by Beth Vrabel
“What about fourth grade?” she asked. “You were a pants peer. Mom says it was because you were stressed and sad, and that if I’m ever stressed and sad, I should tell her and not becoming a pants peer like Aunt Pipi.”
I huffed. “I am not a pants peer. I peed once. Once! And it wasn’t because of stress. It was a snagged zipper and Vile Kara Samson’s refusal to get me help.”
Annie patted my head. “What did you do?”
I smiled. “I took care of that today.”
Annie clapped again. “Tell me!”
“Well, I knew that Kara goes to the bathroom at the same time every day, so I…” I looked at Annie’s clear hazel eyes, the excited just-waiting-to-cheer smile on her face, and suddenly my words burst inside me. “I… I…”
“Told her good job? For using the bathroom like a big girl?” Annie finished for me.
“Not exactly.”
I tried to conjure up the satisfying revenge bubbles that had floated through me as the bathroom door swung shut earlier. But all that ended up happening was a burp. I kept thinking about Kara calling for help from the bathroom. About Sarah’s wrinkled-up forehead as she said how embarrassed Kara was.
“Never mind,” I said. “But it was taken care of. It all ended up just being a joke. Kara was upset, but she’ll get over it.”
“Like how you’re getting over everything now?” Annie said.
“Right,” I said, my face smooshing on the table again.
Annie held out one hand. “That’s five things. What’s next?”
“Fifth grade?” I said. “Well, Kara made me think Jackson loved me. That’s what I thought anyway. But it kind of turns out that she never actually said it was Jackson who liked me. She was being mean, trying to get me to do things, like cut my hair.”
Annie grinned. “I love to cut hair.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t,” I said. “But it turns out that it wasn’t really Kara who did the big mean thing—give Jackson a secret notebook. That was Ricky.”
Everything was so messed up, and I had so much to sort through that I had been pushing Ricky to the back of my mind. Which had been working, until right then. Stop thinking about Ricky, I ordered my brain. Do not think about how he liked you and you didn’t even know it. Do not think about how he hurt you and never told you. Do not think about how he knew about The List and still didn’t tell you. Don’t think about how awesome he is at Skee-Ball and how he helped save Piper’s birthday. Do not think about his dimple and how easy it is to talk to him, unlike, say, Jackson, who only talks about himself and shares really bad poetry and is in general much more boring than you thought he would be. Stop thinking about Ricky’s dark eyes and do not, I repeat, do not wonder if part of Ricky still likes you. If maybe he always has liked you. Or did, because maybe you’ve really messed that up along with messing up your friendship with Tasha. Stop, Brain. Stop.
“What was in the notebook?” Annie asked.
“Jackson’s name.”
Her forehead wrinkled. “Just his name?”
I nodded. “You’ll understand when you’re older.”
Annie shook her head. “I have a notebook with just two words over and over.”
“Which words?” I asked.
“Cashew cheese.”
We stared at each other for a second.
“Moving on. Back to The List,” I said. “I got rid of sixth grade today.”
“What’d you do?” Annie asked.
I didn’t want to explain this one to Annie, either.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said.
“Why would I worry about it?” Annie said. “I’m four.”
“I would rather not tell you.”
Annie crossed her arms. “Is it inappropriate? MomMom has inappropriate words. When she uses them, she says sorry. She says if she can’t say something to me, she probably shouldn’t say it to anyone.”
“It’s not inappropriate words,” I muttered.
Annie gasped. “Inappropriate dos?”
It took me a second to figure out what that meant. “Oh!” I said. “Like I did something inappropriate?”
Annie nodded, eyes wide.
“Let’s just say that Kara’s missing something.”
“You’re a stealer?” She gasped again.
“Not exactly.” I leaned back, thinking about the little blue bottle and rubbing my eyebrows. “They’ll grow back.”
Annie’s eyes got huge. “You stole her eyebrowns? That’s bad.”
“I didn’t steal her eyebrowns.”
Annie shook her head. After a couple seconds she poked my side. “What’s next?” She was holding up seven fingers. “Because the list on your corkboard has eight.”
“I don’t talk about seventh grade.”
Annie kicked her foot back and forth a couple of times and then said, “I was scared to say something. And then the more I didn’t say it, the bigger it got.” Annie smiled. “And it’s silly because the word is small.” She leaned forward again and whispered in my ear: “Mom.”
I smiled at her. “I like that word.”
“So does my mom.” Annie smiled at me. “First, I said it in my head a lot, and then I said it loud. And now I can say it all the time and it isn’t scary.”
We both turned at footsteps in the hallway. “Annie?” Eliza called.
“Coming… Mom!” Annie said with a told-you look on her face. “You should say it. What happened. You should say it, and then you can fix it.”
“You know, you’re pretty smart, kid.”
She cupped my face in her hands. “Superior.”
Chapter Twenty-One
I texted Sarah that I needed help working through an idea. Can you come early to the gym?
Her response was immediate. Sure! I’ll be there in five minutes.
Once she walked in, with her bright, perfect smile and her happy-to-see-you wave, I realized I couldn’t do this. How could I tell Sarah, of all people, my biggest, darkest shame?
But I couldn’t tell Tasha; she was too angry with me. And I couldn’t tell Ricky; he was too complicated. Jackson was out of the question.
I didn’t have anyone else. And Sarah knew something about secrets.
I remembered Sarah standing in the gym bathroom while Kara berated her.
I remembered how she looked when she watched the spoken word poetry videos. How she said all she wanted was someone to hear her.
She would hear me. I knew that. She heard poetry—actual poetry—even in the drivel that Jackson was constantly writing.
Maybe if she heard me, she’d trust me enough with her secret.
Sarah needed someone, and maybe that person could be me?
She might even help me figure out a way to get back at Frau Jacobs without it feeling like my insides were boiling away when I thought of it later.
We went back to the little room we had met in before, but I didn’t sit on the exercise ball and neither did she. Instead, we both sat in the middle of the room.
Deep breath. Okay.
“Can I tell you what happened to me in seventh grade?”
Sarah nodded. “But, if it helps, I know about the flagpole. Remember? I was there?”
I crossed my arms. Deep breath. Just thinking about it didn’t mean it was happening, right? But my body reacted like it didn’t know the difference. Let’s get this over with. “But I need to tell someone all of it.”
So, I told her, overexplaining every detail, even the ones that didn’t matter, the ones that she already knew.
I told her how it had started in Frau Jacob’s Intro to Languages, a required class for all seventh graders. We had spent the first third of the year learning Spanish, then a third focused on French, and finally the last part of the year we had learned German, but our teacher only wanted to be called Frau, not Señora or Madame. She taught the eighth graders German, and she said it was better for us all to just get used to calling her Frau.
Because she had to teach the entire
grade, Frau Jacobs’s classes were double the usual size—fifty kids instead of twenty-five. “Remember the chairs in the mini-auditorium?” I asked Sarah. Fabric-covered, movie theater–style chairs set up in a horseshoe shape around the platform where Frau Jacobs had taught for the past fifty thousand years.
I sat beside Ricky for the first part of the year, and every time Frau Jacobs would spout off something about how boys shouldn’t be distracted, I’d be distracted by the way he’d mutter under his breath about boys understanding that shoulders exist.
Frau also had this rule that if a kid was caught using a phone during class, the phone was locked in her desk drawer and the only way to get it back was to have your parents email and request it. The first ten minutes of class on the first day, both Becky and Wade had their phones out. But Frau Jacobs strode right past Wade and swept Becky’s phone from her hand and locked it in the drawer.
“Notice a pattern?” I asked Sarah and then answered even as she nodded. “Frau Jacobs only targets girls. Ever.”
I had known this from day one—Frau’s anti-girl tendencies were legendary at Northbrook Middle, word of it trickling down to the intermediate school. But I didn’t think I’d ever be one of her targets. She seemed to home in on the popular set. Girls who could pull off fashionable clothes instead of my usual T-shirt and jeans combo.
“I was writing conjunctions of the verb seguir, when I felt it. An uncomfortable wet spot,” I continued.
I had gotten my first period back in fifth grade, but it was never one of those every-four-weeks-for-three-to-five-days like health teachers acted was true for anyone. What really happened was I’d get my period for a couple hours. It’d go away for the rest of the day. The next day, it’d return and stay for a day or two. Then it would go away. Come back a day later. Stop by once in a while for another two days.
I got pretty used to figuring out the signs. But sometimes it just happened. Sometimes I thought things were done for the month. I’d go a solid week period-free, and then bam. Sitting in Intro to Languages on the worst-possible seating at school, wearing the white jeans I bought from Old Navy with my own money just three days earlier, conjugating the word for continue, when I had felt it.
I had raised my hand.
Frau Jacobs, who had been in the middle of instruction, raised an eyebrow. “Si, señorita?”
“I have to go to the bathroom.” My face was flushing so hard Frau Jacobs looked half framed in red.
“En español, Pipi.” She made my name sound more like Pepe.
“Permite me ir el bano,” I stumbled, hoping I got the phrasing right. “Por favor.”
Frau Jacobs crossed her arms. “No. We don’t leave in the middle of class.”
“I’m sorry, but—” The wet spot was definitely growing. As if trying to alert me that this was serious, a blasting sharp pain shot out across my lower back. I gasped, and Ricky shot a sideways look my way.
“Hand down,” Frau Jacobs snapped, then turned her back to me and toward the class.
I lowered my hand. Maybe if I crossed my legs and tried not to think about it, it’d go away. I picked up my pencil, face still flaming, and tried to concentrate on conjugating.
The only thing was, I kept thinking of this super scary movie I once caught my dad watching when I got up in the middle of the night for a drink of water. The scene I walked into had this kid going up to an elevator. All of the sudden, rivers and rivers of blood poured out from the door and frame of the elevator, rushing down the hall and swooping over everyone. I was kind of convinced something similar might’ve just started down below.
I shifted in my seat, bending over my notebook and trying to make it not super obvious that I was peering down at my own crotch. My spine was all bones-don’t-bend-that-way-Pipi. I shifted again, this time swiping my hand across the upholstery for moisture. Nothing. Yet. Another cramp rocked through me. I thrust my hand up in the air.
“Senorita!” Frau Jacobs exclaimed. “No. More. Interruptions.”
“Por favor!” I said. “I really have to go to the bathroom.”
Across the auditorium, a few kids snickered. A couple girls exchanged knowing looks. I wanted so badly for the ground to swallow my period-plagued body whole.
Frau Jacobs turned her back to me again and instead addressed the class. “What is the rule for going to the bathroom in my class?” she asked. “Hmm?”
No one raised their hand to answer, everyone either laughing under their breath or staring at me. “Well, I’ll tell you,” Frau Jacobs finally said in her fake sugary voice. “The rule is that we may use the bathroom before and after instructional time. Never during.”
My chest rose and fell as I tried to calm down. Option A: I could go to the bathroom now, even though it’d infuriate Frau, and everyone could think I either had diarrhea or know I got my period; option B: I could wait as blood leaked through my pants and onto the seat (Would I have to clean up the seat? Would Mr. Russell, the janitor, have to do it?) and I’d spend the rest of the day in ruined jeans. I kept my hand up. Frau Jacobs resolutely refused to face me. Her back stayed to me, even though I knew she knew my hand was up, since so many people were now whispering and pointing in my direction.
“To conjugate seguir in the subjunctive imperfect tense, you would say, ‘yo…’” Frau Jacobs singsonged the last word and waved her hand like a conductor, her cue that we were all supposed to join in as she finished with, “‘siguiera.’” No one joined in.
I cleared my throat and said, “It’s an emergency.”
More people laughed.
“No, señorita,” Frau Jacobs said. “It’s an inconvenience. You are inconveniencing me and distracting everyone around you. Ricardo,” she said Ricky’s full name, rolling the r, “is here to learn. Aren’t you, Ricardo?”
Ricky didn’t move a muscle.
“Ricardo?” she said again. “Respondeme.”
“She has to go to the bathroom,” Ricky said instead. “I think that’s probably pretty distracting to her learning.”
Frau Jacob’s mouth twisted. I pushed my hand straighter into the air even though my back cramped so hard it felt like my insides were ropes being braided together. She crossed her arms. I knew it then, from the look on her face, it didn’t matter what I said or how often I asked. She was never going to let me use the bathroom, not with forty-nine students watching. This wasn’t about me being a distraction anymore. It was about power. Standing in front of the room, she had all of it; I had none, and she wasn’t going to let me—or anyone else—forget that fact.
Frau Jacob’s eyes trailed up to the tip of my upstretched hand. Then she turned on her heel. Her back stayed to me the remainder of the class. A moment later, as the rest of the class rehearsed conjugating verbs into past imperfect, Ricky whispered in my ear. “Just go. I’ll go with you. You get in trouble, I will, too.”
I shook my head. I lowered my hand. “You don’t understand.”
“Look,” Ricky whispered, “I do. I mean, we all had health class. It’s not, like, your fault, okay? Just go.”
But by then, I had felt it. “It’s too late.”
Fifteen minutes later the bell rang. Ricky lingered in his seat as everyone else trailed out. “Want me to…” he asked, his eyes lowered.
“Go,” I said, the words too biting for the only person who had been nice to me. “Please,” I added softly.
Ricky nodded, his lips pressed tightly together as he passed Frau Jacobs, who still had her back turned to me, though she now stood by the door. “Ricardo,” she called out. Ricky paused but didn’t turn. “I’ll have a new seat assignment for you tomorrow. I don’t think you and Miss McGee are a good pairing.”
Ricky didn’t move for another beat, and then he took quick strides from the room.
Slowly, Frau Jacobs turned back to me. Her eyes were wide in mock surprise and her arms crossed. “Well, now, for someone who had to go to the bathroom in such a hurry, you certainly are taking your time leaving, aren’t you
?”
Unable to meet her excited eyes, I stood from my seat.
My period hadn’t just “arrived.” It had descended like water from a slashed balloon. My upper thighs were sticky, even through my jeans. Tears streamed down my face, doing nothing at all to cool my cheeks as I turned to look at the upholstered seat. A blackish stain covered a grapefruit-sized spot in the middle of the cushion.
Frau Jacobs sucked in her breath, but before she could speak, I rushed past her into the hall.
I ran to the gym, figuring I could duck into the locker room and put on my gym clothes for the rest of the day. I made it, too, tossing my backpack on a shelf, swirling open my locker combo, and shrugging out of my tunic shirt, which, yeah, also was blood-smeared. I was just wearing a tank top and was unzipping my soiled formerly white jeans when it happened.
Fire alarm. (I’d later find out that some jerk pulled the fire alarm to get out of in-school suspension.)
The girls’ gym coach rushed into the locker room. “Pipi!” she called and grabbed my arm. “We’ve got to go! This isn’t a scheduled drill!”
“But I—”
“Safety first!” she yelled and ushered me outside, not listening to anything I said about choosing death by fire over going outside, as the halls opened and students poured out.
Did I mention? Anyone caught in the halls or locker room during fire drills instead of with their class had to stand by the flagpole in the middle of the courtyard. Every other class circled around the flagpole in straight lines like sunbeams, facing the flagpole. This was to give teachers the chance to spot missing students and to count them on their class lists.
The entire middle school faced me, my ruined pants on full display, thanks to my tiny tank top. Everyone laughing. Everyone pointing. Everyone so glad they weren’t Pipi Period McGee.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Funny how reliving the memory felt like hours but really only a few minutes had passed. I wiped at my eyes and dragged in another deep breath. “It’s silly, isn’t it?” I said to Sarah. “To get that upset about it?”
