by Carol Weston
I do have a choice about schools. I can go from the girl whose mother died to the new girl. Which might be better, except I’m not ready to accept that for the rest of my life, all the people I meet won’t know my mom. Here, everyone knew her. There, and everywhere else from now on, no one will.
I just wish someone could promise me that it’s safe to come out of my shell. Is that why I like turtles? Because they’re good at staying safe?
And what about Alexa? She’s going to be sooo pissed when she comes back from Canada camp and finds Dad and me in your house—her house! She’s going to want to kill me—or you! Have you even told her yet? And what about when she finds out about Sam?
I did not press Send. This was a pretend letter. All in my head.
I was becoming a head case.
I opened my bottom desk drawer and looked at the emails from Dear Kate and reread the one that had ended with the promise “Things will get easier.”
Would they?
I phoned Kiki. “Can you come over? I’m packing and I need you to be ruthless.”
“Ruthless?”
“Hard-hearted. Unfeeling. Merciless.”
“I thought I was kind, imaginative, knowledgeable—”
“Just come over. Please?”
She said okay, and while I waited, the sky darkened and raindrops pecked at the air conditioner outside my window.
Kiki arrived, and I greeted her holding the ceramic sneakers. “In or out?”
“In! That’s a no-brainer!”
I wrapped them in newspaper and placed them into a box marked “S’s Bedroom.” “What about my Magic 8 Ball?”
Kiki picked it up. “My sources say no.”
“And this sweater?”
“It went out of style two years ago. Which is why you haven’t been wearing it.”
“But it looked good in sixth grade, right?”
“You were quite the hottie! Except you hadn’t hit puberty, so you were quite the warmie.”
I hugged Kiki. “I couldn’t face this alone.” I held up a T-shirt covered with signatures from our classmates in fourth grade.
“Irreplaceable!”
I reached for another shirt and flinched.
“Your shoulder still hurts?” Kiki asked.
“It’s getting better, but I’ll have a scar. At least I got the staples out of my head.”
“Scars are okay.”
“I guess. What about my dress-up clothes?”
“Are you kidding?! Think of Alexa!”
“I can’t stop thinking of Alexa.” I frowned. “What about my turtle collection?”
“Sorry. Can’t be ruthless about your turtles. They’re small—take ’em all.”
“And my stuffies? Will I find them good homes?” I laughed but my voice caught.
“Keep Panther and Tigger-Tiger and Yertle. Wash the rest and give them to Goodwill. God, Sof, what would you do without me?”
“What am I going to do without you?”
“How do you think I feel? I’m having abandonment issues, and you and Natalie haven’t even left yet! At least you’re staying at Halsey, right?”
I hesitated.
“Sofia, you have to! What if your dad and Dear Kate break up?”
“I don’t think they’re going to. Maybe it’s because we have to move anyway, but everything’s in fast-forward.” I sat down. “Kiki, I never saw my dad this happy with my mom.”
“You weren’t there for that part. Your parents had a good marriage—I know because my parents had a sucky one.” Kiki made a face. “And by the way, you’re not allowed to dump me no matter how great it is in the boring ’burbs.”
“You can’t dump me either.”
“No way,” Kiki said, but then I heard a ping as she got a text. “Oh! Gotta go. Madison just got back from China, and I said I’d meet her at the Met. Wanna come?”
“Yeah, but—” I looked at the stuff of my life, strewn across my bedroom.
“Aren’t you almost done?”
“No. Look under my bed.”
Kiki kneeled on the floor. “You never threw out Secret Admirer?!” She pulled out the torn box, opened it, and held the plastic purple phone to her ear. The game board showed the faces of two dozen boys. “Think of the hours we spent on this phone!”
“Hours?! Try years!”
“Look at this! David, Jamal, Liam. I had such a thing for Christopher.”
“I was in love with Scott!” I laughed. “Was there a Sam?”
Kiki studied the board. “No, no Sam. No Jeremy either. I met him two days ago when I was on the Great Lawn, getting a tan. He said he likes my sense of humor.”
“If you were working on your tan, he likes more than that,” I pointed out. “But see? Now you get it. How can I throw this out?”
“Watch and learn.” Kiki closed the box, stood up, and carried Secret Admirer out the door and down the hall to the communal garbage can by the service elevator. She lifted the box high in the air and dropped it in. “Bye-bye, boys!” She dusted off her palms.
I had an urge to dive in and rescue the game—as well as David, Jamal, Liam, Christopher, and Scott. But I resisted. “It’s the end of an era,” I said.
“It is,” Kiki agreed. “Now we have real boys to call.”
• • •
Every time Kate’s phone rang—cell or landline—she rushed to answer, hoping it was Alexa. This time, it was.
“It’s so good to hear your voice!” Kate said, glowing. “Oh, that’s wonderful!” “That’s great!” “I love you!”
“How’s Alexa?” I asked when she hung up.
“She sounds so happy. Her group stopped in some small town to get supplies and there was a pay phone. She said that instead of mountains, they were seeing mountain ranges. And that last night, the Milky Way was crystal clear. They even saw the aurora borealis! She said it was ‘sick.’” Kate laughed. “She said the food is ‘lame,’ but they get so hungry from hiking that nobody minds. Oh, and she’s practicing Spanish with a girl named Victoria who also lives near here, in Westchester. She also said I shouldn’t worry.”
I wanted to say, Did you tell her she should worry? But I said, “Did you mention…?”
“I should have, but it was a short conversation.” Kate went back to arranging the hydrangea and lilies from her fenced-in garden.
“Kate, I just think that if she gets home and it’s all a done deal, Alexa might”—hack me to pieces—“be really surprised.”
“I intend to tell her,” Kate said. “But she’s been impossible to reach, and just now, she barely let me get a word in—as you could hear.” Kate met my eyes. “And I want her to enjoy her vacation. At the airport, the coordinator kept saying that these trips are about disconnecting.”
I wondered if Kate’s neglecting to spill the beans was due to kindness, cowardice, or some kindness/cowardice combo. It occurred to me that Kate herself was on vacation—she was in girlfriend mode instead of mom mode. And while she didn’t want to burst Alexa’s bubble, maybe she didn’t want Alexa to burst hers either. Kate liked feeling summery and carefree. And yes, I got that, but I was also realizing that Dear Kate wasn’t perfect. She was a good person, yes, but she had flaws like everyone else.
The question was: Where did this leave me?
• • •
Ten days till moving day. Kate’s house had a basement and a garage, but she’d said we shouldn’t store things that we should “let go of” or that didn’t “spark joy.” Sure, okay, but how could I “let go” of my mom’s big oval mirror or the wooden “Lemonade 50 cents” sign I made with Abuelo or even my Halsey concert programs? As for framed photos, they sparked both joy and bittersweet feelings. (Did Dad still have framed photos of Mom in his office? Did he have one of Kate now too?)
I made index cards
with descriptions of all the objects we no longer needed—lamp, desk, dresser, bed, chairs, television, sofa—and posted them in the mailroom.
Selling to neighbors felt more personal than putting stuff on eBay or Craigslist. Teachers also bought odds and ends from a card table I’d set up in front of our building. Dad had said I could keep that money, and by 2:00 p.m., I’d pocketed almost $170.
“If I’d known you’d make that much,” he said, “I’d have asked for a percentage.”
I was glad for the cash, but our bigger transactions made my insides curdle. My pink canopy bed? A teacher bought it for her daughter. The sleigh bed Mom and Dad had slept in for nineteen years? The Russells bought it for Mason. They said it would be his “big-boy bed.”
• • •
In late July, I went out a lot with Kiki, Natalie, Madison, and other friends—I’d never felt so popular. But every get-together was tinged with sadness. It was as though I’d already started missing them.
One evening, everyone met at Natalie’s, and Sam came in by train. I told him to take the shuttle from Grand Central to Penn Station and then the 2 or 3 subway up to Ninety-Sixth and that I’d meet him at the Starbucks on Ninety-Third and Broadway. I got there first and liked watching him walk in and look for me, liked how he kissed me in public.
At the party, I could tell that everyone liked Sam. They were all laughing and joking (but not flirting), and when Sam went to the bathroom, Natalie whispered, “Sofia, he’s great.”
“I know.”
“I still can’t believe he used to go out with Alexa!” Kiki said.
“I know.”
“Omigod, they didn’t do it, did they?” Madison asked.
“I don’t know! And I don’t know if I want to know!”
All three nodded.
“I don’t think so,” I added, mostly for my own benefit.
Dad, meantime, had been telling all our neighbors to visit us in Armonk—“I’ll fire up the grill!” But would any of them come? Were some of our “close friends” close simply because they lived close by? I hoped real friendship meant more than that.
Dad also notified the super; arranged for the gas and electricity to be shut off; stopped delivery of The New York Times; contacted the post office, phone, bank, and credit card companies; hired a moving van…and complained that his to-do list was out of control.
“Once we move,” he said, “I hope Mom will stop getting credit card offers. It’s nuts how much junk mail she still gets.” I hated hearing him talk about that—and hated that banks still wanted Mom as a customer. “Speaking of mail,” Dad continued, “am I sending Halsey a check? It’s a lot of money, so I want you to be sure. And if you’re not going, they need to offer the slot to a girl on the waitlist.”
Halsey School for Girls or Byram Hills High School? I couldn’t make up my mind. Kiki suggested I toss a coin—and then, when it was in the air, figure out which school I was hoping for.
I tried: Heads for Halsey. Tails for BHHS.
But it didn’t help.
• • •
Kiki begged me to stay at Halsey, but Sam had a different opinion. One day, he came by after work at his parents’ stationery store in Mount Kisco where his job was to deal with inventory and customers. (“Pens, paper, and Post-its,” he joked.)
“The teachers at HSG have known me forever,” I explained. We started walking up Evergreen Row, and he showed me the foundation of an old stone mansion that had burned to the ground decades earlier. “So if I stay, I wouldn’t have to prove myself. And I’d be the copresident of the Spanish Club, which is cool as a freshman. And if you do all thirteen years, K through twelve, you get to be a Survivor. There’s even a Survivor page in the yearbook.”
“A Survivor? Is that, like, a badge of honor?” he asked, and I realized how silly it sounded. Then again, sometimes surviving was harder than people realized.
“At least consider Byram Hills,” Sam said. “You probably think I’m saying that for all the wrong reasons.” He pulled me closer.
“Windmill afternoons?” I said. Windmill afternoons. It sounded like the first line of a haiku. I slipped two fingers into his belt loop. “You’re not getting impatient with me?” I couldn’t believe I said that aloud, but he knew what I meant: so far, all we’d done was make out.
“No. Not that I—” I kissed him to stop him from finishing the sentence, and we went back to the original subject.
“Sofia, with the school thing, don’t you want a change?”
I shrugged. “Maybe change is overrated.”
“Maybe comfort is too. Don’t get offended—I know Halsey is the god of private schools.” When I’d told him it was up there with Trinity, Exeter, Sidwell, and Harvard-Westlake, he looked perplexed and said he hadn’t really heard of those schools either. “I just mean,” he continued, “is being a ‘Survivor’ enough for you? Thirteen years at the same place with the same people?”
“Surviving isn’t nothing,” I said. “And it’s not all the same people. New girls come, and some leave when it’s not a good fit.”
“If you switch, you get to reinvent yourself,” Sam said.
“I don’t want to reinvent myself,” I said, then wondered if that was one hundred percent true. “I don’t mind myself.”
“I don’t mind you either.” He smiled. “I’m not saying this right. Can I tell you a story?”
“You can and you may.”
“Two summers ago, my grandfather—”
“Grandpa Fritz, the Southern gentleman?”
He nodded, pleased that I’d remembered. I liked that Sam and I had real conversations, full of teasing and references. In middle school, my circle of friends didn’t include boys, so whenever I met one, it had been hard to relax. Now, Sam and I were heading back to “our windmill,” holding hands and pointing out chipmunks.
“Once, when Grandpa Fritz took me fishing,” he continued, “he asked what I was thinking, and I was like: ‘Nothing.’ So he said, ‘What do you see?’ and I was like, ‘I dunno. Water?’ He sounded disappointed and said, ‘Don’t just look down, Sam. Look around. Use your five senses! That way you’ll always appreciate fishing no matter what you catch.’ Well, that may sound stupid, but…like, right now, it’s a beautiful day, and I’m with a beautiful girl, and I’m here for it, you know?”
I knew. I too wanted this feeling to last. It was good to feel happy again. “In sixth grade,” I said, “I was a total geek—”
“A girls’ school geek in desperate need of corruption.”
“You would’ve hated me.”
“I would’ve corrupted you!”
I laughed. “We were watching some old movie in history, and I got out my spiral notebook and raised my hand and was like, ‘Will this be on the test?’ After class, the teacher—who was also, of course, one of my neighbors—took me aside and said, ‘Sofia, you’re eleven. Don’t worry about your permanent record. It’s a privilege just to be a sponge in a school like this.’”
“You could be a sponge at Byram Hills,” Sam said, squeezing me. “We win Intel science prizes and stuff. What does your dad think?”
“He’s forcing me to move, so he doesn’t want to force any other decisions.” I sighed. “If I go to Byram Hills, I’d save him thousands. Maybe that’s reason enough, especially since we don’t have Mom’s salary.”
“Unless your dad likes having his girl at an all-girls’ school. Does Dr. Wolfe thinks all boys are wolves?”
“Would he be right?” I gave him a shove.
“Maybe. You know what, Sof? You have to decide for yourself. Don’t think about your dad or your friends or even me.”
“It’s hard not to.” I held his hand tighter.
We reached the windmill, Sam jiggled the rusty latch, and we slipped inside. I paused to take in the cool, musty stillness. Sight, touch, smell, so
und. My fifth sense was taste, and before we even climbed the steps, I kissed Sam right there, holding his face in my hands. I moved my fingertips to the nape of his neck and tugged delicately on his long hair. I made a little mmm sound. Like yummm. Or Sammm.
When we broke off, he howled. “OWWwooooo.”
“What are you doing?” I giggled.
“Howling. No, ululating. You scared to be alone with a wolf?”
“I’m a Wolfe too, remember?”
He laughed. Being alone with Sam didn’t scare me. It made me feel fizzy and excited, like a soda bottle that’s been shaken. What scared me was how much I was letting myself care.
• • •
Dad, Kate, and I were drying dishes when Alexa phoned again. At first, Kate sounded thrilled to hear from her. But her tone quickly changed.
“Robbed? Oh, honey! I’m so sorry… Are you okay… Look, it’s just money. If you’re okay… I’ll cancel the card. I’ll take care of it. You take care of yourself… All right… I’m so sorry… Okay, okay, okay, see you in eight days. Love you.”
Kate hung up and told us that Alexa was at a hostel taking her “first hot shower in a month” when someone stole her wallet.
“Poor kid,” Dad said. “That’s a terrible feeling.”
“It is!” Kate said, reaching for her purse. “I’m glad her credit card has its own separate number. Last year, Alexa left her purse in a cab, and I had to change my info on E-ZPass, PayPal, Netflix, everywhere.”
Dad nodded, but I knew he was thinking what I was thinking.
Kate looked up. “I know! I know! But how could I when she was already so upset?”
She handed us a postcard from her bag. It was a close-up of a moose’s snout. On the back, Alexa had written: “Hi, Mom. I saw a herd of meese. It was epic! Are you keeping Teen America out of trouble? How are things with Gyno Guy?”
“You need to tell her,” Dad said gently. “Doctor’s orders.”
• • •
After dinner, I joined Dad on the porch swing and told him I was going to Byram Hills. I said I loved Halsey but couldn’t see making the commute twice a day, and it would probably be good for me to “get out of my comfort zone” and go to a school where everything didn’t remind me of Mom. He nodded and said if I kept my grades up, Halsey’s doors would always be open.