Switch

by Tish Cohen

  Finally, Joules turned around to look at the interior of the car, her cheeks flushed and sweating, her black pony-tail swinging, her gold nose ring glinting in the sun. I was struck by the fact that the one and only thing we had in common at that moment, besides both being students at Sunnyside, was long, dark hair pulled into ponies. She looked at the running shoes in the backseat, the Hop on Pop book in the passenger door. “So, what? You have a big family?”

  I was still trying to catch my breath. “Yeah.”

  Her eyes took in the double-sided photo of Kaylee and Kaia hanging from Mom’s rearview mirror and she allowed herself a tiny smile. “Lucky,” she said.

  Lucky.

  Me.

  Then the moment was broken. “Switch tops with me, Birch Tree. Then Will thinks it was you back there with Shane.”

  “Me? Why would I want—?”

  “Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease. “

  Crap. Not only did I not want to strip down in the quad, but she was talking about my favorite shirt. I saved for two months for that top. I was careful not to wear it around the fosters all year, and it was the only thing I owned that wasn’t covered in battery acid or grape juice stains.

  To be honest, I started to rethink the whole sharing-cookies-at-lunch thing.

  “I’m begging you, Birchie. I adore Will. He’s my Reason-for-Breathing.” In the side mirror I saw Will jogging across the quad toward us.

  Here’s the thing about Will Sherwood. I’ve had a silent but deadly crush on him since we were eight and sitting cross-legged in assembly one morning at Poplar Plains Elementary. He was behind me and said, “You’re sitting on my shoelace.” Which I was. I mumbled sorry and shifted to free his black sneakers, and he said, “It’s alright.” Just like that, “It’s alright.” There was no hidden emotion in his words or anything (believe me, I hunted for it). But any other boy would have given me a shove or said something idiotic like, “Yeah, I’d be sorry too if I had your face.” Not Will. Will excused me, and for that I started to take a closer look at him.

  Trouble is, I’ve never been able to look away.

  “Here?” I asked Joules. “You want to trade shirts right here?”

  “I will totally owe you.” She pulled a CD partway out of her purse. Nigel Adams.

  “Is that the new one?”

  She nodded. “Signed.”

  I’d have to hide it from Brayden—who’s obsessed with Nigel Adams. “Fine. But I want my shirt back tomorrow.”

  We pulled off our tops and swapped, and right away she climbed out of the car. I was free. As fast as I could, I hopped back into the driver’s seat, turned around and started to back the car toward the safety and normality of the parking lot, where I planned to re-assume control of my life.

  That’s when I saw it. Mr. Mansouri’s bald head glistening in the sun, flashing in my eyes like an SOS signal as he ran toward us from the metal shop. Sweet relief—I ‘d never been so happy to see a hairless cranium in my life. As ridiculous as it was, I almost felt sorry for Joules. Mansouri would surely pulverize her for what essentially amounted to the following:

  carjacking

  driving a motor vehicle through a school full of minors

  kidnapping an innocent student (a Stanford-bound honor student!)

  and crushing the dream of a friendship that could have brought a tiny amount of joy to my days.

  In that moment, my mind raced through all that might happen to her. Suspension. Expulsion. Prison. I hoped, though, they wouldn’t go that far. In fact, I determined right then and there to refuse to testify on the kidnapping charge.

  I thrust the car into park and climbed out, exhausted. Relieved. Ready to negotiate a lesser punishment for Joules, whom I’d already begun to dislike for making me feel as sorry for her as I would later for Mansouri. Seriously. Her student record was going to be wrecked. Wrecked.

  Mansouri’s words puffed out in time with his crashing footsteps. “Andrea Birch … have you ever … seen a motor vehicle … of any kind … on this campus?” He slowed as he got close, holding his chest and leaning over to catch his breath. “EVER?”

  “I know, right?” I started to say. “It’s a good thing no kids were around—”

  He pointed at me, then his metal shop. “Your carcass in my class after school. Don’t even think about being late.”

  “What? Me?” I spun around to stare at Joules, who was now standing arm in arm with a relieved-looking Will, running her fingers through the deliciously tangled mop of hair that framed his face. “I wasn’t driving the car.”

  “Don’t you try to get out of this!” Mansouri roared. “I saw that fire-engine color from clear across campus.”

  Sigh. See what I mean about the red?

  “No …” I looked to Joules for help, but her pony-tailed head was resting on Will’s chest and she was rubbing his soccer bib, completely at peace with herself. I couldn’t come out and say it was Joules’s shirt. It would end things for her and Will. And as much as I’d like that, I do have a heart. No designer jeans—and maybe no place to live once my mother sees the Volvo’s ruined carpet—but plenty of heart. I also have a guiding principle: I refuse to be the cause of any kind of pain in Will Sherwood’s life. Besides, let’s face it, the Andrea–Will crush is nothing if not one-sided. Breaking them up will not send him running after me.

  “3:05,” Mansouri bellowed. “Be there. Miss Adams, you too.”

  “Me?” Joules’s voice rose into the high-pitched squawk of the wrongly accused. “I had no idea she’d drive through the school like that, Mr. Mansouri …”

  He stared at me. “And, Miss Birch, a word of advice. Next time you’re driving a getaway vehicle with plans to foist your involvement onto another soul when you get caught, take the time, pre-caper, to dress yourself in a more subdued hue. I’ll see you after school.”

  Now, in detention, wiping grass off the red shirt I planned to burn later, wondering if I was crazy to take the heat for a girl who may or may not give me that CD, I look through the open door to see Joules standing very close to her (and my) Reason-for-Breathing. She’s in no rush to report to Mansouri, that’s for certain. They talk for a moment, then Will smiles a blushing, dimple-making kind of smile that makes me tingle down to my toes. He glances down, then back up at her again. Then, in a movement surely designed to rip out my heart, he reaches up, tenderly, lovingly, to swipe a strand of hair from her face.

  Mom calls me The Lucky One. But she has no idea what she’s talking about. She’s never met Joules Adams.

  I hand my detention sheet to Mr. Mansouri and return to my seat. He pushes his wire-rimmed glasses up his nose, examines my response and slaps the paper down on his desk. “So, the only thing you did wrong was getting seen, Miss Birch? Is that your belief?”

  Lying is so not my style. Getting in trouble is so not my style. But Will Sherwood is. So I shrug. “There weren’t any actual signs posted. You know, saying cars weren’t allowed.”

  A flush of magenta creeps up from his shirt collar. “That’s fine. If that’s the way you want to play it. But I’m watching you. Make no mistake about it—you are officially on my radar.”

  I nod, horrified. Humiliated.

  Finally, a full ten minutes late, Joules saunters in. All plaid skinnies and knee-high Docs and my white shirt straining across her chest. She drops into the seat in front of me and slides down low. Right away she starts carving something in the edge of the desk. I lean sideways to watch the initials JA appear in the wood.

  I poke her in the back. “When do I get my shirt back?”

  “Keep mine.”

  “I don’t want to keep yours. I want mine.”

  “Don’t get all bent. It’s a wad of cotton.” Her phone buzzes and she checks it. Giggles to herself, then turns around to show me a text from Nigel61. Her dad.

  what—my jujube wasn’t driving? shame, girlie. grounded 6 wks.

  “You’re grounded?” I ask, kind of impressed with her dad.

&nbs
p; She looks at me as if I’m an idiot. “He’s joking, Birch Tree.” Giggling, she whispers to herself, “Dad’s such a geek.” Joules yawns and stands up. Fishes something out of her bag and walks to the front, dragging her boots. She slaps a CD—my CD!—on Mansouri’s desk.

  He picks it up. “This the new one?”

  “Not released in stores till next month. Signed, too. Check out the back.”

  He flips it over, nodding. “My estranged daughter thanks you.”

  Great. Why did he have to say that? Does he not realize some of us are going to wonder and worry about why his daughter won’t speak to him unless he coughs up swag? And what does he mean by estranged? Does she see him at all? Does he spend his birthday with nothing to keep him company but the shine of his head and the gum on his shoe? And why does she have to avoid him anyway—does she not see the way his shoes are so worn at the heels? Does that not make her just the tiniest bit sad?

  Mansouri looks up at Joules and nods toward the door. “Get going before I change my mind.”

  With a cute nose-scrunching smile back at me, and with no remorse about giving away the CD, Joules heads out the door. Through the window, I see Will wave her over to the soccer field. She races up and tackles him, rolling him around on the turf, surely getting grass stains on my shirt. I look away before they lock lips.

  Seeing that might just kill me.

  chapter 2

  My stomach slithers down to my hips as I pull the Volvo into our driveway. There’s Mom, on the porch, arms folded across her chest, leaning against the open door, short, grayish hair fluttering away from her face, not daring to get in her eyes.

  I glance at the dashboard: 4:45. I’m an hour and a half late.

  There’s a thing my mother does with her mouth when she’s mad. She purses her lips as if she’s sucking on a smoke—something she would never do—and if you look really close, you’ll see her upper lip twitch. Tiny nerve endings fire like furious little pistons. When it happens, all of us kids, big or small, blood relations or treasured charges, Lucky Number One or Number Thirty-five, know to disappear.

  I can see the twitch all the way from the driveway as she watches me haul the three busted cases of Enfamil out of the car and up the front steps. Which means one thing: she knows.

  I step up onto the porch and Mom says nothing.

  “I had detention,” I say, with a world-weary sigh.

  One of the boxes shifts. There’s a creak and a tearing sound, and three cans of formula drop onto the concrete veranda and start to roll. One starts to hiss, and thick beige liquid chugs out and pools at Mom’s feet.

  “I heard. This is really not like you, Andrea.”

  “I know! The whole thing is completely circumstantial …”

  But her attention has already turned to the Volvo. She marches down the steps and starts opening up the car doors. I silently beg her not to look in the backseat or she’s certain to see—

  “There’s baby formula all over the rugs back here! I don’t believe it!” She stares back at me. “Were you in some kind of an accident?”

  “No, I … there’s this girl, Joules. I guess she’s kind of wild. She’s, you know, her dad is that rocker guy who lives up on Skyline …”

  Mom starts back toward the steps. “And this, all this today, is the result of a friendship with a wild girl?” She stops in front of me and sets her hands on her hips. “Doesn’t sound like the kind of friend I’d like to have. You might want to reconsider who you hang around with on a daily basis.”

  Okay. I have been decidedly anti-Joules since she jumped in the car, but hearing Mom write her off as no kind of friend makes me want to be Joules’s best friend forever. “She’s not that bad. It all had to do with this guy, Will.”

  “Mr. Mansouri told me all about it. How you’d been fooling around in the bushes with one of the Enderby boys and somehow this Joules was involved and the two of you used my Volvo—my three-day-old Volvo!—as a getaway car. Then you scrawled some sort of joke across the detention sheet? I’d say any girl who inspired a transformation like this is pretty bad.”

  “Wait, how do you know about Shane?”

  “That’s not important. What’s important is—”

  “I wasn’t in the bushes with Shane or any other boy!”

  She takes a case of formula from my arms and starts inside. “Enough. We’ll talk about this later. We’ll also talk about what this does to our reputation as a family. And to my reputation as a caregiver.”

  “This? What about Samantha and Cici getting into Dad’s car when they were nine and ten, and driving it halfway up the block? What about Brayden breaking into the Millers’ with Tomas and Dillon and Ace and flooding their bathrooms? Wait—did Brayden tell you about Shane? Because if he did, he got it all wrong.”

  “I said we’ll talk about it later. After the babies are fed and the rugs in the car are shampooed.” She looks back at me. “By you.”

  “Okay.” The cases are cutting into my biceps, so I shimmy past her and into the kitchen. The twins are in their high chairs waiting for their 4:30 feeding. I set the cases on the counter and pour formula into two glass bottles that are all set up, sterilized and ready to go, then warm some water in a small pot. When it’s partway heated, I stick the bottles in.

  Kaylee and Kaia start kicking their edible chubster legs as they watch me. How anyone could give birth to these two and then treat them like stale donuts just kills me. They’re nearly impossible to look away from. Seriously, some mornings when they toddle into the kitchen in their footsie pajamas, with their thumbs in their drooly mouths and sleepy eyes all wide and astonished, I can barely bring myself to go to school.

  Here’s the trouble with human babies. They’re dependent on their parents for too long—way longer than any other species. Plus the whole being-born thing is like Russian roulette. A kid can be born to a rock star like Nigel Adams, who forks over major bucks to charities and is super-cool to his daughter in detention, or to the loser with a spare evening on her hands, with nothing more to qualify her to care for a child than a cold beer and a hot date. Unborn babies should be afraid, very afraid, of whom they’ll meet once they scrabble their way out of the womb.

  It’s the kind of thing that hits me at three in the morning. The randomness of it all.

  Mom crosses the room and pulls one of the bottles from the pan, shakes formula on her wrist to check the temperature. Satisfied, she takes both bottles over to the chortling babies, who’ve caught sight of their treasures and are reaching out with tiny saliva-covered fingers and bopping up and down in their seats. In unison, they push silicone teats into red mouths, closing their eyes and sighing with relief as they start to suck and swallow. If Mom weren’t so mad at me, it would be the most delicious moment on earth.

  Brayden appears from nowhere, all braces and bouncy yellow curls and buffalo plaid shirt. He grins as he pokes me in the gut. “So, Enderby, huh? He once did it with a lunch lady. Nice score!”

  “How did you even hear?”

  “How could I not hear?” He thumps me in the chest. “The whole school knows, MANdrea.”

  I shove him backward. “Yeah? Well, check your facts next time, Bray!”

  He loses his footing and falls against the oven, then lets himself flop onto the floor where he fakes his death. After a moment, he puffs out his mouth as if he’s hiding a strawberry in there, but what he’s really hiding is laughter because the whole tumble was staged. He groans in Mom’s direction. “See what she did to me?”

  “Don’t play people for sympathy, Brayden,” says Mom. “You never want to wheedle love out of anyone. You’re better than that.”

  Bray ignores Mom and throws a useless kick in my direction. “She’s verbally abusing a foster child. Didn’t you tell her I was born a crack baby?”

  Mom leans down to pull him upright. As her hand caresses his hair, he winks at me. “You are not your history, Brayden Jacob Green. Don’t ever use it like that, not even as a joke. You ar
e loved. Do you know why?”

  “Why?”

  She squishes his face between her hands and kisses his nose. “Because you are a wonderful human being and you are worthy of affection.” She spins him around and swats his behind. “Now go take your turn in the shower before the girls get home and hog the bathroom.”

  He walks out slowly, letting each leg stomp out in front of him as he passes me by, grinning. “Okay, Mom.”

  I look at Mom, appalled. Brayden has broken the Mom/Lise, Dad/Gary rule. Only I—as Number One of thirty-seven—am allowed to call Mom and Dad “Mom

  and Dad.” This, besides being the only one who has her own room, is my one privilege as a full-blooded Birch. The others have to say Lise or Gary. They have to say Lise or Gary. It’s a rule.

  “Mom,” I say. “He didn’t call you Lise!”

  “Sorry, Lise.” Brayden turns around at the doorway and makes sad puppy eyes at her. “Sometimes I forget I wasn’t born to you.”

  “I put in an order for you, funny boy,” Mom calls out from the stove. “You just came to me a different way.”

  Ugh. For a moment I debate telling Mom I saw him smoking as Joules and I whizzed past the shop buildings, but I figure it will only incriminate me even more.

  Mom turns back to the high chairs to release the toddlers into their playpen, conveniently missing Brayden mooning me from down the hall. I stomp threateningly in his direction and he disappears, the bathroom door slamming shut behind him.

  “As for you, Andrea …” She motions for me to follow her down the hall, where she tugs a rusted metal cot from the closet, complete with a blue-striped mattress folded inside. Then she pulls out a stack of sheets and plunks them in my arms. “Come with me.”

  I do, as she pushes the squeaking cot all the way down to my bedroom door.

  “We need your room.” She bumps my door open with her hip and announces, like it’s a good thing, that my furniture needs to be pushed to one corner.

  “What? But what about our rule? My room is my room because I’m your Number One and all that. Because I’m so, so lucky. Right? Remember—no one is allowed in my room without my permission. That is our rule, right? Andrea’s room is Andrea’s room. No one invades it.”