Gimme Everything You Got - Iva-Marie Palmer Page 0,87

“Don’t you owe her a date? At least to give her back her tonsils?”

He flipped me off. “The bassist has a guitar made of a toilet seat. It seemed more your style of outing.”

Now I flipped him off.

“It’s not a big deal, but if you want to go . . .” He held my gaze, waiting for an answer.

“Sure. As friends, right?” I said, casting a look at Tina.

“Yeah, of course. I’ll pick you up at five.”

Twenty-Three

I dreamed weird dreams. Me and Candace as little kids skipping onto a soccer field with our dolls, then Candace disappearing to be replaced by Bobby, all alone. Bobby asking me to kick him a ball that materialized in front of my feet, me kicking it as Bobby became Ken, asking, “Who the fuck do you think you are?” Ken, turning into my mom, saying, “And what do you want, anyway?” Me, surrounded by more soccer balls than I can kick, and my soccer clothes turning into a dusty peach dress. Joe, putting a hand on my shoulder and saying, “Just like that, champ, but different.”

Then I woke up and lay in my bed, too tired to haul myself out and too anxious to stare at the ceiling.

Had I really told St. Mark’s boys’ soccer team we wanted to play them?

I shoved the covers off and got up. I was in the kitchen pouring a bowl of cereal when Mom came in, with her hair curled and a new blouse tucked into her jeans. “You look nice,” I said.

“I promised the School for Starting Over group at the college I’d help run its bake sale,” Mom said.

“That sounds like a waste of good hair,” I said, catching myself. I was trying to tread lightly on Mom’s interests. “Sorry. I really meant to say, can you bring me a cupcake?”

Mom waved me off. “No, you’re right, it’s going to be awful. But I’m networking. The head of the group has a contact at a different title company and might help pass on my résumé.”

After our argument the previous week, things had gone back to normal, more or less, and on Sunday night we’d ordered a pizza and watched TV together. But I still felt like Mom and I were trying to be more careful around one another, and any time soccer or her job came up in conversation, it put a wave of tension in the air.

“Are you all set with your dress for the wedding?” Mom asked, changing the subject.

“As set as I’ll ever be to willingly dress like produce that’s been left in an attic.”

“Susan, it’s one day,” Mom chided.

“I know, I know. I have one more fitting Monday night, and Polly will pick up the dress Wednesday. I think we have a game the morning of, but it should be fine.”

Mom’s eyebrows went up over the top of her coffee mug. “That’s not too many things for one day, is it?”

“It’ll be fine,” I said, hoping I was right. It was too many things for a year, the more I thought about it. Not to mention, we had to prepare for the game.

Creeping in on my thoughts about Mom, the game, and the wedding was the argument with Candace. I was bothered by how I’d left things with her the night before. But as I tried to think of what I could say to her, an antsy sensation came over me and I couldn’t focus. First thing was first: I had the show with Joe that night. Tutu and the Whatevers. The toilet guitar. The city, which would be exciting. Besides a school trip to the Field Museum, I hadn’t been downtown in over a year, not since Candace had heard about a store on State Street that sold discount Jordache jeans. Mom had volunteered to take me, Candace, and Tina. We wandered awhile and never found the store, so Mom had taken us to the movies. We’d seen Saturday Night Fever, and all of us—including my mom—had fallen in love with John Travolta in it.

I pulled out clothes to see what would be good for a punk show, but nothing looked right. Even if it wasn’t a date, I still wanted to look as with it as the other girls who went to the kinds of shows Joe went to. Around two, after pulling apart my dresser and trying and failing to make any progress on my Great Expectations paper for Ms. Lopez, I got the idea to make a shirt