Big Mouth Ugly Girl Read online

  Sun 3/4/01 12:08 AM

  4 mars

  dear matt—

  u r is never “nice”

  u r

  Sun 3/4/01 12:11 AM

  Dear Ursula,

  You are better than “nice”; you are “good.” 1 individual in 1 million.

  I didn’t know you wanted me to sit with you at lunch. I guess I thought, why would you?

  Your friend Matt

  Sun 3/4/01 12:18 AM

  Dear Ursula,

  Also I meant, I just have lunch by myself now, mostly. The “misfits” table by the trash cans. It’s easier that way.

  (When I come into the cafeteria everybody is, like—WHAT’S DONAGHY GOT IN THAT BACKPACK?)

  (There’s talk of the school installing metal detectors.)

  If you give a sign I will join you. But if not/ if your friends don’t want me, that’s OK.

  Your friend Matt

  Sun 3/4/01 12:29 AM

  4 mars

  dear matt—

  u r’s friends dont tell me what to do/ not to do

  u r

  Sun 3/4/01 12:36 AM

  Dear Ursula,

  I wanted to ask you the other day—about the lawsuit. If you think it’s a good/ bad idea?

  Your friend Matt

  Sun 3/4/01 12:49 AM

  4 mars

  dear matt—

  its none of u r’s business. i dont judge.

  (i dont listen to gossip either.)

  u r

  Sun 3/4/01 12:52 AM

  Dear Ursula,

  I know you don’t. That’s because you are 1 individual in 1 million.

  Why I keep thinking about what happened/ did not happen in the preserve.

  Why I keep thinking where I would be now/ what I would be now/ if you had not seen me, Ursula.

  (Which is why I believe it could not have been ACCIDENT.).

  Your friend Matt

  Sun 3/4/01 12:57 AM

  4 mars

  dear matt—

  i know, i think about it too/ its scary/ so maybe/ better not think about it ok?

  u r

  Sun 3/4/01 1:00 AM

  Dear Ursula,

  I’m afraid to sound like such a coward/ asshole asking you not to tell anybody? EVER?

  Your friend Matt

  Sun 3/4/01 1:05 AM

  4 mars

  dear matt—

  tell who what? & why?

  u r can keep a secret 1,000,000 yrs/ try me.

  (dont you ever get sleepy/ sleep?)

  u r

  Sun 3/4/01 1:07 AM

  Dear Ursula,

  Hey I don’t mean to keep you awake, I’m sorry.

  I lose track of time I guess.

  Before we say good night—maybe we could go hiking in the preserve on Sat.?

  Your friend Matt

  Sun 3/4/01 1:10 AM

  4 mars

  dear matt—

  ok for sat. ridge rd. gate. 2 pm?

  7 AM is wakeup for u r/ so this is GOOD NIGHT MATT.

  u r

  Sun 3/4/01 1:13 AM

  Dear Ursula,

  I will meet you Sat. at 2 PM, Ridge Rd. gate.

  I will be bringing a (4-footed) friend of mine & hope you aren’t allergic to silky-haired golden retrievers.

  I guess you won’t read this till morning so GOOD NIGHT URSULA.

  Your friend Matt

  Sun 3/4/01 2:46 AM

  Dear Ursula,

  I know you’re asleep, & will read this in the morning. I don’t mind being awake.

  My mind just runs, runs, RUNS RUNS RUNS.

  (Pumpkin, my golden retriever, sleeps like a puppy. She’s not supposed to be on my bed, but.)

  I was trying to remember when we were first in school together. Third grade, Rocky River Elementary?

  I wonder what would have happened if you had not spoken to Mr. Parrish & the detectives. Maybe by this time Big Mouth would be in jail.

  Or worse.

  Your friend Matt

  Sun 3/4/01 3:40 AM

  Dear Ursula,

  I was almost asleep then my mind clicked back on. I wanted to say to you—if you think the lawsuit my dad & mom are bringing against people is wrong, will you tell me?

  You would not say anything false, I know. There are few girls like you at Rocky River. (Few guys, either!) Everybody is so PHONY.

  (That’s a cliche, I know. Calling other people PHONY. Nobody’s PHONIER than a Big Mouth.)

  Maybe we’ll have lunch today?

  It’s funny about sleep. I used to sleep 10 hours at a stretch, my mom would tease she was worried I was turning into a sloth. Now I sleep 3 or 4 hours a night, no more. Some nights I don’t even bother to get undressed, just lie on my bed. I don’t turn out the light. I try to write, or do homework, but my head isn’t too clear. But I can play chess with “XO,” my friend (I have never met) in Nome, Alaska.

  (Do you have on-line friends? I do. I don’t know who they are really. My parents are worried about “pedophiles on the Internet.” I have friends in New Zealand, Hawaii, Scotland, Canada, plus the US. They don’t know “Matt Donaghy.” I’m happiest in cyberspace. Or was.)

  If Dad’s home & notices I’m still up he might knock on my door & say I should get to sleep. Tonight he isn’t home, though.

  Mom gave me some of her barbiturate pills “to help with your insomnia” but they made me feel like my head was clogged with phlegm. I flushed them down the toilet. (Mom takes Prozac too, or something like Prozac. I heard her say, of her friends, there’s nobody NOT on some antidepressant.) Guys on the teams taking steroids. I REFUSE TO GIVE IN.

  In school sometimes I’m wide awake but I start to nod off. Like the teacher and everybody else melts into a dream. When the detectives were questioning me, over & over the same questions, it was like that. Sometimes I “heard” my voice say something I didn’t know was actual, or just in my head.

  (I never told anybody this, Ursula. When they came to get me in study period, & began to question me, there was a look between them: they thought [maybe] I’d murdered my mother. Until they called her & heard her voice this is a thought they had & believed me capable of. I will never forget that.)

  I really liked the answer you gave when Mr. W. asked about Gatsby: Is he a hero to take the blame for a crime somebody else did, because he loves her, or is he a fool? You said, “A hero can be a fool, he’s still a hero.” That’s the coolest answer. Mr. W. was impressed I could tell.

  HE doesn’t think the lawsuit is a good idea. He isn’t my friend any longer anyway.

  My parents have made an appointment for me to see a shrink next week. Not Mr. Rainey, they don’t trust anybody at RRHS now. (The school staff will be giving “depositions” for the defense. My parents are worried there might be things in my record that will be used against me.)

  The shrink is a Park Ave. psychiatrist recommended by somebody Mom knows whose daughter tried to kill herself freshman year at Harvard. I overhear Mom & Dad talking about me a lot. Like I have become this disease they have, like leprosy. The shrink wrote a best-selling book I found in their bedroom—ADOLESCENTS AT RISK: YOUR CHILD AND DEPRESSION. I opened the book to a chapter titled “Teenaged Suicide in America” & drew a happy face— :-)

  I figure if my parents get that far reading the book, they will need to be cheered up.

  I hope, about the lawsuit, YOU WILL TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK.

  It isn’t just the $$$. My dad says winning a lawsuit is the only kind of JUSTICE people in our position can hope for. Because what was done to me wasn’t a “crime.” It can only be brought to civil court. There, you can demand money for being treated like shit.

  Maybe you still feel like shit. But you can be “compensated” for it.

  What really hurt was believing the Brewers. And not me. The Brewers! When everybody in Rocky River knows what Reverend Brewer is like.

  My mom isn’t herself any longer. She used to like her realtor job, now she has quit. She’s ashamed o
f me, I guess. (She used to be proud.) Her friends have stopped calling. She has this idea of sending me to a private school in Massachusetts & selling this house & moving away. (Where?)

  My dad actually seems to like the lawsuit. He’d been so angry & tired & depressed but now with Mr. Leacock he can talk for hours. He’s hopeful as a kid. “A lawsuit is a duel,” Dad says. “A fight to the finish.” Rubbing his hands together & laughing. (He’s looking for a new job where he can get more respect, he says. This is TOP SECRET & we never talk about it among ourselves.)

  The one I feel sorry for is Alex. He’s worried we’ll move away, he’ll lose his friends. In 5th grade he’s still OK. He isn’t touched by this. (I hope.) His friends are great little guys who don’t know/ don’t care about the lawsuit. Or me. Alex is a good kid I feel I am being a very bad model for, & betraying.

  I’m so tired of EXPLAINING MYSELF to everybody. You’re the only one who never asks questions, Ursula. You just seem to know.

  It was like we’d already known each other, in the preserve. I heard this voice call—“Matt.” And afterward, hiking back down. We didn’t need to talk. Like we’d done the hike lots of times together. It was so easy to be with you.

  Ursula, is it OK if I call you sometime? On the phone? (I’m a little shy on the phone, I guess. But it’s lonely on the computer. Not many laughs.)

  Hey. I feel a lot better now. Telling you these things. & knowing you wouldn’t tell anybody else, the way most girls would. It’s 3:35 AM & I can’t believe I actually feel sleepy.

  GOOD NIGHT URSULA

  Your friend Matt

  THIRTY

  FIERY RED. I WAS FEELING SO GOOD.

  Like we’d already known each other. In biology there is always a purpose to things. 1 individual in 1 million.

  That first week in March, Matt and I started having lunch together every day in the cafeteria. The first time I’d come into the cafeteria late and seen Matt sitting at the misfits’ table by the trash cans, so I took my tray over and joined him. “Is this seat free?”

  Matt stared at me for a moment without speaking. Like he was surprised to see me.

  We e-mailed each other a dozen times an evening, and talked on the phone, which didn’t make me nervous as it usually did because we laughed a lot. We were discovering how much we had in common, like Matt had a kid brother and I had a kid sister, almost the same age; and we both liked them, a lot. (I didn’t tell Matt that sometimes Lisa annoyed me.) Matt’s mother sounded a little like mine except, as Matt said, Rocky River mothers are probably a lot alike. (I didn’t want to ask Matt if his mother drank sometimes, by herself. That was too personal!) Our fathers both traveled a lot, and were under pressure, but that’s true for probably ninety percent of Rocky River fathers, at least the ones in business. (I didn’t want to linger on this subject. I kind of got the impression that his father was about to be downsized. . . .)

  The most exciting thing was: We went hiking in the Rocky River Nature Preserve on Saturday afternoon. The first time I’d ever wanted to hike in that special place with anybody; and I met Pumpkin, Matt’s golden retriever. A beautiful silky-haired, gentle dog with a russet-gold coat and limpid brown eyes who licked my hands like we were old friends.

  “Pumpkin, this is my friend Ursula Riggs. Ursula, this is Pumpkin Donaghy.”

  I was surprised a guy could be so sentimental about a dog. But it made sense, with Matt. The more you got to know him, the more complex he was. Around school, with his buddies, he’d been kind of superficial, I’d always thought. Wisecracking, pretending to be laughing harder than their jokes merited. Typical guy behavior in a group. But alone with me, Matt was almost totally different. He was nervous and excited and happy, and his breath steamed and I liked it that he was my height, and on the trail neither of us had to wait for the other to catch up; and when we talked, we talked, and did a lot of laughing; but when we didn’t talk, we didn’t, and it was easy and OK as Matt had said it was the first time. Like we already knew each other from some time long ago.

  THIRTY-ONE

  MOM NOTICED MY GOOD MOOD, AND LOOKED at me kind of funny. Trying to think what this might mean, Ugly Girl not-grumpy-around-the-house?

  “Are you back on the team, Ursula?”

  I gave Mom this long slow one-hundred-eighty-degree camera track in utter silence. Then: “What team, Mom?”

  “Oh, Ursula! Basketball. Are you—”

  “N-O, Mom. I am not.”

  It was the second week of March. Girls’ basketball at Rocky River was doing less poorly than people had predicted when Ugly Girl got huffy and quit, but except for shooting baskets in the gym by myself a few times a week, I was behaving as if I was allergic to the ball. And nobody was begging me to come back onto the team, either.

  “Well, you’ve been staying after school so much lately. And you’ve been in a good mood, mostly.” A sly look came into Mom’s eyes.

  I felt my face getting warm. I didn’t want Mom, or anybody in this house, to know about Matt Donaghy. Yet. Because I didn’t know, myself. I’d never been so close to anybody, I didn’t know what this might mean. I flared up, pretending to be hurt. “Hey, Mom: You’re saying I’m not in a good mood, like, one hundred percent of the time? That’s what you’re saying?”

  “Honey, I’m just—asking.”

  I stood there, hands on my hips. Ugly Girl in Rocky River sweatshirt, jeans, running shoes big as horses’ hooves. I stood there incensed. “I’m just asking, Mom!”

  There came Lisa into the kitchen, as if she’d been feeling lonely. She could tell by her big sis’s tone of voice that Mom was being teased. “What’re you asking Mom, Ursula?”

  I said, “I’m not asking. I’m implying. That Mom doesn’t think I’m in a good mood one hundred percent of the time.”

  Lisa chortled. “Maybe just ninety-nine point nine percent of the time, hey Mom?”

  By this time Mom was laughing, shaking her head at us both. I liked to see her in a laughing mood, not sad and edgy, when Dad was away. I’d picked up these shrewd tactics of teasing from Dad, who could wriggle out of a tight spot like Tiger Woods out of a sand trap.

  The best defense, said Dad, is an offense. When somebody’s asking you questions you don’t want to answer.

  * * *

  Still, Mom was suspicious.

  One morning saying, like out of nowhere, “Ursula, I hear you on the phone a lot lately. Last night?”

  I was at the refrigerator. I had my back to Mom. Fortunately she couldn’t see Ugly Girl’s stricken face.

  I continued reaching for the unsweetened grapefruit juice and poured some into a glass, and by the time I turned so Mom could see me, my expression was Ugly Girl–cool, unperturbed. “Is that a statement, Mom, or a question? It’s kind of ambiguous.”

  Mom flushed. She wasn’t in such a great mood this early in the morning. “I’m sure I heard you talking—and laughing—as late as midnight. If I hadn’t been so sleepy myself—”

  “Mom, I’m not aware my phone is tapped. Since when did you and Dad get a court order?”

  Mom glowered. Lisa giggled. Here was Big Sis–on-the-edge-of-rude and it was only seven forty-two A.M.

  “Ursula, I’m not eavesdropping on you. But I’m concerned when you’re obviously wasting time on the phone, and when you stay up so late. It isn’t like you.”

  Ugly Girl shot right back, like Ping-Pong, “Who’s it like, then? Anybody I know?” My expression remained deadpan but Lisa was really giggling now.

  “Ursula, don’t be mouthy. I’m concerned—”

  So Mom goes, frowning and peering at me with her critical Mom-eyes, the way, some other time, she might’ve picked at Ugly Girl because I rarely talked to anyone on the phone, never invited friends to the house, and didn’t appear to be (I’d overheard her worrying on the phone, with Grandma) “socializing” with my classmates at Rocky River. (Which meant: “wasn’t dating.” Sure.) But now that I had a friend, and just possibly this individual was a special
friend, Mom had to pick at me anyway. A FIERY RED sensation was moving up my brain stem like liquid mercury.

  I spooned plain nonfat yogurt into a bowl, sprinkled it with wheat germ, added some fruit, made two pieces of eleven-grain toast, and took my grapefruit juice and departed the kitchen to eat breakfast in our solarium at the rear of the house. I knew Mom would follow, but only partway. “Ursula, I’m only thinking of you. How many hours’ sleep did you get last night? It’s been all this past week—”

  “Mom, where’s Dad?”

  “What? Why do you—why are you asking that?”

  “Is Dad on this continent, or is he in—Australia? Thailand? Germany? Where?”

  “You know very well your father happens to be in Frankfurt until Friday.”

  “Mom, worry about Dad, OK?”

  The look on Mom’s face! Ugly Girl had not meant, maybe, to provoke such a reaction. Like accidentally-on-purpose colliding with an opponent on the basketball court, and knocking the wind right out of her, practically breaking a rib, and you can’t mumble you’re sorry because that might imply it wasn’t an accident.

  Mom just turned and walked back to the kitchen and left me, and I appreciated the quiet, staring into our snowy-leafy backyard, but my breakfast didn’t taste so good, and breakfast was Ugly Girl’s favorite meal.

  * * *

  FIERY RED. I was at my locker hanging up my jacket, running my fingers through my springy hair, wondering if I’d have time to talk to Matt before the last homeroom bell rang, decided no, not worth rushing into the room and looking less-than-Ursula-cool. I was wearing khakis, and a man’s white cotton long-sleeved shirt, and a suede vest, and a dozen studs flashing in my ears. I was feeling good. I’d run two miles to school in the fresh cold air to clear my head of that conversation with Mom. I hate her! She hates me! More calmly thinking, She feels threatened. By Matt. And Dad. What if there’s another woman? Men like Dad do it all the time. Mom would break into pieces. Where would that leave Ugly Girl? It wasn’t fair, when I had my new friend Matt Donaghy and wanted to spend all my time with him.