Finally, she holds a match to the pyramid. The paper catches fire. Slowly, the flames spread to the logs. Soon, the fire crackles and pops.
Bean is stretched out in front of it. I snuggle deeper into my blanket.
We sit there for a while in the quiet. But it’s not the alone kind of quiet I’ve felt before. Or the bad quiet where I’m just waiting for something to go wrong.
This is a good quiet where two sisters are just happy to be together.
“We’d had these big bonfires at Pinehurst,” Mina says when the fire’s died down a little.
I sit back. I listen.
“They’d have these little slips of paper for us to write on. We could put whatever was holding us back—feelings we were having or secrets. It feels good, you know. You feel lighter somehow.”
She pauses a moment, looks at me. “Does that sound ridiculous?”
“No.” I shake my head. “No.” I picture the tiny pieces of paper curling up in the heat. Turning into ash. Disappearing. “We could do that now,” I say. I want to do that now.
“You think?” she says. “Maybe we should.”
“I’ve got paper.” I jump up and run for the stairs, my blanket trailing behind me. Up in my room, I grab a couple of index cards and my nicest pens from my top desk drawer. I’m quick. Just as I turn to leave, a flash of white catches my eye.
It’s the definition of who I wanted to be. I read it again.
Em Murphy (noun)
Cool.
Girl who fits in.
Best friends with Hazel.
Friends with Lucy, Annemarie, and Gina.
Knows the right things to do (hair, boy stuff, clothes).
Fancy-pants.
I unpin the definition from my bulletin board and slip it underneath the stack of note cards.
I hand Mina a few of the cards when I’m back downstairs. I sit back on the couch. What do I need to let go of?
On one card, I write Dad and Alice.
On another card, I write Hazel. Or maybe it’s more things staying the same. I write that down, too.
Mina folds her papers into tiny little stars.
“All right,” she says. “Whenever you’re ready, you can let them go.”
I hold the papers tightly in my fist. Dad and Alice and Hazel and things staying the same. I also hold the definition of Future Me. Or really, who I thought Future Me should be. Turns out they’re not really the same thing at all.
I let go. I watch the papers fly from my fist and land in the flames. They glow orange and red and yellow. They twist and turn. They shrink down into nothing.
They disappear.
THINGS THAT SURPRISE YOU
It’s the first Saturday night in December and there’s a knock at the door.
At first I think I’ve imagined it. Bean and I are in my room. I’m piecing together a dinosaur costume for her and I’ve just texted Sara a picture of my progress. I have all my green fabric laid out in front of me, and I’m cutting the triangle teeth out of white felt. Mom’s downstairs in the basement doing more organizing, and Mina’s out with Phoebs and Jenna at the high school hockey game.
I hear it again. But it’s not so much a knocking this time as it is a pounding.
“Mom, you hear that?” I call down.
Bean and I run down the stairs to the front door. I flip on the outside light and peek out the window. No one.
Pound, pound.
It’s coming from the back door. Now I’m kind of concerned it’s a robber or murderer or something, but I wonder if they would announce themselves in such a way. Still, I yell down the basement steps to be safe. “There’s someone at the back door.”
“What?” Mom yells.
Bean skids across the hardwood floor, running at full speed. I follow behind her. She stops at the door out to the backyard patio. She looks between me and the door, her body jiggling. Bean is not a very good watchdog.
I turn the lock and pull the door open and there’s Hazel. My eyes go big. But it’s not Best Friend Hazel or Highlights Hazel or Lunchtime Hazel who barely looks at me now from her table with the other field hockey girls. This Hazel’s face is red and streaky. Her coat’s half off her shoulder and not zipped, even though it’s freezing. Her fuzzy boots, which look like all the other girls’ fuzzy boots, are soaked through from the earlier snow.
Mom’s joined me at the door and it’s she who moves first. She gathers Hazel in and pulls her into the house all at the same time. I close the door but the chill doesn’t leave the air.
“What’s wrong?” Mom asks. She’s holding Hazel at arm’s length right now. “Are you all right? Does your mom know you’re here?”
Hazel shakes her head and her shoulders heave. A snot bubble forms at her nose, and I run to grab a tissue for her from the bathroom. On second thought, I grab the whole box and hand it to her.
She starts to talk but I can barely make out any words because they’re so shuddery. But I do make out the words Becca and field hockey and I put the puzzle pieces together in my mind. “Becca’s party.” The one I had heard about in the bathroom. “You were there.”
Hazel nods. She blows her nose hard into the tissue. It sounds a little like a honking bird.
“Oh, honey,” Mom says. She squeezes Hazel around her shoulders. She turns to me. “I’m going to call Hazel’s mom to let her know she’s at our house. Why don’t you get her some dry clothes.”
Hazel removes her boots and peels off her wet jacket and leaves them in a heap on the floor. Upstairs, she changes into one of my old T-shirts, a pair of sweatpants, and some fuzzy socks. We sit cross-legged on my rug. Bean lays her head on Hazel’s knee because Bean always knows what to do. Dogs are always their best selves.
We just sit there for a while. Hazel’s rubbing Bean’s bald spot. It’s where she likes to be rubbed the best. Hazel knows that, of course.
I can hear the rise and fall of Mom’s muffled voice on the phone downstairs in between Hazel’s sniffles. I hand her another tissue. I have so many questions. Like: What happened? Like: Why come here? But I’m hearing Dr. Franklinton-Morehouse in my brain and he’s telling me just to listen.
“Joey Peters tried to kiss me,” she blurts at once. My mouth falls open wide like a gaping fish, and I don’t shut it quick enough because Hazel’s face twists again. Tears pool in her eyes. “I turned, though. He got my ear.”
“What? Why?” I’m remembering back to her conversation in the movie theater bathroom. “I thought you wanted to kiss him,” I whisper.
She starts wailing again. “Yes. Maybe. I thought I did. I don’t know. We were in this circle and there were a bunch of kids—boys and girls. Eighth graders. Girls from the team. Joey spun the bottle and it landed on someone else, but then Lucy turned it so that it pointed to me. And no one said anything. Everyone was watching.” She covers her face with her hands like she can’t even bear remembering.
“How—how did it feel?” I don’t think it’s the right question, but it escapes my mouth before I can stop it.
She thinks for a minute. “Do you remember when we were in Girl Scouts?”
I nod.
“And we went to the aquarium in Kentucky. Remember that tide pool?”
The aquarium was what inspired some of our best car dancing moves. “Yeah.”
“Did you feel the snail’s body?” She peeks out at me through two fingers.
I suddenly get what she’s saying. “Oh no!” I scream and then slap my hand over my mouth.
A laugh bursts out from Hazel and suddenly she can’t stop.
“It was like the snail”—she takes a deep breath—“was on my face!”
Hazel and I are on our backs now and I can hardly breathe I’m laughing so hard. It’s just like how it used to be when we’d sit together in her room and watch YouTube videos of kids coming home from the dentist or this strange fox dance or a Jell-O mold that won’t stop shaking.
Hazel and I are both quiet. She’s still looking up at the ce
iling when she says, “They laughed at me. And Joey. But mostly me.” She sniffles.
Her next words are whispered. I have to scoot closer to hear. “Lucy called me a baby.” She pauses and won’t turn to meet my eyes. “In front of everyone.”
There are so many things I could say right now.
I want to say something smart. Or something that will make her feel like the almost kiss and the laughter and the snow-soaked boots never happened. Or maybe that I know how being called a baby feels. But I can’t think of anything right, so I reach over and take her hand and squeeze it.
When Hazel’s mom arrives to pick her up, we’re eating Double Stuf Oreos Mom’s pulled out of the pantry. Mom calls it a feel-better food. I believe her. Hazel holds one out to me. “Go ahead and twist,” she says. “We’ll split it.”
Part of me really wants to, but I shake my head. “That’s okay. I’ll have my own.”
Once Hazel leaves, Mom sits back down at the kitchen table with me. She grabs an Oreo from the package and dunks it into my glass of milk. She points it at me. “When did you get to be so smart?”
I was feeling pretty good until this moment, but now the Oreos and milk are sloshing around together in my stomach. I scrape at the icing with my fingernail. I concentrate on the table. “I have something to tell you,” I say.
Now I peek up, just a little. Mom’s forehead lines fold into deep creases.
I take a deep breath. “Back in September, I kind of did something bad. I ordered these CDs.” My words crash together like bumper cars, like if I don’t get the words out fast enough the story will stay inside me forever. “I couldn’t sleep and there was this infomercial that told me I could be a better me and I thought that sounded pretty good because I felt so bad about things with Mina and things were going wrong with Hazel. I thought this would fix everything. But I didn’t have enough money.” I add the last part really quietly. “I used your credit card. I’m sorry.”
Mom opens the drawer where she keeps all the bills. “September, you say.”
I nod glumly.
She riffles through the papers. She pulls one out and unfolds it.
“They’re Be the Best You CDs,” I say. She scans the paper. “Or Mind over Matter Industries maybe.”
Mom’s trying to keep a straight face but a little grin peeks through. Then a giggle escapes from her lips. Then a bigger one. Soon she’s laughing as hard as Hazel and I laughed in my room. “Oh, Em,” she says. “Oh, Em.”
She takes a tissue from the box sitting on the table and dries her eyes.
“After the year we’ve had—” Mom takes my hand in hers. “It’s okay. I thought you were going to tell me something terrible.”
“This isn’t terrible?”
“No, no. I mean, you shouldn’t have used my credit card.”
“I know.” My voice trembles. “I’m awful. I know it’s yours and only supposed to be for emergencies. But to be honest, this really felt like an emergency.”
“I actually saw this before,” Mom says. “But I just thought it was another charge from Mina’s stay at Pinehurst. There were so many of them, I didn’t even think about it. But honey, why didn’t you tell me all this? About everything with school and Hazel?”
“I don’t know,” I say. It’s hard for me to find the words. “My problems seemed so small. You had bigger stuff to worry about. And you always look so tired and stressed out. I didn’t want to add on my stuff to the pile.”
Mom stands and holds out her arms. “Come here.”
She wraps her arms around me and squeezes me tight. “I am tired and I am stressed, but you’re my daughter. Just like Mina. Just as important as Mina. I’m sorry if I ever made it feel like you weren’t. I care about you and your problems.” She holds me out at arm’s length. “Were the CDs any good?”
I laugh. It feels good. “Yeah. Dr. Franklinton-Morehouse knows his stuff. You could borrow them.” I think about that for a moment. “I mean, you can have them. They’re technically yours, I think.”
She strokes my hair like she did when I was eight. It’s exactly what I need.
“You’re a good mom,” I say.
When she finally says something, her voice sounds heavy and thick. “I’m trying.”
I really think that trying’s the best that any of us can do.
CHANGE
Hector and I dress up for our presentation. He wears one of his dad’s bow ties. I wear the same outfit I wore for school picture day. It makes me feel good.
Hector’s mom drops him and Anita off at school because he’s carrying our secret prop in a special cooler bag that you bring along to church potlucks.
“Are you ready?” he says. He’s stopped at my locker. One of the older girls from the Roosevelts has taped an Eleanor on my locker. She’s outlined in glitter. I still can’t believe I made the team. We have our first competition in two weeks. Anita and Sara and I are riding together. I can’t wait.
He shuffles through his index cards again and again.
“Ready for it to be done,” I say. I couldn’t even finish my cereal this morning.
Yesterday, Steve and Sara presented. They did the history of dance, complete with demonstrations from each era and costumes Sara had created. It was going to be hard to follow.
“I got you something, though.” I pull the tissue-paper-wrapped package out of my backpack and hand it to him.
He unwraps it and holds the miniature dinosaur in his hand. “Whoa!” His eyebrows jump. “A Troodon. This is awesome!” His grin is huge. All teeth.
“From the gift shop.”
“I’m going to keep it in my locker. A place of honor. A guard dinosaur.” He holds his hand up. We high-five. No one messes with a Troodon pack.
Ms. Arnold claps her hand to get the class’s attention. Hector and I have tacked up our poster to the cork strip and are standing at the front of the classroom.
“All right,” she says. “Today we have Hector and Em.”
“Just Emily,” I whisper.
“Hector and Emily. They’ll be presenting on the movement of the earth.” Ms. Arnold walks to the back of the room with her clipboard and grade book. Hector clears his throat.
“A long time ago. Before you were born. Before your parents were born. Before the dinosaurs were born, the earth came to be. It’s not the earth we recognize today. In fact, you couldn’t have lived on earth. It was pretty much one big giant volcano. There was no crust, no place to stand, and it was hot,” Hector begins. He looks at me. I nod.
“Even if there had been land, you wouldn’t have been able to breathe. There wasn’t enough oxygen. The air would have been poisonous to you.”
I flip to my note card. “Over time, though, things changed. The earth cooled, which meant there was land to stand on. But it did not look like this classroom map now.” I point to Ms. Arnold’s rolled-down map. “Instead it looked like this.” I point to the poster Hector and I created. “This landmass was called Pangaea.”
“Over time, Pangaea split apart very, very slowly,” Hector says. “This is because of the movement of the giant plates that make up the earth’s surface. They float on magma like blown-up rafts on a pool. Their movement causes things to happen. Earthquakes rumble, volcanoes explode, land moves apart. Our earth is still changing. One day far in the future, the continents will form another big landmass.”
“The earth is constantly moving,” I say. “In space, it’s spinning and revolving. The earth’s plates are shifting and crashing and slipping. And we don’t even know it. We can’t feel that movement is happening until we look around and see day turn into night. Or winter turn into spring. Or there’s an earthquake or volcano or the coast of Africa and the coast of South America no longer fit together like two snug puzzle pieces.”
“There was this Greek guy, Heraclitus. He said the only thing constant is change. That was pretty smart, and it’s true. So here’s what we’ve got to do: keep our feet planted firmly on the ground and look around ever
y once in a while. The world is so, SO much bigger than us.”
I look up at Ms. Arnold. She’s leaning forward in her desk and smiling.
“And,” Hector says, “here’s the best part. We’ve created a very accurate model”—he takes the foil off the metal tray and leans it up a little so the class can see—“of plate tectonics using pudding and candy bars. The pudding represents the magma and the candy bars represent the different plates. If you push them together, you can see how they sometimes slip underneath each other or could create new mountains. We also have spoons.”
He holds one of the plastic spoons in the air. “Who’s hungry?”
Everyone looks at Ms. Arnold for permission. When she nods, they jump out of their seats and gather around the tray. Hector passes out the spoons.
“That was awesome,” Lloyd says, patting me on the back. He already has pudding on his sleeve. It’s so Lloyd; now it just makes me smile.
“The awesomesauciest?” I ask.
Lloyd grins and bumps my fist with his. “Yeah, it was.”
I step back next to Hector. “We did great,” he says.
We did.
When the bell rings, the class clears out. Hector tells me he’ll see me on Saturday. We’re all going ice-skating at the Chiller—the whole Bagel Bunch. I’ve never been before, but Sara says I’ll be a natural. “It’s dancing, on ice, on teeny tiny blades,” she says. “You’ll be great.”
I hang back.
“Great presentation, Emily,” Ms. Arnold says. She’s cleaning up the classroom. I help her take a bunch of the napkins to the trash can. “I would have never thought about pudding and candy bars for a model. But it’s brilliant. And delicious.” She pops the last mini candy bar into her mouth. “You and Hector make quite the team.”
“Thanks,” I say. I’m quiet for a moment. I bend one of the leftover plastic spoons in my hand. “Can I ask you question?”
“Sure.” Ms. Arnold takes a seat on top of her teacher desk just like she did on the very first day of school. Today her shoes look like little New York taxicabs. There are so many things to like about Ms. Arnold.
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