“Sure.”
Things have been fine with us, but not amazing. Not our usual friendship by any means.
“Look, I’m sorry about what happened,” I say, even though I still don’t think it’s my fault. “I think Yamir and I are both to blame. I didn’t mean to hurt his feelings, but my feelings were hurt for a long time.”
“Yeah. You’re right.” She turns to look at me, and it seems like it’s the first time she understands what I’m saying. Like we may have had a breakthrough.
“I guess I just wanted you and Yamir to go to the dance together, and Evan and me to go together. And I know it’s bizarre, because he’s my brother and you’re my best friend. But it just seems like the four of us should go together. The Masquerade is our last hurrah.”
“Yeah. I know what you mean. I was so obsessed with making this last semester of middle school perfect. It was, like, the most important thing ever.” I move my desk closer to hers. “But it’s so not our last hurrah. It’s just the beginning.”
“You think?”
I nod.
“What if everything changes when we get to high school?” Sunny asks me. “It’s so big, and we may not have classes together. And Evan can meet other girls. And Yamir could fail out!”
I burst out laughing when she says that. It’s kind of funny but also kind of sad. Yamir doesn’t work so hard in school. He always does well anyway, but that could change.
“But seriously, what if we don’t get to have lunch together anymore?” Sunny asks.
“I won’t be able to play ‘guess the spice’ anymore, then!”
Sunny frowns. “But it’s our favorite game!”
Sunny and I started this thing where I guess the spices that are in her Indian-cuisine lunches. I’ve gotten pretty good, and I’ve learned so many new spices.
“Sun, some things may change, but not everything,” I tell her.
“How do you know?”
“I just know. We’ll always be BFFs. No matter what. We’ve made it this long. I mean, things changed when we went from Old Mill Elementary to Old Mill Middle. And we stayed BFFs through it all.”
“True.” Sunny puts her head down on the desk. “You promise?”
“I promise.”
Soon Mrs. Diver comes in and it’s time for class. Sunny picks her head up, and I smile at her and she smiles at me. Knowing smiles. Smiles that mean everything will be okay.
Sunny and I are back.
Sunny’s mom drives us over to the spa and she’s nice to me, the way she always is. I was a little bit worried she’d be upset or mad about Yamir. Sunny sits in front, and Erica and I sit in back.
Soon we’re at the spa. Mom, Grandma, and Penelope, the manager, are waiting for us in the reception area. I wonder if Mom and Grandma had to warn Penelope about Erica.
“Lucy!” Penelope stands up and hugs me. “And you must be Sunny and Erica?”
It feels funny that Penelope doesn’t know who Sunny is. Sunny used to know all the pharmacy employees, because we used to be together at the store all the time. I guess we’re busier now. Maybe that’s why Sunny’s so worried about things changing once we’re in high school. Things have already started changing.
“Follow me, girls. Can I get you anything?” Penelope asks.
“I’d love some of this fruit water,” Erica says. “How fancy!”
“Of course.”
When we first started planning the spa, I knew we had to have water with fruit. It’s the most elegant, delicious drink. Today there’s a pitcher of water with apple pieces and orange pieces. We all fill up tall glasses and follow Penelope to her office.
A seat is set up for each of us with a special Pink & Green spa pad and our signature pink pens.
This feels very official. I wonder if Mom and Grandma told Penelope to take this seriously, or if she knew to do it on her own.
“So I’ve already blocked off the whole day of the Masquerade. All our cosmetologists will be working, and we won’t be booking any other appointments,” Penelope says. “I just need to know what time the event starts, so we know when to schedule the appointments.”
I look at Erica.
“It starts at seven in the evening.” Erica sounds so formal that it’s hard for me to keep a straight face.
“Okay, and how many people will be getting their makeup done?” Penelope asks.
“Well, people are still signing up,” Erica explains. “We should have that by the end of the week. We’d like the whole grade to come in, but we obviously can’t force them.”
Penelope smiles. “Right.”
“There are ninety-seven kids in the grade,” Erica says.
“Well, we have six treatment rooms,” Penelope says. “And we can always make room for people to get makeup done in the reception area if need be. We’ll make it work.”
I start to get nervous. Imagine if everyone wants their makeup done. And then what if people show up late and mess up the whole schedule? If Grandma’s around, she’ll get super stressed. There will be yelling.
This suddenly seems like a lot to take on.
“Thanks so much,” Erica says.
“No problem.” Penelope looks at Sunny and me. “Do you have any questions?”
Sunny shakes her head. “I don’t think so,” I say.
“Don’t worry, Lucy,” Penelope says, smiling. “It’s going to be perfect.”
I guess Penelope could read my mind. Or my facial expression.
Lucy’s tip for surviving eighth grade:
Go with your gut feeling.
I get home and there’s an e-mail from Travis:
Yo LD.
Are we coordinating costumes for the Masquerade? What’s the deal? Wanna come over tomorrow after school?
—T
Wow. I hadn’t even thought about coordinating costumes. I don’t know if I want to coordinate with Travis. The thought of it seems cheesy and potentially awkward. I don’t know him well enough to do that.
Maybe it was easier the way Yamir’s class did it last year. No dates. They all agreed on that, and everyone was cool with it. Now there’s all this pressure. Will Sunny and Evan wear matching outfits? Will Zoe and Gavin? I really don’t know.
And what about the AGE girls? The Masquerade is getting close and they still don’t have dates.
So much to worry about. So little time.
I call Sunny with a new plan. I need her to go along with it. She probably will. But Erica’s an issue. I have a feeling she’s going to hate this idea.
I don’t know what I’m thinking, but I call Sunny’s house phone instead of her cell phone.
And Yamir answers. He obviously knows it’s me, because they have caller ID. I can’t hang up. I have to talk. I don’t have a choice.
“Hey, Yamir. Is Sunny there?”
“Yeah. Hold on.”
I guess I didn’t expect much more than that when I heard Yamir’s voice on the other end of the phone. Or maybe I did. I really don’t know.
“What’s up?” Sunny asks. She sounds all out of breath.
“Are you okay? What’s wrong?” I ask her.
“I’m fine.” She laughs. “I was trying on clothes. It’s a major workout for me!”
It’s true. Sunny’s closet is pretty big, and she has to dig all the way to the back to find some stuff.
“So, Travis e-mailed me to ask about coordinating costumes for the Masquerade, and it got me thinking,” I tell her. “I want to veto dates. There’s no way everyone’s going to have a date. And it’s not fair.”
“That’s kind of crazy, Luce. You can’t tell people what to do.”
“But people can still dance together,” I say. “The thing is, it doesn’t need to be, like, a major date event. If people pair off, that’s okay, but they don’t have to make a big deal ahead of time.”
“I don’t know. I think people are gonna be disappointed.”
“You mean you think Erica is going to be disappointed?”
; “Well, yeah.”
We go back and forth with this, and the more we talk, the more I realize how urgent this is. There’s no way I can guarantee that everyone in the grade has a date. But there’s no reason for people to be miserable either.
We have to find a way to make going without dates seem cooler and more fun.
There has to be a way. I just have to figure out what it is.
I’ve had so many missions this year: completing the green cafeteria work, making sure this was the perfect last semester, doing all that I could to make the AGE girls feel included and happy, helping Zoe with Gavin, even helping Erica with Elias. Maybe it shows a lack of focus to change missions so many times. The thing is, it takes time to find the right one. It takes time to realize which one is most important. But at least I discovered it before it was too late.
I don’t want anyone to have negative feelings about our Masquerade.
I hang up with Sunny and realize that I need to have a meeting with Erica and Zoe right away. I know what it’ll take to convince them: it needs to seem official, secretive, and exclusive.
I call the spa and Penelope answers.
“Hi, Lucy!” Penelope says when she realizes it’s me. “Getting excited for your event?”
“We need to have another meeting at the spa,” I tell her. “It needs to feel fancy and important.”
“I can do that, of course—but what’s this all about?”
“I don’t think it’s fair if some people have dates and some don’t, and there’s no way everyone who wants to have a date will have one. So I want to convince Erica and Zoe, who are basically in charge of everything, that we should encourage everyone to go with their friends. No official dates.”
“I see,” Penelope says.
“But if we tell them at the spa, with fancy lemonade and tea sandwiches and make Erica feel really important, there’s more of a chance that she’ll go along with it.”
“Okay.” Penelope pauses, and I hear typing in the background. “I know just what to do.”
At lunch the next day, the AGE girls are obsessing about not having dates, and I know I’ve made the right decision.
“Dates aren’t that big of a deal,” I say, just to see what Erica’s reaction will be. I’m not sure when it started, but Erica and Zoe sit at our table every day now. If you had asked me in fifth grade if Erica Crane and I would ever share a lunch table, I would have said absolutely not. But here we are.
“Lucy, yes they are!” Erica says. “I mean, if you don’t have one, you’re not going to die or anything, but it’s better to have a date.”
I respond, “I’m not sure about that.”
Erica glares at me after that, and I go back to my turkey sandwich. I don’t want to get into a huge argument about it. Not yet.
“Guys,” Erica leans in to the table and tries to get everyone’s attention. “Lucy’s just bitter because she and Yamir broke up.”
“Erica!” I exclaim. She’s going to say more. She’s going to say I lied to impress them, and that Yamir was never really my boyfriend. Everything she’s threatened to do.
She stops talking, but I worry there’s more to come.
“So you’re still going through with this plan,” Sunny whispers to me as we leave lunch.
“I am. I mean, did you see how the AGE girls seemed today? They’re all worked up about it. It’s not fair. And it’s not only them.”
“I think you’re right,” Sunny says. “But I don’t know if it will work out. That’s all I’m saying. You can’t save the whole world, you know.”
“You’ll get the e-mail after school. Penelope is making it look all nice and fancy. Just wait.”
“Whatever you say, Lucy.” Sunny rolls her eyes at me. “And by the way, Yamir keeps asking me if you have a date. Just figured I’d let you know that.”
“He does?” My heart flips over like a pancake.
“Yup.”
As happy as that makes me, I have to push it out of my head. I told Travis I’d give him a chance. I want to give him a chance. And I’m trying to veto dates anyway. What difference does it make that Yamir wants to know? He didn’t behave like a boyfriend, so he can’t be my boyfriend. That’s just the way it is.
Lucy’s tip for surviving eighth grade:
Sometimes fancy is better.
As soon as Erica gets the e-mail, she sends me a text:
Fanciest e-mail I’ve ever gotten. Z & I will be there.
I knew it would work. Erica can’t resist fancy stuff. Penelope set it up to look like an invitation to a black-tie party. And she mentioned the artisan finger sandwiches and sparkling lemonade we’ll be having.
When Penelope tells her that it’s actually much more sophisticated to go with your friends and not be paired up, Erica will totally believe it. Penelope used to live in Manhattan, and she wears fancy shoes. She’s pretty much Erica’s idol.
I’m over at Travis’s house, and we’re playing some video game where you need to squash all these killer tomatoes. It’s pretty tame as far as video games go, but I’m not really feeling it.
“So, what did you decide about the costume?” Travis asks me, taking a sugar cookie off the platter his mom set up for us.
“I don’t think we should go all matchy-matchy,” I say, putting down the controller. He beat me three games in a row. “It’s just a little cheesy. And not everyone’s gonna match with someone. So let’s just do our own thing.”
He puts his feet up on the ottoman. The bottom of his socks are almost black, even though he has the cleanest house I’ve ever seen. “Okay, cool.”
I can’t tell if he really cares. Ever since I said I’d give things a chance, he doesn’t seem to care as much about me. I wonder if that’s how life works. You try so hard to get someone to like you. And then when they do like you, you don’t really care anymore. It’s kind of depressing.
“I’m gonna go shoot hoops. Wanna come?”
Maybe I should remind him that it’s February in Connecticut and it’s freezing outside. Truthfully I don’t care if he goes to play basketball, but I don’t want to sit in the freezing cold.
“It’s kind of cold out, isn’t it?” I ask.
“Yeah, I guess so.” He looks at me and shrugs. “Well, we’ll bundle up.”
So Travis puts on a hooded sweatshirt and his coat, and I put my coat on too, and we go out front, and he shoots hoops and I sit on the wooden rocking chair on his front porch.
I’m not sure if I’ve ever been so bored or so freezing in my whole life. I’m not sure it’s possible for Travis’s personality to change so drastically so fast, but something seems wrong. Maybe he’s bored with me. Or he can tell that I’m bored with him.
I text Sunny that I’m at his house and bored, and we start texting back and forth about other random stuff. I feel guilty about this, but the whole time I’m sitting here, I keep wishing that I was watching Yamir shoot hoops instead of Travis. And I keep wishing that Sunny would mention something else about Yamir. It’s terrible.
But she doesn’t. Travis keeps playing until I say, “I think I have to go. It’s getting kinda late.”
He shoots the ball another time, and when it bounces off the backboard and rolls away, he doesn’t rush to get it.
“Oh, okay. Cool.”
He comes over to me and puts his hand on my shoulder. “I had some good shots, didn’t I?”
“Yeah.” I force a smile. “Definitely.”
We go back inside, and I wait for Grandma to pick me up. Gavin’s on the couch in the den, watching some sports show and throwing popcorn into his mouth. Their mom is in the kitchen, stirring something on the stove.
The longer I stay here, the more I get the feeling that Travis and I just don’t have a lot to say to each other. We have pretty much nothing in common, I guess. And that makes our time together really boring. Almost in a painful way. Yamir may be thoughtless, but our time together is never boring.
Finally Grandma comes and I say good-
bye, and yell out, “Bye, Mrs. Landes.” She turns away from the stove and waves but doesn’t say anything. She’s cold and a little sad looking. I guess she really misses Chicago.
“Did you have a nice time?” Grandma asks me as soon as my seat belt is buckled.
I nod. “Yeah, I guess.”
“You guess?”
I shrug and try to figure out how to explain. I don’t know what it is, but I get the feeling that Grandma will have an interesting perspective on this.
“Do you think polite people can just be really boring when you get to know them?” I ask.
“Perhaps. It’s still good to be polite, though.”
“I know.” I change the radio station to something quieter. It’s a little strange that Grandma was listening to such loud music. “It’s just … I think Travis is kind of boring. He seemed all nice and sensitive and stuff at first. And now he’s sort of just a regular boy. Nothing special.”
“I see,” Grandma says, looking at me for a second and then back at the road in front of her. “Well, that’s why you’re not marrying these boys. You have time to find someone who’s just the right amount of boring.”
“You mean everyone’s boring?” My face crumples. What a depressing thought.
“In their own way. You’ll see. It’s not always a bad thing.”
I usually believe Grandma, since she’s old and wise and she’s been through so much. But right now I don’t want to believe her. I can’t believe her. Yamir’s not boring, and maybe in eighth grade that’s really all that matters.
Lucy’s tip for surviving eighth grade:
Do for others.
All throughout school the next day, Erica keeps bringing up the fancy meeting. That’s what she calls it. “I can’t wait for the fancy meeting, Lucy,” she says after math. “Penelope is so cool to schedule such a fancy meeting,” she says before lunch.
I keep shushing her, because I don’t want the AGE girls to hear and feel left out. I mean, they haven’t been that involved in the planning for the Masquerade, but still. It’s not nice to keep talking about something in front of other people when you know they’re not included. It’s purposefully mean, even.
“Okay, okay, Lucy.” She rolls her eyes at me. “Calm down.”
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