And he’s the only person I’d let get away with it!
Today is the worst day of my life.
Really, it is!
A new family has moved into our neighborhood, across the empty lot from my house, and across the street from Phillip’s house.
This is most unfortunate.
The parents seem like nice, decent people, but unfortunately they had to bring their stupid, stinky son with them. Why couldn’t they have forgotten to bring him with, or left him on the side of the road somewhere in Missouri? Maybe someone would’ve taken him home, like a lost kitty.
That way he could’ve ruined someone else’s life.
Phillip and I have so much fun playing together. We play lots of sports, games, and fun stuff that I make up. Usually, we play some version of the handsome prince coming to rescue the beautiful, royal princess. But it’s not like it’s all girly. Phillip gets to do some really cool boy stuff, like fighting a dragon with a sword, dueling with an evil warlock, climbing the tower. We even play Olympics and have all sorts of sports competitions.
But since that nasty, smelly boy next door came here, Phillip acts like the only fun thing to do is to play with him. Phillip and I are both real good at sports. It’s not like I can’t keep up with him! Honestly, I’m bigger than he is and can actually beat him at almost everything, except for a flat-out running race—he is a bit faster than me.
I’m always the first girl picked when we split into teams at school, but somehow this evil boy has convinced Phillip that he shouldn’t play with girls.
Today, Phillip and I are minding our own business, playing in the empty lot between Danny’s house and mine.
Did I mention his name?
Danny. Danny Diamond.
Devil Danny is more like it.
I wonder if his parents know how truly awful he is?
Poor people. They really should consider giving that boy up for adoption.
Oh, I hate that boy!
He makes me sooooo mad!!!
Anyway, Phillip and I are playing a nice game of Four Squares, which all the boys at school like to play, when he comes walking over.
He thinks he is so cool!
The first day he moved here, he told me how he’s a great quarterback.
I told him to stop bragging. It’s not nice.
But he went, I’m not bragging. I’m just confident in my skills.
Whatever.
I figured the kids at school would hate him, because no one likes a bragger, right? Right?
Wrong!
Because of his bragging, his so called skills, and the way he looks, all the girls at school are in love with him. I mean, he does have nice blond hair that always looks like he just combed it, even when he’s out in the wind. And all the girls have been going on and on about his dreamy blue eyes and his cool attitude.
Personally, I think they’re just bored with the boys we’ve grown up with and would like anyone new.
Although I have to admit, the first time I saw him, I thought he was really cute too.
But that was way before I knew him.
He interrupts our game by saying, “Four Squares is a dumb girl game. Wanna play football, Phil?”
It’s not Phil, you idiot! No one calls him that. It’s Phillip. I’m sure that my Prince Phillip will not let him talk about our game, or me, like that. So I wait for his reply.
“Sounds fun,” Phillip says, “I’ll go grab a football.”
And off he runs.
No Bye, Princess.
Nothing.
Has Devil Danny used some kind of evil brainwashing on Phillip?
Can he control people’s minds?
Will he suck out Phillip’s soul?
I am so mad that I could scream! But instead, I try to get along, so I say, “That’s okay, football sounds fun too.”
Danny glares at me, like I’m a piece of poop that he just stepped in. “Girls can’t play football. Why don’t you go home and play with your dolls or something?”
Well that was about all I could take from that boy.
“Danny, you are a stupid, ugly, smelly boy.”
I am so mad at him! But then something terrible happens. As I’m yelling at him, tears start coming out of my eyes. Why is that? I’m not sad. I’m boiling hot, furiously mad!
MAD. MAD. MAD. MAD!
I continue to yell at him anyway. “And I wish you would just go back to Missouri and die!”
What I say doesn’t seem to upset him in any way. He just looks at me with disgust and says, “Girls are such crybabies.”
I turn and run home.
Fast.
I slam the back door, run up the stairs, and slam the door to my room. I throw myself across my bed and cry. Then I move to my window seat so I can look out the window at those stupid boys playing football, while I cry.
Why do I cry when I get mad?
Maybe he’s right. Maybe I am just a crybaby.
Maybe I will just give up and let him steal my best friend from me.
No way.
Never, I think, and dry my eyes on my shirt.
Just then, Daddy walks in. I’m sure he heard the doors slamming and is coming to yell at me. He hates it when I slam doors.
I try to hide my crybaby eyes from him.
He looks at me, out the window at the boys, then sits down next to me, and wraps me in a great big hug.
How come a boy can be so stupid, but a Daddy, who actually used to be a boy himself, can be so wonderful?
“Three’s a crowd, huh?” he asks, nodding out toward the boys.
And smart too!
“Yeah,” I sniffle, “Danny says girls can’t play football. He said I should go play with my dolls. I don’t even play with dolls anymore.”
At least not very often.
“I was so mad at him, Daddy. I tried to tell him how mean and stupid I think he is, but then I started crying, so he called me a crybaby. I swear, Dad, I wasn’t sad, I was mad. I don’t know how he made me cry. It’s a big mystery to me! Plus, he’s trying to steal my bestest friend in the whole world.”
“Well,” Daddy says, rubbing the stubbly stuff on his chin and thinking.
I love it when he does that. He has the most brilliant ideas!
“I know,” I say, interrupting him. “How ’bout you go over there and give him a good, old fashioned ass whooping?”
Daddy laughs. He knows I have heard Grandpa say the same thing about me.
“Please don’t use bad words like that, okay?”
“Okay,” I reply sheepishly. “But I think it would be a very good idea.”
“I don’t think I could do that, Angel.” He smiles, pauses, and strokes the stubbles some more. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t.”
“You want me to go and beat up Danny?” I’m very surprised at that man.
“No, you silly goose,” he says, ruffling my hair, “but you are very good at sports, and you especially love football. Teach him a lesson. Show him that girls can play anything they want. Beat him at his own game. I think it would be good for Danny to lose to a girl.”
He gives me another big hug and walks toward my door.
Then he turns around, grabs my doorway, and says, “You know, it’s okay to have more than one best friend.”
Well, his advice on boys might be good, but evidently he’s forgotten the Laws of Fifth Grade.
You can only have one best friend.
That’s okay though; his memory is probably going bad because he’s getting so old. He is thirty-eight after all.
I hug my knees and watch the boys for a few more minutes, while I get my courage up. I’m gonna show that boy that anything boys can do, girls can do better.
My friend Lisa likes to sing, Girls go to college, to get more knowledge. Boys go to Jupiter, to get more stupider.
I don’t know where she comes up with these funny things, but I love it that she does. Usually they are so good!
In this case though, Danny’s
gonna get more knowledge. And I am about to school him. I get up and look in my mirror. Daddy always tells me I am beautiful, but I’m not sure I believe him. Isn’t it required that dads tell their daughters that? Anyway, all I see in the mirror staring back at me is a girl who is way too tall, way too skinny, has gross knobby knees, and some really stupid freckles on her nose.
I look some more.
Well, I suppose my blues eyes are okay, and I do actually like the color of my long blonde hair, but I just can’t see beautiful.
Oh well. I’m going to teach that boy a lesson, and I should definitely look as much like a girl as I can, when I do it. So I take my hair out of its ponytail and brush it until it shines. Then I put on some Lip Smackers lip gloss. Lisa gave me this gloss.
She says Glossing is as important as flossing. I think my dentist might disagree with that, but gloss does make your lips look kind of pretty.
I run outside and walk right up to those stupid boys. I ignore Danny and say to Phillip, “I want to play football with you guys, okay?”
Phillip shrugs his shoulders. “Sure, I’ll go out for a pass and you can guard me.”
Danny steps between us and says to Phillip, “No way. She’ll just end up getting hurt and go bawling home.” He glares at me. “Girls aren’t tough enough to play football.”
I look that Devil Boy in the eye.
Dad told me to teach him a lesson by playing football, but I can see now what I have to do. I cock my arm back and punch that boy right in the stomach. Then I move in closer and give him a jab to the face. He falls onto his butt in the grass.
What can I say? Dad and I watch a lot of boxing.
The corner of his lip is bleeding a bit, and he is lying on the grass looking up at me with a shocked expression. I expect him to go home and cry to his mommy.
But he surprises me. He wipes his mouth on his shirt and looks at me with new respect.
He is nodding his head slowly up and down at me.
It’s like his brain is transparent, and I can see the light bulb going off inside it.
Boys are so clueless.
Finally he says, “You know what? You just might be tough enough to play football.”
I have to say that I think we both learned a lesson today.
He learned that all girls aren’t prissy wimps, and I learned that he just might not be the Devil after all.
The three of us have been best friends ever since.
Tonight is Lisa’s fourteenth-birthday party.
We have been planning it for months—actually for years.
I think we started planning for her first boy/girl birthday party in fourth grade, but this is the first time her parents finally agreed to let her have one.
This is the third one that I’ve been to.
Boy/girl party that is.
The first one was a little boring; everyone was too scared to do anything fun.
But at the last one, things got a little more interesting. We played Spin the Bottle and Seven Minutes in Heaven. I got stuck in the closet with Andrew Martin.
Gross.
I wouldn’t let him get near enough to breathe on me, let alone do anything else!
I’m hoping that at this party I will end up in the closet with Billy Prescott. He is way cute.
Lisa assures me that she has the drawing of one boy’s and one girl’s name rigged in my favor.
She lies.
I end up in the closet with Neil.
Right before we have to go in the closet, Neil runs over and breaks up with Mary Beth Parker.
Tacky. Very tacky.
Phillip told me that Neil has a crush on me. I let him kiss me, mostly because I haven’t liked Mary Beth Parker since fourth grade, when she told everyone not to play with me.
When we come out, Neil has a huge grin on his face.
That’s when things get all dramatic.
Mary Beth is very mad at me.
She is all huffy and says bad things about me.
Of course, she changes her tune as soon as she gets sent into the closet with Phillip.
Then she thinks she’s my new best friend.
God, I hope he didn’t kiss her!
Later on, I have to play spin the bottle.
Yes, I have to.
Lisa makes me.
She says I’ll ruin her party if I don’t.
I don’t need that hanging over my head, so I agree to play.
See. Have to.
Plus, since there are only seven kids left at the party, one of them being Billy Prescott, I figure the odds are in my favor that I still might get to kiss him.
Lisa turns off the light and puts down a bottle. Everyone gets positioned on the floor in a circle.
Neil is strategically trying to place himself across from me.
We go through four spins of the bottle without it landing on me.
Boohoo!
Then it’s Phillip’s turn. He spins, and the neck of the bottle points directly between Mary Beth Parker and me!
I kid you not.
Mary Beth looks all excited.
I feel sorry for the poor guy. It’s like he has to choose between Heaven and Hell. And Hell (Mary Beth) will get really mad and make his life miserable if he doesn’t pick her.
Phillip looks at her and then at me. Then he takes the neck of the bottle and moves it so it points straight at me.
Really!
Both Neil and Mary Beth are looking pissed at Phillip, but he doesn’t seem to care.
He grins, then crooks his index finger at me, motioning for me to come and get him.
I am going to shake my head no, but his grin gets me every time. I can’t resist him . . . plus I kinda want to kiss him. So I crawl through the center of the circle. It’s like his eyes are the light at the end of a tunnel, and all I can see is him.
I’m still not sure what happened, what Phillip did, or how he did it so fast. But next thing I know, I am lying on my back across the center of the circle, with Phillip lying on top of me, kissing me.
The boys are hooting and hollering, but it barely registers because Phillip keeps kissing me. I’m having a hard time processing anything other than the fact that Phillip is a really good kisser, and that he is lying on top of me.
Around us, everyone gasps and jumps up.
I think this is exactly what Phillip hoped would happen.
I am slightly dazed though, so I can’t be sure.
Once everyone scatters he stops kissing me, pulls me up onto my feet, and flashes me that adorable grin.
And I can’t help but fall a little in love with him.
“So, are you secretly in love with me, or were you just trying to break up the game so you wouldn’t have to kiss Mary Beth,” I whisper.
“Oh, I am definitely in love with you,” he replies, with a big smile on his face, as he sees Mary Beth storming out of the party.
“Liar,” I say.
Every summer, Phillip’s dad sets up a tent in their back yard. But it’s so hot already in May that the boys talked him into setting it up this weekend, so they can camp out. I’ve spent many a night in that tent with the boys, but my parents have decided that this year I’m too old to camp with them.
It’s stupid, really.
It’s not like I like them.
I mean, we’re together a lot, and let’s face it, if I really wanted to do anything with them, I could just do it any old time.
But since we are only friends, nothing happens.
I have tried explaining this to Mom and Dad, but they got all freaked out when I told them that if I wanted to do something with one of the boys, I could do it any old time, and I nearly got grounded.
Fortunately, I haven’t been banned from the tent entirely. I still get to go over there, but I have to come home to sleep. Which really makes no sense either, because a lot could happen before I come home. But, whatever. I mean, all we usually do is eat, play cards, and talk.
I know that I’m growing up, but I don�
�t really feel all that different. I’m a lot taller than I used to be. I’m 5’10”, which seems a bit excessive to me, and it really sucks because there are only two boys in my grade taller than me. So if I want to go out with a boy who is taller than me, my choices are very limited.
My mom is 5’9”, and she says she loves being tall and not to worry; the boys will catch up in a few years. She is also constantly telling me to stand up straight.
It drives me nuts.
The talks the boys and I have in the tent are much different from the ones I have with my friends, Lisa and Katie. I swear, growing up is all they have talked about for the last three years.
Who got their boobs first?
Not me.
Who got their period first?
Again, not me.
Who got kissed on the lips first?
Well that would have been me, but now that we are older, a silly playground kiss doesn’t count.
So that one is also not me.
They are totally obsessed with boys and are so excited about going to high school next year because they think the place is just full of boys dying to date them.
Lisa has been counting down the days until we are fifteen and old enough to go out on real dates. (131 for Lisa, 215 for Katie, and 321 for me, at last count.) The countdown is kind of silly to me. I mean, do they think they will turn fifteen and all of a sudden boys will be standing in line to ask them out?
What if no one does?
I haven’t pointed that out to them and probably won’t.
They would get all huffy at me.
As if I don’t have enough to worry about, eighth grade graduation is coming up. It’s a big deal around here. We have a graduation ceremony and parties and everything. Normally, this is something I would be very excited about—I love parties—but my mom has been trying to ruin my life.
I swear!
She said I have to wear a dress. I know I’m kind of a tomboy and love sports, but I don’t mind wearing dresses. It’s just I find they’re not usually very comfortable. Then there’s the whole worrying about your underwear showing issue. So, anyway, the problem isn’t really that I have to wear a dress; it’s the type of dress she wanted me to wear. Everything she picked was soooo pink! And she kept dragging me to the store and making me try these things on.
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