Girl Unmoored

  The swing sets were empty. I leaned my bike up against a tree and slipped off my backpack. Then I waited. Johnny Berman played lacrosse in the spring, and suddenly I worried about whether or not he meant for me to meet him after practice. I sat on a swing. Lacrosse practice went for at least an hour, and I wasn’t about to wait that long. I stood up to go, but sat back down again. If I left, he might not ever ask to meet me again. And the fact was: my middle school life depended on it. If word got around that I had kissed Johnny Berman, no one, not even Jenny Pratt, would really mean it the next time they called me a loser. Ugly or weird, but not a loser. Johnny Berman didn’t kiss losers.

  After a few hundred swings, though, I decided to leave. Just as I stood, Johnny Berman, in his lacrosse uniform, came running over.

  “Hey,” he smiled, whipping his sweaty hair out of his eyes.

  “Hi,” I said. I never really believed that thing about someone’s knees getting weak, until now. Mine were shaking like Grandma Bramhall’s neck. I had to concentrate to keep them from collapsing. Johnny Berman was a little shorter than me, but standing there alone with him he seemed like a giant.

  “I gotta get back to practice,” he said. Smile. Whip.

  “Okay.”

  “But listen,” he pulled a tightly folded piece of paper out of his shoulder pad. “I was wondering. Would you give this to Jenny Pratt for me?”

  “What?” My knees hardened into cement.

  He handed the note to me, so I had to take it. It fit into my palm.

  “Thanks, Apron. I knew you were cool.”

  “But, I’m not, really friends with her,” I stuttered.

  He looked at me surprised. “I see you together all the time. Look, if you don’t want to, I can ask someone else.”

  I wanted to say that was a great idea, ask Rennie. But I didn’t want to risk a cry. I should have guessed it would turn out this way. Johnny Berman wasn’t anywhere near the hottest guy in school, but even he was too good for me. “I’ll give it to her.”

  He slapped me on the arm. “Thanks. All right, see you later.” And with that he jogged off, hiking his lacrosse stick over his shoulder.

  28

  Nemo surdior est quam is qui non audiet.

  No man is more deaf than he who will not hear.

  “What did you say?” I asked Mike on the phone later, after I biked back from school so fast that my lungs still didn’t know I was home yet.

  Turns out I had looked sad instead of perplexed. Mike said Ms. Frane was worried that I was upset about my dad not showing up and asked a lot of questions about how I was doing at home.

  “I told her you were doing as well as can be expected, with everything that’s going on. A new mother and new sibling on the way.”

  “You told her about the little whatever?” I asked, opening a jar of peanut butter, not sure if I should be mad about it. Although once Mrs. Perry knew something you might as well put it on a bumper sticker.

  “I wasn’t supposed to? You should have told me that.”

  Mike said that aside from Ms. Frane worrying about me, they had a great time. “In fact, she asked for our card.”

  “You told her about Scent Appeal?” I stopped the peanut butter jar mid-rotation and pulled my finger out, a plop of it hanging there.

  “Yeah,” Mike admitted. “We never even got to the Hollywood part. She mentioned the shop right away, said she thought she’d seen us before.”

  “So you mean she’s seen Chad, as a boy?”

  Mike didn’t say anything for a second. Then he said, “She did seem awfully familiar.” And even though my throat was still clogged up with all the things I wanted to call Johnny Berman, we got laughing so hard that my head cramped. I thanked him again for going to the conference and he said, “No, Apron, thank you.” He hadn’t seen Chad having that much fun in a long time. After we hung up, I took Johnny Berman’s note and threw it in the trash. I might have given it to any other girl, but not Jenny Pratt.

  On my way upstairs I heard a laugh coming from the back porch. My dad’s laugh. He was lying down on the couch with his head in M’s lap.

  “There,” M said. “He moves.”

  When my dad saw me, he sat up. “Hey, Apron. How was school?”

  I would have told him the truth: that it was its usual horrible self with a sprinkle of Chad and Mike on top. But M was there, waiting for me to complain about something so she could complain about me.

  “Fine.”

  “You want to feel your little brother? Margie’s sure it’s a boy,” he looked over at her with a smile. Then he looked back at me. “Come on.”

  The truth was I did want to. So even though it was inside M, I decided I could close my eyes and hold my breath and pretend it was Mrs. Christianson’s stomach that I was feeling. My dad moved over for me and I placed my hand on top of M’s mound. Nothing moved except M’s breath. I picked my hand up to leave, but M caught it and moved it over to her other side. And then I felt it—a squirmy kind of roll. “Weird!” I said, smiling up at M. And M smiled back, making everything doubly weird.

  Next to me my dad said, “It’s a real live person, all right. That’s going to be needing a whole lot of real live taking care of pretty soon. Which is why his real live mother needs to do some real live settling down before he gets here.”

  It was funny, all the real lives he used, and I waited for M to chuckle about it, too. But instead, her grin fell off. She plucked off my hand and stood. “I forgots the meatloaf,” she said. Then she turned and waddled by us without another word.

  I looked at my dad to see what had happened, but he looked just as surprised as me. He sighed and folded his fingers together.

  “Hey, Apron, I have to talk to you about something.”

  It wasn’t going to be good whatever it was. I could smell the dusty couch cushions filled with so many Maine winters it could choke you.

  My dad kept his fingers folded in his lap. “I can’t come to graduation,” he said, looking up at me like I was going to be upset about it. “I mean, if I hadn’t found out about it yesterday, maybe I could have done something about it. But I have a three-hour final exam to give in the morning to a hundred and twenty-eight students.”

  “Only eighth graders graduate, Dad,” I said, perplexed.

  “I know,” he said, tapping his fingers together. “But. Listen, I’m just sorry I can’t be there, that’s all.”

  Suddenly, I wanted to tell him about Mr. Perry. Except looking at him like that, with his legs crossed and his fingers mixed up in his lap, you could tell he was already filled to the brim with trouble. He didn’t need any more.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said, looking out through the screen and watching some birds peck at the grass. Already mosquitoes buzzed at you every chance they got, and this was only the beginning. By August you would only have to walk across the grass once for your ankles to look like they had the chicken pox. One of the birds stopped pecking to chirp, then jerked its head around fast, trying to figure who had just made that sound. Before, I might have asked my dad why they did that, couldn’t they tell it was only themselves making that chirp? And he might have said, “No, Apron, they have peas for brains.” But these days, we just sat there, saying nothing about the same thing.

  “Dad,” I said, finally.

  “Yuh?”

  “Do you think M likes it here?”

  He jerked his head over to me faster than one of those birds.

  “Of course I do, Apron,” he said, bad mood back on his face. “Listen. You’re going to have to face it. This is our new life. Dixi. Look it up.”

  He stood and walked by me, leaving a cloud of madness behind. And when the screen door slammed shut, every single one of those birds got scared off, too.

  29

  De fummoin flammam

  Out of the frying pan and into the fire

  Seventh graders don’t graduate, but we still have to dress up and watch the eighth graders. I had no choice but to wear my
Avon lady dress. I kept telling my dad I needed to get a new dress, the Lilly Pulitzer one wasn’t even an option for school, but he just kept on grading his papers so I gave up.

  When I finally got to the bike racks, I could see that only four other people had biked to school besides me, and two of those bikes had been sitting there since March. I pulled off my sneakers and slid into my high heels, which were too small for me now. I decided not to tell my dad we were getting dismissed at noon today in case he made me go shopping with M for diapers, so I just said, “Bye” like any other morning. We hadn’t said much to each other since he scared off the birds in the backyard and I learned what Dixi meant: “I have spoken—say no more on the matter.”

  Graduation was supposed to be outside except for the chance of rain so Principal Parker moved it into the gym. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, though. Ms. Frane wore a pink sundress, but didn’t really look any different other than that. The two barrettes in her frizzy brown hair still weren’t pulling anything out of the way. After both homeroom classes squished into our room, she put us in one long line according to the alphabet, which meant I was in between Joe Blink and Jimmy Cannon. Both of them were pretty normal, except Jimmy Cannon’s eyes were crossed and he wore glasses. Johnny Berman was on the other side of Joe Blink. “Hey, Apron,” he whispered to me as soon as Ms. Frane walked away. “Did she say anything?”

  Jenny Pratt was in the back of the line, a head taller than every single boy around her. And Rennie’s dress was so puffed out it looked like she was going to need two chairs to sit. When they first saw me this morning, Rennie pointed at my Avon lady dress and whispered. I turned my back to them. You don’t have to do anything for some people to hate you, but it would have been nice to have a better dress.

  “Yeah,” I told Johnny. “She said she’ll be there.”

  Hi Jenny, There is a guy that’s totally into you. Meet me by the swings on the last day of school so I can tell you who.

  Johnny Berman

  That’s what his note said.

  “Cool. Thanks.”

  “Cool,” I smiled.

  “Come on, kids,” Ms. Frane said. So we started walking in tight steps down the hall and the stairs, and past the cafeteria, which smelled like bleach now instead of meatloaf. When we finally snaked into the gym, the sun was shining so brightly through the windows some people in the bleachers had their sunglasses on. Every year a lot of people think Principal Parker’s time has come and gone, but after every summer it always comes back again.

  Our class walked over to the seventh-grade section where somebody had lined up chairs. The eighth graders had another section with fancy white ribbon wrapped around their chairs and flowers at the ends of each row that would have looked a lot better if Mike and Chad had put them there.

  Ms. Frane told us to move it, so we picked up the pace and sat down. From my seat I could see every single Perry in the history of the world sitting in the top bleachers. For a second, I thought I saw something, so I blinked hard and shook my head and then opened my eyes again and saw the same thing: M. She was sitting in between Mrs. Perry and Rennie’s aunt, waving her arms around like a crazy person, but not at me, at someone behind me. Rennie.

  My blood boiled hotter than the square of sun coming through the window and frying the Fs at the end of our row. I started fanning myself with the song sheet, but sweat kept pouring down my back and behind my knees. I turned my head like everyone else and clapped for the eighth graders walking in, but kept my eye on M, who leaned over and laughed at something one of those short Perrys said. I tried to sneak a look at Rennie, but I couldn’t see her behind the LMNOs.

  Music started playing and Principal Parker got up and said what a great school Falmouth Middle School was except for the library that got caved in by the big tree after lightning struck, so now there were only about three books left in it. Everyone laughed. Then we stood and sang the school song. I could see M singing all wrong in English, even though she was reading the song sheet. On the second verse she said something to Mrs. Perry, who put her hand on that bump and smiled. Finally, Principal Parker started calling up the eighth graders so the rest of us sat there clapping one solid clap.

  Huge squares of sun were blazing down and frying almost half the alphabet now. I looked down at my toes, crooked inside my high heels. Joe Blink was wearing black high-tops, which were lined up side by side, but Jimmy Cannon’s feet were tapping around and bumping into mine every second. All that clapping started sounding like rain, so I closed my eyes and pretended I was outside under a tree, listening to it.

  Then someone yelled, “Way to go, Eeebs,” which made my eyes pop open and watch that whole midget line of Perrys, plus the teepee of M, stand up and cheer for him.

  The burning line of sun was all the way over to Jessie Cartwright now, who kept scooting over so close to Jimmy Cannon’s shade that finally he said, “Hey, cut it out,” which made Ms. Frane say, “Shh.” Finally, the last eighth grader shook Principal Parker’s hand and walked back to his seat. But right when you thought we could leave, Principal Parker clapped straight into the microphone and started talking about “students who stand out” and “students who go the extra mile to get there.” The burning sun was on Jimmy Cannon’s knee now, and the next place it would go was on mine. I prayed there were only a few students who took that extra mile, but Principal Parker kept calling up practically every eighth grader and their brother, except for Eeebs, who was just lucky to get out of middle school period.

  When the sun had finally sailed onto my left knee, Principal Parker wiped his forehead and took a deep breath, which sounded like a hailstorm when he let it out into the microphone. “Now today, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, clutching the sides of the podium with both hands. “There is someone amongst you whose attitude and genuine courage just begs to be singled out, even though they are not graduating today.”

  The burning sun moved onto my right knee now. If you stared at it, it went nowhere, but if you looked up and listened to Principal Parker’s voice saying—“This young lady simply has not slowed down, despite what we can only imagine has been a terrible time for both her and her family”—then looked back down again, it would have moved an inch.

  I thought I heard my name.

  I looked up. That burning line might as well have been inside my brain. Everyone, including Johnny Berman, was staring at me.

  Principal Parker said, “Apron Bramhall” again, and Joe Blink elbowed me right in the ribs. All the people in the bleachers, even M, were clapping. Ms. Frane yelled for me to stand, so I did.

  The Bs moved their feet for me to get by, but when I got to Albie Albertson something tripped me, and my hands slammed into the floor, and then my knees and my chin. Or maybe my chin then my knees, I couldn’t tell, because all I could hear after that were cotton balls in my ears and Ms. Frane saying, “Apron, are you all right?” Someone pulled me up by the arms and there was a tinny taste in my mouth. Ms. Frane said, “She’s bleeding” and told Albie Abertson to go get the nurse. There wasn’t one eyeball in there that wasn’t staring at me now, and it was quiet enough to hear a pin drop. Until Rennie said, “She’s such a klutz.”

  Then, even two broken legs wouldn’t have stopped me from walking over and getting my award. I wiped my mouth with the back of my stinging hand. People started clapping all over again and Principal Parker covered his microphone and said, “Are you sure you’re okay, Apron?” I nodded. He handed me a gold and wooden plaque with the Falmouth Middle School sign on it, and shook my hand. I looked him square in the eye and said, “Thank you,” and tried not to look up at M, but couldn’t help it, and for a second, just a tiny second, I felt like running up and hiding behind her.

  Albie Alberston got into a lot of trouble for tripping me, whether he meant to do it or not. But he didn’t get detention because no one was going to stay late on the last day of school to give it to him. Instead, he got a warning and had to say, “Sorry for tripping you, Apron” really
politely. I said, “It’s okay,” nicely back, because Ms. Frane was standing there with two parents and it turns out my award was for Best Attitude. So even though I was holding some ice on my chin that was so cold it felt like my face was on fire, I had to keep smiling. But the truth was dawning on me; I really was a klutz. I didn’t remember being one before, but now it seemed like every step I took, I ended up on my face.

  M found me in the gym while everyone else except me and the school nurse were having refreshments on the field. She leaned down to hug me so the nurse could watch. “Oh congratulations, Aprons,” she said loudly. And I had to admit it was pretty lucky she had come.

  But then the truth hit me harder than the gym floor.

  “Did you know I was getting this?” I asked into her ear.

  “Ucch,” she whispered. “Why else would your father have made me come to this?”

  I dropped my award and pushed her off of me. She screamed something all wrong in English and pulled her knee up. The school nurse thought she was going into labor, so she ran over and tried to get her to sit. And when she finally did, you could see M’s little toe had already started to turn black and blue.

  30

  Cumulus nimbus

  Rain clouds

  M’s baby toe might or might not be broken. That was what Myra Bennington’s father said, leaning over her foot with a plastic cup of lemonade and a Congratulations napkin filled with cookies in his hand. Either way, she was going to have to keep it taped onto the next toe and wear one of those flat wooden shoes with Velcro flaps.

  The school nurse had asked one of the sixth graders to go outside and see if there was a doctor, while M’s face got wetter and redder, her bubble body turned sideways so she could keep her whole leg across some chairs. She was definitely in pain, even with the ice bag for my chin on her toe. My chin was still throbbing, but no one seemed to remember that now.