Miracle Girls: A Novel

by Anne Dayton

  I watch the sun’s last rays vanish over the horizon. I thought I felt bad when I had no friends here, but tonight I decide that there’s nothing lonelier than knowing you’re missing out on your life. People—my friends—are out there having fun and falling in love and living while I’m stuck here and can only dream of someday taking part. Even my parents have plans. I must be the only person in Half Moon Bay who doesn’t get to enjoy the gorgeous fall night.

  I hear Mom sigh and then hustle my father, who doesn’t even remember to say good-bye to me, out the door. They’re gone. Finally. Off to schmooze with some people for Papá’s new practice. I hope it works. Papá is so stressed that I feel like he might snap at any moment. But I also kind of hope they have a terrible time.

  The house is completely quiet, and it feels hollow. Maria is out with friends from her church tonight. They went line dancing. I didn’t even know people still went line dancing, but at least she’s somewhere.

  I go upstairs to my room and find Zoe’s phone. In a flash of selfless pity, she gave me her phone for the night so I can keep in touch with them and hear about the festival. Zoe and Christine promised to report back if they saw Tyler. Christine even offered to talk to him for me again, but I declined. What’s the use? I’m never going to be allowed to date anyway. I text Christine’s number.

  C him yet?

  The light from the screen disappears, and I am left in darkness. Mom and I fought the whole way home from the festival and then stopped speaking to each other. I don’t like fighting with my parents, but it’s time that they learn that I’m not a helpless baby anymore. They think I can’t take care of myself, but I can.

  The phone beeps, and I look down to see that I have a text from Christine.

  T is here. Just saw him @ the haunted house.

  I text her back to keep him in her sights. I want to know everything, even if I will only torture myself with every single detail for the rest of my life. Just think, I could have been there. I could have bumped into him in the dark haunted house. If I had screamed when something jumped out at me, he might have taken my hand to comfort me. I fall back on the bed in a dizzy state. I should have been there.

  ***

  It’s hours and many text messages later when I hear a knock at my door. “Anita?”

  “Maria?” I sit up as she flips on the light and sits down on the edge of my bed. She’s still wearing her jeans and short-sleeved shirt. “Did you have a good time?”

  “We had a great time,” she says, stroking my hair lightly. “There was so much to remember, but we had a ball. I think I finally mastered the Tush Push.”

  “Um, good.” I think.

  “Have you been in here all night?” She glances around my spotless bedroom, frowning. When we moved in, Mom decided it was time to get rid of all my stuffed animals and childhood trophies and thought we should make it look “sophisticated.” In other words, she wanted it to look like some model teenager’s room she saw in a magazine. The all-white furniture, hot pink bedspread, brightly colored lamps, and pink faux-fur rug were not my choice. Which is basically the story of my life.

  “Yep.”

  “They just want to keep you safe.”

  I don’t answer. She changes tactic.

  “Have you and your mother settled on a theme for your quince yet?”

  “Considering I don’t even want a stupid quince, no.” I cross my arms over my

  chest. Mom thinks the party should have a fun theme, like Masquerade or Arabian Nights. “And even if I did want one, I don’t see what’s wrong with, oh, you know, a Mexican theme.” I roll my eyes.

  Maria is silent for a moment, massaging her knuckles.

  “Don’t forget to enjoy it,” she finally says.

  “What?”

  “Anita, your quince is a big deal.” She pauses. “Mine was magical. I wore the most beautiful dress because I was becoming a real woman, a mujer, and my friends all dressed up too. They were my damas, my ladies to attend me. And there was such a party—my family cooked for days and days, and I danced with all of the young men in town, and I got a tiara to wear just like a princess.” Her eyes become glassy and her face lights up as she relives the party that happened so long ago.

  Well, times have changed. The whole beautiful dress and tiara thing sounds okay, but the rest of it . . .

  “We’ll see,” I mumble.

  “Okay.” Maria nods, then kisses my forehead and walks out quietly. She can tell I’m not going to change my mind tonight. I lie back down on my bed again. I wonder what kind of dress Mom will let me get.

  It’s late when I finally get up to get ready for bed. After I brush my teeth and wash my face, I take one last peek at Zoe’s phone. I have two new text messages. The first one, sent a while ago, says they’re on their way to Zoe’s and they lost Tyler and didn’t see him the rest of the night.

  Then, twenty minutes ago, they sent me this:

  Good night, 0:-)

  17

  “Gossip alert.” Christine slides into our picnic table. Zoe and I chose this one because it’s a little broken on one end so no one ever uses it. It’s amazing how little time it took for Christine to start eating with us every day. All we had to do, it turned out, was ask.

  “Dish it,” I say, nibbling on my bagel.

  “Guess who tried to break her neck at a party on Saturday night?”

  “What?” Zoe says. Her lunch is dumped over our little wooden table, and she’s inspecting it. She usually eats the little baggy of almonds and tosses the “fruit leather” snack and whatever else her mother has sent her that day. Then she hits up the vending machine for two packs of Nutter Butters and a Dr. Pepper.

  “You know that big ogre, Zach?” Christine makes sure he’s not behind her.

  We nod. Everyone knows who he is, even Zoe.

  “Apparently he had a party after the festival on Saturday, and our future homecoming queen jumped off the roof at his house and into the pool.”

  “That’s very dangerous,” Zoe says, genuinely concerned. “You mean Riley, right?”

  “The one and only.” Christine takes a bite of yogurt.

  As if on cue, Riley and Ashley brush past our group. I hear “God Girl” as they pass by, and I put my head in my hands. So I like to wear Christian T-shirts. So what? They stop at a picnic table a few feet away and sit down. Ashley hangs on Riley’s every word. It’s sickening. Andy, the football goon, comes over to join them.

  “Nutter Butter run. I’ll be right back.” Zoe stands up and walks toward the snack bar.

  “What else did you hear?” I try to act like I don’t care, although we both know I do.

  Christine polishes off her yogurt. “I guess at first everyone thought it was really funny, and people were really drunk of course, but after she jumped off then there was, like, this silence that fell over everybody.”

  “Really?”

  “She could have broken her neck. And I guess she stayed under the water for a while. But then she came to the top and everyone cheered.”

  “That’s so messed up. What is she, an adrenaline junkie?” I can’t believe Zoe actually wants that girl to hang out with us. I glance back toward the snack bar and freeze. Tyler.

  Christine turns too and sees him. And Zoe is walking right behind him, trying to point at him without being too obvious. I sit up straight, quickly flash my teeth at Christine, who gives me a thumbs up, and throw Tyler a big smile. He continues to stare off in the distance and breezes right past us to Riley’s group. My shoulders fall.

  “I don’t know why I even bother.”

  Zoe sits down next to me so that she can have full view of Riley and Tyler.

  Christine studies Riley’s group for a moment. “Yeah, I’d say you have some competition there.”

  I crumple up my paper lunch bag. “It’s not really competition when the other person has already won. Tyler only talks to me at church. At school, I’m not even alive.”

  I shove a huge bite of bage
l into my mouth and fight back the tears. God Girl, huh? If I were really God Girl, wouldn’t that mean I was favored by God?

  Zoe gives me a hug. “At least you’ve got us.”

  “And what a prize we are.” Christine laughs.

  I clink my milk carton on Christine’s bottle of green tea and then on Zoe’s Dr. Pepper can. I hear Riley’s loud, almost boyish laugher and cringe as I look at the table.

  “I kind of want both, though.”

  Zoe’s face falls.

  “You guys are amazing. I don’t even want to talk about what it was like those first few weeks I went here and didn’t know anyone.”

  “You don’t have to tell us, God Girl.” Christine says. She takes an apple out of her backpack and pulls the stem off.

  Zoe brightens up. “We’re like a real group now. We should think of a name. My parents are always joining groups, you know, and you’ve got to have a name.”

  “How about Freaks of Nature?” Christine says, taking a bite.

  I laugh. “That about sums it up.”

  Tyler finally walks away from Riley and disappears down a hallway.

  “You guys,” Zoe says and picks at the flaking wood on our broken picnic table. “I’m serious. We’ve all got this, I don’t know, this second chance at life.”

  “Yeah.” I look at Christine to make sure she doesn’t think this is lame. “I kind of agree. It’s like we’re all here for a reason.”

  Christine snorts a little. “You mean we should have been dead a long time ago.”

  “It’s like we’re all miracles.” Zoe unwraps a Nutter Butter and smoothes the wrapper out on the table in front of her.

  ”I guess,” Christine says.

  “That’s it,” I say as the light bulb goes on. “We’re the Miracle Girls.” They both stare at me for a moment. “Okay, maybe not.”

  “It’s perfect.” Zoe claps. “That’s it.” We both stare at Christine.

  “I suppose if you guys don’t like Freaks of Nature, I go could with that.” She shrugs at us.

  “Now there’s just one more thing to decide,” Zoe says. She continues to play with the shiny red wrapper. “What about Riley?”

  “What about Riley?” Christine meets my eye, and we look at each other in horror. Zoe is sweet and everything, but she’s obviously lost her mind. Even if we did invite Riley into our little group, there’s no way she’d join. She hates me, for one. And she probably thinks Christine and Zoe are total nobodies.

  “No,” I say, shoving the last of the bagel in my mouth.

  “Not happening,” Christine says.

  “But she’s—”

  “Zoe.” I put my arm around her shoulders. “Three is the perfect number. It’s like the three parts of the Trinity. Or three strikes. Or . . .”

  “Three stooges.” Christine nods, taking a bite out of her apple.

  “And three amigos,” I say, though Zoe doesn’t look at all convinced by our list.

  “She’s a miracle too. God must have saved us all for a reason,” Zoe says. She crumples up the Nutter Butter wrapper and tosses it toward the trash can, but the wrapper doesn’t even come close and floats slowly to the ground. She runs to pick it up and throw it in the trash, then comes back. “I’m going to make it happen.”

  Christine laughs and throws the rest of her apple in the trash. It lands in the garbage can with a satisfying thud. “Not in this lifetime.”

  18

  “It’s way too cold to be wearing skirts that short.” Christine blows into her hands. The cheerleaders are jumping up and down like kangaroos on crack.

  “They’ve got their brain power to keep them warm,” I say, and Christine laughs.

  I pull the sleeves of my sweatshirt over my hands and take a deep breath of the cool night air, sweet with the scent of cinnamon sugar from the churros at the concession stand. The stadium lights shine brightly onto the supernaturally green field. The stadium is filled with noise, and the bleachers are packed with Marina Vista students cheering and clapping and wearing garnet and gold outfits in a bold statement of school spirit.

  This just in: it’s not cool to bring your English homework to Homecoming. Who knew? To be fair, I only brought The Good Earth in case Mom was late picking me up, but apparently that’s not the kind of thing most people bring to football games. I think even Christine was a little appalled when she showed up and saw me reading. But at least I’m not prancing around, sticking my butt in the air and waving pom poms around like someone else I know, someone whose name quite fittingly rhymes with “smiley.”

  Okay, I do have to give the cheerleaders some credit here. It’s hard to cheer like you mean it when your team is dramatically losing its own homecoming game. It also doesn’t help that the school mascot is a Starfish. “Go, mighty Starfish” just doesn’t sound very intimidating. Even Zach, the star quarterback, is having a tough time keeping it together while the team loses.

  “We've got our hands up high, our feet down low . . .” The whole peppy cheer squad is lined up and clapping along to some kind of chant. They wiggle their butts and scream while I try to figure out what they just said.

  “This cheer doesn't even make any sense.” Christine takes a sip of her hot chocolate. “Doesn't everyone have their feet down low? Ana, can you tell me something? Are your feet up high? No? Hmm, fascinating.”

  I snicker and turn back to the crowd. “What do you think the singular of pom poms is?” I stuff a handful of popcorn in my mouth.

  “What? Now you’re asking the great secrets of life?” Christine continues to study the cheerleaders. “Zoe owes us.”

  “For the rest of her life.”

  Christine and I crane our necks over to where the band sits. I can’t pick Zoe out in the sea of instruments and hideous uniforms. At least we’ll get to see her march at half time.

  I’m not much into football. Did a football player ever go on to pioneer a vaccine or broker a ceasefire between warring nations? No. It’s not a good use of time. But Zoe begged us to come and see her perform, and friends are friends. Christine and I decided that we liked Zoe more than we hated football. Besides, Christine pointed out it could be an interesting anthropology project, you know, to observe the natives at their big powwow or something.

  Besides, Homecoming seems like the kind of thing you should do once, and since Zoe’s family was going to come along to cheer on the band, my parents deemed the outing acceptable. Thankfully, Zoe’s parents are sitting up in the back row with some other band parents, huddled under wool blankets wearing shirts that say “What’s the football team doing on the marching field?” and cheering at every opportunity. I suspect there might be something stronger than hot chocolate in the thermos they keep passing around.

  The crowd around us begins to scream, and I look down at the field in time to see the Seaside Spartans get the ball and run with it to the, um, end of the field thingy.

  Christine makes a face. “Why do they blink so much?” She blinks her eyes in rapid succession in the direction of the cheerleaders, then screws up her face.

  “They look like those dolls whose eyes open and close whenever their heads bobble,” I say.

  “You want some more?” She holds out her hot chocolate. I shake my head and slip more buttered popcorn into my mouth. I prefer my calories in solid form. I continue scanning the crowd.

  “You’re being totally obvious,” she says.

  “What?” I spin my head around and try to look innocent, but she rolls her eyes. “I was looking for Zoe.” I quickly cast my eyes over to where the marching band is sitting in the stands. As if on cue, they launch into a rousing rendition of “Louie, Louie.”

  “He’s over there in the front.” Christine points to the section of the bleachers down in front, near the middle of the field, right by where the cheerleaders are standing. It’s where the cool kids stand. I already figured that much out. I squint, and finally spot his curly blond hair. He’s wearing a light-up plastic neon cord, like you get at th
e circus, around his head, and a dark tuxedo.

  The homecoming dance immediately follows the game, and though it’s a casual thing, the members of each grade’s court are dressed up since the Homecoming Queen will be crowned at half time. Not surprisingly, Riley was elected our Freshman Princess, though since she’s cheering, she gets to change into her dress before the halftime show. Anyway, Tyler is the Sophomore Prince, hence the monkey suit.

  The three of us are not going to the dance. I’m smart enough to know that dances are nothing more than highly organized torture exercises. If I want to stand around and feel awkward, I’ll go to a nude beach. Also, Papá would never let me go even if I wanted to, which I don’t.

  “I wasn’t looking for Tyler.”

  “You should just go talk to him.”

  “No way.”

  “You have to. It’s pathetic otherwise. Before the end of the night, I will insist that you go up and talk to him.”

  “In your dreams.”

  “If you don’t go talk to him, someone else will.” Christine throws her hands up in the air.

  “Hey there.” I turn around quickly, then break into a grin when I see it’s Ms. Moore sliding into an empty seat in the row behind us. “Look at you two wild and crazy girls out on the town.”

  “What are you doing here?” Christine asks.

  Ms. Moore shrugs. “Not much else to do in this town. Might as well take in the culture.”

  I guess it never occurred to me to wonder what Ms. Moore does in her own time. Most teachers have families and kids to deal with, but she doesn’t have any of that. Suddenly I wonder if she ever gets lonely.

  “You need to get a boyfriend, Ms. Moore.” Christine seems to dare Ms. Moore to argue.

  “Been there, done that.” Ms. Moore rolls her lips in for a moment and seems lost in thought. “I came here to get away from a bad engagement, and I’m not in any rush to head back. Boyfriends aren’t everything, you know.”