by Rachel Vail
“Have a good day,” she yelled after me. “Come back if you miss the bus.”
“Are you kidding me?” I yelled to her, halfway down the driveway. A girl in Quinn’s fifth-grade class used to get driven to school at least a couple times a week because other kids made fun of her on the bus. I think that family moved away. Toughen up, Allison said about her, and I totally agreed. We were all like, if you can’t even handle the elementary school bus, how are you ever going to manage real life?
Kirstyn was talking practically before I got to the corner. While the bus wheezed its way down Beech Street toward us, I was trying to figure out what Kirstyn sounded like. I nodded when she looked at me. She smiled, relieved that I agreed with whatever it was she’d been saying. Just before we got to school I figured out what it was: It sounded like when somebody near me is wearing earbuds—noise and a beat but no tune, no recognizable words.
Luke was already in his seat, behind mine, when I got to homeroom. As I sat down, he jiggled my chair a little with his feet. Just barely managing not to fall on my butt, I turned around to shoot him a look. He smiled. I smiled back.
Ms. Alvarez, our homeroom teacher, mentioned that she was waiting, so I sat straight and smiled sweetly at her, my hands crossed in front of me on my desk. Ms. Alvarez sighed. She has a slight facial-hair issue but otherwise she is perfectly nice. She told us her announcements while I finished up the homework I hadn’t had a chance to do the night before and then the bell rang. As I passed her desk, she said, “Phoebe? How’s your commencement speech coming?”
“Great,” I assured her. “Thanks!”
“I’d like a draft by Friday,” she said.
“No problem.” I smiled. “Bye!” I kind of drifted through the rest of the morning smiling, chatting in the halls between classes, nodding. It’s all good, I must’ve said ten times or twenty.
I kept having this odd feeling like I wasn’t myself anymore. Instead I was watching a movie about a slightly familiar-looking girl named Phoebe, and not just watching but really half watching, like a dull movie you kind of watch on a plane while you are also flipping through a lame issue of People magazine.
At lunch, after we made our way to our table past a few cliques of kids who casually mentioned they were looking forward to the party, wondered if there was anything they could do to help, and said how great one or the other of us looked that day, Ann announced that she had finally made an appointment with the Crazy Balloon Lady from Pleasantville. Kirstyn kept her eyes riveted to her notebook. Ann asked if anybody wanted to go to Pleasantville with her to look through the photo album of possibilities on Friday after track.
That woke me up.
“Friday?” I started to object: Since track ends at five thirty and Kirstyn wanted us over for the sleepover by seven, how would we have time to get all the way to Pleasantville and choose centerpieces? But Kirstyn stomped her flip-flop hard on my foot. I turned toward her. She was reading her notes in her notebook with intense seriousness, but then, very subtly, shook her head.
“After track,” Ann repeated.
“Oh,” I said. Kirstyn wasn’t inviting her? How weird! “Um…”
“I’ll come with you,” Zhara said.
“Great,” said Ann. “I’m just so indecisive.”
“I’m not,” Zhara said, taking a big bite of her sandwich. “I always know exactly what I like.”
“That must be nice,” Ann said, sighing.
I didn’t get Kirstyn alone until after school, at track. Gabrielle is faster than we are, and Ann does shot put, down on the lower field (she mostly lies in the grass, looking at the sky; she has no interest in exercise of any kind but nobody gets cut from track and Ann’s mother said she had to do a sport, to get her head, ironically, out of the clouds). Zhara hates sports and her parents think that’s fine, so she was the only one of us not out in the sun, sweating her butt off four afternoons a week.
The boys on the soccer team were doing suicide sprints on the field next to us. We watched them as we jogged by. I think Luke flashed me a smile as he was turning around, but maybe he was just grimacing.
As Kirstyn and I rounded the far end of the track, away from Coach P, I got my chance. “What’s the deal?” I asked her. “You didn’t invite Ann or Zhara?”
“More running, less chatting, Pretty Girls,” Coach P yelled. She always calls me and Kirstyn “Pretty Girls” and it is not a compliment. We don’t care.
“It’s not a party,” Kirstyn whispered. “It’s just a sleepover and my mother is practically psychotic lately as it is, planning our party. Ann and Zhara would put her over the edge. You know how they are.”
I shrugged. I thought they were pretty much the same as us. Apparently not. “What’s wrong with them?”
Kirstyn gave me a shove like I was joking around.
Gabrielle passed us, lapping us, and slowed down a little when I grabbed the back of her shirt.
“Hi, speedy,” I said.
“Hi, slowpoke,” she said. Even though she’s way prettier than me and Kirstyn, she’s also a better runner; Coach P calls her “Bullet.”
We all jogged together a few steps, before Kirstyn said, “Do you think we should get enough invitations to actually invite some of the tenth and eleventh graders, or just kind of, you know, let them crash?”
Gabrielle shrugged, speeding up. We sped up with her.
“Are we even sure we want them to?” I asked, trying to breathe deep and slow, like Coach P taught us. “I mean, there’s something cool about it just being us, right?”
“Something pathetic,” Kirstyn said.
“You think?” I sped up to stay in step with them. Was this a race all of a sudden?
“I’m so stupid,” Kirstyn said. “I thought for a second you were serious.”
I was being serious, but I had no breath to argue. I was concentrating on pumping my legs faster, faster.
“Hey, but seriously,” Kirstyn said. “I say we go with the Sandra Pennington Photographers who always do such a nice job, and we’ll each get a cute little album after. My mother already negotiated that with her. If we’re doing this, let’s do it right. Right?”
“Right,” I said, because I had to, and because I couldn’t say much more. I was sweating like a pig and totally out of breath as we rounded the corner past Coach P, who, for the first time ever, smiled at us.
“Whatever,” Gabrielle said. “My mother says whatever everybody wants is fine, so let’s do it up.”
I glanced at her. She was barely sweating, her dark hair still neat in its perfect loose braid, her legs not pounding the track like mine but moving in smooth circles. She could have been pedaling a bike downhill.
“Exactly. And if some families can’t pay for it,” Kirstyn continued, looking straight ahead, “or don’t want to pay for it, fine. My mother says it doesn’t matter, we shouldn’t make anybody feel insecure or whatever. She’s like, we’ll pay the extra. We like to do it nicely, so, it’s just not a big deal. She said she’ll call your parents today and discuss it.”
“Little albums?” Gabrielle asked dubiously.
“They’re really cute,” Kirstyn said, but checking Gabrielle’s expression, rolled her eyes. “It’s for our mothers anyway.” She shrugged like she really couldn’t care less.
I was totally out of breath. Keep running. Right, left, don’t fall down. Don’t think about if mine is one of the families who won’t be able to afford…
“Phoebe’s the one who’ll look at it every day,” Kirstyn said, shoving me into Gabrielle. I had to take a bunch of little steps to stay up and untangled. “Right?”
“Absolutely,” I managed. “I’m just…getting…a cramp!”
They both slowed down with me, until we were walking. I raised one hand over my head and planted the other on my hip, to ease the stitch.
Kirstyn’s face was red, but not sweaty. She gets so tense lately that Gabrielle will look down on her, think she’s less than cool. “It’s all good,” I
managed to say, trying to reassure her, but it didn’t work. Her face turned even blotchier.
I attempted a smile but a wave of nausea rolled up my body. I put my hands on my knees and lowered my head.
“What’s wrong?” Gabrielle asked. She sounded far away so I turned to look at her. Bad decision. Very bad. Black and bright swirled together in front of my eyes and I lost my balance.
I sank down onto the track. “Nothing,” I was trying to say. “Everything is fine.”
I rested my head on the cool red clay of the track to regain my balance. Above me I could hear them talking about me, and then Coach P asking what had happened.
“I’m good,” I said. “Just…tried to…you know, keep up.”
I didn’t trust my legs yet so I just stayed there with my hot head on the cool ground, and my eyes closed.
“You okay?” I heard somebody else ask. Who? I knew that voice. No. He was way over on the far field with the boys.
I turned my head to the side. Cleats, covered in mud.
“What are you doing here, Luke?” Kirstyn asked.
“Just…just…I don’t know. I thought she fainted.”
I closed my eyes again but said, “I’m fine. Great. Just taking a short break.”
Coach P yelled at Luke that he should get over to the boys’ field and started yanking me up by the elbow. “Get up, pretty girl,” she said. “Break’s over.”
I followed my elbow up. Luke was walking away, toward the far field. I could see his coach yelling at him. He raked his fingers through his wavy brown hair and shook the sweat off his hand without looking back. His last name, Stoddard, stretched across the shoulders of his soccer shirt, and one of his socks was sagging a bit below his calf.
Coach P gave me a little shove. “Make a runner of you yet, Miss Class President,” she sneered. I turned to roll my eyes at Kirstyn, who grimaced.
When Coach P blew her whistle right in our faces and yelled for us to hit the locker room, Kirstyn and Gabrielle turned and started heading there. “Wait up,” I called, jogging to fall into step beside them.
7
“YOU OKAY?” GABRIELLE ASKED as we opened our lockers.
“Yeah, sure. Just not as fast as you guys, I guess.”
“What happened?” Ann asked, already sitting on the bench, ready to leave.
“Nothing,” I said. “Just took a short break. On the track. On my face.”
Kirstyn made sort of a humphing sound. I hunched down a little so I wouldn’t feel quite so hulking, standing there over her. “Did I grow again?” I asked. “How tall am I planning to be? This growth spurt is turning into a marathon, seriously.”
Kirstyn flipped her hair over her head to fix her ponytail. “If you’re interested in Luke, you should say so.” She flipped back up and rested her hands on her hips. Usually when I ask about if I am growing grotesquely tall, she reassures me that I look great.
Ann’s eyes darted between me and Kirstyn. Gabrielle, meanwhile, buried her head so deep in her locker she looked likely to get swallowed up by it.
“I’m not interested in Luke,” I told Kirstyn. “You’re the one who keeps talking about him, not me. Maybe you like him.” I put my hands on my hips, too. Enough, already.
“Ew, as if,” she said. “I get paid for babysitting, thank you.”
“Yeah, right,” Gabrielle said, emerging from the locker with her long hair loosened from the braid. “As if you ever babysit.”
“Well if I did, I’d get paid.”
They both started cracking up. Ann stared at her feet. She babysits.
“But seriously, Phoebe,” Kirstyn said, pulling a fresh T-shirt on. “If you’re honestly not into him, you are leading him on. You need to tell him, Yo, I broke up with you two years ago, it’s over. Move on. He’s like a lovesick pup, following you around. It’s kind of sad, don’t you think?”
“Aw,” said Gabrielle. “A puppy, yeah, with those big sad eyes of his.”
Luke is so not the lovesick pup; if anybody was that, it would be Kirstyn, the way she constantly monitored whether Justin Sachs was online or not. But obviously I couldn’t say any of that to her. She has it harder than I do, I reminded myself, and as cute and fabulous as she seems, I know she gets jealous of me and my life sometimes, and it makes her act mean. She is right, I am a lucky person; everything comes easy to me. I can afford to be generous with her.
“It’s not, it has nothing to do with that,” I said instead. “Anyway, whoa, I practically belly flopped onto the track there, huh?”
But Kirstyn wasn’t letting it go. She turned to Ann and explained, “She looked over at Luke and just swooned.” Kirstyn smiled at me, but it was a cold smile, no happy humor anywhere in it.
“We went out for like five minutes, forever ago,” I said, trying to keep it light. “Who even cares?” I shrugged at Gabrielle and Ann, who both shrugged back.
“Not me,” said Gabrielle, slamming her locker shut.
“Me neither,” Kirstyn said. “And I know Ann doesn’t care.”
Ann opened her mouth and let it hang there.
“Exactly,” Kirstyn said. “So that leaves…” Her head tilted toward me.
I admit, I was getting pissed off. I reached back beyond Justin Sachs to sixth grade, where she was accusing me of getting lost. “Me and Luke are such ancient history nobody remembers it but you, Kirstyn. I mean, you don’t like William, right?”
“William!” Her cheeks reddened immediately, as I had known they would.
“Yeah, William,” I said. “We’re friends now, me and Luke, just like you and William, just like…”
“William and I are not exactly friends. He’s so immature….”
“Well, so is Luke.” I yanked off my own uniform. Okay, Luke is actually not immature, but we’re friends and that’s all. What’s past is past. I don’t like him, I don’t, because why would I? We went out in sixth grade, back when Kirstyn was going out with William and the four of us were like the center of the center and we were all practically babies.
I mean, it was good then, sweet, even when Luke got that weird haircut that made his head look like a rectangle; so much better than seventh grade, trying to get the eighth graders to notice us past Gabrielle. Actually, seventh grade was really fine, too, but back in sixth grade, Kirstyn and I and William and Luke rode bikes together after school, hung out by the swings at lunch, swam in my pool almost every day in June.
Well, anyway, that was a long time ago.
“You girls finished torturing each other yet?” Gabrielle asked.
“Almost,” Kirstyn said, and the three of them laughed. I didn’t. We finished getting ready without talking, and headed outside.
Okay, maybe I have been kind of more, well, aware of Luke lately. But even if Luke is distractingly cute this spring, with his hair hanging down, curling on the ends by his ears, it doesn’t matter. I’ve known him way too long for anything else to evolve between us. He’s a nice guy, is all, and there’s no reason we can’t be friends. I don’t like him and he doesn’t like me. That’s how it’s been for almost two years, I told myself, and how it will always be.
It is interesting, though, that the more people talk about a thing that is absolutely not true, the more it can start to feel a little bit true.
Kirstyn’s mother picked us up in the circle. She asked if Gabrielle and Ann wanted rides but they said no, they were all set. Kirstyn settled in, shotgun, and flipped down the mirror to check her teeth. She does it all the time lately; she says she lives in dread of having a poppy seed stuck in her teeth and not knowing it. I would’ve told her there was nothing there, if she’d asked me. I took the seat behind her mother. I wasn’t sure if we were in a fight or what. Luckily Kirstyn’s mother talked nonstop so we didn’t have to.
She was going on and on about the party, something about how using the white tablecloths the club had standard would be fine, but maybe alternating pink and red, or doing overlays (whatever that is), would be so much cuter an
d why not? I looked out my window and Kirstyn looked out hers. I didn’t want to think about the tension between us. I decided to think instead about what it meant that Luke had run over when I was facedown on the track.
We turned onto Willow Road, past the Magnolia Estates sign with its neat bed of all white flowers growing evenly beneath it, contrasting cleanly with the deep green of the surrounding grass. Nothing messy could happen here, Daddy said when we drove past it, coming home from the airport after spring break last year. No, Mom had said, the Committee wouldn’t allow mess. They both snickered. They thought we were all asleep in the back, but I was faking.
Kirstyn’s mom, who had apparently run out of stuff to say about the party she was planning, oh, wait, our party, started in on the neighbors. “Looks like these new people are using Lansdowne Landscapers.” We passed the first house, and she cocked her head at the pair of trucks in the driveway, then rubbed her finger against her thumb, her sign for a lot of money. “But they’re the best. Those other guys, what’s-it-called—so crappy looking. They barely trim the hedges. But I guess if you want to save your pennies, you get less service and it shows. Anyway, that’s good, Lansdowne. Maybe they’ll put in some trees or something for those poor people, all exposed to the street like that.” She clucked her tongue pityingly and looked at me in her rearview mirror. “These bald lots are so tacky, don’t you think?”