Rodent (9 page)

Mom tells me on Wednesday that she’ll pick up Evan from day care, not to worry about it. I swing by with Maisie anyway on our way home, just in case. He’s gone.

“Mrs. Bennett already came,” Mrs. Carrigan says. She always calls Mom that, even though there has never been a Mr.

I speed-walk to the apartment, dragging Maisie and her backpack. What if she’s been drinking and has taken him somewhere? They could be on some random bus on the other side of the city, Mom passed out in her seat while Evan takes candy from strangers.

I find them curled up on the sofa, reading one of Maisie’s take-home reading books. Relief—and a mental note to get a public library card.

* * *

My after-school routine doesn’t give me any warm fuzzies, but it seems to be working. I hang out for ten minutes after the bell—in the Spanish classroom, the library, the bathroom—until that first bus leaves. There was one day when they must have missed it, and Ainsley and Pole Dancer were still standing on the front lawn when I tried to leave.

I had to sneak out a side door and walk the long way around to Maisie’s school. When I stood on the front step of the elementary school, they were too busy wrestling with some guys, getting leaves stuffed down their shirts, to notice me.
Pole Dancer’s friend, that blond guy from Social Studies, follows her around like a magpie after a leaky garbage bag.

They’re the ones who make me feel like the fly swatter is looming. They’re too quiet. Too still. I caught a full-on mean smile from one of them as I passed through the cafeteria the other day. It hit me like a kick in the ribs. They’ve stopped following me though. Celeste looks away any time our eyes meet, an odd expression on her face. Like a bad memory.

I bumble along through the week, waiting for the ax to fall. I wonder if it’s fallen when Mr. Drummond stands by my desk during English on Friday and says, as softly as a gravel truck, that he’d like to see me after class. Haven’t I been keeping up okay? Is he going to ask me about Mom?

The girl who picks at her split ends meets my eye and cringes sympathetically. I’m starting to wonder if she’s mute. She hasn’t spoken once this term.

There’s a nervous hum in my chest for the rest of the class and afterward, as I stand in front of his desk, arms crossed.

He wears a ratty gray sweater that matches his wiry hair and mustache. “Isabelle,” he says, clearing away a stack of books on his desk, “pull up a chair.”

I wish people wouldn’t say that. As though difficult things are made easier while sitting down. I prefer to stand, myself. Easier to run. Still, I grab a chair from a nearby desk and arrange it across from him, like a job interview.

Once I’m sitting, he says, “Isabelle, I’ve been thinking about Words on the Wall.”

I blink.
What?

“Do you know what that is?” he asks.

I shake my head. Sounds like a trendy coffee shop.

“It’s an event we have near the beginning of every school year, one of our welcome-back activities.” I nod for him to continue. What does this have to do with me? “We cover an entire wall of the cafeteria with paper. Then we supply pens, pencils, crayons, you name it. A theme is chosen, and students come and write whatever they like on it—barring obscenities and hate speech—and it stays up for the week. Kind of a legal graffiti.”

Okay. So he doesn’t want me writing my disturbing troubled-home stuff on it?

“Ms. Furbank and I—she’s the other English teacher—we’re putting together a committee of grade-eleven students to organize and run it,” he says. “Would you be interested in representing our class?”

I open my mouth, but no sound comes out. Represent the class? For a school event?

“You would be our class leader, but I’ll ask for other student volunteers to help. You wouldn’t be doing it alone.” He waits for me to respond.

I open my mouth again and eventually choke out, “Are you sure?” After minutes of silence, that’s the best I can do.
Great show of confidence, Isabelle
. Still, what is the man thinking? “I’ve never done anything like that,” I say in a rumble of panic.

“No problem. The other class leader volunteered with set-up last year. You’ll be in good hands.” He leans back in his chair and smiles, like it’s all settled.

“But—” I don’t know what else to say to him. I should say no—no time, barely keeping up with homework, my job. The crazy, drunk mother. I should say all these things, but I can’t stop staring at him with my mouth hanging open.

“Isabelle,” he says, “you’ll be good at this. You just don’t know it yet.”

I close my mouth. No one has ever said those words—
you’ll be good at this
—to me before. “Okay.”

He gives a firm nod and starts to shuffle things around on his desk again. We’re done here. As I wander toward the library for my spare, a watery dread seeps through me—that familiar “run and hide.” But then something overpowers it, dries it up: a slow, creeping warmth.

* * *

At the beginning of English on Monday, Mr. Drummond announces that I’ll be the class leader for Words on the Wall. Twenty-five heads swivel and stare at me, like some kind of horror movie. I was hoping he’d be a bit more subtle about it, maybe printing it in a newsletter that nobody reads.

“If anyone else is interested in volunteering for the committee, please stay after class today,” he says. A rush of relief. I was afraid he was going to ask for a show of hands right then. What if nobody else volunteered? It would be like that dream where you go to school naked and everyone stares.

It’s hard for me to concentrate during class. At the end I take a long time gathering my stuff, reloading my bag.
Examining the end of my pen. I don’t want to be standing at the front of the room as the entire class files out past me. The last kid picked for dodgeball.

When I finally swing my bag onto my back and look up, I exhale. Two bodies are beside Mr. Drummond’s desk. Will (
Will?
) and that split-end girl. Mr. Drummond and his delegation of freaks.

As I walk toward the front of the class, Celeste shifts in the doorway. I turn to stare before I can stop myself. She looks at me—not Mr. Drummond—and opens her mouth to say something. No mean smile. She takes a step toward me, then sees Mr. Drummond join his (sad) group of volunteers and turns away. She’s gone.

I don’t know why, but I have the impulse to follow her and ask what she was going to say. Then my brain kicks in. Am I stupid? Follow Celeste to Ainsley and Pole Dancer?

Mr. Drummond waves us over. “Ah, the stout in heart! Isabelle, I trust you know Will and Amanda.” Amanda, that’s her name. I attempt a smile. “There’s a meeting at lunchtime today with the volunteers from Ms. Furbank’s class. Do you know where her room is?”

Will nods, and Amanda and I shake our heads.

“Just three doors that way.” He points. “Let me know tomorrow what you decide for theme and materials and such.” We all nod. I guess we’re done. Will and Amanda wander off to their next classes. I go to my hiding hole in the library and finish my story about the bullied girl who loses it, trying to get my mind off the butterflies in my stomach.

When the lunch bell rings, I find Ms. Furbank’s classroom. A few bodies are already gathered around her desk.

“You must be Isabelle,” Ms. Furbank says, her reddish hair in a messy bun. Are those real chopsticks stuck through it? Light freckles dust her cheeks. “Come and meet everybody.” She steers me by the elbow to a group of three. Damien! I feel a burst of relief at seeing his pink streaks, stupid grin.

“Isabelle! We already know each other,” he says to Ms. Furbank.

“Oh, good. Isabelle, this is Zara, our class leader.” Small upturned nose. Dark hair pulled away from her face. Wire-framed glasses. Everything about her is small and tidy. She gives me a tight smile and nods.

“Hey,” I say.

The other member of the group is Nimra, who wears a light-green hijab and black-framed glasses. Shy smile.

“I’ll leave you kids to it,” Ms. Furbank says, gesturing to the empty classroom. “You’re welcome to use this space for meetings, if you like.”

As she heads for the door, Will and Amanda squeak through at the same time, in mid-conversation. Something twinges in me. I should have been part of that conversation too, instead of standing here like a wart, wanting to disappear.

The minute Ms. Furbank’s heels
clip-clop
out the door, Zara announces, “We only have two weeks to put this together.”

In the same breath, Damien says, “It’s boring here. Let’s go somewhere else.” We all turn to stare.

“What?” Zara says.

“I know a better place we can meet.”

“Does it really—” Zara begins, but Damien’s already out the door, his hairy legs zipping by in a pair of striped shorts. We trail after him, Zara sighing behind us.

The hallway crowd has thinned out. Everyone’s in the cafeteria or has left for lunch. Damien’s blond-and-pink head bobs ahead of us. We pass into a part of the school where I’ve never been, near the band and cosmetology rooms. Never had a reason to come down here before, scurrying between my classrooms and the library.

He pauses in front of a light-blue door—the same color as my locker—and knocks lightly before trying the knob. As I go in, I see the placard on the door:
Drama
. Damien flicks on the lights, and a high ceiling appears. There’s a low wooden stage against the far wall, and chairs scattered in small clusters around the room.

“What—” Zara begins.

“No, not here.” Damien beckons us through a door off to the side of the drama room. “
Here
!”

We shuffle through and find ourselves in some kind of a large closet lined with musty clothes, old shoes, flamboyant hats. It smells like twenty years of sweaty polyester.

“We’re meeting in the closet?” Nimra beats Zara to it this time.

“No, not a closet. It’s a
prop room
,” Damien corrects. “It’s the perfect spot.”

Zara looks as if someone just picked their nose and wiped it on her. “No way. I’m not working in here.”

“Think about it,” he says. “It’s perfectly secluded, creative. Who would find us here? We could be totally focused.”

He had me at
Who would find us here?
“Looks good to me!” I say. Damien perks up.

Will shifts next to me, ducking his head away from the overhanging wigs and boxes spilling from the high shelves. Amanda looks like she’s trying not to laugh.

“Fine. But I pick the meeting place next time,” Zara sniffs. No one objects.

With no room for chairs, we sit cross-legged in a circle on the floor, Will on my right and Nimra on my left. Will’s leg presses against mine, warm through his jeans. Should I move away? I notice that his other knee touches Amanda’s, though, and Nimra’s knee bumps me on the other side. I stay put.

“Okay.” Zara pulls out a clipboard and clicks her pen into action.

On cue, Damien jumps up and flits around the room. “Props! We need props.”

Zara drops the clipboard into her lap and throws back her head, en route to a full-scale temper tantrum. I’m starting to wonder if this meeting is like one of those dreams where you start out for Disneyland and end up trying to find a pair of matching socks and eventually follow a firefly down a long tunnel instead.

Damien picks out a gray Stetson for Will, which actually kind of suits him. Tall cowboy type. He drops a moldy-looking boa in Zara’s lap.

“Ew! Get that thing away from me!” she squeals, flinging it over her shoulder.

Amanda gets a checkered gingham apron, which she pulls over her head and ties around her thick waist. Damien pins a sheriff’s badge on Nimra. He hands me a pair of Coke-bottle-thick old-man glasses with brown frames the size of my entire face. They still have the lenses. I try them on and look around the group, everything blurry and smeared. My eyes sting.

Next to me, a deep laugh erupts. I snatch off the glasses and turn. Will is smiling, head back, laughing right from the gut. First time I ever heard him laugh.

“You should wear those all the time,” he tells me.

“Did anyone else come here for a meeting?” Zara says. We turn to her, smiles smothered, like we just shared a dirty joke. “Okay, last year they chose a Back to Our Roots theme and had sections on the wall like ‘Louis Riel’ and ‘Laura Secord.’ ”

“Didn’t they make the paper in the shape of Canada too?” Nimra asks.

“That was confusing,” Damien says. “I wanted to write in Manitoba but couldn’t think of anything to say about Louis Riel.” He winks at me and keeps rummaging for his own prop.

Zara ignores him. “We want to do something totally different this year—make our own mark. I was thinking of a poet theme.” We wait for her to continue. “Poets like Frost and Dickinson were born in the 1800s. We could do something like Two Centuries of Poetry and feature some main poets on a timeline?”

Damien chooses some tacky bling and hangs it around his neck. “How about Get Your Funk On?” he says, doing some bad hip-hop moves.

“Get the Funk Outta Here?” I say.

“Funk Off?” Damien again, and Will gives that deep, throaty laugh. His arm brushes mine, tickling me.

“Hilarious.” Zara pouts and shoots me an accusatory look, like,
Aren’t you supposed to be the class leader?
To be honest, I’m not sure what’s wrong with me. We seem to be floating in an alternate universe that resembles a prop closet. Maybe this is what other people feel like all the time.

“I like the poet idea,” Nimra says, and Amanda nods at her and Zara.

“It’s a little”—Damien hesitates—“dull. You wanted something different, right?”

“Let’s hear your great idea then,” Zara says. Damien shrugs and examines the clutter around us.

“What about Get Your Poet On? Put both ideas together,” I say. Nobody speaks for a second, and then Nimra nods.

“Get-Your-Poet-On,” Damien says slowly.

“Does that make sense?” Nimra says. “I guess it does.”

Zara’s not throwing me a scrap. “
I
don’t think it makes sense. But
some
might like it.”

“That’s good,” Will says. “I like it.”

“I like it too.” From Damien. “All those in favor?”