Mom gets home a little after five. She’s getting out of her car when Mrs. Warren comes out of her trailer and starts talking to her. I watch them from the window. I can’t hear what they’re saying.
“So I hear you played hooky this afternoon,” Mom says as soon as she comes in the door.
“I had to come home to clean up because I had food all over my clothes. Brandy’s friend tripped me when I was carrying my lunch tray.”
She scowls. “Maybe I should talk to the principal on Monday.”
“Do you want to get me killed? Brandy will just get me someplace away from the school. The principal can’t do anything about that.”
I wish I could think of something to do about it myself, but I can’t. I guess I just have to hang around waiting for Brandy to find the right time and place to pounce on me.
Mom puts her arm around me. “We’ll think of something.”
I just stand there, snuffling on her shoulder for a bit.
“Why don’t you call Siobhan?” she suggests. “Maybe you could visit her this evening since tomorrow is Saturday. That would make you feel better.”
That’s so true. Being around Siobhan might ease the sadness. I think of the cake she brought to school. She really likes me. I’m scared that Brandy might get physical, but even if someone could give me a guarantee that she wouldn’t, I’d still feel awful just because she hates me so much. Knowing someone likes me a lot really would make me feel better.
“Maybe she could stay over,” I say.
“There’s not much room here.”
“Maybe we could stay at Dad’s. You have to go there to sign those papers anyway. You could drop me off tonight instead of tomorrow morning.”
Mom nods. “That would work. You better check with your dad.”
I call him. He says there’s no problem.
I call Siobhan’s house. They’re eating dinner, and her mom sounds mad when she answers the phone.
That’s okay, though, because Siobhan sounds happy to talk to me, and when I ask if she can come spend the night with me at Dad’s house, her mom says yes.
Mom and I finish dinner at about six-thirty, so we’re kind of rushed. I haven’t walked the dog since two in the afternoon. I don’t know when Mom will be home to walk her again.
“Maybe we should take the dog,” I say. “Siobhan and I could take her for a walk at our other house. No one wants to kill me there.”
Mom has gathered up her keys and is halfway out the door. “Bring her along then. You might even want to keep her overnight.”
I hadn’t thought of that. “Don’t you want to keep her?” I ask.
“You’ve spoiled her, letting her sleep on your bed. She expects to sleep with me when you aren’t home.”
“So?”
“I don’t know how you stand the doggie nightmares. She’s always yipping and scrabbling with her feet. I wake up every time.”
I don’t. I’ve heard her bark and seen her do running motions with her legs when she’s having a daytime nap, but I didn’t know she did these things at night. I lift her into the car. It will be nice to have her at Dad’s. I sleep better with company.
We pick Siobhan up and then drive over to the house. Amy’s car is in the driveway. Before getting out of the car, Mom flips down the visor and checks her face in the mirror. Then she gets out, straightens her skirt, and adjusts the shoulder strap of her bag. Finally she marches toward the house. Siobhan and I follow after her.
We ring the bell and Dad yells, “Come in!”
He and Amy are sitting at the kitchen table. I wonder how long Amy’s been here. Maybe Mom’s wondering too.
“I’m not late, am I?” she asks.
The clock on the stove says it’s 6:55, so she knows darn well she’s early.
“No,” says Amy. “Come sit down, Kate. Now that you’re here, we can get down to business.”
So if it’s time to get down to business now, what were she and Dad doing before? Mom sits down with them at the table. I go to the fridge to see if there are any snacks. There are some green seedless grapes. I wash them and use a pair of scissors to snip them into small bunches. I can only make the chore take so long. Finally, I go into the family room, where Siobhan is waiting for me. I hand her the grapes and turn on the TV, but I keep the volume really low. I gesture toward the kitchen so Siobhan understands that I’m trying to hear what Mom, Dad, and Amy are saying.
Dad says the offer isn’t bad but that probably the people who made it would pay a bit more if they had to. Amy agrees it’s worth a try. After some more discussion, Amy makes some changes on the papers and Mom and Dad sign them.
“That’s a reasonable counteroffer,” Amy says. “I think they’ll go for that.”
I head back to the fridge and get a couple of cans of pop. Siobhan follows me.
Amy doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to leave. She takes her time packing up her papers. Then she starts asking Dad if he plays golf. He doesn’t. She says he should really try it.
Mom’s hardly said a word since we got here. She picks up a library book that Dad’s left on the table. She pulls out the crossword puzzle he’s used as a bookmark and lays the book facedown so she doesn’t lose his page. She takes a pencil from her bag and fills in a couple of words. Then she puts the puzzle back where it was and pushes the book to one side.
“Have you read much of Robert Ludlum?” Amy asks.
“What?” Mom looks at Amy and then at the book. “Oh, no. I’m not in to the thrillers. This is Harold’s book.”
Amy reaches over and checks the spine of the book. “Oh, a library book,” she says. “How quaint.”
“Quaint?” says my mom. “If it was a hand-copied book where the scribe had worked little animal images in to the uppercase first letter of each chapter, now that could be called quaint. But a paperback published in 2004, what’s quaint about that?”
Amy doesn’t answer her. She just gets up and puts the papers into her briefcase. “Don’t bother to show me out. I know my way.”
That’s good because it doesn’t look like anyone is planning to walk to the door with her.
“Sorry I was such a hag,” Mom says as soon as the front door closes.
“Forgiven,” Dad says.
“I never did like her much,” I say.
“Yeah,” Siobhan says to my dad. “Lucy said you probably didn’t notice that Amy was acting real flirty with you.”
“You noticed it too, didn’t you, Mom?” I ask.
“I may have,” she says. She looks at Dad. “So have I messed up a beautiful relationship for you?”
“No, I think it was the library book’s fault, or maybe she was still miffed because I didn’t buy in to her suggestion that the two of us should have dinner tonight to celebrate our sales deal.”
“She asked you out?” I say.
“She thought I might like to take her to a five-star restaurant with a lot of ambience. I might have gone for it, but I was too embarrassed to admit I didn’t have a clue which of our local eateries would qualify.”
“How about Earl’s?” Mom asks. By now, she’s smiling a bit and looking more relaxed.
Dad just grins, shakes his head, and replies, “’fraid not.”
Siobhan and I take our drinks and go back to the family room, where the dog has made herself comfortable on a chair. Mom and Dad stay at the table.
“So what are you going to buy if this sale goes through?” Mom asks.
“I was thinking about an apartment,” Dad says. “How about you?”
“I might be going back to school. If I do that, I’ll need to use the money from the sale to pay tuition and to live on.”
“You’re going to go back to school?”
“Maybe,” Mom says. “Do you have a problem with that?”
“Of course not, it’s your business. What are you taking?”
“That’s my business too.”
There’s this silence that’s really uncomfortable. I’m about to butt in and end the silliness, but Mom breaks down.
“Interior design. I’ve applied to BCIT, but I don’t know if they’ll accept me.”
“You’d be good at that,” Dad says.
“Yeah,” she says. “Me and probably five hundred other applicants.”
“When did you apply?”
“In February.”
There’s another long pause. Dad’s scowling. “Why didn’t you tell me? You never even told me you were thinking about it.”
“Because I knew how you’d react.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Dad asks.
“I knew you’d never approve, that you’d just be so freaked out about the finances that you’d try to talk me out of it.”
“So now you’re a mind reader too.”
“Am I wrong?”
“I don’t know what I’d have done,” he says. “We could never afford to have you quit your job and go to school full-time unless you agreed to sell this place, and I don’t think you’d have been prepared to do that.”
“What are you talking about?” she says. “I just did!”
“Because we had no choice. I know how much of yourself you put in to making this house what it is.”
“You did a lot of grunt work too,” Mom says.
“Yes, but it didn’t matter as much to me. I’m okay with selling, but I always knew it would break your heart to lose your home.”
“Who’s mind reading now? We just signed the papers, and, in case you haven’t noticed, my heart’s still beating just fine.”
She picks up her bag and grabs her keys off the table. She heads for the front door, and as she leaves she slams it a bit. Siobhan and I finally look at the TV. I turn up the volume. I have no idea what this show is about, but I suppose we have to watch it until the end so it won’t be totally obvious to Dad that we’ve been eavesdropping.
As soon as the show is over, I tell Siobhan we need to take the dog for a walk. We’re barely out the door when Siobhan says exactly what I have been thinking.
“When your mom and dad were talking about Amy, I thought they sounded really friendly.”
“I’d really rather not talk about it,” I say. Then I go ahead and talk about it. “It’s not like I really want them fighting all the time, but, in a way, it would be easier. When they have these good moments, it gets my hopes up.”
“But I don’t understand what they ended up fighting about,” says Siobhan.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I reply. This time, that’s all I say.
We walk along in silence. The dog sniffs and piddles every few feet. Walking in a new neighborhood is probably her idea of a great adventure. The street is very quiet. We don’t meet a single person.
“This is a dull neighborhood, isn’t it?” says Siobhan.
“Dull is good,” I say. “At least I feel safe here. At my mom’s place, I’m afraid to even walk the dog.”
We spend most of the rest of the night talking about Brandy.
Siobhan and I sleep in on Saturday morning, probably because we stayed up way too late last night. We toast bagels for breakfast. Dad’s planning to go grocery shopping this morning.
“Did Mom say when she’d be here?” I ask.
He looks confused. “She’s not coming here. I’ll take you home before dinner tomorrow.”
“Isn’t she coming to clean?”
“She doesn’t have to. It looks like we have a sale on the house.”
“Yeah, but how long till we move out?”
“Five weeks.”
I look at the kitchen floor. I spilled a bit of the cheese topping for the popcorn last night. I noticed earlier that the microwave is dirty inside. “So what’s going to happen till then?”
“Your mom wanted the place to look good so it would sell. If it’s sold, I think she’ll tell me what happens now is my mess and my problem.”
“We should clean up,” Siobhan says.
I can’t believe that I go along with her plan. We spend an hour cleaning. I hope my mom appreciates our efforts. This is just so her job.
Dad takes us with him to the mall when he goes grocery shopping. I tell Siobhan that Dad and I don’t know how to cook. We eat a lot of hot dogs, scrambled eggs, and macaroni dinners.
“Want me to show you how to make a Thai noodle salad?” she asks when we get to the store and start down the first aisle.
“Oh, Siobhan,” Dad says. “I’m not in to making a fuss over cooking.”
“No, really, Mr. Jensen, this recipe is dead easy.”
She makes him buy bean sprouts and water chestnuts. It’s almost noon when we finish. He keeps looking at his watch.
“Amy’s coming by at one. I imagine we’ll be out looking at apartments and houses most of the afternoon. What are you girls planning to do?”
“We could hang out at the mall,” Siobhan says, “and just go window-shopping.”
I have no money. How could that be fun? I go to say something, but she hits me in the ribs with her elbow.
“You sure that’s okay?” Dad asks.
“Do you have enough money for lunch?” Siobhan asks me.
Dad pulls out his wallet and hands me a ten-dollar bill.
“We’ll be home by four,” Siobhan says.
This seems like a really stupid plan to me. But going out for lunch makes sense. We hit the McDonald’s that’s just a block down the street. It still leaves us a lot of time to kill. What will we do?
“Shop!” says Siobhan.
“But I have no money!”
“I don’t either, but we can still shop. You just have to know how to do it.”
What do I know about shopping? I come from a family where my parents don’t even have a line of credit on their bank account.
We wander back to the mall. Siobhan wants to go into Mariposa.
“I guess we could look,” I say as we walk into the store.
“And try things on,” she adds. “That’s the best part. Don’t you ever imagine what it would be like to wear stuff you’d never be able to buy?”
I think of my mom’s lacy push-up bra.
“Sometimes,” I admit.
“So that’s what we do. We each pick something we like. Then we’ll go and try it on.”
She’s already flipping through a rack of dresses. She pulls out a polka-dotted sundress. The top part is like a skimpy halter and it ties behind the neck. The skirt starts right beneath the bra line and flares out gradually. I find the same dress in my size.
We go to the change rooms and share a stall. It’s hard to believe we’re trying on the same dress. Siobhan has tucked her bra straps down, and the top of the dress stretches smooth across her bust, showing off her curves. She even has cleavage. Then there’s me.
“Maybe if you wore a padded bra?”
“I don’t think it would fool anyone.”
The dress is just hanging from the ties that are knotted behind my neck. With no boobs to fill out the top, the dress looks like a sack.
“You could try jeans under it,” she says. “And a T-shirt too. Mariah has piles of these teen fashion magazines. Most of the models are thin like you, and they wear all these layers. That’s the style now.”
She’s just trying to make me feel better, but it doesn’t work.
“Mariah is lucky that Sister Alexis didn’t catch her with those magazines. Can’t you just imagine the lecture?”
“Oh, she didn’t bring them to school,” says Siobhan. “We were at her house.”
I feel like someone’s kicked me in the stomach. “I think I’ll just go get something else,” I say.
I walk out of the change room and hand the polka-dot sundress to the clerk. I go to the racks and pick up the first dress I find in my size. I don’t feel like doing this anymore. I just want to go home and be by myself.
When I get back to our change room, I strip again, then pull the dress on over my head and do up the belt.
“That’s better on you,” Siobhan says.
“Was Janelle at Mariah’s too?” I ask.
“What? Oh, you mean Wednesday when we were looking at the fashion magazines? No, it was just Mariah and me.”
“I see.”
Siobhan wouldn’t be hanging out with Mariah if I weren’t living in stupid old Langley and going to a public school named after some guy no one even remembers.
I look at Siobhan in the mirror. She’s still wearing the polka-dotted sundress.
“Doesn’t it make you sad to try on something that looks that good and then have to go put it back?”
“Kind of. But now let’s do something different.”
“What?”
She takes the dress off and puts it back on the hanger. When we’ve given both dresses to the clerk, we go back to the racks and Siobhan tells me the rules. We have to see who can come up with the worst outfit, or at least the outfit that looks worst on us.
That’s much more fun. We’re back in the change room in minutes.
Siobhan has this denim thing that’s called a skirtall. The top is like the kind you see on the old farmer overalls, but the bottom’s a short skirt. The material is heavy. There’s a wide waistband outlined in orange thread. The skirt pockets add another horizontal line. The waistband, the pockets, and the short skirt make her hips look about ten feet wide. The bib, on the other hand, is narrow. It covers her boobs so you don’t even see that they’re there. The bib and the two fat straps that come up over her shoulders give her upper body a slim look, so overall she looks like a total pear. It makes me feel much better.
Then I have to try on my worst-looking outfit. I have a short plaid skirt with a wide pleated strip at the bottom. I put on a long floppy T-shirt and a sleeveless hoodie over that. You can’t tell what shape I am.
We step out of our change room to see ourselves in the big mirrors.
Siobhan points to my bare legs and laughs. “You need jeans with it too. Then you’ll look like the chair in my bedroom where I throw my clothes. No one will even be able to tell there’s a body in there.”
“Well, you should talk, you look like …”
We’re interrupted by the sales clerk. “Is there anything I can help you with?” She’s looking at me. “A smaller size in that maybe. I’ll see if we have it in a size two.” Then she looks at Siobhan. “That skirtall looks lovely on you, dear. It’s not everyone who can wear those.”
I think Siobhan’s going to burst. She quickly turns her back on the clerk and says something that’s probably supposed to be thanks, except that it comes out more like a croak.
The clerk goes out to find a smaller size for me, and Siobhan and I run back into our change room. Siobhan has her hands clamped over her mouth, trying to stifle her giggles.
I’m pulling off all the clothes I have on. She starts to unhook the big metal hooks on the straps of her skirtall.
“You’re not planning to put that back, are you, dear?” I say. “It looks so lovely on you.”
Then we both are laughing so hard we have to hang on to each other or we’ll fall over.
The clerk comes back with a smaller T-shirt for me. She doesn’t seem so friendly anymore.
“I think we maybe need to get out of here,” Siobhan says.
I think she’s right.