The Opposite Of Tidy Read online

  THE OPPOSITE OF TIDY

  RAZORBILL

  Carrie Mac

  CARRIE MAC is an award-winning author who lives with her family in Vancouver, British Columbia. Some of her accolades include the Arthur Ellis YA Award, the Stellar Book Award, several CLA Honour books, and the Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize, which she was awarded for The Gryphon Project. She is also a paramedic with the BC Ambulance Service.

  ALSO BY CARRIE MAC

  The Gryphon Project

  Triskelia

  The Droughtlanders Storm

  Retribution

  The Beckoners

  Charmed

  Crush

  Pain & Wastings

  RAZORBILL

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published 2012

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

  Copyright © Carrie Mac, 2012

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above,

  no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval

  system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying,

  recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright

  owner and the above publisher of this book.

  Manufactured in Canada.

  LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

  Mac, Carrie, 1975–

  The opposite of tidy / Carrie Mac.

  ISBN 978-0-14-318091-3

  I. Title.

  PS8625.A23O66 2012 jC813’.6 C2011-906821-4

  Visit the Penguin Group (Canada) website at www.penguin.ca

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  www.penguin.ca/corporatesales or call 1-800-810-3104, ext. 2477.

  FOR MY MOM,

  WHO SHARED HER LOVE OF READING

  WITH ME.

  PROLOGUE

  Juniper had gotten used to the smell of the house. Even something as foul as that had become normal after a while, and it was made worse by the incense and cheap scented candles that her mother kept lit to make it smell “nice,” even though foul and fake did not mix well at all. But her mother plain stank, and there was no hiding it. This was a more recent and very alarming development. Her big fat self smelled rank. Junie couldn’t recall the last time her mother had washed her hair. It was lank and wet-looking, but not from any water. Just grease. There was a slick on her skin, too, a light oily sheen from not having showered or bathed or even passed a damp cloth over her face for who knew how long.

  Chinese food takeout boxes balanced on the arms of her mother’s easy chair. Chow mein noodles inched down her ample bosom like worms. Red blotches of sweet and sour sauce dotted her sweatshirt, too, and bits of egg foo yung littered her lap. Junie glanced in one of the boxes. The fried rice looked like maggots. She could imagine them writhing around in there, pale and putrid.

  “Do you want some?” Her mother offered up the box, never taking her eyes off the television. On The Kendra Show that day, a man who used to be a woman was showing off the twins he/she gave birth to. Kendra forced a grin as he handed her one of the bleary-eyed infants, who promptly started to bawl.

  Junie swallowed back bile. She wanted to throw up. It was the smell, yes, but it was everything else, too. Absolutely everything.

  “Is that dinner?” she asked.

  “Lunch.”

  It was almost four o’clock. Junie could be sure that the only time her mother had left that chair was to use the bathroom. And to answer the door for the guy who delivered the Chinese food.

  “Are you planning on making dinner tonight?” The question was pointless. Junie knew that her mother had no plans for dinner that didn’t involve a takeout menu and delivery, if she had plans for dinner at all.

  “How about pizza?” her mother replied.

  Junie glanced at the stack of discarded pizza boxes piled to one side of the easy chair, at the flies buzzing lazily above. When the television was off, you could hear the scurrying of rats as they sought out the dried up pizza crusts and abandoned noodles. No matter how many traps Junie set out, it was never enough. She shuddered at the thought.

  “No. No pizza.” Junie made fists of her hands. Her mother didn’t notice. The man who used to be a woman was going on about how badly people had treated him during his pregnancy.

  “So, in essence …” Kendra leaned forward, excited, “you were the world’s first pregnant man!”

  “Mom?”

  “Hmm?” Her mother looked up. There were deep dark bags under her eyes, and zits dotting her chin. On a grown woman! And that sweat suit had not seen the inside of a washing machine in over a week, at least.

  Junie lifted her fists. She brought them to her face and pressed them hard against her mouth. Part of her wanted to sock her mother between the eyes. Punch her to attention. Knock her out of this mess and into the realm of common sense. And the other part of her just wanted to run away. She let the latter take over and backed toward the door.

  “Where’re you going, honey?” her mother asked, eyes ever fixed on the screen. The Kendra Show cut to commercials, so she flipped to the Shopping Channel. A tiny loud model was promising that the scarf flecked with real gold would slim down any woman when worn just so around the neck. One of those would show up within the week, Junie was sure. At least one.

  Junie didn’t answer her mother. One thing Junie’s grandma had always taught her was that if you couldn’t say anything nice then you shouldn’t say anything at all. Right now, it was taking all of Junie’s inner strength not to tell her mother how disgusting she was. And that wouldn’t make any difference anyway. She knew this because she’d tried it, and all that had ended up happening was that she’d hurt her mother’s feelings and made her cry. She’d tried begging, threatening and shaming, along with everything else she could think of, to snap her mother out of this eternal and fetid funk.

  Junie let herself out the front door and took a deep breath of the fresh spring air. She closed her eyes and thought the worst thought. What if her mother was going to be like this forever? What if she never got better? What if this was the new normal?

  ONE

  What was—and always had been—normal was that Junie sucked at math, even though her own father was a very skilled accountant. What was worse was that her teacher, Mr. Benson, always made a great big show of handing back tests. His thought was that if everyone knew how you did, you would either be proud of yourself, or motivated by shame to do better the next time. Junie wouldn’t have minded this so much if it had been English. Or Art. Or Social Studies. Or Biology, even . . . she was holding steady at a solid C+. But this was Math class. And she sucked at math.

  Mr. Benson strode dow
n the aisles, calling out the mark as he dealt each test paper off his pile, letting it drift onto the desk as if it were light and pleasant, which for some it was.

  “One hundred percent.” That would be for Ollie, behind Junie. She would’ve hated him for it but he tutored her every Thursday and was the only reason why she wasn’t down the hall repeating grade nine Math. “Good job, Ollie.”

  Ollie coughed, which was what he did whenever he was embarrassed by how smart he was. He coughed often.

  “Forty-one, Juniper.”

  Junie closed her eyes. She’d been hoping for a pass, at least. Just a lousy sixty percent or so.

  “Forty . . .”—Mr. Benson tapped the paper—“one.” The test was covered in red, and had an unhappy face up in the corner beside her name and another beside the mark. It was one miserable exam. Even the pencilled-in numbers in their erroneous foxholes under the problems looked sad. They all drooped now, exhausted from enduring so much erasing and rewriting and scratching out. The math problems remained just that. Problems.

  Mr. Benson moved on while a neon-lit marquee of failure buzzed over Junie’s head. “A healthy—if somewhat anemic—eighty-six.” This was for Tabitha, in front of her.

  Tabitha didn’t even glance at her own paper. Instead, she twisted around in her seat and whispered, “It’s okay.” She plucked Junie’s test up, turned around and wrote on it, as Mr. Benson carried on up the aisle to the front.

  “Ninety. Well done.”

  “Seventy-four.”

  “Eighty-three.”

  Tabitha slid the test back. She’d added Fantastic!!! in teacherly printing, plus a halo and wings to the unhappy faces, along with an edit of the mouths, turning them into fat, kissy lips. All this, and a one in front of Junie’s score: 141%.

  Junie loved Tabitha. She was the consummate best friend.

  “It’s just a number.” Tabitha grinned at her and winked. “Forget about it.”

  When the bell sounded, Ollie patted Junie on the back.

  “We’ll get you through this,” he said, as if they were talking about cancer. “Everything will be okay.” He coughed. “See you Thursday?”

  “Sure, Ollie. Thanks.”

  The room emptied until it was just Tabitha and Junie and the test.

  Tabitha grabbed it and shoved it into her binder. “Never mind that. Come on.” She led the way to Junie’s locker, where she undid the lock and took out Junie’s backpack. “You’ll be okay. Right?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I’ll skip my thing if you need me to.”

  “No way. I’ll be fine.” Tabitha’s “thing” was a very important piano adjudication for the Royal Conservatory of Music. It was certainly no small thing.

  “Just say you need me and I’ll book it for next time.”

  “No way. I’m not going to be the excuse for your stage fright.”

  “You’ll be sorry when I come back minus a leg or an arm because the judges gnawed it off with their bare teeth.”

  “You’ll do great. Like always.”

  “But I’ll puke, too, like always.”

  “And then you’ll get a ginger ale from the pop machine, take a few sips, get up on that stage and knock their socks off. Like always.”

  Tabitha fixed her with a sympathetic smile. “But you know I wouldn’t go if you needed me, right?”

  “I’ll be fine. It’s just another mathematical disaster in a long, drawn-out history of mathematical disasters. I’ll be okay.”

  “Ollie will think of something. You’ll see.”

  Usually Junie used the walk home to clear her head of all things school so that she could focus on all things home. After all, there wasn’t much point in dwelling on her abysmal math results. She’d always been terrible at math. Her mother had kept her report cards from elementary school, and every single one of them had a comment about her struggles with math. Politely worded, but essentially saying the same thing: Juniper was a mathematical retard. A numerical dunce. Is working to grasp her numbers. Struggles with addition. More work needed to apply fractions.

  Junie had tried to throw out her report cards once, but her mother had had a conniption fit. She’d also tried to throw out the Mathematic Marvel Flashcard and Workbook System (Success Guaranteed!!!), which her mother bought when Junie was seven. But when it arrived, it just went into a pile of other stuff she’d bought off the Shopping Channel, most of which she never bothered to open. Back then it wasn’t as bad, but you could see where things were going.

  About halfway home, Junie heard an engine gear down behind her. She turned to look. There was no mistaking who it was. There was only one student at school who drove an old orange Volkswagen van. Wade Jaffre. He’d transferred to Junie’s school only the week before from Tupper, and Junie had noticed him right away. He was tall, with long, brown, sinewy arms, and closely cropped black hair that he angled up a bit in the front. He wore a black leather cuff on one wrist, and jeans that slouched just enough to look exceptionally good on him. And he had a video camera with him almost all the time, although she’d only seen him use it once or twice so far.

  He pulled up alongside Junie, going slowly enough to catch her eye. Junie didn’t know where to look, or what to do. This was Wade Jaffre! About three minutes after he’d arrived at school she’d developed a full-blown crush on him. And this was a big deal. Junie didn’t crush easily. She could count all the crushes she’d ever had on one hand. And still have a finger left over. Until now. The first time she’d laid eyes on him her head and heart and gut had all sent her a very clear message: this guy was optimal crushable material. Her palms went damp, butterflies flitted in her tummy and she was at a loss for words.

  Wade rolled down his window. Patsy Cline crooned from his stereo. On many guys, this would seem odd. But it just made Wade Jaffre all that much more sexy.

  “Need a ride?”

  All thoughts of math and her mother evaporated from Junie’s mind. In fact, her brain had apparently shut down entirely, because she was at a loss for words again. Wade Jaffre was offering her a ride, and all Junie could think about was that he had remarkably handsome eyebrows.

  “I . . . uh . . .”

  And the next thing that occurred to her was that she wasn’t allowed to accept rides from strangers. But Wade wasn’t a stranger, was he? He wasn’t some creepy old man with a boner tenting his polyester pants. She wasn’t going to end up dead in a ditch somewhere. Wade was a student at her school. A classmate. So she could say yes. In fact, she should say yes. But she couldn’t make herself say anything at all.

  “Junie?”

  He knew her name. Junie hoped her surprise at this wasn’t written all over her face. She couldn’t wait to tell Tabitha. “A ride?” she finally managed to say.

  “As in, do you need one?” He grinned at her.

  “Sure.” Junie shifted her backpack from one shoulder to the other, not sure what to do next. “Please. Thanks.”

  Wade pulled the van ahead and off the road. He cut the engine and leaned way across the gearshift to open the passenger door. “Get in.”

  “This isn’t the first five minutes of the end of my life, is it?” Junie set her backpack on the floor and started to get in. “You’re not some serial killer disguised as a high school honour roll student, are you?”

  “No.” He raised three fingers and laughed. “Scout’s honour.”

  “Good.” Junie arranged herself on the seat, did up her seatbelt and stared at him. And then she realized what she was doing and looked away. She got the sense that he was staring at her, and when she glanced to check, sure enough his gaze was fixed on her. A nervous laugh escaped against her better judgment. She wished she could slap herself across the face. Instead, she swallowed hard and said, “So.”

  “So.” Wade merged carefully back into traffic. “Where do you live?”

  “Lambert and Fourth Avenue.”

  “Lambert and Fourth it is, then.”

  What amazed Junie about this exchan
ge so far . . . this whole event so far . . . was that she was actually kind of pulling it off. Yet. And it wasn’t like she had any experience in dealing with her crushables. She’d never had the guts to even approach any of her crushables outside of forced school interactions. And this was the first time one of her crushables had ever paid her any kind of attention whatsoever. What amazed her further was that she hadn’t made a complete ass of herself, and this was without Tabitha’s help. This was the kind of thing they fantasized about. The kind of thing they spent entire sleepovers rehearsing. Well, maybe not this scenario exactly, but Major Life Events just like this. All involving boys, naturally. And things one might hope of doing with boys at some point in one’s life. Preferably before the age of twenty, as that was the age she and Tabitha had decided was the Spinster Age of Doom. If you reached the Spinster Age of Doom without losing your virginity, it was not likely ever going to happen. Ever.

  “So are you?” Wade asked.

  Clearly Junie had missed something, because he couldn’t have possibly been inquiring about her virginity.

  “Sure,” Junie said with as much dumb confidence as she could muster.

  “Excellent.”

  A couple of seconds passed, during which Junie prayed that Wade hadn’t asked her something horrible, like if she’d be a drug mule for him.

  “I’m sorry.” She needed to know what she’d just agreed to. “What did you just ask me?”

  Wade laughed. “I asked if you’d help with the Think Globally, Act Locally bottle drive next week.”

  “Then for sure, for sure!” Again, Junie wanted to slap herself across the face. She sounded like a stupid valley girl. This was not what she and Tabitha strove for in their fabulous imaginary relationships with cool and excellent boys. Like Wade Jaffre. She tried again. “I mean, yeah, okay. I’m free that day.”

  “I haven’t told you what day yet.”

  “Hmm.” Junie glanced up to watch the idiot points accumulating above her head, like on the giant scoreboard in the gym. “Right.”