Текст книги "If I Have a Wicked Stepmother, Where's My Prince? "

Автор книги: Melissa Kantor

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If I Have a Wicked Stepmother, Where's My

Prince?

Melissa Kantor

To Carol Einhorn

Chapter One

Cinderella

Me

dead mother

dead mother

wicked

wicked

stepmother

stepmother

evil stepsisters

evil stepsisters

(2)

(2)

friendless

friendless

I tapped my pen against my lips, debating whether or not Cinderella is actually friendless. I

mean, she does have all those talking animals helping her out when she gets into a jam. But do

they count as friends? It's not as if a blue jay can meet you at Starbucks for an after-school latte.

As I tried to categorize the small woodland creatures Cinderella associates with, my eyes

accidentally wandered over to Jessica Johnson, this girl who sits across the classroom from me.

When we made eye contact, her expression didn't change–it was as though I wasn't there.

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I crossed out friendless in the Cinderella column and drew in a woodchuck.

Cindere

Me

lla

father

father

dead

alive

Once more, I wasn't sure this was an accurate description of our respective situations. I mean,

technically, my dad is alive. More than technically–it's not like he's in a coma or anything. But

considering that I am currently living with his new wife and stepdaughters on Long Island while

he spends Monday to Friday back in San Francisco finishing up this mondo case he was

supposed to be done with before we moved to New York in August seven months ago, his being

alive doesn't do me a whole lot of good.

I went back to my list and put quotation marks around alive.

"... that you can't subtract here until you divide here." Mr. Palmer slapped the board, raising a small cloud of chalk dust. Then he spun toward the window. "Mister Marcus," he spat. "Can you tell me why that is?"

John Marcus's head shot up and he looked around the room in a panic. The skateboarding

magazine tucked into his math book slipped to the floor.

I barely listened as Mr. Palmer raged at John, spit flying out of the corners of his mouth. I wasn't

the only

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one unimpressed by Mr. Palmer's tantrum (his third of the day); even John kept his eyes on his

magazine, sliding it under his chair with his toe. And as usual, even before the bell had rung,

despite the fact that Mr. Palmer was still talking, kids started throwing stuff into their backpacks.

"I think you're going to want to hear this since it involves a possible surprise quiz on Thursday."

No one paid any attention to him. Mr. Palmer is always threatening surprise quizzes and then not

giving them. All first semester I spent my nights cramming frantically for a quiz that never came.

Now I just ignored his threats like everyone else.

Out in the hallway, Madison Lawler, Jessica Johnson's BFF, embraced Jessica passionately, as if

the cruelty of the math-tracking powers that be was almost too much to bear. Maybe I'm

paranoid, but as I walked by, it was hard not to feel that the sole purpose of their daily reunion

was to remind me of my utterly friendless state.

For the record, let's just acknowledge that relocation has not done wonders for my social life. To

say I haven't discovered a soul mate within the Glen Lake population would be an

understatement. I have not even discovered a homework mate. And the irony of my current

situation is that I just went through this a year ago. When I was in eighth grade, my dad got

totally obsessed with how the curriculum at my junior high wasn't rich enough or enriched

enough or whatever, and he decided that if I didn't attend Wellington Academy for high school,

mine

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would be an empty and meaningless existence (kind of like it is now). So I had to kiss Bay view

Middle School good-bye, leave all my friends, and go off to Wellington, where I knew no one.

Then, just as I'm finally settling in and can stop skulking around the halls like an assassin,

practically at the very moment my cell phone starts ringing with calls from people who don't just

want me to switch my long-distance carrier, my dad announces he's getting married to the

Wicked Witch of the North Shore, we're moving to New York, and I'll be starting sophomore

year at Glen Lake High in the fall.

You know who people don't stay in touch with when she leaves their time zone?

The new girl.

I made my way to my locker and then to the cafeteria. Since January, when I started taking

studio art, I've usually been able to eat my lunch in the art room, thereby avoiding the

humiliation of being the lone occupant of a cafeteria table that could easily seat twenty. But Ms.

Daniels, my art teacher, was holding private conferences in the studio all through lunch today, so

I had nowhere to flee. I bought a sandwich and made my way to what seemed to be an isolated,

undesirable table in the corner of the crowded lunchroom.

It turned out I was wrong about the table's undesirability, just as I've been wrong about pretty

much everything else at Glen Lake High. Within minutes of

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my sitting down at one end, a noisy group of seniors swarmed and then sat at the other, twirling

car keys around their index fingers and grabbing French fries out of one another's McDonald's

bags.

In the center of the crowd sat Connor Pearson, laughing and chatting with his loyal subjects. The

star of the basketball team and president of the student council, Connor was also voted "Best

Looking" by the senior class. In the fall, to raise money, the cheerleaders raffled off a kiss with

Connor Pearson and two hundred girls bought tickets. (That would be one hundred and ninety-

nine girls plus yours truly.) But sadly for me and all the other members of Glen Lake's female

population, rumor was Connor only had eyes for Kathryn Ford: Homecoming Queen, who, like

all good queens, was currently seated to the right of her lordship.

Some people make me feel freakishly taller and redder-headed than I actually am, and Kathryn

Ford is one of those people. Everything about her is tiny and pale and perfect. I think she might

have been created from a kit. Also, she acts as though ignoring underclassmen is a varsity sport.

Basically, you can't not hate her.

Still, I'm not crazy enough to think it's Kathryn Ford's fault that Connor Pearson doesn't know I

exist. Or that she's blacklisted me, and that's why I have yet to make one friend within the Glen

Lake community. I know I have only myself to blame. I watch the kids in my

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classes talking before the bell rings, and I know all I need to do if I want to talk to them is talk.

Just say something. Anything. And it's not like I don't want to talk to some of them. It's not as if it's their fault I was dragged kicking and screaming across the continental United States.

If three's supposed to be the charm, it hasn't made me especially charming. Moving to New York

to attend my third school in three years appears to have mutated some friend-making gene I

didn't even know I had. Now, instead of talking to people like I normally would, I just sit

silently, as if I'm watching them swing a jump rope higher and higher while waiting for just the

right moment to step in and start jumping.

And it never comes.

That night at dinner, while I was just sitting there minding my own business and trying to decide

if I should take my dad up on his wager that the Rockets were going to lose by ten, one of my

twelve-year-old twin stepsisters looked over at me and pursed her lips, as if I were something

she'd eaten and didn't like the taste of. I should have taken her look as a warning, but I was too

busy calculating the game's odds. Which is why a minute later, when she addressed me, I was

caught totally off guard.

"You should wear a padded bra, Lucy," said Princess One, still eyeing me. "Your boobs are

really small."

Unfortunately she hadn't cleared this tip with her sister, who was so eager to offer counter

advice, she

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nearly choked on her veggie burger. "It's too late for that now" said Princess Two. "She should have started back in September."

"That's a good point," acknowledged Princess One.

Neither one of my stepsisters seemed at all bothered by the fact that compared to them, I'm

Pamela Anderson.

"Actually," I said, "you know how last week you said I should get blond highlights because of how my hair's too red?"

The Princesses nodded eagerly.

"Well, I was thinking I'd dye my boobs blond and get a padded skull."

"Ha ha, Lucy," said Princess One. "News flash: Maybe if you took this kind of thing a little more seriously, you would have been invited to the homecoming dance."

"News flash," I echoed. "Not everyone's life goal is to get the word juicy tattooed on her ass."

"Lucy," Mara said, emerging from the coma she enters whenever her daughters start criticizing

me, "please don't use that kind of language at the table."

After dinner I headed down to my "room," known in most houses as "the basement."

For the first few months after my dad and I moved into my stepmother's house, I was actually a

little worked up about the fact that I live in a furnitureless

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dungeon where my "bed" is an air mattress; and my clothing–which was initially in cardboard

"dressers"– has slowly ended up in piles all over the floor, as first one and then another and then yet another of the "drawers" fell apart. Each time I had the temerity to complain, to point out that the only reason I didn't bring my old furniture from San Francisco to New York was because of

all the beautiful new stuff Mara was "so excited" to buy, I was reminded by my stepmother, the

amateur interior decorator, that finding the "perfect piece" takes time. Nations have fallen and risen, revolutions have come and gone, celebrity couples have wed and divorced, and still the

right headboard eludes my stepmother.

The one cool thing about being down here is I put up posters of my two favorite paintings;

except for them the walls are completely bare, so it's kind of like being in a museum–you know,

vast empty space punctuated by spectacular works of art. Lying on my "bed" I can either look at

the wall across from me, where Matisse's The Dancer hangs, or up at the ceiling, where I've

tacked a ginormous poster of Autumn Rhythm (Number 30).

My mom was a really great artist. Her paintings hang in museums all over Europe, and MOMA

and the Metropolitan Museum of Art each own one. The walls of our house in San Francisco

were covered with her work, but when we moved we put it all in storage. My dad said Mara's

feelings might be hurt if we asked to hang Mom's paintings here. That's pretty much the

9

major theme in my life now–Mara's feelings. Basically, they're always being hurt or in danger of

being hurt.

Which means I'm always in trouble or in danger of being in trouble.

Before I went to sleep, I flipped through a book of Cezanne reproductions I'd gotten out of the

library. But even staring at his perfect pears, each one so sculpted and weighty, I couldn't get my

mind off the list I'd been making in math, the proof that something had gone very, very wrong

with my life.

Because if I have a wicked stepmother and two evil stepsisters, aren't I supposed to get a prince?

10

Chapter Two

Once upon a time I actually tried to make a friend at Glen Lake.

This was back in January, at the start of second semester, when I was foolishly convinced my life

was about to turn around. I'd signed up for this art class, and from the first day I could tell it was

going to be great. Unlike the rest of the Glen Lake faculty, Ms. Daniels, the art teacher, A) really

knows her stuff, B) is not deaf, dumb, blind and/or clinically insane, and C) does not dress as if

we were still living under President Washington. Plus, she's not afraid to give serious

assignments (still lifes, nudes) and to grade them hard.

The other kids in the class aren't especially talented, except for one, Sam Wolff, a junior who's

without a doubt the best artist in the whole school. His paintings hang all over the building, and

when Ms. Daniels took

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attendance on the first day of class and I realized he was the guy whose art I'd been admiring all

first semester, I was totally psyched. Finally, someone I could talk to about something I loved.

The second week of class, when I got to the studio early and found him alone, sitting and

sketching on the old couch in the corner, I figured, Now's my chance. I tried to start up a

conversation, telling him how much I liked a still life he did that was on display in the lobby. It's

a painting of one of those small green tables they have at Starbucks, and on the table there's a

coffee cup, a crumpled napkin, some change, and a half-eaten doughnut. Even though he played

with proportions and perspective, somehow everything seems incredibly real. You can feel the

grains of sugar spilled on the table's surface and the sticky icing on the doughnut.

I told Sam I thought the painting was really cool and I'd spent a long time looking at it. I told him

how it seemed like you could just take a bite of the doughnut. For the first seven eighths of my

monologue, he just squinted up at me, not saying anything. Then, after I'd been going on and on

for, like, two hours, he put on his glasses (he wears these glasses with thick, black rims), stopped

squinting, and said, "Thanks." But he didn't say it like, Thanks, it's really cool of you to take time out from your busy schedule to appreciate the art I have labored to create. Just knowing my

work is appreciated is all the gratitude I need from this cruel, cruel world.

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Instead, he said it like, Could you possibly crawl back into whatever hole you crawled out of and

stop bothering me?

Needless to say, I have stopped pursuing friendship within the Glen Lake artistic community.

On Wednesday, I spent all of art finishing up a charcoal still life of a glass of water, a lemon, and

a notebook on a shelf by an open window. When the bell rang I headed to my drawer to put my

stuff away, and Ms. Daniels gestured at me to come over to where she was culling the most

ancient tubes of paint from a cupboard and chucking them in the trash. She flipped open a tube,

tested the paint on the back of her hand, then returned it to the shelf before taking my drawing

from me.

"This is looking good, Lucy," she said, tracing her finger along the edge of the page. "I love how diaphanous the curtains are."

"Thanks," I said. I was really proud of the curtains; I'd drawn just the edges and a few lines to indicate folds; I wanted the fabric to seem material but weightless.

She handed back the sketch and put her hands together in front of her chin, tapping her index

fingers against her lips. "Lucy, do you know Francesco Clemente?"

Ms. Daniels and I have talked a lot about different artists we like, but I'd never heard of

Clemente. I was tempted to pretend I knew who he was so I wouldn't

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disappoint her, but at the last second I changed my mind. I mean, what if he wasn't even an

artist? What if he was the Prime Minister of Spain or something?

I shook my head. "Who is he?"

She wrapped her long hair into a loose bun at the base of her neck. "He's an artist here in New

York," she said. "His stuff is just extraordinary. It actually reminds me of Picasso's later work.

All that talent and joy." She slipped a pencil through the bun to hold it in place. "He has a

retrospective at the Guggenheim. You should check it out."

I wondered if she'd told anyone else about his show or just me. Since January I'd wanted Ms.

Daniels to think my work was somehow special. Was this the sign I'd been waiting for? Without

my even being conscious of it, I felt the corners of my lips edging upward, something that hadn't

happened in a long, long time. It was sort of a miracle my smile muscles hadn't atrophied.

Thinking out loud, I said, "Maybe I'll go." I could ask my dad if he wanted to go, too. Of course that meant I couldn't go this Saturday. This Saturday had been reserved by Mara to be spent in

pursuit of her own personal holy grail: the late American-Victorian breakfront without which the

front hallway looks, and I quote, "as if nobody loves it!"

"Clemente's painting is just thrilling," Ms. Daniels said. "And I think you'll find it particularly interesting in terms of the direction your art is taking."

My art was taking a direction?

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"Sounds amazing," I said, making the decision to go right then and there. "I won't miss it.

Thanks."

I thought Ms. Daniels's compliment would at least carry me through the week, but no sooner had

I pushed open the door to the cafeteria than the chill of social exile penetrated the warm fuzzy

feeling I'd gotten talking to her. I bought a turkey sandwich and grabbed a chair at an empty table

where someone had left today's sports section. Reading about basketball might have cheered me

up if there hadn't been a front-page article about how the Lakers were guaranteed to lose to

Chicago tonight. My dad grew up in L.A., and I was born there. So even though I've lived most

of my life in San Francisco, I'm a huge Lakers fan. As if the gloomy article wasn't bad enough,

who should decide to sit in the empty seats just down the table from me but Jessica and Madison.

"Okay, can I just show you the bear?" asked Madison. "Because you're going to die! " I glanced over at them. Madison's subtly highlighted hair was pulled back in a sleek ponytail, and her lips

were a plummy color I knew even my stepsisters would approve.

Jessica finished ripping the foil off her yogurt and looked up at Madison. "Give," she said,

reaching out her hand and wiggling her fingers.

Madison looked like she was about to explode with happiness as she handed Jessica the bear.

"You have to squeeze it," Madison explained.

15

Jessica squeezed the bear, which announced, "I love you."

Madison gave a little cry of excitement, like she'd been waiting an eternity for just such a

confession from this particular bear. "I know it's completely dumb," she said. "But it's so cute."

"You guys are nauseating," said Jessica, but she said it in a nice way, like she didn't really mind having a friend who was one half of a nauseating couple.

"Thanks," said Madison. "I was telling him that since it's our three-month anniversary, he

should–" Suddenly she pointed across the cafeteria. "Hey," she shouted. Then she started waving her arms. I glanced in the direction she was waving and saw Matt and Dave, Madison and

Jessica's boyfriends, walking toward the table we were all sitting at.

With them was Connor Pearson.

I stared at him as he crossed the room. It was like my eyes were acting of their own accord; they

couldn't not admire Connor's long legs and broad shoulders, his graceful, athlete's walk. And

who could blame them? If Michelangelo's David strolled out of L'Academia wearing a Glen

Lake High School Basketball jacket, you'd stare, too.

When the guys got to the table, Madison jumped up and gave Matt a PG-defying kiss. As if

inspired by their peers' passion, Jessica and Dave started making out with equal, if imitative, lust.

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Finally Madison pulled away and slapped Matt on the upper arm. "I hate Matt," she said in a

little girl voice.

"Whoa," he said, mock rubbing his arm. "What's that for?"

"For watching the game with these guys tonight instead of seeing a movie with me," she said.

"Matt. Is. A. Jerk." She pounded him on the chest with each word.

"You don't understand," Dave explained to Madison as Matt warded off her blows. "This is

going to be the game. L.A.'s going down." He and Matt high-fived.

And then, out of nowhere, as if support for the home team is some kind of autonomic response, I

muttered, "Yeah, right."

As soon as I realized what I'd done, I tried to focus my eyes on my paper, like the words I'd

spoken had been elicited not by my eavesdropping but by something I'd read. Only it was too

late. Dave, Matt, Connor, Jessica, and Madison were all staring at me as if I were a piece of

furniture that had suddenly been given the power of speech.

"Are you crazy?" said Dave. "Did you see the way Chicago played last night?"

I gave up trying to avert my eyes and looked at him. "How'd they play?" I asked. "The Lakers'

two best players were out and the ref called five totally insane fouls. Chicago was handed the

game."

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"Handed the game?" Dave was practically choking with indignation. He dropped his arm from Jessica's shoulders. "Did you see that three-pointer at the buzzer? Did you?"

"I saw it," I said.

"Then what are you talking about?" He reached out like he wanted to shake me.

"Hey, easy there, man," Connor said, grabbing Dave's arm and holding on until he dropped it

back to his side.

Dave and I kept glaring at each other, but if the only thing rattling Dave was my saying Chicago

was going down, I was freaking about way more than that. Speaking without being spoken to

constituted a major social taboo.

I was royally screwed.

Just as Jessica opened her mouth to say something to me (no doubt along the lines of, Shut up,

Freak!), Connor let go of Dave's arm and turned in my direction. "Sorry about that," he said.

"The D-Man gets a little passionate about Chicago."

And then he winked at me.

Connor Pearson winked at me.

Everyone saw it, too, and I felt myself getting warm. "Yeah, sure," I stuttered. "Don't worry about it."

Jessica shut her mouth and turned away. Because when Connor Pearson winks at someone, that

someone isn't royally screwed.

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She's royally pardoned.

"Yo, Pearson!" We all looked over to the door where Kathryn Ford and two of her attendants

stood. Even from across the room her smile was blinding. "Are you coming or what?"

"You know it," Connor shouted back. He turned to Dave and Matt. "Come on, guys," he said.

Dave and Jessica, Matt and Madison started making out again. It seemed nothing would put an

end to their lip locks, until Conner grabbed the sleeve of Dave's jacket and started pulling. "Let's

go!" he said, yanking hard at the leather. And then Dave was pulling on Matt's jacket and

suddenly– poof! –all three of them were gone.

No one said anything for a minute after the guys left, and then Jessica turned in my direction.

"Wow, you're really, like, into basketball, aren't you?"

Could that be curiosity in her tone? Hey, you're the new girl who's in my math class. I've really

let far too much time go by without getting to know you better. Tell us about your passion for

sport! I was unfamiliar with the social norms of my new habitat–was she friend or foe?

"Yeah," I said. I hated that my answer was so meek, as if I was waiting to see whether she

approved of it. I sat up straighten "I'm a huge fan." I was prepared to defend my leisure activity to the death.

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This, apparently, would not be necessary. "Cool," said Jessica. Then she turned from me to

Madison. "Did you see Connor and Kathryn in the senior parking lot this morning?"

"Oh my god," said Madison. "I give it a month, tops, before they get together."

"A month?" said Jessica. "Try a week. You should have heard her. She was all, 'I heard the

Knicks are having a great season,' and he was all, 'This could be their year.'"

"Like Kathryn suddenly cares about basketball," said Madison.

"Like anyone cares about basketball," said Jessica. And she bit down emphatically on a baby carrot.

I wanted to say something about the pleasures of basketball, what it's like to lose yourself in a

really great game, to watch your team come up from behind to score an unexpected victory, to

see a player you've been doubting for months suddenly find his rhythm. There was so much I

could have said.

But I'd already said more than enough. I finished my sandwich and the article and gathered up

my trash, not surprised that neither Jessica nor Madison acknowledged my leaving.

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