“Here you go, sweetie,” Mom said, coming in with a fresh ice pack. “Are you feeling any better?”
“A little,” I said. “Do you want to watch Finding Nemo with us?”
She was about to say no. I saw it on her face. Then she smiled and said, “Sure.” Angling her head toward the hall, she called, “Joel! Come up to Winnie’s room. We’re having family movie night!”
The three of us kids scooched into the middle of my bed, which luckily was a queen-size bed and barely big enough for the whole family. Mom and Dad made up the bookends. I was still in the very middle.
We watched the movie. I cried when Marlin realized Nemo wasn’t dead after all, and Mom reached over Ty and gently rubbed the back of my neck. “Oh, Winnie. You’ve had a rough start to the year, haven’t you?”
“Huh?” I said. I was with my whole family, watching a movie I picked out. And sure, the ending made me weepy, but in a good way. “Um, if by that you mean the best start to the year, then yes.”
Mom laughed. “All right, well, I really don’t know what you just said. But if you’re happy, I’m happy.”
“I’m happy,” I said. “Anyway, every day is a new day, not just this particular day which happens to be called New Year’s Day.”
“You lost me,” Mom said.
“Just nod and say, ‘Yes, Winnie. We love you, Winnie,’ ” Sandra said in a mock-whisper. “She got hit in the head, you know. In a box. All by herself.”
I whapped her. “Shush up, you.”
“I do love you, Winnie,” Ty said. He yawned. “And I’m glad you’re not a shark, even though some sharks turn out to be nice.”
“I love you, too, Ty. And you and you and you,” I said, looking at Mom, Dad, and Sandra in turn.
Sandra rolled her eyes.
I rolled mine back at her. “And all I mean is that no matter what, we can always start fresh tomorrow.”
February
In February, Mindy started a secret club. A mean secret club. Every morning, she and Katie picked a special friend for the day. First, the girl they chose had to be inspected: her clothes had to be the right kind of clothes, her hair had to be in an acceptable style, her personality had to meet some mysterious standard that only Mindy and Katie understood.
If the girl scored at least a seven out of ten, then she passed the inspection, and she got to eat lunch with Mindy and Katie and whisper with Mindy and Katie and torment people on the playground with Mindy and Katie.
Often they tormented Dinah Devine.
“She still wets her pants,” Mindy said loudly in the lunchroom last week. “I can smell it.”
“I feel sorry for her,” Katie said. But she didn’t mean it.
On the Dinah-wets-her-pants day, Louise was their special buddy. She blinked nervously and said, “Me too,” and Mindy and Katie laughed. It was unclear who they were laughing at.
More often, however, they tormented me. They claimed I sneezed on my sandwich and ate it anyway. They claimed I dug an eye booger out of my eye and ate that, too. They called me “Lint,” because lint clung to things and was annoying. But I didn’t cling to things, especially them. They had just decided I was the enemy, that’s all. Or the target, like in a game of darts, and their words and eye-rolls and snickers were the darts.
But Mindy made me cry one time and one time only: the time she was so mean about the Secret Santa present I gave her. I hadn’t cried since then, and I wasn’t going to.
That didn’t mean their teasing didn’t hurt.
On the outside, I pretended to be brave Winnie who wasn’t scared of anything: not toilets, not outside garbage cans, not the Bathroom Lady, and not Mindy. But on the inside, I wanted to cry. On the inside I felt like I was three going on four, like Ty had been when frilly Erica was mean to him at the pool, instead of ten coming up fast on eleven.
One cold morning, Amanda dashed up and pulled me to the corner of the room.
“You’re not going to believe this. It’s bad,” she said.
“What?” I said.
“No, Winnie, it’s really bad. It’s . . . Chantelle.”
“Is she sick?”
Amanda shook her head. “Worse. Mindy and Katie picked her to be their friend for the day.”
My gut clenched. “What?!”
“I know, but they did. And Chantelle, she . . .” Amanda pressed her lips together. “She said yes.”
“But . . . but . . .”
“I know,” Amanda said again.
“She herself said how rude Mindy is. She knows how rude Mindy is!”
Amanda’s expression was bleak. “I know,” she said for the third and final time. “I just thought I’d warn you.”
I felt sick all day. When recess came around, I felt so sick I thought I might actually throw up.
I grabbed Amanda and said, “Come on, let’s go swing.”
Maybe if I was swooping up and down through the air, I told myself, then Mindy couldn’t get to me.
Wrong.
“Here they come,” Amanda said from the swing beside me.
I didn’t want to look. I couldn’t help but look. My head turned on its own to take in their cocky saunter across the playground: Mindy, Katie, and—yes—Chantelle. Chantelle looked pretty and put together, like she always did, but she also looked . . . different. I couldn’t put my finger on how.
“Why?” I whispered, meaning why why why would Chantelle do this, when the person she was doing it to was me?
“I have no idea,” Amanda said.
“Maybe . . . maybe they won’t be mean this time. Chantelle wouldn’t let them be mean, would she?”
Amanda didn’t respond.
They arrived with linked arms. Chantelle wouldn’t meet my gaze.
“Well, if it isn’t Lint,” Mindy said. She smiled. “Girls, say hi to Lint.”
“Hi, Lint,” Katie said. Her tone was perfectly friendly. She even gave a little wave.
“My name’s not—” I broke off. What was the point?
“Chantelle?” Mindy prompted.
“Chantelle, don’t,” Amanda said to her.
“You don’t want Chantelle to say hi to her friend?” Mindy said.
“How rude,” Katie said.
Mindy hip-bumped Chantelle, and Chantelle stumbled because she’d been holding herself so rigidly. That was what was different about her. Chantelle, usually as fluid and graceful as water, was as stiff as a crayon. A waxy, expressionless crayon.
I willed her to just look at me and see that it was me, but she didn’t. She stared at the ground and said, “Hi.”
“Hi who?” Mindy prodded.
Don’t, I willed her.
With a crayon’s lifeless energy, Chantelle said, “Hi, Lint.”
Shame rose up in me, and all at once I needed to stop swinging. I had to stop swinging, because I’d felt ill all along, but now there was a real chance that my stomach would turn itself inside out, and up would come my breakfast plus my morning snack.
If I threw up in front of Mindy, I would die. I’d have to drop out of Trinity and switch schools. I’d have to move to a new state, or Canada.
“I am so disappointed in you, Chantelle,” Amanda said, loud and clear and brave. She hopped off her swing. “Come on, Winnie. Let’s go do something fun. Let’s go find the nice people.”
I was dizzy with gratitude, and I jumped off poorly, lurching forward and going down hard.
“Ow,” I said, unable not to.
Mindy snorted. From above me, her words pelted my sprawled figure like rocks. “Do you know what you’re like, Winnie? You’re like a flea on a dog’s back that I just can’t get rid of, no matter how hard I try.”
I pushed myself to my knees. I had to. I rose unsteadily to my feet and made myself say the words I was thinking. “Does that make you the dog?”
Mindy’s eyes widened. Then they narrowed, turning to flint. She stepped closer. “What did you just say?”
Amanda moved beside me and took my hand.
“Well, if I’m a flea”—my voice wobbled, but I pressed on—“then that makes you the dog. Right?”
Mindy’s nostrils flared. “You’re calling me a dog?”
I shrugged. I wasn’t calling her a dog. She was calling herself a dog.
“Take it back,” she said. She got up in my face. “Take. It. Back.”
Her breath smelled like honey. Splotches of red mottled her skin, and I could see every fleck of color in her eyes. I’d thought they were just brown, but there was gold mixed in as well. On her left iris, above the pupil, a particularly large slash of gold stood out.
She slapped me.
All thoughts flew from my mind, replaced first by shock and then by pain. Then came a tunneling-in of time like nothing I’d ever experienced, even when I fell over in the lamp box and was knocked unconscious. Everything was bright. Everything happened slowly.
Amanda gasped. She slapped Mindy, or tried to, but Mindy’s hand flew up and caught her wrist, twisting it until Amanda cried out.
“Let her go!” I yelled. I threw myself at Mindy, knocking her to the ground. Dimly, I heard Chantelle say, “Amanda, are you okay?” Katie said something, too, but I didn’t know what, and I didn’t care.
I pinned Mindy’s wrists to the ground and drove my knee into her hip. She kneed me in the gut. When that didn’t work, she squirmed beneath me and dug her fingernails into my skin.
I clenched my jaw, but I didn’t punch her, or spit at her, or any number of other things I could have done. I also didn’t release her, because nobody hurts my friend.
“You guys, the teachers are coming!” I heard. Hands pulled at me urgently. “Winnie, get up. If they catch you fighting . . .”
A second set of hands tugged at me, and Amanda’s face appeared upside down in my line of vision. “Winnie, hurry. Please.”
And then—swoosh. Time returned to normal. The playground teemed with noise. I pushed my weight into Mindy one last time, and then I let her go and rolled off her. I breathed heavily, clasping my arms around my shins.
Mindy sat up. A twig clung to her hair. Her gold-flecked eyes were animal eyes, cold and flat.
“You are so dead,” she told me. “You’re going to get expelled, you know.”
“No way, Mindy,” Amanda said, fast and slow. “You slapped Winnie. So if anyone gets in trouble, it’ll be you, because you started it.”
“Says who?” Mindy demanded. She gestured at Katie and Chantelle. “I’ve got witnesses. Three against two.”
“You think you can just lie?” Amanda said. “On top of everything else?”
Ms. Meyers was almost to us. Mr. Hutchinson, one of the sixth grade teachers, was close behind.
Amanda grabbed Chantelle’s elbow, pulling her away from Katie. Chantelle came willingly, and my brain registered a detail that I hadn’t fully processed.
Two people pulled me off Mindy. Two people wanted to save me from getting in trouble.
“Chantelle is with us,” Amanda stated. “Right, Chantelle?”
Chantelle gulped and bobbed her head. She looked at me—finally—and she was no longer a crayon, because crayons didn’t have eyes that welled with tears. “Sorry,” she whispered miserably.
Amanda helped me get to my feet.
“We choose Winnie,” she said, putting her arm around me.
“Yeah,” Chantelle said.
My lower lip trembled. I wiggled my fingers at Chantelle to say, Get over here, you stinky-poo-poo-head, and I pulled her into our hug.
“Girls?” Ms. Meyers said. Her tone was concerned and dangerous at the same time. Mr. Hutchinson joined her. He was tall. Usually he was a joking-around kind of teacher, but not right now.
“We’re fine,” Amanda said.
Ms. Meyers turned to me, lifting her eyebrows.
“We were, uh, playing cats and dogs,” I said. “I guess maybe we got a little too rough?”
“I’ll say,” Ms. Meyers said. She glanced at Katie, and then at Mindy, who was sitting sullenly on the flattened grass. “Do either of you have anything to add?”
“No, ma’am,” Katie muttered. Katie never said “ma’am,” so it was weird.
“Mindy?” Mr. Hutchinson said.
She shook her head. She didn’t look up.
Ms. Meyers folded her arms over her chest. “Well, how about this. How about you all promise not to play that game anymore. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” Amanda, Chantelle, and I said as one.
“Agreed,” Katie mumbled.
Ms. Meyers waited, and Mindy rolled her eyes.
“Agreed.” Under her breath, she added, “Duh.”
Ms. Meyers lectured us about taking care of ourselves, our friends, and our school, and after that, the group broke up. Mindy and Katie went to the opposite side of the playground, and Amanda, Chantelle, and I went to the swing set. It felt good to pump and move and feel the air lift my hair.
After a minute of silence, I turned to Chantelle and said, “You’re not really a stinky-poo-poo-head.”
She scrunched her brow, and I remembered I’d only called her that in my head.
I backpedaled. “I mean . . . well, I didn’t mean—”
“No, don’t,” she said. She was going back and forth, and so was I, but I could hear her just fine. “I am a poo-poo-head. I don’t know what I was thinking, Winnie. I’m so so sorry.”
Everything was still strange. I was slowly starting to feel better, though.
“I forgive you,” I said with a quick hitch of my shoulders.
“You don’t have to.”
“I want to.” Mostly, I thought. And I suspected that after a little more time passed, I fully would.
“Let’s just swing,” I said. I leaned back, pointed my toes, and pulled hard on the chain, soaring into the wide, blue sky.
March
Sometimes I lounged around in bed after I woke up, just to enjoy being happy for a while. Today was the perfect day for this, because it was a Saturday, which meant no school. Also it was bright and cheerful outside, which I knew because of the stripe of buttery light stretching into my room from beneath my blinds. But the biggest reason why today was a perfect day for soaking up the awesomeness of being alive? BECAUSE MY BIRTHDAY WAS ONLY A SIX DAYS AWAY!
Yep. This coming Friday was March eleventh, and on March eleventh, I would be eleven years old. It was so so so so cool. So cool! Mom had said I could have a slumber party, and I’d sent out invitations to Amanda, Chantelle, Louise, Karen, and—because Mom made me, big surprise—Dinah Devine. Every one of them said they could come. Yay!
I did not invite Mindy. But! BUT! I couldn’t have invited her even if I’d wanted to, because Mindy had moved to Florida. Ha ha ha ha ha!
She left last week. Boo hoo . . . NOT! Only I knew I shouldn’t be gloaty about it, because although it was excellent news for me, I guess it wasn’t so excellent for Mindy.
I knew this because eventually I confessed to Mom about beating Mindy up. Or rather, about starting to beat her up . . . and wanting to keep on going. I twisted my hands together as I told her all the gory details, until finally she reached over and took my hands in her own.
“Winnie, stop,” she said.
I swallowed. I felt dizzy knowing how disappointed she must be in me.
“I want to tell you something, and I want you to listen, all right?” she said.
I looked at my lap.
“I want you to listen to me and look at me. I’m not going to say anything bad.”
I lifted my eyes. She didn’t look mad or disappointed. She did look serious.
“Why didn’t you tell me about Mindy earlier?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Because I kept hoping it would get better?”
“Oh, Winnie.”
“And also you would have said, ‘Oh, Winnie,’ like you just did. Like I’d let you down.”
Mom’s eyes teared up. I felt my own eyes get bigger when I saw that—I could make Mom cry?—but
there was something inside of me that felt happy about that, too. Not happy . . . well, maybe happy . . . or more just relieved to be finally getting it off my chest.
“You would have said to confront Mindy,” I went on, “or to tell Ms. Meyers. And if I said I didn’t want to tell Ms. Meyers, you would have said, ‘Oh, Winnie. You can’t be afraid to talk to your teacher.’”
“I wouldn’t have said that,” Mom insisted.
I lifted my eyebrows.
“Would I have?”
I nodded.
“Oh, Winnie,” she said, and we both laughed a little, because she’d used the exact tone I used, and not even on purpose, I don’t think. “Sweetheart. You have never let me down.”
“What about when I don’t put my dishes in the dishwasher? What about when I forget to say ‘excuse me’ when I burp?”
“You burp?” she said, placing her hand over her heart. “You, my darlingest Winnie?”
“Very funny,” I said.
Mom studied me, and I sensed that she was really and truly seeing me. “Winnie, everyone burps.”
“Ha! You admitted it!” I said, because whenever Dad or Ty tooted or burped or acted too much like gross boys, Mom claimed that she never did anything so unladylike. “Ha!”
She allowed herself a small smile. Then she went back to being solemn. “But what Mindy was doing—picking a friend for a day, doing inspections of how certain girls looked . . .”
“Calling me a flea.”
“Calling you a flea.” She shook her head. “You are not a flea, Winifred Perry. I hope you know that.”
“Woof,” I said, so that I was a dog instead. Then I remembered about the flea being on a dog’s back, and I changed my tune. “I mean, me-o-o-w.”
She ruffled my hair. “You are a goof. That’s what you are.”
“I know. Can I get a kitten, by the way? Please-oh-please with champagne on top?”
“What Mindy did wasn’t nice,” Mom said. “And sweetie, you shouldn’t have had to deal with it on your own. A problem like that is too big for a ten-year-old.”