I get so comfortable talking to Mrs. Findley, I sort of dread the thought of walking into a den of boys. There is something about walking into a room full of boys that makes you feel exposed and somehow all wrong. You feel inadequate, like you come up short in every way that matters. It didn’t used to be like this, and I don’t know when it changed, but now it feels like it was always this way.
That’s why I’m relieved when Mrs. Findley suggests that I bring the cake down to the rec room. It gives me some sort of purpose, a reason to be there. Plus, it’s always easier to walk into a room carrying something—a purse, a cake, a baseball bat. Anything to make you look like you belong.
The boys don’t even look up when I come into the room. I am carrying the cake, and plates and forks underneath it, and when I say, “I’ve got cake,” they finally look at me. I am wearing an old yellow sundress of Celia’s, and I have tied my hair back with green ribbon. I think I look real nice. And all they see is the cake.
Mark says, “All right!” He grabs the cake and sets it on the coffee table. “Hey, where’s the knife?”
I glare at him. “It’s your house. You go get the knife.”
That bum Jack Connelly says, “Aw, pipe down, Annemarie. You’re the girl. Well, sort of.” He smirks. “Girls are in charge of the food; that’s the way it is and that’s the way it’s always gonna be. You better get used to it.”
“You’re a pig, you know that? Oink, oink. You just roll around in your own feces all day thinking stupid thoughts.” I laugh at my own joke.
“Why don’t you go home and play with your Barbies?” he snaps. “What are you doing here, anyway?”
I hate Jack Connelly.
I’ve hated him ever since the third grade. It was lunchtime, and this was when we still had assigned seats in the cafeteria. Jack was bragging about how he had been tested for his IQ, and the doctor had told him he had a genius IQ of 300. I told him that I knew for a fact that he didn’t have an IQ of 300, that a genius IQ was 140, that Albert Einstein himself only had an IQ of 160, and besides, Jack could barely spell his own name. Jack got mad, and before I knew it, we were kicking each other’s chairs, and I kicked so hard he fell out of his chair and I stubbed my toe. The cafeteria monitor yelled at us, and we both had to skip recess that day. From then on, we were sworn enemies.
Every day at school we would try to outdo each other. He told everyone that I was born with both girl and boy parts. I told everyone that his own parents had tried to sell him on the black market, but nobody would take him cause he was so ugly. Then one afternoon he tripped me on the playground, and to this very day, there is a tiny scar on my left cheek. You can barely see it anymore, but it’s there, and it’s all because of Jack Connelly.
We’re still snarling at each other when Kyle Montgomery says, “Hey, thanks for bringing the cake down, Annemarie.”
Tommy Malone says nothing. His eyes dart back to the video game that has been paused.
Mark says, “Let’s eat the cake later; I wanna finish this game.” Then he finally seems to notice me. “Why are you wearing a dress?”
“Because everything else was dirty. It’s Celia’s.” My face feels hot.
He shrugs, and he and Jack and Tommy return to the TV while Kyle cuts into the cake with a fork. He cuts five lopsided pieces, and slides them onto the plates. I sit on the couch with my arms crossed and watch him silently. I wish I could think of something smart to say.
“So, who’s your homeroom teacher?” Kyle asks, passing me a plate. I rest the plate at the edge of my lap to hide my scabby knees.
“Mrs. Simone. Who’s yours?” I take a big bite of cake, careful not to let any crumbs fall. They do anyway.
“Same. I heard she’s nice.”
“Yeah.”
I wish Elaine was here. When it comes to boys, Elaine is confident and supremely sure of herself. Maybe it’s because she’s from New York, but Elaine can flirt with the best of ’em. She acts like she’s hot stuff, and everybody believes it. It’s a trick of hers. I know she would have had Kyle Montgomery feeding her cake by the end of the afternoon.
Why oh why is it so much harder to talk to boys like Kyle? It’s not that he isn’t nice, because he is, nicer than most of the boys my age. There is just something disarming about good-looking people. They make you feel all fluttery and nervous, and you hardly know where to look. I settle on staring at a freckle under his right eye. The freckle makes me feel better, knowing that a good-looking person like Kyle Montgomery can have freckles and still be good-looking.
He asks me which honors classes I’ll be taking in seventh grade, and I say all of them. I ask him if he’s gonna try out for the basketball team, and he says yes. Before long, we’re talking.
I lean back into the couch. This isn’t so bad. Sure, I’m no femme fatale, and sure, the boys aren’t swarming around me, but it’s not so bad. I’m sitting next to Kyle Montgomery and I’m holding my own. I’m a woman in my own right.
We talk about Mr. Romano’s honors math class, and playing softball, at which point Tommy comes and joins us on the couch. Tommy is uneasy around girls, but he likes sports well enough. So I keep the topic on sports, we eat cake, and everything is fine. I check to see if Mark has noticed, but he and Jack are too busy with their dratted game.
When Mark and Jack finally finish their game, they clamor for cake, and the atmosphere changes all over again. It’s so much easier when it’s just you and the one boy. It’s easier to be you without a big audience.
The boys discuss the upcoming basketball season, and although I know as much about basketball as anyone else, certainly Mark, I stay silent. At moments like these, saying the wrong thing would be disaster. And anyway, it’s hard to find a moment to break in with one of my snazzy witticisms. It’s darn near impossible to get a word in when there are boys around. They take over everything and breathe up all the air in the room.
Mercifully, the afternoon passes by without major incident. Jack comments on my eating three pieces of cake, but Jack is a dunce, so who cares? I can’t be bothered with worrying about people like Jack Connelly. When it’s time to go, I am left feeling empty. I don’t know what I was expecting to happen, but it sure wasn’t this.
The whole time we were sitting there, my eyes kept sliding back to Mark. How is it possible to have known a boy for eight years and never have seen how special he was, how terribly, secretly wonderful? Everything about him seems special now. I can’t stop looking at him, and I keep wanting to touch his hair or squeeze his hand. It’s so distracting. If anyone else noticed, I’d die.
Mark didn’t look at me once. I mean, he looked at me, but not once did he see me.
chapter 6
I live in the kind of town where people are always saying things like, “I can’t wait to get out of here” and “When I get out of this town …” They usually want to move to New York, and they say those two words with real reverence: New York. It even sounds capitalized. Everybody dreams big where I am from, but nobody’s dreams ever come true. New York City might as well be Never-Never Land for all the good it will do anybody from Clementon.
The thing is, you can’t ever really leave Clementon. The sweet South lures you back home, just like those Sirens in Greek mythology. You might go to college somewhere else, you might even move away, but you always end up coming back. That’s what happened to my mama.
She and my daddy were both born and raised in Clementon. They both went to Clementon High, they dated, and then they went their separate ways to college—Mama to a women’s college up North, and Daddy to the state school. When Grandpa Cavane got sick her junior year, Mama had to come home and go to the state school too. I guess she and Daddy met up at college and it was all fireworks. They fell right back in love and got married after graduation.
It’s so strange to think about what could have happened if Mama had never come back home, had never met up with Daddy again, had never gotten married. I would have a different daddy and all different ge
nes. Maybe I’d be bite-size, with strawberry blond curls and a tiny nose. Maybe I’d have cocoa skin and mocha latte eyes with long, long lashes. And breasts. Maybe I’d be a good dancer or a gymnast or a figure skater. My potential might have known no bounds; I might have been great.
It’s funny, because in all my fantasies of What if Mama and Daddy had never, Mama is always my mother. It’s only my father that changes. I reckon it’s his fault I’m ten feet tall with a bird chest and big feet. If I looked like my mama, things might be different for me.
Clementon is a small town. Everybody knows everybody, and everybody knows everybody else’s business, too. It’s that kind of place. Mama thinks it’s suffocating, but I like knowing that Bernard Watts’s dog was just neutered, or that Emmy Jo Delessi’s wedding cost her parents over twenty-five thousand dollars. (I had no idea that one day could cost so much money, but apparently her tiara was made out of real seed pearls, and they also served jumbo shrimp cocktail at the reception.) I like knowing that every fall we have our Clementon County Fair, and every Christmas we have our Clementon County Christmas Pageant. I like walking into Mr. Boneci’s family diner and hearing him say, “Hey there, Miss Annemarie. Long time no see.”
I’m not trying to say that there aren’t plenty of negative aspects of small-town life too, because there are. There’s a lot of “small town small mindedness,” as Mama puts it. When Olivia Peterson got pregnant last year, she wasn’t allowed to go to school anymore. I don’t know if that is illegal or what, but nobody put up a fuss. Not even Olivia.
Clementon has its bad points, but I wouldn’t mind living here for the rest of my life. I really wouldn’t. It’s home. I was born here; it’s what I’m used to.
chapter 7
Last night I discovered my bathing suit had a hole in it. This may sound petty, but for a girl who has to go to a boy-girl pool party in a matter of hours, it is no small thing. It is quite a big thing, possibly the biggest. I wore that bathing suit all summer, and just when I needed it most, it fell apart on me. When I tried it on, I didn’t notice at first, and then I felt the light breeze on my butt.
Mama sewed the hole up straight away. I didn’t even know she could sew. I almost didn’t trust her with it because she’d had half a bottle of wine with supper, but she did a good job. I was really impressed. She had the right color string and everything. You can’t even tell there was a hole. It looks as good as new, or as good as a two-year-old stretched-out bathing suit can look, anyway. It’s faded green, and although it’s not a two-piece, it does have pretty little straps.
Midmorning Elaine comes over so we can all walk to Sherilyn’s together. She is wearing her new two-piece under denim overalls. I beg her to show me the two-piece, and she finally gives in. It’s black, and it fits her just right. Elaine has a bit more (not a lot) than me in the chest department. But even a little makes a big difference. When you’re twelve, every bit you’ve got counts.
Celia braided my hair before she left for Margaret’s house, and she even let me borrow her raspberry lip gloss. With Celia helping me, I felt like Cinderella getting ready for her big night on the town. I think I look pretty good.
Elaine and I sit on the porch and wait for Mark to come over. She tells me my hair looks pretty, and I compliment her on her new suit again. I wish I had a two-piece.
We see Mark coming up the walk with a blue towel slung around his neck, and Elaine whispers, “Here comes your one true love.”
I kick her and we giggle until Mark makes his way up the driveway. He says, “Hey, Annemarie, hey, Elaine. What are you guys laughing about?”
I tell him none of his business, and the three of us head over to Sherilyn’s. The walk over is mostly silent.
Elaine and Mark don’t know each other very well. The only thing those two have in common is me, and I get the feeling they’re not crazy about each other. Well, it’s more than just a feeling. Mark thinks Elaine talks too much, and Elaine thinks Mark is dull. The three of us don’t hang out together much anyway. When it’s Elaine and me, it’s just us, and when it’s Mark and me, it’s just us too. If truth be told, I like it better that way.
When we get to Sherilyn’s house, most of the other kids are already there. Mairi Stevenson and Hadley Smith are sunning on deck chairs. Mairi is wearing a pink two-piece, and Hadley, a yellow polka dot one. (I saw both of those bikinis at the mall, but Mama said she thought a bikini on a twelve-year-old girl was absolutely ridiculous. I think it was because they cost sixty dollars, but Mama would never admit that there was something we couldn’t afford. She’s a good one for making excuses when it comes to spending money.) Sherilyn’s bustling around the food table in a zebra-print tankini. The boys—Kyle, Jack, Tommy, and Hugh Sasser—are in the pool splashing one another.
With the exception of Elaine, us Clementon kids have known each other for most of our lives. We grew up together, learned to ride bikes together, took swimming lessons at the YMCA together. We used to all be friends, at least in the general sense. Somehow the cream of our crop rose to the top, and it’s clear we’re not all friends anymore. I have a feeling that this will be the last neighborhood back-to-school pool party at Sherilyn’s house.
Before Elaine, Sherilyn was my closest girl friend. I still like Sherilyn, but after so many years of knowing each other, the little things started to pile up and bug me. She cares way too much about what Mairi and Hadley think. It’s embarrassing. Even when we were little, she was rushing to impress them, rushing to anything them, and she just never measured up. Once Mairi and Hadley and that kind of girl decide you’re not good enough, you never will be. You just won’t. And the sooner you realize that, the better. Sherilyn has never figured it out. She’s so eager to please and imitate that she ends up going overboard.
Like the way her clothes never look right. Mrs. Tallini still picks her school clothes out, and she usually has the right idea, but she takes a good thing too far. If miniskirts are in, Sherilyn will show up in a purple miniskirt with lace trim, plus dangling beads and maybe rhinestones. I do feel slightly guilty for dropping Sherilyn for Elaine, but I didn’t really have a choice. Elaine and I are soul sisters. What could I do?
Mark throws his towel on a picnic table and dives into the water. We say hi to the girls, and then Elaine and I spread out our beach towels. We’re both reluctant to take off our clothes with everybody there pretending not to look. Elaine unbuckles her overalls, and I throw my T-shirt off in a flash. Why prolong the agony? Elaine’s skin is tan and smooth, and I wish I could cover up all my freckles.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see the boys watching us. Elaine and I pretend not to notice, and I know that she’s just as aware of the boys as I am. We’re doing pretty well until the boys start to snicker, and even then we keep our cool. But then I hear the boys guffawing, and that is pretty hard to ignore.
“I like your bikini, Elaine,” Hugh Sasser calls out, and everyone guffaws some more. Hugh is the second cutest boy in our grade, after Kyle Montgomery. He makes red hair and freckles look good.
Elaine lifts her head up from the towel, and her hair swings like a silk curtain across her cheek. “I just bet you do, Huey.” Her tone is dry, and she rolls her eyes, but I know she is pleased. Elaine knows how to play the game. I look over at Mairi and Hadley, and Hadley looks like she just swallowed a cactus. Hadley’s had her eye on Hugh forever.
Later Sherilyn’s mom brings out a couple of pizzas, and of course the boys stumble out of the pool and fall onto the pizzas like wild beasts. They’re dripping pool water all over the food, and I elbow my way in to get a couple of pieces of pepperoni before they’re either soggy or gone. As I inhale my first piece, I overhear Mairi announce that she’s on a no-carb diet. Hadley says she wouldn’t eat greasy pizza anyway, and Sherilyn looks crestfallen.
Lightly, I say, “Didn’t I see you guys eating pizza at the mall last week? Wasn’t that you two?” I’m treading extra softly, because challenging Mairi Stevenson in public just isn’t done.
>
“I doubt it,” Mairi says coldly. “We don’t eat pizza.”
“I thought I saw you guys there too,” Kyle says. “At Pizza Expresso.”
Mairi turns to Kyle and smiles, and it’s like I’m not even there anymore. She tilts her chin to one side and coos, “Then why didn’t you come over and say hey?” Her thick lashes flutter like twin butterflies. I swear, Mairi Stevenson thinks she’s Scarlett O’Hara reincarnated.
I want to say, he didn’t come over and say hey because the two of you were too busy stuffing your faces with pizza and he didn’t want to interrupt. But I don’t dare. I can’t afford to burn any bridges with those two. Once they decide to freeze you out, you’re done for. I’ve seen it happen. I’m hanging off the side of a precipice as it is, and the only thing keeping me there is Elaine. I look at her, and she shakes her head slightly.
No one mentions my green one-piece or me until I hear Jack Connelly say, “Her chest is flatter than my back. It’s flatter than that diving board.” I know he’s talking about me, and I want to kill him. I would do it with my bare hands and a smile on my face.
My face is burning and I struggle to keep it devoid of expression, perfectly blank. I have to focus on my rage, or else I will cry. If I cry even one tear because of that cretin, I will never ever forgive myself.
For my sake Elaine is busy pretending she didn’t hear a word. She is nattering on about getting a better tan before school starts. “I hardly got tan at all this summer—”
“Jack Connelly is an ass,” I hiss.
Elaine whispers, “Just forget it, Annemarie. He’s a moron. He has the IQ of a cockroach.”
“More like a gnat. A dead, squashed-up gnat.”
Full of spite, I jump into the pool. The guys are doing cannonballs off the new diving board Sherylin’s dad bought at the beginning of the summer. Wading to the deep end, I bide my time and wait until Jack is just about to jump. At the top of my lungs, I yell, “Choke, Connelly, you big jackass!”