Basic Page 8

  Kimberly’s smile was so big it took up nearly half her face and her eyes watered as she said, “Thank you, Libby. And I want things to be better, for everyone. Like, that’s really all I want. That’s all…”

  A tear rolled down her cheek and I surprised myself by getting a little weepy at the sight of it.

  Don’t worry, I didn’t burst into soap opera sobs or anything crazy like that, I just felt a little tug at my heart and my eyes may have gone slightly misty.

  “Well, you’re maybe the kindest person I know,” I said. “And if anyone can help make this gross world into something better, you can.”

  “I don’t know,” she took a deep breath. “Honestly, one of my worst fears is that I’ll be like my dad. He didn’t care enough to step in and help his own daughter. Can you imagine how much he doesn’t care about people like that missing woman?”

  I just grunted. I mean, I didn’t want to come out and say, “Yeah, your dad’s a self-absorbed jerk.” It was Kimberly’s right to diss her father, not mine.

  “I don’t want to be like him,” she quietly said. “That’s why I want to help look for that missing woman, Farrah Duncan.”

  Shocked, I turned to Kimberly. “You want to look for her? How?”

  “I don’t know,” she said with a shrug. “But, it’s just something I’ve been thinking about since last night. We helped Angel’s Den, so maybe we can help someone else.”

  I blinked back at her. “Yeah. Or, instead, maybe we can, like, volunteer in a soup kitchen or organize a drive for charity or something.”

  She nodded. “I guess. That would probably be easier.”

  “Yeah.” I watched Kimberly carefully. She was thinking hard and I had a feeling she still had her crazy big heart set on looking for the missing woman.

  “I just want to prove I’m not like him.” She glanced at me.

  “I get it,” I said, thinking of my own mother.

  As much as I admired my mom, I could definitely understand Kimberly’s desire to be the exact opposite of her father.

  Thinking that way made me feel guilty, but it was the truth.

  I took a deep breath.

  The turn my thoughts had taken made me feel disloyal. Mom worked hard to provide for us. She’d rolled up her sleeves and managed to bring us out of poverty and into the sort of life a lot of people longed for.

  Besides, it wasn’t like she was some cowardly douchebag who’d simply sat back and watched as his child was abused.

  Despite this, I found myself quietly saying, “Trust me, Kimberly. I really do get it.”

  ***

  I plopped my lunch bag down on the cafeteria table Jonathan and I had been sharing for the past two days. Until today, he’d somehow managed to find me before I made it into the lunchroom and we’d gotten into the habit of walking there together.

  But ever since Jen had batted her stupid Dollar Store lashes at him, Jonathan had been MIA. Even in second hour, I’d barely gotten a hello from him.

  So, I had a feeling I’d be minus my favorite Sunnyville High guy for lunch.

  Sighing, I unzipped my lunch bag and took out the extra Greek Salad I’d ordered from Panera’s yesterday. The salad for lunch was Mom’s idea. She said all the greenery would be good for me. But, we both knew what she really meant. The salad’s lack of fat was what she actually thought would be good for me.

  Thoroughly unenthused by my lunch, I removed the lid from the salad and stared down at it, wondering if I should put a little bit of dressing on it or be extra careful about my calorie-intake and skip the dressing altogether.

  “Hey, Cloydelia,” Jonathan’s voice startled me. But, in like, the best way ever.

  I grinned as he slid into the seat beside mine.

  “For a minute, I thought you weren’t coming,” I confessed.

  “And miss lunch with you?” he grinned. “Never.”

  I don’t even know how to describe what that sentence did to my poor little heart. All I’m going to say is that my face went so hot I felt radioactive.

  I took a bite of my naked salad (I decided to do without the dressing) and watched him unpack today’s travesty of a lunch.

  “So, what does your mom have on the menu for today?” I asked, eyeing a plastic container that looked like it was housing a substance that I can only describe as white Jell-o.

  Jonathan pointed to the white blob. “Tofu with broccoli and some kind of noodles and soy sauce. Except she didn’t have time to mix it all together, so I have to do that.”

  “That doesn’t sound too bad, although I will say that your tofu looks like it came out of the non-singing end of a bird,” I said.

  Jonathan frowned and gave me a look. “Gross, Libby.”

  Blushing, I looked down at my salad.

  Me and my mouth. There I go again. Just blurting out the wrong thing.

  I briefly wondered how I was ever going to make it as a CIA agent if I couldn’t pull myself together around cute guys.

  I stuffed more salad into my mouth in hopes of stopping myself from saying more gross things and, instead of talking, I watched Jonathan put his lunch together.

  He opened a small container of what looked like spaghetti noodles with bits of broccoli and then dumped the tofu into the noodle-broccoli blend. He took a plastic fork and stirred it around, breaking the tofu into smaller chunks. Finally, he ripped open a large packet of soy sauce and drizzled it over the blend.

  All of a sudden he was looking at me.

  I stopped chewing and blinked back at him.

  “What?” I asked, forgetting that my mouth was full. A piece of lettuce fell out of mouth and onto my lap. Blushing furiously, I picked it up and hid it underneath my napkin.

  Jonathan glanced at the napkin I’d used to hide the lettuce and smiled as he said, “You’re quiet today.”

  I gulped down my salad before answering. “Sorry.”

  “You don’t have to apologize,” he said with a shrug. He picked up his fork and mixed around his noodle concoction. “I just hope you’re all right. Are you?”

  I watched him take the first bite of his lunch, my heart warming and turning into a soft substance, not dissimilar to the jiggling tofu his mom had packed with his lunch.

  He wants to know if I’m all right.

  “I’m fine,” I said. I paused and he looked at me, as if to gauge whether or not I was telling the truth.

  That did it.

  I couldn’t lie when he looked at me like that.

  “Actually,” I said with a sigh. “I’m embarrassed. The things I said at lunch yesterday, about Jen. I don’t know what was wrong with me. I kept saying stupid things and I didn’t mean to.”

  Jonathan nodded. “We all say things we don’t mean sometimes. I definitely do. And, Jen’s not always the easiest person to be around.”

  I perked up. “Right, yeah. She isn’t.”

  “She can come across as, like, kind of cold,” Jonathan said. Now it was his turn to pause. He glanced at me and tilted his head questioningly. “Is that, like, is that how you view her? I mean, do you think she’s kind of distant or…mean?”

  He took another bite of his food, but there was something off about his mannerisms.

  I narrowed my eyes and watched him more carefully. He was nervous.

  I bit down on my bottom lip and weighed this against the fact that we were discussing a girl who’d thrown herself at him with the gusto of a suicidal insect throwing itself into the windshield of a speeding vehicle.

  “Are you asking me,” I slowly said. “What I think of Jen?”

  He shrugged like it was no big deal, but his gaze remained on his food and his jaw was tense.

  He really was nervous to ask me this.

  And that meant only one thing- Jonathan liked Jen. A lot. And since I had sort of become his friend, he wanted me to like her too.

  A string of curses ran through my head while a surge of jealousy shot through me like the world’s most unpleasant adrenaline rush.


  But, I took a steadying deep breath and tried to think clearly.

  As much as I liked Jonathan, I also wanted him to be happy. And if Jen made him happy, how lame would I be to try and put a wedge between them? That would prove just how much I didn’t deserve a nice guy like him.

  So, I pasted on my best fake smile and pretended to perk up as I said, “Jen’s great. I think you two would be cute together.”

  His olive skin turned red and he smiled like he didn’t want to, but couldn’t stop himself. It was goofy, but cute on him. With this, Jonathan said, “I do really like her.”

  I wanted to die.

  But, I didn’t. Instead, I forced a chuckle and patted his arm. “Well, good choice, Cletus. She’s super pretty.”

  I faked a contented sigh and tried to look cheerful as I stabbed my salad with my fork and said, “I’m so happy for you guys. There’s nothing like watching two people fall for each other.”

  “And it feels pretty good too,” Jonathan said with a laugh.

  I cringed and stuffed a heaping forkful of salad into my mouth.

  “Yesterday, I rode home with her after school,” he continued. “And hanging out with her all afternoon was, like, I don’t even know how to describe the feeling… you know that feeling of being around someone who listens to your every word and watches you like they’re afraid you’ll disappear if they take their eyes off you for a single second? It was so obvious that she likes me. I felt … special.”

  It was a good thing I was still chewing my heaping portion of salad. Otherwise, I would’ve probably been compelled to point out that all of that was exactly how I felt about him!

  But, when Jonathan looked at me, his eyes bright with wonder and hope, I just kept chewing and nodded to indicate that yes, I totally understood and supported his feelings of elation.

  He seemed to fall for my fakery because as soon as I nodded he looked even happier, which I didn’t think was humanly possible.

  He pushed his bowl of tofu-noodle-whatever aside, so he could gesture freely and then angled his body so he could face me. “Honestly, Libby. I’ve always thought of Jen as like, this snobby self-centered cheerleader who thinks she’s better than everybody. I’d always assumed she was spoiled.”

  Even though I was done chewing, I just nodded. I didn’t trust my voice. Because internally, I was screaming, “That’s probably because that’s exactly what Jen is,” and, had I opened my mouth, I might not have been able to stop the words from tumbling out.

  Jonathan grinned as he went on, “But I couldn’t have been more wrong about her. And I didn’t fully realize that until yesterday. We spent most of the afternoon at Howard’s Diner on Freedom Highway and she kept asking me all these questions about myself. Like, she wanted to know everything. No one’s ever shown that much interest in me.”

  A part of my heart shriveled and died. Hadn’t I asked him tons of questions about himself? Wasn’t it obvious that I was interested in him?

  Keeping my expression carefully blank, I asked, “No one at all?”

  Jonathan laughed and shook his head. “Definitely no one.”

  I forced another smile and nodded again.

  Apparently, when I asked him the exact same questions that Jen probably asked him and grinned at him with the exact same level of lust that Jen probably had in her grins- it didn’t matter. The way I treated Jonathan made no difference because he didn’t like me the way he liked her. Jen was a hot ginger, and I was … well, I was an overweight blob of tofu.

  Still laughing, Jonathan lowered his voice and said, “This is the first time I’ve ever had a thing with a girl. So, yeah no one’s ever treated me like this before, especially no one like Jen.”

  “Wow, that’s incredible,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound as dead as I felt on the inside.

  “We stayed at the diner for two hours, just talking,” he said with a wistful sigh. “That’s when I finally realized I was late for work. And I knew my dad was going to kill me, but I didn’t even care! That’s how much fun it was, being with her. And then, in the parking lot, we kissed.”

  Jonathan’s pause was long and awkward.

  I just stared down at my salad, hoping he’d keep talking so I wouldn’t have to fake a stupid smile or try to come up with something witty to say as I imagined the two of them kissing. That would just be cruel.

  But of course, seeing as life is cruel, Jonathan said not a word and simply turned to me expectantly.

  So, my gaze still on my salad, I muttered the only inane question I was capable of coming up with, “Did you eventually get to work?”

  “I did, and it was all right because my dad wasn’t even there,” Jonathan said. “He had a house call that entire afternoon. So, I was safe.”

  I loaded the salad’s last bits of lettuce, tomato and cheese onto my fork and shoved them into my mouth.

  “Libby, are you okay?” Jonathan suddenly asked.

  I turned to him and grinned. “Yeah, I just wish I’d put salad dressing on this.”

  I didn’t. The salad was actually fine without dressing.

  “You know,” I went on. “I actually have no idea where you work. What do you do?”

  That was also a lie. The first day we’d met, he’d mentioned in passing that he worked at his family’s security system installation company called Red’s Cameras.

  But when you asked Jonathan a question, he answered it so thoroughly that you didn’t have to speak for a while.

  So, that’s why I asked him something, anything, that would have allowed me a few minutes of freedom from fake smiles and nodding.

  “Oh,” he said perking up. “I thought I told you, but I guess I didn’t. I work part time at Red’s Security Camera’s. It’s a company my dad started just before I was born. We install home security systems and we have all kinds of cameras and…”

  Jonathan continued to explain the details of his job at Red’s and I continued to fall deeper and deeper into the chasm of my own depressed thoughts.

  They’d kissed.

  Why was it that girls like Jen always got the guy? No matter how mean or insincere they were, it didn’t matter. The fact that they were skinny, pretty, and white meant they got their happily ever after.

  I sighed.

  …and that left girls like me- girls who were overweight and average looking- with nothing.

  It just wasn’t fair.

  “Libby,” Jonathan’s voice shook me out of my thoughts. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  I pasted on my brightest fake smile. “Yeah, for sure. I’m awesome. Why?”

  He tilted his head and gave me a questioning look, but after a beat, he continued talking about Red’s.

  And I continued to fall into my own dark thoughts.

  ***

  The school bus, noisy with the chattering of all the kids who actually had someone to freaking talk to, stopped at the entrance to my gated neighborhood.

  I stood, grabbed my backpack and glanced at the empty seat beside me- the seat where Jonathan should have been. But instead of having his butt planted beside mine, he was probably out somewhere with Trailer Trash Barbie.

  I lugged my backpack on over my shoulders and exited the bus.

  “Have a good afternoon,” the bus driver called after me. “And try to smile, hon. Life can’t be that bad!”

  Surprised, I glanced over my shoulder and the middle-aged driver -a dark-skinned woman with gray streaks in her brown hair- grinned at me.

  I forced a smile. “Thanks, I’ll try.”

  “Good for you,” she gave me a thumbs up. “Don’t let the haters get you down.”

  With this, the bus doors closed and she pulled away.

  I stared after it, well, I stared after it until the black exhaust coming out of its mechanical butt drifted into my lungs and inspired a rather disgusting coughing fit.

  Still hacking, I let myself into our neighborhood’s security gate and started the brief walk home.

  Don’t let
the haters get you down.

  It was a nice sentiment. Undoubtedly, the friendly woman had said it because she’d seen the look on my face and wanted to make me feel better. Or, maybe she’d noticed how close Jonathan and I had become and then noticed that he’d been missing from the bus for the past two afternoons.

  Whatever her reason for trying to encourage me, her words actually had the opposite effect.

  I sighed and kicked a lone pine cone on the sidewalk. It skidded into a neighbor’s yard.

  Who’s hating on me?

  My thoughts went to Jen.

  The girl had never said anything overtly mean to me, she was just one of those cold and distant types who didn’t attempt to make friends with the people around her. But I knew she hadn’t, like, targeted me or anything.

  On the other hand, I’d just mentally referred to her as “Trailer Trash Barbie.”

  So, who’s the actual hater in this situation?

  My shoulders sagging, I sighed and sauntered pass the house on our block that had the prettiest front yard garden. But I didn’t even stop to glance at it the way I usually did, allowing myself to imagine that one day Mom and I would settle into a real home and she would do things like garden and date men she actually liked and whatever else it was that normal people did.

  Instead of daydreaming, I stared at the sidewalk and let the hot Texas sun beat down on the top of my head.

  I am a hater.

  But was it really my fault? Was it my fault that white girls like Jen got what they wanted so easily while girls like me tried our hardest and still had to stand by and just watch as the Jen’s of the world took everything without even trying?

  I clenched my fists.

  Am I turning into the mythological creature known as the angry black woman?

  I took a deep breath and shook my head, as if doing so would shake off the horribly negative thoughts that had been bearing down on me all afternoon. With this, I turned into our driveway and headed to our back door.

  I need to pull myself together.

  And that’s exactly what I did if grabbing our screen door and yanking it towards me with such force that it nearly came off of its hinges, counts as “pulling myself together.”