Out of Order Read online

  “Sophie always does very well at school,” Mom says.

  Gran grunts, like she doesn’t believe it. “You’re a terrible one for playing with your food,” she says to me. “Always fiddling with this and that.”

  She is talking with her mouth full of food, which I think is much worse manners than playing with it, but I don’t say anything.

  Mom catches my eye in a silent apology and turns to Gran. “Could you pass the pepper, please?” she asks.

  I wish she’d tell Gran to leave me alone. I push my chair away from the table. “May I be excused?” I say, looking at Gran pointedly. “I should go up to my room and do my homework.”

  Gran looks at Mom. A piece of rice is stuck to her lip. “Jeanie, the child has hardly touched her dinner.”

  Mom stifles a sigh. “Yes, Sophie. You may be excused.”

  THE NEXT MORNING, it is still cold and dark when I wake. I rub my hands across my face, trying to erase the awful night-long dreams of taunts, mocking laughter and shoves in the hallway. I snuggle under my covers and pull Gran’s quilt up over my head.

  I thought the dreams would stop if I managed to Wt in at my new school, but last night was worse than ever. I can’t stand the thought of another day of faking it, another lunch hour listening to Tammy, Heather and Crystal talking about which boys are cute, how hard the homework is, which concert they wish they were going to, which girls have the best clothes.

  I drag myself out of bed to shower and dress. I look at myself in the mirror and have a sudden urge to hurl some­thing heavy at my reflection. I imagine watching it shatter into a thousand tiny pieces. Pieces of pink shirt, almost the same as Heather’s. Pieces of blue jeans, identical to Crystal’s. I close my eyes for a second. You look like one of the group, I remind myself. This is what you wanted. I blow-dry my wild hair into submission, tie it back in a ponytail and walk slowly to school.

  Tammy passes me a note in class, slipping the crum­pled paper onto my desk while Mr. Farley is writing on the board. I unfold it and hold it under my desk to read. Are you okay? How come you’re so quiet this morning? P.S. I love your hair like that. Little hearts instead of dots hover over the i’s. I look at her and shrug. Then, forcing a smile, I silently mouth that I’m fine.

  At morning break, the girls are all extra nice to me. I let them think I’m homesick for Ontario and missing my old friends. The lie hangs between us like a heavy curtain. We have something that looks like friendship, and only I know that it isn’t. It’s not as bad as being the old Sophie Keller, but it’s not much better either.

  Somehow I make it through the rest of the morning, doodling tiny screaming faces on the back of Tammy’s note— eyes hollow, mouths open in inky anguish. In all my planning, I never thought beyond this point, never planned what to do once I was accepted by the others. It never occurred to me that it wouldn’t be enough.

  At noon, I toss my books into my locker and slam it shut. I stand there for a moment, facing the closed door. It’s the same shade of green as the lockers back at Georgetown Middle School. Everything is rushing at me: the memories of the last two years, Gran’s constant criticism, all the lies I have told. It’s all swirling around in my head, feeding off itself like wind and fire.

  “I think this is yours,” a clear voice says from behind me.

  I turn around. It’s Zelia, holding a piece of paper. I reach out to take it. Tammy’s note. Zelia is holding it upside down so the side that we can see is the one covered with dozens of tiny screaming faces. I grab the paper but she doesn’t let go. Our eyes meet, and I see a flash of something like recognition flicker across her face.

  “Like that, is it?” she says. Her voice is low, amused, sympathetic.

  She releases the paper and I crumple it up and shove it into my pocket.

  I can’t think how to respond, but I don’t seem to be able to take my eyes away from hers either.

  She gives me a lopsided half-grin, one corner of her mouth curling upwards. “It’s Friday.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “But it’s only the first week of September.”

  Zelia’s cheeks dimple. “Exactly.”

  I stare at her.

  She shrugs. “It’s only the first week of September. Lots of time left to make some changes.”

  “What makes you think I want changes?” My voice is a little sharper than I mean it to be.

  She blinks slowly, blue eyes shuttered. “Whatever.” She gestures toward the pocket I shoved the paper into. “Maybe you just like drawing little tortured faces. Whatever floats your boat. Don’t let me interfere.”

  She turns and walks away.

  I am still staring after her when Tammy appears beside me. Her constant smile irritates me. It’s not fair, I know, but I almost feel angry with her for believing all my lies.

  “Hey,” she says. “It’s Crystal’s birthday. We’re going for pizza to celebrate.”

  I look up at her cheerful expectant face. Over her shoulder I can see Zelia, twenty feet away, standing and watching. “You know,” I hear myself say, “I’d love to but I didn’t bring any money. Another day, maybe.” I can hear her saying something about lending me money, but I just smile and shake my head. Then I walk down the hall toward Zelia.

  She waits, as if she knew I would follow her. “I had a feeling you wouldn’t want to hang out with the Clones for too much longer,” she says.

  “The Clones?”

  “The whole blond American Eagle thing. I can’t tell them apart.” She shrugs and tosses her head. Her hair is glossy, almost blue black, and so straight and fine that I can see comb lines.

  I stifle a guilty laugh. I have been struggling all week not to mix their names up. “They’re nice enough,” I protest.

  She shrugs again. “Whatever.” Her eyes meet mine and I hold my breath. With a sudden desperate intensity, I want her to like me. To choose me. But I’m not the type that usually gets chosen.

  “I’m going outside for a smoke,” she says. She starts to walk away. Then she turns and says over her shoulder, “Come with me?”

  “Sure,” I say. She walks quickly, ahead of me. I follow her down the hall and out the doors; then I run a few steps to catch up and walk beside her as we cross the grass to the square.

  When we get to the stairs leading up to the old theater, Zelia sits down on the bottom step and takes a pack of ciga­rettes out of her jacket pocket. She waves her hands in front of her, taking in the square in a grand gesture. “Welcome,” she says. “I call this place my living room. I try to be on school property as little as possible.”

  I drop down beside her. It is raining lightly and the steps are wet, the damp seeping into my jeans. A pair of scruffy dogs wander across the cobblestones and sniff through the fallen leaves. I pull the sandwich my mother made out of my pocket, unwrap it and toss it to them. “You don’t like this school?”

  “This school. Any school.” Zelia shrugs and lights her cigarette. “What about you? You’re new here, aren’t you?”

  I nod. “We just moved out from Ontario.”

  “We?”

  “Me and my mom.”

  Zelia looks interested. “Just you and your mom? Same here. Just the two of us.” She flicks the ash off her cigarette, holds it with her hand cupped over it to protect it from the rain. “Where’s your dad?”

  I study my runners and wish I was wearing boots like Zelia’s. “Died when I was a kid, but they split up before I was born, so I never knew him anyway.” I turn toward her. “What about yours?”

  She leans toward me, ignoring my question. “Aren’t you curious about your dad?”

  I think about that for a moment, wondering how to answer, wondering how Zelia feels about her own father. I decide to be honest. “Not really. It’s always been just the two of us—me and my mom.”

  Zelia tilts her head to one side as she listens, and her black hair falls over her face. She flips it back over her shoulder with a slender hand. Her nails are short and painted with black polish. �
�What does your mom do?”

  “Psychologist,” I say. “Counselling. Our place has an old double garage that’s been fixed up. She uses it as an office so she can work from home.” I pause. “How about yours?”

  Zelia shrugs. “Nothing that interesting.”

  An old man shuffles through the square and throws us a disapproving look. I drop my eyes, but Zelia just looks right at him and laughs. “Nathan,” she says.

  “You know him?”

  “No, that’s just what I call old men.”

  I grin at her, amused and surprised, forgetting my self-consciousness for a moment. “And what about old women? ”

  Zelia looks at me, eyes as calm and blue as summer skies. “Why don’t you give me a name for them?”

  I think for a minute. This feels important, like a test I must pass. “Ethel?” I say, uncertainly. “Or Agatha? Or no, wait...Gertrude?”

  Her eyes dance and she claps her hands in delight. “Yes,” she says softly, “Gertrude. That is absolutely perfect.”

  I can feel a huge grin trying to sneak onto my face, but I force myself to shrug nonchalantly. In this moment, I know we are going to be friends.

  This is what I believe: that the past will sink like a stone, the cold water quickly closing over it, leaving only a few faint ripples on its glassy surface.

  Three

  FOR THREE WHOLE weeks, it seems like everything is going to be great. September is almost a perfect month. Sometimes I catch myself smiling as I walk to school, a big goofy grin plastered across my face. Zelia is like no one else I’ve known. She seems older than the other girls in my classes and more confident. Fearless. She doesn’t care what anyone else thinks, and when I’m with her I almost don’t care either.

  I still talk to Tammy and the others once in a while. There was no fight, no big breakup, but we’re already growing distant. We’re already forgetting that I almost joined their group. I spend every spare minute with Zelia.

  Zelia doesn’t ask me questions about myself, so I’m not always forced to lie or make up stories about my old school. And even though I would never let her know about who I used to be, she gets who I am, somehow. She recognizes that we’re not like the others. I think that’s why she likes me. We’re on the outside because we want to be, because we don’t want to be like everyone else.

  Zelia does crazy things all the time, just to make me laugh. Last week we went into the pizza place in the square, and she asked the guy who works there a million questions about how they make the pizza. Weird questions, like whether they use pickle juice in the dough and do they make a pizza with sardines and avocados. Zelia kept a totally straight face and made her eyes all round and innocent. I had to run outside because I was in danger of losing it, but Zelia didn’t even crack a smile. The pizza guy just kept answering all her questions. I guess it doesn’t hurt that she is totally gorgeous.

  Mostly I still can’t believe that Zelia has chosen me, Sophie Keller, to be her friend. Best friend, even. Last week after we had laughed until our faces hurt over the pizza place thing, she suddenly grabbed my arm and got all serious. I was frightened for a second, not knowing what was wrong. She just stared at me kind of solemnly with those blue eyes, and then she whis­pered that we were going to be best friends forever. I whispered it back to her: best friends forever.

  The last time I had a best friend was in grade seven. Patrice Low. Two weeks into grade eight she dumped me to hang out with Chloe Rankin and the rest of the gang who went on to make my life hell in grades eight and nine. I’m trying to forget those years. It’s easier to keep things secret if I pretend they never happened.

  Zelia and I have all these private jokes and games we play, like the name game. Nathan and Gertrude were just the beginning. Girls who are all about clothes and shopping are Madisons; fat women are Berthas or Brendas; bimbos are Tiffanys. Uptight older teachers or librarians are Mildreds or Georges. Clones are just Clones.

  One day in the second week of school, Zelia decides that losers will be called Ermentrude, after a slightly chubby girl in our class who wears thick glasses and jeans with a really high waist. Zelia pretends to hike her own pants up to her armpits and does Ermentrude impersonations. Zelia’s funny, but I have to fake my laughter. It reminds me not to let down my guard, not to let her know anything about who I used to be.

  Sometimes I wake up after a bad dream and sit in sweat-soaked and tangled sheets, trying to figure out what is real and what is not, what was then and what is now. Sometimes I dream that Zelia is calling me Ermentrude, saying I’m fat, laughing at me for believing that she really liked me. I have to get up and splash cold water on my face, stare at my gray eyes in the mirror and feel my newly sharp bones to remind myself that I am safe and that everything is different now. Zelia and I are friends.

  I ride Keltie after school a couple of times a week, but on the other days Zelia comes home with me. We hang out in my bedroom, which is small and square, with three walls painted white and one deep red. Gran’s quilt covers the bed in a pattern of soft greens and blues, and there is a large round mirror above my dresser, its glass half-covered with photographs of horses I’ve ridden. I have hidden away all the school yearbooks and the photographs of myself from the last couple of years. The books and cd’s that line my shelves have been carefully selected to bolster my new image. Any music I am at all unsure about is hidden under the bed, along with a teddy bear I’ve had since I was a baby and all my poetry books. Still, I am nervous the first few times Zelia comes over. I can’t shake my fear that some­thing ugly might sneak out from the past and spoil everything.

  The first day of October dawns gray and rainy, but during the afternoon the wind picks up and clears the skies. When I leave school at 3:30, it is cold and bright. I wait in the school­yard, looking around for Zelia, and my breath forms plumes of mist that hang in front of me. Everything looks sharp and clear, as if the air is thinner than usual. When I look back on this day, I will remember it as the time everything began to fall apart.

  Four

  ZELIA WANTS TO go to the drugstore on the way back to my place. I know my mother won’t like my being home late, but I don’t say anything. I walk quickly and hope Zelia won’t take too long.

  There are some of those gumball-type vending machines just inside the door. Zelia points at one filled with gaudy jewelry.

  “Check this out,” she says, laughing. She crams in quarter after quarter and hands me the little clear plastic bubbles that spill out of the machine. I pop them open and empty the shiny rings into her cupped hands. They are ultra-tacky, with chunks of glass for stones: blue, red, green.

  “Pick one,” she says.

  They’re all a bit too big. I take a gold one with a green stone and slide it onto my thumb.

  Zelia slips a matching ring onto her finger and turns her hand toward me, palm out. I hold my hand against hers in a slow-motion high five.

  “Best friends forever,” Zelia says.

  My breath catches in my throat. “Best friends forever,” I whisper. In this moment, I am happy.

  We try on all the sunglasses from the drugstore racks, making faces and laughing at each other. Zelia perches a pair of reading glasses on the end of her nose.

  “Gertrude,” I say quickly. I feel a little twinge of discomfort. My grandmother has a pair just like that.

  She laughs. “Yup, they’re definitely Gertrude glasses. Points for speed.” She puts on a pair of pink-rhinestone-studded sunglasses and strikes a pose.

  “Tiffany?” I guess.

  “Yup. Points for accuracy.” She hands me a simple black pair. “Here, try these ones.”

  I slip them on and look at myself in the small mirror on top of the rack. I look so different with my eyes hidden. Older. More interesting. More like Zelia. The sunglasses make my red hair look kind of dramatic—kind of striking—instead of just out of control.

  “You should get those,” she says.

  I look at the price tag. “Can’t. I only have
a couple of bucks on me.”

  Zelia takes them from me, glances quickly around, and then she shoves them in her jacket pocket.

  I stare at her.

  “Come on,” she says, like nothing is wrong. “I need to get mascara.”

  I follow, my heart pounding. A fragment of memory pokes through, a sharp little ghost. Girls’ voices: Teacher’s pet. Chickenshit. Think you’re something special, don’t you, Fatso?

  I push the voices back beneath the surface, hold them under. I say nothing.

  “Here,” says Zelia. “I’ll just buy this.” She pays for her makeup and we head out into the brilliant sunshine. We’re only a few steps from the store when Zelia pulls out the sunglasses and hands them to me. “Present for you,” she says.

  I cram them hastily into my pocket. “Thanks,” I say, and together we walk through the quiet streets to my house.

  My mother is in the kitchen, reading a magazine while she microwaves a cup of leftover coffee. Her red hair falls loose to her shoulders, and she is wearing a cream silk blouse and beige dress pants. This means she has been seeing clients; when she isn’t working she pretty much lives in sweats.

  We never hang out at Zelia’s place, but I met her mom once when she drove by the school to drop off some things for Zelia. She is stunning, like Zelia, with the same straight black hair and blue eyes. I bet she doesn’t even own sweat pants. She pulled up to the curb in a white sports car, and Zelia grabbed my arm, drew me over and introduced me. Her mother smiled, all shiny red lipstick and white teeth, and told me to call her Lee. Then she murmured something about an appointment, handed Zelia a duVel bag and sped off, blowing us a kiss over her shoulder. She reminded me of someone in a movie. Kind of glamorous.

  Mom takes her coffee out of the microwave and stirs a spoonful of sugar into it. She doesn’t say anything about our being late, but she gives me a look that lets me know she has been waiting for us.

  “So how was school?” she asks.