The next day, Tuesday, Ginger did present our proposal to Mr. V totally from memory. Although Ophelia pouted so hard I could have sat on her lower lip, Mr. V praised us like we were getting the Nobel Prize, but not just for that. He also thought what we were saying was awesome and that we were going to say some important stuff the whole class needed to hear. He said we were awesome, and even though it had taken us a while to hit our stride, we were really on a roll.
Yeah, and he said it all so loud the entire room heard it all the way from the lab. I knew that because the minute I left the classroom at the end of the period to go to lunch, I felt warm breath right around my ear. It didn’t smell like Ophelia’s grape cough drops or the Downy Winnie’s mom used in her laundry.
It smelled like strawberry shampoo and brand-new clothes and the gum only the Pack got away with chewing.
“You do this project and you are so dead,” the peppermint breath said into my ear.
With a flip of splashy hair, the breath owner was gone. I didn’t even have time to see which one of the Pack it was.
After that, I took my time getting to the cafeteria. I even considered going into the restroom and having lunch with Ginger. For about half of a second.
It wasn’t that I was scared to face the Pack. I just wanted to get alone and figure out what “dead” meant.
“Let’s get a move on, Tori,” Mr. Jett said behind me. “What’s with you and falling behind lately?”
What was with him always being the one to catch me doing it? I picked up a little speed, hoping he’d pass me so I could slow down again and think, but he ushered me into the lunchroom like we were going to a wedding. I’d have to define “dead” later. But I couldn’t get Ophelia’s words to leave me alone: What if they do all that stuff to us? That’s what I’m so scared of.
Our group didn’t meet at my house after school that day because: (A) we didn’t have anything to talk about until everybody finished the rest of their research and (B) I had a date with my mom. Thinking about that got me through the rest of the classes, which wasn’t easy with Ophelia acting all stiff and Winnie looking like Gumby between the two of us and the Pack firing arrows at me with their eyes. And Ginger suddenly acting like we were attached with Velcro.
I am not even kidding.
From the start of lunch on, you’d have thought we’d signed a BFF treaty.
As she followed me from class to class, she asked me exactly thirty-two questions about Lydia, Nestlé, my dad, my mom, and my last four science projects. Before I could even answer one, she moved on to the next so I stopped even trying. She didn’t seem to notice.
She asked Mrs. Fickus if she could move her seat to sit near me in English. Mrs. Fickus said she wouldn’t change her seating chart. It was the first time I thought I might like Mrs. Fickus.
It wasn’t that I didn’t like Ginger, even the way Ophelia didn’t like her, which was more like not liking what could happen . . . Anyway, I just didn’t want to get in trouble, which is what happened in Spanish when Mrs. Bernstein did let Ginger change her seat to sit in front of me, and she whispered questions to me the entire class period. When I finally looked at her to say, “Shhhhh!” Mrs. Bernstein got all over me for talking in class.
And then she shook her head at Kylie, and Kylie shook hers back.
Big throw ups.
Ginger smelled kind of like laundry that sat around too long before it got washed, and her voice could lead you through the San Francisco fog. That was definitely irritating as a stiff tag in the back of a new T-shirt, but I could’ve just shrugged that off. I mean, she was smart. She came up with stuff I never even thought about, like:
Do you think Lydia’s parents are little people too? How does that work?
What do you think came first? Black Labs, chocolate Labs, or yellow Labs?
And . . .
What’s your dream science project of all time? The one you want to do really bad?
I could totally have gotten into a discussion with her about any of those—if she ever hit the pause button long enough for me to get a word in—but if I did, it would make things even worse with Ophelia.
And they were bad enough as it was.
Every time I even looked like I was going to answer Ginger, Ophelia pinched my thigh. I was going to have to take stock of my bruises later. Every time Ginger started walking beside me, Ophelia pulled on my backpack until I basically had to stop or it was going to fall off.
After school, I ran for the door. All I wanted to do was talk to Mom.
But Phee cornered me there. I mean, really, she got in front of me so my shoulders were between the wall and the last locker.
“Ginger is hanging around you all the time,” she said.
“I noticed,” I said.
“So did the Pack.” Ophelia’s eyes were big brown pools of worry. “They think you’re friends with her.”
“How do you know that?”
“Hey—Victoria.”
I saw it in Ophelia’s eyes before I even recognized the voice. Kylie was approaching.
I stepped in front of Phee and opened my locker. Out of the corner of my eye—I thought that was called peripheral vision—I saw that Kylie had only Riannon with her. Two of us, two of them. That could work.
“Victoria,” she said again, this time with the accent on the tor like it was a bad word or something.
I ignored her and pulled my jacket out of my locker. Ophelia was now in the corner staring at the floor like maybe there was a trapdoor she could go through. Me? I didn’t feel scared. I was just annoyed.
“Hey! I’m talking to you . . .” Kylie stopped a couple of feet from me. Riannon was so close behind her I thought they might be stuck together. “Victoria, my pet.”
I jerked and banged my elbow on my locker door. “Don’t call me that,” I said.
“Why not?” Kylie looked at me all innocent. “It’s your name, right?”
“Then how come that old lady called you that?”
“That was my—”
I stopped myself. I’d watched Ginger let herself be dragged in by Kylie, and I wasn’t doing it.
So I pulled my math book out of my locker and slammed the door. Then I squatted down to put my books in my backpack.
“Oh. Hi, Phee-Phee.” Kylie’s voice went so shrill it hurt the one filling I had in my back molar. “I didn’t see you there, Phee-Phee.”
The only person who called Ophelia that was her toddler sister Hero. She always yelled it from her car seat when Phee’s mom picked her up. I waited for Ophelia to correct Kylie, but apparently she couldn’t get her teeth unstuck from each other.
“I’m Tori,” I said. “And she’s Ophelia. Like you don’t know that.”
I nodded at Phee and stepped around Kylie. We’d only gone a couple of steps when Riannon said in her pointy voice, “Are you going to the Gingerbread House?”
“Don’t answer her,” I said to Phee through my teeth.
“We know Gingerbread goes there every day after school, so you must live in a Gingerbread House. Maybe your names are really Hansel and Gretel.”
“And maybe you’re the Wicked Witch,” I said without turning around.
I curled my fingers around Ophelia’s sleeve and pulled her with me to the stairs and down. Neither one of us said anything until we were at the front door. Ophelia was first.
“Now do you see? Tori, it’s already too late. They know everything about us!
“They must have overheard Winnie say—”
“They’re everywhere!”
I didn’t realize until then that Phee was pinching my arm right through my jacket sleeve. I was pretty sure she didn’t even know she was doing it. Her eyes were looking kind of wild.
“We just have to act like it doesn’t bother us,” I said. “They probably won’t say anything else to us since I told them they were witches.”
“That was like the worst thing you could do ever!” Ophelia stomped her foot, exactly the way Hero did pre-tantrum. “I told you this was gonna happen, and you just went right on acting like you’re friends with Ginger.”
“What am I supposed to do, just tell her to go away?”
“Yes!”
Over her shoulder, I could see other kids starting to stare at us. Any minute they’d be whispering, and by tomorrow it would be all over the school that Phee and I had WWE going on right by the front door.
When did I start thinking like that?
I lowered my voice to almost a whisper. “That just sounds too mean,” I said. “I don’t think you could say that to her either.”
“Then what can we do? I don’t want to have to worry about going to my locker. Maybe I already do!” She stomped her foot again. “You promised me, Tori. And best friends keep their promises.”
“Best friends don’t expect each other to make promises they can’t keep,” that other Me said. “My mom’s picking me up. I gotta go.”
I started for the door, but Phee caught my jacket sleeve in her fingers again. “I don’t know what to do if we can’t be friends anymore,” she said.
“Who said anything about that?”
“Hey, Tor—you ready?”
It was Mom, poking her curly, sandy head in through the door. Her face was all rosy from the cold, and her green eyes sparkled like she was excited. I wasn’t happy with Ophelia for ruining this for me. So I said to her, “You decide if we’re still best friends.”
Then I followed my mom out to our car and hoped I could choke the tears back by the time I got in. Because like I said, I hardly ever cried.
Mom spent the first ten minutes (I timed it) we were sitting at a table at the Briar Patch—our fave Mom and Tori place—apologizing for not being around during the Valentine season. She did that every year and said practically the same thing, but I didn’t remind her. It was kind of like she needed to say it more than I needed to hear it.
That was one of the reasons why I didn’t pay that much attention as she talked and I poked at the cheese in my Cornish pasty. The other reason was that I couldn’t concentrate. Things like I appreciate you understanding got all tangled up with you’re dead, best friends keep their promises—I don’t know what to do if we can’t be friends anymore. It was like a bowl of spaghetti noodles in my head.
I tried to act focused. I looked straight at Mom while she was talking and popped my eyes really big and nodded a lot.
Yeah, well (A) I’m not that good at acting and (B) Dad might be wrong about mothers being able to automatically tell when the dog has been up on the bed, but Mom did always know when I was faking it.
“What’s wrong, Tor?” she said suddenly—right in the middle of “We have a lot to catch up on, and I want to hear everything.”
I knew better than to say, “Nothing,” or worse, shrug. Besides, I really did want to tell her. I’d been waiting to tell her. Except that now that she was here and asking, I didn’t even know where to start.
She did.
“You and Ophelia having issues?” she said.
“You picked up on that.”
“It was hard not to.” Mom’s pink fingernails tapped against the cup handle. “Anything I can help with?”
It was exactly what I wanted her to ask. But when I opened my mouth to tell her how she could help, nothing came out. Because I didn’t know.
Maybe I should just give her the facts.
“There’s this new girl,” I said.
“Okay. What’s her name?” Mom scooted in a little. She did like a good story. Maybe this wouldn’t be so hard.
“Her name’s—”
Mom’s cell phone rang. She put her hand on it, but she kept her eyes on me. “If this is your father or Granna, I’ll answer it. Otherwise, we’ll continue. Okay?”
I nodded. That was the reason I loved my mom. She might not let me wear my Einstein sweatshirt three times in one week or use the stove when she wasn’t there. She might think being a lady is the most important thing, and she didn’t think scientifically the way I did. And she worked too much as far as I was concerned. But she really was the best mom, and I knew even as she answered the phone that she would come right back to me and help me sort this whole thing out.
But then I looked at her face. The light was going out of it like somebody had turned off all the bulbs in there, and the hand without the phone in it went to her forehead. She was either suddenly having a major headache or the person on the other end was telling her something terrible.
“Is she conscious?” Mom said.
Long pause.
“They’re not doing it here, are they?”
Another long pause. Who was doing what to who?
“Are you sure?”
“All right. I’ll be there as soon as . . . yes, she’s with me . . . Are you sure she won’t mind?”
Mom stood up, still nodding and saying, “All right,” exactly six times. She pointed to my jacket on the back of the chair, and I put it on. My heart was pounding because my mom’s hands never shook the way they were right now as she ended her call.
“Mom?” I said.
She stopped and put her hand under my chin. It was a strange time to realize that she could look straight into my eyes now. That was how tall I’d gotten.
“Tor, it’s Granna,” she said. “She has an aneurysm, and she has to have emergency surgery. Here. In Grass Valley.”
“Is she okay?” I said.
Even Mr. V would have to admit that was a lame question. They didn’t do surgery on people who were okay.
“I honestly don’t know,” Mom said. “I’m going to drop you off at the house, and then I’m going to meet Dad at the hospital.”
“I want to come!”
“Lydia’s going to stay with you until one of us gets home.”
“I don’t want to be with Lydia—I want to be with Granna!”
Mom pushed open the door with one hand. She was already making a call with the other one. “We won’t even be with Granna. They’re already prepping her for surgery and she’s . . . she’s not awake.”
The person on the other end of the phone answered, and Mom started giving instructions. As I followed her to the car, it felt like every nerve in my whole body was firing. I knew there were a lot of them. We did that report on it last fall.
Strange things to think—things that kept the thoughts that were too scary from getting in.
I was pouting when Mom dropped me off at the house because I wanted to go to the hospital. I didn’t care if, like she said, I’d be sitting around for hours, not having dinner, not getting my homework done. I just wanted to be there when Granna woke up.
My plan on the way home was to go straight to my room, but Mom probably read my mind because when I got out of the car she said, “Check in with Lydia. Make sure Nestlé doesn’t have her pinned someplace.”
So I went to the kitchen. Lydia was putting a dish of something cheesy smelling into the lower oven. The pot holder mitts came almost up to her elbows.
“Mac and cheese,” she said. “Homemade. Comfort food.”
“I’m not that hungry,” I said.
“Nobody is at a time like this,” Lydia said and jerked the ginormous mop of curls toward the table. There was a plate of pita bread triangles and baby carrots and hummus in the center.
“Will you stay here while I have a snack?” she said. “If Nestlé Crunch over there is alone with me for too long, he can’t resist the urge to ‘protect’ me.”
Nestlé was lying down near the back door where she had probably told him to stay, but even as I glanced at him, he inched forward. Like we couldn’t see him doing it.
“Okay,” I said, because (A) I’d seen Nestlé smush Lydia against the wall and (B) suddenly the thought of going to my room even with him made me cold all over. And (C) Lydia wasn’t looking at me like I was a loser.
“I hope you like your hummus Greek style,” she said. “The recipe’s been passed down through the generations in my family.”
“Are you Greek?” I said.
“My last name is Kiriakos. That’s pretty Greek.”
It struck me as strange that my parents left me with a person whose last name I didn’t even know. Everything seemed strange right now.
I dragged a point of pita through the hummus and put it in my mouth.
“You continue to impress me, Taylor,” Lydia said.
I stared at her while I chewed. (A) Because she called me by my last name, which nobody had ever done—and I kind of liked it. And (B) because I had no idea why she would be impressed with me. I’d always acted like I was clueless around her.
“You tried the hummus without asking me what was in it. Most kids your age would want to know every ingredient before they’d even taste it. And they’d probably turn their nose up at all of them.”
“These chickpeas are different from the ones my mom uses,” I said, helping myself to another dollop.
“Your mom probably doesn’t shop at a Greek market.”
“She needs to start.”
“Olives?”
“Did you get those at the Greek market too?”
Lydia nodded.
“Then yes.”
She hopped down from the book on the chair and pulled open the refrigerator door. I noticed that the bottom shelf on the door was lined with stuff I’d never seen before. I also noticed that the kitchen was starting to smell like melted cheese. Maybe I was hungry after all.
And then I thought of Granna.
“Do you know what an aneurysm is?” I said.
Lydia put a bowl of the darkest olive-green olives I’d ever seen on the table and climbed back onto her seat. It was like watching a coordinated toddler.
“I do,” Lydia said. “I looked it up online while I was waiting for you.”
“Why?” I said.
“Because I had a feeling you were going to ask that. I would.”
“Can you explain it to me?”
“Again, impressive. You aren’t saying, ‘Is she going to die?’ You just want the facts.”
Yeah. And I didn’t want to ask, “Is she going to die?” because I was afraid of the answer.
“It’s a weak, bulgy spot in the wall of one of the arteries in the brain,” Lydia said. “Kind of like a thin place in a balloon.”
“It pops?” I whispered.
“Not always, but in your grandmother’s case, it did rupture, and that’s why she had to have surgery. But she has a 60 percent chance of making it through.”
The oven timer went off. Lydia didn’t hop off the chair. It was like she was waiting for me to say something.
“That’s a good percentage, isn’t it?” I said.
“It’s very good, and it’s probably better than that since your grandmother is in such great shape otherwise. And she’s pretty feisty, I understand.”
“Will that help her? Being feisty?” My voice had tears in it.
“Studies show that the will to live plays a huge role in people’s recovery,” Lydia said. “And with you around, why wouldn’t she want to live?”
She did hop down then, which was good, because (A) I didn’t know how to say I’d been wrong about her and (B) I really needed to get a handle on the crying situation.