Twelve

  “I do, too,” I said.

  “I know.”

  “I know you know.”

  This was dumb. I hopped off the trampoline. I liked Amanda and I liked Dinah—was that so hard to understand? Did we have to go through all this again, just when we’d refound each other? Maybe this was what Mom meant when she said she didn’t want me getting hurt. Maybe, secretly, Mom knew I wanted Amanda to like me better than she liked Gail, just as maybe, secretly, I liked Amanda better than Dinah.

  I think.

  Sometimes I did, even though Dinah and I had fun in a way that never left me feeling stranded.

  But seventh grade would be easier with Amanda by my side; harder with Dinah. That much I knew. Dinah would be the one, if it fell upon anyone, who got de-eyebrowed. Which would be terrible! That’s not what I wanted at all.

  All of a sudden I wasn’t sure what I wanted, and I started back toward the condominium complex. In my confusion, I headed in the wrong direction.

  “That’s not the way,” Amanda said from the trampoline. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m taking a shortcut,” I said.

  “To where?” Amanda called. “You’re not leaving, are you?” I didn’t answer, just pressed on ahead. I was tangled up inside myself. Maybe people sometimes got hurt—or hurt each other—without it being on purpose. But did that mean you should just . . . walk away from it all? I felt in some unclear way like that wasn’t the answer. I also, for no good reason, felt mad at Amanda. Like I needed to get away from her and forge my own path.

  I pushed through a dense bushy area. When I felt the first sting, I thought it was a branch scraping my forearm. Then came another, and another—darts of fire all over my body.

  “Help!” I screamed. I pitched forward, trying to escape the jabs on my shins, my thighs, my back. I heard Amanda behind me, her voice pitched high, but the cloud of yellow jackets made it hard to move or even think. “Amanda! Help!”

  The yellow jackets droned around me. One stung my cheek, and it hurt so bad I thought I would faint. Another stung the side of my mouth, and I gagged. I felt its body against my lip, fuzzy and hard, and it left me light-headed.

  Fingers grasped my upper arm. “Move, Winnie!” Amanda commanded. “You’ve got to move!”

  I turned and staggered toward her. I hardly remember getting to the path, and I hardly remember Amanda pounding on the door of Mrs. Grayson’s condominium. I do remember being herded into the front seat of Mrs. Grayson’s silver Lexus, because I thought, She’s still got that fake tan and Whoa, her perfume is strong. I also remember how fat my lower lip grew, swelling like one of Ty’s microwaved marshmallows. And I remember the taste of salt when I touched it with my tongue. Salt and a sticky sweetness, left over from the Mike and Ike’s.

  “Tell me again how scared you were for me,” I said. We were sitting side by side on my bed, me under the covers and her on top.

  “So so so scared!” she said. “I was like, ‘Poor Winnie! I would have collapsed right there on the spot!’ ”

  “I practically did,” I said. “Dr. Harper said it was a good thing I wasn’t allergic, or I might have died.” It was a dramatic thing to say, but true, and as I watched Dinah’s eyes go wide, I felt a welling of love. I’d almost chosen Amanda over Dinah again, when it was clear that I wasn’t Amanda’s first choice at all.

  After Mom and I had gotten home from the Youth Clinic, and after Ty had counted all thirty-two of my stings to make sure I wasn’t exaggerating, I’d asked Mom for the phone so I could call Amanda. I figured she’d be worried sick.

  But before I could tell Amanda anything, her other line beeped. “One sec,” she said. Then, when she came back, she said, “Winnie, I am so sorry. It’s Gail, and she only gets this one chance every day to use the phone. I’ll call you right back, I promise!”

  But she didn’t. Two hours ticked by, and her call never came.

  So I called Dinah, without Mom having to tell me to. Steady, loyal Dinah, who made her dad chauffeur her over right away with a bag of my favorite chocolate-covered pretzels from Whole Foods.

  “Well, I am so glad you didn’t die,” Dinah said now. “I can’t even imagine if you died.” She was struck by a thought. “Oh my gosh. If you died, we wouldn’t be able to go to seventh grade together! I’d be all alone!”

  “Don’t worry,” I said, patting her arm. I felt woozy from the pain medication. “I didn’t, and you won’t. Be alone, that is. You goof!”

  She giggled and leaned against the pillow. She touched her toe to mine. “Back to the dramatic reenactment. You ran into the yellow jackets’ nest, and you were stung five zillion trillion times . . . and then what?”

  “And then a hand reached out through the blur of burning pain”—I made my hand descend from above—“and snatched me from the jaws of death.”

  “Amanda?”

  “She got stung three times. But I got stung thirty-two.”

  “I know. You told me,” Dinah said.

  “And now I’m telling you again.”

  Dinah touched one of my welts, her fingers as light as a moth. She hesitated, then said, “Don’t you think it’s weird? That she’s not here with you now?”

  “Who? Amanda?”

  She looked at me, like who else?

  I almost defended Amanda—she was busy, she only got that one call from Gail a day—and then I just . . . poof, let it go in my mind.

  “I guess it is,” I said.

  “It’s not very cool,” Dinah said. It sounded strange coming from her, the word cool.

  “No,” I said, giving the point to Dinah squarely and soundly. “Not cool at all.”

  I thought about what Mom had said, about how Dinah might not always be there when I came back. But Dinah hadn’t even known I was gone. At least, I didn’t think she had.

  I looked at Dinah as if from a high-up place. I wanted to tell her how enormous it was, this realization of who my friends were and who I myself wanted to be. Amanda wasn’t evil, and she’d probably always be in my life. She’d probably always be someone I secretly admired.

  But Dinah was here beside me, and I was immensely grateful. Because it could have gone the other way. I’d had a very narrow escape.

  “From the yellow jackets?” Dinah said.

  Whoa. Did I just say that out loud?

  “Um, yeah,” I said. “The yellow jackets, the world . . . everything.”

  I offered her a chocolate-covered pretzel, and she happily took three.

  September

  OKAY, SEVENTH GRADE WAS HUGE. Freakily huge.

  And not as in tons of people—although there were— but as in, whoa, big life moment, everything’s different and I can’t deal.

  “Too bad, because you have to,” Sandra said as she drove us to Westminster on the morning of our second day. She shifted into fourth gear, and her lips curved into a barely there smile. She always smiled like that when she changed gears, because she was proud of herself for being so smooth. She’d used her summer savings to buy an old, beat-up BMW, and one of its selling points was that it had a manual transmission. “So many girls don’t even know how to drive a stick shift,” she’d said to me sternly. “Don’t let that be you.”

  I wouldn’t—if I ever made it to sixteen. But manual versus automatic was so not my problem right now.

  “You don’t understand,” I said. “I truly can’t handle it— and I’m not being dramatic. Yesterday I saw a guy get pantsed in PE, and—”

  “For real?” Sandra said, glancing over at me. “You saw this?”

  “Well, no, but I heard about it,” I said. “And they gave this other guy a full-frontal wedgie! They hung him up on a towel hook!”

  “Urban legends,” Sandra said, dismissing my reports with a wave of her hand. “Nobody at Westminster has ever been hung up on a towel hook, I promise you.” She flicked her blinker and turned into Westminster’s back gate. To our right was the wooded trail the cross-country runners trained on; to our left were
the back tennis courts. There was a second set of tennis courts out by the front gate, along with a rifle range and a ropes course. The place was huge.

  I scrunched low in my seat. “But . . . nobody knows me.”

  “So? You’re a seventh grader. Nobody’s supposed to know you.”

  “Gee, thanks. Thanks for being such a great big sister.”

  “I’m letting you ride with me, aren’t I?”

  “Only because you have to.”

  Westminster went all the way through high school, so of course Sandra and I rode together. It only made sense. Westminster had an elementary school as well, up on the hill where the cross-country trail led. But none of us had attended the elementary school, because we went to Trinity. Trinity was nice. Trinity was small. At Trinity, everyone knew me.

  Sandra pulled into the girls’ parking lot. She cut the engine and yanked up the emergency brake. Then she looked at me, a look that was for real. “Just act confident, even if you’re not,” she said.

  Easy for her to say. She was a junior, and she was sassy and tough and drove a golf ball-yellow Beemer. Plus she was beautiful in her “I’m not trying only secretly I am” kind of way. Plus she was dating Bo.

  I sighed. I didn’t get out of the car.

  Sandra slammed her door. There was no point in locking it, since it was so old. Dad had suggested we wear our bike helmets to stay safe. “Ha ha,” we had said.

  “I’m leaving,” Sandra said, taking a token step toward the part of the campus where she spent her day. “You’re going to look really stupid sitting in there by yourself.”

  I gazed at her plaintively.

  “What, you’d rather be homeschooled?” she said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  She strode back and tugged me out of the car. “Go,” she said, pushing me toward the junior high. “You’re going to be fine. You really and truly are.”

  In Mrs. Potter’s homeroom, which consisted of only girls because the boys had their own homerooms, I sat next to a girl with pink braces named Malena. Next to Malena sat Gail Grayson. Malena had honest-to-God boobs just like Gail, and apparently that was enough to bind the two of them in snobby aloofness. They talked to each other, but neither talked to me. Gail acted as if she didn’t even know my name.

  Amanda was in Mr. Gossett’s homeroom, and Dinah was in Ms. Myzchievich’s homeroom. Dinah said she told them to call her Ms. M. Louise was in Ms. M’s homeroom, too, and Dinah said she seemed lost without Karen, who was off in Alaska. I felt lost without Dinah, and she was only two rooms down.

  Mrs. Potter expected us to be quiet during homeroom and do some sort of work, so I read my history textbook. At Trinity, history had been called “social studies,” and our textbooks had been more like workbooks, with color pictures and lists of vocabulary. This year my history book was the size of a dictionary, and its print was just as small. It made me feel grown-up. But it was also really heavy.

  Two seats behind me, a girl tapped a message into her cell phone, and Mrs. Potter glanced up from her stack of papers. Uh-oh. We’d been told expressly that cell phones weren’t allowed. Not that I had a cell phone, but lots of kids did.

  “Ansley, may I ask what you’re doing?” Mrs. Potter said.

  “Sorry, Mrs. Potter,” Ansley said, snapping shut her phone.

  “Why aren’t you doing something productive?” Mrs. Potter asked.

  Ansley’s cheeks reddened, probably because everyone was staring at her. And probably because she didn’t expect Mrs. Potter to make such a big deal out of it. “Um . . . I don’t have a pencil.”

  “You don’t have a pencil,” Mrs. Potter repeated. “As I recall, you didn’t have a pencil yesterday, either. Do you think, perhaps, a pencil would be a good thing to bring to school?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Ansley said.

  “Bring me your phone, please,” Mrs. Potter said.

  Ansley slid out of her seat and walked to the front of the room, where she placed her phone on Mrs. Potter’s desk. Mrs. Potter dropped it neatly into the top drawer.

  “I suggest you find someone who will lend you a pencil, and I suggest that tomorrow you come prepared,” Mrs. Potter said. She waited, then said impatiently, “You may return to your seat.”

  “But . . .” said Ansley. I knew she was thinking of her phone.

  “Yes?” Mrs. Potter said.

  Ansley hovered for another moment, then went back to her desk. As she passed, I saw she was fighting back tears. Mrs. Potter didn’t seem to care, which was mean. It made me not like her—in fact, it made me feel something hot and sharp toward her—and I didn’t like feeling that way toward my teacher.

  I also felt scared of her. I didn’t like that, either.

  I thought longingly of Mr. Hutchinson, who never would have taken anyone’s phone or made a federal case out of a missing pencil. If someone forgot her pencil, he gave her one from his stash, simple as that.

  A lump rose in my throat. I bowed my head over my work.

  During history, I dropped my textbook on the floor and it was extremely loud and Mr. Fackler thought I did it on purpose. During pre-algebra I stepped on some guy’s backpack, and he glared in a way that made my heart pound. It was like he thought I was an absolute idiot. For the whole rest of the class I dwelled on it, telling myself, I stepped on his backpack, that’s all. He needs to chill! But it didn’t ease my shame, which even I realized was too big for my crime.

  During English everyone snickered when I pronounced plethora wrong, even Louise, who should have stuck up for me since she knew me from before. During lunch she tried to make amends by offering me her brownie, but it was too little, too late. If she was going to be nice to me, she’d have to be nice to me all the time, not just when she didn’t have anyone to sit with.

  By the time Mom picked me up outside the junior high building, I was ready for a heaping dose of motherly love. I told her all about my horrible day, expecting sympathy, but instead I got another version of Sandra’s “deal with it” speech from this morning.

  “Oh, sweetie,” Mom said. “You’re going to have an awfully long year if you don’t find a way to change your attitude.”

  So not helpful. I almost wished I’d waited to ride with Sandra, but she had track from four till six. I yearned to veg in front of the TV with a bag of Doritos, not sit in the bleachers and watch Sandra run.

  “Why don’t you like your school?” Ty asked from his booster seat in the back.

  “Because everyone’s mean,” I said. “You better appreciate elementary school while you can, because you’re going to hate junior high.”

  “Winnie,” Mom chided.

  “I love first grade,” Ty said. “For snack they gave us Goldfish, and I snuck some in my pocket. Want one?”

  “I suppose,” I said. I extended my hand from the front seat.

  “With tail or without?”

  “Uh . . . with, I guess.”

  “Okay,” he said. He made it swim toward me, saying “swim, swim, swim” to clarify the process. Then he jabbed me with it, hard.

  “Ow!” I cried. “What’d you do that for?”

  “With their tail they hurt more, because they whack you,” Ty explained. He waved the Goldfish. “Here.”

  “I don’t want it anymore,” I said. To my horror, my voice trembled.

  Ty panicked, as he always did when he upset me.

  “Winnie, I’m sorry!” he said. “I did not mean to whack you!” His fist, grubby with cracker dust, thrust itself into my vision. “Here, you can have all of them. And if they whack you, I will crunch them with my sharp, sharp teeth!”

  “I don’t want them,” I said.

  Ty hyperventilated.

  “Winnie, tell your brother it’s okay,” Mom said. “Ty, it’s okay. Winnie’s not mad at you, are you, Winnie?”

  “I am,” I said.

  “No, you’re not,” Mom said, pulling up short at a red light. “Ty, she’s not. She’s just had a hard day.” She looked at me f
rom the driver’s seat. “Is there something going on you haven’t told me?”

  Oh, so now she wanted to talk, now that I no longer did. Everything was bad and wrong, and maybe it wasn’t Ty’s fault, but he sure hadn’t helped. It actually felt kind of good to have someone else be unhappy, too.

  “Winnie?” Mom said.

  “A girl called Dinah the B-word,” I said.

  “To Dinah?” Mom said.

  “And all Dinah had done was try to open that other girl’s locker by mistake,” I said.

  “What’s the B-word?” Ty asked.

  The light turned green, and Mom pressed on the accelerator. “It’s something people say when they’re not being very nice.”

  “It rhymes with witch,” I said. “Only it starts with B.”

  “What rhymes with witch?” Ty asked.

  I started to answer, but Mom cut me off.

  “Never mind,” she said. “It’s a grown-up word. It’s a word we don’t use.”

  “Like stupid?”

  “Like stupid.”

  “But Dinah’s not stupid,” Ty said.

  “No, she’s not,” Mom said.

  We rode the rest of the way home in silence.

  The next day, Dinah stayed home sick, only I didn’t think she was really sick. She didn’t want to face the B-word girl, that’s what I thought. I didn’t blame her. I wouldn’t, either. But that left me all alone in the universe, and in PE, which was the one class I had with Dinah, I felt especially stupid. We were supposed to find partners to do sit-ups with, and without Dinah, there was no partner for me.

  All around girls paired up, giggling and chatting. I felt like the biggest dork in the world, standing there trying to look unconcerned but privately feeling the onset of a panic attack. I would have even taken Louise for a partner. In a snap I’d have taken Louise. But she wasn’t an option, because she wasn’t in my class.

  “Everyone set?” Coach Swinson said. The girls in pairs spread out on the mats, and I realized that in a few short moments I was going to be standing there by myself with a sign taped to my chest that said SUPER-ENORMOUS LOSER.

  And then . . . salvation.

  “Want to pair up?” a girl said, nudging my arm with her elbow. She had brown hair and green eyes with long lashes.