by Beth Ain
What? No, she says.
Mom, James says. Put on a coat.
Dad has already gone to the closet. He’s carrying a
big black fur coat he must have dug up from the way
back.
I glance at James.
He sometimes goes through Mom’s pockets for
change and I bet he missed this one,
and it looks fancy, like it might have more than just
loose change jangling around inside.
Are you crazy? Mom says.
But she puts it on and they leave us and we watch
from the window as the top on the car comes down,
turning somehow into a chariot.
It’s like Cinderella, I say out loud.
Yeah, right, James says, and we just sit there, waiting.
They are gone so long we put our own tacos together.
I make a platter, the way Mom does,
lettuce in one pile, tomatoes in another, shredded
cheese and avocado slices.
Maybe he’ll stay, I say. Maybe it’ll be taco night.
Maybe you’ve read too many fairy tales, James says.
I think of Princess Atalanta.
I did really want her to settle down with Young John.
James is right.
The door slams, and a whoosh of cold air comes in
with Mom,
who throws that giant coat that used to be an animal
on the bench in the front hall.
Taco night! she says in a high voice that is her acting
voice, and she’s not
the world’s best actress.
I look over her shoulder at James,
who is taking great care to hang up the coat
and who pulls out a twenty-dollar bill from the
pocket.
A fairy tale for him.
Something else for Mom and me.
Beautiful platter, honey, she says.
I tried, I say.
Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo.
On the 100th day of school,
the teachers and the principal
and the specials teachers
and pretty much everyone who walks by you in the
hallway says you are one hundred days smarter.
So we are supposed to bounce a beach ball
100 times in the air
and count out 100 Cheerios and string them
on a necklace
and take
100 steps down the hall,
which Quinn and I choose to do together because
every time Quinn and I team up for something, we
end up having a better time than when we are paired
up with someone else.
We end up laughing mainly because she says things like
I’m going to count how many times my sister mutes her phone
while she’s on with her boyfriend just so she can fart.
I bet it is one hundred.
Ewww, I say, and we laugh so hard I get the hiccups,
and then we count those too.
We never get to 100 because we are supposed to settle
down and write a list of new things we have learned
since the first day of school.
How are you 100 days smarter?
the paper says
at the top.
I stare at the paper and think about all that math,
the multiplication facts, the long division, and
all the books I have read and
all the pages I have logged in my reading log,
and I know I’ve done a lot of work in 100 days,
but it doesn’t make me feel smarter,
just maybe tired
of answering questions.
I’m better at choosing friends, I write.
There is a group of people,
a tribe.
They never look each other in the eyes.
They stare and smile and laugh
out loud
at their hands,
which glow and reflect blue light on their faces.
And they throw things at each other,
still not looking,
flipping their hair,
picking at themselves,
at each other.
The females especially do this.
And some look sadder than they should be,
since the things they are throwing
are snowballs,
flung with gusto
into the air
at each other.
Warlike.
Flinging themselves
with gusto down the hill,
on sleds and flying saucers.
They can fly,
this tribe
of teenagers.
James woke me up by throwing snow pants
on my head.
Snow day!
And Mom made hot chocolate for breakfast
and eggs and toast when we usually have cereal
or a granola bar.
We watched giant flakes hit the windows
and the ground in piles
while Mom got ready for work.
Later, James dragged me out for sledding with
his friends,
the tribe that laughs at their hands,
two blocks from our house.
I think of the Iroquois league—the Cayuga, the
Onondaga, the Mohawk, the Seneca, the Oneida,
once fighting,
warlike.
Until they found peace.
Like me,
whizzing down the hill,
flying toward the teenage nation,
who are looking for something in the palms of their
glowing hands,
a glimpse
or a glimmer
of hope,
but not peace.
They spend A LOT of time at school assemblies
telling you not to be a bully.
Sometimes they even start on the very first day,
when I can’t even remember which classroom is mine
let alone how to be an upstander,
a word they invented for a person who stands up for
others when others are being bullied.
Another way of saying, a LOT to ask.
This year, they’ve waited until now,
until Valentine’s Day,
to spread the love.
The name of the assembly is Spread the Love.
The principal reads us a book by that name,
and then one of the second-grade teachers I never
had comes in playing his guitar and singing really
loud—
“SPREAD THE LOVE,” the song.
And all the other teachers start singing too,
and the whole school is clapping and singing along.
Quinn and I just look at each other in a funny way
because the whole thing is kind of weird.
Love is a funny thing to spread around an elementary
school.
Germs is more like it.
There’s been a stomach virus going around and they
keep sending notices home and Mom
keeps calling us to ask if we’ve washed our hands.
Viruses are easy to spread around but love is not.
Just ask Jackson “FINGER SLAMMER”
Allen. He is a spreader of misery, and Quinn and I
spend a lot of time avoiding him and his group of
FOUR ANNOYING BOYS,
germs, all of them.
So we’re supposed to go back to our classrooms and
make valentines for each other, which means I have to
make one for Jackson.
I want to write what does it feel like to have two names
that could be last names or first names?
I want to write does it feel the same as getting your finger
slammed in between a chair and a table?
<
br /> But I just write Happy Valentine’s Day!
Because of the bullying assembly.
Afterward, at indoor recess, I look over at
Lilly with two l’s.
She is reading a book and even though she doesn’t
look sad or anything, I get up and go over to her.
Want to join our no-friend club? I say.
Sure, she says. She doesn’t seem to care
what the no-friend club is,
or maybe she loves the play like I do.
She and Quinn and I are working on our valentines
and I say Lilly, do you still have those toys you were
holding on to for that princess superhero from Mars?
Huh? she says.
Then she starts coloring again.
Then she says do you still eat your shirts?
Huh? I say, because I don’t really want Quinn to know
that I ate through a lot of my clothes in kindergarten.
Nerves, Mom would say.
Disgusting, Dad would say.
But I get what she’s saying, so I laugh
and then I put my shirt in my mouth
and get back to coloring.
When you are part of a group and that group is made
up of FOUR ANNOYING BOYS,
you yourself are probably annoying.
It is possible, Mom says, that you are NOT annoying,
that at home you are sweet and funny
and nice to your little sister,
but Mom doesn’t know you like I do.
I protect you from her and you don’t even know it.
I tell her things like he would have told on me for
kicking him when I was just walking normally and his
leg got CAUGHT on my leg by ACCIDENT.
And she says things like but he didn’t
and
oh, he probably just likes you a lot.
I say
ick.
And also
not true.
Not even close.
You liking me is worse than you hating me.
Mom, for once in her life, is wrong.
I have been protecting you long enough.
Because today—
TODAY—
I was busy being a nice person and checking on Ezra
when he was crying in the hallway
and we were lined up,
quiet and single file.
Thinking back, he was probably crying because of
something you and your
ANNOYING friends did to him.
He told me to get lost,
which was also ANNOYING, because I didn’t even
really want to check on him,
except I heard Mom’s voice in my head
telling me to reach out when someone needs
reaching out to.
But you.
YOU looked right at me and said something worse
than the ONE MILLION TIMES you have called
me MEDUSA so far this year.
Worse than the ONE MILLION TIMES you have
pretended to turn to stone
when you look at my face.
Is Ezra crying because you’re so ugly? you asked,
fake-pouting.
I thought about hitting you.
I even made a fist.
The only thing that stopped me was the idea that
I would definitely get in trouble, and I HATE
getting in trouble
more than I hate you.
Or maybe it’s a tie.
(And not a happily-ever-after,
Princess-Atalanta-and-Young-John-running-in-a-race-
in-a-fairy-tale kind of a tie.)
Mom was not happy with you.
She ALMOST called your mom.
Almost.
(to be continued)
We have spent a lot of time making color wheels.
I love mine so much
I protect it between two sheets of regular paper and
roll it up and put a rubber band
around the tube I made.
At Dad’s house I take it upstairs and
lay it out on the floor to admire it.
I wanted to wait until I was home
with Mom.
She would love it.
She would like that I was so careful
about staying in the lines.
That I took extra time with a very fine black Sharpie
to fill in my own copyright line, as if
I were an art company that specializes in making
color wheels for fourth graders
to help them learn about primary and
complementary colors.
She would love that.
I have a friend who would like that, my dad says from
the doorway,
startling me.
He has two paperweights in his hand—
one is a heavy glass circle
that says University of Pennsylvania
in etched white letters.
The other is a heavy and smooth black stone from
I don’t know where.
He bends down and puts one on each side of the
color wheel,
which fights to roll back up again.
Her name is Stephanie.
She’s an art teacher, he says.
An artist.
Okay, I say.
I stare at the warm side of the wheel
because my art teacher,
whose name is definitely NOT Stephanie,
taught us that some colors have to do with our moods.
The warm ones are for happiness. The cool ones, for
sadness.
Pessimism, she said.
I try not to look at the cool blues
because I am an optimist, Mom says.
Always looking at the bright side.
There are some things Mom doesn’t need to know.
There are some things that can be a secret forever
because they are special to two people and only two
people.
I stopped Mom from calling your mom for a reason.
The reason is Quinn.
I didn’t even know that Quinn had seen
what happened,
but she must have, even though she was at the way front,
the line leader.
Well, Quinn bent over,
and no one knew why but the line moved along
without her,
without its leader,
until,
somehow,
YOU tripped over the foot she must have only stuck
out because she was tying her shoelace
(and not because she wanted to trip you).
Well, you flew
across the hall and smack into Ezra,
who must have ALSO had enough of you
because he made a fist.
And well,
hating you and hating getting in trouble are
apparently
not a tie for him
since you ended up bent over too,
and not because your shoelace was untied.
And maybe I even saw a tear.
Quinn’s eyes lit up and mine might have too,
which is terrible,
and I’m sorry.
And that is why I didn’t let my mom call your mom.
It’s all right to cry.
We are even.
When I grow up I do not want to be in charge of a
whole bunch of kids who do not listen
unless the principal is the one talking.
Even if they make funny faces
behind the principal’s back,
everyone listens when she talks,
everyone listens when she says boys and girls in a way
that sounds nice when you’re in kindergarten and first
grade but that, by fourth grade,
starts to sound a li
ttle annoying.
When I was in second grade I won a bookmark design
contest—
Reading takes you places,
I wrote
on the side of a rocket
on its way to the moon.
Well, I got to make the morning announcements as
my prize.
I was nervous so I stared at a sign—
The princiPAL is your PAL!
to distract myself.
I think I didn’t know then,
in second grade,
that there was another way to spell principal.
That a principle was something else entirely,
something that might also take you places.
I think now that the sign isn’t about spelling at all.
I think maybe our principal thinks this sign
makes her seem friendly.
Like calling us boys and girls with a wide grin
and clenched teeth.
Two whole years later, I stare at the sign while I wait
to read from Free to Be…You and Me
over the loudspeaker
and to distract myself from Jackson Allen’s sweat.
He is standing too close to me and we just had gym
and he won a million races and
his sweat is contagious.
My clothes feel itchy.
Free to Be…You and Me is part of the whole school’s
theme this year,
not just the fourth grade.
Not just the fourth class.
Other grades aren’t doing a play
but a collage,
or a video,
or a poetry collection
of things they learned from Free to Be…You and Me.
It is a school-wide endeavor.
There is a bulletin board outside the main office to
prove it.
Almost every last fourth grader has gotten a chance to
read from our show
over the loudspeaker.
Once a week the teachers choose another group to go.
This time it is Jackson Allen,
three other ANNOYING BOYS,
and me.
I stare at the PrinciPAL sign and ignore the
sweating boys.
We each take a line and then we read—
read, not sing—our part.
I am last.
I say
I might be pretty;
you might grow tall.
And all together,
in unison,
we say
but we don’t have to change at all.
I have just said,
in front of everyone,
I might be pretty.
My head fills up with pressure.
Like his sweat, Jackson’s hot red cheeks are contagious,
spreading to mine.
He snorts.
This is my punishment, I think,
for feeling happy when he got hit
by Ezra
in line