by Dyan Sheldon
Amy had taken off her shirt and was stepping out of her jeans. “Go on, Jen,” she urged. “Try on the dress. I bet you’ll look terrific.”
I held up the flamingo. It was so skimpy that it must have starved to death. There was no way I was going to be able to pull it on over my jeans. “I don’t think it’s really me,” I mumbled.
“Jen,” said Amy, “just get undressed, OK? Stop acting like such a child. It’s no big deal.”
I glanced over at her. When had she gotten that shiny blue bra and bikini? What had happened to her hips? Why hadn’t I ever realised before that Amy’s hair wasn’t really brown? It was dirty blonde. Much to my surprise, Amy looked just like all the other teenage girls in the room. Perfect. When has she stopped being just regular, like me?
I decided that what I could do was take off my T-Shirt, pull the dress over my head and then pull it down at the same time I was pulling my jeans off. Maybe if I was really fast, no one would notice that my mother still bought me white cotton bras – the kind that old ladies wear. Or that my underpants weren’t bikinis. Only to be really fast, I’d need four hands: two to take off my T-shirt and hang it up, and two to pull the dress over my head at the same time.
Amy was shimmying into a slinky royal blue miniskirt. “Gosh,” she grinned, stopping in mid-shimmy to stare at my bra. “I didn’t know they still made those things.”
In the mirror, I could see the Miss Perfect Teenager behind me, a redhead in lacy purple underwear, smile. I dropped my T-shirt and started to tug on the dress.
“Uh, Jen,” said Amy, her voice so loud she was practically shouting. “Jen, aren’t you going to take off your jeans first? You don’t want to stretch the dress, you know.”
More than one Miss Perfect Teenager began to giggle.
“Oh, right,” I mumbled. “Sure.” I stopped yanking on the dress and started hopping out of my jeans. At least I hadn’t put on my Garfield underpants that morning, I could be grateful for that. I caught sight of myself just before I banged into the mirror; my face was the same colour as the dress and my thighs were wobbling.
At last, I stood before the mirror in the outfit Amy said I was going to look terrific in. The mannequin had looked a lot different in that dress. The mannequin had looked sexy. I looked like a hot dog. A cocktail frank.
Amy was shaking her head. “I guess you were right.” She sighed. “It isn’t really you, is it?”
Someone in the corner laughed.
Life among the Martians
The last thing Amy said to me on Saturday afternoon was, “You’ll think about going to the dance, won’t you, Jen? It won’t be the same if you don’t go.”
And I’d said, “Yeah, OK, I’ll think about it.”
I thought about it Saturday night while I watched TV. Should I go to the dance or should I stay home? Amy wanted me to go to the dance with her. I should go.
I thought about it Saturday night while I brushed my teeth. Dances and parties really weren’t my scene. I felt uncomfortable in large groups of strangers. I felt uncomfortable when I wasn’t wearing jeans. I’d never put on make-up in my life. The dressiest shoes I had were a pair of Hush Puppies. I couldn’t go.
I thought about it while I flossed my teeth. If I did go, we’d hang out and have a good time. Together. Just like always. If I didn’t go with her, would she go with her new friends, the Miss Perfect Teenagers who had been in the café? I should go.
I thought about it while I lay in the dark, staring up at the tiny glowing galaxy on my ceiling, feeling a little bit like a black hole. I’d never wanted to wear slinky dresses and fancy underwear and flirt and giggle like girls were supposed to. I wanted to have a planet named after me. I couldn’t go.
I woke up thinking about it on Saturday morning. Maybe Amy was right. We weren’t little kids any more. We were young women. We were in high school now, we ought to try different things. I should go.
I thought about it while I ate my father’s special Sunday banana-nut pancakes. This was the first big social event of the year. It might change my whole life. It might affect my entire high school career. Especially if no one asked me to dance. Especially if I turned up looking like a cocktail frank. I couldn’t go.
I thought about it while I helped my mother rake the lawn. Most girls my age had been on at least one date. If I never went to dances and things like that I might never have a date. Not ever. Forty-four and never been kissed. I should go.
I thought about it while I peeled the potatoes for supper. I’d have to wear my contacts if I went, not my glasses. But I hardly ever wore my contacts because I’d never gotten used to them. I shouldn’t go.
I thought about it Sunday evening while I did my homework. Who knew, I might have fun at the dance. If I stayed home, on the other hand, I knew exactly how much fun I would have: a video, a bag of potato chips and a root beer’s worth of fun. My mother said I looked really nice when I got dressed up. My father said I was cute. Maybe I should go.
I thought about it while I gave my dog, Percy, his weekly brushing. I couldn’t go. I didn’t have anything to wear.
I thought about it while I put out the garbage. I should go. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” my mother always said.
My last thought as I fell asleep Sunday night was: But I can’t dance.
So I was still thinking about it on Monday morning as I walked to meet Amy. Should I? Shouldn’t I? I figured I’d discuss it with Amy on the way to school, but in the end I didn’t. In the end, it slipped my mind.
Amy was waiting for me by the mailbox at the end of her road, just like always.
Well, almost like always. Even without my glasses on, I could see from down the street that she looked different. Taller. Older. Curlier.
I didn’t pretend to hide my surprise. “What happened to you?”
Amy was smiling like one of those women in a TV commercial whose wash is so clean even her husband notices.
“What do you think?” She turned around a few times. “Do you like it? Do you think I look different? Do you think anybody will notice?”
Different? Would anyone notice? How could she ask? Percy might not have noticed, but anybody else who had ever seen her before would. Amy’s hair, which was usually straight as a toothpick, was a mass of spirals.
“Did you just wake up like that this morning, or did you have it done?” I asked.
She shook her head so that the curls bounced. “I did it Saturday after I saw you.” She spun around again. “Well … what do you think?”
“It looks great,” I said. Which it did. It just didn’t look like Amy. I glanced over at her as we started down Culvert Drive. “Did you have yourself stretched, too? You seem taller.”
“It’s the shoes,” said Amy. She shook her head again.
I looked at her shoes. They were cowboy boots with heels. I was pretty sure Rosie Henley had a pair just like them. I wasn’t going to ask Amy when she’d bought them, but I wondered. Saturday after she saw me? Or Sunday when she said she had to go somewhere with her parents? “It’s not just the shoes.” I looked at her more closely. She wasn’t wearing ordinary jeans, like mine, but stretch ones. Tight black stretch jeans with her new top. What had happened to her hips?
“Amy,” I asked, suddenly remembering the salad plate she’d had at the mall. “Amy, are you on a diet or something?” Amy and I had both made a solemn vow in sixth grade that we would never go on a diet so long as we lived, unless we were really, really fat and it was affecting our health. We made this vow because of our mothers. Amy’s mother mostly. My mother’s always saying that she’s going on a diet, but Amy’s mother is always on one. It’s an obsession. All she ever talks about is how fat she feels, and the only time she isn’t on a diet is Christmas. She even keeps all the cookies and chips and stuff like that locked in the trunk of the car so she won’t eat them. It’s really hard to get a snack in that house.
Amy shook her curls and turned the corner. “No,” she said, looking straight a
head. “No, I’m not on a diet. What makes you ask that?”
“You didn’t eat much when we went shopping Saturday.” I shrugged. “And I guess you look a little thinner.”
“Really?” She was trying to sound like she didn’t care, but I could tell she was pleased. She shook her curls for about the hundredth time. “Well, maybe I have lost a few pounds since school started,” she admitted. “I don’t seem to have much appetite lately.”
She’d had her appetite on Labour Day, though, when she’d beaten me in our annual How Much Stuff Can You Get on Your Hamburger Contest. “It must be high school,” I said. “You know, because you’re not a child anymore.”
My sarcasm was wasted on her.
“I think you’re right,” said Amy, as we strolled up the walk to the main entrance. “Everything’s changed now, hasn’t it?” But before I could answer, she grabbed my arm and pointed towards the building. “Look,” she ordered, already waving into the distance, “there’s Kim and Amber.”
I looked. Sure enough, there by the birch tree were Kim and Amber, looking perfect, and waving and sort of bouncing in place.
“I’m going to have to go, Jen,” said Amy, suddenly sounding shy. “I promised Kim and Amber I’d meet them before the bell rang, so we’d have the chance to talk.”
“Oh,” I said. “Oh, sure.”
“You understand, don’t you? I mean, they are my friends too…” It was amazing how she could look at me and look at them at the same time.
“Oh, sure,” I said. “Sure, I understand. I mean, I have new friends, too, you know. It’s not like I have no one else to hang out with. I understand that you can’t be with everybody at the same time. I know what it’s like to—” I stopped talking when Amy was so far ahead of me that there was no way she could have heard what I said.
I stood at the end of the driveway by the EXIT sign, watching her run up to Amber and Kim, and thinking about how things had changed so suddenly. There’d never before been anyone Amy wanted to hang out with more than me.
It was a dull grey morning. Amy’s red curls and her blue top stood out like the lights of a plane in a cloud. And Amber and Kim, bouncing and laughing, looked like the place the plane wanted to be. You know, the place where it was sunny and fun and everyone would have a good time. I shifted my books in my arms. And I was the cloud. Dark, damp and blowing apart. Cut it out, I told myself. Stop making such a big deal out of it. It’s not like it’s the end of the world or something. So she has a couple of new friends? So what? So do you.
I took a deep breath. I put a cheerful, pleasant expression on my face. I walked right into the EXIT sign. A bunch of boys coming up behind me started to laugh. I stood up as straight as I could, so I wouldn’t look so short, and then I marched towards the building as though nothing had happened.
“It’s a good thing she’s not taller!” one of the boys shouted behind me. “She might have hurt herself.”
“The nervous system, Mr Mackay? Is that what you said, the nervous system?” Mr Herrera, my biology teacher, was the only person I’d ever known who could sneer with his voice. He was sneering now.
Kevin Mackay, who sat in front of me, sort of shrunk down in his seat. “It isn’t the nervous system?” He didn’t so much ask it as gasp it.
Mr Herrera smiled the way a shark who was about to eat you might smile if sharks could smile. “No, Mr Mackay,” sneered Mr Herrera, “It is not the nervous system. And if you had a brain in that skull of yours instead of wet newspapers, you wouldn’t think it was.” He folded his arms across his chest, looking around the rest of the class. “Everyone else knows the answer, Mr Mackay. Why don’t you?”
“Endocrine,” I whispered, hoping Mr Herrera wouldn’t see my lips moving. Science had always been my favourite subject, but if I’d had Mr Herrera for my teacher for the last nine years it wouldn’t have been. Mr Herrera didn’t teach by making his subject exciting and interesting. He taught by terror. The only problem was that he was head of the whole science department. As much as I disliked him, I had to get along with him. I was in the honours programme, and as head of the department he also ran that.
Mr Herrera smiled a little harder. “Well, Mr Mackay. We’re waiting.”
It didn’t seem biologically possible, but Kevin’s neck was sweating. “Endocrine,” I whispered again.
I could hear Kevin clear his throat and swallow. He’d finally heard me.
Unfortunately, so had Mr Herrera. “Miss Kaliski,” he said in his slow drawl. “Miss Kaliski, when I need you to help me teach this class, I’ll be sure to ask. For the present, however, I’d very much appreciate it if you’d keep your mouth shut unless actually asked a direct question.”
I could feel my face turn red. The only good thing about Mr Herrera was that everyone was so afraid of him that no one even dared laugh. Still, I was pretty relieved that the bell rang just then.
Pretty relieved, but not completely relieved. I’d already made up my mind that I had to talk to Mr Herrera after class. The reason was that right before he had started tormenting Kevin he’d announced that we’d be dissecting frogs in a few weeks. He seemed to think this was some kind of treat. I didn’t want to dissect a frog. I wasn’t going to learn anything from it that I couldn’t learn from looking at a picture in a textbook. All these frogs were being killed, and for no real purpose. Just so the boys could make disgusting jokes about frog intestines and the girls could complain about smelling like formaldehyde. Just so Mr Herrera could humiliate anyone who couldn’t locate the pancreas of the common frog. I believed in scientific investigation, but I didn’t believe in killing anything for no good reason, not even a frog. So I had to ask Mr Herrera to exempt me from the dissection. I’d watch, but I wouldn’t take part. I sat at my desk, rationally and reasonably going over in my head what I was going to say, until everyone else had left the room. I didn’t want an audience for this. Mr Herrera just loved having an audience.
“Mr Herrera,” I said, getting to my feet just as he put his hand on the doorknob. “Mr Herrera, could I talk to you for one minute?”
I didn’t hold out much hope that he would be very sympathetic to me, especially not after what happened with Kevin, but he was a man of science. He would listen to reason.
Or maybe he wouldn’t.
Mr Herrera’s eyes looked very cold behind his steel-rimmed glasses as I made my request. “Squeamish, are we, Miss Kaliski?” he asked when I was done.
“No, Mr Herrera, it’s not that I’m squeamish. It’s a … it’s a matter of principle.”
“Oh, really? And what principle would that be?”
I explained again about not thinking the dissection was necessary to my knowledge of biology. I explained again that I was happy to watch, but I didn’t want to be personally responsible for the needless death of a small amphibian.
“This is a frog we’re talking about here,” said Mr Herrera, “not the family dog.”
“I know, but—”
Mr Herrera cut me off. “But nothing,” he snapped. “I can’t make exceptions, Miss Kaliski. You’re in high school now.”
My mother always says that I’m the most stubborn person she knows, next to my father. I tried again. “Excuse me, Mr Herrera,” I said, “but I don’t really think that’s fair.”
“Oh, don’t you?” He looked at me as though I were something on a slide. An abnormal cell maybe. “Do me a favour, Miss Kaliski. Don’t think, all right? Just do as you’re told.”
* * *
What I’d told Amy was true; I had made some new friends at Red Bay High. My new friends were Sue, who sat next to me in homeroom; Joan, who was in my math class; Marva, Joan’s friend from middle school; Tanya, Sue’s friend from for ever; and Maria, who had just moved to Red Bay and sat behind Tanya in history. They were all right. You know, they weren’t Amy – actually, they were nothing like Amy. And they were definitely nothing like Amy’s new friends. They weren’t pretty or popular. Tanya looked a little like a football pla
yer, but none of them dated one. Their clothes weren’t fashionable. They weren’t particularly cool. But the biggest difference between Amy’s friends and my friends was that practically everyone in the school wanted to be with Rosie Henley’s crowd, but no one wanted to be seen with Joan, Tanya, Marva, Sue or Maria. As far as the in-crowd of Red Bay High was concerned, these girls were Martians. As far as I was concerned, they might be Martians but at least being with them meant I didn’t have to eat lunch alone.
I hated eating lunch alone. The first week of school, I’d had no one to sit with, and I thought I was going to have to give up lunch for the rest of high school. I mean, what can you do? You just sit there staring at your plate or your sandwich bag, acting like you’re not the only person in the whole world who has no one to sit with. You can try to read a book or pretend to study at the same time, but you always end up spilling stuff. I had mustard on my biology text, tomato seeds all over the first page of Pride and Prejudice and grease stains on my geometry notes from those first five days. And besides, everyone knows you’re not sitting by yourself because you want to. I mean, even if you did want to, you wouldn’t, would you? Because no one would think you were sitting alone by choice, they’d think you were sitting alone because you had dandruff or you smelled or nobody liked you. Even eating with Martians was better than that.
Everyone but Tanya was already sitting at a table at the back of the cafeteria when I got to lunch that Monday.
Maria smiled at me as I put my stuff down next to her. Maria dressed in second-hand clothes and was sort of mousy, but she looked really pretty when she smiled. “We thought you weren’t coming,” she said in her soft, almost apologetic way. “Sue wasn’t sure if she saw you in homeroom or not.”
Sue, I thought. Sue probably wasn’t sure that she was in homeroom. I shook my head. “I had to talk to Mr Herrera after biology.” I looked over at Sue. Everything about Sue was vague. Her hair was kind of brown, her eyes were kind of blue, her clothes never quite fit together, she never knew what day it was or what class she was supposed to be in. She was even eating her sandwich in a vague way, nibbling around the crust. “But I was sitting right next to you,” I reminded her. “You were telling me about your neighbour’s parrot.”