SUMMER INTERNSHIP POSITIONS/DEPARTMENT 2 page

Kate did as she was told. Almost before she was finished, her mother was behind her, pouring milk into the glasses.

"Sean—breakfast," Mom yelled up the stairs again. This time she added the magic words: "I've poured the milk."

Within seconds eight-year-old Sean came running down the stairs and rushed toward the beige speckled Formica table, giggling as he tripped over the Labrador puppy who'd recently joined the family.

Kate was just about to sit down at her regular place when she happened to glance across the kitchen and into the living room. Through the large window above the sofa, she saw something that surprised her: A moving van was turning into the driveway across the street.

"Wow." She carried her plate through the two rooms and stood at the window, staring out over their three acres and down on the house across the street. It had been vacant for as long as anyone could remember.

She heard her mother's footsteps coming up behind her; hard on the fake brick linoleum of the kitchen floor, quiet in the moss-green carpeting of the living room.

"Someone's moving in across the street," Kate said.

"Really?"

No. I'm lying.

"Maybe they'll have a girl your age. It would be nice for you to have a friend."

Kate bit back an irritated retort. Only mothers thought it was easy to make friends in junior high. "Whatever." She turned away abruptly, taking her plate into the hallway, where she finished her breakfast in peace beneath the portrait of Jesus.

As expected, Mom followed her. She stood by the tapestry wall hanging of The Last Supper, saying nothing.

"What?" Kate snapped when she couldn't take it anymore.

Mom's sigh was so quiet it could hardly be heard. "Why are we always bickering lately?"

"You're the one who starts it."

"By saying hello and asking how you're doing? Yeah, I'm a real witch."

"You said it, not me."

"It's not my fault, you know."

"What isn't?"

"That you don't have any friends. If you'd—"

Kate walked away. Honest to St. Jude, one more if-you'd-only-try-harder speech and she might puke.

Thankfully—for once—Mom didn't follow her. Instead, she went back into the kitchen, calling out, "Hurry up, Sean. The Mularkey school bus leaves in ten minutes."

Her brother giggled. Kate rolled her eyes and went upstairs. It was so lame. How could her brother laugh at the same stupid joke every day?

The answer came as quickly as the question had: because he had friends. Life with friends made everything easier.

She hid in her bedroom until she heard the old Ford station wagon start up. The last thing she wanted was to get driven to school by her mom, who yelled goodbye and waved like a contestant on The Price Is Right when Kate got out of the car. Everyone knew it was social suicide to be driven to school by your parents. When she heard tires crunching slowly across gravel, she went back downstairs, washed the dishes, gathered her stuff, and left the house. Outside, the sun was shining, but last night's rain had studded the driveway with inner-tube-sized potholes. No doubt the old-timers down at the hardware store were already starting to talk about the flooding. Mud sucked at the soles of her fake Earth shoes, making her progress slow. So intent was she on saving her only rainbow socks that she was at the bottom of the driveway before she noticed the girl standing across the street.

She was gorgeous. Tall and big-boobed, she had long, curly auburn hair and a face like Caroline of Monaco: pale skin and full lips and long lashes. And her clothes: low-rise, three-button jeans with huge, tie-died wedges of fabric in the seams to make elephant bells; cork-bottomed platform shoes with four-inch heels; and an angel-sleeved pink peasant blouse that revealed at least two inches of stomach.

Kate clutched her books against her chest, wishing she hadn't picked her pimples last night. Or that her jeans weren't Sears Rough Riders. "H-hi," she said, stopping on her side of the road. "The bus stops on this side."

Chocolate-brown eyes, rimmed heavily with black mascara and shiny blue eye shadow, stared at her, revealing nothing.

Just then, the school bus arrived. Wheezing and squeaking, it came to a shuddering stop on the road. A boy she used to have a crush on stuck his head out the window and yelled, "Hey, Kootie, the flood's over," and then laughed.

Kate put her head down and boarded the bus. Collapsing into her usual front-row seat—by herself—she kept her head bowed, waiting for the new girl to walk past her, but no one else got on. When the doors thumped shut and the bus lurched forward, she dared to look back at the road.

The coolest-looking girl in the world wasn't there.

Already Tully didn't fit in. It had taken two hours to choose her clothes this morning—an outfit right out of the pages of Seventeen magazine—and every bit of it was wrong.

When the school bus drove up, she made a split-second decision. She wasn't going to go to school in this hick backwater. Snohomish might be less than an hour from downtown Seattle, but as far as she was concerned, she might as well be on the moon. That was how alien this place felt.

No.

Hell, no.

She marched down the gravel driveway and shoved the front door open so hard it cracked against the wall.

Drama, she'd learned, was like good punctuation: it underscored your point.

"You must be high," she said loudly, realizing a second too late that the only people in the living room were the moving men.

One of them paused and looked wearily her way. "Huh?"

She pushed past them, grazing the armoire so hard they swore under their breath. Not that she cared. She hated it when she felt like this, all puffed up with anger.

She wouldn't let her so-called mother make her feel twisted up inside, not after all the times that woman had abandoned her.

In the master bedroom, her mom was sitting on the floor, cutting pictures out of Cosmo. As usual, her long hair was a wavy, fuzzy nightmare held in check by a grossly out-of-date beaded leather headband. Without looking up, she flipped to the next page, where a naked, grinning Burt Reynolds covered his penis with one hand.

"I'm not going to this backwater school. They're a bunch of hicks."

"Oh." Mom flipped to the next page, then reached for her scissors and began cutting out a spray of flowers from a Breck ad. "Okay."

Tully wanted to scream. "Okay? Okay? I'm fourteen years old."

"My job is to love and support you, baby, not to get in your face."

Tully closed her eyes, counted to ten, and said again, "I don't have any friends here."

"Make new ones. I heard you were Miss Popular at your old school."

"Come on, Mom, I—"

"Cloud."

"I'm not calling you Cloud."

"Fine, Tallulah." Mom looked up to make sure her point had been made. It had.

"I don't belong here."

"You know better than that, Tully. You're a child of the earth and sky; you belong everywhere. The Bhagavad Gita says . . ."

"That's it." Tully walked away while her mother was still talking. The last thing she wanted to hear was some drug-soaked advice that belonged on a black-light poster. On the way out, she snagged a pack of Virginia Slims from her mom's purse and headed for the road.

For the next week, Kate watched the new girl from a distance.

Tully Hart was boldly, coolly different; brighter, somehow, than everyone else in the faded green hallways. She had no curfew and didn't care if she got caught smoking in the woods behind the school. Everyone talked about it. Kate heard the whispered awe in their voices. For a group of kids who'd grown up in the dairy farms and paper mill workers' homes of the Snohomish Valley, Tully Hart was exotic. Everyone wanted to be friends with her.

Her neighbor's instant popularity made Kate's alienation more unbearable. She wasn't sure why it wounded her so much. All she knew was that every morning, as they stood at the bus stop beside each other and yet worlds apart, separated by yawning silence, Kate felt a desperate desire to be acknowledged by Tully.

Not that it would ever happen.

". . . before The Carol Burnett show starts. It's ready now. Kate? Katie?"

Kate lifted her head from the table. She'd fallen asleep on her open social studies textbook at the kitchen table. "Huh? What did you say?" she asked, pushing her heavy glasses back up into place.

"I made Hamburger Helper for our new neighbors. I want you to take it across the street."

"But . . ." Kate tried to think of an excuse, anything that would get her out of this. "They've been here a week."

"So I'm late. Things have been crazy lately."

"I've got too much homework. Send Sean."

"Sean's not likely to make friends over there, now, is he?"

"Neither am I," Kate said miserably.

Mom faced her. The brown hair she'd curled and teased so carefully this morning had fallen during the day and her makeup had faded. Now her round, apple-cheeked face looked pale and washed out. Her purple and yellow crocheted vest—a Christmas present from last year—was buttoned wrong. Staring at Kate, she crossed the room and sat down at the table. "Can I say something without you jumping all over me?"

"Probably not."

"I'm sorry about you and Joannie."

Of all the things Kate might have expected, that was not even on the list. "It doesn't matter."

"It matters. I hear she's running with a pretty fast crowd these days."

Kate wanted to say she couldn't have cared less, but to her horror, tears stung her eyes. Memories rushed at her—Joannie and her on the Octopus ride at the fair, sitting outside their stalls at the barn, talking about how much fun high school would be. She shrugged. "Yeah."

"Life is hard sometimes. Especially at fourteen."

Kate rolled her eyes. If there was one thing she knew, it was that her mother knew nothing about how hard life could be for a teenager. "No shit."

"I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that word from you. It'll be easy because I'll never hear it again. Right?"

Kate couldn't help wishing she was like Tully. She'd never back down so easily. She'd probably light up a cigarette right now and dare her mom to say something.

Mom dug through the baggy pocket of her skirt and found her cigarettes. Lighting up, she studied Kate. "You know I love you and I support you and I would never let anyone hurt you. But Katie, I have to ask you: What is it you're waiting for?"

"What do you mean?"

"You spend all your time reading and doing homework. How are people supposed to get to know you when you act like that?"

"They don't want to know me."

Mom touched her hand gently. "It's never good to sit around and wait for someone or something to change your life. That's why women like Gloria Steinem are burning their bras and marching on Washington."

"So that I can make friends?"

"So that you know you can be whatever you want to be. Your generation is so lucky. You can be anything you want. But you have to take a risk sometimes. Reach out. One thing I can tell you for sure is this: we only regret what we don't do in life."

Kate heard an odd sound in her mom's voice, a sadness that tinted the word regret. But what could her mother possibly know about the battlefield of junior high popularity? She hadn't been a teenager in decades. "Yeah, right."

"It's true, Kathleen. Someday you'll see how smart I am." Her mom smiled and patted her hand. "If you're like the rest of us, it'll happen at about the same time you want me to babysit for the first time."

"What are you talking about?"

Mom laughed at some joke Kate didn't even get. "I'm glad we had this talk. Now go. Make friends with your new neighbor."

Yeah. That would happen.

"Wear oven mitts. It's still hot," Mom said.

Perfect. The mitts.

Kate went over to the counter and stared down at the red-brown glop of a casserole. Dully, she fitted a sheet of foil across the top, curled the edges down, and then put on the puffy, quilted blue oven mitts her Aunt Georgia had made. At the back door, she slipped her stockinged feet into the fake Earth shoes on the porch and headed down the spongy driveway.

The house across the street was long and low to the ground, a rambler-style in an L shape that faced away from the road. Moss furred the shingled roof. The ivory sides were in need of paint, and the gutters were overflowing with leaves and sticks. Giant rhododendron bushes hid most of the windows, runaway junipers created a green spiky barrier that ran the length of the house. No one had tended to the landscaping in years.

At the front door Kate paused, drawing in a deep breath.

Balancing the casserole in one hand, she pulled off one oven mitt and knocked.

Please let no one be home.

Almost instantly she heard footsteps from inside.

The door swung open to reveal a tall woman dressed in a billowy caftan. An Indian-beaded headband circled her forehead. Two mismatched earrings hung from her ears. There was a strange dullness in her eyes, as if she needed glasses and didn't have them, but even so, she was pretty in a sharp, brittle kind of way. "Yeah?"

Weird, pulsing music seemed to come from several places at once; though the lights were turned off, several lava lamps burped and bubbled in eerie green and red canisters.

"H-hello," Kate stammered. "My mom made you guys this casserole."

"Right on," the lady said, stumbling back, almost falling.

And suddenly Tully was coming through the doorway, sweeping through, actually, moving with a grace and confidence that was more movie star than teenager. In a bright blue minidress and white go-go boots, she looked old enough to be driving a car. Without saying anything, she grabbed Kate's arm, pulled her through the living room, and into a kitchen in which everything was pink: walls, cabinets, curtains, tile counters, table. When Tully looked at her, Kate thought she saw a flash of something that looked like embarrassment in those dark eyes.

"Was that your mom?" Kate asked, uncertain of what to say.

"She has cancer."

"Oh." Kate didn't know what to say except, "I'm sorry." Quiet pressed into the room. Instead of making eye contact with Tully, Kate studied the table. Never in her life had she seen so much junk food in one place. Pop-Tarts, Cap'n Crunch and Quisp boxes, Fritos, Funyuns, Twinkies, Zingers, and Screaming Yellow Zonkers. "Wow. I wish my mom would let me eat all this stuff." Kate immediately wished she'd kept her mouth shut. Now she sounded hopelessly uncool. To give herself something to do—and somewhere to look besides Tully's unreadable face—she put the casserole on the counter. "It's still hot," she said, stupidly, considering that she was wearing oven mitts that looked like killer whales.

Tully lit up a cigarette and leaned against the pink wall, eyeing her.

Kate glanced back at the door to the living room. "She doesn't care if you smoke?"

"She's too sick to care."

"Oh."

"You want a drag?"

"Uh . . . no. Thanks."

"Yeah. That's what I thought."

On the wall, the black Kit-Kat Klock swished its tail.

"Well, you probably have to get home for dinner," Tully said.

"Oh," Kate said again, sounding even more nerdy than she had before. "Right."

Tully led the way back through the living room, where her mother was now sprawled on the sofa. "'Bye, girl from across the street with the cool neighbor attitude."

Tully yanked the door open. Beyond it, the falling night was a blurry purple rectangle that seemed too vivid to be real. "Thanks for the food," she said. "I don't know how to cook, and Cloud is cooked, if you know what I mean."

"Cloud?"

"That's my mom's current name."

"Oh."

"It'd be cool if I did know how to cook. Or if we had a chef or something. With my mom having cancer and all." Tully looked at her.

Tell her you'll teach her.

Take a risk.

But she couldn't do it. The potential for humiliation was sky-high. "Well . . .'bye."

"Later."

Kate stepped past her and into the night.

She was halfway to the road when Tully called out to her, "Hey, wait up."

Kate slowly turned around.

"What's your name?"

She felt a flash of hope. "Kate. Kate Mularkey."

Tully laughed. "Mularkey? Like bullshit?"

It was hardly funny anymore, that joke about her last name. She sighed and turned back around.

"I didn't mean to laugh," Tully said, but she didn't stop.

"Yeah. Whatever."

"Fine. Be a bitch, why don't you?"

Kate kept walking.

CHAPTER FOUR

Tully watched the girl walk away.

"I shouldn't have said that," she said, noticing how small her voice sounded beneath the enormous star-spangled sky.

She wasn't even sure why she'd said it, why she'd suddenly felt the need to make fun of the next-door neighbor. With a sigh, she went back into the house. The moment she stepped into the room, the smell of pot overwhelmed her, stung her eyes. On the sofa, her mom lay spread-eagled, one leg on the coffee table, one on the back cushions. Her mouth hung open; drool sparkled the corners of her lips.

And the girl next door had seen this. Tully felt a hot wave of shame. No doubt rumors would be all over school by Monday. Tully Hart has a pothead mom.

This was why she never invited anyone over to her house. When you were keeping secrets, you needed to do it alone, in the dark.

She would have given anything to have the kind of mom who made dinner for strangers. Maybe that was why she'd made fun of the girl's name. The thought pissed her off and she slammed the door shut behind her. "Cloud. Wake up."

Mom drew in a sharp, snorting breath and sat up. "Whass the matter?"

"It's dinnertime."

Mom pushed the gob of hair out of her eyes and worked to focus on the wall clock. "What are we—in a nursing home? Iss five o'clock."

Tully was surprised her mom could still tell time. She went into the kitchen, served the casserole onto two white CorningWare plates, and returned to the living room. "Here." She handed her mother a plate and fork.

"Where'd we get this? Did you cook?"

"Hardly. The neighbor brought it over."

Cloud looked blearily around. "We have neighbors?"

Tully didn't bother answering. Her mother always forgot what they were talking about anyway. It made any real conversation impossible, and usually Tully didn't care—she wanted to talk to Cloud like she wanted to watch black and white movies—but now, since that girl's visit, Tully felt her differentness keenly. If she had a real family—a mom who made casseroles and sent them as gifts to new neighbors—she wouldn't feel so alone. She sat down in one of the mustard-colored beanbag chairs that flanked the sofa and said cautiously, "I wonder what Gran's doing right now."

"Pro'ly making one of those god-awful PRAISE JESUS samplers. As if that'll save her soul. Ha. How's school?"

Tully's head snapped up. She couldn't believe her mom had just asked about her life. "Lots of kids hang around with me, but . . ." She frowned. How could she put her dissatisfaction into words? All she really knew was that she was lonely here, even among her new friends. "I keep waiting for . . ."

"Do we have ketchup?" her mother said, frowning down at her heap of Hamburger Helper, poking at it with her fork. She was swaying to the music.

Tully hated the disappointment she felt. She knew better than to expect anything from her mother. "I'm going to my room," she said, climbing out of the beanbag chair.

The last thing she heard before she slammed her bedroom door was her mother saying, "Maybe it needs cheese."

Late that night, long after everyone else had gone to bed, Kate crept down the stairs, put on her dad's huge rubber boots, and went outside. It was becoming a habit lately, going outside when she couldn't sleep. Overhead, the huge black sky was splattered with stars. It made her feel small and unimportant, that sky. A lonely girl looking down at an empty street that went nowhere.

Sweetpea nickered and trotted toward her.

She climbed up onto the top rail of the fence. "Hey there, girl," she said, pulling a carrot out of her parka's pocket.

She glanced over at the house across the street. The lights were still on at midnight. No doubt Tully was having a party with all the popular kids. They were probably laughing and dancing and talking about how cool they were.

Kate would give everything she owned to be invited to just one party like that.

Sweetpea nudged her knee, snorted.

"I know. I'm dreaming." Sighing, she slid off the fence, petted Sweetpea one last time, and then went back to bed.

A few nights later, after a dinner of Pop-Tarts and Alpha-Bits cereal, Tully took a long, hot shower, shaved her legs and underarms carefully, and dried her hair until it fell straight from her center part without a single crease or curl. Then she went to her closet and stood there, trying to figure out what to wear. This was her first high school party. She needed to look just right. None of the other girls from the junior high had been invited. She was The One. Pat Richmond, the best-looking guy on the football team, had chosen Tully for his date. They'd been at the local hamburger hangout last Wednesday night, his group of friends and hers. All it had taken was one look between them. Pat had broken free of the crowd of huge guys and walked right over to Tully.

She'd seen him heading her way and practically fainted. On the jukebox, "Stairway to Heaven" had been playing. Talk about romantic.

"I could get in trouble just for talking to you," he said.

She tried to look mature and worldly as she said, "I like trouble."

The smile he gave her was like nothing she'd ever seen before. For the first time in her life, she felt as beautiful as people always said she was.

"You wanna come to the party with me on Friday?"

"I could make that work," she said. It was a phrase she'd heard Erica Kane use on All My Children.

"I'll pick you up at ten." He leaned closer. "Unless that's past your curfew, little girl?"

"Seventeen Firefly Lane. And I don't have a curfew."

He smiled again. "I'm Pat, by the way."

"I'm Tully."

"Well, Tully, I'll see you at ten."

Tully still couldn't believe it. For the past forty-eight hours she'd obsessed over this first real date. All the other times she'd gone out with boys it was in a group or to a school dance. This was totally different, and Pat was practically a man.

They could fall in love; she knew it. And then, with him holding her hand, she'd stop feeling so alone.

She finally made her clothes choice.

Low-rise, three-button bell-bottom jeans, a pink scoop-necked knit top that showed off her cleavage, and her favorite cork platforms. She spent almost an hour on her makeup, layering more and more on until she looked foxy. She couldn't wait to show Pat how pretty she could be.

She grabbed a pack of her mom's cigarettes and left her bedroom.

In the living room, Mom looked up blearily from her magazine. "Hey, iss almos' ten o'clock. Where are you going?"

"This guy invited me to a party."

"Is he here?"

Right. Like Tully would invite anyone to come in. "I'm meeting him on the road."

"Oh. Cool. Don't wake me up when you get home."

"I won't."

Outside, it was dark and cold. The Milky Way stretched across the sky in a path of starlight.

She waited by her mailbox on the main road, moving from foot to foot to keep warm. Goose bumps pebbled her bare arms. The mood ring on her middle finger changed from green to purple. She tried to remember what that meant.

Across the street and up the hill, the pretty little farmhouse glowed against the darkness. Each window was like a pat of warm, melting butter. They were probably all at home, clustered around a big table, playing Risk. She wondered what they'd do if she just visited one day, showed up on the porch and said hey.

She heard Pat's car before she saw the headlights. At the roar of the engine, she forgot all about the family across the street and stepped into the road, waving.

His green Dodge Charger came to a stop beside her; the car seemed to pulse with sound, vibrate. She slid into the passenger seat. The music was so loud she knew he couldn't hear what she said.

Grinning at her, Pat hit the gas and they were off like a rocket, blasting down the quiet country lane.

As they turned onto a gravel road, she could see the party going on below. Dozens of cars were parked in a huge circle in a pasture, with their headlights on. Bachman-Turner Overdrive's "Taking Care of Business" blared from someone's car radio. Pat parked over in the stand of trees along the fence line.

There were kids everywhere, gathered around the flames of the bonfire, standing beside the kegs of beer set up in the grass. Clear plastic cups littered the ground. Down by the barn, a group of guys were playing touch football. It was late in May, and summer was still a ways away, so most people were wearing coats. She wished she hadn't forgotten hers.

Pat held her hand tightly, leading her through the crowd of couples toward the keg, where he poured two cups full.

Taking hers, she let him lead her down to a quiet spot just beyond the perimeter of cars. There, he spread his letterman's jacket down on the ground and motioned for her to sit down.

"I couldn't believe it when I first saw you," Pat said, sitting close to her, sipping his beer. "You're the prettiest girl ever to live in this town. All the guys want you."

"But you got me," she said, smiling at him. It felt as if she were falling into his dark eyes.

He took a big drink of his beer, practically finishing it, then he set it down and kissed her.

Other guys had kissed her before; mostly they were fumbling, nervous attempts made during a slow dance. This was different. Pat's mouth was like magic. She sighed happily, whispering his name. When he drew back, he was staring at her with pure, sunshiny love in his eyes. "I'm glad you're here."

"Me, too."

He finished off his beer and got up. "I need more brew."

They were in line at the keg when he frowned at her. "Hey, you aren't drinking. I thought you were cool with partying."

"I am." She smiled nervously. She'd never really drank before, but he wouldn't like her if she acted like a nerd, and she was desperate for him to want her. "Bottoms up," she said, tilting the plastic tumbler to her lips and drinking the whole amount without stopping. When she finished, she couldn't help burping and giggling.

"Far out," he said, nodding, pouring two more beers.

The second one wasn't so bad, and by the third beer Tully had completely lost her sense of taste. When Pat brought out a bottle of Annie Green Springs wine, she guzzled some of that, too. For almost an hour, they sat on his jacket, tucked close together, drinking and talking. She didn't know any of the people he talked about, but that didn't matter. What mattered was the way he looked at her, the way he held her hand.

"Come on," he whispered, "let's dance."

She felt woozy when she stood up. Her balance was off and she kept stumbling during their dance. Finally, she fell down altogether. Pat laughed, took her hand to pull her up, and led her to a dark, romantic spot in the trees. Giggling, she hobbled awkwardly behind him, gasping when he took her in his arms and kissed her.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 593