by Jenn Bishop
“Phew,” Gabriella says.
I take a deep breath. Okay, now it’s time for the real question. “What’s his name?” Just like a multiple-choice question on a test, there is only one right answer in my mind. Especially after what Avery said last weekend.
This time I close my eyes. I feel the pointer sliding across the board. It’s different this time because, even with my eyes closed, I know the board now. I know where the A is.
But then the pointer stops. We’re not there yet. I’m not ready to open my eyes.
Gabriella giggles. “Maddie, look.”
And I do.
G.
It’s just a plastic board game, not even a fancy wooden one, but I can’t stop myself from believing it. It was right about Kiersten’s dad, so it has to be right about this.
There’s only one boy in our entire grade whose name begins with G.
“Maybe when we start school, you’re going to meet someone whose name begins with G,” Kiersten says.
I whip my hands off the pointer and plunge them deep into the pocket of my hoodie. It’s just a dumb game. A dumb game that only Cammie should believe in. But I can’t even convince myself.
“Come on,” Gabriella says. “You don’t even know what comes next.”
Her hand and Kiersten’s rest on the pointer, with those matching bracelets on their wrists, the pointer still fixed on the G. The emails from Gregg. Did Kiersten tell her about them while they were in Rhode Island?
“Yeah, I do.” I uncross my legs and stand up before they can see the truth in my eyes, the truth only I really know. No matter what happens between me and Avery, he’s never going to like me back. It’s so obvious now. It’s been a week since that night Avery interrupted my Taylor Swift dance party, and nothing has changed. Nothing.
And it isn’t going to.
Even a dumb piece of plastic knows it.
“I need to go to the bathroom.”
I disappear up the carpeted stairs and down the hallway to the bathroom Gabriella shares with her sister. The little shelf above the toilet holds fancy lotions and hair sprays and bottles with labels in French.
There’s an evil part of me that wants to switch the stuff in the bottles. To see Gabriella at the pool party without her perfect hair, perfect skin, perfect everything. If Gabriella couldn’t come to the pool party, maybe for once Avery would see me.
But I don’t know which of these bottles has stuff that will make hair disappear or get all sticky. Probably none of them.
I sit down on top of the toilet seat. On the shelf next to the toilet is a clear glass container with all of Gabriella’s hair thingies. Hair ties in every color and pattern—even tie-dye—and butterfly clips. The purple stretchy headband that Gabriella wears all the time. Probably her favorite. I snatch it and stretch it between my fingers like I’m playing cat’s cradle.
I know what the Ouija board would say if she asked it the same question. And she knows it, too.
A for Avery.
The Ouija board doesn’t tell me anything that five billion emails didn’t already tell me.
I get Gregg. Gabriella gets Avery.
I close my eyes and take five deep breaths. It’s not like with you. With each breath, my anger subsides. The Ouija board’s only acting on what it knows right now.
It doesn’t have to be that way, though. Maybe Avery’s leaving at the end of the summer, but I still have a chance. The pool party: that’s my chance. For Avery to notice me instead of Gabriella.
I’m the only one who understands him, right?
I’ve got my new cute bathing suit and I’m going to shave my legs. I can learn to flirt, right? I’ve got a week. What did Mom say when she was getting my hair ready the night of the dance? You can learn anything on YouTube.
I slip the purple headband into my pocket and head back downstairs.
The morning of the pool party, I wake up with a stabbing pain in my stomach. I roll over to check the time on the alarm clock: 4:03. Lying on my side, I curl into a ball. There. That helps a little.
What would help more would be if Hank were here. Somehow, petting him always made me feel better when I was sick.
Kiersten gets a stomachache anytime she’s really, really nervous about something. Maybe that’s what this is. I’ve never had a stomachache from being nervous, but I also never had my house blown away by a tornado before this summer either. There’s a first time for everything.
Not today, I tell my stomach. I am not missing the pool party. I didn’t spend five hours watching how-to videos about flirting on YouTube for nothing.
I rub big circles on my belly and try my hardest to fall back to sleep.
Not. Today.
—
When I wake up at eight-thirty, the sheets on Cammie’s bed are crumpled up into a ball. He must’ve woken up before me. As I put on my sweatshirt, I remember the stomachache.
It’s gone. Well, maybe not entirely gone. More like a dull pain, but not nearly as bad as it was in the night. Phew.
As I head down the hallway to the bathroom, the smell of pancakes wafts up the stairwell. The TV volume is turned way up. Peg must be watching one of Cammie’s Saturday morning nature shows with him. Avery’s door is still closed, so I guess he’s sleeping in.
I take out my new yellow razor and place it on the ledge in the bathtub. Only four hours to go until the pool party. My legs are going to be the silkiest, smoothest legs there. Or I’ll be sporting a few Band-Aids.
I slide off my underwear.
No!
No, no, no, no, no.
There’s a brownish-red splotch inside.
“Mom!”
Nobody answers.
Kiersten got her first period in the spring. Ever since then, I’ve wanted it—at least, I thought I did. But not today. My birthday, Christmas—I don’t care. Any day but today.
Back in our old house, Mom showed me where she kept her pads and tampons in the bathroom closet in case it happened when she wasn’t around. “Your father is hopeless,” she said. “Completely hopeless when it comes to something like this.”
Still sitting on the toilet, I yell again. “Mom!”
No response.
Peg’s stupid TV is too loud. Mom’ll never hear me with that thing blaring.
Does Mom have a spot for pads here, in Peg and Frank’s bathroom? I check under the sink. Toilet paper, plunger, toilet brush, paper towels.
No pads. No tampons either, not that I have a clue how to deal with them.
There’s a knock on the door.
My underwear is still around my ankles. “Mom?”
“Are you almost done?”
Shoot. It’s not Mom. It’s Avery.
I wish it were appendicitis, so it could just kill me now. “I’m taking a shower.”
“The water’s not even running yet! I just need to pee.”
I dart over to the shower and turn the faucet on. “I’m already undressed,” I shout back. “Go downstairs.”
“Fine,” Avery says.
I leave the water running in the shower and turn on the bathroom fan. Think, think, Maddie. Where would someone keep pads in the bathroom? I check all the little drawers around the sink, but it’s just hair stuff and extra toothbrushes and weird lotions. There’s still the closet with all the towels in it. I slide the door open. Come on, come on.
Maybe Peg keeps this stuff well hidden. Mom’s all out in the open, but then again, she’s a doctor. I stick my hand down the side of the towels, feeling for a box or a plastic container, anything out of the ordinary.
But all I find is an old bottle of bubble bath.
I creak open the door and stick my head out. “Mom?”
Footsteps on the stairs. Please be my mom. Or my dad. Even Cammie would be okay right now. Just not Avery again.
“Maddie?”
It’s Avery’s mom.
“Maddie, do you need something?” Mrs. Linden asks.
I sink down to the floor, leaving the
door open a tiny crack.
“Is my mom around? I kind of…need her help.”
Tip-tap, tip-tap. Mrs. Linden must have on dress shoes. She comes to a stop on the other side of the bathroom door.
“Your mom just left to pick up the helium tank for the pool party. Is it anything I can help with?”
“Um.” If I tell her, she could tell Avery, and I’d die—I’d just die. But I’ve seen the commercials on TV. All that blue liquid pouring onto the fluffy white pad. If that much is going to come out of me, I need something. And fast! There’s always Peg’s towels, but they’re white and then I’d have to find a way to clean them and then…
My eyes start to tear up. “Do you…I mean, could I borrow—well, not borrow—you’re not going to want this back when I’m done with it…” I sound like a moron. “I need a pad. Like, for my period.”
“Oh, sweetie. You hold tight, I’ll be right back.”
Tip-tap down the hall. A thousand years pass before she comes back to the bathroom and slips a couple of blue padded squares through the door. “Is this your first time?”
“No,” I say too fast. “Actually, yeah.”
“I got mine the summer before seventh grade, too.”
“Oh. Cool.”
Cool?
Not cool! Not cool at all!
The last thing I want to do is swap period stories with Avery’s mom.
“It’s pretty startling the first time, but you’ll get used to it,” she says. “Anyway, I’m sure you’ll want to talk about this with your mom. Do you want me to let her know when she gets back?”
I can see it in my head like a TV commercial. Right as Mom opens the door, Mrs. Linden announces, so everyone can hear it, “Breaking news! Maddie got her period!” Avery squirts milk out of his nose and Cammie asks what a period is.
“Can you tell her to come see me right away?”
“Your secret’s safe with me.”
I open up one of the blue pouches. My secret? I don’t think my secret is safe from anyone once I put this diapery thing in my underwear.
—
“I can’t go.”
I’m sitting on my parents’ bed with the door closed. “Shhh,” Mom says. “Calm down, Maddie.”
“But everyone will know!” I hug my legs to my chest. The hair’s all gone from them now and I’m wearing four Band-Aids. (I probably should have waited for Mom to show me how to use the razor.)
It’s a total disaster. I can’t go to a pool party with blood gushing out of my body. I’ll turn the water red. People will think I’m dying.
Maybe if I just close my eyes, it’ll go away. I’ll wake up all over again and start the day without my period. It waited twelve years to start. Can’t it hold off for one more day?
“If you keep your shorts on, no one will have any idea,” Mom says.
“But everyone else will be in the pool! What if someone asks me to be on their team for pool volleyball?”
“Then you can politely decline. Say you have athlete’s foot or something.”
“Mom!”
“Or you can tell them the truth.”
I press my forehead into my knees. “I can’t do that.”
Mom sighs. “I don’t know what else to tell you, Mads. Statistically speaking, there’s no way you’re the only girl there who has her period today. Find someone else who’s not going in the pool and make a new friend.”
A new friend?
Avery will definitely be going in the pool, and so will Gabriella and Kiersten, and I’ll be stuck on the sidelines with the weirdos from my class who are afraid of the water. Me and all the aquaphobes. Don’t they know that our bodies are 50 percent water? Or was it 90 percent?
Avery would know.
“We need to leave soon to pick up the ice.”
I uncurl myself from my ball and head into my room to change into my bathing suit.
Mom was right. I should’ve chosen the red one.
Once we’re done carrying all the decorations from our car to the rec center’s pool house, Dad hops back in. He rolls down the window. “Maddie?”
Did Mom tell him about my period? The last thing I need right now is a motivational speech from my dad. I take a deep breath and shuffle over to the car.
“One more thing.” Dad sticks his head out the window.
“Dad, I need to help set up. Everyone’s going to be here soon.”
“Just one last little piece of advice.” He clears his throat. “Watch out for any blue patches in the pool.”
“Dad! That’s so gross. We’re seventh graders. Nobody pees in the pool anymore.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Mads. Hard to believe, I know, but I was a teenage boy once.” He nods his head for emphasis.
A gross one, apparently.
“Bye, Dad.” I wave at him and run toward the pool house, hoping nobody else heard my crazy dad.
He shouldn’t have bothered. There’s no reason for me to worry about pee in the pool. This will be the first pool party I can remember that I won’t be going in the water.
—
We have a whole hour to set up for the party. Kiersten takes charge, telling me, Gabriella, Gabriella’s mom, and all the other chaperones what to do. She’s got a chart with stickers and everything. I can’t imagine bossing grown-ups around, but Kiersten doesn’t seem to mind.
“Here.” She hands me a pair of orange scissors and two packages of streamers: one red, one white. “Wind these together and then string them from the fence posts.”
“Yes, sir.” I do a little fake salute. “I mean, ma’am.”
She glances at the clock. “Go, go, go! We’re running out of time!”
We have plenty of time, but I hustle over there anyway. Not following Kiersten’s orders is always a bad idea. I learned that the hard way when we had a lemonade stand as first graders. Turns out lemonade is pretty sticky when it’s poured over your head.
Kiersten probably isn’t going to have a tantrum if things don’t go as planned today, but you can never be too sure.
“Can I help?” Gabriella asks as I’m winding tape around the pole to make sure the streamer stays. It’s not as easy as I thought it would be.
“Can you cut the tape?”
She stretches out a two-inch piece and hands it to me. I stick the streamer to the post. The red and white parts don’t twist together as nicely as in the ones Kiersten made, but they’ll have to do.
“Any news about Hank?” Gabriella asks.
It’s been so long since anyone asked about him that sometimes it almost feels like everyone forgot. Like I never even had a dog in the first place. “No.” I shake my head. “Nothing real. Even with all the flyers we put up.”
“That stinks,” Gabriella says. “Kiersten said he was a really fun dog to have around.”
“Yeah.” I twist another long strand of streamers and think about that time when Kiersten and I were playing dress-up and put Hank in a costume. Mom got so mad when she saw that we’d put him in a tutu and shoved his paws into my doll’s ballet slippers.
“Tape?”
Gabriella hands me another piece. “Do you think you’d ever get another dog? I mean, I know it would never be the same and all….”
While we continue to put up the streamers, I tell her about the construction worker with the puppy connections. “I can’t imagine my brother with a puppy. Cammie’d terrorize it. Plus, I don’t know if my mom would really go for it. A puppy peeing all over a brand-new house?”
“You gotta mark it as your house somehow, right?” Gabriella laughs.
“Ew! Gross! That’s enough pee talk for today.”
What I don’t say is that I don’t want a puppy. The only dog I want is Hank. I’ve seen the stories on the news about dogs getting separated from their owners, only to be reunited months, sometimes years, later. I haven’t given up on Hank, even if everyone else has.
“Gabby!” Kiersten yells out from the other side of the pool. “I need your he
lp!”
Gabriella hands me the tape. “You gonna manage?”
I smile. “Do I have a choice?”
Her flip-flops smack the concrete around the pool as she walks over to Kiersten. Twist, twist, twist. Tape. Repeat. As I get into a rhythm with the streamers, I keep thinking about how with Gabriella I’m sort of like a two-sided streamer. There’s the white side that thinks she could be my friend, too, that maybe it could be the three of us in the fall. That maybe somehow we could all be good friends.
But then I hit the red side. And I can’t get that picture out of my head of her dancing with Avery. And the real pictures, the ones Kiersten sent me. Her and Gabriella on the beach in Rhode Island without me. Wish you were here, she wrote.
But what if she didn’t mean it? What if she had way more fun with Gabby than she does with me?
Twist, twist, twist, tape. Twist, twist, twist, tape.
The truth is, there’s this other feeling, too. One that I can’t get rid of. This knobby feeling in my stomach that doesn’t have anything to do with my period. I stole something from Gabriella. Something right out from her house, during a sleepover she’d invited me to.
Twist, twist, twist, tape. Red, white, red.
That knobby feeling is trying to tell me something. I wish I knew what.
A car door slams in the parking lot, and that quickly, the knobby feeling evaporates. So what if I stole her cheap hair thing? Between Avery and Kiersten, it’s like she’s trying to steal my whole life. And starting today, with Avery, I’m going to get it back.
“Par-tay time!”
Gregg and a few of the boys who live in his neighborhood begin to form a line at the gate. “Hey, Maddie! Hey, Kiersten! Hey, Gabby!” He doesn’t single me out. Maybe that’s a good sign. He’s wearing the most ridiculous neon-green sunglasses, the super cheap plastic ones you can get at the gas station for ninety-nine cents.
Oh man, all the boys are wearing them. Neon orange, neon yellow, neon pink. They look insane.
Kiersten runs over to me. “I didn’t think people would show up so early. The streamers look great, but we need to put the food out.”
I follow Kiersten into the pool house, where plastic grocery bags full of chips, cheese curls, cookies, granola bars, soda, and bottled water cover every surface. “Did you leave anything on the shelves in the store?”
