Thirteen Plus One (5 page)

But did I want to
be
her?

“She doesn’t really seem happy,” I confessed.

Sandra tipped her cup so that the mangled end of her straw pointed at me. “See?”

“Uh ... no.”

“Well, don’t sweat it. Anyway, I might have been wrong.”

“What?! ”

“Shocking, I know. But it’s
possible
that when I gave you my whole ‘outgrowing’ advice, I might have been in a weird place personally. Or I might have been just plain wrong. So, um ... I take it back.”

“Sandra!” I exclaimed. “You can’t take back
advice.
Not from three years ago. Not when I already followed it!”

“Well, sorry. But now that I’m a senior, now that I’m about to graduate ... ” She turned up her palms. “I can’t help it, Win. It makes me realize how little time we have with each other.”

“Who? You and me?”

“
Every
body,” she said. “Listen. I’m not saying go back and make things work with Amanda. Or
do
if you want to. Unless it’s impossible. Sometimes people go their own ways, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

“Gee,” I said. “How ... uplifting.”

“But if you
can
do something to save a friendship, then you
have
to. Like with Dinah and Cinnamon, because I know how much y’all love each other.”

“True dat,” I murmured, unthinkingly echoing Cinnamon. Even when they bugged me, I loved them. I loved how Cinnamon was always willing to sacrifice her dignity for me, like Saturday at the mall when I was having pee issues. The ladies room was so crowded that when my turn finally came around, my pee wouldn’t come out. I froze, knowing that so many people were outside waiting ... and worse,
listening
. Cinnamon knew I was incapable of peeing in front of an audience. So what did she do? Out of nowhere and totally randomly, she belted out “All the Single Ladies” at the top of her voice, all three verses. How could I not love a friend with that kind of nerve?

And Dinah, I loved how she always always
always
tried to be a good person. It was part of her very core. That same day at the mall? We were in Macy’s juniors department checking out swimsuits—summer was coming, after all—and all of a sudden, Cinnamon and I looked around and couldn’t find Dinah.

“Where’d she go?” Cinnamon had asked, baffled.

Turned out she’d spotted a little old lady in the accessories section, struggling to get down a purse that was out of her reach. So Dinah hurried over to help, of course. After that the little old lady wanted to take a peek at “that darling purple and green sequined clutch, you sweet girl,” and after
that
, there were multiple perfumes to be spritzed and sniffed, and somehow Dinah ended up serving as the little old lady’s personal shopper for the next half hour.

“What?” she said to me and Cinnamon when we finally marched over and reclaimed her. “She was vertically challenged! And plus her fingers were like gnarled twigs. She couldn’t push down the perfume thingies. And anyway, we’re going to be old one day. Don’t we want people to help us?”

We did. And if we were helped by someone as kind as Dinah, we’d be the luckiest old ladies in the world.

Sandra took a draw of her smoothie. “You shouldn’t let yourself outgrow someone unless you absolutely can’t help it.”

In theory, I agreed with her. But to not “let” yourself outgrow someone, wasn’t that like ... like muzzling a dog so it couldn’t bark, or binding a Chinese girl’s feet to make them stay small forever?

Sandra trained her blue eyes on me. “Okay, Win?” she said. “I mean it. Don’t let your friends slip away.”

At that, a great hole of longing opened inside me, because I didn’t
want
Cinnamon and Dinah to slip away. I would miss them so much. I wouldn’t know who I was without them!

I flopped my forearms on the table and bonked my head on the wood.
Bonk bonk bonk.
The last bonk was harder than I intended.
“Ouch.”

Sandra snort-laughed.

“Don’t laugh at me,” I told her.

“Don’t bonk your head on the table,” she said. “Self-bonking will get you nowhere.”

I giggled, because “self-bonking” sounded funny. It sounded
dirty
. Sandra giggled, too. We noticed a woman frowning from a nearby table, and our giggling got worse.

“Self-bonker,”
Sandra whispered.

I threw my balled-up straw wrapper at her, and in an amazing, never-to-be-repeated show of skill, she leaped for it and caught it—
in her mouth.

“Holy pickles,” I marveled.

She smiled. She swallowed.

“Yummy,” she said.

She was amazing, my sister. And even though she’d made me feel worse—taking back the advice she’d given me three years ago, suggesting that my friends could slip away if I wasn’t careful—she somehow made me feel better, too. Such was the mystery of Sandra.

When we left, I gave a small smile and even smaller wave to the frowning woman. Just a hand-raise, really.
We
are silly, I know. You might have been silly once. Were you?

She pursed her lips. Then her scowl loosened, and she smiled back, revealing a smudge of bright red lipstick on her teeth.

On the ride home, we talked some more. Only this time, we didn’t look at each other. Sandra kept her eyes on the road, while I leaned back against the headrest, closed my eyes, and let my hair whip around my face. I loved the sensation of wind blowing over me all crazy. Mom hated it, and when she drove, she insisted on having the windows up. But Sandra was a windows-down girl, all the way.

It wasn’t a long drive from Smoothie King to our house. Still, we covered a fair amount of territory:

Was Sandra excited to be graduating?

Yup.

Was she scared to be graduating?

Yup again.

Did she ever secretly think about going to Georgia Tech so she could stay in Atlanta and live at home?

“Hell
no” was her answer to that one. She thwapped my shoulder, making my eyes fly open.

“And don’t you, either,” she told me. “I know you’re only in eighth grade, but next year, you’ll be a freshman. And after that,
pfff”
She sliced her hand through the air. “It goes quick, Winnie. Enjoy it, gobble it up—but when it’s time for you to go?
Go
.”

“I will, I will,” I said.

She looked at me hard. “I mean it. Atlanta isn’t the whole world. And Dinah and Cinnamon—and Lars—they aren’t the only people in the world.”

“Ag!
You are so annoying! First you tell me, ‘Don’t let your friends slip away,’ and now you’re saying, ‘Go! Go! Your friends aren’t the only friends in the world! ”’

Sandra opened her mouth, then closed it.

“Ha,” I said.

“But here is the way you need to put those two ideas together,” she said, rallying. She glanced at me. “You ready?”

“I’m ready.”

“Okay ... well ... they’re both true. Don’t give away what you have, but don’t let what you have be all you ever have. Make sense?”

“Like in that Girl Scout song? Make new friends, but keep the old?”

She knew she was being teased. But she went with it.

“Yes,” she replied. “One is silver”—she paused, lifted a finger from the steering wheel—“the other, gold.”

“You should use that for your senior quote,” I said, referring to Westminster’s tradition of having all the seniors choose a special quote to go under their name in the yearbook. Sandra made fun of people who picked cheesy quotes, like “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never get there.” I made fun of those people, too, mainly to be like her. But sometimes I secretly liked those cheesy quotes.

“Maybe I will,” she said.

“Excellent.”

We drove up the steep, curvy hill that led to our house.

“I was never planning on letting Dinah and Cinnamon slip away,” I said.

“I know,” Sandra said.

“I just want to make things better,” I went on, my words barely audible over the rush of the wind. Maybe Sandra didn’t even hear. “And then they wouldn’t be sad. And then
I
wouldn’t be sad.”

“You can’t fix other people’s problems,” Sandra said.

I faced her. “Why not?”

“It doesn’t work that way, that’s all.”

I turned away. I watched the trees go by, and the big, stately homes, none of them all that different from ours. Except ours was
ours ...
and yet in just a few months, Sandra would be moving out. In just a few years, I’d move out, too.

No
, I thought fiercely. I wasn’t going to dwell on the future when the present was right here in front of me—and when without even meaning to
I was having a deep moment with my sister
, whom I loved so much. That was one of the things on my To-Do list, and here I was doing it.

“Hey, Sandra,” I said. “Can I tell you something?”

“Isn’t that what you’ve been doing for the last hour and a half?”

I made a face.

“Kidding.” She turned into our driveway, parked, and killed the motor. “You can tell me anything. What?”

All of a sudden, I felt embarrassed. I wanted to break our eye contact, but I didn’t let myself.

“I like it when you’re nice to me,” I said.

She blushed. I did, too.

“You’re my little sister,” she said.

“I know. But sometimes ...” I paused. “Well. You know.”

Sandra looked away. Not me. She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. “As soon as September rolls around, I won’t be here anymore.”

A lump formed in my throat, because there was so much I was feeling. Like how nothing would be the same without her. Like how, when she was gone,
I’d
be the big sister. I’d be the one Ty, and one day Maggie, would come to for advice. The one who would supposedly have all the answers.

Look at me,
I willed her with my mind.

She did. And she said, simply, “I’ll miss you.”

Oh God, I was going to cry.
I might
cry,
and crying was so not Sandra, and her expression would grow wary, and—

Oh, who cared.

“Me too,” I said, my voice thick with tears. “But I’ll come visit you. Tons and tons, wherever you end up going to college. And every weekend, there I’ll be! Sleeping in your dorm room, eating everything in your mini-fridge, wearing your clothes.” I sniffled. “Won’t that be
so great?”

“Fat chance,” said Sandra, her glance so withering that it could turn a plum into an instant prune.

I grinned wobbily. I liked the oddly nice graduating-senior Sandra, but the truth was, I liked sour Sandra, too.

Do Something Scary

O
N THE FIRST MONDAY OF APRIL, I found Dinah in the library with weird Mary. I’d gone looking for Dinah specifically, I needed to talk to her, and yet there she was deep in conversation with Mary again. Mary was speaking urgently, just like the other time, while Dinah gnawed on her lip, also like that other time.

“Dinah?” I said.

She jumped and looked guilty.

Mary glared at me—no complimenting my outfit this time—then shoved up from the table and scuttled away like a rat.

“What is going
on
with you two?” I asked Dinah.

Dinah didn’t answer. She pulled a piece of her hair to her mouth, and I looked at her, like,
Really? You haven’t chewed on your hair since elementary school, and now you’re starting back up?

I reached out to bat her hand away. She twisted to avoid me.

“Quit it,” Dinah said. “You don’t own me.”

“Who said I wanted to own you?” I said. “You just shouldn’t chew on your hair. It’s gross.”

Her eyes flashed. She deliberately brought her hair back to her mouth, and when she drew it out, the individual strands formed a single wet point.

“Gross,” I said again.

“You have bad habits, too, you know,” she pointed out.

I cocked my head. What was going on here? Was Dinah mad at me?

“Why won’t you tell me what Mary’s deal is?” I asked.

“Because Mary doesn’t have a ‘deal.’”

“Um, obviously she does.”

“Winnie? Drop it.”

Her tone was sharp, and heat rose in my cheeks.

“Fine,” I said.

“Fine,” she said.

I started to say it again—
Fine!
—then shut my mouth, spun on my heel, and walked away.

Normally in a situation like this, I’d hunt down Cinnamon, who would listen as I vented and then say something funny that would make me feel better, and make me realize I was maybe, possibly overreacting, too.

But hunting down Cinnamon wasn’t an option, because Cinnamon was on my bad list—which, ironically, was why I’d come searching for Dinah.

There were many things I loved about Cinnamon. For one, she was extremely amusing. Forks in the hair, deadpan comments to my nemesis, Gail, about Gail’s favorite perfume being made from fish oil, that sort of thing. Also, Cinnamon took crap from no one. As she and I headed to choir today, for example, we happened to cross paths with a guy named Chris. Chris was a jock, and arrogant, and today was wearing a camouflage shirt that said, LICENSE TO HUNT ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS.

I wanted to say something about how obnoxious it was, but Chris has a buzz cut, and he intimidated me, so I kept my mouth shut. Cinnamon, however, marched up, flicked his chest, and said, “That shirt is racist, dude.”

Did Chris care? Unlikely, but at least she had the guts to tell him.

Cinnamon wasn’t perfect by any stretch, however. Like the “boy hater” phase she simply couldn’t let go of, and which I was totally, completely, one hundred percent over.

I did not need Cinnamon dragging me away every time we spotted Lars with Bryce.

I did not need to hear her revenge fantasies, which she’d stolen from
Black Widow
and involved malice-filled utterances like, “She mates, then she kills.”