“More what?”
“More I have to deal with. Like why I’m still sticking up for Doug Monk.”
“What’s wrong with sticking up for Doug Monk?”
“In all your summer spying, you never heard anything about Doug Monk?”
“Not spying. Research. And no, he never came up.”
“What am I supposed to say? I guess he’s an old friend.”
“And your new friends don’t like him. That’s how it goes.”
“They just don’t understand … I mean, unless you know Doug, he can seem … he’s tough to talk to. His family life is weird. He’s basically on his own. It’s hard.”
“Well, I think what you did was heroic. It was about the most heroic thing I’ve ever seen. You’re a hero.”
“Shut up.”
“I’m serious here. It was really, truly amazing. You see that stuff in movies, but in real life? You tore those assholes new assholes.”
“If I’d been a guy, it would’ve gone totally different. There’d be pride issues, and they would’ve beaten me up. See how heroic I am?”
“I think you’re selling yourself short. If that’s true, then how come more girls don’t go on Liv Fleming–style anti-bully rampages? Because they’re scared. I’d be scared, too. That’s why you’re my hero, and that’s my final word on the subject.”
Bruno crossed his arms and lifted his chin in defiance. Liv rolled her eyes, but there was a squirming in her stomach she mistook for dread before identifying it as dread’s opposite. Her relationship with Doug had been soaked in stigma for so long that she couldn’t trust any positive feelings anywhere near it. She stared down at the list of Bruno’s sisters in a desperate hunt for a topic change.
“You were saying hi to Mrs. Meachum, huh? Really getting a head start on the brownnosing.”
“Hardy-har. I actually happen to like teachers. Plus, I’m not above a little brownnosing. They’re casting for Oliver! next week, and if I don’t get a lead, these hallways are going to be ringing with my sobs. With my beautifully musical, pitch-perfect sobs.”
A funny thing to say, but Liv didn’t hear it. At the word Oliver!, it was like coal dust had been poured over her head. Her vision went dark, her brain darker. The word sat on the desk before her like a scorched, unidentifiable, yet disgusting object, something vaguely threatening and not definitively dead. She wanted to push her desk away in hopes that the object would drop to the floor and she could ignore it like a dead roach.
Bruno had quit talking. He ducked his head into her field of vision.
“Liv?”
She blinked, barely seeing him, then crawled her eyes through the room of oblivious natterers to the teacher standing before her stupid shelf of dolls. Mrs. Meachum might be handling the musical side of the play, but it was Baldwin who selected the productions, cast them, and directed them. Liv grit her teeth and let the feelings seep in.
“That bitch.”
“Baldwin?” Bruno shrugged. “This assignment isn’t that bad.”
Only this boy’s recent arrival made him any less ignorant than anyone else. Oliver! was intimately linked to Mr. Fleming’s downfall. It had been his final production, the one that had proven to everyone that he had no place in civilized society. A mere five plays had passed in the interim, and Baldwin thought that was long enough to bring Oliver! back?
Ten minutes later, Liv’s entire body quaked with a level of anger she could barely rein in. There was no need for Baldwin to fish around for volunteers to go first. Liv raised her hand and stood, to the surprise of Bruno, who, by his big grin, had clearly expected to launch their joint interview. Liv ignored him; she ignored the other students; she recalled lessons of speech classes past and focused on her audience, which numbered one: Ms. Baldwin.
“My name is Liv Fleming,” she said in a trembling voice, “and the fact that you’re doing Oliver! this year makes me sick. You don’t have any sensitivity at all. You’re a terrible, terrible person. I hope you go to hell.”
6.
Cross-country practice was just what she needed, though, sadly, the phrase cross-country was a misnomer. When the two hours of jogging around the park were up, Liv found herself still stuck in Bloughton, Iowa, with little rage burned off. It was at least more time with her friends. Monica, Krista, Darla, Laurie, Amber—the team was where she had managed, after her dad’s downfall, to find friends, and although there wasn’t much to be done in practice beyond gasp and sweat and shoot pretend bazookas at Coach Carney, it was the best part of Liv’s day, with endorphins eclipsing all emotion.
She fell into the station wagon, her soggy shirt and shorts gluing to the seat plastic, and did the twenty-minute drive home with only slight attention given to stop signs and red lights. Only when the white gravel cloud of Custer Road swallowed the world did she feel invisible and safe.
John didn’t lift his chin from the steps when she reached them. He rolled his brown eyes upward as if to warn her that there was nothing inside the house any better than what was outside.
Liv assumed that floors of beer cans and tabletops of bottles were more typical signs of insobriety, but Aggie Fleming’s intoxication was signaled by tidiness. Her poison was wine, and her defense was to dress it up as something classy. You saw it on TV all the time. Girlfriends at a brunch, laughing over sauvignon blanc. Women in movies, luxuriating in bubble baths while candlelight made their Bordeaux twinkle. Aggie dressed to drink, in skirts, blouses, and pantsuits as if she were about to leave for a function, and to perpetuate the illusion, she neatened up before getting down to business.
The living room, then, was the antithesis of the jungled yard, as surface-clean as a cheap motel. Sofa cushions were equilaterally placed, magazines squared away in racks, tables cleared of detritus, and a single wineglass was centered upon a glass coaster. Aggie had missed only one spot, in the corner, an anthill of plaster dust from the crumbling ceiling. She was facing away as Liv approached, high-heeled shoe bobbing amiably over a knee.
“First day of school,” Aggie sang.
She uncrossed her legs to look over her shoulder.
“How’s my girl.”
Her lips were too numb to make it a question.
Liv tried to will her sadness into anger. It would be easier. Aggie Fleming’s life had been ruined by her husband’s public fall from grace. The secretarial job at Sookie’s she’d been on pace to parlay into marketing director had turned into an abrupt layoff; now she shopped there in disgrace, because where else was there to shop? She had two jobs these days, answering phones at the vet clinic by day and waiting tables at a steakhouse by night. Right now she was between the two. She used a pinkie to dab wine from her lip, and Liv suffered a contraction of sympathy. Why remove a single drop? She was afloat in it.
“They’re doing Oliver!,” Liv said. “The school.”
“Hmm? Dickens?”
“No. Yes. The play.”
“Baby, would you mind fetching me a paper towel? I think this glass has a crack.”
Of course it had a crack—the constant picking up, setting down. Liv dropped her bag onto the dining room table hard enough to split it, ripped off a towel, and handed it over. Her mom took it, folded it daintily, and blotted at the black hose under her skirt. Liv didn’t see wine stains, unless you counted the permanent ones on her mom’s fingers. Liv noted the current bottle (a third full) as well as the previous bottle (empty) snugged neatly alongside the sofa, though not quite neatly enough to disappear.