Authors: Rachel Vail
“I know,” I said. “Mrs. Platt?” We were in homeroom together last year and the teacher, Mrs. Platt, always called CJ, Cornelia Jane, Our Prima Ballerina—even when she was just taking attendance.
“Oh, yeah,” CJ said, scrunching her pointy little nose. “It’s a family name. My great-grandmother was called Lia, then Grandma is Nelly, and my mom is Corey, so I guess they ran out of nicknames that were actual names for me.”
“I like CJ.”
“Really?”
“Usually only boys get initial nicknames.”
“Exactly,” she said, flopping down flat on the bed.
Wrong thing to say. Oops. I tried something else. “That’s great, to have the same name as your mother. The only thing I have in common with my mother is a weight problem.”
She didn’t take her arm off her face. “It’s not that great, actually,” she said in that slow way of hers.
“Oh,” I said.
“When I was little, I could only touch her toe shoes if I first washed my hands with soap. That’s why I started ballet—I wanted toe shoes I could touch anytime. And to be just like her.”
“No wonder she’s psyched you’re so good,” I said. CJ is a really talented dancer. Last year we had a class trip to see her in
The Nutcracker
. When she came out to the lobby afterward, we were pulling on our wool sweaters and down coats. She looked like a different species from us. You could understand why people who perform are called stars. She sparkled, practically. On the bus ride home, some people said it was just the special makeup with glitter in it, but I don’t think so.
CJ pushed her blanket away again and stretched her neck so her head reached her knees. “Four days a week she drives me all the way to Lenox for lessons and sits there watching me for three hours.”
“That’s great,” I said.
“I guess so,” she told her knees.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “All that time, just for you? Once, when I was like, four, my mom took me to
Sesame Street Live,
just the two of us, and bought me an Elmo flashlight. Please, it’s still my favorite thing.”
“I don’t know, never mind,” CJ said, sitting up and hugging her knees.
“What?”
“Sometimes I just want . . .”
“What?” I asked. “You can tell me.” I sat up, too. I love secrets.
“You’ll think it’s stupid.”
“I won’t. I promise.”
“OK. Sometimes I wish I could just hang around the pizza place after school instead of dancing.”
I thought that was pretty stupid so I stayed still.
CJ frowned. “Stupid, right?”
“No,” I had to lie. “But you know what? Their pizza isn’t even crisp.”
“I don’t care.”
“And nobody gives you a standing ovation for finishing a slice.”
She shook her head. “I’m missing it,” she whispered. “All the regular stuff. I don’t think I’ll ever be good enough to make principal dancer, so I’m just wasting—”
“Maybe you will,” I interrupted. “You’re really good.”
“You don’t know. I’m good but my turn-out isn’t enough and meanwhile I’m missing being a normal kid.”
We lay there in the dark for a minute. She was right, how could I know if she’s good? She looked great to me last year, but I don’t even know what turn-out is.
“That must feel awful,” I whispered.
“It does,” she said. She started to cry.
Oops, wrong thing again. It had felt so good when she said it to me. I looked around for Kleenex, but she didn’t have a box. “You want me to get you some toilet paper?”
“For what?”
“To wipe your nose? Eyes?” I asked. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Some toilet paper?” She wiped her face on her T-shirt. “It’s OK.”
“So what are you going to do?” I asked. “About dance.”
“There’s nothing I can do, because it’s not up to me, it’s obviously my mother’s decision. Anyway, the point is, I know just how you feel, about nothing of your own.”
I nodded. I never know what to say when people get serious.
“Morgan says I should just quit. But she doesn’t care about stuff like disappointing your mother. I mean, my mother’s always telling me I’m her best friend.”
I stopped myself from saying that’s so nice. Instead I said, “Oh, that makes it complicated.”
I wasn’t even sure what I meant, but I was glad I said it because CJ nodded fast, looking right at me. She has really intense green eyes. “Exactly,” she said. “See? Morgan doesn’t get that—she doesn’t care what her mother thinks. But on the other hand, Morgan is right—it is my decision, really. Whether to dance and even who my best friend is. My mom can’t just decide we’re best friends. Don’t I have some say?”
“Absolutely,” I said.
She nodded more and smiled a little. “I mean
best
friends—it’s too important. It’s a commitment, right? Best friends have to choose each other.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I agree.”
“I’m glad somebody does,” whispered CJ.
“Who’s your best friend, then? Morgan?” CJ and Morgan Miller hung around a lot last year. I guess I thought of them as best friends. I was regular friends with both of them, although since
The Nutcracker,
I’ve been a little shy around CJ. It’s hard to imagine all my friends needing permission slips to come see me do anything.
“Well,” CJ said slowly. “I was best friends with Gideon Weld when we were little, but then, you know, we figured out he was a boy and I was a girl, so that ended that.”
“Right,” I said, like obviously you couldn’t be best friends with a boy. I’m just friends with anybody. Nothing of my own. Why didn’t that ever bother me before?
“And since fourth grade, it’s been Morgan, although, sometimes, lately, I feel like she doesn’t understand me,” CJ whispered. “But yeah, I guess it’s Morgan. Who’s yours?”
“I don’t know.” I faced away from her, toward the door, and folded my pillow over. “I don’t have one.”
After a while, CJ whispered, “We should go to sleep, huh?”
I said, “Yeah,” but I can’t sleep.
two
“S
eventh grade is the most horrible
year,” Devin confided, plunging her hand into the soapsuds to open the drain. It was our turn to do the dishes.
“Really? How come?” I can always trust Devin out of all my sisters to tell me the truth and not baby me.
“And you’re gonna be all alone,” she continued. “At least Colette was around for me. I mean, it was Colette, but still, once I had to go to the girls’ room and cry? She cut English and stayed with me the whole period.”
“Well, I don’t cry in school.” I dried my hands on the bottom half of her towel.
She smiled. “Just wait till the hormones kick in.” Devin has the best smile in the family. I’ve tried imitating it in the mirror but mine is big and goofy-looking.
“What does it feel like, when they kick in?” I asked, following her up the steps to our room.
“You’ll know. You won’t recognize yourself.”
“Yikes. Really?”
“Where were you today?”
“CJ Hurley’s.” Then I decided to try something out, see how it sounded. “She’s my best friend.”
“Yeah?” Devin sat down on her bed and crossed her legs. “Since when?”
Um. “Recently,” I answered. I pulled on my baggiest shorts, Devin’s old green ones. “What did you do?”
“Did Colette tell you what she did?” Devin asked.
“No.”
Devin smiled. “Never mind, then.”
“Come on!” I hate not knowing stuff.
“I promised not to say,” Devin said, shrugging. “But after she came home, Anne Marie took us all over to Sundries for school supplies.”
“You didn’t go with your friends?” I asked.
Devin shook her head. “Mommy gave us money.”
“She gave me some to go with my friends tomorrow,” I said. “Anne Marie didn’t say anything to me. Did you guys get pizza after?”
“Yeah.” Devin smiled her little half-smile. “You could’ve come.”
“Yeah, well,” I said, digging in my closet for my tennis racquet. The whole family used to go for school supplies together, and then Mom would take us for pizza, after. It was a total free-for-all, everybody with lists and packs of pens. One time they left me there by mistake, and I didn’t even notice, I was so busy examining erasers. I loved the whole excitement of it, like these blank notebooks were a fresh start, and if my sisters helped me choose, I would be able to look down at the fading blue of my spiral later in the year like during a tough math quiz and remember Anne Marie thought this was a good notebook. It gave me courage or at least company. But then last year, my sisters got too old and wanted to go with their friends. I didn’t want to seem like a baby, so I made a whole thing of going with my friends this year, but I definitely would’ve gone with my sisters today, if I knew they were all going together. CJ and I were just hanging around in her backyard. At the time it was fun to me, but I didn’t realize I was missing everything at home.
“I’m sorry,” Devin said. “Don’t be sad.”
“I don’t care.” I leaned farther into the closet so Devin wouldn’t see how disappointed I was.
“You’re not wearing that, are you?”
She was pointing at my sweatshirt, I saw when I looked up. I explained, “It’s Big Blue.”
“You get very attached to things,” Devin observed.
I pulled out my racquet and a can of balls. “Only some things. Feel how soft Big Blue is.”
She held up her hand. “Thanks anyway. I guess when I was your age I got attached to physical things, too. It’s like a pre-boy stage.”
“You’re so mature.” She’s a whole twenty-two months older.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” She shrugged. “You’re not going over to bother Tommy again, are you?”
“He needs work on his serve.” Tommy Levit and I have been hitting off his garage all summer. “Why? What are you doing?” I didn’t want to miss more.
“You ought to play a little hard to get, don’t you think?”
“He’s my buddy.” I sat down on my bed, wondering,
Does she know that I’ve been thinking about Tommy more than usual?
“You know you flirt with him.”
“I do not!” I insisted. Everything is the same. I refuse to go boy-crazy like my sisters, just because Tommy has deep dimples. Just because I get distracted by how cute his face is, lately. “It’s not flirting, it’s joking,” I told Devin. “We’re friends.”
“That’s what I mean, you let him be just friends. Where does that get you?”
“I don’t want to get anywhere. Except outside, to practice.” I retied my shoe to avoid Devin’s eyes. Maybe I really do want more privacy. I can’t even have feelings to myself without somebody spying on them.
“Then the hormones definitely haven’t kicked in.” Devin sat down next to me and started to French-braid her hair.
“Whatever.” On my way out, I asked, “Is that a pimple?”
“Where?”
I could hear her scrambling over to her mirror before I reached the stairs. Serves her right. Sometimes I am not as nice a person as I should be. I looked for Colette to find out what she had done but I guess she was Out, her favorite place to go, wherever that is. Probably her skanky boyfriend’s.
To get to Tommy and Jonas’s house, you just cut across our backyard, climb the fence, and cross their grass. On my way, I wondered if maybe I do have a best friend, and it’s Tommy. There’s no commitment, like CJ was saying, but Tommy and I rag on each other all the time, and when I’m with him I’m always in a good mood, although nervous, lately, too. But even the nervous is in a good way.
Mrs. Levit answered the door and yelled to Tommy that I was there. I waited in the front hall. She smiled at me but didn’t say anything. I smiled back and then looked at my racquet head balancing on the toe of my sneaker. Mrs. Levit was holding hands with herself. When I looked up, she was still smiling at me.
“How are you?” I asked, to be polite.
“Not so great,” she said. “I have cramps.”
“Oh, that’s terrible,” I said.
“You’re telling me.”
I looked up the steps for Tommy, but he was slow as always. I hate getting trapped in his foyer like this. “Did you go to the doctor?”
“No.” Mrs. Levit sighed. “It’s menstrual.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Do you get cramps, Zoe?”
“No,” I said quickly. Every time I see Mrs. Levit she tells me about her period. It gives me the creeps. My mother can’t even say period at the end of a sentence. She says
Point;
the other kind she just calls
That Time
.
“You’re lucky, then,” Mrs. Levit said. “My uterus . . .”
“Tommy?” I yelled.
Tommy jumped down to the landing and said, “Hey.”
“Want to hit?” What I was thinking was,
Get me out of here
.
“Yeah. Hold on.” He ran back upstairs, then yelled, “Ma? Where are my sneakers?”
“In the mudroom,” she answered. “So anyway . . .”
“I can wait outside,” I suggested.
“Are you excited for seventh grade?”
“Not so much,” I mumbled.
“I don’t blame you. What a rough time.”
“Thanks,” I said. I don’t know why I thanked her. Sometimes I just say thank you when it seems like somebody should say something.
By the time Tommy got outside, I was already in a good volley with myself. He sat on the curb and waited.
“Did you get school supplies yet?” I asked him, mid-backswing.
“No.”
Forehand. “I’m going tomorrow with some people, if you and Jonas want to come.”
“OK.”
“I don’t go with my sisters anymore.” I caught the tennis ball and tossed it to him. He stood up and walked to the crack we use as a baseline. Before he finished his toss, I asked, “Who’s your best friend?”
He served.
“Out,” I said.
“Yeah?” He ran for the ball and caught it near the bushes. “Jonas, I guess.”
“Oh.” Jonas is his twin brother, so I said, “Obviously. But I meant, anybody else?”
He lined up his toe again. “Not really,” he said, and tossed. His serve went in that time.
We hit for a while, until it got dark, then sat down on his sidewalk curb again and picked at our blisters. “Well,” I said when I was done with mine. “See you at the bus stop tomorrow.”
“Yup.” He stood up and headed toward his house.
“Tommy?”