Stanley’s smile widened as the girl in front of Haylee and the one on the other side of him leaned over to listen. “Oh, yeah? Do you pee together, too?” he asked. Everyone who heard him laughed.
“Why do you want to know? Do you like to watch girls
pee?” Haylee fired back. Even I was surprised at how quickly she could be brazen with strangers.
The girls looked at the boy, whose face almost matched his sweet-potato-colored hair, and laughed again, only this time at him.
“Quiet,” Mrs. Elliot demanded, and Stanley Bender sat back.
Haylee turned to me and smiled as if to say, Don’t worry. I’ll protect us . . . always. I saw that the other girls who had heard her were also smiling at her. She glowed in their appreciation.
However, Stanley Bender turned out to have asked a question that was less silly than everyone first thought. It was odd to the other students, I’m sure, but whenever I raised my hand to go to the bathroom, Haylee did so instantly, too, and vice versa. Years later, when we were in seventh grade, we were still doing that. Some teachers became annoyed with it, and one, Mrs. Plunket, our math teacher, refused to let Haylee go one day. Haylee peed in her seat, and that created a very big scene. Mother almost had Mrs. Plunket fired.
But many things like that were waiting for us in the future. For now, we were in school, and we could finally meet and find friends one way or another. Usually, it would be Haylee’s way. She made instant decisions about the other girls in our class and especially the boys. If she didn’t like someone, I couldn’t like him or her. If I talked to someone she didn’t like, she would tell Mother that I didn’t listen to her when she told me why not to be friends with that person. She didn’t make it sound like she was telling on me; she was clever enough to make it sound like she was worried about me.
Two weeks after we entered school, a girl named Mary Braddock invited us to her birthday party. Haylee didn’t like her and told Mother she had made fun of us, even though she hadn’t, but that was enough for Mother to hear. I couldn’t challenge what Haylee had said. We weren’t permitted to go to the party. I was surprised that it was more important to Haylee to decide things for us than to go to our first party hosted by a classmate.
The table was set. I would for the longest time have to eat the dinner Haylee wanted. She was simply more aggressive at finding friends and disliking others. Her decisions were instantaneous, and it did no good to ask her to reconsider. Haylee Blossom Fitzgerald never gave any other girl a second chance. If anything, that kept us from making many friends.
Mother was right about our schoolwork, however. In the beginning, neither of us achieved much less than a ninety-eight on any test in any subject. I often heard Mrs. Elliot compliment Mother on how well she had done with us in our homeschooling. Mother gloated about it to Daddy. If he wanted to express opposition to anything she had decided for us, that diminished even more now. Look at how successful her planning had been.
Before our first year of private-school attendance ended, we went to three birthday parties for girls Haylee did like because they were in awe of her. Two of them, Melanie Rosen and Toby Sue Daniels, became what she declared were “our best friends,” even though they weren’t really that close to me. The truth was, I didn’t like either of them very much. They were always complaining about other students, making fun of other girls, and eager and willing to do anything Haylee told them to do. Because we were doing so well in all our subjects, she offered to help them, which actually meant that I would be doing most of the tutoring. In exchange, they gave Haylee things our mother would never want us to have, from candy to magazines and, eventually, when we were in sixth grade, cigarettes. Haylee smoked only at their houses and tried to get me to do it, too. Melanie and Toby Sue showed her how to get rid of the smell, but Mother finally did detect it on our clothes.
I’ll never forget that day, because it was the first time I saw Mother fall for one of Haylee’s serious lies. She sat us in the great room as usual and began her cross-examination just like the lawyer she had once set out to be.
“Let me see your hands,” she began, and inspected our fingers. Melanie and Toby Sue had shown Haylee how to scrub off any traces of nicotine, and I hadn’t given in and smoked a cigarette that afternoon. Mother squinted suspiciously when she saw nothing. She leaned in closer so she could smell our breath, but Haylee had gargled with mouthwash before we left Melanie’s house.
Mother still looked skeptical and suspicious. “Which one of your friends gave you cigarettes?” she asked me. Although she wouldn’t ever tell us so, she must have believed that I would be more truthful.
But before I could answer, Haylee spoke up. “It wasn’t a friend, Mother. It was Melanie’s father.”
“What? He gave you cigarettes?”
“No. He was the one smoking. He likes to do magic tricks,” she continued. Mr. Rosen did like to perform for us. He worked in a bank and, according to Melanie, hated his boring job. He had always wanted to be an entertainer. He was very funny sometimes. I liked him much more than I liked Melanie.
“So?” Mother asked.
“Well, he was smoking when he performed in Melanie’s room for us,” Haylee continued. “The windows were open, so we didn’t notice it that much. He always has a cigarette dangling from his lips, right, Kaylee?”
That part was true, so I nodded, expecting Mother to start shouting at us for lying. She didn’t, and Haylee continued her fabrication with more confidence than I had ever seen her have.
“The teachers have a room for those who want to smoke,” she said, “and when you walk by, you can smell it in the hallway. Our clothes could smell from that, too, I bet.”
“Really? That should be stopped,” Mother said.
A really clever liar gets someone distracted from the main questions as soon as she can, I thought. At this moment, Haylee looked like she had taken lessons in how to deceive. She was doing so much of it at school as it was.
“It’s just like you say, Mother, very dirty,” she said, nodding and grimacing. “I can see how yellow it makes their teeth. It’s ugh.”
“Good,” Mother said. “Next time Mr. Rosen comes near you with a cigarette in his mouth, I want you to tell him how upset I was about the stench on your clothes. If he wants to get lung cancer, fine, but I won’t let you go to Melanie’s house if it happens again.”
“Oh, we’ll tell him, won’t we, Kaylee?” she said.
There was a part of me that wanted to end the lying, to tell Mother that Haylee—and I, because the three of them were demanding that I do it—smoked cigarettes from time to time, but I was now more afraid of Haylee’s anger than Mother’s at my snitching on my sister.
“Yes,” I said.
“Good. My girls are still perfect,” Mother said, smiling. I couldn’t believe we were getting away with it. Mother was still cautious, however. “I want you to have friends, but remember, real friends don’t force their friends to do bad things.”