Finding the Forger Read Free Page B

consumption.
    While I fought back tears of self-pity, Kerrie rushed downstairs and returned a few seconds later to say it was okay, he’d take me home. When I went downstairs with her, Mr. Daniels stood by the front door with his keys in hand, but his gaze said more than I wanted to know. He looked at my hair more than at me and seemed confused. Finally, he said, “Are you in a play or something, Bianca?”
    I refrained from bursting out sobbing and just shook my head, “no.” Kerrie accompanied me on the ride and made a noble attempt to keep a conversation going. But all I could think of was how I’d fix my hair, or even if I could fix it. And if I couldn’t, I wondered if there was some sort of leave of absence I could take from school until the perm grew out.

    The first sign that I was right was when I got home and my mother didn’t yell at me for being late. I was supposed to fix dinnerthat night—we take turns since Mom works—so being late wasn’t just being late. It was “no dinner when dinner was supposed to be ready” late.
    But Mom took one look at my hair, her mouth dropped open, maybe her eyes watered, too, and she sucked in her lips. I could smell the meatloaf already baking, which meant she’d put it on herself. Yet, she said not one word about my cooking duties. Instead, she merely told me when dinner would be ready and asked me how my day was.
    “I think you can see how it was!” I moaned, touching my hair. A few singed ends came off in my hand.
    “Where did you get it done?” she asked. “Maybe you can get a refund.”
    “Kerrie did it for me. No refund.”
    “Why don’t you go take a shower? It might relax a little if you wash it.”
    I tramped upstairs to my room, threw my backpack on the bed, and avoided looking at myself in the mirror above my dresser. My sister Connie’s door was closed, and music was wafting into the hallway. Tony was nowhere to be seen. At least I’d be able to zip into the bathroom without running smack into sibling cruelty. Call me crazy, but I don’t think I’d get the same kind of loving sympathy from them as I got from Mom.
    This was borne out at dinner a little while later. I showed up at the table in my robe with a towel, arranged swami-style, around my head.
    Connie looked at me with narrowed eyes and asked me if I was sick or something, but Mom cut her off by saying I took a shower after school. Tony sniffed the air and said something smelled funny. He was right. The perm’s odor had been intensified by warm water.My head was surrounded by an aura of putrid foulness, like a garbage dump left in the sun. Boy, was I happy!
    Or not. I was pretty bummed. But have you noticed how hunger can often mask other emotions—such as bummedness? Since Mom made the meatloaf, it was actually good, so we all dove in. Literally. When we’re all hungry, the Balducci table is not a place for the faint-hearted. Tony started jabbing at the meat while Connie piled her plate with potatoes and carrots (she’s into vegetables) and I snagged a couple of rolls for mine. Poor Mom had nothing on her plate until we were all done whooshing and zooming the dishes between us so fast our table could have qualified for federal funding for air traffic controllers.
    Although we kids prefer to watch television during dinner, Mom has this pesky rule about actually talking to each other. She started the ball rolling by asking us each about our days.
    “Fine,” Tony mumbled through a mouthful of meat. Tony was an unapologetic carnivore.
    “Mmm . . . mmm . . . too,” Connie said, which I guess meant “me too have fine day, ugh.”
    Since Mom was nice to me, I stepped up to the plate and recounted my afternoon in such detail she probably regretted asking the question. By the time I was done reciting my litany of woes about Kerrie and Sarah and Doug (leaving out the perm, of course—I have some pride), Tony was rolling his eyes.
    “Flypaper for freaks,” he announced. “That’s what