The Taming of the Drew (29 page)

I needed this anger, to do what I had to do.

I walked to her and gave her a hard poke in the shoulder. She flinched and stared at me.
 

“You’re an embarrassment,” I said.

She narrowed her eyes at me, “Because I go for what I want out of life? Because I refuse to be sucked into some horrible career I don’t want? Because I won’t let my parents bully me? You’re right, those are horrible traits. Which — luckily — none of you have.”

I said, my voice too sweet, “No, sweetie, the reason you’re an embarrassment is that you cheapen the very thing you ought to value about yourself.”

The clearing held its breath and circles of redness erupted like hives on Celia’s cheeks and neck.

“How dare you?” she said.

I didn’t wait for her to catch breath but took a step even closer. “Here’s how I dare. I saw you with my mother. I saw how you could charm a rock if you put your mind to it. You could get your foot in any door in the world. I saw your instincts, how you snapped that picture of Drew without hesitating. We’ve all been run over by your determination. Think about it, charm, journalistic instincts, determination that would make a rhino look feeble.”

Celia said, “Don’t you dare try the fake nice thing on me. Uni girls can run circles around you in that department. I live and breathe people who are nicey-nicey to my face and vicious behind my back. You’re out of your league.”

I couldn’t let myself think about how miserable her life must be, if even half of what she said was true. Pity was the last thing that Celia would tolerate, and right now, frankly, I didn’t feel much for her. I said, my voice hoarse with fury, “Do I
look
like I’m being nice?”

She had the decency to say, “Well, no.”

“I can promise you, what I’m about to say next, even though it’s the
truth
, there’s nothing pretty or nice about it. Because what do you, Celia, do with these gifts of yours? These gifts that even a stupid Cosmo questionnaire can recognize? Gifts that other people would give anything to have?”

By now you could hear a twig-drop.

I loomed over her. “You
whore
them. To become a low-life paparazzi.”

A loud gasp echoed around the clearing and seemed to slap into Celia’s face, which was now death-white.

I turned and stomped back to the stump, saying, over my shoulder. “Go ahead, go to the school.”

Celia stared around the clearing at all of us, her eyes bouncing like she looked for a way out. Then she landed on Gonzo’s gaze and she gave a hiccupy inhale and looked away.

I sat and leaned back on my arms on the stump, trying to hide the fact that my elbows and knees were shaking. “Or,” I said, and the word sounded huge in the silence.

“
Or
, we could work together. You could use those talents to do some real PR.”

Celia’s brain seemed to be shaking her out of her stupor and her eyes narrowed. “What?” she said, “What did you just say?”

“You could do some articles on the Dog. Not nasty ones. Real ones.”

The Greenbacks shifted, disgruntled, glances exchanged like they weren’t sure whether or not
I
had just lost my mind.

Celia folded her arms, “Right.” Sarcasm dripped like rotted molasses. “I knew this was some weird game of yours. Like that get-him-angry thing you suggested to make the Dog talk.” Bianca and Drew both stiffened. “There’s no
way
he’s going to give an interview to me. He doesn’t trust me and I don’t trust him to do it. Not enough to hand over the only leverage I’ve got.”

I turned, for the first time that day, maybe the last time in a long time to come, and looked Drew in the face. He stared at me like I was insane, his face one large frown, and I put everything into my gaze. Please, please, do this. Please, please trust me.
 

He stood and walked forward. Celia took a step away from him, to the left.

“Sure,” he said, his voice sounding anything but sure, “I’ll answer questions.”

Celia said, “Well, duh. Here, now, of course he’ll say that. Then when he’s with me, he’ll stare at me and refuse to talk.”
 

Drew looked like he wanted to throttle her, so I blurted, “No he won’t. He’s good for his word.”

“That’s so easy for you to say. Besides, what are you, like his manager?”
 

Drew’s lip curled up.

Celia sneered, right in his face, “It’s not like you can
control
him.”

Here’s the truly horrible part — I knew what I was doing. I knew it was something no guy would ever forgive. But I couldn’t let Celia get him convicted of a felony. I wouldn’t let her destroy him. Never.

Or destroy everything else, the trees too.
 

I knew what I did when I did it. But I did it anyway.

“Drew,” I said, “what if I told you your shirt is too small.”

He stared at me, knowing what the answer should be, but not wanting to say the words. Trust me, I pleaded with my eyes.
 

He gritted out the words, still glaring at me, not looking at Celia, “I’d say I made a mistake and ordered the wrong size.”

Something inside my heart was creaking and splitting, that horrible scream-sound that a tree makes when it’s ripped in half. I pressed my lips together so they wouldn’t shake, frowning to hold my face still, “Now I’m thinking, hey, it’s too big. What do you say to that?”

A heartbeat of silence, and all the clearing watched, as Drew humiliated himself at my command. He spat the words like every single one was an insult, directed at me, “You’re right. I must have ordered the too-large size.”

“In fact, you’ll do whatever I say.” I turned to Celia, who watched with her mouth open. “
Now
do you believe he’ll talk to you if I tell him to?” I blinked hard, praying it wouldn’t make the shifting wetness in my vision slide down my face.

The silence stretched and a gull screamed overhead.

She put a hand on her hip, “You’ll just want puff-pieces.”

That’s when I knew I’d won. But lost everything.
 

Drew stormed out of the clearing, leaving everyone behind, heading to the school without food.

“Yep,” I said, not trusting my voice to say more.

“That’s boring,” Celia said.
 

“Your job is to make it not.”

Greenbacks were standing, putting their backs to me, picking up bags. Celia said, “I’m keeping the school camera until I've got a few articles out.”

Viola zoomed past me so fast, my shoulder bumped. She put her hands on her hips and said to Celia, “You stupid, stupid person. You don’t know anything. Not even what’s right in front of you. Not even what’s inside you. You keep your stupid camera until the bitter end if you want, for all the good it’ll do you. Just go away.”

Celia looked frightened for the first time.

Viola, somehow, managed to look even fiercer. She leaned from the waist and said in a ringing, hollow, amplified-sounding voice, “GET OUT. NOW.”

Celia turned and fled.
 

After a moment of shocked silence, Gonzo, too casual, picked up his backpack, reached in and put a stack of foil packets on the ground, then left.

I lay on the stump and put my arms around my head.
 

It seemed to take forever, but eventually the clearing was silent. I waited some more.
 

I sat up and there was Bianca, nibbling a Gonzo mushroom pastry triangle. “Give him time,” she said, “He’ll figure out why you did it.” She rose as effortlessly as if she was filled with helium, brushed her swingy mid-calf skirt and walked off into the sunshine.

She had waited there, motionless, for over 25 minutes, just to say that to me.

Drew might, eventually, understand why I did it. But she and I both knew that didn’t mean he’d ever forgive me.

***

Tutoring was hell. We were back to back again, my nose tickling the cube-wall, me breathing through my mouth to hold myself as motionless as possible, and still we were way too close for comfort. Bianca arrived, a bit late, and said, “Curtis, your turn in the tutoring side room. A musical instrument, I think.”

It was so unexpected, it was probably the only thing that could have pierced my misery. I rose, seconds behind Drew, who stood with his arms crossed, surveying them over the cube wall. Curtis, glancing Drew’s way, wiped the smug smile off his face.
 

“Sure,” he said, “name your instrument.”

Call me a pessimist, but it seemed unlikely to me that Curtis could be a music virtuoso. Probably he’d gotten carried away with the giddiness of the moment. Bianca, tapping a finger to her chin, thought for a second and said, “Cello.”

A look of sheer panic rooted Curtis to the spot. “C’mon,” Bianca said, “Aren’t there cellos in the Academy orchestra room, Tio?”

Tio, who’d been glaring thunderbolts at me, as if all of this way my fault, suddenly seemed to understand Bianca was up to something. He leaned back in his chair and gave Curtis a look of pure malice. “Yep.”

Tio asked Bianca, “You play cello?”

“Oh no,” she said, glibly, “but Curtis swears he can teach me anything.”

Tio added, “Be sure to sign the cello out,” he couldn’t resist throwing another thunderbolt glare my way as he said, “I’d hate for Bianca to get in trouble if valuable school property goes missing.”

I slunk down into my seat.
 

Drew also sat. Without thinking about it, we’d ended up in the his-shoulder-behind-my-shoulder position. I sat rigid, not knowing how to get out of it, when he said, staring at the hypnotizing monitor, “Do what you want, but I’m tired of twisting around the whole period. Makes my neck hurt worse than the damn Pilates class. I’m not moving.”

It was somehow even worse. I sat, not sure where to look, or what to do with my hands. I heard Bianca and, eventually, Curtis go to one of the side rooms. I finally said, “Can I use the terminal?”

“Why not?”

I tapped at the keys, unable to remember the spelling. Eisenberger? Finally I put
uncertainty principle
into the search engine and got Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.

Basically, the closer you get to something (even if you’re only going to measure it, or to study it) just the act of getting close causes it to change. The closer you get, the more change happens. Even if you’re talking about tiny sub-atomic particles, nothing can be done in isolation.
 

Viola is downright scary sometimes. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

I decided this was going be an easy twitter day, so I pulled out my cell and hunched over it:

Today’s Tweets:
Drew demonstrates quantum physics. Who knew a jock could toss around the Heisenberg uncertainty principle like a football?

Then I noticed Drew trying to read the screen and I twisted away, my heart making a quantum leap into my throat. Oh God, if he ever,
ever
read these –I would have to kill myself on the spot. I thought he might ask what I was doing, but there was the crashing sound of a tutoring side door slapping open against a wall.
 

Drew and I both popped up.

Curtis staggered, a wide white stringy thing draped over one ear, two splintered thin poles sticking up from his collar area like he was a poor Dracula.

He said, stunned, “She broke it. Over my head.”

Drew and I both sat, smiles on our faces.
 

We could hear Bianca, say, her voice completely calm, “Good thing you signed it out, now isn’t it? Wow, that baby’s a lot harder to play than I expected.” She gave Curtis a serene smile and headed for the door. “Tomorrow is your turn, Nate. We’ll keep switching after that. Ready to go, Drew?” she asked.

Drew stood, and I heard him say to Bianca, as Tio and I followed them out, “Now, you want to learn to play a tough instrument, you ought to try the triangle.”

Bianca gave a very horsy guffaw and clapped her hand over her mouth.
 

Drew said, still deadpan, “But I’m making progress. Five or six years of steady practice, hour or two a day, I’m thinking I could advance. Take on a tambourine.”

Tio gave him a shove from behind and said, “Don’t count on it. You and your ego, are you sure you can get it through the door?”

I drifted behind them as we walked. At the end of the day, I couldn’t pretend it was okay. So I headed for home, taking the corner, to avoid going through the parking lot. When I got to the street in front of the school, a carload of guys was heading toward me, cat-calling, and one of them hung out the window, doing an exaggerated sweep with his arm, trying to grab me.
 

I jerked back, and was horrified to see Tio, Bianca and Drew, all glaring at the carload of guys zooming away.
 

This, I didn’t need. I knew none of it was my fault, but I couldn’t face them and explain the Dino-Dog sleaze problem. Not now.

I ran the rest of the way home.

For the next three days, I hung at the back of our group. Every class was a misery. Drew stopped even trying to talk to me and stared at me with his eyes half-closed, arms crossed on his chest.

My tweets shrunk to total idiocy posts, like “
Drew ponders social issues”
and “
The Dog — a thinker!
”

On Tuesday, I sat at the far end of the group during brunch, but when Drew left to get something out of his locker, all the Greenbacks shifted and I found myself in the center of the group.

Helena said, “You’ve got to do something. Bianca says he’s hanging out with the Uni crowd again.”

I stared at her. “There’s nothing I can do.” And I knew it was absolutely true, as the words hung in the air. It wasn’t a feeble protest because I wasn’t comfortable around him. The fact was, by keeping him from being charged with a felony, I’d burned my last bridges. He could care less what I said, or did.
 

Helena said, “That’s not acceptable.”

I said, my eyes stinging. “You do it. You tell me what to do.”

There was a shocked silence. Then Gonzo, of all people, rubbed my shoulder and said to Helena, “Forgive her. Kate’s not herself.”