Thirteen (15 page)

“It's not a costume,” I said.

“Oh yes it is!”

Two seventh graders walked by, being totally un-subtle as they gawked at me.

“See, I told you!” said one of them to the other.

“Leave!” Cinnamon said to them, clapping her hands and making them jump. “Show's over! Nothing here to see!”

“Does this have something to do with…what we talked about last night?” Dinah asked me.

Cinnamon looked from her to me. “Oh. My.
God
.”

“What?” I said. Had she figured it out? Did I want her to figure it out?

“You're trying to prove some point about what a bitch I am for making Dinah feel bad, aren't you? Although how being Ugly Girl is supposed to do that is beyond me!”

I turned to Dinah. “You told her?”

“I never said you were a…
bitch
,” Dinah said. She whispered the last word. It might have been the first time in her life she'd ever said it.

“But…you
were
being a jerk,” I said. The words came out of my mouth. They did. I stood a little taller.

“Please, I'm begging you,” Cinnamon said to me, making praying hands. “I've learned my lesson! I will be a better person from now on! I will feed the hungry and clothe the poor—just for God's sake do something about your hair!”

I got the giggles.

“You take one arm, I'll take the other,” Cinnamon instructed Dinah.

“What? No!”

They didn't listen. They dragged me to the bathroom, where Cinnamon tugged off my hat and threw it in the trash.

“Hey!”

“We need to get her head under the faucet,” Cinnamon said. “I know hand soap's not the best shampoo, but it's better than nothing.”

“I've got a brush in my backpack,” Dinah said.

They faced me.

“Now,” Cinnamon said firmly. “Are we doing this the hard way or the easy way?”

They were deadly serious, that much was clear. And my bangs truly were greasy beyond belief. The bathroom mirror didn't lie.

“Fine,” I said. “But the outfit stays.”

“Oh no it doesn't,” Cinnamon said. “We can go to lost and found. There has to be something you can change into.”

“Deal with it, Cin-Cin,” I said, and the beautiful thing was, I meant it. “I'm keeping the whales.”

W
INNIE, YOUR MOM HAS A POOCH,”
Cinnamon said. It was after lunch, and we were heading from the parking lot to the junior high building. Mom had just delivered my history paper on the Emancipation Proclamation, which I'd left at home even though today was its due date.

“Never again,” Mom had said, handing it to me with a frown.

“I know, I know,” I'd replied. “Thank you
so
much!” I never intended to leave my history papers at home—or my science reports or math homework or source materials for English—but sometimes it just happened. Well, okay, often. Often it just happened. And every time, Mom would bring it to me, whatever it was. And every time, she said
never again
.

I loved my mom. She was the best.

“It's not a pooch,” I said to Cinnamon. “It's a bump.”

“It's not a bump. It's a baby!” Dinah said.

“Really?” Cinnamon said, laying it on thick. “You mean she's not just becoming a porker? Oh, thank God!”

“Actually, she
is
becoming a porker,” I said. “The lady likes her doughnuts, I tell you.”

Dinah shoved me. “Don't be mean.”

“I'm not being mean! Who's being mean? Mom sends Dad out for Krispy Kremes practically every night, but do you see me complaining?”

“No, we do not,” Cinnamon said.

“That's right. I love the Krispy Kreme.”

Dinah giggled. “I love the” was our new catchphrase, stolen from Bryce, who at a party over the weekend had announced that he “loved the cashew.” He'd popped a handful into his mouth, smacked his lips, and said it just like that: “Man, I love the cashew.”

“Don't you be making fun of my Brycie,” Cinnamon threatened.

We got to the junior high, and I sat on a stone bench outside the building. “I'm not! I'm not! Geez, why is everyone getting all over me today?”

“‘
My Brycie
,'” Dinah repeated. She dropped down next to me. “Did you hear that? She called him ‘My Brycie.'”

“I know. She loves the Brycie.”

Cinnamon smacked me.

“Hey!” I protested. It wasn't as if I were spilling some great secret, after all. Cinnamon and Bryce hung out almost every day after lunch, and they usually spent at least one weekend night together, too. They didn't spend their time just talking, either. In terms of fooling around, they'd already gone farther than Lars and I had. It was obvious that Cinnamon loved the Brycie…but did the Brycie love her? They'd only been going out for three weeks. How could she be sure after such a short time?

“So when does your mom have her ultrasound?” Dinah asked. Dinah couldn't wait to find out whether Mom was having a girl or a boy. Neither could I.

“November seventeenth, two days after Becca's bat mitzvah,” I said.

“Ooo, goodie,” Dinah said. “I can't wait!”

“I still haven't gotten my invitation,” Cinnamon said darkly, meaning to Becca's bat mitzvah, not Mom's ultrasound. “You have and Winnie has and even Bryce has. Why haven't I?”

“Dude,” I said. “The fact that Becca invited Bryce means that of course she invited you. So chill.” My invitation had come in the mail on Friday, and it was like a wedding invitation, it was so fancy. Creamy linen paper, swirly lettering, Becca's name embossed in gold. Lars received his the next day, and he was bewildered until I told him who Becca was: a girl in my grade who I wasn't really friends with, but who was inviting every single person in our class to her bat mitzvah, plus extras. I explained to Lars that Becca was inviting him as my date.

“Huh,” he'd said. He didn't seem convinced that this was a good thing.

“You'll need to get her a gift,” I told him, plucking the invitation from his hand and putting it on the counter. I twined my fingers through his and pressed against him.

“I will?”

“Uh-huh. It's to celebrate Becca's thirteenth birthday. That's what a bat mitzvah is.”

“Why is she just now turning thirteen? Did she skip a grade?”

“Becca?” I said, lifting my eyebrows. One of the few Becca memories I had involved Becca asking me during history if Colorado was a country or a state. “Uh, no. She went to kindergarten in Alabama and the cutoff date was later, or something like that. But there'll be dancing, and probably a chocolate fountain, and it'll be absolutely fabulous. So stop making that face!”

“I've never been to a bat mitzvah before,” Cinnamon said now. She squished in beside us on the bench.

“Me, neither,” Dinah said. “Think it'll be like
My Super Sweet Sixteen
?”

“It will, it totally will,” I told them. Louise had gotten the scoop from Becca during PE—Louise was very good that way—then passed it onto me. “Becca's inviting everyone in our entire class, plus the kids from her Hebrew school, plus at least two gorgeous freshmen guys who happen to be dating eighth grade girls.”

“Nudge nudge, wink wink,” Cinnamon said. The bell rang, signaling the end of our free period. “Well, kids…”

“Yep, it's that time,” Dinah said, rising to her feet. A girl with thick bangs and glasses scuttled by, cutting across from the high school, and Dinah called, “Hi, Shannon!”

Shannon looked startled, as she always did. “Hi,” she said. She hugged her geometry book to her chest—she took freshman math even though she was an eighth grader—and kept going.

“Think Shannon's invited?” Cinnamon said in a low voice.

I giggled, although I didn't know why. It wasn't a nice thing to giggle about.

“
Yes
,” Dinah said defensively. She was always one for the underdogs. “If Louise really is inviting everyone, then yes.”

Cinnamon pressed her hands to her thighs and stood up. “Whatev. I'm not worried about Shannon; I'm worried about me. Seriously—what if my invitation
doesn't
come?”

“Relax,” I told her. “It will.”

 

It did, and together the three of us went to the mall to buy dresses for “the biggest social event of the season.” That's what everyone was calling it (I think Louise was the first), and anticipation buzzed like hummingbirds through the junior high. The girls were more excited than the boys, because we got to wear real, live prom-dress-style-dresses, but the guys were excited, too—especially after they heard there'd be food, and lots of it. There weren't a whole lot of Jewish people at Westminster, but Alex Plotkin had been to a family friend's bar mitzvah (the boy equivlaent of a bat mitzvah), and he regaled us with stories of DJs and prizes and a whole room dedicated to dessert.

“Every kind of candy imaginable,” he said. “M&Ms in huge bowls. Snickers in huge bowls. Reese's Cups in huge bowls—and not just the normal Reese's Cups, but the white chocolate ones, too!”

Saturday the fifteenth finally came, and Mom dropped me, Dinah, and Cinnamon off at the Ahavath Achim Synagogue at eleven in the morning. First came the ceremony part of the bat mitzvah, and then, that evening, the party. “It's called paying your dues,” Sandra said, as if she were a bat mitzvah expert. “They stick you with religion and
then
let you have your fun.”

I didn't mind the ceremony, though. The synagogue looked beautiful, all lit with candles and drapey, ornate fabrics, and Becca seemed surprisingly knowledgeable and in control up there in front of us all. She was the one who ran the service, which gave me thrills of sympathetic nervousness. It was kind of like church, with lots of singing and different people standing up to say prayers and stuff, but Becca was the one who announced each segment and told what it was.

Then it was time for her Torah reading, and one of Becca's aunts or second cousins or grandmother's nieces—I never got it straight—leaned over and said, “This is good, girls. We're in the home stretch.”

“Is she going to read it in Hebrew?” Dinah whispered.

“She is,” the relative said. “Oh, I remember my own bat mitzvah, how scared I was!”

I was the one seated closest to her, and she took my hand and squeezed it tightly.

Becca cleared her throat and stepped behind the lectern, where a massive Torah lay open before her. She wore a pale blue sweater set and a brown wool skirt, very ladylike, and I flashed on the incongruous image of her at school last week, smiling wide with something chunky stuck in her braces.

Ancient syllables tumbled from Becca's tongue, rounded, thick, and with a random throat-clearing sound thrown in for good measure. The words sounded mysterious and beautiful. Becca, during those moments, was
more
than Becca, and I found myself wishing I were Jewish…although even as I wished it, I knew I'd never do anything to make it happen. I loved our Christmas crèche with its teensy baby Jesus, which Mom would get out as soon as December first rolled around. I was Christian, not Jewish. And that was cool, too.

When Becca finished the reading, she gave a short speech about it. “My section is from Genesis,” she said. “It's the story of Sarah, wife of Abraham, who was told by an angel that she would give birth to a baby boy when she was ninety years old.”

“I know that story!” I whispered.

“Duh,” Cinnamon said. “The Torah's pretty much the same as the Old Testament, remember?”

“Oh,” I said. I hadn't remembered.

Becca talked about promises and new beginnings and cute little babies, and Dinah patted my leg to mean,
You! You're going to have a baby!

Well, not me, but Mom, which was close enough. I did love that this was what Becca's reading was about, though. Becca's relative had explained to us that the readings were assigned based on the Hebrew calendar, and that the rule in Hebrew School was “You get what you get, and you don't throw a fit.” A kid's assigned section might be full of action, like Noah's Ark, or it might be archaic Hebrew law, like what to do if your oxen has “relations” with someone else's oxen. Ooo, I pitied the kid who had to make a speech about that.

But babies and miracles and the promise of new life? It was lovely. It made me feel special. It's possible Mom wouldn't appreciate being compared to ninety-year-old Sarah, but face it: Mom was old! And she was pregnant. And I was going to have a new baby brother or sister.

(But hopefully—secretly!—a sister? Please please please? I wanted to be a big sister to a new little girl-person, just like Sandra was a big sister to me. Only I'd be nicer. And if we had a third girl, Ty could retain his status as “only boy.” But if we had a boy…well, obviously I'd deal.)

Becca finished her speech, and the president of the temple gave her a pair of candlesticks and her very own Torah. And then the ceremony was over. I sighed in satisfaction. My only regret was that Lars hadn't gotten to experience it, because I was sure he'd have appreciated it. But he'd opted out, along with Bryce. They
weren't
paying their dues—though they fully planned to participate in the evening festivities.

I felt a pang, there in the synagogue, as everyone stood up and burst into animated chatter. A voice whispered in my head,
Are you sure he would have appreciated it? Are you sure he's the person you think he is, and that you're not just making that up in your head?

I pushed those thoughts away. Yes, Lars disappointed me sometimes. So? The key word was “sometimes,” like that day on the quad with Nose-Ring Girl, when he made me look stupid so she would laugh. Or when he paid more attention to Bryce than to me. Or how he seemed to think kissing would make everything better, no matter the problem.

Faith,
I told myself.
Hope. The promise of new life.

In conclusion?

Get over it.

 

The party. Ah, the party. There
was
a DJ, and there
was
a chocolate fountain, and there were stacks of presents and a birdcage full of envelopes, all for Becca.

“Why a birdcage?” Dinah asked, and yet another friendly relative explained that the envelopes most likely held cash or checks, and that keeping track of all that money was a bit much to expect a thirteen-year-old to do. Hence the birdcage.

Becca herself was paraded out on a litter supported by four poles, each of which rested on the shoulders of a Chippendale look-alike costumed in full Egyptian regalia. Becca was decked out in a full-length ivory evening gown, which had nothing to do with Egypt as far as I could tell. Then again, a bat mitzvah had nothing to do with Egypt, either.

“It
is
like
My Super Sweet Sixteen
!” Dinah squealed. “Omigod!”