She goes off on a tirade about “piece of shit ninth graders and their tiny peens” and how Patrick has failed his driving test so many times he can’t try again until he’s eighteen.
I tell her about the argument with my mom. “And I’m suspended for the rest of the week. Hopefully that will give everyone at school enough time to forget and let this whole thing blow over.” The noise from my mom’s television stops abruptly. “Also, I’m grounded.”
“Wow. Okay, so this is the worst day ever, right? But the good news is that since this is the worst day ever, tomorrow can only be better. Even if it’s by a little bit.”
I laugh. It feels good. “I guess we’ll see.” A yawn pushes up from my chest. “I don’t get how crying can make you so tired.”
“Adrenaline or something.”
“Smart.”
“Hey, you probably don’t want to talk about this right now, but you have given me zero details on your date.”
“Yeah, well there’s not much to say. It was incredibly . . . unremarkable.”
“Aw, man. I had high hopes for Mitch.”
“I’ll talk to you in the morning.”
“Hey,” she says. “I love you. Listen to some Dolly. She’ll make you feel better.”
TWENTY-FIVE
I waste the days of my suspension on the couch. After school, Ellen comes over with my homework before my mom gets home. We watch television in silence and although I want to ask her about school and if she’s heard anyone talking about me, I don’t. Tim drops her off and picks her up, but he never comes in. I like Tim, but I like him even better for not inviting himself in and for letting me have El for these few hours.
At first, my mom and I operate on our own schedules and in the evenings it’s like someone’s come in and divided the house with red tape. When I leave my room, she stays clear and when she leaves her room, I stay in mine. But slowly, our paths wind closer and closer until Saturday morning when she says, “I’ve got an all-day pageant planning meeting today. We’re gearing up for open registration. There’s tuna salad in the fridge.”
It’s not a truce, but it breaks the silence.
Mitch texts me a few times, telling me he’s sorry for the scene he caused and that Patrick has a big mouth. I tell him I’d rather not talk about it, but I know it’s me who should be doing the apologizing.
El works all day Saturday and is going to a party afterward, so I am left alone. I have been stuck in this house for so long that I think the wallpaper is moving.
I hate that there’s never anything good on TV on Saturday afternoons. It’s like even the networks are trying to get you off your ass and have a life. I guess whoever does the channel scheduling has never been grounded on a Saturday.
Maybe it’s the boredom, but Lucy’s room calls me like a siren.
Her bed is perfectly made with Gram’s homemade moss-and-cream-colored quilt folded up at the foot of the bed with my mom’s steamer in the corner.
In Lucy’s nightstand, I find more newspaper clippings, but these are mostly of Mom. Mom’s in the Clover City Tribune all the time. I think she even dated the editor for a while, but he ended up marrying the girl who did his dry cleaning.
The stack of clippings is thick with grainy photos of Mom in her crown and dress. The same dress every year, posing with a different Miss Teen Blue Bonnet. I dig deeper in the drawer, coming up with a weathered gallon-sized bag of documents. Contracts, pamphlets, bills. Until I stumble upon a totally blank pageant registration form. Dated 1994, three years before Mom won in ’97. Mom would have been too young to enter. But this can’t be right. Lucy thought the pageant was a joke. Or I thought she did.