Thirteen

  “No, I do not.”

  I fished it out and checked the name. “It’s Bo.”

  She snatched it before I could press the green “talk” button.

  “I said no,” she snapped. “What do you not understand about that?”

  I shrank. Sandra was often a grump, but not usually a mean grump. And why wouldn’t she want to talk to Bo, whom she’d been going out with for two years? Bo was the most perfect guy in the world. He was captain of the high school baseball team. He was funny and sweet and had muscles, but not in a cheesy way. He loved doughnuts.

  Plus he was nice to Ty and me, and not to impress Sandra. Sometimes he’d show up at our house before Sandra got home, and he’d hang out and watch Oprah with us. Or Ellen, which was becoming my new favorite. Not Dr. Phil. Ty would force Bo to admire the spear he’d made or whatever, and Bo would give him ideas about how to make it better, like soaking a leather shoelace in water and wrapping it around the part where the arrowhead was attached, so that when it dried, it was super tight and looked all authentic.

  I loved Bo. I was probably a little in love with Bo, even though I was also intensely in like with Lars.

  “Are you guys having a fight?” I asked Sandra.

  “No,” she said.

  Then why don’t you want to talk to him? I wanted to say. But I didn’t, because the energy she was radiating told me I’d only get barked at. I was very much a wimp when it came to conflict. Anyone’s conflict. Cinnamon would tell me about these knockdown, drag-out screaming matches she had with her dad, over stupid stuff like her cell minutes or how much time she spent on the Internet, and part of me would be in awe. At the same time, just hearing her stories made my stomach get tight.

  Sandra’s phone stopped ringing. A few seconds later, it did its voice mail bleep.

  “Do you want me to check it for you?” I asked timidly.

  “No. And I don’t want you asking about it. I don’t want you talking at all.” She glared at me. “Do you think you can do that?”

  She said it like I was a baby, like, Do you think that’s remotely possible? Do you think, maybe, you can get that through your head?

  It stung. I had my own boy problems, not that she’d ever asked. And Ty was the baby, not me. Although even Ty had girl problems, apparently.

  We rode the rest of the way in silence. She dropped me off at the junior high building, and I got out without looking at her.

  “Bye,” she said grudgingly. There might have been a smidgen of apology in it.

  Whatever, I thought. But because I was me, I muttered “bye” back. I didn’t even slam the door.

  Over lunch, I vented to Dinah and Cinnamon. Dinah slurped her chocolate milk, nodding with wide eyes, while Cinnamon scowled on my behalf. She shoved around her carrot sticks, which she was eating to try and lose weight. That made her scowly, too.

  “She turned the whole day bad,” I complained. “She took her own stupid mood and forced it on me.”

  “Do you think she and Bo are going to break up?” Dinah asked.

  “They better not,” Cinnamon said. She and Dinah were Bo fans, too. “She’d be throwing away the best thing that ever happened to her.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “She doesn’t deserve him,” Cinnamon went on. “He’s, like, a golden boy. She’s a pile of poop.”

  “Well…not a pile of poop,” I said.

  “Sandra’s really nice when she’s not being a jerk,” Dinah said loyally. “She could be a golden girl if she wanted. If she were a cheerleader.”

  “Sandra would never be a cheerleader,” I said. “She’s more like the anti-cheerleader.”

  “Except she’s still really beautiful,” Dinah said.

  Cinnamon admitted it with a nod. I felt a familiar pang, because I knew I wasn’t.

  I changed the subject. Kind of. “It’s like, everything comes back to boy-girl stuff. Sandra’s fighting with Bo. Ty’s in a tizzy over this girl, Lexie, and you want to know why? Because her pants are sparkly.”

  Cinnamon snorted.

  “And Lars hardly ever talks to me except in class, and then it’s just to say comment ça va and où se trouve la biblio-theque!” Even though Lars was in eighth grade and I was in seventh, we had French together.

  “At least he doesn’t take Spanish,” Cinnamon said. Cinnamon took Spanish. Señor Torres made the girls partner up with girls and the boys partner up with boys, because of hormones.

  “It’s so annoying, though!” I said. “He did hold my hand, right? I didn’t make that up, did I?”

  “He did,” Dinah said. “I saw.”

  “There was definite hand-to-hand contact,” Cinnamon agreed.

  It had happened publicly, the hand-holding, which at the time made it all the more miraculous. Lars and I were outside the junior high building waiting to be picked up, and his hand reached over and grabbed mine. His grabbed mine. He initiated.

  Should a guy hold a girl’s hand if he’s never going to do it again?

  No, he should not.

  “Listen, Win,” Cinnamon said.

  I looked at her, wishing she wouldn’t call me “Win.” “Win” was Lars’s name for me, just as “Lars” was my name for him. His real name was “Larson,” which was nice, but “Lars” was better.

  “When it comes to love, you have to be fierce,” she said. “Sometimes the girl has to make the move. Sad, but true.”

  I sighed. “I am fierce in love. You cannot call me unfierce in love. Right, Dinah?”

  “Huh?” She grabbed one of my fries, which I was too heartsick to eat anyway.

  “With Toby,” I said. “Remember?”

  “Oh, god,” Cinnamon said. “The guy who was your sixth grade Valentine’s Day crush? Please tell me we’re not going back to that.”

  “You weren’t there, so shush,” I said. Cinnamon was an alpha-omega at Westminster, meaning that she’d been here since Pre-K. Dinah and I had gone to Trinity through sixth, and then switched over. Toby, on the other hand, now went to Woodward.

  “Winnie was very brave with Toby,” Dinah affirmed. “She called him up and pledged her undying affection.”

  I blushed. “No.”

  “And his brother made fun of her, and it was very scarring,” Dinah went on.

  “Which is my point exactly,” I said. “Being fierce in love isn’t always the best solution!”

  “Dude,” Cinnamon warned, her expression shifting.

  It was unnecessary. My super-ultra-sensitive Lars radar had kicked in the very same second, noting even before Cinnamon did that he was strolling into the cafeteria. I turned into hyper-Winnie, putting on a show.

  “Dinah!” I exclaimed, slapping her hand as it snaked for another fry. “Leave some for me, will you?” I laughed stupidly and loudly, monitoring Lars’s progress from the corners of my eyes.

  “You’re a freak,” Cinnamon said. “You know that, don’t you?”

  “Silly Cinnamon!” I said, smiling as if I were a Miss Universe contestant. Was Lars watching? Did he see me?

  “He’s coming ov-er,” Dinah said.

  My heart went bambitty-bam. “Teeth?” I said, baring my lips.

  “They’re fine,” Dinah said.

  “Except for the wad of spinach,” Cinnamon contributed.

  “Do you see any spinach on my plate?” I asked. Anything to keep talking—this was not the time to be unanimated. “No, you do not.”

  “Then it must have been from dinner last night,” she replied.

  “I think it’s time for you to be quiet,” I sang. I turned around, glowing (hopefully) with wittiness and joie de vivre. “Oh! Lars! Hi!”

  He was behind me, his hands jammed in his pockets. “Hey, Win,” he said. He jerked his chin at my friends. “Hey, Cinnamon. Dinah.”

  “Hey, Lars,” Cinnamon said. “What’s kickin’?”

  What’s kickin’—she cracked me up. Only I was too jittery to enjoy it. This was what happened when a boy held your hand and then
inexplicably never did again. You started to doubt yourself. You stopped finding the humor in everyday life. Curse false-hand-holding boys!

  Except not really. I wanted to touch him, not curse him.

  “Not much,” Lars said. He focused on me. “You finish the French assignment?”

  “J’aime le hotdog,” I said in reply. I cleverly translated it for the others. “That means ‘I like the hot dog.’”

  “I bet you do,” Cinnamon said under her breath.

  I drove my sneaker into her shin. “Our assignment was to pretend we were at a sporting event? Okay?”

  “She uptalks when she’s nervous,” Cinnamon said to Lars. He chuckled, but her comment made me mad. And embarrassed.

  “I’m not nervous,” I said.

  “I like hot dogs,” Dinah offered. When we all looked at her, she said, “What? I do!”

  “Thank you,” I said. I wasn’t sure for what; maybe just for being Dinah. For being…without guile. Sometimes, with Cinnamon, it was like she fell into this “impress the guy” mode and forgot the primary rule of friendship, which was to make your bud look good in front of her boy. Not stupid.

  “So,” Lars said. “See you in class?”

  I rose above my embarrassment and put on my game face: flirty, but casual. Or at least the illusion of casual. I hoped.

  “If you’re lucky,” I said.

  “Ooo!” Cinnamon crowed.

  Lars’s mouth did an adorable sideways quirk-thing. “Oh, is that how it is?”

  “Uh-huh.” There was that fun, amped-up charge between us, and I willed him to take that energy and run with it. Tousle my hair, I commanded him telepathically. You’re standing right there. Do it!

  “Well, here’s hoping I get lucky,” he said.

  Cinnamon hooted again, and I was aware of Dinah giggling. I grinned up at Lars, and he grinned back. It was nice.

  But I wanted more.

  On Tuesday, Ty asked me what he could do to make Lexie like him. I said, “I don’t know, ask Sandra.” Then I remembered that she and Bo were having their little tiff or whatever. “On the other hand, don’t.”

  “But what should I do?” Ty asked.

  “Well, let’s think about it,” I said. We were in the backyard, squished together in the hammock. Ty was warm and little-kid sweaty against me. “On the playground, when y’all have break, what does Lexie like to do?”

  “She and Claire chase boys and try to kiss them,” he said.

  “Does she chase you?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. Do you know?”

  “Hmm,” I said. I loved that he thought I might, but it was a burden, too. Sometimes it was as if he saw me as God, when I was so not. “When Lexie and Claire are doing that, what do you do?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You just sit there like a lump?”

  “I walk around the edge of the playground. And I look at things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Lexie.”

  My brother, the stalker. Lovely.

  “Sometimes I tell her to fall down,” he went on, “but only when she can’t hear me.”

  “What? Why would you do that?”

  “If she hurt her knee, I could take her to the office,” he said. “I could take her to get a Band-Aid.”

  It made my heart ache, this honesty of his. And the sweetness of wanting to take Lexie to get a Band-Aid. I imagined him standing on the fringes, orange duct tape radiating from his pants cuffs, and, like me, just wanting something more.

  “If I were in first grade, I would totally chase you,” I told him.

  “And try to kiss me? On the lips?”

  “Do Lexie and Claire kiss the boys on the lips?” I said incredulously.

  He shrugged. “Maybe.”

  Whoa. If so, they’d gone further than I had. How pathetic was that?

  “Let’s just swing,” I said. I nudged the grass to make the hammock sway.

  “Okay. We can be baby spiders, and we can’t touch the ground or the birds will get us.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And you are my big sister bird. I mean spider. Reek! Reek!”

  Is that what baby spiders said? Reek reek?

  He said it again, in distress.

  “It’s all right, baby spider,” I said, pulling him close. “I’m here.”

  On Friday morning, I woke up early so that I could get in and out of the shower by seven. Today was Sandra’s seventeenth birthday (twenty-six days after mine), and this was my present to her. This way Sandra could take a super long shower and not be rushed. I’d also made her a pair of earrings, but I’d give them to her later.

  Over breakfast—which Sandra actually had time to sit down and eat, thanks to me—I asked her what her birthday plans were. She said she didn’t know, that she’d probably do something with Elizabeth and Raelynn. Which I thought was wrong. Why wasn’t she spending it with Bo?

  “You don’t think friends are as important as a boyfriend?” she said when I asked.

  “Well, sure, but—”

  “That is so lame,” she said. “You would make the worst feminist.”

  “That’s not true!” I said. “I’m totally a feminist. I’m a great feminist!”

  “Pfff,” Sandra said, and not entirely without reason. I wasn’t actually sure I was a feminist. Truth be told, I wasn’t exactly sure what being a feminist meant, other than sometimes they didn’t shave their legs, and, yeah, um, that wasn’t going to happen.

  “But what about Bo?” I asked.

  “What about him?”

  “Are you guys still fighting?”

  “When were we fighting? What makes you think we’re fighting?”

  “Because…” I didn’t like putting it in words. “That day, you didn’t answer when he called.”

  “I didn’t answer one phone call. Big deal. I was annoyed with him.”

  “Why?”

  “It was stupid. I was totally being stupid,” she said. “On Sunday he went to this girl Kristi’s house to study, and I guess I got jealous.”

  “You did?” I said. She’d given me an unexpected peek into her life as a junior, where boyfriends went over to other girls’ houses to study, and I wanted to know more. I was especially curious about Kristi. Was she cute? Did she have a thing for Bo? Was she trying to steal him away?

  “But I got over it,” Sandra said.

  “Did Bo?” I asked.

  “Yes. Of course. Why would you even say that?”

  “Well, because it’s your birthday. It just seems weird that he…I mean, not bad weird, necessarily, just—”

  “He has plans,” she said shortly. She blinked back a sudden rush of tears, which was completely un-Sandra-like. She chomped off a bite of bagel, chewed ferociously, and wouldn’t meet my eyes.

  Oh. This wasn’t her choice. A lump rose in my throat.

  “Winnie!” Mom called from the stairs. “Could you come here, please?”

  “Um, sure.” I shoved back my chair, glad for an excuse to leave.

  “I need you to talk to Ty,” Mom said. She was standing outside the kids’ bathroom. From within, I could hear Ty crying. “He’s being ridiculous.”

  “I am not!” Ty yelled. “I want them back! I need them!”

  “Ty,” Mom said.

  “They were”—big snotty sniffle—“my friends!”

  “What is he talking about?” I asked.

  “His fingernails,” Mom said wearily. She looked at me like, Do you understand now why I feel like pulling my hair out? “They needed to be clipped. I asked him if he wanted me to do it. He said ‘yes.’”

  “I changed my mind!” Ty cried from behind the door.

  Well, neither one of them were getting anywhere this way.

  “I’m going in,” I told Mom.

  “Good luck,” she said.

  I found Ty sitting on the edge of the tub. His eyes were swollen and his face was slick with tears. Betw
een his legs was the green wicker trash can from under the sink. Fingernail clippings littered the top layer of dirty Kleenex and used up Band-Aids.

  “Ty,” I said. “What’s going on?”

  “They are my friends and I need them,” he said stubbornly.

  “Your fingernails are your friends?”

  “She has to tape them back on, or I won’t go to school.” The way his mouth was working foretold another outburst. “I did not want her to cut them! I did not want her to and I am never going to school again!” He dissolved into tears, and I joined him on the edge of the tub. I put my arm around him, and he sobbed into my shirt. Which got wet. And mucus-y, I was sure. But that was okay, I could change.

  When he’d cried himself out, I said, “Why do you not want to go to school?”

  “Because,” he said into the space below my shoulder.

  “Because why?”

  “Of something.”

  I pulled away so that we could see each other. “Does it have to do with Lexie?”

  He nodded.

  “What happened?”

  He let out a big, shuddery sigh.

  “Ty?”

  “I told her she was my archenemy. But I didn’t mean it!”

  “Oh dear,” I said. “Why did you tell her she was your archenemy?”

  “I ran up to her during afternoon break, and I wanted to say something. So I said she was my archenemy. Only that was a disguise for what I really wanted to say, which was that I like her!”

  Now I sighed. We were all so foolish. Foolish in love.

  “Last night I wished on a star that she would forget,” Ty went on. His lower lip trembled. “But what if she didn’t?”

  “Sweetie, sweetie, sweetie,” I said. It was something Mom said when she didn’t have anything better to offer.

  “Sweetie sweetie sweetie what?” he said. He wanted me to have the answers. He was so skinny and fragile and small, and he wanted me to make everything okay.

  “Well…I bet Lexie knows deep down that she’s not your archenemy,” I said. “Because don’t you think people feel it, when someone likes them?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I do,” I said. “Because…okay, take me. There’s this boy I like, and sometimes I get all wimpy around him, but he still knows I like him.”

  “How?”