“I’ll pick you up at eight, then?” she asks.
“Um, sure,” I say, figuring we’ll be done with dinner by eight. Sarah Lynn did say dinner, didn’t she? Suddenly I doubt myself.
“You realize I’ll have to leave my mahjong group early.”
“I know. I’m sorry. Do you want me to . . . try and figure something else out?”
She sighs. “No, I suppose not.”
I breathe a sigh of relief, glad Grandmother approves of the match enough to cut out early from mahjong. Indeed, when I told her Sarah Lynn’s last name, she was clearly impressed.
At school, I’m bubblier than usual. “Bubbly” comes naturally to me. I like people. But I’m especially vibrant today, and both Thelma and Mitchell notice.
“You sure are smiling a lot,” Thelma says during lunch.
“I am?” I say.
“Uh-huh,” she says. A particular “Thelma” expression crosses her face, one that sometimes annoys me and sometimes breaks my heart. It’s a mix of longing and something akin to dim-wittedness—only not exactly, because Thelma’s not dumb. She does, however, see the world through one specific lens, and when things don’t fit with what she’s expecting, she doesn’t know what to do.
“Did Mitchell give you his school pin?” she asks.
I laugh. “Mitchell doesn’t have a school pin.”
“Then what is it? What happened?”
“Nothing, I’m just happy,” I tell her.
Mitchell himself finds me after lunch, coming up behind me at my locker and putting his hands over my eyes.
“Guess who?” he says. I twist around so that we’re face-to-face and slip my arms around him.
“Who?” I say. I let my fingers dip into his back pocket, and the corner of his mouth goes up.
“You’re in a good mood today,” he comments.
“Why yes, I am.”
Mrs. Watkins, Dr. Evans’s secretary, walks by and tuts loudly. “Twelve inches,” she says, and Mitchell reluctantly steps back to create the required foot of space between us.
“I like your good mood,” he says in a low voice.
“Does that mean you’re going to give me your school pin?” I ask.
“I don’t have a school pin,” he replies. His eyes widen in alarm, and it’s so comical—and so boy—that I laugh.
“Alas,” I say. “Guess I’ll forgive you this time.”
The one person I don’t share my good mood with is Sandy, and when I see her barreling toward me at the end of fifth period, I duck into the stairwell and take the long way to my next class. She calls out, but I pretend I don’t hear.
At 3:35, I meet Sarah Lynn at the front parking lot. I’ve been looking forward to this moment all day, but now that it’s arrived, perspiration pops out under my arms. I have the crazy fear that I made it all up and she didn’t invite me over after all.
But she smiles when she sees me and says, “Good, you’re here. My mom just pulled up.”
“Okay,” I say. I flush at my nerves. “Um, yeah.”
I follow her to a sleek black Buick Riviera and climb into the backseat. Her mother smiles at me, and I smile back. As she pulls out of the parking lot, she asks polite questions, like am I enjoying Crestview and do I feel settled in. I’m flattered, because it means Sarah Lynn’s told her a little about me, such as the fact that I’m new this year. I wonder what else Sarah Lynn told her, if anything, and I miss the next question. Something about Atlanta—do I like it here?
I reply enthusiastically, and Sarah Lynn turns around and gives me an amused look.
“What?” I say, replaying the conversation in my head. Ohhh—her mom didn’t asked if I liked Atlanta; she asked how I liked Atlanta. As in, “So how do you like Atlanta, Bliss?” And I, with my enviable conversational skills, had caroled, “Absolutely!”
I giggle, and Sarah Lynn giggles too. Mrs. Lancaster’s glance, which I catch in the rearview mirror, is perplexed, and this makes us giggle even more.
The Lancasters’ house turns out to be an honest-to-goodness mansion, with a long, winding driveway, Greek pillars, and a balcony stretching along the second story. It’s like a plantation house from Gone with the Wind. I wonder if the Lancasters had slaves, long ago in the not-distant-enough past.
We enter through the back door, and Mrs. Lancaster drops her keys on the kitchen counter.
“Sarah Lynn, tell your father I’d like to go to the Colonnade for dinner tonight,” she says. “All right, sweetie?”
“Okay,” Sarah Lynn says.
“Mamie made some chicken and biscuits for you girls. You’ll find two plates in the refrigerator.”
“Okay,” Sarah Lynn says again.
Mrs. Lancaster smiles remotely, then clips across the tiled floor and disappears to another part of the house.
“Want some chocolate milk?” Sarah Lynn asks.
“Um, sure,” I say.
She pours milk into tall glasses and gets out a container of Ghirardelli chocolate shavings. I’ve eaten Ghirardelli chocolate before, but only once. I was in San Francisco with my parents for a protest march, and Dad splurged on a four-piece box for us to share. We split the fourth piece three ways.
“Here,” Sarah Lynn says after dumping two heaping spoonfuls into my glass. She passes me my milk, along with a silver spoon unlike any I’ve seen. It’s a combination spoonstraw, with a long, hollow handle. It clinks against the glass as I stir, and when I take my first sip, the cool metal feels exotic against my tongue.
“Let’s drink it on the porch,” Sarah Lynn says, leading the way. She walks with an easy self-assurance. She’s self-assured at school too, but here, her confidence is more relaxed, less Snow Princess perfect.
The porch is enclosed, with wood-paneled walls and wide windows overlooking a spacious yard. There’s a bookshelf in the corner filled with paperbacks, and on the top sits a large gourd painted to look like a whale. A patchwork quilt is draped over a spindle-legged chair. The décor has the feel of a mountain getaway, not that I’ve ever been to a mountain getaway.
Sarah Lynn takes a long sip of her chocolate milk, then sets her glass on a rickety side table and kicks off her shoes. She flops onto a hammock and says, “Ahhhhh.” It’s not one of those cheap nylon hammocks that a couple of people on the commune slept in, but a thick rope hammock suspended from a green metal frame. Sarah Lynn pulls in her elbows and moves to one side, balancing carefully so the hammock doesn’t flip.
“Here,” she says, patting the space she’s made. “Put your head by my feet and we can both fit.”
I hesitate, then place my glass by Sarah Lynn’s and slip off my shoes. I ease onto the hammock. When I’m situated, Sarah Lynn pushes the wall with her foot so that the hammock swings back and forth.
“In the summer I’m out here every day,” she says. “Sometimes I even sleep here. It’s my own private place.”
“Mmm,” I say. The cords of the hammock cradle my body.
“I’m so glad it’s the weekend,” she goes on. “I get so sick of it all, you know?”
“Of what?”
“Of school,” she says. She laughs a little, like what else?
“You don’t like school?” To me, this seems incomprehensible. I like school, and I’m just me. Sarah Lynn is . . . Sarah Lynn.
She sighs. “Melissa’s all mad because she says I treat my guy friends better than my girl friends, and Heather says she doesn’t want to be in the middle of it, but she gives Melissa these looks, and it’s obvious whose side she’s on. And Lacy—”
She breaks off. “Oh, gosh. I invite you over and bore you to death with my stupid life. Nice, Sarah Lynn.”
“No, it’s okay.” I don’t mind in the least that she’s boring me with her stupid life—which anyway, she’s not. It’s as if we got out here on her porch and were transported to an alternate universe: a universe where Sarah Lynn Lancaster confides in me like it’s the most natural thing in the world, and where I open my heart and welcome the gift o
f natural friendship.
“What were you going to say about Lacy?” I ask. “Did something happen with her too?”
“Nothing happened,” Sarah Lynn says. “It’s just . . . this is going to sound incredibly dumb.”
“No, it won’t. What?”
She stalls, but I wait her out.
“She’s mad at me for getting chosen as Snow Princess,” she confesses.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she’s jealous?” She quickly retracts her statement. “Or maybe not. Like I said, I don’t know.”
“But it’s not like you asked to be picked,” I say. “She shouldn’t blame you for it.”
Sarah Lynn loops her toes beneath a cord of rope. Since her feet are by my head, I can’t help but notice their narrow elegance.
“I wish I hadn’t been picked,” she confesses. “That sounds like one of those things people just say, but it’s true. I don’t want everyone staring at me. I don’t want to buy a dress. And I don’t want to deal with my parents, especially my daddy.”
“How come? Isn’t he proud of you?”
“I guess.”
“I’m sure he is,” I say, wanting to convince her. “How could he not be?”
“You know what, just forget it.”
I feel bad, like I’ve failed her.
Sarah Lynn frees her toe from the hammock, extends her leg, and pushes off the wall to get us swinging again. Her foot returns to curl among the hammock loops, like a kitten on its bed.
Well, no. Not like a kitten.
“It’s just that he’s already laying down all these rules,” Sarah Lynn says unhappily. “Like what kind of dress I can wear and how late I can stay out and who I can—”
She breaks off abruptly, but I know where the sentence was going.
Who you can go with, I fill in silently. Who you can dance with. Who you can love.
“I know I sound like a spoiled brat,” she says. “It’s just . . . sometimes I feel so trapped.”
We sway, and it’s like being hypnotized: back and forth, back and forth. I stare at the ceiling, which seems to sway with us.
I wish she’d go ahead and bring up Lawrence, or that I was brave enough to do it myself. I wish I could make everything be okay.
ater, we go upstairs so Sarah Lynn can change out of her school clothes. Her room is pretty much as I expected: pink floral curtains and a pink comforter for her bed; pillow shams with white ruffles; lots of stuffed animals. It’s nice. It’s clean. Not a cat in sight.
She opens a drawer and tosses me a shirt, which I catch by pure luck. She selects a shirt for herself, then opens the next drawer and pulls out two pairs of jeans. “Which do you want, butterflies or bell-bottoms?”
I’m caught unawares. “You don’t have to lend me anything,” I say.
“You want to keep your school uniform on? Bliss, it’s the weekend.”
She makes a good point.
“Um, butterflies,” I say.
“Butterflies it is.” She passes me the jeans, which have lavender butterflies embroidered onto the back pockets. I slip out of my skirt and wiggle into them.
“They look good,” she says, and I turn to see that she’s fully dressed. I change into the shirt she gave me, and it does feel nice to be out of my Crestview attire. It feels like we’re just us, instead of the people we are in school. Even though I’m in her clothes.
“Listen,” she says. “About the Snow Princess stuff . . .”
“Yeah?”
“I really do know how lucky I am. I hope I didn’t come across as ungrateful.”
“Oh, don’t worry.”
“Can you imagine what people would say if they heard me complaining? ‘Poor little Sarah Lynn doesn’t want to be a Snow Princess. Boo-hoo.’”
“They wouldn’t say that,” I say.
Her smile is rueful. “What about you? Will you be there?”
“At the dance? Why, yes, I will.” I straighten my shoulders. “I’m going with Mitchell Truman.”
“For real?”
“What do you mean, for real? Yes, for real!”
Sarah Lynn giggles. “Oh my gosh, I did not mean for it to come out that way.”
“Uh-huh, sure.”
“I didn’t. Honest. I think Mitchell’s awfully cute.”
“That’s because he is awfully cute.”
“And he rides a motorcycle.”
“He does at that.”
She touches my arm. “I’m glad you’re going to be there,” she says. “And seriously, thanks for listening to all my crap. I can’t talk to Melissa or Heather about it, and I definitely can’t talk to Lacy. But it’s different with you.”
Happiness makes me grow warm. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” She’s solemn for a second. Then she smiles and says, “Come on. We better get some work done at least.”
meet Mr. Lancaster before the evening is over. He’s a big, burly man with big sideburns of the sort called “muttonchops,” and sure enough, it looks as if slabs of meat have been slapped onto each side of his face. Meat with the fur still attached.
He has an affable charm, and I wonder if perhaps he’s not as bad as some people say after all. His blue dress shirt matches his eyes—I see now where Sarah Lynn got her blue eyes—and he’s comfortable in his body the way powerful men tend to be.
“Your mother say anything about dinner?” he asks Sarah Lynn after she has introduced us.
“Um, she wants you to take her to the Colonnade,” Sarah Lynn says.
“That I can do,” he says. “Are you two coming with us?”
“Mamie made us chicken,” Sarah Lynn says. “We’re going to stay and work on our essays.”
“My smart girl,” he says, mussing her hair. She ducks from his touch, and he chuckles. He turns to me and says, “She gets embarrassed, but a daddy’s got to brag on his girl, isn’t that right?”
“Yessir,” I say.
He loosens his tie. “A man who can’t take pride in his daughter, why that’s a man I feel sorry for. Just today, I heard that Tom Dewitty’s girl is up and marrying a Negro. Don’t that just take the rag off the bush?”
Sarah Lynn’s eyes dart to me. I don’t know what to do with my expression.
“Little black nigger babies, that’s what Tom’s got coming,” Mr. Lancaster says, striding to the refrigerator. “Little black nigger babies for grandbabies.”
“Daddy,” Sarah Lynn says, mortified.
“If I were Tom, I’d handle it different, I tell you what. A shotgun and a shovel would take care of it real quick, and not a man in Georgia would fault him for it.” He opens the refrigerator door. “You two want a Co’ Cola?”
Neither of us answers. Splotches of color blaze on Sarah Lynn’s cheekbones.
Three Coke bottles clank as Mr. Lancaster brings them over. He sets one in front of me and another in front of Sarah Lynn, then uses a bottle opener to flip the caps off. He opens his last and takes a long swig.
“Reckon I better let y’all get back to your studying,” he says. He winks at me before leaving the room. “Mighty nice to meet you, Bliss. Come back anytime.”
onday at school, Thelma invites me to be on the freshman float committee.
“What’s the freshman float committee?” I ask.
“It’s the committee that makes the float,” she says in the tone she reserves for moments of Bliss-stupidity. “For the Winter Dance?”
“Ohhh. Right. What’s a float?”
“It’s only what we’ve been slaving away on every lunch period for the last week! What did you think we’ve been doing?”
“Uh . . .”
She huffs. “The Winter Dance is on the first Friday of December. It’s always on the first Friday of December, and that’s only four days away. The float’s almost done, but we need all the help we can for the final touches.”
I’m still not getting the whole “float” thing, but I say, “Okay, sure.” It has to do with the dance,
and that’s good enough for me. Plus, there’s no way Sandy will be part of the float committee, whatever it is.
“Great!” Thelma says. “Meet us in the gym after fourth period.”
But at noon, as I head down the hill that leads to the gymnasium, I hear rapid footfalls and heavy breathing, and a winded Sandy appears by my side. A nasty welt runs down the left side of her face, a dark line slicing her from eyebrow to cheekbone. Her eyelid is puffy, and on the white of her eye, below the iris, is a gummy red clot. It reminds me of an egg, how every so often the yolk is flecked with blood.
“Cripes,” I say. “What happened to you?”
“What happened to me?” Sandy says. “What happened to you?! You haven’t answered my calls, and all last week you never ate in the cafeteria. You didn’t show up today, either!”
It’s not my job to eat with you, I want to say. Instead, I dodge the question.
“Did Regular scratch you?” I ask.
“Regular? No.” She smiles a funny little smile. “Well, yes. Okay, she did. But this is the scratch Regular gave me.” She holds out her forearm, where there’s another, equally violent gash. “This one”—she gestures at her swimmy eye, then blinks—“well, it just kind of happened. But it wasn’t Regular.”
“It looks bad,” I say. “Like, you-need-to-see-a-doctor bad. You might have a burst capillary.”
“Yeah, yeah, sure, sure,” she says. “So are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
“Nothing’s going on,” I say. “I’m helping out with the freshman float, that’s all. What is a float, anyway?”
The distraction works, and for a moment, Sandy forgets to nag me. “It’s . . . a big display,” she explains, “and for the Winter Dance, they’re always made to be thrones. Every grade makes one—freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors—and the Snow Princesses sit on top.”
“And then what?”
“What do you mean, and then what? And then nothing.”
“They just sit there?”
“Pretty much.”
“So what’s the point?”
She laughs. “Exactly.”
I laugh too, though right away I stop. “Anyway, we’re meeting at twelve, and it’s already five after. So I better go.”