Twelve (14 page)

“What's this?” I said. On the cover was a boy with a pair of binoculars.

“Read it and you'll see,” Sandra said. “Boys
do
have to go through stuff, just not periods and boobs.”

“You mean . . .” The word
hard-on
floated into my brain, but I wasn't prepared to speak it. I'd heard of hard-ons, but I didn't really know what they involved.

“Just read it,” Sandra said. She went back to her computer. “Now go away. I want to finish IM-ing.”

I took Sandra's book and waddled back to my room.

“Oh, and congratulations on being a woman!” she called out, loud enough for the entire universe to hear.

Then Again, Maybe I Won't
was an eye-opener. It was as shocking as
Wifey,
if not more so, and surprise surprise, it was written by the same author, Judy Blume. She wrote embarrassing-yet-utterly-fascinating books for kids
and
grown-ups. Wowzers.

In it, a boy named Tony lived across the street from a girl named Lisa, and in the evening, sometimes, he could see her getting undressed. He knew he shouldn't watch, but he did. And he felt really guilty about it, but also really excited, and it made this crazy thing happen to his . . . boy-part. And the crazy thing that happened was called an erection.

That's what a hard-on was. An erection. The boy-part actually did get hard and, I guess,
erect
.

I imagined being a boy and getting erections, and I decided that okay, maybe that
was
as bad as getting your period. Maybe worse, because apparently it could happen anytime. And if somebody was looking, well, too bad. It wasn't something you could hide, even through your pants.

I read the rest of the novel in one long marathon sitting, and when I finished, I was a changed person. Or woman. Whatever. And the whole experience made me grouchy.

I stomped back to Sandra's room and smacked the book down on the bed.

“Here,” I said.

“That was quick,” she said. She was still on the computer, because Saturdays were like that, with everybody doing their own thing. “Next you should read
Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret
.”

“Is it by Judy Blume, too?”

“Uh-huh. It's about a girl who does all these exercises to develop her bust.”

“Sheesh,” I said. “Who
is
this woman? Is she obsessed with every single humiliating thing that can happen to a kid?”

“Basically, yeah.” She turned toward me. “When you're older, you can read
Forever,
which is about two kids having sex for the first time.”

Whoa.
Too much, too much.
And I didn't think Sandra should call it “having sex.” She should call it “making love.”

“I'm leaving now,” I said, backing out of her room.

“'Kay, see you,” she said. “Hey—have you changed your pad?”

I guess my face betrayed me, because she said, “You have to change it, Winnie. Every three to four hours, otherwise it could start to smell.”

My thighs clamped involuntarily together. “Ewww! That is just
wrong
!”

“Chill,” Sandra said. “It's just biology.”

“It's
insane,
” I said.

Sandra laughed, because she could. She wasn't the one with a yacht between her legs. “Ain't it the truth.”

At school on Monday, I saw the world through Judy Blume eyes. Ms. Duncan: period. Mr. Gossett: erection. Period, period, erection, erection. Period, erection, period. I confessed to Dinah that I was turning into a pervert.

“You were already a pervert,” Dinah said, giggling. I swatted her.

“You'll understand when you get
your
period,” I said. “Then you won't be laughing.”

“I know—that's why I'm laughing now.” She squeezed my arm. “Winnie, what am I going to do when I
do
get it? Can you imagine telling something like that to my dad?”

Yikes, that's right. She'd have to tell her dad, because he'd be the only one around to tell. I hadn't thought about that.

“I'll help you,” I said. “And you should, like, go ahead and get some pads now, to keep under your sink.”

“You'll have to come with me,” she said. “I don't know what kind to get. I don't even like going down that aisle!”

“We'll get Sandra to take us,” I said. “Just be warned: she's going to try to talk you into tampons.”

Dinah looked appalled. I laughed.

Cinnamon plopped down beside us on the concrete steps. She'd just come from history; her big old textbook was weighing down her backpack.

“What's up?” she asked.

I bit my lip, then leaned in close. “I got my period.”

“Oh, man,” she said. “You have it right now? This very second?”

“Uh-huh.” I kept my legs close together, my arms wrapped around my knees.

She whistled, like
boy, that's tough
. She turned to Dinah. “Have you gotten yours?”

Dinah shook her head.

“Me neither,” Cinnamon said.

“For real?” I said.

“For real. My mom didn't get hers until she was fourteen, so I'll probably be late, too.”

Dinah didn't say anything, but I knew what she was thinking. She didn't know when her mom got hers.

“So what's it like?” Cinnamon asked me.

“No fun,” I said. “It's like, I keep thinking it'll be gone, but it's not. Sandra says it'll last five days, so I've got two more to go.”

“Does it hurt?”

“I'm pretty crampy,” I admitted. “In fact, I need to go to the bathroom before next period starts.”

“Next
period,
” Cinnamon said. “Ha.”

I got to my feet, and Cinnamon and Dinah rose with me. Wherever I went, they would go, too, and that made me so glad.

“Am I okay?” I said to Dinah. I kept walking so she could check my jeans.

“You're fine,” she said.

She and Cinnamon escorted me to the bathroom, where I changed my pad and put the old one in the little trash box attached to the side of the stall. I wrapped it up in toilet paper, the way Sandra told me to. Then I flushed and came out.

“Everything good?” Cinnamon asked.

“Everything good,” I said.

In the hall, kids jostled and chatted. It was a mass of humanity, everyone with their own weird and particular body.
Biology,
Sandra had said.

Out of the throng, one especially gorgeous body emerged. Lars, with his jaunty stride and messy hair. Lars, who was a boy and had . . . boy-parts. He walked beside Matt, his books tucked under his arm, joking and laughing and not yet noticing me with all the people between us.

My pulse quickened. I liked Lars—a lot. And when I talked to him, I seemed to turn into a me that was somehow not so stupid as I'd have expected. I made jokes. I acted confident. Sometimes I was witty.

Last year, I'd liked a boy named Toby Rinehart, who was really good at drawing airplanes. I thought of Toby fondly, but he went to Woodward now. He'd be drawing airplanes to impress other girls, if he still drew airplanes at all. Maybe drawing airplanes was more of a sixth-grade thing to do.

I'd thought, at one time, that maybe Toby was my Bo. But Toby was simply someone from my past, back when we were young.

Was Lars my Bo? I could see us having doughnut-eating contests, like Bo and Sandra. And Lars would watch
Oprah
with us and make smart-aleck remarks. I could see him being that kind of guy. Bo and Sandra could sit on one sofa, and Lars and I would sit on the other, and Bo and Lars would talk back to the TV while Sandra and I slugged them and told them to hush.

Stop
, I told myself in my head. Just because I liked Lars didn't mean Lars liked me. I was crazy to let my mind go off like that, especially as our paths were getting nearer every second to crossing.

I pressed my spine abruptly against a locker. “Hide me,” I begged.

“Why?” Dinah said. “Don't you want—”

Cinnamon yanked hard on Dinah's arm, pulling her in front of me.

“So,” she said loudly, her body and Dinah's forming a shield. “Did you see the caftan thingie Mrs. Potter was wearing?”

“What caftan thingie?” Dinah said. “I was just in her class—she wasn't wearing a caftan!”

Cinnamon stepped on Dinah's toe.

“Oh!” Dinah said. “
That
caftan! The one she changed into for Dress Like a Poet Day!”

Lars passed, oblivious. I watched his jeans saunter by through a crack between Cinnamon and Dinah. He had an extremely appealing rear.

When he was officially gone, I came out of hiding.

“‘Dress Like a Poet Day'?” I said.

Cinnamon giggled. We
all
giggled, even Dinah, who at first tried to maintain her composure.

“Shut up,” she said. “Anyway, it's your fault. Why didn't you want Lars to see you?”

“Because of her . . .
you know
,” Cinnamon said. “Right?”

“Uh-huh,” I said, feeling both stupid and relieved. I didn't want to be a child, and I didn't want to be a woman, and sometimes I just didn't know how to be in between.

By Wednesday my bleeding had grown light, and it was dark brown instead of red. “Panty-liner time,” Sandra told me. Panty liners were better than pads, but they were still a pain in the butt.

A pain in the
butt
. Hee hee. Cinnamon would appreciate that one.

By Thursday, my period was gone. By Friday, I actually believed it was gone, and I wore pale blue sweatpants to celebrate. At school I resolved to plant myself in a spot where Lars was likely to run into me, knowing that even if he didn't, I'd for sure encounter him in French. And I'd talk to him this time. I wouldn't hide like a scared puppy. I'd be witty and sparkling and
normal,
and I'd put this craziness called biology behind me.

Until next month.

December

CINNAMON HAD AN OLDER BROTHER named Carl who was a sophomore at the University of North Carolina. During Christmas break, Carl drove back to Atlanta and sold Christmas trees at Sam's Tree Lot. He lived in a trailer at the front of the lot, and he even spent his nights there, so that no one would take off with the trees.

“Who would steal a Christmas tree?” I asked Cinnamon when she was telling us all this.

“You'd be surprised,” she said.

She also told us that Sam, the owner, was actually a man named Halim Palaniyappan, from India. He picked the name Sam because it sounded less ethnic.

Cinnamon and Dinah and I liked to hang out at Sam's Tree Lot after school, because it felt like a secret hideaway. Carl kept a space heater plugged into the trailer for warmth, and he had a Bunsen burner for making hot chocolate. We'd sit with our steaming mugs and breathe in the smell of pine. And we'd talk. Today, Dinah was ranting about Alex Plotkin.

“He does a
countdown,
” she wailed. “It's so disgusting! Mr. Erikson will leave the room to go get copies or something, and the next thing you know Alex is back there going, ‘Ten, nine, eight, seven...' ”

“And then he
farts
?” Cinnamon said. “He can do that? On demand?”

“Apparently,” Dinah said. “Then the whole class cracks up, which of course encourages him even more. I'm like, ‘Could you
please
grow up?' ”

“You're just embarrassed because you used to have a crush on him,” I teased.

Dinah turned pink. “I did not! Winnie, you take that back this instant!”

“You did so,” I said. “Don't try to deny it.” I turned to Cinnamon. “He asked her to go with him, and she said yes.”

“Yeah, but Winnie skated with him at our fifth-grade skating party,” Dinah shot back. “She asked him for girls' pick.”

I couldn't believe she remembered that.

“It was under duress,” I protested. “There is a very rational explanation, which is that Mrs. Jacobs asked me to. She practically
ordered
me to. I was doing an act of kindness.”

“Your teacher told you who to ask for girls' pick?” Cinnamon said.

“She felt sorry for him,” I said.

“Uh-huh,” said Cinnamon. She looked amused. “And you're such a good girl, you said, ‘Yes, ma'am,' and did exactly what she wanted.”

“Uh . . . pretty much.”

“
See,
” Dinah said, as if she'd won the point.

“See what?” I countered.

Cinnamon laughed. She pushed herself up to look out the trailer window, then dropped back down.

“Any customers?” I asked.

“Just that same lady Carl's been helping for the last fifteen minutes,” she said. “Buy a tree, lady. Just pick one.”

Dinah grabbed a doughnut from the box we'd picked up at 7-Eleven. They were the miniature white powdered kind, and when she took a bite, her bottom lip got dusty. “Any-way, he's going by ‘Critter' now.”

“Who, Alex Plotkin?” I said.

“He's calling himself
Critter
?” Cinnamon said.

“He's telling people it's his nickname,” Dinah said.

“Is it?” Cinnamon asked.

“No,” Dinah and I said together.

“That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard,” Cinnamon pronounced. She could be forceful in her opinions, and they weren't always nice. “You can't come up with your own nickname. That just brands you as a loser.” She shook her head. “Why
Critter?
”