Pretty Is

By the last week of school I was excited and Monica was grumpy. All week I kept thinking, I’m out of here! Mrs. Winsted kept telling us, “School is not over, kids. We still have work to do.” But there was a lot of giggling and fooling around, and even Mrs. Winsted didn’t seem all that serious about the work.

With everybody giddy like this, it wasn’t too hard to forget my worries about Monica and Kayla and Hannah. And myself.

Every morning on the way to school I was as brave as Aragorn, ready to fling myself into battle, slashing the air with a stick sword. Or I was Legolas the tall elf, swift and light, more nimble than any human, leaping into the saddle as if I was flying.

Monica, though, was anything but winged. She dragged her feet in the morning, getting ready for school as if she was going to the doctor for a shot. After school she spent more time than ever with the guinea pigs, and she was even bossier than usual, asking me if I’d done my homework or telling me to get my stuff off the table.

On Wednesday, when we were supposed to help Mama fix dinner, instead of waiting for Mama to tell us what to do, she ordered me around. “I’ll make the salad. Erin, you set the table.”

“Nay nay, horseface.” I was feeling too cheerful to be seriously annoyed; besides, I was pleased to have come up with this clever answer, which I’d heard on the playground the week before. I continued reading the advice column in the newspaper, where a woman wanted to know what to do about her teenage son who smoked marijuana.

“Erin,” said Mama in her warning voice.

“Yes, Mama dearest?” I answered pleasantly.

“Be polite to your sister, and set the table.”

“Coming, dearest Mama.”

I finished the advice column, then went to the kitchen and started counting out forks and knives from the drawer. Instant rhythm: pick up one fork and one knife simultaneously, clink them together (“One!”), put them on the counter, do it again. Pickup, clink, “Two!” Clatter Pickup, clink, “Three!”

“Cut it out, dummy,” snapped Monica.

“Girls,” said Mama. “Would you please stop antagonizing each other?”

“Just making a little music,” I said with a shrug, and took the silverware into the dining room.

Behind me, I heard Mama say, “Monica, what’s going on, honey? Did you have a bad day at school?”

“No.”

“Are you sure? You’re acting kind of mad at the world.”

“I’m not mad at the world.” But she sure sounded like it.

Mama sighed. “If you say so.” She took a casserole dish out of the oven and lifted the lid. A little cloud of steam puffed out.

“Good evening, ladies,” called Daddy from the front hall.

Five minutes later we were all sitting in the dining room, and Daddy said, exactly the way he said almost every night at supper, “Well, how was everybody’s day today?”

“Twenty-nine SUVs! Fourteen vans! And the highlight of the day—one white stretch limousine!” Mama worked part-time as a teller at a drive-in bank. Her job was so boring, she kept count of the different kinds of cars that came through.

“Very good,” said Daddy. “And how was Sandy Creek School?”

“Good,” I answered. “We finished making the video about our science projects. Tomorrow we get to watch the whole thing.”

“Do parents get to see this?” Mama asked, reaching over to put a spoonful of spinach on each of our plates.

“I think we’re all going to get copies of it. You know what’s really great?”

“What?” said Daddy, cutting into a pork chop.

“Only two more days of school and I’ll never have to go back there again.”

“That’s fine,” Daddy said. “And how about Miss Monica ? How was your day today?”

Monica rolled her eyes. “How come you have to ask that every single day?”

Daddy looked annoyed, like underneath his usual polite self there was someone touchy and tired and not so polite. “It’s a civil question, Monica. Civilized people ask each other how their day went. Now, how about a civil answer?”

Monica clamped her mouth shut in that bulldog way we all knew, but Mama intervened, saying smoothly, “Your English class had a video project, too, didn’t you, Monica?”

“Yeah.”

“And you had a part in it, didn’t you?”

“Everybody had a part,” Monica mumbled.

“What was your part?” Daddy asked, and got a mumbled reply that none of us seemed to catch.

I suddenly had an idea that made everything funny.

Daddy said, “What?” and at the same time I said, “I know! Her part was Mumbling Monica! Monica the Merry Mumbler!” No one else seemed to think this was funny.

“How did it go?” asked Mama.

“It was dumb,” she said, looking down at her napkin and twisting it. “We were all supposed to read these speeches from Romeo and Juliet and then play them back. So we could see how we sounded and whether we looked at the audience and things like that.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound too bad,” Mama said, “if everybody had to do the same thing.”

Monica just sat there, eyes on her plate, blinking a little. Blinking back tears, I suddenly realized.

“Did something else happen, honey?” Mama asked gently.

“Just”—she swallowed hard before going on—“a bunch of dumb boys started calling people names.”

“Calling who names—you?” asked Mama.

“Yeah.” I could hardly hear her now.

“Like what?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Monica said, looking away, blinking rapidly.

Mama shook her head. “Just ignore them. Boys think they have to show off, doing things like that.”

But I wanted to know what they said. “What did they call you?” No answer. Monica wasn’t looking at any of us, just fiddling with her napkin, her glass of milk, her fork. “Come on, what did they call you?”

Mama and Daddy were waiting for an answer, too.

“Dumb stuff,” she muttered finally. “Like ‘Juliet.’ When we were going upstairs.” Her voice got louder and angrier, doing a mocking imitation. “ ‘There’s Juliet on her balcony.”’

“What’s wrong with that?” said Daddy. “That Juliet was a real pretty girl, if I remember rightly.”

I rolled my eyes. Daddy just did not get it.

Monica didn’t seem to hear him. “Then stupid Mark Malone said, ‘Where’s Romeo? Wherefore art thou Romeo?’ ” She was really beginning to cry now. “Stupid idiot.”

“Of course he’s an idiot,” said Mama. “Pay no attention.”

“And then,” Monica said, and now she was swallowing hard and crying more. “And then he grabbed Randy Wayman” —a scrawny little guy—“and made him kneel down and lift his arms up. And then Randy pretended he had to throw up and all the boys started—barfing.”

“Oh, that’s nothing,” Daddy said. “Don’t let that bother you.” He went on eating, but Mama winced, and I knew she didn’t think it was “nothing.” I suddenly didn’t feel like eating anymore. I could hear the hoots of laughter, picture Monica’s humiliated face.

Daddy went right on. Maybe he wanted to cheer her up by changing the subject. Or maybe, like I said, he just didn’t get it. “Well, don’t pay any attention to that sort of nonsense. Let me tell you about my day. Old Dad gets a turn, too, right?” He started talking about the people he interviewed for a salesclerk job in the shoe department, and how most of them didn’t know the first thing about how to dress or how to act. Whenever you got good help, he said, they stayed a month or two, or a couple years at most, and then they left and you had to find somebody else.

I wasn’t listening. I was thinking about how mean those kids were to my sister, and I wanted to kick that Mark Malone. I was thinking about how awful Monica must have felt, with all of them laughing at her. But I was also thinking, grimly, Thanks a lot, Monica. Now I know who I’ll be in middle school—Juliet’s little sister.