She shrugged her thin shoulders under the silk Michael Kors top I would have killed for. Sometimes I looked at her and thought she might be prettier than I was.
I hated that.
“I just figured with your father being out of town until next weekend, maybe we could have sort of a girls’ night out.” She gave me a tentative smile and waited for a response, and then after not getting one in reasonable time, kept talking.
“I looked it up and it sounds pretty good, actually …”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, but I’m busy tonight.”
I started up the stairs. I knew exactly which movie she was talking about, and I had been dying to see it. But going to the movies with your stepmother—how pathetic is that? She might as well have asked me to go to a midnight opening of Blue’s Clues 3-D in full furry costume regalia.
“Oh, but you were so disappointed when you couldn’t go the other night …”
I stopped when she said that and bent toward her, talking to her as if she were the child and I was the evil stepmother.
“That’s because I didn’t want to go to Dad’s stupid dinner thing, that’s all.”
“Oh.” She looked down at a piece of paper in her hand, which looked like it had the movie summary on it. I felt a small stab of guilt when I saw it.
She folded it in half and followed me as I walked up the stairs. I could feel her eyes on my back.
“Well, maybe there’s another movie you’d like to see, or we could do something else—”
I stopped and turned again, feeling disproportionately averse to the idea.
“Okay, Meredith? I don’t know how to make this obvious to you if you really don’t get it yet. I don’t want to do anything with you tonight. Mmkay?”
Her eyes widened and she looked like she was about to have another one of her crying fits. For God’s sake, what was wrong with her? She cried all the time lately. She was, like, forty. Was that too young to go into menopause?
Whatever. I wasn’t going to take responsibility for upsetting her. I’d walked away from arguments like this feeling guilty before. Walked away feeling like I must have really pushed the limit to make her cry. But then, later in the week, I’d see her sobbing over Sesame Street and realize it was not about me.
Though I did wonder why on earth she was alone in the living room watching Sesame Street.
I DROVE TO MY BORING, stuffy, private high school, Winchester Preparatory, in my 2007 Toyota Corolla (my father gave me his old car instead of buying me a new one in one of his few-and-far-between fits of parenting) and parked in my usual spot. I was late, also as usual, though this time it was because of the conversation with Meredith. So it wasn’t actually my fault. It never is.
Still, I guess I wasn’t exactly running down the hall. And I did stop at the vending machines to get a Vitaminwater. After a moment or two of deliberation between flavors, I headed to class. To Tech Ed, where my teacher was as useless as the subject.
His name was Mr. Ezhno, and he was just simply not cut out for teaching. He was weak and spineless, and on top of that, entirely boring. He blathered on, teaching us things everyone in our day and age already knows. How to turn on a computer. How to open a blank document.
When we weren’t doing that, we were doing things like building light switches. Which was stupid, in my opinion. Why should we have to figure it out when it’s already been figured out? I seriously doubted that I’d ever be in a situation where someone was saying, “Quick, it’s an emergency, put down those matches and build a light switch!”
It would have been almost impossible to pay attention to him even if anyone had tried.
Which, naturally, we didn’t.
On days when we were behind the computers, we were either working on essays with useless topics or ignoring him to play games or browse the internet, while the more studious students did work for other (real) classes. Either way, none of us were doing what we were supposed to.
About halfway through the semester, he noticed that no one was paying attention to him, so he started making us turn off the computer screens when we weren’t supposed to be doing something with them. All this did, however, was bore us into terrorizing him. We would raise our hands and ask deliberately stupid questions, and he would have to answer them, just in case one of them was for real.
Except, there was one day when Matt Churchill had asked, with a completely straight face, if there was really such thing as a “chick magnet.” Mr. Ezhno had refused to answer, calling it a “ridiculous question.”
But I’d seen the doubt flicker through his eyes as he wondered if Matt was serious.
As if the curriculum wasn’t irritating enough, the class was first thing in the morning, making it positively impossible for me to ever get there on time. And once I did get there, I admittedly gave him kind of a hard time.
Every once in a while, a twinge of pity for the man stopped me in my tracks. Him, with his button-down shirts and pleated khakis, his office supplies, weekly boxes of new chalk and the stickers he put on papers with good grades (which, incidentally, I knew existed only from spotting them on other people’s papers). He was the classic nerdy teacher. Seriously, if the makers of that movie Office Space had seen this guy, they would have given Milton and his stapler the boot and asked Mr. Ezhno to step in.
Often, however, I didn’t stop. It usually started with me saying something double-sided that Mr. Ezhno couldn’t respond to appropriately. He’d then send me to the main office, I’d get in-school suspension, my behavior wouldn’t improve and then he’d have several parent-teacher meetings with Meredith.
I hated that.
She was not my parent, and my father never got involved in this stuff. Thank God.
Still, they would meet, get along and, as I imagined it, plot ways to make my life more frustrating. Luckily, the meetings had stopped somewhere along the way. At this point it was like he’d given up. Which worked for me. Honestly, I’d been about to ease up on him—I could tell I was pushing him too far, and the last thing I needed was to get in trouble. But that didn’t seem to be an issue anymore.
So it was 7:40 on that Thursday morning when I waltzed into the classroom and crossed right in front of Mr. Ezhno, my shoulder grazing his grade book. I headed toward my seat next to Jillian Orman. I heard the boys in the back row talking about me, saying something sexist but still flattering.
But this time, as opposed to every other time, Mr. Ezhno stopped talking to the class.
His eyes fastened on me.
“Go on.” I raised my eyebrows at him, like I was giving him permission, and then twisted open my Vitaminwater.
“Miss Duke, can you please go wait out in the hall for me?” He sounded tired.
“Already?” Snickers from the class, who appreciated my anticipation of getting in trouble—just not yet.
“But Mr. Ezhno, I bought the flavor that’s supposed to help me focus. I bought it just for your class, Mr. Ezhno.” I raised my drink, tapping lightly on the label where it said Focus.
Most of the people in the class sniggered quietly, waiting for him to come up with something to say.
Instead he just pointed toward the door.
When I looked at him like I didn’t know what he was talking about, he repeated, “Please go wait for me in the hall.”
I sighed theatrically and walked out, making a face at his back as soon as I was past him.