“Stop it,” I said. My fingers turned to icicles as all my blood rushed to my head. My heart pounded. “You can’t do that to Bernadette.”
“Would you like her instead?” Yosh said. “You could make waffles. Or a nice layer cake. Or—”
“Yosh,” Carina said, “cut it out. You’re being mean.”
Surprise joined the amusement on his face. “How so? The past couple of weeks have been entertaining, but let’s be real. Bernie’s never been anything but a sack of flour. If you and Hazel got attached to her, well, maybe it’s time to wake up and smell the raisin bread.”
He picked up Bernie and rocked her, singing, “Rock-a-bye, Bernie, my sack of flour. You will be garbage in just one hour. Isn’t it great that I love to bake? I think I’ll turn you into a cake.”
My fists clenched. “Give her back. Now.”
Yosh cuddled her even closer to his chest. “Not now, Hazel. Bernie and Daddy are making plans. Delicious, chocolaty, frosting-covered plans.”
“She’s in my custody until last period.” I struggled to keep my voice even. “Hand her over.”
“Or what?” Yosh said. “You’ll take me to family court?”
Everything Yosh had said was true. Bernadette probably would get weevils if she weren’t thrown away. And if I took her home myself, what would I do with her? Stick her in a Tupperware for the rest of my life? She might as well be part of a recipe. But something about the sharp curve of Yosh’s mouth, the glint in his eyes, infuriated me. Didn’t he understand Bernie was more than a sack of flour? How dare he joke about cannibalizing our daughter?
I stretched my arms and made a grab for Bernie. Yosh yanked her out of my reach, waving her over his head, and I went tumbling half off the bench into his lap. I untangled myself in a hurry and stood over Yosh to swipe again. This time my fingers caught hold of something soft yet solid: Bernie’s head inside its fuzzy green hat.
Holding on with both hands, I pulled as hard as I could. Yosh tightened his grip on Bernie’s bottom end. Then came the sound of paper tearing, and Bernie’s hat came away in my hands. A shower of white powder cascaded over Yosh and me.
“Oh my gosh,” Carina said, her hands clasped to her mouth. “Oh my gosh.”
Yosh sputtered. “Nice one, Butterfingers-Wellington!” He brushed uselessly at himself. Flour was everywhere, pooled in his lap and the backpack that hung off the back of his chair.
Kids at the other tables began to point and hoot. The cafeteria monitor bore down on us, furious. I barely noticed. I stood in shock. All I could think was, I killed Bernadette.
“What on Earth is going on here?” demanded the monitor. She turned to Yosh and knelt beside him. “Hey, there. Is this girl bullying you?” Her voice was kind—too kind.
Big mistake. “No, ma’am.” Yosh made his eyes go wide. “We were just eating lunch, and a bag of flour fell out of nowhere and exploded. You should probably get an exorcist in here. Make sure there aren’t any poltergeists in the pantry.”
Her eyes narrowed when she realized he wasn’t the angel she’d assumed. She stood and said, “Nice try. I know all about those gosh-darn flour babies.” Only she didn’t say gosh-darn.
“Oh my goodness,” said Yosh. “My parents don’t like me to hear words like that.”
I barely heard the monitor telling the two of us to get our rears to the principal’s office, Do not pass GO, do not collect two hundred dollars. My brain was too loud, repeating, I killed Bernadette, I killed Bernadette. Before I could stop myself, I burst into tears.
Ten minutes later, I was still sniffling into Bernie’s empty, balled-up clothes as Yosh and I sat in the office, waiting for the principal to get back from lunch. Her earthly remains had ended up in one of the cafeteria’s giant wheeled garbage cans without so much as a “rest in peace.”
For a while the only other sounds were the secretary’s fingernails clicking on her keyboard, the copier going zip-swish, and Yosh fidgeting with his hand brakes. He snapped them off and on in turn. “Look, I’m sorry,” he said. His orange mohawk was frosted with white, like a Creamsicle. “For what it’s worth, I’ll tell the principal the whole thing was my fault. You don’t have to worry about getting in trouble.”
“I don’t care if I get in trouble,” I said, and hiccupped.
“I’ll tell Mrs. Paradisi, too. I’ll make sure she doesn’t dock your grade.”
“I don’t care about my grade.”
“Okaaay.” Yosh tipped his head at me. “Then is it what I said about baking Bernadette in a cake? You had to know I was yanking your chain.”
“I knew.”
“Then what’s your deal? Come on, you’re freaking me out.”
I swiped the tears from my eyes. Yosh’s face bore an uncharacteristic expression of concern. “I—” I croaked but didn’t know what to say. I felt so stupid for getting worked up over a sack of flour.
Except Bernie hadn’t just been a sack of flour, not by the end. It was like Carina had said: Bernie was one of a kind. Somehow, in the past two weeks, she’d acquired a year’s worth of experiences and her own personality. Losing her felt like—well, it didn’t feel like losing Lena or Miles. There was no competition. But it was still a loss, and it still hurt, more than I ever could have expected.
That tug-of-war might’ve only dumped 2.5 pounds of flour on me, but with it came a much heavier fear. Bernadette hadn’t lasted two weeks, so how could we expect the new baby to make it another three months until its due date? I didn’t believe in omens, but if I did, this would be a very bad one.
Click-clack went the secretary’s fingernails. Zip-swish went the copier.
“Spit it out,” Yosh said. “Whatever it is. I can’t guarantee you’ll feel better, but it’s worth a try.”
But I couldn’t. Yosh was actually being serious for a minute, but it wouldn’t last. If there was one thing I could trust him on, it was to turn everything into a joke. I couldn’t tell him the reason I was crying went far beyond one little Disney/demon-faced flour baby.
I sniffed one last time and cleared my throat. “Thanks, but I’m okay.”
“It was a car accident,” Yosh said abruptly.
“Huh?”
He gestured to his wheelchair. “You wanted to know why I have this. I’m telling you: car accident last winter. Bad one. I ended up with a pretty severe spinal cord injury.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Pity gets old fast. It sucks, but I’m dealing. It’s not like I have a choice, and hey, I’m alive. Honestly, the worst part is repeating eighth grade.”
“Ugh,” I said. “That would be awful.”
“Yeah, well, I spent a lot of time in the hospital while the doctors decided I wasn’t going to walk again, for all intents and purposes.” Yosh shrugged. “My parents really wanted me to do summer school so I could start high school this fall, but I felt more like playing video games, and I’m more stubborn than they are, so here I am. The classes aren’t that bad, but all my friends are in high school. Believe it or not, I haven’t always been a friendless loser.”
I waited for him to add like you, but he didn’t.
Instead, he shocked me by saying, “I’m sorry I was a jerk when we met. It was my first day at school with the chair, and I felt like everyone was staring at me, including you. When you tried to take my question like I was completely helpless, I snapped.”
“You had a green mohawk,” I said. “Of course I was staring. I didn’t even notice your chair until I sat next to you.” I paused. “Maybe you’re right, though. Maybe I did underestimate you. I’m sorry.”
“I’m over it.” He shrugged again. “For real, you didn’t notice the chair?”
“Yes, for real. Isn’t that why you dye your hair? To distract people from your chair?”
Yosh smirked. “That would have been a brilliant strategy. But no, I’d wanted to do this for a long time, and even though they’re not super straitlaced, my parents always said no before. Turns
out getting in a life-threatening accident does wonders to make your folks let go of the little stuff.”
“Is that all?” I said. “What do you think would convince my moms to get me a phone?”
“Hmmm.” Yosh pretended to ponder the question. “A couple of broken limbs ought to do it. Maybe you could find yourself in the middle of a goat stampede.”
We both laughed. I couldn’t believe I was sharing a joke with Yosh instead of being the butt of it. Maybe he was surprised, too, because he suddenly stopped.
“There’s something I’ve been meaning to give you.” He twisted and rummaged in his backpack for his sketchbook, sending up a cloud of white dust. He flipped through the book until he found what he was looking for, and tore out the page at its spiral binding, leaving a ragged edge. He passed it to me.
It was a drawing of a girl wearing jeans and a Science Olympiad T-shirt. She held a big, fat, blue book under her arm. But she was only human from the neck down. From the neck up, she had the brown-and-white-striped snout and broad ears of a Toggenburg goat. Long, reddish brown braids tumbled over her shoulders, and glasses perched on her nose. Kirsten and her minions had called me Goat Girl for years. Now I was holding a portrait of myself as a literal goat girl.
“What’s this supposed to be?” I asked.
“It isn’t obvious? It’s you with a goat head. I drew it after Carina told me about hanging out on your farm. Do you like it?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “I mean, it’s really good, but . . . am I supposed to be insulted?”
“Of course not! It’s a present. I guess you could call it a peace offering.”
I shook my head. “Why didn’t you give it to me right away, then?”
“Because I was afraid you’d take it like this. Actually, I was afraid you’d take it worse. You gave me the silent treatment after I gave you that drawing of me with a bird head. I wasn’t sure what had your undies in a twist, but I figured I’d better leave you alone. Then we started hanging out at lunch, and I began to think you didn’t hate my guts after all—until you emptied a five-pound bag of flour on my head, anyway.” He grinned. “Comparing me to a turaco was pure genius, by the way. That’s all I really wanted that drawing to say.”
“I still have it,” I confessed. “It was too good to throw away.”
“What about Goat Girl? What’s her fate?”
“I guess I’ll keep her, too.” I hesitated. “Thank you.”
“No problem. I want to do one of Carina, too, but I haven’t figured out how yet.”
“Make her a deer,” I said, remembering how shy she’d been when I met her. Then again, she wasn’t like that anymore, not with us. “No, maybe a unicorn would be better. Or—well, it probably doesn’t even matter. She’ll love whatever you do.”
I studied Goat Girl again: her glasses and braids, the hand-me-down shirt from her nerdy brother, the fat book under her arm. Who would want to be friends with her?
But Carina and Yosh did, and hopefully Becca still did, too. Somehow, the things that had made me a freak to Kirsten were the same things that made me special to my friends. What if the Island of Misfit Toys wasn’t a place for outcasts after all, but a place the Charlie-in-the-Box, the spotted elephant, and the others chose so they could be together, each their strange kind of special, their special kind of strange?
I tucked Goat Girl into my H&HD folder on top of Bird Boy. When I looked up, Yosh was grinning at me, his eyes crossed. Instinctively I crossed mine back.
Chapter 19
The principal gave Yosh and me three days of lunchtime detention, and Mrs. Paradisi docked us a letter grade. We each still got a cupcake. Mostly I felt sorry for Carina. As the only one who hadn’t been involved in the incident, she’d be stuck eating lunch without us.
I didn’t tell my family what had happened. I imagined them laughing at Yosh’s threats to eat Bernadette and the tug-of-war that followed—and how could I blame them? The whole thing was like something from a cartoon. But I couldn’t laugh. Rowan might argue that Bernie was nothing more than a damaged sack of flour, but I knew better.
That night, as I sprawled on my bed reading On the Origin of Species, he knocked at my door. “What do you want?” I called.
He hung on the doorframe. “What’s the trick-or-treat plan this year? The usual?”
I set the book facedown, adding to the creases in its well-worn spine. “There is no plan.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Becca’s got her own plans. So you don’t have to worry about taking me trick-or-treating. I’m getting too old anyway.” My voice faltered. It was stupid. Candy and costumes were kid stuff. But somehow this felt like something bigger coming to an end.
Rowan frowned. “Screw that. You and I will go, just the two of us. Or what about your new friends? Carina and that kid you’re always complaining about?”
“Yosh,” I said. “He’s not so bad.”
“Well, what about them?”
“I’d have to ask.”
Rowan rolled his eyes. “Then ask. Jeez. For someone who whines about not having your own phone, you barely use the one you have access to.”
“It’s different, and you know it,” I said. “Anyway, I’m serious. You don’t have to take me.”
“Look, Mom and Mimi won’t be happy if you’re at home doing nothing on Halloween. Second, I’ve been working on an epic costume, and I’ll be pissed if I have to wait a whole year to use it at Stanford. When you think about it, you’ll be doing me a favor.”
“So, you really are planning to go to Stanford?” I asked.
“Of course,” Rowan said. “What did you think, that I was going to be Mom’s so-called assistant forever? Or that I’d try to earn a living from license plate sculptures, like Paul?”
“I don’t know. You decided out of nowhere. I don’t get it.”
Rowan looked thoughtful. He stepped all the way into my room and shut the door. He sat at the edge of the bed, fingers steepled. “I’ll tell you why, but only if you promise not to blab.”
I hesitated. I didn’t like the idea of Rowan hiding something important from the rest of us, or of me becoming part of it. But I wanted to know the truth. “Okay. I promise.”
“I’m here because of Mimi and the baby,” said Rowan.
“Huh?” I said. “I thought it was because you were sick of school. Didn’t you tell Mom and Mimi you didn’t want to start college feeling burned out?”
“Yeah, that’s what I told them. But think about it. When did I break the news?”
“Beginning of July?”
“Right. To be specific, it was a week after I figured out Mimi was pregnant again.”
“But what do you going to college and Mimi being pregnant have to do with each other?”
Rowan ran his hand through his hair, leaving it as spiky as a pinecone. “She’s due at the end of January. The way I figured, there were seven months for things to go wrong—if they were going to go wrong—and I’d be thousands of miles away.”
“You could have taken a plane home,” I said. “That’s how you were going to get there and come back anyway.”
“But it would have been hard,” Rowan said, “and expensive, and I wouldn’t have been able to stay here long. Stanford’s intense. It’s sort of a miracle I got in, in the first place. I didn’t want to blow my chance there because I ran home in the middle of the semester.”
“Mimi wouldn’t even want you to do that. She’d want you to stay at school.”
“Maybe intellectually,” Rowan said, “but I’m sure her heart would tell a different story.”
I thought about it. He was probably right. “Okay, but isn’t it silly to take off an entire year just in case something bad happens? You could’ve come home for a week. I bet your teachers would’ve understood.”
“Maybe,” Rowan said, “but what if a week wasn’t enough? Remember how it was last time? The last two times? Mimi barely got out of bed for weeks. Mom was strugg
ling to take care of the farm and us and Mimi all at the same time.”
I set my jaw. “I don’t need taking care of. It’s been two years. I’m older now. I can help.”
“Sure, but you’re still a kid, and I can tell you’ve been imagining the worst ever since you found out about the new baby. It’s good to care, but if the whole skunk-crossing thing after Miles proved anything, it’s that you care too much.”
“What does that mean?” I demanded. “How can a person care too much?”
Rowan put up his hands. “All I’m trying to say is, if something bad happens to the baby, you’ll be messed up, too. And if Mimi’s heartbroken, and Mom’s trying to hold down the fort, and you’re running off on some crusade—well, it’s better if I’m here.”
“Great. So, you’re not even here for Mimi. You’re here because you think I’m unhinged.”
He groaned. “For Pete’s sake. I can’t win, can I? What if I told you that if something goes wrong, I don’t want to be alone in California? Because that’s true, too.”
I saw in his eyes that he meant it. “But if nothing goes wrong, and the baby is born perfectly healthy, you’ll have wasted a whole year.”
“How can you call this wasting a year?” Rowan said, leaning over to tousle Arby’s ears. She gazed adoringly up at him. “I get to see more of you all before I move away. I get an entire year without homework or exams. And if the baby’s born healthy, and I hope to God she is? I’ll be here when it happens. I’ll get to hold her. I’ll be here for her first smile, her first word, maybe even her first crawl.”
As he talked, my eyes started stinging, and my throat choked up. I wondered if Rowan had ever imagined filling out a book for the new baby. Arby glanced at me in wide-eyed concern and climbed up my chest to lick my chin. I pulled her back down into my lap and petted her.
“What are you reading, anyway?” Rowan said, reaching past me for my book. “Darwin, huh? Your health class is way more intense than I remember mine being.”
“It’s not for school,” I said. “It’s for my personal edification.”
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