by Beth Ain
which has a little girl on it, getting a boost from her
brother,
reaching up to outen the light, it says.
Something they maybe say, or said
a long time ago,
in Pennsylvania.
I have something for you, he says, scraping his teeth
against the ring
in his tongue.
That’s gross, I say.
He shrugs and I follow him to his room,
where he throws a bag of something at me.
I catch it because I am good at catching things
in a hurry.
Jelly Bellys.
Mom made me clean them up, he says.
Kitchen-floor Jelly Bellys? I say.
Take ’em or leave ’em, he says.
I take ’em.
Then he hands me headphones and
he puts on headphones too, and we lie down on the floor,
head to head
and he plays me some music.
Real music, he says.
The Beatles! he shouts over the loud, weird sounds of
someone—
John Lennon! he shouts—
singing:
I am the eggman.
They are the eggmen.
I am the walrus.
It’s a magical mystery tour, I think.
James is my guide, I think.
Sometimes he kicks me out and sometimes
he takes me along for the ride.
Quinn is home,
dismissed early from the hospital,
with a diagnosis that requires a regular old letter home
from the nurse.
Like lice,
or strep throat.
Your child might have been exposed to the flu virus.
A student was recently diagnosed with influenza.
A student.
Suddenly Quinn is anonymous.
It’s better that way.
The PTA sent their own letter, with Quinn’s full name,
explaining the wonderful outcome,
the relief we all feel,
knowing that it wasn’t a recurrence,
knowing that her collapse was
due to extreme fatigue and fever,
that she is simply battling the flu.
My mom gives me a big, long hug after she reads
both notes.
The flu! she screams.
She does a funny little dance and we jump around the
kitchen, cheering and singing, and she’s crying at the
same time.
You hardly even know her, I say.
But you do, she says.
And then she looks up at the ceiling,
and closes her eyes,
and says
There but for the grace of God.
You’re weird, I say.
You are, she says, and hugs me again and tighter.
Why didn’t you tell me about the cancer? I ask
since it is our overflow day,
the day when Quinn and I get to sit together
at the table for all the kids
who don’t fit
at the class lunch table.
There is a chart that tells us whose day it is, and
I dread it every time.
It is the worst day usually.
You never know who else will be there.
People from other classes too.
People you aren’t used to anymore.
Sometimes it is Fiona,
sometimes Sara,
sometimes Jackson.
Today it is Quinn, so it doesn’t matter who else is there.
(Okay, it matters.
Sara and Fiona are there.)
I forgot, I guess, Quinn says.
Do you even have asthma? I ask.
She shakes her head no and looks at her plate.
I thought you fell, I say,
that day.
Didn’t I? Quinn asks.
I think you fainted, I say.
Was it cool? she asks, her eyes looking up at me and
not at the
Homemade Baked Ziti from the lunch menu.
Cool? Fiona asks.
Sara just stares. Sara has never liked things like this.
Scary things that not everyone thinks of as scary.
Scary things that can be funny if you choose funny
over scary,
like Quinn does.
Was it like this? Quinn says, and she throws herself off
the bench and onto the
disgusting cafeteria floor.
I squint and say
no, more like this,
and I clunk my head down on the table and stick my
tongue out.
Really? she squeals.
And we are laughing the way we laughed at her house
in our party dresses.
I snort, even.
Sara and Fiona are looking at us out of the corners of
their eyes,
pretending it isn’t funny.
One day I will ask Quinn what it was like to have
cancer, since I am wondering
if she thought about dying,
if she threw up a lot,
if there was a lot of crying,
if she worries every day about it coming back,
if the flu feels even worse when the flu could be cancer.
One day I will ask her, when I am not
overflowing
with relief.
It smells like spring, which means people are in the
mood for sweet drinks and cookies.
Or else maybe they are in the mood to lay out a towel
on the grass,
kick off their shoes,
like we did,
like Quinn and I did at recess.
The day started out cold and if you come in with a coat,
you go out with a coat.
A silly rule, if you ask me.
I mean, you don’t go out to recess with your backpack
and you come in with that the same
way you come in with a coat.
But we bring our Windbreakers and we toss them in a
pile and we fly high on the swings,
kicking off our shoes and one of them, my right-foot
shoe, hits Fiona,
and she says
hey!
And I think of the flying piñata at Sara’s Candy Land
birthday party and I just can’t even
believe how we don’t talk to each other so much
anymore.
How we used to swing together and talk together and
laugh together and dance together
and make lemonade stands together on days like this.
And it’s all because of soccer and maybe dance and
being in the fourth class.
And I wonder if we were only friends because of being
near each other and not because
of being close to each other.
Quinn and I spread out our Windbreakers on the
grass and put our faces up to the sun.
Let’s make a lemonade stand today, I say.
And we do, outside Quinn’s big house right near
Main Street,
later in the afternoon.
And people walk past and a few buy lemonade.
But then Fiona and Sara walk by and Fiona says
Ralph’s is opening today, most people want ices and not
lemonade.
And I say well, Ralph’s isn’t giving their money to charity.
And I point to my sign, which says
All proceeds go to Marlo Thomas’s St. Jude’s Hospital for
Sick Kids.
And they shrug and walk away.
And Quinn and I go on selling lemonade and cookies
to people on their way to Ralph’s
opening day, who toss their filled-up cups in the
garb
age can
about a block down the road.
I don’t notice until the day of the concert, when I see
in the program
Lilly Callahan, “When We Grow Up”
that Lilly with two l’s actually has four l’s in her name
(five if you count the first one)
and I think
that’s a lot of l’s.
And then I find out that she is sick—regular sick—and
I feel bad about it, since I can only imagine how awful
it would be to miss out on singing a solo,
especially with a voice as nice as hers.
But then Mrs. Johnson asks me if I know the words
and I say I do.
And suddenly those butterflies, the ones from that
first night into day
before the first day of school,
they’re back.
I fill up the minutes until the show starts with
will I be good enough?
Not will Dad show up?, which is what I thought I’d
be thinking about.
Not will Mom remember?, which I also thought I’d
be thinking a lot about.
Not I hope James skips out of school for this, which he
told me he might do and which I actually believe
because James hates school and because James doesn’t
care about getting in trouble the way I do.
It’s May, I think. School is almost over, I think.
The Free to Be project is almost over, too, which is
okay because I might finally be tired of these songs.
So Dad shows up and he’s with his art teacher friend
and I think that I hate her because she wears a lot of
jewelry and perfume.
I can tell she has perfume even from all the way on
the stage.
She looks perfumed.
The principal introduces us right after she explains the
school-wide theme and that the fourth grade has done
a marvelous job and she can’t wait to share it with
everyone.
It gets quiet.
Quinn gives my hand a squeeze and says go!
I head onto the stage, into the spotlight.
I start to sing Lilly’s song and I don’t sing it so well
until I spot Mom’s face,
her plain, pretty face.
Then I get back to singing the way I sing.
With feeling.
The light is shining on the outside of me,
but it is on the inside
that I feel
lit up.
I never thought about the magic of butterflies until now.
I only ever thought about the trouble with butterflies.
The first-day butterflies.
The divorce butterflies.
The meeting-Dad’s-art-teacher-girlfriend butterflies.
Butterfly problems,
all of them.
When I finish, people clap so loud I feel dizzy but
there is still so much more
of the show
to go.
Jackson has to sing the mommies are people part!
And “It’s All Right to Cry” is coming up!
And “Girl Land”!
And “Don’t Dress Your Cat in an Apron”!
With a real cat, in a real apron.
And suddenly I don’t ever want it to end.
Any of it.
I look out at my brother
during “Sisters and Brothers.”
My brother who is rolling his eyes, which I know is an
inside-joke thing
because it is our way of understanding each other,
from the inside out,
the way we make fun of things.
The way we give each other bloody knuckles
and headphones filled with old music.
The way I let him tell me what to make fun of and
what to take seriously.
The way he protects me.
Ain’t we lucky.
Then Fiona and Sara and some other girls from the
Candy Land party do a dance while we all sing
“Glad to Have a Friend Like You.”
This is where I get to say a few lines on my own.
Where I get to sing-act.
This was my original big part, the one I worked on
with Elana.
The one where I get to say ooey-gooey
and sticky-licky
and fair and fun and skippin’ free.
I look right at Quinn when I say my lines, because she
helps me think about
the people I’m glad to have instead of the ones
I’m glad not to have.
At long last and extra loud because this is it,
we sing “Free to Be…You and Me.”
The finale,
the end.
And when it’s over, and we’re all free to be ourselves
again,
free to go out into the audience and
hug Mom and Dad,
I think that I have one thing I don’t hate
about Stephanie.
She’s here.
She got my dad here, and there is no boil in him,
no simmer, even.
Warm, though.
Tickling and cheerful.
I could never do that on my own.
My mom hugs me and she and my dad nod at each
other and he says
This is Stephanie.
Can you believe they still do this show? Mom says,
shaking Stephanie’s hand.
Well, they did all right by it, Dad says, squeezing my
shoulders with both of his hands.
Especially you, Stephanie says to me.
You really did, babe, Mom says.
Then she says
Was that James I saw?
I just shrug. Couldn’t be, I say.
I forgot to tell you something, I say
after I dial Quinn’s home phone number.
I went through my backpack
to clean it out since Mom said she
CANNOT take another disgusting backpack clean-out
herself.
I found a lot of things—
a foldout ruler,
hot-purple Post-its,
Quinn’s phone number,
which she had scribbled down after we won the
marshmallow-and-pretzel-stick contest,
no thanks to motormouth.
School supplies.
These things at the bottom of my bag—
mixed in with the crumbs of birthday cookies,
some rocks I found on the playground—
things for next year,
can be rinsed off like new.
And then the acrostic, the reason for my call,
folded up like the ruler,
but in a triangle.
I read it to Quinn now—
How had I forgotten to tell her about it?
All this time.
So many things happened in between.
We should write one ourselves, she says
right after she says NO WAY Jackson wrote that.
He’s too good at spelling.
But do you think he thinks you’re pretty? she asks.
Ew, no, I say.
And we spend a lot of time hanging out on the phone,
laughing at funny ideas for an acrostic called
FOUR ANNOYING BOYS.
Will take a lot of time and collaboration
to get through all those letters.
All summer maybe.
We’ll save it all up—our ideas, our notes,
our acrostic—
like the leftover school supplies—
make things shiny and new
for next year.
Mom, who couldn’t make it to the Thanksgiving feast,
<
br /> always makes it to the picnic.
She likes fresh air and new seasons.
We are outside on blankets and there are watermelons
and Popsicles and picnic lunches.
I sit with Quinn and eat a turkey sandwich while she
eats peanut butter with Marshmallow Fluff, a
special treat because we are outside.
The only allergies out here are flowers and grass
and bees
and there’s no escaping any of that.
We get up and climb the monkey bars and I watch as
Mom and Quinn’s mom
chitchat.
Maybe about the weather or work or the flu or maybe
divorce
or maybe cancer.
Maybe they will be friends now and have lunch
the way some moms do,
talk to each other on the phone,
plan more playdates for us.
Plot together about getting us into the same class again
next year.
After the summer,
when the mail truck arrives,
when the butterflies arrive.
When a whole new school year stretches out and we are
far away from this one.
When it won’t matter
what the room assignment card says,
because I have Quinn,
no matter what.
We are best friends,
we decided
on top of the monkey bars,
while the moms chitchatted,
while the FOUR ANNOYING BOYS
played ball.
While Fiona and Sara danced
a routine
under a tree.
While we ate watermelon Jelly Bellys that once rolled
across the kitchen floor.
Her birthday is September third,
just the right time of year to shop for
school supplies,
to start writing things down
in her Stargirl journal.
Best friends forever.
I carry a box out to James on the last day,
where there is shouting and picture taking and moms
shaking their heads because
where did the year go
and where it smells like
summer.
Jeez, what’s all this? he asks.
It’s my stuff from the year, I say.
My work.
My teacher, who looks old but who is just gray,
and who never did yell,
not even when I fell off my chair laughing,
who would never say mathathon,
but who knows how to teach math,
has been the best teacher I have ever had.
Attached to everyone’s box was a note from Mrs. Soto.
I read mine right away.
She said she liked my way with words.
Pretty voice with pretty things to say, she wrote.
She said I have a gift.