Eleven

  “They threw Snap ’n Pops at us?” I said. My heart was still racing, but now that it was over and the boys were gone, I got a feeling of wanting to laugh. I looked up the hill, and then I looked at Amanda. We cracked up, and once we started, we couldn’t stop.

  “They must have been George’s evil cousins,” Amanda said.

  “His henchmen,” I said. “Death by Snap ’n Pops!”

  We laughed longer than we officially had to, stumbling down the hill and bumping each other with our shoulders. If Amanda started to peter out, I’d say “Snap ’n Pops” in a threatening manner, and off she’d go again. Or if it was me who began to lose steam, she’d throw her hands over her face and cry, “I’ve been blinded! Aaagh!” It was the kind of laughing where one burst led to another and another, and our breath got all gaspy and hilarious. I wanted it to last forever.

  In the makeup aisle at King’s, I searched for a giant-size Lip-Smacker to replace the Dr Pepper one Karen had given me for my birthday. I’d loved that Lip-Smacker, and now it was gone, because Ty had found it and eaten it. On the shelf before me I saw regular-size Lip-Smackers, as well as Blistex and Carmex and cherry-flavored Chap Stick, but that was it.

  I wandered back to the perfume section, where Amanda was spraying herself with a perfume called Sand and Sable. She sniffed the damp patch of skin, then held out her arm. “What do you think?”

  I smelled her wrist. “Ick,” I said. “Come on, let’s go to Richard’s.”

  “Not yet,” Amanda said. “I want to check out the magazines. They have the new Seventeen. Did you see?”

  I groaned. I didn’t care about the new Seventeen. I got a brainstorm and grabbed her arm. “We don’t have time,” I said. “It’s George—he’s heading this way.”

  “Who?”

  “You know, George. The orphanage lady’s son. We’ve got to hurry!”

  Amanda pulled her arm away. Her eyes flicked to the lady behind the counter. “Winnie, not now.”

  “Yes, now! I saw him two aisles over, standing in front of the razor blades!”

  “No, I mean—” She bit her lip, and I realized with a flush of heat that she was embarrassed.

  “I was kidding,” I said, loud enough for anyone nearby to hear. “Jeez. It’s just that it’s so boring in here.”

  “I know,” Amanda said. “I just need a few more minutes, really. You go on to Richard’s, and I’ll meet you there.”

  “Fine,” I said. I stood there for a minute, but she didn’t change her mind.

  At Richard’s, I walked purposefully down the aisles so that anyone watching would know that this was a very interesting store and I was very interested in everything. In the back corner, I stopped in front of a shelf of plastic containers. Next to the containers was a shelf filled with ceramic cats and dogs. The cats and dogs were cute, but the containers had more possibility. For example, there was a sky-blue container that would be perfect for holding sea glass, if I happened to have a sea-glass collection. Last year there was a girl in my grade who used to live in Florida, and for her science project she brought in a piece of poster board with bits of sea glass taped all over it—smooth hunks of glass that looked like pieces of the ocean.

  I picked up a pink container and tugged on the lid. It made a popping sound when I pulled it free, and when I put it back on, it snapped into place with a thunk. This container would be perfect for storing treats in, I thought. Like Gummi Bears or Hershey’s Kisses. You would see the candy through the side of the box, and it would make your mouth water, so that the candy would taste all the better when you finally plunked a piece in your mouth.

  Last year at Christmas we had Secret Santas in homeroom, and the person I got paired with was that same girl from Florida, the one with the sea glass. Her name was Mindy. I bought a plastic box like this one, only smaller, and I painted her name on it with puff paint. I added little flowers and one buzzing bee, and I threw in some wavy lines above the bee’s wings so that it looked like the bee was actually flying. Then I filled the box with miniature Reese’s cups. The day after I gave it to her, she came up to me and said, in an annoyed sort of way, “My mom told me not to tell you, but I’m allergic to peanut butter. Just so you know.”

  This year Mindy moved back to Florida. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.

  An old lady doddered down the aisle, sending all thoughts of Mindy from my mind. I clutched the plastic box and stared. The lady’s white bun was loose and floppy, like a drifting bird’s nest, and her neck was so wrinkled that folds of flesh hung over the collar of her dress. And she had a weird smell. Like baby powder mixed with petroleum jelly. She did something with her lips that made a smacking sound, then lifted a wavering hand to one of the ceramic cats.

  She couldn’t reach it. Her hand shook as she tried again, and then she turned toward me. I panicked. I shoved the box on the shelf—not where it belonged, but too bad—and darted to another part of the store.

  Once I was safe in the toy section, a wave of shame washed over me. I hadn’t run because I didn’t want to help; I’d run because she was too old. Freaky old. But everyone got old eventually, unless they died first, and who wanted that? One day I would be old. Did I want kids to run screaming when they saw me?

  My heart was thumping in a way I didn’t understand. I glanced around and tried to get interested in the rows of toys. On one shelf sat dozens of troll dolls with crazy hair. On another was a bunch of G.I. Joe stuff, all rifled through and cluttered so that none of the packages faced the right way. At the end of the shelf was a pair of pink strap-on roller skates, flimsy and cheap. I couldn’t imagine anyone buying them, unless she knew she’d never have enough money for real Rollerblades.

  Amanda and I both had Rollerblades. Amanda’s were nicer than mine, but neither of us cared. When we were in third grade, we used to talk about how we’d live together when we grew up, and how we’d have a big house with wooden floors so we could Rollerblade whenever we wanted.

  I know now what a dumb idea that was, but I still like to think about it sometimes. When Amanda got here, I’d ask if she remembered. Or maybe not. I flashed on Amanda’s expression back at King’s perfume counter. I didn’t want her thinking I was a baby.

  I wondered if the old lady I’d run from had had a best friend, and if they were still friends now. I wondered what they talked about. Or what if the lady did have a best friend, but that friend was dead, and now she had no one? I imagined her in a cluttered apartment, watching the Wheel of Fortune with the sound turned off. She probably ate TV dinners, or ravioli from a can. For dessert, a crusty Fig Newton.

  I returned the roller skates to the shelf. I chewed on my thumbnail, imagining growing older and more alone. Imagining no Amanda.

  I walked to the front of the store, not knowing exactly what I was going to do but wanting to do something. I hesitated at the card section, then picked out a yellow card with a bouquet of flowers on the front. Inside, it said: TO A VERY SPECIAL PERSON. I took the card to the cash register and paid for it with two crumpled dollar bills. I stuck the card in the envelope, licked the flap, and pressed it shut.

  My stomach got jumpy, but I made myself walk to the ceramic-cats-and-dogs aisle. No old lady. I searched for her in the aisle with the sewing stuff, and then farther up near a display of kitchen timers. There she was, squinting at a timer shaped like an egg. I came up behind her and took a breath. I reached out to tap her shoulder.

  “Winnie?” Amanda said.

  I whipped around and saw her behind me. She’d come in without my noticing.

  “Find anything good?” she asked.

  My pulse thudded, and I jammed the card into the waistband of my shorts. “Not really,” I said. “What about you? Did you buy any perfume?”

  “Too expensive. I bought the new Seventeen, though.” She held up her brown bag. “We can look at it later if you want.”

  I shrugged. My palms felt sweaty. I stuck my hands behind my back.

  “Anyway, I’m sorry I took so long.” Her eyes
slid to a canister of magnets. “And I’m sorry for acting ... you know. Kind of weird a while ago.”

  Now she was the one who blushed, and I knew it’d been hard for her to say. Even for best friends, sometimes things can be hard.

  “That’s okay,” I said. “I’m sorry, too—for acting so dumb. Sometimes I just do stupid things.”

  “You don’t. I do.”

  “No, I do.”

  I felt the edge of the card pushing against my skin, and I pulled it out.

  “Here,” I said, before I could change my mind.

  “What’s this?” She opened it, and her eyebrows went up. “‘For a very special person’?”

  “Well, you are,” I said.

  She gazed at me, then grinned and bumped my shoulder. “You are so strange,” she said.

  And then it was fun, because for the whole walk home, we were both super nice to each other. Like, when we got to the crosswalk, I gestured to the street and said, “After you,” and she said, “No, you,” and I said, “No, you,” and on and on until the light turned red and we had to wait for it to change again. About half a mile from my house, Amanda went back to playing orphans, which I went along with even though I knew she was only doing it because there was no one else around. We belted out the lyrics to “Tomorrow,” which for an orphan is especially heart-lifting, but even in our happiness we made sure to keep an eye out for evil George. For all we knew, he could be lurking anywhere.

  June

  ON THE LAST DAY OF SCHOOL I wore my best pair of jeans and a soft, white shirt with a butterfly on the front. Amanda wore new overalls, and Chantelle wore a pink tank top and a denim miniskirt. We’d dressed up on purpose, because that afternoon the entire fifth grade was going to Jellybeans for an ice-skating party. It was going to be great.

  “Just think,” Amanda said during homeroom. “After today we’ll no longer be fifth graders.”

  “That’s right,” said Chantelle. “After today, we’ll be in the sixth grade. We’ll be the sixth graders.”

  “There’ll be no one above us,” Amanda said.

  “We’ll rule!” they said together.

  I cleared my throat. “Actually,” I said, “we won’t be sixth graders yet. Not technically.”

  “What are you talking about?” Amanda asked.

  “Well, we won’t be fifth graders anymore, but we won’t be sixth graders, either, because we won’t be in the sixth grade.”

  Chantelle rolled her eyes.

  “Not until September,” I said stubbornly. I’d thought about this a lot, the gap between one grade and the next. During the summer, if some grown-up asked what grade I was in, I always took the time to give the exact, honest answer. Otherwise I felt like a liar.

  “Maybe you won’t be a sixth grader,” Chantelle said, “but I sure will, and I can’t wait.”

  “I can’t wait for the party this afternoon,” Amanda said, pulling us back to the real issue. “I haven’t been ice-skating in forever.”

  “Me neither,” said Chantelle. “Not since my cousin’s birthday party.” She fingered the strap of her tank top. “Do you think I’ll be too cold in this? Maybe I should have brought a jacket.”

  “You’ll warm up once you start skating,” Amanda promised. She poked Chantelle in the ribs. “Or maybe Tyrone will keep you warm.”

  Chantelle blushed. “Oh, please.”

  “You are going to ask him, aren’t you? During girls’ pick?”

  “Girls’ pick” was when they played a slow song over the speakers, and if you wanted a guy to skate with you, you had to go up and ask him. The three of us got giggly just thinking about it.

  “If I ask Tyrone, then you have to ask someone, too,” Chantelle said.

  “Don’t count on it,” Amanda said.

  “Winnie?”

  My mind flashed to shy Toby Rinehart, who hardly ever talked, but was really good in art. I doubted I’d have the nerve to ask him, but who knew?

  “I don’t even know how to skate to a slow song,” I said.

  “You just hold hands and ... skate,” Chantelle said.

  “Guess you’ll have to show us,” Amanda teased.

  “Maybe I will!”

  Ms. Meyers walked in from the hall and shut the door. “All right, class, time to settle down,” she said. “I know you’re excited about this afternoon, but we have a lot of work to do before then. Turn in your math books to Chapter Twenty-four, and Mark, would you do problem number five on the board?”

  I pulled out my book and opened it on my desk. I drew a jelly bean at the top of the page, but it looked dumb, more like a lima bean or a puddle. To do a really good jelly bean, I’d have to have colored pencils.

  I peeked at Toby from under my bangs. I bet he could draw a good jelly bean without even half trying. If he could draw an aardvark—which he did once, during our unit on African animals—then he could definitely draw a jelly bean.

  All day long kids got wilder and louder, and the teachers threatened to call off all graduation parties if we didn’t get ourselves under control. But we knew they wouldn’t. During music, Robert used his recorder to shoot spitballs into Karen’s hair, and during language arts, Karen got him back by hiding his notebook under a bunch of magazines in the reading corner. He was definitely her choice for girls’ pick. It was obvious.

  During lunch, Alex Plotkin shook David’s Coke up under the table so that it sprayed all over David’s face when he popped it open. Then David flicked a scoop of applesauce into Alex’s hair, and another into his ear.

  “They are so immature,” Chantelle said from our table at the other end of the cafeteria. She opened her pack of Oreos and gave one to me and one to Amanda. “I can guarantee no one will ask them to skate during the slow songs.”

  “Maybe they’ll ask each other,” I said. “And you know what they’d do. They’d go around slamming into everyone and making kissy noises.”

  Chantelle scowled. “They better not. That would be just like them, to ruin it for everyone else.”

  Amanda took a bite of her carrot stick. “David’s not so bad by himself,” she said. “Once, when Alex was absent, he helped me set up my science project. He was really sweet.”

  “Yeah, David can be okay,” Chantelle admitted.

  “But Alex,” I said. We looked at one another and burst out laughing.

  “Uh-oh,” Amanda said. “Here comes Mrs. Jacobs. Now they’re going to get it.”

  Mrs. Jacobs is the assistant principal. She is really pretty, and she makes a point of asking how things are going when she sees us in the hall. On Wednesday afternoons, she led a group for kids whose parents were divorced, and Katie Jacobson said she was super, super nice. Katie said she could even get Alex to act like a human being, which sounded extremely unlikely to me. But I wasn’t in the group, so I didn’t know.

  Mrs. Jacobs frowned when she saw Alex and David’s mess, but she didn’t go over and stop them. She scanned the room and headed instead toward our half of the cafeteria. Toward our table. Toward us.

  “What does she want?” Amanda whispered.

  “I don’t know,” Chantelle whispered back.

  “Hello, girls,” Mrs. Jacobs said, standing before us. She wore a blue suit with a narrow skirt, and she looked very official. Like a cop.

  “Hi, Mrs. Jacobs,” we said.

  “I like your suit,” Chantelle said.

  “Thank you, Chantelle. I like your outfit, too.” She smiled. “Are you all looking forward to the skating party?”

  We nodded.

  “Are you coming?” Amanda asked.

  “I’m afraid not. I’ll be at the square dance, saying goodbye to the sixth graders. Next year, it will be you who will be leaving us.”

  We sat quietly, letting that sink in. It gave me goose bumps.

  Mrs. Jacobs tilted her head. “Winnie, may I talk to you for a moment?”

  I glanced at Amanda and Chantelle, then scooted back my chair. Together, Mrs. Jacobs and I walked to her o
ffice.

  “Am I in trouble?” I asked. I couldn’t imagine what I might have done, unless she thought I was the one who hid Robert’s notebook.

  “No, no,” Mrs. Jacobs said. She opened the door to her office and gestured toward a chair. “I have a favor to ask, that’s all. It concerns the skating party.”

  I sat down.

  “It’s a bit delicate,” she said, “and I’m not even sure I should be interfering. But when a student is going through a hard time, it’s our job to help out. Right?”

  I stared at her, confused. I wasn’t going through a hard time. Behind her, on the wall, was a poster printed with the school’s slogan: DARE TO CARE!

  She looked at me in the solemn way grown-ups do when they want you to feel as if they’re treating you like a real person instead of a child. My neck prickled, because when grown-ups look at you that way, there’s always something expected in return.

  “You’ve got a big heart, Winnie,” she said. “All your teachers have always commented on how kind you are.”

  “They have?” I said.

  “That’s why I thought of you when this problem was brought to my attention.” She drummed her fingernails against her desk, then stilled her hand. “Alex Plotkin is worried that no one will choose him for the girls’ pick. I was hoping you might help.”

  “Oh. Uh ... how?”

  “Well, I was hoping you’d consider picking him. If you want to, that is.”

  My stomach dropped. I must have gone pale, because Mrs. Jacobs said, “Winnie?”

  I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t even get my brain to work. All I could think was, Alex Plotkin? She wants me to skate with Alex Plotkin?!

  Mrs. Jacobs furrowed her brow, and I opened my mouth to reply. Then I grew hot as the injustice of the situation sank in. Teachers weren’t supposed to ask things like this. Not teachers, not assistant principals, not anyone! It was ... it was ... unconstitutional. Even with the “if you want to” tagged on, it was completely unfair. Because of course I didn’t want to pick Alex Plotkin. No one in her right mind would pick Alex Plotkin, so to tell the truth, he was right to worry. But that was his problem, not mine.