Mrs. Garrett is now standing behind her lectern and pointing to a poster on the wall. “Can you read a seating chart, Miss Buckman?”
So it’s Miss Buckman now. She’s never going to say my name—not correctly or any other way. Zoe takes a few steps forward so she can read the tiny lettering in each square. Everyone’s names are listed first and last. Except hers. She is listed as Miss Buckman. The seat she is assigned to is in the first row, right beneath Mrs. Garrett’s nose. Zoe looks over at Mrs. Garrett. Her gray eyes are unwavering and her jaw is set, the lines hard, intimidating, and full of knowing, just like Grandma’s. Zoe’s trying will not be enough for Mrs. Garrett. Not ever. She wishes now she hadn’t forged Mama’s name on that form, but there are still no other options for her.
Zoe hears every scuff of her shoes on the gritty linoleum as she steps forward and slides into the front and center seat, and she knows with every muffled cough and sideways glance from other students: Mrs. Garrett wants to throw her out of the classroom. There are no “sorry”s or counseling sessions in Mrs. Garrett’s controlling, know-it-all world. But protocol must be followed. The rules. Forms have been signed. Now it is up to Zoe to blow it again. Mrs. Garrett probably thinks it will be easy. But Mrs. Garrett doesn’t know her. Compared to the rest of Zoe’s life, Mrs. Garrett is a cakewalk.
Zoe will wait her out.
The fifty-five-minute class moves along at an excruciatingly slow pace. Zoe raises her hand twice to offer answers. Mrs. Garrett looks over her head and calls on other students. Zoe wonders why Mrs. Garrett put her front and center if she only plans to ignore her. What is her fucking point? The bell rings, and Zoe has not said a word the entire period. God, she needs a cigarette. But her next class is on the other side of campus and there really isn’t time to sneak out to the parking lot. “C’mon,” she says to Monica, tugging on her sleeve, “I need a lookout.”
They slip into the bathroom at the end of the hall, and Zoe disappears into the last stall. Between the flushing toilets and the tinny sound of paper towel dispensers, Zoe listens for Monica’s voice. She lights her cigarette and takes a deep drag, one that she pulls all the way down to her toes. She’s only been smoking for a year, only half a pack a day—maybe a little more. She doesn’t think she is addicted, physically, that is. It’s more of a mental thing. Like polishing off a dozen Hershey’s kisses when she is stiffed twice for tips in one night or eating a carton of pralines and cream when the guy who felt you up the night before is rubbing someone else’s ass the next day. It is a gnawing that you have to satisfy, and cigarettes are a lot less fattening. Of course they’ll turn your lungs to a tar pit—not good for tennis—but she only smokes half a pack. It isn’t much. Just half a pack to get her through the day. And she has a lot of days she needs getting through.
She takes another deep drag and hears Monica blurt out in song, “L is for the way you LOOK at me!” The signal. She drops her cigarette in the toilet, flushes, and waves her hand to clear the air. Monica sings on. “O is for the only one I SEE!” Her voice echoes in the concrete cavern like she is auditioning for a musical. Zoe has the feeling that Monica enjoys the role of lookout. She steps out before Monica can go on to the next line. A faint haze of smoke follows her. She looks across the bathroom and decides she can finish the next line herself—V is for VERY bad timing.
Mrs. Garrett is staring at her again, looking down her nose, her head tilted slightly to the side, like she is looking at a useless bug. Zoe looks away and continues the bathroom act, swishing her hands under the faucet and reaching for a paper towel. Her mind races under the silent stare. Shit. She can’t prove anything. It’s only a damn cigarette. What’s her problem? Zoe throws her towel away, and she and Monica walk out without a word from Mrs. Garrett, but Zoe stills feels the heaviness of the stare and wonders how a simple look could make her feel like so much less than everyone else.
Twelve
“You don’t have to wait. Go on.”
Zoe adjusts her butt on the edge of the curb and stretches her legs out. She doesn’t want to wait. She wants to go home. To her new home. School let out fifteen minutes ago, and the parking lot is clear. But she says what Carly wants to hear, what she needs to hear. “I don’t mind. It gives us a chance to talk.” They have already talked about the unfairness of speeding tickets on perfectly flat stretches of highway, Carly’s lack of wheels, Zoe’s suspension and the wave of careful pronunciations infiltrating all the classrooms, and finally, Zoe’s forthcoming counseling.
Carly looks at her watch. “Reid said his stupid meeting would only last five minutes. Just long enough to find out a couple things about their first play.” She shakes her head. “He’s probably already auditioning for every damn part.”
Zoe smiles. Carly knows her brother too well. Reid lives for drama—in and out of the theater. This past summer he got the starring role in Little Shop of Horrors at the community playhouse. And for drama out of the theater, he got to spend the night in jail for chaining himself to an old eucalyptus on the corner of Algheny and First. The tree had to go to widen the road, but Reid didn’t see it that way. “A tree has rights, too,” he said. “It’s been here longer than us and is way better-looking than the mayor.” The city didn’t agree, and neither did his parents. Besides a night in a cell, that drama also cost him a long-planned fishing trip to the Gulf with his dad. Carly went instead and loved every minute.
Zoe doesn’t understand what could have excited Carly so much about a fishing trip. The idea of bobbing on a boat for the sole purpose of pulling bloody-lipped fish out of the sea doesn’t appeal to her at all. She and Carly are different in a lot of ways, most ways probably. She isn’t even sure you could call them best friends. What does “best” mean? she wonders. But they are loyal friends, longtime friends for sure, ever since seventh g
rade when they were both alone at lunch at a new junior high and they latched on to each other to save the humiliation of being alone.
Zoe had had friends in elementary school, but one had moved away over the summer, and the other had switched to Saint Pat’s Catholic School. Carly had been her life raft. Standing alone on an asphalt sea at a junior high is just as deadly as being adrift in a real one when you are a girl who doesn’t wear the right shoes and your mother hasn’t thought to get you a bra for your emerging nipples. Of course Carly did have the right shoes, and her breasts were already full and well-covered, but her teeth hadn’t been fixed yet, and she mumbled through a hand that always hovered just below her nose. Her braces have been off for a couple of years now, her smile straight and beautiful, but Zoe notices that when Carly is nervous, her hand still shoots up, on guard at her upper lip, braced for taunts that still have life in secret memories. Zoe guesses some scars are etched on the skin, some in the brain, the ones in the brain much deeper and lasting.
She hasn’t told Carly about moving. She wonders if she should. It might make Carly feel guilty, like she should have known, like she should have offered her place, like she shouldn’t have a mother who is so different from Zoe’s, like she shouldn’t have a father who is still alive and takes her on fishing trips. But more than worrying about Carly’s guilt, Zoe feels the room on Lorelei is still part of a dream world—thin and gauzy and fragile. Like it could swirl away into the air at any moment. Her urge to leave is stronger. She has to hurry. Has to anchor it down by being there. She stands.
“How about if I just give you a ride?”
“Nope. Part of the punishment, too.” Carly rolls her big brown eyes. “Lack of wheels is only effective if it inconveniences you. Mom says no rides with friends—only Reid.” She stands with Zoe and swats at her butt to brush off dust. “She’ll get over it fast enough, though. She doesn’t realize how much she relies on me to run errands. No way is she going to send Reid to the store for tampons. I know something will come up that will have me behind the wheel by this weekend.” Carly smooths a damp strand of her short, curly brown hair from her forehead. “Go ahead. He’ll be here soon.”
“You sure?” Zoe knows Carly hates to be alone. Brain scars, she thinks.
Carly’s brows pull together, and she blows a puff of air out between her lips like being alone is nothing to her. “Go,” she says.
And Zoe does.
Thirteen
It is eight minutes from the school parking lot to the shaded parkway. Eight minutes for every worry to crowd her mind. What if? What if? What if Mama needs me, what if Kyle calls, what if Opal changes her mind, what if Mama…Mama…Mama? It always starts and ends with Mama. The what ifs are only blotted out when Zoe’s feet stamp out a frenzied rhythm up the stairs and she slides her key into the lock, throws open the door, and it is all still there. The bed. The jukebox. The stone bulldog on guard. The air. Hers.
Every corner is still there.
She walks to the bed and lies facedown, her arms spread wide, her fingers digging into the fabric, holding to be sure, tossing on a crest between laughter and tears, and then she lifts her head, focuses, and the gauzy dream is solid. Her breathing slows, and she takes in the comfort of the room. She lets it fill her, settle her like ballast in a boat. And then, when the calm has coursed to her fingertips, she gets up and begins taking a few last items from a pillowcase propped in the corner. The need to finish her nesting is obvious. Of course. Down to her marrow she needs this. She pushes thoughts of Mama aside and finishes finding order for the years of jumble she brought from home.
A tuneless hum tumbles from her throat and floats on the air as she works. She carefully places a small, rose-flowered photo album at the end of the window seat on a tasseled tangerine pillow. She fluffs the other pillows lining the seat and then rearranges them. Their bright mismatched colors remind her of a worn but loved box of crayons. Next, she sets a tiny wooden tray on the dresser next to the picture of her and Kyle and places half a dozen perfumes on it. She sprays a blast of Summer Morning into the air and inhales. She marvels. She controls the smell of her room, too. She sprays another blast and sets the bottle with the others. Her battered stuffed Eeyore is placed between the two pillows on her bed. His matted gray-blue fur looks nice, she thinks, against the tiny winding-leaf pattern of the spread. Opal said she had another spread if Zoe preferred, but the delicate leafy design is perfect for under the star-filled ceiling. It will stay.
She continues to empty her pillowcase until it is flat and then she neatly folds it and sets it on a shelf in her closet. Her closet. It’s done, she thinks, and there are still two hours before her shift starts at the diner. Enough time to smell the Summer Morning or rearrange everything all over again if she chooses. Or maybe time to run to the store for a few things to fill the refrigerator.
A refrigerator. She has a refrigerator to fill. Her own refrigerator.
After paying Opal and buying lunch and half a tank of gas, she still has twenty-two dollars. Today that sounds like a fortune. More than she needs for a few things. The room is working. It’s working.