And what if the new recipe didn’t work? What if it turned out I couldn’t help?
“Plus,” said Alyssa, “I don’t have sleepovers very often.”
“You’re kidding. What about Megan?”
“I don’t like Megan’s house. Her brothers are thugs.”
“Why doesn’t she stay at your place, then?”
She didn’t answer for a while.
“Oh, well, my parents …” she started, and then faded away. She was quiet so long this time, I was sure she’d gone to sleep. I lay there thinking about how to get an extra breakfast tomorrow.
But then, “You know what’s strange?” she said. Her voice was getting smaller and smaller, as if she didn’t really want to be talking, but it was leaking out anyway.
“I sometimes get this feeling, when I’m at home with my parents, that I’m not really there.”
“What do you mean?”
“They ignore me most of the time. I try to be funny and say clever things so they’ll at least turn their heads in my direction. But they just keep on talking and talking to each other.”
The bed above me creaked again. Alyssa’s voice came more clearly. “They’re in the same law firm, so they’re together all day, too. They come home chuckling about some woman at the office or complaining about the waiter at lunch, and I sit there thinking I must be invisible.”
Her voice dropped to a whisper. “And now I am. Invisible. Isn’t that weird?”
“Yeah.” And sad, I was thinking. I never knew Alyssa was covering feelings like that. You’d never guess from her regular self.
“It’s the opposite at my house,” I said. “I’ve got a Leech Mother. Talk about a Friend Repellent! Did you ever think about that? She hears what we’re saying before we even think it. Plus, she’s at school all day and knows what happens there, too. I feel all clogged up from having her watching me every minute.”
“Well, I was listening to your mother go smoochy on you, calling you ‘honeybun’ and everything, and I was going to say something, you know, rude. But at least she’s thinking about you. A pet name is not so bad. It’s usually a sign of affection.”
“That’s true.”
“Can’t you just tell her to back off a little?”
“I try, but she gets insulted.”
“Which do you think is worse?” asked Alyssa. “Being loved too much or not enough?”
“They’re about the same, I guess.” I didn’t really think so, though. I knew however annoying my mother was, I’d rather have her there than not there.
I felt bad for Alyssa. She was sort of alone. Maybe being invisible was starting to take the crusty shell off her. If only she would keep it off.
I fell asleep thinking that if I never had to see her again, maybe we could be friends.
18 • Flustered
Alyssa and I waited for Hubert on the uptown platform of the R train. He lives near the Canal Street Station and I live half a block from the Prince Street station, so if we stand in the right spot, it’s easy to meet on the train.
My mother had taken Jane to Katie’s birthday party. Harry was safe with Sam, our totally cool dog-walker. And that was it for the plus side. I felt almost dizzy from thinking about the minus side.
Had Hubert chewed enough gum? Would the new recipe work? Would we be finished in time to meet Mom at my father’s place uptown like I was supposed to?
“I wish this was all over,” said Alyssa.
“So do I.”
The train chugged into the station. When the doors slid open, Hubert was blowing a bubble and waving from inside. And Jean-Pierre was standing right beside him.
Oh, no! How could we do what we had to do with Jean-Pierre around?
“Oh, goody,” whispered Alyssa as we stepped onto the subway. “Your boyfriend is here. This’ll be fun!”
“He’s not my boyfriend, Alyssa,” I reminded her through gritted teeth. I didn’t want us to fight this morning, but she seemed to have her shell at least partway back on.
“Hi, guys,” I said, glaring at Hubert as the train started. I grabbed the same pole they were holding. Alyssa must have, too. The whole pole vanished beneath my mittens.
“Let go!” I shouted. “Sit down!” The pole reappeared.
“Billie, I can’t take this,” said Hubert.
“What happened?” asked J. P
“The lights play tricks in the tunnel,” I answered, looking around for a clue to where Alyssa had gone.
“The lights?” said Jean-Pierre.
The seats were about half full. We were the only ones standing up. She might be anywhere in the car. I could almost hear the bomb ticking.
“Billie?” said Hubert.
“Huh?”
“I said, are you okay?”
“Me? Oh, sure. Surely, surely, indeed.” My mouth was talking without my brain. I squeezed my eyes closed and opened them again to help me focus.
“How was the sleep-over?” I asked. “Did you guys stay up late?”
“Not too late,” said Jean-Pierre.
“Felt like all night,” said Hubert at the same time.
What did that mean?
People pushed in through the doors at the next stop. I noticed the number of empty seats was shrinking.
“We had ‘boy talk,’” said Jean-Pierre, grinning at me.
Hubert flinched. What was going on here? I wondered.
“Hey, Bertie,” said Alyssa out of nowhere on my left. “What color are J. P.’s pajamas?”
Jean-Pierre’s head snapped up, and he stared at me. Hubert’s eyes widened. I took a firm step to one side, intending to crush every bone in Alyssa’s toes. Why couldn’t she just be quiet for one more hour?
“My pajamas?” asked Jean-Pierre.
“Ha-ha, no, no,” I said, squeaking my voice to sound more like Alyssa. “I was just—er—ha. That didn’t come out the right way. What I meant was, it’s a bit funny, you know? J. P.’s pj’s. That’s what we call them in English: pj’s.
Alyssa giggled, and I swung my backpack into what I hoped was her rib cage.
“It could be a nonsense rhyme,” I babbled.
“J.P.’s pj’s,
He could wear them many ways,
Back to front or upside down,
In the sky or underground!”
What was I doing, reciting poetry about a boy’s pajamas on a subway? The obvious answer was that Alyssa had finally managed to drive me insane.
“Billie,” said Jean-Pierre, “you—you are— extraordinaire!”
Hubert looked as sick as I felt. The train squealed as we pulled into Forty-second Street.
“Don’t we change here?” asked Hubert.
“Ohmigod!” I rushed for the door. “Come on! It’s our stop, everybody!” I looked around frantically as I jumped onto the platform. People shoved past on both sides.
“Billie?” said Jean-Pierre, probably wondering why I was blocking the exit.
“I’m right here, honeybun,” said Alyssa, next to me.
“Guys, go on ahead.” I pretended to pause on the stairs to tie my sneaker. “I’ll meet you on the uptown 1/9 platform.”
As soon as they were a few steps ahead, I began to mutter. “Listen to me, Alyssa. Can you hear me? Alyssa?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“I’m helping you, Alyssa.”
I noticed a woman yank her child away from me, and I realized how strange I must seem, babbling to no one. But I had to set things straight.
“Are you listening, Alyssa? I want to help you, I really do.”
“Whatever,” she said, like I was boring her.
“Alyssa? If we both make an effort—”
“You just make an effort to fix me, Billie!”
Oh, she was so annoying!
“Fine,” I said. I’d given her a fair chance to be friends, and she hadn’t taken it. I wished she had, but she hadn’t.
“Just be quiet,” I said, “since that’s the way you want it! Do whate
ver I say, or I swear I’ll leave you like this forever!”
I didn’t give her a chance to make another rude comment. I ran to catch up with the boys, pretty sure she’d follow, at least for five minutes.
19 • On the Spot
Alyssa tripped on my heels getting on the number 1 train, so I knew she had followed us on board. I sat down. There was only one spot beside me, and Jean-Pierre took it. Hubert stood, wedged between a man with four shopping bags and a teenager with his Walkman turned up so loud we all could have been dancing. I couldn’t tell where Alyssa was.
“Are you here?” I said aloud.
“I’m here,” said Jean-Pierre, nudging me. “Why didn’t you call me back at Hubert’s house last night? Did Alyssa tell you my message?”
“No. She said—”
I got punched on the shoulder. “Ow!” I rubbed the spot. “I told you not to do that!” I guess Alyssa was pretty close by.
“What?” said Jean-Pierre.
“Never mind,” I said. “What were you—” I stopped. What if he did have a crush on me? What if he said it out loud? What if Alyssa heard? I suddenly felt very hot under my jacket.
“It’s about Hubert.” Jean-Pierre leaned in close. I caught my breath. I could smell his shampoo. Lemon.
“I think I made a mistake last night,” he was saying. “I should have noticed before, but I didn’t. You probably think I’m an idiot….”He paused.
“What are you talking about?” I asked. Idiot was not the word I had for Jean-Pierre.
“Until last night, I didn’t realize—I guess I should have—that you were Hubert’s, er, you know, that you and he are sort of hooked up,” he said. “You should have told me. I looked so— I mean, if you’d told me, I wouldn’t feel so stupid, asking you myself.”
“What?” I said.
“What?” gasped Alyssa.
“You and Hubert,” said Jean-Pierre.
“He said that?” I asked, quickly making certain that Hubert couldn’t hear.
“Well, not exactly,” said Jean-Pierre, “but I could tell from the color of his face when I told him that I—well—that I—”
He wasn’t looking at me anymore. He was fiddling with the silver button on his denim jacket. I could practically feel Alyssa’s breath in my face, so I knew she must have been eavesdropping really close.
“Oh, Hubert always turns red,” I said. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
“But since then, he hasn’t spoken to me,” said Jean-Pierre. He stared down at his boots.
“Poor guy,” said Alyssa.
Jean-Pierre looked up again. “Who’s the poor guy? Me or him? I didn’t mean to mess up. He was my best new buddy. You and me, we can still be friends, right? And you’ll tell him that I made a mistake?”
My face was so burning hot I thought I might explode.
“Can we not talk about this anymore?” It was the most embarrassing minute of my entire life, I swear. Hubert liked me? Jean-Pierre liked me? Oh, why did Alyssa have to be there, listening to every word?
“Hey, Billie,” called Hubert. He hadn’t heard, thank goodness! He squeezed past the guy with the headphones and stood over us with his knees knocking mine.
Hubert liked me? No way. J. P. must have made a mistake. Hubert was my best friend. He didn’t like me!
“Which stop is it?” Hubert blew an enormous bubble.
“Seventy-ninth Street. Two more. And don’t dry out the gum,” I reminded him. “It’s supposed to be juicy.”
Hubert opened the pocket of his fleece vest, showing me the bulge of a Ziploc plastic bag, only half full of dripping gum blobs.
“We need way more,” I said. “Keep chewing.”
“I’m doing the best I can,” he grumbled.
Maybe Hubert just didn’t want J. P to like me because he thought he’d lose his new friend. Or maybe he wanted to protect me from being embarrassed. Or maybe J. P. had it all wrong because he didn’t know Hubert like I did. Or maybe—oh, make my brain stop! I couldn’t think about this on the subway!
“Where are we going anyway?” asked Jean-Pierre as the train left Seventy-second Street.
“We’re going to a bookstore to do research.” Well, it was sort of true. I stood up. Ours was the next stop.
“Research?”
“For our project,” said Hubert, catching on.
“Our science project,” I said. “For extra credit.”
“What is the topic?” asked Jean-Pierre.
“It’s a study of the—ah—” Hubert was stumped.
“Particle Evaporation,” I said. “The Dynamics of Disappearing Particles and Other Phenomenons of Altering the Boundaries of Perception.”
Alyssa snorted. I leaned on her.
The boys stared at me in bewilderment.
“Right, Hubert?”
“Uh, yeah, uh-huh.”
I heard a quiet snap and a shuffle close by. It sounded exactly as though Alyssa was putting on the latex gloves.
“Don’t you dare,” I whispered.
“Lighten up,” she whispered back. “It’s research.”
20 • Jody’s
New Recipe
All the way to Barnes & Noble, I tried to walk tall, taking deep breaths. First things first. We had to fix Alyssa before she churned up more trouble.
“Hubert,” I said in a hurried whisper. “Go to the science section. Write down titles and stuff, just to keep J. P. busy. We’ll meet you by the doors in twenty minutes. And keep chewing!”
Alyssa trailed after me up the escalator.
“I don’t like this, Billie,” she said, barely lowering her voice. “Does all that disgusting gum that Hubert is chewing have anything to do with me? And what about J. P. asking you out? You said—”
I buried my face in my bag. One thing I was definitely not discussing with Alyssa was boys. “Alyssa, in five minutes we’re meeting Jody. She’s the Powder inventor. She’ll make everything normal so you can go home. Until then, keep your hands in your pockets and shut up. We’re in a bookstore. It’s practically a library!”
In the junior section, they have a little story-time stage draped with baby-blue curtains, as if Mother Goose is going to turn up any minute to put on a show.
Jody was sitting cross-legged on her jacket in the middle of the platform, reading Curious George Gets a Job. I hadn’t seen her for months, but she looked just the same, like an overgrown elf with big ears and floppy hair and braces and an odd, orange shirt with RODNEY embroidered on the pocket. She comes across as way younger than sixteen, but she doesn’t seem to care.
“Hey!” she said, looking up as we arrived. “Don’t you love Curious George? I always loved him. I wanted to marry the Man in the Yellow Hat and live with Curious George and have escapades. Escapades is such a good word, don’t you think? I thought it would be much more exciting than living with my parents.”
“This is the person who’s supposed to save my life?” said Alyssa. “I should have known. With Billie running the show, the most I could expect was a freak.”
“Alyssa! Shh! Jody is the smartest person you’ll ever meet.”
Jody’s eyes locked with mine and then danced over to where Alyssa’s voice had come from. I checked behind me quickly, making sure no shoppers were nearby.
“Hmm,” said Jody. “A nervous subject, eh? I guess we’d better get on with it. We don’t want this situation to linger any longer than necessary! Did you bring the gum, Billie?”
“Hubert has it. He’s meeting us downstairs.”
Jody pulled on a fuzzy plaid jacket, making her look like an elfin lumberjack. She herded us toward the escalators.
“I’ve checked out the ladies’ room here, but I don’t think it’s going to work. The sinks are tiny, and the toilets would clog up in a second. We really do need a bathtub. Got any ideas?”
She didn’t wait for an answer.
“Full immersion is always most effective. The new recipe has some real benefits, like being able to shop
at Fairway for Power Puppy Pork Chunks any day of the week instead of beetling down to Chinatown for fungi.”
“Wait a second!” interrupted Alyssa.
We stepped off the escalator and wove our way through the tables toward the door. All the holiday books were on sale, and lots of readers were browsing.
“Dog food seems to work faster,” Jody continued, “but she still has to soak for at least—”
“I said, stop right there!” Alyssa burst out.
I’d been dreading this moment.
“Let me get this straight. Did you say ‘soak in dog food’?”
I shook my head at Jody, signaling her to proceed carefully, or maybe even outright lie, but she was focused on the space where Alyssa seemed to be. A man with earmuffs was watching us. I hoped he couldn’t hear properly.
“It’s a mixture of dog food and mushroom soup,” Jody explained, trying to convince us both, I guess. “It’s freeze-dried in a sort of primitive manner, in waxed-paper pouches. My mother found a few lumps in the freezer last week, and I told her they were rum truffles from the Festivals of Other Cultures class at school. She wanted to know which culture so we’d never go there on vacation.
“But the freezing reduces the odor and makes the substance much easier to work with. There’s really nothing to be worried—”
A whole stack of books flew to the floor with a tremendous thump. Apparently, Alyssa was wearing the gloves!
“This was all part of your plan from the beginning, wasn’t it, Billie Stoner?” Alyssa hissed. “You only pretended to have fun and do tricks and everything, just to lure me into the hands of some weirdo science cult, but if you think I’m going to jump into a tub full of dog-food slush, you’re beyond whack!”
A basket full of holly-shaped bookmarks fluttered over the carpet. A second pile of books teetered in the air, ready to follow.
A little kid screamed in his stroller. People browsing looked over our way.
“Alyssa!” I yelled.
“How is she doing that? Why can we see the books?” Jody clasped her hands in ecstasy. “This is amazing! Astounding! Wonderful!”
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