by Rachel Vail
1. great
2. cornf
AJ: Hahahaha. 3. Frostedf
“What does that even mean?” Sienna asked, reading her texts and AJ’s.
“Frosted F-lakes?”
“Yeah, but . . .”
I shrugged and smiled, trying to stop myself from wishing those texts could live on my phone instead of Sienna’s, and not only so I could reread and enjoy them over again whenever I wanted. Also, honestly? So AJ would know it was actually me he was going back and forth with. Connecting. So it could be legit between him and me instead of . . .
No.
Shut up, shut up, shut up.
“His sense of humor is so like yours,” Sienna said.
“That must be why you like him,” I said. Stop sweating.
“Maybe he asked the wrong girl out,” she said.
“No!” I said. Inhale. Exhale. “You guys are such a good couple.”
“Do you actually think so?”
“Yes!” I said, trying to believe myself. “You are both so nice. And sporty. And adorable. And smart. And sweet. And oh, Sienna. Just trust me.”
“I do,” she said.
“I know,” I admitted. who wants bagels? I texted from Sienna’s phone to AJ’s, and handed it back to her.
“That’s good,” Sienna said. “Phew.” She followed me to the bathroom. “Simple.”
While we were putting our hair up, AJ texted back: Who doesn’t want bagels?
She showed me. I smiled. “Cool. We should hurry, I guess.”
“Answer,” she said, trying to pass me the phone.
“You answer!”
She grunted and stared at the screen. “Fine. Fine. I can do this.”
“You so can.”
She chewed on her lower lip, thinking. “Should I just say, Come on up then?” she asked. “Or something funny?”
“Like what?” I asked, loading up both toothbrushes.
Instead of answering, Sienna put down the phone beside the sink and started flossing, inches from the mirror.
I started brushing. Flossing is So Much.
“Maybe we could say something to him about, like, people who don’t want bagels are just wrong?” Sienna suggested, talking around the floss. “Or, like, maybe . . .” She sat down, dejected, almost deflated, on the edge of the bathtub. The piece of floss dangled from between her teeth like a sad walrus whisker. “I don’t know, Gracie! I am normally a functional person. You do it. You’re so much better at this than I am!”
“No, I’m not,” I assured her. “You’re just panicking. What were you thinking?”
“Promise if it’s dumb you won’t let me send it?”
“Promise,” I said through my toothpaste. “What?”
“I don’t know.” She got up and went back to flossing while she talked. “I was thinking maybe we could say something like, Well, gluten-intolerant people don’t want bagels!”
“Hmmm.” I spit out my toothpaste and then rinsed out my mouth, to delay. “That’s a little insensitive to the gluten-intolerant, don’t you think?” I said. “My cousin is gluten-intolerant, you know.”
“Oh! I’m so sorry,” Sienna said, her voice and face instantly flooded with anxiety. “I didn’t know! Which cousin? Shane? I didn’t mean . . .”
“Just kidding,” I said. “Sienna. Chill.”
“Oh,” Sienna said. Her high cheekbones had bright-pink blotches in the centers. She tossed the floss and started brushing really aggressively. “I have lost all sense of humor or, like, sense.”
“All sense of sense,” I said, nodding. “That’s excellent.”
Sienna shook her head and kept brushing. No wonder her teeth are so shiny; she takes really good care of them.
To cheer her up and calm her down, I put my hand on my hip and rolled my eyes, imitating Riley, and said, in Riley’s breathy not-that-I-care-but voice, “I got a callback for a print ad for gluten-free bread last month.”
Sienna laughed so hard, she choked on her toothpaste. “Ow, ow, that’s terrible!”
I flipped my hair the way Riley does. “So many auditions.”
“I’m a model!” Sienna imitated, still brushing.
“Commercials,” I said. “Print work. I’m dating Pierre, who is also a model, like me, because, well, I’m a model. Bow down, losers.”
“Ugh, she’s the worst.” Sienna stopped brushing for a sec when a glob of toothpaste fell onto her phone. “Tell me what to do.” She stood there, her mouth erupting with toothpaste foam, looking like she’d gotten rabies.
“Well,” I said. “Okay, first? My advice? Spit.”
“Huh?” Bubbles of toothpaste foam floated from her mouth into the air between us.
“Spit?” I repeated.
She did, and waited.
“Sienna! Okay, now just text back anything, nothing—something like, We have Absolute up here, so if you want some, you better hurry.”
“Okay, I am literally just typing exactly what you said,” Sienna said, splashing water into her mouth and onto her face. She is the messiest tooth-brusher. I put her phone into the towel rack’s cubbyhole, next to a box of Band-Aids, so it wouldn’t get wet.
“What did you say again?” she asked, drying partially off.
“Sienna,” I said. “You got this.”
“Ugh,” Sienna grabbed her phone and followed me to my room, saying out loud while she typed, “We have Absolute up here, so if you want some, you better hurry.”
By the time she sent it, I was changing into clothes. Nobody sees me without a bra on. No baboom, baboom, thanks.
“I can’t even,” Sienna said, flopping down onto my bed. “My clothes from yesterday are still damp and all I have for today are more tennis clothes and oh, Gracie . . .”
I told her truthfully that she looked fine in my pajamas, and she should absolutely stay like that.
“You sure?” she asked.
“You look adorable,” I said. “I swear on Lightning’s life.”
“You are everything,” she said to me.
“I really am,” I agreed. “An everything bagel.”
“What would I do without you?”
“Miss me,” I said. I turned around to see if she thought I looked okay, in my new shorts and the dug-out-of-the-messy-pile-of-presents T-shirt Ilaria and Jo had given me as a birthday gift.
“That’s great on you. You’re completely awesome. I, on the other hand—”
“Don’t,” I said. “Remember our pact.”
“I, on the other hand,” she insisted, “am so sick of myself, I’m starving.”
“It’s hungry work, flirting,” I assured her.
“Well, then I think I am going to have to eat all the bagels.”
“Bagels have between 245 and 500 calories each,” I said in my best Riley voice.
“Good,” Sienna said. “I need all the calories in the universe.” She regathered her hair into a messy half ponytail/half bun, not even checking how it looked before we went down the hall. I did the same to mine. Hers looked cute. Hopefully mine did too.
27
IN A SANE WORLD, I COULD NEVER HAVE A CRUSH ON A BOY WHO LIKES BLUEBERRY BAGELS
By the time Dad got up to slice bagels during the next talkies commercial, the boys were ringing our doorbell. AJ was wearing Emmett’s pajama bottoms, which were three inches too short for him, but his hair was neatly combed. Emmett was wearing shorts and a T-shirt, but his hair was a minor mountain range, tilting west.
“Nice hair,” I said to Emmett, to keep from saying anything about how adorable AJ looked in those pajama bottoms. Look away, look away.
“You like that?” Emmett said. “Took an hour.”
“Totally worth it,” I said.
Meanwhile, everybody else was crowded around the center island
, where the bagels and toppings were all arranged. Mom lifted the Shakespeare tea towel off, and Dad asked what kind of bagel everybody wanted. He doesn’t trust anybody to slice bagels except himself.
“Are there any blueberry?” AJ asked.
Silence.
“Um,” Dad said. “No.” He didn’t say sorry or what’s your second choice because . . . blueberry?
“Dude,” Emmett said, putting his hand on AJ’s arm. “No.”
“What?”
“Blueberry?” Emmett asked.
“Blueberry bagels are the best!” AJ said.
My parents and Emmett and I all had to take a sec. Sienna just kept her eyes down, a small smile on her pretty mouth.
“Never say that again,” Emmett said to AJ. “I love you, man, but you actually can never say that again.”
“Blueberry bagel?”
Dad clutched his chest. Mom covered her face with her hands. Sienna was laughing her bubbly adorable laugh by then.
“Even in the same sentence,” Emmett said.
“Even in the same paragraph,” Mom said.
“In fact,” I said, pointing at the bowl of berries near Sienna’s arm. “Those blueberries? They’re pushing it.”
“Throw those out immediately,” Dad agreed.
“I love blueberries,” Sienna said, chivalrously, in AJ’s defense.
“Everybody loves blueberries,” Emmett said. “Just keep them out of the . . . Can I have an everything, please?”
“Yes,” Dad said, and started slicing him one. “Good man. And you? Tall boy? Pull yourself together. An everything? Garlic? The salt is for Gracie.”
“An everything, please,” AJ said humbly. “How does everything not include—”
“Stop,” Emmett warned him.
“Never mind,” AJ said.
We ate almost all the bagels and all the toppings Dad had gotten, too. So, score one for him, overbuying at the bagel shop, not. And score another one for AJ, who, though barely saying another word beyond thank you to my parents, now that he’d been schooled on what is fine and what is unspeakable, bagel-wise, managed to eat four bagels in the time it took the rest of us to eat one.
Lightning chased me around until I added some extra radicchio to her special plate, the one we got free with some soap from L’Occitane last year and used to just keep unused in the cabinet. Emmett cleared his plate all the way into the dishwasher and then sat back down next to me on the floor to watch Lightning eat. He and Daphne were really young when they got their rabbit. Before Fluff, he had a goldfish named Fishy.
He and I had a moment of silence for the tragedy of stupid pet names given by children too young to know better.
My parents shut off the TV after the talkies finished. Emmett and I were trash-talking about whether a tortoise could really beat a rabbit in a race. I was trying to focus only on the tortoise and the hare, hahahaha. Don’t look up at the counter again even though AJ eating is one of my favorite things to watch.
“Anybody want more?” Mom asked.
“Just a few mangled sample bagels left,” Dad said, holding the bowl toward the ill-fitting-pajama-pants wearers sitting at the counter. They both shook their pretty heads politely.
I could have eaten a second bagel, but I held back. I’d only had the one, plus okay, like, one tiny bite of an everything and one slightly less tiny bite of an egg, but those were the sample bagels. And those bites were just for taste. Just-for-taste bites of sample bagels have—fun fact!—between zero and screw you calories.
28
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE
Late that night my phone buzzed while I was lying in bed, watching the stars from the toddler turtle toy dance on my ceiling.
EMMETT: Hey, are you asleep?
me: yeah you?
EMMETT: Yeah.
me: oh sorry
EMMETT: You didn’t throw away the boxes and bags and stuff yet, did you?
me: what stuff?
EMMETT: BD gift wrapping stuff.
me: still a mess in here don’t judge me
EMMETT: Your present from me wasn’t just the awesome hat from the guy on the corner. There’s something else in that bag.
me: uh-oh if there’s a puppy in there it might be dead bc it’s v quiet here now
EMMETT: Oh no, poor puppy, oh no, oh no, I should’ve mentioned it before, oh no.
I got out of bed and dug through the bag from Emmett, stuffed with yellow tissue paper and, lo and behold, yeah, no puppy, but there was a small paper sack in there. I opened it. A necklace with a small chunk of yellow something, maybe a rock, dangling from it, held on by some silver wire.
It was very cool looking. I’d seen it on the Guy at the Corner’s table this past week and thought it looked like something Future Me would wear. But I hadn’t said anything out loud to anyone. Just pictured it, around my neck, when I was older.
And hey, now here I was, older. Fourteen.
Not old like that Future Me lady at Hungarian, reading a novel and eating a croissant-comma, but still, on my way toward becoming her. Was she wearing a necklace like this? Is that why I noticed her, or why I noticed the necklace?
I put it on and latched it behind my neck, under my mess of hair.
I took a selfie, even though I was all ragged from a long-haul weekend of turning fourteen. Still, I told myself, it was just Emmett. So I sent the picture to him, with thanks scribbled under it.
EMMETT: Perfect.
I sent him another selfie of me making a goofball fake-model pose, like I was Riley modeling this necklace.
EMMETT: I’d buy it.
me: you already did bozo
EMMETT: You like it? The guy said I could switch it for a supercoolio visor if you don’t.
me: no way. this rock thing on a chain is worth more than every visor in the world put together
EMMETT: Do you know how many visors you’d have to stack to get from the top of our building to the moon?
me: no
EMMETT: Phew.
me: yeah cuz that would be a weird piece of knowledge to have
EMMETT: Even tho u r 14 now.
me: yeah so I know stuff now watch out
EMMETT: Yikes. Okay, good night.
me: good night
me: hey Emmett?
EMMETT: Yeah?
me: I really like it thanks
EMMETT: Good, I’m glad. It looks nice on you.
me:
I kept starting words and deleting them. I had no idea how to respond to It looks nice on you. The typing and deleting went on under my fake dancing stars for approximately a billion hours until I fell asleep, holding my phone, still wearing the necklace.
29
A RARE BEAUTY
I was really into making bead necklaces when I was in nursery school, and I loved wearing them and giving them as gifts. In fact, Emmett and I got to be friends at Hollingworth Preschool when I used to make him bead necklaces and he wore them all the time. He never came to school or, the moms say, left the apartment without wearing one of my creations. We don’t remember any of this, but we believe the moms, because in every single picture of Emmett ages three and four, he has a bead necklace on. According to the stories our moms tell, I always gave him my best necklaces (unclear how I determined the rank, but I was supposedly very definite about the quality) and kept the second bests for myself. In my second year at Hollingworth, though, I made my best ever bead necklace, the Platonic Ideal of Bead Necklaces. They knew this because that was the one and only bead necklace I couldn’t part with, couldn’t even give it to Emmett. I asked Mom and Dad over and over, “Isn’t this one the most beautiful?” And they, being them, said that yes, wow, that is a rare beauty of a bead necklace.
That’s what they called it: a rare beauty of a bead necklace, and aft
er a while just Rare Beauty. That one I kept for myself, and stopped wearing any of my others. I gave all those second- and third-rankers away to grandparents and lesser nursery school friends, who I’m sure were thrilled to receive my rejected bead necklaces.
I wore Rare Beauty every single day when I was in the big-kid afternoon class at Hollingworth, and through the following summer. Until one day on the subway platform at Seventy-Ninth Street, waiting for the uptown 1 train, I got mad at Mom for some nothing; Mom can’t remember what it even was. Probably I was just hungry or tired so I wanted her to make the day start over from dawn and she didn’t. I was so massively little-kid angry, I took Rare Beauty off and threw it down on the platform near Mom’s feet.
Mom said, “Gracie, please pick up your bead necklace. Come on, sweetheart.”
And I said, “No! You pick it up!”
Mom says she wishes she had just picked it the heck up. But it was hot, August in the city, and it had been a long day, and I sounded bratty and she didn’t like that tone of voice, so she said, “No, Gracie. I’m not picking it up. You threw your bead necklace on the ground. You need to pick it up. The train is coming, sweetheart. Please pick up Rare Beauty.”
“You do it,” I said. “You pick it up.”
I turned my back on my necklace, and her.
Mom said, “I’m not picking it up, Gracie. If you don’t pick it up right now, Rare Beauty will be lost forever.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and refused to look at it. The train came. We got on without my necklace. And obviously Mom was right; it was lost forever. It’s not like I can go to the MTA lost and found now and say, Hey, ten years ago I left a rare beauty of a bead necklace on the uptown platform of the 1 train at Seventy-Ninth Street. Do you have it?
Oh, certainly, miss! Here it is in this special box. We’ve been wondering when somebody would come to claim it because, wow, it sure is a rare beauty!
Don’t think so.
So that was the end of that perfect bead necklace. Mom says I didn’t make myself a new one and never mentioned it again, so she didn’t either, until I was, like, ten and didn’t remember the incident at all. She was laughing, telling it, but then she got sad at the end. She said she has always regretted that she didn’t just grab it at the last second and shove it into her pocketbook, so at least she would have it as a memento.