Abby kicks off the covers, trudges over, and falls into Fern’s chair. Fern crouches next to her on the floor. Abby opens her textbook and takes out Monday’s still-unfinished worksheet. It is wrinkled and Fern seems annoyed by it, which makes Abby happy. But mostly, she would rather fail than suffer through this.
Abby watches Fern’s eyes sprint across the page. She secretly hopes Fern won’t remember this stuff, but Fern quickly announces, “Alright. So you need to calculate the rate of the seafloor spreading.”
Abby stares at the map in her textbook. There’s a star on North America, another star marking Africa, and a spread of blue for the Atlantic Ocean.
Fern continues, “The seafloor was approximately two thousand two hundred kilometers between North America and Africa eighty-four million years ago, and it’s four thousand five hundred and fifty kilometers today.” Abby starts to write that down, but Fern says, “You don’t have to write that down, Abby. It’s already on your worksheet.”
“Fine.” Abby crosses her legs at the ankle and rubs the bones together.
Fern waits a few excruciating seconds before asking, “So what’s your next step?”
Abby stares into the ocean. The blue seems to get darker as the paper dips into the spine. “I subtract?”
“Well … yes. But your figures are in kilometers, and you need to answer in inches.”
“Why does it have to be in inches?”
“Because the seafloor grows so slowly, the number would be insignificant in kilometers. And also, we don’t use kilometers in this country.”
There is a tone to Fern’s voice. It is teacher-y and confident, making the words sound pointy and crisp, like the tip of a freshly sharpened pencil.
“If the answer is so insignificant” — Abby’s tongue clumsily pushes out the word — “why does it matter?”
Fern looks slack jawed at Abby. “Because moving plates cause volcanic eruptions, they cause tsunamis. I mean, Mount Everest grows an inch a year. That’s something you’ll want to keep track of.”
“An inch? Wow. You don’t say.”
Fern ignores her. “One kilometer equals point six two miles, and there are five thousand two hundred eighty feet in a mile, and twelve inches in one foot.”
“You know that by heart?” Abby laughs heartily, even though it isn’t that funny. But she likes turning the tables on Fern.
“Those are basic conversions,” Fern says back. “Now, to solve it, set up a cross multiplication.” She stands and goes over to her bed, flopping down on it as if she were already exhausted.
Abby grips her pencil and writes “cross multiplication” down on her notebook with the hope that seeing the words might spark her memory.
It doesn’t.
Fern opens The Blix Effect like she is going to read it, but Abby can feel her sister’s eyes pinned to her. “Multiply by a ratio of one, Abby.”
Abby drops her pencil. “I don’t know how.”
Fern’s face wrinkles. “That’s eighth-grade math.”
“Don’t you remember? I was stupid last year, too.” Abby stands up.
“You’re not stupid, Abby.”
“Whatever, Fern.” Abby lies back down on her bed. “I know you don’t want to help me, so forget it.”
Fern walks over and stands with her hands on her hips. “You’re a brat, you know that?” Fern says. “I have a stack of homework I have to do myself, and here I am spending my time trying to help you and you couldn’t be more ungrateful!”
“What does it matter? I’m missing the dance.”
“Are you kidding me? Hello! If you’re doing as badly in your other classes as you are in Earth Science, you could get left back, Abby. Do you want to be a freshman again next year? How do you think that will affect your precious social standing?” Fern licks her lips. “Or maybe you could be the prettiest freshman girl again next year! Wouldn’t that be totally awesome?”
Abby rolls over and stares at the wall. Getting left back is a huge, very real fear of hers. And Fern knows that. She knows that, and now she is throwing it in her face. “You’re a horrible sister!” Abby screams at the top of her lungs.
Fern startles. She backs away from the bed. “What? Was I not just helping —”
Abby rolls onto her knees and jabs a finger at her sister so hard, the mattress springs bob her up and down. “Don’t you even feel a little bit bad about ratting me out to Mom and Dad?”
“Is that why you brought up Mr. Timmet? To get back at me?” Fern shakes her head. “I hate to break it to you, Abby, but this is your fault. Quit feeling sorry for yourself. And quit blaming me.”
“You want to punish me for the list. You’re jealous!”
Fern’s face gets tight. “That’s pathetic.”
It is as if Abby has reached the top of a steep hill, and now she tumbles down without any chance of stopping. “You are. You’re jealous because I’m pretty and you’re ugly and EVERYONE KNOWS IT.”
For a second, it is a relief. To have said the thing she felt, to have said the best thing to hurt Fern. But in the next moment, Abby can’t breathe.
It happens fast. Fern’s face goes white, and then the tears pour out, as if they’ve been collecting there the whole time, waiting for the opportunity to fall. “Obviously, Abby! I know I’m ugly. I was on the list, too.”
It scares Abby to hear Fern say this. To hear Fern call herself ugly. “No, you weren’t. The list didn’t mention you by name. And like you said, no one thinks we’re sisters, anyhow.”
Fern wipes at her eyes, but it doesn’t help. “I’m not talking about this year’s list.” She looks away, ashamed. “I was on last year’s list. I was the ugliest sophomore.”
“What are you talking about?” Abby says, but she thinks back and starts to remember. Last year, she’d overheard Fern in the kitchen with their parents. Fern had been upset that someone had called her ugly.
Abby now understands that “someone” was, essentially, the entire school. Well, one person speaking for the entire school.
Their parents quickly leaped to Fern’s defense. Looks didn’t matter; Fern was smarter than the majority of her classmates; intellect was what counted; a million other compliments Abby never received. They had wanted to call the school to complain, but Fern forbid them to.
No wonder Fern had been so bitchy to her this week. And while Abby definitely feels bad, Fern should have told her. “How was I supposed to know that? You said the list was no big deal.”
“It isn’t a big deal,” Fern clarifies, her voice startlingly emotionless despite the tears. “I don’t need a stupid list to tell me what I already know.”
Abby opens her mouth, but no words come out. She doesn’t know what to say.
“And I’m not sorry for telling on you, Abby. It’s crazy to me that you think this list is the only thing you’ve got going for you. I seriously don’t understand how someone like you has such horrible self-esteem.”
It is the first nice thing Abby can remember Fern saying to her. “Well, you’re not ugly, Fern.” She would have said it back then, too. If she’d known.
“I am ugly. I know it.”
To hear Fern, so sure of herself, makes Abby want to cry. It makes her feel so ashamed for thinking it. She never meant it. Not really. “You’re not.”
“And you’re not stupid.”
Abby shakes her head. “Trust me, Fern.”
“Trust me, Abby.”
They are clearly at an impasse. Abby realizes they both firmly believe they are one thing and not the other. But they also have each other’s backs, like real sisters, for what feels like the first time ever.
Fern sits down on the floor. “Look, I’m just going to stay home and help you with this. I don’t need to see The Blix Effect again.”
“No, Fern. You should go. I’ll see where I can get on my own with this and you can check it when you come home. Do you want me to do your makeup?”
“Give it a rest,” Fern says, and they leave it
at that.
auren climbs out of the back of her friend’s pickup truck. It is overstuffed. Most of the girls are crabby about Mount Washington’s football team losing yet another game. But not Lauren. She’s smiling ear to ear, having had the time of her life. She loved the burn of the wind on her cheeks, that her hair is a tangled mess, that she’d cheered her throat raw.
“So we’ll see you at Candace’s house in a few hours?”
“Yup! See you there!”
“Do you need a ride?” the girl driving asks.
“No, I’ll be okay.”
“I’m not even excited to go over there,” someone groans.
“Let’s go as late as we can. I don’t want to be hanging out there all night.”
Lauren realizes this is the perfect time to discuss Candace. “Come on,” Lauren says. “It’ll be a fun way to start off the night.” The girls still seem doubtful, so Lauren adds, “Candace was really nice to me last night and it’s not because she likes me. It’s because she misses all of you.”
“You shouldn’t defend her, Lauren.”
“I’m not defending her, exactly. I’m just saying that maybe she’s changed.”
“She’s using you to make herself look good in front of us.”
Lauren wants to say no, because she truly doesn’t think that’s it. But she doesn’t say anything. She feels bad for Candace, because Lauren hasn’t changed anyone’s mind. But she did what she could. She tried. And Candace will still have a chance, at her party.
Her mother is in the shadowy part of the kitchen, looking over some papers.
“We lost!” Lauren announces cheerfully. “But it was the most fun I think I’ve had in my whole life.” She goes to the sink and gulps down a glass of water. “The game was so close, Mommy. We lost it in the last minute, when one of our guys dropped a pass. But it was so exciting! Much more exciting than football on television. And our high school band is amazing. They played songs throughout the game, songs that everyone knew the words to. And all the girls sat together on the bleachers underneath blankets. It was just … perfect.”
Lauren crashes down next to Mrs. Finn. She glances down at her mother’s papers. One of them is the list. The copy that’s been in Lauren’s book bag all week.
“We need to talk,” Mrs. Finn announces.
“You went in my bag,” Lauren says, backing up slowly until she hits the counter. “I can’t believe you went into my bag!”
“What kind of people are you friends with, Lauren?” Mrs. Finn taps the paper.
“My friends didn’t do this.”
“Then who did?”
“I don’t know, Mommy!”
“They certainly don’t speak kindly about Candace. In fact, they pretty much confirmed my impression of her.”
Lauren shakes her head. Candace had been nothing but kind and respectful last night. Which was more than she could say of her mother. “Mommy —”
“Why didn’t you show this to me right away?”
“Because I didn’t want you to worry. I’ve met a lot of really nice girls. My grades are good. Everything’s okay. Everything’s great, actually.”
“You think those girls care about you?” Her mother runs her quivering hands through her hair. “You’ve changed, Lauren. I don’t like who you are choosing to spend time with. And this” — she crumples up the paper — “is beyond anything I would have thought you’d get involved with.”
“Mommy … I haven’t changed.”
“I’m quitting my job.”
“What?”
“This isn’t working out for us, Lauren. I’m going to pull you out of Mount Washington as soon as possible. I figure if I sell the house, which is too big for the two of us anyway, I’ll have enough money to carry us through the last two years of high school.”
The kitchen walls close in. “I want to stay in school.”
“I was always afraid of the way other people would treat you, never that you’d become some kind of mean popular girl. I can’t even begin to say how disappointed I am at the choices you’ve made.”
“You don’t like it because you don’t control my life anymore. Because I’m not afraid of school and other people.” With a shaky hand, she holds on to the back of a kitchen chair. “I’ve got to go get ready.”
“You’re not going to the dance!”
Lauren sits down, shocked but still obedient. A second later, though, she stands back up.
“You can’t do that! I haven’t done anything wrong!”
“This is my right as a mother, to intervene when I see my daughter going down the wrong path.”
“Mommy, please. It’s the homecoming dance. Everyone’s going to be there.”
“Lauren, I’ve said what I need to say.”
Lauren storms up to her room. She slams the door and falls on her bed, sobbing. It isn’t fair. She knows that the list had made a lot of girls unhappy, but it is different for her. The list has given her confidence. It’s made people take a chance and approach her. Sure, maybe if the list had never been written, everyone still would have viewed her as the homeschooled girl, but things are different now. She is different now.
Later, Mrs. Finn comes up to deliver dinner. Neither speaks to the other. Lauren eats a little, but not much, and when her mother returns to collect the tray, Lauren has her curtains drawn, her lights out. Again, she says nothing.
But as soon as her mother closes the door, Lauren climbs out of bed wearing the dress she’d worn to her grandfather’s funeral. It is long, black, and surely wrong for the dance. She puts her shoes in her bag, along with a camera. She shimmies open her window, drops out, and runs barefoot across the grass.
t is time to see if the dress fits.
Bridget walks slowly down the hall, robe tied tight around her, a glass of ice-cold water in her hand. She takes a sip, barely gets it down. The fear has collected in her throat like a too-big bite of something gone bad. Moldy bread, sour milk, rotten meat.
With each step closer to her bedroom, Bridget thinks of the things she swallowed this week. The bagel, the bottles of cleanse, the pretzels, a forkful of salad at the mall. It adds up, in her off-kilter mind, to a hundred Thanksgivings.
If the red dress doesn’t fit, if she is too big for it, what will she do? There’s nothing else in her closet to wear. And even if there were, it would be impossible for her to have a good time, knowing she failed. All her sacrifices, all the hunger pains, will have been for nothing.
As Bridget passes the bathroom, she hears Lisa through the closed door singing along to the radio while brushing her teeth. Though she’s doing it earnestly, Lisa’s voice is garbled by the brush and the foam and it makes the whole thing sound wonderfully silly. It breaks through the darkness, the emptiness, inside Bridget. She stops, delays the judgment awaiting her for a little longer, and quietly opens the door a crack.
Steam seeps out and she sees Lisa dressed in a tank, shorts, and her slippers. Her black hair, wet and shiny like oil, hangs down her back, and the dripping water has made the portion of tank top covering the small of her back see-through. White bubbly paste blooms at the corners of Lisa’s mouth, and she bops from side to side, the toothbrush her microphone, the fluffy bath mat her stage.
Bridget hasn’t seen much of her sister today. Bridget decided to bail on the Spirit Caravan and the football game. She was too tired, and what little energy she had she wanted to save for the homecoming dance. Also, she knew it would be hard to pass up the snacks. Her friends love to hit the snack shed — nachos, soft pretzels, hot dogs, popcorn, cardboard boxes balanced on their laps, hands reaching across one another.
Anyway, Lisa barged into her room, looking for something. Even though Bridget was clearly sleeping, Lisa turned on the light and made lots of unnecessary noise. When she noticed the ice cream bowl that had been left last night, melted soup covered by a skin of curdled milk, she snorted. “This is disgusting, Bridget,” she said.
Bridget knew why her sister was being
so sharp. It had all come out last night. Lisa was worried about her. And even Bridget couldn’t deny … it was for good reason.
So instead of getting mad at Lisa, Bridget rolled over and told her to take her spot in the backseat of her friend’s car. Do the Spirit Caravan with the junior girls. Bridget didn’t even have to check with them. Her friends loved Lisa, babied her. They wouldn’t mind her tagging along.
But instead of being grateful, Lisa muttered “No, thanks,” marched out, and got their parents to drop her off at the football field.
When she came home a few hours later, Lisa went right to her room.
Bridget still doesn’t know which team won.
Lisa leans forward to spit in the sink. When she straightens back up, she notices Bridget in the mirror. Lisa’s entire expression changes from happy to pissed off. “I’m in here,” she says, and kicks the door to close it.
Bridget’s grip tightens on the doorknob, and she pushes against Lisa to keep the door open. “Do you want me to help with your hair?”
Lisa narrows her eyes. “No.”
“Are you going to curl it? Or wear it up?”
“I don’t know, Bridge.” Lisa pushes harder.
Bridget uses her foot to keep the door from closing. “What about your makeup? Did you want to borrow my lipstick again? I have a lip liner that goes with it. You really should wear liner. Otherwise it’ll rub off after a few minutes.”
“God, can’t I have some privacy?” Lisa shouts and lunges for the door, pushing against it with both her hands.
Bridget moves her foot and the door slams shut.
She wants to scream about how Lisa could have hurt her, but Lisa switches on the hair dryer. Bridget turns and leans her back against the closed door. From inside, the whirling vibrations send tingles through her body.