11 Before 12

by Lisa Greenwald

  DEDICATION

  For Aleah

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  Forty-Three

  Forty-Four

  Forty-Five

  Forty-Six

  Forty-Seven

  Forty-Eight

  Forty-Nine

  Fifty

  Fifty-One

  Acknowledgments

  Excerpt from 12 Before 13

  About the Author

  Books by Lisa Greenwald

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  ONE

  “KAYLAN!” RYAN POUNDS ON MY door. “You overslept! School starts today! You’re already late!”

  I run to beat him over the head with my pillow, but I’m too slow. “Ryan,” I shout down the hall. “You’re a jerk! Karma’s a thing, you know. Bad things will happen to you if you’re not nice to me.”

  After five deep breaths, I call Ari.

  “You want to go to the pool?” I ask her as soon as she answers.

  She replies in her sleepy voice, “Kay, look at the clock.”

  I flip over onto my side, and glance toward my night table.

  8:37.

  “Okay,” I reply. “I’ll admit: I thought it was later. At least nine.” I pause a second. “Sorry. Did I wake you?”

  Ari sighs. “I’m still in bed, but you didn’t wake me.”

  “Agita Day,” I tell her. “August first, red-alert agita levels. I’m freaking out over here.”

  August 1 signals the end of summer, even though you still have almost a month left. August 1 means school is starting really soon, even though it’s still twenty-nine days away.

  “Oh, Kaylan.” She laughs. “Take a few deep breaths. I’ll get my bathing suit on and be at your house in an hour. I already have my pool bag packed because I had a feeling you’d be stressing.”

  “Perfect.” I sigh with relief. “Come as soon as possible! But definitely by nine thirty-seven, okay? You said an hour.”

  “Okay. I’m up. And you’re never going to believe this,” she says, half distracted. “I’m getting new across-the-street neighbors.”

  “Really?” I finally get out of bed and grab my purple one-piece from my dresser drawer. “Describe.”

  She pauses a second, and I’m not totally sure she heard me. “They’re moving the couch in right now,” she explains. “I can’t tell how many kids there are, but there’s one who looks like he’s our age.”

  “A boy?” I squeal.

  “Yeah, he’s playing basketball right now.” She stops talking. “Oops, he just hit one of the movers in the head with the ball.”

  “Tell me more,” I say, dabbing sunscreen dots all over my face. They say it takes at least a half hour for it to really absorb into the skin, and my fair Irish complexion needs all the protection it can get.

  I only take after my Italian ancestors in the agita department, I guess.

  “He went inside,” she explains. “I think he got in trouble. I saw a woman, probably his mom, shaking her hands at him.”

  “Oops.” I step into my bathing suit, holding the phone in the crook of my neck.

  “Oh wait, now they’re back outside. Taking a family photo in front of the house.” She pauses. “He has a little sister. I think they’re biracial. White mom. Black dad.”

  “Interesting,” I say. “Maybe his sister is Gemma’s age!”

  “Maybe . . .” I can tell she’s still staring out the window at them, only half listening to me.

  “By the way, Ryan is insisting that red X thing is true. You haven’t heard about that, right?” I ask.

  “Kaylan!” she snaps in a jokey way. “No! He’s totally messing with you. Okay, go get your pool bag ready, eat breakfast, and I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  I grab my backpack and throw in my sunscreen, a change of clothes, and the summer reading book I haven’t finished yet. I’m having a hard time getting into My Brother Sam Is Dead, although from what I’ve read, it makes my life seem pretty easy.

  I hear Ari’s instructions in my head as I get ready, and I already feel calmer. Her soft voice—she’s never really flustered by anything.

  I stare at my watch again. 9:35. I wait for Ari on the front steps. I’m trying to stay as far away from my brother as possible. Ari still has two minutes, but I wish she was here already.

  I stand up and look for her, but she’s nowhere in sight. She is so going to be late. On Agita Day.

  I learned the word agita from my mom. She’s part Italian and she learned it from her grandmother, who was 100 percent Italian and apparently said it all the time. It basically means anxiety, stress, heartburn, aggravation—stuff like that.

  I don’t know what my great-grandma’s agita was about, but mine is pretty clear.

  Starting middle school.

  A few minutes later, I spot Ari at the end of the block, and I walk down the driveway to meet her. She strolls toward me, hair up in a bun, with her favorite heart sunglasses on. Her pink-and-white-striped tote hangs over her shoulder like it’s the lightest thing in the world.

  “I brought you an extra hair tie,” she says, showing me her wrist. “Since you always forget.”

  “Thanks,” I say. “Let’s go in so I can grab my stuff. I’ve had the worst morning.”

  “What happened?” she asks, after a sip from her water bottle.

  I look around for my brother. “I can’t even talk about it. Ryan and I got into a huge fight last night. I dumped a bowl of cereal on his head, that’s how bad it got. Right as his friend Tyler walked in the door.”

  “Wow,” Ari says.

  When we get inside, Ari heads straight to the den and sits down in the brown recliner. It used to be my dad’s favorite, before he moved out. I think about him every time I see the chair. I should be over it by now.

  He doesn’t miss the recliner. He doesn’t miss us.

  He hardly even calls.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Ari says, slipping off her flip-flops and putting her feet up on the ottoman. “I’m gonna go by Arianna when school starts.”

  My heart pounds when she says this, like more announcements and confessions are coming, like she’s going to tell me stuff I don’t want to hear. I pick at the mosquito bite on my cheek and try to listen.

  She looks at me crooked and comes to join me on the couch. Ari, or I guess I should say Arianna, sits up straight, cross-legged, facing me. “Ya know, because, like, it’s a new school. I should have a new name. Sound more mature. Sophisticated. That kind of thing.”

  I nod, but all I can think about is that I need a thing like that. I need to do something big, something to change myself before middle school. But I don’
t have a nickname people use, and I can’t get a whole new wardrobe. Should I get a life-changing haircut or something? Nothing is coming to me.

  “Just wanted to make sure you’re okay with it,” she says. “I know how you are with change.”

  I psshaw that away, but I’m kind of glad that she gets that about me, that she knows I’m terrible with change. “You’re already sophisticated, though, Ar,” I remind her. “I mean, you go to the ballet every year with your mom.”

  She laughs. “Um, yeah, but that’s because my mom buys the tickets.”

  “Okay, well, you’re mature—I mean, you babysit for Gemma all the time, and your parents are never worried that you two are home alone and gonna burn down the house.”

  “Kay.” She puts her hands on my knees. “I get what you’re saying, I’m pretty much ready for college. So I need a name that reflects that, shows my true self.”

  “Okay, well, if you think of something that I can do like that, Arianna, just let me know.” I take a lip balm/sunscreen out of the pocket of my cover-up and rub it on my lips. “Do I have to call you Arianna, too? Or can I stick with Ari? I mean, I already know you’re mature and sophisticated.”

  BFFs should be allowed to stick with nicknames forever. It’s like some kind of rule of friendship that everyone knows and accepts.

  “Well, when school starts, around other people, use Arianna, okay? Otherwise, it’ll be confusing. Ya know?” She puts out her hand so I’ll give her the lip balm. “Just, like, try it a few times, so you can get used to it.”

  “Okay, Arianna.” I laugh. “Ready for the pool?”

  “I’m always ready for the pool,” she says, picking up her neatly packed tote. She even remembered two bottles of water and the spray sunscreen.

  I grab the still-damp-from-yesterday towel from the back of the bathroom door and throw it over my shoulder.

  “Ryan, we’re leaving,” I yell as I’m running upstairs to get my bag, trying to get him to hear me over the beeping of his video game. “Your eyes are going to bleed out of your head if you keep staring at that screen all day!”

  He doesn’t respond.

  “Do you think my brother got a personality transplant and didn’t tell me?” I ask Ari on the walk over to the pool, loosening my backpack straps. I can never get it to sit right on my shoulders; it’s, like, digging into my skin. I definitely need a new one before school starts.

  She laughs, sliding her sunglasses to the bottom of her nose and eyeing me suspiciously. “Can you do that? It would be kind of cool if you could, actually.”

  I hold on to my backpack straps. “I was kidding, but yeah, could be cool. His crazy behavior has been going on for a few weeks now, but I’ve been mostly ignoring it because I just wanted it to disappear.”

  “A magical ability to make things like that disappear would be cool, too,” Ari suggests.

  “Totally!” I think about it for a second. I wonder if there’s a way to do that, like really control our thoughts and calm them down. “Ryan and I used to be friends, ya know? And now he’s either being a jerk to me or ignoring me.”

  “I think brothers are like that,” Arianna explains. “Probably the more you stress about it, the more it will seem like a big deal.”

  I look at her, but she doesn’t meet my gaze. “That’s what you say about everything.”

  She laughs. “Yeah, because it’s true.” She stops walking to get a pebble out of her flip-flop. When she comes back up, she puts an arm around me. “Kay, you stress too much. You know this, right?”

  I mumble, “I guess.”

  “And also,” Ari continues, “I don’t know anything about brothers. I’m just making this up. Gemma still thinks I’m the coolest. But that’s because she’s eight. I’m sure she’ll find me annoying, eventually.”

  “Probably.”

  We get to the pool and throw our towels on our favorite lounge chairs. They’re not really “ours,” of course, but I call them ours because we always sit in the exact same spot, by the steps to the shallow end. It’s half-sun, half-shade.

  The best spot at the pool.

  Ari goes to the bathroom, while I lather on more sunscreen. I’m about to jump in the water when out of the corner of my eye, I notice Tyler sitting on the lifeguard chair. I look away and spend all my energy trying to focus on making sure every dab of sunscreen is smoothed in. I examine the little tan dots on my legs and inspect my chipping pedicure.

  “Hey, Kaylan,” he says.

  “Oh, um, hey.” I pretend that I didn’t see him sitting there, when I clearly did. “I didn’t know you were working here. I’ve been here, like, every day this summer and I’ve never seen you.”

  “I’m just filling in for August,” he says. “I’m still training, really. I want to work as a lifeguard when I’m in high school.”

  I’m not sure if a kid only a year older than me, who’s “still training” to be a lifeguard, should really be watching over the pool, but who am I to judge?

  “Don’t look so nervous.” He laughs, pulling up his shirt to mop up the sweat on his face. I try to look at him as he talks, but all I see is stomach. Tyler’s stomach. It’s tan, golden brown, and it’s right there in front of my face. It’s like I can’t see anything else. “Joey’s keeping an eye on me.”

  Joey’s the director of the pool and a lifeguard, too.

  “All right, well, I’ll be careful not to drown,” I say and then laugh, not really sure if that was funny or not.

  “Good plan.” He gives me a thumbs-up.

  Tyler blows his whistle at some kids wrestling in the shallow end. He looks so official, the way he sits there, leaning back in the lifeguard chair, like he has it all under control. His hair is just the tiniest bit spiky. He even has the white sunscreen lines on his nose and his cheeks, but it doesn’t look dorky on him. It’s like he was born to be a lifeguard.

  My left eye starts twitching and all of a sudden my arms are really itchy. Like really, really itchy. Am I getting a rash from this new sunscreen? I can’t stop scratching my elbow.

  I think I’m breaking out in hives. He’s just Tyler, Ryan’s best friend since pretty much forever, but I can’t look at him all of a sudden. I need to focus my eyes anywhere else.

  Suddenly just talking to Tyler makes me feel like I’m about to pass out.

  And seriously, why is Ari taking three hundred years in the bathroom?

  Finally, she gets back. “Ari.” I pull her close and whisper, “This is so random, but do you think Tyler’s cute?”

  She looks around like she can’t find him, and I nudge my head up toward the lifeguard chair to show her where he is.

  “Umm. Maybe?” She shrugs, sitting down at the edge of my lounge chair. “Never really thought about it. . . . Let me look at him closer.”

  “No! Don’t!” I hit her on the arm.

  “Ouch! Kaylan!” She gives me a crooked look.

  “Sorry.” I feel his presence in this odd way. Like I know he’s close by. It’s like an itch that’s so super-itchy, but I’m not allowed to scratch it.

  Ari nudges her head toward mine and whispers, “I’m sorry to tell you this, because Agita Day and all, but Brooke and Lily are here.”

  “What? Really?” I’m completely zapped out of Tyler thoughts. I scan the pool to find them.

  “Yeah, I guess they’re back from camp.” Ari looks over toward the deep end. “They’re over there with that group of boys—Chase Selnowitz, and I know a few of those other boys from Hebrew School.”

  Brooke, Lily, and Kaylan. We called ourselves Blick for BLK (kind of a dumb name, now that I think about it) and we loved each other. We met in a baby music class, and our moms became friends, and then we became friends, and I figured it would be like that forever. But then, overnight, it just wasn’t. Brooke and Lily were scooped up by the Phone Girls (I called them that because they were the first ones to get cell phones), and I wasn’t scooped. I was a freezer-burned pint of ice cream, left to melt on the counter�
�until Ari moved to our school in fourth grade.

  “Is Tamar here, too?” I ask. “Are you guys still gonna be Tamari this year?”

  Tamar is Ari’s Hebrew School BFF. She jokes that Tamar’s the me of Hebrew School, since Tamar doesn’t go to school with us. People need a BFF wherever they are; it’s a simple fact of life.

  “I think we’re done with Tamari.” She laughs at the name combination they made up. “Are you still jealous about that, Kay?” She side-eyes me.

  “No,” I groan, and look away. “God, why are Brooke and Lily back already? And is one of them going out with Chase?”

  Last summer, Brooke and Lily went to the same sleepaway camp as the Phone Girls, and they just looooved it. I overheard them talking about it all the time like it was the best thing ever and they were hanging out with celebrities or something.

  Ari leans in close and puts her hands on my shoulders. “Come on, let’s swim, it’ll clear your head.”

  She takes my hand and leads me over to the pool, and we jump in together, holding hands, the way we always do. It’s probably babyish, and I wonder if I should tell her that we should just jump in on our own from now on, or maybe even use the steps like normal, civilized people.

  “They have mozzarella sticks at the snack bar today,” Ari says, treading water and changing the subject entirely.

  “What are the other specials?” I ask, even though eating is the last thing I want to do. My stomach is more knotted up than the rope we had to climb in gym last year. I can’t think about Brooke and Lily. I can’t talk to them, or ask them about camp, or anything without feeling totally embarrassed. It’s easier when I pretend they don’t exist.

  Maybe there are things you just never get over. Like friendship endings, and your dad leaving, and who knows what else. Maybe I should make a Never Get Over list in my mind and just accept that some things need to stay there.

  “Um, a turkey club and some blackberry smoothie,” Ari explains. “Kay, let’s race, okay? It’ll be good for you. Crawl?”

  I nod. “It’s our best stroke, for sure.” We take our places on the wall at the shallow end, and we ask Rebecca, one of the other lifeguards, if she’ll tell us when to go.

  Racing takes my mind off everything. For the few minutes that I’m trying to swim as fast as I possibly can, I’m not thinking about Brooke and Lily. I’m not thinking about Ryan being a jerk. I’m not even thinking about August 1 or agita or starting middle school.