by Ami Polonsky
“Me too,” he said. “Speaking of which, what’s for dinner, Mom?”
“Good question,” she answered. “I’m making soup. We can have that tonight or tomorrow. It’s usually better when it sits for a day. Your choice, Max.”
Pizza Pizza, I mouthed at him.
“I was thinking of Pizza Pizza…,” he said, “but I’m not sure.”
I scowled.
“I mean, I unpacked all my stuff. It’s in a gross pile on my bed and is going to take forever to put away…”
I kicked him. “Fine, I’ll help,” I said. “But,” I went on, “in exchange for helping you clean your room so we can go to your favorite restaurant, I have a favor to ask you.”
“Ask away!”
“Privately,” I told him.
* * *
“Hey,” I said to Mom’s back. She was at the stove, stirring the soup.
“How are you?” she asked, pulling me next to her.
“Eh,” I told her, envisioning life without Essie.
“Yeah.” She seemed to get what I was saying.
“What kind of soup?” I asked.
“Squash.”
Gross.
“Remember when we used to cook together?” I asked her suddenly. I’d practically forgotten about that.
“Of course! When you were in elementary school, I could always get you to talk to me if you were busy doing something else at the same time. I realized if I put you to work chopping something, you’d tell me what was on your mind.”
“I did?”
She smiled. “I need some more diced garlic cloves. You game?”
At the sink, I scrubbed the remainder of white paint out from under my fingernails. Then I went to work.
Apparently, chopping stuff with Mom still made me say things I normally wouldn’t because, all of a sudden, without realizing it was going to come out, I told her, “I think I should talk to Mr. Bell about the fact that I’ve been using the girl’s locker room for long enough. I mean, I’ve just been changing there because it’s convenient. But it doesn’t make sense. I should probably see what the other options are. What we really need is a gender-neutral locker room.”
Mom nodded. “That’s true! Want me to call him and—” She cut herself off and looked at me out of the corner of her eye, smiling a little. “You’ve got this, right?”
“Right,” I confirmed. “So,” I said as she handed me another garlic clove, “what’s new at work?”
“You actually want to know?” she asked. “It’s totally boring.”
I shrugged. “Try me.”
* * *
After dinner at Pizza Pizza, Max and I drove toward Essie’s to pick her up. “She still doesn’t know where you’re taking her?” Max asked as we turned onto her street.
“Not a clue. Thanks for the ride, Maxi Pad.” I held out my hand. “Cash?” I asked, wiggling my eyebrows.
“We still haven’t discussed your plan to pay me back,” he said, handing me the money.
“You could think of it as an investment, of some sort,” I suggested.
He smiled, stopping in front of Essie’s house, honking the horn. “Nice try. Hey. I know I keep saying this, but you seem so much older all of a sudden,” he told me.
“I guess it happens.”
“I guess so.” He tousled my hair.
Max and Essie spent the twenty-minute drive engaged in an intensive getting-to-know-you session, which consisted of him grilling her on all the Most Important Things: Favorite food? (Cheese melted on carbs.) Least-favorite food? (Avocado.) No relationship is perfect, Ollie, I told myself. Favorite animal? (Baby sloth.) Favorite color? (Clear.) I was starting to feel sorry for Essie because of Max’s seemingly endless list of questions, but she seemed to like playing the Q&A game, which made me love her even more.
Eventually, we pulled up at the front gates of Rumble Peak. Essie and I got out of the car, and I walked around to Max’s open window as she waited for me on the curb.
“Nine o’clock, right here?” he confirmed.
I nodded. “Thanks for the ride.”
He looked from Essie to me. “I approve,” he whispered. “There’s the issue of the avocados, but we can probably work around that, right?”
I smiled. “Probably,” I whispered back. Then he drove off, and I took Essie’s hand.
At the far end of the park, past the roller coasters, the merry-go-round, and the endless food stands, the giant hammock hung, dirty white against the dark gray sky. And even though I was bigger than I’d been three years before, it still seemed huge and daunting. I felt Essie’s eyes on me as I guided her to the rope ramp that led to the highest part of the net. All of it was exactly the same as it had been, except that everything was different now.
Essie stumbled on the netting behind me as we made our way upward. “Are you okay?” I asked her, turning around.
She wiggled her foot out of where it had caught on the net and nodded. “Are you?”
“I think so.”
We climbed up the gentle incline past a bunch of little kids who were jumping around excitedly, making our way to the highest point of the hammock, where nobody else was. All I could see from that high up was the star-studded sky. Essie and sky. We lay down next to each other and I tried to ignore what was hanging over us—the fact that the next day, Essie would be gone.
“We’re not here because of Addison Miller,” I told her.
“Okay,” she said, turning on her side, touching my cheek.
I really didn’t want to cry. “I figured out—because of, like, this doorway that you opened inside of me when we met—that pretty much in this exact spot, three years ago, I split into two parts: the part of me that has to do with my gender, and the rest of me. Being with you helped me realize that I should get to be all of me.”
“And you wanted to come back?” Essie asked. “So you could weave the parts back together?”
I nodded.
“Is it working?”
“I think so,” I told her, “because I feel whole.”
She smiled and my heart fluttered. “Ollie?” she said.
“Yeah?” I asked, looking at her pale face and wind-blown hair.
“So just before you and Max picked me up, my dad and I FaceTimed my mom. First off, she says hi. I told her about you.”
“You did?”
“Yeah. All about you.”
I smiled and she went on. “A few days ago, I asked them a big question. Then they had a million hours of phone conversations and today they gave me their verdict.”
I was starting to feel weird. Like, good-nervous-weird. “Okay,” I said again.
“I asked my parents if I could stay with my dad for the rest of the year. Here. Because it didn’t seem fair for them to uproot me twice in seventh grade, and why should I have to go home now? I don’t want to go home now.”
I sat up. “And?”
Essie smiled—the world’s most perfect smile. “They said yes.”
DAY 110
Essie walked toward the corner—our corner—in fuzzy pajama pants and a purple hoodie. Moonlight flooded the sidewalk.
I could feel the magnetic pull; the closer Essie got, the stronger it was. When she stopped in front of me, the magnets sucked our hands together, palm to palm.
I wrapped my fingers around hers. “Essie?” I asked, suspecting I was about to sound ridiculous. “Do you ever feel like maybe we’re magnets? Like those really strong ones, from science class?”
“Wait,” she said, smiling, “are you talking about the zaps?”
“I guess you could call it that,” I said, studying her eyes. “Like the magnets pull us together and we click and—”
“There’s a zap?”
“There’s a zap,” I confirmed.
Hand in hand, we walked around the corner to Annabella and Damien’s yard. Their hammock was bright white in the moonlight. We lay back in it and looked up at the stars. The moon was a perfect crescent. I pulled my comple
ted butterfly-hands carving out of my sweatpants pocket. “I made you something,” I told her.
“Wow,” she said, holding it up. “I love it. What do you see? A butterfly? Or hands?”
“Both,” I told her without hesitating. “You?”
“Definitely both.”
It felt like the first time Essie and I had been in the hammock three months before, only better, because in the time between then and now, because of her, I’d found the parts of myself that I’d practically forgotten about for three years. They’d been waiting for me on the giant hammock at Rumble Peak, exactly where I’d left them.
I turned my head to Essie. Our faces were like magnets. Like always. “Essie?” I asked, “Can I—”
She nodded. “Definitely, yes.”
Our lips touched.
Zap.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I continue to be grateful beyond measure for the kind souls who support me from near and far. Kim Bell, the duck to my rabbit and butterfly to my hands, thank you for the seed that became the idea that became this book. And for all the other seeds. Wendy Schmalz, thank you for always keeping the faith. Joy Peskin, you nurtured my writing with great wisdom and heart. Thank you for taking such incredibly good care of Ollie and Essie. Elizabeth Lee, thank you for your thoughtful input and enthusiasm along the way. Caleb Hosalla, I am grateful for the beautiful cover that you created. Cassie Gonzales, Avia Perez, Nicole Wayland, and Linda Minton, thank you for all of your behind-the-scenes contributions to Spin with Me. Henry Alberto, Agnes Borinsky, and Rae MacCarthy, your thorough and thoughtful sensitivity reads were invaluable. Finally, Daniel, B & E, thank you for continuing to be the inspiration for everything I do.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ami Polonsky is the author of the critically acclaimed Gracefully Grayson and Threads. She is a middle school English teacher and a parent of two kids, one of whom exists happily beneath the trans umbrella. Learn more at amipolonsky.com, or sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Part 1. Butterfly
Part 2. Hands
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
Copyright © 2021 by Ami Polonsky
Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers
A part of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC
120 Broadway, New York, NY 10271
mackids.com
All rights reserved
Names: Polonsky, Ami, author.
Title: Spin with me / Ami Polonsky.
Description: First edition. | New York: Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers, 2021. | Audience: Ages 8–12. | Audience: Grades 4–6. | Summary: Told in two voices, seventh-graders Essie, in North Carolina for just one semester, and Ollie, a nonbinary, “gender weird” classmate, develop a gentle romance while Essie ponders her label.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020007735 | ISBN 9780374313500 (hardcover)
Subjects: CYAC: Gender-nonconforming people—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | Middle schools—Fiction. | Schools—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.P7687 Spi 2020 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020007735
Our eBooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at (800) 221-7945 ext. 5442 or by email at [email protected].
First hardcover edition, 2021
eBook edition, 2021
eISBN 9780374313494