“They’re cracking down on that, Mrs. K,” Emma says. “Principal said that if anyone’s caught dirty dancing they’ll be thrown out and their parents will be called to come and get them.”
“About time they do something about that,” Elizabeth says. “Parents were complaining about the way kids dance at the PTO meeting the other night.”
I’ll never forget the one and only junior high school dance I went to. Rachel talked me into it. I would have rather stayed home and rented movies as we normally did on weekends. But, Rachel really wanted to go so I agreed.
The night started out bad. I forgot my school ID and it was a hassle getting in the door. One teacher had to get another teacher who had to get another teacher before I was cleared. And then when Rachel and I walked into the school cafeteria, which had been transformed into a Winter Wonderland with giant snowflakes dangling from the ceiling and fake snow everywhere, we got the stare down from Tracey Carmichael and her minions.
“Don’t look now, but Tracey’s headed this way,” I told Rachel. “And Tara and Paige are with her.”
“Hi, girls,” Tracey said. “Do you like what we did to the cafeteria?”
Tracey was on student council and headed the social committee, which planned all of the dances.
“It looks nice,” I said.
“Yeah, nice job,” Rachel said.
Tracey looked me straight in the eyes. “Are you going to dance tonight?”
“Probably not,” I said.
“Well, that’s a good thing,” Tracey said. “You’re one of the clumsiest people I know.”
Tara and Paige giggled.
Tracey scanned my clothes from my black shirt with silver and white sequins around the V-neckline to my black jeans. “Remember the time, girls, that little Miss I-get-my-clothes-at-Goodwill tried to turn on the balance beam and slipped and fell off and sprained her ankle?”
They all giggled except Rachel. I stared at the cafeteria floor and prayed that I would melt away like Frosty when he got trapped in that greenhouse. No one would miss me, I thought. Well, maybe Grandma and Rachel. But no one else – especially Tracey. She hated my guts all of my life and I had no idea why. Grandma said Tracey was jealous, but I never understood why. She had everything I didn’t.
“Come on, Sarah,” Rachel said. “Let’s get a drink.”
We walked away from Tracey, Tara and Paige, but their giggles hung in the air like whole notes.
“I told you I didn’t want to come,” I told Rachel. “I hate Tracey Carmichael. I hate how she always makes me feel. Like I’m a piece of crap. Crap. Crap. Crap.”
“Listen, Sarah,” Rachel said. “You let her make you feel like crap. Don’t. You’ve got to learn to stand up for yourself, otherwise, she’ll just keep whacking you every chance she gets.”
“No, she won’t, because I won’t come to any more stupid dances.”
“It might not be at a dance. It might be in the hallway or during gym class or outside of school somewhere. Like the mall. You’re an easy target because you just take it and she knows that and uses that to her advantage. Don’t let her.”
“I just don’t know why she hates me so much.”
“You really don’t know why?” Rachel asked.
“No. She’s hated me for as long as I can remember.”
“It’s because you’re drop-dead gorgeous. Always have been. And you don’t need any make-up or anything. You’re what my mom calls a natural beauty.”
“I don’t feel pretty.”
“But you are and for people like Tracey who have to work hard at being pretty, they resent people like you who don’t have to do anything.”
“But you’re pretty and she’s never treated you the way she treats me.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m black in a school that’s mostly white. I had cornrows growing up until I pleaded with my mom to let me straighten my hair this year. I’ve never been any competition for Tracey Carmichael. But you, you outshine her and you don’t even realize it or care. And that’s what burns her up.”
That night, with Rachel’s help, I was braver than I’d ever been. Rachel and I danced and people actually stopped to watch. No one had any idea that Rachel had given me dance lessons for months. My hard work had paid off. It was as if all of the snowflakes were aligned and no one, not even Tracey Carmichael, could melt them. I wasn’t clumsy. I didn’t fall. I danced as I had never danced before.
Olivia and Emma join their friends on the dance floor in front of where the DJ is set up. Huge speakers sit on the floor beside his table and are so loud that it’s impossible to hear anyone talk. Olivia lassoes the song’s pulse-thumping tempo and it’s as if her body has awakened from a winter slumber. She moves without thinking.
Leaps.
Jumps.
Turns.
Falls.
She uses her body and the space around her to express herself. The others catch her moves and fall back one after another to form a circle around her. Even at a junior high school dance her moves command attention. The kids in the circle clap and shout and more kids dribble over to see what all the commotion is about.
Olivia doesn’t realize she’s in the spotlight. She’s married to the music, oblivious to everything but the burning tempo. Her heart races and I know that she’s found her passion. It’s only when the song stops that she realizes that she’s dancing alone. Everyone breaks out in a thunderous applause and Olivia backs away from the center to join Emma.
“Why didn’t you stop me?” she asks Emma.
“Because I loved watching you,” Emma says. “We all did. You really got something special there, Lib. No one can dance like you.”
Olivia is embarrassed by the attention her dancing has brought. The rest of the night, girls and boys comment on her dance moves. She tries to blend in with the crowd but it’s clear that her dancing has set her apart.
“Dad just texted me,” Olivia tells Emma. “He’s out front. Are you ready?”
The girls say goodbye to their friends and as they’re walking out the door, an eighth-grader with dreads approaches.
“I saw you dancing earlier,” he says. “You’re good.”
“Thanks,” Olivia says.
“I dance, too. Maybe we can get together and dance sometime.”
“Maybe.”
He flashes a gummy smile that shows his bright white teeth. “Later.”
“Yeah, see ya,” Olivia says.
“Oh. My. Gawd. Terrell Jackson talked to you.”
“Terrell who?” Olivia asks.
“He’s just one of the most popular boys in eighth grade,” Emma said. “Great football player.”
“How do you know these things?”
“Well, this girl in my Sunday school class likes him big time. She’s in eighth grade, too. She’s always talking about him to another girl in the class. I sit right beside her so it’s hard not to hear.”
The girls find Olivia’s dad’s car and slip in the back.
“Have fun?” Tom asks.
“Loads,” Olivia says.
“Dance with any boys?”
Olivia rolls her eyes. “No, Dad. I only danced one dance and it was fast and there were a lot of people on the dance floor.”
Tom smiles.
“But,” Emma says, “Libby’s one dance was the talk of the night. An eighth-grader even asked her to dance with him sometime.”
“Eighth-grader? Isn’t that a little old?”
“It’s one year, Dad. You’re four years older than Mom.”
“True,” Tom says. “But I was a lot older when I met your mom. Four years when you’re twenty-six is different than four years when you’re twelve.”
“Well, I’ll soon be thirteen.”
“Yes, I know,” Tom says. “You keep reminding me that you’ll soon be a teen.”
Chapter 19
Emma and Olivia are in Olivia’s bedroom. Magazines are scattered on the bed. The girls look through the glossy magaz
ines, commenting on the fashions and hairstyles of the models.
“I like her hair,” says Olivia, showing the page to Emma.
“I don’t like the bangs,” Emma says.
“But bangs are in.”
“Still, not for me. What about this one?”
Emma flips her magazine over so Olivia can see the picture of a girl with stick-straight hair cut on an angle.
“I would never be able to get away with that,” says Olivia, shaking her curls. “Remember that time you straightened my hair with your flat iron?”
Emma laughs. “Yeah, it curled up at the ends. I couldn’t get it to stay straight.”
“Do you think I have a big nose?” asks Olivia, changing the subject before Emma has a chance to finish her thought.
“No. Do I?”
“No,” Olivia says.
“What about my ears?”
“Your ears are fine. Mine are pointy,” Olivia says.
“Just a little, but they’re cute. And your ears are attached to the side of your head. Not like mine, which dangle. I’d rather have attached lobes like you.”
Olivia feels her earlobes. “Never noticed that before. You’re weird.”
“Not any weirder than you.”
The girls laugh.
Watching Olivia and Emma becoming teens makes me happy and sad at the same time. Now I know how Grandma must have felt when I was growing up. One day Olivia was playing with dolls and the next day she’s putting on makeup and thinking about boys. I know that I’m just her moment keeper but I can’t help worrying about her. She’s getting older and her parents have less and less control over her life. I want her to make good decisions, and yet I know from experience that not all of the decisions she’ll make will be good ones.
I remember the speech Grandma gave me about making choices. I was around thirteen.
“It’s like driving a car,” Grandma said. “You come to an intersection and you got to decide which way you’re gonna go. Right, left or straight. And no matter which way you choose, you’ll have to deal with what lies ahead. Sometimes there’s a pothole. I hate those. Or a tree that fell during a bad storm. Doesn’t matter what’s blocking your way, you got to figure out how to get around it. I’m not saying it’s easy. And it’s definitely not fun, but it will make you stronger and wiser. Why, look at me. I had so many trees fall in my life that I was beginning to think I wasn’t supposed to keep going. Turned out those trees helped me build one heck of a fire that couldn’t be doused by misfortune and bad luck. After all, I got you.”
Guess I had forgotten this speech when I decided to kill myself. Guess I allowed the pothole to become a sinkhole and swallow me whole. Grandma wouldn’t have been proud.
Emma looks into Olivia’s mirror. “I think I’m getting a zit.”
Olivia gets up. “Let me see.”
Emma sticks out her chin. She points to it with her finger. “Right there. See?”
“Yeah, I see it.”
“Think I should pop it?”
“No. Mom says that’s bad. Here, you can use this cream she bought me. It dries zits up and conceals them at the same time.”
“Hey, want to make each other up?”
Olivia nods. “My grandma bought me this new professional makeup kit. It’s got loads of stuff. Something like forty eye shadows, several bronzers and blushers, two eyeliners and lots of lip colors.”
Olivia gets the kit and returns. “Do you want to go first?”
Emma nods.
“Let’s do it in my bathroom. The lighting’s better.”
Emma follows Olivia into her bathroom and sits on the chair at the built-in vanity. Olivia hands her a headband to keep her hair off of her face, then she starts applying the foundation.
“Good thing we’re the same skin tone,” Olivia says.
I watch as Olivia applies the makeup and it reminds me of when she was little and played with her Mattel doll bust. She’d spend hours combing and braiding and twisting the doll’s hair and applying makeup.
Olivia smiles. “OK. Open your eyes.”
Emma opens her eyes and turns to look in the mirror. “Wow! You’re good at this.”
“So you like it?”
“Love it. Now your turn.”
The only makeup I’ve ever worn was mascara. I didn’t like the feeling of having stuff on my face. Especially when I was hot and sweaty. I imagined it melting into my pores and my face breaking out and looking like a pepperoni pizza. That’s what Tracey Carmichael called this one girl in our class. Peyton was plagued with zits. And she picked them so it made her face look worse.
“Hey, look who’s coming,” Tracey yelled one day in the hallway. “It’s pizza girl.”
I watched as Peyton hung her head and walked past Tracey. Everyone laughed.
“Hey, Peyton. Wait up?” I ran to catch up to her.
She stopped.
“Don’t let that jerk get to you,” I said.
“Easy for you to say. Your skin’s perfect. Your life’s perfect. Mine sucks.”
Later that day, I heard that Peyton had found a picture of a pizza that was cut out of a magazine taped to her locker. She never did come back to school after that. And I never could eat pizza without thinking about Peyton and how mean Tracey Carmichael was.
Olivia closes her eyes and Emma applies the eyeliner just above the lashes, starting from the inside corner and moving to the outside corner. She then lines the lower eyelid, moving from the outside edge in.
I watch as Olivia is transformed into a young woman. I prefer the no-makeup Olivia.
“OK. I think I’m done,” Emma says.
Olivia opens her eyes and looks in the mirror. “You’re good at this, too.”
Olivia gets up. “Let’s get my mom to take a picture of us.”
She grabs her cell phone and runs to find her mom, who is in her office doing paperwork.
“Mom, can you take our picture?”
Elizabeth looks up and takes off her red reading glasses. “Wow! Don’t you two look grown up.”
“Well, we’re just about thirteen,” Olivia says.
“Please,” Elizabeth says. “Don’t remind me.”
Elizabeth takes several pictures of the girls, some together and some separate. Afterward, they look at them on Olivia’s phone.
Elizabeth points to one she had taken of Olivia holding Daisy. “Email me this one, Lib. I want to use it for my screensaver.”
When I turned thirteen, Grandma brought home Chinese food to celebrate. Take-out was a rare treat at our house. It was the first time I used chopsticks – and the last! I never could get the hang of it. Neither could Grandma, but we had fun trying.
“What’d you get?” I asked Grandma as she lugged a brown bag into the apartment.
“A special meal for a special young lady,” Grandma said. “Let’s see here.”
Grandma removed one item at a time from the bag. “I got won-ton soup. Egg rolls. Chicken and broccoli.” She winks at me. “That’s my favorite. And pork fried rice. Oh, and for dessert, a fortune cookie.”
I smiled. Grandma always made me feel special. We had so much fun that night eating Chinese and we had plenty of leftovers for the next day. I kept my cookie fortune for the longest time in my purse. Every time I got a new purse, I’d make sure I transferred the fortune to it. I carried it around as if it were a contract. As if it were something that was owed to me and I was holding onto it until it happened.
Every now and then I’d get it out and read it, wishing as hard as I could that the fortune were right. It said: Your dreams will come true.
But some dreams don’t come true. Some dreams are like the little white strips of paper they’re written on. They fade and become wrinkled, torn and tattered and are eventually thrown away. Paper dreams are like that. They sound good on paper, but that’s all they ever are. In the end, they’re trash like everything else.
Chapter 20
Olivia’s in her bedroom on her phone. When
she isn’t at the dance studio or with Emma, that’s what she’s doing. Daisy’s chewing on a plastic squeaky toy on the floor beside her. When Olivia’s home, Daisy’s never far from her side.
“Libby,” Elizabeth calls from the bottom of the stairs. “Come here.”
Olivia walks downstairs and sees her mom waving a piece of white paper.
“We got your interim grade report today in the mail, and I’m not happy.”
Olivia’s left eye and thumb twitch. She knows she’s in trouble, especially since she got zeroes because she didn’t hand in a couple of assignments.
Olivia follows her mom into the kitchen and plops on a wooden stool.
“Lib,” Elizabeth says. “I’m really disappointed in this report. You got zeros in math class because you didn’t hand in work. That’s totally unacceptable.”
“But I—”
“No. There are no excuses for not doing your work. Up until now, I haven’t been checking your grades online. That changes today. From now on, I will check every day. I will see the grade for every assignment, every test in every class. I want to see these grades improve and improve significantly.”
“But I hate math. It’s hard. And I’m really not crazy about science either.”
“Well, you can’t major in socializing in college. Right now, you’re in junior high and these grades won’t matter like the ones in high school will when you apply to colleges. But you have to establish good study habits now so that when you get to high school, you’ll be prepared to handle a much more rigorous workload. If you need help with math or science, ask for help. If Dad or I can’t help you, we’ll find someone who can.”
“OK. But do you have to check my grades online?”
“Yes. But I’ll make a deal with you. If you bring these grades up to where I think they should be and maintain them, I’ll stop checking every day.”
“Cause you’ll make me nervous if you check every day and freak out over one little score. Kind of like what you and Dad are always telling me about looking at the bigger picture. If I have a bad day and get a bad score and you flip out, that’s just going to make me more nervous and it could be that that one bad score isn’t enough to mess up the overall score.”
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