The Encyclopedia of Me

by Karen Rivers

  Answer: They wouldn’t! They cared about Freddie Blue’s birthday, Miss Popular Barbie. I sat down on the stairs between the kitchen and the outside door. People passed me but mostly they ignored me. I ignored them back, fiercely, with my patented Tink Aaron-Martin Stare of Nonchalance.

  There was something about being in a big crowd of kids my own age that made me feel like I wasn’t even a kid my own age, like I was too different to belong. Like I was just pretending to be me.

  It got old pretty quickly.

  I was just about to pick my sweaty, puffy self up to go home when Freddie Blue stood up on the kitchen counter and started yelling, “Attention! Attention!”

  “Oh, no,” I said to myself. “What now?” I scanned the room again, but still no Kai. I guessed he wasn’t coming.

  Freddie Blue cleared her throat and giggled. “So we are, like, here for my birthday!” she shouted. At least seven parts of my insides died of embarrassment right then. She was so . . . loud. OTT (Over The Top)! Show-offy! Which would work if she was a rock star at a concert. But she was just a kid on a counter. I closed my eyes.

  “But more important than that, we are here for TINK’S birthday!” I don’t know why she was yelling. Everyone was listening. “Tink has been my best friend for, like, ever. She has been through SO much with me and I’m always getting her in trouble, but she’s still always been so so so so so awesomely great to me. And I wanted to have this party for her because she deserves it! Because I love her. I really love you, Tink,” she said. “You’re like a sister to me. You really are.”

  I got choked up. I admit it. I think it was because she was shouting. It made it all seem real.

  “We’ll be friends forever and always, I pinkie swear promise. And I’ll never tell anyone about how you used to have a crush on Wex!” She laughed.

  And so did everyone else.

  I gasped. Did she really say that out loud? “I DID NOT,” I said.

  “Don’t freak out!” said FB. “I’m kidding. Anyway, that was last year.”

  “It was when we were eight!” I said.

  “I knew you liked me,” yelled Wex from the dining room. “Ooooh, Tink likes me.” I couldn’t see what he was doing, but I could guess from the laughter that it was something gross.

  “I have to go,” I said.

  “Don’t be so serious, Tink,” said Freddie Blue. “I’m sorry. I mean it. I’m really sincerely totally sorry. I don’t want you to feel bad. I want you to be happy! Which is why I got you . . . THIS!”

  She pointed at a big box on the floor, which apparently I had to go open in front of everyone. I smiled, but my teeth were rubbing together like sandpaper.

  I pulled back the paper, which was Barbie-themed and so pink I was nearly blinded. I was scared, but I opened the lid.

  And inside the box, crouched down like a . . . well, like an idio, was Kai.

  “What?” I said. I didn’t get it.

  “We planned it all during your photo-shoot thing!” Freddie Blue laughed. “I wanted to get you something you couldn’t ever get on your own!”

  I was so confused at first, I didn’t know what was happening, but I did know that if seven bits of me died when Freddie started talking, at least a thousand more died in that moment. Kai was smiling at me or maybe laughing at me and everyone was laughing. I felt a rush of tears sweep down my cheeks like Niagara Falls. Then Kai’s face changed. I turned and started to leave the room.

  But then something else happened.

  Freddie Blue was still on the counter. And she was laughing. It was the phoniest, most awful laugh in the world, and the hardest. And she was just wearing that stupid, ugly sparkly dress, but it was tiny and way too short. She had nothing covering her up. Not really. And then there was this sound.

  Like a huge splat.

  Like someone had thrown a water balloon.

  Only it wasn’t a water balloon. I knew right away what had happened.

  She’d peed her pants. On the counter. In front of everyone. Everyone.

  After that, there was this horrible, awkward silence. Really awful. The worst silence I’d ever heard. So instead of staying mad, I just reached my hand up and grabbed hers and pulled her down and said really loudly, “Thanks so much, Freddie! You’re the best!” I didn’t care how fake it sounded, I just needed to fill up that silence with something. Anything. Then I hit the button on the stereo and turned the music up loud.

  I pulled her all the way up to her bedroom. She was shaking like crazy. “Oh my god,” she kept saying. “OMG OMG OMG.”

  “It’s not that bad,” I told her. “It’s really not. No one will remember.”

  “I’ll have to change schools!” she said. “I’m going to die. I can’t live with it. No one will ever forget!”

  I thought about saying how maybe no one would forget the totally not hilair Boyfriend-in-a-Box joke, but then I decided it just wasn’t worth it. I bit my tongue, which hurt. I guess you aren’t meant to do it literally.

  I started rummaging through her drawers. “Don’t you have anything else that’s pink?” I said.

  “No,” she said. “I got this especially.” She looked down at it. “I thought it would be funny, Tink. I thought at least you’d think it was funny.”

  “Which part?” I said.

  “The Barbie stuff,” she said. “Remember how you used to color them in and cut their hair?”

  “Totally.” I tried to laugh but it didn’t come out right. “Do you want me to scribble on your face and cut your hair? ’Cause I will.”

  “No!” she said. “Don’t!”

  “I wouldn’t really,” I said. “I was joking.”

  “So was I, sort of,” she said. Then she sighed.

  I pulled a T-shirt and shorts out for her. “Go clean up and put your clothes on,” I said. I lay back on her bed and waited while she showered.

  She came out dressed, with wet hair and a brush. “Hey, Tink,” she said. “Thank you.”

  “Forget it,” I said. “I’m still mad at you. The boyfriend thing wasn’t funny at all.”

  “Yes, it was!” She laughed.

  “No,” I said. “It wasn’t.”

  She started to head downstairs. “You used to laugh more,” she said. “Now you’re all so serious.”

  “No, I’m not,” I said. “I just don’t want to be your punch line!” I kind of shouted the last bit down the hall. And of course, it was the silent second between songs. A bunch of people looked up at me. But then they just went back to their conversations or dancing or whatever. They didn’t care that much.

  Which was good. Because I didn’t want them to.

  Freddie Blue leaped back into the party room. I still admired her bravado. Did she really think they’d forget? But the truth was that she was pretty enough that people did forget things. They just looked at her and fwooom, their Etch A Sketch brains were wiped completely clean and blank.

  And then I was invisible again, so I went outside and sat on the lawn. I tried to breathe in and out and remember to exhale all my troubles, as Charlotte Ellery once taught me to do. I liked the way the grass felt prickly under my bare legs, so I tried to concentrate on that. I picked daisies and wove them into a chain. It was late afternoon, but the sun was still nice and warm, even though the air felt cool and alive on my skin.

  I hated Freddie Blue Anderson.

  But I still sort of couldn’t help but love her. We had been friends for so long! She was my Freddie Blue. She needed me. She needed me to tell me things like how she has to have a cup of hot milk before bed or she can’t sleep. Or about how she asks questions to her alphabet soup and then scoops up a spoonful to find the answer. Or about that time that she called a psychic line and it cost over a hundred dollars and all she was asking was when she was going to get her period, and she got it the next day anyway, even though the psychic told her it would happen in November of next year. That’s the kind of stuff you tell your sister.

  And we were like sisters.
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  Who hated each other right now. I mean, that’s OK. I ­hated Lex and Seb a lot of the time too, but they were still my ­brothers. I was OK with being her sister-who-couldn’t-much-stand-her-right-now.

  I guessed.

  Stella was her BFF and I’d just have to get over it. I wouldn’t want to be some mean girl you are trying to impress because you want to be popular. Or even “pops.” Who cares about popular, anyway? Who decides? Freddie Blue wanted to be pops more than she cared about anything else, especially about me. And she wanted Andrew Young to be her boyfriend. And Andrew Young was pops. So if she was with him, she would also be pops. Ta-da! Popularity math.

  I knew all this because I KNEW Freddie Blue Anderson. Better than Stella did, that’s for sure.

  And I knew it also because I read it on her phone notepad thing she keeps beside her bed. It’s where she writes things that she wants to have come true. “Andrew Young, ask me out!” it said.

  So it’s not like I’m psychic or anything, but still, it was ­useful information. Maybe I could pay her back for being so horrible to me with the Boyfriend-in-a-Box. Somehow.

  I made another daisy chain and tied it around my ankle. It was getting colder. I could hear the party going on inside, but I felt so separate from it. I was really done.

  I stood up to go. My legs were covered with the weird pattern of the grass.

  “Hey,” said a voice.

  I turned around. “Oh,” I said. “It’s you.” I didn’t know whether to smile or cry or what to do, so I didn’t do anything. Kai walked over and stood in front of me. Right away my breathing got weird. I would have done anything for a paper bag, just about.

  “She didn’t say, like, that it was going to be, um . . .” he said. “I told her I was going to, like, see if you wanted to . . . anyway. I was going to ask . . . and she said that you would think this was funny. I feel really bad.”

  I shrugged. “Whatev,” I said, like I didn’t care, which was a lie because I totally did care. More than anything. I really, really cared.

  “I’m such a jerk!” he burst out. “You should hate me. It just didn’t, like, happen the way I thought it would. Freddie Blue said . . .”

  “I just can’t really imagine how you thought it would come across,” I said. “What could be good about being in a box as a present for someone?”

  “I don’t know,” he said miserably. “I’m so sorry, Is. I’m totally sorry.”

  I shrugged again.

  He got down on his knees. “I’m like BEGGING you to forgive me,” he said. “Please?”

  I laughed because I was uncomfortable. “Get up,” I said. “Come on.”

  “No,” he said. “You sit down.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Please?” he said.

  “Please is not a question,” I said. But I sat.

  He shot me a look that said, “You are weird but I still like you.”

  So I shot him one back that said, “I was really embarrassed, you jerk.”

  And he shot me one that maybe said, “I don’t really know, but Freddie Blue made it sound like a good idea.”

  And I tried to shoot him one back that said, “I still like you, so please let’s leave and go lurk or something and get away from these people I don’t even know or like.”

  I mean, it was all silent, so our looks might not have actually said anything like that. That’s just what I thought. He might have thought they meant, “Nice day, isn’t it?” Or the like.

  “Are you OK?” he said.

  “Oh, yes,” I said. And I was kind of surprised, but it was true.

  “This is, um, a nice yard,” he said. I looked around. There was a kids’ swing set, a sandbox, and then some grass and a flower border. Most of the flowers were dead or dying. Freddie Blue and I hadn’t used that swing set for at least a year.

  “Um,” I said.

  We looked at each other and just start to laugh like crazy, clutching our sides and howling until we sobbed. It took ages for the laugh to die down. He had the best laugh. It was the kind of laugh that you wanted to reach out and hold on to, like a puppy, all soft and rolling.

  We were already lying down, which was sort of a mistake because the grass was making me sneeze, but it didn’t matter. I was happy. I was just happy to lie there and sneeze next to Kai and the dying flowers and the old rusty swing set.

  Nothing else happened. So if you were expecting a big kiss scene or something, I’m sorry, there isn’t going to be one in this entry. It was just a birthday party and that was it.

  Kai pulled me closer so that my head was resting on his chest.124 It was uncomfortable, but it was also the best feeling in the world. I couldn’t have written it any better if it had been a play, except I would have not included the mosquitoes or the pain.

  Kai: I’m glad we moved here.

  Me: Me too.

  Kai: I really like you.

  Me: I really like you too.

  Kai: I, um, like talking to you.

  Me: I like talking to you too.

  Then he did kiss me, actually. I lied before when I said he didn’t. I wanted to make it extra amazing and have it catch you off guard, just like it did me.

  Did it work? See? This isn’t just an encyclopedia, it also contains FUN SURPRISES! It’s like the Cracker Jack of books.

  Best Virgorama Ever.

  See also Anderson, Freddie Blue; BFF; Barbie Dolls; Bullies; Kai; Kissing.

  WEE

  Worst Enemy Ever. Yes, that’s right, I DO mean Stella Wilson-Rawley. Still. Always. Forever.

  Even though I guess we are friendly acquaintances now, through FB.

  But I’m like an elephant, not in that I am a huge, hulking, scary gray mammal, but in that I do not forget things, ever, such as the meanness of SWR or that the Spanish verb “to annoy” is molestar.125

  See also Elephants; Spanish.

  Weekend

  The two days — Saturday and Sunday — that happen at the end of the block of five solid days, Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday. Most of the fun in your life will happen on a weekend. Unless you have a job where Monday and Tuesday are your days off, then the fun will be on Monday and Tuesday. Unless your job is incredibly fun and interesting, in which case you might just go ahead and have fun all the time! As I am planning to be a writer when I grow up, obviously weekends will have no meaning to me, as I will just write whenever I feel like it and stop when I don’t, and all of it will be fun regardless. You may want to consider this as a career choice.

  Virgorama occurred on a weekend, as it happened. It was a Saturday.126

  There were a lot of stars in the sky when Kai and I walked home.

  Holding hands.127

  We just needed a sound track and then we’d be an adorable teen movie!

  But it was all real.

  It was not a play that I made up.

  It was not a dream.

  Kai walked me all the way up to the porch, where he finally let go of my hand. My hand sighed with relief. I didn’t exactly know what to say or do, so I fiddled with my hair a bit.

  “Sorry about the eels,” I said, wrinkling my nose. The smell was so much a part of the house now, I barely noticed it, but I knew he probably did. Most people did.

  He shrugged. “Um,” he said. “I had fun?”

  “Me too,” I said quickly. “It was good.”

  He grabbed me and pulled me over to him awkwardly. Well, awkwardly in that I nearly fell into an eel bucket. Then he gave me another kiss. I reached up to put my hands behind his head, like I’d seen in films when people were having a romantic kiss, and my hand got stuck in his hair.

  “Ouch!” he said.

  “Sorry!” I said. “My hand is stuck!”

  “Awkward!” we both said at the same time.

  He kissed me again. This time, a bit harder, like he really, really meant it. So I kissed him back like I really, really meant it.128 My knees immediately turned to ice cream and melted me into a puddle on the de
ck, where the eels would almost certainly have eaten me, given the option. And if they’d been actually alive.

  “Bye,” he said. “This was, like, so . . .”

  “Yeah,” I said. “For me too.”

  “OK,” he said. “I’m gonna go. I don’t really want to, though. Maybe I’ll, like, sleep in the tree outside your window.”

  “That’s my favorite tree!” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “When Mom and Dad bought the house, it was basically the best thing about it, I thought.”

  “Really?” I said.

  He shrugged. “But I don’t really climb trees much anymore anyway.”

  “Of course not,” I quickly agreed. “That’s, like, kid stuff.”

  “It’s still OK,” he said. “I mean, I might climb it now . . .”

  “Ha ha,” I said. I wasn’t sure if he was kidding or not. Sometimes I’m not good at knowing what is a joke and what isn’t. I nudged an eel bucket with my foot. The silence got bigger and the littlest bit awkward. “So,” I said.

  “OK,” he said. “Now I’m really going.” He grabbed his board, which he’d left leaning up on the rail, and shifted it from hand to hand. “Bye,” he said again.

  “Bye,” I said. “Go!”

  “I’m going,” he said, and he threw his board up in the air and then did the most awesome something-or-other I’d ever seen: He somehow landed on it mid-flight before it reached the ground and skipped the stairs altogether, grabbing it on the way down.

  “Wow,” I said. He was so talented, it was crazy.

  I went inside. I was expecting to go straight up to write down everything that happened. I didn’t want to forget any of the details. But Mom and Dad were sitting at the kitchen table, staring. Did they see the kiss? My entire body reddened with embarrassment.

  “What’s going on?” I said. I was trying to sound casual, but I was suddenly scared. “Did something happen?”

  Dad cleared his throat. He looked really upset. OMG, I thought. Maybe Lex died from some mysterious complication! Maybe Seb did something crazy! It took only about ten seconds for one of them to talk, but in that ten seconds, I made about twenty-seven deals with fate that were like, “If Lex is not dead, I will drink eight glasses of water a day and feed the hungry and donate all my shoes to homeless people and sign up to give my kidney to science or whoever wants it or needs it, unless they just want it for creepy weird reasons, like they want to collect it in a jar on their shelf.”