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“Is that all you’re eating?” My mom frowned and tugged at one of her pearl earrings. She was still in her church clothes, since she had been too eager to get back to her casserole baking to change.
I shrugged at the small heap of mashed potatoes on my dinner plate. I hadn’t eaten much since my vomiting spell at the hospital. I wasn’t sure if it had more to do with the fact that I’d become a nervous wreck, fretting over whether or not Officer Russell would find out that I had been at the party, or if it was the hybrid Matilda guilt.
My dad gave me an awkward smile, crinkling his brow all the way up to his receding hairline as he cut into his steak. “You’re really too thin to be dieting, Janie. I hear that curvy Marilyn Monroe look is coming back into style.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not dieting, Dad.”
“Are you feeling well, honey?” My mom reached over to lay the back of her hand against my forehead.
“I’m fine. I’m just tired. It’s been a long weekend.”
“Yes, it has.” She sighed. “We’re so lucky that you’re such a good kid, Janie. I don’t know what we would have done if it had been you in that car.”
I knew that I should tell them I had been at the party, but I just couldn’t. They would make me talk to Officer Russell, and he would be angry that I hadn’t told him at the hospital. Then he would make me answer all the questions that Wayne hadn’t answered, and then Wayne would be mad at me too.
The sky was dark outside the dining room window, even though it was only six. The blue lights from the Christmas tree reflected off the glass. Early December in Jasper was depressing. It was cold outside, but not quite as cold as winter should be. It was the kind of cold that had kids crossing their fingers, hoping for snow by Christmas break, though it usually didn’t come until late January.
My dad cleared his throat. “The funeral is being held Tuesday afternoon. Did you want to go, Janie?”
I looked back at the mashed potatoes on my plate and sighed. “Do I have to?”
“I just thought that you might want to be there for Wayne. You know, if he’s out of the hospital by then.”
I tried hard not to smile. If I knew Wayne, he would fake another coma just to get out of going to a funeral, even if it was Matilda’s. He hated them as much as I did.
When we were nine, my great-grandma Lucinda died in her sleep. She’d had an open casket. During the reception, Wayne and I snuck back into the viewing room and stood over her coffin, thinking that we might have better luck waking her where the doctors had failed.
“Everyone’s so quiet,” Wayne had insisted. “It’s like they don’t want her to wake up. Maybe we just need to make a little noise.” He counted to three and we both shouted, “Lucy! It’s nine o’clock!”
The mail always came at nine in the morning at my great-grandma’s house, and she’d had a fierce crush on the mailman. She’d fan herself with the sale flyers as he left, watching him walk on down to the next house.
We leaned further over the casket, watching for any movement, but the only person we’d roused was one of the ushers sneaking a cigarette by the back door. We both about came out of our skins when he flung the door open and hollered at us.
I really hoped that Wayne didn’t go to Matilda’s funeral. I would feel obligated to go if he did, and then I would have to deal with all of Matilda’s adoring minions who hated my guts as much as she had. Just the thought of them made my stomach turn into a boulder. School was going to suck tomorrow.
“May I be excused?”
My mom frowned at my plate again but nodded. I had really wanted to enjoy dinner. My mom’s casseroles were actually really good, but it was nice to have more than one course on occasion. The only time that happened was when she was good and burned out on casserole baking. Steak and potatoes was one of my favorites too. I took my half-eaten potatoes into the kitchen and washed them down the garbage disposal before heading upstairs to my room.
My parents had finally relented last summer and let me paint over the cotton candy pink walls that had been the sole reason I had stopped having slumber parties in middle school. They weren’t thrilled about the dark charcoal color I had picked out, but it wasn’t so bad after I topped it with a coat of spray-on glitter. Of course, I spent the entire month of June washing the stuff out of my hair. Wayne had called me Tinker Bell for the rest of the summer, until senior year began and he started dating Matilda. After that, he didn’t call me anything.
I flopped onto my bed and sighed, nuzzling into the neon orange pillows and the two remaining stuffed animals that had survived the room makeover, Herbert and Gertrude. They were fluffy white bunnies dressed for a tea party. Herbert wore a little vest with a faux pocket watch, and Gertrude wore a lacey tutu skirt and a flowered headband. Wayne had given them to me on my tenth birthday.
My arm caught the edge of my sketchbook, tucked safely away under a pillow. I pulled it out and skimmed through the hundreds of drawings that made me even more ashamed than the formerly pink walls had. Each sketch was a different rendering of senior prom. Wayne and I were together in every single one. Matilda was featured in a few, but only as something ridiculous or abstract, like a piñata in the fiesta themed prom, or a bubble-headed green alien in the space prom.
I’d started the sketchbook freshman year, around the time that talking to Wayne grew awkward, because I didn’t want him to be my best friend anymore. I wanted him to hold my hand instead of punch my shoulder. I wanted him to bring me flowers on my birthday and ask me to be his date for prom.
The sketches had been typical girl fantasies at first. There was a fairytale ballroom prom and a masquerade prom. During sophomore year, I got creative and added a Gatsby and a Victorian prom. Junior year had been more whimsical, with a haunted house and an eighties flashback prom. But once senior year began and Matilda swooped in to snatch up Wayne and crush all my fantasies, the sketchbook had taken a turn for the worse.
It just seemed so definite that Wayne would be taking Matilda to prom. I kept doodling out our imaginary dates, but they stretched a little further beyond reality now. The fiesta and space proms were just the beginning. There was even a military themed prom, where Wayne and I arrived in a tank and ran over an enemy solider who looked suspiciously like Matilda with a Hitler mustache. I paused on that particular drawing, wondering if I should tear it out of the sketchbook and burn it. The hybrid Matilda guilt chewed at my stomach again, no matter how well I knew that her death wasn’t my fault.
In the end, I couldn’t do it. I left the tank and the Hitler imbued Matilda right where they were. I was beyond mortified by my stalker tribute sketchbook, but it was all I had. It was a journal of sorts, and it was sacred to me, in a weird dysfunctional sort of way. The only other person who knew about the sketchbook was my friend Chloe. She had suggested that I enter some of the sketches in the student art show, and then she went on to say that she also thought I might need a team of shrinks and possibly some electroshock therapy.
As if on cue, my cell phone buzzed on my nightstand. I answered on the first ring. “Hello?”
“Oh. My. God! My mom just showed me the newspaper. There’s a picture of Matilda’s car. It says that Wayne was in there with her. Why didn’t you call me?” Chloe fumed in my ear.
“Sorry. It’s been a stressful weekend. Wayne’s okay though. I saw him this morning.”
“Yeah, well, Matilda is obviously not okay. Did you know her parents are helping organize some anti-teen drinking campaign? They’re going to be giving a speech at the funeral and then another one at the school this week. I betcha ten bucks they mention their resort at least twice.”
“Hmmm.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah. Fine.” The hybrid guilt was stirring again. I needed to figure out what to do about it before I ended up with an ulcer. I didn’t think most seventeen-year-old girls had to worry about ulcers, but I’d heard my dad describe his often enough that I was sure this was what one must feel like.
Chloe was quiet for a minute. “Shouldn’t you be celebrating or something? You know, ding, dong, the witch is dead?”
I sighed. “Wayne is my friend, and that would hurt his feelings.”
Chloe laughed. “I’m not saying that you should go do a Broadway dance number in his hospital room, but you’re alone in your room right now. Aren’t you?”
“Yeah. So?” I sat up on my bed and pulled my knees up under my chin.
“I think it’s perfectly safe and healthy to be relieved that your arch nemesis bit the dust. I mean, she filled your locker full of industrial spray foam. You know it was her. And you definitely know that she was the one who cut out nipple holes in that blouse you left in the girls’ locker room.”
My cheeks felt like they were on fire all over again. “I was just lucky that you had an extra tee shirt in your locker.”
“Janie, all I’m saying is that you shouldn’t feel guilty for being a little glad about that witch being dead. I know I am, and she didn’t even do anything to me.”
“You’re right. I know. I just... feel wrong about it.”
“Whatever. I’ll see you tomorrow after lunch, right?” Chloe skipped eating lunch with everyone in the cafeteria. She was a real art student, not a poser like me, so she had a little studio cubical in the painting room all to herself. She ate lunch there so she could squeeze in an extra half an hour of work.
“Yeah, I’ll come by and see you before algebra.”
Chloe snorted. “And if you’re not going to celebrate, you better at least not sulk.”
We said our goodbyes and I flipped to a blank page near the back of my sketchbook. I wouldn’t put Matilda in this drawing. I hadn’t picked out a theme yet, but I started with a basic outline of the gym, where prom was held every spring.
A few seconds into the drawing, I had an epiphany. Matilda was gone. Wayne wouldn’t be taking her to prom. The hybrid guilt took a backseat as excitement bubbled through me. It was a slim chance, but it was still there, and it was all I needed.