“Have you ever thought,” I finally say, not taking my eyes off him, “she might be a werewolf?”
He looks up, and smiles with just his eyes. Grateful. “I hadn’t, but now that you say that, it does make sense. The violent outbursts, the howling, the constant hair brushing . . .”
“The ruthless approach to board games,” I add. “My mom probably has a support group listed in her binder.”
“Do you think we should try cutting out gluten?”
“I don’t know. Maggie, is that working for you?”
Maggie throws a baby carrot at me.
“What are you guys even talking about?” chirps Natalie, who has lost track of the conversation, and more important, where she and her cousins all fit in it.
Guess what, Natalie? You don’t, says my cocky butterfly.
The bell rings, giving us four minutes to get to next period. Tahlia tugs Natalie up. “Come on. You always make me late.”
Maggie carries her tray to the recycling station.
“Thanks for finally sitting with me, Greer,” Jackson says.
“Well, I felt sorry for you with the head injury and the werewolf sister. And being new and friendless and from Cleveland and all that.” Jackson tilts the empty Pirate’s Booty bag my way. Classic big-sibling trick: pawn off the garbage on the other kid. I throw up my hands to refuse.
He heads toward the second-floor stairwell, but not before turning around to add, “I guess tomorrow I’ll sit at the counter and write wistful poetry about your Booty.” I turn tomato red, and the tiny butterfly shits herself.
Maggie slides next to me and looks back and forth between me and the disappearing Jackson. She smirks, but doesn’t accuse me of anything. “He’s cool. But the sister sounds like a psychopath.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
CHAPTER 18
Volleyball tryouts are starting and the new bra hasn’t arrived. I’ll make do with my sports-bra-over-regular-bra-under-giant-shirt strategy. Maggie is excited that I’m trying out. She says she always thought I’d be good at team sports because I’m good at following directions and remembering rules. I draw a frowny poo on her arm in blue pen. And then she adds that I’m strong, because Mags can’t lift anything heavier than a twenty-ounce kombucha, which makes me seem like a weightlifter. I think she also feels bad because she’s at play practice every day, and I go home alone to lie half naked in my room. (She doesn’t know that’s what I’m doing, but she figures the alone part, and she likes the idea of me having something to do.)
Tryouts last the week. Jessa explained there are practices every day after school, and Ms. Reinhold and the team captains evaluate people as they go. Two years ago, a newbie like me wouldn’t have had a shot, but now that volleyball shares a season with basketball, Jessa says they lost some good players.
There are a ton of warm-ups before we get near a volleyball: burpees, mountain climbers, squats. None of them are easy, and all of them make my superboob swing around like an accident-prone trapeze artist. I keep yanking both bras back in place, but one of the straps underneath gets twisted and starts rubbing.
The worst drill is something the girls from last year call “sprinting to hell and back.” You run one length of the gym, bend down and touch the line, run back, touch the line, then run three quarters, touch the line, run back, and keep shrinking the distance until it’s only a few feet—and then you start lengthening it again until you are running the whole way again. It’s horrible.
If it was gym class, a few guys would go all out and race, but most people would trot along next to a friend and never even bother to touch the line. But these girls (a) know they are being evaluated for both skill and attitude; (b) are fiercely competitive; and (c) might be a sleeper cell trained on Themyscira to defeat the Patriarchy using only brute power and headbands.
It’s impossible not to get caught up in it. I watch the first group go, and when it’s my turn, I’m right there in the mix, heart pounding, shoes squeaking, racing for that line like I’m Katniss Everdeen and Prim’s life depends on it. I sprint up the gym, pivot a foot in front of the line, and smack my hand down, then shoot the other direction. It’s murder on the knees, and one girl who hasn’t tied her shoes tightly actually slides right out of them on the second stop. As the drill goes on, the line begins to stagger. I’m behind a couple of girls, but ahead of the main pack. Maude and Mavis are not happy, though, double-corralled in their school-day bra and the sports bra. They are hot and sore, and the twisted spot is hurting like crazy. It feels like a piece of tree bark rubbing against a blister. I put one hand up to hold the strap away from my skin, and by doing this I can use that forearm to hold back some of the bouncing as well.
Turning into my final full-length run, I am right on the heels of Jessa. She’s throwing her whole self into it, and I’m trying to keep up while carrying an armload of angry kittens (with claws). We finish the drill and sink against the wall to watch the third group of runners.
“What’s with the arm?” she pants between sucks on her water bottle.
“My bra strap is bugging me.”
She nods, as though she has any idea what I’m talking about. Jessa’s not little, but it looks like every part of her is solid muscle. I doubt her breasts try to go anywhere the rest of her isn’t going. “I’ll give you some Glide.”
I look at her blankly.
“It’s, like, this gel that you use wherever stuff rubs.” I am still staring at her blankly. “A lot of people use it with new shoes. I use it on my thighs. They rub together when I run.”
“Thanks,” I nod, and Jessa gets up to roast another player about her poor sprints to hell and back.
And right there, Jessa Timms and I have had the most intimate conversation about our bodies that I’ve ever had.
CHAPTER 19
“Melinda Oates sure thinks I’m a lifesaver,” says Mom, swirling the wine around her glass. She never drinks more than a few sips of it. She’s usually too busy talking.
“Who’s Melissa Oates?” asks Dad, at the same time I say, “Why are you a lifesaver?”
“Melinda, not Melissa. Melinda is a client of mine, and the reason that I’m a lifesaver is because she’s moved seven times in fifteen years and she says she’s never had the kind of relocation support she has had here.”
Dad forks a spear of asparagus off Mom’s plate. “That’s great, Kits.” This is his name for her, which no one else is allowed to use. “I hope she finds someone half as good as you next time.” Mom beams.
“Why would there be a next time?” I ask. I’m annoyed at myself for the tiny panic I feel.
“Somebody moves seven times in fifteen years,” says Dad, “I doubt they’ll stick around suburban Illinois forever.” He puts a little extra emphasis around “Illinois,” just enough to make me wonder if he wishes he were somewhere more interesting than the middle of the country.
It hadn’t occurred to me that Kennedy might not be the last school Jackson will be the New Kid at. I figured once they got here, here was home. But maybe some dumb girl in Cleveland thought that, too.
Mom is not fazed by this, because to her, the Oateses are clients. Companies pay Relocation Specialists to help with moving in, not moving out, so if they stay or go is irrelevant. In fact, my mom needs families like theirs to keep uprooting all the time so she can get their three-month settlement-support contracts.
I’m distracted by the thought that Jackson won’t be around long enough to fall in love with me. I have no experience with anybody falling in love with me, but I suspect that it might take a long time. On the other hand, if he is going to move, maybe he’ll move before he falls in love with somebody else, so there’s a silver lining.
“How’s volleyball shaking out, G?”
I shrug. “There are eight or nine girls who are awesome, like Olympic-ly awesome. And there are some freshmen who have never played anything that wasn’t
on a PlayStation. And everybody else is in the middle.”
“Which part of the middle are you? The top of the middle?”
“I’m okay,” I say. What I don’t say is that I felt better about the whole thing before Coach Reinhold yelled at me for missing a perfectly easy hit because I was adjusting my bra. Or that my blocks look bad because I’m holding down my giant T-shirt while I jump. I’m not exactly a superstar out there.
But now that I’ve been to all those practices, I want to play. Except that at the end of every practice, my breasts ache like they’ve been squeezed in an elevator door. And my shoulders burn from the weight. And now there are rashy red spots under both arms where the bra has been rubbing.
Plus there’s that uniform.
It will be much better if I don’t make the team. Then I can concentrate on the things I am comfortable with: wrecking the curve in math; keeping Maggie from starting a revolution; and making fun of Tyler. And secretly obsessing over Mom’s client’s son.
“I’m sure you’re better than okay.” He goes to squeeze my shoulder, and I shift sideways out of habit. “Where’s your confidence?”
In math class, I think.
“Can we get me some shoes tonight?” Tyler says it with his mouth full of bread, like “Caweegehmeshmoosdanite?”
“You need shoes again?” Mom puts half her chicken on Tyler’s plate. He doesn’t have giant breasts making him look “heavy,” so Mom thinks he’s too thin.
“Yah,” he says between chews.
“Does it have to be tonight?”
“Yah.” He swallows and says, “My gym teacher says I can’t bring those shoes into her presence again.”
“What does that mean?”
He says, “I dunno,” but without any actual words, just that little melody that always goes along with “I dunno.”
Mom goes out to the front to investigate the shoe situation. A second later we hear a cry like she’s found a dead body. “Oh my . . . Oh my god . . .” Worse. Like a client has found a dead body and she doesn’t have any five-star dumpsters to ditch a corpse listed in her re-lo binder. Dad runs out to help and he says, “Jesus effing . . .”
Ty and I stay at the table. “They that bad?” I ask.
“I guess.”
“Did you get them wet or something?”
“I stepped in the creek a couple days ago, but I put ’em in a plastic bag so they wouldn’t get everything else in my locker wet.” He sounds proud that he took such good care of his shoes.
“Tyler, you’ve got to take wet things out of the plastic bag so they can dry. Otherwise stuff starts to grow in them.”
We hear my mother cry out, “HOW is this even POSSIBLE?” and my dad shout, “Just get them out of here!”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Bacteria? Mold?”
“That’s nasty,” says Tyler, as though I’m the nasty one.
The front door opens and closes, and my parents pass through the dining room on their way to the kitchen to boil their hands.
“I can’t get that smell out of my nostrils,” Dad says, blowing his nose into his napkin again and again.
“Tyler, those shoes were a hundred and twenty dollars.”
“Is that a lot?”
“When they last less than a month it is,” Mom says, exasperated. “Let’s go. Master’s closes in an hour. Oh my god. Now I can smell it in here. Did you wear those socks with those shoes today? Get rid of them too.” She drains her whole wineglass for once. “IN THE GARBAGE, TYLER. NOT ON THE TABLE. Oh, Greer, that package you ordered was on the front step.” She tosses a padded envelope at me.
“What’d Greer get?” Tyler whines as he follows Mom out.
The Stabilizer has arrived.
CHAPTER 20
This is how I usually put on a bra: Pull it around my waist like a belt. Hook each of the four hooks. Twist it around. Poke my arms through the straps. Lift the front up and over. Tuck everything in. I can’t reach around back to hook it while it’s already covering me like you’re supposed to, because the whole thing is too tight. I don’t have the lats to pull it together.
There is always a half-inch gap between the bottom of the bra and my body, because the cups aren’t actually big enough. My boobs squeeze out and over the sides like an overfilled muffin tin. Instead of a sexy little dip of cleavage like you’d see in a Victoria’s Secret ad, mine looks like a butt crack going straight up to my neck.
Right away the Stabilizer looks different from my old sports bra. There are several sets of hooks, and the straps are threaded in and out like one of those pot holders you make on a toy loom. If you pull on one part, it shifts and tightens all the other parts. Imagine levers and pulleys and stretchy belts. Imagine if M. C. Escher and Rube Goldberg designed a bra.
Fortunately, it comes with directions. Yes. Directions. For a bra. Unfortunately, they are a little hard to follow. There’s a page of illustrations of a woman adjusting all the dimensions, and the address for a YouTube video “for more ways to wear the Stabilizer.” But first I have to actually get inside the thing and how to do that isn’t as obvious as you’d think. I wrap it around my waist and put my arm through a hole, but there’s not another hole that looks the same for my other arm, so that can’t be right. I flip it over, thinking maybe it’s upside down, but now all the hooks are facing in. I stare at the illustration, trying to match up the crisscross of the various straps with the tangle of spandex in front of me.
I try every combination of looping, tying, and strapping, until I more or less get it on. The hooks come around the sides instead of the back, and when you cinch the straps that go over your shoulders, they also adjust through the cups. It’s generally bra shaped, but a very complicated bra. Like if the engineers at SpaceX invented a bra. It would be ten times easier to get it all perfect if I had another person here, but the only other one home is Dad and neither of us wants to make my new sports bra a family project.
Once I’m in and adjusted, it feels pretty good. It’s tight, for sure, but not so tight I can’t breathe. When I wear my too-small sports bra over my too-small regular bra, it feels like a boa constrictor. This is more like a bear hug.
I do a little jump. It feels okay. I do a bigger one. I can’t quite tell, so I jump up and down a bunch of times in a row. They aren’t flopping! It’s not like they’re not moving, because I’m not made of stone, but they are moving with me, like my arms do, like my nose does. Like they are part of my body and not just a purse or a couple of sacks of potatoes I threw over my shoulder.
I lift my arms above my head. The fabric stretches, but it doesn’t ride up. I wave my arms over my head like I’m trying to get the attention of a rescue plane, but everything stays where it’s supposed to. When I put my arms down, everything is still where it’s supposed to be. Nothing rubs wrong, either. The fabric is soft.
And the people on the site were right: There are distinctly two breasts, not one monster one. This is a relief, because I’ve been having to use Jessa’s Glide between Maude and Mavis, and even still, they are red and raw.
“Greer?” my dad yells from downstairs. “Want to watch the British Baking Show with me?”
“I’ll be down in a minute!” Part of me wishes I could show him the thing because he loves gadgets, but the other 99 percent of me plans to keep this feat of engineering to myself.
I try something I haven’t done in years: I turn a cartwheel in the space between my bed and my closet. I whack my leg on my nightstand on the way down. It hurts like I’ve cracked my shin bone in half, but my breasts feel great. I don’t even have to tug the bra back down.
In the bathroom mirror, it looks like I’ve fallen through the webbing of a lawn chair and gotten tangled up, or like I’m a sporty mummy. But I feel more like I’ve put on a safety net. And if you attached a cable to it, maybe I could even fly.
CHA
PTER 21
Kate Wood and Jessa find me before math. It’s the last day of tryouts. Coach R will post the rosters on Monday. Kate’s heard a bunch of rumors from her sister, who is one of the varsity captains.
“Emma says seniors are automatically on varsity, so Eva Frank and Arianna whatsherbutt will be on varsity even though they suck. I mean, not to be mean or whatever.”
“That’s fine.” I shrug. “I didn’t have a shot at varsity anyway.”
“But that means that somebody who would have been on varsity will take a spot on JV!”
“Right, but those seniors who would have been on JV move up to varsity, so the numbers are the same.”
Kate ignores my logic. She thinks we should be worried about this news. Maybe they use a different kind of math in sports where twelve girls on one squad does not equal twelve girls on another. She starts in on a bunch of hypothetical volleyball rosters. It’s more complicated than the electoral college.
Someone bumps the back of my knee, the kind of thing that makes your legs fold but doesn’t knock you over. Jackson doesn’t say anything, just waves as he keeps going, not wanting to interrupt the volleyball summit. The redheaded girl who always tries to drag him to class early to conjugate verbs will be whatever the German word for happy is. I watch him like he’s a birthday balloon disappearing into the clouds. Kate doesn’t pause for a second.
“And Nasrah Abdullahi will for sure make it ’cuz she’s so tall.”
Nasrah is a ninth grader who has never played either, but she’s almost six feet and a pretty amazing athlete. Jessa says Reinhold practically drooled when Nasrah walked in to tryouts.
Jessa and Kate are going through the list of girls at tryouts, trying to determine where our real competition is. Or really, where my competition is, because Jessa is awesome, the best of the underclassmen, and Kate’s been playing in a competitive league since she was ten.
Way down the hall, Jackson is stopped outside of class with Red Hair. She’s leaning on him and laughing, like he’s telling some hilarious story. I wonder if he’s telling it in real German or the kind of funny broken German he uses on me.
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