Eleven

  Maybe Amanda had been changing already. Maybe it started at the beach, or even earlier. But it wouldn’t have been such a problem—I know for a fact—if Gail Grayson hadn’t prissed onto the scene. Well for all I cared, good ol’ Gail could march right out of Ms. Russell’s sixth-grade class in her lemon-colored skirt and matching tights. Even if I knew I’d never see her again, I wouldn’t shed a tear. Amanda and Chantelle would beg her to stay, but not me. Although I might go to the office the next day and ask very politely if I could change classes, since if Gail left, Ms. Russell would have an extra space. Mr. Hutchinson wouldn’t care, and then I’d be back with Amanda where I belonged.

  “And another thing,” Gail said, interrupting my thoughts and bringing me back to the playground. She glanced at the girls doing gymnastic moves on the basketball court, then back at us. “If we’re going to be in a club together, it’s important we look our best. We shouldn’t just wear shorts and T-shirts, and we should take some time doing our hair. Like, if we have bangs, we should curl them with a curling iron, just as an example.” She looked at me. “I could show you how, if you want.”

  I glared. She could curl her bangs all she wanted, but mine were staying nice and straight, thank you very much. And what was wrong with my Atlanta Braves T-shirt? I liked how big it was, and how the lettering across the front had cracked from being washed so many times. Most of all, I liked the fact that I wasn’t being all fancy and frilly just because it was the first day of school. Unlike some people I know.

  Gail blushed the tiniest amount. “I mean, not that they look bad the way you’ve got them. It’s just that in Chicago, it’s, like, a crime not to look the best you possibly can.”

  “If Chicago’s so great, then why aren’t you there?” I asked.

  “Winnie!” Amanda said.

  Gail turned even redder, but she lifted her chin and said, “Look. No one said you had to join our club. Maybe it should only be for people in Ms. Russell’s class. And for your information, my father got a promotion, but my mom says it’s too hot here and she wishes we’d just move back.”

  “She’s not the only one,” I muttered.

  “So are you in or not?” Gail said.

  I looked at Amanda. I looked at Chantelle. I looked across the playground at the girls doing gymnastics. Louise, who’d been to gymnastics camp, was showing the others how to do a back walkover, while Karen tried to balance on her hands but couldn’t get her feet to stay up. Both wore matching pink T-shirts and overalls. Five yards away, Dinah Devine sat alone on the concrete steps. Dinah, wouldn’t you know it, was in Mr. Hutchinson’s class with me. This morning when she saw me, she smiled and called, “Winnie, over here! I saved you a seat!”

  “Oh, Winnie, just do it,” Amanda said. “It won’t be any fun without you.”

  “Anyway, you have to help us pick out a name,” Chantelle said. “We can’t have a club without a name.”

  I shrugged. “Fine, I’ll be in your stupid club.”

  Gail’s eyes flicked over me, but I couldn’t tell what she was thinking.

  The next morning, I dug out Mom’s curling iron from the bottom drawer in her bathroom and plugged it in, just as an experiment. I’d worn my hair the same way ever since I could remember, and maybe it was time I tried something new. Not because Gail told me to. And if she said anything, I’d give her the evil eye.

  But I’m in the sixth grade now. Next year I’d start junior high. I didn’t want to be the one kid in school who looked like she belonged in day care.

  Amanda and Chantelle have it easy. Amanda has thick, blond hair as shiny and straight as Alice in Wonderland’s, and without even trying she always looks cute. She somehow knows to wear a purple headband with her yellow and white sundress, for instance. But if I try to mix and match, I end up looking like an oil spill. Plus, Amanda has freckles, which according to Robert Bond look like tiny hearts. I’ve wanted freckles forever, and I don’t have a single one.

  And Chantelle. In my opinion she’s the prettiest girl in the sixth grade, far prettier than Gail. She has dark brown hair and dark brown eyes, and she’s the only person I’ve ever met whose eyelashes curl up like the models in Amanda’s Seventeen. Her skin is the color of Nestlé’s Quik, and her teeth are straight and white. My teeth are a little crooked. Mom says I might need braces.

  I touched the rod of Mom’s curling iron and snapped back my hand. It was hotter than I’d expected. I picked up the handle, getting a feel for how the clamp opened and closed. It didn’t seem hard. If I was going to use it, though, I needed to go ahead and get started. This morning the three sixth-grade classes were meeting to talk about school pictures, and Amanda had promised to sit with me.

  I raised the curling iron and clamped down on a chunk of my bangs. I counted to ten, then carefully released the handle. Not bad. The bangs on the right side of my face now curved under in a smooth arc, like the cap of a mushroom.

  I looked at my watch—7:20. Usually I’d be heading out the door by now, but I couldn’t go with my bangs half done. Although it would be funny. “In Atlanta, all the girls wear their bangs like this,” I’d tell Gail. “In Atlanta, it’s, like, a crime to look totally froufrou every minute of your life.”

  I clamped the left side of my bangs and started counting.

  “Winnie!” Mom called. “Time for school!”

  I didn’t answer. Eight more seconds.

  “I’ll get her,” I heard Ty say. His footsteps pounded down the hall. “Hey, Winnie! Mom says—”

  “Wait! Don’t come in!” I leaned toward the mirror and squeezed the handle.

  “—or you’ll be late and she’s not going to drive you!” He barreled into the bathroom, ramming into my legs and knocking me forward.

  “Ow!” I bellowed as the rod touched my skin. “Ow, ow, ow!”

  The curling iron clattered to the counter. I grabbed a washcloth, stuck it under the faucet, and jammed it against my forehead. I pulled it away, revealing an angry red burn that was already turning blistery. “Great, Ty! Thanks a lot!”

  Mom appeared at the door of the bathroom. She took in the scene, then stepped closer and gently pushed back my bangs. “Ouch,” she said.

  “It kills,” I whined. I twisted away from her and stared at my reflection. Even with my bangs hanging normally, you could still see the burn. “There’s no way I’m going to school.”

  “Oh, I think you better,” Mom said.

  “But everyone will see!”

  “Do you want me to put on a Band-Aid?”

  The only Band-Aids in the cabinet had Barney on them. I begged Mom with my eyes.

  “I’m sorry you burned yourself, Winnie, and I’m sorry it hurts. But you’re not staying home. Now scoot downstairs and get moving.”

  By the time I got to school, the gym was packed. Mrs. Jacobs held up her hands, but no one paid attention. “Students,” she said into the microphone. “Students, please!”

  “Take a seat, Winnie,” Mr. Hutchinson said. He saw my forehead and his eyebrows shot up. “What happened to you?”

  I scanned the floor, looking for the empty spot that would help me find Amanda. “I kind of had an accident.”

  “I’ll say. Do you need a Band-Aid?”

  I craned my neck, still searching.

  “Well, go on and sit down,” he said. “Mrs. Jacobs is trying to start.”

  “I will. I’m just looking for—”

  He took my shoulders and guided me to the last row of students, right next to Dinah Devine. “Sit.”

  “Winnie! Hi!” Dinah said, lighting up as if I’d sat there on purpose. She beamed and launched in about teachers and classes and how exciting it was to be a sixth grader at last. Then she fished around in her backpack, saying something about her sticker collection and how she’d been working on it all summer.

  “Want to see?” she asked. “I know it’s here somewhere.” I tuned her out, because four rows up I finally spotted Amanda. To her left sat Chantelle and to her right sat
Gail, with no space between them at all. My heart lurched.

  Dinah plopped a spiral notebook into my lap and turned to a page full of kittens. “These are my favorites. You can have one if you want.” She looked up and sucked in a breath of air. “Ooo. What happened to your head?”

  Ahead of me, Gail cupped her hand over Amanda’s ear and whispered something secret. Amanda whispered something back, and the two of them laughed.

  “Shh,” I said to Dinah. I got a stinging feeling in the back of my throat, and I dug my fingernails into my palms. “We’re not supposed to talk.”

  For the rest of the day, I avoided Amanda. She obviously didn’t need me, so why should I need her? Only, I did. Lunch was boring without her to crack jokes with, and staying inside during recess made me feel like a loser. Mr. Hutchinson offered to let me feed Hannibal, the sixth-grade class snake, but I turned him down. Somehow I doubted that dropping a dead mouse into a corn snake’s gaping mouth would make me feel better.

  At home, I went straight to my room, and when the phone rang, I almost didn’t answer. I didn’t want to answer—I had better things to do than talk to people who didn’t even save me a seat—but my hand betrayed me. When I heard Amanda’s voice, my stomach got shaky.

  “Where were you all day?” she asked. “I know you weren’t absent, because Dinah asked me during recess if I knew how you burned your forehead. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  “Well, what happened? Dinah acted like it was this big deal that she knew something about you that I didn’t.”

  “Nothing happened. I burned myself with the curling iron. It was no big deal. And the only reason Dinah knew was because Mr. Hutchinson made me sit next to her in assembly.” I clutched the phone. “Why didn’t you save me a seat?”

  “I did save you a seat, but you never came! And finally Ms. Russell made Chantelle scoot over so more people could squeeze in.”

  I bit my lip. If Chantelle had to scoot over, then the space Amanda saved was between the two of them. Which meant that Gail would have sat next to Amanda either way.

  I guess Amanda figured out that I wasn’t going to respond, because she said, “Anyway, we finally came up with a name for our club.”

  “Oh, yeah? What?”

  “The Aqua Girls.”

  “The Aqua Girls?”

  “I think it sounds sophisticated,” she said. “Like we’re glamorous dancers or something.”

  “Where, at Sea World? Amanda, that is the dumbest name I’ve ever heard.”

  She exhaled. “Well, if you’d have been there, you could have—”

  “Who picked it out? Gail?”

  “We all did. Gail thought of it first, but we all agreed.”

  I shook my head. “That is absolutely the dumbest name I’ve ever heard.”

  For a few seconds we sat there breathing, and I worried I’d gone too far. In my mind I saw Amanda and Gail during assembly, how their shoulders touched when they leaned together.

  I cleared my throat. “Amanda—”

  “The thing is, tomorrow’s picture day,” she said before I could finish. Her voice was cooler than before. “We thought it would be a good idea if we all wore the same-color shirts.”

  “What, like Karen and Louise?”

  Amanda was silent. Then she said, “If you don’t want to, Winnie—”

  “No, I want to. I was kidding.” I closed my eyes. “So, um, what color?”

  “Turquoise.”

  “Turquoise?”

  “Winnie—”

  “Great. Fabulous. I love turquoise.”

  Amanda sighed. “I’ve got to go. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Tomorrow.”

  That night, I couldn’t fall asleep no matter how hard I tried. First was the issue of the turquoise shirt. I didn’t own a turquoise shirt. I didn’t own anything turquoise, period. I had a midnight-blue T-shirt that I loved, as well as a light blue button-down that used to be Sandra’s. But neither counted as turquoise, and I didn’t want Gail gazing at me with her lizard eyes as if I were too dumb to know the difference. Mom had a turquoise shirt, but it had long, flowing sleeves and a floppy bow above the top button. When I asked if I could borrow it, she wanted to know what kind of costume I was putting together.

  “Is it for a play?” she had said.

  “It’s not for a play. It’s just to wear. So can I?”

  She fingered the shirt’s bow and squelched a grin. “Sure, Winnie, if you want to. You know, this blouse used to belong to your grandmom Perry. She wore it every Sunday for ten years, back when she played the piano for her church choir.”

  I grabbed the shirt and stomped out of the room.

  The second reason I couldn’t fall asleep was because I couldn’t stop thinking about Amanda and Gail. What if Amanda decided to be Gail’s best friend instead of mine? I thought about Sandra and Angie Newsom. What if Amanda outgrew me, like Sandra outgrew Angie? I’d still have Chantelle, but Chantelle has about a dozen cousins she saw every weekend, and one of them, Darlene, is in sixth grade the same as us. She doesn’t go to our school, but she and Chantelle are really close. There isn’t room between them for me.

  When Amanda and I were seven, we pricked our fingers with a needle and pressed them together, mixing our blood. Where was Gail then, huh? And why didn’t she stay there, where she belonged?

  But the biggest reason I couldn’t fall asleep was because my forehead still hurt where I’d burned it with the curling iron. If I lay on my side like I normally did, my pillow pressed into the burn and made it ache. I tried lying on my back, but that didn’t work either because I never slept that way. Finally, I curled up on my side and twisted my neck as far as I could in the opposite direction so that my forehead didn’t touch my pillow. It wasn’t very comfortable, but gradually my thoughts grew muddled and I slipped into a troubled sleep.

  I woke up the next morning with Sweetie-Pie snuggled against my side. The song playing on my radio alarm was one I liked, and even Grandmom Perry’s turquoise shirt, which I’d draped over the top of a chair, didn’t look quite as hideous as I’d originally thought. A warm coziness seeped through me, and for a moment I couldn’t even remember why I’d been so worried the night before. I mean, I remembered, but none of it seemed quite so important anymore. Amanda was probably just being nice to Gail since Gail was new. I could be nice to her, too. We could be nice to her together. Secretly we’d feel sorry for her, but we’d only let on when it was the two of us alone.

  I sat up, and pain shot through my neck. I gasped and held still. Slowly, I moved my head, and the pain flamed up even worse. I tried turning my neck more gently, but it didn’t help. I tried massaging it, but that didn’t help either. I must have slept all night with my neck wrenched to the left, and now it was stuck that way.

  I eased off the bed and took tiny, clockwise steps until I could see myself in the mirror. My heart stopped. With my head twisted to the side, I looked like a human flamingo. And today was school picture day, which meant that unless the photographer had everyone try an over-the-shoulder glamour shot, I was in big trouble. But I had to be there, because otherwise there’d be three Aqua Girls instead of four, and I’d be the one everyone felt sorry for, not Gail.

  Tears welled in my eyes. Why did everything have to happen to me? Why couldn’t I be normal like everyone else?

  Stop it, I told myself. Just stop it. Maybe my neck muscles would loosen up between now and the time I got to school, and maybe by homeroom I’d be able to face forward. If not by homeroom, then surely by the time we got our pictures taken. Either way, crying would only make things worse. I had enough problems without adding puffy eyes to the list.

  I carefully got dressed and grabbed my backpack, wincing each time I jarred my neck. “Bye!” I yelled, slipping through the front door while Mom was busy with Ty. Pain bloomed above my spine, but I made myself keep going.

  In homeroom, the girls fidgeted with their hair and passed a
round compact mirrors while Mr. Hutchinson tried to read the announcements.

  “Do my bangs look okay?” Karen asked. “Do you swear?”

  “I told my mom I wanted to wear lipstick, but she wouldn’t let me!” said Maxine.

  Beside me, Dinah tightened the ribbon around her ponytail. “My picture always turns out horrible.” She giggled and tugged at the waist of her dress. “I close my eyes every time. I can’t help it.”

  “Just blink a lot before it’s your turn,” I said. My neck was still stuck, but I was trying to act casual. “That way your eyes will stay wet.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Okay, I will.” She glanced at me, then followed my gaze out the window. “What are you looking at?”

  “Nothing,” I said. I shifted sideways in my seat.

  “Yes, you are. What is it? What’s out there?”

  “Class,” Mr. Hutchinson said. “I’ve told you twice now. We need to walk quietly to the gym, where we’ll join the other two classes for the sixth-grade group photo. Individual pictures will be taken row by row immediately afterward, so stay in place until your name is called. Does everyone understand?”

  The girls squealed and hurried to the door, while the boys joked around and shoved each other out of place.

  “Just tell me, Winnie,” Dinah whispered. Even in the hall, she kept craning her neck to look where I was looking. “Are you pretending to be a spy?”

  I walked faster and hoped no one else was watching.

  “Winnie!” Amanda called when we reached the gym. “Over here!”

  I could see her out of the corner of my eye, a shiny, turquoise blob standing next to two other turquoise blobs. I climbed the riser and edged in between Amanda and Gail.

  “Good,” Amanda said, “you wore turquoise.” She paused. “Is that new?”

  “Kind of,” I said. I should have stood on Amanda’s left side, I realized, so I could look at her while we talked. With her on my right, I had to twist my body almost all the way around in order to even see her.