I spend the next week avoiding Tommy at school and ignoring the calls I receive from Marlene. I’ve permanently taken up a seat in the back of History class and will myself to focus on taking notes instead of staring at the back of Kennes’s head and trying to find a way to hex her Harry Potter–style.
From Twitter, everyone on the planet is aware that Kennes spent last Saturday enduring the horror of shopping for “an off-the-rack dress at the last possible minute,” but that she triumphed and had a delightful evening of dancing at 00-Snow. Judging from the fact that I pass Tommy and Kennes sitting together, holding hands, as I carry my lunch to the Clothing room, the I can’t see you anymore conversation never happened.
I can’t figure out what I’m supposed to make of that kiss behind the oleander bushes, and I try not to think about it. The truth is, in that moment, either Tommy was being a jerk to Kennes or he was being one to me. I don’t have the emotional bandwidth to try to analyze the latter scenario.
Mrs. Vargas reminds me that I can’t dodge Marlene forever. “You’re getting school credit for your work at SoScottsdale,” she says.
But I can’t go back. No retreat. No surrender. “What if I make my own blog? Using the idea I worked on in class?”
Mrs. Vargas is cool and we agree that she’ll be my faculty supervisor. I’ll have to put in the same number of hours as I did at SoScottsdale, and be able to prove it by keeping a log of my time. “You do need to advise your current employer of the change,” she adds. “I don’t want to get another phone call from Marlene Campbell.”
Marlene always breezes out of the office around three, so I wait until after school and well past four to call in hopes of being able to leave a message. Sure, quitting by voice mail is tacky, and yeah, it’s what you do when you’re chickenshit. But this plan eases the weird fluttering in my stomach. And anyway, I’m pretty sure I’ve already burned the SoScottsdale bridge, so what the hell?
Because this is my life and not some alternate reality where things work out as planned, Marlene picks up the phone on the second ring.
“Hey, Marlene. It’s Cookie. Mrs. Vargas asked me to call and make sure it’s clear that I won’t be continuing my internship.”
“Hang on, Cookie,” she answers. She puts down the receiver and I can hear her close the door to her office. “Okay,” she says. “Look, I know that thing with Kennes—”
I interrupt her. I want off this call and I don’t want to rehash last Friday. “Marlene, I get it. You have to do what’s best for your family. And in this situation that means helping Kennes and not helping me.”
“No, it doesn’t mean that.” Marlene surprises me with the force of her statement. She’s being loud. I have to hold the phone a few inches from my face. “This thing with Kennes, you’re letting it get the best of you. You’re so hurt and bitter because you think life is unfair—”
“It is unfair!”
“—that you can’t be objective. You can’t see that Kennes is all opportunity and no talent. But you’re all talent and sooner or later opportunity will catch up and you will know what to do with it. She won’t. You’ll have to work hard—”
“She doesn’t have to work at all.”
“—but you can make it. You can get where you want to go. Whatever her advantages are, she doesn’t have that shot. Not really, anyway. She’s only ever going to be Jameson Butterfield’s daughter.”
“I won’t feel sorry for her.” I can’t keep the bitterness from my voice.
“I can’t come back to the blog.”
There’s a pause. “I know. But, Cookie, my door is always open. I’m rooting for you. We all are. You’re stubborn. But if you take one piece of advice, take this. Forget about Kennes Butterfield and focus on yourself. You’re going to be fine.”
I hang up the phone. I’m done at SoScottsdale.
I fight the impulse to wallow. There’s no real point in thinking about how I didn’t get a send-off from the office or how a couple years of really hard work feels like a massive waste of time. I’ve got shit to do.
Now I get to start my own blog. Yay.
Who’s got two thumbs and can barely operate her iPhone?
This girl.
The one fringe benefit to high school, where people are sharply divided into cliques based on interests and appearances, is that it’s easy to figure out where to turn for expertise. It’s lunchtime on Friday, and I’m about to journey into the land of The Big Bang Theory.
The computer lab is in the main Mountain Vista building on the side farthest from the football field. Black posterboard covers the windows, creating permanent night in a classroom that could best be described as a computer junkyard. There are beige towers and monitors and green components lying all over the place. I have to be careful where I place each one of my knockoff Céline wedges.
I’m searching for Carson Graham. He’s one of the few geeks who’s ever made an attempt to cross over. Everyone knows he auditioned for the fall play and asked a drama nerd to the dance.
He’s in the back corner, staring deep into his computer screen, and doesn’t notice me when I approach. I clear my throat. That doesn’t help.
Before I can say anything, he says, “Where’s Rich? We need a shaman to do a solo wipe recovery.” There’s the faint sound of someone else talking and then, “Getting pizza? What the fuck? The whole point was to do this battle during lunch to level up the guild for later.”
Carson’s talking into a small headset mic and listening to headphones. I walk around him to see a game of World of Warcraft loaded on his screen. My first impulse is to think, how typical. But then, I’m in the Clothing room sewing during most lunches, so I guess I’m not really any better than he is.
“Yeah?” he says. He’s looking at me and, I think, speaking to me.
“I need to talk to you about a project.”
“I can’t.”
“I can’t come over to your house and fix your dad’s wireless printer or figure out why your modem keeps going down or tell you why your iPad, iPhone, i-whatever won’t sync to the cloud.” Streaks of Carson’s greasy brown hair cover his forehead. He’s so white that he’d probably catch on fire if he went out into the sun. But otherwise, he’s not bad looking.
“That’s not why I’m here. I have a deal to offer.”
“A deal?” he repeats.
“Yeah, I need to—”
“Hang on. I’m about to be killed.”
A second later, he removes the headset and I have his undivided attention. “I want to know if you’d like to swap services.”
He eyes me with skepticism. “What exactly are your services?”
I try to smile but it feels unnatural. “You do computers. I do clothes.”
“You think I want clothes?” he asks.
“You’re saying you’re deliberately going through your high school years in a uniform of stained Grand Theft Auto T-shirts and khakis?”
“Well...” He glances down at his own shirt.
“When you asked Hayley to the winter dance, don’t you wish the answer had been yes?” I ask.
He shifts around in his office chair and in the monitor’s light, I can see his face turning red. “So you’re offering me the plot of the movie She’s All That?”
“I have to set up a blog and I don’t think it’s going to come as a big shock to you that I need help. I’m offering you clothes in exchange. Three full outfits. Whether or not you want to dance around in a teen movie montage is up to you,” I say.
“That thing with Hayley. Five years from now, I’ll have a seven-figure income and a house in Palo Alto. She’ll be on a barstool next to me begging for my phone number. Look at Zuckerberg.” Carson’s gaze returns to his screen and he makes a few taps on the keyboard.
“Look at Steve Jobs,” I counter. “If you believe that Ashton Kutcher movie, he always got girls. And he wore nice clothes.”
“Steve Jobs?” Carson repeats.
He sighs and types for a couple more minutes. “I want five.”
“Five?”
“Five outfits.”
“Deal.”
It quickly becomes clear that I’ve gotten the short end of the stick. In about ten seconds, Carson sets me up with a website address and a site using WordPress. Half an hour later, he’s dressed the site up with the logos my Clothing class made and given me a crash course in how to blog.
But a deal is a deal, so after my homework is done and the doughnuts have been made on Saturday morning, I spend the rest of the weekend sewing. Thanks to Grandma, three of her bingo buddies from church and Sewing for Boys and Men, we finish a collection that would be right at home on the rack at Banana Republic. Carson is a fashion noob, so I stick to a simple color palette. Basic blues and grays, khakis and a bit of black. I try to add a few techie touches here and there, like using a Space Invaders printed fabric to line the collar of a polo shirt and the waistband of the pants.
I drop them off at Carson’s house late on Sunday night. The Grahams must be the perfect postmodern family, with a place in posh Las Sendas and a giant Christmas tree in the window. He tries on a pair of navy slacks and a plaid button-up shirt. They fit great and the sky blue is especially good for his pale complexion. I’m getting pretty good at menswear.
“This isn’t too bad,” Carson says. “I was sort of worried you’d try to dress me up like a boy-band singer or something.”
As I leave he smiles and says, “Hey. Let me know if you have any trouble with the blog.”
Perfect. Fashion changes lives, and I’ve got tech support.
The next day I’m off to city court.
The hearing goes better than expected. Grandma’s there and the judge seems to buy the idea that I’m a good kid caught in a bad situation. I get sentenced to twenty hours of community service. Grandma signs me up for work at St. Vincent de Paul, a food bank and homeless shelter. I’ll be making sandwiches on some days and going to grocery stores asking for donations on others.
I volunteer for a shift on Monday after school at the Bashas’ Grocery near Mountain Vista. We work in teams of two, and it’s easy. We have a table inside the store, which we stock with generic peanut butter, jelly and bread. When people come by, we ask them to take some to the register, pay for it, and bring it back to us for the shelter.
Julie from church is my partner. She goes to Mesa High and is volunteering to look good on her college application. She assumes I’m in it for the same reason, and I don’t correct her. We’re doing pretty good and have managed to convince shoppers to pay for most of the peanut butter we’d stacked on our table.
“One of us needs to go back to the stockroom and get more peanut butter,” I tell Julie. We’ve been trained to go to the back of the store, ring a buzzer and wait for a store employee to give us more boxes of food.
“I’ll go,” she says. She grabs the cart and heads toward the rear of the store.
While Julie’s gone, Tommy shows up. Inwardly, I groan. Also, I sort of want to punch him.
He’s got a third chair he must’ve lugged out of the store office. I don’t move over to make room for him. “You don’t need to be here,” I say coldly.
He stares at the ground. “They’re always looking for volunteers.” Tommy’s not wearing his usual T-shirt and cargo pants. He’s got an expensive polo shirt with an enormous logo on the pocket area and a pair of designer jeans.
Volunteer some other time, I’m about to say.
Tommy speaks first. “Cookie. Come on. I’m—”
“Sorry?” I finish. “I’m sick of hearing that.”
“I wasn’t going to say that,” he says, raising his head. “I was going to say that people can disagree. Okay. So you don’t like Kennes, so...”
I never get to hear the rest of Tommy’s speech or point out that he kissed me and then blew me off to take Kennes to the dance. A woman with a tween daughter approaches our table and adds several jars of peanut butter and loaves of bread to our stash. “Say hi to Father Tim, okay?” she says as she and her daughter leave the store.
I hear a familiar voice.
“Hey! Tommy!”
It’s Kennes.
Oh. Perfect.
Tommy’s face turns red but the situation has left him with no option other than to join Kennes where she’s standing in line at the Starbucks inside the grocery store. The barista calls, “Iced skinny vanilla latte,” and Kennes picks up the cup.
Julie’s making her way back to our table pushing a cart loaded with boxes of peanut butter. She and I are about the same size, which is to say that she’s another person society would classify as fat.
As Julie passes, Kennes says loudly, “Yeah, if they need food for the homeless shelter, that girl ought to skip lunch a couple days a week. They could probably feed half the city with the leftovers.”
Julie’s face turns red and she pushes the cart faster. Maybe we can combine our powers and disable Kennes with our death glare.
Tommy joins Kennes near a display of coffee mugs and, a second later, is smiling and nodding along with her. Then he’s walking with her, and they’re holding each other’s tanned hands and bouncing with light steps like a Ralph Lauren ad set in motion.
The Lean Cuisine spring rolls I ate for lunch creep their way up my throat. I’m doing volunteer work to pay for Tommy’s fancy Ken-doll outfit. I wonder what the hell has happened to my best friend. I wonder if there’s still time to rat him out. I wonder what the punishment is for face-punching.
Kennes puts her arm around Tommy’s waist as they pass me at the table. “What do you think, hon? You think if we donate a few jars of peanut butter at least one will make it to the shelter?”
Hon.
What the hell?
“I’ll walk you to the door.” Tommy maintains a bland face and an even tone.
“Yeah. Good call. I don’t think they’d make it either.” Kennes laughs again.
Tommy comes back as I sit there with my blood boiling and my face frozen in shock and rage. He faces me straight on. For a second, he isn’t laughing or smiling, and he’s that same real guy from the first night in Wyoming. For a second, I can see the old Tommy in his slouch and seriousness.
Julie’s back, and her eyes are watering like she’s about to cry. I silently pray that she doesn’t. Not that there’s anything wrong with releasing your emotions or anything. But girls like Kennes thrive on their ability to make people feel like dirt. Crying gives them their power.
Julie’s barely holding it together.
“Don’t let her get to you. She’s just really...” I trail off.
“Having a hard time,” Tommy says in a quiet voice. “Her parents’ divorce. It’s been really rough on her. She doesn’t mean to...” He trails off. Like even he can’t figure out what Kennes doesn’t mean to do.
“I was going to say horrible,” I say through clenched teeth.
Julie laughs but asks, “Mind if I cut out early?”
I shake my head, and she takes a few steps toward the door. “Julie. Hey,” I call. “What happened here today...don’t think about it. It’s what’s inside us that counts.”
She glances at Tommy. “We may be the only ones who think that.”
“No, no, you’re not,” Tommy sputters. But the damage is done. Julie eyes him skeptically and then disappears through the store’s sliding doors.
“Twenty bucks says she’s in tears by the time she hits the parking lot,” I say.
Tommy squirms in his seat. “Cookie—”
“Don’t. Just don’t.”
He sits there with me for the rest of my shift, a tense silence between us.
Afterward, I drive the bags full of supplies over to St. Vincent de Paul. Father Tim is there, and he helps me unload the Corolla. As we stock the kitchen cabinets with bread, I say, “Can I ask you something?”
“Shoot.”
“You think Jesus was serious about all that turn-the-other-cheek stuff?”
He brushes the dust off his black shirt and leans against the counter. His gray hair is a total mess. “Do I think he was serious? Oh no. See, Jesus said, ‘When someone strikes you on your right cheek, turn the other one to him, as well,’ and Matthew forgot to write down, ‘Just kidding.’”
Yep. Note to self: Father Tim doesn’t like to talk.
He surprises me when he continues, “But that quote is taken out of context all of the time. People think it means Christ intended for everyone to make doormats of themselves and allow others to mistreat them. But it’s really a warning against retaliation, especially when reacting in anger. The Old Testament permitted a certain amount of vengeance. An eye for an eye. Jesus is saying that’s no longer possible.”
I frown in confusion. “So what does that mean? In terms of behavior. If someone hurts you, what do you do?”
He snorts. “Has someone hurt you? Out of professional obligation, I’m required to ask and also to hint with subtlety that you’ve missed Mass a few times lately.”
“This is hypothetical,” I say, rolling my eyes at the Mass comment.
He resumes stacking jars of grape jelly in one of the cabinets. “Well, hypothetically, it’s more about what you can’t do. You can’t get revenge. You have to try to love your enemy.”
“What if it’s your friend that hurts you?”
Father Tim turns back to me with his piercing blue eyes, and I get the sense he knows what I’m talking about. “You should forgive your friend. But also realize that when we offer forgiveness, we don’t need to keep putting ourselves in a position to get hurt. Just because you love someone doesn’t necessarily mean being around that person is good for you.”
We finish our work in silence.
“Good work,” he says when we’re done.
I turn to say goodbye to Father Tim.
“Cookie, your father doesn’t know about any of this stuff, does he?” Father Tim sighs. “He’s asking about you again. I’m a simple man. Once in a while, I’d like to get a mission report that doesn’t end with Martin asking me to track down his kid. Is there some particular reason you can’t manage to squeeze in a couple emails between your toy heists and doughnut frosting?”
“Ha ha.”
Father Tim frowns. “That’s a real question.”
My shoulders tense up. “I told you, he knows where I am.”
He doesn’t press any further, and says, “Hypothetically speaking, Catholics aren’t supposed to miss Mass. I’m sure I’ll see you Sunday.”
I smile at him. A fake sort of smile.
As I drive to Grandma’s yellow house, I think about the situation I’m in.
Tommy sends me a couple of text messages. Call me when you’re ready to talk. We’ll always be best friends. I delete them so that I’m not tempted to answer.
Grandma says, “This too shall pass.”
Maybe the time will come when I forgive Tommy. Maybe the time will come when I will have Grandma’s faith that everything works out in the end.
Right now, I can take only one part of Father Tim’s advice.
Tommy isn’t good for me.
That night, I make the first entry on my new blog. It’s my mission statement.