Rafa Ramos-Sikes, in a floppy, flowered sunbonnet, pulls himself onstage from the pit. He walks straight up to Maggie, bows deeply, and lays a giant bouquet of long-stemmed roses in her arms. Like Miss America roses. Only they’re for Maggie, so imagine a pageant recognizing someone for their feminist achievements, or she’ll get mad. Only she’s not mad. She’s beaming. And so is Rafa, who turns out not to be so shy after all.
Lizzie’s mouth is hanging open in a way that will not look good in the yearbook photo. Picture it like this: If Lizzie’s flowers were a grungy little toy poodle, which seemed really sweet, Maggie has just been presented with a thoroughbred racehorse, with silky-shiny muscles and a wreath of laurel leaves around its neck who could step on the poodle and not even notice. Maggie throws an arm around Rafa and everybody takes another bow. Lizzie Barnes looks like she’s going to beat both of them to death with her own stupid flowers.
When the lights go up, everybody is still whooping their heads off, including Elliana/Monika/the Gummi Baroness, who doesn’t even know why it’s the most perfect thing Rafa could have done.
CHAPTER 49
Mom and I stop at Tyler’s school to pick him up. She has to run in to drop off holiday gift cards for the teachers. If she sees anyone she knows—and she knows everyone—she will be a half hour at least, and a half hour in my old middle school sounds as fun as, well, a half hour in middle school, so I tilt back my seat and roll down the window to wait.
Tyler is messing around out front with a group of kids who look like they’re filming an Old Navy commercial. They’re wearing a rainbow of colors, no one is sulky, and everyone’s hair is flopping at just the right angles. I recognize most of them, boys from his team and girls that have been in his classes forever. Seventh graders. They’re little/big people—little to their families and teachers, but big to themselves. Sometimes it’s the opposite when you get older.
Was this what seventh grade was like for me? I think it was. I think I’ve been in this ad, too.
I think I was the Emily in this crowd. Not Maya, who keeps stealing the boys’ hockey sticks, or the curly-haired girl I don’t know who has fixed herself to the side of one of the Sams. Emily is finishing a bag of chips that the boys passed around, talking about a statue of Crazy Horse while everyone else is hoping for Maya to steal their gear next.
“If it ever gets done, it will be bigger than Mount Rushmore. Crazy Horse’s head is actually much bigger than Lincoln’s head.”
Maya is after Tyler now. She manages to get his stick, the one he just taped pink, and holds it up. It’s warm for December, so everyone has left their jackets in a pile. Her shirt rides halfway up and at first I’m embarrassed for her until I realize it’s the kind of shirt that’s supposed to do that. It’s tiny and short on purpose. I’m wearing a sweatshirt meant for an extra-large human male, and she’s wearing a top that would fit an extra-small squirrel. She holds the stick over her head, like no one could get to it there. I worry that she’s got some kind of a cognitive disorder that makes it impossible to judge relative size, because Ty has at least four inches on her.
But Tyler knows how to play this game, too, and instead of taking the stick back, he fakes her out, reaches for her butt, and grabs her phone out of her pocket. She lunges for him but he tosses it to the next kid, and Maya fake-pouts with her hands on her hips. She is not worried about that phone, though. She is in total control.
I look back to Emily, on her own. At first I think she hasn’t got a clue, but then I realize she likes it this way. She’s safe sitting on the bike rack watching the rest of them like it’s a Sunday at the dog park. Why jump in if it just means having someone else’s greasy fingerprints on your iPhone? Plus she’s got the chips. I want to tell her that soon, very soon, when she decides it’s not enough to be the foremost school expert on Native American monuments—when she wants Sam, or Sam, or even Tyler to look at her like they’re all looking at Maya now—it’s going to be way more complicated than just jumping off the bike rack and stealing someone’s gear. But I don’t, because she looks happy now. And I still haven’t got a clue what she should do next.
CHAPTER 50
“You didn’t borrow my sunglasses, did you?”
“The giant ones with the gems on the corners? What do you think?”
“You don’t have to be a snot about it, Greer.”
I stare into the fridge wondering if eleven fifteen is breakfast or lunch. “They’re probably in the car.”
Breakfast, I decide, and take out a yogurt. Maybe a freezer waffle, too. Maybe two freezer waffles, too. It’s the first morning of a long and Jackson-less winter break. Yeah, yeah, Christmas, Hanukkah, school’s off, blah, blah. I need these waffles.
Mom stands at the kitchen island with her hands on her hips, like she wants to scold her sunglasses for wandering away. “I know I had them inside, because Melinda asked me where I got them.”
Madame Butterfly wakes up from her hibernation. You said they were gone for ten days, she accuses. “Mrs. Oates was here?”
Mom is opening and closing cupboard doors as though her glasses might have been accidentally put away with the Tervis tumblers.
“She stopped by to pick something up.”
“Was she alone?”
“Jackson was not here, if that’s what you’re asking.” She’s smirking, like it’s so amusing I might care whether or not Jackson was here. I don’t know why I would. It’s been a week since the play and everything is exactly like it was before. Plus today they are heading to Banff. The Oateses always ski at Christmas. The butterfly goes back to sleep, but not before reminding me that there is another Oates who might be responsible for the missing shades.
“Was Quin with her?”
“Yeah. They were just here a minute. Maybe I carried them with me downstairs?”
I follow Mom down the stairs. I suspect that those sunglasses are in the hot little fists of Quinlan Oates on a plane to Canada, though I thought the two of us had an understanding. She wouldn’t steal stuff anymore and I wouldn’t tell anyone she was a kleptomaniac. But maybe she saw those sparkly rhinestone frames and couldn’t help herself.
“What were they picking up anyway?” I doubt they swung by for more of Mom’s re-lo coupons and sample-size laundry detergents.
I can tell by the space before her answer that she did not mean to mention any of this to me. “Just a few hand-me-downs. Things you don’t use anymore.”
“Things I don’t use anymore? I doubt Quinlan Oates needs or wants anything of mine.”
“You wouldn’t even notice unless I told you.”
“Mom?”