The Impossible Knife of Memory(50)

Gerta, the guidance secretary, was completely covered by orange rubber fish scales. An enormous clam, opened to show a pearl inside it, sat on her head.

“No costume?” Gerta asked as I signed in.

“I’m going to wear something different tonight,” I said. “Right now I’m disguised as a rebellious, irritating teenager.”

“Very convincing. I hardly recognized you.”

Ms. Benedetti, dressed as an old-school, guaranteed-topiss-off-the-Wiccans witch with a pointy hat, wart on the chin, cobwebs and plastic spiders nestled in her wig, opened her door.

“Ger-a agh-agh allowee,” she mumbled, beckoning me in and brushing aside the thick cobwebs that drooped from the ceiling. “Ome ee.”

I had to squeeze by an inflatable cauldron and step over life-sized plastic rats to get to the chair.

“I o oou own my—” Benedetti began.

“Ma’am.” I interrupted and pointed at her fake teeth. “Would you mind?”

“Oh.” She pulled out the teeth and took off her hat. “Feels so natural, after a while you forget you’re wearing them.”

It took all my strength, but I resisted the temptation to comment.

She pushed a plastic orange bowl across the desk. “Candy corn?”

I didn’t want to take anything from her, but my stomach overruled my head and I snagged a handful.

She waited until my mouth was full.

“Hayley, we have a bit of a problem.”

I stopped mid-chew, mind racing with the countless disasters that could follow an opening statement like that.

“I had a meeting with Mr. Cleveland,” she continued.

I started chewing again.

“He said he’d set you up with tutoring.”

I nodded, hoping she didn’t notice the blushing because my tutoring sessions no longer had anything to do with math.

“And yet your grade hasn’t improved at all.”

I shrugged and took another handful of candy.

“He said you had shown some interest in helping revive the school newspaper, but that has fallen by the wayside, too. In addition—”

“Did you tell my father about Trish?” I asked. “He said he talked to you.”

“We didn’t talk about Trish,” she said. “We discussed her concerns.”

“What were those, exactly?”

“Most had to do with your father’s unconventional approach to your homeschooling. He confirmed that he had not been entirely truthful about your lessons.”

“Was he angry?”

“Not at all. He simply asked if I thought you were struggling in any subjects. According to your teachers you haven’t had any problems with the material, with the exception of math, of course.”

“You said ‘most.’ What else?”

“In trying to understand the whole student, it’s helpful to have a picture of the larger family dynamic.”

“That sounds like a load of crap,” I said. “Did you ask Dad about this ‘dynamic’?”

“I tried.” She picked up a piece of candy corn with her fingernails. “I got the impression that you’d have more to say about that than your father.”

The final bell cut her off.

I jumped up. “Can we talk about this on Monday?”

“I imagine so.” The witch sighed and popped the candy in her mouth. “Be careful tonight.”





_*_ 53 _*_

Our washer and dryer stood at the bottom of the basement steps. I led Gracie past them and opened the door to the rest of the basement.

“Whoa,” Gracie said. “It didn’t used to look like this.”

When we first moved in, Dad had spent an afternoon trying to deal with Gramma’s old stuff in the basement. I helped him until we got in a stupid argument about some ancient books of his. They stank of mold and I said we needed to throw them out and he’d yelled at me so I’d stormed out. This was the first time I’d ventured past the washer and dryer since then. It looked like Dad had stopped working as soon as I’d left.

“I swear to you this wasn’t here then,” Gracie said, pointing at the rickety metal shelving unit half filled with plastic tubs and cardboard boxes. “There was a little round table and three chairs, and a rug and a toy chest—”

“Knock it off, will you?” I asked. “You’re freaking me out. Your memory is unnatural. I bet you have a brain tumor or something.”

She stuck her tongue out at me. Her mood had been better since her parents had declared a temporary truce after their family therapist had threatened to quit.

“This is ridiculous,” I said. “We’ll never find anything. How about I just carry an open umbrella and say that I’m a rainstorm?”

“Such a pessimist.” Gracie pulled a bin from the shelf, set it on the ground, and opened it. “Eww! Old wigs and mouse poop.” Two bins later, she shrieked in triumph; she’d found our old dress-up clothes and a box of arts and crafts supplies that were free of rodent turds. I pointed out that we had grown a bit in the past decade and she called me an ungrateful bitch and we dumped everything on the floor and started pawing through it to figure out a costume for me.

“How about Sexy Princess?” Gracie asked, putting a bent tiara on her head.