Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board

Chapter 13

"Sorry," I apologized. "That we didn't move away forever."

"Don't be sorry about that," Trey teased, nudging me with his arm. "If you had moved away forever instead of into the house next door, I would have been watching someone else get undressed for the last few years."

My eyes shot wide open and my jaw dropped. "Trey!"

"Probably some gross, hairy guy," Trey continued tormenting me. He leaned over and took my face in both of his hands and kissed me right on my protesting frown.

Strangely, Candace returned to her old self that week at school. It was if the promise of a trip to Hawaii had pointed her mania a different direction. In the cafeteria, she rolled her eyes at Violet and didn't appear to be affected by the taunts and jeers of lower classmen who had heard about her Homecoming rampage. I continued to sit with Violet, Tracy, and Michael at lunch time, but made no attempt to hide my friendliness toward Mischa and Candace. With mid-terms just two weeks away and the leaves beginning to fall from every tree in town, I busied myself with preparations for our first junior class fundraiser of the year. It was my goal to organize a weekend yard clean-up service, which I had decided to call, "the junior class Rake Sale." I created a series of posters encouraging classmates to sign up for six-hour shifts to help our class "rake in the money" for the ski trip that Violet was organizing for January. The amount of money that we needed to raise by the end of January was fairly daunting. Wealthy kids at our school probably could have asked their parents to write checks to cover their costs, but everyone else could raise the majority of the cost of their trip by working their shift. No one liked doing manual labor, but I was hopeful that people would take advantage of the opportunity to pay for their trip with a few hours of hard work.

To my great surprise and relief, the sign-up forms were nearly full by Wednesday afternoon at lunch time after having been posted in the cafeteria for only three days. It definitely seemed like kids were open to working off their fee to go on the trip; the big remaining question was whether or not people in town would be interested in hiring high school kids to clean up their leaves, mow their lawns, and trim their hedges. We lived in a town where everyone's family had thousands of dollars' worth of lawn equipment in their garage, so it was a gamble whether or not anyone would be willing to pay for assistance.

Candace's mom checked Candace out of school from the principal's office on Thursday to drive her to Sheboygan to meet with my father's former colleague, Dr. Gonzalez. Candace had actually been looking forward to the examination, hoping that Dr. Gonzalez would take her side on the topic of the sedatives and anti-depressant drugs she had been taking for the last month. She was insistent that the drugs were dulling her senses and making her feel stupid, and was eager to be free of her prescriptions. Mischa and I walked Candace to the first floor before lunch time and watched through the slats in the blinds on the windows of the principal's office as she greeted her mother. They exchanged pleasantries with the office administrators before stepping back into the hallway. Mrs. Lehrer shifted her oversized sunglasses from the top of her head back down over her eyes as soon as she was back in the busy high school hallway in an attempt to avoid the stares of curious teenagers. Candace held perfect posture as she strode toward the high school's western exit, a set of double doors leading to the guest parking lot, not especially caring who observed her leaving school midday with her parent.

All afternoon, I was lost in thought during my classes, wondering if—when Candace resurfaced later that night—she would be able to provide some kind of logical, reasonable explanation for everything that had happened in the last few weeks. Even despite all of the proof that I'd gathered, I was still holding out for some kind of plausible reason for all of the weirdness I had witnessed. My father had taught me that logic was the greatest defense against doubt, and while I was certain that what I'd seen with my own eyes was real, I desperately wanted a reason for it not to be so.