages of the phone book in his fast, nervous voice.

I’m late because of my meeting with Mr. Harris. Everyone else has gone home except Merry, who stands waiting with her teacher, Mr. Dick. I mean, that would have to be his name, wouldn’t it? Although everyone likes Mr. Dick, actually. He coaches the senior boys’ basketball team, and isn’t all super-smiley like you might think he would be, teaching the special class. “Hi, Edie,” he says.

“Sorry I’m late,” I say. “Got your stuff?”

Merry shrugs her shoulder to show me her pink backpack.

“See you tomorrow, girls,” Mr. Dick says.

Merry wants to hold my hand as we walk down the hall. Usually I brush her off, but since it’s late and there’s no one around, and I did just get an A in my worst class, I let her just this once. Her hands are thick and dry and warm. “I love you, Edie,” she says.

Oh, for god’s sake. “I love you, too,” I say. “Let’s not say that anymore, though, okay?”

“Aw,” a voice says.

We’re walking past the art room. The door’s open and I realize, too late, that two girls are still in there working on some project, something big made out of papier mâché. They’re seniors; I’ve seen them around the hallways. They’re popular girls, but not in the way my sister is popular. The taller one wears her dark hair in a faux-hawk and has a pierced nose. She has bright blue eyes and always dresses ugly-on-purpose; today it’s a tartan miniskirt with torn fishnet stockings, clunky boots, and a blue velvet frock coat. The shorter one wears jeans all splotched with paint and a skull-and-crossbones T-shirt, and her hair hangs all in her face so that you wonder she can see to walk in a straight line. At lunch sometimes I’ve seen her leaning against her locker, feet sticking into the hallway so people have to step over her, strumming on her guitar until a teacher comes along and tells her to stop. Everyone seems to like them, though they only seem friends with each other and a couple of boys who dress as weirdly as they do. Their voices pursue me down the hall.

“Are they gay?” I hear the shorter one ask the taller one. “That’s cool.”

“No, they’re from the special class,” the taller one says. “Didn’t you get a look at them?”

Of course she didn’t get a look at us! I want to shout. She’s got so much hair hanging in her face, she wouldn’t notice if we were rockhopper penguins! Get a freaking barrette, already!

“That’s cool,” the shorter one says.

“The special kids are so in touch with their emotions,” the taller one says.

All right
, I think,
that’s it.

I tell Merry we have to stop by Mr. Harris’s office on our way downstairs. I scribble my name quickly in one of the remaining spaces. Inside the office I hear a chair scrape on the floor. I grab Merry’s sleeve and pull her away before Mr. Harris can open the door and see it’s me.

The benefits begin the very next day.

“I can’t walk Merry home,” I tell Mom at breakfast. “I have a thing after school.”

“Oh, you do not,” Dexter says.

“I signed up for the school musical,” I say. “I was thinking about what you said about joining a club or something, to get to know new people and make friends. I was taking”—I smile sweetly at her—“your advice.”

“You hate drama,” Dexter says.

“I hate acting. There’s more to putting on a play than just acting in it. There are lots of other jobs going.”

“Like what?” Dexter says.

Think fast, Edie. “Lighting,” I say confidently. “Costumes, scenery, writing, music. Directing.”

“Directing takes leadership,” Dexter says serenely. “You couldn’t direct your own foot into a sock.” One of her classes this year is Leadership.

“You don’t dance on Thursdays,” Mom says to Dexter. “You could get Merry, couldn’t you?”

Ha!
I think, but Dexter just shrugs and says, “Not a problem.”

“I’m glad you decided to join us,” Mr. Harris says. The last bell of the day has just rung and I’m getting my books together. Sam and I arranged to meet at my locker and then we’re going to the theatre together for the first school musical meeting. She’s not sure yet if she wants to sign up, but I was nervous about going alone and finally persuaded her just to come and sit with me. I thought I would enjoy being free of Merry for once, but I’m actually pretty nervous for someone who’s planning to avoid all auditions and find herself a job in deepest, darkest backstage.