Twelve (3 page)

“Now,” she said. “Ty, no sword fighting in the house.” She turned to me. “And, Winnie, are you
sure
you want to get your ears pierced? Are you absolutely positive?”

“Mo-o-om,” I said. She couldn't get it through her head that yes, I was sure, and that nothing she could say would change my mind. Not that she hadn't given it her best shot. Over the weekend she'd modeled a fake ear out of Ty's Silly Putty to give me a visual demonstration of what I was in for.

“This is your ear,” she'd said. And it did look remarkably like an ear—even the color was appropriately skin-toned. She used her fingernail to carve out a too-big hole in the lobe, then said, “And this is what will happen if you wear earrings. Your ear will stretch, like this.” She pulled on the lobe, and it stretched like taffy. It became a tribal woman's ear in
National Geographic
. Then the Silly Putty reached its snapping point, and the whole lobe popped off, leaving a mutilated half ear with an unnaturally smooth scar.

“You see?” Mom had said.

Now I took Mom's knife and placed it by the green peppers. I put my hands on her shoulders. “Repeat after me,” I said. “Ear piercing will not lead to disfigurement. Ear piercing is normal and good.”

“Hello?” Sandra said impatiently. “My driver's license?”

Mom sighed. She got a Ziploc bag from the drawer and scraped the peppers into it. She sealed it and put it in the fridge. Then she faced the three of us and said, “Here's what we'll do. We'll go to the mall and get Winnie's ears pierced, and Sandra, you can drive. And afterward we'll stop by the Department of Motor Vehicles. Everybody satisfied?”

“Can I bring my sword?” Ty asked.

“You can bring it in the car, but not into the mall,” Mom declared.

“Deal,” Ty said.

On the way to Lenox Square, I gave Sandra helpful hints about her driving.

“Green light means go,” I said when Sandra was slow to start up at a traffic light. I said it very pleasantly, but Sandra scowled nonetheless.

“Oops, don't hit the pedestrian!” I exclaimed as we passed a man walking his dog.

“He's fifteen feet away!” Sandra protested. “He's on the sidewalk!”

“Crazy driver!” Ty said.

“Winnie and Ty, stop distracting your sister,” Mom scolded. “Driving is very serious business. One wrong turn and you could ruin a life forever.”

“We know, we know, we know,” I said. Earlobes popping off, innocent bystanders getting killed in the blink of an eye—in Mom Land there was disaster lurking around every corner.

“My cousin Laetitia was killed when she was two years old,” Mom said. “Her own father backed over her in his pickup truck.” She twisted around to eye me from the front seat. “Do you think a day goes by when he doesn't wish he could go back in time?”

I'd heard many times about Laetitia, so I didn't bother to respond. I felt extremely sad about Laetitia, and morbidly fascinated as well. Did she cry out? Was it quick? Did her father feel a horrible bump and know immediately that his world had changed?

“Imagine how horrible you would feel if you took a life,” Mom went on. “Or if you maimed someone. Imagine how horrible you would feel if you caused an accident and a ten-year-old boy fell into a coma and never came out. It happens every day!”

“What ten-year-old boy?” Ty asked.

“Okay, Mom, we get the point,” Sandra said. I noticed with interest that she was gripping the steering wheel more tightly than usual.

“
What
ten-year-old boy?” Ty asked again. “Tell that story!”

“Could everybody please stop talking?” Sandra said. “Or I'm going to have a wreck for real!”

“Sandra, if you think you're going to have a wreck, then pull over,” Mom said. “You should never drive when you're incapacitated. Just last week a man had a heart attack in his car and killed four teenagers.”

“Mom!” Sandra complained.

Mom settled into her seat with the air of someone who has spoken the truth, and too bad if it was painful. “You need to be careful, that's all I'm saying.”

On the escalator that led to the second floor of the mall, Mom glanced at her watch and said, “You know, Winnie, while we're here we could take care of some other shopping. It really is time we got you a—”

“La la la la la,” I said to drown her out. “Look! Isn't that a cute bunny, Ty? Isn't that a cute bunny?”

“Time she got a what?” Sandra asked.

Ty regarded me with disdain. “I'm not a baby,” he said, “so you don't have to talk to me like that. And there isn't any bunny.”

“In the toy store,” I said to Ty. And to Sandra, “
Nothing
.” I glared at Mom.

Mom widened her eyes, like
I'm sorry, I didn't know
. But she should have. Nobody wants to go bra shopping with her scoffing older sister.

At Claire's Boutique, the saleslady set me loose in the rows and rows of sparkling earrings. She said not to pick danglies, but that I should be sure to get fourteen-karat-gold posts for my very first pair. She recommended delicate gold balls.

“Too boring,” I said.

"Too WASPy,” Sandra said.

“Huh?” I said.

"WASPy,” Sandra said. “As in a White Anglo Saxon Protestant?”

I still didn't get it.

“Hoity-toity rich-girl stuff, like going to the country club and having a tennis date with Muffy. ‘
Oh, dahling, you look so adorable in your precious gold earrings
.' ”

“Sandra,” Mom said.

“I like these,” I said, selecting a pair of tiny gold flowers with pale blue stones in the middle. “Will they work?”

“They'll do just fine,” the saleslady said. I wondered if she was WASPy, and decided she was. She had a big bust and sensible shoes. Her own earrings were prim gold bows.

She used a pen to dot both my ears, then gave me a mirror so that I could check the placement.

“Looks good,” I said. Jitters started up in my stomach.

She loaded the gun with earring number one, and
pop
! In it went, just like that. There was a pinching sensation, but it honestly didn't hurt at all.

“Can I do the other one?” Ty asked.

“
No!
” the saleslady and I said at the same time. She repeated the procedure for earring number two, and then she handed me the mirror once again.

“There you go,” she said. “What do you think?”

I turned my head from side to side. Glints of light danced off the earrings.

“Great,” I said.

“What does she need to do about upkeep?” Mom asked. “That is part of our agreement, that she'll be responsible for taking care of them. Should she swab them with hydrogen peroxide?”

The saleslady shook her head as she rang up our total. “That's no longer recommended. She needs to twist them every night before bed for a week, but only use hydrogen peroxide if they get infected.”

“If they get infected, your earlobes will fall off,” Sandra said.

Mom nodded. “True,” she said.

The saleslady opened her mouth, then shut it.

“Ha ha,” I said. I looked completely and utterly fabulous, and I knew it. I felt on top of the world.

Our next stop was the DMV, but when we got there, Sandra chickened out.

“It's too late,” she said, not getting out of the driver's seat. “They're going to close any minute.”

“It's a quarter till four,” Mom said. “They don't close until five.”

“There could be a long line,” Sandra said. She swallowed and wouldn't look at any of us.

“Sandra, what's going on?” Mom asked.

Sandra didn't answer. Her spine was stiff, and I realized with surprise that she was scared. My sister, Sandra, was scared.

“It's because of all that stuff you said,” I told Mom. “About how she could kill someone with one false move.”

“That's not it,” Sandra said angrily.

“Oh, Sandra,” Mom said. “I didn't mean to worry you, sweetie.”

Sandra made a noise of disbelief, which I happened to agree with. Mom loved to worry us. She had a horror story for every occasion.

“Anyway, I was scared about getting my ears pierced, but I did it just the same,” I said.

“Yeah,” Ty said. “And I was scared when you talked about wasps, but I was brave just like Winnie.”

I looked at him in confusion. What was he talking about? Then I got it:
WASPs,
as in White Anglo Saxon Protestants. I giggled.

“Not that kind of wasps, you doof,” Sandra said. “And anyway, you were not scared. You were just jealous of the saleslady's gun.”

“Guns are a bad idea,” Ty said piously. “You should only use guns if you're a bad guy.”

“Oh, good Lord,” Sandra said, putting her head in her hands.

“Sandra, if you're going to take your driver's test, you need to go in and do it now,” Mom said. “Otherwise we need to go home.”

“Fine, we'll go home,” Sandra said. She turned the key in the ignition.

Mom was surprised. “Are you sure?”

Sandra put the car in reverse and pulled out of the parking spot. “I'll do it soon,” she said. “Just not today.”

“Did you get your license?” I asked Sandra the next day when I got home from school.

Sandra gave me her “you're an idiot” look. “When would I have gotten it? I've been at school all day just like you.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, are you going to?”

“I'm too tired. We had to run three miles in PE.”

“You're too worn out to drive a car?”

“Leave me alone,” she said.

The next day she hung out with Bo and conveniently forgot to come home until 5:30, after the DMV had closed. And on Thursday, she had an earth-science assignment to complete concerning the Ring of Fire. The Ring of Fire, she informed me, was a big circle in the Pacific Ocean where there was a lot of volcanic activity. California was part of the Ring of Fire. That was why there were so many earthquakes there.

“Uh-huh,” I said. “And this has to do with your driver's license because . . . ?”

“Eighty-one percent of the world's earthquakes happen in the Ring of Fire!” she exclaimed. “We're talking major world disasters! Do you really think this is an appropriate time to be discussing the DMV?”

While she slaved away on her project—or more likely IM'd with her friends and chowed down on Oreos—I went out into the beautiful spring day for a bike ride. It was crazy that Sandra was being such a wimp, I thought as I cruised down Woodward Way. Usually she was so tough. Usually she was the one who could do anything.

I turned right on Peachtree Battle and stood to pedal up the hill. My muscles burned in a way that made me feel strong. Down the steep slope to Sagamore Drive, the wind whipping my hair. I'd worn a helmet out the back door for Mom's sake, but I'd stashed it in the bushes when I got to the bottom of the driveway. I couldn't stand having a helmet on. I felt so much freer without.

As I biked around Memorial Park, I reached up to check the posts of my earrings, to make sure they were still there. Today during lunch, Gail Grayson's hand had flown to her ear and she'd cried out in alarm. One of her earrings had fallen out and was nowhere to be found.

“My
diamond
,” she had wailed when everyone gathered around. She held out the other one, which she'd removed for safekeeping, but folded her fingers over it when Dinah got too close. “My dad gave them to me. They came from South Africa. They cost two thousand dollars!”

My homeroom teacher, Mr. Hutchinson, shared a glance with Ms. Russell.

“Why in the world did you wear a two-thousand-dollar pair of earrings to school?” Ms. Russell asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Be
cause,
” Gail said. She glared at me in a way that reminded me we weren't friends and never would be. “I happen to think high fashion goes a little further than Claire's Boutique, that's why.”

“Ouch,” said Louise. She loved seeing other people get taken down.

Then, from under the table, Amanda had called, “I found it, I found it!” She backed out on her hands and knees and held up the glittering stone.

“Amanda,
thank
you!” Gail said. “Omigod, thank you so so so much!” She flung herself on Amanda in a stumble-back hug.

“I thought you said you looked there already,” I said.

“I did,” Gail said.

“It was smushed into a bread crumb,” Amanda said. “Someone must have stepped on it.”

“Someone clumsy and stupid,” Gail said.

I'd pressed my lips together, not proud of what I was feeling. I wished Gail's earring hadn't been found. I wished she'd been taught a lesson—that it hurts when you lose something special.

I pumped hard on my bicycle, not wanting to think about that anymore. Losing a friend, the way I'd lost Amanda, was a lot worse than losing an earring. It wasn't as bad as losing someone to a car accident, but it still made my heart ache. Especially when something happened like that hug.

Mom should have warned us about that. She should have warned us that
everything
was dangerous unless you shut yourself up in your house and never came out.

Actually, at some point or another, she probably had.

I leaned sideways as the road curved, and a squirrel scampered in front of me. I reacted on instinct, jerking the handlebars right and then left to avoid it. I didn't have time to think.