Amandine

by Adele Griffin

  “I should wear the three-colored one,” Amandine suggested. She did not explain why. Simply held out the flat of her hand.

  “No way.” Mary grinned. “It takes double time when you braid in the extra color. I’ll keep mine, thank you.”

  I could tell that Amandine didn’t appreciate that. If it were up to me, I probably would have handed over the nicer bracelet, just as I usually let Amandine have her choice of skits or the last word. This was a difference between Mary and me.

  “Come on,” said Amandine. “You can make yourself another one.”

  “Nope.”

  “How about I borrow it for the week and give it back?” Amandine persisted.

  “How about no way, forever?”

  “You can wear mine today,” I appeased, taking off my bracelet and offering it up. “Then you have all the colors.”

  “All right.” So Amandine wore two bracelets, and I wore none, and although Mary was irked by my solution, I’d solved the spat temporarily. It was part of my role, as a member of the group, and I wasn’t bad at figuring out the thing to say or do to keep the peace. But I was not always there to tamp out the fires.

  Since Amandine and Mary were both in the same homeroom and as neither of them was in the honors track, they shared a majority of classes. That meant lots happened in their day that I didn’t witness. So if Mary did or said something that Amandine chafed against, I had to hear her complaints after school while we waited for our rides. It was always something—that Mary hadn’t let Amandine cheat off her paper during a pop quiz, or that Mary forgot to save Amandine a seat in lab or study session.

  One afternoon, Amandine walked up to my locker looking furious. Her face, usually so flat and still, was plummy with rage.

  “You might be right that Mary’s a stupid bitch,” she said, whisking past me without stopping.

  Quickly, I collected my books, slammed my locker shut, and followed Amandine out the doors. “I never said that.”

  “Did so.”

  “I said priss.” My face was hot. “And I never said stupid, and whatever I did say, I said it a long time ago.” I dropped my bag and crossed my hands over my chest, trying to get her to look at me.

  “Fine, whatever.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Really, tell me.”

  Amandine pressed a hand over her eyes. I knew she was nowhere near a state of crying, but I suspected she was trying to force it. When she lifted her hand, her eyes looked shiny, and I felt almost as bad for her as if the tears had been real. Tears are powerful, even phony ones. “The thing is,” she began in a tremulous voice, “in art, I passed her a note asking her to draw a picture of her Ugliest Thing, and listen to what came back. You won’t believe it.”

  She pulled an origami-style folded sheet of paper from the zip pocket of her book bag and then, in a voice that was too squeaky-mean, but otherwise not a bad imitation of Mary’s, read, “‘Why would I want to draw an ugly thing? There are so many beautiful things in the world! Believe me, it’s not good for the soul to celebrate ugliness! P.S. Did you take my bracelet? I put it in my desk before math and now it’s gone. P.P.S. I promise I won’t be mad. P.P.P.S. Here’s a picture of you.’”

  “That doesn’t seem so awful,” I said. “Can I see?”

  “What, you think I’d make it up?” She flipped it to me. The picture of Amandine was just a stick figure in a tutu and ballet slippers.

  I passed it back. “It’s a little prissy,” I admitted. “Like, using the word soul especially.”

  “Prissy? It’s worse than a sermon! She probably copied it off her preacher dad!”

  “Maybe she couldn’t think up a good Ugliest Thing.”

  Amandine seemed to consider this. “No,” she said finally. “She saw it as a way to slam me. Oh, and I like that extra touch, accusing me of stealing.” She looked at me and stuck out her tongue. “Which we both know is so not true. Right?”

  “Right,” I answered.

  “Are you with me for my joke, to get her back?”

  “What kind of a joke?”

  “Leave that up to me, how about.”

  I said nothing.

  “Are you with me?”

  “I guess.”

  “It’ll be funny. I promise.”

  In my opinion, the worst thing about what Amandine did to Mary next was that she waited a day. To me, that seemed more awful than the “joke.” The next morning, as I held my breath through classes, then through lunch, art, and fifty excruciating minutes of freeze tag at spring fitness—the only class I shared with both of them—Amandine acted as though she weren’t angry at all. She chatted, shared lunch, passed around her box of lemon throat drops, even braided Mary’s hair while they sat on the exercise mats once both of them had been tagged out.

  She’d forgotten. I tried to convince myself.

  “You look tired, Delilah,” Mrs. Gogglio informed me on the ride home that afternoon. “What kind of day did you have that put such a sag in you?”

  “Just a regular one, I guess.”

  “Munchkins?”

  “Sure.”

  “I had my coupon book around somewhere. Do you see it? It’s got a green felt billfold sleeve.”

  My heart was beating so loud I was sure she could hear it. At that moment, all I wanted was to get out of the car and be alone, far away from school and Mrs. Gogglio.

  “No.”

  “Oh, it doesn’t matter. It wasn’t much off anyhow. Fifty cents, if that.”

  We pulled through the Dunkin’ Donuts and split a baker’s dozen along with large hot chocolates. I closed my eyes and let the taste absorb me. Powdered, cinnamon, chocolate. Sweetly filling. It made me sleepy.

  “Mrs. Roe, she forgot her own daughter’s name today,” Mrs. Gogglio began comfortably as she sipped her hot chocolate. “It wasn’t unusual, but this time her daughter was there to see. ‘Julie,’ I said to her later, ‘what’s in a name? Your mama knows who you are without her needing to sticker a word onto your face.’ But Julie was upset. We were school friends, Julie Roe and I. Her mother used to dress up as a witch every year when she passed out candy on Halloween. Full of life and fun, Mrs. Roe was.”

  I listened, tried to loosen myself into Mrs. Gogglio’s stories.

  “You could talk to me, if you ever wanted,” she said when she stopped the car at my driveway. “I’m just across the road here. I’m a pretty good talker, but I’m a five-star listener.”

  I nodded mutely and looked down at the front of my shirt. Powdered sugar had scattered all down the front. When I wiped at it, the powder turned streaky, making the mess worse.

  The next morning, I almost stayed home from school rather than face another day of waiting and watching.

  “You don’t look sick to me.” Mom’s forehead rippled perplexedly. She checked her watch, smoothed her cuff over it, and tapped her low-heeled, business-casual foot.

  “Maybe I will be.”

  “Up, up, up.”

  She flipped back the covers and left my room. I noticed that the flowers bought in honor of Amandine’s visit had turned brittle and brown in their vase.

  At school, Amandine met me at my locker. She was in a slinky dress too light for the weather. With a silky scarf and open-toed shoes and an anklet. She twirled.

  “I’m Barbara Stanwyck today,” she said. “From Double Indemnity. With my dragonfly pin, it would have been perfect.”

  “If you say so.” I glanced her over. She looked ridiculous. Her dress smelled mildewed and her red lipstick was dry on her mouth. But her smile was smug, satisfied, and I knew that whatever she had done, was done. My stomach rolled.

  “Is Mary here?” I asked.

  “What do you need to tell her that you can’t tell me?”

  “You’re not still mad at her about that note, are you?”

  Amandine shook her head. “Not anymore.”

  I peered into the other homeroom on the way to mine. Mary was s
itting alone at her desk. When I hissed her name and waved, she stared and didn’t wave back. As Amandine pushed past me into the room, Mary looked down.

  What was done was done.

  I tagged Mary down in the hall after first period. Hooked her arm as she brushed by. She veered up like a spooked horse and nearly caused a couple of girls to collide into her from behind.

  “Watch it,” one girl snapped.

  Which spooked Mary even more. Wheeling away from them, from me, she changed course and fled around the corner. I followed her into the sports locker room, which was empty.

  “Go away, Delia,” she called over her shoulder.

  “Mary, what is it?”

  She had pulled herself up into a huddle on the windowsill. Her overlong arms were wrapped around her knees with her nose buried into the space between. All I saw was hair. I stopped at what seemed to be a polite distance. From far away, the starting second period bell rang. I would have to be late to algebra.

  “What?” I stepped from one foot to the other. “What?”

  “That picture.” Her voice was muffled.

  “Picture?”

  “As if you don’t know!”

  “Where is it?”

  “What do you care?”

  “I do. What was the picture of?”

  Mary looked up, her face working hard to stay controlled. “You thought I’d throw it away, but I’ve got it. In case I want Mr. Serra to suspend you guys. It’s evidence, you know. Bet you never thought of that.”

  “It wasn’t me, Mary. Whatever it was, it wasn’t me.”

  “Ha, ha. Funny, funny. You even signed it, in your own handwriting.” She stared at me hard, then leaned back to fish inside her front jeans pocket. The paper she extracted had been folded prettily in an imitation of Mary’s own style. But the paper itself had the same thick creamy weight and texture as a page from Amandine’s Ugliest Things notebook.

  I unfolded it.

  Amandine had used my rotten eyeballs as starting point. She had encased them in a pair of thick scratched glasses and gone on from there. In her picture, Mary was monstrously tall and hunched and hulking, a nightmare of all the things most awkward about her. Her underbite pushed her chin out like the man in the moon; the knobs of her elbows and knees stuck out from the church choir robe in which Amandine had dressed her. The details were scrupulous; the three-colored friendship bracelet, the scuffed hiking boots that Mary always wore, her carrot-shaped fingers. Amandine had picked up on everything and had translated it into this creature.

  Our names were signed at the bottom-Delia Blaine, Amandine Elroy-Bell—under the neat capital letters that read

  MARY WHITECOMB:

  HE UGLIEST THING AT JAMES DEWOLF HIGH SCHOOL.

  What made it bad was that it was so good.

  “You’re smiling.” Mary snatched the paper.

  “No.”

  “It’s not anything to smile about.”

  “No, I know.”

  “Why did you?”

  “I didn’t. I mean, all I did was the eyeballs,” I explained. “That’s why I signed my name. She did all the rest. She made the rest of you out of the eyeballs.” It sounded like a lie. I could hear my breath, shallow as a dog’s. Why couldn’t I ever say the right thing?

  “I’m sorry,” I told her, “but I promise, I really didn’t have anything to do with this picture of you, Mary.”

  “That picture is not me,” said Mary.

  “No, of course not, all I meant was … Please, I promise we can clear this up.” My voice whined, begging her. “We’ll go find Amandine. She can’t … she’ll answer for it. She’ll have to. She’ll have to apologize.”

  It was lunch or never. I pushed through the rest of my morning’s classes in a fog. It had taken some convincing, but Mary had agreed to meet me in the cafeteria so that we could brave Amandine together.

  Fury and fear squeezed into a knot inside me. I just hoped that Amandine would be reasonable. That she would see how her joke had struck too hard. That she would understand how she had not thought all the way through the consequences. When she realized she had hurt both of us, she would back down. She would apologize. Amandine was tricky, sly. But she was no monster.

  Spying her across the lunchroom, I relaxed. She was eating alone at our usual table in the back, her musty movie star dress flowing onto the floor under her chair, her back and shoulders ballerina straight. She looked almost pretty, certainly harmless. A water sprite, Mom had called her. Yes, I saw that.

  “Hey,” I began, forcing a false brightness into my voice as we approached. “Tell Mary that I didn’t do any of that drawing.”

  Amandine looked up, startled, and her face tightened. When she spoke, though, she sounded only puzzled, and not at all defensive.

  “Of course you did, Delia. The whole thing was your idea.”

  “Come on, Amandine. That’s just a huge lie and you know it.”

  Amandine sighed patiently. Her eyes moved from me to Mary and back again. She pushed away her lunch and clasped her hands together to her chest as if in prayer.

  “Mary,” she began seriously, “I know it’s not nice for me to repeat what other people say behind your back, but in this case, I have to. When I showed her the note, Delia said, and I quote, ‘That stupid prissy preacher girl only has to take a look in the mirror to find an Ugliest Thing.’ See, and that’s how the whole idea got started. The reason Delia’s mad now is cause I actually showed it to you. The original plan was that we were just going to draw it for ourselves. I stuck it in your locker because she dared me for five dollars, and now I am sorry. Especially since Delia decided to blame me for the whole thing.” She tipped her head in my direction and gave me a grave, wounded look. “Delia, I think I’ll give you back that five dollars. It just wasn’t worth it.”

  Mary backed away, her hands twisting. “I hate you both!” she said. “Both of you! I’d rather be marooned on a desert island than spend another second with either of you!”

  Turning her back on us, she fled stumbling from the cafeteria.

  I stared at Amandine, too shocked to speak.

  She picked up her sandwich and bit into it contemplatively. “Marooned on a desert island,” she repeated, giving each word scoffing emphasis. “If that’s not the absolute lamest, prissiest thing I ever heard.”

  My fingertips touched my forehead. My brain felt gummy, slow to make sense of what Amandine had done.

  “You,” I began. “You.” It seemed like the right word to start off with. “You are the worst, worst liar.”

  “The best liar, you mean. Don’t be jealous. You’re the best thief. How long have you had her bracelet, anyhow?”

  “I did not steal Mary’s bracelet.”

  “Of course you did.”

  “You made that up.” I laughed uneasily. “You never stop making things up, do you?”

  “Oh, Delia, you’re such a hypocrite. I could even tell your mother where it is. One phone call to Shelton-McCook—not that I’d ever do that. I don’t care about any of your little stolen things.” Her voice changed, became gentle and entreating. “It’s no good with Mary and us, anyhow. She’s always wrecking skits and being horrible. She’s starting to talk about guys too much. And that note, ugh. I’m sick of her. Aren’t you sick of her, Delia?”

  My memory circled and returned to the morning that Amandine had stayed over. My bookshelf, my cigar box. She hadn’t taken anything from me. But she knew.

  “Sick of her?” I asked vaguely.

  “Yeah, don’t you think it’s better, just us?”

  “I guess,” I said.

  Amandine grinned. “Good. And now that it’s just us, you have to admit it.”

  “Admit what?”

  “That my picture of Mary was pretty funny. Wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?”

  I nodded. “Yes,” I answered. It was.

  Mrs. Gogglio and I did not speak during the ride home, not even when she noticed that I was crying. I’d heard her mak
e a quiet, sympathetic sound, and my whole body clenched against the questions I knew she wanted to ask. When she asked me nothing, I was grateful. She understood I was not able, not ready to talk yet.

  “I’m just across the road,” she said as I opened the car door.

  I nodded, then ran up the walkway to my house. Free. Neither of my parents would be home for another couple of hours.

  Relieved to be alone, I toured slowly through the rooms. First my parents’ downstairs, then my upstairs. Everything was neatly arranged under my mother’s precise hand. Pillows plumped, this month’s magazines in the wooden rack. There was aspirin in the medicine cabinet and there were fresh herbs in the kitchen window. It was nice here. Anybody could come into this house and feel at home, or at least as at home as I felt.

  The upstairs was as tidy as the downstairs. Maybe that’s why it didn’t seem as if it belonged to me. I noticed that the wastepaper basket was empty, that my mother finally had thrown out my flowers. She swept through my room every few days or so just to make sure I wasn’t hoarding snacks or storing up a collection of empty glasses and mugs.

  But she did not know about my treasures. Neither of my parents did. It would not even have occurred to them to look. Somehow, though, it occurred to Amandine.

  I did not hesitate. I took the cigar box from my shelf and headed over to Mrs. Gogglio’s. My mind was empty. When I stepped onto her porch, I heard wind chimes, and my mind filled with their same erratic, tuneless clink.

  She opened as I knocked. She must have seen me from across the way.

  “Delilah! I’m having tea. Do you want some tea? Do you like cinnamon toast? I was fixing some for myself.”

  “All right.”

  “You have a seat in the front room there. I’ll be right out.”

  I sat. Mrs. Gogglio’s house was nice in a different way from ours. It was soft and faded and filled with things my parents would have rolled their eyes at; dressed-up mice dolls and framed Dolly Dingle pictures and netted lace everywhere—in the curtains, on the pillow fringe and lampshades. When Mrs. Gogglio came back and set down a tray, I saw that the tea set had a Popeye motif. Knock-kneed Olive Oyl danced with Bluto on the kettle. Li’l Swee’Pea beamed woozily from the creamer.