Words That Start With B Read online

  Words

  That

  Start

  With

  B

  by VIKKI VANSICKLE

  For My Parents

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Before

  Benji

  Beautiful

  Birds

  Blank Slate

  Broken-hearted

  Basketball

  The Blues

  Bully

  Boys

  Brainstorming

  Boots

  Betsy Blue

  Blocked ID

  Bombarded

  Breast

  Blame

  Bedside

  Beef Bourguignon

  Burned

  Book

  Branded

  Bathrooms

  Bluff

  Breakaway

  Breakfast

  Bittersweet

  Beat up

  Blood

  Busted

  Broadcasting

  Bonding

  Baking

  Bravery

  Boo-yeah!

  Blessed

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright

  Before

  In grade seven your life is supposed to change forever. At least, it does if you’re a student at Ferndale Public School. That’s the year you spend in Miss Ross’s class, if you’re lucky. If you’re not, you end up in 7A with Mrs. White and spend the whole year wishing you were in Miss Ross’s class. The kids in 7A pretend they don’t care, saying the A stands for A+, but you can just as easily say that the B in 7B stands for better or best, and that would be the truth. There is no reason why some kids end up in 7A and some in 7B; it’s just one of those cosmic mystical things that is decided by the universe. I hope I’m on her good side this year.

  Benji

  I’m not the only one who loves Miss Ross. Ferndale students spend their entire lives waiting to be in her class. She always does the coolest stuff. Last year her students adopted a whale, and they decorated the display case in the front hall with pictures of it and facts on whales and how they are becoming endangered. Or some of them are. I don’t remember exactly what the reports said because mostly I was looking at the pictures. They adopted a beluga whale named Aurora. Beluga whales are totally white and they look like they are always smiling. I guess no one told them about the icebergs melting and all the oil spills that are wrecking the environment.

  The year before that Miss Ross’s class planted a school garden where the old playground used to be before they tore it down because it was unsafe. They turned an old muddy patch of land into a wild flower garden, complete with a bird bath and a pathway to walk on. Miss Ross was always doing things like that. And now I was finally in grade seven and about to be in Miss Ross’s class — I hoped. What sort of project would my class be taking on? Maybe she was planning it right now. Maybe she was staying up late, putting the finishing touches on a big presentation.

  I could hardly wait for next week to come.

  There is only one person in the whole world who is feeling as anxious as I am right now. He just so happens to be my best friend. The phone barely rings before it’s picked up.

  “Hello?”

  “Benji?”

  “Hi, Clarissa.”

  “What do you think Miss Ross is planning for us this year?”

  “I don’t know. I guess we’ll find out on Tuesday.”

  “Well I can’t wait that long.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I was thinking maybe we could call the school.”

  “Why?”

  “To ask Miss Ross.”

  There is a long pause, which means Benji is trying to find a way to say he thinks I am crazy. I have known him for five years and I know what every single one of his pauses means.

  “What would you say?” he finally asks.

  “I don’t know; maybe I could pretend to be a parent and just ask.”

  “Why couldn’t you just ask her as yourself?”

  Honestly. That Benji. I explain myself as patiently as possible, which I admit isn’t very patient. “Because teachers never tell kids that kind of stuff. They want us to wait and see. But I bet she’d tell a parent. Teachers are obligated to tell parents that kind of thing.”

  “But won’t she recognize your voice?”

  “Not if I disguise it,” I point out.

  Benji is not convinced.

  “I guess,” he says.

  “So are you going to come over?”

  “Now?”

  “Yes, now. We have to practise the phone call if we want it to sound good.”

  “We?”

  “I’m hanging up now, Benji.”

  “Okay, I’m coming.”

  ***

  Benji has lived next door for as long as I have lived here, but I never really noticed him until the day his father dragged him over to get his hair trimmed and forgot about him. He said he was going to run an errand, and one errand turned into three and then he met some friends for lunch downtown at Good Times. So Benji stayed over for the rest of the day. Before that he was just the weird, skinny kid who stared out the window but never came outside, and who scurried to school in the mornings, like maybe if he moved fast enough no one would see him.

  Mom gave him the royal treatment — scalp massage, a glass of chocolate milk, shampoo consultation — even though he was only seven and none of that stuff means anything to a seven-year-old. Especially a boy. But Benji isn’t like other boys. He loved it and asked all sorts of questions. He wanted to smell all the products and touch all her brushes and combs. Mom was in heaven. At least until her next client showed up and she shooed him into the living room to play with me.

  Benji is the kind of kid who has been teased his whole life: small, scrawny and kind of girly. He always has his nose in a magazine and hangs on the sidelines while the other boys team up for basketball. At least, he’s girlier than I am, which isn’t saying much since I hate dressing up and could care less about stupid teen magazines. You would think having a mother who owned a hair salon would have made me hair crazy and fashion conscious, but I told her ages ago she’d better find someone else to leave the Hair Emporium to, because the minute I’m done high school I’m going to Hollywood to become an actress. I’ll be famous, and all those people who made fun of me or underestimated me will be sorry they weren’t nicer to me. They’ll turn on their TVs at the end of the day to see me walk across the stage to accept my Oscar, while they sit on the couch in their pyjamas eating Cheezies.

  Benji has already offered to be my stylist. When you’re famous, it’s good to have people you can trust working for you. They are less likely to sell your diaries to a tabloid or go on late-night talk shows and blab all about your love life. Benji would never do that. Plus he’s pretty good at doing hair. Mom says he has the gift of gentle hands and I have to agree with her. Sometimes between clients Mom will teach him how to do a new updo or the correct way to blow someone’s hair out straight. Benji practises on me and he never pulls too hard or jabs me with a bobby pin, which is more than I can say for my mother, who has been known to yank so hard that I get tears in my eyes. And she’s supposed to be the professional.

  Benji used to get picked on pretty bad, which is one of the reasons we became friends. He’d come home snivelling away and my mother would run out screaming blue murder at the boys who’d knocked him down. She’d take him by his hand and march him right into the salon, where she’d sit him down and sponge away the blood and dirt. Afterwards she’d mix up a special batch of foundation to cover the bruising. Sometimes she’d sweep a little blush on his cheeks to give h
im “a healthy glow.” I guess she figured if it looked like Benji got out once in awhile the kids would think he was a healthy, robust kid who could handle himself in a fight. Poor Benji went from being the wimpy kid to the weirdo kid who wore makeup. But it didn’t seem to bother him much — didn’t stop him from hanging around the salon, asking my mother all sorts of questions about her hair care line. Ever since then we’ve walked home together and somewhere along the way we became best friends.

  ***

  Faking a phone call is a lot harder than faking a signature. With a signature you can put a piece of tissue paper over a sample of handwriting and trace it a few times until you get the hang of it. Plus, you can always do it in pencil and then trace over it in pen when you get it just right. You only have one chance for a phone call, so you have to get it right the first time. Also, you can’t say “like” and “um” all the time. You have to lower your voice and know the right questions to ask.

  “Okay, let’s practise one more time. You be the school, I’ll be the parent.”

  Benji sighs. “Okay.”

  “Ring, ring.”

  “Hello?”

  “Benji, you have to say the name of the school.”

  “Right. Ferndale Public School.”

  I put on my best bossy Mom voice. “Yes, hello. To whom am I speaking, please?”

  “Mrs. Davis, secretary.”

  “Good day, Mrs. Davis. I would like to speak to a Miss Ross.”

  “Okay.”

  “Benji! You didn’t ask me who I was!”

  “Sorry,” Benji apologizes. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Annie Delaney and I am a parent of a student at the school.”

  “Please hold, Mrs. Delaney.”

  “It’s Miss Delaney. I’m not married.”

  Benji’s eyes widen.

  “Do you really think she’d say that? She’d correct Mrs. Davis?”

  “Of course she would. Mom corrects everybody. It has to be believable.”

  Finally, after three practice rounds, I’m ready to give it a go. I make Benji go upstairs and find something for us to eat while I make the phone call. I can’t have him distracting me while I’m in character.

  The phone seems to ring for an awfully long time before there’s a click and Mrs. Davis picks up.

  “Ferndale Public School.”

  This is it! I take a deep breath and speak in my calmest voice.

  “Yes, good day, I was wondering if I could speak with a Miss Ross.”

  “I’m sorry, the staff have left for the day.”

  “Oh, of course,” I think quickly. “Well my name is Annie Delaney and I am just calling to, uh, confirm, that my daughter, Clarissa Louise Delaney, has indeed been placed in 7B.”

  “One moment, please.”

  Mrs. Davis puts me on hold. My heart seems to throb in time with the beeping sound the phone makes while I wait. I hold the receiver away from my mouth and take deep breaths. Benji comes down the stairs, a giant freezie in each hand.

  “Well?” he whispers.

  “I’m on hold,” I hiss. “Don’t look at me! You’ll mess me up!”

  Benji looks around for some place to hide.

  “Where do you want me to go?” he asks.

  “Thank you for holding, Mrs. Delaney—”

  “It’s Miss,” I insist, turning my back on Benji.

  “Miss Delaney,” Mrs. Davis repeats. “I see here that Clarissa will be in 7B.”

  It’s all I can do to keep from whooping and hollering, but I regain my composure and think calmly, like an adult. In my most polite voice I ask, “Might I enquire if a Benjamin Denton will also be in that class? I told his father, David Denton, that I would check for him.”

  There is another pause; I can just picture Mrs. Davis with her poufy bangs and clip-on earrings running a long pink fingernail down the list of names.

  “Let me see, yes, Benjamin Denton will also be in 7B.”

  “Oh that’s just, I mean, we’re very excited. Thank you very much, Mrs. Davis.”

  I hang up before she can ask me any more questions. When I turn around Benji is grinning, his lips stained blue from the freezie.

  “We’re in!” I shout.

  Benji thrusts a freezie at me and we start jumping up and down, sucking on our freezies and laughing like maniacs. Mom sticks her head out from the salon and frowns at us.

  “What’s gotten into you two?” she asks. “You’re awfully cheerful for two kids who are going back to school on Tuesday.”

  “I wish it was Tuesday tomorrow,” I gush.

  Mom looks at me like I’ve gone a little insane, and maybe I have.

  “Now I know you’ve gone crazy,” she says.

  I ignore her. “This is going to be my year, I know it!” I hold up my freezie and say, “A toast!”

  Benji lifts his freezie up and repeats, “A toast!”

  “To Miss Ross!”

  “To Miss Ross!” Benji says.

  We down the rest of our freezies and collapse on the floor, suffering from too much excitement and wicked-bad brain freeze.

  Beautiful

  It’s my favourite time of day, just after dinner but before the street lamps turn on. Outside the air still smells like barbequed hamburgers and the sound of the crickets is getting louder; you can hear them underneath all the yelling from the kids playing street hockey. There is a nip in the air that I swear wasn’t there last week. Inside, Mom and I are staring at each other in the mirror of the Hair Emporium.

  “Well,” she says, testing the weight of my hair in her hands, “what’ll it be this year? Blue highlights? Bangs? A fauxhawk?”

  I roll my eyes. “Ha, ha. If I want to look like a weirdo, I know where to go.”

  Mom laughs. “Well if you ever feel like indulging in a little teenage rebellion you can always get a job at Curl Up & Dye. That is one sure way to get under my skin.”

  Curl Up & Dye is the newest salon in town. It falls under hipster salon in my mother’s three categories of salon. Barbershops don’t count because their clientele is mostly men. Hipster salons are full of stylists with tattoos and body piercings. They wear tight jeans or patterned tights and revealing tops, even the boys. You go to a hipster salon if you want to dye your hair purple or get a mohawk or want any kind of haircut that most people would find stupid.

  Curl Up & Dye opened this summer and Mom has been grumbling about it ever since. The head stylist moved from Vancouver where she used to work on film sets, doing hair for movie stars.

  “A gimmick,” Mom said. “She won’t last. Not when people realize how hard it is to grow out those mini bangs. Plus, if she was so hot in Vancouver, then what is she doing here?”

  My mom’s best friend Denise tapped the side of her nose. “Drugs,” she said.

  Denise thinks that drug dealing is the source of all mysterious wealth. “Clarissa,” she said, “you stay clear away from drugs. I don’t care how cute a boy is, never let him give you drugs; they will scramble your brains and wreck your skin. And that is more than my own mother ever told me.”

  Mall salons are usually part of a chain. They offer the cheapest rates and use products you can buy from infomercials on TV. The stylists wear white and too much makeup. My mom worked in a mall salon once called Kwick Kuts. “I gave perms and trimmed bangs for eight hours a day with a half-hour lunch and no break. I felt like a little cog in a big wheel.”

  To this day she hates giving perms because the smell of the chemicals reminds her of working at Kwick Kuts.

  The last category is granola salons. In a granola salon, everyone talks in hushed voices and they play nature CDs on repeat all day long. If they offer you anything to drink, it’s water or green tea. The hair products are all natural, all organic and full of essential oils. Mom does not buy into any of it.

  “If I want to feel close to nature, I’ll go camping,” she’ll say. “Oatmeal is for eating, not for scalp treatments.”

  Mom calls them granola salons
because they go after the granola hippie: “Or worse, the type who think they’re hippies but spend hundreds of dollars at the mall to look like hippies.” Just the word hippie makes Mom roll her eyes.

  The Hair Emporium doesn’t fit into any category. Mom caters to the small-town woman who wants a good haircut in a nice place, which is why the salon looks like a sunny kitchen, with fluffy white curtains, black-and-white checkerboard tiles on the floor, yellow walls and red reclining chairs. Every morning Mom burns a vanilla candle in the salon to make it smell homey. People are always saying that the Hair Emporium reminds them of the little salon in the movie Steel Magnolias. That makes my mom smile because it’s one of her all-time favourite movies. After Pretty Woman, of course.

  Mom smiles at me in the mirror, playing around with my hair, trying to find the perfect shape. I try to avert my eyes but it’s hard when you’re sitting in front of a huge mirror and your mother is staring you down. I don’t spend a lot of time looking in the mirror if I can help it. I know I’m not ugly, but I’m not beautiful either. I am the tallest girl and the third-tallest person in my whole class. My legs are really long, but not in a good way, more in a pants-never-fit way. I’m flat as flat can be, which is fine with me, and my hair can’t seem to decide if it would rather be straight or curly. Mostly I wear it in a ponytail to hide the fact that it is probably the worst hair you could possibly be stuck with.

  “Don’t worry, Clarissa,” Mom says, reading my mind. “Right now your hair is all hopped up on hormones. It’ll settle down once you get through puberty.”

  I hate it when she says words like puberty.

  I have this idea of what I look like in my head, and every time I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror, I’m always a little surprised at the person staring back. In my head, my nose is smaller, my cheeks are thinner and my eyes are more green than brown. It doesn’t help that my mother is officially a knockout, with a heart-shaped face, dimples, big blue eyes and thick, honey-blond hair. She has an award to prove it. When she was seventeen Mom won the beauty pageant at the fair and came second in the regionals, not that she ever talks about it. Her official title was Dairy Queen, which had nothing to do with the restaurant, sadly, but was because the pageant was sponsored by the Dairy Farmers of Ontario.