IT’S WEIRD HOW LISTENING TO people yell at people is fascinating, because people actually yelling at you is terrifying. When you’re not the target, it’s intense but totally watchable.
One moment everything was fine. Girls in the cafeteria, eating soup, or, because it’s Wednesday, lasagna, which is okay but not great. People in their little groups, Shirley and her crew, and me and Carrie in the corner.
Then the next minute, Shirley was screaming at Sarah Hammersmith about what, I wasn’t clear. But unless what Sarah said was “Your hair’s on fire,” it was a clear overreaction.
Carrie looked up from her meatballs. “What the fuck?”
Shirley, tears streaming down her face, stomped her foot. “Fuck you, Sarah.” She wiped her eyes, a little bit of mascara running. “FUCK YOU, you WHORE.”
“Did Shirley just call someone a whore?” I gasped, actually legitimately surprised because … like wow, really? A whore? What was this, church?
Sarah gasped, hand on chest. “Fuck, Shirley. I was just ASKING.”
“Nobody cares about ME,” Shirley spat, storming out of the room.
Carrie munched her pie. Then looked at me. “You want ice cream?”
“It’s like minus thirty degrees.”
“That’s a no, then?”
I might not be screaming my head off in the cafeteria but I also have a problem, in the shape and form of the bag of money that is still stuffed in my locker. Money I didn’t take home and did not give back to Mark last night.
I could have.
I did not.
This is, to be clear, a problem, in part because I’m pretty sure Mark now knows that his money is missing but he hasn’t said anything about it. He didn’t even ask if the woman who cleans the house moved it, which is what I would do if I had a legitimate pile of money and it suddenly went missing.
He did look at me, for like twenty seconds when he came downstairs for breakfast this morning with his big floppy gym bag that he dropped on the floor in front of the kitchen table.
At first, I thought he was looking at me like in some sort of accusatory way because I’m basically in some sort of tell-tale heart situation right now. But then I looked up from my cereal and realized he was like practically asleep; his eyes were almost closed and he was all greasy.
“Mark,” my dad tutted, smoothing down his tie as he stood up from the table, “you need to shower.”
“Yeah, I have practice at school then I’ll shower,” Mark said.
“Hey, Mark,” I said, salutary.
“Hey, G,” he sighed, grabbing a banana from the table.
Then he slipped out the front door to grab a ride with Trevor. Who was blasting “Welcome to the Jungle” so loud in his car I could hear it in the kitchen.
After Shirley’s meltdown, we had independent study. Carrie and I worked on our bio presentation in the Hall C alcove. Which seemed like a good chance to ask Carrie about something I have been thinking about that I cannot google for any sort of helpful answer.
“Hey,” I said, leaning over my desk.
“Hey, what?” Carrie whispered, her nose an inch from her book.
“Why do you think a person puts money in a paper bag?”
Carrie looked up. “Is this like a riddle? Like why did the chicken put his money in a paper bag?”
“Or her. Why is the chicken a ‘he’?”
“Sure, or her. Chicken her. A hen with a lot of money,” Carrie muses.
“It’s a hypothetical question,” I cut in. “But we can make it a riddle if you want.”
“I guess, to give to someone,” Carrie said, as she slipped a tab of gum between her lips and began surreptitiously chewing. “But in a weird way. My stepmom uses weird things as envelopes like brown paper bags and shit like that. But she’s crafty.”
“Right,” I said, lowering my voice. “Does your stepmom give people money in recycled envelopes made of, like, cut up cereal boxes?”
“She usually writes a check,” Carrie said, now searching my face. “Wait. Are you giving me money?”
“You’re rich, and you want me to give you money?” I asked.
“You brought it up.” Carrie shrugged. “And I’m not rich. My dad is rich.”
“Which is something pretty much every girl in this school has said at one point.”
“HA!” Carrie laughed so hard she spit out her gum. “Too fucking real, Georgia.”
After school, Carrie wanted chicken nuggets so we walked the eight blocks to McDonald’s. Is it me or is most of socializing getting food?
Once she was full of batter and chicken, on our way back to the bus stop, Carrie looked at me out of the side of her eye and asked, “Why do you want to know about bags of money? Are you selling drugs? That’s also a money bag thing.”
“I’ll tell you,” I said, finishing my milkshake, fingers numb in the cold, “if you tell me why you’re not friends with Shirley anymore.”
Carrie stopped and looked at me, a little wisp of heat rising up from her collar.
“Or whatever,” I said, slowing as we hit an icy patch, hoping I didn’t fall on my ass. “Did you guys fight?”
“No.” Carrie shrugged. “We’re just … different people.”
It’s weird when you ask someone something and their answer gives you, like, no sense you’ve gotten an answer. Like a step sideways.
You were friends with this person for years, I wanted to say. How does that just end?
Instead, I asked, “What do you think she’s freaking out about now?”
Carrie raised an eyebrow. “That’s two questions.”
“FYI, ‘We don’t get along anymore,’ is kind of a half answer,” I noted.
Carrie reached into her pockets. “It’s probably something to do with Trevor. It’s always Trevor. He loves her; then he doesn’t. Most of the time, she’s basically his doormat. He makes her half a person.”
“Is that why you guys aren’t friends anymore?”
“I don’t know.” Carrie stared at the sidewalk. “Maybe I was never her friend. Shirley is a super fucking selfish person, and maybe super fucking selfish people don’t have real friends.”
“But they have boyfriends?” I asked.
“Trevor is a total asshole,” Carrie added. “He literally treats Shirley like garbage.”
She shoved a second stick of gum in her mouth.
“He’s so good looking,” I said. “I don’t trust boys that good looking.”
Carrie punched me in the arm. Because I think she likes whacking my puffy coat. Admittedly, if someone else was wearing my coat, I would punch them, too.
“OW!”
It didn’t actually hurt but still.
Carrie pulled out a packet of cherry from her left pocket and held it out. “I told you about Shirley. Now you tell me your thing.”
I slipped a slice of surprisingly soft cherry gum out of the packet and unwrapped it with numb fingers. “I found a bag of money in my house.”
Carrie popped a giant pink bubble. “Whose?”
I chewed to keep up. “My brother’s, I think.”
“How do you know it’s his?”
“It was in his room.”
Carrie popped another bubble. “Huh. Is that weird?”
“The bag or that I was in his room?” I ask.
“Both,” Carrie said.
“Maybe?” I said.
Carrie shrugged. “Maybe he’s thinking of making a run for it. Paying his way out of a sticky situation?”
“Maybe.”
I thought of saying the thing about Todd and Mark lying about Todd, but then the bus showed up. Carrie shoved her hands in her pockets.
“Hey. Georgia. Just. You’re not, you know,” she added, as I stepped back so she could get past my big purple hemisphere.
“What?”
“You’re not like Shirley,” Carrie said, turning on her heel as she stepped up onto the bus and was whisked away. “You’re like the opposite.”
Now I’m home to an empty house. Which is pretty standard because my mom has yoga Wednesdays and my dad, as I think has been established, is never home. My house is a good house empty. It doesn’t have any weird squeaks or banging noises, possibly because it’s pretty new, paid for by either my dad’s hard labor or my mom’s creativity, depending on who you ask.
Home alone means I can eat my saltines on the couch and watch TV, so I’m huffing it up the stairs to get changed into my sweats when the house is suddenly full of the sound of my mom’s voice getting shriller and shriller.
“You sit right there; you sit RIGHT THERE,” my mom barks, stomping across the kitchen floor. “YES, HELLO? Yes. Yes, this is HIS WIFE. Tell him, no, I don’t CARE; you TELL HIM to GET ON THE PHONE NOW. TELL him I just had to go to the SCHOOL and talk to the POLICE with his SON, and I need to talk to him NOW.”
I peer through the hallway into the kitchen, where Mark is sitting at the kitchen table. His head down, his knee bobbing up and down in this way teenage boys do. I don’t understand why.
My mom is pacing, the phone pressed to her ear.
I step softly into the kitchen. Mark looks up but only in this way that involves looking at me through the curtain of greasy hair. His eyes look tired. Like, really tired.
There’s a puddle of snow water under the table, dribbling away from Mark’s soaked sneakers.
“Hey,” I whisper.
Mark shrugs and doesn’t look up. “Hey.”
Suddenly, my mom whips around and does that thing where she points UPSTAIRS with, like, a level of violence I don’t think children’s writers should ever exhibit.
I grab a sleeve of saltines and climb the stairs, listening. Mostly, all I can hear is my mom’s tone. Which is at about a nine on the rage scale.
My dad gets home forty minutes later. Enough time for me to get to the bathroom and lie on the floor with my ear to the grate that connects to the kitchen.
“First of all, everyone just CALM DOWN.”
“Do NOT speak to me that way, Will. I was the one who had to go to the school. YOU do not get to waltz in here and play some patriarchal role of—”
“I don’t even know what’s happening!”
“Tell him. MARK!”
Mumbling.
“MARK, speak UP.”
“I … sort of cheated. On an exam.”
“You SORT OF cheated? Explain to me how that is possible, Mark. To SORT OF cheat?”
“Sarah.”
“WILL. Do not look at me like that. Our son CHEATED and I am ALLOWED TO BE ENRAGED.”
Scooting on the floor. Chairs being moved.
I can see, without seeing, the big thick vein in my dad’s neck, always covered with a thin layer of stubble, pulsing. It is the vein of frustration, the vein of disappointment.
More mumbling. Then my dad yells.
“GOD DAMMIT MARK, speak UP!”
“I said, I’m sorry.”
My mom’s voice cuts through my dad’s hollering sharply. “The police were at the school. They think this has something to do with the boy who died. But no one is talking. Will, the POLICE are involved. They think this might have something to do with a MURDER.”
My father’s voice falls an octave. “What did you say, Mark?”
Silence.
“Nothing,” Mark said.
“Is there SOMETHING you SHOULD say?” My mom’s voice is so shrill it’s vibrating the walls.
Mumbling again.
I can feel my heart thumping against the bathroom tiles.
“FINE. So we go to the police. You tell them everything you know. We go now.”
“I can’t.”
My mom’s voice is so high it’s making the pipes shake. “OH YES YOU FUCKING CAN. OH YES YOU FUCKING CAN.”
“It wasn’t really cheating.”
“OH, MARK!” my mom wails. “How stupid do you think we are? Principal Spot showed me your papers! You and your FRIENDS all answered the same question the same fucking way for FUCK SAKES.”
“Okay fine! Okay. What do you want from me?”
The buzz of the fridge. A squeak of shoes.
“Tell me you had nothing to do with what happened to this boy.”
“MOM!”
“TELL ME you had nothing to do with what happened to that boy, Mayer.”
“Jesus, Sarah.”
“Shut up, Will. MARK.”
“I was HOME all night!”
“Mark—”
“I had NOTHING to do with it, okay? He was just. He was selling the answers, and I took them. That’s it!”
My father’s voice. Calm. “He sold them to you.”
Thump.
The sound of what I could only imagine was my father’s signature, if rare, palm slam on the table. Which I had only seen once before when Mark accidentally drove the car in the garage door.
“He was just some kid I got some answers from; it wasn’t a big fucking deal. It was a mistake!”
“Let’s go. Get in the car. Get in the car right now,” my father’s voice rumbles.
Steps echoing to the front door, which slams before I get downstairs.
I grab a jar of honey and sit at the table, dipping saltines and thinking.
Suddenly, I have this really clear memory. Of when Mark and I were kids. This one year, we stayed at my grandparents’ place in Florida for a week during the holidays while my mom was on tour. It was this super retirement complex, and the pool had all these fancy rocks stacked on an island in the middle of the deep end. Because there was no one else under eighty to play with, Mark and I spent the whole week gathering “treasure” from the island. We’d swim to the platform in the deep end, reach up, and knock the rocks one by one into the pool, then we’d take turns diving down to “rescue” the rocks (my idea), put them in towels (Mark’s idea), and carry them to my grandmother’s backyard, tucked behind her gardening shed, where we were going to use a spoon to bury them once we had “enough.” Possibly this meant all of them. After four days, we had pretty much cleaned the pool out, except for the giant pink stone I think was welded down.
Which is when this old man with like two hairs on his head and I’m going to say some sort of deadly facial rash, who was on the condo committee or something, freaked out and came knocking on our grandparents’ door, because of course it was us. Old people don’t steal rocks.
He had a baseball cap that said “BEST GRANDPA” on it, and he was, like, instantly yelling at us about the POOL GEMS. Even though we were just sitting all innocent-like in our grandparents’ kitchen eating Cheerios. Like in his weird yellow grandpa flip-flops with his weird old-man toes waggling. He called us “degenerates.”
My grandmother is not keen on confrontation. I thought she might melt into her sandals.
Meanwhile, I was terrified and started to cry. But Mark just stood up, and, still in his swim trunks, lead everyone to the back yard.
And pointed to the pile of white quartz glistening in the sun.
“There,” he said. “We were going to bury them, but we’ll put them back.”
“Goodness,” my grandmother said.
Later, my grandmother told my mother she blamed the whole thing on my mother’s own “creative tendencies,” which is a compliment hidden in a diss if you’re coming at it from the right perspective.
And after that, we weren’t allowed in the pool for the rest of the week. Which, by the way, a pool is the only reason you go to visit your grandparents in Florida. Not that I wanted to risk seeing the scary old man with the potato skin and weird sausage toes anyway.
I didn’t ask Mark, who spent the rest of the week looking for alligators on the side of the road, about why he fessed up until we were on the plane home, sitting in our vinyl seats with our bags of candy my grandmother got us from the airport.
“Why did you tell them?” I asked.
Mark put his headphones on and shrugged. “Because we did it,” he said.
Because that’s who he is, right? Like, no, Mark isn’t some secret-agent, duplicitous asshole. He’s someone who tells the truth when he’s, like, directly asked about it maybe because it wouldn’t occur to him to do any different.
And it hits me.
That’s what the money is for! For answers. Like he said, he paid money to Todd to cheat on a midterm.
My mom sends me a text a few minutes later, tells me to heat up the meat loaf in the fridge.
And I do.