Girls in Pants - Ann Brashares [18]
“Dad, you didn’t—
“Dad, come on. Let me just—”
She started a lot of other sentences too. The next thing she knew, he had his hand clamped around her arm and was steering her back through the door, turning her forcibly away from Andrew.
Annik appeared in the hall with amazing speed. “What’s going on here?” she asked calmly.
“We are leaving,” Mr. Kaligaris blustered.
“You are?” she asked Lena.
“I’m not,” Lena said faintly.
Mr. Kaligaris exclaimed three or four things in Greek before he turned to English. “I will not have my daughter in this…in this class where you have…in this place where she is—”
Lena could tell her father wouldn’t use the necessary descriptive words in her earshot. When it came down to it, her father was a deeply conservative and old-fashioned man. He’d grown even more so since Bapi’s death. But long before that, he’d been way stricter than any of her friends’ fathers. He never let boys up to the second floor of their house. Not even her lobotomized cousins.
Annik stayed cool. “Mr. Kaligaris, might it help if you and Lena and I sat down for a few minutes and discussed what we are trying to do in this class? You must know that virtually every art program offers—”
“No, it would not,” Mr. Kaligaris broke in. “My daughter is not taking this class. She will not be coming back.”
He pulled Lena through the hall and out onto the sidewalk. He was muttering something about an unexpected meeting and coming to find her to get the car back, and look what he finds!
Lena didn’t manage to pull away until she was standing in the harsh sunshine, dazed and off balance once again.
It’s like, how much more black could this be? And the answer is none. None more black.
—This Is Spinal Tap
How bad could it be?
That was what Carmen asked herself as she fixed Valia a cup of tea first thing when she arrived at the Kaligaris house early Monday afternoon and brought it into the den, where Valia was watching television.
“Awful.” Valia nearly spat when she tried the tea. “Vhat did you put in this?”
“Well, tea.” Carmen was being patient. “And honey.”
“I said sugar.”
“The sugar bowl was empty.”
“Sugar and honey is not the same. American honey you cannot eat.”
“You can if you want,” Carmen began, but realized this was not a diplomatic avenue. “Here, I’ll try again.” She took the teacup back into the kitchen. She located the box of Domino granulated white sugar on the high shelf in the pantry. She refilled the sugar bowl.
While she waited for the water to boil a second time, her mind traveled to September. From a chilly distance she imagined her mom very pregnant. She imagined a baby shower. She imagined her room, filled with expectations for somebody else.
When she used to think about September, she imagined herself arriving at college, meeting her roommate for the first time, unpacking her stuff. Now she could only seem to picture what would be going on in her absence, and in those pictures, it was as though she were dead. Or as though she were the one who hadn’t yet been born.
She used to be able to look forward to college. She had dreamed of Williams for so long. It was one of the best colleges in the country. The place her dad had gone. As agonizing as it was to leave her friends, college was something she’d really wanted. Why couldn’t she want it anymore?
She was angry. She wasn’t angry at the baby, exactly. How could she be? She wasn’t angry at her mother. Well, she sort of was, but that wasn’t the real root of it. She was angry that she couldn’t picture her own life anymore. She was angry that her mother and this baby had somehow stolen her future and plunged her back into the past.
The pressure was building up behind her eyes again. Reflexively she snatched the phone from the wall.
“Hey, it’s me,” she said when Tibby answered.
“You okay?” Tibby asked. It was so nice how a person who loved you could pick up on your mood in three small words.
Carmen could hear Nicky shouting about something in the background. “I guess. How ’bout you?”
“Nicky, could you do that in the other room?