Mrs. Bobbie jabbed her finger in Omega’s direction. “You listen to me and you listen well, missy. You will not agree to meet a boy. You will not so much as look at a boy until you leave this house. You are a child, not an adult. Sex is for the sanctity of marriage. For two married adults such as Mr. Al and myself. It belongs in the marriage bed, not out in the woods, in the dirt. Am I clear?”
She was inches from Omega now, and I saw clearly Mrs. Bobbie was wrong. Omega was an adult and this was an argument not between a woman and child, but between two peers of equal standing, each with their own particular weapons of warfare. I also recognized I had no idea what this battle was being fought over. I just knew I didn’t have a part to play in it. I didn’t belong here, and I wanted out.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Bobbie,” I said. She didn’t look at me.
Omega grabbed the panties. Her face was burning but her eyes were grim. She turned, as if about to leave.
“No camping trip,” Mrs. Bobbie shrilled at her back. “Neither of you. You’ll both stay behind. Here with me, to do chores.”
Omega hesitated for a fraction of a second, then wrenched open the door and stormed out. I waited a moment longer, wringing my hands, wondering if I was dismissed, or if I should stomp out like Omega. Mrs. Bobbie didn’t even bother to look at me. She sank on the bed, her fingers picking imaginary lint from her pilled black trousers. Smoothed and cupped her hair. Smoothed and cupped, smoothed and cupped.
“There you go,” she croaked. But I didn’t think she even realized I was still standing there. “See how you like that, Mr. Sneaking Off to the Woods.”
I crept out as quietly as I could and went and climbed into my top bunk. I fell asleep and slept through the pizza and the football game. But it turned out it didn’t matter, because Omega and I had been forbidden from going to that too.
Chapter Eighteen
“Go away,” Omega said.
I was lurking in the doorway of her room, gazing at her the way Bitsy looked at us through the dining-room window when we sat down to supper. I’d been circling her all weekend, far enough away not to aggravate her, close enough to gauge her mood. So far, she’d acted like I was invisible. Now it was Sunday night—fifteen minutes until lights out—and I was desperate. Somehow I sensed that if I did not repair whatever it was that had broken between us before Monday morning, she and the rest of the Super Tramps would be lost to me forever.
“I know who did it—” I started.
She twisted around, her face a thundercloud. “I said get out!”
I darted away before she got really mad and chucked a book or something more substantial at me. Back in my room, I knelt on the floor, pulled out my backpack, and went through my binders and books, smoothing and sorting every homework paper and book report and math worksheet. I checked and double-checked to make sure I’d completed every assignment for the upcoming week.
Sometimes I thought I was just like Mrs. Bobbie, with the organizing. Smooth and cup. Smooth and cup.
Every now and then, I would stop and chew one of my already-ragged nails until a tiny bead of blood would bubble out. Like the papers, my thoughts shuffled themselves in order of importance in my head, then flew apart and reshuffled. But on the inside, I could feel something winding tighter and tighter, like a coil. Mrs. Bobbie might be annoying, but she wasn’t dumb. She had to know Omega would never send her underwear to one of the boys at school. There were plenty of reasons:
All of the boys at Mount Olive Christian were greasy haired and acted weird when they got around the Super Tramps, whooping and giggling and clobbering each other like a bunch of chimpanzees.
None of us girls had more than three or four pairs of underwear to begin with, and even those we had to wash in the sink just to have enough to make it through the school week.
If Omega was going to give a boy her panties, I’d seen enough TV to know she would never, ever give him a faded-out pair like that. She’d give him filmy, delicate, lacy panties—the kind none of us had ever owned and, if we did, we sure wouldn’t throw away on some greasy-haired chimpanzee.
Even if Mrs. Bobbie was dumb enough to think Omega had done that, Omega knew I hadn’t done anything. So why wouldn’t she speak to me? Why was she angry? Didn’t she understand we were both being falsely accused?
She had to know Chantal had set the whole thing up. Omega knew everything that went on in this house. She ran the place. Orchestrated every event that went on inside these walls, every change in temperature, every passing storm, every ray of sun.
I knew somehow, even though I was young, that it had to do with the fact that Mr. Al liked to hang out at the clubhouse with us. That must have made Mrs. Bobbie really jealous. Which made sense but also seemed odd to me, because Mrs. Bobbie was an adult who could do anything she wanted. We girls got stretched-out hand-me-downs and mac and cheese out of the box, and she got weekly manicures, bubble baths, and Pepperidge Farm cookies. Plus, she and Mr. Al had been married for a long time, over ten years, I thought. Seemed like she wouldn’t mind him spending an hour or two with the kids he was house dad to. That was his job.
I shoved my binder in my book bag, rocked back on my heels, and pushed my new glasses up my nose. I had to do something—something big and real to prove to Omega that I’d never betray her. To make her know that her friendship was more important to me than anything else in the world. But I would wait until the time was right, like I’d done with Chantal and the stolen food. I would wait until an opportunity presented itself, then I would make my move.
I went to sleep easily that night—Chantal’s regular jolts didn’t bother me. Her whispers—Fat Fuck, Four Eyes, Egg Salad—barely registered as I nestled deep into the warm covers. The girl was beneath me in a literal sense and a figurative one too, I thought with satisfaction. And she would be sorry for ruining my friendships with Omega and Shellie and Tré. She would be very, very sorry.
Two weeks later, we had a brilliant blue-sky October Saturday morning. Orange leaves drifted and the smell of far-off smoke in the cool air lent an air of expectancy. For most of the girls, the anticipation had everything to do with the camping trip.
For me, it meant destroying Chantal.
Mrs. Bobbie had assigned Omega and me a list of chores as long as our arms. Omega had torn the list, thrust half of it at me, and gone to work spraying Lysol on the grout in Mrs. Bobbie’s pink bathroom without even a glance my way.
She was still mad. But she’d also stopped talking to Tré and Shellie, which made me feel somewhat better. I was more determined than ever to bring our leader back to life. To see the spark in her eyes again. To hear the house filled with her mocking laughter. Things had grown so gloomy.
I’d found an excuse to walk to the main office—picking up a box of fabric that had been sent to Mrs. Bobbie from some church in Atlanta—and was dawdling near the small parking lot. I was wearing a new sweater—pale-blue angora with a white stripe across the chest. Well, it wasn’t new. It was one Omega had outgrown and thrown into the box in the hallway closet. I’d seen her do it one afternoon, and the minute she’d disappeared back inside her room, I’d tiptoed down the hall and fished it out. Now, I ran my fingers lightly over a downy sleeve. The day was too warm for it, but I didn’t care. I felt like the new Daphne wearing it.
I watched the girls who were going on the camping trip swarm around the three white vans parked in the lot. They dropped their duffels and sleeping bags and pillows in a pile that grew rapidly. They clumped in groups, one or two separating and joining another group, chattering excitedly. They didn’t seem to notice me, and I didn’t join them or wave or anything. I wasn’t mad or even really disappointed anymore about missing the trip. I was thinking.