girl stuff.

by Lisi Harrison

  Fran and Steven sat up a bit taller, their balance balls suddenly still.

  “Meaning?” Fran dared.

  “I suspect Ruthie performed poorly on purpose.”

  “On purpose?” they said together.

  “I’ve seen this happen before, although I have to admit I never thought I’d see it from Ruthie,” Rhea said with a disappointed frown. “Most kids would roll around in duck dung to be part of this program—”

  “Odd visual,” Steven muttered.

  Rhea ignored him and continued. “But some kids don’t want to be in TAG. They find it polarizing. I think your daughter purposely threw her tests for that very reason. Think about it.” Then to Ruthie, “Could there be some truth to my theory?”

  Ruthie paused, knowing that what she was about to say might not bode well for her mother. But she was tired of lies and cover-ups. Regardless of how they were intended, they caused more anguish than the truth. And Ruthie was done with anguish. “My mom and I were talking about how hard it is for brains and hearts to be happy at the same time, and she said . . . She said to go with my heart.”

  “You what?” Steven asked.

  Fran drew back her head. “Wait, how is this my fault?”

  “You said if you had to choose, you’d choose your heart.”

  “Ruthie, we were talking about my work versus my family. So, yes, I said I’d choose you and Dad over my practice. Though I’m not clear on how that relates to your situation.”

  Ruthie looked down, noticed her missing friendship bracelets, and welled up with tears. To think she had been about to sacrifice her education for two people who wouldn’t even sacrifice their Friday night. Could she have been any more pathetic? Needy? Self-sabotaging?

  “Ruthie!” Steven barked. He was a hardened criminal lawyer. Crying meant nothing to him. “Answer your mother’s question.”

  “What was it again?” Ruthie sniffled.

  “What were you choosing?” he said. “What was more important than your education?”

  “My friends,” she peeped.

  “Friends?”

  “Drew and Fonda?” asked Fran.

  Ruthie nodded as tears slithered down her cheeks.

  “Are you serious?” Steven asked.

  “I don’t feel that way anymore,” Ruthie pleaded. “I want to be here now. I swear.”

  “Case closed,” Steven said to Rhea. He stood, buttoned his suit jacket, and returned the tests to her desk. “I’m sorry to have wasted your time, Rhea.”

  “It’s Ray-a,” she said. “And I have recommended that Ruthie be transferred into regular classes. We want our students to be happy, and if she’s not happy—”

  Ruthie stood. “But I was happy. I mean I am happy. I want to stay.”

  Rhea began stuffing papers in her tote. The conversation was over. “Ruthie, TAG is a special program that only works if we have students who really want to be here. I think the best thing for you to do is give the general curriculum a try, and if you keep your grades up, we can revisit the topic next year.” Then to the Goldmans: “Thank you for coming in. I hope your daughter finds what she’s looking for. She was a pleasure.”

  With that, Rhea was gone, leaving Ruthie in the classroom with two indignant parents and the first academic problem she didn’t know how to solve.

  chapter twenty–four.

  AFTER SCHOOL ON Monday, Doug flopped down on the couch beside Drew and turned on the TV. He smelled like sunscreen and surf. At least one of them had a life.

  “You can’t watch on a school night,” she reminded him. Not because she was a stickler for the family rules, but because she wanted to sulk alone.

  “Mom and Dad are on a hike. We’ve got an hour.” He clicked through the channels and settled on a documentary about war veterans.

  While Doug watched, Drew relived the horrors of her day.

  Seeing Ruthie leave thirty minutes early so they wouldn’t have to walk to school together

  Drew and Fonda walking on opposite sides of the street so they wouldn’t have to walk to school together

  Pretending not to notice that Fonda was on the opposite side of the street

  Pretending not to notice Fonda sitting beside her in four classes

  Eating lunch alone in the library

  Getting kicked out of the library for eating

  Not seeing Will during lunch

  Seeing Will and Henry skate away from her after school

  The entire Goldman family driving by on Drew’s walk home and not offering her a ride (Fonda was on the opposite side of the street when the Goldmans drove by, and they didn’t offer her a ride either. Which helped.)

  Knowing that her ex–best friends were next door and she couldn’t talk to them

  In the documentary, one of the veterans, a guy named Mo, tragically lost his leg and was describing his phantom pains.

  “What are those?” Drew asked Doug.

  “It’s real pain he feels in the place where his leg used to be.”

  Had this been last week, Drew would have wondered how a missing body part could cause physical pain, since it was no longer there. But now she understood. Though all her limbs were intact, Drew could still feel Fonda and Ruthie inside her body, even though they were gone for good. It was the worst kind of pain she’d ever known.

  “I know what happened with your friends,” Doug said, eyes fixed on the screen.

  “How?”

  “Instagram.”

  “Great,” Drew said. She reached for the knife in her brother’s bowl and handed it to him. “Help me out and get these bracelets off my arm.”

  “All of them?” Doug asked. “You sure?”

  “Cut.”

  Doug lifted his leg and cut a fart.

  “Ew!” Drew whacked his butt with a pillow.

  “What?” He laughed. “You said you were sure.”

  She held out her arm again. “Cut these instead.”

  He sliced through all eight strings and caught the falling beads in an empty bowl. Drew’s stomach lurched. Ugh, why had she lied? She should have given Ruthie and Fonda another chance to be supportive. She should have trusted them more.

  “I can’t believe this is happening,” she cried, no longer able to pretend she was okay. “Ruthie is mad at me; I’m mad at Ruthie. Fonda is mad at me; I’m mad at Fonda. I’m also mad at myself because—”

  “Silence!” Doug insisted, then farted again. “Girl stuff is for Mom, remember. Give me the boy stuff.”

  Drew rolled onto her side, hugged a pillow into her chest, and told him all about her night with Will. Everything from their sunset skate to the Henry-dibs scandal, the L-word exchange, and how Ruthie ruined it all.

  “Yeah, I saw that on the video. Did you really say if Will was hurt, you wouldn’t help him?” Doug asked.

  “Technically, yes, but—”

  “You won’t get into a good nursing college with an attitude like that.”

  “I’m not worried about college applications right now; I’m worried about Will.”

  Doug clenched his teeth like the grimace emoji and shuddered. “For good reason. The entire party shouted ‘diss!’ at him, and the moment went viral. That’s tough to bounce back from.”

  Drew kicked his thigh. “Don’t make me feel worse.”

  “Sorry.” Doug turned off the TV and got serious. “Have you talked to him since?”

  “No. He ran out of the party and avoided me all day.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Tell him I’m sorry?”

  “No,” Doug said. “Don’t tell him you’re sorry. Show him.”

  * * *

  ♥

  After dinner, Drew found Will’s address in the school director
y and begged Doug for a ride.

  “Wait for me down the street,” she said.

  “Why not here?”

  “I don’t want you to watch me.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s embarrassing.”

  “Young love often is,” he teased before driving off. Leaving her to trespass on her crush’s property at eight thirty at night, surrounded by garden gnomes that may or may not have been ironic, with a laptop in one hand and a Nerf football in the other.

  Drew quietly circled the house in search of Will’s bedroom and found it in the back overlooking the pool. He had a pool! The curtains were blue, the wall was covered in skate posters, and the bed was unmade. Total Will, she thought. Then she prayed he’d appear in the next ten minutes, because her parents wanted them home no later than nine.

  Drew finally spotted him around minute eight and chucked the ball at his window. He peered outside, then disappeared from view. She retrieved the football and chucked it again. Then again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again.

  Finally, he slid open the window and shouted, “Dude!”

  With shaky hands, Drew lifted the laptop over her head and played a clip from The Skateboard Kid. It was the scene where Rip the skateboard gets hit by lightning and comes to life. “I’m back,” he tells Zack Tyler. “And I’m on a roll.”

  Drew was sure it would make him laugh. Or at the very least make him want to hear her out.

  Except it didn’t.

  Will slammed his window shut before the scene was over. At first, Drew thought he was running outside to accept her apology. So she laid her laptop on the grass, tightened her ponytail, and dried her clammy hands on her sweatpants. Then she waited . . . and waited . . . and waited . . . But Will never came down.

  chapter twenty–five.

  AVA H. PUSHED her organic turkey wrap aside and leaned forward. “So . . .” she began in that I’m-about-to-spill-some-extremely-hot-tea sort of way. Fonda was at the Avas’ table in the Lunch Garden for the second day in a row, laying claim to their fourth seat.

  “What kind of name is Fonda? Norwegian?”

  “No, it’s feminist. My mom has a thing for strong women. My sisters are Winfrey as in Oprah and Amelia as in Earhart. I’m Fonda as in Jane.”

  “Pause,” said Ava G. “Who’s Fonda Jane?”

  “It’s Jane Fonda, actually.”

  “The one who saves chimpanzees?”

  “No, that’s Jane Goodall,” said Ava H., with a bat of her eyelash extensions. “Jane Fonda is that tall chick who played Sue Sylvester on Glee.”

  “That was Jane Lynch,” said Fonda, knowing Drew and Ruthie would be poking each other under the table if they heard this nonsense. Especially since the Avas, like the Janes, shared a name and should be more sensitive to this type of confusion. “Jane Fonda is a civil rights activist who has spoken out against the Vietnam War and climate change. She also won a ton of awards for acting.”

  But it wasn’t Jane they were interested in. It was Fonda. Fonda Miller, the seventh-grade star of the most viewed party post ever. She was also the queen bee of irony. Because when a girl who was desperate to matter finally started to matter only to hate it, ironic was the perfect way to describe it. Other than annoying. Which it definitely was.

  Every hallway, classroom, bathroom, sidewalk, and Starbucks that Fonda had frequented since Friday night became an opportunity for someone to say, “Epic PP,” or “You got soooo busted.”

  The attention felt good at first. It put Fonda on the party map, associated her with the Avas, and let everyone know that as a friend, she was available.

  Except she wasn’t. Not in her heart, anyway.

  Explaining her name to a new group of girls was tedious. Decoding their inside jokes was draining. And pretending she was someone she wasn’t—a period-having, good-humored PP star—was exhausting. Hang- ing out with Ruthie and Drew had always been so easy and effortless, the way it was supposed to be with true best friends. But Ruthie had made it clear that their friendship was over. And Drew hadn’t looked at her since Friday.

  Fonda packed up her uneaten sandwich. Was this really it? Were they really over? She consulted the Magic 8 Ball in her gut. It said, All signs point to yes. In English, Fonda noticed that Drew had cut off her friendship bracelets. When she spotted Ruthie in the halls between classes and asked what she was doing there, Ruthie took off. But were they really done? Was Fonda an Ava? It was something she’d wanted for so long, and now that it was happening, the whole thing felt awkward. Like she was wearing someone else’s flip-flops and the fit was off. The rubber was worn in unusual places, and the toe prints weren’t hers. Seasonal and temporary, they were good in a pinch. But Fonda wanted something permanent. Something that was built to last.

  Ava R. waved a hand in front of Fonda’s face. “Hel-loooo! Are you even listening?”

  “Yeah, sorry. Something about hair?”

  “I was asking when you started using a curling iron.”

  Fonda felt the back of her head. The smoothness was gone. In its place were bumpy, wild curls. “This is my natural texture. I didn’t straighten it this morning.”

  “Oh, poo.” Ava G. pouted. “We liked it the nonnatural way.” She tucked a sleek strand of her own straight hair behind her ear, revealing a stain of leftover gold paint by her temple.

  “Guess what?” said Ava R. “I totally CC’d in science today. First one of the year!”

  They exchanged a round of high fives, which Fonda did not participate in because, once again, she had zero idea what they were talking about.

  “What made you do it?” asked Ava G.

  “We were dissecting frogs, and I couldn’t deal.”

  Fonda let them go on a bit longer, hoping that, in time, they’d reveal the meaning of CC, because she was dead tired of asking what everything meant. But she cracked.

  “What’s CC?”

  “Calling cramps,” said Ava R. “You do it to get out of a situation you don’t want to be in.”

  Fonda shrugged. She still didn’t get it.

  “Period cramps.”

  “Yeah, I still don’t—”

  “It’s the excuse you give when you don’t want to participate.”

  “It works super well with male teachers,” added Ava H. “Trust me. They do not want to challenge you on something like that.”

  Fonda wished she could call cramps on the entire school year and go back to the way things were. She missed Drew and Ruthie. They were her solid, comfortable shoes. A perfect fit.

  * * *

  ♥

  The rest of the afternoon was spent strategizing. Instead of listening in class, Fonda filled pages of her notebooks with corny apology poems and elaborate schemes to win back her friends. But it wasn’t until last period, while everyone was changing for PE, that she settled on a plan.

  “Coach Pierce,” Fonda mewled, clutching her abdomen.

  He spit the whistle from his mouth. “Don’t tell me you forgot your uniform.”

  “No, I have it. It’s just that—” She scrunched up her face the way women in labor do in the movies. “I don’t think I can run today.”

  The coach crossed his hands over his Santa belly. “And why not?”

  “Cramps.”

  He squinted at her, as if he had X-ray vision and could read brains.

  Fonda scrunched up her face again.

  “Fine,” he sighed. “Go.” He gave her a slip and sent her to the nurse’s office, but Fonda walked straight out of Poplar Middle School’s front doors instead.

  Back in sixth grade, Joan had filed a letter with the principal giving her daughter permission to leave cam
pus whenever she wanted. “If you want to cut class and flunk out, go for it,” she had said. “This is your education, not mine. No one should care more about it than you.”

  Fonda had never taken advantage of the letter and swore she never would. But desperate times called for desperate measures. And Fonda was desperate to get her nesties back.

  * * *

  ♥

  At three forty-five p.m., Fonda was in position on her front lawn, seated in a beach chair with a gift bag on either side. Nervous her plan would fail, she lifted her face to the sun to absorb its optimism. Three black crows were hanging out on the wire overhead.

  Nesties, she thought. It was a good sign.

  Just then, Drew and Ruthie appeared (on opposite sides of the street) and hurried for their houses.

  Fonda stood and called, “Wait!”

  The crows took off. The girls kept walking.

  “Can we please talk?”

  As they approached their front doors, Fonda shouted, “Stop!” They did, but neither girl turned around to face her.

  “That’s fine. You don’t have to look at me, just don’t leave.”

  Fonda took a deep, steadying breath. She had spoken to Drew and Ruthie a trillion times in her life, and never once had her hands been so shaky, her throat so tight. What if it was too late for forgiveness? What if they never wanted to talk to her again? What if the only friends who mattered to Fonda decided that she no longer mattered to them?

  “I’m going to say a few things,” she began, “and all you have to do is listen. If you like something I say, maybe you can take a step toward me. And if you don’t, I dunno, stay where you are, I guess.”

  They remained still.

  Fonda looked up at the sun one last time. You’ve got this, it seemed to say.