Crazy Beautiful Read online

  I know I should get rid of the dog alarm and get something cooler, something more suitable to my age. But I don’t even know what that would be. My friend where we used to live, Gracie, had a Hannah Montana alarm clock, but I don’t even know if that’s something a kid my age would have anymore. What would girls our age have now? A Lindsay Lohan clock? No. Probably not. Maybe, I think sometimes, I should just get something in basic black? But my mom gave me that alarm and I can’t stand to part with it. Now whenever the dog alarm goes off, I’m awake in the same instant. I’m no longer a heavy sleeper, having learned the opposite practice all the years my mom was sick.

  I hug the dog alarm, whose name is Bowser, to my chest, thinking of the day ahead, dreading it.

  Change has never been my favorite thing, maybe because so many of the changes in my life have been bad ones.

  My dad, knowing this about me, has tried to keep things from changing too much for me too quickly. That’s why, even though this is a new house, a new bedroom, he was careful to recreate as much of the old bedroom in the old house as possible. My dad is like that. If there were an award for being the best dad who ever lived, my dad would win it. His recreating my old room means that all my old furniture is here: the white bed with the fairy canopy, the matching dresser on which he used leftover paper from the Cinderella border to decorate the drawers, the sheer white curtains that love to dance in the breeze. I do realize that the fairy canopy and Cinderella accents, like the dog alarm, are too young for me now, but I like familiar things, my brief flirtation with Lindsay Lohan and basic black clocks notwithstanding. And it’s been my experience that so long as I have all the hottest CDs, DVDs, clothes, and other things, no one ever seems to notice the rest. My dad also insisted I take this room, even though it’s the biggest and would likely be called the master bedroom, because he knows I prefer the morning sun to the dying sun at the end of the day, and this is the one bedroom in the new house that greets the dawn.

  The only other thing my dad insisted on—he really doesn’t usually insist on much—was that we move here in the first place. He said the old house had become a mausoleum, and, despite my loud objections, he decided that wasn’t healthy for either of us.

  I let go of Bowser and roll out of bed, feel the coolness of the hardwood floors beneath my feet. It’s odd. You’d think softer would be better than harder, right? And yet there’s something comfortingly solid about this hardness beneath my naked toes, how it doesn’t give to my weight at all, that it remains firm beneath my feet. It almost makes me temporarily believe the illusion that this new world could be a safer, steadier place. In our old house, it was all wall-to-wall carpeting in the hallways.

  Some changes, I think, are good.

  Once in the bathroom, I take a long shower, and when I come out I brush my hair one hundred strokes, just like my mom always taught me to, before styling it into something that the kids in my new school will hopefully take as familiar but special.

  It’s easy to pick out my first-day clothes, since I set them out the night before. My mom and I picked them out from a catalog earlier in the year, because she could no longer make it out to the stores, something she once upon a time loved so much to do. She used to say that her own mom, born in the Depression, hated to take her shopping, would just buy the quickest and cheapest things, and not much of that. Not that my mom was reckless with money, but she used to say she loved shopping for me, loved having the money to spend on buying me the kinds of things she would have loved to have for herself if she were growing up now. Hell, sometimes I’d have to tell her, “No! I don’t need three different-colored versions of the same shirt. That style will go out before I even have the chance to wear them all. Put two of those back!”

  That was one of the last things we ever did together, shopping from that catalog. She made sure I had the latest jeans, the latest top, the latest shoes, but nothing too flashy or unusual—again, familiar but special.

  People at my old school, friends, sometimes said they thought I seemed too effortless, that I didn’t bother trying to stand out or wearing makeup, like I didn’t care whether people liked me or not. But of course I care. It’s hard to be a human being and not care if you’re liked. Or maybe it’s not so much that I care about being liked as that I’d prefer, if given the choice, not to ever be hated by one and all. My mom always said a person needs only one good friend in this world, and it used to make me sad when she’d say that some people don’t even have that.

  At least back where we used to live I had Gracie. And I had a lot of other people, friends, as well.

  As I’m dressing, the smell of pancakes drifting up the stairs is so strong that I hurry up and finish putting on my shirt, buttoning up my jeans. Then, as I follow the aroma down the stairs, I feel as though I’m following one of those smoky trails you’d see in a cartoon, the kind that are supposed to symbolize a really good smell.

  When I get down to the kitchen, there’s my dad, slaving over a hot griddle, wearing one of Mom’s old frilly full-length aprons to protect his crisp white shirt and navy and crimson striped tie.

  Sometimes I think my dad has it even worse than I do since Mom died. I had her for only fifteen years, five of which she was sick and then sicker until she was no more—cancer can take so much out of a person, until there’s nothing left but a shell—while she’d been his best friend since they were my age.

  I know that whenever he looks at me, he can’t help but be reminded of her. I’ve seen pictures of her when she was the same age I am now, and though the hairstyles and fashions are different, when you line the pictures up side by side it’s the same face repeated, the same eyes, the same dark color hair, the same smile.

  As for my dad, he’s a tall, burly guy, still young to be mostly bald but doing it all the same, with just a little bit of blond left around the edges, blue eyes behind steel glasses. My mom’s frilly apron looks frankly ridiculous on him whenever he wears it, but I’m careful not to tell him this or even smile about it, because I know how hard he’s trying, trying all the time.

  “Can you pour the juice, princess?” my dad asks, using a spatula to flip the pancakes from the griddle to a china plate. The plate is white with gold trim: a thin stripe of gold inside and then a wide band of it circling the rim. My dad can’t seem to get the hang of things, that the china is supposed to be for when company comes, while there’s everyday dishes for when it’s just us.

  On the table, next to a crystal vase with fresh-cut flowers in it—lush peonies that he bought special from the florist, Mom’s favorite flower—is a glass pitcher of hand-squeezed orange juice. I fill glasses for each of us as my dad sets our plates down on the table.

  “Big day ahead, for both of us,” he says, forcing a bright smile as he takes his seat, draping a heavy linen napkin in his lap. Using the linen means the laundry piles up more quickly, but I never tell him it’d be easier to just use paper, throwing it away afterward like the rest of the world does.

  “Yeah,” I say, forcing an equally bright smile, and lying through my teeth when I add, “but we’re up for it.”

  “That’s the spirit!” he says, drizzling maple syrup over his pancakes. He pauses, forkful of pancake in hand. “You’re not nervous, princess, are you?”

  “Of course not!” I lie again, punctuating my words with a cheery laugh for good measure.

  “That’s great,” he says, content to eat at last, “just great.”

  I hope he doesn’t notice that I’m just sitting there, that I’m not eating at all because my stomach is churning so badly with nerves.

  He’s almost done with his breakfast when I say, “Daddy?”

  “What is it?”

  “I was just wondering.” I stop, unsure of how to proceed so he won’t see how I really feel. “I was wondering,” I go on, “if maybe we should drive into school together? You know, just this once? I thought, I don’t know, maybe it would be fun. We’ve never done it before.”

  My dad is a librarian
by profession, a school librarian, which is a good job for him since he loves books; we both do. My mom used to tell me that even when I was an infant, my dad would lie next to me on the floor, extending his arms high and holding a book over our heads as he read to me and I squealed, kicking my baby legs at the sound of his voice and the sight of all those pictures. But he’s never been librarian at any of the schools I’ve gone to in the past.

  Now things are different.

  Back where we used to live, some of my friends had parents who were teachers at the same school, and those friends always hated it. And the friends who didn’t have teacher parents? They all said they’d hate it if they were those teachers’ kids too.

  But I’m glad my dad and I will be in the same school now. It makes me feel safer somehow, for both of us. I think sometimes now that he needs me to look out for him just as much as, if not more than, I need him to look out for me.

  “Oh, princess.” It’s like his whole cheerful expression collapses as he says this, and I swear I see tears forming in his eyes. “You’re just worried about your old man, aren’t you?” He reaches out a hand, pats the back of one of mine. “Well, don’t be. I’ll be fine, and more important, you’ll be fine.” He straightens up in his chair, as though steeling his resolve. “But I think it’s important you start your first day out just like all the other kids. You belong on that bus with everyone else. Don’t let feeling sorry for your old man get in the way of your good times.”

  I want to tell him, wish I could tell him, that he’s got it all wrong: that in this moment, just this moment, I’m more worried about myself than I am about him, that I’m terrified of getting on that bus with all those people I don’t know, everything new, everything different.

  But I can’t tell him that.

  So instead, I just get my things together, give him a hug goodbye, and head on out the door to wait for the bus.

  Lucius

  It’s not hard for me to decide where to sit on the bus.

  If this were my old school, I’d sit all the way in the back. But even though the back of this bus isn’t completely filled yet, I don’t go there. Once I’m in school, once I’m in classes, the back row will be the place for me. I can hide out there. But not here. The back of the bus is where all the cool kids hang out, and I am not a cool kid, certainly not here, not yet, maybe never.

  The middle of the bus?

  Too many jock types and preppy-looking girls. First day of school, not even at school yet, and already it’s possible to see where everyone fits in to the hierarchy. If there is a greater scheme of things, I am at rock bottom on that scheme. If I try to sit there, with the jock types and the preppy-looking girls, I know I’ll get cold-shouldered or, worse, abused. I expect to get abused today—I’m not an idiot—but it’s a little early in the day for that. I’m hoping to delay it until after lunch, at least. My reasoning? Do I need any?

  So I take what is the perfect seat for me, the one that no one will ever object to my taking: the one right behind the bus driver. No kid in his right mind ever wants that seat. From now on, it’ll be mine. Ownership, as they say, has its privileges.

  I settle down lengthwise in the bench seat as the bus pulls away from the curb, meaning I place my back against the side of the bus, head resting against the grimy window, legs sprawled out across the bench so that any riders who enter after me—should they truly be losers enough to also want to sit behind the driver—will get the message and go sit somewhere else. From this vantage point, if I turn to my left, I have a view of the bus driver’s stringy red hair. I’m thinking she might maybe want to wash it sometime this century. Swivel to the right, and I can check out the other kids, some of whom will no doubt wind up sharing some classes with me. I can’t wait. Can they?

  I can’t say it looks like a particularly distinguished group. Oh, there’s nothing wrong with any of them—at least not that I can see now, not yet—but they don’t really look any different from kids in my old school. They’re just your basic kids. Some may be nice. A few will be cruel. They’ll worry more about what other people think than what they themselves think. There’s really only one that bothers me from the start. That guy there—the one halfway between the middle of the bus and the back, long legs sprawling into the aisle so everyone who walks past either has to say “Excuse me” or try to step over those legs. He’s got short, spiky hair so perfectly streaked in shades from brown to white-gold, you can almost see him sneaking trips to his mommy’s salon to get it dyed just perfect. I don’t like his shell necklace either, and I really don’t like it when I hear him say to the girl sitting next to him, the girl with the red hair gathered into a ponytail, “Hey, did you get a load of the new crip sitting behind the bus driver?” I hear her giggle a response and I realize maybe I don’t like her so much either.

  Right around now, I am wishing I could have stayed at my old school.

  But by the end of the last school year, my dad said it was no longer an option.

  He said it was bad enough, the damage to our home. He said it was bad enough, what I’d done to myself. But now everyone was talking like I was crazy—even people who used to maybe be my friends were saying they thought that maybe I just might be dangerous—and he said enough was enough.

  We would move to a new town, but not too far, so he wouldn’t have to change his work. And I would be given one last chance: to prove I could live among civilized people. He didn’t have to spell out the implied “or else.” We all knew what he meant: or else I’d be sent away to some place where I couldn’t be a danger to other people if not myself.

  Now that Shell-Necklace Boy has used the word “crip,” there is no longer any point in my checking out the other kids. Now that he has used the word “crip,” he has opened the door for them all to talk about me, the boy who got on the bus with hooks for hands. The way he uses the word makes it sound as though I’ve somehow offended him personally and with great deliberation. And, oh, how they talk about me—as though I am also deaf and cannot hear them.

  “I think I read about that dude in the city newspaper,” I hear a different male voice say, not Shell-Necklace Boy. Yeah? I’m thinking. You really expect anybody to believe you read the newspaper? I tune them out. Instead, I study the back of the bus driver’s hair again. She really should think about washing that hair someday. I really need to stop obsessing about her hair.

  The bus slows for another stop.

  I think to keep my eyes focused away from the person entering. If I don’t make eye contact with other people, I can’t see them looking at me with cruelty.

  But something compels my gaze.

  Entering the bus now is perfection. And it’s not just the clothes and accessories, which make her look as though she just walked out of the pages of the coolest back-to-school catalog in the world. It’s not that in a world that mostly always looks like black and white to me she’s like this shocking blaze of color. It’s not any of that. It’s that with that cloud of long black curls, she’s like some sort of dark angel. And it’s that when my eyes meet hers, eyes that are the color of a serene ocean, she gives me a quick smile, a nervous smile.

  Immediately, I recognize that she’s new too, that she’s nervous too.

  And I recognize something else: I know her. I don’t mean that we’ve met before, because we haven’t. I don’t even know her name! I mean that somehow, instantly, I know her.

  I’ve been prepared to say no to everyone all morning, to say “Stay away” to anyone who even thinks of drawing near. But as I see her scanning the bus for a friendly face, I start to move my legs, thinking to offer her a seat.

  I would give a lot to see that smile again, directed at me.

  It may not be much, but I would give everything I’ve got.

  Aurora

  In my old school, I used to be in a lot of plays. This meant that my friends all thought I liked getting up on stage, that I didn’t mind getting up in front of a large group of people.

  That is so
not the case.

  I like taking lines as they appear flat and two-dimensional on the page and turning those lines into something that breathes life, emotion. I like the scenery, seeing stagehands take naked wood and large sheets of paper or cardboard and transform it all into a forest or a mountain or even someone’s private bedroom.

  Most of all, I just like acting, hiding behind another personality.

  When I stand in front of people as myself, any size group of people, like I’m doing now, I can actually feel the trembling in my legs. Are people looking at me? Are they staring? Will someone say something that will make me want to crawl under a rock and die?

  The first face I see, outside of the bus driver’s, is a friendly one. It’s a boy with shaggy hair the color of soft coal and eyes that are the brown of mahogany, turning topaz when whatever morning sun can stream through the grime of the bus windows strikes them. All I notice is his head and that as soon as I smile at him—which is the first thing I do whenever I make eye contact with anybody, just like my mom taught me—his smile is instantly wide open, inviting.

  There’s something shocking about those topaz eyes—what is it?—that shakes me to the core, makes me shiver even though it’s still so hot out in the mornings this time of year, nails me to the floor where I stand at the head of the aisle.

  I’m about to smile again, maybe say, “Hey,” when I hear a voice shout to me from somewhere in the middle of the bus.

  “Hey!” I hear a girl’s voice. “New girl! Come sit back here with us!”

  Lucius

  Two minutes ago, I was hoping no one in this new school would ever notice me, much less talk to me.

  A moment ago, I was hoping the Dark Angel would smile at me one more time.

  Now she’s walking past my seat, headed toward the voice that called out to her.