Rodent (10 page)

Everyone raises their hand except Zara, and Damien gives a hearty “Aye.” We spend the next ten minutes trying to
work out other details, like what kind of materials we should use. Will mostly listens, nodding from time to time. Zara still pushes for the timeline idea, and Amanda suggests we supply finger paints.

“Too gross. Too messy,” Nimra says. “It would take a long time to write a poem in finger paint.”

“When was a timeline ever interesting? Think. In your entire life,” Damien says to Zara.

“
I
know.” Zara’s voice gets all squeaky. “Why don’t we just put on stupid costumes and wander around saying things that don’t make sense? There, all settled.” She snaps her clipboard shut and leaves, slamming the door behind her.

“Don’t worry about her,” Damien says to me, like I’m taking this personally. “She just likes to be in charge.”
Hey, not my problem if Zara’s got her panties in a knot.
He reaches out to collect our props. “We’ll meet again tomorrow.”

Nimra asks if she can wear the sheriff’s pin for the rest of the afternoon, but I gladly hand back my old-man glasses. My head’s still floating, disconnected. We wander together toward the cafeteria for the last few minutes of the lunch hour, to the other side of the looking glass where rabbits can’t talk.

ELEVEN

I sit Maisie down as soon as we get home and finally level with her. I’ve been putting off the birthday conversation for a week.

“I’m sorry, Maisie,” I say. “It’ll just have to be a family party this year.”

She blinks and bites down on her lip—the face she makes when she’s trying to be brave. “Why?”

“We just don’t have the money for anything else, and this apartment isn’t right for a party with friends.”

She nods, one tear trickling down her cheek. My chest collapses. I pull her into my lap and hug her tightly. “Don’t worry. It’ll be really nice. Maybe I can make some cupcakes to send to your school?” Like Mom never did for me.

Maisie nods and rubs her eyes. “Okay.”

If I have to steal the ingredients and stay up until 2
AM
, I’m making the damn cupcakes. “I already got your present,” I whisper, giving her a big smile. Her face brightens. “Now go blow your nose.”

She skips away, placated by my crappy compromise. Is she really asking that much? Some stupid party games with her school friends, candles on a cake. Presents in gift bags with colored tissue paper. Someone to take her picture.

I will make her next birthday different. I swear it. I’ll save a few dollars from every paycheck and hide the money in the suitcase with my notebook. Her birthdays will be different than mine. Different memories. Different than all of this.

I barge into our bedroom without knocking. “Maisie’s birthday is this weekend,” I say to Mom. “Have you got her anything?”

She looks up from a book and marks her place with a finger. “Not yet.”

“You mean not at all.”

“Isabelle, I still have a few days!”

“Have you even thought about”—I hear my voice rising—“what she would like?”

“Of course I have,” she says. “I already invited Richie and Jacquie over on Saturday.” Because every little girl wants her drunk uncle and delinquent cousin to celebrate her special day. Might as well invite Mom and Uncle Richie’s estranged sister, Laina, as well. One big happy family.

“She wanted a party with her school friends,” I hiss. “You know, party hats and balloons and all of that.”

“Well, she can have a party with friends.” She’s bewildered by this—no idea what I’m talking about. “What’s the problem?”

I slam the door behind me before I tell her she’s the reason we can’t have a party, that she’ll wreck it all. That she’ll forget
the party, or burn the cake. Throw up. Fall down. Promise Maisie a gift “later” that never comes. That she’ll hook up with some drunk who will lock her daughter in the basement on her special day for being a pissant. It’ll all be one big mess. And that girl will cry.

I run to the bathroom and lock the door. Run the tap. I stay in there until Evan’s small fingers poke under the crack at the bottom of the door. “Isabelle?”

Deep breath. A kiss for Maisie and Evan before I leave for work.

“It’ll be different, Maisie,” I say to the top of her tangled cinnamon head. She sits at the table, drawing a picture of a cat, no idea what I’m talking about. Then I’m out the door and down the hall. Fire nipping at my heels.

* * *

All through English and my spare the next morning, I feel a sort of hum running through me. But it’s sweet. Is it possible I’m excited about a meeting in a prop closet?

Will smiled at me as I sat down this morning, and my insides flipped. Stupid. I don’t know exactly what I think of him, except it felt nice to sit by him yesterday. And, well, touch him. That great laugh hiding under all that hair. Now I want to get back there. Damien’s insanity. Amanda and Nimra, the way I feel almost human sitting there with them. If I can have all of that, I don’t mind putting up with Zara.

As I wait outside Ms. Furbank’s room, Damien claws his way to the front of the line leaving class and pulls me aside.

“Just go there now!” he whispers.

“But Zara—”

“You, Will and Amanda go straight there, and I’ll tell Zara that half the group is already waiting down there.”

“She’ll be pissed.”

“What else is new?” He shrugs, slipping back inside to distract Zara.

I have to admit, meeting in a regular classroom doesn’t hold the same appeal after yesterday. When Will and Amanda appear at the end of the hall, I grab them and drag them along with me.

Amanda flicks on the light in the prop room, and we discover new treasures for today in a tidy pile. Damien has been busy. Will claims a woman’s hideous curly wig. It’s almost the same color as his real hair, so it’s hard to tell where his own hair ends and the wig begins. I howl. He makes a seriously ugly woman.

Amanda pulls on a leather biker vest. I offer her the matching bustier with silver spikes, but she declines. I opt for a string of pearls and a silk fan.

“Too pretty,” Amanda says. She holds up a flea-bitten fur hat for me instead.

“I think I’ll pass on the head lice today,” I say, and Will rewards me with a big laugh that fills this space.

We’re standing there—the rejects time forgot—when Damien, Zara and Nimra walk in. We freeze. I almost forgot why we were here in the first place.

Zara takes in the whole scene and flushes red. “I thought I was choosing the location today.”

“Bustier?” Will offers her the studded leather thing. At that moment I truly love him. I can’t believe he did that.

Nimra—diverting disaster—raises an eyebrow. “Damien, who exactly were you hoping would wear that?”

He shrugs and smiles. Everyone ignores Zara and settles on the floor again, sifting through the gaudy pile. Zara eventually joins the circle and pretends to have nothing to do with what’s going on around her.

“I have an idea for writing implements,” she says, pulling out the infamous clipboard.

“Okay.” Damien snaps on a pirate patch. “Let’s hear it.”

“A symbol for a poet or writer is sometimes an inkpot with a quill pen.” She pauses to make sure we’re all listening. “We could buy or make ballpoint pens with feathers and keep them in jars that look like inkpots.”

“Arr! Me likes, young lassie!” Damien growls in pirate-speak with a bad Scottish accent.

Zara clenches her jaw and turns to face Nimra, on her other side.

“If we wanted some color, we could also do the same with markers, right?” I say. Poor girl. I’ll try to keep her from having kittens right here in the prop room. “I think it’s a good idea.”

Will nods. If I suggested we use human blood, he would probably do the same. He sits on my right side again, Amanda on my left. She stretches out her short legs in front of her, toward the middle of the circle, her scuffed black flats poking up. I’m about to do the same when I realize I’ll lose that warm circle where Will’s knee rests against mine.
Pathetic, Isabelle. Move
. I can’t.

Zara looks less likely to claw out my eyes now. “I’ll look into that then. I could probably get feathers at any craft store.”

“I’m still against the timeline,” Damien says.

“Okay.” Zara swallows, all strained civility. “Other ideas then?”

We hum and haw for a minute and get distracted by playing around with a pair of handcuffs. After Damien finishes cuffing his ankles together, Will motions for him to throw them over. He snaps my wrist in one side and loops the other through the leg of a coffee table tucked beneath the rack of clothes.

“There, that’ll keep you out of trouble,” Will says.

I look up and catch Damien’s raised eyebrow. My cheeks flush.

Damien crawls over to us, takes one end of the cuffs off the table leg and puts it on Will’s wrist instead, so we’re cuffed together. “That’s more like it, I think,” he says.

Face on fire, I can’t look at either one of them. Jacquie has told me how bad I am at flirting. She’s right. I never know the right words. Can’t even catch a smile from Hasan without running for the toilet brush.

Silence. Have they stopped talking because of us? Can’t look up. I press the release button and wriggle my wrist out, dropping my side to the floor with a
clank
. Stretch out my legs in front of me. Deep breath. Head up.

“We could still use poetry but in a different way,” I say, all business now. Bubble popped. Nimra. Yes, I’ll look at Nimra.

“What are you thinking?” she asks. She must have felt 100 percent of my attention hitting her all at once.

“We-ll…” I draw it out, since I don’t exactly know what I’m thinking. I look around and see Amanda in the leather vest. Damien in an eye patch, now trying on the bustier over his T-shirt. Nimra in a flower lei. Can’t bear to look at Will, but the wig. That repulsive wig. “What if we all pick a favorite poem and put up samples? Beat poetry, haikus, sonnets—anything, really.”

Nimra nods, then Amanda. Damien’s too busy wrestling with the clasp on the bustier to respond. I see Will’s head bobbing out of the corner of my eye. Zara looks up, examining the ceiling, and makes a duck face.

“And we could make the paper in the shape of a scroll,” I say, on a roll now, “to go with the feather pens.”

Well, now that you mention the feather pens
… “Okay.” Zara nods. “That might work.” She looks to Damien, who looks at his chest in the bustier. “Well?” she says.

“That’s better.” I’m not sure if he’s talking about my idea or the bustier. “I’m doing Jimi Hendrix.”

Zara opens her mouth to protest—probably not Robert Frost-ish enough for her—but closes it after a look from all of us.
We take a few minutes to iron out supplies, who’s getting what, and how we’re going to make this work. Nimra, who’s also a member of the Art Club, thinks she can make the paper into the shape of a scroll.

When she says
Art Club,
a cloud moves over me. It’s been twenty-four hours since I thought about Ainsley at all. Saint Ainsley, president of the Art Club. I didn’t even notice whether Celeste was in English today.

“Maybe I can get the Art Club to help me put up the paper and shape it,” Nimra says.

“That would be great.” Zara scribbles something on her clipboard.

“I’m sure the six of us could handle it,” I say.

“The more hands, the better,” Zara chirps, like some forty-year-old rounding up volunteers for a church fundraiser. Discussion closed.

Zara gives us some assignments for the next meeting, which isn’t until Monday. Almost a week away. It’s only been two days, but the thought of returning to the dusty library, Ms. Hillary shuffling around, falls flat. I want to do this every day for the rest of the year—hide in a prop closet with lunatics. Zara can come and bark orders if she must.

As soon as we have things sorted, Zara and Nimra get up and leave. Damien, Amanda, Will and I stay back.

“Just like a little poodle,” Damien says about Zara, “yipping in your ear.”

We all sit with our legs stretched to the center of the circle, a lopsided star. Damien makes a halfhearted attempt
to throw more props in our direction, but we’re lazy now. Tossing words back and forth. Amanda’s giggles ring over everything. A sad sinking feeling when the bell goes.

* * *

“What’s with you and that Will guy?” Damien asks me in Spanish class.

Daniela leans in, looking back and forth between Damien and me. Every part of me shuts down.

“What do you mean?” I say.

“He obviously likes you.”

Over the ringing in my ears, I hear Daniela’s voice. “Will who? Which Will?”

Mercifully, Damien left out
and you like him
.

“He just sits by me in English,” I say.

“Well”—he gives me that raised-eyebrow look again—“he ‘just sits by you’ in our meetings too.” When I don’t respond, he adds, “Try sitting in a different spot next time. You’ll see who follows.” Smug smile.

Mr. Dent stops conjugating the verb
hablar
on the board and stares at us, thin-lipped.

“
Lo siento, Señor Dent
,” Damien says, and Mr. Dent turns back to the board.

I feel like wiping that stupid smile off Damien’s face. But I feel something else too. Through the window, sunshine trickles in.

TWELVE

Uncle Richie shows up to Maisie’s birthday party with a twelve-pack of beer in one hand and a two-six of Jack Daniels in the other. Jacquie juggles coolers and an enormous gift bag.

“Good thing we aren’t celebrating a kid’s birthday or anything,” I say to Jacquie, eyeing the haul.

“Are you kidding?” she says. “Wasn’t this every birthday party you ever had?” I can’t argue with that. “As traditional as candles on the cake in this family,” she adds. Actually, more traditional.

“Where’s the birthday girl?” Uncle Richie roars, scooping Maisie up by the armpits and swinging her. He must have come straight from work—a monkey with long hairy arms wearing a suit, a brown stain on his tie.

Mom pads out in a black dress, laughing. The dress has gray pearl buttons down the front and ends just above her knees. I call it her weddings-and-funerals dress—the only
thing she owns that isn’t high here and low there and lets it all hang out.