The gym thins out, and the couples appear from the periphery and fill out the dance floor. After another survey, I see that Winslow is definitely not among the couples converging onto the floor. He’s definitely not the VERY short boy with the tall girl. They’re swaying, their arms around each other. Only preppy leadership girls and the couples are out there. I see Petra stepping out with Justin. Certainly, Winslow should have been here by now. Everyone else watches, including me. There are a bunch of girls doing a group slow dance.
After the song ends, Petra goes back with her friends by the wall of dance gram messages. I hear her laughing. “Thank god that dweeb didn’t show up. Even if he’s looking semidecent.”
“He still might.”
“I don’t think so. Not after what I did to him.” Then they high-five.
It hits me like a rockslide, splits me like an earthquake, and drowns me like a flood.
Winslow isn’t coming.
It’s amazingly unfair. I’m punished, while Petra gets to celebrate after she cheated. I mean, nothing seems to have happened to her, and it’s been more than twenty-four hours. Suddenly, I need to cry. I can’t do it in front of THEM. They are about to pass this way. It’s just too much. I race down the hallway, past all of the signs for the dance and the outside picnic tables, and find a bathroom that’s far away from the blaring music and from them, my so-called friends.
Inside the bathroom, I let everything out and, after washing my face, stare at the mirror at my red eyes, my flyaway hair. I blot my cheeks with a paper towel, not even bothering to reapply lip gloss or whatever. What’s the point? I look at my watch. Eighty minutes left of the dance. He could still show, I think. Give it some time. So I lean over the sink, my hands on the cold porcelain counting to one hundred Mississippi. I am at ninety-seven Mississippi when I hear screams.
Not Silly!
I rush outside. The sounds are coming from the parking area. By the limo. It’s covered with shaving cream and Silly String.
Shallow! Cheaters! Hate me!
The words are sprayed on the windshield and on the trunk and hood. I just don’t get it. Silly String. Toilet paper. That’s Petra and Caylin’s (and my) handiwork. They wouldn’t do it to themselves. Beside the car, a straw dummy dressed in mule heels, a tank, and jeans, leans against the bumper.
Caylin and Petra stand outside with a growing crowd that includes the limo driver, the principal, Mrs. Barnes on a crackly walkie-talkie, and two teachers. The Girls are clutching their chests as if the straw girl is like a voodoo doll with pins through its heart.
Petra points to me. “She did it,” she says simply.
Principal Barnes stares at me incredulously. “Ernestine?”
“No,” I say, backing away. “Sorry. Wasn’t me.”
“She did just leave the snack table,” says a voice in the crowd. It sounds like Mushroom.
I turn around. Yes, it’s her, frowning at me with her porcini hair. “I was in the bathroom!”
“Oh, yeah,” Mushroom goes, “but you were gone a looooong time.”
“I went to the other bathroom. I just needed a break. From the dance. And…” I take a deep breath. “Don’t stick up for them.” I point to The Girls. “Do you know what they think of you? They call you Maggie the Mushroom, and you”—I nod over at her friend—“Invisible Girl. Get a life. Dress how you want.” Maggie shakes her head and rolls her eyes at Meshell-like-the-beach.
Petra juts her jaw out and stares at me like I’m mono and bird flu all rolled together. “In the gym yesterday, she screamed a psychotic threat that something bad would happen to me today.”
“She completely did,” adds Caylin.
“I said something bad would happen to Petra because…because,” I say, sputtering, “I was trying to warn her.” How lame I sound.
I’m so far from myself I’ve forgotten how to react normally, like I don’t even protest when Mrs. Barnes starts printing my name on some sort of pink slip for Supreme NP. She’s coming down extra hard on me, I know, since I was basically on probation due to the letting-Petra-cheat-off-me incident. Looking at my watch, I see it’s already 7:55. The dance will end in a little over an hour now. How can I right this wrong? Will I have to wait until another dance, which won’t happen until next year? By then will I even remember I want to be Taffeta? Do I even want to be Taffeta now?
Mrs. Barnes gazes at her pink slip on her clipboard. “We’ll need to go to the office and call your mother. To pick you up pronto from this dance.”
“That’s unnecessary,” I say. “Since she’s here. Taking photos.”
“Last I saw she was over by the DJ taking some close-ups,” says Caylin.
Mrs. Barnes talks into her walkie-talkie. “Please bring Ernestine’s mother to my office. She’s over by the DJ.”
Suddenly, I see a hennaed hair vision whip past me. “I did it, Mrs. Barnes,” says Olivia, racing up the sidewalk, almost falling down. “I messed up the limo. Caylin and Petra had it coming to them for what they did to Ernestine.” As Ninai speeds up next to her on the curb, Olivia lists on her fingers. “Cheating off her, TP’ing her house. It’s our supreme birthday present.” I’m trying to take this in. Olivia did this? Medieval Russian Queen? And my friend. Yes, my friend!
“Sorry not to say anything, but I couldn’t tell you,” she adds in a low whisper. So that’s what she and Ninai had been whispering about for the past few days.
My mind leafs through all of the incidents from last year, and I remember the fake e-mails that we—chiefly I—wrote to Olivia pretending to be from Tyler.
Mrs. Barnes stands there, blinking like she can’t believe that I didn’t do this.
“I don’t care what you do to me. It was worth it,” says Olivia, looking at Mrs. Barnes. “Petra cheated and Ernestine got punished. I can’t stand it anymore.” Ninai is nodding her head.
I stand there silent, completely ashamed.
“Put me on NP, give me a suspension,” Olivia cries out, catching the principal’s eye. “I made the straw dummy. The writing on the limo. Let Ernestine go.”
No Show
Olivia’s on NP and Winslow isn’t going to show up at Winterfest because Petra told him that she had NO intention of actually dancing with him. I’m having such a great time. The disco lights spin and the throbbing bass squeezes into my temples. Headache. I’ve got to get to Winslow. I’m looking at the clock. There’s fifty-five minutes left of the dance. Seven to ten minutes to pedal to his house and back. Not much time. I have no choice.
I hop onto Mom’s bicycle built for two and hope for the best.
Hard Knocks
After passing the thousandth blue Dumpster in front of another house in the middle of a remodel, I speed it to Winslow’s. There’s a very important gate around Winslow’s house so I leap off my bike and, somehow, I scale the fence, scratching my legs but landing on my feet. Now I’m at the door. I bang a brass lion’s head and ring the bell. Nobody comes to the door. Not his hot corporate mom or shooting-particles-down-a-mile-long-tube dad.
I go to leave when I notice that the garage door is slightly ajar, so I slither under it and push myself into a bowl of wet cat food. Gross. I have to do this, though. The lights are off and I grope around looking for a switch. Finding none, I push open the door into a hallway with a laundry room and cubbies filled with shoes. Suddenly, I feel like an idiot (and a burglar). What if his parents are home? What will they think? What could I possibly say? Soon I’m in an enormous kitchen. There’s a light on above the oven and I can make out a granite countertop, cherrywood cabinets, and gleaming stainless steel appliances.
When I hear footsteps, I hold my breath, ducking next to the kitchen island that stores carving boards and a wooden block full of knives.
Now I can hear someone padding into the adjacent dining room, and I go to call out Who’s there? when I hear a whoosh of air and a yelp of pain. A cat screeches as the butcher block falls down and knives clatter onto the tile floor.
“Who’s there?
” I yell.
“OWWWW,” somebody moans—a voice I recognize—and another moan.
I flick on overhead lights that are on a dimmer switch by the fridge.
It’s Winslow. His hair, although still short, looks almost messy. His T-shirt is black. This one says COEXIST. No polo shirt, no clean, pressed pair of khaki pants. The duct-taped shoes are back. Even the chain is back. It’s ridiculous but I’ve never been so happy to hear clanging metal in my life.
“My hand’s bleeding,” he says. “I think one of the knives scraped it when it fell.” He lifts up his head to gaze at me. “What are you doing here?” he demands, totally out of breath.
“I came to get you to go to Winterfest.”
“Heard of knocking?”
“I did.”
“Oh, riiiiight,” he says, pulling off his iPod. “I thought you were…whatever. So I used my tae kwon do moves on the butcher block. Defensively, of course. You’re lucky you weren’t hurt. Yesterday, I crushed Tyler in my sparring class.”
“You crushed Tyler?”
“Yeah, we’re in tae kwon do together. He’s been trying to build up his confidence after his, you know, the kidnapping thing last year.”
I’m so surprised I blurt, “Why would Tyler need to build up his confidence? He took care of those guys, the ones that broke into his house.”
Winslow scratches his chin where his love patch used to be. “Actually, Ty opened the door to the crawl space in his parents’ closet and escaped under the house. The scar on his chin—you know, the one that kinda looks like a caterpillar—is from when he banged into something in the crawl space. He was really scared. He started taking tae kwon do to get over the fear thing. I’ve been trying to help him.”
“You?” Now it’s my turn to almost knock into the counter.
“Shocking, I know. Ever since I got my black belt I’ve been helping the dojo and, sometimes, Ty even comes over to my house for some pointers.” He taps his black, scrubby notebook. “I write down all of the forms we’re working on and some sparring class techniques in here.” Ooooh, that’s why he’s obsessed with that notebook. “Plus, I’m trying to learn some Korean. I want to know more than Kibon, Taegeuk, and Palge. Which are forms.”
“It sounds cool but I’m not sure if I get it,” I say, being completely honest.
“Neither do I sometimes, which is the point,” says Winslow. Running his hand under the faucet to wash off the little bit of blood, he laughs. “So luckily for you, I hit the cutting board.” Winslow shrugs.
“I guess,” I say and we laugh a little. “Your hand’s still bleeding. Maybe you should put on a Band-Aid.”
The Dance
Winslow blinks and I can see in his Saturn eyes how he’s not going to going to give any cues for me to continue talking, like, Yes, I’d love to hear anything you have to say. Nope, he’s going to stand there in the kitchen and force me into blurtation.
I breathe deeply and try to ignore the fact that my whole body feels like it’s revved up. “Okay,” I say.
“Are you disappointed?” I ask. “That I’m not Petra?”
He gazes down at his duct-taped shoes. “No, relieved, actually. I dunno. I wanted to believe, I guess. But I’d much rather be sitting here talking with a real person. I’m sorry I asked you to, you know, cheat. That was pretty heinous of me. But not you, you’re pretty perfect.”
His eyes flick up to my eyes, and my whole body seems to flutter for a moment. That’s when I notice he’s got Scotch Tape wrapped around all of his fingers. “I thought you were going to put on a Band-Aid.”
“Works for me,” says Winslow. “Now here’s my question. Why are you so obsessed with getting me to the dance? You sound stressed.”
With my foot, I trace a plank of wood. “I have to get you to dance. For a very good reason…” My back is up against the sink. “I had to get you to dance with me because I need to become my real self.”
“Which is?”
Oh, god. Here it goes. “This beautiful, popular girl named Taffeta Smith. Ring a bell?”
Winslow fingers his iPod and I’m feeling stupid. “You don’t believe me, do you? You think I’m a mess.”
He stares at me. “Wow, okay, I’m processing this.” He shakes his head. “Vous êtes un lunatic. Did you know that means, you are…?”
“Crazy!” My breath comes out in short puffs. “I can understand that.”
“Crazy. That’s not a bad thing but, okay, I am tripping here a little.” I start to turn away. But Winslow touches my arm. “Don’t go, dummy. I want to see where you’re going with all of this. Taffeta—that’s a kind of material. Silk. La soie. Sounds better in French.”
“Listen to me, Winslow. I’m not joking around. Okay! This is not some attempt to get your attention. I used to be her. Taffeta. I turned into this other person.” I pat my face. “Ernestine. I need to dance with you. Got it?”
He crunches his eyes at me, and moves his head side to side. “So you’re telling me you used to be somebody else? Seriously?”
“YES!”
“Okay, chill. I’m not judging. I’m listening. It’s not your run-of-the-mill statement like I once broke my elbow when I was seven. But I’m intrigued. I always wanted to be able to shapeshift into something else and get all powerful.” He makes a muscle. “But you’re saying you were—”
“Beautiful.” I pull on my polyester apron. “Everyone used to love me. EVERYONE. They just worshipped me. I could make them do whatever I wanted. The limo thing. That was my idea because it’s MY birthday today.”
“When you say everyone worshipped, do you mean me?”
“Especially you.”
As he pulls off his glasses to wipe them, a lopsided grin spreads over his face. “I knew it. I knew something was up with you. ’Cause you’ve been acting a little weird.” For a moment, I’m hurt, but then Winslow crouches down. His eyes crinkle up and his lips tug into a slight smile. “Did you know there are two kinds of forces? If we didn’t have gravity, we would have been pulled into the sun and would’ve been fried, but the two forces even things out and keep things going into orbit. Shows the importance of balancing. Don’t want to get sucked up by one force or the other.” Pretending to battle a force, he sways back and forth.
I blink, not sure where he’s going but I’m hoping it’s someplace decent. Finally, he stops his mock combat. “I bet it’s hard sometimes to know who you really are,” Winslow says in a whisper.
And I realize something. He’s taking me seriously. He’s, maybe, believing me.
Grovel
We pedal back to school on my bicycle built for two, up the long hill and into the La Cambia parking lot. I look at my cell phone. There’s still twenty minutes left of the dance. YES!
As we walk through the open double gym doors, Winslow stretches out his arm. I think he’s going to grab me and dance. This is it. Instead, his fingers play with the bracelet on my wrist.
“There’s a lot more to you than I thought….”
“What did you think?” I’m hanging on his every word, watching the door for Olivia. He is still twisting the bracelet around my wrist.
“I don’t know,” he says, smiling. “That you’re really cute when you get all weird and babbly.”
“Do you believe me?” I ask. “Tell me. Be honest now.”
“I believe that you believe,” he says.
His fingers are still touching my wrist, and I’m finding it hard to concentrate, to make my words stick together into a sentence. “I know I was Taffeta. It’s not a belief.”
“Okay,” he says. “I’m open to new ideas. Sure. Because, I seriously believe I might have been King Arthur, Lancelot, or maybe just the Round Table itself.”
I want to be mad at him for not really believing me, but I’m too jumbled. “What do you think of me? I mean, why was it so hard until recently for us to connect?”
“I don’t know.” He smiles and drops my wrist. It’s hard to hear because of the music. “
I guess I thought sometimes that you didn’t approve of me.” He shrugs his shoulders. “I’m not exactly on time with assignments. Don’t follow directions. You and Olivia and Ninai always hand everything a week ahead of time.”
“But you get an A on every test. Everything!”
“Yeah. But not on my report card. Too many incompletes. I can’t stand to do every little thing the teacher says. All of the hoops we have to jump through and sometimes you seem like you’re playing the game, that’s all. You’re like a Girl Scout.”
Me, like a Girl Scout? I laugh at the idea. But maybe it was true now. “So you thought I was judging you.”
“Judging everyone, in fact.”
“Yeah. Maybe I was.” I smile—judging people is a trait Ernestine seems to share with Taffeta. “Maybe I do,” I admit, wishing he’d start playing with my bracelet again.
“But you’re a freak. Like me.”
“Yeah. I guess.”
He takes off his glasses to rub his eyes. They’re big and fringed with lashes. Thick like a girl’s, but I can see that when he grows into his body that, well, he’d be sort of interesting-looking.
A fast song ends and a slow song comes on.
“Want to dance?” he asks.
I hear his words. I mean, I know Winslow has said them, but somehow it seems surreal.
Like I’ve been waiting ALL THIS TIME for this moment and now it’s here and it’s just us.
My Moment
That’s all. It’s like the rest of the kids and the teachers aren’t there. And somehow I thought there would be more of a drumroll. Like a giant highlighter pen would come down from the sky and highlight us in blue and everyone would stop what they were doing and watch and nod approvingly. But it’s not like that at all. It’s much more private and normal, like it was just an extension of any kind of moment we would have had together. My body plays catch-up and, suddenly, I feel like my insides have dragged down into my toes.
“You look good,” Winslow shouts over the music.
Okay, me, the lights, the DJ equipment—we’re all one because I’m totally and completely electrified. I’m about to actually go onto the dance floor.
Things Are Gonna Get Ugly Page 15
