Skin

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Text copyright © 2013 by Donna Jo Napoli
All rights reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Request for permission should be addressed to:

Amazon Publishing
Attn: Amazon Children’s Publishing
P.O. Box 400818
Las Vegas, NV 89140
www.amazon.com/amazonchildrenspublishing

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data TK

ISBN-13: 9781477817216 (hardcover)
ISBN-10: 1477817212 (hardcover)
ISBN-13: 9781477867211 (eBook)
ISBN-10: 147786721X (eBook)

Book design by Abby Kuperstock
Editor: Melanie Kroupa

First edition
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Noam, sine qua non.

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Acknowledgments

MY LIPS ARE WHITE.

This can’t be happening. The first day of school? People have panic dreams about this sort of thing, but they don’t really happen. Giant zits happen. Bad hair happens. White lips—nuh uh, no way.

I rub the sleep from my eyes. I wash my face and brush my teeth and part my hair and clip it. One clip on each side right above my ears. I look ready. Almost…

My lips are still white.

Yesterday—when totally no one but my family saw me—my lips were, well, lip-colored. That’s what they were all day. That’s what they were last night.

Now, here in the bathroom, looking in the mirror, on a morning when everyone will see me, they are white. White.

I touch them. They feel like they’ve always felt. And nothing comes off on my fingers. It is not white powder or white chalk or anything like that. It is not a magic light-bulb, or the rest of me would look weird, too. My brother Dante did not play some trick on me in the night.

It’s not a bad trip, because I don’t do drugs.

And it is not a dream. I’m completely awake. I smell breakfast. Unmistakable. Dad is making Dutch pancake—one big giant thing that fills a twelve-inch diameter iron frying pan and rises up like half a beach ball, then falls when he takes it out of the oven. But falling is what it’s supposed to do. It’s delicious.

I drop my head and inspect my feet. I cut my toenails last night and scrubbed away the green stains from walking barefoot in the grass this summer. My feet are ready. I’m dressed, so I can’t check the rest of me, but I know I’m ready. Let my face be ready. Please.

I look at the mirror again. White lips. Mirrors don’t lie: my lips are white.

I am not a white girl. That is, I am a white girl, or sort of. I’m a Mediterranean mutt, but mostly Italian, which means I get classified as Caucasian on forms that ask for race. Last year, Owen said we should all just write human
for race. So at the start of tenth grade, a bunch of us put human on the health form. Mr. Eberly, the head counselor, made us all change it.

Whatever. I am Caucasian. Italian style. I have a Roman nose, like my grandfather Nonno. And thick lips, and big cheeks. My skin is deep olive-brown by the end of summer, and it is now the end of summer; the first day of school makes that official, regardless of the calendar. Even in the middle of winter, though, I am not white. I become a kind of pale green. Sort of sickly looking. But not white.

Besides, even white girls—peaches and cream girls—don’t have white lips.

Am I delusional? The first day of school and I’ve lost my mind. Perfect.

“Slut, get out of the bathroom.”

That’s Dante. His latest joy seems to be calling me slut. I am as far from a slut as anyone gets. Even my best friend Devin has kissed more boys than me. But Dante calls me it for three reasons. One, he thinks he’s a riot. Two, he’s proud he’s finally found a nickname for me that trumps the one I have for him—which is Squirt. Three, he knows I hate it. I want to punch him. But I’m not a puncher.

“That’s it, Slut. I’m coming in.”

I have barely enough time to put my palm over my mouth before Dante barges in.

I rush out as he’s lifting the toilet seat with one hand and blowing his nose into the other. My brother is so nasty. It is astoundingly unfair that my totally unpoetic brother got the name Dante.

And I got Giuseppina. There’s no excuse for my parents naming me that. I mean, they’re not complete morons.

There is no nice nickname for Giuseppina. You can’t take the first syllable because that would sound like you were calling me Jew. You can’t take the last two syllables (even though my parents do) because that sounds too much like
penis
. People laugh when they hear my parents call me that.

Anyway, I go by Sep, which is as close to the center of my name as it can be. But I pronounce it with a Z at the start. Kids think it’s okay. Very few people know my real name. Devin and Owen do, of course. They know just about everything about me. But I can’t think who else does, outside my family. I’m careful to write a note to every teacher every fall asking them please never to use my full name in class.

So, my name sucks.

And now I have white lips.

When I am twenty-one I can change my name.

But these white lips can’t wait that long.

“LOOK AT ME.”

Mamma puts her papers in her tote and searches around the floor of her study. Well, this is not strictly her study. It is also the laundry room. Mamma likes to give people the impression she does a lot of housework. The truth is, we all take turns on the laundry. But in our town a lot of women don’t work, so Mamma has various defensive tactics.