She held up her hands. “I believe you. I just thought—”
“That I had a crush on Alex? No!”
“It’s just that usually, when a girl talks and talks and talks about a boy, or vice versa, well, that’s usually what it means.”
I drew myself to my full height. “And again I say: I AM NOT IN THAT STAGE.”
“Then what’s the problem? Does he have a crush on you?”
“Yuck. No. Gross, Sandra.”
I’d been a fool to talk about it, I realized, just as I’d been a fool to hope that Amanda’s boy craziness would simply . . . fade away, like a ghostly spirit in the misty October air. It didn’t. It just grew crazier, especially when the boys in our class learned that the girls were secretly auditioning them for possible crushdom.
“If he doesn’t have a crush on you, who does he have a crush on?” Sandra asked.
I didn’t say. As it turned out, I didn’t have to.
“Amanda,” Sandra filled in. “Ahhhh. And you’re jealous.”
“No,” I said. “I’m just grossed out, and I want him to go away.” Maybe I wanted everyone to go away, everyone except Amanda.
Or, omigosh. Maybe I was jealous.
“Oh, Winnie,” Sandra said.
Her sympathy made me feel sorry for myself.
“All the girls are picking boys to have crushes on,” I said. “Everyone but me. And Amanda’s so pretty, and she’s got all those cute freckles, and since she hasn’t picked someone yet, Alex thinks he has a chance, I guess.”
Sandra put her arm around me. She tried to draw me toward her, but I was too wound up for a hug.
“But I think being boy crazy is d-u-m-b dumb,” I said. “We’re in fifth grade! We have miles and miles to go before it’s time to think about that stuff. I mean, Mom won’t even let me get my ears pierced yet!”
“Winnie? Breathe. Unless you want to hyperventilate, you need to breathe, okay?”
I grew aware of my chest, which was rising and falling awfully quickly. And to tell the truth, I always had wanted to hyperventilate, kind of. Maybe this was my chance?
But, no. Sandra hugged me, and the solidness of her calmed me down despite myself. Not all the way, but enough that I didn’t start seeing stars or anything.
“Being boy crazy is dumb, you’re right,” Sandra said. “But it’ll pass, I promise.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I’m me. I know everything.”
I shot her a look.
“And because it’s a fad,” she said. “Fifth grade is a big year for fads. For me, it was Mexican jumping beans.”
“Those toy ones with faces? That flip over in your palm, and then stand up straight?”
“Yep,” Sandra said. “Dumb, huh?”
I remembered when Sandra built up her collection of Mexican jumping beans. I was in the first grade, and my class was studying koala bears. But Sandra didn’t want to hear about koala bears. All she cared about were those beans, and she was always begging Mom to take her to Target to buy more.
“I thought you loved those little beans,” I said.
Her cheeks turned slightly pink. “What can I say? Fads.”
“Can I have them? If you don’t want them anymore?”
“No,” she said. “Back to Alex.”
I groaned.
“If he’s as disgusting as you say—”
“He is.”
“Then why would Amanda like him?”
“She wouldn’t. She doesn’t.”
“So there you go,” Sandra said, relaxing against her bed’s headboard. “You have nothing to worry about.”
She was right. Alex was Alex, after all. He couldn’t weasel in between me and Amanda no matter how hard he tried, and I knew that. There was nothing in the world for me to feel jealous about. Goodness gravy.
But seriously? A cage still would have been better.
There were sixteen kids in our class: eight boys and eight girls. Of the eight boys, two had already been plucked and chosen. Chantelle called dibs on Tyrone the day the craziness began, and Maxine claimed Mark soon after. She said it was because she liked his smile, but I think it was because “M and M” sounded good together.
With Tyrone and Mark out of the running, that left six boys up for grabs. I was not going to grab anyone, even if Amanda and Chantelle tortured me by making me lie on a bed of nails. Anyway, too bad for them if they did try that, because it wouldn’t work. I’d seen a Discovery Channel special about lying on beds of nails, and I’d learned that the trick for surviving was to get on super-duper carefully and distribute your weight evenly.
There was a science museum in Arizona where you could actually could lie on a bed of nails—on the Discovery Channel show, they went there—and forever after, you’d have bragging rights. As in, Oh, yes, these mosquitoes are quite a bother, aren’t they? + insert delicate yawn + But I must say, they’re nothing compared to that time I’d lain on a bed of nails.
Amanda and Chantelle had reluctantly come to terms with my refusal to pick a crush, and in return, I’d reluctantly accepted the role of rah-rah girl. What that meant was that I squealed and did fast, soft claps with the rest of the girls when we got together on the playground and gossiped about who a particular girl might pick, and why, and how cute or uncute he was, and how his overall look might (or might not) be improved if he grew one of those walrus-style mustaches with long, curled-up ends.
Fine. No one was interested in the walrus mustache question but me. I was just trying to liven things up, because it was all so boring. The only part of the Crush Fad that wasn’t boring was the part where Alex Plotkin called Amanda “milady” and opened doors for her and gave her stupid presents, like a heart made out of fuse beads.
But giving her a heart made out of fuse beads wasn’t going to make her fall in love with him, and after art class, I told him so.
“Yeah, only it’s not up to you, is it?”
“And you’re not supposed to use the fuse beads for personal projects, and you’re not allowed to use the iron unless Miss Huber’s there to supervise. You totally know that, too.”
“Miss Huber was sick,” he said. He stepped within inches of me. “If the substitute didn’t want me using the iron, then the substitute should have told me.”
I waved my hand in front of my nose. He was exaggerating the sub at the beginning of substitute on purpose so that I’d have to smell his breath, BECAUSE HE’D ALMOST EATEN A COCKROACH DURING “MATH WITH PAT.” Pat was a retired rocket scientist who volunteered at Trinity to make math fun, but today Pat forgot to show up.
Guess who—or what—did show up?
A cockroach. Yes, over by the quiet reading corner, and Maxine screamed, and Mark stomped on it with his big puffy tennis shoe, and Maxine swooned and said, “My hero.”
Alex didn’t like the idea of Mark being a hero, it seemed, because he said, “You stepped on a roach. Big whoop. I dare you to eat it.”
Mark laughed in disbelief. “No way, dude. You eat it.”
Alex held out his hand. “Fine. Give it to me.”
“It’s squished,” Maxine said faintly. She lifted her eyes from the poor squished cockroach (and for the record, this was the one and only time I ever felt sorry for a cockroach, or ever would) and turned to her hero, Mark. “Do you think you can peel it off the floor?”
Mark got down on one knee. Robert handed him an index card, and Mark scraped the squished roach off the carpet. A fiber of yarn came up, too, dangling from the yellowy-green roach guts.
“He’s not really going to eat it, is he?” Amanda said. Her expression was horrified, and yet she couldn’t seem to look away.
“No,” I said. I raised my voice. “Even Alex isn’t dumb enough to eat a dead roach.”
“Brave enough, you mean,” Alex said. He approached Amanda and knelt before her. “I will if you want me to, Amanda. Do you?”
“No!” Chantelle said, wrinkling her nose.
“Yes!” Lou
ise said. She elbowed Karen, who joined her. “Eat the roach! Eat the roach!”
I swiveled my head to the door of our classroom. Where was Pat? Where was any teacher?
“Do it, dude,” Mark said, but I noticed that he took a step back from Alex as soon as he passed off the index card with the roach on it. Maxine darted even farther back and hid behind him, giggling.
Alex grinned. Pinning his gaze on Amanda, he said, “So . . . ? It’s your call, milady.”
“Don’t,” I said.
“Do!” Louise said, along with half the other kids in the class. Even Chantelle flip-flopped positions and said, “Yeah, make him eat it!”
“It could have an egg sac inside it,” I said.
“A squished egg sac,” Alex said.
“You don’t know,” I said stubbornly. “Maybe some of the eggs are squished, but not all. And if you eat it, guess what?”
“Roach babies in your stomach!” David crowed. “Awesome!”
I grabbed the bottom of my chair and jump-scooted toward Amanda until our bodies were touching. What I was going to say was private. I didn’t want Alex eavesdropping.
“He is just trying to impress you,” I whispered into her ear. “Do not let him. Do not say yes, Amanda.”
Amanda’s skin was flushed, and she gave off a hum of excited energy. Even though she didn’t like Alex—and I knew she didn’t like Alex, because how could she?—I think she did like all the attention.
“Don’t be mad, ’kay?” she said without looking at me.
“Amanda!” I said.
Alex waggled his eyebrows.
Amanda took a breath, then let it out in a giddy whoosh. “Yes.” She covered her face with her hands, then peeked through her fingers. “Yes!”
Locking eyes with Amanda, Alex raised the index card and gave a toast. “For you,” he said.
He angled his head, unhinged his jaw, and tilted the index card. Girls squealed. Boys did, too. One boy’s screech was so high it hurt my brain.
But the roach didn’t slide into Alex’s waiting mouth. It stayed put, its broken brown body glued to the card by a smear of shiny . . . inside stuff.
There were sighs of relief and murmurs of disappointment. There was lots of nervous laughter.
“Use your teeth,” David said. “Scrape it off.”
Alex shrugged, and it seemed as if he was going to. But we would never know, because right at that moment—both wonderfully and horribly—ex–rocket scientist Pat huffed into the classroom.
Wonderfully, because ha, Alex was foiled.
Horribly, because un-ha, Alex wasn’t truly put to the test. Maybe he would have done it. Maybe he’d have scraped that dead roach off the index card and swallowed it down, guts and all. But maybe he wouldn’t have, and everyone would have said, “Boo! Boo! Boo on you, you stupid Alex Plotkin!”
As it stood, he got to claim the title and glory of Roach Eater without having ingested a single roach antennae. Not an antennae, not a leg, not even a . . . wingy thing.
And yet he acted as if he had roach-breath anyway—hence the sub-sub-substitute when he got in my face after art class. Amanda hadn’t filed out of the room yet, and I fervently hoped it was because she was busy breaking Alex’s fuse bead heart to pieces.
“Alex, you are playing with fire,” I told him.
“Am I, Winnie?” He stepped even closer. “Am I?”
I tried to remember Sandra’s words of wisdom: The Crush Fad was just a fad. Amanda would never pick Alex to be her boyfriend, and she would never ever pick Alex over me. If she did? I would have to eat a dead roach to win her back, and I really hated roaches.
“Yes, Alex, you are,” I said. I stepped closer, so close our noses almost touched. So close I could see his eyebrows, which were abnormally pale. “Yes, Alex. You are.”
At afternoon snack break, Alex sauntered over to the beanbag cluster where Amanda, Chantelle, Maxine, and I were sitting.
“Excuse me, but these seats are taken,” I said.
“Did I ask you?” he said. He dropped down next to Amanda, WHO GIGGLED. He held out his pack of cheese crackers and said, “Anyone want one?”
I reached for one just so I could crumble it up and throw it at him. He snatched the pack back.
“Let me rephrase. Anyone other than Winnie?”
“Alex, that’s mean,” Amanda said.
“Thank you,” I said to Amanda. I turned to Alex. “But Alex doesn’t scare me.”
He lunged forward. “BOO!” he shouted.
Chantelle screamed. Maxine dropped her juice box, but luckily it didn’t spill.
“Did that scare you?” he asked, stepping back and smugly taking a seat on the rug.
“Not at all,” I said, using amazing self-control to keep my heart from leaping out of my chest and flopping around on the floor.
I smiled. I told Maxine I liked her earrings, which was true. Then, lightning quick, I sprung wolflike from my beanbag. I bared my teeth and growled at Alex, and everyone screamed, including Alex.
“Ha,” I gloated, sitting back on my haunches.
“My pants,” Maxine said, and I glanced down to see a purple stain blooming on the white denim.
“Oh, gosh. I’m so sorry, Maxine.”
She got up and grabbed the bathroom pass.
“I didn’t mean to make her spill her juice box,” I told the others.
“We know,” Amanda said.
“I would like to point out, however, that Alex—not to name names—isn’t nearly as brave as he wants everyone to think.”
“Wrong,” Alex said. “One time I stepped on a rusty nail and had to get forty-two tetanus shots.”
“How fascinating,” I said. “One time I lay on a whole bed of nails and didn’t have to get a single tetanus shot.”
“You did?” Amanda said. “When?”
Alex smirked. “Liar. One time my parents went out for dinner, and the babysitter forgot to come, so I stayed by myself for two whole hours.”
“Well, one time I went downstairs in the middle of the night for a snack,” I lobbed back. “Everyone else was fully asleep, and I didn’t even realize it. I was the only person awake in the whole house.”
No one looked impressed. Amanda looked confused, and ready to be impressed if only she understood why, but Alex just snorted.
“Come on, ladies,” he said to Amanda and Chantelle. “Let’s stop the charade, shall we?” He leaned back on his palms. “Who here ate the dead roach, huh?”
“Uh, no one,” I pointed out.
“Details,” he said. “Minor details.”
I glanced at Chantelle and Amanda. From the looks of it, his nearly eaten dead roach packed a punch, and it frightened me.
“Okay, okay, well . . . I didn’t eat a dead roach, because that’s disgusting. And again, neither did you.” I swallowed. “But one time I touched a dead mouse. Didn’t I, Amanda?”
“She did,” Amanda said. “It was extremely dead, and his name was Henry, and Winnie dug a grave for him and buried him.”
“Yep,” I said. “Beat that.”
Alex smiled a bad smile. “I saw a dead dog on the highway once.”
“Ohhh! That’s so sad!” Chantelle said.
I thought so, too. Dead dogs were on a different level from dead mice or dead roaches, and I struggled with how best to respond.
“I saw it up close,” he said before I got the chance. “My dad stopped the car and got out, because he wanted to make sure it was all the way dead.”
“That’s sick,” I said.
“Shows how much you know, because if it wasn’t all the way dead, he was going to put it out of its misery.”
“How?” Amanda said. For the second time today, her blue eyes were fixed on Alex’s smarmy face.
Amanda, snap out of it! I wanted to say. Bad Alex! No! Yuck!
“But it was all the way dead,” Alex said. “Its skull was dented in.”
Amanda put down her miniature quiche. Her mom always packed
her good snacks. I had to pack my own snacks, so I usually ended up with a Thermos full of pepperoni slices. But even my pepperoni slices had lost their appeal, thanks to Alex.
“Oh, Alex!” Amanda said.
“And its eyeball had popped out,” he said mournfully.
“Its eyeball popped out?” I said. “Really?”
Amanda shuddered. “If I saw a dead eyeball? Ugh. I don’t even know what I’d do.”
“I’d faint,” Chantelle said.
“Me too,” Amanda said.
“Not me,” I said.
“Alex, you poor thing,” Amanda said. “Seeing a dead dog—that’s even worse than what we went through with Henry. Don’t you think, Winnie?”
“For the dog,” I muttered.
Alex gloated. He’d won that round, and he knew it. He once more held out his snack. “Cheese crackers, anyone?”
That night, I went to Mom. I told her the whole sordid story about how Alex was showing off for Amanda and how annoying it was.
“Hmmm,” she said, chopping up carrots for a salad. “Don’t you think you’re a little young to be having crushes on boys?”
“I’m not having crushes. Amanda is. She just hasn’t picked out who yet.”
“She certainly doesn’t need to be rushing into anything,” Mom said. “There’s plenty of time for boys later, like in college.” She slid a row of carrot coins off the cutting board, grabbed a fresh carrot, and started hacking away. “Or after college. You do know how important college is, don’t you?”
“Yes, Mother,” I said. I squiggled in between her and the counter, forcing her to put down the knife. “But what do I do?”
“About what?”
“About Alex!”
“Oh,” she said. “Well, Winnie, just ignore him. I know you hate it when I say that, but that’s the best thing you can possibly do.”
I made an exasperated sound. I did hate it when Mom, or any grown-up, said to ignore someone. Oh, just ignore that boy in werewolf’s clothing, little girl, as if ignoring people was as easy as eating a delicious chocolate chip cookie.
“Mom, that is the most unhelpful advice ever,” I said. “Try again.”
“Sorry, sweetie, but it’s the best I’ve got,” she said. She attempted to lean past me to get at the carrot. When that didn’t work, she set down the knife, placed her hands on my shoulders, and moved me out of her way.
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