Thirteen Plus One

ALSO BY

Lauren Myracle

ELEVEN

 

TWELVE

 

THIRTEEN

 

LET IT SNOW

 

(WITH JOHN GREEN AND MAUREEN JOHNSON)

THE FASHION DISASTER
THAT CHANGED MY LIFE

 

KISSING KATE

 

 

TTYL

 

TTFN

 

L8R G8R

 

BLISS

 

LUV YA BUNCHES

 

RHYMES WITH WITCHES

 

 

HOW TO BE BAD

(WITH E. LOCKHART AND SARAH MLYNOWSKI)

DUTTON CHILDREN’S BOOKS • A division of Penguin Young Readers Group

 

Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

 

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2010 by Lauren Myracle

 

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any informa-
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The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for
author or third-party websites or their content.

 

CIP Data is available.

 

Published in the United States by Dutton Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group

345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014
www.penguin.com/youngreaders

 

 

 

eISBN : 978-1-101-42941-9

 

 

Table of Contents

 

for Ariel whose mommy is (usually) a very good girl

Acknowledgments

All of you Dutton-buttons, thank you for being fabulous. Y’all take such good care of me! Special smoochie thanks to the sales and marketing folks who work so hard to get Winnie out into the world, and special smoochie-huggie-kissie-playful-smack-on-the-booty thanks to Allison, Eileen, Emily, Irene, Jennifer, Kim, Lauri, RasShahn, Samantha, Scottie, and Theresa. Rock your sweet selves on!

 

Rosanne? You deserve more “forgive me” cupcakes than I can ever give you. Thank you for caring enough about the book to keep helping me make it better, long after you should have locked me up in the special jail cell copy editors reserve for meddlesome authors.

 

Beegee, you bring the girls into living color. Thank you. Your Winnie
is
Winnie, and she’s just perfect.

 

Lisa, you are there for me whenever I need you—and I realize with pink cheeks that I need you a lot, and usually for total nonsense, like a delightful distraction chat when Julie—
ahem
—is “working.” Plus, you watched over me while I slept. You are a dear.

 

High-fives to my Starbucks buddies: Angie, Seth, Scottie, Ian, Aaron, Audrey, Bre, Michelle, Lolo, Christy, Carly, and Kendra. It’s not the caffeine I come for. It’s y‘all.

 

Barry, your inner thirteen-plus-one-year-old is alive and strong, and I love that about you. Plus, you know, the fact that you’re the most amazing agent ever, dude.

 

Julie? You are the “wuh” of Winnie. Without you, she wouldn’t be whole. You are Wonderful Plus Infinity, which equals winninity. ☺

 

Hugs to my friends, who keep me relatively functional: Julianne, Maggie, Virginia, Jackie, Nina, Emily, Sarah, and Bob.

 

Kisses to my family, who is just dysfunctional enough (in a good way!) to keep life from ever being boring.

And hugs, kisses, and marshmallow dreams for Jack, A1, Jamie, and Mirabelle. I love you, forever and ever, amen.

Say Out Loud What I Want Out of Life

T
HE THING ABOUT BIRTHDAYS, at least
fourteenth
birthdays, is that they’re more ... well ...
complex
than every single birthday that came before. Or maybe the only reason I thought that was because I just this very day turned fourteen. Me me me me me me! Fourteen, fourteen, fourteen, fourteen!!!!

In the cozy warmth of my bed, I pointed my toes and s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d my arms above my head. Then in one great
whoosh,
I let my limbs flop down. The mattress jounced beneath me, and I exhaled happily and reflected on my life.
Fourteen years and counting, baby.
That was a lot of birthdays!

The earliest ones, I didn’t remember. There’d been cake and me looking adorable with icing in my hair, all the normal stuff. On my third birthday, according to family mythology, I’d tilted my chair so far back that it toppled over—with me in it. Dad said my skull hit the floor with a
thwack.
He also said that my older sister, Sandra, had burst into tears because she was so worried about me.
Aw,
so sweet (and a teeny bit funny).

Other birthday highlights:

Then I reached the land of double digits. That was huge—though scary, too—and on my tenth birthday, I left a secret note of encouragement to myself in the hollow interior of a way-high piece of molding in our way-old house. I also left a candy bar. Then one weekend Dad threw himself into a short-lived let’s-spiff this-place-up frenzy, and he ripped the molding down. Bye-bye candy bar, bye-bye note of encouragement. Sad!

On my eleventh birthday, I had a slumber party, and I remember being so excited I couldn’t sit still. I bounced on the sofa, desperate for my friends to arrive, and chanted
get here get here get here
in my head.

That was the birthday Amanda gave me my cat, Sweetie-Pie, who was then just a kitten, with paws too big for her fuzzy little body. She had the scratchiest, teensiest
mew.
I named her Sweetie-Pie to be twinsies with Amanda’s cat, Sweet Pea, because Amanda and I—back then—were the bestest of best friends. Sweetie-Pie still has a scratchy
mew,
but Amanda and I are no longer best friends. For that matter, we’re hardly friends at all.

How did that happen? I mean, I know how it happened. I was there for all the cracks and fissures and seemingly unimportant differences that piled up and turned into no-more-Amanda. But still—how did it happen?
Why
did it happen?

This was an example of the complexity of turning fourteen: looking back at your life and just ... wondering.

The year I turned twelve, Mom and Dad took me to Benihana for a fancy birthday dinner. I was allowed to invite one friend, and I invited Dinah, who had become my new Amanda. Except, not really. Not because Dinah wasn’t as good as Amanda, because she was ... even though that’s a stupid and horrible way to put it, “as good as.”

Dinah was wonderful, steady and loyal and true. (And she still is.) She maybe wasn’t as exciting as Amanda, but that wasn’t Dinah’s fault.

At any rate, it hardly mattered, since that fall we started seventh grade—and Cinnamon entered the picture. Cinnamon filled the “exciting” role and more. I met her in PE and realized in the locker room that she wore a thong. Omigosh, I was in shock.

For my thirteenth birthday, Mom let me, Dinah, and Cinnamon get makeovers at the Bobbi Brown makeup counter at Lenox Mall. I still have the Rockstar glitter dust I picked out.

That was a fun night, yet for some reason looking back on it now made me feel melancholy. Well, melancholy-
ish. Ishly
melancholy, not fully melancholy.

I turned my head and looked at my clock. It was seven-thirty, which meant I should be rolling out of bed and getting ready for school. Instead, I let my head loll back, because I wasn’t done thinking yet. Because while all my birthdays mattered, they weren’t here anymore. They were in the past. Turning fourteen was happening
right now,
and brought me one step closer to growing up, and my feelings toward
that
were all over the place.

For the most part, I was excited. Growing up meant more privileges, more freedom, one day possibly even a car,
mwahaha.
Possibly even a convertible, although that would have to wait till I was in my twenties and living on my own, since no way would Mom and Dad ever let me drive around without a roof over my head.

At the same time, there were aspects of growing up that made my stomach clench. Like, I worried about becoming boring and
serious
(to be said in a very
serious
voice). I worried about the steady march of month after month after month ... until one day I’d be dead and in a coffin.
Bang bang bang
would go the nails, and gee, wasn’t that a lovely birthday sentiment?

But death was a long, long,
long
time away. At least, I hoped. There was something closer on the horizon that worried me far more ... and its name was high school.

Today was March eleventh, and the school year ended on May twenty-eighth, which meant I had a little over two months left of junior high. Then would come summer, and then,
bam
. A new school year would start, and I, Winnie Perry, would be a freshman in high school.

It was mind-blowing. Like, seriously mind-blowing, so when I heard my brother and sister singing in the hall outside my room, I was glad for the distraction.

“Do you like Pop-Tarts?” Sandra belted out from the hall.

“Yes, I like Pop-Tarts!” Ty caroled back.

“Do you like OJ?”

“Yes, I like OJ!”