The next morning is bright and sunny. The storm passed during the night. When Annie and I get up there’s only Aunt Maeve downstairs cooking breakfast. Crazy Uncle Rufus has already gone to work.
Annie is quiet as she plays with her scrambled eggs, pushing the food about on her plate, not eating it.
She’s missing Ma. I know it’s because of the eggs. Aunt Maeve’s scrambled eggs are okay but they’re not the same as Ma’s. Ma’s were lighter and fluffier and had bits of bright green parsley mixed in.
“Yellow and green are the two main colors of the Irish flag,” she used to say. “What better way to start the day than with a bit of Irish in your stomachs?”
Have I described Annie yet? In case I haven’t she’s small for an eight-year-old, maybe even skinny, with serious green eyes just like Ma’s, and fine auburn hair — a color between Ma’s red and Da’s brown — that falls straight to her shoulders. I’ve got red hair like my ma but my eyes are neither green nor brown but a kind of in-between color called hazel, and I’m built like a beanpole. The top of Annie’s head comes barely above my elbow. Normally, when she’s her usual self, she walks lightly, with her shoulders and back straight, nose in the air, like she’s a princess whose feet are too royal to touch the common ground. You would never guess we were brother and sister.
Annie is my responsibility. It’s my job to get my sister safely to and from school every day, no ifs or buts, Da’s orders. Not that I mind. Annie’s okay most of the time. She misses Ma as much as I do.
Annie leaves most of her eggs and we set off together for school. Except for a few tree branches and leaves lying about you wouldn’t think there’d been a storm at all except everything looks and smells fresh, like the whole neighborhood just tumbled out of the dryer.
Annie drags her feet, like it’s Monday instead of Friday, and I briefly consider taking her back to our own house, skipping school together and making it a long weekend for the pair of us.
Then I decide against it. Annie might blab to Da or Aunt Maeve if we skip out. Girls are dreadful blabbers right enough. They can keep nothing to themselves, isn’t that the truth?
Benny Mason is absent. The morning drags. I’m in my house-plant mode, my vegetable state.
In social studies I stare out the classroom window, my mind wandering, thinking of riding my bike and my job in the mall and the new cycling shoes I’m saving for.
And thinking of Ma.
Mrs. Pickles — the kids call her Dill Pickles — asks me to stay behind after class.
“I wish to discuss your attendance,” she says.
It’s the lunch hour. Mrs. Pickles talks as she walks about the room.
“The school year has hardly begun and you have been absent from my class twice already. I’ve talked with Mr. Bennett, your homeroom teacher. He tells me he’s had no notes from your parents explaining these absences, even though he has asked for them and left messages on your voice mail. You were, what, sick on those days?”
“Well...” I start, but she carries on talking.
“That’s not all. You have handed in no homework. None. Not one assignment out of...” — she glances at her mark book —”...the three assigned so far on the course. What do you have to say about that?”
“Well...” I start, but again she talks over me.
“And I’m not at all happy with your behavior in class, staring out the window when you should be listening or working. Next Socials period you will sit here...” — she walks over to a desk at the front of the class and slaps one hand loudly on its top — “...where I can keep a closer eye on you.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And after school on Monday you will report to me for a detention class, during which you will begin to catch up on the missing work.”
“I can’t come after school. I pick up my sister every day. She’s only eight, you see. I could come in the lunch hour instead if that’s all right.”
She asks a bunch more questions and we argue back and forth and in the end she agrees that I come for a lunch hour detention on Monday.
Some of the other teachers have started flagging me as a problem, too.
I never used to be like this, honest. It’s just that, as I said, I can’t get interested in school this year. It’s terrible pointless and unimportant to me right now.
I mean, why waste precious time doing things you don’t like — school, for instance — so you’re supposed to have a better future? How do you know you’ll even have a future? We’re all going to die — like what happened to Ma, dying so soon when most people live to twice her age.
Is that what Shakespeare means in The Tempest when he says we’ve got a little life? Does little mean our lives are short?
Thinking about this kind of stuff could drive a feller barking mad.
It might be different if I had friends. It’d give me something to look forward to instead of all this dreadful business with Sammy and Rebar and Benny Mason. I don’t want to be here in school at all.
On the days Da is away from home, it’s easy to skip out, because nobody knows what I’m up to, not even Annie. Nobody’s home, you see, at our house.
I’ve always got my key on a cord around my neck, so once I’ve taken Annie to school I’m free to return to our own house and ride my truly grand Rocky Mountain Hammer bike I bought second-hand through the Buy & Sell before Ma started getting sick. Or if it’s raining I can sit around at home listening to music, watching telly or reading back copies of the bicycling magazine I borrowed from the school library, or I can take a nap in my own badger’s den, Ma’s closet upstairs.
I’ve got the house to myself. No one knows I’m there. The universe goes along without me.
If the school office or my teachers phone home about me and leave voice-mail messages, I erase them before Annie or Da can get a chance to listen.
I’m bad.
••••
I don’t hang about after school because I always have Annie to pick up, so I don’t see too much of what goes on. What I’ve been hearing lately, though, is that thanks to Sammy, Rebar and their friends, Benny Mason is becoming known through the whole school. Even some of the older kids are starting to call him names.
I saw this happening a bit on Friday as I was on my way to pick up Annie. Benny was leaving the school, tripping lightly down the concrete steps when a couple of seniors walked by.
One of them yelled, “Hey, Benny! Pacific Ballet wanna know if you’re free to do the dying swan for them this weekend.”
They all laughed.