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Run Girl Run
By Robbie Haden
BALBOA PRESS
Copyright © 2013 Robbie Haden
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4525-6777-8
Chapter One
Notes From A Freak Like Me
My name is Haley Bodine. No, it's actually Haley-Jo Bodine. In the normal world (anywhere that's not Texas) people get a first name and a middle name. In Texas you are likely to get two names stapled into one by that hyphenator thing. Jeez, did my mother hate me from the get-go?
I've been writing about my stupid life since I could hold a pencil. I write my stories in little discount-store notebooks. These aren't like diaries or journals since they don't pay much attention to dates, or record things every day. They're just bits of my life that I write down. Sometimes I have to write them the instant something happens, and sometimes I wait and think and remember for a long time before I write them. They are just me, thinking on paper.
MY CAT IS DEAD
My cat is dead. My cat is DEAD. My cat IS dead.
Twelve-year-olds shouldn't have to think much about dead, you know. His name was Wiffy, short for Willful, which he was, and on some days he felt like my only friend. Pure white, pinkish nose, pinkish eyes, and a devilly sense of humor. In our house, he was the only living thing that ever totally "got" me, and I could tell him everything. He actually laughed at my jokes, inside. Only I could hear him.
Wiffy died on my first day at my new middle school, or maybe the night before. I'll never really know the truth for sure because I only have the story that my mother chose to tell me. She said that she found Wiffy dead on our back patio after I left for school that morning, just lying stiffly dead, no signs of a struggle. She said she called a city services number and a man in a uniform came and scooped Wiffy up with a shovel and put him in his city truck. He said my cat would be "disposed of." Is that the true story? I don't know. What is true is that Wiffy is gone forever, and I must not feel sad. My mother told me that she hoped I would be mature about it, and no hysterics please, these things happen. Then she served me the nutritious after-school snack she feels every good mother should provide for her child. I couldn't eat the granola bar or drink the milk, but I faked it. Later, in my room, I pricked neat little circles on the inside of my wrist with a straight pin until I didn't feel so much like screaming anymore.
SOMETIMES MY MOTHER CAN'T STAND ME
Elaine Bodine is a pretty woman who might be happier if we lived in the 1950s. She's just a little too formal for the current times, like she's a housewife but she wears skirts and dresses and high heels when other mothers are wearing jeans and sneakers. I don't care enough anymore to be embarrassed by her, but I know that I embarrass her regularly just by looking the way I look. She wishes she had birthed a preppie girl, and what she figures she got is a non-compliant wild red-haired girl who thinks style rules and dress codes are stupid . Well, they are.
Elaine (I call her by her first name when I really want to bug her) has her blonde hair done up in a French twist by professionals on a weekly basis, and thinks that my current age (about to jump into the teens) is the perfect time to begin my beauty salon education. Like that will ever happen! All I wish is that she didn't act like she had a stick up her butt all the time. (That's something I heard somewhere and it tickles me to say it about my mother. It's just SO true!). After twelve years of trying to please the woman, I'm giving it up. Haley-Jo Bodine declares her independence!
Umm, that all sounds pretty mean, I guess. I think there was a time, when I was very small, when she thought I was an okay human being, and she loved me. Maybe I just grew more and more unlovable, I don't know. I'm not the first and only child. I have a brother, Brett, who is ten years older than I am. She's never had any trouble loving him.
GOLDEN-BOY BRETT
In Texas, to be the first-born son is to be the Golden Boy, for sure, and Brett is all that. He's out of the house now, all grown up, done with his undergrad years at UT. (Hookem Horns!! Like who cares?) He's a handsome blonde hunk, athletic and smart and a smooth talker, expected to go far in this world.
When I was a little kid, until I was six or so, I thought Brett was the eighth wonder of the world. He was my best grown-up, all blue eyes and smiles, jokes and giggles, gentleness and games. Sometimes he took me to his places to hang out with his friends, it was special, and he took good care of me. He made me feel like a real person. But I guess after you're six, you can't be just a real-person little girl anymore.
The teasing games turned into something else, the tickles weren't funny, they hurt. Brett would catch me from behind and put his hands over my non-existent boobs and squeeze hard, then put a hand to my crotch to poke and squeeze. Stop, Brett, stop! He'd laugh and let me go, and call me a damn baby. We were never allowed to use bad language in our house, but he called me a damn baby. I was always on my guard, knowing he'd catch me again, and he always did. I knew that a big brother shouldn't do that to a little sister, although no one told me so.
I wish I had known how to stop it, because it got worse. Brett became my nighttime nightmare, coming late at night into my girly pink bedroom. Not every night, but sometimes, and the not knowing when tortured me. I pretended to be asleep when he lifted my Barbie pajama top to brush his hand across my chest to make my little nipples peak, to be asleep when his fingers found and stroked the place down there I barely knew. I hated how I felt, and I hated the man-boy I had loved. I did not believe I had the right to tell on him. Brett was super-loved by our parents, and if I told, I knew their disappointment would somehow fall on me, not him. I never told anyone. He stopped it after I was about eight, so I guess everything's okay.
DADDY'S A DRUNK
I wrote those words at the top of this notebook page and stared at them for a long time. I used to try so hard not to know that something's wrong with Daddy.
Light comes into our house when Daddy's home. He doesn't have to do anything special except be there. He's a big guy, loud and lots of fun, the darkest one of all of us—skin, hair, laughing eyes. It's a mystery how I turned up with the red curls. Maybe I'd have done better in my family if I just looked more like any one of them. I'm pretty sure Daddy loves me. He says it, and I can see it in his eyes when they crinkle and smile. He works hard for his family, crunching big numbers for a big corporation. He wants us to have a good life. We've moved around a lot, which means too many new schools, but it is always to a better neighborhood, a bigger house, snobbier neighbors. This time we've moved up to having a backyard pool. That pleases my mother, since she thinks having things is important. I really can't tell how Daddy feels about it.
Sometimes I wonder if my parents are in love. I used to think if you were married to somebody, you were in love with them, but now I'm not so sure. There doesn't seem to be the mushy stuff going on with them. They do have two kids, so there must have been something— well, SEX—but now there's not any kissing or touching that I know about. We're not that kind of feely family, I think. And nobody's much of a talker, either, I mean like real talk if someone has a problem. We just pretend we don't have any problems, and get over it. It works, sort of.
Daddy for sure has a problem that nobody talks about. He just disappears, like he's here when I go to bed and totally missing when I get up. Sometimes he stays gone a long, long time. When I was younger I thought every time that he would never come back and it was my fault. I'm not a worried baby anymore, and I know he'll come back when he is better and life will go on as though it never happened. I know that my Dad is a drunk because my mother let down her guard one day and said so.
I tried for a long time to make Daddy so happy at home that he would never want to leave. I was good all the time, and smiley and cheerful and helpful and got mostly perfect grades. It didn't make one bit of difference. Now, I am sad when he is gone and happy when he brings back his light. It's the best I can do.
DO ANGELS BELIEVE IN ME?
I don't believe in God. I may be a kid, but I'm smart enough to notice that the world is pretty much an f-word mess, and I think if God existed He wouldn't allow it. When I did believe in God, I thought that He would always make everything come out okay in the end, like a TV sitcom or something. Now I know it's not like that, no, you pretty much have to rely on yourself if you get in a pickle. There's this funny thing, though. I still say prayers in my head. I wonder where I think they're going, if I don't believe in God.
My family is a church-going family. I think Elaine insists on it because she wants us to fit in and be considered good people, not because she's taken Jesus as her Savior or anything like that. Now that I don't believe in God, I'm not going. I will not be a hypocrite just to please my mother, although I am obviously willing to be a big disappointment to her.
It's odd, but I have a clear memory of going to church as a four-year-old. I don't remember where we lived then, but I can see the rough grey stone building with big stairs going up and smaller stairs going down. Down went to my Sunday School and the Story Lady, my sweet Story Lady who told us Bible stories with the help of a flannel board on which she stuck cut-out felt figures for illustration. I loved all the stories, but I thought the best was the "Suffer" one, about how Jesus cared about little kids. I believed that Jesus truly was God's handsome Son and he cared about me. Oh the GLORY when I was called on to place the felt angel on the board above Jesus. I could see the light of that angel, even if it was only a fuzzy piece of yellow felt. I sang "Jesus Loves Me This I Know" heart-strong that day.
Can you have angels even if you're a girl who doesn't believe in God anymore?
SPENCER
Spencer doesn't look like much, just a grubby kid in dusty jeans, a faded tee shirt, and twenty-dollar sneakers. He found me on the morning of the same day that Wiffy died, although I didn't know about Wiffy until late that afternoon. Spencer was new at Carlisle Middle School just like me, although you would have thought that was the end of any sameness about us. We had a math class together that ended just before lunch, and that first day he attached himself to me for the walk to the cafeteria. I didn't mind much, since I knew zero people in the new school. As the weeks went by, I got used to Spencer hanging with me off and on through the school day, and even started keeping an eye out for him. It sounds corny, but I get a good feeling from Spencer. It's like he sees something spectacular when he looks at me. He never sees a girl who can't get along with her mother, or a girl who hates her brother, or a girl who chooses to wear weird clothes to defy the rules, or a girl who doesn't believe in God.
Amazingly, Spencer's been in my life for more than a year now. You could say we're best friends. I tease him and tell him he's my best GIRLFRIEND because we talk about stuff that girlfriends talk about, personal stuff that boys, being boys, can't even comprehend. Spencer's fine with that, and thinks it's funny. He thinks I'M funny. He never says I'm pretty, but he says that I have a beautiful brain. He's serious when he says it, and I like hearing it.
I've learned a lot about Spencer, and some of it is tough. His dad split when his younger sister was a baby, leaving his mom to make it with two kids on her own. They are making it, but barely. His mom works a couple of jobs, and she depends a lot on Spencer to keep things together for Anna, who is eight now. They live in a trailer park, but it's not as bad as that sounds. It's a pretty place with trees and flowers and a playground, and Spencer's home is not trashy, but just the opposite.
I like spending time with Spencer and his family, and sometimes I go over and help him watch Anna while we do homework. I feel welcome there, and when she's home his mom feeds us and we'll all get going with a noisy game of Sorry, which is Anna's passion right now. We've tried it the other way around, with Spencer coming to my house to hang out by the pool or play ping pong on the covered deck, but it doesn't work out well. Elaine has never said in so many words that she thinks that Spencer is an inappropriate friend, but there are ways to say things without using words. Spencer has never been anything but polite to my mother and she has no reason to dislike him, but she does. I know he feels it, and I am ashamed of my mother.
Oh, one other thing about Spencer. He's the only teen-age kid I've ever known who not only loves but also admires and respects his mom, and lets her and everybody else know it. That is so cool.
A COUNTERFEIT LIFE
Okay, this one's going to be kind of a long story that will take awhile to tell, but here goes:
My mother believes that there has been a dramatic improvement in my behavior. She dates it back to a few months ago, around my fourteenth birthday, when, she says, I "finally grew up a little." The real truth is that I made a decision when I turned fourteen. I decided I could enjoy a life of greater freedom if my parents thought I was a good girl, a girl who could be trusted. It turned out to be almost too easy, since it seems to me that most of the time your folks just want everything to be fine so badly that they can't even see when it isn't.
I made a plan and I put it in motion. First I made a list of all of the things about me that I know either annoy or worry my parents. Actually the list was more about my mother, since my dad sort of accepts me at face value and doesn't ask too many questions. I think he sees me more as just a normal f***ed-up teenager and has faith that time will take care of everything. Poor Dad. Anyway, this is what the list looked like:
1. Raunchy music
2. Weird clothes
3. Bad manners
4. Sarcastic comments
5. Unkempt hair
6. Cursing
7. Low grades
8. Door slamming
9. Smart mouth
10. Messy room
11. Silent treatment
12. Sullenness
13. Spencer
Okay, so I got thirteen things in about two minutes without trying very hard. I'm sure there are more, but that was a decent start.
I spread the amazing makeover of me over several weeks so it wouldn't look too phony and suspicious. I began with better grooming and better housekeeping, since my personal appearance and the state of my room are such hot-button issues for Elaine. She was thrilled that I could actually brush and comb and corral the curls into something tidy, as well as clear my bedroom floor of junk that had accumulated over weeks. Imagine her delight when I cleaned up my mouth, spoke civilly to adults, and wore a pleasant expression more often than not. I played my raunchy rap stuff softly so the house didn't ring with it, and stopped (this was a hard one!) relieving anger with a satisfying door-slam. My slipping grades were an easy fix, since I just did the assignments instead of ignoring them. I didn't actually give up Spencer, but I never mentioned him so she forgot about him completely. She actually thought that all of her years of lecturing me were finally paying off. I was happy to let her think so, for it lulled her into a kind of parental happy place, and left me free to do as I pleased when I was out of her sight. With all of this working so well that it was practically ridiculous, I got busy creating my new life.
Things began to take off quickly at school. Using the makeup stashed in my locker, plus a few adjustments to my clothes—buttons unbuttoned, skirt bands rolled, a blouse ditched for just the skimpy sweater, borrowed jeans too small and riding low—I started to be noticed by the older crowd. I feel way older than other fourteen-year-olds, for sure. Now I am hanging out with sixteen-year-olds and passing as one of them. My new friends accept me as the person I appear to be—bright enough but not a brain, pretty enough but not a starlet (yet!), and cool enough to try whatever is going down. These kids aren't bad in the really criminal sense, but they are rebels who push the rules and limits every chance they get, and they let me be one of them. I never really belonged anywhere before, never felt like I had a group to be part of. Now I have Angela and Justin and Ty and Sheila and Phillip ...
Ty (who looks and acts exactly like a bad boy movie star or even better) took me to my first party, and I had a blast. It didn't seem to matter that neither of us knew the kid who lived in the house where the party was held. It was in the basement, and maybe there were adults upstairs, I don't know. The music was loud, kids were dancing and talking and horsing around, laughing. Guys were passing cigarettes around, but only a few girls were actually smoking. I thought they looked very grown-up and cool, but I didn't try it, not that night.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Run Girl Run by Robbie Haden Copyright © 2013 by Robbie Haden. Excerpted by permission of BALBOA PRESS. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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