Thirteen

by Lauren Myracle

  “Um…yes?” I made praying hands. “It’s really important, I swear. Or I wouldn’t ask.”

  She regarded me.

  “Please? Pleasie please please?” I was full of wheedling on the surface, doing my best to be winning and cute. But the need inside me was raw and true. “Please?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Fine—one hour. But I don’t know why I’m letting you.”

  “’Cause you’re the best mom ever,” I said. “That’s why.”

  As I biked to Lars’s house, I didn’t let myself think. I just pedaled, focusing on not letting my skirt catch in the chain. But when I got there, his dad said Lars was out with friends.

  “Can you tell me where?” I asked. “It’s important.”

  “I think he’s at Bryce’s,” Mr. Mitchell said.

  So I went to Bryce’s. This wasn’t part of the plan, but then again, I didn’t actually have a plan. Just do it, I kept chanting to myself. Do it, do it, do it. I conjured up Dinah in my mind—Dinah, of all people—and reminded myself how brave she’d been the time she confronted Cinnamon. She’d said the hard thing that needed to be said. If Dinah could do it, surely I could, too.

  I knocked on Bryce’s door. Brianna’s friend Stephanie opened it, and my stomach cramped.

  She took in my head-to-toe black, and her mouth twisted. “Hello, Death.”

  Ha ha. I could feel my face heat up.

  “Is Lars here?” I asked.

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe?” I lifted my chin and acted ballsier than I felt. “Do you think you could act like a normal person, please? Just for once?”

  She faltered, then scowled and stepped aside. Lars’s laugh rang out from the basement, followed by Nose-Ring Girl’s giggle. Brianna’s giggle—whatever. I gulped and headed downstairs.

  Bryce saw me first. He glanced up in surprise and said, “Winnie—hey!”

  “Hey,” I replied.

  Lars straightened up fast from the pool table. Brianna stood way too close to him, wearing a tight brown T-shirt and a silver choker with a star dangling from it.

  “Winnie!” Lars said. “What are you doing here?”

  It wasn’t bad, the way he said it. In fact, he seemed happy. Hopeful, in a I’m-a-guy-and-I’m-going-to-act-cool sort of way. Brianna, on the other hand, crossed her arms over her chest and glowered. She looked like a potato.

  “Can I talk to you?” I asked Lars.

  “Sure,” he said.

  Brianna made a sound of protest. “It’s your turn. You haven’t taken your turn.”

  “It won’t take long,” I started to say, but I bit down on my words. I wasn’t a nuisance, easily taken care of. I wasn’t going to act like one.

  “Take your shot,” Brianna told Lars, jerking her chin at the pool table. She edged a fraction of an inch closer to him. “She can wait.”

  “No, I can’t,” I said. Just simply.

  Lars looked at Brianna, whose fingers had traveled to his sleeve and grabbed hold. He looked at me. I kept my gaze level.

  Lars peeled Brianna off him. He put down his cue stick and came over.

  “What’s up?” he said. “Why weren’t you at school today? Are you sick?”

  He noticed! I thought.

  “No, I just…Sandra and I, we just didn’t—” I felt Brianna and Stephanie shooting hate-rays at me. “Can we go outside?”

  “Yeah,” Lars said.

  “Dude? The game?” Bryce said.

  “You shoot for me,” Lars said.

  “We’re on different teams!”

  “Then don’t.”

  We went to Bryce’s porch, and I told him how Sandra and I had ditched. He looked impressed, which made me feel tough, and which made me forget for a moment that I wasn’t. Maybe that’s why Amanda does it, I thought, thinking of her black eyeliner and her habit of hanging out behind the cafeteria. Because it keeps you from having to be real.

  And then I thought of Joseph, which was odd, since Joseph and Amanda had nothing in common. Except maybe they did? Or used to, before Amanda went ultra-sullen-cool? And maybe…I don’t know. Maybe Amanda needed to remember that life didn’t last forever. Maybe we all needed to remember that life didn’t last forever, and that the bit of it we did have was a gift, which at any millisecond could be taken away.

  I looked at the porch’s floorboards. I didn’t know what I was thinking, only that I wanted to be real, and I wanted to be real with Lars.

  “Winnie?” he said.

  I lifted my eyes to his. I’d been nervous all along, but now I got crazy-shaky nervous, my muscles twitchy and jittering.

  “Um,” I started. “I wanted to ask you…”

  “Yeah?” He jammed his hands in his pockets and hunched his shoulders. Gone was his cool-boy façade, and his own nervousness buzzed off his body and combined with mine. It was nearly unbearable. Why was it so hard, sometimes, to be a human and simply exist?

  “Do you want to be broken up?” I asked.

  Lars shook his head. He blinked rapidly, and his lip trembled, and I was pretty much thrown into shock, because I’d never seen him like this before.

  “No,” he said. His shoulders shook, and I flung myself onto him. He pulled his hands out of his pockets and embraced me. He held me close, so close, and when he pulled back, I saw he was crying.

  He half-laughed and said, “These are very manly tears. You know that, right?”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. “Of course.”

  He took my hands and grew solemn. His Adam’s apple jumped, and I knew an apology was coming. “Winnie…”

  I almost cut him off, because my chest was ballooning again, and I wanted him to know it was okay. It was so okay. But some secret strong part of me said, No. Let him.

  “I was a jerk,” he said. “A phenomenally huge jerk, and I don’t deserve someone as wonderful as you.”

  “You got that right,” I said.

  He looked straight at me. “And I’m sorry.”

  “Well…” I could drag it out, but why? I was ready to start fresh. That’s what the real me wanted to do.

  “Okay, I forgive you,” I said. I grinned, and a smile like a flower opened on his face. A flower of the manliest sort.

  Later that evening, I shared my happiness with Ty. Lars had wanted to take me out for ice cream (it was Valentine’s Day, after all), but I turned him down, knowing I had something else I needed to take care of. Plus, I was technically still in the doghouse with Mom, and I knew there was no way she was going to let me go out a second time. For dinner she’d made lasagna, which involved lots of pans and utensils and dried-up-sauciness, and she was hummingly gleeful as she flitted about making a mess.

  “Thanks, girls,” she said to me and Sandra at the end of the meal. She rose with Dad to retire to the sun porch. “The lasagna dish needs hand washing—don’t forget!”

  But the cleanup didn’t last forever, and by seven-thirty I was in the basement with Ty, watching Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.

  Ty snuggled beside me on the sofa for a while, then squirmed and kicked at the fuzzy throw we’d wrapped around ourselves. He shifted positions, putting his head on a sofa cushion and his feet in my lap. He farted.

  “Ty! Pew,” I said, pulling away and fanning the air.

  He giggled. “Sorry.” He wiggled up closer, pressing his jeans against my thigh, and I thought how lovely it was that it took so little to make things right between us again.

  “Don’t you dare stink again,” I said. “I will spank you.”

  “You are not allowed to spank,” he said.

  “Tough. If you stink on my leg, I will spank you and throw you in the hold of Davy Jones’s boat.”

  He giggled some more. Will, the cuter of the movie’s two heroes, was currently trapped in the hold of Davy Jones’s boat, and it wasn’t good. Davy Jones was an undead pirate with tentacles dripping from his face and two slits for a nose.

  “Hey, Winnie?” Ty said. He twisted on the pillow to look a
t me.

  “Huh?”

  “Have you had a mainly happy life?”

  His question took me by surprise. I wondered if it had to do with Joseph, with sadnesses that could have been, but weren’t.

  “Yeah, I guess,” I said. “Have you?”

  “Aye-aye, cap’n,” he said. “Mainly.”

  I hugged him, dodgy bottom and all.

  March

  MAGNOLIA GRACE PERRY burst into the world on a drizzly Saturday afternoon, two weeks before her due date and three days before my fourteenth birthday. If she’d waited three more days—only three more days!—we’d have been birthday twins, which I once thought would have been horrible. But now there was a part of me that thought it could have been cool, like a sign from God or something.

  Then again, we’d have had to share parties till the end of time, which could have potentially sucked. When Maggie turned one, it wouldn’t have mattered, since one-year-olds didn’t even know what birthdays are. But when she turned two and actually had opinions? No way was I having a “My Little Pony” party, and I doubted she’d be too psyched about having a “Yay, I got my driver’s license!” party.

  So maybe God knew what he was doing after all.

  How weird that I’d be getting my driver’s license in only two years!

  Sandra drove me and Ty to the hospital as soon as Dad called with the news. The rain stopped as we pulled up in front of the main entrance, and above the building we saw a rainbow. True. Forever and ever, part of Maggie’s story would be that we saw a rainbow on the day she was born.

  I remembered how to get to the elevators from the time Ty and I came to visit Joseph, so I led the way. The maternity ward was more cheerful than the pediatric ward, the lounges populated with fat ol’ mommies and fat ol’ mommies-to-be. There were proud grandparents and nervous new dads. One dad was passing out chocolate cigars, which reminded me of a Hallmark special, and when I grinned at him, he bounded over and gave me one. He gave cigars to Sandra and Ty, too, since it would have been impolite not to.

  There were doctors and supply carts and a hospital volunteer delivering flowers. And, of course, there were babies.

  Maggie was the cutest of them all.

  “Hey there,” Mom said when the three of us burst into her room. She smiled wearily. Nestled to her chest was a puff of blanket, and, sticking out from the top, a teeny sucking red face.

  “She’s nursing,” Mom explained.

  Ty stepped closer, fascinated. “Did I do that?”

  “You sure did,” Dad said. If Mom looked tired, Dad looked downright exhausted, even though he wasn’t the one who’d given birth. Later, he’d no doubt make it sound like he had. When Mom was in labor with Sandra, Dad had offered her an ice chip, and Mom had thrown a hairbrush at him. That was part of Sandra’s story. With Maggie, the whole of her details had yet to pour forth. But they would.

  “You were a breastfeeding champ,” Dad told Ty. “You about sucked your mother dry.”

  “Da-a-d,” Sandra said. I agreed.

  “You did not,” Mom reassured Ty. She gestured to all of us. “Come here. Come meet your baby sister.”

  Maggie must have sensed that something important was happening, because she stopped nursing and gazed up at us. Her eyes were dark and murky, the color of a swamp.

  “She’s beautiful,” Sandra said. There was a note of wistfulness in her voice, and I wondered if it was hard for her, knowing that she’d be off and gone to college before Maggie took her first step or said her first word. It was hard for me, knowing Sandra would be gone. But I’d tell Maggie all about her. I’d teach her the same stuff Sandra had taught me.

  Omigosh. I hadn’t thought of it like this, but I’d be Maggie’s Sandra. Only I’d be less Sandra-ish and more Winnie-ish, and when Maggie grew up she’d thank her stars for her lovely good fortune. Tee hee.

  “She’s so cute,” Ty said. “Even though she’s bald. She’s a bald, bald cutie.”

  Mom sat up and pulled shut her gown. She kissed Maggie’s button nose, then said to Ty, “Do you want to hold her?”

  Ty did. He sat on a chair by Mom’s side, and Mom handed Maggie to Dad, who placed her in Ty’s arms.

  “Watch her head,” Dad said, showing Ty how to support Maggie so that her neck didn’t bobble. She was wrapped in the same hospital-issue blanket I remembered from when Ty was born. It was white with pink and blue stripes, which I thought was clever. That way it worked for girl babies and boy babies, both.

  Ty held Maggie for about thirty seconds, then announced, “I’m done. You hold her, Winnie. And then Sandra, so it’ll be youngest to oldest.”

  I lifted the Maggie-bundle from Ty’s lap. I didn’t need Dad’s help. I cradled her in my arms and said, “Hey, sweet teensy. You smell good.”

  Ty hopped up. “I want to smell! I want to smell!”

  “Relax,” Sandra told him as I twisted away protectively. “You already had your turn.”

  “But I didn’t smell her,” he complained.

  “You’ll be smelling her plenty, I promise you,” Sandra said. “Maybe she smells good now, but just wait.”

  “Till what?” Ty said.

  “Till she poops,” Sandra said.

  “Oh, man,” Dad said. “Talk about poopy babies—Sandra, you nearly blasted my hair off the first time I changed your diaper.”

  “The only time you changed her diaper,” Mom said.

  On it went, the teasing discussion of Ty’s favorite subject and as they teased each other, I walked with Maggie to the hospital window. The maternity ward was on the fifth floor. From where we stood, we could see sidewalks and trees and streets.

  Well, I could. Maggie probably couldn’t. Her eyes were too new.

  “That’s the world down there,” I said softly. “Isn’t it pretty?”

  She cooed, and I thought of all that awaited her: her whole life, stretching out even further than the busy Atlanta streets.

  “Oh, little Mags,” I whispered, bringing her cheek to mine. “I have so much to tell you.”