by Abby Cooper
I didn’t say anything back. I just lay there until I heard another familiar voice. And this one actually sounded nice. “Do you need some help getting up?”
Who was that? I lifted my head as high as it would go.
“Ms. Wolfson?”
“Sophie?”
I made a weird gurgly noise that didn’t really mean yes or no. It kinda just meant Get me out of here, please, and a second later, her hand was firmly gripping mine.
I knew that I had to get up. That’s what people did in this kind of situation. I had to get back on the horse. Or the stationary bike. Or just leave. Or whatever. The point was, I had to get up, because that’s what Adventurous Girls did, that’s what cool historical people did, and that’s what regular people did, too.
Only …
A weird thought crossed my mind. Who said that we always had to get up? Why couldn’t we lie there if that’s what we felt like doing? Now that I thought about it, usually the guys who lay there during battles throughout history were the ones who survived. Mom had been acting like she was lying on the ground for the past five months now, and she was getting by.
But maybe getting by wasn’t enough. Wasn’t the whole point of this risk project (besides doing it for Kaya and Rafael) to inspire Mom, to remind her how fun it was to have adventures and try new things and not spend all day lying around?
This project sure didn’t feel very fun right now. Even so, I squeezed Ms. Wolfson’s hand and let her pull me up.
“So what were you guys doing here?” Viv asked.
I could feel Ms. Wolfson watching me, even if she was quiet.
“We started training for our triathlon,” Kaya said.
“Oh, the one you were talking about in class? The one in April? I’m totally doing that triathlon, too! Look, I have my sign-up sheet right here.” She waved it around and around, so much that I felt a little dizzy.
“You’re doing it for your risk project?”
“No.” She giggled. “Just for fun. I’m doing something more challenging for my risk project.”
“And that would be?” I asked, but nobody seemed to hear.
“You should give your sign-up sheet to Sophie,” Kaya said. “She offered to go to ZOOM and turn all of ours in.”
Viv practically shoved the form into my right hand. My left, I realized, was still clutching Ms. Wolfson’s. “Thanks, Sophie! Anyways, I take it you guys don’t want to stay for the spin class?”
“Hey now.” Rafael stepped forward. He had taken off his helmet and held it above his head like a trophy. “We’ll stay for the class if we want to stay for the class. We fear no spinning. We leave no spinning bike unspun. We spin the spinning bikes to spinfinity and beyond.” I am the master of the spinning, his bubble said. And soon I will be the master of the gloves, and the universe! Bwahaha.
“Are you serious about wanting to stay?” Kaya asked him. “Because I would do it if you would.”
Kaya, Miss Super Afraid of Everything, would stay for the class? That didn’t make any sense.
“Obviously,” Rafael said. “I was just getting warmed up.”
“I don’t know,” said the Human Orange. “The class is really high intensity. It’s geared toward adults who’ve had a lot of experience. And, of course, children of the instructor, who’ve grown up around this type of active lifestyle.” She beamed at Viv.
“Please, ma’am. We’ll go slow and take it easy. And no injuries for us, promise.” That could not possibly be Rafael’s voice, begging like he was dying to stay up for five more minutes at night. And did he have to mention injuries? My leg throbbed like it wanted to remind me that there was totally going to be a bruise there soon.
“Well, I guess it’s okay, just this once. Take it easy, though. And I’ll need you to text your parents and make sure it’s okay, and I’ll need to e-mail them a waiver to sign electronically.”
I watched Kaya. She smiled, but her bubble said exactly what I suspected: Stay. Calm. Do. Not. Freak. Out. She didn’t really want to stay for the class. As her best friend and the person who had brought her here in the first place, I knew I should help her escape somehow, but a weird part of me felt kinda smug, like, Ha ha on you, that’s what you get for saying you wanted to stay. What was wrong with me? I was supposed to look out for her in scary situations, but all I wanted to do was leave.
Ms. Wolfson looked at me again. “I don’t really feel like spin class anymore,” she said. “I’m actually kind of hungry. I could go for some breakfast for dinner, if you’d care to join me for an early dinner.”
Her bubble said, I feel so sorry for Sophie, but maybe I felt sorry for me, too, so I nodded and followed her out, right as the lights went off in the room and loud music started thumping. Out of the corner of my eyes I could see flashes of neon red, green, and blue lights. I looked back and saw circles of the colors swirling together on the ceiling, crashing into each other like they were colorful bumper cars. There was the disco ball I’d been looking for, finally—only there were more like seven thousand of them all going at once. There was no way Kaya would be into this. I didn’t look back, but I bet she was staring at the door, wondering if it was too late to catch up to us.
My brain spun as Ms. Wolfson and I walked through the lobby, and I don’t mean the kind of spinning as on those dumb stationary bikes. It was really no big deal that Rafael wanted to stay and Kaya sorta kinda wanted to stay and I didn’t want to stay one bit. We didn’t have to love all the same things. Or be good at all the same things. And this was much different than riding a real bike, anyway. And I was a great swimmer, so there was always that. Even if I was bad at bikes, I could probably still win the race if I swam fast enough to make up for it. And somehow figured out how to run.
I knew all of this, and I knew that I wanted pancakes way more than I wanted more traumatic exercise (and more time with Viv Carlson), so I should have been happy.
But as I slipped on my jacket and pushed through the gym’s heavy door with Ms. Wolfson by my side, I wasn’t happy at all.
15
THE TOUGH EAT PANCAKES
I wasn’t hungry either, as it turned out. That was weird. I was always hungry. Even when I was sick or tired or cranky, food was always good. Especially pancake food.
I kept picking up pieces and putting them back down, then scooting them around my plate with my fork to make it look like I had eaten a lot more than I actually had. It was a trick Mom and I came up with once when she was going out with this guy named Torin who was really good at playing drums and drawing funny pictures of animals sticking their tongues out but not so good at cooking or acting like an adult.
I giggled a little, thinking about him. He always wanted us to come over so he could cook for us, and it was super nice of him, but it was really, really, really bad food. Always. But it was still fun. Mom and I would have silent competitions to see who could make the funniest shape or design out of their dinner, and we’d share looks across the table like “Look, I turned my mashed potato–like things into the Eiffel Tower!” Then we’d go home and order a pizza and spicy garlic knots.
“At least he tried,” Mom would say. “It’s still probably better than what I’d make!” And then we’d laugh, because we knew it was true.
Torin never understood our looks, or the fact that we were making them because his mashed potatoes were not even close to being mashed, or potatoes. Maybe that was why he and Mom broke up, but I think it might have had more to do with that day when we realized that the reason Torin was so talented at drums and animal pictures was because he worked on both of them all day instead of going to a job. Pratik’s new job meant that he was going to be off working overseas or whatever. He’d probably go to his job way too much, but Torin didn’t go at all. Mom and I needed someone in the middle, maybe, who went just enough.
“Look, I turned my pancakes into a snowman!” I pointed to my plate. I had lined the three of them up so the biggest one was on the bottom and so on, and I’d made a face
out of my chocolate chips.
Maybe I totally stunk at spinning, but I could make a pancake snowman like nobody’s business.
“That’s nice,” said Ms. Wolfson, with a fake smile that reminded me a little bit of Viv’s. Maybe you shouldn’t brag to the person paying for your pancakes about how you’re turning them into something else and not eating them, I realized a little too late.
“But, um, yeah. They’re really good, though. Thanks, Ms. Wolfson.” I made myself chop off some of the snowman’s belly and forced it to my lips. It didn’t taste bad or anything. It just didn’t taste like much at all.
“For pancakes that are so good, you’re hardly touching them. Aside from turning them into a snow sculpture.” A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth, even though her voice sounded serious.
“Sorry. I guess I’m not that hungry. I mean, I am hungry. I’m always hungry. I just don’t feel like eating. So it’s sorta confusing.”
“It’s okay that you fell off that bike, you know. No matter what my spin teacher thought about it. No one’s perfect. And you know what they say—when the going gets tough, the tough eat their pancakes.”
A small giggle escaped my mouth. That was so not what they said, whoever they were, but I liked this new expression better than whatever the original was.
“What were you and your friends doing there, anyway?”
She wasn’t asking in a mean way or an I’m-trying-to-get-you-in-trouble way. It seemed like she just really wanted to know. And she liked breakfast food almost as much as Mom and me, so she was probably an okay person to tell.
“We were practicing for this mini-triathlon we’re doing in April,” I said. “My mom doesn’t really care. But she will.” I picked at my pancakes some more.
“She’s been unhappy,” Ms. Wolfson said, sorta like she was asking me even though she already knew the answer. “It’s not going well with Neighbor Boy.”
“They broke up a while ago,” I said.
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.” Ms. Wolfson raised her eyebrows and studied me over her plate. “I haven’t seen your mom in the lobby much lately. Guess that explains it, huh? Although she always looks very nice when I see her. You’d never know anything was wrong.”
“Well, come upstairs at night sometime,” I said with a groan. Almost instantly I felt terrible, like I’d kicked myself in the gut or something. I shouldn’t spill the truth about Mom like that. She’d never told any of my secrets in the whole twelve years I’d known her, and here I’d just blabbed hers without a second thought.
“You know, a lot of times people only show off their highlights,” Ms. Wolfson said. She took a huge sip of her chocolate milk and blew a few bubbles in it with her straw. “People show you what they want you to see and believe. Your mom might want everyone to think she’s one thing, but then when she’s in her home with the person she loves…” she nodded at me, “she feels safe enough to be something else.”
I blew bubbles in my chocolate milk, too, as I thought that over. First things first, she was onto something. Why had I not blown bubbles in milk in so long? It was way fun. Second, that made a lot of sense.
“Well, I’m…” I stopped. I was about to say that I was tired of being the one she loved, the one she was her real self around. But that was by far the meanest thing I could ever say. It was bad enough to think it.
“Anyway, your mom is going to be just fine,” Ms. Wolfson continued.
“How do you know that?”
“Because. Wolfson women are not doormats. Which is how I know you’re going to be just fine, too. With your friends, with your race, everything.” She folded her hands in her lap.
I folded my hands in my lap, too.
“Doormats?” I asked. Mom and I had a doormat. It was blue and it said HI. I’M MAT. I didn’t think about Mat much; I just stepped on him anytime I went in or out of our condo. And I had no idea what he had to do with anything we were talking about right now.
“I know we’re not related, but since we’re neighbors who have shared cocoa and cribbage, I hereby consider you a Wolfson woman. Your mom, too, of course. And Wolfson women don’t let anyone make them feel that they can be walked on. No one treats us that way. Not stationary bikes. Not races. Not boyfriends or ex-boyfriends or anybody else.”
I smiled. Now I was thinking about Mat a lot. Even though he wasn’t real or anything—poor guy. Mom and I stepped on him with muddy shoes. Snowy shoes. Shoes that had stepped in mushy dog poop. And he just had to take it.
But we didn’t.
I smiled, took a bite of pancake, and looked around the diner. In the corner, a bubble had popped up over a guy’s head. He looked like a regular guy. Maybe a little scraggly (kinda like Pratik when he had all his face hair going on), but regular, like he could be somebody’s dad. He was taking a sip out of a coffee cup and staring into space. The bubble said, I haven’t eaten in two days.
I looked down at what was left of my pancake snowman, feeling like a terrible person. Here I was, messing around instead of eating, basically wasting the awesome food in front of me, getting a little confused by the person I was talking to, but at least I had someone to talk to, and meanwhile there was someone in the same room who hadn’t eaten in forty-eight hours. My stomach rumbled just thinking about having to survive something like that.
Ms. Wolfson followed my gaze across the room. Then she said, “Let’s get that man something to eat, shall we?” She waved and our waitress came over. “Can you add another order of pancakes to my tab? And please take it to the man in the corner, but don’t tell him who sent it.” The waitress nodded and went away.
Meanwhile, my eyes were almost popping out of my head. How did Ms. Wolfson know about that guy? She looked my way and winked.
Holy chocolate pancakes. Could it be? Ms. Wolfson knew about my bubbles. It was the only possible explanation. Or, even freakier yet … she saw them, too.
16
WRISTBANDS
Obviously she didn’t want me to know for some reason, since she wasn’t coming right out and telling me. I wished a bubble would appear over her head, something that would tell me what to do. Maybe a nice Yeah, it’s okay, ask me or an Ignore it and ask me about cribbage strategies. Anything would be better than what I had to work with now.
“It’s been about forty-five minutes,” Ms. Wolfson said after she paid the bill. “Let’s run back to the gym and grab your friends.”
I groaned inside my head. I kinda figured they’d get home on their own; none of us lived far, so they could walk together. I didn’t really want to see them and talk about my super embarrassing fall. I wasn’t a doormat or anything. I could act tough. But I couldn’t make the fall—or the bruise—disappear. Would Rafael still think I was awesome after something like that?
The thought of Kaya and Rafael walking together without me made the pancakes churn around and around in my stomach. It was fine that they were in Dumb Fake Biking Class of Doom together because they couldn’t really talk to each other and do that at the same time. Unless they were so incredibly talented that they could. Which, at this point, wouldn’t surprise me that much.
“Okay.” I zipped up my jacket. “Yeah, let’s go back and get them.”
As we walked toward the door, we passed the guy who hadn’t eaten in two days, who now had a giant steaming hot breakfast-for-dinner plate in front of him. He looked up at us and grinned from ear to ear, though he didn’t know who had given him the meal. He was smiling at everyone who passed by, not just us. And he was gobbling it down like they were the best pancakes he’d ever eaten in his life.
By the time we got to the gym, I was a little happier. It was cool that we’d used that bubble to help someone. But what wasn’t cool was the way Kaya, Rafael, and Viv were standing in front of the gym all smiley, talking and giggling and looking at each other like no one else on the whole planet existed.
My heart felt like it’d dropped all the way from the top of Mount Fitz Roy, that ridiculously tal
l mountain in Argentina.
“Hi, guys,” I said. My voice came out in a whisper, so no one heard. But they still had eyes, didn’t they? They should be able to see me standing right next to them. Only if they did see me, no one said a thing.
“Hi,” I tried again, a little louder.
“Sophie!” Rafael turned to me. Kaya and Viv were still talking to each other. What was so important that they couldn’t stop for a second to care that I was back?
“You should’ve stayed,” Rafael shouted to me. “It was amazing! We spun to this awesome playlist, and there were flashing lights, and it was like the coolest dance party ever, only on bikes!”
“You don’t have to yell,” I said. “I’m right here.”
At least he was talking to me, though, even if he was doing it way too loudly.
“Sorry! We had to scream at the top of our lungs to talk to each other in there. It was the best thing ever!”
Kaya and Viv’s Super Important Chat finally ended, and Kaya and Rafael said bye to Viv in this super long, dramatic, goodbye-forever kind of way, like it was going to be twelve years before they saw her again, not twelve hours.
When Ms. Wolfson, Rafael, Kaya, and I got outside, Kaya started skipping down the sidewalk. Skipping down the sidewalk! Obviously she was happy about something, which was good. But I’d missed it, whatever it was. I’d ditched them when they were doing this for me. It wasn’t her fault she was amazing at it and I stank.
I picked up my pace. There was a bubble forming over Kaya’s head, bouncing right along with her with each skip.
This is crazy, it said.
I took a couple steps back as the bubble disappeared. I guess what it said made sense, sorta. Kaya had done totally new things tonight, and it was a huge deal for her. She was probably completely freaking out. She probably had freaked out, during the class. And I hadn’t been there for her. But if she was freaking out, why did she seem so happy?