You Should See Me in a Crown(18)
I looked back at the Prom Projectioners, and they may have been smiling, but they were also whispering to themselves. I didn’t have to hear them to know what they were saying: Why is he hanging out with her?
But now, in the kitchen, I want to tell Robbie the whole story, to unload all the details of hanging out with Jordan onto him in a way I can’t with Gabi, Britt, or Stone. But Granny chooses this moment to stride into the kitchen to say good night, fully dressed in her bland blue scrubs.
“Robert, I know I didn’t just hear something about no Campbell Confidential! You better get off them apps and social medias, or so help me you’re going to be sending smoke signals to your friends instead of texts.” She reaches into the fridge to grab her floral lunch box. “Y’all know I don’t like that nonsense.”
“How do you know I’m even talking about Campbell Confidential? I could be talking about good old-fashioned, ear-to-the-ground gossiping. You know, like the industrious and inquisitive young man I am.”
“Industrious and inquisitive my foot, Robert. I pay your phone bill, remember?” Granny is where we get our height, so despite the fact that she’s getting shorter with age, she can still kiss us both on the forehead easily on her way out the door. “I know how much data you’re using.”
When Granny says good night, she reminds Ro to take his medicine and reminds me to make sure to watch him do it. It’s not that we don’t trust him, but him forgetting or thinking he’s healthy enough to skip a dose is a chance we’re not willing to take. He’s a smart kid, but sometimes he starts feeling good, and he gets so cocky and convinced he’s invincible that he doesn’t take his meds. He’s done it before, and I’m terrified he’ll do it again.
“How does she even know what data is?” Robbie whisper-hisses in my direction as the front door clicks shut behind her. I’m laughing as I drain the sudsy water from the sink. “The elders are evolving, and it’s going to ruin us all.”
The week is so busy, I don’t have time to meet up with Mack after school to help her learn the new music until Friday afternoon. Since she’s also running for queen, her schedule is just as hectic. And even though I’m doing this as a favor to Mr. K, I’m kind of looking forward to it. There’s rarely a time when I wouldn’t choose to be in the band room over any other place, especially with everything else going on right now.
I’m only a little annoyed when she shows up fifteen minutes late.
“Hi! Sorry I’m—” She bursts through the door and immediately the book she’s holding slips out of her hand and onto the floor. And when she bends over to pick it up, the drumsticks tucked loosely into her tiny half ponytail slip out onto the floor. She picks up her drumsticks and smiles at me apologetically.
“This is so not the impression I wanted to make on you today, but I somehow still manage to get lost finding this place even though I’ve been here multiple times this week. But my old school—I went to this super small art high school in Chicago—was not designed like this.” She walks over to the kit and plops down onto the seat. She drops her bag to the floor with a thud. “I miss it—my school—but I’m glad to be here. This feels like the quintessential American high school, honestly.”
“I—”
I don’t think she hears me, because she just keeps going. I’m convinced she’s on track to set the record for most words spoken without taking a break in the history of the universe.
“It’s funny, because I’ve always kind of wanted to go to a school like this, but I just wish it hadn’t happened this way. We moved because of my great-aunt Ida. She’s pretty sick, and never had any kids of her own, so my dad moved us down here to help take care of her.”
She looks up at me from her place behind the drums. It’s almost like she’s seeing me for the first time. She tightens the screw on the crash cymbal without breaking eye contact with me, and once again I’m sort of shocked by the way her eyes look. I know it’s superficial, but I don’t mind listening to her talk a mile per minute if it means I just get to keep looking at them.
Purely for, um, opposition research purposes, obviously.
“You know, you dress a little bit like her.” She adjusts the seat on the kit. It comes out so quick—like everything she says—that I don’t even think she realizes she just compared me to a woman who I’m currently imagining has a mouth full of porcelain teeth and smells a little bit like mothballs and the nearness of her own mortality. I look down at the sweater Gabi had sent over to my house and cringe. “I love her. She’s a real ballbuster. Kind of like Madame Simoné, you know? Very takes-no-nonsense-from-anybody.”
She looks up at me and smiles. Her smile slips when she sees my face. I can only imagine I look shocked. Not only did she compare me to her denture-mouthed aunt Ida, but she also compared me to faux-French, takes-prom-way-too-seriously Madame Simoné. She’s cute, but I wonder if maybe the part of the brain that keeps most people from blurting out their innermost thoughts just never developed for her.
“Oh my God, I did the thing, didn’t I?” She bites at her thumbnail and groans. “My dad is always saying that I put my cart before my horse, and most of the time I ignore it because dads, you know? But I’m beginning to see what he means, because I did just compare you to a seventy-year-old white woman from Ireland with a lopsided wig and cilantro perpetually in her teeth, so I—”