Eleven

  On Saturday, Dinah came over after lunch. She found me up in my bedroom, and I dumped Sweetie-Pie out of my lap and tugged on my sneakers. Sweetie-Pie meowed in complaint, and I went back to the bed and gave her a quick pet. “Silly cat,” I told her. “I can’t spend every minute with you, you goof!” I scratched her behind the ears, and then Dinah and I ran downstairs and told Sandra and Bo we were ready.

  “Can’t you get Mom or Dad to drive you?” Sandra said. “We’re in the middle of Sponge Bob.”

  I grabbed the remote and switched off the TV. “You promised you’d take us. Come on.”

  At Toys “R” Us, Dinah and I each bought our very own Chinese jump rope, and in the back of Bo’s Jeep, we ripped off the plastic packaging and stretched them between our hands.

  “What are you going to do with those?” Bo said. “Shoot a giant spitball?”

  I looked at Dinah and swiveled my finger by my temple. She tittered.

  “They’re Chinese jump ropes,” I said. “You use them to play Chinese jump rope.”

  “Oh-h-h,” Bo said. “So, what, you have to do everything upside down?”

  “Ha, ha. When we get home, we’ll show you. You guys can help us practice, because next Friday is my birthday and we’ll probably play Chinese jump rope before we go to dinner. If you’re really, really nice, I might even let Sandra invite you.”

  “What do you mean ‘might’?” Bo said. He caught my eye in the rearview mirror. “How old are you going to be, anyway? Eighteen? Nineteen?”

  “For your information, I’m going to be twelve, thank you very much.”

  “Wow,” Sandra said, “twelve whole years. Pretty impressive.”

  I leaned back, propping my feet on Bo’s seat. “You got that right.”

  Out in the backyard, while Dad pruned the boxwoods and Mom read her mystery in a stretched-out chaise longue, Sandra, Bo, and Ty played Chinese jump rope with me and Dinah. Sandra was as bad at “scoop” as I was, but Dinah taught us a trick that made it easier.

  “Pretend your foot is a fork and the rope is a spaghetti noodle,” she said. “Just scoop it up like it was the last noodle on the plate. Then when you jump, point your foot, and the rope will slide right off.”

  “Oh, sure,” I said. “Easy for you to say.”

  “You can do it,” Dinah said. “Now go!”

  I hooked the rope over the toe of my sneaker and leapt into the air.

  Turn the page to read a chapter of the next Winnie Years novel,

  Twelve

  March

  THE THING ABOUT BIRTHDAYS, especially if you just that very day turned twelve, is that you should make a point of trying to look good. Because twelve is almost thirteen, and thirteen is a teenager, and teenagers don’t strut around with holes in their jeans and ketchup on their shirts.

  Well. They did if they were my sister, Sandra, who was fifteen-about-to-turn-sixteen. Her birthday comes next month, which meant that for a delightful three-and-a-half-week period beginning today, she was only three years older than me, instead of four. Yes!

  Sandra made a show of not caring about her appearance, although it was clear she secretly did. She stayed in the bathroom far longer than any human needed to, and I knew she was in there staring and staring and staring at herself in the mirror: putting on eyeliner and then wiping all but the barest trace of it off; dabbing on the tiniest smidge of Sun Kissed Cheek Stain from the Body Shop; making eyes at herself and dreaming about Bo, her boyfriend, who told her he liked her just the way she was—natural. So ha ha, the trick was on Bo, but I’ve learned from Sandra that boys were often like that: clueless, but not necessarily in a bad way. When I am fifteen, I’ll probably have a boyfriend, and I’ll probably be just like Sandra. I’ll want to look pretty, but not like I’m trying.

  But today was my birthday, not Sandra’s, and I felt like pulling out all the stops. Dressing up usually felt dumb to me—I left that to snooty Gail Grayson and the other sixth-grade go-go girls—but I had a tingly special-day feeling inside. Plus, we were leaving in half an hour for my fancy birthday dinner at Benihana’s. Bo was going to meet us there, and so was Dinah, my new best friend. Although it still felt weird calling her that.

  I tugged my lemon yellow ballerina skirt from the clippy things on the hanger and wrapped it around my waist. I threaded one tie through the hole at the side, then swooped it around and knotted it in place. When Mom bought this skirt for me six months ago, she had to show me how to make it work, and I’d found it impossibly complicated. Not anymore.

  A full-length mirror hung on the inside of my closet door, and I twirled in front of it and watched the fabric swish around my knees. I had scabs from Rollerblading and a scrape from exploring a sewage pipe, but who cared? I could be beautiful and tough. I refused to buff away the calluses on my feet, too. Mom said a girl’s feet should be soft, but I said, “Uh, no.” I was proud of my calluses. I’d worked hard for them. Summer was right around the corner, and I wasn’t about to wince my way across the hot concrete when I went to the neighborhood pool. Flip-flops were for wimps. For me, it’s barefoot all the way.

  I rifled through my clothes until I found my black tank top. Sleek and sophisticated—yeah. People would think I was from New York instead of Atlanta. But when I wiggled into it, I realized something was wrong. It was tight—as in, really tight. I flexed my shoulder blades forward and then backward, trying to loosen things up. Then forward and backward again. But what I saw in the mirror was bad. With my herky-jerky shoulders, I looked like a chicken. With breasts.

  “Mo-o-om!” I called. “We’ve got a problem!”

  “What?” Mom called back.

  “We’ve got a problem!” I yelled.

  “Winnie, I can’t hear you. If you need me, you’re going to have to come here!”

  I skittered down the long hall to Mom and Dad’s bedroom. My skirt fluttered against my legs.

  “Look,” I said. Mom was in her bra and underwear, picking out her own outfit, and she was so much curvier than I was. Than I would ever be, I was pretty sure. And that was okay. I didn’t want to be curvy. I didn’t even want to be ... bumpy.

  Mom turned and took me in. “Winnie, you look adorable,” she said. And then, “Oh.” And then, “My goodness, Winnie. You’re developing.”

  I turned bright red. I could feel it. I crossed my arms high over my chest and said, “What am I supposed to do?”

  “Well, you’re going to need to pick another top,” she said. She put her arm around me and rubbed my bare shoulder. “And I guess we need to go bra shopping, don’t we?”

  “No no no no no,” I said. “Let’s not overreact here, all right?” Bras were for go-go girls. Bras were for Gail Grayson, who just last week made a huge stinking deal out of how cool she was because she wore one, while not everyone else in the sixth grade did. Like me and Dinah, to be specific. No way was I going to slink to school with telltale strap lines under my shirt, making Gail believe I actually cared what she thought.

  “Sweetie, there’s nothing wrong with wearing a bra,” Mom said. “It’s life. It’s the way the world works. It means you’re on the brink of womanhood.”

  “Whoa,” I said. I held up my hand, palm out. “Enough, okay?”

  She smiled like she thought I was being funny. But I did not want my mother telling me I was on the brink of womanhood. What next? Orthopedic shoes with squishy soles? Dentures?

  “You’ll probably be getting your period soon, too,” Mom said.

  “Beep, beep, beep! Alert! Alert!” I wiggled out of her grasp and backed toward the door.

  “Winnie ...”

  “Got to run. See you!”

  I dashed to my room and ducked into my closet, pulling the door shut behind me. I pulled off the tank top, scrunched it into a ball, and dropped it out of sight behind my Little People Castle, which I had yet to pass on to my younger brother, Ty, who was five. I allowed Ty to play with it—together we’d drop Little People through the dungeon’s trapdoor and go ?
??Ahhh!”—but I wasn’t ready to give up possession. Even though Mom said I was too old for it. Even though Sandra said, “Sheesh, Winnie. Grow up already, will you?”

  Naked except for my skirt and underwear, I confronted myself in the mirror. It was true: I was no longer flat as a pancake. I had strong arms and a smooth, firm belly and ...

  Boobs.

  I was with boob. I was boobful. I was boobed.

  I, Winifred Perry, had boobs.

  I sank down onto the floor, scrunching my knees up in front of me. How had this happened? I didn’t want this. Boobs were for other people, not me. I didn’t even like the word boobs, although breasts was a thousand times worse.

  Dinah had boobs, soft little humps that provoked Gail’s bra attack on the playground last week. “It’s really kind of embarrassing the way certain people bounce around,” Gail had said, shooting a sidelong glance at Dinah. “Especially with boys nearby.”

  Gail’s boobs were even bigger than Dinah’s. She let her bra straps show on purpose. Sometimes they were purple.

  Amanda, who used to be my best friend but who had dumped me for Gail, had also gone the way of the bra, although she did not have boobs.

  Which was worse: to have boobs, or not to have boobs?

  I didn’t want to be boobless forever. I just wasn’t sure I wanted them now. Today they were starter boobs, no bigger than cotton balls, but what if they kept growing? I thought of a poem Ty had learned at the library, which ended like this: They grew and they grew and they never stopped, they grew and they grew till the darn things popped!

  The poem was about pea pods. But what if it was in code?

  I leaned forward, still looking in the mirror, and bent my arms at the elbow. I placed my bent arms over my chest like big, pendulous breasts. They didn’t look like breasts, they looked like elbows, but if I let my sight go hazy, I could create the illusion.

  I was ginormous.

  The doorknob clicked, and Sandra poked her head into the closet. She saw me on the floor with my elbow-boobs.

  “Oh my God. What are you doing?” she demanded.

  “Nothing!” I scrambled up and grabbed a white button-down.

  “It’s time to go. Dad’s turning the car around.”

  “I’m getting ready,” I said. “A little privacy, please?”

  Sandra shook her head. “You just today turned twelve and already you’ve got attitude? Great, this is just great.”

  I made a big “ahem” sound.

  “Well, hurry,” she said. She strode away, leaving the closet door wide open.

  At Benihana’s, Dinah flittered with excitement. “You look fantastic,” she said to me in the waiting area. “You look so old. I love your shirt—it looks so cute like that!”

  “Thanks,” I said. I’d paired a white T-shirt with a white button-down, and I’d tied the ends of the button-down at my waist. My boobs were safely hidden by the double layers, plus the knotted waist of the button-down made the fabric poof out in a way that was very concealing.

  “You look nice, too,” I told Dinah.

  Dinah beamed. She wore a pink dress with a built-in vest. As always, she was one step off in terms of the whole fashion thing. She looked more like she was going to church than going out to dinner. She even carried a small, white leather pocketbook.

  “Right this way,” the hostess said. She led us to a sunken table at the back of the restaurant. “Shoes here,” she said, gesturing to a mat on the floor.

  Dinah watched as Dad slipped off his loafers. Mom stepped out of her clogs, and Dinah edged closer to me.

  “We have to take our shoes off?” she said.

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “That’s the way they do it in Japan.”

  “But . . . what if my feet stink?”

  “Did you take a shower?” I asked. Dinah’s mom died way back when she was a baby, and sometimes she had to be reminded of the basics.

  “Yes,” she said. “Yesterday I did.”

  “Then I’m sure your feet are fine,” I said. “Anyway, they’ll be under the table, not plopped on top with the Poo Poo Platter.”

  Dinah’s eyes widened. “We’re having Poo Po o Platter?”

  “That’s Chinese, not Japanese,” Sandra said, using her toe to nudge her Chuck Taylors onto the mat. “Stop teasing and be nice.”

  “She’s right,” I whispered to Dinah. “We’re actually having fish heads.”

  Sandra rapped me with her knuckles.

  “Ow,” I said.

  The waiter, who had an impressive Fu Manchu mustache, chopped and diced on a steel griddle right in front of us. Oil sizzled, and Dinah shrank back. A snow pea got too hot and exploded; Dinah squealed.

  “What’s he doing now?” she asked as he slid an upside-down bowl onto the hissing griddle.

  “Shrimp,” I said. “Yummy yum yum.”

  The waiter lifted the bowl, and two dozen raw shrimp spilled out, sputtering in the heat. They looked as if they were dancing. I grinned at Dinah, but Dinah didn’t grin back.

  “Uh ... Dinah?” I said.

  She gulped. “I don’t ... I can’t—”

  “Do you not like shrimp? Are you allergic?”

  “I’m not allergic, I just ...” Her eyes flew to Bo, who sat on the opposite side of the table with Sandra. He was showing Ty how to bounce water up inside a straw by tapping the end with his finger.

  I lowered my voice. “You just what?”

  Dinah gave me a pleading look. “I’m scared of them.”

  A whoop burst out of me. “Of shrimp? You’re scared of shrimp?”

  “Shhh,” she said. “They’re so pale. And they’ve got ... veins.”

  “Really big veins,” I said. “Help! They’re coming to get me! Attack of the veins!”

  She giggled despite herself. “Don’t let him give me any, okay? I mean it.”

  In part she was being goofy, but in part she meant it, too. She was funny that way, always wanting me to protect her—which usually I didn’t mind because it made me feel important. It was something I noticed, though. My friendship with Dinah was so different from my friendship with Amanda, who’d been much more of an ... equal.

  Ooo, shove that thought back down. Dinah was an equal, too. Just a different kind of equal.

  Dad clinked his fork against his glass, and I was glad for the distraction. I sat up tall and nudged Dinah to do the same.

  “A toast,” Dad said.

  “Hear, hear!” said Ty. He loved making toasts.

  “To my wonderful daughter on her twelfth birthday,” Dad said.

  “Oh God, here we go,” said Sandra.

  “May she learn the value of a tidy room and a tidy desk, and may she realize that when it comes to stuffing the toilet with gummy worms, her father does indeed know best.”

  “Da-a-ad,” I said. I’d put gummy worms in the toilet once, when I was like Ty’s age.

  “May she always stay true to her kind and generous heart,” he said. “And may she stay our little girl forever.”

  He gazed at me. There was love in his eyes, and it made me embarrassed, but happy, too.

  “Cheers!” cried Ty, lifting his Shirley Temple. “Everybody clink!”

  I clinked my glass with Dinah’s, and then with Dad’s. Then Mom’s and Sandra’s and Bo’s and Ty’s.

  “Happy birthday, sweetie,” Mom said.

  “Yeah, yeah, happy birthday,” said Sandra.

  “Happy birthday,” said the Fu Manchu waiter. He flipped a sizzling pink shrimp at me, but it missed my plate and landed on Dinah’s. Or maybe that’s what he intended all along. Dinah shrieked, and everyone laughed.

  Ty went to bed at nine, and at ten, Mom and Dad retired to their room to watch the news. By eleven, I was pretty tired, and I think Dinah was, too, but we weren’t the slightest bit ready to go to sleep. Punch-drunk, Mom would have called us. Everything I said made Dinah laugh, and everything Dinah said made me laugh. Sandra kept stomping into my room to tell us to be quiet, and each tim
e she looked grumpier and grumpier. The last time she had a mud mask smeared over her face, and I said, “Better wipe that frown off, young lady, or it’ll stick like that.” Dinah about busted a gut.

  After Sandra left, I said, “She puts that on to clean her pores. Isn’t that weird, to use mud to clean your face?”

  “She’s so pretty,” Dinah said. She scratched my cat, Sweetie-Pie, behind the ears, and Sweetie-Pie head-butted her in pleasure. “Is it fun having a sister who’s so pretty?”

  “Ehh,” I said. Sandra was pretty, but mainly she was just Sandra. “Want me to see if she’ll let us use some of her mask?”

  “Yeah!” Dinah said.

  “It’s really neat,” I said, getting to my feet. “It tightens on your face until you can’t smile, and it feels like you’re paralyzed. Hold on, I’ll be right back.”

  I padded across the hall to Sandra’s room, but she was on the phone with Bo. I held up my finger to mean, “Just one little thing? Real quick?” She scowled and turned her back to me.

  Well, I thought to myself. How rude. I walked in plain sight to her bathroom and grabbed the tub of mask, then darted in pouncy, tiptoe steps back across the hall.

  “Mission accomplished!” I announced. I plopped down on the floor, and Dinah scooted closer.

  “So what do we do?” she asked.

  I picked up Sweetie-Pie and tossed her onto the bed, because mud and fur don’t mix. Then I unscrewed the lid of the container. “We smear it all over, and then we let it dry.” I wiped a fingerful across my cheek. It was cool and oozy. “Now that I’m twelve, I guess I better start thinking about these things. Pores and stuff.”

  “How does it feel being twelve?” Dinah asked. “Does it feel different?”

  I liked the way she was regarding me, as if I were the wise one because I was older.

  “Hmm,” I said. “Mainly it feels the same ... but yeah, I guess it is different.” I hesitated, then said, “My mom says it’s time for me to get a bra.”