I still had a lot of homework. Also, I’d visualized myself doing the splits a ton, but I hadn’t practiced doing them on the floor in a very long time. So I did that. And I got much closer to the carpet than I ever had before. I bounced a little and I almost touched. I felt so relieved. I wasn’t going to have to live in loner town after all. I didn’t need Alice Potgeiser to teach me basic and intermediate tumbling. I was plenty bendy without her. And I had a feeling that once I became a cheerleader, once I had an automatic lunch table full of friends, all the terrible stuff in middle school would finally turn good.
Write off Sylvie
Become a cheerleader
Force Raya Papas to become my friend
Learn more
ven though it was dark and cold oustide the morning of cheerleading practice, I did not feel doomed. I climbed out of bed and hurried into the kitchen to grab a handful of cereal to wake me up. And when I did this I saw something on the counter that made me very happy. It was a package from Grandma! On the outside she’d written in big blue inky letters,
PLEASE GIVE THIS TO BESSICA THE FIRST DAY OF CHEERLEADING PRACTICE.
When I read that, I knew it was okay for me to tear it open. So I did, as fast as I could.
Grandma was a genius. Inside that package was a pair of purple stretch pants that I could wear for PE. This was a big relief. Because I still hadn’t figured out where to buy purple pants. I felt the material between my fingers to make sure that it wasn’t the kind that would itch. And it wasn’t. Holding my purple PE stretch pants made me miss Grandma in a very powerful way. It would have been so nice to have her here with me. That was when I realized that deleting those emails was the worst mistake I had ever made in my life. Because getting rid of Willy had been the right idea.
I ran downstairs, opened her account, and went straight to her trash. How could I have made such a terrible mistake? I hoped with my whole heart that her future boyfriends were still inside her trash can. Click. Click. Click. And they were! I carefully moved them back into her inbox, where they belonged.
Even though I shouldn’t have, I read the emails. It was pretty obvious that the responders liked sandwiches and Grandma. One possibility named Sully was a retired engineer who wanted to see Grandma next week when he was in Rexburg. That was a huge bummer. Because Sully couldn’t see Grandma next week while he was in Rexburg, because Grandma was riding around the middle of America in a stupid Winnebago. Poor Sully.
I decided to set something up for when Grandma would be back, in four weeks. I worried about how to phrase it, though, because I didn’t want to sound like me. I wanted to sound like Grandma. Also, I wasn’t sure how many men Grandma should agree to meet. Because I still wanted her to have plenty of time to spend with me. I tapped my fingers on the desk and tried to think strategically.
Four seemed like a good number. It was easy to find the best four. Engineer Sully. And Pete who lived in Post Falls and wanted to take Grandma on a hike in the Kaniksu National Forest. Because forests were cool. And Hunter who lived in The Dalles, Oregon, and who wanted to take Grandma on a visit to Mount Hood. Because visits only lasted a couple of days and then Grandma would be back home. And Pilot Mike who lived in Missoula, Montana. He was my favorite, because he had an awesome personality.
In his subject line he said that he wanted to take Grandma waterskiing. I clicked on his picture. Holy crud! It was too good to be true. In addition to being a former pilot, and sending a gorgeous picture of himself, he had also included a fantastic picture of his superhuge boat. In fact, I think it was a yacht. And he’d named it the SS Funshine.
His message was wonderful.
Glad to hear you like boats and adventure, Rhoda. Getting together for a sandwich sounds great. Give me your phone number and we can set it up. You’re not like a lot of the other people I’ve met on this site. You’ve got the heart of a kid and the legs of a supermodel.
I read Pilot Mike’s message seven more times. Plus, I couldn’t stop looking at his boat. It was like he really understood who Grandma was. When I closed my eyes, I could picture us all together aboard the SS Funshine. Grandma and I were so happy. And so was this Mike person. That was when I decided to write Pilot Mike a letter that was straight from the heart. Grandma’s heart.
Dear Mike, Thanks for the delightful email. I’m shy about giving out my phone number. Why don’t you send me yours. Sandwiches sound wonderful. Maybe we can eat them on board the SS Funshine.
Tootles. Rhoda.
When I sent that message I didn’t feel bad at all. I felt like I’d figured out a great solution for returning Grandma to normal. Because Grandma hadn’t made Grandma go crazy. Willy had done that. And so if I introduced her to Pilot Mike, who seemed very normal, Grandma would most likely return to her own self again.
When I finally ran upstairs, I was very behind.
“Bessica, you’re not even dressed,” my mom said. “Are you sick?”
I dashed to my room. “No, I feel great.” I threw on my clothes as fast as I could. Then I attached my blue tongues to my sneakers and ran to the kitchen table. I was breathing hard.
“I made you lunch again,” my mother said.
“Cool.” I wolfed down two pieces of toast.
“It’s a hummus sandwich.” My mother sat down next to me with a brown paper sack.
“What’s it made out of?” I asked.
“Chickpeas!” She smiled and made an mmm sound.
I looked out the window into the dark morning. It felt like the middle of the night. My mother’s hair was stuck to her head and she had bags under her eyes.
“Maybe you should go back to bed,” I said. “I won’t miss the bus. I’m hurrying.”
She shook her head and poured us each a glass of orange juice. “We have a few minutes before your bus. Let’s chat.”
I took my glass. “Chat?”
“You haven’t talked about any of your friends at school.”
“Sylvie goes to South and we’re still on the outs. Big-time,” I said.
“We’re two weeks into school. I’m talking about your friends at North.”
I did not want to admit to my mom that I hadn’t made any real friends yet. And that currently I was a socially certified nothing.
“Who do you hang out with?” She smiled at me in a very hopeful way.
My mom had bad timing. If she asked me this question in a week, I could tell her about all my cheerleader friends. But I didn’t even know their names yet. “Raya Papas.”
“That’s a pretty name. Tell me about her.”
“She likes stickers and she’s very alert in math.”
“Oh!” my mother said. “She’s got a brain for numbers.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I also spend time with Cameron Bon Qui Qui.”
“She sounds interesting.”
“I think she wants to grow up to be a policewoman. She likes rules.”
“Kids are so mature these days.”
I nodded. Then I changed the subject, because I got tired of lying about the friends I didn’t really have. “How’s mallet-toe Betty?”
“She needs another casserole. We should probably stop by there today or tomorrow.”
Normally, I would have objected to this idea. But I was tired. And maybe when my mom went there, I could hang out with Betty’s coward dog and spy on Raya some more and figure out why she was rude to me.
“I forgot to tell you something,” my mom said. “Noll came over last night.”
And when my mom said this, my heartbeat zoomed. “Noll came to see me?” I asked in a very surprised voice. Because I was pretty sure that after the Mustang incident Noll thought I was a huge dork who might not have been totally normal.
“No. He brought you something.” My mother lifted up a card.
My mouth dropped open. “Noll Beck brought me a card last night?”
It seemed impossible, but maybe this was his way of telling me that he’d broken up with his girlfriend and was interested
in spending time with me.
“No,” my mother said. “The mailman delivered a postcard from Grandma to Noll’s house by mistake.”
My heart stopped zooming and I took the card. It had a big cow on it.
“What’s with the cow?” I asked.
“I think it’s a tourist attraction. Apparently, it’s the world’s largest Holstein.”
The cow was named Sue. And she was black and white and had horns and a big udder. The card said she was made out of fiberglass and stood thirty-eight feet tall.
As Mom loaded my lunch into a brown paper sack, she finally noticed that I’d opened my present.
“Bessica! You opened it.”
I set the card down and nodded. “It was mine.”
“What did Grandma give you?”
“PE pants.” They were folded up in the chair next to me, so I lifted them up and showed her.
“You’re going to wear those to PE?” my mom asked. Her face looked concerned.
“Totally,” I said. “My teacher said I have to wear purple pants. It’s in our dress code. It’s part of our grade.”
But my mom’s face only looked more worried. “Have you read what’s written on the backside?”
It hadn’t occurred to me that something could be written on the backside. I turned them over and read the butt. KISS THIS. I gasped.
“I think that might actually violate a decency rule,” my mom said.
I didn’t know if it violated one of those, but I sure wasn’t going to wear purple pants that said KISS THIS during PE in the school gymnasium. What was Grandma thinking? “What are they even good for?” I asked. I tossed them back on the chair.
“Pajamas. Or long underwear,” my mom offered.
“Long underwear?” That seemed like a terrible idea. I liked my underwear regular length.
“They’re thin enough that if you needed an extra layer for warmth you could wear these underneath your pants.”
I could not imagine ever needing an extra layer. “That’s weird.”
I left the pants and got up and loaded all my stuff into my backpack for school, even Grandma’s postcard. And I felt really anxious, because I hadn’t slept enough and my purple pants were lame and while I was thrilled about Pilot Mike, I wished I were able to be more honest with my mom about stuff. I started shoving everything into my backpack in a rough manner that resembled mashing.
“You should pack up before you go to bed,” my mom suggested.
I shoved my last book inside my backpack and tugged the zipper closed. “Sure I should.”
“Have a good day!” my mom called.
As I walked out to the bus, it was sort of like I couldn’t control my own legs. Because I saw Noll’s car, and even though I knew I should stay pretty far away from it, I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to see if his girlfriend had left anything in there. Because if she had, I thought it would mean they were pretty serious, because she knew she’d be returning to the car. But if she hadn’t, then I thought it would mean that they weren’t very serious at all.
I hurried up to the passenger-side window and looked inside. The chemistry book was back. And there were more crumpled-up papers in the backseat. And there was a duffel bag in the backseat. I leaned in closer. But I couldn’t see what was inside of it because it was zipped shut. Maybe it was the girlfriend’s duffel bag. This made me feel terrible. But the duffel bag was red. Would a girl want a red duffel bag? I hoped not.
As I walked away from Noll’s car to catch the bus, I knew that it was going to be hard for me to concentrate at school. Because I had a lot on my plate.
All day I was in a distracted mood. I had a tough time remembering my locker combination. And I forgot to automatically give Redge a pen and he had to remind me.
“Hey. Pen girl. I’m waiting.”
And when Mrs. Mounds lectured about the central nervous system, I only took half as many notes as I should have. And when Mr. Val had us read a story out loud in class about a celebrated jumping frog, I couldn’t follow what was happening, even though he turned off the flute music. When the bell rang and class ended, I was surprised to see people leaving the room, because it felt like we’d just gotten there. And I was so distracted in math that I accidentally sat in Raya Papas’s seat.
“You’re in my seat,” she said.
“Really?” I asked. And then I didn’t move right away because I sort of wanted Raya to talk to me more.
“You need to move,” Raya said.
“Okay.” But I stayed right there.
“Do I need to get the teacher?”
I shook my head and got up.
“You might not look alt, but you sure act alt,” Raya said. “You’re totally weird.”
And I didn’t understand why Raya was being so mean to me, because I was nice to her. And I liked her. So I thought she should have been automatically kind to me until we became friends and she wrote me notes with heart stickers on them.
After that, the only interesting thing that happened in math was that Raya told the story of her neighbor’s dog getting snatched by a dangerous coyote.
“He got grabbed right by the mailbox!” Raya said. And she didn’t tell just one person. She told everybody. And so that became a very, very popular topic in class.
Coyote. Coyote. Coyote. Dog. Dog. Dog. It’s all anybody wanted to talk about.
I’d seen a coyote once with my dad. It had big teeth and looked exactly like a wild animal. I wasn’t surprised that it would snatch a dog. When the bell rang, I went straight to my locker. And when I opened my locker, I took out my lunch sack, and I was bummed out. Because my hummus sandwich was releasing an odor.
I reached inside my backpack and was really surprised by what came tumbling out of it. First, Grandma’s postcard fell to the floor. It was very bent. Then my cell phone dropped down there too. Uh-oh. I remembered the postcard, but I’d hurried so fast to pack for school that I must’ve accidentally stuffed my phone in my backpack. I picked it up and stuck it in my lunch sack along with the postcard. Because I sort of felt like calling somebody. Because lunch was a lonely time for me. I slammed my locker shut and I saw somebody inside Davis’s locker. I figured it was Davis. He gave me a strange look.
“What’s in that bag?” Davis asked. “Is it a dead animal?”
I didn’t mention my banned cell phone. “I’m Bessica. This is my lunch. It’s made out of chickpeas.”
“That’s disgusting,” he said. “I’d rather eat my own arm.”
And I was glad that Davis said that. Because it showed that he was most definitely a dork. And so I walked off and didn’t say another word to him. I headed toward the row. And on my way there a terrible thing happened. I ran into Cola.
“Are you going to walk? Or are you going to run? Or are you going to attack the vending machine?” he asked.
That psycho-bully was such a goon. I didn’t even know what to say to him. So I just said a fact. “I brought my lunch today.”
Then Redge and Beecher appeared.
“What’s that smell?” Beecher asked.
And I didn’t mention that it was my sandwich.
“What’s in your bag?” Cola asked.
“Lunch,” I said.
Then I started walking away, because I didn’t want to waste valuable minutes of my life talking to those three.
“I know what’s in your bag,” Cola said. “A fart sandwich.”
Then Cola made loud fart noises over and over. And I just kept walking. But he followed me. And so did Redge and Beecher. And they made fart noises too. So I didn’t walk to the row. I walked to the bathroom as fast as I could. Because my eyes felt hot. Like I could cry at any moment. And I didn’t want to cry in the hallway. I really didn’t want to cry in the bathroom either. But I thought that was my safest option. So I opened a stall and sat down on a toilet. And I watched the tears tumble to the floor in juicy splatters.
I wanted to throw my sandwich away. But I was also hungry. I didn’t under
stand why school had to be this difficult. Or why the psycho-bullies couldn’t stop being psycho. Or why rude Raya couldn’t start being nice. Or why my mom couldn’t have made me a peanut butter sandwich.
I reached over and grabbed some toilet paper and blew my nose. Then I continued to sit there. And I decided to open my smelly bag and eat my smelly sandwich. And that was when a bunch of girls came into the bathroom. Something about what was happening reminded me of my weird dream. I held my breath and peeked through the crack in the door. There were three of them. And one of them was the fluffy-ponytail girl who knew that I liked Kettle. I almost lost my appetite.
“We’ll make them do round-offs right away,” said a girl wearing green shoes.
“Backflips,” said Alice Potgeiser.
“Shouldn’t we let them stretch first?” asked a girl wearing red sandals. “Won’t they break their necks if we don’t?”
“Maybe,” Alice said. And then they all laughed. “But we only want the best. No losers who can barely jump.”
Then they all laughed some more and left. And I knew they were talking about cheerleading. And I knew that I didn’t know how to do round-offs or backflips, even if I did stretch. So it seemed pretty likely that after school today I would break my neck.
I blew my nose again. And then I remembered Grandma’s postcard. I reached into my lunch sack and pulled it out. On the back of the cow postcard, Grandma had only written two words: LIVE LARGE! I put the postcard back in my bag. What was that supposed to mean? Just because she was off having a fun time with Willy didn’t mean that she should send me messages I couldn’t understand. Live large. What did she want me to do—try out for cheerleading and break my neck? Live large. I said it over and over as I sat on the toilet. What a mean thing to send me. Grandma didn’t have any clue about how bad things really were. That was when I realized the only solution to this problem. I needed to get my banned phone and call her.
The Reinvention of Bessica Lefter Page 14
