She looks down.
the note says. The picture above the words is of Saturn. With boobs.
Katie-Rose’s face burns. She would punch those stupid boys if she could, or stomp on them, or pour ice water over their heads—yeah! Except she can’t do any of those things. She can’t even yell out something random like Chrissy suggested (not what she yelled before, but something else) because she’s paralyzed with mortification.
Those boys! Those horrible boys! They wrote a note about—she can hardly bear to think the words—about her very own boobs!!!
the class. There are groans, and Mr. Emerson says, “Hey. You think you’ve got it rough? Try finding true love through an internet dating service. Then we can talk. For now, take out your journals.”
Did Mr. Emerson just tell his class he was looking for love through an internet dating service? Violet is scandalized and delighted. She turns to share this with Milla . . . but Milla isn’t here. Neither is Max. Maybe they’re still with Stewy the hamster? She overhears Becca tell Carmen Glover that Modessa is absent, too. Violet rolls her eyes at how lame Modessa is, staying home for the second day in a row just to avoid apologizing to Cyril.
Cyril. Bleh. Violet doesn’t want to think about Cyril or Modessa.
Mr. Emerson scrawls the free-writing prompt on the whiteboard: Where do you go when you want to be alone?
“Okay?” he says, facing the class. “There’s a difference between being lonely and being alone by choice, and it’s the second type I’m asking you to write about. You’ve got ten minutes, starting now.”
Violet thinks for a bit, but she can’t remember the last time she went somewhere to be alone on purpose. There are so many places she feels alone already, even with other people around. She could write about those places, but her list would go on forever:
Home.
School.
The girls’ bathroom with its echoing tile.
The grocery store with her dad, buying individual portions of Easy Mac so that Violet can make herself a “healthy” snack when she’s hungry.
She doubts Easy Mac is actually healthy, though. Thanks to Yasaman, she’s growing more aware of just how many unhealthy foods there are in the world, unhealthy foods pretending to be healthy just to make people buy them.
she writes in her notebook, just in case Mr. Emerson looks over. He’s good about not reading their journal entries unless he’s given permission, but he does want to see their pencils moving over their paper.
Okay, stop that, she tells herself, because thinking about her mom at school is dangerous. That’s a problem with writing. Once she starts, her ideas flow out and go all over the place, not just where they’re “supposed” to go.
Is it like this for everyone? When Cyril writes in his notebook—yes, good, switch your thoughts to Cyril, even though Cyril is bleh—does he discover things about himself that he wouldn’t have otherwise known? Or does he only write about other people, and does he figure out things about other people that he wouldn’t have otherwise known?
Writing is powerful. It makes things real and shines light into shadowed corners. Writing, Violet realizes with a flash, is where I go when I want to be alone.
But Cyril . . .
He knows things about Violet that are private, and that on its own is bad and wrong. But what if he’s written about those things, or is writing about them right now?
The thought makes her sick. Literally, physically, could-throw-up sick.
She has to know.
So . . . all right . . . she’ll ask him. She’ll ask very politely, no big deal, because if Cyril has written anything about her (or her mom), then she has a right to know, doesn’t she?
She steals a glance at Mr. Emerson. He’s at his desk, writing in his own journal. Whenever he gives the class a prompt, he writes about it, too, just as he pulls out a paperback and reads whenever he makes the class do silent reading.
Violet slides out of her seat and goes to Cyril. She crouches by his desk.
“Cyril,” she whispers.
He looks at her. Surely he’s at least a little bit surprised to see her—when has Violet, or anyone else, crept over to confer with him before?—but his dark eyes reveal nothing. His shirt today has a rainbow-colored tiger on it, and Violet’s throat tightens, because tigers aren’t rainbow colored. Tigers aren’t rainbow colored, just like Cheezy D’lites aren’t cheesy, and there are so many lies flying about that just for a second Violet sees how it could drive a person crazy. Where is the truth, if everything’s a lie? Where can you be alone, if everyone is peering into your private nooks and hollows?
Then she snaps out of it, because she can, and that’s the difference between her and her mom. But the burning wrongness of it remains.
“Cyril,” Violet whispers again.
“What?” he says defensively. He folds his arms over his notebook.
“Tell me what you wrote. The other day in the principal’s office, when I was on the phone.”
“No.”
“Tell me what you wrote!”
He draws back.
“Violet? Cyril?” Mr. Emerson says. “Something I should know about?”
“She wants to read my journal,” Cyril says. “But that’s personal, right, Mr. Emerson?”
Violet feels herself flush, because said like that it sounds creepy. The other kids titter.
“Violet, what people write in their journals is for their eyes only, unless they choose to share,” Mr. Emerson says.
Violet starts to protest, but realizes it’s a dead end and returns to her seat.
“Would anyone like to share their entry for today?” Mr. Emerson says.
Hands fly up. Not Violet’s. Not Cyril’s.
“Carmen, great,” Mr. Emerson says. “Let’s hear it.”
Carmen begins. “When I want to be alone, I go to a very special place. My piano. It’s a Steinway, which, if you don’t know, is a very special kind of piano, and we have to get it tuned professionally twice a year. Not just by anyone, either. It has to be a special piano tuner who is familiar with Steinways. Because Steinways are so special.”
She drones on. Special special special.
Violet’s gaze slides to Cyril. He’s staring right at her. First she sucks in a breath, heart fluttering. Then she straightens her spine and narrows her eyes.
Tell me, she commands him telepathically.
He must be telepathic, too, or maybe he’s just had lots of practice communicating nonverbally. Either way, his reply comes back loud and crystal clear: No.
down from Max’s house. She has a tiny bit of throw-up on the corner of her mouth, but she doesn’t know it. The splat of throw-up that made it all the way out of her—well, there it is on the ground, not far from where she’s sitting. It’s pink. She had a cherry Pop-Tart for breakfast.
That moment seems remote to her now. She sees herself in her mind as if she is another girl from another life: sitting at the table, swinging her white boots, eating the crust off her Pop-Tart to save the yummy part for last. As she ate, she was thinking about Max. She was excited to go to his house. She was looking forward to meeting—
She squeezes shut her eyes. She pushes against them with her fists, hard enough to make flashes of light go pop pop pop. A stick digs into her upper thigh. Good.
In the hour or so she’s been hiding out here, no one has emerged from Max’s house. No car has pulled out of the driveway, either.
Milla isn’t surprised. She wouldn’t go to school, either, if her pet had just died.
And Stewy is dead. Milla has no doubt about that.
His small body . . .
The squish . . .
His unnatural position afterward, and on her boot, little bits of . . .
Milla heaves, but nothing comes out. Sweat beads on her forehead. She wants her moms. Either mom, though Mom Abigail is better in situations like this—only there’s never before been a “situation like this” and the longer she thinks about it, the mor
e she realizes she doesn’t want to see anyone. Doesn’t want to be seen by anyone: not her moms, not her flower friends, and certainly not Max.
She killed his hamster.
She killed him, and now she’s a murderer, and what is she going to do???
Can she hide in these bushes forever?
No.
Can she go back to Max’s house?
NO. Gosh, no. She can never see Max again.
Should she go to school? She could walk. It’s not that far. Home is farther, but she could get there if she had to. If she could find the energy to stand up, to put one foot in front of the other and keep doing so over and over and over.
Maybe she should go to the police station—not that she knows where it is—and turn herself in. She imagines herself hunched in the corner of a cell, her arms wrapped around her shins. She’d eat mush for every meal. A steel commode would be bolted to the floor by her cot. Her only friends would be the rats that came scavenging for crumbs—that is, until they learned of her crime and decided to eat her.
Let them, she thinks.
Milla has thought many times of all the awful things that could happen to her or to her family or to her friends. House fires, floods, car wrecks. Quicksand. Alligator attacks. Killer bees.
She’s devised elaborate strategies for how she’ll handle different emergencies, like if she and Mom Joyce are cruising down the highway in Mom Joyce’s convertible, and Mom Joyce cuts her hand. Say Mom Joyce slices her thumb clean off—doesn’t matter how—and a gust of wind blows it out of the convertible. It would be horrible and freaky, and Milla certainly doesn’t want that to happen, but if it does, Milla knows what she’ll do: First she’ll tell her mom to immediately pull into the emergency lane. Then she’ll apply pressure to the wound. She’ll use her own shirt if she has to—or, better, her skirt. If she’s going to end up half-naked, the bottom half is less mortifying than the top, since she doesn’t yet wear a bra.
She’ll speak to Mom Joyce in a gentle voice to make sure she doesn’t go into shock. Then she’ll say, “I’ll be right back, ’kay? Keep pressing this against your cut. You’re doing great.”
Then she’ll hop out of the car and find that thumb. She’ll find it in a ditch or wherever, and she’ll put it in a baggie of ice, and if she doesn’t have a baggie of ice, she’ll dump the Coke out of her cup, keep the ice cubes, and use that. And if she doesn’t have a cup of Coke . . . well, she will have a cup of Coke. Every time she rides in Mom Joyce’s convertible, she’ll make sure of it. Or she’ll bring an insulated lunch box, the kind with a frozen cold-pack zipped inside.
It’s a decent plan, but did it serve her well this morning? No. Because the one disaster she never anticipated was What to Do if You Kill the Boy-you-like’s Hamster. And now Milla can never go to school again, or see Max, or be allowed within twenty feet of small mammals.
She lies down in the shelter of the bushes, overlapping her hands beneath her head. She tucks the thumb of her right hand between her second and third fingers, an old carryover from learning not to suck her thumb. She holds her thumb like this when she goes to sleep, and usually it comforts her.
Not today.
like her parents do. She will when she’s older, but kids don’t have to, and her parents have assured her that she can be a good Muslim without sneaking off to the girls’ bathroom throughout the day and bowing toward Mecca. (Which is lucky, as the girls’ room has no windows, and Yasaman’s not even sure which direction Mecca is.)
But today she gives prayer-at-school a shot, maybe because of Natalia’s earlier comment about praying for Katie-Rose. Yasaman would like to pray for Katie-Rose and for Natalia, and for herself as well, because the Katie-Rose-Natalia-Yasaman triangle (which shouldn’t even be a triangle!) still feels like a tangled mess. Katie-Rose might think everything’s back to being easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy, but Yasaman’s not there yet. She’s not even close.
She goes to the bathroom at the end of the school day and waits while a kindergartner named Sierra washes her hands. She helps Sierra with the paper towel dispenser, which is tough to crank, and Sierra says, “I’m only using one, because I care about trees.”
“That’s great,” Yasaman says.
“I know,” Sierra says, and Yasaman smiles. Sierra’s certainty reminds her of Katie-Rose, who also has a high opinion of herself and her opinions. But Katie-Rose has a vulnerable side, too, which only her flower friends see. Like on Sunday, when Milla was late getting to Katie-Rose’s house, and Katie-Rose couldn’t stop fretting about it. She tried to pass it off as grumpiness, but Yasaman knew better.
Yasaman wets a paper towel and lightly wipes her face and behind her ears. Then she washes her hands and her arms, up to her elbows. While she cleans her body, she focuses her thoughts on cleansing her soul as well, so that she can reach out to Allah with a pure spirit.
When she’s done with that part of the ritual, she retreats to the farthest stall and locks the door. She thinks of her baba and the special room he prays in. When she was little, she sometimes prayed beside him, sitting on her knees and pressing her forehead to the carpet. Other times—she knows this from hearing family stories—she would jump on top of him as he prayed, making him go oomph.
Now that she’s older, she’s no longer allowed to pray with him in his special room. She wouldn’t get in trouble, exactly, but since she’s a young lady, it’s better for her to pray with her ana.
Alone in the bathroom, she closes her eyes and silently thanks God for the many blessings in her life. She means it, too. So much.
Then she prays about what’s bothering her. Normally, she’d go to her flower friends with this sort of thing, but today they weren’t much help. At lunch, Violet wasn’t in the mood to talk, and Milla wasn’t there. Violet said she guessed she was home sick.
Oh no, Yasaman thought when she heard that, because that meant Milla must have had to cancel her plans with Max. Poor Milla kept having bad luck in that department.
With neither Violet nor Milla available for a good heart-to-heart, that left Katie-Rose. But Yasaman couldn’t ask Katie-Rose for help with her problem, because Katie-Rose was the problem. Is the problem. Blegh.
Please, she says to Allah, trying to communicate the depth of her need with that one word. She wants to say more, but she’s unsure how to put it, because no doubt Allah has bigger things to worry about than the feud between Katie-Rose and Natalia, and how Yasaman feels trapped in the middle.
Yasaman’s loyalty lies with Katie-Rose (of course!), but the way Katie-Rose has been acting makes her extremely uncomfortable. Her baba has taught her that according to the Quran, you shouldn’t treat people badly, even your enemies, and you shouldn’t stay mad at anyone for more than three days. But Katie-Rose first got mad at Natalia on Monday, when Natalia found her sticking police tape over the snack cabinet. She stayed mad all through Tuesday, and she’s obviously still mad today. Mad enough to say she hated her, and to yell “boobies from outer space” at her.
(And, um, boobies from outer space??? What was that all about?)
Yasaman tries to find a place of stillness inside of her. Please help me be a good friend to Katie-Rose without being a bad friend to Natalia, she prays. Not that Natalia and I are even friends, exactly. But please help me be kind to her anyway, and help Katie-Rose be kind, too.
Her thoughts drift to Modessa and Quin and how mean they are to almost all the fifth-grade girls—and to some of the boys as well. (Case in point: Cyril.) Not long ago, Modessa and Quin were especially mean to Katie-Rose, so Katie-Rose knows what it’s like to be on the other end of the stick. Shouldn’t she put the stick down, then, and not treat people that way herself?
Please help everyone just be nice to each other, Yasaman concludes. And please help Milla feel better, and please help Violet have a good visit with her mom. She squeezes her eyelids closed extra hard. And, um, thanks.
With a renewed sense of purpose, she leaves the bathroom and seeks out Natalia. She finds he
r in the commons, because that’s where the aftercare kids meet, and Natalia stays for aftercare almost every day. Yasaman has never stayed for aftercare. She’s supposed to be outside waiting for her ana, who will be in a hurry since they’re having dinner at her aunt’s house.
“Come, come, come!” she’ll call to Yasaman when she spots her. Nigar will be buckled into her booster seat already, because the preschoolers get out earlier than everyone else. “We have katmer to make, and also almond custard. I need your help, küçüğüm!”
But Yasaman can see the carpool line from the commons, and her ana’s minivan is nine or ten back. She’s got a little time.
She goes over to Natalia, who’s sitting alone at a table, working on her homework.
“Natalia?” she says.
Natalia looks up. “Yathaman! Are you thtaying for aftercare? Do you want to do your homework with me? And omigosh”—her face grows bigger, somehow—“have you heard?!”
Yasaman isn’t here for the gossip. And she only has a few minutes to say what she wants to say. Still, she can’t help asking: “Heard what?”
“Well,” Natalia says importantly. “I’ve been looking for you ever thince afternoon break. That’th when it happened, you thee, and, of course, you were the firtht perthon I wanted to tell.”
The way Natalia leans forward tells Yasaman that she’s in for a long, detailed story, and Yasaman inwardly groans. She doesn’t have time for a long, detailed story.
“Wait. Natalia—”
“It began when I found a pen by the water fountain,” Natalia proclaims. “I’m ninety-thix perthent pothitive it’th mine, becauth I had one ethactly like it latht year. It had the thame fluffy pink featherth and everything.”
“That’s great, Natalia. But—”
“I’m not done! Becauth Ava thaw me pick it up—the pen—and she wath like—”
“Natalia, please,” Yasaman interrupts. She’s firmer than usual, and Natalia breaks off in surprise. She blinks at Yasaman, and Yasaman stands as tall as she can.
“I just wanted to say that I’m sorry about Katie-Rose,” Yasaman says.