“Yeah,” I say.
Luckily, we make the endless light at Scary Boulevard so I’m not super-late. Just regular-late.
I’m dreading class, but at least it all ends today. Dad and I can go back to our lazy Saturday mornings! Just the two of us. I say good-bye and walk down the make-me-choke-from-chlorine-smell halls to the classroom, and as usual, I’m the last one there.
The other Naomi is wearing this really cool turquoise shirt, and as I sit down next to her, I say, “That shirt looks so good on you!” And she gives me a big smile. And I think, Hey! Everything is really going to be all right!
Julie steps to the front of the room, and everyone goes quiet. “I’m going to give you a few minutes right now to run through your projects, make sure everything’s working, and then we’ll move forward with presentations.”
A knot tightens in my stomach. “We should tell her,” I say to the other Naomi. “Before everyone starts showing what they did. Let’s get it over with.” When I was little, I used to like to pull a Band-Aid off slowly (underwater, when possible), but now I believe in getting hard things over with quickly.
The other Naomi is scratching at a tiny piece of something on the keyboard when she asks, “Tell her what?”
What does she think??? “That we weren’t able to finish,” I loud-whisper. “That we don’t have anything to show!”
Why won’t she look at me?
She says something really quiet, not at all to me, under her breath. Is she scared? “Come on, Naomi,” I say. “Let’s tell her. . . .”
“But we did finish,” she says, louder now. “Or I guess I should say, I finished. Since you—” And then she’s back to talking under her breath.
The two girls sitting in front of us turn around and give us this long stare, a silent way of saying “BE QUIET!!!” But the other Naomi is being plenty quiet now.
“What do you mean?”
She opens a project and starts playing around with it. I ask, “Hey, where are the stairs I put in?” And then I realize that it’s not even our project at all. It’s something completely new. Something I had nothing to do with.
“I made a new game since you didn’t seem interested in it. I thought it was fun, so I did it, and it came out great, no thanks to you.”
I feel stung. And it doesn’t make sense, because she’s right. I mostly didn’t want to do it. But I also finally did the right thing, and she completely ignored it. “So you just ignored my upstairs/downstairs idea and created a whole new thing? What about my note? Why didn’t you at least write back and tell me you were trashing my stuff?”
“What note?” she asks, but not in a nice voice. Not in a nice voice at all. It’s a voice that sounds like she doesn’t even believe I wrote a note!
I am biting my lip so hard, I’m scared it’s going to start bleeding.
Everyone can hear her say in this super-bossy and talking-down way, “Don’t worry that you didn’t do anything. I got this. Just be quiet and follow my lead.”
The texting–nail polish girl in back actually stands up to get a better look at us. I try to stare her down but end up looking away.
I want to pull the other stupid Naomi’s hair or pinch her or at least scream really loud, but everyone is already looking at us. Staring at us. Three people are standing now, peering around other people. You’d think that would make me be quiet, but I’m so mad! “I’m not Brianna. You don’t get to be a bossy big sister to me.”
She keeps playing around with HER project on the screen, and I sit there with my mouth open. Before long I feel Julie standing right in front of us.
“I would like to talk to you both outside the classroom right now.”
My stomach ripples with scaredness as we follow Julie into the hall.
“Would one of you like to tell me what’s going on?”
I think about starting when we first went to the other Naomi’s house for dinner, how we had the same sneakers and Dad forced me to do this class so I’d have to spend more time with her. And then she announced to everyone that she did the whole project without me. But I don’t think that’s what Julie has in mind.
“We worked together on our project in the beginning, but then SHE got bored,” the other Naomi says. “So I finished it myself. And my dad said it was awesome.”
Her dad? What does he have to do with anything?
She stands tall and proud, but one look at Julie makes her all slouchy again.
“I have been very clear that this is a team project. A project for a pair to complete together. Do you remember, girls? Collaboration? Mature and generous spirits? Respect? All that is far more important to me, and I hope to you, than the projects themselves.” Julie looks right at me. “You were bored with your project?” she asks.
It’s too much to explain. “I guess,” I say. “Some of it was fun.” I can’t look her in the eye, but I do make myself say, “I’m sorry. I should have helped more. But when I tried to, she ignored me and did everything by herself.”
Julie looks right at the other Naomi now. “If you really did the bulk of the work yourself, or with someone other than your partner, I’m sorry to say that you can’t be considered for the showcase.” And then she really surprises me by bending over a little and drawing both of us into a hug. “But DuoTek will always be here, you know. Maybe you can get together to work on a project and present it if you join us for the fall session.”
As we walk back into the room, I’m almost sure that the other Naomi is doing everything she can to not cry in front of everyone. She doesn’t say a thing. She stands as straight as she can and walks back, then slinks into the seat, blinking a lot.
I wish I had made her a costume back when I studied her. She could really use a confident costume right now.
Everyone is looking at us. Every single person. Nail Polish girl is smirking. One girl who was absent for half the class is whispering with the girl next to her.
I want to protect the other Naomi—and maybe myself too—from all the people who turn to stare. But all I can do is sit there and stare back, feeling awful.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Naomi Marie
“Want my chocolate pudding?” asks Xio. She pats my shoulder. “I think you need it.”
I’ve spent the whole lunch period explaining why we didn’t have our “celebration” on Saturday. Explaining that all my hard work didn’t even matter to THAT OTHER NAOMI because she is a big lazy babyhead who doesn’t do work and gets mad at people who do.
I take the chocolate pudding and the Paddington Bear spoon that Xio is holding out.
“Thanks,” I say. “I mean, can you believe her?! I was trying to make us both look good, even though I did EVERYTHING.”
Xio nods.
“She called me BOSSY!”
Xio nods.
“I was TRYING to give her some SHINE and not take ALL THE CREDIT even though I DID ALL THE WORK and she just . . . she just . . . was SO MEAN!”
Xio nods.
“Why do you keep nodding?” I ask.
“Because that’s what it said you should do in my Friendship Skilz workshop when a BFF is having a crisis and keeps—needs to vent.” The bell rings, and Mikey gets busted right as he’s about to throw a milk.
“When did you go to that?” I ask, forgetting how mad I am for a second. We start packing up our things and head down the hall to the classroom.
“Um . . . Saturday afternoon. After . . . you know, things didn’t happen.”
“Oh,” I say. Since Mrs. Perkins isn’t back yet, we lean on my desk together. “Was it good?”
“Yeah . . . I would have told you, but your mom said you didn’t really feel like talking.”
“She was right.” I do now, though. “And another thing. The game I made by myself? Seriously awesome.”
Xio nods, really slowly and exaggerated this time. I start giggling.
“Hey,” she says. “Can we make a game together?”
“Sure, that would be
way more fun than working with Ms. Evil. I can show you how to use DuoTek.”
“Great! Because I have an idea from the Friendship Skilz workshop and Vocalympians!”
This time I nod very, very slowly. And we both laugh.
Mrs. Perkins rushes into the classroom and starts talking like she’s been there all along. “For this project, you will be working in teams of four. And, yes, I know—one team of five,” Mrs. Perkins adds when Margot the Correcter raises her hand. “You’ll have ten minutes to work out the teams, and I don’t”—she glares at us—“want any nonsense.”
Mrs. Perkins never wants any nonsense, and I’m glad. We only have art once a week, and the kids who fool around just mess things up for us all. Last week, Maria V. was my partner, and she drank all the milk with food coloring from our liquid paintings. Mrs. Perkins told us it wasn’t poisonous, but since then Maria’s been way more annoying than she used to be.
We shuffle around to figure out teams. Xio and Chris Williams jump over to me right away, which gives me a warm, sunshiny feeling; I really need that now.
“Who else?” says Chris, looking around. He tries to make his voice deep and growly. “We must choose wisely.”
Xio nudges him. “It’s like this. . . .” She clears her throat and growls, “We must choose wisely.”
“Whoa!” he says. “How’d you do that?”
“She can go high too,” I add. “Like glass breaking.”
“I got skills,” says Xio. “And I take vocal gymnastics class.” She sings what I think is supposed to be a scale, waving her index finger around the whole time. A few people look over, including Jenn Harlow, who rolls her eyes and whispers to her minions. The same old same old. I swallow the lump that’s in my throat and turn away.
“Come on, guys, let’s get this done,” I say. “I don’t want to look like we’re slackers.”
Yasmine is headed our way, and I smile. She’s reliable and not bossy. She’ll have this on lock. They’ll all see. I can COLLABORATE as good as anyone else. Better, even.
“Come on over, Yazzy,” I say. But as she walks toward us, Jenn grabs her arm and drags her away. What’s up with that?
“Five minutes!” calls out Mrs. Perkins.
I march over to Jenn’s group. “Hey, Yazzy,” I say loudly. “Did you want to be on our team?”
She looks at me, then at Jenn. “Um . . .”
Jenn steps forward. “Yazzy’s going to be with us,” she says. “My friend Drea is in this workshop? Where you make computer games?” Uh-oh. Even though she’s ending every sentence with a question mark, we both know exactly where she’s going with this. “And she said they had final presentations? And there was this one team?” She pauses.
“This one team what?” I ask.
She sighs. “She said it was sooooooo random. This one team was the only one that didn’t show anything, and she felt sooooo sorry for them . . . especially the bossy one who thought she knew everything but was obviously clueless.”
I put my hand on my hip, but then I put it down so I don’t look that interested. “Really?”
“Yeah, really,” she says. She rolls her eyes. “Oh, come on, Naomi, you can’t play it off. She told me the whole story, and as soon as she described the bossy girl, I knew it was you. And, like, some other girl named Naomi too, which is so weird, like you.”
I just keep looking at her, and I don’t blink. I can feel my face heat up again as I remember how it felt to be just sitting there doing nothing after all that work. Like I didn’t even matter. Again. Like I was being erased. Like I’m not me anymore.
“She said you were trying to cheat or something, and I’m not surprised. That’s why I think Yazzy should be with people who do their own work.”
I start to say, “I always do my own work!” but I stop. I stand there for another beat so they know that I am me and I am right here. Then I turn and walk away slowly, probably in a way that Momma might call grown. I can hear them whispering behind me.
When I get back to Xio and Chris, they ask what happened. “Jenn is using her powers for evil again,” I say, and leave it at that.
Xio raises an eyebrow. “Should I say something?”
“It’s no big deal,” I say. And it isn’t. I know what I did, and what I can do. Shine your light without dimming anyone else’s. “Come on, we’ve got like a minute left.”
“Maybe we can just be three?” asks Chris. “Or . . .”
We all glance over at Mikey and shudder.
There’s a tap on my shoulder, and I turn to see Yazzy.
“Can I work with you guys?” she asks.
I want to ask why, and what about Jenn, but I don’t. “Sure,” I say. “There’s room for one more.”
“Thanks,” she says. “Jenn thinks everyone should do the work for her. You always have good ideas.”
“We’ve all got skills,” I say.
Mrs. Perkins claps. “Time’s up. Mikey, if you don’t have a team . . .” She looks around the room. “Join Naomi’s group.” She looks at me like she expects me to complain.
“I like to be called Naomi Marie now, Mrs. Perkins” is all I say.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Naomi E.
“So you know how we postponed the celebration because . . .” It would be impossible to sum up how not celebration-y that class with the other Naomi was last weekend, so I let the “because” sit in the air. Birds are singing, and the “because” fades away as they tweet on, mixed in with the sounds of people and cars.
“Yeah,” Annie says, watching her feet dribble the soccer ball. She’s running some drill she learned at practice that involves kicking the ball high up and then trying to control it with her feet. I always want to say, “It would be so much easier if you’d use your hands,” but Annie doesn’t find soccer jokes funny.
It’s hot this morning, but there are lots of clouds, and when they slide in front of the sun, you can feel a cool breeze too. Beneath the tree, little not-yet-apricots fell before they had a chance to get ripe, rotting in a sloppy circle around the trunk.
I’m on the swing, rocking slowly, feeling pretty miserable. “I screwed up,” I say. I’ve had that not-hungry-and-then-some feeling in my stomach all week.
Annie’s feet keep doing complicated things, but now she’s looking up at me. “Yeah? So what really happened?”
I tell her the whole horrible story. Everything. How I kept not doing any work. And how the other Naomi and I argued a lot but sometimes we agreed too, and how some of the stuff we put in our project was really cool. But how in the end it was this whole disaster, and if I had only worked as hard as the other Naomi, everything would have been fine, the class would be over, we’d have had our big celebration, and Annie would have already met the other Naomi.
“I really did want to meet her,” Annie says.
I’m almost sure they’d like each other. I can picture Annie “reading” one of Brianna’s books, and both of them—Brianna and Naomi—laughing with Annie and me.
“I’m realizing something,” I tell Annie. “I actually like her. I was so mad at Dad about everything that I was almost refusing to let her be my friend, you know?”
Incredibly, impossibly, Annie’s feet are not moving. The ball is still, right next to her. She’s not moving, just waiting, like I’ve said something she thought she’d never hear.
“She’s really smart. And kind of funny too.”
I wish I could make this better. And without thinking too much about it, I say, “So I have this idea”—even though it’s only the start of one—“and maybe you could meet her.”
“I’m tired of waiting. When? When would I meet her?”
“Now?”
I don’t exactly lie to my dad, because it is true, as I said, that we’re heading toward Annie’s now. I don’t mention that we’ll be walking right past her house after we head toward it. Annie and I are barely on our way when she asks, “Exactly how mad will your dad be if he finds out?”
> Good question. Hard to answer. “He won’t find out,” I tell her. I want to say more, but the loudest bus in the history of transportation is right next to us. It could win awards for snorty and groaning loudness. We walk faster to get away, but it catches up to us. Annie stops, turns, and gives it a nasty look. A bus! When it finally turns, we can hear each other again.
“We’re allowed to walk to each other’s houses all the time, right?” I say.
Annie looks at me like she’s not even going to bother answering such a stupid question. “It’s the other part,” she says. “Are you allowed to walk to the Y yourself?”
She knows I’m not. All because of one stupid street. That very wide street we have to cross where there was once a terrible accident and so now I need to be with my dad to cross, probably until I graduate high school. Or maybe even after that. “I walked there every week with my dad for the six stupid classes,” I say. And then, remembering I’m trying to be nicer about the whole DuoTek thing, I say, “For six whole weeks.”
Annie makes a face at me—eyebrows raised, half a smile—that says, You totally didn’t answer my question, and we both know you are not allowed to cross that street without an adult.
We’re a block from Annie’s when she stops walking. She looks at me, confused, and says, “So wait a minute. You know her sched-ule by heart? You’re sure the other Naomi will be there now?”
I shake my head. “But she made it sound like she’s always there. Like she practically owns the building. She takes swimming, African dance, and probably five other things too. And if she’s not there, maybe she’ll be at the library.”
“Our library?”
“Um, no, I don’t think so, but we could figure it out. I’m sure we’ll find her. I need to at least try. I want to, you know, talk it out. And tell her I’m sorry.”
When we reach Annie’s house, she races to the end of the lawn to grab a new ball because her soccer feet need it, and she’s almost all the way back to the sidewalk when her mom opens the front door. “Naomi! Annie, I thought you were staying at Naomi’s today.”
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