Laura Ruby - Bad Apple

The way to read a fairy tale is to throw yourself in.

W. H. Auden

All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.

Pablo Picasso

Mr. Mymer, my art teacher, is tall and skinny with floppy hair the color of yams and a peculiar affection for funny T-shirts: CLUB SANDWICHES, NOT SEALS. YOGA IS FOR POSERS. FULL FRONTAL NERDITY . When my mother met him at parent-teacher conferences, she said he seemed like a very interesting person. She doesnt say that anymore. Now she says things like hes evil, a criminal, and a predator.

After she says these things, she sometimes stares at me as if Im a wounded bird flapping around her living roommaybe something you want to help, maybe something you want to smack with a broom. She opens and closes her mouth as if she might call me a name, too, but she never does.

I think the name is liar.

My father didnt go to the parent-teacher conferences. He was on his honeymoon. His new wife is Hannalore, which is German for I keep poisoned apples in my purse .

No, stupid, says my sister, Tiffany. Its German for I haul spoiled stepchildren into the woods and leave them for the wolves. I gather the bones that are left and crush them to a powder. I drink the powder in my afternoon tea. It keeps my skin looking young.

Hannalore is six hundred feet tall and looks like one of those opera singers. You know the ones. They wear the metal breastplates and the big hats with the horns. Theyre always the last to sing.

Like Hannalore, the Brothers Grimm also came from Germany. We all know what kind of tales the brothers had to tell. Bad things have gone down in Germany.

Youre such an idiot, Tola, says my sister, her eyes narrow as punctures. Ever hear of the Spanish Inquisition? The Salem witch trials? Slavery? Bad stuff goes down everywhere.

But my sister doesnt really care about the Brothers Grimm or anything else. After a few minutes of talking about it, she suddenly shrieks: Shut up! Shut up about the Brothers Grimm! Why does everything you say have some sort of literary reference? Why do you carry around that stupid book? How pretentious are you?

Someone who wears lavender contact lenses shouldnt talk about being pretentious. I refuse to call my sister Tiffany, so I call her Madge. Madge is eighteen going on Crypt Keeper and cries all the time. I often find her curled up on her bed, wailing like a lost kitten. When you ask her whats wrong, she can never explain. Life, she says. Or, more specifically, Everything. Sometimes she hyperventilates. She carries around a supply of brown lunch bags just in case she has to sit and breathe into one.

Only people named Madge breathe into brown lunch bags.

Madge has been to four doctorsone regular one and three therapists. She doesnt like therapists. She calls them voodoo headshrinker freaks. She says that all they want to do is blame our parents for her problems when its the whole world thats in pain.

I myself have not been to any therapists, which is funny, considering that my sister is (was?) the golden girl and Im the bad seed. Five years ago, at one of the parent-teacher conferences my mother enjoys so much, my sixth-grade math teacher told my mother that though I was doing better in class, I still stared out the window and appeared stupid. Those were her exact words, too. She still stares out the window and appears stupid. This is not the sort of thing you say to my mother about one of her children. My mother used her coldest voicethe voice so arctic and furious that icicles spiked the air as she spoketo tell off my teacher. It took a while. A half hour, maybe. (Im not sure how long because I was staring out the window and appearing stupid.) My teacher got paler and paler as my mother told her how inappropriate and ridiculous and irresponsible this comment was and how rude and naive and inept the teacher was. My mother talked until the teacher blended in with the white board behind her. And then my mother grabbed my arm and yanked me from the room.

In the car on the way home, my mother used that same freezemonster voice to tell me that Id better start paying attention in class and living up to my potential, or she would send me to a monastery in Nepal, where Id spend my life combing fleas from the yaks.

I told my grandpa Joe what my mom said. He patted my hand and declared that hed never met a yak he didnt like.

Me, Mom, Madge, and the yaks. Sounds bad, but its not. It wasnt. Take the teachers. Most of them are nice. Sometimes I draw portraits of them and leave the pictures on their desks. That doesnt thrill some of the other kids, who think Im a brownnoser. But thats not true, either. I like to draw, and the teachers are there just waiting to be drawn. Besides, the things I draw arent always the kinds of things that teachers find flattering. Like, say, putting Ms. Rothschilds head on a rabbits body. Or drawing Mr. Anderson with a tail. Ms. Rothschild thought her portrait was hilarious; Mr. Anderson, not so much. Actually, that last drawing got me a trip to the principals office.

The principal: Is this supposed to be a joke?

Me: No, its a present.

The principal: A present?

Me: As in gift.

The principal (muttering) : You couldnt have given him an apple?

Me: You think he would have liked fruit better?

The principal: Youre a smart girl, so Im going to be blunt. I think youd be a lot happier if you stopped acting so weird.

Me: Who says Im not happy?

But maybe he was right, because nobodys happy now.

Before Mr. Mymer, these are the kinds of things that people said about me:

1. In third grade, Tola Riley ate nine funnel cakes at the school carnival and then puked them up on the Tilt-A-Whirl.
2. In fourth grade, Tola Riley stole Chelsea Patricks American Girl dollone of those creepy twin dollsand tried to flush it down the toilet, flooding the school bathroom and causing thousands of dollars worth of damage.
3. In sixth grade, Tola Riley ran down Josh Beck, the fastest kid in the whole school, so she could rip out a lock of his hair to use in a spell.
4. In eighth grade, Tola Riley drew a picture of one of her teachers with a noose around his neck and was almost suspended.
5. In ninth grade, Tola Riley was caught making out with Michael Brandeis in the broom closet and was almost suspended.
6. In tenth, Tola Riley was caught making out with June Leon in the girls room and was almost suspended.
7. In eleventh, Tola Riley was making out with John MacGuire at a party when, for no reason at all, she smashed him in the head with a fishbowl and swallowed the goldfish.
8. She has strange piercings in mysterious places.
9. Shes descended from fairies, trolls, munchkins, and/or garden gnomes.
10. She has ADHD, bipolar disorder, Aspergers, and/or psychic powers.

I think this stuff is funny; at least, I used to. No one really believed any of the stories; they just needed something to talk about. Everyone loves a villain. Or maybe not a villain, exactly, but someone you can point out and say, I might be weird, but Im not weird like her . I was cool with that. I had my friends. I didnt need to be like the rest of the drooling high-school idiotsobsessed with sex, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, texting, drinking, and UV rays ( Orange is the new tan! ). Let people think I was crazy; let them think I would say anything, draw anything, do anythingwhat did I care?

Now that I do care, now that Im trying to tell my own story, no one is listening. Madge says I havent helped my case by chopping off my hair and dyeing it a shiny emerald green (in addition to the nose ring my mother nearly had a stroke over).