Dyan Sheldon - Away for the Weekend

“Well… I… Uh…” She can feel the blood racing to her face. She probably looks like a tomato. A tomato with glasses. And a pimple on its chin. “I… Uh… I’m really sorry, but I—”

“Excuse me?” He leans towards her. Even though Beth always sits in the front row so people can’t turn around to look at her if she says something, she speaks so softly that it’s never easy to hear her if there’s anybody else breathing in the room. “What did you say?”

“I just… I’m sorry it’s late notice, but I—”

Mr Sturgess sits down on the edge of his desk so that he’s almost in front of her. “Excuse me?” She seems to be apologizing. So, no change there. “What are you apologizing for, Beth?”

“I’m not, I just…” Even if she can’t see them, she knows that the whole class is looking at her now. “I… I’m sorry but I…” She takes a deep breath and rushes on. “I would like an extension. Please. If that’s all right. I’m a finalist and I’m going away for the weekend, too.” And then, for some stupid reason and illustrating the truth of the statement that life is famous for its ironic coincidences, she adds, “To Los Angeles. To The Xanadu.”

“ You? ” Mr Sturgess’ smile starts to slide from his face. He used to think Beth had an older brother whose clothes were handed down to her. He can’t remember ever seeing her in a skirt, let alone anything with a must-have label. “You’re a finalist in the fashion competition?”

The laughter is good-natured but still she couldn’t get any redder if the Queen of Hearts had her painted. Her cheeks feel as if they may pop.

“No, no… I’m sorry… No, I’m not… No. Not fashion.” As the racket in the room increases, Beth’s voice decreases. “Writing,” she whispers. “It’s the Tomorrow’s Writers Today National Competition.” Beth has been shortlisted for fiction. “It’s this—”

Edward Sturgess waves a hand at the rest of the class. “Simmer down, guys… Simmer down!” He can tell this is something he should be interested in, but he can’t hear what it is. “Let’s show—” Let’s show Beth a little respect here , was what he was going to say, but the end-of-period bell and the ensuing noisy bolt for freedom cuts him off. When he turns back to Beth she is already out of her chair and moving fast. “Beth?” he calls. “Beth! Yeah, sure. Of course you can have extra time.” He watches her charge through the door. He has no idea if she heard him or not.

A solitary figure, dressed in jungle combat trousers and a souvenir T-shirt from a rock concert that happened over fifty years ago, sits on one end of the bank of sinks in the first-floor girls’ room (west wing). Unusually for someone at Jeremiah High, her hair is not only peacock blue but woven into dozens of tiny braids. It is also unusual for a Jeremiah student to have no reflection in the wall of mirrors on either side of the room, of course, but it is normal for an angel in invisible mode. Which Remedios is. She’s having a break, enjoying the silence and reading the local paper she picked up in the staffroom. The Jeremiah Crier is unlikely to take any interest from the Dead Sea Scrolls, that’s for sure. This issue contains a long article about the town budget. Another about raising money to restore the bandstand in the park. A recipe for low-fat cheesecake. Advice on fitting a new window. A photo collage of the elementary school’s fair. An interview with 101-year-old Mrs Celeste Rubins who remembers when the trolley car ran between Jeremiah and East Jeremiah. A piece entitled: Youngsters Plant Trees. Advertisements for classes in tennis, golf, yoga, Pilates, kung fu, t’ai chi, scrapbooking, weaving, salsa, jewellery-making, a diet club, a walking group, Alcoholics Anonymous, baking and cooking. A photograph of three small children dressed as polar bears for the Earth Day celebration. The scores for the bridge club. The results of the county bowling tournament. Three birth announcements, two obituaries and a book review. Remedios sighs. The town of Jeremiah may be as exciting as cold mush, but next to the world of the high school it’s a two-day royal banquet with minstrels.

Remedios yawns, and leans her head against the hand dryer. This is only the end of her third week here and although she’s still, as it were, finding her wings, she couldn’t be more bored if she were walking across mudflats on crutches. Not that the teenagers of Jeremiah don’t have problems – they do have problems (to hear them talk, they have more problems than Noah) – but they are no more than petty worries and everyday anguish and despair. They should try living through the sacking of Rome or the Blitzkrieg if they want a real problem.

The last bell of the day rings and Remedios lets loose another sigh. Where , she wonders, are the innocent and lost souls who really need my help?

The door opens and Beth Beeby hurls herself into the girls’ room, miraculously managing to look both flushed and eerily green at the same time. Beth, of course, is no stranger to anxiety – it’s the most constant companion she has – but her nervousness about the weekend surpasses anything she’s experienced before. She desperately wants to win in the way that only a girl who is depressed by getting an A- rather than an A can; but at the same time winning means that she will have to do even better in the future – publish a novel before she’s twenty-five, be profiled in The New York Times, win the Pulitzer Prize. Great expectations, of course, open the door to great disappointments.

Remedios watches Beth clasp a hand to her mouth and run to the end stall. Because Remedios often comes in here to avoid the tedium of hearing the same lectures and conversations over and over, she has seen Beth before. Sometimes Beth simply hides in the end stall reading a book, but sometimes she comes here to vomit or weep. This afternoon, it seems, she’s come to do both.

The door opens again and Gabriela Menz glides in like an image on a screen, her book bag and handbag held over one shoulder and a suit bag in her other hand.

Gabriela is also a familiar face; the first-floor girls’ room (west wing) is practically her office.

Since Remedios isn’t visible at the moment, Gabriela is oblivious to her presence, but she’s equally oblivious to Beth’s retching and sobbing in the corner stall. She dumps her stuff on the counter opposite the sinks and hooks the suit bag over the door of the nearest stall. While she changes out of her school clothes into her going-away-for-the-weekend clothes, Gabriela is thinking not about her mother, out in the parking lot, tapping the steering wheel and checking the time every few minutes, but about the next two days.

There are three reasons why Remedios doesn’t normally bother listening to thoughts: it requires a lot of concentration; most of the time they’re way less interesting than you might imagine; and if there are more than a few people around it’s like listening to 97 TV channels at the same time. Now, however, she sits up, leaning forward, and tunes in. Gabriela doesn’t have to worry about homework … blahblahblah … she can’t wait to get to LA … blahblahblah … OMG that dikey girl, the brainy one, whatever her name is … she’s going to be in LA, too, in the same hotel … like, really, what are the chances? blahblahblah … shopping … shopping … blahblahblah…

Other girls come and go – hurrying in and hurrying out again, eager to be away from school until Monday – but not Beth or Gabriela. Beth stays in her stall, sick with stress and nerves. Gabriela dresses with even more care than usual – changing everything from her shoes to her accessories – and then stays planted in front of the mirrors, redoing her make-up. She examines every inch of her face, peering and pulling and pouting – touching up and then touching up again – until she’s finally satisfied that the only thing that could make her look better would be plastic surgery. They’ll both be lucky not to miss their flight.