That story gave me an idea. I could (if I had the nerve) pretend to faint dead away on the floor. Preferably this would happen in the locker room so I wouldn’t have to appear in public in my gym suit.
It was with this plan in the back of my mind that I headed toward gym class. I realized it was a rather drastic plan, but this was a desperate situation.
“Hi,” Jessi greeted me when I entered the locker room.
I wiggled my fingers at her in a half-hearted greeting as I pulled open a locker three doors away from hers. Now I had a decision to make. Should I fill her in on my plan? No. Jessi is a very honest person and she can’t lie to save her life. If she knew I was faking, her face would tip everyone off. Besides, she’d probably try to talk me out of it.
“That jumpsuit looks cool on you,” she commented as she changed into her baggy blue shorts and white camp-style shirt. Somehow the gym suit doesn’t look nearly as bad on her as it does on me. In fact, it looks almost nice. But Jessi looks good in anything.
“Oh, this? Thanks,” I muttered. My mind was on my plan. I had to find just the right moment to drop to the floor.
But the right moment never seemed to come. The truth was that I couldn’t get up the nerve to do it. And time was running out. Soon almost all the girls were dressed and moving out to the gym.
“Are you coming, Mal?” Jessi asked.
“Um, yeah. You go ahead,” I told her. That was the problem. I couldn’t do it in front of Jessi. I’d feel too dumb.
“Okay, you better hurry,” said Jessi, heading for the door.
This is it, I told myself. Now! I squinched my eyes shut and crumpled to the floor.
I waited, expecting to hear a wave of shocked and concerned voices begin to gather around me.
I didn’t hear anything.
What was going on? Hadn’t anyone noticed? Didn’t anyone care that I was lying in a pathetic heap on the floor?
Cautiously, I squinked open one eye. No one was around. I lifted my head and looked. That’s when I realized the humiliating truth. I’d waited too long. No one was left in the locker room.
With a deep sigh, I pulled myself up onto the bench. At that moment, my gym teacher, Ms. Walden, came barrelling back into the locker room from the gym outside. “Pike,” she barked when she saw me, “you’re late! Get dressed and get out there.”
She pulled open a supply cabinet and rummaged inside.
I got dressed, not knowing what else to do.
In a minute, Ms. Walden emerged from the closet with two big cardboard boxes. “Ms. Walden, I don’t feel so —” I began in a small voice.
She didn’t hear me. Instead she plunked one of the boxes on the bench by me. “Here, you can carry one of these out for me. And get a move on!”
With that she was gone. I peeked into the box. It was filled with blue, red, orange, and green colored cotton pinnies. The only thing that could make our gym suits look uglier than they already were was to put a crumpled, faded pinny over it. It was the finishing touch.
But now I had no choice but to go out to the gym. They were waiting for me to bring the rest of the pinnies. There was nothing to do but go.
I dressed and went out to the gym. Normally the gym is divided into two parts by a movable wall. The boys take gym on one side and the girls on the other. Today the wall was moved aside the way it is for basketball games.
On the bleachers at the far side of the gym sat the sixth-grade boys, a combined class of about forty boys listening to their gym teacher, Mr. De Young.
Four volleyball nets had been set up on each side of the gym. There was no getting away from it. This was really happening. The only good thing about the situation was that Ben didn’t have gym this period. That would have meant one perfectly great boyfriend down the drain, for sure.
My classmates were seated on the bleachers closest to me. In front of them stood Ms. Walden showing them something on a rolling blackboard. She motioned for me to bring the box to her. I set it down beside her and found a spot on the bleacher. “Pike, write your name on a piece of paper and drop it in that basket,” Ms. Walden said, pointing to a basket on the bottom bleacher. “We’re picking teams at random. You’ll play with these same teammates for the entire volleyball unit.”
This was good news and bad news. The bad news was that I might not be on the same team as Jessi. And I had been counting on having her near to make jokes and wisecracks through this ordeal. The good news was that I wouldn’t have to be crushed by the fact that no one would pick me for their team. This way, my teammates would have no choice. They’d be stuck with me, like it or not.
As Ms. Walden continued to review the rules of volleyball with the help of her blackboard drawings, I dropped my name in the basket. When she was done, Ms. Walden joined Mr. De Young in the center of the gym and they combined the names. Then came the long, drawn-out process of pulling out the names and separating everyone into different teams. I prayed it would take up the entire period.
Jessi scooted over beside me on the bleacher. “You look terrible. Do you feel all right?” she asked.
“I’m going to make a total jerk of myself,” I told her. “And in front of all these boys!”
“Everyone will be paying attention to their own game,” she pointed out.
“Yeah, and the kids on my team will be paying attention to me, because I’ll be the worst player on the team.”
Jessi gave my arm a friendly squeeze. “You’re not that bad.”
I looked at her. How could she be so calm? And why did her gym suit look so good on her? “Do you iron your gym suit?” I asked.
“Aunt Cecelia does. She irons everything. Even underwear,” Jessi replied with a laugh.
My outfit had the casual, rumpled look that can only be achieved by taking my shorts and shirt straight from the dryer and stuffing them into my knapsack. I made a mental note to iron my gym suit.
“Mallory Pike, green team,” Ms. Walden called out.
“So long,” I told Jessi as I slid off the bleacher.
“It won’t be as bad as you think,” she said, smiling. Good old Jessi. She had no idea.
The green team was to play at the net at the far end of the gym. I felt as if I were walking in slow motion, and everyone in the gym was staring at me. I had never been so aware of my arms before. Suddenly I had no idea what to do with them. I crossed them, but that felt dumb. Then I put them behind my back, but that made me look like I was in handcuffs. I placed them at my sides and felt like a robot.
“Move, Pike,” called Ms. Walden, clapping her hands.
Thank you, Ms. Walden, I said to myself. Now everyone really is looking at me. I broke into a trot and that, at least, made me forget about my arms.
When I reached the net, a girl named Helen Gallway handed me a green pinny. Helen is one of those very athletic girls Ms. Walden just adores. Somehow it seemed to be understood that she was the team captain.
“Mallory, how’s your serve?” Helen asked me.
“Not so hot,” I admitted.
Helen sighed. “Okay then, stand in the middle over to the right.”
I did as she said, hoping I was in a nice, out-of-the-way spot that the ball would never reach. I looked around at my ten teammates, but didn’t see anyone I knew very well. In a minute, Mr. De Young blew his whistle and the games began.
The other team chose a big guy named Chris Brooks to deliver their first serve. Obviously Chris was a good judge of nonathletes. He served the ball directly to me.
“Yaow!” I cried, jumping back. The ball came at me so fast it practically whomped my head off! (My fantasy of being rushed to the hospital had nearly come true.)
“Ma-lor-reeeee!” Helen said huffily. “You’re supposed to hit the ball, not run away from it.”
“Sorry,” I said lamely.
But, too bad for me, Chris Brooks had realized he was onto a winning strategy. Here was his plan: Keep sending the ball to Mallory. Which is exactly what he did.
“Put your arms up,” a boy named Glen Johnson coached from behind me. I tried that, but the next ball just flew right through them.
“It helps if you keep your eyes open, too,” Glen added snidely as he tossed the ball back over the net to the other team.
“Right, yeah. I know that. Sorry,” I mumbled.
After two more misses, I could tell my team was pretty annoyed with me. Hey! Don’t look at me! I felt like shouting. I didn’t ask to play this stupid game!
“No matter what happens, let me get it,” said a boy named Robbie Mara, who was standing next to me.
“Gladly,” I replied sarcastically. I should have been relieved, but his superior tone of voice bugged me.
Once again, the ball came zooming at my head, like a missile aimed at its target. “Move, move, move,” I heard Robbie say. But I didn’t move fast enough.
The next thing I knew he was leaping in front of me, hurling himself at the ball. His arm jabbed me in the side. His foot came down hard on mine. Suddenly I lost my balance and went flying over backward. I landed with a thud on my behind on the gym floor.
And was anyone concerned about me? Oh, no! Everyone was cheering because we had finally made a point.
“Pike, are you okay?” asked Ms. Walden, who was moving from game to game.
I didn’t know which was worse, the pain in my foot, or the embarrassment. Hot tears tingled in my eyes, but I didn’t want anyone to see them. “I’m all right,” I mumbled, staggering to my feet.
“Get in there after that ball,” she told me. “You’re wimping out on your team.”
Thanks for making that so clear, I thought bitterly. Just in case anyone here wasn’t aware of that.
Once my team had the ball the game wasn’t so bad. At least every serve wasn’t directed at me. And I discovered that if I hopped up and down with my arms in the air, I could pretend to be a functioning member of the team.
I didn’t fool Ms. Walden, though. “Pike! Don’t just flap your arms!” she’d yell. “This is your ball, Pike! Get it!”
So, thanks to Ms. Walden’s big mouth, all eyes were on me every time the ball flew past me.
The game seemed endless. I couldn’t help but wonder what terrible thing I’d done to deserve this torture. Ms. Walden never let up on me.
The girls on my team weren’t too bad. (With the exception of Helen.) But the boys were animals. You’d think they were engaged in a war, the way they yelled, leaped, pounded the ball, and spiked it over the net. Didn’t they realize it was just a game?
After what seemed like a thousand years, the period ended. As I slunk off the court, I realized Jessi had been right. It hadn’t been as bad as I thought.
It had been much worse.
After school, I dropped my books at home, then limped to my afternoon baby-sitting job on Bradford Court.
My foot still throbbed from when that jerk Robbie had stomped on it. And to say that I was in a bad mood would be an understatement. But I could feel my mood lift a little as I approached the Newtons’ house. I like sitting for them. Four-year-old Jamie is lots of fun and Lucy is one of the most adorable babies in the world. She has the biggest, roundest blue eyes you have ever seen.
“Hi, Mallory,” Mrs. Newton said as she opened the door and let me in. “Did you hurt your foot?”
“Some guy stepped on it during gym.”
“Ouch,” Mrs. Newton sympathized. “Well, I hope the kids don’t give you too much trouble. I’m afraid Jamie has been acting up today.”
I smiled confidently at Mrs. Newton. “Jamie’s never any problem. And Lucy’s an angel.”
That seemed to make Mrs. Newton relax. To tell the truth, she did look frazzled, which usually isn’t the case. “We’ll be fine,” I added.
Mrs. Newton gave me the phone number of the hairdresser’s where she’d be for the next two hours. “I’ll try to get home earlier, if I can,” she said. “I know you have your meeting at five-thirty.”
“Thanks,” I said. “If you get here by five-fifteen, I’ll have just enough time to race over there.”
“Lucy is down for her nap and Jamie is upstairs in his room coloring,” she continued as she pulled on her coat. “I finally got him settled down. He’s been wild lately. I don’t know if it’s nursery school, or if he’s competing with Lucy for attention or what.”
“Don’t worry. Enjoy your haircut,” I said.
“Highlighting.”
“Whatever.”
When she was gone, I quietly headed up the stairs. When I reached the second floor, I saw about a hundred crayons spread across the floor in the hallway. Jamie was busy peeling the paper off of them and then cracking each one in half.
“Jamie! What are you doing?” I cried softly, aware of the sleeping baby across the hall.
Jamie grinned at me guiltily. “Making rockets.”
“What?”
To demonstrate, Jamie picked up one of the broken crayons. “Fire rocket!” he shouted as he hurled the crayon against Lucy’s closed door.
“Don’t do that,” I told him, picking my way through the crayons. “You’re going to wake Lucy and you’re marking up her door. Besides that, you’re going to ruin all your crayons.”
“I don’t care,” he replied.
“Sure you do,” I said as I began to gather up the crayons.
Suddenly, Jamie scooped up a handful of crayons and sprang to his feet. “No, I don’t care!” he insisted. With that, he hurled an entire handful of crayons at Lucy’s door.
My jaw dropped. I had never seen Jamie act this way. “Jamie! What’s the matter?”
“I want to call up my friend, Roger,” said Jamie stubbornly. “He’s my best friend in school. He’s five!”
“First we’re picking up all these crayons,” I said firmly.
“I want to call Roger!” Jamie bellowed.
At that moment, a piercing cry told me he’d awakened Lucy. “Now look what you’ve done,” I scolded, pushing open Lucy’s door.
In the darkened nursery, Lucy sat up in her crib wearing a yellow one-piece stretchy. Her big eyes were sleepy and wet with tears. And when she saw me, she began to wail even harder. Babies prefer to see their mothers when they wake from a nap. But I lifted her out of her crib and walked around with her. In about three minutes she had calmed down. After another three minutes, she gave me a big smile.
“Hey, Jamie!” I cried. “She has four teeth. She only had two the last time I was here.”
“Big deal,” said Jamie, who had come into the room with me.
I studied him a minute and decided Mrs. Newton had been right. He did seem to resent Lucy. And maybe Roger had something to do with his attitude, too. I’ve noticed that when Nicky wants the triplets to hang around with him, he acts tough so they won’t think he’s a baby. Possibly Jamie was trying to act like Roger.
As I supported Lucy on my shoulder, with one hand under her bottom, I realized that her diaper was leaking at the sides. “Time for a fresh diaper, kiddo,” I said, laying her on her changing table.
At least Lucy’s temperament was the same. She kicked and laughed as I changed her diaper. “She’s gotten so big,” I commented to Jamie while I fished in Lucy’s drawer for a fresh romper. “You’ll see. The older she gets, the more fun she’ll be to play with. Right now she probably seems like a pain to you sometimes.”
There was no answer. I looked around and saw that Jamie had left the room. Considering the mood he was in, I didn’t want to let him out of my sight for too long. I quickly snapped Lucy into her outfit and took her from the table. “Let’s go find your grouchy big brother,” I whispered to her as we left her nursery.
The first place I checked was Jamie’s room. He wasn’t there. Then I tried the den and the kitchen. “Jamie!” I called out. “Jamie!”
With Lucy still in my arms, I checked the basement. “Jamie!” I looked behind the washer and dryer, around the boiler. Everywhere.
Finally I returned to the living room. “Jamie! This
isn’t funny!” I hollered. Still no response.
Now I was starting to panic. I went to the front door and looked out. He wasn’t in the front yard. Next I tried the backyard. No Jamie.
Lucy must have sensed my growing unhappiness because she began to whimper. “It’s okay,” I consoled her.
My arms were getting tired from carrying her, so I put her in her high chair in the kitchen. Luckily she became interested in some plastic toys that were on the tray, which freed me to look around for Roger’s phone number or address. All I could think of was that Jamie had gone to his house.
I did find the number of a Roger Friedman tacked to the bulletin board. I called it, but the line was busy. “Get off the phone,” I mumbled as I banged down the receiver. If the line didn’t clear in the next few minutes, I planned to call the operator for an emergency break-in.
“Stay calm, Mallory,” I told myself. “He’s got to be here somewhere.”
But all the horrible possibilities occurred to me. What if he’d headed for Roger’s house and gotten lost? Or hit by a car? Or kidnapped?
I decided to dress Lucy more warmly and go outside to look for him. I picked her up from the seat and carried her back upstairs. Then I dressed her in her warm, fleecy sack suit, put on her hat, and carried her downstairs again.
Before we left, I decided to try the Roger Friedman number one more time. I wasn’t even sure this was the right Roger, but it was worth a try. With Lucy propped against my hip, the phone receiver cradled between my shoulder and cheek, I punched in the number. The line was still busy.
“All right, Lucy, let’s go,” I said.
At that moment I smelled the distinctive aroma of a dirty diaper. “What next?” I sighed. Normally, I don’t mind changing a dirty diaper, but this diaper change presented a real dilemma. Should I waste precious time unbundling her, or, should I take her as she was and risk her getting a rash?
It was a decision I didn’t have to make.