by Leila Sales
“How much have you found so far?” Arden asked.
“Nothing. But I just started looking.”
Arden thought if there was gold buried in her backyard, she would probably know about it. She changed the subject. “Are you going to start at Northeast tomorrow?” Northeast Elementary was where she went to school.
“I guess.” Lindsey scuffed at the dirt. “I don’t really want to make new friends.”
Arden didn’t quite know what to think of this. She’d never considered whether she wanted or didn’t want to make new friends. It was just something that happened. In fact, she was pretty sure it was happening right at this moment. “Everyone at Northeast is really nice,” Arden reassured Lindsey. “I’ll introduce you to them all tomorrow.”
Lindsey looked cheered by this. “Anyway,” she said, “it’s just for another few weeks, and then it’s summer break.”
“Yeah!” Arden enthused. “Are you going to camp this summer? I’m going to Disney World for the first time, and then day camp at the Y, and then we’re visiting my grandparents in Atlantic Beach in August. They live right on the ocean.” Arden was excited for all of this, even visiting her mother’s parents, which usually was boring, but now she had hope that they might give her Tabitha’s barre and pointe shoes.
Lindsey shook her head. “I wish I could do something like that,” she said, “but we can’t anymore. We have to save all our money for Dad. That’s what my parents say.” She shrugged, like What can you do?
Arden nodded. She felt bad about her expensive Just Like Me Doll still in her arms, and bad about her secret wish for Tabitha’s performance tutu. Probably Lindsey didn’t have any Just Like Me Dolls. “I hope you find some gold,” Arden said.
Arden thought about Lindsey all the rest of that afternoon, all through dinner and her TV time and her nightly bath. She liked her new neighbor. But she sensed Lindsey’s powerlessness, the odds stacked against her like a pile of bricks, and it made Arden sad. If there was one thing Arden never felt, it was powerless. Her mother had always drilled into her, from the time she was a baby, that her power was something that came from inside of her. Her strength was her kindness, her generosity, her positive spirit. “And no matter how bad circumstances get,” her mother would sometimes say, “no matter how bleak things might seem, never lose that part of you. If you only have ten cents to your name, give it away to charity. Being a charitable person will do more for you than ten cents ever could.”
Her mother had this idea that some people were like flowers and some people were like gardeners: each needed the other. She prided herself on being a gardener, and though she hadn’t much considered it before meeting Lindsey, Arden supposed that she was the same.
By the time her parents came to tuck her into bed that night, Arden knew what she wanted to do. “Can we give the Disney trip to Lindsey?” she asked.
Her parents, sitting on the edge of her bed, exchanged a look. “Who’s Lindsey?” her mother asked.
“Her family just moved into the house behind ours, on the other side of the woods,” Arden explained. “Her dad is sick, so they can’t afford to go on vacation. She can’t even go to camp. And she told me she doesn’t have any brothers or sisters to play with at home. And she’s new to town so she doesn’t have any friends. And…” Arden shook her head and sat up. She didn’t need to explain this to her parents. She knew what she wanted. “I want to give the Disney trip to Lindsey.”
She worried that maybe her parents would say no because maybe they had really wanted to go to Disney World. It was her dad’s trip, after all. He’d said that Space Mountain seemed like a blast. But when she looked at them now, they were both smiling at her, and her mother’s eyes were moist with happiness.
“Okay,” said Arden’s mom, and, “Okay,” said Arden’s dad.
That was only the first day of a million days of Arden and Lindsey’s friendship, but it established how it would be: Lindsey would need, and Arden would deliver.
After Arden gave away the Disney trip, she wrote an essay about it, and she sent the essay in to the Just Like Me Dolls Company. She didn’t really think they would choose her to be the Doll of the Year when they had so many gymnasts and figure skaters and ceramicists and budding chefs to choose from. But she wanted somebody to know what she had done. Plus, she really wanted to be a doll.
A couple months later, her mom got the call. Out of all the thousands of girls between the ages of eight and twelve who had sent in their essays, Just Like Me Dolls had chosen Arden as their winner.
Because Arden was Girl of the Year, she got free copies of her books, with titles like Arden in Charge and Arden’s New Friend. She got a free doll, designed with peach-colored skin and light brown hair and hazel eyes, just like her. She got every single one of the Arden Doll’s accessories for free, too: a doll-size tire swing and doll-size metal detector, a doll-size cat and doll-size dog to mimic her own pets. They made it out to seem like Arden spent a lot more time in the woods than she actually did, like she was some kind of budding naturalist when actually she just went out there occasionally, and less so now that Roman’s tantrums were less frequent. But the slight inaccuracies didn’t bother Arden whatsoever.
She also got a free trip to New York City with her mother to visit the Just Like Me Dolls flagship store once the Arden Doll had gone on sale. It was the first—and wound up being the only—trip that was “just us girls,” as Arden’s mom put it. Going on this trip without her father or Roman made Arden feel delightfully grown-up.
She had never been to New York before, and she didn’t like it at all. The neon lights outside her twenty-first-floor hotel room windows kept her awake at night, and it seemed like every taxi driver was hell-bent on running over not just anybody, but her specifically.
But she loved the Just Like Me Dolls Store.
It was right on Fifth Avenue, nestled among the fancy department stores and jewelers, like Tiffany, which Arden recognized from her mother’s favorite movie. Much like the streets outside, it was a madhouse inside Just Like Me Dolls. The difference was that this madhouse was caused by hundreds of girls striding purposefully through the store, each trailed by at least one adult, sometimes by a full family, toting coats and bags and matching doll-and-girl clothing and tea party sets. Arden’s mother described it as the stock exchange floor of elementary school girls, since they were all marching around shouting, “Buy! Buy!” at their minions.
The Arden Doll was in a Plexiglas display, lined up with the dolls based on real girls of past years. Arden pressed her nose to the glass, as if trying to get closer to her doll. But even there in person, at the Just Like Me Dolls Store itself, nobody looked at the doll and the girl and put two and two together. Not one of the other children or their parents said, “Hey, you both have peach-colored skin and light brown hair and hazel eyes! You must be the real Arden!”
But that was okay, too. Arden didn’t need any of these strangers to know that doll was her. She knew.
She looked at all the past years’ dolls. Each one had a little placard that summed up her identity in a short phrase. There was Tabitha, of course, though without the dirt stains of Arden’s version. Tabitha’s placard said she was “graceful and inspiring.” The Jenny Doll was “brave and committed.” Katelyn was “quick-witted and fun-loving.” But the Arden Doll’s placard described her in this way:
“Arden is recklessly loyal.”
Arden looked into her doll’s eyes and knew without a doubt that her identity was the best one of all.
For a while there was talk of making a Lindsey friend doll, too, since Lindsey’s character was such a big hit in the Arden stories. But within a few months, the idea was dropped, and the Just Like Me Dolls Company moved on to picking the girl of the next year. Lindsey didn’t seem to mind. Arden had given her a free vacation to Disney World. And Lindsey had given Arden the opportunity to be a doll.
To both girls, this trade-off seemed more than fair.
Arden gets m
ore than she bargained for
Four hours had passed since Arden had been called into Principal Vanderpool’s office. Four hours since the principal asked her to explain the baggie of marijuana in her locker. Four hours since she looked him square in the eyes and admitted it: yes, those drugs were hers. Yes, she was guilty.
Now they were both waiting for Arden’s father to show up and escort her home. A principal can’t just release a known drug user into the world, of course. It can’t be done. There are protocols.
When the school day ended, Lindsey came flying into the reception area outside Vanderpool’s office, where Arden was sitting, reading a book under Mr. Winchell’s watchful eye.
“Oh my God,” Lindsey said, flinging herself onto a plastic chair beside Arden’s. “I am so, so, so—”
“I’ll be okay,” Arden cut in, casting an eye toward the eavesdropping secretary. “It’s my fault. I’m the total idiot who decided to bring drugs into school. I’ll bear the consequences.”
Lindsey paused. “Are you kidding?” she asked.
Arden shook her head. That was what she had told their principal. Whether he believed her, given her squeaky-clean record, was beside the point. All the evidence pointed toward her. He had a crime, he had a confession, justice would be done.
Besides, why wouldn’t he believe her? Who would lie about such a thing?
“Wow,” Lindsey said, and suddenly she laughed, the carefree laugh of someone who has just been caught by an unanticipated parachute when she thought she was plummeting out of the sky to her death.
But it was Arden’s parachute Lindsey was using, so Arden didn’t laugh. “Why the hell did you bring pot to school?” Arden whispered, so quietly that Mr. Winchell’s hearing aid would never make out her words.
“To smoke it?” Lindsey replied in a small voice.
Arden rolled her eyes. “Linds,” she said, “go home. Honestly, I’ve got this.”
So Lindsey hugged her, and she went home.
But the longer Arden sat waiting for her father, the school emptying out around her, the less confident she became. The thing was, she didn’t want to miss three days or more of school; she’d fall behind in everything (especially Spanish). She didn’t play any sports, that was true, but she did stage crew—would she be forced to quit that? And what would her classmates think of her after this? Naomi, Kirsten, all of her other friends—not to mention Chris.
But this was selfish thinking. Arden knew she could live without the spring musical. She could live if she never figured out how to conjugate a single verb in a foreign language. The one thing she couldn’t live with was Lindsey’s misery.
What had become abundantly clear to Arden over the past month was this: There were people in this world who didn’t know how to take care of others. There were people who walked away even when they’d made a promise to stand by you. There were people who threw around the word love but only acted on it when it was convenient for them.
And Arden was not one of those people.
It was nearly six p.m. by the time her father finally showed up to collect her. The custodian had already come through the office to take out the recycling and trash, and Mr. Winchell kept shooting Arden death glares, as if it were all her fault that he was still at work at a time when he would have otherwise been already chowing down on the early bird special at Mamma Luciana’s Pasta Shack.
When her father arrived, he was wearing his business suit and carrying his briefcase, and he looked annoyed. “What’s going on here? Arden, I got two messages at work saying you’re in trouble and they’re going to be taking ‘disciplinary action.’ I had to call Roman’s after-school teacher and beg her to let him stay late. What on God’s green earth is this about?”
He probably got those messages four hours ago, but whatever; Arden was actually impressed he’d made it there before midnight. This may have been the earliest he’d left the office in a month. She felt simultaneously accomplished and ashamed to be the cause of her father’s abbreviated workday.
Arden’s father was a lawyer. Not a TV-style lawyer, with custom-made suits and luxury cars and multimillion-dollar cases argued in front of the Supreme Court. Arden’s dad was the other kind of lawyer, the kind with a small office downtown and his name on a plaque on the door, the kind who sometimes argued in front of the judge at the district courthouse, but who mostly settled out of court. Being that kind of a lawyer wasn’t fancy. Still, it was a good job in a town without many good jobs on offer, and it was important. He didn’t like for it to be interrupted. So it almost never was.
Mr. Vanderpool ushered them into his office and closed the door. Arden could see Mr. Winchell craning his neck from his desk in reception, trying to keep his eye on the drama.
“Mr. Huntley,” the principal began, “I appreciate your taking time to address this situation. As I indicated in my message to you earlier, your daughter has admitted to bringing contraband substances to school and storing them in her locker.”
“Can you define contraband substances?” Arden’s father asked.
“Drugs.”
Arden’s father showed no obvious reaction. He didn’t sigh, or put his head in his hands, or yell at her. Only a daughter would notice the slight droop in his shoulders, the minor widening of his eyes.
“What classification and quantity of drugs are we talking about here?” he asked in a measured tone, a lawyerly tone.
“An eighth of an ounce of marijuana,” Mr. Vanderpool replied.
Arden’s father sighed impatiently. It was an on-purpose impatient; Arden recognized that. “That’s hardly a criminal quantity. Clearly it’s not enough for you to peg my daughter with intent to deal.”
Mr. Vanderpool fussed with his flamingo-print tie and rearranged the impressive metal pens on his impressive oak desk. Arden could not understand why he had so many pens. Surely he, like everyone else in modern-day America, did most of his work on the computer.
“I never accused your daughter of planning to sell drugs, Mr. Huntley. But as I’m sure you’re aware, we have a zero tolerance policy here at Allegany High. That means no type of controlled substances, of any sort, in any quantity, on school property.”
Arden doubted that her father was aware of this particular detail about the rules of her school—he wasn’t the sort of parent who sat around at night and read through the school handbook—but he nodded like he was. “Arden”—he turned to her—“is this true? Did you actually bring drugs to school?”
Lying to her father was harder than lying to the principal, but both were important. Arden would need to lie to everyone about this, she realized in that moment, and she would do it without breaking. This would be a secret between her and Lindsey and no one else.
“I wasn’t thinking,” she admitted to her father, lowering her eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“This isn’t like you,” her father said. But his confidence in that statement served only to annoy her, because for all he knew, maybe this was like her. Maybe she’d been doing this for years and had just never been caught before today. Arden imagined that was probably what Marie Baker’s parents said when she told them she was pregnant two months into junior year, or what Dean Goddard’s parents said when he broke a teammate’s nose in the locker room after football practice. This isn’t like you. As if parents know what their kids are like, day in and day out.
Arden’s father turned back to the principal and said, “Look, I agree with you that Arden should be disciplined. And she will be. But I can take that over from here. This is an issue for her parents, not for the school. As I’m sure you’re aware, Arden is a responsible student, with a 3.4 GPA, and she is an asset to the Allegany school community with her contributions to the theater program.”
Arden twisted in her seat to look at her father. Her GPA was actually 3.5, but he got close, and that alone was surprising. She didn’t know he ever looked at her report cards, and he hadn’t attended a play she’d worked on in years.
“Furtherm
ore,” her father continued, “Arden has difficult extenuating circumstances, which I’m sure are causing her to act out right now.”
Principal Vanderpool looked blank and fiddled with his pens. Arden immediately felt bad for him, this man with his sad, trying-too-hard necktie. Somehow he had not been briefed on her extenuating circumstances. Somehow this news had not made it into her file, or whatever Vanderpool had referenced before calling her in here, and now he was going to look like he didn’t know what was going on with his own students.
Arden spoke up just to spare him the embarrassment. “My mother left,” she explained. “Four weeks ago.”
The principal’s eyes widened. “I’m so sorry to hear that.”
Arden could tell he was dying to ask where she went, and why she left, and whether she was ever coming back. The same sort of questions that Arden herself was wondering about, really. He didn’t ask, though, maybe because he didn’t want to be rude, or maybe because he didn’t actually care about the answers as much as he cared about leaving his office and diving headfirst into his weekend. She wondered if he had a special place in his closet for weekend neckties, and, if so, she wondered just how wild they got.
“As you can see,” Arden’s father said, “this is not Arden’s typical behavior. But it hasn’t been a typical month for our family.”
That was an understatement.
“I hear what you’re saying completely, and you’re right that this is Arden’s first offense,” Mr. Vanderpool agreed, going on as though Arden herself weren’t actually present in the room with him. “Nonetheless,” Vanderpool continued, “a zero tolerance policy means that the school is obligated to respond to her actions with disciplinary action, no matter what her background and circumstances. I’ve already decided against expulsion—”
“Expulsion!” Arden cried.
Both men looked at her.
“You would actually expel somebody just for having a teeny tiny bit of marijuana in her locker?” Arden demanded. She was starting to get the very bad feeling that when she stepped in to save Lindsey, she had gotten way more than she’d bargained for.
