“Definitely. He’s one of my best friends.”
“Just a friend? That’s all he is?”
I caught the “Yes” before it escaped from my mouth. Yes was not exactly the truth.
Which surprised even me.
“I don’t know, Peaches,” I said. “Maybe not.”
I learned a new word on Tuesday evening.
Pariah.
Janine taught it to me. It means “a person shunned by others.” She called me “Claudia the Pariah.”
She wasn’t being mean. We had been talking about my day at school. And she’d thought of the perfect way to describe it.
All day long, my seventh-grade friends had shunned me.
Josh was acting as if I had some awful contagious disease. When I’d arrived at my locker before school, he was already off to his homeroom. In the cafeteria during lunch, he’d headed away from my table.
Even during the Color War, when our team had pulled into first place by four points and everybody was screaming and hugging each other, Josh had stayed far away.
That alone wouldn’t have bothered me too much. I figured, okay, he’s embarrassed to talk to me. Tongue-tied. But the weirdest thing was that Shira, Joanna, and Jeannie had avoided me too.
I could guess what had happened. They must have talked to Josh. They must have known that Josh knew that I knew that Josh liked me. And they had been waiting for me to take the next step.
How did this become so complicated?
There were two bright spots. As I mentioned our team had pulled into the Color War lead that day. And Mark had apologized to me sweetly. He’d even asked me out after school — and had given me a signed guarantee that he’d show up.
To be honest, I was nervous about going out with him. So much had been happening. I didn’t know how I felt about a lot of things anymore.
Especially about him.
As I approached my locker at the end of the day, Joanna, Jeannie, and Shira were huddled around Josh.
“Hi, guys!” I greeted them.
“We were just going,” Shira said. “ ’Bye, Claudia.”
Off they flew.
All except for Josh. He was still stuffing books in his pack, looking very stiff.
“Hi, Josh!” I said as I pulled open my locker. “Can you believe it? We’re ahead.”
“Cool,” Josh replied. “It’s so cool. I mean, it’s just really …”
“Cool?”
Josh burst out laughing. “I’ve been working on my vocabulary.”
That was when I noticed his smile. I mean, really noticed it. And it was so contagious. It made his face very handsome.
Well, more handsome. He was pretty good-looking to begin with.
Could it work? Could I possibly …?
Stop it, Claudia!
I guess Josh must have been reading my thoughts. When he glanced at me, he clammed right up.
“Well. I have all my books now,” he said, backing down the hallway. “So, uh, ’bye.”
He jogged away, then disappeared around the corner.
Claudia the Pariah strikes again.
As I finished loading up, I heard whispers. They were coming from around the corner Josh had just turned.
They were frantic, scolding whispers. And they were unmistakably the voices of Shira, Joanna, and Jeannie.
They’d been waiting for him!
His coaches. That’s what they were.
They were planning strategy. Tactics. Whatever.
About me!
Why couldn’t Josh just talk to me? Why was he being so immature?
Because he’s a year younger, I reminded myself. He’s supposed to be less mature. I was less mature a year ago.
Wasn’t I?
It made sense that I was attracted to Mark. He’s thirteen.
Not that he’s the world’s most mature person. But at least he’s not tongue-tied and nervous. At least he knows what to say to me.
Even if it’s not what I want to hear.
I looked around for him. He should have been here by now.
The hallway was emptying. Locker doors were slamming left and right.
I waited. I sat on the floor, leaning against the lower vents of my locker door. I tried to do some homework, but I couldn’t concentrate.
When my back started aching, I stood up and walked to the front lobby.
Mark was leaning against the wall, near the glass display case. Jennifer Blye was with him, yakking away.
Jennifer has the world’s worst crush on Mark. If I decided to switch grades, she would probably organize a victory parade.
“Mark?” I said, trying to sound nonchalant.
Mark turned. “Oh, hi, Claudia.”
Jennifer’s big, gooey smile vanished.
“I’m ready,” I said patiently. “Are you?”
“Sure,” Mark replied.
“Where are you guys going?” Jennifer asked.
“Yes, where are we going, Mark?” I asked.
“Uh … downtown, I guess,” Mark said.
“That’s where I’m going,” Jennifer piped up.
I nudged Mark in the ribs. “Well,” he said, “this is kind of a, you know …”
“Date,” I added.
Jennifer huffed away. Mark and I left the school.
As we walked across the street, I could not keep my cool any longer. “You’re forgiven,” I snapped.
“Forgiven for what?” Mark said.
“I thought I heard you say, ‘I’m sorry, Claudia.’ Hmmm, maybe I just assumed you did, because it’s the decent thing to do.”
“Sorry for what? She was talking to me.”
“Sorry for forgetting you were supposed to meet me, Mark!”
“I didn’t!” Mark protested. “I was waiting.”
“So was I — by my locker, where we always meet after school.”
“I didn’t need to go to my locker today!”
“I was supposed to know that? You could have come to meet me.”
“Okay, okay —”
“Or at least apologized —”
“I’m sorry. All right?”
I didn’t reply.
Our footsteps clacked dully as we headed toward the short route to town, through Brenner Field.
Mark was scowling. He looked as if he were heading to the dentist.
Some date.
I’d been looking forward to this for days. But now that we were finally together, I felt awful.
What was the point?
“Mark,” I finally said. “Do you think this is working?”
“Do I think what is working?”
“Us.”
Mark shrugged. “I guess. I haven’t thought about it that way.”
That wasn’t the answer I was hoping for. “What do you think about, Mark? Do you ever think about us?”
“Well … yeah. I am now, right? I mean, how can I help it?”
“I don’t mean now! I mean, in general. It’s just that, well, sometimes it seems as if you’re … not there.”
“So you’re talking about yesterday and the day before? I couldn’t be there. I had to postpone —”
“I don’t mean there there. I mean mentally there. There for me.”
“I don’t get it, Claudia. Are you asking, like, are you my girlfriend? Because, yeah, that’s what I tell people and all.”
“I don’t care what you tell people. I care about what you feel!”
“I don’t know,” Mark said. “I mean, how do you feel?”
Arrgh. This conversation was driving me crazy.
But it was a fair question. It deserved an honest answer.
“Right now?” I said. “I don’t know how I feel about you, Mark. I don’t think we’re working out.”
Mark exhaled loudly. We were walking on a dirt path through a grove of maple trees. Leaves were falling around us, and I caught a distant smoky whiff of someone’s chimney.
“Claudia,” Mark finally said, “is it another guy?”
br />
That question took me by surprise. As far as I’d been concerned, this conversation had had two parts only: Mark and me.
But maybe I was wrong. Like it or not, Josh was in the picture. Exactly how, I wasn’t sure. He wasn’t the reason Mark and I were fighting. But maybe he was part of it.
Maybe I was seeing Mark more clearly because I knew someone else really cared about me.
“I don’t know,” I said softly.
We stopped near the opposite side of Brenner Field. Mark turned to me. His face was scrunched up in a frown.
I felt bad. Part of me wanted to reach out and hug him and tell him everything was all right.
But it wasn’t. So much had been happening. The last few days had been rough for me. I’d been leaning on my family and my friends, dragging them through my dilemma. Stacey had been there for me. And my mom. And Janine. And Jeannie. Even Josh had been a good listener.
Through it all, Mark had been absent, really. To him, my problem hadn’t seemed too important.
And he had become the last person I wanted to share it with. My own boyfriend!
Not a good sign.
“You’re right, I guess,” Mark said. “It feels different than it used to.”
“We did have fun.”
Mark smiled. “Yeah. You’ll still pass me funny notes in homeroom, right? I mean, just as a friend?”
“Okay.”
We hugged, but just briefly. Like friends.
“I guess that’s it?” Mark said. He looked toward downtown. “Do you want to …?”
I shook my head. “I have tons of homework.”
“Me too. I’ll miss … you know.”
“Me too.”
That was it. We had broken up. No fights. No crying.
I was amazed.
Mark was backing away now, toward his house. “Hey, look at it this way: At least we’ll still be King and Queen of the Seventh Grade!”
He turned, waving. I waved back.
“Right!” I said cheerfully.
The truth? I wasn’t sure about that either.
“No, Suzi, you roll the hoop on the ground,” Stacey explained, “pushing it along with the stick.”
Suzi Barrett ignored her. Holding the guide stick in the air, she spun the plastic hoop around her waist and started shimmying. “Oh, I like to dance, I have ants in my pants!” she sang in a silly, high-pitched voice.
Her teammates were cracking up.
“Okay,” Stacey said, crossing out the event on her Official BSC Kids’ Color War Scorecard. “The hoop-rolling contest has now become a hoop dance!”
Not far away, against the baseball backstop, Mallory was helping Jake Kuhn onto a pair of stilts. “All I have to do is walk into the outfield?”
“It’s harder than it looks,” Mallory explained.
“Right,” snickered her brother Adam, who was waiting his turn. “Maybe for Jake.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jake snapped.
“Nothing,” Adam replied.
Jake was on the stilts now, leaning against the chain-link fence. He trained his eyes forward. “Just you wait,” he murmured.
Mallory gently pulled him upright, holding onto the stilts. “On your mark … get set … go!”
She released her grip. Jake’s right foot — along with the stilt — lunged forward and slightly to the right.
His left foot (and stilt) followed, slightly to the left.
“You’re doing it!” Mallory shouted.
“Go, Jake!” screamed Marilyn Arnold, Jake’s green-team partner.
Right.
Left.
With each step, Jake’s legs spread farther apart. Finally he just stood still, wobbling, about to do a split.
Rrrrrrrip! went his pants. Right up the middle.
He tumbled to the ground.
Adam and Buddy Barrett, both on the red team, were doubled over, laughing.
Poor Jake. He was so embarrassed he started to cry.
“Okay, red team next!” Stacey shouted.
Guess what? Jake was soon laughing too. Neither Adam nor Buddy could travel any farther.
Nor could the black-team members, Patsy Kuhn and Shea Rodowsky.
Marilyn, however, made it all the way to center field.
“Green team, one point!” Stacey announced.
Across Brenner Field, a safe distance from everyone else, Kristy was holding a Nerf football toss. Four-year-old Jamie Newton was standing behind the throw line, which was a yardstick. He was winding his arm as if the Nerf ball were a baseball.
“Don’t try to overpower it,” Kristy warned.
“This is going to go so-o-o far,” Jamie promised.
“Okay, Jamie, throw!” Kristy said.
Jamie kept winding. “I’m going to throw it across the whole field!”
“Jamieeee, hurry up!” urged Lindsey DeWitt, his teammate.
Jamie gritted his teeth and threw. The ball flipped into the air and landed behind him.
Lindsey quickly picked it up. “My turn.”
“Good try, Jamie,” Kristy said.
Jamie turned and walked to a tree. Silently he sat down. Then he burst into tears.
“Time-out!” Kristy ran to him. “Hey, pal, are you okay?”
“Kristyyyyyy, look!” Lindsey yelled.
Kristy peered over her shoulder. The football was bouncing way out in the field. “Sorry, Lindsey, I can’t measure that. I called a timeout.”
“I didn’t hear it!” Lindsey protested.
“Well, go again,” Kristy said.
“I wanna go ho-o-o-ome!” Jamie cried.
“Look, you can have another chance too,” Kristy said.
“What about us?” bellowed Linny, who was waiting his turn. “You have to give us two chances too!”
“Fine,” said Kristy.
“But I’ll never throw it that far again,” Lindsey complained.
“Crybaby,” Linny taunted.
Lindsey picked up the Nerf ball and threw it at Linny. He caught it and threw it back. The ball bounced away and Jackie Rodowsky, Linny’s teammate, picked it up. “War!” he cried.
“Give it back!” Kristy commanded.
Too late. The entire Color War soon degenerated into a free-for-all game of Nerf dodgeball. All the other activities stopped as kids jumped in.
Stacey was running around, yelling. So was Mallory.
Kristy had reached her limit.
And that is not a pretty sight.
“I HAVE HAD ENOUGH!” she shouted. “THIS ENTIRE COLOR WAR IS HEREBY —”
HO-O-O-O-ONK! H-O-O-O-ONK!
The loud horn made everyone turn toward the street.
The Stevensons’ minivan was pulling up to the curb. When it stopped, Abby jumped out and waved. “The prizes are here!”
Instant stampede. Every single Color War team ran to the minivan.
Mrs. Stevenson was walking around to the back of the van. “I hope you appreciate this,” she said. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to drive here from New York City — even if you beat rush hour?”
She kept complaining (but in a friendly, teasing way) as she pulled open the door.
The back of the minivan was stuffed with big cardboard boxes — at least a dozen of them. On each of them was printed the logo of Mrs. Stevenson’s publishing company.
“Wo-o-ow,” said Suzi. “Are those for us?”
“Nope,” Stacey replied. “They’re for the charity chosen by the winning team.”
“Well, maybe a few bonus books for the participants,” Mrs. Stevenson said with a wink. “Right, girls?”
Kristy smiled. “Maybe.”
“YAAAAAAAAAAY!”
Stacey, Mallory, and Kristy had never seen kids so excited about books. The three teams raced back onto the field.
The final day of the Kids’ Color War ended without a hitch.
The score? A tie. (At least, that was what Kristy claimed. Stacey says they crunched the numbers a bit
, so no one would be disappointed.)
As a result, three different charities received brand-new children’s books that week.
And so did our charges.
Kristy? She was already planning next year’s Color War.
She never gives up.
“You can throw it any way you want,” Mark shouted to the orange-, white-, and blue-suited kids lined up on the basketball court. “Underhand, backward, jumping, standing on your head — as long as you’re behind the foul line!”
This was ironic. On the second-to-last day of the SMS Color War, Mark was working harder than I was.
I felt funny sitting in the bleachers as a spectator. Most of my friends were busy in the gym or outside. Kristy was in a rope-climbing event and Jeannie was in a “Design a Color War Logo” contest (the winning entry to be used in next year’s war). Stacey was trouncing everybody in a math contest. Josh was playing Speed Chess. But I had no events scheduled. I guess, in a way, that was a sign that the Color War was a success. The orange team was running on its own steam now.
So were the other teams. I think every kid in every grade had participated in at least one event.
The score? White 45, Blue 50, and Orange 49.
Close. Very close. But I had confidence.
Mark caught my glance for a moment and waved. I smiled and waved back.
Another ironic thing. Now that we’d broken up, I liked Mark better. I didn’t have to be angry about broken dates. I wasn’t worried how he felt about me.
I was free to concentrate on all my other problems.
Like my future.
Now that it was Thursday, now that I’d had two whole days to think clearly, what had I decided?
Nothing.
Zero for two.
I still didn’t know what to tell Mrs. Amer.
I still didn’t know what to say to Josh.
I have to give Mrs. Amer credit. She wasn’t pressuring me at all. Whenever I saw her in the hallway, she just smiled reassuringly.
Josh, on the other hand, was treating me as if I were the Queen of Cooties.
This was growing old. Very old. If Josh really liked me, why wasn’t he saying anything? He must have known Mark was out of the picture. I hadn’t had the nerve — or the time — to tell anyone, but it had to be obvious. Mark and I were no longer holding hands and hanging out together.
Was Josh playing hard to get? If so, it was working. Was he scared? Shy? Was he just waiting for the right time? Or had he given up, figuring I already hated him for waiting so long?