“I’ll talk to him when I’m ready.” I looked at Kate and then at Georgia and then back at Kate again. She’d just ripped a page out of my precious Observation Notebook, and she didn’t feel bad about it. And Georgia didn’t even say anything.
Some people collect snow globes, some people collect porcelain dolls. I collect observations that I write down in marble notebooks.
Is that weird? Maybe. But Kate and Georgia were supposed to be my best friends. They understood me. At least I thought they did.
“I’m going home.” Kate walked toward the door and Georgia followed her. “I still love you, just remember that.”
She sounded like my mom.
I stared at my notebook. I opened to where the page had been ripped out, and rubbed my finger against the binding. It felt rough and jagged and uneven.
I could hear my dad in the living room watching TV. I went in there not because I wanted to talk to him, but because I didn’t want to sit alone.
I sat on the far end of the couch and looked at my notebook in my lap, thinking about what had just happened. Were we in a fight?
I wasn’t sure, really. I hoped not.
My mom kept marble notebooks on all her patients. Psychologists need to keep meticulous records, and she liked having all her notes in one place. She bought marble notebooks in bulk at the stationery store around the corner. So one day I just took a blank one out of the box in her office and started writing. I wanted to understand PBJ, and I figured the best way to do that would be to keep a notebook and write down what I observed.
I was in fifth grade then. Two years ago. That’s how long I’ve liked—I mean really liked—PBJ.
PBJ’s real name is Phillip Becker-Jacobs, but I always call him PBJ. Not to his face, of course. I don’t say much to his face anymore.
I met PBJ in first grade; we were in the same class. Back then he seemed like the perfect person to be friends with. It was normal for girls to be friends with boys in first grade. Also, he wore glasses and I felt bad for him. For some reason when I was little, I thought that kids wearing glasses was sad. Glasses, like arthritis or bad backs, were for older people. But he actually looked so cute in his glasses.
PBJ was the perfect boy. He always kept his desk really neat and always said please and thank you. And he could draw.
And back then we were friends. Plain, normal friends. Until the day he didn’t seem like a plain, normal friend anymore—the day in fifth grade when Mr. Smith put us on the same team for the History Trivia Bowl. When I got a question right, PBJ slapped my hand. And when I got one wrong, he told me it was okay; I’d get the next one.
After that, I couldn’t wait for more Trivia Bowl competitions and I dreaded them at the same time. It didn’t make any sense. I stopped being able to talk to PBJ normally. I started avoiding him for no real reason and feeling really nervous when he was nearby.
That first day on the same Trivia Bowl team was the day I started liking him, and it’s been that way ever since.
In the beginning Kate and Georgia found my notebook cool, and they even helped me name it. We cut out letters from my mom’s psychology journals and taped them to the front. We called it “O’s Os,” short for “Olivia’s Observations.” Since then it evolved, and it’s not only about PBJ anymore. It’s about other stuff too, like what I observe day-to-day, just average stuff.
I like being an observer. One day I plan to compile my notebooks into a real book, typed up and everything. I think it’s publishable. It’ll be like a study of society—my society—like in the play Our Town by Thornton Wilder. The school where my dad teaches—Wilder Academy—is named after him. Every year the senior class puts on a production of the show, and every year it’s different.
But lately Kate and Georgia seem to find my observations annoying. In fact, they have started calling my notebook “Olivia’s Obsessions.”
“Looks like there’s gonna be a snow day tomorrow,” my dad said, snapping me out of my thoughts. Sometimes I could be lost in my own thoughts for hours and completely forget there was anyone else around me. I looked at the weatherman on the TV; he was standing in front of the meteorological map thing. I could never make any sense of all the symbols and swirly things on those maps.
“Yeah, right,” I said. We never had snow days. New York City had a snow day once every, like, ten years or something. Plus, it had been a really warm winter so far. It was February, and most days it felt like early October, as if winter was still on its way, not like it was almost over.
“No, really. I mean it.” My dad was sitting on the edge of the couch staring at the television. He seemed excited, like a little kid. “They’re saying it’s going to be the biggest storm the city’s seen in years.”
“You know the weather people are always wrong. If they were sure of a blizzard, the schools would already be closed.” I went into the kitchen and poured myself some orange juice. I hated that I was being so blasé about a possible snow day. It should be illegal to feel this way. Everyone knows snow days are the best thing ever. But if there was one day, out of the whole year, when I really, really, really didn’t want a snow day, it was Valentine’s Day.
My Life in Pink & Green Page 17