Spectacle (A Young Adult Novel) Read online

  Spectacle

  by Angie McCullagh

  Copyright © 2012 by Angie McCullagh

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. Please do not participate in or encourage the piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Dedicated to my parents,

  who raised a six-foot-two-inch girl

  with grace and humor.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Postscript

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  1. Tall Pride

  IT WASN’T THAT Emily Lucas didn’t like her jeans; it was that they had shrunk. Or something. This particular pair had been her favorite: a dark blue wash with worn spots on one hip and the opposite knee.

  But lately they hadn’t been skimming the tops of her feet so much as swinging around her ankles. It was embarrassing, actually, the way they’d gone from Cool to Floods in a matter of a few weeks.

  Emily tried not to catch a glimpse of her pant leg as she swung one foot over and off her bike, a heavy ‘90s Schwinn, brush painted sky blue. She leaned the Schwinn against the porch, trudged inside and dropped her backpack at the base of the stairway.

  In the kitchen, she scrounged for a snack that wasn’t kale or garbanzo beans, and found a can of diet soda, a jar of creamy Jif (her stepmom’s one vice), and a box of crackers.

  Plopping down at the kitchen table, she dug in.

  “Hey Emily! You’re early,” Melissa said, coming in and beginning her detailed ritual of brewing green tea. She filled a red kettle with water, measured exactly one teaspoon of dried leaves into a diffuser, and snapped it closed. She tapped it against the counter, then added exactly one more teaspoon of leaves, and snapped it closed again. She retrieved a cup and saucer from the cupboard’s top shelf.

  Emily, a cracker jammed into the side of her mouth, said, “It was an early release day.”

  “What for?”

  “Teacher meetings or something. I don’t know.”

  October sun streamed through the bank of windows above Melissa’s beloved rectangular farmer’s sink.

  Emily took a swig of soda and said, "I need new jeans."

  "Oh? What's wrong with those? And your Luckys?"

  "They're shrinking."

  "No," Melissa said, sounding mildly devastated. "We're so careful."

  Which was true. Emily did her own laundry, but Melissa helped stretch her jeans after every wash, pulling the hems while Emily yanked the waistband, like denim tug-of-war. But it worked. It usually worked, anyway.

  "You're growing again," Melissa said.

  Emily shook her head, refusing to accept that possibility. "I can't be."

  "Let's measure you."

  Emily thought Melissa took a weird overinterest in the actual numbers of her height. When someone asked Emily how tall she was, which was often, Melissa would crow, "Five eleven and three-fourths!"

  Who cared about the stupid three-fourths?

  "C'mon! It'll be … exciting!"

  Emily swallowed a large gob of cracker and peanut butter and said, "Unlike you, I don't need specifics, okay? I don't wanna know."

  Melissa crossed her arms and leaned against the counter. She nodded. "Denial."

  "Fine, whatever," Emily scooped up her snack, went to the family room, and folded herself into the couch.

  She clicked on the TV and stared hard at some reality show she didn't care about.

  Soon, Melissa joined her and settled herself on the leather chair across from Emily. She flipped her hair, shiny and black. "It's okay to be tall," she said. "You should hold your head up high."

  "Tall pride. Got it."

  "When I was a kid, I would've killed to be taller."

  Right, Emily thought. Taller. Not three-story-house tall. Not oak-tree tall. Not Emily Lucas tall.

  She looked at Melissa, whose dainty foot was slung over her knee. She wished Melissa wouldn’t try so hard to be her friend. To be all Girl Power. She was ten years younger than Emily’s dad and had good music on her iPod, so she thought she and Emily should be besties.

  “Can I just eat my snack?” Emily pleaded. “And watch some trashy TV? It’s been a crappy day.”

  Melissa pretended to stare at the show with her for a few minutes, then stood, stretched noisily, and left. She bopped around the house with her earbuds in, straightening, cooking, getting on the computer, and generally being overly cheery.

  Just before dinner, Kristen came crashing in, dropping her duffel with a thud on the floor by the front door and disappearing into the bathroom for a shower. She came home just before dinner most days, finally done with whatever practice she was involved in at the time. Volleyball, softball, soccer. It could be any sport. She was good at them all.

  Athletic, normal-heighted Kristen.

  Emily always wondered how they could be sisters. Really, how?

  She had to hate her a little bit.

  She went up to her room, kicked the door closed, lay across her bed, and tried to concentrate on algebra. She could smell rice cooking and the fruity scent of Kristen’s shampoo.

  She heard Kristen’s door open and close.

  The phone rang, and Emily assumed it was her dad calling to tell Melissa he was going to be late again.

  She chewed her pencil, loathing the x’s and y’s. The numbers that, to her, looked like a jumble of noodles in a bowl. She doodled across the margins of her paper. She thought about calling Trix but decided against it. Trix
was probably working at Frederick Hui’s, the fabric dyeing plant where she put in 20 hours a week, or wandering Seattle’s twilit streets.

  Frustrated with math, Emily stood in front of the full-length mirror hanging on the back of her door. There was her long, long body and thin face and big hands.

  There was the very-much-not-ideal teenage form. The girl without a petite or sprightly bone anywhere within her skeleton.

  Her eyes, thankfully, were bright. Alert. Her henna-brown hair hung in a thick wave past her shoulders. Her lips were a nice shape—kind of full and wide, though she didn’t like how they spread like melted butter when she smiled.

  Emily could go days sometimes without noticing herself, without catching her reflection in the chrome toaster or a dark store window, without glancing down at her stretched out legs and thinking she was anything other than normal. But then there would come a surprising objective moment, and she could see what others saw: the lanky limbs and how, when she sat with crossed legs, she looked angled and severe. It was a wonder, in a way, that people didn’t exclaim more when they saw her, didn’t gawk for longer than they did.

  She checked out her jeans, at how they stopped too soon now above her feet. She examined her sleeves, which, sure enough, had hiked up an inch or so, showing her bony wrists.

  Frustrated, she spun away. How could she be growing again? And how tall was she actually going to get?

  2. Trailer

  TRIX OPENED HER window as far as it would go. Sounds from Aurora Avenue filtered in: five lanes of traffic rumbling, the occasional shout, barking dogs. She removed the screen, lit a cigarette and leaned out into the night, a breeze blowing her curly hair off her face.

  Trix’s mom would flay her if she found her smoking.

  Her mother, Fiona Jones, used to smoke herself, but quit when she was diagnosed with early emphysema. Now she filled the nicotine void with food and TV.

  Still, Trix was sixteen. She was supposed to try all sorts of things, figure out what and who she wanted to be. Smoking, she had to admit, made her feel kind of badass. It gave her something to do and look forward to.

  She thought about the guy her mom was on a date with. Rodney. He had an octopus tattoo on his left bicep. “Look!” her mom had squealed when he come to pick her up, “He can make it swim!”

  Sure enough, with a little flexing, the tentacled legs rippled. Trix had smirked and looked away. She couldn’t bear the thought of her mom with that guy, laughing at his jokes and swooning over his stupid octopus. But her mom had made it clear a couple years back that Trix had no say in the matter. Fiona’d go out with whomever she wanted, and no amount of protesting or sulking on Trix’s part was going to change that.

  Fine, Trix thought now, you go out with who you want to, and I’ll go out with who I want to.

  The person Trix really wanted to date was Ryan McElvoy, a cute, quirky, and egregiously decent guy she’d crushed on since middle school. She’d liked him since seventh grade, when she understood nothing about boys except maybe who was nice and who wasn’t. And, though Trix probably didn’t seem the type to go for a sweet guy, she couldn’t help herself. She was drawn to the way he held doors open for people and looked everyone, even adults, in the eye when he talked to them.

  Whenever she saw him at school her heart pumped hard and stupid words came out of her mouth.

  Sometimes she let herself believe that he could like her back, even though she knew it was extremely unlikely. He was from a normal family that skied and cooked with cilantro and picked up litter on Earth Day.

  There was no way he’d give the time of day to a girl who lived in a trailer park on Aurora.

  A metallic guitar riff signaled that she’d gotten a text on her crappy old cell phone. It was the flip kind no one had anymore.

  Emily: Bord. What r u up 2?

  Trix texted, Just hangng, and noticed her fingernails needed attention. Her purple polish was chipping and her cuticles looked shredded. As soon as she finished her cigarette, she’d fix them.

  Wnt 2 come ovr?

  Trix shook her head at the phone. As a matter of fact, she didn’t. As big and nice as Emily’s house was, Trix hated being in it. Emily’s stepmother Melissa kept the place perfect—nothing askew, smelling of clean laundry, the kitchen stocked with exotic spices and expensive cutlery. And every time Trix set foot in the McMansion she felt dirty and even more disheveled than usual. She was afraid to sit on the white microfiber sofa or leave lipstick prints on the Crate and Barrel glassware.

  U come here.

  She knew Emily felt weird at Trix’s, too. Trix didn’t exactly live in a palace. The rooms were narrow and cluttered. The “front yard” was a makeshift patio lined with fake grass and a short wire fence. And city noise filtered in all day and all night. It was pathetic. Trix couldn’t wait to get out on her own. The second she turned 18 she was going to put down a deposit on an apartment or rent a room in a decent neighborhood. She was tired of recognizing prostitutes and living next to Butch’s Gun Shop.

  Emily texted back that she needed jeans, and did Trix want to hop the bus with her to Northgate before it closed?

  Shopping with Emily was brutal. She had this perfectly proportioned but crazy long body. Occasionally she’d find something she was happy with, but reaching that point took eons. Because not only did whatever pair of pants or top have to fit, but also had to pass Emily’s cool barometer. Which meant nothing the least bit interesting. No sparkles, low necklines, or short skirts. Trix itched to dress her friend more flamboyantly but her suggestions of ruching or color never went over well.

  We wont make it b4 9.

  Trix tapped the last bit of ash from her cigarette, then carried it into the tiny bathroom and flushed it.

  She got out a shoebox she kept under her bed. Inside were wadded dollars and coins. She added a few quarters that’d been in her pocket and counted the entire stash. A hundred and thirty-two dollars plus some change. She still needed another $196 to buy the sewing machine she had her eye on, a used model at Quality Sewing and Vacuum Center.

  To reach her goal, she’d need to stop buying cigarettes for a while, force her mom to pay for the groceries herself from her disability check, and maybe pick up a few more shifts at work.

  Once she had the Singer, she wouldn’t be limited to lurking around the home ec room at school. She’d be able to bring her designs to life, wear them around, show off a little.

  She reached for her sketchbook. There’d been a jacket, short leather, but with a crocheted bustier underneath that had been rattling around her brain for the past few days. She spent the rest of the night drawing, tweaking, filling in colors with her pastels.

  She had to fill the time because, though she’d never admit this to anyone, she couldn’t go to sleep before her mom came home from one of her dates.

  Finally, at one thirty, when Fiona’s keys rattled in the doorknob, Trix shoved the sketches under her pillow and closed her eyes. She hoped her mom wouldn’t invite Rodney the Octopus Guy in.

  3. Crush

  “HEY, EM!” CALLED Trix, in her tall black boots and short fake-fur lined coat, catching up to Emily outside the massive, multiwinged brick building that was their school. “Was that algebra homework not impossible?”

  “It sucked,” Emily said. She rose a good seven or eight inches over the top of Trix’s head. “I have to finish it first period.”

  “I’m not gonna bother. Screw it. When am I ever going to need to know that stuff in real life?” Trix was lying. She always finished her homework, almost effortlessly. She’d been gifted with an amazing memory that made it all a breeze for her.

  It was overcast, threatening rain. A typical Pacific Northwest fall day.

  “Never. If you’re going to be a designer for Betsey Johnson,” Emily said.

  “No,” Trix held up one finger. “My own design house. Remember?”

  They walked through the mist into the bright school, which echoed with voices and laughter and the soun
ds of lockers slamming. Even though the school smelled like stale grilled cheese and moldy paper, Trix was actually glad to be there. Home was too fraught right then.

  In the hallway, the girls separated.

  Emily twisted her locker combination and got the books she needed for English Comp. Just as she was shoving them into her backpack, Ryan McElvoy appeared. “Hey, Lean Bean,” he said.

  She pulled the zipper on her pack. Ryan came up to her eyebrows. “The name’s Emily,” she said. She wanted to call him a turnip or potato or some other stubby vegetable. But, in all honesty, he didn’t remotely resemble a turnip or a potato. He was more like a yam or an ear of corn. Kind of ropey and strong.

  “I know. But I can have my own special nickname for you, right?”

  His nose was long, like a carrot, Emily thought.

  He took her in from head to toe.

  She was glad her jeans were tucked into her boots that day. So he couldn’t see their shrinkage. Or Emily’s growthage.

  “Leave me alone, McElvoy,” she said and sighed. She navigated her way around him and headed for English.

  “Ryan just accosted me in the hallway again,” she murmured to Trix.

  Trix blinked up at Emily, stung, though she tried to hide it. She’d never told anyone, not even Emily, how she felt about him.

  Her crush had always been very cloak-and-dagger. She couldn’t risk the hurt of finding out for sure that she wasn’t his type.

  And now Ryan was trailing Emily, Trix’s best friend, of all people: teasing her, grinning a lot, and watching her as she walked away.

  Trix, to cover her extreme annoyance, started singing the k-i-s-s-i-n-g song under her breath.

  “Oh stop,” Emily said. “It’s the opposite.”

  “No, he’s like a little boy chasing you around the playground. He can’t get enough.”

  Mr. Johnson jumped up from his desk then and began acting out two parts of a play neither Emily nor Trix recognized. He whispered and shrieked and tiptoed and vaulted around. And that was why they loved English Comp and Mr. Johnson. He always made it interesting.

  “Rhinoceros!” he said triumphantly, finishing his first act. “By Eugéne Ionesco. A drama from the genre Theatre of the Absurd. Can anyone tell me about Theatre of the Absurd?”