Ten

  Kids at nearby tables had realized something was going on. They’d stopped talking so they could hear.

  Katie elbowed Mindy. “The bee,” she said.

  “Oh, right,” Mindy said. “And that . . . bumblebee? Is that what it’s supposed to be?”

  I was rooted to the floor. I couldn’t move.

  “It looks like a turd,” Mindy pronounced.

  The word turd made kids laugh. I wasn’t sure how many, but it sounded like lots. All I could think was, It does not. It has wings. It has stripes. There are wavy lines to show that it’s on the move.

  Katie’s ugly nose-laugh sounded as if it was coming from underwater. So did Mindy’s dismissal.

  “You can go now,” she informed me, and like a robot, I turned and left.

  When I walked past my own table, Amanda and Chantelle glanced at each other in alarm. I saw them through a film of waiting-to-spill tears.

  “Winnie?” Amanda said.

  She and Chantelle shoved back their seats and trailed me out of the lunchroom. In the hall, they flanked my sides to keep me safe, because I was crying by then. Not noisily. Stonily, although on the inside, I’d crumbled to dust.

  “What happened?” Amanda said when we got to the girls’ room. It was empty except for us. I went into the far stall, and Amanda and Chantelle crowded in with me.

  “It was Mindy, wasn’t it?” Chantelle said. “She wasn’t very nice when she opened your present.”

  “What did she say to you?” Amanda demanded. She put her arm around me. “What did she do to make you cry?”

  I told them. Amanda’s lips formed an “O” of dismay, and Chantelle huffed and said, “How rude!”

  They took turns trying to make me feel better, telling me that Mindy was a jerk, the present I gave her was awesome, and that nobody heard the “turd” remark except maybe the kids sitting right near Mindy and Katie.

  Amanda told me that Mindy’s parents were divorced, and so were Katie’s, and that was the only reason they were friends. Chantelle said she overheard Mrs. Jacobs, the assistant principal, tell a parent that Mindy wasn’t “a good fit” for Trinity, and that once Mindy had been sent to the office for calling someone a donkey hole.

  “She is not someone whose opinion you need to care about,” she said. By then, we’d all slid to the floor and were sitting with our knees bent and our legs squished up toward our chests. “I mean it, Winnie.”

  “She was so mean,” I whispered. “It’s like . . . she wanted to embarrass me. Why would anybody do that?”

  Amanda, Chantelle, and I looked at one another. None of us had an answer.

  Chantelle wiped the lost expression off her face. Shifting her features around, she said, “Well, we’ve all had our embarrassing moments. Remember when Ms. Katcher thought I was a boy?”

  Amanda winced. Mrs. Katcher was our teacher in third grade, and on the first day of school, she called Chantelle “Robert.”

  “Ms. Katcher was crazy,” I said, sniffling.

  “She was,” Amanda agreed. “Just because you had short hair, that meant you had to be a boy?”

  Chantelle lifted her eyebrows. “That’s what I’m saying. Embarrassing.”

  “What about the time I got trapped in the bathroom?” Amanda said. “In this very stall?”

  I blinked. I’d forgotten all about that, but sure enough, this was the very stall I’d crawled under when Amanda couldn’t make the lock unstick.

  “I was so embarrassed, but you rescued me,” Amanda said.

  “What about the time you got that staple stuck in your tooth?” Chantelle said to me.

  Amanda pressed the back of her hand to her mouth to hide her smile.

  “Ha ha,” I said. I’d eaten a caramel, and it glued itself to my back tooth. I tried to pry it out with a staple, only to get the staple stuck up there, too.

  “You couldn’t close your mouth,” Chantelle said. “You were afraid you’d jam it in farther.”

  Amanda widened her jaw as well as her eyes. “You alked ike iss,” she said, keeping her top teeth from touching the bottom ones.

  My lips twitched.

  Amanda let her mouth go back to normal. “I had to pull it out. It was covered with spit.”

  “Yes. Well. These things happen.” I tried to sound lofty, but failed.

  “Exactly,” Chantelle said. She put her hand on my knee.

  “You know what, though?” Amanda said. “With the caramel, and the staple? That was your own fault.”

  I swiveled my head and made a face at her. “Thanks.”

  “No, I just mean that was all you. You embarrassed yourself.”

  “And again I say thanks.”

  She knocked her leg against mine. “You know what I’m saying. Just now, with Mindy, I know you were embarrassed—”

  “I would have been, too. Anyone would have been,” Chantelle piped up.

  “Yeah,” Amanda said. “But in reality”—she looked at me hard—“she embarrassed herself.”

  “Out of rudeness,” Chantelle said.

  “Extreme rudeness,” Amanda said. “Don’t you let her matter, Winnie. Don’t you dare.”

  My chest loosened. Even scrunched up in the bathroom with Amanda and Chantelle, I no longer felt small and insignificant, which was how Mindy had made me feel. Instead, I felt . . . blessed.

  “Okay,” I said. I smiled at my friends. “Thanks.”

  We sat for a few moments.

  “Should we go back?” Chantelle said.

  “I guess we should,” Amanda said.

  I didn’t want to, but then I remembered Maxine’s mom’s potato latkes, waiting for me at my desk.

  “I have potato latkes!” I proclaimed loudly.

  Chantelle put her hands over her ears. “Ow.”

  “That was random,” Amanda said, giggling.

  “Let’s go,” I said, and the three of us scrambled to our feet. Nobody bonked her head, nobody stepped on someone else’s toes, and nobody got locked in or fell in the toilet.

  It was a Christ-nukkah-whatever-ian miracle.

  January

  January first was a day for reflection. It was the first day of a brand-new year, and that was a big deal. It wasn’t as big of a deal as my birthday—which was in two months and ten days!!!—but still. New Year’s Day was the exact right day for sitting down and making plans for who I wanted to be. In other words, it was the exact right day for writing down my New Year’s resolutions.

  I got out my spanking new journal, which Santa had put in my stocking, and uncapped one of my spanking new fruitscented gel pens, which Sandra had wrapped up and put under the tree for me. Good ol’ Sandra. My gift to her was a pale blue baby doll shirt that said, Shalom, y’all! She loved it, which I knew because she darted to the bathroom and put it on right that second. It looked really pretty with her eyes.

  I opened my journal to the first page. It was blank and inviting, a promise waiting to be filled. I gripped my pen—I’d chosen Very Berry Blackberry—and inhaled the tang of its sparkly purple ink. Yum.

  And now there was nothing left to do except write those resolutions down. Only . . . where to start?

  I knew from experience that when it came to writing, thinking too long about something was the kiss of death. I imagined a black blob floating over to a stick-figure girl and saying, Pucker up, sweetie! And then, SPLAT! The stick-figure girl would fall down dead, limbs splayed and X’s over her eyes.

  That was no way to start a new year.

  So I got that pen moving. I didn’t let myself worry about whether what I wrote was dumb or wrong or embarrassing, because it was my journal. Plus, wasn’t I allowed to be dumb, wrong, and embarrassing sometimes? Everybody did things that were dumb, wrong, and embarrassing sometimes, just like Chantelle said.

  Well, helloooooooo, me! I wrote. It’s January 1st, the first day of an entire new year. An entire new going-to-be-GREAT year! And the reason it’s going to be great is because I’m going to MAKE it great. Yep, you
heard it here first, folks!

  So with that as my goal, I hereby resolve:

  • That I won’t let a certain girl named MINDY get under my skin.

  I didn’t exactly intend to put that resolution down first, but getting Mindy out of my head and onto the paper flooded me with so much relief that I was glad I did. I guess I’d been worrying about Mindy more than I realized, even over Christmas break.

  But I didn’t want to let Mindy matter to me, and so I wouldn’t. La la la. Mindy who?

  What next?

  I bit my lip, then kept writing.

  • I won’t worry about other things, either. For example, bees or rules or—dun dun dun—the Bathroom Lady. Be gone, Bathroom Lady! Be gone!

  There was something else that went along with that, so I decided I might as well put it down, too.

  • I will also stop flushing the toilet.

  Wait, that wasn’t right. Do-over!

  I will no longer not not flush the toilet. In fact, I WILL FLUSH THE TOILET EVERY TIME I USE IT. That is an order, young lady. Got it?

  The truth was that I’d gotten better about the Bathroom Lady, meaning that as long as I didn’t think about her, I was fine. But when I did think about her . . . alone in the downstairs bathroom, say . . . or late at night when suddenly and desperately I had to use the bathroom . . .

  I shuddered. The surest way to make myself need to use the bathroom was to tell myself I didn’t, just as the surest way to creep myself out about the Bathroom Lady was to tell myself not, under any circumstances, to think about pruney claws or just plain claws, or even just plain prunes.

  So don’t, I told myself.

  Can’t you see I’m trying? I replied. Sheesh!

  The problem was that I had a very good imagination, and having a good imagination had its pluses and its minuses. On the plus side, when I dreamed, I dreamed BIG. Finding a magic wish-granting penny? Stumbling on a secret system of tunnels beneath our house? Becoming pen pals with Al Roker’s daughter? Why not? Those things could happen. They could totally happen.

  But when my imagination turned toward not-so-happy topics . . . well, it was bad. I didn’t even want to think of examples, although here they came just the same: Being kidnapped ! Biting my own tongue off! Biting someone else’s tongue off! And once a thought popped into my brain, it was nearly impossible to make it leave—just like the Bathroom Lady, for example. Mom called it getting trapped in a bad thought pattern. Sandra called it obsessing. I didn’t call it anything, but I didn’t like it.

  What Mom and Dad and Sandra didn’t understand was that I didn’t mean to let my imagination run wild. I didn’t on purpose think, Ooo! Hot dogs for dinner, yay! I JUST HOPE THEY DON’T CLOG TY’S THROAT THE WAY THE BLACK RUBBER STOPPER CLOGS UP THE KITCHEN SINK, BECAUSE THEN HE COULD STOP BREATHING AND TURN PURPLE AND DIE!

  Wait. What did hot dogs have to do with my New Year’s resolutions? Nothing . . . except that eating animal intestines was seriously gross, so maybe I should resolve to not eat hot dogs anymore.

  Except hot dogs were also seriously delicious, so maybe my resolution should be not to think about how hot dogs are made.

  Yes. Excellent solution.

  • I will never again think about how hot dogs are made, I scribbled.

  Then I groaned, remembering how hard it was to NOT think about something once I’d already made the mistake of thinking about it.

  • I won’t think about it on purpose, that is. And if I’m in a group of people and the topic comes up, I will walk away. That’s right. I will WALK. AWAY. And the moral of this story is?

  Bring it on, New Year! Let the good times roll!

  I made the exclamation point at the end of that sentence big and bold, and then I capped my pen and put it down. Then I uncapped it, breathed in its smell one last time, recapped it, and put it down for real.

  With my resolutions done, it was time to get started on the good times rolling part. I left my bedroom and took a moment to check in on everyone. Sandra was in her room, doing something boring on her laptop. I trotted downstairs, where I found Mom and Dad watching Masterpiece Theater in the den. Ty was in there with them, playing with his toy cars and quietly going vroom, vroom as he made them race along the floor.

  “Hi,” I said, waving.

  “Hi, Winnie,” Mom said. “Want to watch Pride and Prejudice with us?”

  “No thanks, but thanks for the offer,” I said politely. “Bye now!”

  Knowing the coast was clear, I tromped down to the basement, where I took hold of a very large cardboard box and dragged it up to the main level of the house. I’d been wanting some alone time with this box ever since Christmas, when Dad had pried it open and pulled out a new lamp to be used in the den. It was a present from Mom.

  The box—and the lamp—were as tall as I was, and while Mom and Dad and Sandra had oohed and aahed over the lamp, I’d privately oohed and aahed over the box, considering its many possibilities. Ty had been too busy with a new racetrack gizmo to pay attention to either.

  When Mom caught me eyeing the box, she tilted her head and said, “Winnie? This box is not for climbing in.”

  “I know, I know,” I said.

  To Dad, she said, “Joel, will you please break it down and take it to the recycling bin after we finish opening presents?”

  “Of course, of course,” Dad said.

  But he didn’t. He lugged it to the bottom of the basement staircase and forgot about it. I, however, did not.

  I pulled the box into the back hallway and took a break to catch my breath. With it on its side the way it was, I suspected I could scoot all the way in and be totally contained. I tried it, and I was right. I thought about how much Amanda’s cat, Sweet Pea, loved to curl up in boxes or baskets or open drawers, and I pretended I was a cat. Then I pretended I was dead, and the box was my coffin.

  It worked, until someone came along and kicked the box’s side.

  “Hey!” I complained, pushing open the top of the box and peering out.

  Sandra stood above me. “Move,” she said.

  “What are you doing here? Go back to your room,” I said.

  She snorted and stepped over me, deliberately allowing her heel to bang into the cardboard.

  “Hey! Gentle!” I said.

  “Don’t worry, I’m fine,” she said. She jerked her chin at the storage closet behind me. “I need the hammer out of Dad’s toolbox, though, and I need something to step on so I can reach that high.” She lifted her foot, as well as her eyebrows. “Mind if I . . . ?”

  “Yes, I mind!” I cried, squirming out of the box. “You’d squish it, you big lug. And you’d squish me. And you don’t need Dad’s hammer—you totally made that up, didn’t you?”

  She laughed and went on her merry way while I stood guard in front of my box. She grabbed a Coke from the kitchen and returned to the back hall.

  “Still here?”

  “Bye now,” I said with narrowed eyes.

  She laughed again. “So weird,” she said, fakily under her breath. But she left, so fine.

  I pulled the box to the kitchen, where I could have some privacy. What would be really cool, I decided, would be if I could somehow find a way to be in the box while standing up. Not standing on the floor with the box pulled over me, but actually standing inside the box with my feet on the cardboard bottom and the top of my head inches below the open cardboard flaps.

  Hmm. If I climbed onto the kitchen counter, I’d be high enough to lower myself into the box. If I pulled the box over to the edge of the counter, I could hold myself up with my hands and ease myself in, feetfirst. I’d have to tilt the box diagonally, but it would straighten up as I dropped all the way in.

  I realized my mistake the instant I let go of the counter. As I dropped into the box, my arms slid up, pinned between my ears and the cardboard sides. The momentum threw my body against the front of the box, and everything tilted forward.

  “Ahhh!” I yelled. My forehead smacked the tiled
kitchen floor, and the world went dark.

  Mom was too embarrassed to take me to the emergency room.

  “What would I tell them?” she said, once I came to. “My daughter was pretending to be a lamp, so she jumped feetfirst into a box? Anyway, you were only out for a minute. Two minutes, tops.”

  She pressed a washcloth filled with ice against my head and readjusted my pillow. Dad had carried me upstairs to my bed during my two minutes of unconsciousness, I’d been told. He was now outside breaking down the box. Ty was with him, helping him jump on it.

  “I wasn’t pretending to be a lamp,” I protested. I lifted my Coke to my lips. I took a tiny sip and put it back on my bedside table.

  “Not to mention the fact that it’s New Year’s Day. The emergency room is probably overflowing with drunks and degenerates.”

  “So she’d fit right in,” Sandra called from her room.

  “Eavesdropper!” I called, then winced and wished I hadn’t.

  Mom shook her head. “What a way to usher in the new year. If the swelling isn’t down by morning, I’ll take you to Dr. Larson’s.”

  “Can I have another Coke when I finish this one?” I asked.

  “No,” Sandra called.

  “Sandra? Hush,” Mom called back. To me, she said, “Absolutely not, and you’re lucky you didn’t break your nose.”

  I got to watch movies in bed for the rest of the night. Dad brought up the portable DVD player that we used on long car trips, and Ty snuggled up with me, asking every so often if he could touch my bump. Sandra tracked down Dad’s camera and took pictures of it.

  “Quit,” I said.

  “I haven’t gotten it from this angle,” she said, squeezing onto my bed and taking a picture from below my head.

  “Quit!”

  “Fine, you big baby.” She put the camera on my nightstand, but stayed where she was. “Poor little Nemo,” she mused, getting sucked into the movie. “When, oh when, will you realize that you weren’t big enough to go out on your own?”

  I elbowed her, but not hard. I liked being cuddled up with Ty on one side and Sandra on the other. They were the bread, and I was the cheese. Or the baloney. No, the cheese, just not the hi-ho the derry-o sort of cheese, because the one thing I wasn’t was alone.