11 Before 12

by Lisa Greenwald

  “Why are you guys following us?” Ryan asks.

  “Um, duh!” I yell. “We live in the same house, flea brain.”

  “Um, duh, but there are other ways to go. We take the long way so we can pass the skateboard park. Duh.”

  Tyler doesn’t say anything, but he laughs when Ryan says that. Probably because he feels that he has to. I mean, they are best friends.

  Ari rolls her eyes in their direction. “Don’t listen to them,” she says under her breath.

  Ari and I get to my house and make a whole buffet of snacks on the kitchen table, the way my mom used to do when she was home in the afternoons. Chips and chocolate-chip cookies, pink lemonade, and every snack we can find in the pantry.

  “I’m going to get my copy of the list!” I tell Ari, running upstairs.

  But by the time I get back downstairs, Tyler and Ryan are feasting on our buffet. And Ari is sitting at the table, looking at her phone. Probably texting Jason.

  All those snacks that I was so excited to eat suddenly make my stomach feel all rumbly, like I swallowed too much water.

  With Tyler in the room, even picking up a single chip feels impossible. And if I managed to pick it up, it would take me forty-five minutes to eat it.

  I go to tuck the list into my backpack, but Ryan snatches it away before I have the chance.

  “What’s this?” he asks.

  “Oh, nothing.” I try to grab it back, but he holds it above his head and I can’t reach it.

  “Ryan! Come on! Why do you even care what I’m doing, anyway? Your life is so lame that all you have to focus on is your little sister’s stuff?”

  Tyler puts his hand into the chips bowl, not even paying attention.

  “Ryan, come on,” Ari says. “Just give it back.”

  But he ignores her, too.

  “Whole Me Makeover!” Ryan bursts into laughter and attempts to show Tyler the list. My cheeks are on fire. My heartbeat is in my ears.

  I stand up on a kitchen chair and snatch it away from him. Thank God he didn’t see the Sabotage Ryan part!

  “Get out of here,” I say, to Ryan of course but also to Tyler, because the truth is I can’t think clearly when he’s around. Words come out jumbly, and I start to itch all over.

  Ryan takes the whole bowl of chips and leaves the kitchen with it. Dummy. He doesn’t know there’s a whole other bag in the pantry.

  “I don’t know why he’s become literally the biggest jerk in the world,” I tell Ari. “I mean, he wasn’t always like this.”

  “You’ve been asking me this for a month already,” Ari reminds me and bites into her apple. “He’s become a jerk. What can I say?”

  She’s suddenly cold and patronizing. Like she’s the smartest person in the world and I don’t know anything at all.

  Everyone is changing around me. I feel like I’m at the airport, standing on the regular floor, while everyone I know is on one of those conveyer belt people-mover things.

  “Anyway, back to the list,” I tell her, trying to refocus. “I say we tackle the Do something we think we’ll hate thing next.”

  “Yeah, I wonder if there’s a yoga club at school. We’re still gonna do yoga, right?” She looks at me. “Maybe we could even use it for gym credit.”

  “Hmm, maybe.” I finish my cookie, hoping the instructor from the class at the pool was okay. She got into some water skiing accident. “I need to exercise and calm down, and this solves both.”

  Ari’s about to respond when her phone vibrates.

  Oh no. Is this another Jason call?

  She starts typing back a text reply, and I can’t help but ask who it is. I’m nosy.

  “This girl Marie. She sits at the other end of our lunch table.”

  I nod, eager for her to get to the point.

  “She’s in my math class, and we exchanged numbers so we could go over the homework, but it turns out she’s really cool. She’s always texting me about new bands and stuff.”

  I try to seem impressed and happy about this Marie person, but inside I’m singeing. Ari gets mad at me for talking to other girls at lunch, and yet she has a new texting BFF.

  Not cool. Not cool at all.

  “She lives around the corner from that cool coffee place. Where they have all those crazy muffins,” Ari tells me like it’s the most interesting thing she’s ever talked about. She’s talking about muffins. Snooze. “Ya know what I mean?”

  I nod. “Yeah. I’ve been there a hundred times.”

  “I’ll ask Marie where she does yoga,” Ari says, all excited like she’s come up with an amazing plan. “I totally forgot, but she goes to a yoga class every Wednesday after school.”

  “Great,” I say, pretending as hard as I can to be into this idea. “Do you think Tyler, like, only thinks of me as Ryan’s sister, or does he think of me as a real person?”

  Ari laughs and takes another sip of lemonade. “Ummm. I have no clue. Both, I guess.”

  “Hey, flea brain,” Ryan calls from the hallway. Oh God. Did he just hear that? He just heard that whole entire thing, I bet.

  “Don’t answer, pretend we’re not here,” I say to Ari through my teeth.

  “He’s staring right at us, Kay.” She nudges her head in his direction.

  “Ari, I know my sister is the most annoying person in the world. All she does is talk about Tyler,” he sings. “You’re probably sick to death of hearing about him!”

  “Ryan!” I scream, and run over to start pounding on his back with my fists. “Get out of here! You don’t even know what we were talking about!”

  “Right.” He runs away, letting the screen door slam behind him.

  Ari looks down at her lap. “Um. That wasn’t great.”

  “Yeah, not at all.” I stare out the window and ignore my throat-stinging-about-to-cry feeling. “Wanna do homework together?”

  “Actually, I think I have to go. My mom said something about my grandma coming over. Don’t worry about Ryan,” Ari says, grabbing an apple out of the bowl. “Can I take this for the walk home?”

  “Sure,” I grumble. “Text me later?” I ask, but what I’m really thinking is, If you’re not texting Marie . . . or calling Jason.

  My brother just completely harassed me, and she couldn’t even stay.

  Ari nods and leaves my house and I’m left at the kitchen table all alone with a million snacks in front of me. They’re all my favorite stuff, too—chocolate-chip cookies, Cheetos, those little cheese slices wrapped in wax, mini Snickers—and I don’t want to eat any of it.

  This is not how I envisioned this afternoon going. Not at all.

  To be honest, I’m not sure anything is going according to how I envisioned it. Not this afternoon, not the list, not middle school.

  I wonder if anyone’s plans ever go the way they think they will go or if life is basically one big question mark.

  I finish the whole bowl of strawberries and try to come up with an answer, but by the time I’m done, I feel just as clueless as when I started.

  I decide to text Jason: What’s up?

  Nada.

  What r u up to?

  At this kid Andre’s house. Peace.

  So Jason has new friends, too. I mean, I expected that. Just because he was our new guy friend didn’t mean we were going to be the only friends he had.

  I walk up the stairs, all ready to start my homework, when I hear, “What’s your sister’s deal?”

  It’s Tyler.

  My deal?

  “Um, her deal. I don’t think she has a deal. But she’s a pain in the butt, I can tell you that,” Ryan replies. “See, if you want to get to the next level on this game, you need to make sure all the mines are covered. It’s the only way.”

  “Yeah, man. I know,” Tyler says, and then pauses for a second. “But your sister is way less of a pain than mine.”

  My heart bubbles up a little when he says that—like water for spaghetti right as it’s about to boil.

  It’s not even th
at nice of a thing, that major of a compliment.

  But Tyler was talking about me. Really and truly he was.

  Maybe Tyler doesn’t just think of me as Ryan’s sister. I mean, if that’s the only way he thought of me, he wouldn’t wonder what my deal was.

  I’m a real person to him.

  NINETEEN

  FOR THE NEXT FEW DAYS, I live on Tyler’s words. I mean, really live on them. I think about them all the time.

  But your sister is way less of a pain than mine.

  “So what do you think he meant by that?” I ask Jason. We’re sitting in the entryway of the school, waiting for our moms to pick us up. I feel a little weird talking to him about this stuff, because it’s kinda personal, but he doesn’t seem to mind. And isn’t that part of the point of having a guy friend? Guys have to know what other guys are thinking way better than girls know what they’re thinking.

  I’m kind of glad it’s just Jason and me for a change. Ari stayed for extra help, too, but I guess her session didn’t get out yet.

  “Um.” Jason makes an over-the-top-perplexed sort of face. “He means—wait for it—that you’re less of a pain than his sister.”

  “Jason!” I yelp. “Be serious. Please. For once.”

  “Well, he probably means what he says. But what he’s not saying is that he’s thinking about you enough to bring you up. So I’d say that’s something.”

  “Something? What do you mean?”

  “No clue.” He stands up when he sees his mom’s car pull into the school lot. “Later, Kaylan. See ya mañana.”

  My mom is always late. She’s late so often that I barely even expect her to be on time anymore. She’s so late that all the after school clubs are letting out now, and the parking lot is filling up with more cars. I stare at my phone, like someone really important is texting, and I’m so busy that her lateness doesn’t even get to me.

  I’m still waiting for her when Ari and Marie come down the hall from their math extra-help session.

  “Hey, Kay,” Ari says to me, making a sad face. She knows all about my mom’s lateness.

  “Oh, hey, Kaylan,” Marie says, like she’s known me her whole life. She’s fake-chummy and I hate that. At least be real. That’s my motto. I mean, I made it up just now, but it’s still my motto. My new motto.

  “Hey,” I reply. Marie and Ari aren’t alone, though. Soon three other girls from the end of our lunch table come traipsing behind them.

  They sit down on the bench, all five smooshed together, and another girl says, “That was soo hilarious. I can’t believe Ms. Dashner had, like, no idea he was chewing gum!” And then another girl says, “I bet he does that in every class and gets away with it.”

  “Totally,” Ari adds.

  Seriously? They’re talking about someone chewing gum like it’s just sooo fascinating.

  “Arianna is so going to be the first one of all of us to have her first kiss,” Marie declares, like that’s what they went over in extra help, and it’s a fact that everyone needs to know.

  First one of all of us? Ari’s part of an “all of us”?

  “Stop.” Ari hits her on the arm, and then looks at me like she’s making sure that I heard.

  Oh, I heard. I heard loud and clear.

  “Yeah, Arianna, I agree,” another girl says.

  Things are shifting and I feel it. But I don’t know what it is exactly and I don’t know why it’s happening. And the scariest thing of all: I don’t know how to stop it.

  “Oh, guys, my mom’s here,” one of the girls says. “Come on.”

  They all get up at the same time and walk toward the double doors. Ari stops right in front of me and says, “I’ll call you later, Kaylan. Okay?” And she blows me a kiss.

  I guess that one mom is driving all of them home, but they didn’t think to offer me a ride. My best friend didn’t even offer me a ride home! I feel like my head is on fire.

  After that, I sit on the curb and wait forever for my mom. And people give me these pity looks while I’m waiting. They ask things like, “Are you okay? Are you sure you don’t need a ride? Can we call someone for you?” I just smile and say I’m fine, but what I really want to do is find some secret bunker and hide away from all these people. If I have to be waiting here forever, I’d at least like to be invisible.

  When my mom finally arrives to pick me up, she says through the open window, “So sorry, Kaylan. Everything ran late today, and then there was traffic.”

  I get in the car and slam the door.

  I don’t say anything; I just sit there and stare out the window as she drives out of the school parking lot.

  “Are you okay?” she asks.

  “No! You’re late. I mean, really, really late. People thought I’d been abandoned! And I’m starving. They don’t have snacks at extra help, ya know.”

  “Kaylan,” she says, driving through the yellow light. “I came as fast as I could. There were a few last-minute patients I had to see. My phone was out of battery and I didn’t want to waste time charging it to text that I was going to be late.”

  “Fine.”

  “You know I’m doing my best, right?”

  “I’m doing my best, too,” I say, even though I wonder if that’s really true. Maybe we all think that we’re doing our best, but we could actually do a lot better. I mean, how does anyone know what their best really is? Maybe it’s something we feel. Or maybe it’s how exhausted we are at the end of the day.

  I don’t think my mom’s doing her best, even though she says she is. Her best would be arriving on time. It’s like a basic part of motherhood. And life.

  “We’ll order in Chinese food,” my mom says, like it’s a remedy that’s going to make everything better. It won’t make everything better—but it’s a start. My mom and I have a thing with food—we like eating together. It comforts us.

  “Can we both get egg rolls?” I ask. Usually we share an egg roll and an order of scallion pancakes, but I’m feeling extra-hungry tonight.

  “Sure,” she says, pausing, like she’s about to tell me bad news. “Can we discuss social media for a second?”

  “Um . . . what about it?”

  “How much you do it, I guess? The principal sent an email that we need to be vigilant about social cruelty, what our children are doing online, and I just want to be aware.”

  I roll my eyes. “Really, Mom? You think I’m cruel on social media? Don’t start this, okay?”

  “Kaylan, I’m your mother, and frankly, this social media business scares me. People can really get hurt. And do not speak to me like that!”

  “Fine. Sorry. Honestly, I don’t even go on that much. Maybe an Instagram pic every now and then . . .”

  “Okay, well, maybe we can look at it together sometime soon,” she says, pulling into the driveway. “Go upstairs and do all your homework. We’ll eat at seven.”

  I put an arm around her as we walk inside. “Mom, you don’t need to worry so much about social media. But the lateness thing—try to work on it, okay?”

  She laughs and drops her bag on the entryway table. “I’ll worry about what I want to worry about. That’s my right, as a mother.”

  “Mothers are the only ones with rights, I guess!”

  I traipse up the stairs.

  TWENTY

  MY PHONE RINGS AN HOUR into my homework. It’s Ari FaceTiming me. A tiny little corner of my brain calms down when I see her number. Like, okay, we’re still friends. She still cares about me. She hasn’t totally moved on to Marie and the other lunch table girls.

  I click the green button, and I see her sitting on her bed, her hair tied up in a bun.

  “What’s up?” she asks, not looking at the camera in the right way, so I see mostly the top of her head.

  “Ugh.” I lean back in my desk chair. “My mom is suddenly obsessed with social media.”

  “Huh? Like she’s on it?”

  “No.” I laugh. “Like she wants to know what I’m doing on it.”

&nb
sp; “Oh, whatever, moms being moms,” she says, popping some gum in her mouth. “What else is up?”

  “Ryan’s being a pain again. He keeps saying he’s gonna tell Tyler I like him. It’s gonna be so embarrassing.”

  “I don’t even get why you like Tyler,” she says. “I mean, he never even says anything. And he laughs like a weird cartoon boy.”

  When she says it like that, my cheeks get hot, and I feel like I have to defend him—like he’s running for president and I’m voting for him, and I need everyone else to vote for him, too.

  “Well, he’s supercute, which you know, and he’s, like, cool, and he never gets flustered and stuff. . . .”

  Ari looks away for a second, like her mind is wandering and she’s thinking about something else. “Uh, okay. You didn’t really say much. But whatever.”

  “Well, I’ll make a list of all the reasons he’s awesome.” I pause. “Is Ryan right? That you’re sick to death of hearing me talk about Tyler? I mean, I haven’t even been talking about him for that long.”

  Ari looks away from the screen and stays quiet for a few seconds. “Well, you do kind of fixate on things.”

  “What?” I recoil.

  She looks back at the screen and says, “You asked.”

  “Fine,” I say, swallowing hard. I feel like I was just slapped in the face with her honesty. Sometimes it’s okay to lie a little, I think. “So what else is going on, then?”

  She takes her hair out of the bun and shakes it around a little; the red highlights still look so good. “Well, did I tell you that Jason is actually going to this watch convention next week? With his grandpa and his dad. Where they just look at watches!”

  “No.” It stings that Jason didn’t tell me either. Especially since I text him a picture of a different watch every day. I am trying so hard to show interest in his interests! I’m really trying to be a good friend to him.

  “Isn’t that so weird?” she asks.

  I nod. “Well, we know he really likes watches.” And then a tiny little flicker goes off in my brain—does Ari like Jason?

  Thankfully, I hear my mom calling me to come down and set the table so I can end this FaceTime call.