The Symptoms of My Insanity (8 page)

Miss Swenson’s fallen braids dangle in my peripheral vision. I look over to find her studying me, her hazel eyes clear. “Don’t think so hard, Izzy,” she says, squeezing my shoulder, “you’ll scare your inspiration away.” Then she blinks at me once, and heads back to her hallway junk drawer office.

Don’t think so hard? Okay, fine. I won’t think so hard about not really being invited to that party by Meredith, and about not really wanting to direct Jacob Ullman and the rest of the basketball guys in a musical while they potentially humiliate me in Spanglish, and how Pam’s convinced my mom has a nausea problem, and about how the only thing I really have to look forward to right now is a date with Blake on Saturday that I’m pretty sure is not even a date at all.

I circle around my unfinished painting and focus on diminishing the outlines of my new shapes, blurring all the details together. I float my brush across the canvas, wishing I could blur together all the details of this day too.

I’m sitting in the first row of our auditorium, staring down at a clipboard with nothing clipped on it, hoping it looks like I’m doing something important. Jenna’s in full-on director mode, running around, trying to get people seated onstage. “Okay everyone—hello?!” she shouts, tapping her faux animal-print boot on the stage floor.

It’s after school and everyone’s huddled in noisy groups—Meredith is sitting with a bunch of dancer girls stage left who are being entertained by Ryan Paulson duct-taping himself to his seat. The basketball dancing-tree boys are sitting in the back row of the auditorium, as if to let everyone know they don’t belong at a rehearsal for a Rogers and Hammerstein musical. And there’s Cara on the floor near the music pit, thumbing through her dance binder, in the splits.

“Izzy, are
you
in the play?” Emily Belfry is holding a pink highlighter and staring up at me with her magazine-ad face. Well, except for its expression, which unfortunately always looks pained, like the air she’s breathing tastes bitter.

“No, I’m not in the play,” I tell her. “Just helping Jenna with directing. Are you … performing?”

She looks at me as if I’ve just asked her if she pees sitting down.

“I’m a lead.” She shifts in her seat to pull the pant leg of her khakis down over the ankle of her shiny brown boots.

Of course. Emily’s captain of Broomington’s all female a cappella handbell choir, The Bellerinas. She sings first soprano. I only know that because in health class last year during a warning lecture on the effects of cigarette smoke, she kept raising her hand to mention that she would
never engage in an activity that would sully the tone of her expansive first soprano range.

I have lots of reasons for not smoking too, but I’m not about to start brag-sharing them in health class.

“I really like your jeans,” she adds.

“Thanks,” I say, even though I sense she means the opposite. Mom got me these jeans and they have embroidered flowers on the pockets and up the side of one leg. I didn’t put up a fight when she brought them home because she looked so happy when I tried them on, like she was a stylist to the stars who just found a hot new look. Or at least that’s the mental snapshot I remember.

“Can I borrow those and wear them in the show?” Emily asks. “They’re very … western.”

“Sure you can, Em. If you supply the extra denim we’ll need to cover your ass, you can most certainly wear them in the show.” Jenna swoops in to my rescue and then, without
missing a beat, goes right back to trying to corral everyone onto the stage.

Emily makes a bitter-air face and then buries her head in her binder. Still on the floor, Cara’s laughing so hard, she falls into an unintentional forward bend stretch.

“Thanks.” I climb up with Jenna onstage to help her sort the rest of the dress rehearsal calendars while she furiously staples packets together.

“I
love
those jeans,” Jenna says without looking up from her work, which makes us both burst out laughing.

“So by the way”—she hands me a finished packet to add to the pile—“I need you to rescue me and let me hang at your house Saturday night. It’s Cathy’s turn to host her ‘Ladies Who Read Aren’t Ladies in Need’ book club.”

“Oh no. What are they reading this week?”

“I think some memoir about these women who found God after knitting the same scarf in six different countries.”

“Nice. Is she making her famous book-shaped brownies?”

“I really hope not.”

“Yeah, those ones she made last month tasted …”

“Like we were literally eating paperbacks?”

“Yes,” I say, laughing. “So on Saturday actually—”

“Oh, last time when the group was over, oh my God, did I tell you? Mrs. Hendricks was wearing one of her famous ‘I bought this twenty years ago’ jumpsuits, and her camel toe was a work of art. It should have been in a museum. Even Marcus couldn’t take his eyes off it.”

“Gross!”

“Yeah. I tried to sneak a picture of it on my phone, but there was no way I could hold my cell at a non-obvious angle, and I would get in major trouble if Cathy caught me paparazzi-ing Mrs. Hendricks’s crotch.”

“What? Whose crotch?” Meredith asks, walking up the stage-left stairs.

“Nothing, nobody’s.” Jenna stares at Meredith like she just started talking really loud during the serious part of a movie, and then makes a silly face at me.

“Um … okay,” Meredith relents. “Cara wants to know if you have copies of the calendars, and she also changed the can-can choreography, so we need at least an hour to go over it sometime before we do a full run-through.”

“Putting the calendars together now,” Jenna informs her, and then turns around and continues to staple.

Meredith looks like she’s about to say something else to Jenna, but instead turns to me with a big smile.

“So Izzy, I was just thinking, your sister’s in town this weekend, right? Is she going to be there Saturday? I mean, she’ll probably be up late and see me leave. Do you think she’d be cool?”

Jenna’s hands freeze mid-staple.

“How did you know that Allissa’s in for the weekend?” I ask, feeling Jenna’s eyes burning a hole through the back of my neck.

“My mom,” Meredith says, as if that explains everything. Which it doesn’t at all. Why would Meredith’s mom know
about Allissa coming in this weekend? It’s not like Meredith’s mom and my mom talk or anything. They used to be friendly, but only because their daughters were best friends. Stacy Brightwell owns Brightwell Interior Energy Designs. She’ll be the first to tell you that she’s an expert who studied feng shui in China. And my mom will be the first to tell you, “Eh, so what?”

“What do you mean Allissa will see you leave, from where?” Jenna asks Meredith.

“Izzy’s. I’m
sleeping over,
” Meredith says breezily, using air quotes and all. Then she explains to me that her mom is meeting up with Allissa this weekend.

“Meredith, what are you talking about?” I say.

“What are
you
talking about?” Jenna asks, looking at me.

“She’s going to a party at U of M. She needs to tell her mom she’s at my house,” I explain, and then turn back to Meredith. “Why would Allissa be meeting with your mom?”

“What? Come again, what? I think my ears just shriveled up and fell off my head,” Jenna says.

“For your mom’s birthday coming up. My mom’s giving you guys a bunch of overstocked furniture for your mom’s new office. In your attic? Oh, no. I’m sorry. I just assumed you guys were doing it together.”

“No. Wait. Wow, what kind of furniture?”

“I think a desk, a couch, an armoire … My mom has lots of extra stuff. I guess she knew your mom was leaving her office and that the expensive trendy stuff in there was rented or something ’cause I guess they have the same landlord?
And then she ran into Allissa at the mall and—”

“Seriously? You’re going to let her sleep over at your house just so she can leave and go to some party?” Jenna asks, all big-eyed and stifling a laugh. “Izzy, such a pushover,” she adds, now full-out laughing and shaking her head at me.

“Well, you’re both invited to the party …” Meredith adds softly.

“Yeah, like Izzy would even go”—Jenna makes another silly face at me, her brows half raised—“but thanks for the invite.”

“Okay, I get it, Jenna,” Meredith says a little louder now. “I get why you have no interest in going with
me
to a party at U of M, but—”

“Izzy, will you hand me the rest of that pile.” Jenna bolts up fast, turning to me, and accidentally kicks over her full cup of tea. “Crap!” she says as it spills across the stage and all over the newly stapled schedules. “Crap crap crap crap crap!”

I kneel down and start mopping up some of the spill with—oops—I think somebody’s scarf, while Jenna runs offstage to grab some napkins.

“I’m sorry.” Meredith cringes at me, attempting to shake dry some of the ruined pages. “I really shouldn’t have said that.”

“No, no, it’s okay. Allissa and I sometimes get separate gifts for my mom, so that’s why I didn’t know anything about the furniture and—”

“Here.” Jenna runs back in and hands me some napkins.

“You okay?” I ask her now, because Jenna looks like she’s seriously about to bite a hole through her lower lip.

“Yeah, yeah fine,” she says, mopping up the tea and then grabbing some papers from her bag. “Do me a huge favor and make more copies for me?” she asks. She hands me the pages and then zaps back into director mode, putting both her hands on her hips, and looking frustrated as she scans the crowd.

“Okay everybody, listen up! Listen up, everybody! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!”

There is a split second of silence and Jenna takes this as her cue.

“Okay, we’re heading into the final stretch here, people, and—okay, will everyone come up front so I don’t have to yell!”

I weave awkwardly through the oncoming crowd, trying to get to the back of the auditorium.

“Hey,” I hear, and feel a tug at the bottom of my shirt just as I’m about to push through the doors.

I turn. Oh. “Hey,” I say to Blake, “what’s up?”

“Not much, how goes the art?” he asks.

“Um … it goes … okay, I guess.” And then I realize he’s still holding on to my sweater. And then he realizes he’s still holding on, and realizes that I realize, and then abruptly drops his hands. I see now that he must have just come from practice, because he’s got his basketball shorts on, but with a … button-down shirt? And wait, why is he wearing boots? He catches me staring at his ridiculous ensemble.

“I know, I know, don’t ask.” He shakes his head.

“Well, now I kind of have to,” I say, laughing.

“Seniors. Hazing.”

“Hazing?”

“Yeah, they haze us during workouts. Well, during everything, actually. And more like torture us because that’s what it is basically. Anyway, they took my T-shirt, and my jeans, and my sneakers while I was in the shower and they rubbed them all over their …” He grimaces and shakes his head remembering.

“You know what? I don’t want to know anymore.”

“Sorry. Yeah, so anyway …” He trails off, gesturing to his shorts, shirt, and boots in a fashion model way that makes me laugh.

Then we hear Jenna shouting, “Does everyone understand? Are you all with me?” and Blake makes a silly face like I got him in trouble or something and heads up front to join the rest of the guys.

I feel a huge smile spread across my face as I head to the computer lab, thinking out my non-date DIA date with Blake. Maybe it’s not a mom setup after all. Then I realize Blake is probably going to that U of M party too … though I’m the last person he’d expect to see there since apparently I’m a non-party-going pushover. Not that Jenna meant to be mean or anything. Even Meredith assumed I wouldn’t want to go. Still, it’s annoying that Jenna’s blowing off a party invite now, after all those times she’s pressured me to go up with her to U of M.

I wait for Jenna’s copies to finish, hoping she doesn’t have a lot more for me to do today, that maybe I can sneak out to the art room and keep working on that new painting, or maybe just hide out in the back and get to talk to Blake some more and fantasize about—since Jenna has put the image in my head—making out with him amidst important art on Saturday.

Except when I get back, the theater is empty. I can hear the cast through the walls of the connecting choir room singing multi-note
oh
s and
ah
s. I can also faintly hear Jenna’s voice coming from backstage, lecturing someone—probably Meredith or Cara—about Oklahoma’s territory struggles, and how they should be more “deliberately represented through symbolic choreography.”

I tiptoe the photocopies to the stage, and then speed-tiptoe up the aisle to the auditorium doors. But before I can escape, I see one worn white sneaker and the top of a bright red cowboy hat peeking around the half-open door. The cowboy hat lifts to reveal Marcus’s face.

“Izzy! Thank God it’s you,” he whispers. “Are you alone?” His voice sounds strangely urgent.

“Yeah,” I say, and then jump back as Marcus pushes his way through the door—with his elbows since his arms are piled high with stuff up to his chin. Before I can ask if he needs help, Marcus is stumbling to the nearest empty row. The bright red, one-size-too-small cowboy hat slides forward on his head. He keels over the armrest, cowboy hat falling onto the seat along with some decorative fans, floral
bonnets, two pairs of—I can’t believe I know what these are called—pantaloons, and a slew of other random items.

“Man is it good to see you, Izzy,” he says, turning to me.

“Um, good to see you too, Marcus.” I smile. “Um … you still have some …” And I can’t keep it in any longer and burst out laughing as I pull some pink ribbons and another pair of pantaloons off Marcus’s left shoulder.

His cheeks go a pale pink as I throw the items onto his pile.

“Yes, what you’re thinking is correct,” he says.

“That you’re suddenly into eighteenth-century cross-dressing?”

“Oh, um.” His cheeks go an even brighter pink and he laughs. “Well, I was going to lie and say a one-man
Oklahoma!
prop table-slash-rolling rack, but yes, you see right through me.”