by Barbara Dee
“Sorry,” Mak called out. I ignored her, yelling at myself not to cry in front of my ex-friends, whatever it took.
Ms. Bivens, the gym teacher, came running over. “Lia, are you okay?”
“Fine,” I muttered.
She put her hands on my shoulders. “Never say you’re fine when you’re not. Come with me.”
She led me to the sideline. “Well? What happened?”
I could have said something like, Oh, I just screamed in agony because our team messed up, and you know how intense I get about volleyball, Ms. Bivens. But I couldn’t lie. When the volleyball hit my chest, it knocked the invisible sign from my neck. And even if it hadn’t, Abi’s laugh had made me furious. I refused to pretend I hadn’t heard it. So I told Ms. Bivens what happened.
She frowned. “Does your chest still hurt?”
I shook my head.
“But your feelings?”
I shrugged.
“Abi and Mak, could you please step over here for a moment?” she called loudly.
“Ms. Bivens,” I begged, “please don’t—”
She blew her whistle. “Let’s go, girls. Now.”
“But I’m about to serve,” Abi protested.
“It can wait.”
Abi and Mak exchanged glances. I thought I saw Mak mumble something and Abi shrug in response as they walked over.
“Ms. Bivens, it was an accident,” Mak said immediately. “I’d never hit anyone on purpose. And if my serve hurt you, Lia, I’m really sorry.” Her face looked pinched in a way I could tell meant she wasn’t lying.
I nodded. “Okay.”
Ms. Bivens seemed satisfied. “All right, Makayla, you can get back on the court now. Abi, why did you laugh?”
Abi blinked. “I don’t know. When Lia screamed, it just surprised me, I guess.”
“That’s not true,” I snapped. “You laughed because you thought it was funny.”
Her eyes widened. “I did not.”
“You also put this on my locker, didn’t you?” I yanked the crumpled paper from my pants pocket. “A sign that says ‘Liar’?”
“It doesn’t say ‘Liar.’ It just says your name. ‘Lia R.’ ”
“Oh, come on,” I said scornfully. “Why would you put my name on my locker? Just to be nice?”
“Someone wanted to give you a note, and they asked which was your locker. I can’t help it if your name is Lia R.”
“Abi, that is such a bunch of—”
“It was Graydon.” She smirked. “It was a love poem.”
“It was not! Don’t lie!”
“Hold it right there, girls,” Ms. Bivens ordered. If she could have blown her whistle at us, she would have. “This is sounding like a personal conflict, not a gym issue. If you can’t resolve it yourselves, I suggest you take it to a guidance counselor. All I want to say here is that in my gym, we don’t laugh at a classmate’s injury. Understood, Abi?”
Abi nodded, but her lips were tight.
“All right, then. Return to the game.”
As Abi jogged off, Ms. Bivens turned to me. “Simple suggestion for you: sports bra. To protect your girls.” She gestured at my chest.
“Oh, but I don’t have—I mean, I don’t need a bra.”
“Don’t be too sure, Lia. I know that scream when I hear it.”
♥ ♥ ♥
At home that afternoon, I locked myself in the upstairs bathroom. I pulled off all my clothes and took inventory.
No visible hair anywhere. No waist or hips.
But were breasts finally happening? I wasn’t sure; it’s not like I’d suddenly come down with a bad case of cleavage. But if I stood sideways and held my breath, I thought I might be seeing some faint puffiness. Maybe. Possibly. And if I were, it would explain why the volleyball pain had been so . . . painful.
Did I actually need some girl protectors, after all?
Huh, I thought.
Maybe I did.
Dark Cloud
DINNER THAT NIGHT WAS SPAGHETTI and salad, which Nate and I made together while Dad grated some parmesan cheese and set the table. The three of us had just sat down to start eating when the kitchen phone rang.
We looked at each other. When Mom was here, she refused to let us answer the phone at dinnertime. It’s probably just a telemarketer, she would say. If it was a real person, then he or she should learn to respect our dinner hour!
Did we really spend an entire hour eating dinner with her every night? I couldn’t remember. We always did start the meal at the same time, though—six thirty. These days we ate when Dad got home, sometimes at six, sometimes as late as seven forty-five. Dad said that since we were so unpredictable with our meal schedule, it didn’t seem fair to punish people who wanted to talk to us, so he always answered the phone.
While Dad spoke quietly to the caller, Nate and I ate our spaghetti, not talking so we could eavesdrop. Finally Dad said, “I’ll put her on.” Then he handed me the phone.
My heart bounced. Who could possibly be calling me? “Hello?” I asked.
“Niecelet!” Aunt Shelby shouted. “Bad me for ruining your dinner! How are you?”
I told her it was fine; I was fine; everyone in the family was fine. By the time she’d told me about the cats (all were great, except Stinkbug, who had a nail infection, which she was treating with a special cat-foot herb she’d read about online), I was upstairs in my bedroom with the door shut.
“So listen to this,” Aunt Shelby said breathlessly. “Guess who called me today!”
I told her I couldn’t guess, so she might as well just tell me.
“Vaaaaal,” she said, as if the name had three syllables.
“What?”
“Yep. She said you’d accused her of torturing me in middle school?”
“Omigod. I never said torture, I swear!”
My aunt laughed. “Relax, buttercup. She actually called me to apologize. She said she didn’t remember the locker room business when you first mentioned it, but the more she thought about it, the more it came back to her and the more she realized how hurtful she’d been back then. Can you believe it?”
“No,” I answered truthfully. Then I added, “Although Val can be really nice sometimes.”
“Well, she couldn’t have been nicer on the phone today! So apparently it is possible to outgrow the Mean Girl routine!” Aunt Shelby laughed again. “And afterward we had a wonderful conversation. Did you know she’s into crystals?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“I even told her about my stores. She seemed really interested. I’m thinking of asking her to invest in Herb ’n’ Legend, because I’m pretty sure your dad’s not gonna.”
“Awesome.”
Aunt Shelby paused. “Okay, buttercup, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t lie to your aunt. Something’s up; I can hear it in your voice.”
I chewed the inside of my cheek. “It’s no big deal. I’ve just lost every single one of my friends. Including Abi.”
“You did? When? What happened?”
I suddenly realized how exhausted I was. Not talking, keeping your head down, took effort. Almost as much effort as telling lies and keeping your stories straight.
So I told her everything: about the Truth or Dare game, and Abi constantly fighting with Mak, and Marley quitting the game and also our group. About the fake My First Period story. About the LIA R sign and how Abi laughed when the volleyball hit my girls. Even the part about fake-kissing Tanner. Even the part about not kissing Graydon.
Aunt Shelby listened without interrupting. When I finished, she said, “All right, Lia. Here’s what you’re going to do. Invite your friends—just those four girls—to your house on Saturday. Say it’s your birthday party.”
“But that’s ridiculous. My birthday isn’t until April, and they all know it!”
“Say it’s an early birthday. Or a half birthday. Or an anti-birthday. I’ll bake a cake. What kind would they like?”
<
br /> “Chocolate,” I said immediately. “Like the kind Val made us as cupcakes. But what’s the point of inviting them to anything? I told you they hate me. They won’t come!”
“Oh, yes, they will. I’ll talk to Val, my new best friend.”
That was too warped for my brain to process. “Okay, but even if they do come, the thing is, I’m not sure I want to be friends with them after all the stuff that’s happened.”
“Buttercup, let me share a little wisdom. In life, it’s so important to get things out in the bright sunshine, share your feelings, come to a mutual understanding, and then move on. Otherwise all that negative energy just sits like a dark cloud over your universe. Look at Val and me.”
Was she joking? “Aunt Shelby, you didn’t share your feelings with Val! For twenty-five years! I shared them for you!”
“And I’m deeply grateful, Lia. I feel like you made the sun come out for us. But now it’s my turn to be there for you.”
I bit a hangnail on my pinkie. “What will you do?”
“Don’t worry. I have an idea.”
“Okay, but what is it?”
“It’s a whole creative process. I’m still feeling it out.”
“Aunt Shelby—”
“You just leave it to me, niecelet. I’ll see you tomorrow night!”
♥ ♥ ♥
I guessed that Dad thought I was talking to my aunt about bras or bobby pins or something equally girly, because he let me stay on the phone for more than an hour. When I hung up he didn’t ask me what we discussed; he nuked my spaghetti in the microwave and even let me take it up to my room.
But I couldn’t eat.
The relief I’d felt evaporated almost immediately. What exactly would my crazy aunt do? How exactly would she solve all my problems? Even she admitted she always “messed up” when it came to “daughter stuff,” so it was hard for me to trust her, especially with a situation this hopeless. And the party idea made zero sense. I couldn’t imagine even sitting in same living room as my ex-friends—any of them, including Marley.
And speaking of Marley: If Aunt Shelby asked her new BFF, Val the Former Bully, to force Abi, Jules, and Mak to show up, that wouldn’t mean a thing to Marley. If this party was seriously going to happen, I’d need to invite Marley on my own.
But first I’d need to think of a reason for her to accept.
Seashells
HOW DO YOU INVITE FRIENDS who aren’t your friends to a party that isn’t a party? That you don’t know anything about? That you’re not even sure you want to go to?
I sat at my desk for almost an hour, puzzling it out. I couldn’t just text everyone since I didn’t have a phone, and even if I borrowed Nate’s, texting seemed kind of weird if we weren’t talking. Plus, texts were easy to ignore, and I probably should know who (if anyone) was coming.
It occurred to me that I could make a big-deal invitation if I used a few of my five hundred name labels:
Amalia Jessica Rollins requests the honor of your presence—
But that sounded too wedding-y. And too dress-uppy. Better to make it sound ultracasual:
Please come to a thing
Where: Here
When: Sat @ 6 p.m.
Why: Not sure. Something about dark clouds in the universe?
Finally I gave up trying to do invitations. I just wrote Lia’s, Sat @ 6 p.m. on four small strips of paper, each about the size of a cookie fortune, and stuffed the strips into seashells from my collection. I had no choice but to give these out tomorrow, because tomorrow was Friday, and this party-ish event was happening Saturday.
♥ ♥ ♥
The next morning outside homeroom, I gave Mak a seashell.
“There’s something inside,” I told her.
She looked grossed out.
“Don’t worry; it’s not alive,” I explained.
I watched her pull out the fortune-cookie strip.
She read it, frowned, then looked up at me. “You know, Lia, I really didn’t mean to hit you with that ball.”
“I know.”
“And I’m still so mad at Abi for laughing.”
“Me too.” Then I stopped myself. For all I knew, Mak and Abi could be having one of their five-minute feuds; it would be pointless to get in the middle of it. “So you’ll come?”
“Yeah, why not.” She didn’t say anything else, or ask any questions about my mystery gathering, which was kind of funny; I mean, I could have been inviting her over to floss teeth. On the other hand, “yeah, why not” counted as a yes, which was the main thing.
I decided to invite Jules and Abi together. Jules would follow Abi’s lead in any direction; if Abi was coming (because Val forced her), so would Jules. If Abi refused to come (because she hated me for all eternity), neither would Jules—although she’d probably act all sweet and sorry.
After French, I hurried to PE. I stood in front of Jules’s gym locker with the seashells poking out of the pocket of my yoga pants. Finally they both showed up in matching sideways ponytails.
“Can I give you guys something?” I asked. Not waiting for an answer, I handed them seashells. I’d been wondering if Mak had texted them during the morning, or met them for a secret rendezvous to warn them I was distributing shells—but by the startled looks on their faces, I could tell she hadn’t. “There’s a note inside,” I explained.
Jules dug it out with her fingernail. “What is this, like, a party?”
“Exactly—it’s like a party,” I answered. “Can you come?”
She glanced at Abi, who shrugged sullenly.
“Will there be chocolate?” Jules asked.
“Ridiculous amounts.”
Jules smiled. “Sure, we’ll come. Thanks, Lia.”
Abi glared at me, but she didn’t contradict Jules. Obviously, Aunt Shelby had spoken to Val, and Val had scolded Abi, although who knew about what.
So that meant three ex-friends were coming. Woo-hoo. Marley was going to be the hardest to invite. For one thing, I didn’t know her schedule—she was in my homeroom but not in any of my classes, and sometimes she worked in the Resource Room with an aide or a special ed teacher.
Plus, she hadn’t spoken to me since the day of Abi’s “fun” body-switching question. I knew it was stupid, but I’d kind of thought she’d slip me a drawing—maybe that fantasy tree I’d admired in her sketchpad—as a way of making up after all the upsetting stuff she’d said. But she hadn’t. She didn’t make eye contact with me in homeroom or in the hallway. Once I saw her after school walking in the direction of the diner, so I waved—but I couldn’t tell if she waved back, or was just pushing her bangs out of her eyes.
Still, I told myself, Marley had only said she “didn’t know” if she wanted to be friends—which meant that possibly there was a slight chance she’d show up at my sort-of-party. Anyway, if we weren’t friends, we couldn’t be non-friends even worse than now—so there was nothing to lose by handing her a seashell, right?
Since Graydon tutored Marley, I thought he might know where to find her. He and his friends played their card game in the computer lab during lunch sometimes, so I went there as soon as I’d grabbed a yogurt from the cafeteria. And to my shock, there was Marley—in the computer lab—playing the Phantom game with Graydon, Ben, and Jake.
“I AM INVINCIBLE,” she shouted, slamming a card on the table.
“Yeah, yeah,” Ben said impatiently. “Your turn, Gray.”
Graydon looked up. “Hey,” he said, seeing me standing by the door. “You wanna play, Lia?”
“No. I mean no, thanks,” I said hurriedly. “Marley, can I talk to you a second?”
“Now?” She frowned.
“When you’re finished?”
“Sure. First I have to annihilate these miserable wretches with my cunning gamesmanship.”
“Shut up and play,” Graydon muttered.
I sat there, eating my yogurt and watching the game. As far as I could tell, Marley was dominating.
Finally s
he shouted, “VICTORY!”, stood, and did a sort of spazzy touchdown dance that was mainly just flapping her elbows and twirling in a circle. My first reaction was, Good thing Abi isn’t here to see this. My second was, So what if she were?
When Marley finished, she came over to me with a grin so wide I could see her green and orange rubber bands.
“You really rock at that game,” I said.
“Yeah, I do,” she stated, as if it were just a fact. “So what did you want to talk to me about?”
I handed her a seashell. “Can you come?”
She ran her fingers through her messy bangs.
“I really hope you can,” I added.
“I dunno, Lia. Who else is coming?”
“Well, our other ex-friends.”
“Our?”
“Yeah, I’m not friends with them either now.”
“Huh.” She nodded thoughtfully. “Why are you inviting them, then?”
“It’s more like my aunt is.”
“Your aunt?”
“Yeah, I don’t get it either. She refuses to tell me what she’s planning. It’ll be something weird, though.”
“Weird how?”
I rolled my eyes. “She’s into botanicals and soup and crystals, so it could be anything. And she has these theories about clouds and, I don’t know, negative energy in the universe.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Yeah, I know. I don’t get it either.”
“Well, it doesn’t sound like another boring pizza-and-bowling party. But . . .” She shrugged.
“Marley, please come. I’m begging you. I need you there for sanity.”
“That’s a nice compliment,” she said quietly. “Thank you.”
“Plus, there’ll be chocolate,” I added.
She sighed. “All right. I’ll come. But I have to warn you, Lia: If anyone picks on me, I’m fighting back.”
“Good. Me too.”
Marley returned to her game. I could have gone to the cafeteria then, but I stayed in the computer lab, watching them play.
One Big Circle
WHEN AUNT SHELBY DROVE UP that evening in her rusty old pickup, all she’d tell me was that she had “stuff planned” and tomorrow was “going to be awesome,” and I should “just try to relax.” But relaxing was out of the question. Ever since the Accident, I hadn’t been a huge fan of surprises. For me to relax, I needed to know details. And the more Aunt Shelby refused to answer my questions, the more unrelaxed I felt.