by Jenn Bishop
“Come on, come on.” She grabs some big plastic bowls and starts laying them out on the table. “Chips in this one, cheese curls here, and cookies in this one.” She points to the smaller bowl.
“Kiersten, relax. It’s just a party. It’s going to be fine.” I open a bag of rippled potato chips and empty them into the bowl. I snatch a few off the top and cram them in my mouth.
“Is it?” She lets out a shaky breath.
I swallow, suddenly regretting the chips. Do I have chip breath now? “It’s going to be fine,” I say, staring up at the perfect blue sky with the occasional puffy cloud. I lower my voice to a whisper. “At least you didn’t get your period this morning.”
Kiersten claps her hand over her mouth. “Wait, you did?”
I nod.
“Whoa. Crazy. You have to tell me all about it.”
“Tell you all about what?” Gabriella says, picking off a cheese curl. She pops it in her mouth and licks the orange dust off her fingers.
“Nothing.” I whisper to Kiersten, “I’ll tell you later.”
Gabriella bites her lip.
“Hey, hey, hey. No climbing the fence!” Gabriella’s mom yells at the boys. Gregg inches his way down the chain-link fence. The line has grown since I last looked, even though there’s still ten minutes until the official start of the party.
The pool employees gather us, along with Gabriella’s mom and the other chaperones, in a shady spot under the overhang to go over ground rules. No eating or drinking in the pool. No running. No “horseplay.”
The lady in charge doesn’t say no peeing in the pool, but I think that’s a given.
“You girls ready?” Jane, the pool employee with the bright blue Speedo and the Red Sox hat, looks over at us.
I wait to see what Kiersten says.
She flashes two thumbs up.
“I do not get paid enough for this,” Jane says under her breath as she opens up the gate. The chaperones stand guard behind the food as everyone runs straight toward it. So much for “no running.”
“Three cookies apiece. This is a snack, not a meal,” Gabriella’s mom says. “Three means three! You can’t possibly be entering seventh grade if you can’t correctly count to three.”
“Oh no! The music!” Kiersten dashes into the pool house. I follow to make sure she doesn’t choose country. I love Carrie Underwood, but not the songs about trucks. We settle on a pop station.
“Ugh, this stupid dress.” Kiersten pulls on the top of her terry-cloth tube dress, and that’s when I notice. She and Gabriella coordinated outfits. They’re both wearing the same dress, just in different colors. Kiersten’s is pink and Gabriella’s is purple.
“Did you and Gabriella go shopping together?”
Kiersten keeps adjusting the top of her dress over her bathing suit. “We ordered them online,” she says. “Sorry. Gabby’s mom had a coupon. Buy one, get one free.”
A coupon. Really? She and Gabby just wanted to do their own thing, without me.
“Look, if it makes you feel any better, I’m not really sure I like it anyway.” She pulls out at the top of the dress, revealing her bathing-suit top. “Maybe it would be cute if I had some water balloons.”
“One of the boys would probably pop one. You’d end up lopsided.”
Kiersten laughs. “True. Maybe next year, my mom will let me buy a bathing suit with padding.”
“Maybe next year, we won’t need padding.”
When we head back out into the sunlight, it feels like more than a few minutes have passed. Our class is spread out all around the pool. Kids are sitting two or three to a lounge chair. A few stray, soggy cheese curls float in the water.
The pizza came. And went. All that’s left is a few stray slices of sausage. How come no matter how many times you tweak the order, there’s always too much sausage pizza and never enough cheese?
Avery’s over by the snack table with Naveen. All the lessons I learned from the YouTube videos run through my head. How to stand with my shoulders back. Touch my hair. Bite my lip. Not too much, just a little. How to look at him the right way. There’s a fine line between coy and crazy, the lady on the video said. It’s too much, and I can’t keep it all straight. I don’t usually cram for tests. I study a little each night in the days leading up to the test, so I absorb what I need to know.
I grab Kiersten out of instinct. Maybe she’s not my best friend for much longer, but right now she’s all I have, and I need her by my side. I have to talk to him now, before everyone’s in the pool and I’m stuck on the sidelines.
“Hey, Avery.” I keep my shoulders back, but my voice, the one that’s supposed to be confident, comes out a little too loud. Coy, not crazy. Coy, not crazy.
“Hey, Maddie, Kiersten,” Avery says.
Kiersten starts talking to Naveen about this trip he and his parents just went on to Nantucket. It’s just me and Avery. Except I don’t know what to say. I just saw Avery this morning back at the house. Nothing’s new except my period. And we’re not going to talk about that.
I snatch a cheese curl and try to pop it in my mouth delicately, like Gabriella. “So, what do you think?” I thrust my shoulders back and try to look at him the way the lady did it in the video, but it doesn’t feel right.
Avery stares back at me. “About…?”
“The party,” I say. The hair! I’m supposed to touch my hair, too. I touch my hair.
“You guys did a good job.” His eyes dart to the left and right, like he’s looking for someone. “What part did you do?”
I tell him about the streamers I put up with Gabby, except I leave her name out of it.
“You’ve got…um…” Avery wipes at his collar.
I look down at my hair and then I see it. Bright orange cheese-curl dust, all mixed in with my brown curls.
“Oh! Oh my gosh.” I grab Kiersten away from Naveen. “I’ll be right back,” I tell Avery, and pull Kiersten into the corner.
“Why do you have cheese curls in your hair?”
I don’t even know where to start. What if I tell her and then she tells Gabby and then the two of them laugh about it? Without me.
“Can you just help me get them out?”
“Go in the pool. They’ll all come out in the water.”
“I can’t go in the pool. Remember?”
“Oh, right.” The two of us pick the cheese-curl fragments out with our fingers until we’re pretty sure they’re all gone.
“Why can’t you tell me about it?” Kiersten squints in the sun.
“Later,” I say. “I’ll tell you later.”
I glance back to where I left Avery, but he’s gone.
“Maddie, Kiersten. Over here!” Gregg waves from his table, where there are two empty chairs.
Kiersten and I grab slices of pizza and cans of soda and head over.
Carlie-Beth bounces at the tip of the diving board.
“Yeah, Carlieeee!” one of the guys yells.
She blasts off, slipping into the water with barely a splash.
Kiersten grabs the seat further from Gregg, leaving me with the one right next to him. Gee, thanks, Kiersten. I slide in and start picking at my pizza.
“I’ve barely seen you all summer, Maddie. That’s so weird,” Gregg says.
“But I saw you at—” Target, I was about to say. More like hid from him at Target. That’s different. “Never mind, I don’t know what I’m thinking about. I guess we’ve been really busy getting ready for the new house.” I pick a lumpy piece of sausage off my slice.
“Only sausage left, huh?” Gregg asks.
I nod.
“It’s like the orange soda of pizza. Nobody’s first choice.”
Kiersten leans toward Gregg. “Hey, I like orange soda!”
Gregg scrunches his nose. “Then you can drink it, am I right?” He looks to me for approval.
“It’s no Dr Pepper,” I say, cracking open my can.
Gregg lifts his can of Dr Pepper to toast mine and slu
rps a sip. I wish that lady from the YouTube video gave tips on how not to flirt. I need to make sure Gregg’s not getting the wrong message.
I sit up straight in my chair to look around. Where the heck did Gabriella go? She’s not in the pool. She’s not over by the food.
“Looking for somebody?” Gregg asks.
“You seen Gabriella?”
“Oh, I’ve seen Gabriella.”
What’s that supposed to mean? I glance at Kiersten, but she shrugs.
“Bow-chicka-wow-wow.” Gregg bops his head as he says it.
“Okay,” I say.
“Gabby and Avery went to”—he raises his fingers for air quotes—“refill the snacks.”
The pizza I just ate wants to make a return appearance.
“But he’s not on the committee,” Kiersten says.
“Maybe you should tell him yourself,” Gregg says.
I turn to look back toward the snack area. Gabriella and Avery weren’t there a minute ago, but there they are now. Gabriella’s not even wearing her purple tube dress, but this super cute zigzag-cutout bathing suit. She keeps touching Avery’s arm with her hand, and she’s laughing. Laughing like there’s something so funny that only the two of them know about. She doesn’t need to watch videos online to figure out how to flirt. She just knows.
Refilling the snacks.
I crumple up my paper plate.
“Maddie,” Kiersten says as I push my chair back. It scrapes against the concrete, but it’s so loud with the music and everyone talking and laughing and having a great time—the best time—I’m the only one that hears it. And Gabriella’s laughter. Even though she’s across the way, I can hear it, too.
“I’ve gotta go to the bathroom.” I toss the crumpled-up paper plate in the trash on my way. I have to walk right past them to go to the bathroom, but Gabriella doesn’t even notice me—and neither does Avery. I might as well be a disintegrating cheese curl in the pool.
When I find the girls’ bathroom, it’s empty. It has one of those eco-friendly light switches that Mom chose for our new house. I wave my hand forever, waiting for it to turn on. Maybe I really am invisible, I think, but then the light crackles on, casting a creepy blue glow over the yellow tiled walls.
I sit down in the corner stall.
The door creaks open and I hear the smack-smack of flip-flops.
Please don’t be Gabriella.
“Maddie?”
It isn’t Gabriella, but Kiersten.
I lift my feet off the grimy floor and press them against the door. There’s no way I can hold this position for long without falling into the toilet.
“Maddie, I know you’re in here.”
Smack-smack. I can see her flip-flops in the spot beneath the door.
Knock, knock, knock. “Maddie, come on.”
My feet creep down the door. It’s that or fall into the toilet, and as bad as today has been, falling into a toilet would actually make it worse.
“Did you know?” My voice sounds so small in here. Like a mouse is on the other side of the bathroom door from Kiersten. Not a person, not me. “Are they together?”
“Maddie…”
“No. You have to tell me. You’re my best friend. You’re supposed to tell me things.” But the matching dresses. Another sign. “But you don’t…you’re not.”
“I’m not your friend? Well, that’s news to me.” Kiersten sighs. “Can you just come out here so we can talk face to face like normal people?”
“No.” My voice wavers. I’ve read about how having your period makes you cry. But that’s not why tears stream down my cheeks. I wish it were that simple. That it would all go away in three to seven days.
But when my period is over, all my problems will still be there. Adding up and multiplying, growing all the time like the worst word problem ever. First no house, no Hank, having to start all over with nothing, then Kiersten ditching me for Gabriella, and now Avery, too. Avery and Gabriella. Again. It was never just that one dance.
Kiersten sticks her hand under the door.
“What the heck are you doing?”
She’s got her whole arm coming through now, bending at the elbow, reaching up for the lock, but she’s not even close.
“Maddie, please.”
The next thing I know, she’s sliding under the door, headfirst.
“Kiersten! Do you know how dirty that floor is?”
“It’ll come off in the pool.”
“Yeah, and everyone swimming in it will get some infectious disease, thanks to you.”
I unlock the stall door while Kiersten picks herself up off the floor. She sits up on the sink. I wipe my eyes.
“So, are they? Together?”
Kiersten shrugs. “There was this pool party at Gregg’s house the other weekend—”
“At Gregg’s? Why wasn’t I invited?”
“Don’t look at me, I wasn’t invited either. It was everyone who went to soccer camp together. Look, maybe it wasn’t even a party. They were just hanging out. She talks to him, you know? She acts like she likes him, like she’s interested.”
“And I don’t talk to him? Kiersten, I live with him. I talk to him all the time. I see him every day.”
But it’s not entirely true. There have been plenty of times when I don’t talk to him, even when I want to. Times when he’s sitting by himself watching TV and I go right upstairs. Or when his door is open and he’s reading on his bed and I continue on to my room. I wimp out. I second-guess what I want to say. I decide it’s easier just to walk away.
And what did today prove? Even when I do try to talk to him—try to flirt—it’s a disaster.
“I know. I mean, I know you like him. But that’s because you told me. You tell me everything. But does Avery know?”
How could he not?
The bathroom door opens and in comes Gabriella, with her purple dress back on. She takes one quick look at me. “Maddie, what’s wrong?”
I glance at Kiersten, but she doesn’t answer for me. Maybe Kiersten’s right. Maybe I’m supposed to say how I really feel.
“You knew I liked him,” I tell Gabriella. “And you went and did it anyway.”
“Did what? Wait, with Avery? Maddie, we were talking.”
But she wasn’t just talking. She was hair-flipping and leaning into him and touching his arm, while I basically ran my cheese-curl-dust-covered fingers through my hair like a total moron.
“You like him.”
“Are you still upset about the dance? Maddie, that was over a month ago. And it was just one dance. It would’ve been weird if I said no. And anyway, you danced with Gregg.”
“But that’s different!” I say, practically shouting. “You know it is. I don’t like Gregg. I mean, he’s Gregg!”
The bathroom door opens again but then shuts so quickly I can’t see who tried to come in.
“Maddie, did you have to shout it?” Gabriella says.
I look to Kiersten for an explanation. She mouths, “Gregg.”
I grab the door, and when I look down the hallway, I see Gregg’s bare back, Gregg’s red swim trunks, going into the men’s room.
Gabriella pushes past me to leave the bathroom. “Way to go, Maddie.”
“Maybe he didn’t hear,” Kiersten says, once it’s just her and me again.
“Right. Maybe the earth is flat, too. And we evolved from dolphins.” I splash some water on my face. Between getting mad at Gabriella and the water, I no longer look like I was in here crying. But if we don’t leave soon, there will be some rumor about a bathroom emergency, starring me.
No thanks.
“Come on,” I say, and Kiersten follows me back out into the bright sunshine. I sit down by the side of the pool, lightly splashing my legs in the water.
All the pool floats have been claimed. Carlie-Beth and her friends are ruling the deep end, and in the shallow end there’s some kind of contest about who can hold their breath underwater the longest. One of the chaperones is keeping
a close eye on that, but nobody seems to last very long. Ten, twenty seconds, tops, but that feels like forever when you’re underwater.
Kiersten sits down next to me, dipping her tan legs into the water. Her toenails are painted hot pink with little neon-green polka dots. I wonder how she did that and if she’d show me. But then I think maybe Gabriella did them.
“He might be moving.” I say it quietly because I think it’s still a secret.
“Avery?” Kiersten whispers.
I nod. I stop kicking my feet and let them float on top of the water. It’s so loud I’m not sure why we’re bothering to whisper. With everyone talking and the music and the Marco Polo game in the pool, there’s no way anybody could eavesdrop on us.
I tell Kiersten about the night he came back, when it was just the two of us in the McLarens’ big house, and the maybe/maybe-not date. “It was so different than all the other times with him. He was different, too.” I leave out the part about him crying. “It’s dumb. I mean, just because we hung out and I made us mac and cheese and he told me stuff, that doesn’t mean anything.”
But I want it to. Want it so badly it hurts, actually hurts.
“I don’t know,” Kiersten says. A beach ball floats toward us and she kicks it back. “What if you’re the only one he told?”
I squint and stare up at the sky. It’s so blue, even more brilliant a blue because of those big white puffy clouds. When Kiersten and I were little, we’d lie out on her lawn, gaze up at the clouds, and talk about which animals we saw in them. Galloping horses, frogs on lily pads, a giraffe taking a nap.
“I was just the person who was there.”
“You think he would’ve told your dad if he’d come home and it was your dad dancing around to Taylor Swift?”
I laugh. “I don’t think he would’ve told my dad.”
But she’s right. There were so many other people Avery could have talked to about what was going on. One of his friends. Or his mom and dad. Or Frank. Or Peg. Peg always wants to make you a cup of tea and chat.
That night, Avery told me. Said I was the only one who understood.
But I don’t know anymore. Doesn’t seem like he and Gabby are having a hard time understanding each other.
