I notice a bunch of colorful globs on her dresser. They look like Play-Doh, but when I touch one, it’s more like plastic.
I know what this is. It’s polymer clay. You get it at the craft store. It starts out soft, but when you bake it, it hardens. Maggie and I tried making beads one summer, but they didn’t work.
Quin has made all kinds of little things, some recognizable, some not. There’s a pink kitten, and what’s probably a frog. A lot look like chewed gum. I’m ready to dismiss them when I notice one that looks familiar. Not exactly familiar, but recognizable. It’s a little man with a pointy hat and what is probably supposed to be a long white beard. It’s Grumpy Dwarf. She made herself a Grumpy Dwarf.
I pick through the pile and find more dwarfs, and a skinny figure with a blue and red dress, a white head, and black hair. It’s my whole set, remade in Sculpey. What’s remarkable isn’t that they are especially good, it’s that she’s made them at all.
I pick up another blob. Now that I realize what she’s done, I can figure out what it’s supposed to be. This one’s a tennis racket stuck on a block: Jackson’s doubles trophy from his bookshelf. A little iguana. I’d never guess that this speckly melty mess was a Lego boat with a Batman if I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I’m sure of it. It’s Jackson’s stuff, in miniature.
I line them up in even rows. I find the one I’m looking for: A tiny perfect coffee mug. I can imagine those skinny fingers rolling out the minuscule handle. For a second I understand Quin entirely, because I have to work hard not to just slip it in my pocket.
Even the things I don’t recognize must have a real-life counterpart somewhere. So Quinlan’s got a collection, too, only hers is a collection of other people’s collections. She’s made a miniature copy of other people’s lives.
“Did you ever make anything with Sculpey?” she asks. She’s right beside me now, leaning her elf face against my arm.
“I tried. I wasn’t as good as you.” I finish putting all the figures in lines.
“You weren’t?”
“Nope. I only made little balls.”
“For what?”
“They were supposed to be beads, but the holes closed up in the oven.”
Quin reaches out to straighten my rows, evening up the space between the kitten and a volleyball. “What were you going to do with the beads?”
“Maggie and I were going to make bracelets. And then Tyler ate a couple of them.” Quin gasps and giggles. “It wasn’t his fault. He was little and they looked like candy. I mean if you didn’t know better, wouldn’t you try to eat this?” I hold up a plump purple heart, which matches a monster fur pillow on her bed. Quin takes it from me and puts it back in its row. “So my mom threw them away.”
Quin thinks about this for a minute. “I don’t let my mom throw things away.”
I look around the chaos of her room, with its overflowing bins and shelves piled deep, its mountains of clothes and stuffed animals, and stacks and stacks of games no one plays with her. It’s obvious no one has ever thrown any of her things away. This is what she does, I guess. The moving truck must get bigger and bigger. If you keep moving around the world, you try to take the world with you.
Unless you’re Jackson. Then you do the opposite. You leave everything behind.
“You do have a lot of stuff,” I say.
“Thanks,” says Quin, like it’s a compliment.
CHAPTER 64
Jackson is sitting on the floor leaning against my locker. There’s virtually nobody else here this early. (Mom drove.) I was planning to be safe inside math long before the bell. He must have suspected this, because here he is, looking like he slept here.
A few weeks ago, this would have had me blushing from the inside out. Now it just makes the cement block in my belly heavier and harder.
But still, that stupid butterfly keeps beating herself against the wall 150 times a minute. She doesn’t understand there’s no point. There never has been.
Not a butterfly. My stupid heart.
He messaged me last night. Said he would have told me himself but Quin beat him to it. Said it wasn’t final yet, so nobody was supposed to know. Said once you told people you weren’t coming back the next year, they kind of stopped bothering with you.
My responses were:
No problem
Got it
[insincere sad-face emoji]
The sad-face emoji is just a sad-face emoji. There’s not a special one for insincere sad face. Only I knew it was insincere.
He said other things, too, but none of them were “This sucks” or “I hate my parents” or “Let’s run away to Stockholm and watch them award the Nobel Prize in Physics.” None of them were the kinds of things I wished he would say.
I would be less disappointed if I thought he was more disappointed. What I felt like writing was:
Just go away already. You are a ten-second mirage in the four years I’m going to spend in this stupid school and it was easier before you. I’m going to go back to the short list of things I am good at, and you are not one of them.
But obviously I wasn’t going to send that, so I ended with a GIF of a cartoon cow shrugging its shoulders and went to bed.
And now he’s sitting against my locker where I can’t just cartoon cow him. He is all bent arms and legs. He looks like a lean letter M. If I sat like that, Maude and Mavis would fill all the space between my body and my knees. I’d be like a filled-in O on a standardized test.
I hover over him waiting to open my locker.
“My mom wanted me to give you these,” he says. He hands me a paper bag. “To thank you for taking care of Quinlan yesterday. She’s never done something like that before.” The bag is warm. Inside there are fresh blueberry scones.
They smell like waking up on top of a mountain in the springtime. I mean in a fancy lodge on a mountain, not actually outdoors where a grizzly could maul you and eat your scone. At least I understand how his mom feels about me: nice girl with a big appetite. “Tell her thanks.”
I wait patiently till he gets up and out of the way of my locker, unload my books, and wonder what I’m supposed to say next. Good luck in Amsterdam? I hope there are goede relokateun aadveusers there?
“This was supposed to be the last move until Quin graduates. That’s what they said when we left Cleveland. That’s what I thought.” I’m still waiting for him to say he’s going to fight it. I keep rearranging things in my locker. “But my dad says it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” he adds.
My sarcastic sniff comes out accidentally. Come on. It’s not like your dad’s an ambassador.
We’re talking again, except that this talking feels worse than not talking. I need to make this casual. I need to prove that none of this bothers me. To convince myself, at least. I don’t feel like eating with all that dead weight in my belly, but I feel like looking like I can eat. I take a scone from the bag. “Amsterdam sounds cool. Plus you can add another souvenir to your collection.”
“I don’t have a souvenir collection.”
“Sure you do. On your bookshelf. You can get a wooden shoe or a Van Gogh key chain. I don’t know what else is there. Maybe The Hague has war criminal magnets!” I’m trying to make this better. Fun. Because now all the pressure is off. I swallow a bite of the scone, which mostly stays in my throat because of the whole insides-filled-with-cement thing.
“What are you talking about?”
“The Netherlands?”
All the pressure isn’t off. I can’t stand here with him and not feel disappointed and angry and embarrassed. I let that caterpillar of an idea in, the idea of Jackson and me, and she spun and emerged and grew and stretched out her wings, and then I killed her.
I start walking toward math and Jackson follows.
“So, are you ready for the formal this weekend? I heard th
ere will be dance trophies, and you’ve been falling behind on trophies.” Not even a smile. “You going with Elliana? Sie ist probably a sehr gut danzer.” I hate saying her real name out loud.
“No.” He sounds surprised, like he can’t figure out where I’d get that idea. In my head, that’s where. “I’m just meeting some people there.”
“Cool. That’s a good way to do it,” I say. I bet there will be a line of girls in pretty dresses waiting for him like in an episode of The Bachelor. “Or maybe there’s a wistful poets meet-up at the snack table,” I try.
“Sure.” It’s not working. He’s not picking up his side. The hallways are starting to fill up. Lots of people nod or wave at Jackson as we make our way toward first period. We pass by Mena and Khloe, who raise their eyebrows curiously. They have no idea.
In a break in the crowd, Jackson reaches out for my arm. “Greer, can you just stop for a second?” He turns to face me and takes a big breath. “I never know what you’re—”
Griffin Townsend is walking past, and I see his eyes drop from my face to my chest, just for a second. I follow his line of sight and see that there’s a piece of scone on my sweatshirt. Mavis caught it.
I pick off the crumb, and it leaves a bright purple smear right at my nipple. I wipe again and the smudge gets bigger, streaking out across my breast. I look at my hand and see that violet has bled into the pads of my fingerprints.
There is now a bull’s-eye on one boob. A purple boob’s-eye. Like Barney the Dinosaur tried to feel me up. I rub with my sleeve, but it makes it worse.
I start to panic. I could run to the bathroom and try to scrub it out, but blueberry stains, and then I’d have a wet purple nipple. Kyle Tuck and his friends would think I was spontaneously lactating grape juice.
Can I call Mom and tell her to pick me up? And is “boob stain” an excused or unexcused absence? Can I hold a notebook in front of my chest for the entire day? I’ve done it before.
No, wait! My jacket! It’s going to be hot and weird to sit through class in a winter jacket, but I’ll tell people I’m cold.
I hurry all the way back to my locker, threading through the crowd of students. I flip open the lock and slide into the jacket, safe undercover again. When I shut the door, I’m surprised that Jackson has followed me. He’s just standing there on the other side.
“Sorry. What were you saying?”
Around us, people bang lockers open and shut, scuttle to class, and still, Jackson says nothing. There’s a couple of loud minutes where it doesn’t matter that we’re not talking because everyone else is talking all at once. The warning bell rings, and then the noise fades as people drift into class and we don’t. I am waiting for him and I don’t know what he’s waiting for. The jacket crinkles as I shift back and forth.
We’ve been standing here so long the hall is empty again.
“I’m just going to go,” he finally says.
I don’t know if he means he’s going to class or he’s going to the Netherlands, and I realize that in some way, it’s the same thing. When he turns down the hall, it feels like someone takes a sledgehammer to the concrete block in my belly. Now the construction dust and dead butterfly parts are making it hurt to swallow.
What did I think? He’d throw himself at my parka and tell me he’s madly in love with me? And then when we FaceTimed over the Atlantic every night I could position the laptop so my boobs were out of the frame? And then Maggie would be wrong and I could get everything I said I wanted?
Well, I didn’t not think that.
“You know,” I say, my voice loud and shaky. He stops and turns. “Not everyone can just run from place to place till we find the one we like.”
The Adam’s apple in his throat pulses hard, like he’s swallowing the same dust I am. The corners of his eyes narrow. For a second I wonder what I’ve done. And then his jaw goes tight, like it does when he’s growling at Quinlan.
“And we can’t all just hide under a sweatshirt if we don’t like the life we’ve got.”
I watch him disappear down the hallway, walking faster than most people run. Even from behind, I can tell that he is wiping his eyes. I don’t understand what just happened but I understand that I am hurt and angry, and that Jackson is hurt and angry, too, and that I don’t know how to fix it for either one of us. And this makes me even angrier.
Last year, we all went to Boston during one of Dad’s work trips. Mom booked us on a whale-watching boat. Sometimes you go out to sea and don’t see anything at all, but when we went, it was whale Coachella. Tons of whales, breaching, fluking, spouting—all the whale greatest hits—right next to the ship. The crew made everyone under sixteen wear a life jacket, except that none of the ones they had taken out would zip over my chest. I decided I was close enough to sixteen to skip it and could probably tread water long enough for some whale watcher to spot me if I went overboard, but the first mate disagreed. He found me a skanky old jacket that might have fit an actual whale, and the captain didn’t start the tour until I was strapped into it. The thing was so oversized that I would have floated right out of it and been strangled by the straps if the Dolphinia IV hit an iceberg.
So my boobs weren’t only annoying and embarrassing; they might have actually gotten me killed. I stood at the railing pissed the whole time, not oohing and aahing over the whales. Not giggling when a spray of the Atlantic sprinkled everyone’s cameras. Not feeling profoundly guilty when the guide told us about the danger global climate change poses to these most ancient and majestic mammals. I just stood there feeling angry. Angry at the Coast Guard for making stupid rules. Angry at the captain for enforcing them. Angry at the life jackets. Angry at Tyler for wearing one that fit. Angry at the damn whales for showing off, for not giving a shit about how ridiculously big and dumb-looking they were, just jumping and splashing and having a ball.
But mostly, angry at me.
Angry at
them.
I’m not even smiling in the photo of me and Tyler that’s got a whale hula-hooping in the background.
And now I feel angry like that.
I am still holding one of Melinda Oates’s perfect mountaintop scones, and I chuck it as hard as I can at the locker across from mine. It explodes into a billion crumbs and leaves a violet streak down the door. And I burn inside my parka as I walk alone to math.
CHAPTER 65
We’re playing Ironwood, a tough team, and we’re down two of our strongest players. It’s the last game of the season, and Coach asked Jessa to play with varsity, which is a great opportunity for her but not so great for us. Sylvie’s got mono, but she’s come to watch, sitting with the varsity girls. This leaves Nasrah, me, and Kate Wood to hold things together. We can’t afford to lose any of us. There was a game two weeks ago that would have made Misty May-Treanor proud. Today we’ll be lucky if we don’t get destroyed.
The gym is packed. All the parents and friends who skipped the rest of the season came to this one. Plus basketball finished yesterday, and we are the only sport still going. Rafael and Maggie are sitting two rows ahead of Mom, Dad, and Tyler. Max and some of his friends are here, but no Jackson, of course. A ton of people in purple are here for Ironwood.
Warming up, I am determined to stay focused, but I keep replaying the conversation this morning with Jackson, especially the part about hiding under a sweatshirt. He has no idea. It must be easy to be Jackson.
I pull at my jersey, miss the rotation in the warmup drill, and get knocked in the head with a ball. So much for staying focused. Jessa’s off the court with the varsity players, but she gives me a what-was-that kind of face I haven’t seen in a while.
I’m glad I’m not on the other side of the net, where the Ironwood coach can’t stop screaming at his players. At one point, he grabs the water bottle out of a girl’s hand and squirts it in her face. “Did I say to take a water break?”
We tak
e our places on the court. I’m going to stay focused, I remind myself, even though I’m not used to seeing the gym this full. I scan the bleachers. There are tons of people I would not expect to see at a game. It looks like the whole school. Kids from the musical. Most of the baseball team. Soccer players, with a varsity player’s number written on their cheeks. Kids I’ve known since we were little. Kids I barely know at all. Griffin Townsend. Elliana the German class stalker. The whole Vang side and the whole Ellis side of Khloe’s family. Mr. Feiler. Natalie and Tahlia with a big group. Kurtis and Omar. Nella. A part of me wishes I was the one with mono. But I am part of this team, and I am determined to play like Jessa always plays: all in. I adjust my jersey again.
The game should be starting but the coaches’ meeting with the referee is taking longer than usual. Standing out here not playing gets everybody more jittery, but the coaches are disagreeing about something.
The ref steps out and says, “There is a uniform challenge against Kennedy High. There will be a five-minute courtesy delay.”
Coach Reinhold steps onto the court, looking ninety shades of furious, and I assume that she’s coming to tell Nasrah that she has to lose the neon-pink shoelaces, because that happened once before. But Coach passes Nasrah and grabs me by the elbow. She pulls me off the court, and now the entire gym is interested.
She’s holding a binder that Ironman brought with him—about nine thousand pages of rules and regulations from the State High School Athletic Commission.
“Walsh, I’m sorry, but he’s challenging the legality of your jersey.” She says it softly, so no one else can hear, but even at a near whisper, I can hear how upset she is.
She shows me the page in the book that lists all the rules—how many inches the letters can be, how many contrasting colors can be where, how long the shirts have to be. There are dozens of very specific things to complain about, probably put together by a team of people with personalities as lovable as that Ironwood coach’s. Most people hardly notice the changes we made to make my uniform fit, but the other coach is very concerned about my top.
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