You never know what people are going to do. Sometimes it’s the so-called normal ones who surprise you most of all.
I figured my parents were going to go crazy. This bus thing was way worse than the tattoo Bess got on her neck or the words she sprayed all over her ex-boyfriend’s father’s Winnebago. Mum and Dad went ballistic then.
But here it was, two days later, and there was nothing. No yelling. No slamming doors. Not even any of that loud laughing Bess fakes to drive them nuts.
The quiet was making me nervous. Maybe this was going to be more like the time she got caught with a stolen credit card on her way to Sudbury. (She wanted to see the World’s Biggest Nickel.) That time no one raised their voices at all. The family counselor got everyone talking, but even then Mum barely moved her lips. (It was creepy. I’d rather she’d just gone snaky and got it over with.)
I don’t know why the whole thing was bugging me this time. It’s not like it had anything to do with me. Just the same, I decided to crawl under my bed.
I make that sound as if it’s something I only do in emergencies, like Dorothy and Toto heading for the storm cellar or something. But it’s not like that. I really like it under there. I always have. You can still see where I painted the word “Dreemland” on the plywood ceiling. I must have been about seven. It was the brand name on my mattress, but it seemed like the perfect thing to call my little hiding place, at least until I realized that dreamland is spelled with an “a.”
It’s not as if it’s anything special under there. It probably looks like most kids’ beds, from the outside anyway. It’s got a pink-striped ruffly thing that hangs down to the floor and behind that the usual junk you’d expect: a couple of old shoe boxes, a gym bag, a stuffed monkey. I put them there as decoys so my mother wouldn’t get suspicious.
It’s set up really nicely in back. Very neat. No dust. I’ve got a pillow and a little lamp. (It’s an old bed so it’s high enough.) There are books lined up against the back wall, a couple of games, my Discman and a picture of Snowball before she got run over. (Duh. Who’d have a picture of their cat after it got run over? Other than Bess, I mean.) Just below the headboard is my “kitchen”: some juice boxes, some granola bars, two cans of ravioli and the can-opener my mother tore the house apart for. I don’t actually eat anything under there, but I like to keep some nonperishables just in case. I also keep a change of clothes, though for the longest time they were size 6x because I forgot to update them as I grew. It didn’t really matter. It’s not as if I actually needed them. I just like the feeling of having my own little world that’s got everything I could ever want, right there.
What’s so bad about that?
I don’t know. But Mum caught me crawling out of Dreemland once when I was nine, and I knew I’d never let her catch me again. Not that she was mad—what was there to be mad about?—but she didn’t like it. She got that worried “how-unusual-dear” look on her face and then tried to make it sound as if I was playing under there or something. Like I was doing it for fun! I started pretending I didn’t go there anymore.
No one knows I go there—though I figure the cleaning lady must have her suspicions.
Anyway, two days after the “bus incident,” I was lying under the bed, wondering whether I should get one of those little pots to pee in,2 when Mum knocked on the door.
“Telly?” Way too sweet.
“Just a minute!” I tried to sound calm but I was freaking. I thought she was going to walk in on me scrambling up to the surface.
“Are you changing, dear?…I won’t come in.” Luckily, respecting each other’s privacy was one of the counselor’s big things. Mum went on from outside the door: “When you’re ready, could you come into the sunroom please? It’s …important.”
Important.
The Mercer family code word for seriously bad. But what had I done? Nothing. I figured it must be about Bess. Why did I have to get in on it then?
It hit me as I was walking down the hall. They were going to punish Bess and they needed a witness! They had to make an example of her. This was going to be like a public hanging or stoning or something. (Mum had been reading a lot of history books lately.)
No. It didn’t take me long to delete that idea. My parents don’t agree with “corporal punishment,” so I doubted they’d go for an actual execution. (That would be overkill anyway. All they really needed to do was haul off and smack Bess— even once. It might have helped. At least Mum wouldn’t be needing all that wrinkle cream now.)
(Don’t tell anyone I said that. About the smack, I mean.)
(Or the wrinkle cream.)
I realized it was more likely to be an exile kind of thing. We were all going to stand at the door, pointing into the distance, and send Bess away. About time.
I was almost right.
Dad took my hand and patted it and talked in his nice doctor voice.
“Telly, we’re going to send you away for a while.”
2 Toilet facilities were the only thing I needed in Dreemland that I didn’t have there. My big problem was I couldn’t figure out how I was going to pee lying flat on my back. I must have known how to do it at one point because I wet my bed till I was nine.