Sincerely

  Anyway, I hope you are having a good weekend. Write me soon, if you can.

  Sincerely,

  Sophie

  I reread my letter before folding it up and putting it in an envelope. I still didn’t write anything about my parents. I wasn’t ready to tell Katie about them yet. But at least I could send her a picture. I went to the drawer in Mom’s office where she keeps the extra photos of Haley and me. But when I looked through them, I couldn’t find any of just me that I liked enough to send. My hair looked so flat in all of them and you could see the bump on my nose. I hoped Katie would just forget that she had ever asked me for one.

  Ten

  I DIDN’T EVEN want to go to the dance. I was supposed to be at Victor by six o’clock because I was on the setup committee. But when Mom came into my room, I was still in the same jeans and sweatshirt that I had been wearing the whole day.

  “Sophie, you have to be at school in half an hour!” she said.

  “So?”

  “So, you’re not even dressed!”

  “I’m dressed,” I said. “What do you think these things are on my body?”

  “Very funny,” she said. “I mean dressed for the dance.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I don’t want to go.”

  “You don’t want to go?” she asked.

  Wasn’t that what I had just said? “No, I don’t want to go,” I repeated.

  “Why not?”

  “I’m just not into dances,” I told her.

  “Why not?” she asked again.

  “Because I’m just not into them!”

  “But, Sophie,” Mom said, “this is your first school dance.”

  “It’s not a big deal,” I told her.

  “Yes, it is,” Mom said. “It’s very special. In a couple years you’ll be in high school and you’ll have these things all the time. But this is the first one and you’re going to regret not being there.”

  “No, I’m not,” I said. High school seemed so far away. I doubted I would even remember the sixth-grade dance by the time I got there. There were already so many other important things to remember about sixth grade.

  “Please, Sophie,” Mom said. “I really want you to do this. Go for me.” I looked up at her. Things were so hard for her already. At night sometimes when I couldn’t sleep I would walk by her room and hear her crying. By the time Haley and I woke up in the mornings, Mom acted like everything was fine. She got us ready for school and did her work, just the same as before, but I knew the truth. Even though I was sure that I wasn’t going to have a good time at the dance, I didn’t want to let Mom down.

  “Fine,” I said to her. “I’ll go. But at least can I wear your blue earrings?”

  “Not Grandma’s earrings,” Mom said.

  “Why not?” I said, even though I wasn’t sure why I was pushing her. I didn’t care about the dance to begin with.

  “Because they’re expensive,” Mom said. That seemed like a dumb answer. I wasn’t like Haley. I never lost anything or ruined anything. I was eleven, after all.

  “How come you don’t trust me?” I asked.

  “Listen, Sophie,” Mom said, “those are special earrings and I’ll let you borrow them for a special occasion, but not for tonight.”

  “I thought you were the one who thought tonight was so special. If it’s not special, then why do I have to go?” The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. I knew I sounded mean and angry. Sometimes even when I’m trying to be nice and helpful to Mom, it still comes out the wrong way.

  Mom sighed. “You don’t have to go,” she said. “I just think you should.”

  Then I sighed. “I said I would go,” I told her.

  “And change your shirt at least,” Mom said.

  “How come?”

  “Oh, Sophie, come on. You can’t wear a sweatshirt.”

  I knew she was right about that. Even though I didn’t want to go, I didn’t want to look dumb when I got there. I opened my shirt drawer and pulled out a black shirt with silver designs on it that looked like starbursts. It was the fanciest shirt I had that went well with jeans. Then I went into the bathroom and pulled my hair up into a half ponytail. Mom says I look more mature when my hair is off my face. I put on a little of Mom’s blush. I definitely thought I looked older.

  When I came back out, Mom’s face looked pensive. She stared at me as though she didn’t quite recognize me, and then she smiled. “You look so grown-up and so beautiful,” she said. “You’re going to have a wonderful time.”

  But when I got over to Victor, all the other girls were dressed up and in makeup too. Some of them were even wearing eye shadow and dark lipstick. I didn’t think anyone would even notice the blush on my cheeks, and I felt plain and young-looking all over again. Jessie and Lindsay weren’t there yet—they must have gotten switched over to the break-down committee after all. It was amazing how Lindsay always got her way, and Jessie was becoming just like her. But Marachel and Lily were both there, and I went over to them to help with the crepe paper. We twisted red and blue crepe paper together and then strung it around the gym—red and blue are Victor’s school colors. Then Mr. Pomeroy made us help set up the tables and chairs so there would be a place for people to sit down if they wanted to. There were big bowls of chips and sodas on the tables. I had never had soda in school before. Usually the lunchroom only had juice, water, and milk, but I guess they relaxed the rules for a weekend dance.

  People started to arrive even before it was seven o’clock. Besides the Dorr boys, we had invited kids from two other schools. I knew everyone from Victor, and I recognized some of the boys from Dorr, but most of the other kids I didn’t know at all. There was music playing, but nobody was dancing. People were just standing in small groups and talking. I saw Jessie with Lindsay, Amy, and Melissa. They were all facing outward, looking over at Madden Preston, who was standing with three other boys, but they didn’t go over to talk to them. I stood against the back wall with Marachel and Lily.

  “What do you think?” Marachel asked. She was sort of yelling because the music was pretty loud.

  It wasn’t at all what I had expected. I shrugged my shoulders.

  “Look,” Lily said. “All the boys are on one side of the room, and all the girls are on this side.” I hadn’t noticed it before, maybe because I’m used to being around all girls since that’s all there is at Victor. But I looked up to see, and she was right.

  “This is kind of dumb,” Marachel said. “I wonder if anyone is going to dance.”

  “I’m not,” Lily said.

  “Me neither,” I said.

  But after a while a few kids did start to dance. Even though most of the girls stayed on one side of the room and most of the boys stayed on the other, there were a few kids in the center of the room. I looked to see if Jessie was dancing with Madden Preston, but she wasn’t. Lindsay was dancing with a boy I didn’t recognize, and Jessie was standing by the soda with Amy and Melissa, still watching Madden Preston. Madden and his friends were over by the bleachers. Madden had a handful of pretzels and was tossing them, one by one, into another boy’s mouth. Even from the distance, I could tell he was mostly missing his target. I was glad Lindsay and Jessie were on the break-down committee—they would have to clean up all the pretzels Madden dropped, and everyone else’s messes too. Madden turned and saw me watching him. I couldn’t be sure, but it looked like he winked at me.

  Then, all of a sudden, he was walking toward us. He got closer and closer. I was afraid he was angry with me for looking at him and he was coming to tell me it was rude to stare. I turned toward Marachel. “Hey,” I heard Madden Preston call. “If it isn’t Sophie Turner.” I knew it would be even ruder to ignore him so I turned around.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “What’re you doing?” he asked. I wasn’t sure if he was asking me that because I had been staring at him or if he was just coming over to say hello.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “You wanna dance
?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Ah, come on,” Madden said. He took my hand and pulled me away from the wall. “Don’t you love this song?”

  “It’s all right,” I said. Actually, I had never heard it before, but I followed him to the center of the room. Madden seemed to be looking me up and down. I hoped I hadn’t spilled anything on myself. I thought Marachel or Lily probably would have said something to me if I had.

  “I think I should call you ‘Sophie the Shrimp.’ I bet you’re the shortest one in this whole room.” I looked around to see if there was anyone shorter, but I didn’t see anyone. I knew he was right. I was almost a whole head shorter than Madden, and I was sure I looked stupid standing next to him. “Relax,” Madden told me.

  I didn’t know what to say to him and I was relieved the music was so loud. It made it easier to not talk and just dance. I had never danced with a boy before, and I didn’t think I would be very good at it, but I shouldn’t have worried because Madden was terrible. “You keep stepping on my feet,” I complained after a few minutes.

  “Well, they keep getting in my way,” he said. He stepped on me again, but that time I think it was on purpose. I started to laugh. I knew it was wrong because Jessie liked him, so I shouldn’t have been having a good time with him. I turned my head to see where she was and saw her coming toward us.

  “Hi, guys,” Jessie said. She was smiling, but I could tell it was a fake smile. After all, we had been best friends for five and a half years. I knew when her smile was really a smirk. “Do you mind if I cut in?” she asked.

  “Jess,” Madden said, “we’re right in the middle of a song. Besides, I don’t think Sophie wants to stop dancing yet, do you, Soph?”

  Madden was right—I was having fun and I wanted to keep dancing. For a second I thought about telling Jessie that she would have to wait her turn, but she was standing there smirking at me and I couldn’t do it. I knew Jessie thought I was a terrible person for dancing with Madden in the first place. If I told her I wasn’t ready to stop dancing, she would never be my friend again. Jessie narrowed her eyes into little slits, the way she does whenever she’s really mad at someone. I took a deep breath and turned to Madden. “It’s okay,” I told him. “You guys can dance now.” I walked over to the back of the room where Marachel and Lily were standing.

  “Sophie, that was awesome,” Lily said.

  “Yeah, and you said you weren’t going to dance at all,” Marachel added.

  I watched Jessie dancing with Madden and I started to feel mad at her even though that didn’t make any sense. I had never cared about Madden before, and I had known all along that she liked him. “Jessie’s going to kill me,” I told Marachel and Lily. “She really likes Madden Preston. I wish he hadn’t danced with me. He doesn’t even like me.”

  “Of course he likes you,” Marachel said. “After all, he danced with you.”

  “No, trust me,” I said. “He doesn’t. He told me I was the shortest person in the whole room and he called me a shrimp.”

  “See, he does like you,” Marachel insisted. “Boys always tease you when they like you.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “Definitely,” she said.

  “Yeah,” Lily added. “She’s totally right.”

  I looked back over at Madden and Jessie. Jessie had hooked her arms around Madden’s neck. But when the song ended, Madden walked back over to where I was standing with Marachel and Lily. He stopped in front of me and then leaned forward, resting his hand against the wall behind me. Our faces were really close and for a second I was afraid he would kiss me. I didn’t know whether to be excited or scared. “See you around, Shrimpy,” Madden said into my ear, and he went back over to his friends by the bleachers.

  “See you,” I said. I saw Jessie glaring at me from across the room. Even from that distance I could tell her eyes were still narrowed into little slits.

  “What did he say?” Marachel asked.

  “He said he’d see me around.”

  “You see, you see!” she said, jumping up and down. Luckily the music was still loud, so I didn’t think Madden could hear her. I didn’t know what to say. It didn’t seem like that big of a deal, but Marachel certainly thought that it was.

  “You look great tonight. You’re way prettier than Jessie, by the way,” she said.

  I knew she was just saying that to be nice. “No, I’m not,” I said.

  “Are you kidding?” Marachel said. “Jessie’s hair is all frizzy and she never smiles. You’re definitely prettier than she is.”

  Was that true? Did people think I was pretty? I didn’t care about being prettier than Jessie, I was just happy to be pretty at all. Sometimes I thought I was, but I could never be sure.

  Mom picked me up at nine o’clock. I couldn’t wait to get home because I wanted to write down everything that had happened so I could remember it better. I decided to write a letter to Katie about it. Since my last letter to her had been so short, I felt like I owed her one. “Dear Katie,” I wrote, “I just got back from our school dance. It was really great, and the best part was that I didn’t expect it to be good at all.” I told her all about dancing with Madden Preston—although I left out the part about Jessie. When I finished, I went into Mom’s office and made a copy of my letter on her Xerox machine. I wanted to keep a copy of it for myself. Then I pulled open her drawer of pictures and found one of Haley and me. I looked better in pictures that weren’t of just me, and I decided to send it to Katie. That way she could see what we both looked like.

  Eleven

  AFTER THE DANCE everything went back to normal. Not normal like the way it should be, but a new kind of normal, where Dad lived somewhere else, Jessie wasn’t my friend, and I felt lonely most of the time. I got into the habit of counting backward. Each day when I woke up and looked at the calendar above my desk, I would think, This time last year I was in fifth grade, Dad was here, and Jessie was probably sleeping over. Everything was different now, but I didn’t really cry about it. I just thought it was strange how quickly and completely things had changed. None of it seemed real.

  Mom and Dad had made an official agreement that Haley and I would have dinner with Dad every Tuesday night, because that was the day neither of us had any after-school activities, and then we would stay with him every other weekend. Except I wasn’t seeing Dad at all. I didn’t get on the phone when he called, and I didn’t answer the phone unless I was sure it wasn’t Dad calling. Dad still wrote me letters. He sent one home with Haley each time she went to see him. I saved them all in my desk drawer, but I never wrote back.

  The next weekend Haley and I were scheduled to go to Dad’s apartment. Haley pulled her duffel bag out from under her bed. “Are you coming this time?” she asked me.

  “No,” I told her.

  “Why not?” she asked.

  I couldn’t tell Haley what I really felt—that I was too angry, that I was afraid of hurting Mom, that I wasn’t sure if he still loved us as much, or if I even loved him, and that I really wanted to punish him. Instead I just said, “Because I need some time away from you.” Sometimes it was just easier to be mean to Haley than to figure out how to explain things to her. Still, I knew it was wrong and that I could get into trouble for it, so before she could run to Mom and tell on me, I offered to help her pack for the weekend.

  Haley went to the closet and stood on her tiptoes, pulling at different skirts. She still wore a skirt over her jeans on the days it was too cold to wear just a skirt alone. “I need to find the skirts that go best with pants,” she told me. “How about these ones?”

  Haley brought four different skirts over to my bed. “You don’t need so many,” I told her. “You’re only going for two days.”

  “But I like to have choices,” she said.

  “I don’t know if there’s going to be room in your bag. We haven’t packed your shirts and underwear yet.”

  “It will fit,” Haley said. “I’ll just
sit on top of the bag and you can zip it up.” Haley loved that trick. Mom always over-packed when we went to Florida, so when it was time to zip up her suitcase, she’d make us sit on either end of the bag so she could zip it up.

  “I don’t know if that works with a duffel bag,” I told Haley. She looked disappointed. “Well, figure out what shirts you want. Maybe it will all fit.”

  Haley went to the dresser and pulled out a few shirts, some socks, and underwear. We stuffed everything into the bag.

  “Now let’s close it,” Haley said.

  “What about sleep shirts?”

  “I’ll just wear one of Daddy’s,” Haley said.

  “It’ll be too big for you,” I told her.

  “I don’t care.”

  “Well, you still need to add your brush and toothbrush,” I told her.

  “I don’t need to,” she said. “Daddy bought us all kinds of bathroom stuff to keep at his apartment.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Then I guess we can zip this up.” I held the sides of the bag together and Haley ran the zipper up the middle.

  “I told you it would all fit,” she said.

  Dad called on his way to pick up Haley. I could always tell when he was on the phone because Mom would look tired and annoyed every time she spoke to him. I remembered how Dad used to act extra cheerful around Haley and me whenever he was mad at Mom. I bet he had stopped pretending to be cheerful now that he lived alone. “I’ll send her downstairs,” Mom said. She paused and turned to me. “Sophie, your father wants to speak to you.”

  “I don’t want to talk to him,” I said.

  Mom covered the mouthpiece with her hand. “Come on, Sophie,” she said softly. “He’s your father.”

  “No,” I said. I didn’t care if Dad wanted to talk to me. No one could make me talk to him if I didn’t want to.