by P. J. Night
“She gave it to you?” her mom asked, looking surprised. Emmy hoped her mother wasn’t going to make her give it back. She realized that it was kind of odd to take a gift from a stranger, and that her mom probably wouldn’t like it. But her mom let the matter drop, and picked up the doll and examined it. “Well, the doll’s interesting,” she said. “Pretty.” She placed it back on the desk.
“Thanks,” Emmy said. She twirled it around again on the desk. It spun easily, like a toy top. Just like the candle, it felt kind of soothing.
Another day with short hair, Emmy thought as she woke the next morning. She had to admit she was feeling slightly better than she had during the previous days. Maybe she was getting used to the haircut. Maybe it wasn’t so bad after all. And it would grow back. Eventually. This too shall pass, her dad liked to say.
Her bedroom still smelled slightly of lavender from yesterday. Maybe it’s working, Emmy thought. Maybe it is a tonic for my nerves. She went downstairs in her pajamas and for the first time wasn’t shocked by her own reflection when she passed herself in the mirror.
Walking to school, though, she felt the familiar pangs of sadness. She and Lizzy used to walk together every morning, and now she walked alone. She looked around for Lizzy. For the past few months, they’d been walking to school separately, but if they ran into each other, they would join up and walk together. But there was no sign of her today.
Lunchtime came quickly enough. On her way to lunch, she picked up her pace so she could get in line early for the hot lunch, before it got too long. The sooner she got in line, she figured, the sooner she’d be eating lunch. She wasn’t exactly running, but walking as fast as one could without breaking into a run. As she cruised down the hall, two boys stood at their lockers, watching her.
“You better hurry up!” one of them said sarcastically. “It might be all gone by the time you get there!”
Ugh. Emmy had forgotten it so wasn’t cool to rush through the halls . . . especially for the school lunch.
There was a silver lining, though. She did get in line early. And today was pizza day, and the pizza was extra cheesy and delicious. She smiled at Hannah as she sat down. As she took her second bite, she realized she hadn’t even looked over at the table where Lizzy usually sat with Cadence and Sophie. Maybe she really was starting to adjust to the new reality of life without her best friend. She used to get a stomachache every time she entered the lunchroom, and now she was eating somewhat happily and forgetting to notice Lizzy’s table.
But she did look over eventually, of course, and saw Cadence and Sophie, but no Lizzy. Once she’d finished her pizza, she said good-bye to Hannah and walked slowly past the table holding her empty tray. She strained to listen to their conversation.
“Gross!” Cadence was saying.
“I know, right?” Sophie responded.
“Poor Liz,” Cadence said.
Emmy couldn’t help herself. She turned to them. “What’s the matter with Lizzy, I mean Liz?” she asked.
Cadence and Sophie looked up. They seemed irritated by the interruption.
“Liz was up all night kissing the porcelain god,” Cadence said with a straight face.
Emmy had no idea what she was talking about. Cadence and Sophie began to giggle.
Sophie chimed in. “Liz was up all night tossing her cookies,” she added. Emmy was more confused than before.
Sophie and Cadence seemed to think it was quite funny that Emmy wasn’t following the conversation. They laughed harder.
“She lost her lunch,” Sophie added. “And dinner!”
“Oh,” Emmy said. She felt so stupid as she realized Lizzy had been throwing up. At first she felt bad for Lizzy. Throwing up was the worst! Then she felt a small twinge of pleasure. Throwing up was the worst, and didn’t Lizzy deserve to feel terrible for a little while?
“Oh. That’s the worst,” Emmy said after a pause.
“I know, right?” Cadence said. “I got a text from her this morning. She said she felt like she was spinning around on a crazy-fast merry-go-round all night. But I think she’s better now.”
“That’s good,” Emmy said, not really meaning it. Maybe she ate too many of those traitor strawberries, she thought. Serves her right.
CHAPTER 6
After school that day Sam was sitting on the steps as Emmy tossed her bag down and went into the kitchen for a snack. Sam wasn’t so bad, as far as little brothers went. But he did have two major flaws. One, he constantly wanted to be included in everything Emmy did. Two, he was always pawing through Emmy’s things. Usually, it seemed, he was in search of sweets, which Emmy liked to keep stashed in her bag. (Their mom was a little too concerned about limiting their sugar intake, so what was Emmy supposed to do?)
Pawing through Emmy’s bag was exactly what Sam was doing after school that day as he sat on the steps, and he hit the jackpot. Gummy bears! Emmy saw the flash of the wrapper as she came back into the room, and Sam leapt quickly up the stairs.
“Um, hello?” Emmy called after her brother.
Sam turned around innocently. “Hello,” he said, as if Emmy hadn’t been being sarcastic with her “hello.”
“What did you steal from my bag?” Emmy snapped.
“Nothing,” Sam said, hiding both hands behind his back. He was such a bad liar.
“Give it,” Emmy said, lunging up the steps.
Sam had a “busted!” look on his face as he held out the package of gummy bears and Emmy grabbed it. But one hand was still behind his back.
Emmy sighed impatiently. “Do you really think I don’t realize you have something else in your other hand?”
Poor Sam looked totally defeated as he held out his other hand, which gripped the little doll Emmy had bought the day before. Suddenly Emmy was more than mildly annoyed, she was furious. Which was strange because she’d barely given the doll any thought since yesterday. When she’d cleared her desk off before school, she’d stuffed it in her backpack, but didn’t even remember that it had been in there all day. Suddenly she felt very attached to it.
As quickly as it had taken Emmy’s reaction to shift from annoyed to furious, Sam’s expression changed from guilty to nasty, and he threw the doll as hard as he could all the way down the staircase, then ran into his room and slammed the door. Emmy scrambled down the stairs to retrieve the doll, grateful that it was made of cloth and therefore not breakable. Little brothers can be such a royal pain, she thought as she stuffed the doll back into the front pocket of her backpack.
Every day before school, if it wasn’t raining or freezing cold, kids liked to hang out in the yard before the bell rang. Of course, when Lizzy and Emmy used to walk to school together, they’d hang out there too, joining in a game other kids were playing or sometimes just talking to each other. Now Emmy faced this before-school scene alone, and Lizzy hung out with Sophie and Cadence. They were always giggling and looking as if they were having just the greatest time ever enjoying some grand private joke.
But as she approached the school yard the next morning, something looked different, even from a distance. There were lots of kids standing around Lizzy, not just Sophie and Cadence. Lizzy definitely seemed to be the center of everyone’s attention. And they were all focused on something near the ground.
As Emmy got closer, she saw that one of Lizzy’s legs was thick and white. Oh, wait, that would be a cast, Emmy realized. And Lizzy was standing with crutches.
It was always such a big deal when someone showed up at school with a cast, as if he or she had been away at war and lived to come home and tell the tale. Rumors quickly circulated—The bone in his arm was sticking right through the skin! She had to be taken in an ambulance to the emergency room!—and the kid with the cast usually
appeared to enjoy the attention.
And Lizzy, it seemed, was no exception. She was talking and laughing, gesturing dramatically to the crowd.
Emmy felt a rush of sympathy and concern for Lizzy. Forget about the extra attention, breaking a bone couldn’t have been fun. It had to have really hurt. Emmy wanted to know what had happened, so she approached the crowd. But she could barely get near Lizzy with so many kids swarmed around her.
Lizzy had managed to accommodate her cast and still look great in her outfit. She barely looked awkward at all. She was wearing a pair of leggings with the one leg rolled way up to show the whole cast, which was bright white and clean. When Emmy took a closer look, she saw that there were thin pencil marks on it dividing the cast into seven stripes.
As if reading Emmy’s mind, Cadence asked, “So what are those pencil marks for?”
Lizzy’s face lit up as she dug into her backpack and pulled out a package of thin permanent markers in every color of the rainbow. “My mom had a great idea,” Lizzy announced to the crowd. “When everyone signs the cast, they can use a different color in a different section. So when everyone’s finished signing, my cast will look like a big handwritten rainbow. The more people who sign it, the better!” Kids nodded and oohed and ahhed appreciatively as the bell rang. And besides Sophie and Cadence, several boys were scrambling to help Lizzy inside to start the school day. It was as if she had her own private staff of butlers.
Emmy was glad her first few classes weren’t with Lizzy. She already needed a break from The Lizzy Show after the scene in the playground. Funny how no one even noticed my haircut, she thought, and yet they can’t take their eyes off Lizzy’s cast. She dreaded lunch and the scene she was sure she would see in the cafeteria—kids lining up to sign Lizzy’s cast. She wasn’t too far off base, either. There wasn’t exactly a line, but there was a small crowd around Lizzy’s table during the entire lunch period. Kids were taking turns trying to walk with her crutches. Emmy tried to focus on her grilled cheese and tomato soup. “Comfort food,” her mom would have called it. But it wasn’t much comfort at all.
As usual, she and Lizzy had English together after lunch. They’d been reading haiku, and Ms. Calhoun explained that now it was time to try writing their own. A haiku has three lines. The first has five syllables, the second has seven syllables, and the third has five syllables. It was fun to try to fit the syllables into the correct pattern. At the end of class, anyone who wanted to could read his or her haiku to the group. Emmy struggled to transport herself to a different time and place to write about, and decided on the Fourth of July, which, coincidentally, was the last time she and Lizzy had really had fun together. They’d walked with their families to the river and watched fireworks go off over the Manhattan skyline.
FIREWORKS
Pop, bam , sizzle, boom
Colors lighting up the dark
Independence Day
Emmy was pretty pleased with her haiku, but when Ms. Calhoun invited students to read their work to the group, she felt shy and didn’t raise her hand. Lizzy did, though, and when called on, slowly struggled to get to her feet and reach her crutches so she could stand in front of the class.
“It’s okay, Lizzy,” Ms. Calhoun said. “You can read from your desk.” Lizzy seemed disappointed about this, but took a dramatic breath before she began reading:
PAIN
Sharp, stabbing zinger!
Pain rushes through me and I
Can’t even breathe right
“Wow, very nice, Lizzy,” Ms. Calhoun said. “I assume this was about your recent experience of breaking your leg?” Everyone laughed. Except Emmy. Because the truth was, Lizzy’s haiku described Emmy’s hurt feelings just perfectly.
The day wore on and each time Emmy saw Lizzy, she was surrounded by a team of helpers. And as promised, her cast was slowly becoming a handwritten rainbow. Emmy wondered if Lizzy would ask her to sign it. But by the end of the day Lizzy hadn’t even glanced in Emmy’s direction. It was as if Emmy didn’t exist.
Once again Emmy felt her sadness harden into anger as she walked home alone. She even felt a little glad that Lizzy had broken her leg. No more strawberry picking, and it would definitely put a damper on any costume she had planned with Cadence and Sophie. What kind of costume could incorporate a big clunky cast? Never mind, Emmy thought bitterly, Lizzy will think of some fabulous way to make it work. And everyone will feel so sorry for poor Lizzy that she’ll win first prize.
Then suddenly Emmy emerged from these thoughts and realized she had never found out how Lizzy had broken her leg.
CHAPTER 7
Later that afternoon Emmy sat in the orthodontist’s waiting room. Dr. Costa’s office was just a block away from her house, so her parents had started letting her go to routine appointments like this one by herself. Today she was just going to have her clear braces tightened, which was a quick and painless procedure. The discomfort would come in the next few days, when her whole mouth would be sore from the tightening.
If only braces were as cool as a broken leg, she thought, leafing through a women’s fashion magazine in the waiting room. Page after page of models stared back at her, looking about as far from human as aliens. One wore a dress that looked like it was made of aluminum foil; another had a face painted like a leopard. She didn’t usually read these kinds of magazines but was strangely drawn to the images. It was sort of impossible to look away. “Fashion” was a word she had heard spoken by Lizzy all too often lately, and it seemed like something Emmy needed to learn a thing or two about. She didn’t even like shopping, though, so how would she ever change her look from kid to tween?
It felt like it was taking a long time for her name to be called. She flipped a page and saw a model with black nail polish on. Emmy herself had only ever painted her nails pink or red, but come to think of it, she’d seen a few girls at school with darker colors on their nails, like deep blue or purple. She and Lizzy used to give each other manicures and pedicures using their mothers’ nail polish, which was the usual variety of pinks and reds.
Maybe it would be cool to do something new, Emmy thought. The black seems kind of cool. And then a thought popped into her head. It was a thought she wasn’t proud of, but there it was nonetheless.
Maybe Lizzy would think it was cool.
After all, painting her nails black was a risk Lizzy hadn’t taken, and this time Emmy could be the one to show Lizzy a thing or two about what looked cool. Emmy kept thinking about Lizzy telling her she needed to update her look. Well, consider it updated.
On her way home Emmy stopped at the drugstore and examined her choices. She was surprised by how many different colors there were on display. She’d never thought much about nail polish, actually, and now realized there were people whose job it was to name the colors. What a cool job! Satin Slipper. Peony. Candy-Apple Red. And finally, Midnight, which was the one she grabbed, brought to the counter, and paid for.
When she got home, Emmy emptied her backpack out onto her desk as usual. Her books, her notebooks, her nail polish, her pens and pencils, and her little doll. She picked up the bottle of nail polish and stared at it. Then, as suddenly as she’d gotten the idea to paint her fingernails black, she realized how crazy it was. She imagined Lizzy’s table at lunch with Sophie and Cadence and their snarky laughter. She remembered the model in the magazine and how tall and elegant she was, and the outrageous clothes she was wearing. Emmy was neither tall nor elegant and owned nothing that could even remotely be considered outrageous. She sighed. Who did she think she was fooling?
Okay, it’s only nail polish, she thought, trying to talk herself down. Then she saw the doll out of the corner of her eye. She was not as into it—or the lavender candl
e—as she had been earlier in the week. In fact, looking at it now, she wondered what made her buy the silly little doll. But then she had an idea for a new use for it. Maybe I’ll just start by testing out the black nail polish on the doll, she thought. A practice run. She reached for the doll and set it in front of her. She gave the small glass bottle a good shake and twisted open the cap. Then she carefully, delicately applied the black lacquer to the tips of the doll’s tiny fingers. She had to really focus because the fingertips were so small, but she was able to dab a dot of the enamel on each of the doll’s fingertips.
When she had finished, she tilted her chair back and examined her work. Interesting, she thought. It looks kind of cool. Now that she saw it on the doll, she decided to paint her own nails. Once she’d finished and her nails had dried, she started on her math homework, which was a breeze. Soon her dad called her downstairs for dinner.
Like lunch, dinner was always a bright spot in Emmy’s day. Her parents had a rule that the four of them sit down together each night, no matter how busy they all were. Her dad liked to do something called “highs and lows,” which was when everyone went around the table and said the worst and best parts of their day. Emmy didn’t even have to think about her low.
“My low kind of lasted all day,” she admitted. Her mom gave her a sympathetic look, and her dad raised his eyebrows. Sam seemed involved with his meat loaf.
“Do tell,” her dad said.
“Lizzy broke her leg,” Emmy told her parents, then realized by the looks on their faces that they already knew. Of course they did; Lizzy’s mom would have told them. “And she was the center of attention all day, like no one had ever seen a cast before. Everyone was falling all over themselves trying to help her.”
Her mom put down her fork. “I don’t suppose she asked you for any help,” she said gently.
“That’s right,” Emmy said. “She basically ignored me all day. Then in English she wrote this really overly dramatic haiku that she read to the class. I think she loves the attention.”
