by Carol Gorman
I sighed heavily. “I want to go to the game, but this is terrible. That was even worse than Ms. Landers telling me in front of everybody that I need a bra! My bra size will be broadcast all over school before our first class tomorrow morning.”
“There’s no relationship between bra size and brainpower or talent,” Mary Ann said.
“No kidding,” I agreed. “Look at Lisa.”
“Just keep concentrating on why you’re doing this,” Mary Ann told me.
“I’m going to see the Cubbies, I’m going to see the Cubbies.”
“That’s right.”
“I’m going to punch Lisa’s lights out, I’m going to punch Lisa’s lights out.”
Mary Ann laughed. “I’ll help you. She’s such a wimp, that’ll be easy.”
“I think I’ll daydream about that for a while,” I said. “That makes me feel better than anything right now.”
“Good, then do it.”
On the way home, I imagined cutting off all of Lisa’s hair while she slept, dousing her with superglue and rolling her around on piles of dryer lint.
When I got home, I felt a lot better.
CHAPTER NINE
MS. LANDERS DIDN’T SAY anything at rehearsal that night about my wearing a bra. I was glad about that, but I hoped she noticed I was wearing one.
I’d decided that after the rehearsal, I’d point out the mistake she’d made, assigning me to model the swimsuit. I thought we should get that cleared up right away.
She taught us the choreography for the four songs. It wasn’t hard. Mostly, it was learning where our entrances and exits were in the music, when to do turns, when to raise our arms together, and when to pose. Stuff like that.
I felt pretty dumb doing it, but I kept imagining myself sitting between Zach and Mary Ann at Wrigley Field. That picture in my mind helped me to smile when I was supposed to.
We practiced the songs over and over till I was sick of them. Ms. Landers gave us critiques at the end of each song. I was waiting for her to say something embarrassing to me, but all she said was, “Lizard, you were two beats slow in coming out on the first song,” and “Remember to smile a lot.”
At the end of the rehearsal, I stood around so I could talk to Ms. Landers about the swimsuit without anyone else listening. I didn’t mind if her assistant, Samantha, heard the conversation. She seemed nice. But I didn’t want any of the other girls to hear. Especially Lisa.
Someone came up behind me, pulled out my bra strap and let it smack against me, stinging my back.
“I see you’re wearing your little bra—”
I whirled around and shoved Lisa so hard she fell backward on her butt.
“Owwww!” she yelled as she hit the floor.
“Don’t ever do that again, Lisa St. George!” I shouted.
“What’s going on here?” Ms. Landers strode over from her table. Samantha followed close behind. I guess they weren’t used to their models getting into fights.
“Lizard shoved me over backward!” Lisa wailed, wrapping one hand around her wrist.
Ms. Landers looked horrified. “Why did you do it, Lizard?”
“Lisa’s been making fun—Oh, never mind. She had it coming.” I glared at Lisa. “Get out of my face.”
“Lisa,” Ms. Landers said firmly, “if you’re hassling Lizard, stop it right now! And Lizard, I don’t want to see you shove anyone again. Either one of you—or both—will be out of the show if I see any more of this kind of behavior.”
“She pushed me!” Lisa whined.
“Not one more word!”
Ms. Landers, at that moment, looked an awful lot like my mom when she’s mad.
I turned and stalked out of the store.
I hadn’t talked to Ms. Landers about her mistake, but I could do that later. I had to get out of there fast, before I punched in Lisa’s perfect, snotty little nose.
Ginger was waiting for me at our locker in the morning.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said. “Lisa had it coming.”
“Oh, I wasn’t going to say anything about you shoving Lisa on the floor,” Ginger said, twisting a strand of hair between two fingers. “I just thought that, as your friend, I should tell you about Zach and Cassandra.”
My ears pricked up, but I didn’t say anything. I threw my homework books into the locker.
“You know they’re doing that scene from Dracula, don’t you?”
“Yeah.” I pulled out a notebook and slammed the locker closed.
“And you know Zach has to bite Cassandra’s neck, don’t you?”
“So?” I started walking away.
“Well, Lizard, I think you should know …” She scurried alongside me to keep up. “They’re falling in love.”
I stopped in the middle of the hall. “That’s a crock.”
Ginger sighed. “I know, the jilted one is always the last to know. But it’s true. Just ask anybody.” She put her hand on my arm sympathetically, but I shook it off. “I’m only telling you as your true friend. I know how totally devastated you must be. Talk about major ruin-your-life news! Call me anytime you want to talk about it.”
What I wanted to say was “Buzz off,” and I almost did. But she had real sympathy in her eyes, so I couldn’t say anything mean. I wasn’t in the mood to say something nice, though, so I walked away.
“Just remember, I’m on your side, Lizard!” she called after me.
I rounded a corner and spotted Cassandra drinking at the water fountain. I walked over and waited behind her. She leaned over, sipping water and holding her hair to one side so it wouldn’t get wet.
Her neck was right there in front of me. The neck that Zach was biting every day at his rehearsals.
I had to admit, it was a nice neck. Slender and long, not like a giraffe’s, but graceful and curved like a dancer’s. I was sure it was the kind of neck a boy would like to bite.
She straightened up and wiped a drop of water from her mouth.
“Oh, hi, Lizard,” she said.
So she knew who I was. I’m sure she’d heard that I was Zach’s girlfriend.
“Hi.”
She smelled of perfume, just as Stinky had said.
I really wanted to dislike Cassandra for wearing that perfume. Zach was my best friend and my boyfriend, and I had a right to hate her for trying to steal him away from me. I waited for her to say something that would really make me mad. But she didn’t say anything; she just smiled.
“How’s Dracula going?” I asked finally. Would she say something about Zach?
“Fine.” She looked down at the floor a second. “It’s embarrassing, though. Everybody’s teasing me about the neck bite.”
“I know,” I said. I watched her face carefully. Did she really like the teasing? Was she just trying to keep on my good side so I wouldn’t get mad? “Zach’s getting teased a lot too.”
“I wish they would stop,” Cassandra said. “It’s dumb.”
“Yeah.”
I tried so hard to hate her, but how could I? She seemed so nice. Anybody would like her. I thought she meant it when she said she wished everyone would stop teasing her and Zach.
“Oooh, there they are,” Stinky said. He stood next to Ed Mechtensteimer in the middle of the hall. Ed looked awkward and embarrassed, but Stinky was grinning. “Rivals for Zach’s affections. Are they going to punch it out?”
“Shut up, Stinky,” I said.
“Don’t hit her, Lizard,” he said. “She might have a great right hook. Then you’d be flattened right here in the hallway, and you know what Wildwoman would do about that! You’d get detentions, lots of them! You might even get expelled.”
“Come on, Cassandra,” I said. “Let’s get away from these jerks.”
She smiled at me, looking relieved. “Yeah, let’s go.”
“Wow, did you see that?” Stinky said behind us. “They’re acting like friends!”
We walked down the hall. “What’s your first class?” I asked her.
“Language arts.”
“Oh, yeah. Mrs. Brown. How do you like her?”
“She’s nice.” Cassandra stopped. “Hey, Lizard?”
“Yeah?”
“I know that Zach is your boyfriend,” she said. “I want you to know that I’m not trying to take him away from you or anything. I’ve heard what the kids are saying.”
“Well … thanks, Cassandra.”
“Sure.”
“Hey,” I said, “you don’t play baseball, do you?”
“No. I’m the last person chosen for any kind of team in P.E.”
I grinned. “Great!” I forced the smile off my face. “I mean, that’s too bad. I was just wondering. See you.”
“See you.”
I felt like jumping up and down and whooping, but of course I didn’t. Cassandra really was a nice person. It was great news that she wasn’t trying to steal Zach away from me, and that she wanted me to know—
I stopped suddenly just outside Squirrely Pearly’s class. A thought came to me then like a thunderbolt.
What if Zach was falling in love with her? What if she wanted me to know that she wasn’t trying to steal Zach away from me, but he wanted to be her boyfriend anyway?
That rotten feeling came back to my stomach. I decided to talk to Zach again and see how he reacted when I asked him about Cassandra. After school would be a good time.
I’d watch his face, and then I’d know for sure.
“Tell them what your mom told you,” Ginger said.
P.E. class was about to begin, and most of the girls were sitting around Lisa’s feet while she sat on the lowest level of the bleachers. They’d been treating her like royalty since she’d been named as one of the models in the Spring Pines fashion show. They were sure she’d be chosen Supermodel and they wanted to be on her good side when it launched her into a career in high fashion modeling.
Ginger led the fawning fest. “Tell them,” she urged Lisa. “Your mom is so understanding.”
Lisa smiled. “Well, my mother has excused me from all chores until the fashion show is over. I don’t have to wash dishes or rake leaves or pull out the tomato plants or wash the car or anything.”
The girls oohed.
“Gee, Lisa, I wish I could get out of chores,” Tiffany said. “Your mother’s fantastic.”
“Well, she understands how important it is for me to protect my hands,” Lisa sniffed. “If a talent scout is in the audience, and I get into professional modeling after this, I might be used as a hand model sometime.”
“What’s a hand model?” Heather asked.
“If you see a closeup of a hand doing something on TV or in a magazine, the person that the hand belongs to is a hand model. People who are hand models don’t do physical labor. They can’t afford to have dishpan hands or to break nails or get dirt or stains on their skin.”
“Oh, but no one would want to show just your hands, Lisa!” gushed Ginger. “Your face is so beautiful.”
“Well, you never know what kind of morons might be doing the commercial,” Lisa said.
Mrs. Puff walked in, her clipboard under her arm.
“Just a minute,” Lisa said. “I have to talk to Mrs. Puff.”
She jumped up from her seat and approached the teacher, flipping her long hair over her shoulder.
“Mrs. Puff,” Lisa said, “I don’t know if you know this, but I’m modeling in the Spring Pines fashion show.”
“Oh, yes. I heard about that.” Mrs. Puff started checking off names on her roll sheet. “Amanda Adams? Is she here?”
“She’s at the orthodontist getting braces,” Sara Pulliam chirped.
“Anyway,” Lisa said, “my mother and I think I should be excused from gym until the show is over.”
Mrs. Puff stopped and turned to Lisa, surprised. “Whatever for?”
“Well, what if I get hit in the face with a ball and get disfigured?” Lisa said. “It could ruin my career in high fashion modeling.”
A laugh escaped my mouth before I could stop it. Lisa glared at me, then turned back to Mrs. Puff.
“I don’t think that’s likely,” Mrs. Puff said. “You don’t have a letter from your mother, do you?”
“Well, no, but—”
“Then I suggest you join the other girls on the floor while I call the roll.”
“But, Mrs. Puff, I have to think of my future.”
“Sit down, Lisa.”
“My future—”
“Your future is going to be in the principal’s office if you don’t drop it.”
Lisa huffed loudly, but walked back and sat down, defeated. Ginger patted her arm and whispered to her, “Don’t worry. If you get disfigured, you could sue the pants off the school district.”
Lisa’s face brightened, then her smile faded when she realized that meant she’d have to have her looks ruined.
The kids swarmed out of the building like bees out of a hive. I stood next to the flagpole, looking for Zach. I’d told Mary Ann that I’d asked him to ride home with me today. She knew why. She’d been hearing the rumors, too.
He came loping out the door in the middle of a crowd. He waved at me.
“Hi,” I said.
He walked past me, and I followed him to the bike rack. We unlocked our bikes and stuffed the chains in our backpacks. Then we headed into the street.
I rode behind him for several blocks in the heavy traffic. But when we turned off the busiest street, I rode up next to him.
“Want to stop at Whetstone’s and get some taffy to eat at the ravine?” I asked him.
“Okay.”
We stopped at Whetstone’s, then veered off the street after half a block and left our bikes at the rim of the shallow ravine. We ran down the side and stopped next to the stream that flows across the bottom.
This is a special place to me. Whenever I want to have a talk about something important with Zach or Mary Ann, I like to come here with them. Sometimes, I take off my shoes and socks and cool my toes in the water while we talk.
Today, though, we tossed our book bags on the leafy bank and sat together on the fallen log next to the water.
My stomach fluttered nervously. I tried to be ready for whatever Zach would say. Maybe he would tell me that he liked Cassandra better than he liked me. Maybe this would be a horrible conversation, and we’d break up.
I’d thought a lot about how I’d start off the conversation, so I jumped right in.
“How’d your Dracula rehearsal go today?” I asked him. I handed him his taffy and unwrapped my piece, even though I didn’t feel like eating it.
He took the taffy and sighed heavily. “Fine.”
That didn’t get me anywhere, so I tried again. “Is it hard to learn all your lines?”
“I don’t have any lines.” He stared at the taffy in his hand, then stuck it in his back pants pocket. He leaned his elbows on his knees and looked into the water that gurgled along the stream bed.
Was he trying to think of a way to tell me he wanted to break up?
“Well,” I said, my heart hammering away in my chest, “it sure must be more fun than doing dumb old language arts stuff.”
“Yeah.”
Zach was never this quiet! If he had something to tell me about Cassandra, why didn’t he just say it? I decided the only way to find out once and for all was to ask. I pulled the wrapper up and folded it over the candy and was surprised that my hands were shaking a little.
“Zach? I’ve been hearing things about you and Cassandra.”
“What things?” He was still staring at the water.
“That you … that you … really like her.”
“She’s real nice.”
“I know. I think so too.” I thought a moment. Would he tell me he was in love with Cassandra if I asked? I braced myself. “I mean, all the guys are saying that you want to be her boyfriend.”
Zach didn’t even blink; he just stared. I couldn’t tell if he even heard what I said.
&nb
sp; “Zach?”
“Hunh?”
“Do you really like Cassandra?”
“Sure.” He sat up and looked at me, but I had the strange feeling he wasn’t really seeing me. “Did I ever tell you about what happened to my uncle when he was a kid?”
“Your uncle?” I was surprised that he’d changed the subject so suddenly. “Which one?”
“Uncle Elmer.”
“I haven’t heard of him.” Was Zach going to tell me something serious, or was this one of his crazy stories?
“When Uncle Elmer was a kid, he took a shortcut home from school one day. He had to walk through a thick forest. It was dark and cool, and hardly any light penetrated the umbrella of leaves overhead. But he knew if he kept walking, he’d come out on the other side, just a block from his house.
“After an hour of walking, though, he realized he was lost. Maybe he’d been walking in circles. This was supposed to be a shortcut, and walking around the forest only took twenty-three minutes.”
“Some shortcut,” I said.
“Elmer came upon an old house. It looked a little like my house, with a big front porch. But it was very run-down.”
“Who lived there?”
“The grown-up granddaughter of the witch in the Hansel and Gretel story.”
I grinned. It was good to hear one of his wild stories after so much weird silence.
“She inherited nasty genes from her grandmother. She captured Uncle Elmer and made him a prisoner under the porch. It was dark and cold under there, and rats and snakes came in at night and nibbled on his toes. He screamed and yelled, but he was so deep in the forest, no one could hear. He nearly went crazy. The only food he had was potato chips and Coke, which the witch fed him once a day through the openings in the trellis.”
“At least it wasn’t lentil and spinach surprise,” I said, thinking of one of my mom’s favorite dishes. “Did he finally get away?”
“The witch had termites that ate through the wooden trellis, and he escaped. But my uncle was changed forever after his imprisonment under the porch. He can’t stand small spaces. He’s forty-three now, but he won’t ride in elevators, even though he lives in an apartment on the fourteenth floor. He turned into the skinniest man alive because he runs up and down the stairs all the time. You can look him up in the Guinness Book of World Records.”