I looked at Sandra, then unstuck myself from my chair. “I’ll go. I don’t mind.”
“Stephanie’s waiting in room two,” the receptionist said. “She’ll get you all set up.”
I heard Sandra snort, but I didn’t turn around, because I knew she’d make me laugh. I was sorry Sandra was in a bad mood, but at least I was the one she shared it with.
In the tilt-back dentist’s chair, I watched as Stephanie washed her hands and snapped on a pair of rubber gloves. Sandra was right—Stephanie did dye her hair. When she sat down to organize her tray of instruments, I could see the dark line of her part. It was interesting, like a stripe. It wasn’t something I would have noticed on my own.
“How’s school?” she asked, pressing a button that made my chair go back farther.
“Fine,” I said.
“Studying hard?”
“Uh-huh.”
“That’s good. Open up, please.”
She went to work on my teeth, poking them with a sharp metal thing and then scraping away with a second sharp metal thing. She told the receptionist about a trip she’d taken to Cumberland Island, and the receptionist said things like “Not me, not in this lifetime,” and “Two for one?” and “Well, you’ll have to give me the brochure.”
While they talked, I thought about the straw Stephanie used to suck up my spit. Really, it was more like a vacuum cleaner than a straw. Or a combination of the two. It tickled, and every so often it made my lip tingle in a way that made me afraid of accidentally jerking away. It was hard, with my mouth open so wide, to lie perfectly still the way I was supposed to.
But what I wondered was where all that spit went. Dozens of patients came here every day, and Stephanie used the straw thing on all of them. The end that wasn’t in my mouth disappeared into a hole near the tray of instruments, and I suspected there was probably a sink in there. Probably they kept it hidden so that no one would have to see the spit swirling down the drain. Spit could get pretty gloppy, after all. Sometimes when I sat on Ty and tickled him, I let a big ooze dangle out of my mouth. If he wiggled, it would plop off and land on his chest, but if he didn’t, it could hang there all day.
Along with the spit question, I also thought about sneezing, which turned out not to be such a good thing. At first I just thought, what if. What if I sneezed right as Stephanie was chipping away at a bit of plaque, and she ended up chipping off part of my tooth? Or worse, what if she plunged her scraper into my gums? But then thinking about it turned into worrying about it, and my eyes got watery like a sneeze might actually come. I stared hard at the light shining down on my face and breathed in a shallow way through my mouth until the feeling passed.
Finally, Stephanie raised my chair and told me to rinse. When I spat into the sink, not all of it came free, and I had to use a Kleenex to wipe my mouth. See? I told myself. Gloppy.
“Are you flossing every night?” Stephanie asked.
“Um ...”
“You need to floss every night. You had quite a bit of buildup.” She handed me a new blue toothbrush in a rectangular box. “All right, you’re done. Send in your sister, please.”
I hopped out of the chair and headed past the receptionist’s desk. As I opened the door that led to the waiting room, I tried to think of something to tell Sandra, something that would make her laugh.
“Your turn,” I said when she looked up from her chair. She stood up to move past me, and I said, “Wait! I have to tell you something!”
She looked annoyed. “What?”
“Stephanie’s hair. You’re right, she dyes it.”
“So?”
“So you’re right. It looks terrible. And ... she’s gained, like, a hundred pounds.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“She’s huge.”
Her lips twitched, and I knew she’d think it was funny even when she saw that it wasn’t true.
“Sandra?” Mom said. “They’re waiting.”
“Thanks for the warning,” she said into my ear, then disappeared into the back room.
While Sandra got her teeth cleaned, I played checkers with Ty. The board was falling apart and we had to substitute a penny for one of the pieces, but it was better than reading old Highlights.
“King me,” Ty said, moving one of his men to the middle of the board.
“No,” I said, “you have to get all the way to my side. Remember?”
“King me.”
“Ty, no.” I moved one of my men.
Ty picked up my piece and placed it on top of his. He grabbed five more pieces, stacked them up with the others, and rammed the tower with a beat-up yellow truck from the toy bin. “Ka-boom!” he cried.
By the time Sandra was finished, most of the checker pieces had disappeared behind the magazine rack, and Ty and I were using rolled-up Highlights to fish them out. I saw Sandra push through the door, and I jumped up and ran over.
“Did she make your gums bleed?” I asked.
Sandra pulled down her lower lip, and I saw dots of red where her gums met her teeth.
“Ew,” I said.
“Do you know what she said? What her only comment was?”
“What?”
“That if I flossed more, my gums would toughen up. Yeah, that’s just what I want—tough gums.”
Mom and Ty joined us at the door, and all four of us filed back into the main part of the office so that Mom could pay the bill.
“And you were right about her little problem,” Sandra went on.
I giggled.
“Or rather her big problem, I should say.”
“Sandra, what on earth are you talking about?” Mom asked, uncapping a pen.
“Nothing,” Sandra said. “Stephanie happens to have gained a lot of weight, that’s all. She must have a disorder. It’s really sad.”
“And she dyed her hair super, super blond,” I added. I stifled my giggles. “It really is sad.”
Mom looked startled. “Goodness,” she said.
The receptionist returned from the computer and handed Mom the bill. As Mom wrote the check, Stephanie came out of the back room and said, “Sandra, I’m glad you’re still here. You forgot your toothbrush.”
Sandra froze, then moved quickly to take the toothbrush before Mom could react. But it was too late.
“Why, Stephanie,” Mom exclaimed, “you’re as skinny as a stick! The girls told me you’d put on weight and dyed your hair!”
Stephanie’s eyes widened. “Excuse me?”
“Uh, thanks,” Sandra said, snatching the toothbrush. She backed through the main office and dashed through the waiting room, me at her heels. We took the elevator to the main floor, laughing in a way that made me feel giddy.
“Oh my God,” Sandra said when we reached the parking lot. “I can’t believe Mom said that. Stephanie is going to kill us next time!” She raised her eyebrows and pretended to be Stephanie. “Oh dear, did that hurt? Better start flossing!”
“She’ll use that little whirring brush, and she’ll turn it on high. And she won’t let us spit!”
Mom and Ty emerged from the front of the building. Sandra saw them and stopped laughing. She crossed her arms over her chest.
I hesitated, unsure, then said, “Mom, what were you thinking? Stephanie’s going to hate us forever!”
Mom unlocked the door to the station wagon. “It popped out. I’m sorry. But if you girls hadn’t made up such a lie in the first place—”
“Oh, sure, blame it on us,” Sandra muttered.
“Yeah,” I said. “Blame it on us when she pulls our teeth out accidentally on purpose and forgets to give us any Novocain!”
Mom got into the front seat. “Winnie, help Ty fasten up. And both of you, stop overreacting.” She started the car. “Although Stephanie did insist on being scheduled for your next checkups. I heard her tell Mary Ann.”
“Mom!” I wailed. I waited for Sandra to make Mom stop teasing, but with Mom in the game, Sandra no longer wanted to play. She sat sto
ny-faced for the whole ride home, and as soon as we pulled into the garage, she got out of the car and strode to the house.
“Sandra, wait!” I called, untangling myself from my seat belt.
“Winnie, leave her alone,” Mom said.
“But—”
“Sandra is angry because she wants to be angry. It’s not your job to make her feel better.”
I closed my mouth, but I knew Mom was wrong. It was my job. I’m her sister.
“Want to play demolition derby?” Ty asked me as Mom helped him out of the car.
“That’s a kid’s game,” I told him. “It’s boring.” But I couldn’t think of anything else to do, so I handed Mom my toothbrush and reluctantly said okay.
That night, I made Sandra a snack of peanut butter crackers and M&M’s. I didn’t know if she was still mad, but I figured she probably was since she’d sat through dinner without saying a word. I went upstairs and knocked on her door.
“It’s me,” I said.
“What do you want?”
“I brought you a snack.”
She unlocked the door and pushed it open. She took the plate, then raised her eyebrows like, Yeah? And?
“Can I come in?” I asked.
“I guess.” She sat down on her bed and nibbled on a cracker, watching as I stepped into her room. “Close the door. God.”
“Sorry.”
She scooted back and leaned up against her pillow. “Today totally sucked. Mom is such a pain. And that broccoli she made for dinner was disgusting.”
I sat carefully on the foot of the bed. It made me uneasy when Sandra talked about Mom like this—not that I wanted to leave. But I figured it was a teenage thing, insulting your parents, and I had two more years to go before I’d understand. Anyway, I liked the broccoli, because of the cheese sauce. Pretty much anything tastes good with cheese sauce.
“And Angie called about an hour ago,” Sandra went on. “Guess what she’s decided to do?”
“What?” I said. Angie was one of Sandra’s best friends. Sometimes she painted my toenails and used those spongy things to separate my toes while the polish dried.
“She’s going out for cheerleading. Can you believe it? She asked if I wanted to be her partner for the tryouts.”
I could tell by Sandra’s expression that the answer had been no, which was too bad. Having a sister who was a cheerleader would be fun. Like having a sister who was a movie star.
But I said, “That’s crazy,” and Sandra nodded and rolled her eyes.
“Tomorrow she’s going shopping for her tryout outfit,” she said. “It has to be green and white. Her sister Nina is going to lend give her a pair of socks from when she was a cheerleader, little white ankle socks with green paw prints on them. Isn’t that the dumbest thing you’ve ever heard of?”
“Paw prints?” I said. They sounded the tiniest bit cute, but that was probably because I hadn’t seen them. I slid my hands under my thighs. “So, um, you think she’ll make the squad?”
“Who cares?” Sandra said. She closed her eyes. “That’s awful. I don’t mean that. It’s just ...” She opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling. “Angie and I, we’re not even that good of friends anymore. I think I’ve outgrown her.”
I blinked. Was that possible? Could you really outgrow a friend?
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“All Angie wants is to be popular. It’s boring.”
I must have looked worried, because Sandra sighed and made a fluttering motion with her hand. “We’ve grown apart, that’s all. It happens.”
Not to me, I thought. Not with Amanda. Still, I tried to act mature. “Oh. Right. Does Angie care?”
The question surprised her, I could tell. But she frowned and said, “Don’t be dumb.” She moved the snack plate and sat up. “Go do something else. I’ve got stuff to do.”
“Like what? I could do it with you.”
“Leave,” Sandra said.
I got off the bed and leaned against the bedpost. “Can I borrow your Sunkist shirt?” I asked. I loved that shirt. It was a soft, faded orange. On me it hung low enough to be a nightshirt, and when I wore it, I pretended I was going to a slumber party.
“No,” Sandra said.
“Please?”
“I said no.”
I walked to the door. I dragged the toe of my sneaker against the carpet.
“Oh, all right,” she said. She jerked open the middle drawer of her dresser and tossed me her Sweet Treats shirt instead. “Just don’t get it dirty.”
“Thanks,” I said, backing into the hall as she shut the door. Her Sweet Treats shirt wasn’t as good as her Sunkist shirt, but it was close. On the front were the words SWEET TREATS ICE-CREAM PARLOR, and on the back were two smiling ice-cream cones. On the bottom of the shirt, way down low where you could hardly see it, was a small, round hole. Sandra made it with a cigarette, she told me. Someone handed her one at a party, and she took it because she didn’t want to be rude. But she didn’t smoke it. She stretched a bit of the shirt between her fingers and held the cigarette to the fabric, just to watch it burn through.
May
SO WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?” I asked Amanda. She’d come home with me from school, and for half an hour we’d lounged against the kitchen counter, eating Chee•tos and wiping the orange dust on our shorts. But we were getting bored. “Want to get my pogo stick and see who can jump the most?”
“Only if you want to have a throwing-up contest afterward and see who can throw up the farthest,” Amanda said. She dipped her hand back into the Chee•tos bag.
“We could go bird catching,” I suggested. Dad once told me that if I caught a bird, I could keep it. He said it in a ha-ha kind of way, like I never would, and I couldn’t wait to see his face when I marched into the house with a thrush cupped in my hands. The thrush would have soft brown feathers and trusting brown eyes, and I’d name her Midge. Or Brownie.
Amanda assumed an all-purpose phony accent and said, “I theenk not, my dear.” She gestured at her shorts. “Ze grass stains? My mother would keel me.”
I considered pointing out the Chee•tos stains already there, but I kept my mouth shut. It was fun to think about catching a bird, but, to be honest, the actual event meant a lot of pouncing, which could be painful. Plus there was all that whispering, which started off giggly but grew bickerish and more blaming as the afternoon wore on.
“Let’s walk to Keeng’s,” Amanda said. It was really King’s she was talking about, as in King’s Drugs, but she was still using her accent. She pushed herself away from the counter. “We can try out ze perfume samples.”
“Okay,” I said, “but only if ve go to Reechard’s, too.” King’s and Richard’s are plunked smack-dab next to each other in Peachtree Battle Shopping Center, which is a little strange since they’re both drugstore-y types of stores. I guess it’s okay, though, because they sell different stuff. King’s sells makeup and perfume and magazines—normal drugstore things—while Richard’s is packed with weird junk like old metal lunchboxes and Styrofoam rabbits. One time I bought a pair of green plastic sunglasses with square lenses, like something a space alien would wear.
I rolled up the Chee•tos bag and put it back in the pantry, then yelled to Mom where we were going.
“What?” she called. “I can’t understand a word you’re saying!”
This made Amanda and me giggle, so it was a few seconds before I called up to her again, this time without the accent. Then Amanda and I banged out the door, and just being outside made everything seem lighter and more interesting.
“Come on,” I said. I pulled her down the driveway, and as we turned right onto Habersham, I got the idea of pretending to be orphan girls on the run. This meant we had to walk very fast and every so often glance over our shoulders, because we’d just escaped from an evil orphanage.
“Where our clothes were made out of burlap, and all we ate was gruel,” Amanda said.
“And we only got one cup of
water a day,” I said.
“Except when visitors came, because then the orphanage lady served hamburgers,” Amanda embellished. “Only really they were made out of rat. And all of the kids knew it, because she told us, like ‘heh, heh’ in this really nasty voice. And then she laughed and rubbed her hands together, but we had to eat it anyway or she’d lock us in the basement. The dungeon. And all the visitors would walk by and say, ‘Oh, how sweet, they get hamburgers here like real children.’ And we’d be gagging, but the orphanage lady would just laugh and say, ‘No manners at all, the poor dears. They were abandoned when they were two, you know.’”
I imagined those poor two-year-olds, now older and being forced to eat rat meat, and I thought how great it was that Amanda could come up with this stuff. Chantelle couldn’t. She always wanted us to be models, or sometimes Xanadu Maidens, which were like models only on Rollerblades. But Amanda and I could make up stories for hours. Once we played Lost on a Desert Island for an entire night and all the way through to the next morning.
I heard a car coming, and I grabbed Amanda’s arm. “Hurry, dear sister, we must hide!” I said. “If we’re found, we will surely be beaten!”
We ducked behind a boxwood. Amanda peeked around the leaves and cried, “It’s George, the orphanage lady’s son! Oh, no, he saw me! Run!”
We ran down the street, laughing at the startled looks we got from people in their cars. Then suddenly there were popping noises all around us, like firecrackers, and I screamed and covered my head. Amanda screamed, too, and a blue pickup revved its motor and zoomed up the hill. The sound of boys’ laughter trailed behind.
“Are you okay?” I asked Amanda. Her face was pale, except for her freckles.
“Yeah. Are you?”
“I think so.”
Cautiously, we walked back to the place where the truck had passed us. I knelt and picked up a curled piece of cardboard. It looked like a burned match.
“Snap ’n Pops,” Amanda declared. “My cousin had them at the beach last summer.”
The curled pieces were all over the road. Tons of them.
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