All Adults Here(52)
Chapter 23
Elizabeth Taylor
August wasn’t sure about the Parade Crew. “It’s just, not, I don’t know . . . ,” he started, saying plenty.
“You can be honest,” Cecelia said. “You think it’s lame.”
It was study hall, and they were sitting at the very last table in the library, with August’s phone propped up behind their American History textbook. August had taken it upon himself to educate Cecelia about Elizabeth Taylor, his favorite actress. They had already watched several clips from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Cleopatra and had moved on to clips from Giant, which was August’s favorite. They were sharing one pair of headphones, with one tiny bud in August’s right ear and the other in Cecelia’s left.
“Don’t get me wrong—I love to build things and to decorate things,” August said. He was so wonderfully careful with his words. “It’s more that the Harvest Festival Parade is always full of girls like Sidney and her posse, who always wear the same strappy dresses and strappy shoes with dumb beauty-queen curls, like they’ve never even seen a magazine. I think it would be way more fun to build, like, an alternative parade that happened on the same day on the other side of town.”
“As my one friend, don’t you think you should be encouraging?” Cecelia snuck a gummy bear out of her pocket and passed one to August. “And you could probably make the float like a hundred times better! Why don’t you do it with me? It’s easier to change things from the inside out, right? And what if I was a Harvest Queen? You know what they say—if you can dream it, you can do it.” Elizabeth Taylor made Texas look about as sultry as Wisconsin, but Cecelia was into it anyway.
“What about me? I could be the Harvest Queen too! At least I’d wear something interesting. Fine, fine. Join. Don’t let me keep you from your dreams.”
Nicky and Juliette weren’t big on holidays—there were usually flowers and chocolates on Valentine’s Day, and celebratory pancakes on birthday mornings, but Christmas and Thanksgiving they usually spent at other, more organized people’s houses. No tree of their own, no turkey of their own. The one holiday thing they had always done, though, since the year that Cecelia was born, was take the subway to the Museum of Natural History the night before Thanksgiving and watch all the balloons get puffed up. That it happened at night made it always feel half secret, even though there were hundreds or thousands of other people there too. Cecelia never cared about the crowds. It was like a giant version of being in your school after dark, a little bit sneaky, even if nothing sneaky was going on. She would hold hands with both of her parents—why would anyone want to be anything other than an only child? She was in the middle, clutching them both, at the very center of the world. That was why she wanted to build a float. Maybe if the float was big enough, or glittery enough, she could make her parents wake up, get on a train, come to the Big House, pick her up, and take her home. It was a humiliating, childish desire, and she would rather die than admit it out loud, but there it was. It was as if she had proven just too challenging, after twelve years of perfect, normal, easy behavior and then several months of a handful of confused calls from the guidance counselor’s office and tears and conversations with other parents that weren’t just about playdates. Her parents needed a time-out from being parents. That was how she saw it—betrayal masked as concern. Katherine’s parents, in their leather shoes and buttoned-up clothes, had forced the school to apologize, had threatened to sue, had kept their daughter home for a week’s suspension and then had started tidying their private school applications. It was nothing.
“I just want to learn how to do things,” Cecelia said.
“Fair enough,” August said. “Now, look at her blouse.”
“You’re the only person under fifty who uses the word blouse, August,” Cecelia said.
“Yes, well, you can learn from me too.” He bowed.
The library was quiet—only a third of the eighth grade had study hall, and it was still nice enough that they were allowed to sit outside, on the lawn, which was what almost everyone else had decided to do. A few studious girls were doing math homework at the next table toward the door, and then there were a few kids sitting alone, reading. Cecelia felt flushed with appreciation for August, for her aunt Porter, for the universe. Having friends was not something to take for granted.
Liesel appeared in the open doorway of the library, and even though Cecelia couldn’t see who she was talking to in the hallway, she could guess. She nudged August’s elbow and then they both watched Liesel make her way down the low bookshelves until she’d reached their table. She held out a folded square of paper, and Cecelia took it slowly, as though it might bite. When she’d taken it, Liesel turned quickly and hurried back into the hall.
“Let me see that,” August said. He took the note out of her hand and carefully unfolded it until it was a creased but mostly flat piece of paper.
A WITCH IS BETTER THAN A SNITCH, BITCH.
Cecelia gasped. “How the hell does she know?”
“I don’t know, the internet? How does anyone know anything? Wait, there’s more,” August said, dragging his finger down the page until the whole sheet was unfolded. It was also possible, August supposed, that he had told his mother and that his mother had told Sidney’s mother, because they took yoga classes together, but he didn’t want to admit that he might very well be the source of the leak. Better to blame it on Sidney’s Insta-stalking, which she was no doubt doing. At the very bottom, in smaller letters, it read: