Just as Long as We're Together

  “What night?”

  “That night I told you to think of other people’s feelings.”

  “Oh … that night.”

  “From now on,” Mom said, “if we have something to say we should say it. It’s not good to hold in feelings … anger and resentment build up that way.”

  “Did you know I went to see the counselor at school?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Only one time … she wanted to help me with my problems but I told her I didn’t have any. Rachel says I don’t face reality.”

  “Is that what your fight was about?”

  “That’s part of it. Do you think I face reality?”

  “I think you handle it in your own way. I don’t see you hiding from the facts. I don’t see you withdrawing.”

  “Sometimes I pretend everything’s okay when it’s not.”

  “So do I,” Mom said. “That’s how I make it through the day.”

  “We’re a lot alike, aren’t we?” I asked. “We’re both optimists.”

  Mom hugged me. “We sure are.”

  Spring

  It’s been seven weeks since Rachel and I stopped speaking. At the bus stop in the morning she doesn’t even look at me. She and Dana stand together, talking and laughing. Sometimes they talk so softly I can’t hear what they’re saying. I wish Alison would hurry and get better. I hate standing at the bus stop by myself. I’ve never felt so left out in my life. It’s as if I’m invisible, as if I don’t exist. Well, fine. Because as far as I’m concerned, Rachel Robinson doesn’t exist either. Besides, I have more important things on my mind, such as what happens on May first when Dad starts working in New York?

  I took Alison’s homework assignments to her but the first three days she was too sick to do anything. Leon let me peek into her room. Seeing her like that, so small and pale with her eyes closed, frightened me. I guess Leon could tell because he said, “It looks worse than it is. She’s going to be fine.”

  Later that week when I got to her house, Alison was sitting up in bed, sipping grape juice. “I feel a little better,” she said, coughing.

  “I can tell.”

  She held up a book—What to Name the Baby. “I’m trying to find a good name for him. You’d be amazed at how many names there are. So far Mom likes Alexander, Leon likes Edward and Sadie Wishnik likes Nelson …”

  “Nelson?” I said.

  “I know,” Alison said, “it’s terrible.” She laughed a little but that made her start coughing again. “You better not come too close.”

  “I’m not afraid of catching it,” I said. Actually, the idea of a week in bed, with Mrs. Greco making me cinnamon toast and camomile tea, didn’t sound all that bad.

  “It’s good I didn’t go to Paris after all,” Alison said. “I’d have been stuck there with the flu.”

  “Yeah … and without Leon to take care of you.”

  “I’ve decided to wait and see what happens. Maybe it won’t be that bad. And if it is, I can always leave after the baby is born.”

  “Right,” I said. Maizie came in and jumped up on Alison’s chair. “Guess what?” I asked, running my fingers along Maizie’s back. “My father’s coming back to work in New York.”

  “When?” Alison asked.

  “May first.”

  “What’s going to happen?”

  “I wish I knew!”

  “Well, at least you’ll be able to see him whenever you want.”

  I nodded.

  “Leon says you can feel spring in the air today,” Alison said, lying back against her pillows. “I wish I could go outside. I hate staying in bed.”

  “You’ll be better soon,” I told her. “Did you hear that Dana and Jeremy are going to the ninth grade prom together?”

  “No ….”

  “I heard Dana telling Rachel at the bus stop this morning.”

  “Is she wearing his bracelet again?”

  “No, they decided it was the bracelet that was the problem.”

  “That doesn’t make sense. Are you sure you heard right?”

  “Yes. I listen to everything they have to say. Besides, she’s humming under her breath again.”

  “The way she did when they first started going out?”

  “Yes … the same way, only louder.”

  Alison yawned. “I think I’ll take a nap now.”

  “Okay … see you tomorrow.”

  Jeremy Dragon is back to wearing his chartreuse jacket. He bumped into me in the hallway at school. I saw him coming but he didn’t see me and we collided. I suppose I could have stepped aside but I didn’t. He knocked my books out of my arms.

  “Hey, Macbeth!” he said. “Long time, no see.”

  “I’m still on your bus.”

  “Well … long time, no notice.”

  I could smell his breath and his hair and a woodsy scent coming from his shirt as he crouched next to me, helping to gather my books. I got tingles everywhere. Dana is so lucky!

  I had trouble concentrating for the rest of the day. I was still thinking about him that afternoon when I got off the bus. Rachel and I were the only ones to get off at Palfrey’s Pond. I walked behind her, humming to myself. The crocuses were beginning to bloom. I love the way they work themselves out of the ground. One day there’s nothing there and the next, little blue, yellow and white flowers.

  Rachel walked with her books under one arm. Her hair bounced up and down, instead of side to side, like Alison’s. I thought about catching up with her and saying, What’s new? But I didn’t know how she’d react.

  I followed Rachel all the way to her house without thinking. When we got there she turned around and faced me. For a minute I thought she was going to tell me to get lost and I started thinking of what I’d say if she did. But instead her face softened. “I’ll walk you home …” she said, as if she were asking my permission.

  I nodded.

  This time we walked next to each other but we didn’t speak. When we got to my house I said, “I’ll walk you home.”

  Then she nodded. Halfway there I said, “You want to talk about it?”

  “Do you?” she asked.

  “I don’t even remember how it started.”

  “You told Amber that Max liked me.”

  “Oh, right … I never did get what was so bad about that.”

  “It was just the last straw,” Rachel said. “I was so mad at you by then.”

  “For what?”

  “Because you didn’t like me anymore.”

  “No,” I said, “you were the one who didn’t like me!”

  “I didn’t like you because you didn’t like me!” Rachel said. “You were best friends with Alison and everyone knew it.”

  “But you had Stacey Green,” I told her. “You didn’t want to be my best friend anymore.”

  “That’s because you didn’t want to be mine!” Rachel shifted her books from one arm to the other. “I felt it was some kind of competition … me against Alison … and I was always losing.”

  “You acted like you were too grown-up to hang around with us.”

  “I was trying to get back at you for leaving me out.”

  “We never left you out. It was always the three of us.”

  “I felt left out. I felt you weren’t my best friend anymore.”

  “You can have more than one best friend at a time,” I said.

  “No, you can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because best means best.”

  I thought about that. “What about close?” I asked. “You can have more than one close friend at a time, can’t you?”

  Rachel thought that over. “I guess so.”

  “And close is as good as best!”

  “I don’t necessarily agree,” Rachel said.

  “But it’s better to be friends than not to be friends … you agree with that … right?”

  “Well, yes,” Rachel said, “if you’re talking about true friends.”

  “Yes, I’m
talking about true friends.”

  “Then it’s definitely better to be than not to be.” Rachel stuck her tongue into her cheek. “I think that’s a line from Shakespeare,” she said.

  “I wouldn’t know,” I told her.

  “I hear you got your period,” Rachel said.

  “Yeah, I did. But only one time, so far.”

  “And you’ve lost weight, too.”

  “I’m not as hungry as I used to be. Mom says my hormones are adjusting.”

  “Do you still have that stupid poster over your bed?”

  “You mean Benjamin Moore?”

  Rachel laughed. “I always liked that poster.”

  “Are you still throwing around big words?”

  “You mean literally or figuratively?”

  “Ha ha,” I said. I had no idea what those words meant.

  When we got to Rachel’s house we stopped. “I hear you broke up with Max.”

  “He was a complete airhead,” Rachel said. “I hear you’re going with Peter Klaff.”

  “We’re not exactly going together. We’re friends, is more like it.”

  Rachel put her books down on the front steps and fished her key out of her bag.

  “My father’s coming back to work in New York,” I said.

  “I know. My mother ran into your Aunt Denise.”

  “Is that how you found out about my parents in the first place?”

  “Yes.” Rachel unlocked her front door but didn’t go inside. “Look … I shouldn’t have said those things about your parents. I’m sorry. I guess I was trying to hurt you the way you hurt me.”

  “I never tried to hurt you.”

  “But you did.”

  “Then I’m sorry, too,” I told her.

  “So … you want to come to my concert on the fifteenth? I’ve got a solo.”

  “Sure.”

  “You don’t have to come,” Rachel said. “I just want you to know you’re invited. And you can bring Alison.”

  “I don’t have to bring her.”

  “No, I want you to. I like Alison.”

  “Okay, I’ll ask her. She’s got the flu. I’m on my way to her house now.”

  “Tell her I hope she feels better.”

  “I will.”

  “See you tomorrow,” Rachel said.

  “Yeah … see you tomorrow.”

  I saw a bee buzzing around the forsythia bush in front of Alison’s house. I’ll have to start wearing my bee-sting necklace, I thought. I wonder what Alison will say when I tell her Rachel and I are speaking again, that maybe we are even friends. Probably she’ll be glad. I broke off a sprig of forsythia and rang Alison’s bell.

  Here’s to You, Rachel Robinson

  To Amanda

  Trouble in our family is spelled with a capital C and has been as long as I can remember. The C stands for Charles. He’s my older brother, two years and four months older to be exact. Ever since the phone call about him last night, I’ve felt incredibly tense. And now, at this very minute, my parents are driving up to Vermont, to Charles’s boarding school, to find out if he’s actually been kicked out or if he’s just been suspended again.

  I tried to take a deep breath. I read an article about relieving tensions in Psychology Today. You take a deep breath, then count to ten as you slowly release it. But as I inhaled, I caught the scent of the fresh lilacs on Ms. Lefferts’s desk and I started to cough. Ms. Lefferts, my seventh-grade English teacher, looked over at me. She was discussing the three most important elements in making a biography come alive for the reader. When I coughed again, she crossed the room and opened two windows from the bottom, letting in the spring breeze.

  The class was restless, shifting around in their seats, counting the hours till school let out so they could enjoy the first really warm day of the year. But the clock on the wall read 10:17. The day was just beginning. And the date on the chalkboard said FRIDAY, MAY 8. Still seven weeks of school to go.

  I forced my mind back to class.

  “So now that we’ve come to the end of our unit on biographies,” Ms. Lefferts was saying, “I have an assignment for you.” She walked back to her desk and stood there, looking at us, a half smile on her face. She knows exactly how to get our attention. She makes good use of pregnant pauses. I once used that expression in class and have been paying for it ever since. Now I would know better. Now I would say dramatic pauses.

  “I want you to write a biography of your own lives,” Ms. Lefferts continued. “Not an autobiography, but a biography. Who can explain the difference?” She took a hair clip out of her desk drawer and held it between her teeth while she gathered her streaked blond hair into a ponytail. She looked around the room as she fastened it, waiting for someone to respond to her question.

  Max Wilson raised his hand.

  “Yes, Max?” Ms. Lefferts said.

  “An autobiography is about the life of a car,” Max said.

  The class cracked up. Ms. Lefferts didn’t.

  “Get it?” Max asked. “Auto … biography.”

  “Yes, Max … I get it,” Ms. Lefferts said. Then she sighed deeply.

  I cannot believe that just a few months ago I liked Max Wilson. I actually spent the entire seventh-grade dance with my head nestled on his shoulder. We even kissed in the parking lot while we were waiting for our rides home. What a revolting thought! Now I understand that I never really liked Max, the person. It’s just that he is the only boy in seventh grade who’s taller than me.

  “Rachel …” Ms. Lefferts said.

  I snapped to attention. Ms. Lefferts was calling on me even though I hadn’t raised my hand. I hate when teachers do that. But I said, “The difference between a biography and an autobiography is that in an autobiography the writer is writing about his or her own life. In a biography the writer is writing about the life of someone else.”

  “Exactly,” Ms. Lefferts said. “Thank you, Rachel.” Then she went on to explain that she wants us to write a short biography of our own lives, as if we don’t know anything about ourselves until we go to the library to do research. “And try to hold it to five pages, please.”

  Ms. Lefferts never says a paper has to be at least five pages. She uses reverse psychology on us. And it always works.

  I began to think about my biography right away. Luckily my French teacher was absent, and the substitute told us since she doesn’t know one word of French, we could use the period as a study hour. I opened my notebook and started writing, ignoring the kids who were using the period to torture the substitute.

  RACHEL LOWILLA ROBINSON

  A Biography

  Part One—The Unexpected Visitor

  Rachel Lowilla Robinson was born tall. The average infant measures nineteen inches at birth but Rachel measured twenty-three. She was the third child born to Nell and Victor Robinson, following Jessica, who was four, and Charles, who was twenty-eight months. The Robinsons had planned on only two children, so Rachel was, as they sometimes put it, the unexpected visitor.

  From her mother, Rachel inherited her height and her curly auburn hair. From her father, dark eyes and a love of music. Although her mother was from Boston and her father from Brooklyn, the Robinsons settled in Connecticut to raise their family, in an area of cluster housing called Palfrey’s Pond, located just one hour from New York City by train.

  Nell Robinson liked to say Rachel was mature from the day she was born. “She was born thirty-five,” Mrs. Robinson joked with her friends. But obviously that wasn’t true. Rachel was born a baby, like everyone else. She just did things a little earlier. For example, at eight months Rachel was walking. At eighteen months she was speaking in three-word sentences. She could read at three and at four she could pick out tunes on the piano. Her favorite was the theme from “Sesame Street,” which Jessica and Charles watched on TV every day. Rachel’s first memory was of Charles biting her on the leg, right above her knee. She was barely two at the time.

  By first grade it occurred to Rachel that
she was different. As her classmates were learning to read, she was finishing the Beverly Cleary books and starting the Little House set. As they were learning to add and subtract simple numbers, she enjoyed adding up long columns of figures, especially the register tape from the supermarket. This difference did not make her happy.

  I was careful, in Part One, not to tell too much. I told just enough to show Ms. Lefferts I’ve given serious thought to this assignment. And even though I tried to use interesting details, little-known facts and humorous anecdotes—the three most important elements in making a biography come alive for the reader—I was not about to share the private details of my family life. I was not about to discuss Charles.

  The bell rang before I had the chance to start Part Two. I didn’t notice until then that I hadn’t had any trouble breathing while I was writing. I guess Psychology Today is right when they tell you to get your mind off whatever is making you feel tense and onto something else. I picked up my books and went to the cafeteria to meet Stephanie and Alison for lunch.

  “What’s wrong?” Steph asked, the second I sat down. She was already halfway through a bologna sandwich.

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  “You’re doing that thing with your mouth.”

  “I am?” Last year the dentist made me a kind of retainer to wear at night, to keep me from clenching my jaw, but I left it at Steph’s in January and haven’t seen it since. My parents still don’t know I lost it.

  “You get an A minus or something?”

  “No,” I told her.

  “Then what?”

  “Charles.”

  “Again?”

  I nodded and began to peel a hard-boiled egg. All three of us bring our lunch. We’re convinced we’ll live longer that way.

  “Why doesn’t Charles ever come home?” Alison asked, chewing on a carrot stick. She’s small and delicate and eats so slowly she hardly ever has time to finish her lunch. But that doesn’t bother her. Hardly anything does. She’s probably never had trouble breathing in her entire life. She’s probably never even felt tense. We are total opposites, so it’s amazing that we’re friends. “I mean, doesn’t he want to?” she continued.