My Year in the Middle

by Lila Quintero Weaver

  When I arrive, some of the volunteers are passing out information leaflets to every Tom, Dick, and Harriet who ambles past the building. Behind them, Sam is up on a ladder, cleaning the plate-glass windows with a squeegee.

  I watch for a second while his squeegee goes wheeeee across the glass. Yep, he sees me. My reflection is right in front of him, but it takes forever before he says hi. I say hi back and work up the nerve to add, “I was dumb to go.”

  “Huh?” he says, giving me a little frown.

  “I said, I was dumb to go. You know, to the rally.”

  He shrugs and pushes the squeegee a little faster — wheeee, wheeee — across window glass that already looks squeaky clean. I wait for him to say something more, anything.

  Silence.

  There’s that fish in my chest again, but it’s gasping for air. If only he’d turn around, I’d explain that I shouldn’t have gone in the first place, shouldn’t have listened to Abigail, or written that stupid report for Miss Garrett, even if it meant getting a bad grade. My head’s full of shouldn’ts, and it’s too late to change a single one of them.

  I go inside the campaign offices, where Marina is on phone duty. When she hangs up from a call, I sneak in a question. “Can I have a cookie?” I see how she’s looking at me. “Just one?”

  “Fine, but you’ve got to earn it by helping out. Take a plateful out back where some of the volunteers are setting up for a break, okay?” So when Daisy, a college girl who I’ve seen a few times before, grabs some cola bottles, I follow behind her with the cookies and a stack of napkins. We carry everything to a rickety picnic table in the parking lot behind the building. It’s in a good shady spot to keep us from roasting in the afternoon sun. “This’ll be peachy keen until the rain gets here,” Daisy says. By golly, she’s right. Dark clouds are building off to the west.

  Mrs. Townsend, a retired schoolteacher, is already at the table. “Six days to the runoff, kiddos,” she says.

  Daisy groans. “Wallace is going gangbusters, but I can’t imagine him winning. If he had his way, black folks like me and mine wouldn’t be able to vote at all!”

  “Don’t you know it!” Mrs. Townsend says, taking out her pack of Lucky Strikes. “The Wallace campaign sure is fighting dirty. Governor Brewer’s got to raise up his dukes and fight back.”

  “But he’s a gentleman,” Daisy protests. “He’s not going to fight dirty.”

  “Oh, I didn’t say fight dirty. But he ought to get on TV and denounce these lies the Wallace people are telling!”

  If they’re going to talk politics till the cows come home, I’m going to do something more interesting, like watch a caterpillar crawl up the telephone pole. It goes galumph, galumph, an inch at a time, with all that spiky hair wiggling.

  Then Sam appears, drenched in sweat. Daisy pours him a big cup of fizzy cola over ice. “You ought to be inside where there’s air-conditioning,” she says.

  He stands there, chugalugging the drink and mopping his brow. “Are you still going to the party?” he asks me. My heart goes ziiiing, soaring like a balloon pumped up with helium. He’s talking to me! Then he says, “Do you have a gift suggestion for Phyllis?” Oh. Is that all he wants — a gift suggestion? The balloon goes pop.

  “I’ll think about it and let you know at school.”

  “Or you could call me.” He’s shading his face with his hand. I can’t tell if he’s blushing or blinking or anything.

  “Can’t.” I bite my lip. “My mom — uh, I’m not allowed to call boys.”

  “Okay. I’ll call you then, since I’ve only got a couple of days left to shop.” He takes a napkin from the stack. “Can I have your number?” My pulse is a-hammering. I want him to call me — of course I do! — but what if Mamá answers the phone and it’s a boy? She wouldn’t let me out of her sight for a month of Sundays.

  Mrs. Townsend and Daisy stop their chitchat to see what we’re up to. I wish they wouldn’t snoop on us. For one thing, they’re getting the wrong idea — I can tell by their goofy grins.

  While I write down my number, Sam pops a cookie in his mouth and starts chewing before it hits him that he took the last one. “Oh, no, I’m sorry. I’ll go get some more!”

  “If Marina will let you have any,” Daisy says. “We’re supposed to leave plenty for the other volunteers.”

  “I might have to beg,” he says, and disappears inside.

  As soon as he’s gone, Daisy gets right to it. “That boy is sweeeeet on you!”

  “No, he’s not. He hardly speaks to me!”

  “He just asked for your phone number!”

  “Only so I could help him pick a birthday gift for another girl. For all I know, he likes her.”

  “Aw, that’s just an excuse!” Daisy says. I want so bad to believe her, but if she’s right, why does he ignore me when I say I’m sorry? Aw, fiddlesticks, boys confuse the dickens out of me.

  “Listen,” Mrs. Townsend says, “when you teach school like I did for so many years, you get a sixth sense about puppy love.” She winks at me. “He likes you, honey.”

  “But he’s the kind of boy who needs lots of encouragement,” Daisy says. “Know what I mean? He’s very shy with girls. Give him a little help.”

  “But I don’t know a blooming thing about boys!” I figure I could’ve read every last word in the Groovy Gal magazines and it wouldn’t have made a bit of difference — not with a boy like Sam.

  Mrs. Townsend says, “Let me clue you in about this kid. He had to endure a lot when his daddy got in trouble for supporting civil rights. Poor Sam — he was just a little kid.” She grinds her cigarette out with the heel of her shoe. “He had to grow up real fast. He may be shy, but there’s steel in that backbone. You watch and see.”

  Daisy says, “He’s a keeper. You ought not let him get away.”

  Humph. As if I ever had him.

  About that time, everybody clams up because Sam’s coming around the corner with another plate of cookies. “Sorry it took me so long,” he says. “Your sister hid them.”

  Daisy pokes me in the ribs. “Go on. Talk to him,” she whispers, but I just give her the evil eye. Sam scarfs down two cookies and guzzles another cup of cola. He wipes his chin with a napkin and says he’d better hurry with the windows before the storm gets here.

  Wait. Was that the napkin he wrote my number on? Oh, brother.

  The wind whips up, and the rain comes down hard. It’s what old-timers call a gully washer. Before the storm arrived, Sam got the heck out of Dodge, so now it’s just me, Marina, and a few other volunteers. Since I’m supposed to earn the cookies I ate, Marina puts me to work stuffing campaign flyers into envelopes. An hour ticks by while I stuff and the volunteers yak on the phones with voters. When the rain finally slacks off, Marina announces, “Time to hit the road, Lu.”

  Dink, dink, dink. When we step outside, raindrops dribble off the eaves and land on our heads. We don’t have an umbrella for our walk home. That’s okay — the rain has nearly stopped and the sun’s trying to break through. Our real problem is the water on the ground. So much of it rushes down the street that the gutter can’t hold it all and it’s spreading over the sidewalks, inches deep. “Better take off those leather shoes,” Marina says. “We’re going wading.” She’s wearing plastic flip-flops, so getting wet is no big deal for her.

  I stick my bare feet in the stream, which is warmer than I figured. The water moves fast, and in some places it comes up to my shins. Leaves swirl by. Chewing-gum wrappers. Flower petals. “All we need is some fish nibbling on our toes,” Marina says.

  “Or some turtles on a log,” I add.

  It’s pretty fun. We slosh down the first block, laughing like goofballs because it’s so nutty that there’s a river in the middle of Red Grove. Plus, the moving water tickles.

  Marina says, “Holy moly, Lu, I can’t believe your leg muscles! You’ve been running a heap of a lot, haven’t you?”

  “You can tell?” I stare at my legs and notice my cal
ves bulge where they didn’t use to.

  Marina says, “Hang on a second.” She kicks off her flip-flops. “Put these on.”

  “What for?”

  “I don’t want you to cut your feet.”

  “But what about your feet?”

  “Well, I’m not running a race on Field Day.”

  “You remembered that I was running on Field Day? I told you about that ages ago!”

  Her flip-flops are too big for me. I have to dig my toes into the plastic to keep them from floating off. Cars drive by. Although they move slowly, the waves they make are upon us before we can figure out how to escape them. I laugh my head off when Marina’s skirt gets soaked.

  “Ha! You should see your hair!” she says. “You look like a drowned rooster!”

  I reach up to feel it. Yep, my quills are on the rise. “You mean a porcupine?”

  We’re almost home, giggling like a couple of goony birds, when without so much as a howdy-do, she hauls off and sloshes me with a giant wave of water. I shriek and try to leap out of the way. No such luck. Now I’m drenched. Water is inside my clothes. It’s dripping off my eyelashes and trickling all over every blooming inch of me. I slosh her back. We laugh like maniacs all the way home and tromp across the backyard with squishy, drippy footsteps. Marina says, “Mamá’s going to croak when she sees us.”

  We stop at the back steps to wring out our hair and wipe the mud off our feet.

  “Hey, can you come see me on Field Day?” I ask her. “I’m supposed to run two laps around the school.”

  “Shoot yeah, I’ll be all done with the campaign by then.”

  “You don’t mind?”

  “Of course not. You’re my sister, and this is a big deal for you.” She tousles my hair.

  Man oh man, those words feel better than anything she could’ve said.

  I wait till Marina and I are in the car on our way to Phyllis’s party before spilling my secret, the one about boys being invited. Also, that I painted my nails on the sly and smeared just a dab of gloss on my lips. “You rebel! You daring young thing!” she teases me. But I don’t tell her my biggest secret: that there’s one special boy I’m hoping will be there. And that, fingers crossed, he’ll be ready to be friends again.

  Sam did call me about Phyllis’s gift, not that it got us anywhere, except to figure out that if he bought the headband from me it would save him and his mom a shopping trip. Since there was no sense in Mrs. McCorkle having to come by my house to pick up the headband, I offered to gift-wrap it and take it to the party. So here I sit, clutching both gifts in my lap, one of them with Sam’s name on the tag and the other with mine.

  I get to thinking about the fact that the headband and the purse match to a T. They’re both green imitation alligator hide. Seems like Sam and I match a little, too. We both care about a lot of the same things, like music, Governor Brewer, and making friends with all kinds of kids, not just the ones we’ve always known. I sure hope Sam figures this out. In fact, I hope so hard for this that I think my chest might bust wide open.

  When we pull into the Hartleys’ driveway, I remind Marina what time the party’s supposed to be over. “Okay, my study group should be done by then,” she says.

  Everything is nuts in the Hartleys’ basement rec room. For one thing, the beanbag chairs and recliners have been pushed against the walls to clear space for a dance floor. On top of that, tons of streamers made of crepe paper hang from the ceiling, along with balloons. But the nutsiest thing is the strobe light, which Mrs. Hartley says they’ll plug in as soon as the birthday girl makes her big entrance.

  Paige is the only other guest already here, and she and I turn into party elves. We help Mrs. Hartley bring down platters of sandwiches and bowls of chips and dip from the kitchen, and arrange everything on a big table covered with a long cloth. Soon, the doorbell goes off and more kids stream down into the basement. Everybody chatters at once.

  Connie arrives with an armload of presents, and soon the gift table is piled high. I don’t see Abigail or Sam yet, but here comes Missy, with her hair teased up to a fare-thee-well. Then Phyllis appears, looking like a million bucks, with ringlets around her face like the model Cybill Shepherd in one of those CoverGirl ads. Mrs. Hartley hurries over with her Polaroid camera. She says, “Stand in front of the gift table, hon,” and snaps a ton of pictures.

  As soon as the stereo cranks up, the regular lights switch off and the strobe ball starts rotating. Suddenly, the room looks like a sparkly underwater scene with all the dancers swimming. The first song that slaps down on the turntable is “Mony Mony” by Tommy James and the Shondells.

  It’s so dark at the edges of the room that Abigail passes by without noticing me. The music’s loud, so I have to yell to make myself heard. “Oh, hi!” she yells back. She’s wearing white bell-bottoms and a navy top. “See my braids?” Her hairdo’s a fancy twisted-and-tucked arrangement of poufy blond hair and fake braids going every which way.

  “Groovy!”

  “Whaaat?” She cups a hand to her ear.

  “I said, groovy!”

  “And I got my ears pierced!”

  “You lucky dog!” I scream.

  “And see my nails? Conrad thinks they’re real!” They’re glue-ons, but in this light, nobody would suspect it.

  Over by the punch bowl is a crowd of boys, including Conrad, who’s taller than the rest by bunches. He’s got Lady Killer written all over him, down to that shock of hair that falls over his eyes. When “Sugar, Sugar” by the Archies starts up, a slew of couples rushes the dance floor.

  “I love this song!” Abigail shrieks. “Get yourself over here, Conrad!” He breaks off from his admirers and takes Abigail by the hand. They swim into the strobe pool and start wiggling like fishes.

  Where’s Sam? I wonder. I park myself in a chair and rove the whole basement with my eyes, taking in jumping ponytails, flashes of jewelry, and now and then, Abigail’s laughing eyes. When another single drops on the turntable, the opening chords are enough to give it away as “Baby, It’s You.” Golly dog it, if this was my bedroom and that song was playing on the radio, you couldn’t keep me still. But this is Phyllis’s basement, so I move nothing but my eye muscles.

  By the time “Backfield in Motion” starts, I’m feeling more and more wound up, constantly checking the door at the top of the stairs, expecting it to fly open and for Sam to come thundering down. I let myself get lost in a daydream, a really stupid one, if you must know, where he pulls out his spiral notebook and shows me a new drawing that he made. In the middle, there’s a big heart with curlicues all over it, plus our initials, his and mine. All that fuss about the Wallace rally? That’s history, he says, with mist in his eyes. But the door doesn’t budge, and the longer I sit here by my lonesome, the clearer it gets: Sam and me, we’re not really anything to each other. We’re just friends that lost the friend feeling.

  Sitting for so long, I get a powerful craving to escape to the backyard. Too bad Jimbo and his parents have already claimed the patio. They’re at the table, eating supper. Mrs. Hartley jumps up to pull out a chair. “Hey, sweetie, come join us! We may be old folks, but we don’t bite.”

  Even out here, the bass from the stereo pounds like it’s flowing through your blood. Mr. Hartley says, “You kids are going to go plumb deaf listening to that so-called music at full blast.”

  Jimbo’s got a just-lit cigarette in his mouth. “Girl, you haven’t been here in forever and a day.”

  “We saw each other not that long ago.”

  “At the rally? Shoot, that doesn’t count. I’m talking about air hockey. Nobody’s challenged me to a decent game in eons. Why don’t we get one going tonight?”

  “You still have the air-hockey table? I didn’t see it.” Boy, playing air hockey with Jimbo would be way more fun than sitting on my duff for the rest of the night.

  Mrs. Hartley says, “It’s covered up with a tablecloth. The refreshments are sitting on it.”

  “Shoot, we
can fix that,” Jimbo says. “We’ll move the food somewhere else.”

  “Don’t you go messing with that table,” Mrs. Hartley says. “Phyllis would have a duck.”

  “Ha, you think I’m scared of her?”

  Mrs. Hartley gives Jimbo a dirty look and turns to me. “So tell me, Lu. What do your folks think about East Lake Academy? Are they coming to the open house?”

  Jimbo snorts. “Mama, think what you’re saying. What do they want East Lake for? They’re from South America. They don’t mind going to school with Negroes!” Gulp. Suddenly, this conversation has gotten pretty squirmy.

  Mr. Hartley scowls. “You mean your daddy doesn’t give a flip that his little girl has to be around them?” Them! My skin crawls the second I hear that.

  Mrs. Hartley gives her husband a swift kick under the table. “Bob, hush. You’re liable to embarrass her.”

  “I’m only stating facts.”

  Mrs. Hartley pats my hand. “Phyllis has been telling us about those high-school boys with the gigantic Afros. The way they strut around and talk about black pride, it’s scary.” She shivers. “I’m counting on Wallace putting everything back the way it used to be. Yes, ma’am, he’s got my vote.”

  Right this minute, I’d give my eyeteeth for somebody to wave a wand and — poof — send me far, far away from this patio. I can just picture Marina at this table. She wouldn’t sit here like a stump and not speak up. I mean, really speak up, like somebody with surefire gumption and the good sense to stand up for her friends. Me, I’m just a scaredy-cat. All I can do is scoot my chair back from the table and say: “Guess I better go inside, or Phyllis will wonder.”

  Jimbo calls after me, “After a while, let’s play us some air hockey.”

  Mrs. Hartley says, “Jimbo, what did I tell you? This is Phyllis’s night, not yours.”

  Back in the rec room, Tommy James and the Shondells are at it again. This one’s “Crystal Blue Persuasion,” and it’s a slow-dance number. I guess Phyllis owns every album they ever cut. Just in case I missed something while I was outside, I scan every last inch of the room for Sam’s long and lanky self. My gaze stops at the refreshments table. If Sam would be anywhere, it would be right here, where the snacks are. But there’s nothing left to eat or drink. The punch bowl is down to the dregs, and across the tablecloth I see nothing but potato-chip crumbs. One last little bitty sandwich sits all by its sorry self on a platter.