The Taming of the Drew (23 page)

What could I say? That she was right. I was the one who screwed up Tio’s life. That she was right. I never wanted anyone to see those photos. That she was right. She probably had no clue what my life was like anymore, not since I made that deal with Mrs. Bullard.

But I couldn’t tell her any of that, because then I’d have to tell her I wanted to buy the trees, and my mother would be forced to point out — as a reasonable adult would — that I’d probably pissed off the school enough already, and that I should stop being obsessed about a few doomed trees.

I tried to swallow the cold hard lump that sat in my chest. But it wouldn’t go down. I absolutely couldn’t tell mom the one thing she desperately wanted to hear, that I somehow knew where the camera was, and I’d go get it so we could return it to the school. The fact was, even if she didn’t quite believe me when I said I didn’t have it, none of the Greenbacks had any clue where the camera had gone.
 

There was almost nothing left to discuss.
 

So I said the one thing I
could
say, my voice low and trembly, “Can I have a party?”

***

The Greenbacks were noisy when they arrived in the circle early the next morning, chattering — before the sun was fully up — like insomniac squirrels.

I gave up on trying to get some peace. “Guuuuys,” I said, sitting up. “We can’t be this loud so early in the morning — old lady Hathaway’s house is right over there. She’ll never sell the trees to us if she thinks we’re a bunch of vandals.”

Tio said, sullen, “You’re the one bellowing.”

“It’s Friday! And we’re excited about tomorrow’s party,” Helena said, giving Tio a darting glare. “It’s so great you’re doing this.”

Helena would never know the half of it. My mom had agreed to the party, but only after giving me such a searching look that I wondered if this was some invisible test of hers. And then, when she demanded I write down the names of everyone coming, did that mean I’d passed the test, or failed it? I couldn’t decide.

I was determined to do all the work for the party and I threw myself into it. I worked until long after midnight, even scrubbing cabinets and clearing out the worst of our overstuffed kitchen drawers — ones that I was afraid someone might accidentally open.
 

Then before I went to bed, I remembered with a sinking feeling that I still had to send a report to Mrs. Bullard. Trying to juggle the twitter posts plus reports meant I’d forgotten to send her a message for a couple of days. Maybe I could combine them. The twitter thread was getting popular too — we were up to 1,386 followers. I texted Mrs. Bullard the link to the tweets, sent a personal message for the week, and fell into bed, only to get up a couple of hours later to meet everyone at the trees.

“Helena, thanks for the idea about positive PR tweets. If Mrs. Bullard goes for it as a replacement for her daily report, you saved me a ton of time. I think you’re right. If the Dog does something bad now, the PR tweets are like a buffer, they
might
still save the trees.”
 

“Hey, you’re welcome.”
 

Then Viola surprised us by squealing, “And Kate — wow — I’m so proud you
listened
to me! You’re
really
doing it!”

There was a brief moment of group-confusion.
 

I said, “What are you talking about? What is it that you think I’m
really
doing?”

She leaned forward and said, in a stage whisper, like somehow she thought someone might be spying on us, “You’re Pavloving the Dog.”

Into the horrified silence, I said, over-enunciating each word, “Did you say ‘Pavlov —
ing’
or ‘Pav —
loving’
?”
 

Viola waved a hand, like she was brushing aside a cloud of dawn-gnats, “Either way. The important thing is that you’re doing a great job of it.”

So much for assuming Viola had something brilliant to say. “Viola, sweetie, honestly, this party wasn’t my doing. It was Bianca’s. And it isn’t to
reward
the Dog. It’s to
distract
him, which might, hopefully, fingers-crossed, delay him getting into trouble for one more weekend.”

I turned back to the others. “Gonzo volunteered to bring food.” A ragged cheer went up. “And I’m hoping some of you will bring stuff to do.”

Behind me, Viola kicked the base of the stump and said, half-under her breath, “I didn’t
mean
the party,” which only confused me. So I went back to acting like she hadn’t said a word.
 

“But before we go into who brings what, keep in mind we don’t have much time and we still need to talk about the camera.”

Tio said, “
Yes
. Why
don’t
we talk about the camera, Kate.” The entire group got quiet. This wasn’t a tone anyone had ever heard from Tio before.

“Did you find it?” Phoebe asked.

Tio said, stepping closer to me. “I better not ‘find’ it. I will
kill
whoever’s got that camera. Are you listening, Kate?”

Gonzo said, “Hey, Tio. Chill.”

A poison-ivy prickle rushed up my face. It was one thing to have my mom believe I was hiding things from her (well, in fact I was) and it was another thing altogether to be accused by my friend in front of everyone.

Worse yet, I realized they were all looking at me. Waiting for me to answer, instead of shouting,
Tio, what are you thinking, Kate would
never
do that
.

I had a funny hitch in my breathing, like a painful half-hiccup. I looked at all their faces, one after the other, like I was memorizing them, or trying to see who they really were.

Viola appeared at my side, and leaned her head against my shoulder. “They’re silly, Kate,” she said to me, “they’re worried you’re changing too fast.”

“But I’m not changing.” The words exploding out of me and the ravens outside the circle that had been stabbing the field grass for worms cawed and flapped away. “I’m the only one who’s not changing.”

At that, the awkwardness seemed to melt. A smile went around the group, passed from one person to the next, even Tio.

“What?” I said, resisting the urge to yank my hair like the Dog.

“You hang out with this University cool guy all the time and you make all these plans and you don’t tell us to do stuff the way you used to.” Alex, talking, picked at the bark of a tree.

“You guys called me controlling!”

“Of course,” said Phoebe, making circles in the redwood needles with the toe of her shoe, hands in her front pockets, “but now it feels like, like you might be ditching us. You know, moving on to bigger and better things.”

People exchanged sideways looks, like they were both embarrassed at what Phoebe said, but glad it was out there.

“You, Tio?” I asked, my arms crossed, “you think I’d hold out on you about the camera?”

Tio sat on the stump and leaned forward, his head in his hands. “I don’t know what I think any more. I guess the answer’s no. I don’t really believe you’d get me in trouble on purpose. But I don’t want to think about what you might do to save the trees. If you could keep the Dog from getting a felony conviction, at least until the end of school, I guess I could believe you might leave me dangling.”
 

Some part of my heart felt like it cracked. Mostly because I probably deserved every word Tio said.

“I don’t know anything about the camera. I didn’t ask Gonzo to set up a photo shoot to fake anyone out. I don’t want to ditch any of you. You guys, you’re, you’re my…” my voice cracked.

From somewhere around my shoulder, Viola said, “Group hug!”

And we did, people drifting over, one by one. Then, when everyone was clumped but Robin, we looked around, right as Robin made a running slam into us, taking the all the Greenbacks down onto the redwood-needle-padded ground, toppling together like a rugby scrum.

As we laughed and untangled and climbed to our feet, Gonzo said to Robin, “Learned some stuff from the Dog, huh?”

Robin smiled, “Yep.”

Despite the hug, I just wanted to be left alone. I kept my eyes down in first period. At the end of second period, the dark cloud over my head parted for a second when I heard one of the Pottery girls say to Drew, as they left the class, “Nice centering today.” She said it off-hand and a little patronizing, like a third grade teacher telling you your cursive was nice.

“Centering?” I asked.

Drew turned pink along the edges of his ears. “Pottery slang,” he said, and speed-walked off.

***

Today’s Tweet:
Drew explores his artistic nature.

***

Third period, Mrs. Broadstreet made us come to the front of the class and draw a piece of paper out of a box, show it to her, then return to our desk. The paper was the topic of our next project. It had to be secret because no one else in class was supposed to know what we got. In keeping with the kind of day I was having, I, of course, got Freudian theory (gag me with a spoon).
 

Mrs. Broadstreet announced that we were expected to apply some portion of our chosen theory to our lives, then report on the results.
Great
. I would get to spend the next weeks blaming everything, like Freud, on the women of the world. Gee, doesn’t that seem fair?

Brunch, no one talked, but it wasn’t a good kind of not-talking. Everyone shuffled, and the quiet was too thick. Drew leaned forward after Alex and Robin went to the girls’ bathroom and said, still staring after them, “Robin’s got lip fuzz.”

It somehow broke the ice. We all sighed.
 

Finally Phoebe said, “No more than I do. See?”
 

She tilted her nose up and Drew carefully studied her flattened upper lip while Phoebe turned her face a little to the left then a little to the right.

“Well I’ll be damned.” He gave a little tooth-sucking click of disappointment and leaned against the wall.

Phoebe sat back, satisfied, and everyone relaxed into a calmer quiet.

Right after the bell rang, we were jammed in the usual crowd trying to rush the band door, when I remembered how Mr. Whitworth had blown up at Drew yesterday. “Drew!” I said, trying to get his attention where he inched along ahead of me. “Drew! It’s important!”

He gave a shimmy and somehow moved in reverse until I was pressed against his back. I leaned forward and whispered against his neck, “Listen, the triangle…” The edge of his ear turned red again. “There’s got to be something like it in football. You must have to use timing in a play, or count out who does what, right?”

Tio, mashed against my right shoulder as we shuffled forward, said, “That’s it!”

Drew turned to stare at me and I got shoved from behind and ended up craning my neck up, pressed against his chest. Then we almost fell through the band doorway, like being born out into a giant space. Tio, behind me, and Drew in front of me, we all did a stumbling kind of sprinters’ start to get our feet under us, laughing.

Tio said, bouncing with excitement. “That’s brilliant. Don’t rush your snap, or leave the other guys hanging. Music’s like football. You’ve got to get the timing right. You’ve got to be
together
.” Tio ran off to haul out his bass sax.

Drew, his ears rimmed in scarlet, ran a hand through his hair and didn’t make eye contact with me.

Later in the period, when it was clear Drew had mostly got it, I turned to look over my shoulder where he stood, behind and to my left, standing in this no-man’s-land between the drummers and the trombones. “You did it!” I mouthed.

He stared at my lips and I raised two fingers to rub them. “Trombone mouth,” I stage-whispered. “Goes away in about an hour.”

Drew gave a sharp nod, then fixed his gaze down at his triangle.

Mr. Whitworth kept Drew after band to congratulate him on his “triangle breakthrough.” Drew looked like he would rather be doing one thousand three hundred and forty-five gut sprints.
 

***

Today’s Second Tweet: Drew gets his groove on in band. Shows he can lean into it with the best of them.

***

I was desperate for the day to be over. I was emotionally exhausted and I had a gazillion things to do tonight, because tomorrow I would wake up, go to Dino-Dog, and barely get home before the party started. But at lunch, as we straggled toward the circle, going slower than we ever had, like all of us were still uncomfortable about being alone together there, Celia materialized at the edge of the group.
 

“I should have known,” she said, like we’d been caught wood-chippering body parts. “I’ve gone to Academy at lunch three times this week — and let me tell you, the sight of that crowd, chewing with their mouths open — it’s enough to put you off food for a month. And the whole time you’re sneaking off campus. Does Dean Verona know?”

The Greenbacks around me were jostling, like cattle that might panic and stampede any second. And I knew exactly why. I had to fight the same urge. The idea of Celia discovering and contaminating the fairy ring made me want to run screaming in all directions.

“What do you want, Celia,” I said.

“What I paid for,” she said.

“Get in line,” said Tio, a bit loudly, from the back of the crowd. “Everyone wants it.”

“You want naked pictures of the Dog?” she said, baffled.
 

Tio’s face flamed like a lit torch.

“Naked?” barked Drew, pushing his way toward the front.

“Not entirely,” said Celia to him, without a trace of embarrassment. “Apparently Kate doesn’t do naked.” She said it like it was some obvious flaw. Like you would say
apparently Kate doesn’t have real teeth
.

Drew towered over Celia. “What the hell are
you
doing asking for naked pictures of
me
?”

There was a long and breathless silence. For once, Celia seemed to realize she may have said too much.

“I didn’t ask for them,” she said, like this made it better, “I
paid
for them. Ask Kate.”