by P. J. Night
“Where are you going?” Emmy asked.
“I didn’t tell you?” Lizzy asked, distracted.
Emmy saw there was a car outside waiting, but she couldn’t tell who was in it. “Tell me what?”
“Cadence and her parents are taking me and Sophie to Manhattan today!” Lizzy squealed. “We’re going to go shopping and then see a Broadway show tonight! But first we’re going to pick some fresh strawberries at a real farm nearby. They’re going to be so delicious.”
“Oh,” Emmy said. She didn’t know what else to say. She stood there in her pajamas and short hair, feeling totally idiotic. “Well, have fun.”
“Okay, thanks! Bye!” As Lizzy walked out to the car, Emmy noticed Cadence in the front seat and Sophie in the back. Lizzy shut the car door and did not wave to Emmy.
Emmy went back upstairs to get dressed as quickly as she could. She tried to avoid the mirror this time. What would her mother say? Well, she’d find out soon enough.
On her way out, Emmy passed Lizzy’s parents in the kitchen.
“Good morning, Emmy,” Marilyn said when she saw her. “It’s too bad Liz had to leave so early, but why don’t you sit down and have some breakfast?”
“Thanks,” Emmy mumbled. “But I’ve gotta get home. Busy day today.” She suddenly couldn’t wait to get out of there.
Marilyn gave Emmy a look. “Are you okay, honey?” she asked, her face wrinkled up with concern and sympathy.
“Yeah, thanks,” Emmy said quickly. Marilyn had to know that Emmy was seriously hurt by Lizzy’s behavior, but Emmy didn’t want to start crying in front of Lizzy’s parents. That would be embarrassing. And her new “haircut” was embarrassing enough.
Emmy walked to her house next door. As soon as she let herself in and sat on the couch in the living room, her mom came out of the kitchen and gasped. Emmy put her head in her hands.
“What on earth have you done?” her mother said slowly and quietly, the way she sounded when she was absolutely furious. “What have you done to your beautiful hair? If you wanted a change, why didn’t you say anything about it?”
“She said she was just going to trim it!” Emmy cried, and this time she didn’t hold back her tears.
Her mom softened and joined Emmy on the couch, taking her into a big warm hug. As Emmy cried and cried, her mom just kept saying “Oh, honey.”
When Emmy finally stopped crying, she rested her head on her mom’s shoulder, exhausted.
“Honey, I know those tears can’t be just about your hair,” her mom said. “Did something else happen at Lizzy’s?”
Again the tears came. Emmy managed to choke out the whole story: how Lizzy wanted to be called Liz and wanted to call her Em or Emma, how she wanted to “update” Emmy’s look, how she took off in the morning with her cool new friends with barely a good-bye and definitely didn’t want her to join them. Her mom sighed.
“Honey, I’m afraid this is all normal,” she said to Emmy. “You two are at an age where you’re growing and changing at different paces and in different ways.”
“You mean Lizzy’s more mature than me,” Emmy said, and cried even harder.
“No, she’s just exploring different interests,” her mom said gently.
“Right,” said Emmy. “Except that she’s more mature than me and I’m just a big loser.”
Just then Emmy’s seven-year-old brother, Sam, came downstairs in his soccer uniform, stopping short when he saw Emmy’s hair. No matter that Emmy was clearly upset and being comforted by their mom, Sam burst into hysterical laughter and pointed to Emmy’s hair.
“Really, Sam.” Emmy’s mom sighed. “Please. Emmy is obviously upset about this.”
“What happened?” Sam asked.
“Lizzy cut it,” Emmy told him. “She said she was just going to trim it.”
“Oh,” Sam said. He really was trying to be good. He turned and went quietly up the stairs, leaving Emmy and her mom alone again.
Emmy turned to her mom. “You and Marilyn have been best friends forever,” Emmy said. “And I thought Lizzy and I would be best friends forever too. I don’t know what’s going on. It’s like I’m just not cool enough for her anymore.”
“I’m sorry, honey,” her mom said. Her mom really was a good listener. But Emmy felt not one little bit better and couldn’t wait until it was time to go to sleep. How many more hours before bedtime? Then again, at that point she’d be even closer to showing up at school on Monday with her short, horrible hair.
“I bet I’ll get teased on Monday,” Emmy murmured to her mom.
Her mom shook her head. Then she said, “And the good news is that your hair will grow back. In the meantime, how about if we go to my hair salon and have Josephine fix it up a little bit? I bet she’ll be able to turn it into a really stylish cut and you’ll like it a lot more.”
The possibility of actually improving the hair situation hadn’t really occurred to Emmy. “Yeah,” she said. “That sounds like a good idea.”
“Great,” her mom said. “I’ll call and see if she has any time for an appointment today.” She got up and went to the phone in the kitchen. Emmy could hear her mom speaking in a low voice, as if she didn’t want Emmy to overhear. What could she be saying? Emmy wondered. The girl that my daughter thought was her best friend just butchered her hair, and can you please fix it by the time she has to show up at school on Monday so she isn’t the laughing stock of the seventh grade?
“Wonderful,” Emmy heard her mom say. “We’ll see you soon, then.” She came back into the living room and smiled at Emmy. “We can go right now,” she said. “Josephine will squeeze you in.”
So Emmy and her mom walked the four blocks to the salon, where Josephine greeted them tactfully, pretending not to be shocked by what she saw before her. She ran her fingers through what was left of Emmy’s hair.
“Not quite what you were expecting, huh?” she asked Emmy sympathetically.
Emmy nodded sadly.
“Well, I definitely think I can work with this,” Josephine said to Emmy and her mom. “Come on in and let’s get started.”
Josephine had Emmy put a robe on over her shirt and then shampooed her hair, just like Lizzy had done yesterday. Emmy had a strange feeling of déjà vu and hoped this haircut would end a little differently than the last one.
It didn’t take Josephine long to reshape Emmy’s hair into a much better cut. It was still short, but the jagged edges were gone and it looked a lot less awkward. It would take some getting used to having such short hair, but Emmy supposed she could live with it until it grew out.
Sunday was lame.
It rained, and Emmy stayed in her pajamas all day and refused an invitation from her parents to go to a movie. She even took her lunch up to her room and ate it under the covers. Wouldn’t it be great, she thought, to be a bear and hibernate for a few months, till my hair has grown out a little? And maybe that’d make Lizzy miss being friends with me?
She kept thinking Lizzy would call or come by, like she used to on rainy days. So when the doorbell rang, Emmy’s heart leapt like an eager dog. She let her mom answer the door.
“Marilyn, hi!” she heard her mom say. So it wasn’t Lizzy. It was Lizzy’s mom. She heard them speaking softly as though they didn’t want Emmy to overhear. Then her mom called upstairs.
“Emmy, honey, come down and say hello to Marilyn.”
Emmy didn’t know why she suddenly felt so furious with Marilyn. She’d always loved Marilyn just like a second mom. And Marilyn had always treated her like a daughter. But now she felt betrayed. Look what had happened under Marilyn’s roof! Under Marilyn’s supervision! Still, she knew she had to go downstairs, so she did.
“Hi, Marilyn,” she said, avoiding her eyes.
“Hi, Emmy,” Marilyn said kindly. “How are you doing? I see you had your hair touched up a little bit. It looks great.”
“I’m okay,” Emmy said, trying to sound normal. “Thanks. Yeah, my hair came out okay, I guess.”
“I brought you over some of the strawberries that Lizzy picked yesterday,” Marilyn said. “She feels really bad that you don’t seem to like the haircut.”
Then why didn’t she come over herself and say so? Lizzy screamed in her head. Or even send me a text? But she said nothing.
“Well, Lizzy did say she was just going to trim it, and look how short she cut it,” Emmy’s mom said, running her fingers through what was left of her daughter’s hair. For a moment no one said anything, and the sentence hung in the air. You could cut the tension in the room with a knife. Great, Emmy thought. Now not only are Lizzy and I not best friends anymore, it’s causing problems between our moms.
“I know, Joanne.” Marilyn sighed. “I don’t know what to say. I’m really sorry things happened the way they did. I do think your hair looks really pretty though, Emmy.” She reached over to give Emmy a hug, and Emmy forced herself to hug back. “Well, I’ve got to get dinner on the table,” Marilyn said. “You guys take care. Say hi to Sam and Bernard.” Bernard was Emmy’s dad. And she was off.
Emmy’s mom went into the kitchen and put the strawberries into a big bowl, which she put in the middle of the table. They looked pretty. But as Emmy marched back upstairs, she swore to herself she would not have one bite of any of those strawberries. Those strawberries could rot for all she cared.
CHAPTER 3
Monday morning. Again for a few blissful moments after Emmy awoke, she did not think about her hair. Then the familiar jolt of remembrance—Lizzy had chopped it. Chopped it. It was short and she had bangs. But Josephine had fixed it, pretty much. Emmy supposed she could forgive Lizzy. Maybe Lizzy really was just trying to give her a more stylish cut. Maybe she meant well, it’s just that she wasn’t a professional like Josephine. Maybe she did the best she could.
Emmy and Lizzy didn’t have class together until after lunch. For the first half of the day, no one seemed to notice Emmy’s hair. No one seemed to notice Emmy at all, actually. And that was kind of the way it had been so far this year. It was like she was camouflaged against a background. And Lizzy was the opposite. She was . . . noticeable. Uncamouflage-able.
But for now Emmy had lunch to contend with. She got in the hot-lunch line and grabbed a tray. This year it suddenly seemed that the cool kids brought their lunches, and the rest got hot lunch. Last year everyone had loved hot lunch, but this year was different in so many ways.
For starters, Emmy and Lizzy used to sit together every day until the beginning of seventh grade. Sometimes just the two of them, sometimes other kids would join them. But they were always together. Then all of a sudden Emmy found herself sitting alone with her hot lunch while Lizzy sat across the room with Cadence and Sophie. With the lunches they had brought. They always seemed to be busy trading things from their lunches. They were in their own little world.
Cadence and Sophie were new to the class last year. They had both moved from the same town and had been in the same school before, so they stuck together in sixth grade. They kept pretty much to themselves, and both Emmy and Lizzy thought they were a little snobby. But all of a sudden in seventh grade Cadence and Sophie began including Lizzy in their exclusive little group while still ignoring Emmy. And now Cadence, Sophie, and Lizzy had become a threesome.
Which was surprising to Emmy because last year Sophie and Cadence had played quite a mean trick on Emmy and Lizzy in the lunchroom. It had been spaghetti and meatballs day, and both Emmy and Lizzy had gotten up to get napkins and water in the corner of the lunchroom, leaving their trays unattended. When they returned, they sat down, grabbed their forks, and dug in. But in addition to the meatballs in their spaghetti there was something truly horrifying and disgusting: eyeballs.
They were fake eyeballs, of course, but that didn’t matter to Lizzy and Emmy, who both felt like throwing up. They looked up and across the room. Sophie and Cadence were doubled over laughing.
Today Emmy sat with her short hair and dipped her fish sticks in ketchup. A girl named Hannah sat across from her. Emmy and Hannah been good friends in third and fourth grade but weren’t so close anymore. Hannah didn’t really have any other friends to sit with, and this year they had begun sitting together at lunch. They didn’t have much in common, and they didn’t really talk much while eating lunch, but still it was nice not to sit alone.
Then Emmy looked over at Lizzy, Cadence, and Sophie. They seemed to be sharing something in the middle of the table and acting like it was hilarious.
I’ll just go over there, Emmy thought, tired of no longer eating lunch with Lizzy, and ask to join them. Lizzy would never say no. Lizzy’s got new friends, but she’s not mean. It took Emmy a while to get up the courage. She made sure she had one fish stick left so it would be like she hadn’t finished her lunch. She took a deep breath, mumbled a good-bye to Hannah, and stood up. As she approached the table, she could see what the three girls were sharing.
It was strawberry shortcake. And it looked delicious. Emmy immediately wanted some, then remembered her promise not to eat any of the “traitor strawberries,” as she had come to think of them. Her mom had kept offering her some yesterday, and she had kept refusing until her mom had gotten the hint. Then her mom had given her a sympathetic look, which made Emmy want to start crying all over again.
“Hi, Lizzy,” Emmy said, standing next to the table and holding her tray. Sophie and Cadence barely looked up from eating the cake, which was almost devoured.
“Excuse me?” Lizzy said, and looked directly at Emmy without smiling.
“Hi,” Emmy said softly. Why had she even bothered to come over?
“Hi who?” Lizzy said.
“Sorry, hi, Liz,” Emmy said.
“Hi,” Lizzy said, and nothing more.
Cadence looked up. “Nice haircut,” she said. Emmy couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic or not.
“Yeah, Liz has a special talent,” Sophie said. “She could open her own salon.”
Was she serious?
Emmy tried to smile. “Thanks for the strawberries,” she said to Lizzy. She didn’t mean it, but she had no idea what else to say, and she felt like she had to say something.
“What do you mean?” Lizzy asked blankly.
“Your mom brought over some of the strawberries you picked on Saturday,” Emmy said.
“Oh, she did?” Lizzy said. “I didn’t know that.”
Lizzy picked up her fork and began working on the last of the cake. It was almost gone, which the three girls seemed to think was the funniest thing in the world. Sophie and Cadence were laughing as hard as when they had played the eyeballs-in-the-spaghetti trick on Emmy and Lizzy last year. Only this time Lizzy was laughing with them and Emmy was on the outside. Alone.
Emmy decided to forget about sitting down. There wasn’t a chair, and they certainly weren’t inviting her.
“Yeah,” she mumbled. “Well, see you later.”
Lizzy didn’t look up. Neither did Cadence or Sophie. And as Emmy walked away, they started cracking up.
Emmy went back to her table and ate her last fish stick. Her humiliation made it almost impossible to swallow.
Now she was going to have to see Lizzy again in English class next period. And, as if by some cruel twist of fate, they got paired off as editing buddies. Their teacher, Ms. Calhoun, sometimes started Monday’s class with a “quick write” in which everyone had five minutes to write about something he or she had done over the weekend. Then everyone got paired off with an editing buddy, swapping papers and reading each other’s work, then making corrections and notes. The editing buddies also discussed the pieces. No one knew who his or her editing buddy would be until everyone was finished writing, though.
When it was time to start writing, Emmy gripped her pencil tightly. How could she possibl
y write about this weekend? She took a deep breath and started writing the first thing that came to her:
This weekend I had a sleepover with Lizzy. She gave me a haircut. It wasn't quite what I had expected. We made purple cows, which are the best smoothys ever. Blending blueberries and bananas together is a beautiful thing. On Sunday it rained and I stayed home. And that was my weekend .
Oh well. The writing lacked her usual enthusiasm. It was stiff and clunky. But it was technically a complete paragraph.
When she learned she would be paired with Lizzy, she had the same feeling that she had when she looked in the mirror and saw her short hair. Like her stomach was melting. They swapped papers. Lizzy had written:
Best Saturday Ever
By Liz Draper
This Saturday I spent the day with my friends and it was perfect in every way. We got up early, but it was worth it to go strawberry picking. After we had picked enough delicious strawberries to fill Cadence's dad's trunk we went to Manhattan. First, we went shopping and I bought a gorgeous new sundress. I can't wait to wear it. And then we went to a Broadway show, which was so cool because I want to be an actress when I grow up. It was definitely the best day ever.
It was time to discuss each other’s pieces. They traded papers and spent a minute reading them. Then Lizzy spoke first.
“You spelled ‘smoothies’ wrong,” Lizzy told Emmy, tapping the word on Emmy’s paper with the eraser of her pencil. “It’s I-E, not Y. Other than that, it’s perfect.”
Emmy erased the Y and replaced it with I-E. “You think it’s perfect?” she said. She hoped Lizzy would get what she was saying. As in, the weekend had been the exact opposite of perfect.
“I mean, it’s fine,” Lizzy said. “You go.”
“Um, yours is good,” Emmy said. What was she supposed to say? Glad you had such a super weekend, Lizzy? Thanks for mentioning our sleepover. “I’d put a comma after ‘trunk,’” she added. “It seems like it needs a comma there.”
“That’s it?” Lizzy said.
“Yeah,” Emmy said. She guessed that really was it.