The Girl with the Mermaid Hair by Delia Ephron Page A

hearty greetings. “Come on, don’t be shy, it’s no big deal, your child’s future is at stake, that’s all.
    “What are you going to do with this bag of bones, haw, haw, haw,” he said, referring to lanky Troy Bascomb, who was duking it out with Sukie for the most A’s and was such an extraordinary fencer he was trying out for the Olympics. “Your very existence is an embarrassment,” he assured Jenna’s parents. He evenelbowed Dr. Fusco, Autumn’s dad, a man everyone was terrified of. Dr. Fusco did brain surgery. “Where’s your kid?” Mr. Vickers asked him. “Hiding in plain sight like all the rest of them?”
    Trying not to see, Sukie actually perceived more keenly. She knew what Vickers meant. Kids lagged behind parents and, as quickly as possible, migrated to friends. Denicia bolted from her mother’s car as if she were escaping kidnappers.
    Sukie, at the back of the crowd, spied her tall dad at the front. If she’d craned, she could have seen her mom, too, but the dead don’t crane. At most they mill about. “Well, if it isn’t the parents of the driven and studious—” Vickers abruptly shut up.
    Had he forgotten her name?
    “—Susannah Jamieson.” There. He supplied it.
    She knew what had happened. Her mother’s face. Vickers had been temporarily silenced by the close-up truth.
    Did the dead have parents? She made up another rule: No parents for dead people. Tonight she was an orphan.
    There was no escaping Vickers, however, because she had to pass him to get in. “How are you?” Hedropped his goofy cheer and peered down through rimless glasses. She responded with a bland vague affect. He pressed her arm. “Are you all right, Sukie?” She shrugged and floated by. “How’s Emma?” he barked.
    Emma? Who was Emma? Even if she’d cared, she couldn’t ask. Speaking broke the rules, as did caring. In fact, it occurred to her, the dead didn’t have teachers either.
    “I’m referring to Madame Bovary.” He cupped his mouth and blared into the cafeteria. “All you kids in AP English, don’t forget. Settle on your topics. Essay presentations begin a week from Monday.”
    Sukie’s mom had staked out a front-row table, laying her coat across the bench on one side and propping her purse prominently on the other. Sukie drifted as fast as zombie legs could drift in the other direction, past Mikey with a fistful of cookies, over to the refreshment table, where Jenna’s boyfriend, James, was peeling oranges.
    “You will not believe this orange James discovered,” said Jenna. She offered samples, passing slices on a paper plate soggy with juice, standing on one leg while she did it. Jenna was, Sukie observed, excruciatinglygraceful. Sukie sometimes thought there was nothing she couldn’t be jealous of, even an ability to raise your leg and point your toe while serving orange slices. Jenna was studying ballet and Sukie wasn’t, but still. James, meanwhile, a serious foodie, spun an orange in one hand and wielded a small paring knife with the other. The peel fell off in a perfect spiral.
    “A surprisingly huge variety of oranges are grown in Sicily,” said James.
    “You’re the professor of fresh fruit,” said Frannie.
    “You are.” Jenna giggled. She popped a slice into his mouth and mopped juice off his chin.
    He started skinning another. “They’re called Moros.” He glanced up and flinched.
    “What’s wrong?” Jenna asked. “Are you all right?”
    He sucked his knuckle while he stared at Sukie.
    Did I make him nick himself? wondered Sukie. Is that a compliment?
    “Given what we pay in tuition, you’d think the refreshments would be better.”
    Sukie realized her dad was standing next to her, his bad side showing. As he popped a cheese cube into his mouth and chewed, the lumpy purple bruise on his cheek pulsed.
    Autumn’s mother, pouring juice, nudged Ethan’s mother, who was upending a plastic bag of prepeeled baby carrots, the kind Sukie’s mother refused to serve