One of the girls folds her arms decidedly. “Well, if Lauren’s not going to Candace’s party, I’m not going.”
“Me, either,” another girl chimes in. The rest nod their heads.
It amazes Lauren to see the girls, her new friends, rally around her. Candace was wrong. This isn’t only about Lauren being pretty. They like her. Really.
The girl who lent Lauren her cell phone dips her head below the cafeteria table and checks her voice mail. “Um, Lauren?” she says. “Your mom said to tell you she got the job.”
Lauren brightens. “Yay! Do you know what this means? We’re staying in Mount Washington!” She squeaks with excitement. The girls smile politely, though they seem maybe a bit embarrassed. Lauren claps her hand over her mouth. “Sorry. I’m just so happy,” she says with a nervous laugh.
The girl holding her phone looks a bit confused. “Oh. Okay,” she says. “That’s good. ’Cause your mom sounded kinda bummed.”
he sixth-period bell rings. Abby waves good-bye as Lisa bolts from their lab desk and disappears into the hallway. Lisa’s next class is on the opposite side of the school, and she has to sprint out of Earth Science to make it on time. Their arrangement is that Lisa does most of the actual lab experiments and calculations, and Abby records the results and takes care of cleaning up the work space. It’s an excellent deal, in Abby’s opinion. Abby’s next class is gym, so she takes her time rolling up their relief map and returning the rock samples to the cabinet, because she hates gym almost as much as Earth Science.
She is on her way out the classroom door when her teacher, Mr. Timmet, raises his pencil in the air.
“Abby?”
She stops just past the doorway and turns to face his desk, careful to keep her body in the hallway. “Yeah, Mr. Timmet?”
“I’m afraid we have a small problem.” After beckoning her closer, he shuffles papers around his desk and avoids eye contact. “Between your first two quiz grades and Monday’s incomplete worksheet, you’re not doing very well in my class.”
Crap. Monday’s worksheet. With all the excitement of being named on the list, Abby had forgotten to copy the answers down from Lisa.
“Abby, I know it seems like we’ve only just started back in school, but the marking period’s nearly half over,” he continues, producing a rectangle of light blue card stock. A progress report. “Please have one of your parents sign this before the end of the week.”
Abby shoves her hands in the pockets of her jeans, down to the linty seams. “But I’m trying, Mr. Timmet. I am.” She tries to sound sweetly desperate and vulnerable. Teachers like Mr. Timmet, who think they’re still young, who think that their students might find them cute, respond to that sort of thing. “And I’m sorry about Monday’s worksheet. Something exciting happened that morning and I…” Abby pauses, hopeful that a glimmer of knowing about the list would register on Mr. Timmet’s face. Or, at the very least, sympathy. “Anyway, I seriously meant to do it. Really.”
Mr. Timmet sets his glasses on top of his head and rubs at his eyes. “Like I said, Abby, this is about more than Monday’s worksheet. I’m glad you’re trying, and I want you to know that it’s not too late to turn your grade around. Remember, we’ve got a big test next week, and a good score could bring your average back up to passing. But I still have to let your parents know that you’re currently failing my class.”
Abby’s bones go soft. Failing? Already?
She’d started with such high hopes. That high school would be different from eighth grade, when she’d scrambled and pleaded and made all sorts of deals with her teachers to do extra credit and make-up exams to keep her from getting left back.
This year, Abby actually tried to pay attention from the very start. She took notes, even on the first day. She wrote down everything Mr. Timmet said in her notebook as neatly as she could.
And for a while, Abby did feel like she was getting it. Understanding the concepts of natural disasters and the craziness going on inside the Earth’s core. But then, as the days passed, his lessons changed from learning the names of rocks to hieroglyphic equations. Now she had no idea what was going on.
“If my parents see this progress report, they’re going to kill me. Please, please, pleeeease, can’t we work something out? I’ll make up any homework I’ve missed. And I’ll come every day for detention until I bring my grade up.”
Mr. Timmet sets the progress report on the very edge of his desk, just shy of teetering to the floor. “I’m obligated to do this, Abby. It’s nothing personal.”
Mr. Timmet was Fern’s favorite teacher. Abby can imagine Fern staring at Mr. Timmet from her desk in the front row, counting the tiny pinstripes on his shirt. His watch is the kind you could wear underwater. Practical. His wire-rimmed glasses, unlike the other teachers who wear them, are never smudged or dirty. He made lots of corny science jokes in class, stuff that the smart kids laughed at. She could see why Fern liked him so much. But all those reasons annoyed her.
“Mr. Timmet, I’m begging you. Could you at least wait until after next week’s test? The homecoming dance is Saturday night, and my parents will probably ground me, and …” Abby lets herself trail off as Mr. Timmet turns to his computer. Obviously he doesn’t care about her or the homecoming dance. Abby has never had the kind of relationship Fern does with teachers. They love it when Fern stops back in their classrooms, talks to them about the things going on in her real life.
When he realizes that she’s stopped pleading her case, Mr. Timmet looks back at her. Abby thinks he seems a little nervous. Or maybe just regretful that this is becoming so awkward.
“I’m afraid this is nonnegotiable,” he says.
The weight of Abby’s books increases tenfold. She squeezes them tight in her arms and her eyes fill with tears. “But I’ll do better,” she whispers. “I promise.”
“I would like nothing more than to see that, Abby. You know, you should ask your sister to tutor you. Fern had no trouble with this stuff. She’s a very smart girl.”
Abby finally snatches the progress report off of Mr. Timmet’s desk. She does it so fast, a bunch of his other papers flutter onto the floor. “Right,” she mutters on her way out.
If there is one thing Abby does know, it’s that.
All through the crab soccer game in gym, Abby thinks over her options. If she gives the progress report to her parents, she’ll definitely be grounded, and there’s an extremely good chance that they’d forbid her to go to the homecoming dance. If she doesn’t get it signed by Friday, Mr. Timmet will probably call home, and then she’ll also be forbidden to go to the dance. All the great attention she’d gotten from the list, the invite to Andrew’s party, will be wasted.
It is pretty much a lose/lose situation.
Abby sits on her bed. She doesn’t want to do her homework or watch the talk show flashing on the small television atop her cluttered dresser.
Across the room, Fern is hunched over her desk in the valley between mountains of books piled high on either side, the reading lamp picking up the dust in the air. Abby watches Fern’s pencil fly so fast, so confidently across her notebook.
Because both her parents needed home offices for their work, Fern and Abby have to share a bedroom. It is set up to be a mirror image, the same furniture and accessories pinned to each wall. A bed, a desk, a dresser, a night table. But beyond the skeleton, that simple architecture and layout, each side is vastly different from the other.
The walls that cuddle Abby’s bed are taped over with photos, glossy magazine shots of models and boy actors, and fun trinkets from different adventures she’s had with her friends, like a strip of red paper tickets from the Skee-Ball machine at the pier arcade when she’d gone to visit Lisa at her family’s beach house. The floor is covered with her dirty clothes.
Fern’s side is the after shot of a cleaning demonstration. Everything is neat and arranged by right angles. Her clothes are hung up and put away. A tangle of academic ribbons hangs from the left be
dpost. An inspirational poster of a beach at sunrise is taped to her ceiling. THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR HARD WORK, it says. There are only white pushpins stuck in her cork-board, pinning up a monthly calendar where assignments, tests, and debate competitions have been marked in perfect penmanship.
If Abby had a sister like Bridget, they’d be able to talk this over and figure out a plan. At the very least, Bridget would step in and try to get her parents not to make a huge deal about the progress report, find an angle to help convince their parents to let her go to the dance.
Fern would never help her that way. Never ever.
Abby feels around for her remote and inches her television volume up slowly, click by click, until the applause from the audience sounds like thunder.
Fern, scribbling away furiously, pauses a moment. “Why don’t you go watch that in the den, Abby?” she asks, not politely.
“Oh, so you’re talking to me now?” Abby mumbles.
“What?”
Abby mutes the television. “I know you’re mad at me about the list.” There. She’s said it.
Fern lets go of her pencil and it falls onto her notebook. “I’m not mad at you for the list,” she says slowly, as if Abby is an idiot. “But I don’t know what you expect me to say about it.”
“Um, I don’t know. How about … congratulations?”
Fern spins around in her desk chair. “Are you serious?”
“Maybe,” Abby mutters, suddenly wishing she hadn’t said anything. “You shouldn’t blame me. It just happened. It wasn’t my fault.”
“Of course it’s not your fault. I know how the list works. But you don’t have to parade around school acting so proud about it.”
“You mean the way you act whenever you make honor roll?”
Fern snorts. “That’s different, Abby.”
“How? Even though I never get on honor roll, I’m still happy for you.”
“Because getting on honor roll is an actual accomplishment. It’s a direct reflection of the hard work and effort I’ve put in. You’re not going to put the fact that you are the prettiest girl in your freshmen class on your applications for college, are you?”
Fern starts laughing at her joke, and Abby wants to crawl inside herself. “Whatever.”
“Why don’t you concentrate on doing your homework instead of watching television? Or spending all your free time looking at stupid dresses online,” Fern says before spinning her desk chair back around to her homework. “Why don’t you work on something that matters? Try to win a prize that can actually help you in life?”
“They aren’t stupid dresses, Fern. And maybe you think being on the list is stupid, too, but it isn’t. It’s an honor.”
Fern picks up her pencil. But instead of going back to her homework, she stares at the wall. “The list isn’t changing your life, Abby. I’m not trying to be mean, but I’m also not going to fall at your feet over something so meaningless. Now, if you ever make honor roll, I’ll be the first one to congratulate you. I’ll tie balloons to your bed.”
Abby doesn’t want to cry, but she feels like it’s inevitable. Luckily, her cell phone rings. Without saying another word to Fern, she grabs it and walks out of their bedroom. And she unmutes the television, just to be a snot.
“Hey, Lisa.” Abby presses her back up against the wall, and the frames of family photos dig into her spine. She hears Fern let out a deep sigh as she rises up from her desk chair to shut off Abby’s television.
“You sound upset,” Lisa says. “What’s wrong?”
Abby bites her lip. She wants to tell Lisa about the progress report and Mr. Timmet, but she’s too embarrassed. So instead she says, “It’s my sister,” kind of loud, and peeks inside her room. Fern is back at work, leaning over her books, and Abby shoots daggers into her. “Honestly, she’s been horrible to me ever since the list came out.”
Lisa lowers her voice. “I don’t want to start trouble or anything, but look … Fern is just jealous of you. You know that, right?”
Abby huffs. “No, she’s not.”
“Yes she is, dummy! Okay, sure. She gets better grades than you do. But guess what? I bet Fern would give up all her perfect report cards for your DNA. I mean, you’re soooo much prettier than her.”
A part of Abby thinks that herself, somewhere deep down inside. It was the last place her mind went when she fought with Fern. Abby always felt dirty about that, like it was a dark and terrible secret, and she was an awful person for ever thinking it.
Hearing Lisa say it makes her feel better.
Kind of.
fter practice, Danielle steps out from the steamy pool showers and clicks open her gym locker. The inside of the cube is lit yellow-y green. She’s received a text from Andrew.
Meet me @ the pool entrance after yr practice
Last night, after getting home from the mall, she’d called Andrew and they’d spent another night talking on the phone until dawn. She told him about her homecoming dress — a pale pink dress with sheer cap sleeves. It was nothing like what she’d ever worn before, but it was definitely girlie and looked good on her, despite the fact that the sleeves were a bit snug around her shoulder muscles. No one was more stunned by the choice than her mother, who claimed to the saleswoman that she hadn’t seen Danielle that dressed up since her first Communion.
Though the list never came up once, a part of Danielle wondered what Andrew was feeling about it, what his friends were saying about her. She could have asked him, but she didn’t want to risk ruining their good conversation.
But today is another story. Again Andrew avoided her during school, and Danielle is starting to feel paranoid. Is Andrew embarrassed to be seen with her? And his text seems a little curt. Is he planning to break up with her today?
Her hair drips water onto the phone screen. She wipes it with her towel and sees that she’d missed something.
:)
Danielle lets out a breath she didn’t know she was holding. If Andrew wanted to break up with her, he wouldn’t have put the smiley. All the doubts she’d been feeling drift away like a cloud passing the sun. She warms up. She can’t wait to see her boyfriend.
Hope squeezes past Danielle to get to her locker. “Do you want to come over for dinner tonight? We’re having tacos. And I want to show you my homecoming outfit. I know most girls are wearing dresses, but I was thinking I’d wear jeans and a cute shirt or something. I don’t know. I never feel comfortable in dresses. I can’t dance in a dress.”
Danielle had felt the same way, but she’d bought a dress anyhow because she knew anything less would only invoke her new nickname. “I can’t tonight,” Danielle says. “I’m meeting Andrew.”
“Oh.” Hope sounds surprised. “Is everything okay with you guys?”
“Of course everything’s okay,” Danielle says. “Why wouldn’t it be?” She can feel Hope watching her as she wrings the water out from her hair.
“Well … because you said Andrew’s been acting kind of weird since the list came out. Distant.”
Danielle had indeed confessed that feeling to Hope in a weak moment during study hall, but now she regrets having said anything. “It’s not that he’s acting weird,” she tries to clarify. “We just haven’t talked much about it, that’s all.”
“Do you think he’ll ever want to? You know, talk about it?”
“I hope not.” Danielle slides on her deodorant. It is vanilla-scented and will hopefully mask the smell of chlorine on her skin. No matter how hard she scrubs in the shower, it always lingers on her. “I don’t want to have a big awkward conversation with him.” She doesn’t particularly want to have this conversation, either. So instead of running a comb through her hair and putting on a little makeup, Danielle shoves her stuff into her book bag in a hurry.
Hope sits down on the bench. “It wouldn’t have to be a big awkward conversation, Danielle. But he should say something. Like … that it doesn’t matter to him. That he thinks you are beautiful no matter what anyone else
says.”
“Can you please stop?” Danielle snaps. She hopes none of the other girls in the locker room have overheard these embarrassing attempts to pump her up. She turns her back to Hope and closes her eyes for a second, listening to the waves of murmured conversations, the white noise of hair dryers. Andrew hadn’t said anything like that to her. Hearing those things would almost make it worse. As if she were a pathetic weakling who needed him to make her feel good about herself.
“Sorry,” Hope says. “I just think you deserve the best.”
“I know.” And Danielle does know. But she doesn’t stop packing up her things. “I’ll call you later.”
As Danielle heads out of the locker room, she makes a promise to herself, then and there, never to talk about what went on between her and Andrew again. Hope will only bring it up later, out of context, completely misinterpreted. And while Danielle doesn’t want Hope thinking badly of her boyfriend, the truth is that Hope doesn’t understand. She wasn’t with them during the summer. She’s never had a boyfriend. Andrew is simply a person who’s come between her and her best friend.
Danielle enters the bathroom near her locker and fixes herself up there. As she descends the staircase, she sees Andrew with his friends out the window. She leans against the banister and watches the guys goof around for a minute. Andrew looks much younger from a distance, she thinks to herself, as he tries to fight his way out of Chuck’s headlock. Andrew is the smallest of his friends.
Chuck gets picked up by his dad in a sports car. And then, a minute later, a minivan pulls up. The remaining boys pile in, while Andrew takes a seat on the curb, as if he’s waiting for a ride himself. He waves as the minivan departs, and when it turns the corner, he stands up, grabs his book bag, and starts walking around toward the pool building.
Danielle turns and sprints. She wants to beat Andrew to their meeting spot. She wants to run away from the question of whether or not his friends know he’s meeting her.