by Alex Flinn
So that was the start of Amanda and me. People were singing the K-I-S-S-I-N-G song about us by the end of the week, and even though Amanda was always the first-picked girl when we played team sports in PE class, while I was the last-picked boy, when she was captain, she always chose me third.
“You have to practice,” she told me when I didn’t get a runner out in kickball because I was cringing away from the ball. “This is kickball, Chris. Kick. Ball. The ball is soft, so it doesn’t hurt even if it hits you in the face. See?” She tossed the ball at me. I ducked it.
She sighed. “What are you going to do when we start softball?”
“Isn’t a softball soft?”
“No,” she said, like that made sense.
We had our first playdate the Saturday after school started. My mother drove me to Amanda’s house. “I’m so glad you made a friend,” she said on the way “Would I know Amanda’s mother?”
“She doesn’t have one.” Mom gave me a funny look, so I added, “I mean, her mom doesn’t live with them. She lives with her dad. And her sister.”
I didn’t know why it mattered, but I sensed it did. “She’s really nice, and her dad sounds nice, and she says he’ll teach me baseball. Please let me go over there. She’s my best friend.”
Amanda was more than my best friend. She was my only friend. While Amanda knew people, girls from T-ball and soccer who talked about practices, boys whose families were friends with hers, they all pretty much ignored me. Or included me only as Amanda’s friend. Even at five, I sensed that. I was too small, too quiet, too insignificant. I was like the ugly duckling, maybe not actually ugly, but just . . . nothing. I didn’t know if I’d have made other friends had Amanda not adopted me as her personal project. Somehow, it didn’t matter. I’d had no real friends up until then, just playgroups with Mom’s friends’ kids. Amanda was the one friend I’d made by myself. Amanda seemed like enough.
“So is it okay?” I said.
“Of course it’s fine. I just want to meet her father.”
I nodded happily. But as we got farther away from our house, closer to Amanda’s, I started thinking. I hugged Spidey, who didn’t go to school anymore but mostly resided in our car, suctioned to the back passenger window. What if Mom didn’t like Amanda? Or her dad? I’d never been to a house where there was no mother. What if it was messy or smelled funny, so my mother would wrinkle her nose? What if they weren’t back from Amanda’s soccer game yet, so we had to stand outside and maybe see Nolan? What if she had another friend over, and they didn’t want to play with me?
Mom pulled into the driveway of a peach-colored house bigger than ours. The front yard had a tire swing and a bunch of equipment for sports. As our car slowed, the white front door flew open, and Amanda, in an orange soccer jersey that said Hurricanes, flew down the path, yelling something. When I opened the car door, I heard her.
“Chris! You’re here!”
A man with a red beard and a soccer jersey that matched Amanda’s came out next. A little girl in a pink ballet outfit followed him, twirling around and trying to run on her toes. The man was laughing.
“Mandy, Mandy, we’ve been home, like, five minutes. Don’t lay a guilt trip on the boy. He’s not late.”
Amanda reached our car first. I had this weird feeling she was going to hug me, but she detoured back to Mom. Then she stuck her chubby little arm out like someone had told her to. “Hello, Mrs. Burke. I’m Amanda Lasky.”
Mom looked dumbfounded, but finally, she held out her own hand with an Isn’t that cute? expression I knew Amanda would hate and said, “How do you do, Amanda? Laura Burke.”
My mom was being totally embarrassing, but Amanda said, “I’m fine, Laura.”
I saw Mom decide to ignore her first name, though she’d told me never to call adults by them, even if they said it was okay. Mr. Lasky had reached us by then. “Nice to meet you. Tim Lasky.” He held out his hand, realized it was dirty, and wiped it on his shorts. “Sorry. Coaching girls’ soccer is messy.”
Mom took his hand. “Our children seem to have become fast friends.”
“My Mandy’s pretty outgoing.”
Beside my mom, still holding Spidey, I mouthed, Mandy? Amanda scowled.
Mr. Burke invited us in. I figured my mother was dying to get a look inside, and I wasn’t wrong. We followed him inside. The house smelled like lemons, and Amanda’s sister leaped and spun in front of us.
“Do you do ballet too?” my mother asked Amanda.
“No,” she said, and I was glad she didn’t talk about ballet being dumb.
“The ballet was more my wife’s thing,” Mr. Burke explained in a low voice. “Can’t say I was devastated when Mandy quit. I’m terrible at buns.”
Mom laughed but said, “Christopher thought you didn’t have a wife,” pumping him for information.
Mr. Burke shrugged. “Like they say, it’s complicated.” He tousled Amanda’s curls. “Why don’t you guys go up and play in Amanda’s room. We’ll play some catch in a few.”
Amanda grabbed my arm. “Come on, come on!” She dragged me toward the stairway. Her little sister followed, but when we reached the threshold, Amanda said, “Go to your own room, Casey,” and slammed the door. I heard footsteps running downstairs and something about telling.
I looked around. The room was painted the color of cotton candy, with a dollhouse and about five of those dolls with the big eyes. Not what I expected from Amanda. Would there be anything for me to play with? There was also a poster of a women’s softball team and a bunch of other softball stuff, including trophies and a batting helmet, which sat on the bedpost of her flouncy pink bed.
She squinted at Spidey. “You brought that?”
“It was just in my hand when I got out of the car. It’s cool.” I walked over and suctioned it to her wall. “He could play with your dolls. One of them could be Mary Jane.”
“Ha!” Amanda picked up a blond doll, who was taller than Spidey in about the same proportions Amanda was to me. She made her voice high and girly. “Help me, Spidey! Help meeeee!”
She tossed the doll down and grabbed my arm. “I’ve got a ton of Legos in the closet. The nanny just puts them away.” She opened the door to reveal thousands of Legos packed in plastic containers. She took out two of the boxes and pulled a pink Lego table from the corner. “You good with Legos?”
I was good with Legos. I totally coveted her Legos, which would have made Matt drool with envy. “My mom says they’re too messy.”
“Let’s make a skyscraper. Last year, we went to New York for Christmas, and my dad took us to the top of the Empire State Building.”
“Cool.” I started taking out gray pieces to make the building. “Why does your dad call you Mandy?”
“Don’t call me that!”
“I didn’t. I just asked why he does.”
She didn’t answer, and I kept gathering grays.
Finally, she said, “It’s from some dumb song my mom likes about some girl who gave without taking. I hate it. You’re so lucky your name’s Chris.”
There were three boys in our grade named Chris. “My mother wanted to call me . . .” I stopped. What, was I stupid?
“What?” Amanda was gathering windows now.
“Never mind.”
“Wha-at?”
“I don’t want you to call me it.”
“I won’t call you it if you don’t call me Mandy.”
“I’d never call you Mandy. Okay, she wanted to call me Topher.”
Amanda giggled. “Topher! That sounds like an animal.”
“I got attacked by a vicious topher. It ripped off all my toes.”
“And then I ran into Mandy, and she gave without taking,” Amanda said.
We were still giggling, and we’d made about a six-inch tower, when Amanda’s dad came in. “Ready to play some ball?”
I looked at the Lego table.
“We can finish it another time,” Amanda said.
Mr. Lasky d
idn’t make us put away the Legos, like my mom would’ve. “Mandy tells me you want to play baseball.”
“I guess. Everyone says I’m kind of small for sports.”
“Anyone can learn if they try,” Mr. Lasky said.
I hoped he was right and followed him downstairs.
At first, it seemed like I was going to be the exception to Mr. Lasky’s statement about anyone. He lined me up in front of the batting tee, which Amanda said made it easier, and he showed me how to stand.
I hacked into the air with my bat.
“That’s okay. Look at the ball,” he said.
“Tell him to choke up on the bat,” Amanda said. She had been sworn to silence about instructing me.
“And choke up on the bat,” Mr. Lasky said.
On about my fifth try, I hit it so it sort of dribbled off the tee and onto the ground.
“That’s good. Bunting isn’t allowed in T-ball, but if it was, that was a good one. Just try and swing through it.”
After Mr. Lasky worked on my swing so long that my elbows hurt from holding up the bat, with Amanda forgetting herself and shouting stuff like “Tell him to rotate his hips!” I actually hit one that went a few feet.
Then another one. Then about ten more, including one glorious one that sailed over my mother’s car as it pulled into the Laskys’ driveway.
I dropped my bat and ran up to her. “Did’ya see that?”
“I did. Wow. That was incredible.”
Tim—that’s what Mr. Lasky had told me to call him—walked up to Mom. “Kid could be a ballplayer.”
Mom looked dubious. “He’s kind of small.”
“He’s got good instincts, good reflexes, follows directions, which is more than a lot of kids. And nothing teaches teamwork like being on a team. Little League tryouts are in December. I could prep him.”
Mom smiled like she wasn’t really listening. “I wouldn’t want him to get hurt.”
Tim laughed and gestured to Amanda. “Why don’t you kids go over there and throw a few while the adults talk.”
Amanda led me over to her pitchback. She stared throwing the ball and catching it, always catching it. “Now you.”
“I can’t.”
“Even Casey can catch a ball.” She threw the ball at an angle so when it bounced back, it came to me.
I caught it, then threw it again, copying the way she wound her arm back, then threw the ball over her head. It went a little farther than I’d planned, but I still got it. The next time, I ran back right after I threw it, so I was ready. That’s when I realized Mom and Tim were watching.
“Good job!” Tim yelled.
“Is he really any good?” Mom’s voice carried even though she tried to whisper.
“He’s good. It’s his first time, right? He was afraid of the ball at first.”
I pretended not to hear, concentrating on throwing and catching, throwing and catching. Finally, Amanda intercepted the ball. “My turn!” After she threw it, she said, “I knew you were afraid of the ball.”
“I was not.”
“You aren’t anymore.”
“Never was!”
“Mandy!” Tim said.
“Topher!” Mom said at the same time.
We both burst out laughing. Our parents stood there, staring, with no idea what was so funny.
Then Amanda pitched it, and I caught it again. “Sorry, Mandy!”
I loved arguing with her. It wasn’t like fighting with my brother or even people at school. It was more like a sport. Or like having a friend.
3
Sometimes my brother, Matt, called us Chrisandamanda. Not in a Brangelina type of way, but just because when you saw one of us, you usually saw the other. I went over to Amanda’s house or she came to mine almost every day after school. At her house, we played ball, and I actually was kind of good. I thought Amanda would be bored with the baking and art projects at my house, but she seemed to enjoy it.
Mom also read us stories, including The Ugly Duckling.
After it was finished, Amanda said, “Aren’t most people born pretty or ugly?”
Mom looked at Amanda, probably taking in her chubby, freckled face. “Not necessarily. Some people are just late bloomers. That’s what the story’s about.”
Sometimes, Mom took us to the park near school to feed the real ducks. We saved our bread crusts all week for the cute little ducklings who swam in the canals. The bigger ducks were black-and-white spotted, with warty red things on their bills.
“Why are they so ugly?” I asked once.
“They’re Muscovy ducks,” Mom said. “That’s just what they look like.”
“So the ducklings are going to turn into those big ugly ducks?” Amanda said.
“Just like in the story,” Mom said.
Amanda took some bread from the bag. “They seem pretty happy.” She tossed a crust to the biggest, ugliest duck of all, the duck with a fishhook permanently stuck in its beak. He ate it fine.
It took a while for Dad to figure out that I had a girl best friend. But when Matt enlightened him, Mom reassured him that Amanda was “a tomboy” and that we weren’t having tea parties.
Later that night, I heard Mom whispering about Amanda and her dad. Apparently, she’d asked around to the other moms, who’d been happy to fill her in. I heard her saying things like “mother ran out on her family” and “drugs” and “poor child.” I went to bed with my pillow over my face. I didn’t want to hear.
In December, I tried out for Little League. “What if I don’t make it?” I asked Tim. He and Amanda were accompanying me even though Mom was going too.
“Everyone makes it,” Tim said. “Tryouts are just to make the teams fair.”
“There are a lot of people worse than you,” Amanda said.
“Mandy, that’s enough,” Tim said.
But it calmed me down. Amanda thinking people were worse than me was a huge compliment.
We’d stopped using the batting tee at Amanda’s house weeks before, but that’s what they used at tryouts. It would be easy. When Nolan Potter saw me coming, he nudged his friend and said, “Oh brother.” I ignored him. I stepped to the tee and hit every ball with a loud thwack, the way Tim had taught me. And when the coaches hit pop-ups and grounders to us, I got those too. When I finished, Tim walked over and flipped up my cap. “Good job, sport.”
Nolan wasn’t laughing anymore, especially when Amanda said, “Hey, I think he did better than you.”
I thought so too. And so did Nolan, I could tell.
I was on my first team that year, the Tigers, with yellow baseball jerseys that I slept in some nights. I finally made friends with some of the boys at school. They were going to play football in the fall, and Tim promised to teach me that too. But Amanda was still my best friend.
Some days, Amanda played with other girls in class, which I hated. I liked having her all to myself. She had friends from softball, so I couldn’t be part of that group.
“What do you do when you play with them?” I asked every time she had a playdate.
She’d say something mundane like “Sophie has a trampoline” or “We watched a movie,” and I made plans to re-up my trampoline begging or ask for more TV time.
But one day, Amanda walked away from the girls at lunch looking perturbed.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, as we sat down in class again.
“Nothing.”
“Come on.”
“I said nothing.” Amanda took out the sight-word list and started to study it.
“I can do that with you,” I said.
“I’m ahead of you.”
“Then do mine with me.”
She turned her back. “Just leave me alone.”
She stared at the word list for a long time but didn’t ask Mrs. Rosner to test her on it. When we went on to the next activity (filling in a coloring sheet about autumn leaves), she broke her red and yellow crayons, the fat kind that were impossible to break.
After s
chool got out, Sarah Rivas came up to her.
“My mom said I could only ask four friends,” Sarah said.
“Okay.” Amanda put her homework folder and lunch box into her backpack.
“I didn’t think you’d want to go,” Sarah explained. “It’s like a Disney Princess party at a makeover place.”
“So?” Amanda said.
“I don’t know. I’m sorry.”
Amanda looked down. “I have to go.”
I followed her out. “What’s wrong?” But I knew.
“Nothing. Go away.”
We walked to the drop-off not talking. When Mom picked me up, she said, “What’s wrong with Amanda?”
“She didn’t get invited to some birthday party with makeovers. I don’t know why she cares. It sounds stupid.”
“Don’t say stupid. Say foolish,” Mom said. “And all girls like that stuff.”
“Why would Amanda want to be a foolish princess when she can be a ballplayer?”
The next day, when Amanda got in the car, my mother said, “I’m going to get my hair and nails done Saturday, Amanda. My friend Stacey can’t make it. Would you like to come with me?”
I glared at Mom. Amanda would know I told.
But Amanda was smiling, her face all pink. “Really?” Her face fell. “But I have softball.”
“What time is that? We could go afterward.”
“I’ll ask my dad.” She kicked the seat. “Can I do my nails any color I want?” She held out her nails, which were short and ragged.
“As long as your father says it’s okay.”
“And toes too? Or just fingers?”
“Definitely toes too,” my mother said. “Wouldn’t be a proper pampering without a pedicure.”
Amanda giggled. “Pampering.”
I stared at her, incredulous. I just didn’t get this part of her at all.
When I got out of the car, I tagged her while she was still sitting down, yelling, “You’re it!” because impromptu games of tag were our thing lately.
I ran down the block, and she tore after me.
On Saturday, my mom picked Amanda up after her morning softball game. I had baseball that afternoon, but she got my friend Tristan’s mom to drive me. She’d found out that the party Amanda was missing was a Disney Princess theme, so she went to the store and bought a crown with a picture of Ariel on it.