The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady - Elizabeth Stuckey-French [90]
“Yeah.” She was in there.
“Hi, it’s me, Suzi, the babysitter.” She liked calling herself this.
“Otis’s sister?”
“Right.” Suzi had never been referred to as Otis’s sister before in her life. How would Rusty know Otis?
“Need something?”
“I’m just bored.”
“Sorry, the booze is locked up,” Rusty said. There was a rustling, then a creaking sound, and the door popped open a few inches. Rusty, with her hair pulled back in a ponytail and no makeup on, looked almost normal, except for the nose ring. She wore pink pj’s with elephants on them. “Why, if it isn’t the preppy, popular Miss Witherspoon.”
Suzi made vague noises of protest, her face flushing. On the surface, being called popular was great. But the way Rusty said it, popular sounded like something worse than shallow and foolish, which it was, but how was it Suzi’s fault that other people liked her? “Just wanted to see if you were really in here,” Suzi said.
“Ta-da!” Rusty said.
Suzi looked over Rusty’s shoulder but didn’t see anything interesting in Rusty’s room—no cigarettes, booze, illegal drugs, nasty books. The room was neat and clean, without even any pictures on the walls. No computer, no electronics visible.
“Come in, I guess, if you want,” Rusty said. She stood back from the door.
Suzi hobbled into the room and Rusty quickly shut the door behind her.
“Sporting injury?” Rusty asked her.
Suzi told her how it happened, and surprisingly enough, Rusty actually listened as if she were interested.
She motioned for Suzi to sit down on one of the twin beds, which she did. Rusty plopped down on the other, lying on her side in her baggy pink pj’s, head propped up, staring at Suzi with her big blue eyes. It was a mysterious room, not what she’d been expecting. All white, no other color to balance it out. No personality. It was like an institutional room, like a room in a crazy ward. Girl Interrupted. The white bedspreads had nary a wrinkle in them.
Rusty must’ve noticed her looking around. “I used to have all kinds of shit in here, but I took it to the Goodwill.”
“Why?”
Rusty shrugged. “I want as little of my actual self in here as possible. It’s my way of protesting.”
“Dang,” Suzi said. “That’s harsh. On yourself, I mean.”
“They can make me live here, but they can’t make me enjoy it.”
Suzi admired Rusty’s zealous self-denial and wondered if she could strip her room bare this way. Nope. No way. She needed her comforting things. Her room was the polar opposite of Rusty’s room. She and Rusty were opposite in every way, when you thought about it, but here they were talking. It was like a social miracle. Never would’ve happened outside this room. Rusty was two grades ahead of her but seemed way older. And she was easier to talk to than a lot of people. She didn’t bother with meaningless chitchat, so Suzi decided to forgo it as well. “Why aren’t you watching Angel?” she asked Rusty.
“I’ve been deemed irresponsible.”
“How come you hate it here so much? Your dad’s so cool!”
“You go right on thinking that. I know him, and he ain’t cool.”
“You should see my dad.”
“I’ve seen him.”
They both shared a nasty little laugh.
Suzi asked what was wrong with Buff.
“Let’s just say, his fixation on your sister—it’s not the first, and it won’t be the last.”
“How did you know he liked Ava?” For some reason, hearing this, rather than making Suzi angry or repulsed or frightened, gave her hope. “Did he tell you?”
“It’s obvious.”
“Doesn’t your mom care? Does she know?”
Rusty sighed and rolled over onto her back. “She’s the Great Wall of China.”
“Huh?”
“She knows, but she pretends she doesn’t. She blocks it out. Even though he’s been in treatment.”
“Wow,” Suzi said, but