Anyway, Amber always had another fish to fry, and now it was going to be the new girl.
I watched Taylor up on the hill alone. I saw Amber and her cronies fast approaching. I knew what they had in mind. They already had their arms folded across their chests as they marched.
I also knew Taylor would be crying again by the time they finished telling her off.
Chapter 6
I’m not the heroic type. In fact, I’m not particularly brave at all. I’m afraid of most things; of new things, new places, strangers, of raising my hand with the answer because I’m scared I’ll say something stupid. I always forget to think before I talk, and usually I do say something stupid. But in this case I’m glad I didn’t think, because I might never have met Taylor.
I got there just as Kelly Noonan was doing the preliminaries.
“What kind of outfit is that?” Kelly asked.
Kelly Noonan always wore one color exclusively. She was in her purple phase. Last year she had gone a full five months in a blue phase.
Today she was wearing faded, purple overalls and a shaggy, purple turtleneck. Since it was unusually warm for November, she wore only a maroon sweater (maroon and white are our school colors) with the varsity letters, NP (for New Paltz), on the back.
“Who do you think you are, dressing up like this is some kind of fashion show?” Kelly continued her interrogation.
Taylor’s chin was betraying her with signs of trembling. I had gotten there just in time.
“She thinks she’s a girl coming to school and wearing clothing, same as you, Kelly Noonan,” I said, stepping into a direct line of fire.
“Figures she’d be your friend,” Kelly said. She backed off immediately.
Amber looked right at me. Something in her eyes told me that she wasn’t all that bad. She even looked a little scared herself. I realized that if this were all suddenly switched around, Amber Whitman could just as easily be surrounded by some other angry, popular Ones. They could be picking on what she was wearing or what her mother’s new last name was or the size of her hips or her breasts or the color of her shoes. Possibly, Amber was realizing this very same thing.
Kelly must have decided telling off Taylor Such wasn’t worth this much trouble. She turned and started off down the hill, followed by Melanie and Sophie. Amber stared at the ground, waited a beat, and then abruptly turned and left after her friends.
It was just Taylor and me.
“Thanks,” Taylor said, her voice still shaking. She was breathing fast.
“Don’t worry about them. They’ll all have on your exact outfit by the end of next week,” I told her. “And they’ll all want to be your best friend.”
It wasn’t until I said that out loud that I realized how much I didn’t want it to happen.
I was beginning to like Taylor.
“Really?” Taylor smiled.
“Well, maybe.” I shrugged.
We started down the hill together. The first bell was ringing.
“So where’d you move from?” I asked.
“NewYork City,” Taylor said. “My dad still lives there.”
We both walked the same. Our steps fell right into place. We were about the same size, if you were just looking at things in general. Taylor kept talking a little too quickly, like she was calming herself down.
“We moved here because Richard got a great job and the real estate market here is about to boom.”
“Richard is your stepfather?” I asked.
“Oh, Richard is great,” Taylor said, even though I hadn’t asked if she liked him or not. “I knew him since way before my parents got divorced. He was already like family.” Taylor got to the door and I held it open.
She walked through and stopped just inside the hall.
I glanced at her schedule. “This way” I pointed.
We walked down the hall together while everyone else was rushing to their classes.
“Hi, Gabby.” Peter passed us.
I waved.
Amber was coming the other way. She was alone.
“Hi, Gabby.” She nodded at me and then said to Taylor, “Hi, Taylor.”
I had known Taylor less than a day, but it felt okay to kind of bang into her with my shoulder. “See,” I said with a big, everything-is-okay grin. “I told you.”
Taylor smiled and leaned back into my push.
Chapter 7
Taylor called me that very night and invited me to her house the next day after school. I didn’t need a bus note because Mrs. Tyler and Taylor’s stepfather, Richard Tyler, lived in one of the old historic houses near the school and we would walk. Taylor told me it was Richard who advised her parents to buy their co-op on the upper west side of New York City. That was when her parents first were married, so when they got divorced and had to sell it they made a fantastic profit. Her father stayed in New York City. Taylor said Richard was amazing at foreseeing property trends. I supposed that was good for New Paltz, real estate−wise, anyway.
A cold front was definitely moving in from wherever they move in from, but I was determined to hold out until I went shopping with Cleo over the weekend. My winter coat was now unbearably ugly and therefore unwearable. Instead, I wore a lot of layers and a wool hat. Taylor and I crossed over the football field with our backpacks weighing us down. We would have to cut through the Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot, over the empty lot where there’s a hole in the chain-link fence, and up the hill to Taylor’s neighborhood.
The Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot was nearly empty. The smell of sugar leaked out the back of the building through the roar of loud ventilators and an open rear door.
“I love the chocolate glaze,” Taylor said and sniffed the air.
She looked so funny; her nose pointing up, her backpack hanging down, the cold air coming out with her words like the steam from the Dunkin’ Donuts exhaust—I started to laugh. A real laugh, the kind you can’t stop.
Taylor looked at me a minute and then she said it again—“I looove the chocolate glaze”—in this exaggerated voice.
She broke out laughing, too. We laughed so long our stomachs hurt. We had reached the vacant lot and climbed through the fence, our laughter reduced to a few uncontrollable spasms now and then. Until I said it—“I love the chocolate glaze”—and we started all over again. All the way to her house.
Mrs. Tyler opened the door before we even got there, as though she was expecting something new. Then I realized it must be me.
I was laughing so much my voice was kind of louder and hoarser than it usually is. My eyes were probably watery and my cheeks were probably blotchy. I had this stupid leftover laughing smile on my face.
“You must be Gabby,” Mrs. Tyler said, still standing in the doorway so we had to stop on the front step and wait.
“Uh-huh,” I said. Loudly.
“C’mon, Mom. Just let us come in first,” Taylor said. She was slipping her backpack off. Taylor’s mother took it from her and then let us in.
I watched Taylor carefully. There was something here that was signaling me to be aware, a test. It was one of those situations where I was deficient as a girl, a girl who otherwise would have understood what was expected of her.
Taylor took off her shoes. So I did, too. There were two other pairs of shoes already there. I placed my sneakers beside Taylor’s. (Taylor hadn’t worn her platforms that day, but I was still betting some One would have an identical pair by the end of the next week.)
I felt Mrs. Tyler’s eyes on my back. I switched my sneakers around so they were lined up left then right, both pointing in like the others, and I stood up.
“Would you like a little snack, girls?” Mrs. Tyler asked. She was very tall. And thin. She had blond hair, too, though not as blond as Taylor’s.
“Thanks, Mom,” Taylor answered. I decided it would be best to not say anything, so that I couldn’t say the wrong thing.
But that was the wrong thing. “Would you like something to eat, Gabby?” she asked me.
> This was more than a test.
“Sure,” I answered.
This was a minefield.
“Sure, please,” I added. We followed Mrs. Tyler into the kitchen, single file. Taylor looked back at me and smiled. She raised her eyebrows luringly and, just before she was seen, stuck out her tongue at her mother.
I wanted to smile at Taylor’s joke, but I was too awestruck by her home.
It looked to me that everything in Taylor’s house was white. The walls were white. The rugs were white. The sofa in the living room, where, Taylor told me, no one was allowed to stand for more than a few moments to admire, was white. The leather couches in the den where the TV was were the color of perfectly mashed potatoes. The bathroom was filled with white towels, Dove soap, white curtains, and chrome.
Even Taylor and her mother looked white in that house, with their blond hair and creamy skin. I felt dark, big, and too loud and clumsy.
The more uncomfortable I felt, the more I acted dark and big, too loud and clumsy. Just like when I was in third grade and I was invited to Beth Moore’s birthday party. The whole memory is a blur, like a photograph that’s out of focus. I do remember jumping on Beth Moore’s couch, and I remember when Beth told me I wasn’t allowed to come to her house anymore.
To credit her eight-year-old politeness, Beth didn’t actually volunteer the information. It didn’t come out for two whole days, when at school I asked Beth if she wanted to play on the playground with me.
We had just come out for recess, and I had my eye on something just past the sandbox. The two best swings were still empty.
“Do you want to play with me, Beth?” I asked.
Beth said, “My mom says you can’t come to my house again.”
It took my eight-year-old brain a few minutes to figure out what she was saying. But I did figure it out. Beth’s mother had banned me from her house.
“What are you talking about?” I asked Beth, as if I was really annoyed, instead of horribly embarrassed and tremendously sad.
“My mom said you were too wild and you jumped on our couches.” Beth looked down at the ground. She flicked a little rock around with the tip of her sneaker.
I knew then, as much as I liked Beth Moore (and as much as Beth liked me), we weren’t going to be friends.
“I was just asking you if you wanted to swing,” I snapped. “But now, forget it.”
“I’m sorry,” Beth said, still looking at her feet.
Not as sorry as I was. Still, I was glad I wouldn’t be going to her house again. I didn’t know mothers could disapprove of and dislike one little girl so much. I never thought anyone noticed me at all. But from then on, I knew I had to be more careful, had to watch my step.
*
And here I was, watching my step. Steps I hadn’t been taught to take.
At the Tylers’ house food was only allowed in the dining room. Mrs. Tyler put out milk (white!) and cookies (also white). Each cookie had delicate stripes of chocolate across the top and a hole in the center, so you could put it on your finger and spin it.
I started to nibble my cookie as it spun on the tip of my finger but quickly decided against this method of eating. I didn’t know if Mrs. Tyler had seen me yet or not.
I had this feeling Mrs. Tyler didn’t like me, already. It was something about the way she looked at me later, when Taylor and I were playing Monopoly in the family room. I got a little carried away making jokes about the car and the top hat, and I was a little loud, again. Mrs. Tyler walked by just as I said “brang” instead of “brought,” and she corrected me. My dad had always corrected me on that, too, and I hadn’t done it for years until, of course, just then.
My dad was supposed to pick me up on his way home from the university, and around five o’clock I heard him beep his horn. I could tell Mrs. Tyler didn’t approve of that, either.
“My dad’s here,” I said, moving to get my shoes on. “Yes, I hear the beeping.”
“Well, Thursdays are his student critiques and he’s probably real tired,” I explained (I lied—his crits were on Wednesdays), and then at the same time I felt further inclined to entice Mrs. Tyler with something interesting about me.
“And he gets up at five thirty in the morning to paint, so he’s extra, extra tired.”
“Oh, what kind of paintings does your father do?” she asked me.
“Oil paintings. Landscapes mostly. Cows and clouds and stuff,” I said.
I looked up from the floor, where I was busy tying my laces, to see if I had made an impression. From this angle Mrs. Tyler seemed immense. Looming tall. But yes, she seemed interested.
“Well, Gabby, it was nice to meet you,” she said, opening the door. “We’ll see you again soon, I hope.”
“Bye, Gabby,” Taylor said. “See you tomorrow in school.”
I remembered to say “Thank you for having me” to Mrs. Tyler, and right before I got into my dad’s car I turned to Taylor and said, “I looove the chocolate glaze.”
Taylor laughed. Mrs. Tyler looked puzzled. I saw Taylor turn inside her house without explaining the joke to her mother. Maybe this time it wouldn’t matter what her mother thought of me.
Chapter 8
I was studying Cleo as we drove to the new mall in Poughkeepsie. With her arms bent and her hands on the steering wheel, Cleo’s elbows did not look so wrinkled. She wore a thin line of brown eyeliner on her upper lids, a pale lip gloss, and other than that nothing that I could detect. Cleo wasn’t the makeup kind. She wasn’t the dress-up kind, either, which was funny since she designed clothing. Cleo had her own line of shirts and pants with her drawings on the arms or legs or in the center of her sack-of-potatoes dresses (there was no other way to describe them). Mostly she had pictures of leaves or tree branches or what looked like animal bones on her clothing. All natural things that you might find walking through the woods.
Cleo had given me one of her T-shirts the first time I met her. The T-shirt had tiny falling leaves on the sleeve and one on the front like it had just landed there by accident. But I left it in gym once and someone stole it. I was afraid to tell Cleo, but so far she hadn’t asked why I never wear that shirt. Now, driving to the mall, it seemed like years ago, though it was probably just about ten months before I first met Cleo. I suppose I was getting used to her.
“Maybe there’ll be some of those ladies with baskets giving out free stuff right by the door,” I said. I stopped staring at Cleo. We were getting close to the mall now.
There was a Saks Fifth Avenue at this mall that Cleo said would probably have lots of winter coats on sale. She said by November the stores are getting rid of their winter stuff and getting ready for the mid-winter cruise crowd, as in ocean liners to the Caribbean. Whatever.
“Oh, goody. You mean those women who squirt you with perfume when you walk by?” Cleo scrunched up her face.
“Yeah, the ones that look like mannequins when they stand still.” I thought that was a good one.
“You mean the ones who wear so much makeup their own mothers wouldn’t recognize them without it?” Cleo said.
I laughed and was thinking of something to add. It felt like we were friends or even something more. Right away I could feel my heart start thumping. I always say something dumb when I get like this.
But Cleo had stopped smiling. And I hadn’t even said anything dumb yet.
“I’m so sorry,” she said quietly. She had her hand over her mouth.
“What? What?” I looked out the window and then back at Cleo.
“I can’t believe I said that,” she said. “I’m sorry”
In my mind I flashed over the last few words Cleo had said. Their own mothers, she had said, but it meant nothing to me. Their own mothers—these are words that just get tossed around and immediately evaporate in the air.
“Why?” I asked. “Sorry for what?”
“I guess everyone just assumes you have a mother, don’t they?” Cleo explained. “And I’m sorry for the other night at dinn
er. It’s just that I thought if I didn’t finish what I was going to say about your mother it would have been worse.”
Cleo looked sad. “Oh, I always say something dumb.”
“So do I!” I nearly shouted. I couldn’t believe I had just been thinking the same thing. She was like me. I was like Cleo.
“I mean, you didn’t say anything dumb,” I said quickly. “It doesn’t bother me. People always say things like that, like ’Go tell your mother.’ Or ‘Wait till your mother finds out.’ Or ‘Your mother will be so proud’… Like teachers or strangers or nurses, stuff like that.” Once I had started, I couldn’t stop talking.
Talking but not feeling anything. All words, information I was used to imparting, information that usually got people to feel sorry for me. Sometimes it got me out of trouble, sometimes it got me out of having to do stuff.
“The only thing…,” I began.
And if feeling sorry for me got Cleo to like me, I’d take that, too.
“The only thing that kind of bothers me…is Mother’s Day,” I told Cleo. “I have this whole collection of dried-up marigolds in green plastic planters from school.”
But that was true. Mother’s Day bothered me, if I thought about it. I used to give the Mother’s Day gifts to my Nana, but after she died I started hiding them in the back of my closet. I don’t know why I didn’t just throw them away. Anyway, they stopped having us make Mother’s Day projects by second grade. It was just cards now, and cards are easier to get rid of. Mother’s Day still came and went every year. Come to think about it, I hated Mother’s Day.
Cleo was listening. She looked interested, but she looked sad. I was giving too much away, thinking too little and talking too much. I should have stopped, but Cleo looked like she wanted me to keep going. To keep talking. Once I realized this it all came out at once.
“Cleo?” I blurted out. “Do you think I have big hips?” At first I couldn’t tell if Cleo had sneezed or laughed real loud. “Who told you that?” she asked.