I don’t know what to do, so I put my head on her shoulder and pretend we’re going to stay like this. I know she’s going to go away for a long time, and I know that’s why she’s telling me all this.
“Write to me,” I whisper.
A wet, sobby laugh breaks out of her. “I will. And if you ever really need me, I’ll be at MIT, okay? You can always come to me, Annie.”
I look down and swallow. “But you won’t be coming home anymore.”
“No. I’m getting out while I still can.”
After a long while Miri gets into the old blue Chevy Nova that used to belong to my aunt Mary Perpetua (my mom’s sister, and totally Irish) and drives south toward Boston. I sit in the grass for a long time—hours, it feels like—because I don’t really want to go back in there with all those people who say they’re family but never did anything to help Miri. Or my mom. I never needed someone to swear a blood oath for me. I just needed someone to give me a bath.
A light goes on from the house. “She’s out here,” JP says behind me. I hear him walking toward me. “Where’s Miriam?” he asks, standing over me.
“Oh. She had a test or something, so she had to get back to school,” I say.
JP looks down on me for just long enough to tell me he knows I’m lying.
“You can talk to me, you know,” he says, and I know I can because JP has never laughed at me when I’ve told him something, even if it was just silly kid stuff.
“Miri just told me she’s going away for a while.” I look up and see JP nod. Miri must have already told him.
“Are you upset about that?” he asks.
I shrug. “I’m not surprised” is all I’ll say. I don’t want to get into it with JP and start crying or something. Everyone’s about to come out here.
He reaches a hand down. “Come on, Shrimpy. It’s time to go home.”
He pulls me up and puts an arm over my shoulder, bumping me with his hip and messing with me until I laugh and chase him to the car. JP always makes me feel better. He hardly ever says he loves me, but he always makes me feel like he’s saying it, you know?
The whole car ride home I think about my destiny. It better be a great one, for Miri’s sake.
When we get home, Nora practically runs upstairs to her room. Fay follows her, and I can tell from the look on her face that something isn’t right. I start to go up the stairs after them, but Bridget gets in my way.
“Want to play cards?” she asks me.
“No,” I say. “I want to go to bed.”
“It’s early,” she says, grabbing my hand and dragging me into the playroom. “Play one game with me and then go to bed.”
I’m getting anxious now. I don’t know how I know something bad is going on except that Bridget never pays attention to me in a nice way. I pull my arm out of Bridget’s hand and run upstairs.
When I get to our room, it’s too late. Nora’s face is all red and she’s cradling her left arm with her right like it’s a dead animal and Fay is walking out of our room with something in her hand. Fay looks at me to see what I’m going to do. She’s close enough now that I can see what she’s got. It’s a birthday card. Fay’s birthday isn’t until summer, but Nora’s birthday is next week.
Fay’s still staring at me, and I realize I’m blocking the door. She gets really close to me and speaks quietly.
“Nora gave this to me, right?” she says.
I swallow and look down. She grabs one of my wrists and twists. It hurts, a lot. That’s bad enough, but the worst thing is that it doesn’t leave any kind of mark. No red spots like a pinch or a burn, and no bruises like a punch or a kick. A twisted arm just hurts and hurts until the person stops, and when it’s over, there’s no proof it ever happened.
“She gave me her birthday money from the two tias. Right?” Fay repeats. She doesn’t even sound angry, because she’s not. Because she knows she’s going to win.
I see Nora holding her hurt arm across her body. I have to nod. When I do, Fay lets me go and walks away, probably to go downstairs like nothing happened.
Nora won’t look at me. This is just like when Fay took her First Communion money. Nora will act like she hates me for a while because she needs someone to hate, and she couldn’t possibly hate Fay any more than she already does.
Chapter Six
There’s going to be a teacher in space.
Christa McAuliffe is going to ride on the space shuttle Challenger, and she’s going to be the first teacher in space. She was selected and I saw it on the news last night, and I can’t stop thinking about it because if someone who isn’t an astronaut can go into space, anyone can go. That is so freaking awesome.
When Kristin Gates gets on the bus, I can see the excited look on her face. I wave to her, and she comes rushing to me with her Trapper Keeper clutched to her chest.
“Did you hear?” she says. She’s so excited she can hardly catch a breath.
“Yes!” I reply. “I could barely sleep last night.”
“Me either!” Kristin squeals. “I wonder who’s going to ask me.”
Hang on. I don’t think we’re talking about the same thing, but I can’t say anything about it now or I’ll look stupid.
She gives me a sneaky smile and elbows me. “I wish Jordan would, but we all know he’s going to ask you.”
I smile and nod and shake my head and shrug all at the same time, hoping Kristin will pick whichever gesture is the right one until I can figure out what she’s talking about.
“How did you hear?” I ask, fishing for a clue.
“My mom’s on the school board,” Kristin says, like I should know that. “She said that sixth and seventh are going to be combined this year on Saturday night, so that leaves Friday night for us.”
Uh … still no idea what’s going on.
“So, how did you find out?” she asks. Her tiny nose is scrunched up. It’s cute on her. If I did it, I’d look like an anteater. I have a beak where Kristin has a button.
She’s still waiting for an answer. I remember her saying something about somebody asking her something. “So who do you think will ask you?” I say to distract her.
Kristin sighs and then launches into a list of all the boys in our grade. I keep saying “Uh-huh” and “Na-uh!” when it feels like that’s what she’s looking for. Luckily, she keeps chattering the whole way to school and off the bus and halfway down the hallway.
“It’s going to be this Friday after school,” Karen Green says as she runs toward us. “I hope Chris Lawrence asks me.”
“Then why don’t you ask him?” Samantha Schnabel replies, rolling her eyes. She looks down the hall and giggles suddenly. “Jordan Dolan is walking toward us,” she says, dropping her chin and blushing.
What the hell (five Hail Marys) has happened to all my friends?
I turn around to include Jordan and see he’s just as confused as I am. He looks around at all the girls staring at him. I can tell he’s getting uncomfortable, so I say the first thing that pops into my head.
“Did you see the news last night?” I ask him.
“Christa McAuliffe,” he blurts out, looking relieved. “Isn’t it awesome?”
“I know, right?” I say, nodding at him and so happy that I’m finally part of a conversation I can understand. “First teacher in space.”
“I wonder if she’ll be doing experiments up there,” Jordan says. His eyes are all starry.
“Yeah, like, seeing if the same experiments we do in science class have the same results in space.”
“What if they’re different?” he asks.
Jordan and I grin at each other, thinking about how cool that would be. We’d have to reinvent science, because if science doesn’t work everywhere, it doesn’t work at all. It gets quiet again. I notice that Kristin, Samantha, and Karen are staring at us.
“Don’t you want to ask Annie something?” Kristin says to Jordan.
Jordan clams up. When Jordan clams up, it’s not just that he sto
ps talking. He shuts his face off, too, so you can’t even get a hint of what he’s thinking.
The bell rings and we all have to rush to homeroom. Right before we take our seats, Kristin grabs my arm.
“I’m so sorry, Annie. I didn’t mean to embarrass you,” she whispers. “I really thought he’d ask you.”
“It’s okay,” I say, still lost. I smile at her really big while I take my seat behind Jordan so she doesn’t feel bad anymore.
I still don’t know four periods later when I walk into the lunchroom, but I find out.
The whole cafeteria has been plastered with posters that say FIFTH GRADE HALLOWEEN DANCE FRIDAY NIGHT!!! And others that say SIXTH AND SEVENTH COMBINED HALLOWEEN DANCE SATURDAY NIGHT!!!
Oh.
The word dance is everywhere. It keeps repeating in my head until it’s just a sound that rhymes with pants and ants. Ants-in-the-pants dance. Ha!
I’m smiling when I sit down at the lunch table with everyone.
“Oh my God, he asked you,” Karen says with way too many high notes and not enough low notes in her voice.
“Huh?” I say, still singing the ants-in-the-pants dance in my head.
“Jordan asked you to the dance,” Samantha translates. She’s got her arms crossed and her lips are as tight as the knot on a balloon.
“No he didn’t,” I say, sitting.
Kristin reaches out and squeezes my hand. “Sorry,” she says.
“Why?” I ask.
I pull out my sandwich. I can immediately tell something’s wrong with it. I peel apart the edges of the bread and see my mom’s mistake. There’s no meat or cheese or even a tomato in here. My mom made me a mayonnaise sandwich. My mom’s a really forgetful person. She’s forgotten to make my lunch before, but remembering the mayo and forgetting the meat? This is a new one. My mother is always coming up with new and interesting ways to forget about me.
I move my tongue around my mouth, trying to gauge my hunger vs. the gross-out factor of eating a mayonnaise sandwich. I shove the pieces back together before my friends can think maybe I’m too poor to put anything in my sandwiches.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Sarah asks.
Damn (ten Hail Marys). They must have seen my meatless sandwich. “I should have packed my own lunch. It’s no big deal,” I say. They look confused.
“About Jordan,” Samantha says. As soon as his name is out, she looks up and slaps a hand over her mouth. Everybody gasps and looks behind me.
“Annie?”
I turn around to see Jordan. “Hi,” I say.
“You wanna go to the dance?” he asks.
I shrug. I like dancing, I’ve just never done it in front of other people before. “I hadn’t really thought about it,” I say.
“Think about it.”
“Okay. I will.”
“Good,” he says, and walks back to a table full of boys, who are all staring at him. A second after he sits down, the boys turn to stare at me.
Boys are strange.
Now, how am I going to fix this sandwich?
“That was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen,” says Sarah Bernstein. “You were like, whatever. And he was like, whatever.” She sucks air through her teeth like she burned herself.
I look around the table. My friends are all staring at me. I think I’ve missed something here. All I know is Samantha’s pissed off again, and Kristin is trying not to look sad.
“He made you wait four whole periods,” Karen says. “You played it perfectly, Annie.”
Eat your sandwich, dummy, and try to put the facts in order. One: nobody cares about Christa McAuliffe but Jordan and me. Two: there is a Halloween Dance. Three: Jordan asked me if I was going to it. Four: Oh.
The mayonnaise sandwich turns to glue in my mouth. Why am I so slow?
“Annie? Are you okay?” Kristin asks.
I swallow. “Do you think Jordan was asking me to the dance?”
“Oh my God,” Samantha says. She sighs and slumps in her chair, shaking her head at me.
Kristin shoots Samantha an angry look. “Yes,” she says, answering my question. “And you told him you’d think about it.”
That was a lucky break. I nod for a while. “So, how does this work? Going to a dance with someone, I mean.”
The girls lean in, excited. “Well, first you have to buy a dress,” Karen says.
Buy. A dress. With money?
“Then he’ll have his mom drive him to your house and they’ll pick you up,” Sarah says. “His mom might come inside to meet your mom.”
My mom. His mom. Jordan. In my house. A panic light starts flashing in my head. Sirens clang. Some old movie actor shoots at a giant squid and screams, “Abandon ship!”
I crumple up the rest of the mayonnaise sandwich in its brown paper bag and march over to Jordan’s table. He turns and smiles at me, but his smile disappears when he sees my face.
“No,” I say.
I run out of the cafeteria.
Jordan won’t look at me for the rest of the day. He doesn’t even glance in my direction once, and I know he doesn’t because I spend the last three periods trying to catch his eye and make him smile or something.
I feel awful. He looks so angry. The only time Jordan’s ever been angry with me was when I said I wanted Walter Mondale to win because then Geraldine Ferraro would be the first woman vice president, and Jordan said that picking a president because of the vice president didn’t make any sense, and I told Jordan that he didn’t make any sense.
We were mad at each other for two whole days, and then I asked him to help me build a giant pendulum in the gym so we could demonstrate the rotation of the Earth and we both forgot about the Geraldine Ferraro thing.
I have the feeling that this time neither of us is going to just forget about it. Something’s changed. I don’t like it.
“What’s the matter with you?” Nora asks as we stand in line for the bus. She’s still hating me instead of Fay, or because I was there, or just because she kinda hates everyone right now, so there’s no point in trying to tell her what happened, because she’ll just be mean about it.
“Nothing,” I lie, trying to look two lines over to find Jordan, but I don’t see him anywhere. Nora keeps looking at me and frowning as we get on the bus.
“You’re coming over to my place after school,” Kristin says. I don’t really feel like company, but Kristin won’t let it go. “We’ll eat Fruit Roll-Ups and watch General Hospital,” she says, taking my hand and dragging me off the bus at her stop.
Kristin is a latchkey kid. Both her parents work, so she has the whole house to herself when she gets home from school. Usually I love coming over to her place. It’s like going to a different planet—a clean, quiet planet with lots of food.
All the furniture matches. The chairs have red cushions on them. The red cushions go with the red drapes. The red drapes go with the flowery wallpaper that Kristin once told me was from Laura Ashley. I don’t know who Laura Ashley is, but I know you’re supposed to say her name in a whisper. All the dishes match, and none of them are chipped. The pots are so pretty they hang them from the ceiling so everyone can see. Even the plants are just the right shade of green. All the plants in my house died long ago, probably because our cat, Geronimo, wouldn’t stop peeing in them.
Kristin always has the apple cinnamon Fruit Roll-Ups that I really like and never get at home, but even though I didn’t eat lunch, I’m not at all hungry. It’s like my stomach has a rock in it.
“You think I don’t know why you turned Jordan down, but I do,” Kristin says.
I laugh. “Well, if you understand, you’d better explain it to me, because I haven’t understood one thing all damn”—(ten Hail Marys)—“day.”
Kristin looks at me from across the table. “How long have we been friends?” she asks me.
I shrug. “Since first grade,” I answer.
“How many times have I been in your house?”
“Never,” I say. She ju
st looks at me. “You’d hate it.”
“You always say that, Annie.”
One little part of me wants to tell her. She’s a good friend and she’s just trying to help. The rest of me sees this kitchen and wants to stay here and pretend I belong here. If she knows the truth, I won’t even get to pretend I’m just like her and that everything is safe and smells nice and there isn’t shit (fifteen Hail Marys) all over the place. I cross my arms over the rock in my stomach.
“I just don’t want to go to the dance. That’s why I said no.”
Kristin’s shoulders slump. “Fine,” she says. “Let’s watch General Hospital.”
I have no idea why the people in this show always look like they’re about to cry. I don’t understand what’s going on, but that seems to be my whole day right there. All I can tell is that all the crying is usually over a boy.
It dawns on me that this is why all my friends know about school dances and what you’re supposed to do if a boy asks you out. All my friends come home and watch soap operas all afternoon. Look, if I had nothing else to do when I got home but think about boys and all I did was watch soap operas to practice, I’d probably never have made such a fool of myself in school today about Jordan.
But we don’t watch soap operas in my house. And when I go home, I’ve got other things to think about.
The show ends, and Kristin uses the remote to turn off the TV. In my house, I’m the remote. How can someone like Kristin ever understand that?
“You should probably call Jordan tonight and apologize for turning him down in front of all his friends like that,” Kristin says. “You really embarrassed him.”
I nod, but I don’t call Jordan when I get home, because what would I say? I can’t tell him the truth about why I did it. Plus, I’ve never called Jordan on the telephone before.
When I get to school the next day, it’s like Jordan doesn’t even know me. After homeroom, when he doesn’t turn around to say hi, I know I can’t sit behind him anymore. First period I change seats. I’ll sit at the front of the class with Jimmy Collins from now on so I can’t stare at Jordan even if I want to. I still feel like there’s a rock in my stomach, but it’s a little better than it was yesterday, and maybe in a couple of weeks it’ll be gone. And then it’ll be like Jordan and I were never friends to begin with.
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