Come to your senses, Jennie!
It’s like calling a duck, you know? Here, duck, duck, duck, duck! I have some stale bread for you! Come to your bread!
Here, Jennie, Jennie, Jennie! Come to your senses!
It’s my parents’ fault! If Daddy hadn’t given me a credit card I wouldn’t have been able to buy these tickets. If they hadn’t pushed me and pushed me, I wouldn’t have been so super. I would have been ordinary and people would have liked me. Well, I’m ordinary now.
This is the real me. Your basic, no-frills Jennie.
And who is she?
She’s a plain, brown-haired teenager nobody has noticed. Nobody has spoken to. Nobody has questioned.
She’s a jerk.
She did a dumb, dumb, dumb thing. Anybody else would just have heaved a big sigh and failed the math section. But no, Jennie Quint, who has to do everything too much, too much—Jennie Quint left the state.
Why didn’t I just sit there and fail? Why did I run out of the test room, and out of the building, and down the street? Why did the bus station have to be so close? Why did I have to see the sign? Why did that fat lady standing in line have to buy a ticket to Pittsburgh? Why did I buy a ticket, too?
It’s Emily’s fault. And Hillary’s. They didn’t have to be so mean to me! If I had friends this year, I wouldn’t have done these dumb things! I wouldn’t be sitting on this bus, with other people’s radios playing, and other people’s smelly bag lunches, and other people’s laughter, and other people’s destinations!
Classified.
I used to love that nickname. Made it so much easier to hide.
Now I think I was dumb.
You keep secrets from everybody else, you end up keeping them from yourself, too. A person can’t be classified. And you need help one day, you don’t know how to get it, because you’ve never done any talking. I’m not crazy about Jared. But his father and mother are pretty terrific.
Phys. ed. coach talked to me again about sports.
I might.
Not this year, can’t be after school for practice this year. But I might next year. He’s all tense. Seniors can’t be on junior varsity, he says, you’ve got to be good enough for varsity, you’ve got to start this year.
I might.
I just might.
There’s no news on Jennie. I was over at her house this afternoon with Mrs. Lowe, who brought a casserole over to the Quints. She said she felt very dumb, taking broccoli and cheese instead of their daughter, but it would show that she cared. What an unbelievable house. It is truly perfect, like a glossy magazine, and afterward I said to Mrs. Lowe, “Were they training Jennie to be a prop?”
Mrs. Lowe said, “Oh, you children! You’re so cruel! They were doing the best they could. They love Jennie.”
I didn’t quite do it.
At least I can write that down, and it’s true, it’s not a lie.
I didn’t actually cheat.
I only wanted to.
I thought of cheating as this wonderful, splendid, beautiful solution! It was waiting for me—crying, You too can cheat and be a winner still!
I set my pencil down very carefully.
Waited for the examination hour to end.
It was the longest and the shortest hour of my life.
Like waiting for my execution.
Failure.
It was there, in my hands: I had finally achieved failure.
Go home now?
Face my mother and father?
Say to them: I failed, do you still love me? Am I still a good enough trophy?
Right now there’s only one thing to be proud of.
I didn’t cheat.
Come to your senses.
I think about that all day now.
Because what are the senses Jennie’s supposed to come to?
Does it make sense to try so hard? To do so much? To be so shiny?
Does it make sense to lose your friends and your family?
But does it make sense just to hang around and not use your brain and your music?
Nothing makes sense. All of us being jealous doesn’t make sense and Jennie’s running away doesn’t make sense. Sometimes now I think maybe something happened to her—she was kidnapped or killed or something—because it does not make sense, and everything Jennie did added up to a success, and this doesn’t.
Jennie, Jennie, I’m sorry.
I’ve come to my senses, at least.
Please come to yours.
I got off the bus all of a sudden, thinking of Jared following Paul, thinking of police following me, thinking of being caught, like an animal, being caged, being yelled at, being bad, being wrong, being worthless.
I don’t even know where it was, but it was a dark and horrible town.
I stood alone on the sidewalk and the bus pulled away. I ate a cheese sandwich from a vending machine and it was dry and I choked on it. I had a soda and when I used the bathroom behind the magazine counter, it was dirty and there were no paper towels.
I bought a magazine but I couldn’t seem to read.
The music from the sonnet to snow blurred in my head and little bits of it played over and over and over and over again until I wanted to scream and rip my hair out and never hear the notes again.
I ran outside and ran down the street and I didn’t stop until I had a pain in my side.
Leaves whipped by the winter wind rushed around my ankles, like little sheep wanting a shepherd. As if they wanted to be raked up and put in a cozy pile somewhere. If I had a match I would do it for them. I would set fire to them and they would be happy.
I walked through the icy dark past a bar where no commuter to New York would ever hang out. Garbage filled the gutters. A little girl came out of a side street, carrying a cardboard bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pepsi. Her thin windbreaker was unzipped, and she had no hat, no scarf, and no mittens. The jacket was unzipped because the zipper was half torn off, hanging by its thin ribbon and waving in the wind. The only warm thing about her was the bucket, which steamed slightly around the edges.
I unzipped my thick luxurious ski jacket, took off my mittens, stuffed my scarf into the bookbag that swung from my bare fingers. Ye season, it was winter. Thirteen degrees, in a harsh wind. My fingers turned blue.
A car pulled up next to me.
A man leaned over the passenger side, from the driver’s seat, and said something. His greasy hair was tied back under a bandanna that circled his forehead; a cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth, and filth rimmed the fingernails that gripped the opened window—a window that was always open: it was broken. His voice came through little shards of glass that poked up out of the opening.
I began running.
He simply drove alongside.
I ran faster.
He laughed, and stayed with me.
We came to an intersection and the cross street was one way: I raced the wrong direction up it so he could not follow. His laughter followed. Sick and depraved, it rang in my ears.
I found the bus station again, running the whole time, praying the car would not find me. I spent the night sitting on a wooden bench watching the minute hand on the wall clock go around. There wasn’t much heat. A bus came around four in the morning and I got on.
Came “home” today before Jared—he’s in the drama production and had a rehearsal. I felt so strange walking in the front door of the Lowes’ house. Mrs. Lowe was home, and we sat watching a soap opera. She loves the same soap opera Mom did, and has the same favorite character she worries about.
Mrs. Lowe said, “Shall I go with you to visit your mother?”
The visit was easy. Mrs. Lowe made it like a tea party, or something, so that we actually laughed. I didn’t know Mom would ever laugh again. I didn’t know I would ever laugh again. Coming home, Mrs. Lowe said, “Your biggest problem isn’t going to be your mother, Paul.”
I did laugh then. “Mrs. Lowe, if I have a larger problem out there than her, I don??
?t even want to think about it.”
She smiled. She said, “Forgiving Candy is going to be harder. Candy left without a backward look. Candy doesn’t even notice what she did. Candy is genuinely happy with her biological mother. The eleven years your Mom spent bringing Candy up are gone as if they had never been, and Candy doesn’t care. She’s still your sister, she will always be your sister, and you hate her. That’s what you have to get over, Paul. That’s what’s classified inside you.”
I can’t use my charge any more. They called my number in to the computer and I’ve reached my limit. Oh, how true, how true! I’m on my last ticket right now. I don’t even know where this bus is going to end up. All I know is, I will have to get off.
I have a good coat, my scarf and gloves, my purse with six dollars left, my diary, three magazines, and half a bag of potato chips my last seatmate left. For lunch I had a candy bar and water from the drinking fountain at a station where we had fifteen minutes.
I don’t look out the window. Ever. I look into myself.
I don’t see good things.
What is the point in being born good if you hate yourself?
She’s right. I hate my sister.
I forgive my biological mother for coming back and wanting us again, even though we didn’t hear from her for ten years. I forgive Dad for not being able to stand the stress of his first wife taking his child away from his second wife, and vanishing. I forgive Mom for collapsing. I forgive Mom for caring more that Candy left than that I stayed.
But I can’t forgive Candy.
I hate her.
Admitting it is half the battle.
It’s not classified now, even to me.
And so I feel better toward Candy.
I still haven’t said “thank you” to anybody. I thanked Mr. Lowe for the clothes. I thanked Mrs. Lowe for dinner. I haven’t thanked Emily. I haven’t thanked Jared for taking me in as if he liked me. I haven’t thanked Ansley for going to visit my mother, too.
And I haven’t thanked Jennie.
I learned something from Jennie. Never be jealous. Never believe that somebody else’s life is perfect.
At lunch on Saturday I said to Mrs. Lowe, “Do you think Jennie is all right?”
“A girl without money has to figure out some way to eat, Paul. I tremble when I think what she might decide to do.”
I changed buses. The bus driver was starting to talk to me. He knows I’ve run away from home. He told me Greyhound gives free rides home to runaways. He would arrange a free ride home.
A free ride.
My whole life has been a free ride.
That’s what happens when you’re smart and talented: you go everywhere for free. But I don’t want to anymore! I want to be just like everybody else, and fail some and be ordinary some, and be okay some. I don’t want to shine all alone!
The Awesome Threesome.
We weren’t awesome one by one.
We were awesome because we had two to share with.
The bus driver said, “You could share a few things with me, kid. Like your name and your parents’ phone number.”
So I got off the bus. I sat half the night in the station until another bus came. I cried the whole time.
We’ve talked so much about Jennie lately. My mother said we all have to forgive Jennie for having everything.
My father said if Jennie really and truly had everything, she wouldn’t have run away, and it just goes to show you a family can look all shiny and perfect on the outside and be rotten on the inside. He said nobody runs away from a nice family.
For a minute I felt good, saying out loud the Quints aren’t nice.
But then I remembered all of it: every tuna-fish sandwich Mrs. Quint made for us, every trip to the beach, every Band-Aid she put on my knee because I was always the one who fell down.
I’ve never liked Mrs. Quint. And after all these years, I still hardly know Mr. Quint. But I could at least go over there and tell her I’m sorry it all happened to them.
My father said, “Well, I’m sure I’m the crummiest person around, but I for one am glad that the Quints finally fell down in public.”
“You’re not the crummiest one, Dad,” I told him. “The whole school said that the first day.”
“And what did they say the second day?” Dad wanted to know. “And the third, and fourth, and fifth?”
Suppose I went home and was nothing.
Just me: a girl with brown hair.
Would they still love me?
They can’t frame what I am today in this bus station.
I don’t even know what town it is.
I don’t even care.
I lie awake at night sometimes and wonder where Jennie’s living.
Hey! Star of the East, come back!
All those places where you should be shining—you’re not!
All those things you could be starring in—you’re not!
As for Paul, I’m glad this house has lots of bedrooms and bathrooms. He’s a very polite guest, but he and my mother are endlessly Questing for Answers: talking Life, and Truth, and Morality. If I say something like, “So—what’s for supper, Mom?” they both look at me as if I’m their local resident mental defective. Twice I have gotten supper for them, and they took this meal as if they deserved it, and Mom even said it was good for me to be the servant for a change.
Paul’s servant.
I do not care for this change of events.
However, the other night Ansley was here, and Hillary and Emily came over because they were depressed about Jennie, and we all played Monopoly half the night, and Paul actually laughed. Out loud and everything. Ansley congratulated him and made up a little Laugh Chart. She says every time he laughs she’ll give him a gold star. That made him laugh, too, so she licked a little gold star we found in the back of the crayon box my mother’s had since I was a little kid, and she pasted it on his forehead.
For a minute I got jealous of Paul, because Ansley’s never pasted a gold star on my forehead, but Ansley kissed me good night later, when I took her home, and she said, “But Jared, darling, you are just one solid spectacular gold star.” So I decided not to be jealous of Paul Classified.
I could call home.
I have a Calling Card.
But they’ll yell at me.
Because they’re going to feel responsible. They’re going to be failures. They were parents who didn’t do it right after all, just when they thought they were perfect.
They only loved me because I was perfect.
I was the trophy on their wall.
They won’t love me now that I’ve ruined it.
So I can’t call home.
Who could I call?
Not Emily, not Hill, not Paul, not their parents, not Miss Clinton, not anybody I can think of.
I’m sitting here in this bus station and now, at last, I am alone.
I only thought I was alone before.
Now it’s real.
I said, “What do you think made her run away, Mr. Lowe?” I asked him because I had this sense that he had all the answers to everything. He laughed. “I haven’t had a conversation with Jennie in years,” he told me, “but if I had to guess I’d say that endless perfection and achievement can be as horrible for a person as endless failure and pain.”
“That’s ridiculous,” said Jared, just before I did.
First time I ever had anything in common with Mr. Preppy Jared.
So here I am.
A bus station far away.
Twinkies for dinner and dirty hair.
So far I have blamed
a) my parents, for pushing me
b) Hillary and Emily, for abandoning me
c) Paul, for not loving me back
d) fate, for making me different
e) my parents, for giving me money
Jennie Dunstan Quint, I think it’s time to xxxx out those and put in the real one. You. (Like at basketball games, when somebody fouls, and everybody in the
bleachers stands up and points and shouts “YOU YOU YOU YOU YOU!”)
You could have gone to the English teacher and told her not to post your papers. You could have gone to the home-ec department and asked if the classes there could help with the costumes. You could have asked Emily to be your partner in the laser experiment so she wouldn’t have to do boring library research and you’d have a friend for a term paper. You could have told your mother to stop boasting to the neighbors and you …
Or maybe not.
Maybe no matter what you did, you would be isolated.
Maybe that’s what success has to be.
Isolation.
I’ve started laughing.
Because sitting on that last bus, driving into the snow, realizing that I’ve made almost a complete circle and this bus is going to stop only two hundred miles from home—another song came to me. “Ye Season, It Was Winter.” I can see the ice storm, and the burials, and the fear: I can hear percussion making the sounds of branches rubbing eerily and ice snapping under boots; I can hear an English horn weeping for a child … I am ready to compose the rest of my next musical.
I am ready to tell my mother I’m sorry.
I am ready to tell my father I’m sorry.
I am ready to face the whole school, and admit I’m a jerk, and shrug, and ask if anybody wants to help on next fall’s musical.
I’m ready to be me.
She called me.
She called me!
Out of all the people in this world who were scared for her, and wanted her home, and yearned to help—she called me.
“I’m coming,” I said.
I didn’t know how. I don’t have a car or a license. And then Jennie said, “I’ve sat here so long, Em, it doesn’t matter how long it takes you to get here. I’ll just wait.”