Life On Hold Page 2

  I kept my attention on my sandwich during the Blake drama, although I was aware of him going through the lunch line and laughing a little too loudly at something the lunch lady told him. He always acted nice to the teachers and cafeteria workers, but made fun of them behind their backs. I’d encountered Blakes at other schools. I knew their ways, how they had to be the center of everything, the disdain they had for most other people. Blake had no idea what a stereotype he was. Every high school in the country had their own top dogs, all of them completely oblivious to the fact that they wouldn’t be anything special once they got out in the big world. I had a sudden amusing thought that a good idea for a movie would be to fill a stadium with every Blake-type kid from every high school in America and make them compete against each other. I was a little fuzzy on what kind of competition I’d have them do. Some sort of fight-to-the-death thing. I’d have to think about it and fill that part in later.

  I looked up in time to see Kylie grinning at me across the table. She peeled the top off her yogurt and laughed. Mason sat next to her looking like he was about to crack up too. Something was funny.

  “What?”

  “We’ve been watching you for the last ten minutes, and I’ve been waving at you.”

  Mason smiled so widely I could see his canines. Man, he had white teeth. “When you get lost in thought, you’re in another world,” he said.

  I looked at them in mock indignation. “What’s your point?”

  Kylie shrugged and gestured with her spoon. “You just look so cute. Did you know you have a vein in your forehead that sticks out when you concentrate really hard?”

  “No way.” I reached up to touch my forehead. Smooth, just like I remembered.

  “Of course it’s not doing it now,” Mason said. “Only when you’re doing your heavy thinking.”

  “How much does it stick out?” I asked, concerned. One more thing to be self-conscious about.

  “Like this,” Mason said, putting his finger against his forehead. “Only not a finger.”

  “It’s not that obvious,” Kylie said. “Don’t let him get to you.”

  The subject of my forehead distracted us from the rest of the lunch-hour noise—the talking and laughing and banging that filled the room. We were in our own world, with Mason going on about blood flow and what causes veins to protrude, and Kylie assuring me that lots of people had the forehead vein thing and that it really wasn’t that noticeable.

  We were so into the conversation that we didn’t even see Blake coming up alongside us. I only noticed him when he fell flat on his back next to our table. One moment he was upright, sauntering along with his tray in front of him like he ruled the school. A split second later he was down on the floor. His tray went up as he fell; an apple catapulted upward as the rest of his food slid downward. In the quickest show of reflexes I’ve ever seen in my life, Mason reached out and grabbed the apple as it came back down. The whole thing happened in an instant. In shocked silence, I burst out laughing.

  Blake sat up stunned, his legs sticking out in front of him. He still held onto the tray, but his pizza slice had landed upside down on his lap. Mason jumped up and extended a hand to help him up. “Dude, you okay?”

  “No, I’m not okay.” He was turning red now and looked really pissed off. “Some dumbass spilled something and made me slip.” He glared at me, like it was my fault.

  The look on his face struck me as really funny. The more I tried to stop laughing the worse it got, and now some of the other kids at surrounding tables were laughing too, a few of them clapping and calling out things like, “Way to go, Blake!”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, wiping my eyes. “But the way you went down and then the apple went up…” A person really had to see it to get the full picture. He’d gone down fast, and then the apple had flown upward like it was a whole separate thing, as if it had a life of its own. Then Mason’s hand shooting out and catching it. All so perfect, it could have been a scene in a movie.

  “It’s not funny.” Blake swatted Mason’s hand away. I guess he didn’t want any help getting up. He stood up slowly and brushed off the front of his legs, but his pizza slice had left a tomato sauce smear on his khakis right over his crotch. “Great, just great.” He gave me the evil eye, and I tried again to hold back my laughter.

  “I really am sorry,” I said. “It just struck me as funny. Sorry about your pants.” I tried to hold back my laughter, but I was so far gone I was choking on it.

  His face contorting in anger, he took a step toward me like he was going to get in my face, and I reached toward my backpack for the pepper spray I always carried. My mom had bought it for me when I got my first period, like suddenly men would be attacking me. I’d put it in the small front pocket, like she’d suggested, but I’d never used it. She told me when my gut was afraid I shouldn’t hesitate.

  “Hey,” Mason yelled. “Back off.” He stepped in between me and Blake, which was hugely courageous because Blake was about eight inches and fifty pounds bigger than him.

  “Out of my way, chink-boy.”

  His voice was threatening, but Mason didn’t movie. “I’m Japanese, not Chinese, you moron.” I noticed Mason’s hand, still holding the apple, rise up a few inches.

  “Chinese, Japanese, whatever. It doesn’t make a difference,” Blake screamed, his vocal cords jutting out of his throat. I think he meant to come off like he was tough, but he sounded like an idiot.

  By now three of Blake’s guys were clustered behind him. One of them, Nick Dunstan, whooped and clapped a hand on Blake’s shoulder. “It does make a difference, Blake. They’re completely different countries.”

  Blake glared at him, but Nick’s gaze was on me, a big grin on his face like we were in on some secret. But if there was a secret between us, someone forgot to tell me.

  Mr. Meltzer, the lunchroom supervisor, walked toward us with his keys jangling. “What’s the problem here?” As usual, he’d waited until a group had gathered. He only responded to situations that were impossible to ignore.

  “Blake hit a wet spot,” Kylie said, taking another spoonful of yogurt. “He fell down.” She gave me a sly smile.

  “Are you hurt, son?” Mr. Meltzer put his hand on Blake’s arm. Big mistake.

  Angrily, Blake shook him off. “I’m fine.”

  Nick picked up the tray and the slice of pizza. Another guy retrieved a Gatorade from underneath a neighboring table. Nick held up the pizza, which drooped like a clock in a Salvador Dali painting. “You want me to get you another piece?” he asked, but Blake was already heading out the door of the lunchroom. Off to the bathroom, was my guess, but I had news for him—that blob of pizza sauce wasn’t going away easily.

  “Okay, people,” Meltzer said. “Back to your seats. I’ll get someone to clean this up.” Everyone was pretty much drifting back to their tables anyway, so his big display of authority didn’t count for much.

  Mason took his seat. “That was interesting.”

  “Thanks for sticking up for me,” I said. “No one ever did that for me before.”

  “No problem. Anything for a friend.” He waved a hand and took a bite out of Blake’s apple.

  I watched Blake’s crew as they headed back to their table. A whole herd of them. As if he could feel my eyes on his back, Nick stopped and turned around so he was facing my table. He caught my eye, picked up the droopy pizza, and pretended he was going to take a bite. I wasn’t sure what that was all about, but he made me smile.

  “What are you looking at?” Kylie asked.

  “That Nick Dunstan. He’s goofing around with Blake’s pizza.” Kylie swiveled around, but he’d already turned to join the others. “What’s his story, anyway?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?” She studied my face.

  “I mean, what’s the deal with him being in Blake’s group? He doesn’t seem like the rest of them.” Most of the guys at Blake’s table looked like athletes, or football players anyway, but Nick didn’t have the same bui
ld. He wasn’t big or muscular, just sort of lanky and thin. He had to be the water boy or team manager or something.

  “He’s going out with Crystal Palmer, and she’s part of that group. He’s in by association,” Kylie said. She got a sudden smug look on her face. “You think he’s cute, don’t you?” She nudged Mason. “Our girl has a crush on one of Blakey’s boys.”

  “I do not,” I protested. “I just think he’s interesting. He doesn’t fit.”

  Mason leaned across the table and started singing. “Rae and Nicky sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G…”

  “Stop it,” I said, reaching over to cover his mouth. “You are so immature.” Trust Mason to torment me like a fourth grader.

  Underneath my hand, he finished a muffled version of the verse. “First comes love, then comes marriage…”

  Chapter 4

  Message from the Smedster

  When I got home to our apartment, Gina and her friend Carla were in the kitchen smoking cigarettes and drinking Diet Coke, flipping through the newest issues of Elle and Glamour.

  My mother could justify spending money on makeup and magazines and hair products because she was in the fashion business. Or at least that’s what she thought. In reality she was a nail technician, which is just a sideways way of saying she was a manicurist. It’s not anything I’d want to do, but Gina is extremely good at it. First off, she has people skills like you wouldn’t believe. It’s impossible not to like her, and believe me, I’ve tried. She loves to talk, and she’s good at listening. She notices everything and gives compliments the way other people exhale. Every time we move she gets a job no problem, and within months she’s the one all the customers want. When I was little I loved to count her tips. I made a game of smoothing out the bills and stacking the coins by size. I used to think we were rich.

  Not only is Gina a people person, but she’s also an artist. The only difference between her and the painters in art galleries is that her canvases are fingernails. I swear she could do full-size paintings if she had the interest. Every year for my birthday she creates a banner that’s absolutely beautiful. I have last year’s rolled up in my closet. I would have kept all of them, but Gina believes in traveling light and not hanging onto a lot of crap.

  “Hey babe,” Gina said when I came into the room. “How was school?” She gave me a wide smile, the same one she greeted me with every day. A so-glad-to-see-you grin. You’d think I’d been away forever or something.

  “Good.” I shook off my backpack and set it against the wall. “I got an A on my English test and a B plus on my biology quiz. We have to dissect a frog tomorrow.”

  “Yuck,” Gina said, making a face like she’d tasted something nasty. “You want me to write a note so you can get out of it? We could say it’s against our religion or something.”

  “No,” I said and went into the fridge for a bottle of water. “I don’t mind. I’m doing it with my lab partner. We did a worm last week and it was pretty interesting.”

  “That’s my girl,” Gina said to Carla. “Did I tell you she got a 3.8 average last year?”

  “You did tell me.” Carla nodded. “Smart girl.” She was a new friend to my mom. Gina made friends very easily, mostly from work.

  I sat down across from the two of them and unscrewed the cap from my bottle.

  “And look at her with the water,” Gina said, pointing. “She stopped drinking soda in seventh grade. Rae’s a better person than me. I’m not sure how that happened.”

  “Maybe from her father’s side?” Carla said, not knowing, of course, that the topic of my father was off limits.

  “I wouldn’t know about that,” I said. “My father is an unknown. I might not even have one for all I know.”

  Gina frowned. “Give it a rest, Rae. I told you everything you need to know.” She snuffed out her cigarette in the ashtray she’d stolen from the Hard Rock Café. “By the way,” she said, conveniently changing the subject, “your vice principal called this afternoon.”

  “Mr. Smedley?”

  Gina nodded. “That’s the one.”

  This couldn’t be good. Mr. Smedley was in charge of discipline. Mason called him the Smedster and did a wicked impression of him, complete with the exaggerated way he pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. As for me, I just tried to stay out of Mr. Smedley’s way. Usually I saw him in the hall yelling out, “Move it along, people. Enough with the screwing around.” I once witnessed a scuffle near the water fountain, or “bubbler” as they insisted on calling it here in Wisconsin. Some kid got his face pushed into it as he was taking a drink, and the Smedster came out of nowhere to haul the offender off to his office. He was tough.

  “Don’t look so worried,” Gina said, putting a cigarette in her mouth and flicking a lighter so that a blue-gold flame shot out of the top. She inhaled and set the lighter down on the table. “You’re not in any trouble. I asked. He said he wants to ask a favor of you.”

  “A favor of me?”

  She exhaled, the smoke coming out in a hazy wisp. “That’s what he said. You’re supposed to go to his office fifteen minutes before school starts.”

  “Did he say what the favor was?” I pulled at the edge of the label on my Aquafina and tore one lone thin piece from around the top.

  “Nope, but he did say you’ve been a model student. You’re not in any trouble.”

  Yeah, because the Smedster always called students in just to chat. I wondered if he wanted me to tell on someone else. I really didn’t have any information that anyone else didn’t have. And how did he even know who I was? Out of hundreds of kids in that school he wanted me to do him a favor? Something wasn’t adding up.

  Gina laughed. “Chill, Rae. I’m sure it’s nothing. If they give you any grief at that school, you can always switch and go somewhere else. Hey!” She snapped her fingers. “Maybe you could homeschool. We could order that curriculum in a box off the Internet and you could work from here. Admit it,” she said, pointing my way, “that’s an interesting idea.”

  “Interesting, yes,” I said. Homeschooling? What was she thinking? All I could envision were those religious families, the ones with the little girls wearing Amish dresses and the boys with their slicked-back hair and matching polo shirts. I’d seen groups of them at the mall, following their mother single file, pretending it was a field trip. Of course, in Gina’s version of homeschooling, I’d be sitting at the kitchen table filling out worksheets while she came and went from the salon, depending on her schedule. I’d keep her company while she read her horoscope and answered her cell phone. Bleah. No thank you, I’d rather go to a real high school, one that would get me into college. I picked up my backpack and slung it over one shoulder. “If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go to my room and start my homework.”

  “Nice seeing you, hon,” Carla said, giving me a wave like a salute.

  “Nice seeing you too, Carla.”

  From the hallway I heard Carla say, “You sure did luck out with that girl.”

  And my mom answered, “Isn’t she something? I’ve never had a bit of trouble with her.”

  Yes, No Trouble Rae, that would be me.

  Chapter 5

  The Rae Maddox Integration Program

  I’ve always been uncomfortable around men, especially authority figures. My mom, on the other hand, has never had a problem talking to anyone, especially men. It doesn’t hurt that Gina’s very pretty. She has red hair, curly red hair—the kind that stands out even at a distance. About once a month, she puts some kind of rinse on it that “enhances” the color, but she’s a true redhead from birth. She’s also petite and thin, but not in a skinny, anorexic model kind of way. More like a movie star from the 1920s, the ones with the big eyes and heart-shaped faces.

  She’s dated a lot of men over the years, and I can always tell how surprised they are when they meet me, the daughter with the straight brown hair and ripped blue jeans. The funny thing is, Gina thinks I look great. She likes my ripped jeans and black T-
shirts, my silver hoop earrings. She respects that I have my own style.

  Gina would have had no problem walking in the Smedster’s office that next morning. She thinks the world loves her, and it usually does. I, however, know the world doesn’t care about me one way or the other, so I’m always cautious.

  I got to school early and walked into the office. I couldn’t shake a feeling of dread. The head secretary, a large woman with a pencil tucked behind her ear, was already there tapping away on her computer. “Can I help you, dear?” For some reason, her kind voice made me feel a bit better.

  I cleared my throat and leaned on the counter that separated us. “Mr. Smedley left a message with my mom asking me to come in and see him before school.”

  She stood up from her desk and gave me a hard look over her wire-rimmed glasses. “You would be Rae, then?”

  I nodded. It was bad when they knew your name.

  “The other girl is already there, and Mr. Smedley should be arriving any minute. You can either wait here or in his office.” She indicated a short hallway off to the right.

  “The other girl?” There were two of us? Could the other girl be Kylie? I doubted it. I would have heard if Smedley had called her house. This whole thing was so confusing. Gina had said I wasn’t in any trouble, so why did I have this uneasy feeling like something bad was going to happen?

  “Go on down then,” the woman encouraged, like I was a little kid or something. “You two can talk until he gets here.” She pointed. “First door on the left.”

  As promised, there was another girl in Mr. Smedley’s office, but I’d never seen her before. She sat at a small circular table just inside the doorway, not much bigger than the kind they had in preschool. Four molded plastic chairs were arranged around it at perfectly spaced intervals. Mr. Smedley’s desk was on the opposite wall. To give him credit, at least his office didn’t have any of those inspirational posters—the kind with the kitten dangling from a branch headed by the words “Just Hang in There.” Instead he had framed photos of sailboats with sunsets in the background. Or maybe they were sunrises—hard to say, because in a photo it looks the same.