Twelve (4 page)

And then,
squish
. My tire bumped over it. Its soft little belly. It was plump, like a grape, and then it wasn't. There was a texture to the squish that made my throat close.

I squeezed the hand brakes and squealed to a stop. Straddling the bike, I turned around. The squirrel lay motionless, fat and furry except in the spot I'd run over it. Oh God. The squirrel's paw twitched, and a weird cold sweat popped out in my armpits. What was I supposed to do for a half-smushed squirrel that was still alive?

My heart thudded.

I hadn't meant to hurt it.

My hands were clenching and unclenching my brakes, and I didn't even realize it until the metal dug deep into my palms.

The squirrel flicked its tail, then scrambled to its feet and darted into the tall grass on the side of the street. I blinked. Where the squirrel had been, there was nothing: no blood, no guts, no tufts of fur.

A wave of repulsion washed over me.

“You okay?” a runner asked as he jogged by.

“Uh-huh,” I said. My body felt boneless, and I got off my bike and sat down.

After several minutes, I heaved myself up. I grasped my bike by the handlebars and trudged with it all the way home.

The next day, I went to Dinah's after school. I told her about the squirrel, and she didn't laugh or say “ew.”

“That's so amazing that it came back to life,” she said.

“I know,” I said.

“I mean, it's like . . . a miracle,” she said.

I nodded. “I know.”

She regarded me with something close to awe. Then she remembered the Ritz cracker in her hand and squirted on a dollop of Cheez Whiz. She offered it to me.

“Thanks,” I said.

“When something like that happens, you have to take it as a sign,” Dinah said seriously.

“Of what?” I asked. I liked this about Dinah, that I could talk to her about real things without any elaborate eye rolling. She wasn't afraid to speak truly. Sometimes it got her in trouble, like during PE when she asked what a “douche” was, and, when pressed, didn't take it back and pretend she'd been joking. “I really don't know,” she'd said to Chantelle, who'd brought it up in the first place. “Just tell me!”

Dinah put down the Cheez Whiz. She looked at me, and I stopped chewing. It got quiet. I had the sense she was going to say something important.

“I don't know,” she said at last. “But
something
. And you probably won't even know it until it happens.”

The Ritz cracker was mealy in my mouth. I swallowed, then used my tongue to work out what was left.

“Want another?” she asked.

When Dinah's dad dropped me off at the end of the afternoon, I was alert for changes big or small. I didn't know if I believed in Dinah's sign business, but it was fun to think about. Maybe Mom had bought me a treat, a new shirt from the mall or my favorite flavor of fruit leather. She did that sometimes to say yahoo for a good week of school.

But Mom was fixing dinner like normal—homemade chicken pot pie with bonus crust. Ty was applying sparkly heart stickers up and down his arm, and Sandra was sitting at the table doing her homework. She lifted her head when I plunked down my backpack. She followed me with her eyes as I got myself a glass of orange juice.

“What?” I said. I pulled out a chair and joined her at the table. “Is my hair sticking up funny?”

“Aren't you going to ask if I got my license?” she said.

“Oh my gosh,” I said. “Did you?”

“Yes,” she said accusingly.

“That's great! Congratulations!”

“Yeah, whatever.”

I frowned. If she got her license, why was she acting so sour?

“Show her,” Mom said to Sandra, barely suppressing her smile.

Sandra flipped the piece of laminated plastic my way. It was smooth and authentic, and I was impressed. The picture wasn't great—she looked a little bug-eyed—but it wasn't terrible.

“Read what it says under 'weight,' ” Mom said.

I scanned the card. EYES: BLUE. HAIR: BLOND. WEIGHT: 1000.

A laugh blurbled out of me before I could help it. Mom laughed, too.

Sandra scowled. “It's supposed to say one
hundred
. The stupid lady typed in an extra zero.”

Delighted, I imagined Sandra at the tremendous weight of a thousand pounds. She'd be a giant blueberry. She could go and join the circus.

“I'm going to get a new one,” Sandra said. “I'll say this one got lost, and I'll just pay to do it all over again.”

“Sandra,
no,
” I said. I clutched the license to my heart. “It's so much better this way!”

“Oh yeah? How do you figure that?”

“Because it's so funny. It's one of a kind.” I had a brain-storm. “In fact, it's a sign!”

“A
sign
? Of what?”

“Of the fact that you're going to be a very good driver, because the bad thing has already happened and it was
this
.” I tapped the license. “So that means no accidents or maiming or loss of life. Isn't that good?”

“
If
you're careful,” Mom interjected. She wagged her flour-covered spoon.

“Mo-o-om,” Sandra groaned.

“Sometimes bad things happen even when you
are
careful, ” she went on. “I'm sorry, but they do.”

“But sometimes they don't,” I said. “Sometimes they get up and walk away and everything's just fine!”

“Exsqueeze me?” Sandra said.

I held her license out of reach. “I am very proud of you for facing your fears and taking your driver's test, just like I am very proud of me for getting my ears pierced.”

“Are you proud of me?” Ty asked, glancing up from his sparkly hearts.

“Yes,” I pronounced. “I am proud of you for lining your stickers up so neatly and symmetrically.” I cleared my throat. “Now. Sandra. If I give you this back, do you promise not to get a new one?”

“Give it to me,” she said.

“
Do
you?”

She nabbed it from my fingers and smiled victoriously.

“Maybe I will and maybe I won't,” she said. “You'll just have to wait and see.”

May

ON A THURSDAY EVENING near the end of May,

Mom did the unthinkable. She announced, smack in the middle of dinner, that it was time to take me bra shopping.

“Mom!” I protested.

“Nope, no arguing,” Mom said, pointing at me with an asparagus spear. “You're a growing girl. Your graduation ceremony is in two weeks. We're getting you a bra tomorrow.”

My cheeks could have lit a fire, that's how hot they were. A Girl Scout could have roasted marshmallows on them. And it wasn't just the fact of a bra, which was terrible enough on its own. It was that she was saying all this in front of Dad and Sandra and Ty, who now gazed at me with varying levels of interest.

“A bra,” Dad said jovially. “That's terrific. Get me one, too, will you?”

Ty's eyes widened as he absorbed this new idea, that maybe men
did
wear bras. “I want one, I want one!” he said.

Mom frowned at Dad. “Bras are not for little boys,” she said. “
Or
grown men.”

“I can't believe you don't have one already,” Sandra said. She munched on her chicken tender, which Mom bought at Whole Foods and then pretended were made from scratch. “You're such a throwback.”

“What's a throwback?” asked Ty.

“Someone who doesn't get a bra until sixth grade,” Sandra said. “Kind of like an ape.”

“Sandra,” Mom scolded.

I focused on my corn, which looked like teeth. Yellow kernels, then pale up at the top with a flimsy rim of skin. Like they'd been pulled from someone's mouth and plopped in a pile on my plate.

“Winnie?” Mom said, at long last realizing that I wasn't joining in on the hilarity. “Are you okay?”

I didn't answer. I was too angry. Didn't she know that my “growing body” should not be discussed at the dinner table?

“You don't want to look different from everybody else,” she went on, softening her voice in a way that made things ten thousand times worse. “I know it's hard, and it's not necessarily something that's good about the world. But, sweetie, it's easier if you fit in.”

“Fine,” I said. My lips hardly moved.

“What, honey?”

I raised my eyes and sent her a look that I hoped would scorch right through her retinas. “I said
fine
.”

She held my gaze. It was a battle of wills—at least that's how it felt to me—until she curved her mouth downward to show her disappointment.

I don't care,
I said to myself.
Don't care, don't care, don't care.

“There's a girl in my class I do not like,” Ty announced. He squirted a blob of ketchup onto his plate. “She's new. She moved here from Texas the day after this day.”

“You mean the day
before
today,” Sandra said. Ty was always messing up his yesterdays and tomorrows.

“She has a bad smile,” Ty said. “Like this.” He pushed his lower teeth out past his upper teeth and grimaced, squinching up his eyes. Dad cough-laughed, and a splatter of mashed potatoes hit my arm. I wiped myself off in silence. I was mad at him, too.

“Does she smile like that on purpose?” Sandra asked.

“Yes,” Ty said. “She does it all the time. Her name is Taffy.”

“
Taffy?
” Sandra said. “Ugh, that's unfortunate.”

Mom stood up. “Does anyone want any more chicken, or are you ready for dessert?”

“Dessert,” Sandra and Ty said together.

“Winnie?” Mom said. There was too much patience in her voice.

“I'm full.”

She waited. “Then you can ask to be excused.”

“May I please be excused?”

She sighed. “You may.”

Later, after a rerun of
7th Heaven
that I didn't really watch, I went to Ty's room to talk about Taffy. It
was
an unfortunate name, but I felt wounded on her behalf. Maybe she couldn't help the way she smiled—had anyone considered that? Anyway, was looking different really such a crime?

“Hi,” I said, flopping down on the floor beside him.

“I'm having bonus playtime because I got my pj's on before the timer went off,” he said. “And brushed teeth.
And
put my clothes in the dirty-clothes basket.”

“Good job,” I said.

“Want to play with me?” He held out a gray plastic knight. “You can be this guy. He can step on hot lava and not even melt.”

I accepted the knight. I made him walk a little, but with no sound effects. “Listen, about Taffy,” I said.

Ty came at me with his own knight, which was red. “
Brrrng!
” he cried. “
Wa-choo!
”

“She probably has an underbite. She probably can't help the way she smiles.”

“She says no one will play with her on the playground, but I don't want to either,” Ty said. He karate-chopped my knight. “Take that! Whack, whack!”

“When I was in kindergarten, there was a kid in my class named Jared who had really greasy hair,” I said. “Everybody was mean to him. It made him cry.”

“That's not nice,” Ty said.

“He ended up moving to California, which is too bad, because that's where all the earthquakes are.”

“Oh,” Ty said.

“It's in the Ring of Fire.”

“That boy's hair?”

“No, California. Because of all the underwater volcano explosions.”

“He could die,” Ty said. “Right, Winnie?”

“That's right,” I said. “And there was another boy, his name was Charlie, who had an actual steel plate in his head. He could bang on it like this”—I rapped my skull—“and it made a hollow sound. The kids were
super
mean to him.”

I had Ty's attention. There hadn't really been a boy named Charlie in my kindergarten class (well, there was, but he didn't have a steel plate in his head), but I thought it served my point.

“Did he move to California, too?” Ty asked.

“Not that I know of.”

“What
did
he do?”

“I don't know. He probably grew up to be very sad.”

“He might have turned into a criminal,” Ty suggested.

“He might have,” I said. “That's why you need to be nice to Taffy. You don't want her to grow up to be a criminal, do you?”

“No.”

“People can't help being different. There's nothing
wrong
with being different.”

“I know.”

“Okay, then.” I tossed him the gray knight, then stretched over and gave him a kiss.

Ty swiped at his cheek, and I said, “Ty!”

“I only wiped the slobber off,” Ty insisted. “Not the kiss.”

“Yeah, right,” I said.

He smiled his sweet-boy smile. “Night, Winnie. Love you.”

“Love you, too,” I said.

Dinah adored the mall. Amanda, before we stopped being best friends, seriously adored the mall. I, on the other hand, did not. I pretended to sometimes, because I didn't want to be a wet blanket. And there were some mall things that were admittedly cool: the fountain, the pet store, Chick-fil-A.

But plain old shopping? Boring with a capital B, especially if you were with your mother, and especially if she insisted on checking out the boring women's fashions at boring Neiman Marcus with its boring racks of boring old-lady boringness.