by Beth Vrabel
“I’m happy for you, Mom,” I said, and I meant it.
Mom’s smile was radiant. “Really? Are you really okay with this?”
“A baby?” I answered. “How couldn’t I be?”
Mom rushed over and gave me a hug. She ran her thumb along my nose. “Thank you,” she whispered.
Love is so mysterious.
Take my parents, for instance. I knew they once had been in love. I had seen pictures of my dad with his arm slung around Mom’s shoulders; Mom in her wedding dress, her face glowing and happy. But now? The idea of them kissing was just disgusting. And now Mom was with Alec; they were so easy and right for each other. Mom said she knew the moment she saw him that she was going to love him, and when they actually started dating, it just felt right. Like it was meant to be (like me and Jackson Thorpe).
But sometimes people fall for each other and it’s like, huh?
Such as, I don’t know, Ricky Salindo and Tasha Martins.
We were sitting together at lunch and Ricky was still reading that book aloud to Tasha. (Her usual book club meetings were canceled this week so that members could read the new release.) Ricky had a great voice and he got into the story so much that he made each character sound different. But this was the third book in a series—a series I still hadn’t started to read—so I didn’t know what was going on. And something about the little smile on Tasha’s face made me feel like I was intruding. I could’ve sat with other friends, but… I didn’t have other friends.
“Wait!” Tasha suddenly said, interrupting Ricky. “He’s in love? With Priscilla?”
“I know, right?” Ricky said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Wow!”
They both turned to look at me, Tasha’s eyebrow high.
I shrugged. “Playing along.”
Ricky smiled at me, his dimple flashing for a second, but Tasha focused back on Ricky. “I totally didn’t see that coming!”
“I know what you mean,” I said with a little more feeling that I probably should’ve. She turned back to me again.
I glared toward where Jackson trailed behind Sarah in the lunch line. Ricky followed my gaze. He made a snorty sound from his nose. Smile gone.
Tasha rolled her eyes. “Don’t you think it’s time to give that up?”
“Give what up?” Ricky asked, his eyes darting between us.
“Nothing!” I snapped. Ricky ducked his head back to the book. “Look,” I said to Tasha, “I am over it. I’m totally over it. But he’s still on The List.”
“The List?” Ricky repeated.
“My list of humiliations,” I said.
Ricky’s eyes met mine over the book. “Ah, The List. That’s why we’re volunteering in kindergarten, right?”
I nodded. Tasha, who was super blurty today, added, “And it was back in kindergarten when Pipi decided Jackson Thorpe was the one for her.”
I stuck my tongue out at her. “Not true. It was fifth grade.”
“So, how do you redeem yourself for liking Jackson?” Ricky’s face was behind the book again, which made it strangely easy to answer.
“I’m not redeeming myself for liking him,” I said. “I’m redeeming myself for fifth grade.”
Tasha’s forehead wrinkled. “Which one was fifth grade?”
“You know… the notebook,” I answered. Ricky shifted, lifting up the book to cover more of his face. “So, it’s not that big of a deal really,” I started to tell Ricky, my cheeks burning and nose itchy. Why had I even brought this up? “Kara told me she thought Jackson liked me.”
“That was the height of the Pipi Touch movement,” Tasha said to Ricky.
“Oh, yeah! Pipi Touch! I remember that!” A boy passing by us laughed and jabbed my shoulder, then poked the kid behind him. “Your hair’s gonna fall out, man.”
“I cut it off!” I stood and yelped. “My hair didn’t fall out.” But the boys had moved on by then. I sighed, watching the Pipi Touch spread around the cafeteria.
Ricky cleared his throat and then continued as if nothing had happened. “Maybe I’m wrong, but I thought Jackson was, like, the one who came up with the Pipi Touch to begin with. Shouldn’t that be why he’s on your list?”
I lifted my chin. “No, he was the first to call me Pipi after the peepee accident of fourth grade. And who could really blame him? It’s catchy.”
Tasha nodded.
“The Touch thing happened before that, in first grade.” I glanced at Ricky. “Nose picking,” I reminded him. “Everyone just changed it from The Touch to the Pipi Touch after the peeing-my-pants thing in fourth grade.”
Tasha squinted like she was solving a math problem in her head.
“I remember now! Fifth grade started with Kara.” To Ricky, she said, “She messed with Pipi for weeks,” Tasha said. “Told her Jackson only liked girls who wear white dresses.” Tasha waved an arm toward me. “Guess who looked like a child bride for weeks?”
“You were there, Ricky,” I said. “Remember? You, Kara, and I had lockers next to each other. You saw it all unfold.” I was proud of how steady and nonchalant my voice stood.
Ricky shrugged, making Tasha laugh. “Pipi,” she said, “it probably didn’t make an impression on Ricky the way it did you. I barely remember it, and I was your best friend.”
Tasha turned to Ricky. “Kara then told Pipi that Jackson loved short hair.”
Ricky cleared his throat again. “Okay with you if I read ahead?”
Tasha gasped and tugged the book from his hands. Ricky’s cheeks flushed.
“So, yeah, I chopped off my hair. Not because of The Touch,” I snarled toward the boys’ backs. They were still jabbing each other back and forth where they sat across the cafeteria.
“You cut off your hair because you thought Jackson liked you?” Ricky said.
“What?” I asked.
He and Tasha exchanged looks.
“You believed The Touch?” I yelped.
Ricky shook his head, but his ears were awfully red. “Nah, of course not. It’s just, isn’t that a little extreme? Cutting off all your hair like that?”
My hair had been so long I could sit on it, but I had convinced Mom that I had always wanted a pixie cut. By the end of the week, that’s what I had.
“Your hair was so pretty, too,” Ricky said. He ducked his head back into the book.
The silence around us felt as awkward as cotton stuck in my ears. Tasha crumpled up her napkin. “I wouldn’t change anything about myself for a boy.” I blinked at her. She was wearing blue lipstick. Again. “I happen to like this color,” she snapped. Tasha can sometimes read my mind.
“What do you like about him?” Ricky asked. Tasha and I exchanged a quick glance, then both cracked up. Ricky shrugged. “Well, I guess if you go for the popular, handsome, athletic type.” He grinned, then went back to the book.
“What I don’t get,” Tasha said, “is what made you think he liked you?”
“Just Kara. She was pretty convincing.” And I was pretty gullible. “Honestly, like you said, it was a long time ago. I barely remember it.”
Tasha crossed her arms and stared at me, reading my mind again. Here’s something true: most of the time when I say “honestly,” I’m about to lie.
I remember every bit of what happened.
Of course, Jackson had never actually told me he liked me. A couple of times he had nodded as I passed him in the hall, and I knew it was a secret message because Kara had told me he was too shy to talk to me. Kara had been extra nice to me that year, laughing at anything remotely funny I said; complimenting my headband and then wearing one like it. I felt like that year, I was so different. I felt like at any time Kara would call me up on the phone and ask me to go over to her house for a sleepover. So, when Kara nudged me one day at our lockers, winked, and said, “I know someone who likes you!” of course I believed it.
She suddenly liked me. Didn’t it make sense that Jackson would, too? I knew Kara and Sarah were always with Jackson, so natura
lly she’d be in a position to know if he liked someone. And in fifth grade? That someone was me. I had somehow gotten cool without even realizing it.
I’d have to make the first move, she had said, because Jackson was, get this, shy. I couldn’t believe it. We had so much in common!
Picture me, standing by my locker. Wearing a long white dress. Hair so short the stylist had used an electric razor on my neck. Bursting with excitement because Jackson’s bus had been just in front of my bus, and we had walked together down the hall. (Sort of. I was mostly trailing behind Jackson, but every half step our legs were kind of next to each other. And he didn’t quicken his steps to get away from me. Then Wade had bumped into me from behind and screamed, “It gave me the Pipi Touch.” He had jabbed at Jackson. But Jackson didn’t scream, and that had to mean true love, right? He just rolled his eyes and trotted ahead down the hall. He kept the Pipi Touch! He obviously loved me.)
I did what any reasonable eleven-year-old girl would do. I wrote his name over and over again in a little notebook I kept just for the purpose of writing his name. I loved writing his name moments after seeing him get off his bus. Ricky and I would be first to our lockers—his was on the right side of mine, Kara’s to the left—and Ricky would talk and talk and talk about Minecraft while I wrote and wrote and wrote Jackson Thorpe in cursive. On this day, in honor of this miraculous event (He kept the Pipi Touch!), I added a giant Penelope Claire Thorpe with a super fancy swirl on the first p.
“What are you doing?” Kara had asked that day near my locker.
“Oh, nothing!” I said. She and Ricky peeked over my shoulder; I quickly slapped shut the notebook and threw it into my locker.
With a little smirk at Ricky, Kara leaned in. “So, the boy who loves you? He’s getting super close to telling you he likes you,” she said. Around her, a trio of girls I didn’t really know laughed. “He’s going to ask you to go out with him. Like, later today. He just told me.”
Ricky rolled his eyes and slammed shut his locker. “Bye, Pipi,” he said, but I kept my eyes on Kara. Around her the girls all nodded, eyes wide. Kara crossed her arms.
“Really?” I bounced a little, and then they did, too. But I had just seen Jackson heading to homeroom. I paused. “When did you talk with him?”
Kara rolled her eyes. “Earlier, okay? Trust me! Today’s the day.”
“Who said what?” someone asked. Sarah Trickle. Her locker was on the other side of Kara’s.
I looked at poor Sarah, who had squandered her shot with Jackson. I remember feeling bad for her as I stood there, practically already the future Mrs. Jackson Thorpe. Kara’s face flushed. “Nothing.”
I blinked a little. Kara turned back to her locker and her eyes slid to mine. She rolled them and made a face, and I understood—even she occasionally got sick of perfect Sarah Trickle. Kara turned and skipped off toward class, but Sarah stayed, watching me. “What’s going on?”
Well, the truth was about to be out, wasn’t it? I lifted my chin. “Jackson Thorpe is going to tell me he likes me today.”
The rest of the girls giggled and rushed back to Kara, whispering in her ear. I heard her squeal Jackson’s name, and for a second, I panicked. Maybe I shouldn’t have told Sarah? I mean, I figured he had been talking to Sarah as much as Kara and already knew, but maybe I should’ve just pretended not to know so that when Jackson told me, I could act surprised?
Kara whipped around, her mouth popped open like she was so excited for me. Then she collapsed in giggles, leaning into the other girls. I breathed out. Everyone was so happy for me and Jackson!
Sarah pinched her mouth shut. “I don’t think that’s true,” Sarah said, her eyes downcast. “I don’t think he likes you, Pipi.” She said it like she felt sorry for me.
I lifted my chin and shrugged. She didn’t have to believe it for it to be true.
“I mean, not that he wouldn’t like you.” She swallowed, her eyes still too wide, too sad looking. “It’s just I don’t think Jack—”
“Jackson,” I interrupted, “likes lots of things you don’t know about.” I let my eyes drift over her pink and purple tie-dyed T-shirt and pink shorts. She didn’t even know Jackson loved white. She grabbed her long ponytail in one hand and twisted it around her fist.
“Maybe,” she said. “If he does like you, that’s—”
I didn’t even try to, but a hmpf noise leaked out of me at the word “if.” She didn’t think I was good enough for Jackson. Well, too bad. He liked me.
“It’s just sometimes Kara thinks things are funny. You know, just a joke? But if you don’t know her the way I know her, then…”
The bell rang, and I turned on my heel, striding away as fast as I could from the other girls.
Tasha had been waiting for me in second period. “Pipi, I heard Kara and some girls talking and—”
By then the teacher had called for attention, cutting off whatever Tasha was going to say. She looked worried, so I flashed her a smile and whispered, “I know. It’s about me and Jackson, right?”
Tasha squinted at me over her shoulder. “And you’re okay?”
“Of course, I am!” I laughed.
He was going to tell me he liked me. Soon. Kara told me and had let it slip to other people, too. My whole life was about to change. Tasha smiled at me, but it was the same sad sort of smile that Sarah had been sporting.
“Don’t worry,” I whispered.
Tasha cracked her knuckles and nodded. “We got this.”
Which was a little strange, I guess. I mean, looking back, it was pretty obvious, wasn’t it? Anyone could’ve seen through Kara and what she was up to. Anyone with half a brain would’ve questioned a little bit before believing that someone like Jackson would like someone like me. Anyone else would’ve realized it had all been a lie, way before she wore the same white dress three days a week like some pathetic bride wannabe. Way before she chopped off her hair. Way before she filled a notebook with a boy’s name.
They don’t call it pulling a McGee for nothing.
I heard whispers all day, linking Jackson and my name. And I’d smile. Smile. Tasha told me all lunch that she thought I should go home. “Just tell the nurse you don’t feel well.”
But I didn’t listen. I figured she didn’t get it. “No!” I tried to explain. “This is great. Really. It’s good stuff!”
Tasha said, “I think you really might be sick.”
And I had laughed.
Kara had told me how shy my crush was, so I figured he wouldn’t tell me he liked me until dismissal. The day passed in a blur. And then the bell rang. I walked slowly to my locker. I was picturing how my dress was billowing out around me and how I held my books in my hands, pretending they were a bouquet and the hall a church aisle. (Whatever. I watched a lot of soap operas with Mom.)
And there was Jackson, standing by my locker with Kara and a bunch of other kids, including the girls from that morning. His shoulders were shaking.
“Guys, stop!” he said, but I could hear the smile in his voice. Still, how awful that his so-called friends were picking on him when he was so nervous—so nervous, in fact, that he was shaking! I quickened my steps.
He turned then, a huge grin on his face. That’s when I noticed my locker door was open. That’s when my heart stopped thudding. It seemed to stop altogether. He was holding my notebook. The Jackson Thorpe notebook. It was open to the page with Penelope Claire Thorpe scrawled out in giant loopy letters.
Jackson Thorpe handed me the notebook, or at least he tried to. My arms didn’t seem to be working, so it fell between us. He shrugged. “So, um, I don’t like you. No offense or anything. I just don’t like you. Like, at all.”
He pushed his backpack up his arm. “Is it true what Kara said? The white dress thing? The hair?” He laughed, and everyone around joined in.
I blinked, but it must’ve taken an extra-long time for my eyes to open back up because when I did, Jackson’s forehead was wrinkled. “I didn’t know anything
about what Kara did or the notebook thing.” He shrugged. “But it was just a joke, right? Don’t make it a big deal, okay?”
I nodded, and he bumped me on the shoulder with his fist. “Cool.”
I saw him swipe at Wade as he walked away. “Oh, yeah! Pipi Touch!”
Kara had slowly twirled her locker combo. “You totally fell into that whole thing. Right, Ricky?”
Ricky, on the other side of my locker, had slammed shut his door and ran for his bus.
Kara’s laughter had followed me out of the school that day. Or maybe it was hers and everyone else’s.
I winced three years later, remembering.
“Barely remember it,” I said again, even though by the time I went through the mental play-by-play of that particular humiliation, Ricky had finished reading the chapter and the bell was about to ring.
“But how do you redeem yourself for all of that?” Ricky said as if the conversation hadn’t stopped at all.
“I’ll figure it out,” I said. By making Jackson fall in love with me for real and possibly shaving Kara’s head, my mind supplied.
He swallowed. “Wouldn’t the best thing be to get over it?”
Tasha snorted. “If you haven’t noticed, Pipi doesn’t exactly get over stuff.”
“That’s not fair!” I said. “That’s the whole point of this List thing. To get over it.”
Ricky opened his mouth, then closed it again.
Tasha said, “So, what’s the plan?”
I shrugged, thinking about the poetry club thing. “I have a few ideas.”
Kara grabbed her bags from the table and headed out of the cafeteria. She always was the first to leave lunch. Every girl in school knew she commandeered the girls’ bathroom on the second floor for the last ten minutes after eating. Kara was nothing if not predictable. And vile.
As she left, Jackson and Sarah exchanged a glance. Then they both got up, too. Holy moly. They were walking toward me! My whole body spasmed.
Alert! Alert! Jackson is approaching! Alert!
Chapter Thirteen
As Jackson approached our table, Ricky scooted closer to Tasha and began reading aloud again. Tasha turned her back slightly away from him, but I knew both of them would be listening in on whatever Jackson had come over to say. Just in front of me, Jackson smiled and nodded. My heart did this strange little fluttery thing, like it expanded too big for a second, letting too much blood through, all of which immediately rushed to my face.