"I had to come early," I said aloud, "so I could go to the library and finish my civics paper." I had never lied to Maureen before. I waited for her to see through my flimsy alibi.

"Oh," she said, believing me. How could she believe me? Something inside me was jumping up and down, waving its arms, and yelling, "It's not true, it's not true!" I looked back into my locker so she wouldn't see it. Locker doors were banging all around. "Let's go," she said.

"We're going to be late," whinnied Glenna. "You guys go ahead," I said. "I'll catch up in a minute."

I kept moving things around in the bottom of my locker. Then I stood up and moved things around in the top of my locker. A large lump was in my throat, and I hoped I wouldn't have to speak to anyone. The din of the hallway quieted behind me. Cla.s.sroom doors clicked shut, sealing in the clatter and the racket, putting the lids on jars filled with bees.

I was still standing there in front of my locker. I couldn't seem to move. I studied the pictures taped inside. There was a mirror taped inside, too, and I looked into it. I tucked my hair behind my ears and put on some lip gloss. Since I still seemed to have the use of my arms, I crossed them in front of me to hold myself together. It was starting to look as if I might stand there all day when I heard footsteps approaching, footsteps with authority. I thought I should act busy, but my locker was in perfect order now, and I hesitated. The footsteps stopped a few feet away. I grabbed a book and closed the door. I saw that it was the wrong book, and I had to fumble through my combination and open the door again. Whoever it was, was still there. I shifted the rearview mirror and looked right into the green-shadowed, black-rimmed, blue mascaraed brown eyes of Miss Epler, the new English teacher with the crooked nose and the perfect, freshly bleached Sa.s.soon haircut.

"Are you okay, Debbie?" she asked.

I nodded. Miss Epler clip-clopped over and stood next to me. Even in platform shoes, she was shorter than I was.

"Are you sick?" she asked.

I shook my head, still looking straight ahead at the neat stack of books.

"Do you want to talk about it?" she asked.

The muscles in my face were trying to seize up, a bucketful of tears was pressing against the backs of my eyes, and working their way up through my windpipe were some heaving sobs, which I knew would be loud and embarra.s.sing. I gave a tiny shrug, and one of the sobs escaped, sounding like a heavy piece of furniture being dragged across the floor.

Miss Epler put her hands on my shoulders. "Come on," she said. "I have a free period."

She gently closed my locker door and led me down the hall. She left me outside the teachers' lounge and returned in a minute with a bag of corn chips and two bottles of Squirt. "This is probably not very nutritious," she said, "but there's not much choice in there."

We sat on the front steps of the school. Miss Epler ripped open the bag of chips and started crunching, but when she noticed I wasn't eating any, she tried to m.u.f.fle her crunching. Then she stopped, licked the salt from her fingers, and took a sip of her Squirt.

"So, what's up?" she said. "Let me guess. Boys. You had a fight with your boyfriend."

"No," I said. "I don't have one."

"Good for you, you're better off," she said. "I don't have one either, but that's another story. Let's see ... not a boyfriend. Hmm ... Animal, vegetable, or mineral?"

I thought for a moment. "Is slime mold an animal or a vegetable?" I asked.

"Slime mold?" she repeated. "Your locker didn't look that bad to me. I've seen a lot worse."

"Not my locker," I said. "A person."

"Aaahhh," she said. "A person. Then animal, of course. But I'm pretty sure that mold is vegetable, so you need to pick a different a.n.a.logy."

"Snake," I said. "No-worm."

"Wow," said Miss Epler. "Does this person have any good qualities?"

"No," I said. It felt very good to say it, but I knew it might not be completely fair. I didn't want to be fair, but in case G.o.d or anyone was listening, I added, "Some people think she does."

"Some people think she does," said Miss Epler. "That's good. Some objectivity." She took another chip and went on. "Now we can come back in a minute to how c.r.a.ppy this person is, but just for the sake of objectivity: What are the good qualities that some people think she has?"

This was one of those questions that English teachers like to ask, like: What three things would you take with you into the nuclear holocaust? Or, who should get off the lifeboat, you or Mahatma Gandhi? I wasn't in the mood for it right now, but with the promise of trashing Glenna just ahead, I sc.r.a.ped together the few nonnegative qualities of hers that I could think of.

"She's punctual," I said. "And clean. And neat."

"Hmm," said Miss Epler. "Punctual, clean, and neat. What else?"

I didn't feel like playing this game anymore. I said, "She took my friend away from me. I don't like her."

"Okay," said Miss Epler. "I see."

The air was humid and heavy and crammed with the grating sounds of jackhammers, bulldozers, and cement mixers from Birdvale. They were building a 650-foot-high smokestack at the power plant, so that the fly ash would float farther away before settling to the earth and landing on someone else's town.

"You know," said Miss Epler, "maybe this person didn't take your friend away from you."

"Yes, she did," I shot back.

"Maybe partly," she said carefully. "But at least partly it was your friend who left. All by herself. I just think that if you're going to be angry, you should be angry at the right person."

It was my friend who left.

All by herself.

A black pit opened inside me, and I fell in. I fell and I fell.

When I stopped falling, my face and my hands and my knees were warm and wet with tears, and the cold stone step I was sitting on was making me numb. I felt Miss Epler's hands squeezing my shoulders, and I heard her murmuring, "It's okay, it's okay, you're going to be all right, it's okay, I mean, I know it certainly doesn't feel okay right now, but you will be okay."

My breath was coming in jerky sobs, evening out only to collapse again. Finally, I got my breathing to calm down. In, out, in, out No loud noises. I lifted my head, and my gla.s.ses slid down to the tip of my tear-slicked nose. I dried them with my skirt, then used my sleeve to wipe my face, but I needed something else to blow my nose.

"Here," said Miss Epler. She handed me some Kleenex. She was watching me with a concerned expression.

"It's a good thing I'm not the guidance counselor," she said. "The whole school would be bawling. Everyone would have to wear life jackets.

"Listen," she said. "It's almost time for the bell. Let's go in and wash your face." She took me into the teachers' washroom and put wet paper towels on my face and drops of Visine in my eyes.

"This is how all the stars do it" she said. And then: "Maybe just a little blusher," brushing some pink onto my cheeks. "You want eye shadow? You would look stunning in lavender, but you have too much on your mind today to be fighting off advances. Let's just use a little concealer to deblotchify you." I let her pat something around my eyes, her bracelets bangling and clacking together on her arm. She was trying to jolly me up, and her voice was calming, but when she led me to the mirror, I looked like death with rosy cheeks.

"Now, take a deep breath," she said, "and if anyone asks, you have hay fever. I think there's still some ragweed out there. And if there isn't, who cares, right?"

I wondered how long this hay fever season would be lasting.

We stepped out of the washroom, and the bell rang.

"Hang in there, kiddo," said Miss Epler. She gave my arm another squeeze. "Are you going to be okay?" I tried to smile but didn't even come close. I felt tears welling up again.

"You are," she said. "You are absolutely going to be okay. Okay? I'll see you sixth period."

The wave of voices and footsteps swelled and burst through the cla.s.sroom doors into the hallway. I let myself be carried back to my locker, where I messed up the combination three times before getting it right. I slipped back into the current that was pulsing up the stairs and ejected myself into life science cla.s.s. For once I was grateful that alphabetical order kept me on the far side of the room from where Maureen and Glenna would sit.

I opened my notebook and didn't look up when I heard their voices entering the room. I wasn't ready to look at anyone. My eyes and my heart felt thick and swollen. Paul Nepovicz was sitting in front of me, and I stared at the back of his shirt It was paisley, in psychedelic rainbow colors. It must have put me into some sort of a hypnotic state because suddenly Linda Sabotnik was pa.s.sing a note to my desk that said, "Do you like Paul N.?" I considered this for a second, then looked at her as if to say. Are you nuts? She pointed to my notebook. I saw that I had copied his whole paisley shirt. I wrote, "No, just his shirt," on the note and pa.s.sed it back. Linda pa.s.sed another note that said, "Where were you last period?" I wrote back, "Nurse's office. Bad hay fever." I looked back at my notebook page. Besides Paul Nepovicz's shirt, neck, and ears, there were the words cell division and superst.i.tion, but I had no idea what Mr. Zianetti had talked about. I wrote, "Can I copy your notes?" and pa.s.sed it to Linda.

I didn't have a plan. I was just putting one foot in front of the other. I moved like the wrong end of a magnet through the iron filings of the day, repelling contact. I could feel Maureen's questioning glances. I could sense Glenna's satisfaction. She was so sure I was out of the picture that she came over and, in a voice that almost sounded friendly, asked me if I was going to lunch. As if you cared, I thought.

"I can't," I lied. "I have a doctor's appointment."

"Are you sick?" she asked with fake sympathy.

Only of you, popped spitefully into my mind. But aloud I said, "Just hay fever. Allergies."

"I didn't know you had allergies," she said.

"Neither did I," I said. "But I'm starting to think I might."

I wanted Maureen to come to her senses and say, "You, Debbie, are my best and truest friend. I'm so sorry, Glenna, but you will have to go back to the pond sc.u.m where you belong."

She didn't. She didn't say anything like that.

I started to understand that she wasn't going to. Ever. I was adrift. I wondered what I had done wrong. What was wrong with me. Why my friend had left. All by herself. I wanted to ask her why. I wanted to ask. How? But something I had thought was solid was just gone. It had dissolved, and I couldn't bring myself to ask anymore.

I walked to school by myself. I was starting to get used to it when one day a voice called out to me from behind, "Hey. Debbie. Wait up." I turned around. It was Marie Prbyczka. I waited for her to catch up.

"Don't you hang out with Maureen no more?" she asked. "Did you'ns have a fight or something?"

"No, we're still friends," I said. This wasn't exactly true, but I still didn't feel like saying so.

"I thought you guys were like this." She crossed her fingers, like for good luck or telling a fib. "Me and Don used to say to each other, 'Oh, look, here comes the Bobbsey Twins."

Part of me was proud, but another part was embarra.s.sed and sent blood rushing to my face and ears. This must be some evolutionary survival mechanism, but I can't imagine how it worked. I also can't imagine Marie reading The Bobbsey Twins. Probably she just knew the tide. I was surprised they had even paid any attention to us.

"Where's Don?" I asked her. "Doesn't he usually give you a ride?"

"That jagoff," she said. "He has some new girlfriend. Some chick from Hesmont. I told him, 'If you're calling her up, don't bother calling me up no more." She didn't seem to be heartbroken. She didn't even seem to be concerned.

"Do you miss him?" I asked.

Marie laughed. "I miss getting a ride to school," she said.

Marie was all right to walk with. She talked a lot, so I didn't have to. She told me about Jerome and Anthony, the oldest of her little brothers, who were always stealing her cigarettes and then almost setting the house on fire. She told me stories about the weekend dances at the Hesarena. The stories always had cigarettes, beer, cars with a lot of people packed in, and fights. Sometimes the police. I wondered what it would be like to go there. Marie talked as if I would be doing that, any day now. I sort of hoped that I wouldn't be. I sort of hoped some other option might come along.

One day Marie told me that her dad had girlfriends besides her mother, that they both drank too much sometimes and then they had arguments where they threw things. The gold grapes flying though the air, the lamp with the figurines.

"At each other?" I asked her.

"No," Marie said. "Just across the room or at the wall or something. Just to make some noise."

I looked over at her. She was staring straight ahead, out from under her long bangs, out from behind her beige makeup that ended like a mask at her chin and the sides of her face. Her eyes were watery. Then she turned to me. She peered out through the mascara and said, "I bet that don't happen at your house.'

"No," I said. I couldn't even imagine it.

Marie sighed. "My dad is such a jagoff," she said. "I can't wait till I'm eighteen."

It turned out that Bobby Prbyczka was in Mom's cla.s.s at school in September. And in October and November, of course, until the Prbyczkas drove off into nowhere in their big, shiny car. A few weeks into school Bobby started showing up in clothes that didn't seem to have been washed lately. Then they were the same clothes day after day.

"I feel sorry for him," Mom said. "He actually smells, and the other kids don't want to be around him."

She gave Bobby a bag, and she told him to put his dirty clothes into it and bring it over to our house. She washed them, folded them, and ironed the shirts and pants. Some things she even, mended. At school one day she had Bobby stay inside for recess, and she helped him to wash himself. In minutes the water in the sink was a dark gray.

"Good Lord, Bobby," she said, "when was the last time you took a bath?"

"I think we're out of soap," he said. "And anyways, my dad don't make us take baths."

"Oh, he doesn't, does he? Well, what about your mother? What does she say about that?"

"She don't say nothing. She ain't there."

This stopped my mom in her tracks. But not for long. "Where is she?" she asked Bobby.

It turned out that the Prbyczkas were separated. Mr. P. said it was his d.a.m.n house and he wasn't going to move out, so Mrs. P. was staying with her sister for now, until she could find a place where there was room for the kids.

Mom started packing Bobby a lunch, and she made him eat half of it before school started. She made him brush his teeth. "I can't feed the whole family," she said, "but it's hard to teach when you can hear someone's stomach growling."

One day Mom opened Bobby's laundry bag and pulled out four or five shirts. Men's shirts. "Well, if he thinks I'm going to do his laundry," she said, and she stuffed them back in the bag.

When I asked Marie if it was true, she rolled her eyes casually and said, "Yeah, her and my dad had a fight. So what else is new? They think they're Liz and Richard. She'll stay at my aunt Renees for a couple weeks. Then my dad will show up there with flowers or something, and she'll come back."

She stopped walking, put a finger to her lips, and narrowed her eyes. Then she brightened a little and said, "Huh. It's lasting longer than usual this time. Maybe they really will split up."

eight.

I WROTE A STORY FOR ENGLISH CLa.s.s IN WHICH ALL THE AMIN characters died horrible deaths. At the same time I was writing an extremely optimistic story for science cla.s.s that was a lot of work because it had to use three scientific facts as plot elements, and it had to be sort of technically accurate.

By the time I got to the English one, which was supposed to have a tragic hero with a "fatal flaw," I had to hurry. I went for broken hearts, fatal diseases, car accidents, and poisonings. And a drowning. The fatal flaw of my heroine was forgetfulness. She kept forgetting to return phone calls, look both ways, label containers correctly, etc. She forgot to bring the life jackets. Finally, she forgot to bring food on a camping trip, and she starved, alone and forgotten (Irony. Also poetic justice) in the wilderness. I knew it wasn't a great story, I was tust trying to show that I got the point: Fatal flaw Tragedy.

It took me by surprise when Miss Epier leaned over my desk a few days later and asked me to come back to the cla.s.sroom after school. "l.u.s.t for a few minutes," she said "I want to talk to you about your paper."

"Oh. Sure," I said. But before I could read her expression or ask any questions, she was off on the other side of the room. The bell rang, the cla.s.s swarmed up in a mob between us, and I decided I could wait to find out what she wanted. Probably I had been just too quick and sloppy. Then I had another idea: Maybe my story was good, really good. Maybe she wanted to send it off somewhere.

When I got there. Miss Epler was at her desk, reading I chose a nearby desk and waited. Miss Epler looked up and smiled her V-shaped, peach-colored smile. "Hey, Debbie," she said.

This seemed like a good start.

I smiled too. and said, "Hi."

"So, how are things going for you?" she asked casually.