You Go First

by Erin Entrada Kelly

  He picked up his phone.

  “I have news,” he said, when Lottie answered. He didn’t know what news he was going to tell her. His parents’ divorce? His theories of personal evolution? The situation with Sherry, Theo, and the rest?

  He only knew that he wanted to say something to someone about something.

  “Have you conquered the school already?” she said. “Because it’s your turn and you haven’t gone yet.”

  She sounded stuffy. Sick, maybe.

  “I’ve been busy preparing my speech,” Ben said. “Are you sick? You sound sick.”

  “Yeah. I had to leave school today. Fever and stuff.”

  He thought about the sign-in/sign-out sheet and wondered if Lottie’s school had a kid like Wyatt manning it.

  “You know,” said Ben. “Chicken soup isn’t just an old wives’ tale. Science shows that it actually helps reduce upper respiratory cold symptoms.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” She sniffled. “Actually, I think I have news, too.”

  Ben leaned back in his chair. “You go first.”

  “Well . . . ,” said Lottie. “I don’t know. Never mind. It’s stupid.”

  “No it’s not.”

  “How do you know? I haven’t even told you yet.”

  “If it’s news to you, then it isn’t stupid.”

  “It’s not really news, I guess. More like a problem.”

  “Excellent. I love problems.”

  She took a deep breath. “The thing is . . . I don’t want to be friends with my best friend anymore and I don’t know how to tell her.”

  Uh-oh. This was a problem of the social variety.

  He wasn’t so good at solving those.

  “What happened?” he asked. “Did you get in a fight?”

  Lottie paused. “Sort of. It’s just . . . she can be irritating sometimes, you know? Always hanging around me. Stuff like that. She doesn’t have many other friends. I’m kinda the only one. And it gets to be too much. There are other people I want to hang out with.”

  “Why don’t you just all hang out together?” asked Ben.

  “I don’t know if she’d mix well with my other friends.”

  “You should let them decide. Maybe she’ll find friends in the group, too.”

  “Yeah,” said Lottie. “Maybe.”

  Then again, I may not know what I’m talking about, Ben thought. It’s not like I’m drowning in friends over here.

  Lottie was quiet for a long time. So long, in fact, that Ben wondered if she was still there.

  When she finally spoke, her voice was tight and heavy.

  “What was your news?” she asked.

  Ben picked up his pencil and tapped the water bottle again. Plink, plink, plink.

  “I might be moving to Ann Arbor,” said Ben. “It’s in Michigan.”

  “Cool. I’ve never been to Michigan, but it scrambles to chiming. Like bells. So maybe that’s a good sign.” She sniffled again.

  “Maybe,” said Ben.

  They were both quiet.

  “Well,” he said. “Good luck with your friend.”

  “Good luck with your Michigan,” she replied.

  Thursday

  rhetorical adj : 1 : asked in order to produce an effect or make a statement

  2 : a question without a real answer

  River

  Rabbit Hole: A group of tortoises is called a creep. A group of camels is called a caravan. A group of wolves is called a pack. Although wolves tend to travel together, one member is occasionally ostracized and becomes a “lone wolf.” Life is difficult for lone wolves, but their self-reliance often makes them stronger than average.

  “Your father is doing really well,” said Charlotte’s mother.

  Normally Charlotte walked to school, but it was raining. Sheets and sheets that backed up traffic and turned Hampshire into a river. Her mother drove slowly even in nice weather; in the rain, she moved like a tortoise. Most of the time it made Charlotte crazy and she had to resist the urge to lean over and step on the gas herself, even though she’d never driven a car before. But she was thankful for it today. She didn’t want to get to school early. She didn’t want to face the benches.

  She’d cried so much the night before that she soaked her pillow. When she woke up, her cheek was damp and itched. She was pretty sure she’d been crying about Bridget, but as the night went on she had thought about her father and even her mother—how her mother hadn’t hassled her about going to see her dad and had been unusually patient—and then a million of other things crept into her mind. Scalpels and YouTube videos of open-heart surgeries. Starfish dissections. And things that didn’t make any sense. Her parents looking at the ballroom ceiling. Her hidden dolls. Scrabble on the dining room table. Staring at Gauguin and wondering when she could leave. Ben Boot, too, and the things he said on the phone—Why don’t you just all hang out together?—and after a while she wasn’t sure what she was crying about.

  Were there other people out there who had so many things to cry about that they didn’t know which one to choose?

  “They’ll move him to a regular room soon. Maybe tomorrow,” continued her mother. “He’ll look more like himself then.”

  Charlotte wanted to ask if he’d asked where she was. If so, what did her mother tell him? But she was afraid to open her mouth, afraid that she’d only start crying again. She wondered what Ann Arbor looked like. She wished she was going somewhere, too. She wished she had good news like Ben.

  Life According to Ben

  Part XIII

  “. . . and that is why I’d love to have your vote for student council.”

  Ben bowed without taking his eyes off his mother, who was sitting at full attention on the couch. Ben had once read that up to 93 percent of communication is nonverbal, so he wanted to make sure he caught every nuance of her response. She’d been difficult to read—ever since the devolution, she’d developed a new set of facial expressions—but after his bow she set her morning coffee on the side table and clapped like he’d just performed at Carnegie Hall.

  “That was perfect,” she said.

  Ben took this with a grain of salt. She often said everything he did was “perfect,” which he knew couldn’t be true, even if he wished it were. He wondered what she would think if she knew her perfect son was getting his head slammed into lockers. What would she say about him having condiments slathered on his shirt? The warm water hadn’t even fixed it. The shirt was now buried at the bottom of his wastebasket, under crumpled speech notes.

  He was, as Sherry Bertrand put it, the “biggest dork in school,” so maybe he was good at something, after all. I’m so proud of my perfect Ben. The other children think he’s the biggest dork in school. Isn’t that marvelous?

  “It can’t be perfect,” he said, flatly. “Nothing’s perfect.”

  “Except my perfect pineapple,” she said.

  This was an old pet name. Something she used to call him years ago, when everything was different. A feeling tugged inside him. He couldn’t tell what it was, exactly. Some of it was anger. If his parents were going to devolve the family, they shouldn’t be able to pretend things were the same when everything had changed. His father left early in the morning and came home late at night. There were boxes covertly tucked in corners with some of his things inside. His mother watched Make Me Famous alone. And Ben locked his bedroom door.

  “I’m serious,” said Ben. “It’s not like FDR’s mother called him ‘perfect pineapple’ when he ran against Hoover.”

  “We don’t know that.”

  Ben tightened his lips into a line and glared at her.

  “Okay,” Mrs. Boxer said. “Try not to be quite so robotic when you move your arms. It looks rehearsed.”

  “I look robotic?”

  She picked up her coffee. “Slightly robotic.”

  “I’ll have to work on my hand gestures. Make them more fluid.” He tried moving his arms as naturally as possible. “Good feedback.”
>
  “Make sure you drink plenty of water to stay hydrated. You don’t want your mouth to go dry.”

  “I always drink the recommended daily amount.”

  “And don’t eat a big breakfast or you’ll get an upset stomach.”

  “I’ll have toast.”

  “And take deep breaths just before.”

  “I know, Mom.” Ben stopped practicing his hand gestures. He smoothed down his khakis and straightened his tie. He stood as tall as possible. “How do I look? This is my last day before the speech to make a good impression.”

  He knew what she was going to say before she said it.

  “Perfect,” she said.

  Nows

  Rabbit Hole: Murphy’s Law was named after Edward Murphy, an aerospace engineer. He claimed that the best way to prepare for something was to understand all the worst-case scenarios. It’s also a good idea to be alert to the best-case scenarios, too.

  Here was how you avoid your best friend in the morning: You don’t make it to the morning bench. You take your time putting your books away so you don’t cross paths in the hallway. If she texts to ask where you are, you don’t answer—but in this case it doesn’t matter, because she doesn’t.

  But now there was lunch.

  The tree was there, of course. Tall and looming. Had it always been so big? Why hadn’t she noticed? The branches stretched like arms, hovering over the patch of grass where she and Bridget always sat. The leaves created a natural umbrella of shade.

  Charlotte wasn’t sure what she was going to do, so she went through the motions on autopilot. She got her chips and soda and made her way to the usual spot.

  Tori and her friends were standing off to the side, chatting in their own spot—near the soccer goal—and as soon as they saw her approach, they turned toward her like a multiheaded beast. That’s when the laces of her new Vans—laces that were stupidly long, but supposedly fashionable at West Middle School, at least for the moment—tangled themselves under her feet. She fell hard. Her chips flew out of her hand and landed about ten feet away. Her soda, too. The wind was knocked out of her lungs. Her knee hit a pebble and a pinch went up her leg. She reached for a hand-up then realized no one was offering, so she stood on her own. Her knee burned against her jeans and she knew she had a cut.

  “Well done, Lock-nerd!” Tori called, laughing. She clapped.

  The clapping spread to Milo Adiga—Charlotte thought it was Milo Adiga, anyway—who watched Charlotte struggle to stand up. A group of boys were with him, but none of them made a move.

  Charlotte made a promise to herself then and there: If I ever see someone fall, I’ll ask if they’re okay.

  “Such a loser,” said Tori to Isabelle Meade.

  Charlotte knew Isabelle. She used to, at least. Charlotte had gone to her birthday party in third grade. Isabelle had come to Charlotte’s party, too. Her dad kept saying, “What’s the biz, Izz?” and they all giggled like it was the funniest thing they’d ever heard.

  “No wonder no one likes her,” Isabelle said.

  Charlotte’s jeans were scuffed and muddy. Tiny scrapes lined the heels of her hands. The sun shone directly overhead. Look over here, everyone! Look at this clumsy idiot! She has no friends and she can’t even walk straight! No wonder no one likes her.

  Charlotte had the sudden urge to cry. It was stronger than any force she’d ever felt before, and it seemed inevitable that she would succumb in front of everyone. But she managed to hold herself together. Just.

  She left her chips and soda behind when she limped away.

  And she’s a litterbug!

  She didn’t know where she was going until she got there.

  The ladder next to the Dumpster.

  She and Bridget had discovered the ladder on the first day of sixth grade. They had spent two whole days daring each other to climb it.

  “Let’s climb it,” Bridget had said. She turned her head this way and that to see if anyone was coming. “Maybe we’ll be able to look through vents and see everything in school. Maybe we’ll be able to see into the boys’ locker room.”

  Bridget giggled. Charlotte scrunched her nose.

  The ladder was out of sight, in a corner by the gym, half-hidden by the Dumpster. Charlotte couldn’t remember now what had brought them there.

  “Come on,” Bridget had urged. “You go first.”

  But Charlotte hadn’t climbed it then. She didn’t want to get caught. Her mother had given her a big speech about the struggles of middle school and she didn’t want to end her first day in the principal’s office.

  “You’re such a prude sometimes,” Bridget had said.

  But she didn’t climb up, either.

  Charlotte hadn’t thought of the ladder since, but that’s where her feet went now. She climbed it without thinking. Her hands hurt. Her knees, too. But she didn’t stop until she was on the roof.

  She’d never been on a roof before. She wasn’t exactly a roof-climbing type of person. But here she was.

  Everything was different from this vantage point. Not in a good way or a bad way.

  Just different.

  She sat cross-legged and watched the seventh graders putter around like ants. There were Milo and his friends, standing in a wide circle. Milo snuck up behind one of the other boys and kneed him in the back of the leg, trying to get him to fall, but it didn’t work. The other boy—maybe his name was Ian—turned around and punched Milo in the arm.

  Charlotte didn’t understand why any girl, much less Bridget, would think these boys were cute.

  The treetops were incredible from up here—yellows, reds, oranges, and greens. She knew there were houses and neighborhoods to her left, but all she could see were trees in that direction. If not for the noise of the kids outside, she could pretend there were no people there at all.

  Someday, I’ll be digging for specimens in Egyptian pyramids and none of this will matter.

  But for now, it did.

  She looked for her chips and soda in the grass, but couldn’t find them.

  No wonder no one likes her.

  The heat materialized quickly so she moved to the long rectangle of shade cast by the air conditioner and stretched out on the roof. It was dirty and sprinkled with dried leaves, but so what? She stared up, up at the sky and squinted. She saw three white clouds. One of them looked like a rabbit wearing a cape. The sky was a perfect shade of blue.

  A symphony of blue and yellow.

  After staring at the sky for too long, Charlotte’s eyes started to play tricks on her, like she was going blind, but only for a moment. She squeezed them shut and sat up. She was dizzy. She opened her eyes slowly and blinked, blinked, blinked. When she focused again, she was staring at the AC unit. Someone had written on it in permanent marker.

  IN THREE WORDS I CAN SUM UP EVERYTHING I KNOW ABOUT LIFE:

  ____________ ___________ __________

  Charlotte looked around, as if a person was still there with a marker, even though she could tell it had been written a long time ago.

  What were the three words?

  “Hey.”

  Charlotte jumped, startled. She turned and saw a hazy silhouette. She recognized the uneven socks.

  “Hey,” said Charlotte. “What are you doing up here?”

  Magda sat down in the shade next to her. A sheen of sweat covered her face. She had a lunchbox—the same one she’d had in fifth grade—plain yellow—and set it next to her.

  “I could ask you the same thing,” she said. She nodded toward her lunchbox. “This is where I eat lunch.”

  Charlotte almost asked why, but then realized she knew the answer.

  “I like it up here,” said Magda. “When I grow up, I’m going to live in a penthouse. Like, the topmost apartment somewhere. Just so I can look out the window and see everything from a hundred stories up. I won’t even need furniture.”

  Charlotte tried to picture Magda in a fancy apartment. She couldn’t.

  She cleared her throat.<
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  “My dad says everyone has a big someday. A dream, I guess. Of what they want their life to be,” said Charlotte. “I guess that’s yours.”

  They stared out at the other kids, bustling around like ants.

  “Emily Dickinson once said ‘forever is composed of Nows,’” said Magda.

  “You know a lot about poetry,” Charlotte said. She turned to the treetops. “I like it up here, too. It makes things look different.”

  “If you don’t see anything beautiful, change your viewpoint,” said Magda.

  “Which poet said that?”

  “Magda Rivera.” Magda leaned forward, picked up a wayward leaf, and held it up to her phone to take a picture. After a few seconds the app gave her an answer, and she said, “Dogwood.”

  “I should tell my dad about that app,” Charlotte said. “He’d probably like it.”

  Magda put her phone in her back pocket. “He already has it. He’s the one who told me about it.”

  “Really?” Charlotte didn’t know her dad downloaded apps.

  “Yeah. I was outside one day, making a leaf rubbing—have you ever done that? Where you put a piece of paper over a leaf and color a pencil over it? Anyway, I was doing one of those and he came over to say hi then he told me all about the trees in our yard. It was cool. And he showed me the app.”

  Charlotte pictured it. Here is the pear tree, Magda. And this is a pine and a cherry blossom. See?

  He’d never talked about trees to Charlotte.

  Then again, she hadn’t paid much attention lately.

  A knot formed in her throat.

  She swallowed it away.

  Life According to Ben

  Part XIV

  “Ben Boxer, as I live and—ohmygod!”

  Mrs. Carlile stood up at her desk.

  Wyatt leaned forward and squinted. “Dude,” he said. “What happened?

  “I took a tumble on the way to the cafeteria,” said Ben. He forced a shrug. He knew he was bleeding, but hadn’t looked in a mirror. “Clumsy me.”