Pretending Normal by Mary Campisi Page B

house all weekend.”
    “I’m going to five o’clock Mass on Saturday.”
    “Wow, really? I’m sure Father Torrence will be very impressed with your new haircut, and the red shirt will blow him away. He probably won’t be able to say Mass.”
    “Where’s she going to go, Nina?” I ask. “Benny’s? The bowling alley? This is Norwood.”
    “No kidding. The flies are limited in Norwood. So, that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to do here.” She taps her chin, grins, and says, “We’ll go to the bowling alley tomorrow night. And in two weeks, there’s a dance at the Teen Center.”
    “We never go to those,” I say.
    “Well, we’re going to start.”
    ***
    I cram my days with Nina and Conchetta, and packing up Ms. O’Grady’s basement. After six visits to the O’Grady’s, I still haven’t seen more than Mr. O’Grady’s right arm but at least I haven’t smelled his stinky feet either.
    I stay very busy most days, but the nights swallow me with sadness , until one morning the sadness rolls away and anger takes over. Peter let me believe he was someone he wasn’t, let me believe in something he didn’t. I am not so foolish as to realize he did not once apologize, or say he would stop pushing.
    Pretend. That’s what he wanted me to do. Or better yet, separate the two Peters—the one with the girlfriend named Sara Polokovich who drives around in a blue Chevelle and shares double dips and French fries at Benny’s Hot Dog Deluxe, and the other Peter, the one who steals Black Beauties and ‘ludes’ from his psychiatrist father and sells them on the street.
    Well, no thank you.
    It is almost seven days before Kay finds out Peter and me. I have just combed more lemon juice through my hair and am spread out in the backyard on my belly, slathered in Coppertone. The sun is mid-August brutal, the kind that beats down so hard you can feel your heart pulsing against your chest, hear it thumping in your ears.
    “Sara! Sara!”
    I crack open an eye. “Hey.”
    “Oh, Sara” —she crouches on her knees, her lips pulled down—“I have some terrible news.”
    “What?”
    Kay leans closer, whispers in my ear, “It’s about Peter.”
    She knows Peter is a pusher. I open my mouth to tell her that I didn’t know, that sometimes you just don’t know.
    “I saw him kissing Kelly Jordan.” She presses one hand to her mouth as though to pull the words back. “I’m so sorry. I know you were crazy about him.”
    Well. My gut pumps bile to my throat. Does Kelly Jordan think it’s okay for him to keep ‘ludes under the floor mat of his Chevelle? What if he sells it to her friends, maybe her little sister, Moira? I bet Kelly Jordan doesn’t know Peter is Jekyll and Hyde. Come to think of it, she probably doesn’t even know who Jekyll and Hyde are.
    “Say something, Sara. I didn’t know if I should tell you, but I didn’t want you to hear it from anybody else.”
    “It’s okay, really.” Funny, how she is worried about hurting my feelings. It has been okay for her to point at my hair and tell me that braids went out five years ago and tan pants make my butt look big and have I ever noticed that my right ear is higher than my left? Just a little, but I notice, she says. And now she is worried about me.
    “I don’t understand,” Kay says . “He’s your boyfriend.”
    “Was. Not anymore.”
    “You broke up? When? Why didn’t you tell me?”
    I lift a shoulder. “I really didn’t want to talk about it.”
    “Oh.” She looks at me then, that knowing of a thirteen-year old. “He dumped you, huh?”
    Sometimes a lie is easier than the truth. “Yeah.”
    “Bastard,” she whispers. “No good piece of shit .”
    “That about sums it up.”

Chapter 14
     
    I can’t avoid Jerry Jedinski forever. He’ll find me, poke around the truth, listen to my story, poke a little more and draw his own conclusions, right or wrong. What am I going to tell him? Maybe nothing, maybe I’ll wait and see what he