by Nancy Rue
But although she never would have said it to the Girlz, Lily was even more excited about going to her first medical class.
They don’t understand how much this means to me, she told herself. And that’s all right. Not everyone knows what their thing is yet.
She did remember to thank God in her Friday night prayers that she knew what her thing was now. It’s so perfect, God, she thought before she dropped off to sleep.
However, “perfect” started to fray a little around the edges when Dad dropped her off at the classroom in the health club the next morning before he went to his whirlpool. It was early, and the door was still locked, so Lily just stood looking at the poster for the class that was taped to the wall in the hallway.
Why are there things like calendars and toothbrushes and shampoo bottles on this poster? she thought. Where are the stethoscopes and the thermometers?
She read the course title on the poster: “Taking Care of Your Body, for Girls 10 to 13.”
“Taking Care of Your Body”? she thought. Dad said it was “Taking Care of the Body.” As in somebody else’s body, not mine!
Lily had already turned on the heel of her boot and was about to go to the whirlpool room when the classroom door opened and a woman with a pair of hoop earrings poked her head out.
“Hi!” she said. “You must be either Katie, Natalie, or Lillian.”
“Lily,” Lily said, and she immediately wanted to bite her tongue off. If she hadn’t identified herself, she could’ve just run on down the hall and told Dad this was a big mistake. Now she had to let the woman pull her into the classroom, still going on about Katie and Natalie, whoever they were.
“I’m Missy,” Hoop Earrings said. “Just make yourself comfortable. I’m going to go out and wait for the others.”
Missy went back out into the hall, still on a quest for the mysterious Natalie and Katie. Lily looked around the room and almost groaned out loud.
The overhead projector was turned on, and the words Symptoms of Puberty were enlarged on the white classroom wall. On the counter was a stack of handouts with a drawing on them.
Those do look like some part of your body, though, Lily was thinking just as the door opened and Missy breezed back in with two girls in tow.
One looked like she was about ten; the other, around thirteen. The ten-year-old had one of those embarrassed smiles on her face, like people get when they don’t know what else to do. The thirteen-year-old looked as if she’d like to shove the overhead projector through the wall.
She probably could too, Lily thought as she watched the big girl stomp toward a chair. I wouldn’t want her mad at me. As if she had read Lily’s mind, the girl turned to her and made a low growling sound in her throat.
Hair ball? Lily wanted to say, but she didn’t dare.
“Lillian,” Missy said in her too-breezy voice, “this is Katie.” She tapped the embarrassed-looking ten-yearold’s head. “And this is Natalie.”
When she tried to tap the big girl’s head, Natalie jerked away and stared at Missy. Lily expected to see her whip out a switchblade any second.
“All righty, then,” Missy said, still sounding way too cheerful. “Let’s get started.”
“Aren’t we going to wait for the rest of the class to get here?” Lily said.
“This is the class,” Missy said. “Why doesn’t everyone have a seat?”
Katie smiled wider.
Natalie growled.
Lily stifled a groan.
Only three people in the class? That meant this class about getting armpit hair and stuff was going to be even more embarrassing, because she wouldn’t be able to hide behind anybody or let everyone else answer the questions.
That’s it, Lily told herself as she selected a chair two seats away from Big Natalie. I’m not coming back after this. I already know all about this stuff anyway. I thought we were going to learn how to set broken legs and stop people from bleeding to death!
“Come join us, Lillian,” Missy said.
She was pointing to the two empty seats between Katie and Natalie.
“Let’s get cozy. We’ll be like family before this is over.”
Katie’s smile stiffened. Natalie growled louder. Lily moved over two seats and said, “It’s not Lillian. It’s Lilianna. Just call me Lily, though.”
“Oh, like the flower,” Missy said and then laughed as if she’d just cracked a sidesplitter.
“Ha-ha,” Natalie said, clearly not amused.
Missy cut off her laugh and dived for the overhead projector.
“All right, since we’re all girls here,” she said, “I think we can talk openly. How many of you have had any of the symptoms we see listed here?”
Natalie’s growl turned into a snarl. If Missy isn’t careful, Lily thought, she’s gonna have to put a muzzle on that girl. At least she’s smart enough not to call on her.
“Katie, how about you, honey?” she said.
Katie just stared at the list on the wall and shook her head. Lily decided it must be impossible to talk with your mouth frozen into a smile that way.
“I guess that leaves you, Lily,” Missy said.
Lily wished Natalie would jump out of her chair and bite Missy so she wouldn’t have to answer. But Natalie just sat there glowering, and Missy stood there looking cheerfully expectant.
“I have some of them,” Lily managed to say.
“Good! Which ones?”
Which ones? Lily looked miserably at the list.
• New body hair
• Sudden body growth
• Long arms and legs
• Smaller waist
• Rounder hips
• The beginnings of breasts
• Coarser hair on legs
There wasn’t a single one on there she would want to say out loud, especially here.
“Well, you’re nice and tall,” Missy said. “Have you always been tall, or did you just sprout up like a sunflower recently?”
Lily knew her face wasn’t even blotchy. She could feel it just going straight to bright red.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I guess.”
“Well, Natalie, Katie, Lillian, let’s see why those changes are taking place in your bodies. Everyone will need one of these.”
As Missy passed out the handout sheets Lily had seen on the counter, Lily kept her head down. Maybe if she pretended to be concentrating really hard, Missy wouldn’t call on her again. Ever.
“All righty, then,” Missy said for about the forty-fifth time, “this is where it all happens, girls. These are your reproductive organs.”
Natalie gave a particularly threatening growl that made Lily move to the far edge of her chair, but Missy breezed on.
“Someday, when you want to have babies, you’ll be very glad you have all this stuff, but right now it’s probably giving you fits. One thing I forgot to put on my list was mood swings. Any of you feel on top of the world one minute and about ready to smack somebody the next? How about you, Natalie?”
“Yeah,” Natalie said. “You.”
Missy threw back her head and gave a shrill laugh. “Then I guess we’d better find out why! You see the spongy-looking areas that have been colored yellow? Those are your ovaries, where all the eggs for your future children are located. They’ve been there since before you were born. How about that?”
Lily tried to look impressed, but her mind was growling louder than Natalie was. If this class isn’t over pretty soon, I am so going to scream.
She did manage to keep herself from howling as Missy chirped on cheerfully about the fallopian tubes and the uterus and the hormones that operated them. When she got to the part about those hormones suddenly sprouting out hair in weird places, Lily couldn’t sit there any longer. She stood up.
“I really have to use the restroom,” Lily said, and she escaped out into the hall.
That is it, she told herself firmly. After today, I am not going back to that class—ever!
Six<
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When the class finally ground to a halt and all three girls bolted out of the room, Lily beat her father to the car. Fortunately there was a talk-radio program on the national debt that he wanted to listen to, so he didn’t ask her any questions about the class while they were driving home.
But when they met Mom and Joe and Art at Taco Bell for lunch, the first thing out of Art’s mouth was, “Well, can you do open-heart surgery yet?”
“No. Get out of my face,” Lily said. “Mom, I want two bean burritos, okay?”
“I want three and a taco,” Joe said, “and an order of fries.”
“French fries too?” Lily said.
“French fries with Mexican food?” Dad said.
“Dad, this isn’t Mexican,” Art said. “It’s called paying for food poisoning. In fact, ugh!” He strained his face to make it turn purple and grabbed his middle. “I think I have some now! Lily, help me! Save me!”
“Knock it off, Art,” Mom said. Her mouth wasn’t twitching. Her big, brown doe-eyes had a rare stern look. “Enough picking on Lily. You were being real good about that for a while, and now you’re starting up again. What’s with it?”
“You really want to know?” Art said. He twisted away from surveying the menu on the wall and looked seriously at Mom.
“This ought to be good,” Mom said.
“Go ahead,” Dad said. He too was looking serious. Lily leaned in. Art was about to get his for smarting off at the mouth, and she didn’t want to miss any of it.
“It’s kinda hard not to make fun of her and pick at her and stuff, because she’s so bossy all the time. The way she acts like she knows it all makes me want to just get to her once in a while. That’s all.”
“I am not bossy!” Lily said. “What did I say that was bossy?”
“What didn’t you say? Joe shouldn’t eat French fries if he’s going to have a taco. I should get out of your face—”
“Well, you should. And he shouldn’t.”
Art shrugged. “I rest my case.”
Mom looked at Dad, who crossed his arms and cocked his head at Art. “Lily may be a little more assertive than you’d like,” Dad said, “but that still doesn’t mean that you can—”
Lily didn’t hear the rest. She was thinking about how this was the second time in just a few days that somebody had said she was bossy.
Why doesn’t anybody understand that I’m only trying to help? she thought. I wish there were somebody who appreciated that.
There will be, she decided. As soon as I get some more knowledge and can start saving some lives.
But that sure wasn’t going to happen through that stupid Saturday class. She was going to have to learn things on her own until Mom and Dad let her take a real first aid and CPR class.
“So, Lily, you haven’t said how your first class was this morning,” Mom said when they were settled at a table.
“It was my last class,” Lily said.
“What do you mean?” Mom said.
“It wasn’t about what I thought it was going to be about.”
“She thought it was going to be about performing brain surgery,” Art muttered into his burrito supreme.
“What was it about?” Dad said.
Lily’s head jerked up. “Uh, just stuff. Stuff I already know.”
“Like what?” Dad said.
“Just . . . I don’t know!”
“I don’t understand,” Dad said, looking puzzled behind his glasses. “If you were there and you already knew the stuff, then why—”
“Oh,” Mom said suddenly. She nudged Dad. “Drop it.”
“Oh,” Art said. “That.”
“What?” Joe said. “I don’t get it.”
“Doesn’t matter, Son,” Dad said. “Eat your taco.”
“But I want to know!”
“No!” Lily said. “Now shut up!”
“See? I told you she was bossy,” Art said.
“It was a stupid class, and I’m not going back. That’s all anybody needs to know,” Lily said.
“I have to agree with Art on this one,” Mom said. “You are being a tad bossy, telling us what you are and aren’t going to do.”
Lily blinked.
“Remember when you wanted to sign up for this class? We told you no quitting. If you start something, you have to see it all the way through.”
Lily let her burrito drop to its paper. “You mean, I have to go back there until the course is over?”
“That’s what I mean,” Mom said.
Lily argued about it with her mother and father off and on for the rest of the afternoon until Mom finally said she couldn’t go to the sleepover at Suzy’s if she said another word about it.
“You said this wasn’t just a phase you were going through,” Mom said. “Now prove it.”
Lily almost came out with a “But—” until she saw the firmness in her mother’s eyes. Art always called it her “coach look.”
If you’re out-of-bounds, you’re out-of-bounds, that look said, and there’s no sense in arguing about it, or I’ll put you out of the game completely.
Lily clamped her mouth shut and packed her bag for the sleepover. She wasn’t that excited about it anymore, though. She knew the Girlz were all going to want to know about the class, and, worse, they were expecting her to show up with a blood pressure cuff.
That’s weird, she thought as she walked through the nippy almost-night air to Suzy’s house. First I wanted to talk about it, and they didn’t want to listen. Now I don’t want to talk about it, and they’re gonna be all over it.
And they were. As soon as they had climbed onto Suzy’s bed, turned off the lights in her room, had the flashlight on (which was the only way to have a decent sleepover), and started into Zooey’s mother’s brownies, they peppered Lily with questions.
“Does a real doctor teach the class?”
“Do you get to go on a field trip to the hospital?”
“Yeah, and watch an operation?”
“Where’s the blood pressure thingie?”
Ultracasually Lily flopped back on Suzy’s bed and gave a loud yawn. “I’m so tired from that class,” she said. “Can we talk about it later? Somebody else pick a topic.”
“Guess what happened yesterday,” Zooey said. She always had another topic ready.
“Finish chewing that brownie first, would you?” Reni said.
While Zooey was chewing and giggling, Reni turned to Lily.
“What’s wrong?” she said.
“Nothing,” Lily said.
“Nuh-uh. Something’s weird.”
“Okay! You want to hear what happened?” Zooey said.
Lily sat up and gave Zooey her full attention. She could still feel Reni looking at her.
“What happen?” Kresha said.
“Ashley Adamson started her period!”
“No, she did not!” Reni said.
Suzy gave her little nervous giggle. “How do you know, Zooey?” she said.
“I was in the bathroom when she noticed it,” Zooey said, looking very important. “She came out of the stall all crying and saying, ‘Chelsea, I started! What do I do?’”
“Ashley was actually crying?” Lily said.
“I would be too,” Reni said. “That whole period thing is gross. I don’t ever want to start mine.”
“Is it gross, really?” Zooey said. “Is it, Lily?”
Lily felt like she was back in Missy’s class again. But she chewed at the inside of her mouth and said, “I don’t know. I haven’t gotten mine yet either.”
“Whew,” Suzy said, giggling, of course. “I thought I was the only one.”
“Who cares?” Reni said. “I’ll wait as long as God lets me before I have to start wearing those evil-lookin’ pads and worrying about getting stuff on the seat of my desk—”
“When I start mine,” Zooey said, “I don’t want anybody else to know.”
“Nobody will,” Suzy said. And then her face clouded over. “Will they?�
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“The dentist will if you go in to have your teeth cleaned while you’re on your period,” Reni said.
“What?” Lily said.
“I heard that,” Reni said.
“I heard that boys can tell by the way your breath smells,” Zooey said. “I’m not getting near Shad Shifferdecker then. He’ll blab it all over the school.”
“And if you don’t go swimming, people will know why,” Suzy said.
Zooey’s face wrinkled up. “Why can’t you go swimming?”
“Because—” Suzy lowered her head and her voice. “You’re wearing that big pad. People will see it through your bathing suit. ”
“I do not understan’,” Kresha said suddenly.
They all looked at her. Lily realized Kresha hadn’t said a thing since they’d started talking about periods. Her usually sharp face looked fragile, like she was about to cry.
“It’s okay, Kresha,” Reni said. “I don’t understand all of it either—and I don’t want to.”
“No, I do not understan’ vhat you are talking about,” Kresha said.
But before anybody could even begin to figure out what Kresha meant, they heard a sharp scratching noise from the direction of the window. Startled, all five of them let out a chorus of shrieks.
Lily was the first one to recover. “Shhhh, you guys!” she said. “It was just the wind blowing a branch.”
But Suzy’s eyes were still wide on her china-white face. “What branch?” she said. “There are no bushes out there. My daddy trimmed them all down before winter.”
“Then what was that?” Reni said.
Zooey started winding up to a scream as they all turned toward the window. Everyone joined her in a group scream as soon as their eyes hit the glass.
Staring in at them from the darkness were two deformed and hideous faces.
Zooey was immediately up on her feet in the middle of the bed, screaming like a chicken being chased by the farmer with his ax. Suzy plastered herself up against the headboard and froze there. Lily heard a slam and knew that Reni had just thrown herself into the closet. Kresha was nowhere to be seen. Lily figured she was under the bed.