You Go First

by Erin Entrada Kelly

  “Maybe I will.” Charlotte smiled. “And maybe I’ll ask him to marry me while I’m at it.”

  “Ooh, little Rivera and Lockard babies! Just think how smart those kids’ll be. No one else would ever win anything again.”

  “You never know. Mateo might not be good at word games.”

  “I’m sure he is. Look at Mad Magda. Things like that run in the family.” She paused and squinted over Charlotte’s shoulder. “Oh, God. Speak of the devil.”

  Magda had just come outside and was walking toward them. She was wearing last year’s West Middle School T-shirt, faded and wrinkled; oversized shorts that probably belonged to Mateo; and socks of different lengths.

  “Hey,” Magda said. She pointed at the pear. “‘The pears are not viols . . . They resemble nothing else.’”

  Bridget looked at her with both eyebrows raised.

  “It’s from a poem,” Magda said.

  “Oh,” said Bridget.

  Magda turned to Charlotte. “I’m sorry about your dad. Is he okay?”

  “Yeah,” Charlotte said. She knew the poem: “Study of Two Pears,” by Wallace Stevens. She’d written it on a card for her mom’s fifty-fifth birthday a few years ago. Her father had given her mother a painting of pears for the dining room—in honor of her beloved pear tree in the backyard—and Charlotte had copied the poem in a card to go with it.

  Wind rustled and a shower of leaves fell on them. Bridget immediately brushed them off. Magda raised her arms like she was receiving a gift directly from Mother Nature. Charlotte just sat there. When the breeze passed, Magda picked up one of the fallen leaves and held it gingerly by the stem.

  “I can take a picture of this leaf and an app on my phone will tell me what kind of tree it comes from,” said Magda.

  “Fascinating,” Bridget said.

  Magda turned to Charlotte and spun the stem in her fingers. “Are you excited about the next TAG trip? I hope it’s to the Mütter Museum.”

  “Uh,” said Charlotte. “Yeah.”

  Magda kicked the stone wall with the toe of her sneaker. “Okay. Well. See you at school, I guess. Tell your dad I hope he feels better.”

  After she walked across her yard and disappeared back into her house, Bridget shook her head and said, “It’s hard to believe a living god like Mateo Rivera is related to Mad Magda. Eggheads are so weird. No offense.”

  Mad Magda.

  Maybe some nicknames weren’t so great.

  Life According to Ben

  Part III

  Ben’s mother finally knocked on the door at eight-thirty. He was surprised she held out so long. Usually she buzzed over him like a fly. His father had probably told her to give him space, give him time to think, don’t smother him so much. He said those kinds of things sometimes.

  Maybe that’s one of the things they argued about.

  Maybe that was one of the reasons.

  Ben considered this with each thoughtful knock. He was still splayed across his bed and staring at the ceiling. He hadn’t moved. He needed to pee, but didn’t want to leave his bedroom. Things still made sense in here. His comforter. His laptop. His Minecraft universe. The stuffed bookshelves. No one in this room was getting a divorce. Everything was in stasis.

  “Ben?” said his mother, her voice muffled. “Are you okay in there?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’re worried about you.”

  Stasis. A state of equilibrium or stoppage. A state of unchanging.

  “What are you doing?” his mother asked.

  “Playing Scrabble.” This was partly true. After he got off the phone with Lottie, he’d started a new game with YEOMAN. But that was more than an hour ago and she hadn’t taken her turn yet.

  “Do you want to talk about anything?”

  “Not particularly.”

  Pause. “Your father and I feel like we didn’t get to have a real dialogue with you about all this. We’re sure you have questions.”

  He had a million.

  He had none.

  She said something else, and he imagined the words getting stuck in the wood, even though he knew that would never happen because there wasn’t enough insulation between the sound waves of her voice and the subpar materials used to build his bedroom door, but nonetheless he chose not to hear and instead thought about what he’d said to Lottie. About student council. School had only been in session for a few weeks, and Ben already found middle school uninspiring. No Adam. No Kyle. He had several different teachers and he didn’t mind them too much (not even Mr. Brennamen, who taught advanced history in the most frustrating monotone imaginable), but thus far he had no friends, and now that his parents were getting divorced, it was clear that his entire world was crumbling, one brick at a time, and landing in rubble at his feet. He needed a change for the better. A project over which he wielded complete control.

  Perhaps student council was just the thing.

  Pear

  Rabbit Hole: Enthusiasts believe that Scrabble is an ideal board game because it’s the perfect blend of strategy and luck. You never know which letters you’ll get, so there are elements you can’t control. But if you know how to use what you’re dealt, you can triumph.

  Charlotte’s dad was the one who had taught her how to play Scrabble. When she was seven years old, he pulled the game board from the closet and set it on the dining room table. Charlotte was captivated because they never used the dining room table for anything except holiday dinners. It was strictly off-limits—one of Mom’s rules—because it was “worth a fortune” and “couldn’t get nicked.” Later, the painting of pears watched over it.

  “Your mom and I played this on our first date,” her father had said. He brushed away the dust.

  Charlotte’s parents had met in the ballroom of the Rosecliff mansion in Newport, Rhode Island. They were on a tour and they were the only ones who “went stag.” Charlotte’s father, Clayton, secretly worked his way through the small crowd until he was standing next to her mother, Ellen. They looked up at the same time to study the painted ceiling. After the tour, they had lunch and discovered they had a lot in common. They were both in their forties. They’d both gone to Ivy League schools. They both liked to tour historic homes, and they both loved puzzles.

  Charlotte’s father unfolded the board and shook the bag of tiles under Charlotte’s nose—click-clack, click-clack.

  “You go first,” he had said.

  She played PEAR, and they both laughed.

  After that, they played all the time, just the two of them. The box stayed on the dining room table so it’d be ready when they were.

  But last year, the game went back in the closet.

  Charlotte wasn’t sure what happened, but suddenly there were other things to do. There was too much to worry about. Middle school infected her life like a virus. She started hiding her dolls, even though she still wanted to brush their hair. She slipped stuffed animals under the bed—how babyish they seemed now. And she said no to Scrabble.

  That didn’t stop her dad from asking.

  “How about a game?” he’d say.

  “Maybe later,” she’d reply.

  Eventually he stopped asking. Then the box wasn’t on the table anymore.

  One day it was there, the next day it wasn’t.

  When Ms. Khatri told her about her father’s heart attack, Charlotte’s feet had turned to stone. She couldn’t move. For a second she thought she might have a heart attack, too. There was a weight on her chest that wouldn’t go away. She had a million thoughts, but the only thing that came out of her mouth was, “I should have played more Scrabble.”

  Tuesday

  gauche adj : unsophisticated and socially awkward

  Life According to Ben

  Part IV

  There were two offices at Lanester Middle School. Ben wasn’t sure which one did what, so he walked through the door closest to the school entrance. The morning bell would ring in five minutes. He didn’t have time to waste.

&nbs
p; The office was small and mostly empty, except for a petite blond woman pecking away at a keyboard on the other side of the desk. A bell sat next to a lined sign-in/sign-out sheet. Ben rang it, even though the woman was only a few feet away.

  “The tardy bell hasn’t rung yet,” she said. “You have plenty of time.”

  Her nameplate said: MRS. D. CARLILE. He wondered what her first name was. She looked like a Diane. Maybe Denise.

  An oversized plastic water bottle sat perched next to her keyboard.

  “Did you know that the average American uses more than one-hundred-and-sixty disposable water bottles per year, but only recycles thirty-eight of them?” said Ben.

  She stopped pecking the keyboard and looked at him. “Are you signing in?”

  Ben glanced down at the sign-in sheet. “Signing in? No. I wanted to register for the student council race.”

  “The deadline was yesterday,” said Diane-Maybe-Denise.

  Ben tapped his chin thoughtfully. “I wonder if the school would make an exception.”

  “I wouldn’t know. I don’t handle the applications. All that’s done in the main office.” She motioned toward the second office nearby. Ben craned his neck to look through the glass partition that separated them. The other office bustled with activity.

  “Which office is this?” he asked.

  “Attendance.”

  Ben looked around. “So what happens here that doesn’t happen there?”

  “Nonstop action and excitement. A regular carnival.”

  “Doesn’t look too exciting.”

  “I know. I was being sarcastic.” She leaned back in her chair. “The attendance office is where you go when you’re late for class.”

  “I’m never late for class.”

  “You also come here if you have to leave school early.”

  “I never leave school early.”

  “Or if you were absent the day before.” Before Ben could say anything, she lifted her hand. “Let me guess. You’re never absent.”

  “That’s right. I’ve never missed a single day of school in my life.”

  “If you keep that up you’ll get the Perfect Attendance Award at the end of the year.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure as I’m sitting here.” She glanced up at the clock. “The bell is going to ring soon. You better get to class.”

  Ben turned on his heel and headed toward the door.

  “Make sure to pick up those registration papers next door,” Mrs. Carlile said.

  Ben’s hand was on the doorknob. “I thought you said it was too late.”

  “Tell them I said it’s okay,” she said. “I have a feeling you’d make a good representative.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Carlile!” Ben hadn’t expected to be so excited. He’d only just decided to run yesterday, after all. And it was completely on a whim. But it felt like something meaningful. Personal evolution. “By the way, what’s your first name? Is it Diane or Denise?”

  “Danielle.”

  “My name is Ben Boxer,” said Ben. “I just started sixth grade.”

  “Well, Ben Boxer,” she said. “Welcome to middle school.”

  The Anti-Clique

  Rabbit Hole: A winning word at the first National Spelling Bee in 1925 was gladiolus. The winning word in 2016 was gesellschaft, which refers to social relations based on impersonal ties, such as duty to a society or organization. A gladiolus is a flower that dies in the autumn and winter, only to bloom again.

  The benches in front of the auditorium were prime real estate at West Middle School. Charlotte and Bridget had lucked out: They had lockers within sight of the benches and a well-tuned system that got them there before anyone else. That’s where they were sitting when Bridget pulled her hair into a ponytail and said that she hated her art class.

  Charlotte thought she must have heard wrong—the hallways were loud and full of shrieks, squeaking sneakers, and slamming lockers, because art was the only class where Bridget finished her assignments. She was a great artist. Like a professional. Before they started middle school, she had talked about art classes nonstop—how they could be taken as an elective and she could take art all three years if she wanted.

  “It’s because of Tori Baraldi,” said Bridget. She sighed and rolled her eyes. Her hair was now in a perfect ponytail. “She keeps coming over and telling me my lines aren’t straight or my design isn’t big enough or the circumference of whatever isn’t in perspective.”

  “I thought art was supposed to be subjective.”

  “And what annoys me most,” continued Bridget, “is that Mrs. LaPira doesn’t do anything. She’s, like, this awesome artist, but she never says, ‘Tori, go back to your seat, you irritating, conceited gnat.’”

  “Why is Tori in art class, anyway?” Charlotte said. “She doesn’t seem like the type.”

  “She calls it her ‘meditation hour.’ Relaxation time so her brain can rest in preparation for the Bee.”

  Bridget grinned knowingly and they both burst out laughing.

  Here’s the thing about Victoria “Tori” Baraldi: Last year, in sixth grade, she made it to the National Spelling Bee. It was a big deal at West Middle School, and for an entire week the students had to listen to Tori spell words over the PA system during morning announcements. There were posters everywhere: “HOW DO YOU SPELL W-I-N? B-A-R-A-L-D-I!” and “BEE YOUR BEST!”

  “Did you know Victoria Baraldi scrambles to diabolic?” said Charlotte.

  “Yes. You’ve told me that like a million times.”

  They leaned back on the benches and people-watched. When they were little, they would sit knee-to-knee in the shade of the neighborhood playground and make up stories about all the parents there, like that father is a spy and that mother is in the witness protection program. Mr. Patel was secretly a millionaire with diamonds in his basement. Ms. Gianforcaro’s real name was Mrs. White, but she had to flee the country after a bank heist gone wrong. And old Mr. Mruk wasn’t old at all—he’d taken a special potion that made him age backward.

  When had they stopped playing that game?

  It must have been one of the things that disappeared, like Charlotte’s thick-haired dolls.

  Back then, in elementary school, they were even sort-of friends with kids like Tori and Magda—the “eggheads,” as Bridget called them now. Charlotte distinctly remembered holding hands with Bridget and chanting, “Red Rover, Red Rover, let Magda come over.”

  Charlotte closed her eyes and imagined the smells of the West Elementary School playground. Then she nudged Bridget and tilted her head toward Magda, who was unloading books from her locker to her backpack.

  “Hey,” Charlotte whispered. “Do you think Magda is in the CIA?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Had Bridget forgotten?

  “Nothing,” Charlotte said.

  Bridget eyed Magda and said, “You know how we were joking about you inviting Mateo over for Scrabble?”

  Charlotte pictured Mateo at her dining room table, hair falling in his eyes as he pinched a Scrabble tile between his fingers.

  “Well,” Bridget continued. “That got me thinking. Maybe you could invite Magda over instead.”

  Charlotte’s eyebrows bunched together. “That Mateo thing was a joke. And anyway, that’s not exactly an even trade-off,” she said.

  Bridget laughed nervously. “No, I mean . . . I bet she’s really good. You could play after school. She’d be a much better opponent than me, and it would give you something to do until you’re able to visit your dad.”

  “Oh,” Charlotte said. “I thought you could just come to my house, or something. Like usual.”

  “Yeah, but. I mean, she lives right next door to you.” Bridget shrugged. “I just thought, since she’s part of the egghead clique . . .”

  “Well, I’m part of the anti-clique.”

  That’s what Charlotte and Bridget had called themselves last year, because there were only two of them and they didn�
��t have a theme, like “the eggheads” or “the band kids” or whatever. They were just two friends who hung out all the time, even though they didn’t have much in common.

  After a long pause, Bridget said, “The thing is, I don’t think I’m going straight home after school today.” She tugged at her ponytail and wrapped a lock of hair around her finger. “Sophie Seong asked me to meet her at Red’s . . .”

  “Sophie Seong?”

  “Yeah. We’re in art together this year.” Bridget stood up. “You can come, too, if you want. I’m sure Sophie won’t mind. I just figured you wouldn’t want to, especially after what happened last time.”

  Charlotte thought about this science-fiction book she’d read once, where a robot repeated “does not compute, does not compute” until it self-destructed.

  “Maybe,” she said. But she was really thinking: Me at Red’s? Does not compute. Does not compute.

  Red’s wasn’t really Red’s. It was JJ’s Pizza, and it was just a few blocks away.

  Red’s was named for the red awning in front. It was an after-school hangout for people like Sophie Seong and her friends. From three to four p.m., the place was packed with “cool” kids. There was always a way to tell the Red’s crowd from the rest of the kids at West Middle School, and this year it was their shoes. It was the “in” thing to wear Vans sneakers with long laces.

  Charlotte had only been to Red’s once—not counting the times she went with her dad on a weekend, when it was just a pizza joint and not a hangout.

  It had been at the end of last year. She had gone because Bridget wanted to see what all the fuss was about, but first Bridget wanted to put her hair in a messy bun, because that’s what all the Sophie Seongs were doing. So they’d stopped at Charlotte’s house to get a rubber band and bobby pins. Her dad was in the kitchen, sorting through his prescriptions.

  “Hey there,” he said. He was putting pills in little containers marked for the days of the week. Clink, clink, clink. “What’re you two troublemakers up to?” He smiled at Bridget. “Paint any masterpieces lately?”