“Oh, my!” Margo’s face lights up with pleasure at the sight of Kylee’s handiwork. “Jeff, this is the girl I was telling you about. Remember? The one who came back three times to get more yarn?”
I’m so happy for Kylee.
If I had to choose between Ms. Archer loving my review and the animal shelter loving Kylee’s sweaters, I might choose the sweaters. I really might.
But I wish the universe had given us both.
* * *
We’re doing more standard news-and-feature-reporting stuff in journalism for the next few weeks: the five W’s (who, what, where, when, why); getting the most important information in the lead; and organizing the piece so that if the editor needs to cut it for reasons of space, he or she can just chop off the end and not lose anything absolutely crucial. I hate the idea of having the ending of any story of mine just lopped off by an editor who happens to be in a lopping mood. I want to be my own lopper.
Our new assignment is a feature piece on someone at our school or in our community who is doing something fascinating. If only I knew something fascinating Cameron was doing and could write about him! Of course, I’d be too shy to ask for an interview, given that I can barely make myself say two sentences to him.
“You’re not knitting,” I hear Olivia whisper to Kylee in class on Thursday, the day after Kylee delivered her sweaters to the animal shelter. We’ve all gotten so used to that rhythmic clicking that it feels wrong not to hear it. Maybe even Olivia feels unnerved by the unexpected silence.
We’re supposed to be doing a freewrite on the most memorable person we’ve ever known—I’m doing mine on Cameron while making very sure he can’t see what I’m scribbling—but Olivia must be stuck on hers.
I hear Kylee whisper back that she got carpal tunnel syndrome knitting a dozen sweaters for abandoned dogs awaiting adoption at the animal shelter.
“Wow!” Olivia says, sounding nice about Kylee’s knitting for the first time.
“Girls,” Ms. Archer calls over to them, holding her finger to her lips with a smile.
I think Ms. Archer must miss the sound of Kylee’s knitting, too. It’s been the sound track for our class all trimester.
“That’s so cool!” Olivia whispers to Kylee before she picks up her pen and starts to write. Snarky thought from me: maybe she’s decided that the most memorable person she knows is herself.
* * *
That evening, Kylee texts me after dinner: You’re not going to believe this.
I text her back: What?
Olivia just called me.
You’re kidding.
She wants to write her feature article about me!
About Kylee?
Of course about Kylee.
Who else in our school, who else in any middle school anywhere, knit a dozen stunningly adorable sweaters for stunningly adorable dogs awaiting homes in an animal shelter? And gave herself carpal tunnel syndrome doing it?
This is the article I should be writing! Kylee is the memorable person I should be writing about! I’m Kylee’s best friend, not Olivia. Olivia didn’t even like Kylee’s knitting until Kylee stopped doing it.
Why on earth didn’t I think of this before? But I was so distracted by my crush on Cameron that I missed seeing the story of the century—well, at least a terrific piece for the school newspaper and maybe even for the Broomville Banner—right in front of my eyes. This is the kind of story the Associated Press might pick up, a heart-tugging human interest story with universal appeal.
Could I write it anyway? It’s not as if for every story in the world there is only one person who is allowed to write it. Just because Olivia thought of it first doesn’t mean I couldn’t write it, too, and maybe write it better, because I love Kylee more.
Except: Olivia did think of it first.
And she already talked to Kylee.
I have to face it: on the biggest story in our school this year, she scooped me.
That’s great! I text back to Kylee.
And it is great for Kylee, it really is, and it’s great for Olivia, who found the perfect article idea that was right under my oblivious nose.
The only person it isn’t great for is me.
18
I’m once again in the backseat of the car, with Hunter once again at the wheel and Mom once again losing her marbles as she sits next to him. We’re making a quick run to the grocery store. I agreed to go because Kylee and Brianna are sleeping over tonight (Isabelle is going to a high school football game with another friend) and I want to pick out exactly which snacks we’re having. I could have sent Mom with a list, but sometimes inspiration strikes when I wander the aisles at the store.
So apparently I value spectacular sleepover snacks more than I value my life.
I have to admit Hunter is getting better at driving. There’s no lurching now as he steps on the gas. It’s almost like being in the car with a normal driver. He stays in his lane just fine with no close calls with parked cars or oncoming traffic.
He drives too fast, though, and doesn’t leave enough distance between us and the car ahead of him.
“So what’s that rule?” I ask. “The one about how far you’re supposed to be behind the other car?”
“Trap,” Hunter tells me. He’s now said “Shut thy trap” to me so often that he abbreviates it for convenience.
“Hunter, slow down,” Mom says. My question had the desired effect. “You’re supposed to be two seconds—one one-thousand, two one-thousand—behind that Suburban.”
“I am,” Hunter says, which is completely false. I’m not sure exactly how the two-second thing is measured, but I’m sure that if the Suburban were to slam on its brakes, we wouldn’t have time to stop without rear-ending it.
I guess that wouldn’t kill us all.
But it wouldn’t be good either.
Hunter gains on the SUV. I can see Mom’s neck jerk as she brakes hard. The only problem is she doesn’t have a brake.
“Mom!” Hunter barks at her. “You’re doing it again! Enough with the imaginary brake!”
“It’s a reflex,” Mom says. “It’s an automatic response.” She sounds like she’s apologizing, which is ridiculous. He should be apologizing to us.
Hunter turns around to glare at me, as if it’s my fault he was driving too close to the SUV in front of us. Even though I said he was getting better at driving, he’s not good enough to drive without looking at the road. Few drivers are. Driving-while-giving-your-sister-dirty-looks is just as dangerous as driving-while-texting. Maybe worse.
The car swerves.
Mom shrieks.
She grabs the steering wheel just as we cross the lane into the path of a FedEx delivery truck. I stifle my own yelp of terror.
All I can say is, these snacks had better be worth it. They had better be the best sleepover snacks in the history of the world.
* * *
The snacks aren’t amazing, but they’re good. I’ve discovered Nutella—this scrumptious chocolate-hazelnut spread—so I bought a jar of it, plus crackers and fruit to spread it on, and vanilla ice cream, because Nutella is the best ice cream topping ever. Also tortilla chips and stuff to make Mom’s seven-layer dip (memo to braces-wearing self: don’t have any). And cookie dough for these chocolate cookies that have a melted fudgy center.
Kylee and Brianna arrive together after dinner; Brianna had a dinner thing she had to go to with her grandparents. So it’s eight-thirty by the time we spread our sleeping bags on the family room floor and open the Nutella jar.
Thank goodness Hunter is sleeping over at Moonbeam’s house.
Brianna glances up from her phone, where she is busy texting somebody—Isabelle?—to let her eyes roam around the kitchen and family room. “Where’s Hunter?” she asks, as if it would be normal for him to be at home on Friday night to welcome his sister’s friends.
“He’s out all night, hooray, hooray.”
Brianna makes a pouty face.
“No,” I tell her. �
�No. No. No. You are not going to say what I think you’re going to say.”
“He’s cute, that’s all,” Brianna tells me.
This from the girl who doesn’t think a single boy in our grade is cute.
I might just throw up Nutella-covered crackers, which would be a tragedy, because once you’ve thrown up something, you end up hating the taste of it for a long time afterward. I’ll never forgive Brianna if she ruins Nutella for me.
“Try having him for a brother, and then tell me how cute you think he is.”
“That thing he does with his eyebrows?” Brianna says. “Where it’s like he’s teasing you but only because he likes you? And those curls? I’ve always liked guys with curls. You know, the tousled look. And he’s a drummer. In a band.”
I should change the subject, but I can’t let those comments go unchallenged. I just can’t.
“Well, when he does the stupid eyebrow thing, it’s not because he likes me, it’s because he hates me. And his hair would look better if he occasionally washed it. And I wouldn’t call him a drummer in a band. I’d call him a ‘drummer’ in a ‘band.’” I make big air quotes with my fingers in case she needs help getting the punctuation marks.
“No one ever thinks their own brother is cute,” Brianna says. “Kylee, you’re over here all the time. Do you think Hunter is cute?”
“Not really,” Kylee says loyally. But she’s too darned nice to disagree with Brianna outright. “I mean, I can see how someone would think he’s cute, but he’s not my type.”
I’m relieved Kylee and I can still be friends. Brianna-as-friend may be on the way out.
“This Nutella is awesome!” Brianna says then, through a big mouthful of Nutella-and-cracker.
I thaw toward her a tiny bit. Even if she has this weird thing for my brother and is obsessed with her stupid phone, at least she loves the same snacks I do.
“Movie time?” I ask. “Something scary or something funny?” I have a row of DVDs lined up on the coffee table next to the snacks.
“Do you know what I heard?” Brianna asks, ignoring my question. Whatever she’s going to say is important enough that she actually puts down her phone. “At the student council meeting before school today, we were talking about plans for the dance, and someone suggested having Hunter’s band play.”
“Who?” I demand.
“Some eighth grader who’s friends with your big crush, Cameron, though what you see in him I don’t know—those bangs falling over his face look soooo lame.” Brianna knows I like Cameron, but I’d never, ever tell her about my poems. “Anyway, Cameron’s brother is in the band, too, right? And this kid said they’re really good.”
I can’t decide if I’m irritated that Hunter’s band might be getting a real gig, or proud of him.
One good thing I can think of is that if they play at the dance, Cameron might come in solidarity with them. And if he comes, and if the band plays his ballad again, and if I’m standing right near him, he might ask me to dance. And it might end up being the best night of my life. If. If. If. If.
“Scary or funny?” I ask again, trying to get the sleepover back on track. “Who votes for scary?”
Brianna raises her hand.
“Who votes for funny?”
I put up my own hand this time.
“Kylee, you need to vote to break the tie,” I tell her.
“Um—both?” she says. “Scary first, then funny, so we’re not too scared to sleep.”
“Sounds good to me,” Brianna says.
So that’s what we do, and I eat my way through the Nutella jar, cracker by cracker.
19
Saturday I take a nap to make up for not sleeping at the sleepover, and practice flute, and do a ton of homework for pre-algebra and French. I got the only A in the class on the last test, too, but I didn’t tell anyone in my family, to save Hunter the trouble of making more “Whoop-de-doo” comments.
I don’t feel like calling anybody to try to do anything tonight, so I lie on my bed and watch a movie on my laptop. I’ve seen it before: one of my favorite black-and-white movies, Roman Holiday with Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck.
Audrey Hepburn is a princess who has no freedom to do any fun things ever; she has to do all these stiff, stodgy royal etiquette things instead. But then, on a goodwill tour of European capitals, she runs away for one night, in Rome, and meets Gregory Peck, who is a reporter for this foreign newspaper. He knows she’s a runaway princess, but she doesn’t know he knows. They fall in love, but they can’t be together because she needs to return to her royal duties. It’s more romantic having it end with their not being able to be together than if they had lived happily ever after. The tragic doomedness is what makes it so wonderful.
Hunter likes—well, used to like—black-and-white movies, too. His favorite is Casablanca, with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. The first time we watched it together, a couple of years ago, he pointed out all the most famous lines to me: “Round up the usual suspects.” “I’m shocked, shocked, to find that gambling is going on here.” “We’ll always have Paris.” “Here’s looking at you, kid.” It used to be that whenever we came across it on TV, we’d both have to stop whatever we were doing to finish watching it, even though we own it on DVD. But when it was on one night last week, and I plopped down on the couch next to him to watch it, he clicked off the TV and walked away.
So I picked Roman Holiday to watch tonight instead. I love Casablanca more, but it would make me too sad to watch it now.
* * *
It’s cold and windy on Sunday after church, so I lie on the couch by the gas fireplace in the family room. I should be working on my novel, because the big day with the two agents at the public library is this coming Saturday, now less than a week away. Instead I’m writing a new batch of poems about Cameron. But I don’t write flowery rhyming poems with “thee” and “thou” this time. Hunter’s mockery, not to mention the New Yorker rejection, has cured me of floweriness. Now I’m striving for the simple style of Cameron’s song lyrics.
Maybe my poems could be made into songs, too?
I’ll need music to go along with the words. Even though I love playing the flute, I’ve never tried writing music. Maybe Cameron can collaborate with me: I’d write the lyrics, and he’d come up with the melodies.
Here’s the one I wrote that I like best:
Maybe I care because you don’t.
Maybe I will because you won’t.
And yet I think that if you smiled,
I’d smile, too.
And I think that if you left,
I’d go with you.
I imagine Olivia critiquing my song: “Autumn, what do you think the reader will learn from this poem? We get that you like Cameron, but we don’t know why. What is it about Cameron that justifies your feelings for him?”
But Olivia is still the one who knew that Kylee’s knitting triumph would make a fabulous article.
And I’m the one who didn’t.
Guess who I wrote my feature about? I couldn’t think of anyone else, so I wrote about, yes, my father, and how he was named Best Orthodontist in Broomville seven years in a row. What seventh grader writes a “fascinating person” feature about her dad? Only a seventh grader who already blew a major chance to write one about her best friend.
* * *
The Peaks Post is published on Thursday. Olivia’s article about Kylee is right there smack in the middle of the front page, complete with a smiling photo of Kylee and pictures of two dogs wearing Kylee’s sweaters that Olivia must have gone down to the Broomville Humane Society to take. I don’t read it. I can’t bear to read it. I don’t even let myself collect a copy from the huge piles I see on tables at various points throughout the school hallways. Yet I can’t help but see them.
Even as we’re standing by our lockers before the first bell, a bunch of girls come up to Kylee to squeal over the article.
“Those sweaters are soooo cute!”
“You shou
ld sell them! I want one for my dog for Christmas!”
“Do you think my cat would wear a sweater?”
“Can you make these in people sizes?”
“Can you teach me to knit?”
“We should start a knitting club at Southern Peaks!”
“I never knew so many dogs needed homes!”
Ms. Archer begins journalism class by holding up the hot-off-the-press Peaks Post for everyone to see. She does this whenever anyone in the class has an article in it.
“Good morning, intrepid reporters!” she greets us. “I hope you all grabbed your copy of the Peaks Post this morning and checked out your classmates’ work. We have a terrific feature by our own Olivia Fernandez profiling our own Kylee Willis. Good work, Olivia!”
Olivia flashes Kylee a big grin.
Kylee grins back.
My heart twists.
“And,” Ms. Archer continues, “we have an insightful review of Broomville’s new knitting store, Knit Wits, by that same Kylee Willis. Nice job, Kylee.”
What?
I totally did not see that coming.
How could I have seen that coming when my own best friend didn’t even tell me that Ms. Archer picked her review—not Olivia’s and not mine—for publication?
I wonder if Kylee will turn around and look at me with pleading eyes.
She doesn’t.
As the day began, so it continues. Kylee is mobbed in the halls even by kids who don’t know her.
“Are you the girl who was in the paper today?”
“Are you the knitting person?”
“That is so cool, what you did.”
“Do you need a dog model? I have a dog who would look so great in your sweaters.”
I don’t say anything to Kylee about the Knit Wits review. If I were a truly good friend, I’d congratulate her on her first publication. But if she were a truly good friend, she would have told me about it ahead of time.
I feel almost as terrible as I did when Hunter showed my poem to the band.
I feel almost as terrible as I did when The New Yorker rejected my poems.
Maybe even worse.
* * *
After school, my mom is driving us to ballet. Neither of us is talking in the car.
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