Twelve

Lars passed, oblivious. I watched his jeans saunter by through a crack between Cinnamon and Dinah. He had an extremely appealing rear.

  When he was officially gone, I came out of hiding.

  “‘Dress Like a Poet Day’?” I said.

  Cinnamon giggled. We all giggled, even Dinah, who at first tried to maintain her composure.

  “Shut up,” she said. “Anyway, it’s your fault. Why didn’t you want Lars to see you?”

  “Because of her . . . you know,” Cinnamon said. “Right?”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, feeling both stupid and relieved. I didn’t want to be a child, and I didn’t want to be a woman, and sometimes I just didn’t know how to be in between.

  By Wednesday my bleeding had grown light, and it was dark brown instead of red. “Panty-liner time,” Sandra told me. Panty liners were better than pads, but they were still a pain in the butt.

  A pain in the butt. Hee hee. Cinnamon would appreciate that one.

  By Thursday, my period was gone. By Friday, I actually believed it was gone, and I wore pale blue sweatpants to celebrate. At school I resolved to plant myself in a spot where Lars was likely to run into me, knowing that even if he didn’t, I’d for sure encounter him in French. And I’d talk to him this time. I wouldn’t hide like a scared puppy. I’d be witty and sparkling and normal, and I’d put this craziness called biology behind me.

  Until next month.

  December

  CINNAMON HAD AN OLDER BROTHER named Carl who was a sophomore at the University of North Carolina. During Christmas break, Carl drove back to Atlanta and sold Christmas trees at Sam’s Tree Lot. He lived in a trailer at the front of the lot, and he even spent his nights there, so that no one would take off with the trees.

  “Who would steal a Christmas tree?” I asked Cinnamon when she was telling us all this.

  “You’d be surprised,” she said.

  She also told us that Sam, the owner, was actually a man named Halim Palaniyappan, from India. He picked the name Sam because it sounded less ethnic.

  Cinnamon and Dinah and I liked to hang out at Sam’s Tree Lot after school, because it felt like a secret hideaway. Carl kept a space heater plugged into the trailer for warmth, and he had a Bunsen burner for making hot chocolate. We’d sit with our steaming mugs and breathe in the smell of pine. And we’d talk. Today, Dinah was ranting about Alex Plotkin.

  “He does a countdown,” she wailed. “It’s so disgusting! Mr. Erikson will leave the room to go get copies or something, and the next thing you know Alex is back there going, ‘Ten, nine, eight, seven...’ ”

  “And then he farts?” Cinnamon said. “He can do that? On demand?”

  “Apparently,” Dinah said. “Then the whole class cracks up, which of course encourages him even more. I’m like, ‘Could you please grow up?’ ”

  “You’re just embarrassed because you used to have a crush on him,” I teased.

  Dinah turned pink. “I did not! Winnie, you take that back this instant!”

  “You did so,” I said. “Don’t try to deny it.” I turned to Cinnamon. “He asked her to go with him, and she said yes.”

  “Yeah, but Winnie skated with him at our fifth-grade skating party,” Dinah shot back. “She asked him for girls’ pick.”

  I couldn’t believe she remembered that.

  “It was under duress,” I protested. “There is a very rational explanation, which is that Mrs. Jacobs asked me to. She practically ordered me to. I was doing an act of kindness.”

  “Your teacher told you who to ask for girls’ pick?” Cinnamon said.

  “She felt sorry for him,” I said.

  “Uh-huh,” said Cinnamon. She looked amused. “And you’re such a good girl, you said, ‘Yes, ma’am,’ and did exactly what she wanted.”

  “Uh . . . pretty much.”

  “See,” Dinah said, as if she’d won the point.

  “See what?” I countered.

  Cinnamon laughed. She pushed herself up to look out the trailer window, then dropped back down.

  “Any customers?” I asked.

  “Just that same lady Carl’s been helping for the last fifteen minutes,” she said. “Buy a tree, lady. Just pick one.”

  Dinah grabbed a doughnut from the box we’d picked up at 7-Eleven. They were the miniature white powdered kind, and when she took a bite, her bottom lip got dusty. “Any-way, he’s going by ‘Critter’ now.”

  “Who, Alex Plotkin?” I said.

  “He’s calling himself Critter?” Cinnamon said.

  “He’s telling people it’s his nickname,” Dinah said.

  “Is it?” Cinnamon asked.

  “No,” Dinah and I said together.

  “That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Cinnamon pronounced. She could be forceful in her opinions, and they weren’t always nice. “You can’t come up with your own nickname. That just brands you as a loser.” She shook her head. “Why Critter?”

  Pleased, Dinah took another bite of doughnut. She wasn’t usually the one bringing stories to the table, but she’d found a treasure trove in Alex Plotkin. Or rather, Critter.

  “Now Lars, on the other hand,” Cinnamon said. “There’s a nickname.”

  “Winnie made it up,” Dinah boasted.

  “I know,” Cinnamon said.

  My palms got sweaty, which they always did when Lars’s name came up. But I was proud, too. “It’s not something to brag about,” I said. “Larson, Lars. It’s pretty obvious.”

  “Still,” Cinnamon said. She stretched up on one arm and again peeked out the window.

  “What are you looking at?” I demanded. “Why are you suddenly so obsessed with Christmas-tree sales?”

  She slid back down onto the pine-needle-covered floor. “Tell Dinah about today in French,” she said. “When the yearbook guy came.”

  “Oh yeah,” I said. “It was so cute. The guy was like, ‘I’m supposed to take a picture of your class,’ and Ms. Beauchard was all, ‘These hooligans? You want a picture of these hooligans?’ ”

  “Hooligans,” Cinnamon said. “She cracks me up.”

  “So Lars goes, ‘Okay, everybody. Look like you’re learning. ’ Then he widened his eyes and made a prissy face, like this.” I folded my hands in front of me and demonstrated.

  Dinah giggled. “You look constipated.”

  “So did he,” I said. “But in a cute way.”

  “You think everything he does is cute,” Dinah said.

  “Because it is,” I said.

  “You need a little Lars action away from school, so that something can actually happen,” Cinnamon said. Up she went, again, to peer out the window. This time, she caught her breath and jumped to her feet. She flashed a grin at me.

  My heart did a floppy thing. “Uh, Cinnamon? Why are you smiling like that?”

  A knock came at the door, and Cinnamon flung it open.

  "Lars!” she said. "Hola! ”

  Every drop of my blood rushed to my toes.

  “Hey,” Lars said. He glanced first at Cinnamon, then at me. He was wearing a brown jacket, and it made his hazel eyes look amazing. His hair was sticky-outy, and I knew it wasn’t because of gel. He was gorgeous without even trying. He was born that way.

  I swallowed. “Hi,” I said. “Comment ça va?” Comment ça va means “what’s up” in French, and it sounded utterly idiotic coming out of my mouth. But it was Cinnamon’s fault. She’d started it with her hola.

  “Comme çi, comme ça,” he deadpanned. “Et toi?”

  Okay, he sounded good in French. He sounded good no matter what. I smiled like a big stupid smiling person.

  "Sit,” Cinnamon said, scooting over and patting the space between me and her. She was so naturally cool around him that it made me jealous. She was doing it for me—I knew that—but I still felt cooler on my own without her.

  Lars ambled over and slouched down. His legs, in his scruffy jeans, were longer than any of ours. “So your brother sells Christmas trees,” he said to Cinnam
on. “Nice.”

  “It pays the bills,” Cinnamon said.

  “I’m going to make my parents buy ours here,” I said. Lame, but at least it was something. And in our mother tongue, no less.

  “We’ll probably pull out our hot-pink aluminum one,” Lars said. “Why have a real tree if you can have a fake?”

  Dinah looked aghast.

  “He’s joking,” I said.

  “Nah, we’ll get a real one,” he said. “One of those scrawny, pitiful ones, like in Charlie Brown.”

  I smiled. I loved him for referencing Charlie Brown.

  We sat there, all four of us. Lars drummed his fingers on his thigh. I wished desperately that I had something scintillating to say.

  Carl burst in, bringing a blast of cold air with him. His cheeks were ruddy, and he was wearing a goofy knit hat. He noticed Lars on the floor.

  “Hey, man,” he said.

  “Hey,” said Lars. He kind of saluted.

  Carl turned to Cinnamon. “I need you to go make change for me,” he said, handing her a wad of bills. “I’m completely out of ones.”

  Cinnamon stood up. “Guess I’m off to 7-Eleven.”

  “I’ll come, too,” Dinah said.

  Lars and I looked at each other. Did I really want to be left alone with him? Actually, maybe that was the wrong question. Was I physically capable of being left alone with him? Not in an “oh no, better watch out” kind of way—more in a “why look, she’s melted into a puddle” kind of way.

  “Me, too,” I said. I scrambled up. “I’m coming, too.”

  “You don’t have to,” Cinnamon said.

  “I know. I want to.”

  “No, really,” Cinnamon said. “You just stay here. You guys hang out, and we’ll be right back.”

  “Too late, I’m already up.”

  “I’ve got to get going anyway,” Lars said. He got to his feet. “See you guys around?”

  “Sure,” Cinnamon said. She yanked Dinah out of the trailer with her. Carl headed out as well.

  Lars looked at me, then ducked his head. He kicked the floor of the trailer with the toe of his sneaker.

  “You look like a horse,” I blurted.

  He wrinkled his forehead.

  “You know. Pawing at the ground?”

  “Ahhh,” he said.

  I got the giggles. It was all just so ridiculous.

  He smiled. “Well, I’m off.”

  “Okay, see you.”

  “Yeah.” He jammed his hands in his pockets. “I’ll, uh, call you sometime?”

  “You will?” I said. I mentally whacked my forehead. “I mean, yeah. Cool. Great. Whatever.” I laughed again.

  He regarded me as if I were a bit of a nut. But oh well, I was a nut—he was going to call.

  My insides soared.

  As a family, we picked out a tree at Carl’s tree lot, which was really Sam’s Tree Lot, which was really Mr. Palaniyappan’s tree lot. It was a nine-footer, and Dad paid twenty dollars extra for Carl to deliver it straight to the house. Which he did, with Cinnamon assisting.

  “Yay!” I said when I saw her. She had pine needles sticking to her sweater, and she looked tough and woodsy as she wobbled to the door with her arms around the trunk.

  “Got yer tree for ya, ma’am,” she said.

  I turned to the front door. “Dad? Where do you want them to put it?”

  “Let’s take it straight in,” Dad said. He came out to take over for Cinnamon, and he and Carl shuffled the tree into the living room. Pine needles littered the floor. Dad screwed the tree stand onto the bottom of the trunk, and they slowly eased it up, with Dad doing more grunting than was necessary. When they stepped back, the top nearly touched the ceiling. Glorious, wonderful tree-smell filled the room.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said.

  “We forgot to put on the angel,” Sandra said.

  “Oh, man,” I said. “We always do that!” Every year, we forgot to put the angel on before raising the tree, and every year, we promised ourselves we’d remember next time.

  “Lift me up!” Ty said. “I’ll do it!”

  “You’ll get scratched,” Sandra said.

  “I don’t care.”

  Mom handed Ty the soft cloth angel we’d had forever, with blond hair and no eyes and droopy wings. Gold filigree stuff flaked off her dress. Dad heaved Ty up—high, high, high—and Ty arched forward and plopped the angel onto the tip. Dad set him down. Ty beamed.

  “Want to stay and help us decorate?” I asked Cinnamon. The tree looked goofy with just the angel on it.

  Cinnamon looked at her brother. “Can I?”

  “If you want,” Carl said. “But I can’t pick you up till late. Like, eight o’clock.”

  “You can stay for dinner,” I said. “Right, Mom?”

  “Of course,” Mom said.

  Together we helped Mom unpack the ornaments. Ty and Sandra and Dad helped, too, and Dad put on a Billie Holiday CD. In a way it felt strange having Cinnamon there, because it was like, Yep, this is our family on display. This is the way we do it, with fudge and family anecdotes and “oohs” of appreciation at the delicate paper stars that Grandmom Rosie made way back in the olden days.

  But I felt proud of us, too. I was proud of Grandmom Rosie’s ornaments, which she’d given to Mom in sets of three, so that one day Sandra, Ty, and I could have one of each to start our own ornament collections. I especially liked the little wooden drummer boys with the red ribbon trim.

  “Uh-oh,” I said, spotting a glimmer of shiny green in the corner of one box. I dug out Jell-O, the long-legged Christmas elf, and made it shimmy in front of Ty. “Watch out! It’s Jell-O!”

  “Nooo!” Ty cried, swatting Jell-O away. “I don’t want him!”

  “Ty’s afraid of Jell-O,” I explained to Cinnamon. “He thinks he’s freaky.”

  “He is freaky,” Cinnamon said. She took the bedraggled elf. “What’s wrong with his head?”

  “It’s just a little loose,” I said. I wedged Jell-O’s plastic head back into his cloth body. Jell-O looked deranged with his pointy nose and bright red cheeks, but Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without him.

  I marched over and propped Jell-O up on the tree. He wasn’t really an ornament, so he didn’t have a hook, but he nestled in the branches just fine. Ty waited until I went back to the sofa, then darted over and pushed Jell-O way far in so that his manic smile was hidden by pine needles. He thought I didn’t notice. Foolish boy. Next ornament I put up, I’d pull Jell-O back out. This, too, was tradition.

  “What does your family do for Christmas?” Mom asked Cinnamon. “Do you already have your tree?”

  “We do at my dad’s place, but not at my mom’s,” Cinnamon said. “Mom thinks it’s too much of a hassle.”

  “Too much of a hassle?” I said. “You have to have a Christmas tree!”

  “Not if you’re Jewish,” Sandra said. She was untangling a strand of lights, which was probably a waste of time because invariably our Christmas-tree lights ended up dead and broken from one year to the next. Soon she’d plug them in and say, “Great. These don’t work, either.”

  “But Cinnamon’s not Jewish,” I said. “Her brother works at a Christmas-tree lot, remember?”

  “Owned by a practicing Hindu,” Sandra said.

  “I think it’s sad that your mom doesn’t have a tree,” I told Cinnamon.

  “Yeah, it kind of sucks,” Cinnamon said. Her tone was matter-of-fact. “Christmas in general kind of sucks, because first we rush through our presents at Dad’s house, but we can’t stay too long or it’ll hurt Mom’s feelings, so then we have to drive three hours to Mom’s place in North Carolina. And once we get there, it’s totally depressing because there’s no tree and no decorations and all Mom does is bad-mouth Christina.”

  Christina was Cinnamon’s stepmom, the one who counted the snot-marks on Cinnamon’s Kleenex.

  “Jesus,” Sandra said. Our “happy family” routine suddenly came across in a different
light.

  Cinnamon shrugged. She reached for a piece of fudge, then saw it was the last piece. She hesitated, hand hovering.

  “Go on,” Mom said. “I’ve got another whole tin in the refrigerator. In fact, why don’t we send some home with you when you leave?”

  Cinnamon popped the fudge into her mouth. “Yum,” she said. “That would be great.”

  Cinnamon and I didn’t catch a moment alone until after all the ornaments were hung and the new lights from Dad’s quick trip to Eckerd’s were draped among the branches. We’d done our grand ta-da, where Sandra turned off the living-room lights at the exact second that Ty plugged in the tree, and everyone sighed in unison. Then one by one, everyone else had wandered off. Cinnamon and I stayed, slouching on the sofa amid the empty boxes. We kept the ceiling lights off and watched the Christmas tree glow.

  “Thanks for hanging out,” I said. “I know it must have been boring, being stuck with my family for the whole day.”

  “Are you kidding? I’d trade your family for mine in a heartbeat.”

  “No, you wouldn’t.”

  “Want to bet?”

  I smiled uncertainly, assuming it was a joke but not one hundred percent sure. Which made me aware that here was Cinnamon, a newish friend, sitting with me in the dark; in my house, away from school, with no one else to add to the mix.

  With Dinah, that newness was far behind us. I always knew what she was thinking. For example, my family: she liked them, sure, but she worshiped and loved and totally adored her dad. That’s why it was okay that it was just the two of them, even though it was for a sad reason.

  But I guess it took a long time to know someone for real. And even then, it could all go away in a puff of smoke. Like with Amanda. Although I still felt like I knew her . . . until I was actually with her.

  Life was complicated. But as I stared at the tree, it felt okay to think about it. My brain felt pleasantly full.

  Cinnamon stretched her legs and rested her stockinged feet on the coffee table. Her toes barely reached, and she had to curl them over the edge to hold on. “So has Lars called you yet?”

  I shook my head.

  “Didn’t he say he would?”

  “Uh-huh. But maybe . . . you know.”

  “If he said he was going to call, he should call,” she said.