Lauren gets to homeroom. She takes a seat and again reviews the notes on the back of the list, trying to focus only on the girls in the tight circle who’d seemed the most interested in her.
One by one, these girls arrive to find Lauren. They pull their seats close to hers. Others stand to get a better view, and they all beam down at Lauren as if she’s a baby in a nursery they’ve collectively adopted.
They appear charmed by her innocence, sharing pleased little looks as they point out Lauren’s social transgressions to each other — her lack of makeup, that she’s covered her textbooks in brown paper, the barrette she uses to keep her hair pinned off her face.
Blood rushes to Lauren’s head and makes her woozy and warm.
And then, the questions begin.
“So, have you lived in Mount Washington your whole life?”
“No,” Lauren answers, once she’s picked out the girl who’d asked from the crowd. “I used to live out west with my mom. We moved here when my grandfather died.”
“Are your parents still together?”
Lauren turns her head toward a girl perched on the desk to her right. “No. It’s just the two of us.”
“Where’s your dad?” a girl leaning against the bulletin board asks.
“He died, too. When I was a baby.”
“Wow. That’s so sad,” comes a voice from behind her. The girls nod in solemn agreement.
“He was a lot older.”
Lauren senses their urgency to get to know her, and she tries her best to keep pace, answering their questions as quickly as they’re asked. It is clear from the unspoken ways they communicate — head nods, glances, smiles — that most of these girls have known each other for practically forever. Lauren herself has watched them from afar the last few weeks walking through the halls with their arms linked, hugging in between classes. She wants to be a part of what they have. There seems to be so much time to make up for.
Lauren wishes it wasn’t so one-sided. She wants to ask them things, too. But their questions keep coming.
“What kind of stuff do you like to do?”
“Um, I don’t know. Read? I like reading.”
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
“A couple of the guys told us to ask you that,” a girl says slyly, and the others laugh.
Lauren shakes her head. “I’ve never had a boyfriend. I’ve … I’ve never even been kissed.” As soon as she admits this, it hits her that she isn’t just talking to these girls. Her answers will be reported back to more people she doesn’t know.
“Never?!” they all squeal with shocked delight. A few inch closer to her desk, as if to protect her. She can’t remember any of their names.
“Well, that’s about to change,” a girl says. She is speaking to the others in the group but keeping her eyes on Lauren. “I bet Lauren gets a boyfriend by the homecoming dance.”
Lauren feels herself blush. It seems impossible. “I don’t know about that.”
“Have you bought your ticket to the dance yet?”
“No.”
“But you’re coming, right?”
Lauren nods. “I think so,” she says, even though she hadn’t considered it before now. Even though she’ll have to ask her mother.
“Good. And you should totally help us work on our Spirit Caravan for the homecoming parade. Everyone in school decorates their cars and drives around town, like a parade before the game starts. People come out on their lawns to watch. It’s seriously so fun.”
“I’d love to help.” The idea of riding in a car with these new girls, who are maybe becoming her actual friends, is extremely exciting. Suddenly the reality of high school is matching up with how she dreamed it might be, and not at all what she’d been told.
One girl cocks her head to the side and says wistfully, “I bet this is kinda crazy for you. Like, one minute, you’re invisible. And then the next, everyone knows who you are.”
“I thought you looked friendly,” another girl admits. “I don’t know why I never said hi or anything.”
“Me, too,” says another.
Lauren shakes her head. “It’s partly my fault. It’s not like I was talking to you guys, either. I’m really shy.” She spreads her eyes on all the girls. And as she does, she sees Candace walk by the homeroom, alone. Candace, the former leader of this group. Lauren sees Candace’s eyes flit sideways into the classroom, looking but not looking. The other girls don’t notice. They’re too busy staring at Lauren.
“I feel bad for Candace,” Lauren says in a low voice. “She seemed upset yesterday.” More upset than anyone else in Principal Colby’s office.
One of the girls moans. “Ugh. Don’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because she’s evil!” another cries.
Lauren watches the girls nod solemnly. “Wait. Aren’t you all friends with her?”
“We are friends with her,” someone says. “We’re still friends with her.”
“But … Candace had this coming, you know?”
“She gets away with a lot of stuff, because she’s … you know … so pretty. And that’s not right.”
“She’s said a lot of bad things about a lot of people.” It seems like the girl who says this wants something to register on Lauren’s face, and when whatever it is doesn’t, she adds, “Including you.”
Lauren cycles back through the last four weeks of school. She’d tried hard to blend in, but even still, there’d been mistakes. The waterproof hiking boots she’d worn on the first rainy day had gotten her a few weird looks. Her clothes were plain and sensible, not stylish. Her hair was longer than anyone else’s by several inches, and no one wore the side pinned back with a tarnished old barrette.
She lifts up her hand and quietly removes her barrette. She knows there’s so much still to learn. Things her mother doesn’t know, or never taught her.
When homeroom ends, Lauren still feels like she should say something to Candace. Making new friends is great, and so exciting, but she doesn’t want them at the expense of an enemy.
She sees Candace duck into the girls’ bathroom. Lauren follows her.
“Hi,” Lauren says. “I’m Lauren.”
“I know who you are.” Candace walks into a stall and closes the door.
Lauren wrings her hands. “I … wanted to say that I’m sorry about everything that happened yesterday. You don’t deserve to be called ugly. By anyone.”
After a second, the toilet flushes, though Lauren doesn’t recall hearing Candace pee or anything. The door opens and Candace walks over to the sink to wash her hands. She never looks at Lauren. But she does say, “I know I don’t.”
Candace is obviously upset. Lauren can’t blame her for that. Maybe talking to Candace is a mistake, but she still feels relieved to say her piece. “And, I’m sorry your friends aren’t talking to you right now. But I’m sure that will blow over.” Candace laughs, and it sends a shiver over Lauren. Because really, what does Lauren know about all this? She doesn’t know these girls. She doesn’t understand how things go in high school. “Okay. Right. Well, I just wanted to tell you that.”
She is nearly at the door when Candace calls after her, “You know that the only reason people are suddenly being nice to you is because of the list, right?”
This time, it’s Lauren who doesn’t answer. Because she does know that. And because she doesn’t care. The point is that they are being nice to her. And she plans to enjoy every minute.
anielle reaches for the tile marking the end of her swim lane. Then she twists around, presses her feet against the wall, and blasts the last lap of her heat.
Her mind is usually blank when she swims, clear and chlorinated like the pool water. But not today. Today her thoughts are murky and dark, like the water had been during the summer at Clover Lake.
The camp was nearly a hundred miles north of Mount Washington. Neither Danielle nor Andrew had been there before, but each had a relative who’d been a camper back in the day and
who pulled strings to get them the extremely well-paying summer jobs.
The rest of the teen counselors were veteran campers, a tight clique who’d gone to Clover Lake as kids and knew all the campfire songs and the indigenous trees and probably didn’t care if they got paid anything, so long as they could spend another summer at the lake. Danielle and Andrew were the outsiders, and sometimes they’d share an eye roll when the other counselors critiqued the stability of their pinecone birdhouses or corrected their pronunciations of the Native American tribes who’d once inhabited the area. But it wasn’t like they were friends or anything.
The kids loved Danielle. The other counselors barely paid any attention to their campers, but Danielle included herself in their activities, mainly so she’d have people to talk to. The girls in her bunk wove her a special lanyard for her lifeguard whistle. The boys constantly challenged her to impromptu races across the lawn or to swim to the buoys and back. At first, they seemed frustrated to lose, and lose badly, to a girl, but after a while, those disappointed feelings evolved into something closer to respect.
It was around that time that Andrew began to make himself more visible. She’d see him walking the edge of the lake while she sat in her lifeguard chair. She’d feel him standing close behind her in the food line. She’d catch him watching her through the flickering orange flames of the nightly bonfire.
It was the first time a boy had paid her attention.
She’d been writing old-fashioned pen pal letters to Hope for fun. But the topic of Andrew required more immediate communication. So she took to sneaking phone calls to give Hope a daily report on the comings and goings of Andrew.
“I feel like he wants to talk to me,” Danielle whispered to Hope one night, once her campers were asleep. She leaned against the cedar-shingled bunk and watched the stars in the sky, waiting for one to fall.
“So go talk to him first.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Danielle! Don’t be dumb. You talk to boys all the time. And we’re gonna be freshmen!”
“Never boys that may possibly like me,” Danielle clarified.
Hope said, “He’s probably nervous. You’re kind of … intimidating.”
Danielle closed her eyes and breathed the thick, humid air. She was nervous, too, which would hopefully level the playing field.
The next day, Andrew made his move.
Danielle was in the lake, up to her waist, leading a swim relay for the eleven-year-olds. She saw Andrew sitting on the dock, his legs dangling in the water. Maybe that was as far as he could go. She decided to swim over.
“Hey,” Andrew said when she reached the dock. “I came to warn you.”
“Warn me about what?” Danielle pulled herself out of the lake and sat next to him, far enough so that the water dripping off her wouldn’t get him wet.
Andrew kept his eyes on the lake. “Every boy in my bunk has a crush on you.”
Danielle wondered if Andrew counted himself among those boys in his bunk. She dropped her head to the left so the sun was not in her eyes and took Andrew in. He was tan with tufts of sandy hair. The sleeves of his navy camp polo were rolled up to his shoulders, exposing his lean, muscular arms.
“They were talking about you last night,” he continued. “Danny Fannelli said he was going to pretend to drown so you’d rescue him and give him mouth-to-mouth.”
Danielle burst out laughing. “Wow. Well, thanks for the tip.”
He waited a second, and then asked, “You’re going to Mount Washington next year, right? I think I heard someone say that.”
“Yup. Why, do you go there?”
“Yeah.” He scratched his head and squinted into the sun.
With that, the potential for a little summer fling, a chance to try out love with a boy for a few weeks, turned into a bigger, more exciting possibility. She struggled for something witty and funny to say back. Luckily, Danny Fannelli was near the shore, flailing and splashing dramatically in water that maybe came up to Danielle’s knees.
“See what I mean?” Andrew grinned. “I told Danny that you probably have a boyfriend, so he shouldn’t even bother trying.”
“I don’t have a boyfriend,” Danielle said with a laugh. She stood up and let her toes hang over the dock edge.
“Good to know.” He got up, too. “I’ll see you around, Danielle.”
“See you,” she said, before diving back into the water. Clover Lake had never felt so warm.
Danielle pops to the surface and pulls off her goggles to get a look at the timing clock. Seconds later, the girls in the lanes on either side of her splash up.
Mount Washington’s varsity swim coach stands over Danielle’s lane with her clipboard and whistle. Coach Tracy is tall and thin, and she wears her blond hair cut close, like a boy in the army, except for a few long pieces in the front that curl behind her ears. She’d swum through college on a full scholarship before tearing both rotator cuffs during a butterfly sprint for Olympic trials.
Coach Tracy has sat in a few other freshman practices before, watching from the bleachers, but this is the first time she actually participates, relegating their freshman coach to the lifeguard chair. Danielle heard a few of her teammates whisper in the locker room that Coach Tracy wants fresh meat to round out the varsity relay teams.
“Nice one, Dan,” Coach Tracy tells her. “But you’re losing at least a second on your flip turns. You need to be tighter.”
Danielle doesn’t hear the compliment. Or the critique.
As Coach Tracy steps over to address another swimmer, a bubble rises up in her throat. “It’s Danielle, actually,” she finds herself calling out.
Coach Tracy turns and raises her eyebrow. “What was that?”
“I’m sorry,” Danielle stammers, this time a little quieter. “I would rather you call me Danielle. That’s … my name.”
The freshman coach shouts from his perch. “Did you hear what Coach Tracy told you?”
“Yes. Got it. I was only —”
A shrill whistle silences her. Coach Tracy spits it out and calls, “Alright. Girls out, boys in. Let’s hustle.”
Danielle paddles over to the ladder. She tells herself not to feel bad about correcting Coach Tracy. After all, her name is Danielle.
But the nickname given to her by the list has taken on a life of its own. Despite the fact that she’s wearing makeup today, and flatironed her hair, people she doesn’t know have been calling out to Dan the Man in the hallway, offering fake hellos, mimicking what they assume to be her husky voice. Except Danielle doesn’t have a husky voice. They’d know that if they bothered to talk to her. Each time, it’s been a fight not to spin around and scream My name is Danielle! at the very top of her lungs.
But she hasn’t. And what she said to Coach Tracy is as close as she’s come to defending herself. But even this little stand makes her feel guilty, especially after the things that Andrew said. Plus, she wants to impress Coach Tracy. And yet, for some reason, Coach Tracy is the only person she feels okay correcting.
Hope grabs Danielle’s foot and pulls her backward through the water. “Way to kick ass,” she says, and splashes Danielle as she makes it to the ladder first.
“I blew my chance,” Danielle responds, following Hope out of the water.
“Please. It’s obvious that Coach Tracy came down just to see you swim.” Hope takes a sports bottle from the bleachers and shoots a stream down her throat. “I’m almost positive you’re getting called up to varsity. I’m thinking about lodging an anonymous complaint and getting your DNA tested. I swear, the way you swim, you must be part mermaid.”
Danielle smiles meekly as she runs her hands fast over her flat stomach, flicking the water off her bathing suit. When she looks up, she sees Andrew lurking near the door in his practice jersey and football pads. And her heart, which had started to slow down from the sprints, revs right back up.
She spent an entire summer wearing her bathing suit around him without a second thought.
But before walking over, she stops to grab her towel from the bleachers and wraps it tight around herself.
“Nice job out there,” Andrew says, folding his arms. “You’re as fast as a fish!”
A fish is different from a mermaid, but Danielle doesn’t let it bother her. She’s glad he’s seen her this way. At her best.
“Thanks,” she says. “Aren’t you supposed to be at practice, too?”
“I pretended that I had to use the bathroom so I could see you.” His eyes go to the concrete floor. “We didn’t get much of a chance to talk in school today. Sorry about that.”
Danielle says, “It’s fine,” though she’d been hurt about it for most of the morning, after looking unsuccessfully for Andrew in all the usual places. By lunch, Danielle had accepted that Andrew was probably avoiding her. Strangely enough, this made her feel relieved. It was hard for her to pretend that she didn’t care about the list around Andrew, and especially around Andrew’s friends, who’d tease her worst of all. So in a way, it was good that Andrew was lying low. It made things easier on her. And on him, too.
Andrew pats her on the back, and then wipes his hand on her towel. “Well, I’d better go before Coach sends the guys to find me. I’ll call you later.”
“I’m supposed to go shopping with my mom for homecoming dresses. Hey … do you guys have a plan yet for Saturday night?” She isn’t sure how the dance thing works in high school. If people who are dating go together, like junior formal or prom.
Andrew shakes his head and starts to walk backward for the door. “I’m not sure what’s going on. Chuck has his ideas … We’ll probably hang out, but I’m not sure where yet. Everyone’s pretty focused on Saturday’s game right now. I mean, we have to win this one, or else we’ll be the laughingstock of the whole division. But I’ll let you know when things firm up.”
Danielle feels better as she walks away from Andrew. She can keep up the tough act a little longer, till this whole list thing blows over. Tonight, she’ll get something beautiful to wear to the dance. And then there won’t be a doubt in anyone’s mind, least of all Andrew’s, that she’s a girl.