11 Before 12

by Lisa Greenwald

  “Katy Berry!”

  They all applaud and laugh, and Petey G says, “It does sound delicious.” He pauses. “Okay, ready for the final question?” he asks me, and I nod. “Craziest thing you’ve ever done?” He looks out into the audience. “She’s only eleven, almost twelve, folks.”

  I pause to think a second, putting a finger on my chin, all dramatic, and everyone cracks up again. “I started middle school.” I pause, for emphasis. “And let me tell you—it is pretty darn crazy!”

  Right then, the entire audience bursts into laughter.

  “I did also crawl through my neighbor’s window to get her keys because she was locked out,” I continue. I feel like I’m on a roll and I can’t stop talking. I’ve never felt this way before, but I love it. “And that’s how I got here!”

  Petey G says, “Standing O for Kaylan Terrel. KT. Does anyone ever call you that?”

  “They do now!” I yell out. “Thanks, everyone!”

  “Best guest we’ve ever had,” Petey G says. “I kind of feel bad for our other guests tonight.” He looks toward the back, all jokey like he’s worried they were listening.

  I go back to my seat with red cheeks and a pounding heart. My jaw kind of hurts from smiling so much.

  “You were amazing, Kaylan!” my mom whispers, pulling me into her as soon as I’ve sat down.

  “I was, right?” I smile.

  “Definitely. No doubt about it.”

  I sit there for the rest of the show, not paying attention because I feel so empowered. Under the bright, hot lights, with an entire audience out there and all the people watching in their homes, too, I felt different. Like a new and improved Kaylan. A funny Kaylan who could say stuff and not worry it would come out wrong.

  On that stage, everything came out right.

  No agita whatsoever.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  I SLOW DOWN AS I pass Mrs. Etisof’s house on my walk to the bus on Monday morning, and I’m so grateful when I see her on her front porch.

  She was away on an all-day painting retreat on Sunday so I didn’t get to see her and tell her all about the show.

  “Kaylan! TV star!” she calls out to me. She’s bundled up in a parka, sipping a mug of tea.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Etisof.” I walk up there for a second. “It’s all because of you, though! Thanks for getting me the tickets.”

  “All because of you, Kaylan Terrel. The most considerate, thoughtful neighbor!” She raises her mug like we’re toasting each other. “Have a good day at school!”

  I run down her steps and toward the bus, and I kind of feel like I’m floating, like the wind just carries me wherever I need to go.

  When I get to school, I realize that people are actually talking about the show. I had no idea so many kids my age watched it. Or maybe their parents do, and so they heard about it.

  I waited all weekend for Ari to text me or call or email or something. I don’t even know if she saw me. Or if she thought about me doing the JHH by myself when I got home. If she did, she didn’t care to get in touch.

  We both got on TV.

  I accomplished what I wanted to accomplish.

  Take that, Ari. But I was funny! I made people laugh. That should count for something extra, I think.

  I am totally winning this competition!

  At lunch, the Whatevers are saying how I was so funny, even their parents cracked up. “Even my grandpa laughed,” Saara says. “And he never laughs.”

  Kind of sad for Saara’s grandpa. Maybe I’ll ask her about him one day.

  They compliment my outfit and my hair and go on and on about how great I did.

  I’m not gonna lie—I enjoy the compliments.

  “Do you want to go to Harvey Deli to celebrate your celebrity status?” Cami asks, laughing through her words.

  “Yeah! That’s such a great idea,” June adds. “Maybe Friday after school?”

  Saara nods. “I’m free.”

  “I’ll ask my mom if she can drive us,” Cami continues. “I mean, she’s usually around, but she may have to drive my brother . . . and I don’t know if he’ll have a playdate. . . .”

  I shift in my seat. Maybe I can’t really be a loner now, after I’ve been on TV. I’m kind of a local celebrity. I mean, I’ll need friends. An entourage, even.

  “Um, maybe . . .” I say. “I’ll check with my mom.”

  “Come on, Kaylan! We haven’t gone yet and we both have the same favorite sandwich!” Cami says, going on and on about it.

  I keep listening to her, but out of the corner of my other ear, I’m eavesdropping on Ari and Marie at the other end of the table. Are they talking about me being on TV? Did they hear all my compliments? Does Ari know the Whatevers invited me to hang out?

  “He’s so cute,” Ari says. But I don’t know who she’s talking about. This is torture! I need to know.

  I keep listening, while I “uh-huh” Cami about the Harvey Deli plans.

  “I feel like he has major first kiss potential,” Ari goes on.

  “Noah is a definite cutie name,” Sydney says. “Every Noah I know is really cute!”

  What? Who is Noah?

  I ever so gently turn my head in that direction so I can listen a little more, but then Marie and I make eye contact, and I look away and pretend to be super-interested in Cami’s plans.

  After lunch, Jason comes up behind me at my locker. He puts his hands on my shoulders and then quickly moves them away.

  “Kaylan, you rocked it,” he says.

  I turn around. “I did?” I don’t know why I play dumb; I know I rocked it.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t text you; my phone got lost in the washing machine. I mean, it got washed, so . . .” He smiles in a crooked kind of way, one side of his mouth higher than the other. Did he always smile like this, and look so cute? And I never noticed? “But you totally rocked it.”

  “Thanks, Jason.” I lean in to hug him and then pull back. Jason and I are not hug-in-the-middle-of-the-hallway friends. “And sorry about your phone.”

  “I’m coming over after school today,” he announces. “We’re practicing your clementine peeling. Okay?”

  “I haven’t totally settled on that yet. I mean, what if someone from the show writes to me with an amazing idea? But no one at the show gave me any ideas, so I’m not going to count on it.”

  “Well, we can always add more in,” he declares. “But this is going to be hilarious. Really, really hilarious.”

  “Okay. I gotta go. I’m gonna be late.”

  I’m walking to class, thinking about Jason’s crooked smile, when I see Tyler at the end of the hallway, by himself. This is rare. He’s one of those people who’s always surrounded by a group.

  “Hey, Kaylan,” he yells, way too loud for the hallway, and Mr. Bernard, who is on hallway duty, scolds him.

  “Shhhhh.” I am not getting detention again. Never again. When I get closer, I whisper, “Hey.”

  “I saw you on TV.”

  “Yeah.” I don’t know what to say. When I’m around Tyler, words don’t come out of my mouth the way they normally do.

  “It was cool.” He smiles. “It’s like a big thing for kids to be on that show. My parents watch it every night. They never have kids on.”

  “Uh,” I stammer. I can barely mutter out a “thanks” before he tells me he has to turn to go to science.

  “I’ll be at your house later,” he says, nudging his head in my direction. “Maybe we can hang.”

  “Um, yeah. Sure.”

  “Later, Kaylan.”

  I think I’m about to hyperventilate. My head feels all cloudy and hazy, like I don’t know if this is really happening or if it’s a dream.

  Tyler and I just touched arms, he told me he’s coming over later, he wants to hang.

  This is huge. This is huger than huge.

  I replay the whole thing in my head over and over on my walk to history and then as I sit down, and Mrs. Clarke passes out the worksheet, and I’m wo
rking on it, the problem hits me: Jason will be at my house, too.

  Jason and Tyler. Jason and Tyler. Jason and Tyler.

  My cheeks prickle, and I have to take my hoodie off because I’m sweating so much.

  I want to hang out with Jason because he’s my friend and he’s helping me with the talent show and because sometimes I have this insatiable urge to hug him. But I always want to hang out with Tyler, because, well, he’s Tyler and he has first-kiss potential written all over him.

  Should I tell June and Cami about this conundrum? Maybe they’ll have advice.

  “Kaylan,” Mrs. Clarke says. “You don’t look like you’re working.”

  “Oh, um, sorry.” I smile. “I am.”

  I stare down at the worksheet and force myself to concentrate, or to at least make it look to Mrs. Clarke like I’m concentrating.

  It doesn’t work as well as I think it does.

  “Kaylan, can you come talk to me for a second?” she asks as I’m packing up my books. I nod and smile, and try to look calm. I doubt that’s working either.

  “You seem very distracted,” Mrs. Clarke says when I’m at her desk. “I’m concerned.”

  “Oh no. I’m okay, Mrs. Clarke.” I pause, unsure of what to say, and then something comes to me. “I’m not sure if you know this, actually, but I was recently on TV.” I bulge out my eyes for extra emphasis.

  “I’d heard that, Kaylan.” She smiles and then it falls flat. “And that’s terrific. Really. But you need to focus on your studies as well.” She starts collecting some papers on her desk and looks away, and I think this is a sign that it’s time for me to leave.

  “Okay, Mrs. Clarke. I will.”

  Sheesh. You’d think I’d get a little pass being a TV star?

  If only I could channel the awesomeness that came over me on the Petey G show and put that into my history worksheet.

  TWENTY-NINE

  I SPEND THE REST OF the day fretting about the Tyler-and-Jason combination at my house later this afternoon.

  I have so many things I wish I could talk to Ari about that I decide to write them down. That way if we ever do start talking again, I can catch her up on everything.

  I’m waiting for the bus, looking around for June and any of the Whatevers. I don’t see anyone and I hate this. I hate to be standing around, alone, while everyone else around me is chatting.

  I take out my notebook and start making a list of all the stuff that has happened since Ari and I stopped talking.

  I hung out with Jason one-on-one. I sometimes wanted to hug him.

  I climbed through Mrs. E’s window.

  I got on TV.

  Tyler asked me to hang out.

  Even though I’m trying to look busy keeping this list, the bus line at the end of the day is still probably the loneliest place in my world. I don’t know where Jason is—maybe he got a ride home with someone—and Ari always pretends she doesn’t see me.

  When I had Ari, life was the opposite. Always someone to sit with on the bus, to talk to, to rehash the day with. Now no matter how well my day went, the bus line reminds me of what I’ve lost.

  I don’t know how many more days I can get through like this.

  By the time I get home, I’ve filled three journal pages with stuff to tell Ari and potential talent show acts, but I’m nauseous from writing all of that on a moving bus.

  I walk in the door, expecting to have a few minutes to relax and change and have a snack before everyone shows up, but no.

  Ryan and Tyler are already at the kitchen table, eating popcorn.

  “Hey,” I say, as I walk by.

  They don’t even acknowledge that I’m there.

  I start to wonder if that interaction in the hall with Tyler even happened. Maybe I dreamed it.

  So I go up to my room and stare at myself in the mirror for a few minutes, deciding if I should change clothes or not. I mean, it’s just Jason. Tyler seems to have forgotten about me, anyway.

  A few minutes later, there’s a knock on my door.

  I daydream for a second that it’s Ari. And she’s changing her mind about being mad at me. I’m still a little mad at her, but I’d give in. I’d forgive. I miss her. I want her back.

  But no—it’s Tyler.

  He’s alone.

  “Um, hey,” I say.

  “Hey, Kaylan.” He leans against the doorframe. “Cool room.”

  He’s been in here before, so why is he looking around like he’s in some kind of museum? Also, I still have my babyish pink wallpaper. There’s nothing cool about it.

  “Uh, thanks.”

  I peer around the corner to see if Ryan’s behind him and they’re going to do something dumb, like spray me with Silly String. But I don’t see him.

  “Later,” Tyler says.

  “Later.”

  I don’t get him. He stops by my room and then it’s like he has nothing to say. Does he think things and not say them? Or is his mind just mostly empty?

  Then, a few minutes later, there’s another knock on my door.

  “Terrel, it’s me, Jason. The front door was open.”

  “Come in,” I say.

  He plops down on my bed, and his shirt rides up a little, and then I see a sliver of his boxer shorts, the same ones I saw in the laundry that day, and it freaks me out so I have to look away. I sit down at my desk, and pretend I forgot to write something down.

  “I have an idea.”

  “Yeah?” I ask, sliding around on my wheelie desk chair to face him.

  “Fast clementine peeling isn’t going to be enough,” he says.

  “Um?”

  He stands up. “You’re going to sing while doing it.”

  “I can’t sing, Jason.” I shake my head. “I mean really. I’m tone-deaf.”

  “That’s what’s going to make it even funnier, Kaylan!” he yells. “You’re not like singing in an opera. You’re singing in a funny way!”

  “I really don’t know about this.” I get up and open the door to my room, just a crack. “Let’s go downstairs and get a snack, and keep discussing it.”

  Ryan and Tyler are in Ryan’s room playing some game that’s so loud I can hear it through the walls, so I figure it’s safe to go into the kitchen with Jason.

  We get downstairs and I take out a bag of chips and two cans of Cherry Coke. We sit across from each other at the kitchen table, a bowl of clementines between us. Jason finds a pen and paper in the drawer and starts writing down songs for me to sing. He suggests some current ones like Lady Gaga and Katy Perry, and then classics like “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” and “The Shoop Shoop Song.”

  “‘It’s in His Kiss’?” I ask. “I can’t sing that onstage.”

  He slurps his soda and says, “Yes! Yes, you can!”

  We go back and forth on this a billion times and crack up while we’re snacking.

  “Kaylan,” he says in his reassuring tone. “You are going to rock this. You have to think of it as total, over-the-top, wacky humor. Ya know?”

  I laugh again. Jason puts an orange peel in his mouth, covering his teeth, and tries to talk. “Something like this? Add this to it?”

  I do it, too. “How do I look?” I crack up so hard that I need to put my face on the table to take a break.

  We’re laughing so much that it totally catches me off guard when Tyler says, “Yo. Ryan. You didn’t tell me Baby Kaylan has a boyfriend?”

  Baby Kaylan?

  “Is her boyfriend a one-eyed alien? Because that’s the only creature that would go out with her!” Ryan bursts out laughing. I turn around and Tyler high-fives him.

  “Yeah, well, only a blind alien would go out with you!” I yell, but they’re already back upstairs.

  I turn back around and see that Jason’s cheeks are bright red. “Um, yeah,” he says. “So we have a good list. Don’t you think?”

  “Oh, for sure.”

  We sit there quietly for a few more minutes, and the only sounds I can hear are the crunching of p
otato chips and the slurping of soda.

  “Hey, Kaylan,” Jason says like he’s starting a difficult conversation.

  “Hey, Jason,” I reply.

  “Like, we’re friends, right?”

  I nod, swallowing hard like I have a brick lodged between my tonsils. “What are you talking about?”

  “What Tyler said before,” he continues. “About a boyfriend? We’re not . . . ?”

  “Jason. Come on!”

  “Okay.” He laughs. “You know Arianna is like obsessed with boyfriend stuff, right?” I think he realizes what he’s said when he says it, and then looks down at his feet. “I mean, everyone is. . . .”

  “You know I don’t talk to Ari,” I remind him, sounding snippier than I’d meant to. “So how would I know?”

  “Right. I don’t even know why I brought that up.”

  I shrug.

  We go back to our list and keep adding songs, and my heart feels heavy.

  I didn’t want Jason to be my boyfriend. At least, I don’t think I did. But then why do I feel so deflated? Like a pool toy that didn’t last the summer.

  And then his Ari comment? What was that all about?

  I make a mental note to add this to the Things I Need to Talk to Ari About list.

  Wow. I have a lot of lists going on right now.

  Maybe this is a sign that all of the loose ends are going to fall into place pretty soon—all of my lists coming together and everything starting to make sense.

  For a list maker like me, a lot of lists has to mean something.

  It has to mean something good is about to happen.

  I can’t fall asleep that night. Jason’s comment about Ari being boy crazy just swirls around and around in my head, and I can’t get it to stop.

  So I focus on the thing that was supposed to calm me down: the 11 Before 12 List. I snuggle up under my covers and read it over. It feels like a million years ago that Ari and I made this list together. I’ve accomplished so many things since we wrote it.

  But I’m not done yet.

  Eleven Fabulous Things to Make Us Even More

  AMAZING Before We Turn Twelve

  1. Make a guy friend. ✓

  2. Do a Whole Me Makeover.

  3. Get on TV for something cool we’ve done (not because we got hit by a bus). ✓