Authors: Rachel Vail
When I realized I’d made a hole through the page, I tore it out, folded it up small, and pushed it to the corner of my desk. Garbage. There wasn’t any usable information for my article on it. I doodled cartoon dogs on the next page until Mrs. Shepard said, “OK. Let’s put the desks back. Please spend the rest of the period writing a newspaper feature about the person you interviewed, and leave it on my desk at the end of the period.”
Dragging my desk back to its normal spot, I caught eye contact with CJ. I shrugged and looked away. I hadn’t done a very good job—at being a best friend or an interviewer. I don’t deserve her, I realized. Morgan would’ve fixed them up for sure. And not to let schoolwork intrude on my social life, but what was I supposed to write? I turned to a fresh piece of notebook paper and spent the next fifteen minutes writing down everything I knew from before about Tommy, like he’s been working on his tennis serve and his mother embarrasses him and his twin brother is his best friend and he’s proud of what a good older cousin he is. The introduction read:
Thomas David Levit says his favorite thing in the world is pineapple upside-down cake, but the truth is more complicated than that.
When the bell rang I was still writing. A note dropped on my desk, but I pushed it aside and covered it with my left hand so I could finish. I stood up, still writing, and finished while CJ and Morgan waited at the door, saying, “Come on! Come on!”
I grabbed my stuff, slammed my two pages onto Mrs. Shepard’s desk, and quickly unfolded the note. It said
For Zoe Only,
in Tommy’s pointy writing on the front. When I saw what was inside, I refolded it and shoved it in my pocket.
“Anything?” CJ whispered, dragging me toward the lockers.
I shrugged. I couldn’t talk.
“Did you hint? What did he say?”
“Nothing much.” I pushed open the door of the girls’ room. “Meet you in gym?”
“OK.” She ran to catch up with Olivia and Morgan. I locked myself in a stall and unfolded the note again. It was my paper, the one I had torn out of my notebook, folded, and forgotten. Below the mess I had doodled, Tommy’s erasable pen had drawn a new line and filled it in. Here’s how it looked:
Tommy Levit likes Zoe Grandon
sixteen
“Z
oe?”
“Hey,” I called to CJ, quickly refolding the note and shoving it back in my pocket.
“You OK?”
“Um, yeah.” I unlocked the stall door and came out into the green glow of the girls’ room. I couldn’t get the grin off my face, so I pushed past CJ and dropped my books next to the sink to wash my hands. “What’s up?” I asked, but I was thinking,
How am I going to tell her?
and,
How do I stop smiling like a lunatic?
“You don’t look so good,” she said.
“No?” The bell rang. “We’re late,” I said, bending down to pick up my books. “We’d better run or we’re screwed.” Who said “screwed” recently? Oh, Tommy. I pictured him running up to the bus stop yesterday morning, saying he thought he was screwed. Tommy. He likes me! Me? Maybe we’d kiss at the bus stop.
“CJ,” I started. I was so excited, it was practically bursting out of me.
I have to tell her,
I thought.
No! You’ll ruin everything.
But somebody has to tell him yes, I like him, too, so he’ll know it’s OK to ask me out. Of course, that was the least of my worries. I was having some trouble thinking straight. I wished I could run to the high school and tell my sisters.
CJ reached out and touched my hands. “You look like you’re going to cry,” she said.
And then I did, I swear. I started crying. I slid down to the floor and cried, right in the middle of the best half-hour of my life. Bawled. So much for the problem of
how will I ever stop smiling.
CJ sat down next to me with her arm around my shoulder.
“I never,” I blubbered. “Devin said everybody cries in seventh grade, but I was like, not me! And here, I didn’t even make it through the first week.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Never mind. The thing is, I know I’m not pretty.”
“Oh, Zoe,” she said. “Is that it?”
I shrugged. “I know you and Morgan think . . .”
“I do not!”
“That boys would never like me . . .”
But you are wrong! So ha, ha on you!
Obviously I didn’t say that part.
“I never said that, Zoe,” CJ said.
“Right.”
“I didn’t!” she insisted.
“Fine.” I wiped my eyes.
“Is that why you wore that shirt today?”
I pulled my knees up to my chest and looked away from her. I didn’t know I was angry at her until that second. I thought I was just avoiding saying,
Hey, Tommy likes me, and isn’t that awkward, just as I was hooking him up with you?
But I could barely look at her, I was so mad. Why would I ever want to be best friends with someone who thinks I’m so undesirable?
She craned her head around, trying to make eye contact with me. “Because boys aren’t going to like you just for, you know, your boobs sticking out. Not nice boys, anyway.”
“No?”
Maybe that’s not true,
I thought.
Maybe that is exactly why a very nice though occasionally obnoxious boy suddenly likes me. Although, if so, yuck
.
“No,” CJ said. “They’re going to like you, Zoe, I know they will. Maybe they’ll have to get a little more whatever—mature, but they’ll be lining up at your door, by eleventh grade, at the latest.”
I shrugged. “Eleventh grade?”
She tapped my sneaker. “Because you are strong and funny and a great friend, and that’s what truly matters.”
“Maybe.” Maybe that’s what made Tommy like me—that I handled the bra flicking strong and funny, instead of wimpy and backing-down-girly. I do know how to be a friend, it’s true—at least, usually. That’s what I like about myself. And I guess that’s what CJ likes about me, too, which, thank goodness. I mean, I don’t like her for her looks. How boring would that be?
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I would never want to hurt you.”
“I’ll bounce back,” I answered. “Truce.”
She smiled and we shook on it. Maybe what Tommy really liked was how powerful he felt when I crawled across the cafeteria begging forgiveness—after he was a jerk to me. The same thing just happened, sort of, with me and CJ. Here I am being horrible to her, stealing Tommy, and she apologizes to me. It made me like her more than ever. Weird. But it doesn’t really work that way, I thought. If Colette had apologized to Dad last night, would he like her more? Would he have come home? Actually, yes, I bet he would’ve.
“It’s not that, anyway,” I whispered. “It’s . . .”
“What?”
“Everybody thinks my family is so perfect, but the truth . . .”
She bent her head toward mine. “You can tell me, Zoe,” she said. “I told you about my crazy mother and you kept it secret. Everybody’s family is a mess. I swear, I won’t tell a soul.”
“Not like mine.”
“What happened?”
I gathered my books into a pile. “We’re gonna get detention for skipping gym.”
“I don’t care,” she said. “You’re more important to me than gym class. If something’s wrong, well, then, I’m not budging.”
I took a few deep breaths and let my math text slide off my loose-leaf. “Colette wouldn’t show him her belly button. So he called her a whore,” I said quietly.
She shook her head but didn’t say anything.
“I mean, she asked for it,” I explained. I didn’t like the way I had just made my father sound and I don’t want CJ to think badly of him. “He told her to get rid of it and he is her father. It’s his house.”
“It’s her house, too.”
“Yeah, but she knows what kind of reaction . . . My parents aren’t exactly liberal.”
“Still.”
“She always does this.” I shifted around so I could look at CJ and explain. It’s so hard to explain, and I wasn’t sure if I was just spilling all my family’s secrets as an excuse for what was really going on with Tommy, or vice versa.
“What?”
“I mean, she could’ve just left it but she . . .” I lifted the brown T-shirt and showed my belly button, the way Colette had, last night. “She taunted him. She wrecks my family. I don’t know where he went last night, but he didn’t come home and I don’t know if he’s going to. He’s never done that before.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. I’m not allowed to tell this kind of thing.”
“I won’t say anything,” CJ promised.
It felt so good to let it out I just kept going. “When my mom stands up for Colette, in the middle—she always does that, she thinks she’s so fair, but, so my dad feels like, like a nothing, and I don’t blame him. But I mean, Mom was just protecting Colette, which she should, she has to, it’s her kid. And she was right, but . . . I don’t know what’s going to happen, but if they get divorced because of Colette, I swear. They give us everything. Do you know how much shoes cost, for five of us?”
“A lot?”
“And then Colette shoves it in their face. I hate her.”
CJ nodded.
“And him,” I said, then stopped. “No, I don’t hate him. Or her, really, either. Hate. That’s silly. I don’t hate anybody.”
“Of course you do,” she said.
“No. I like everybody.” I dropped my head into my hands and breathed my palms. The bun she had knotted into my hair came loose and when I looked to the side, a Bic pen was sticking forward near my eye. I yanked it out.
CJ laughed a little and smoothed my hair down my back.
“I was just so scared,” I admitted.
“I bet.”
“And when she said he has no right to touch her ever again?”
“Yeah?” She waited for me to explain.
“I mean . . . ever.”
“She was mad.”
“Still,” I said. It was strange but that was the part bugging me most. It seemed so final.
“Well, you don’t still hug your dad or anything, do you?”
“Sometimes,” I admitted. “You don’t?”
CJ shrugged. “It feels sort of, I don’t know, creepy lately. But sometimes I do, I guess. If I’m tired. I didn’t think you would.”
“Maybe I’ll stop hugging him in eighth grade,” I said, wiping my nose on my hand.
CJ stood up. “Me, too.” She ripped some toilet paper out of a dispenser and handed it to me.
“Toilet paper?” I asked.
She shrugged again. “I don’t know what to do.”
“You are such a good friend,” I told her.
She sat back down next to me.
After a minute I told her, “I never heard my father say that word before.”
CJ nodded. “Ouch.”
“He must really hate belly button rings.”
“Seriously,” she agreed. “Wouldn’t you die? If my dad ever called me a . . .”
“I know it. Me, too. Colette doesn’t even care, though.”
“Still,” said CJ. “Not to knock your dad or anything, but it was pretty wrong of him, saying that. Don’t you think?”
After I blew my nose I said, “Yeah. He was wrong.” I took a deep breath. It felt better and worse at once, thinking it could be that simple, Dad could just plain be wrong. “But the thing is,” I whispered, “I still love him.”
“He’s your dad.”
“Right. Thanks.” I blew my nose again and tossed the toilet paper into the garbage. “I mean it, CJ. I never tell anybody this kind of stuff. I’m really not supposed to.”
“You can tell me anything,” she said slowly.
“I know,” I said.
“I mean, like, I trust you.” She pointed her toes hard. “Totally.”
“So.” I straightened my math text on top of my notebook. “You really like Tommy, huh?”
She nodded. “But don’t worry. I’d never let a boy come between us.”
“Neither would I,” I promised.
“Do you think he might like me?”
“He should. He’s stupid if he doesn’t.” I tucked my hair behind my ears. “Sorry about the bun.”
“I like it better down, I think.” She untucked it and the side fell forward. “It’s more you.”
“Whoever that is.”
“That’s my best friend,” she said. “So you give her a break.”
seventeen
M
ost of the kids were already
on the bus when I got out there. We hadn’t been caught for cutting gym, at least yet, so CJ and I said good-bye at the wall, and I promised I’d call her later.
Jonas was three quarters of the way back, doodling in his notebook, and Tommy was across the aisle, also alone, looking out his window. I walked up slowly, hearing the doors creak shut behind me, and plopped down next to Tommy as the bus lurched forward.
Tommy didn’t acknowledge my existence until after the first stop. “You cut gym,” he said to the window.
I blurted out, “Do you like CJ?”
He turned and faced me like WHAT? I looked down, away, at my sneakers; I inspected the shoelace where it was fraying. She is my best friend. She is the best friend I’ve ever had.
Tommy picked at the callus he’s been working on and asked quietly, “Did you read my note?”
“Hey, Zoe!” Jonas called from across the aisle. “We’re going bowling tonight. You want to come?”
“I can’t,” I lied. I love bowling, and home was the last place I wanted to stay tonight. But.
“Oh,” Jonas said and slumped back into his seat with his knees up.
“Because if you want to ask out CJ,” I whispered toward Tommy’s knees, “you should.”
He didn’t say anything.
It was the longest bus ride home. I pulled my poor shoelace apart so bad, all I had left were spindly strings. That expression,
Thank God It’s Friday
? Oh, yeah. At least I wouldn’t have to face Tommy again for two full days.
I was standing before the bus stopped and had run halfway down the block before I heard the bus pull away. Tommy and Jonas always cut through my yard, though, so while I was fumbling with my key at the back door, they passed right next to me.
“See you tomorrow, maybe?” Jonas called. “You guys hitting tennis balls all day again?”
I looked at Tommy.
He was staring at me. “No,” he said, and jumped the fence.
eighteen
“Y
ou have to choose something
about yourself to emphasize.”