My parents’ top five things to do on fall weekends in Clover Gap
1. Shop for “antiques.” (Even though our new house isn’t huge, it’s still a lot bigger than our apartment was. Which means we now have a lot of space with no furniture in it. But new furniture is expensive, so we go to stores that sell old stuff. Mom says they’re antiques; Dad calls it junk. Either way, they almost never find anything that’s “in their price range,” which I know is their way of saying that even old stuff is still too expensive for us.) Come to think of it, maybe these shopping trips are only one of Mom’s favorite things to do. Because Dad is usually really quiet by the end of them, and when we get home he goes straight to his iPod and his big noise-canceling headphones for a while.
2. Go “leaf-peeping.” (I don’t know why this is what it’s called when you just drive around and look at the leaf colors in fall. It’s not like you’re sneaking up on the leaves or trying to get a secret glimpse of them. I pointed this out to Mom on one of our drives, and she said she thinks people just like to make up rhyming names for things. Then I told her “leaf-peeping” doesn’t exactly rhyme, and she sighed and said, “You got me, Annie. It’s a mystery.” It was obvious she didn’t want to talk about it. My parents don’t really want to talk about much of anything on our leaf-peeping trips. Mom says it’s “meditative” to drive around quietly and look at trees. I wonder if she’s meditating about how hard life has been since I made us move. But I don’t ask that question.)
3. Rake leaves.
4. Make Ted and me rake leaves when they get tired.
5. Repeatedly sniff the air and say, “It just smells like fall!”
Ted’s favorite thing to do on fall weekends in Clover Gap
1. Go for long bike rides that always seem to start right when Mom and Dad are about to tell us to rake leaves.
One thing Ted missed while he was on a long bike ride
1. Dad almost falling off the roof
Two things that nearly drove Dad over the edge, literally
1. He was checking out a spot on the roof above Ted’s room where he thought there might be water damage. (Mom wanted to call a roofer, but Dad insisted on investigating it himself.)
2. As he was climbing to the top, he lost his footing and slid to the very edge of the roof. He dug in his heels and stopped just before he would have gone over (but not before kicking a gutter and knocking it loose, sending a shower of smelly wet leaves cascading onto the front steps).
One conversation that followed
1. Mom: THAT’S IT! I’m calling a roofer.
2. Dad (trying to save face with a chuckle): Phew, okay! I guess that’s Dad, zero; house, one.
I decided not to point out that the house’s score should actually be much higher, if you count the clogged garbage disposal, the window that slammed onto his hand last week, and the bathroom mirror he accidentally ripped off the wall because he thought it was the door to a medicine cabinet. Poor Dad.
My favorite thing about fall in Clover Gap
1. So far, the leaves. I have to admit they’re pretty amazing. City trees never turned colors the way these do. The raking is a drag, but once in a while I find a leaf that’s so perfect I have to save it and press it in the pages of our giant old dictionary.
Favorite pastime for the rest of Clover Gap in fall
1. Football (specifically, rooting for the football team at Clover Gap High on Friday nights)
Number of football games I had been to before moving to Clover Gap
1. Zero
Football just wasn’t a big deal in Brooklyn. I mean, sometimes my dad would watch it on TV on Sundays, but it’s not like he was a superfan. And I never cared about it at all. (“Superfan” is a word I learned recently. Lots of the people here in Clover Gap are superfans.)
Number of football games most people in Clover Gap go to in a year
1. Five, if you are just a fan and you are going only to the home games
2. Twelve, if you are a superfan and you go to ALL the games
It seems that most of my friends’ families are just fans, with the exception of Charlie’s family. His parents belong to the booster club and take Charlie and his brother to all the away games. Charlie says if he doesn’t make the team when we’re in high school, his dad told him there’ll be “hell to pay.” Yowza.
One person who refused to join in when my parents said we should check out a game
1. Ted
He said football is boring and he had to do homework anyway. (I think Mom and Dad suspect that he doesn’t want to have to hang out with his parents at a place where all the other kids his age will be with their friends. At least I think that’s what they’re thinking. They didn’t push him, but they gave each other a look that I didn’t really understand.)
Five ways my parents and I looked out of place at our first Clover Gap High football game
1. We were wearing regular clothes instead of team sweatshirts.
2. We didn’t have green-and-white pompoms.
3. We didn’t have giant green foam fingers.
4. We didn’t know the team cheers.
5. We weren’t chatting with people all around us. (In fact, we weren’t chatting with anyone at all, because we didn’t know anybody.)
Three people who saved the day
1. Zora
2. Zora’s mom (wearing a CGHS ALUMNI jacket)
3. Zora’s dad (guiding Zora’s little brother, Jackson, up the bleacher steps and telling him not to bop anyone with his foam finger)
Five ways Zora’s family rescued us
1. They sat with us (after Zora spied me in the bleachers, waved like crazy, and steered her parents to our spot).
2. They introduced us to the people in front of us, behind us, and on either side of us. (I could see where Zora got her personality from; no one in her family is shy.)
3. Zora’s mom gave Mom and me their extra pompoms so we would look a little more spirited.
4. Zora’s dad gave my dad a program so he would know who the players were. (He said he got the program for Zora’s older brother, Marcus, but since Marcus was wandering around with his friends somewhere, Dad could keep it.)
5. Zora’s mom told us we should stay in our seats during halftime because the marching band was as good as the football team. (She was right; the band was my favorite part.)
Six things Mom said on the way home from the game (Clover Gap won, by the way)
1. Wasn’t that fun?
2. Thank goodness Zora saw you.
3. Her family is so nice.
4. Isn’t her older brother Ted’s age?
5. Maybe we can convince Ted to come next time.
6. I feel like we learned a lot about the town tonight.
She sounded more than just happy; she sounded relieved. It occurred to me that my parents have to navigate “new kid” challenges sometimes too.
For me, the next new-kid thing to figure out was around the corner: Halloween.
One more rule in Clover Gap that we didn’t have in Brooklyn
1. For Halloween, you can’t dress up as anything too scary.
Five Halloween costumes I was considering
1. Angry cheerleader
2. Mad scientist
3. Witch doctor
4. Rotting pumpkin
5. Evil fairy
I asked Zora if she thought these would pass the “not too scary” test at school, and she said yes, that as long as nothing involved blood or weapons, I should be okay. She voted for evil fairy. Since I already had the wings from when I was a regular fairy in first grade, I went with that one. (Besides, Halloween was two days away and Mom told me there was no way she was making a whole new costume b
efore then. And I knew that buying something was out of the question—anytime Ted asks for something new these days, Mom reminds him that “moving was expensive and we’re still trying to save money.” I never ask. Mom always says she appreciates how “unmaterialistic” I am. I think I’m just more sensitive than Ted when it comes to asking for unnecessary stuff. And I know I notice more, like the way Mom has gone a long time without getting her hair cut, and the fact that she and Dad empty out their coin jar more often than they used to. It’s not hard—for me, at least—to see that it’s not such a good idea to ask for too much.)
One opinion Zora had about evil fairies
1. They should have cramazing hair. (She said “cramazing” was a combination of “crazy” and “amazing.”)
My new most embarrassing moment after today
1. Walking in the Halloween parade with a hairbrush stuck in my hair
Fifteen events leading up to my shame parade
1. When Mr. Allbright said we could close our math workbooks and start getting ready for the parade, I told Zora I wasn’t sure what she had in mind for my cramazing fairy hair.
2. She said she would show me.
3. Zora hovered over me, winding sections of my hair around the spiky crown of dyed-black pinecones Mom had made me to top off my evil look.
4. Zora had to leave to go to the bathroom and fix the whiskers on her cat costume.
5. I told her I could finish my hair. The only spot that wasn’t done was in the front, right above my forehead.
6. I tried looping hair around the crown the way I thought Zora had, but it didn’t look quite right.
7. I tucked the brush under the crown and tried to pull a chunk of hair through with it.
8. The brush stopped. It wouldn’t budge. Neither would the crown. Neither would my hair.
9. Zora returned from the bathroom.
10. Mr. Allbright told us we had to line up for the parade.
11. I told him the hairbrush was stuck.
12. He briefly tried to untangle it and was unsuccessful. So was Zora.
13. He suggested that I tell people I was “a hair fairy.”
14. I asked if I could stay in the classroom during the parade.
15. He said no.
Two responses the kids from other classes had when they saw me in the parade
1. What’s the new kid supposed to be?
2. Hey, there’s a brush stuck in your hair! (No kidding.)
One thing Zora chanted as she marched in front of me
1. She’s an evil hair fairy! You better watch out!
I had to smile then. Zora is a pretty good friend to have, even if it was her idea to give me cramazing hair.
Five ways Halloween got better after that
1. Zora asked if I wanted to go home with her after school so she could fix my hair.
2. She also asked if I wanted to go trick-or-treating together later.
3. She told me Amelia was trick-or-treating in her own neighborhood with her older cousin. (I was pretty glad Amelia wouldn’t be around to make private jokes with Zora or remind everyone about my flying underwear.)
4. I got to see Zora’s house for the first time.
5. Mom said Zora could come to our house after trick-or-treating.
Four cool things about Zora’s house
1. There’s a tire swing hanging from the highest branch of an oak tree in the backyard.
2. Her mom makes amazing oatmeal cookies.
3. Zora and her brothers have pictures taped up all over their bedroom walls. Some of them are cut from magazines, but most are ones they drew themselves. (Zora’s pictures are all cats; her older brother draws a lot of guitars. And her younger brother’s are mostly his name above stick-figure self-portraits.)
4. There were elaborate blanket forts set up in two different rooms. They were built by Zora’s older brother, Marcus, for her younger brother, Jackson.
Three things Zora said while we ate oatmeal cookies in her room
1. Are you over the underwear incident yet? (Me: Almost.)
2. Don’t worry; everyone else has moved on from that.
3. Now they’re talking about other things. Like crushes.
Three examples of crushes Zora knew of
1. Angela has a crush on Derek.
2. Xavier has a crush on Keira.
3. Raymond has a crush on Olivia.
One crush I knew of that was not news to Zora
1. “I think Charlie might have a crush on you.”
Three ways I would react if I heard someone had a crush on me
1. Blush
2. Get a rumbly stomach
3. Ask for evidence of the crush
Two ways Zora reacted when I mentioned the Charlie crush
1. Ha, I know. Everyone says that.
2. He’s just my friend. But it doesn’t matter anyway because his grandmother would flip out if she knew he liked me.
Charlie’s grandmother lives with his family and takes care of him after school. She’s at pickup and other school stuff more than any other grandparents are; she has short black hair that’s sprayed into place, and she is always smiling in this way that looks forced (kind of like the smile is held on by hairspray too).
One answer Zora gave when I asked why Charlie’s grandmother would care if he liked her
1. Because I’m black.
Two questions I asked after Zora told me that
1. Are you serious?! (I have to admit I was shocked. In Brooklyn, lots of kids I knew had parents of different races. Besides, we’re in fifth grade; it’s not like having a crush on someone means you’re going to marry her. But Zora didn’t even seem surprised.)
2. How do you know that? (Zora’s answer: My mom has known their family for a long time. She and Charlie’s mom were in the same class in third grade, and there was only one other black kid in the class, Carl. When Charlie’s mom had a birthday party at her pool, the whole class was invited…except for Mom and Carl. My grandma called Charlie’s grandma to ask what was up, and all she said was “It’s a pool party. I’m sure you understand.”)
Four responses I had to this story
1. I don’t get it. (Zora said she didn’t either at first. But then her mom told her that was a thing back then, that some white people thought it was bad to share a swimming pool with people of other skin colors.)
2. I don’t get that, either. (Zora: Me neither.)
3. That’s really awful. Your poor mom. (Zora: Yeah, it’s a pretty bad memory for her. She was really upset. My grandparents took her to the circus that weekend instead, to try to take her mind off it, and now she says the circus always reminds her of that birthday party, but it also reminds her of how much her parents loved her.)
4. Maybe Charlie’s grandma isn’t like that anymore. (Zora: I’m pretty sure she is. She’s always icy when I see her. And, whatever…maybe it will make Charlie keep his crushy feelings to himself.)
But I wondered if Zora really thought “whatever” about Charlie’s grandma. The story about her mom and the birthday party was one of the saddest things I’d ever heard. (It made my mom’s old mean-kid stories seem like no big deal.)
Three interruptions to my train of thought about Zora’s mom
1. Zora’s dad popped his head in and said, “Hey, Z. Do you know what time it is?”
2. Zora looked at her clock, jumped up, and said, “We have to trick-or-treat!”
3. Then she said, “Dad, you said I could just go with my friends this year, right? No parents?”
Her dad sighed and said, “Yes, I guess I promised.” I called my parents and they said it was okay too.
Four Halloween firsts I had that night
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1. Trick-or-treating without one of my parents
2. Trick-or-treating at houses instead of stores or apartments like we did in the city
3. Trick-or-treating with boys who weren’t Ted and his friends (We saw Zach and Charlie at the third house we went to, and they stayed with us the rest of the way.)
Annie's Life in Lists Page 5