D, My Name Is Danita

by Norma Fox Mazer

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  PRAISE FOR THE WRITING OF NORMA FOX MAZER

  “Mazer is one of the best of the practitioners writing for young people today.” —The New York Times

  “It’s not hard to see why Norma Fox Mazer has found a place among the most popular writers for young adults these days.” —The Washington Post Book World

  A, My Name Is Ami

  “A satisfying novel about the ups and downs of 12-year-old Ami’s relationship with her best friend Mia … The writing is light but consistently sensitive and realistic, as the joys and disasters of the characters flow towards a moving and memorable ending.” —School Library Journal

  “The atmosphere and the girls are right on target.… An accurate slice of teenage life.” —Publishers Weekly

  B, My Name Is Bunny

  “[Bunny] is a likeable, true-to-life character who hates her name and wants to be a professional clown. Her friendship with Emily is the source and depth of this simple story of two teenagers learning about life … [a] story of growth and acceptance with accurate and touching emotions.” —School Library Journal

  C, My Name Is Cal

  “Deftly sketched … Mazer’s skill in telling the reader more about Cal than he knows about himself, while narrating Cal’s unique, taciturn voice, is especially memorable.” —Kirkus Reviews

  “Readers will recognize themselves.” —Booklist

  Dear Bill, Remember Me?

  A New York Times Notable Book and a Kirkus Choice

  “Highly accomplished short stories, variously funny and moving, about ordinary, contemporary girls and their relationships with mothers or boyfriends.” —Kirkus Reviews

  “Eight short stories, powerful and poignant, about young women at critical points in their lives.” —The New York Times

  “Stories that are varied in mood and style and alike in their excellence.” —The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

  Summer Girls, Love Boys

  “Featuring female protagonists, the stories mix the bitter and the sweet of life while encompassing a variety of narrative techniques, settings, themes, and tones.… Mazer writes honestly and provocatively of human emotion and circumstances while she demonstrates her versatility as a writer.” —Booklist

  Good Night, Maman

  “Mazer writers with a simplicity that personalizes the history.… Direct … honest.” —Booklist, starred review

  D, My Name Is Danita

  Norma Fox Mazer

  For my sister Linda—

  love, friendship, Thysania zenobia and

  “Mega excellent dude!”

  Chapter 1

  When I was born I weighed less than a pound. “Not even as much as a loaf of bread,” my mother always says. When my parents, who are Jody and Daniel Merritt, finally took me home from the hospital, I was four months old, and I still didn’t weigh as much as some babies do at birth.

  “You were smaller than my thumb,” my dad says. “And you’re still a tiny thing.”

  Well, maybe … but now I’m nearly fourteen, and I want my parents to stop fretting about me. I want them to stop hovering over me as if I’m a delicate plant that someone in the big, bad world is going to step on and crush.

  Here’s the way it goes in our house. In the morning, as soon as I enter the kitchen, my mother says, “How did you sleep, Danita?” My father hands me my vitamins and says, “Kiddo, did you brush your teeth good?” And even my little sister gets into the act. “Dani, were you cold last night? Did you have enough blankets?”

  I swallow vitamins and say, “Warm as toast, slept fine, and always brush my teeth.” Which, just then, are showing in what’s meant to pass for a smile. Finally, we move on to other things.

  My father begins reading out loud a letter someone wrote to the newspaper. “‘Dear Editor, we women do not appreciate the hairy apes that are called men today.’”

  “Hairy apes!” Lizbeth shrieks.

  Dad smiles. For years he’s been collecting the dumbest letters people write to the newspaper. He says someday he’ll make a book of them and call it Stupid Opinions. He’ll print it right at his shop. “‘How can any self-respecting man cover his face with a hairy mess called beard?’” he goes on. “‘Did you ever see one of these ape-men eat?’” He’s laughing too hard to continue. “How do you guys vote on this one?”

  “Definitely a saver, Dad,” I say. Ooops. Why did I say anything? Now he’s got me on his mind again.

  He fixes his eyes on me and says, “That’s not the way you plan to go to school, is it, sweetie?”

  Certainly, it is. I’m wearing sneakers, white ankle socks, mauve pants turned up at the ankles, and a mauve-and-white diagonally striped sweater. Plus, my best silver double hoop earrings. I spent a lot of time last night and again this morning figuring out what I was going to wear.

  “Pretty outfit, Dani, but it’s raining.”

  “Dad,” I plead, “it’s only dripping.” It’s a soft rain, and I look forward to walking in it. I might put on a jacket, but not a raincoat! Not rubbers! Not an umbrella.

  “I don’t want you taking a chance of catching a cold.”

  “Which could turn into flu which could turn into pneumonia which could cause me to die at a young, tender age,” I say.

  “Very funny,” Mom says. “I want to see that raincoat walking out the door this morning, Dani.”

  “Lizbeth—” I begin. I don’t even know what I’m going to say about Lizbeth. Just something about them never bugging her. But Mom reads me on that, too.

  “Sweetie, you’ve had every little horrible virus and nasty bug in the world. Lizbeth has never been ill a day in her life. She’s healthy as a horse.”

  The perfect thing to say about my sister! She’s a horse fanatic. She sleeps, eats, talks, thinks, and even wears horses. This morning she’s got a wooden horse on a chain around her neck, a T-shirt with an embroidered red horse on the pocket, and a belt around her jeans with a brass horse-head buckle. I think her secret desire is to be a horse.

  I gulp milk, grab a piece of toast. “‘To Arnold with whom I used to pick raspberries when we were children thirty-five years ago,’” I whisper under my breath, trying to ignore my family. That’s the title and also the beginning line of the poem I’m going to recite for Greasepaint tryouts. It’s a very sad poem, about someone who killed himself a long time ago. Every time I recite it all the way through, I cry.

  “See you guys,” I say, putting down the glass.

  “Hold it.” Dad takes my arm. “In case you haven’t noticed, sweetie, breakfast is on the table.”

  “Dad, I have to get to school early.”

  There’s less than a week until tryouts. I’m definitely not an actress; just the opposite, in fact! But somehow I’ve got it into my head that this year I have to be in drama society. Which means I need every bit of practice I can get before tryouts. And not in my bedroom, where I feel safe, but on the spot (so to speak), on the stage, in the auditorium, facing those rows and rows of seats, where I feel … I won’t lie to you … terrified.

  Mom slides a plate of loose, whitish scrambled eggs in front of me. Dad muscles me (gently, I admit, but still muscles me) into a chair. “Get any skinnier and you’ll blow away in the first stiff wind.”

  I choke back a yell of outrage. If I blow my cork, they’ll say I’m not acting like myself and conclude I’m getting sick and may not even let me go to school. According to my parents, I’m “myself” when I’m happy, calm, and cheerful. But then who am I when I’m feeling ugly, irritable, an
d disagreeable? I swallow a forkful of slimy egg, trying not to see it or taste it.

  By the time I get to school, it’s much too late to go to the auditorium to practice. “Disaster day,” I mutter between my teeth and slam my locker door a few times. Fortunately, I finally notice the note on the floor that Laredo slipped into the locker.

  DANI, LUNCH MUNCHIES TOGETHER PER UZUAL?? GUESS WHAT! I SAW YOU KNOW WHO ON THE WAY TO SCHOOL. LOVE YA. W.W.

  W.W. stands for Wild Woman. You know who is Jon Haberle, a senior-high boy I have a crush on.

  Chapter 2

  Laredo and her mom live on the east side of the city on Park Street in an apartment, which happens to be in the same building and above a place called the People’s Beer Hall. The first time Laredo invited me for a sleepover, Mom and Dad drove me there together. They parked the car, got out, looked up and down the street like a pair of housing inspectors, and advanced with murmurs and frowns on the People’s Beer Hall.

  “Your friend lives here?”

  “Not in there, Mom and Dad. Upstairs!”

  Laredo’s door is next to the bar, but completely separate. You go up a long, narrow flight of stairs. The apartment is at the top. Up we went, a parent in front of me, a parent in back of me.

  “You could get a buzz on from just breathing the smell off these walls,” Dad said.

  I prayed he wouldn’t say anything like that in front of Laredo’s mom. She was already going to be late for work, just so she could be interviewed by my parents. I should have prayed harder! Dad asked a million questions.

  “What time will you be home from work, Mrs. Gerardi? What are Laredo’s rules for being alone? Will you be calling the girls from work to check that they’re okay?”

  Finally he and Mom ran out of questions and agreed with Mrs. Gerardi that Laredo and I were responsible people and could take care of ourselves for a few hours.

  “Well, that wasn’t so bad,” Laredo said, after they all left. She locked the door.

  “Oh, no? Did you happen to notice that my father thinks I can’t walk and chew gum at the same time?”

  “Dani, don’t complain; it’s adorable the way your father worries over you.” She went into the kitchen and plugged in the popcorn maker. “I decided tonight that he’s Mr. Ideal Dad. He’s a ten, Dani.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Plus, he and your mom are still a big romance item. Another ten!”

  Laredo was impressed that every year my parents celebrated two anniversaries, the day they got married and the day they met.

  “Plus, they’ve been married sixteen years.” She poured in a cup of popcorn. “My parents couldn’t even hold it together for three crummy years. And, your father likes me.”

  “Why should he get credit for that, Laredo?”

  “Let me put it to you this way. Does my father like you?”

  “Laredo, he lives three thousand miles away in Texas. He wouldn’t know me if he fell over me.”

  “My point exactly. Your father is here, on the spot, present and accounted for. And I’ll tell you something else about your father.”

  “I know you will,” I said over the noise of popping corn. “You’re on a roll.”

  “He thinks you are the greatest thing that ever happened to him, Dani. And he tells you so. The last time my father told me anything, I can’t even remember.”

  “I’m sure he loves you,” I said.

  “Yeah, he has a great way of showing it.” She dumped the melted butter into the popcorn and we went into the living room to watch TV.

  Laredo and I met for the first time last year in gym, on the volleyball court. She was new in school. I noticed her right away—tall, lanky, all this hair flying wildly around her head. Very beautiful, and she looked athletic. Ha! She was all thumbs and clumsy feet. She did things like bumping the ball backward instead of over the net, losing us the point. Not once, not twice, but three times!

  “What a spaz that new girl is,” Heidi Gretz said, not even bothering to lower her voice.

  I glanced at Laredo. I thought she’d be crushed. Instead, she was laughing. “Sorry, guys, I’m a total flake on a court. Keep the ball away from me!”

  Later, I asked her to come home with me after school. I liked her—there was something so different about her. One thing was her enthusiasm for everything. “This is great,” she said the moment we walked into my house. “I love this place! Oh, look, a breakfast nook! Your father made this? I’ve never had a breakfast nook.” She ran from room to room, looking at everything. “A family room! Your dad built that fireplace? I don’t believe it! And you have two bathrooms.”

  Laredo had lived in apartments all her life. “Eight, no, ten apartments, counting the two I don’t remember from when I was a baby.”

  “It must be fun living in different places. I’ve always lived in this same boring house.”

  “Oh, ta! Poor baby!” “Ta!” was Laredo’s expression of sympathy, scorn, warmth, irony, whatever. “Ta!” was for everything, and I picked it up from her. We said “ta” to each other when we met, and “ta” when we parted. It became our special word.

  One day we made ourselves blood sisters. Laredo’s idea, of course. She sterilized a needle over the kitchen stove. I’m sure I turned pale. I closed my eyes and tried to make a joke. “Practicing to be a doctor?” Laredo wanted to go to medical school someday.

  “It’ll be fast,” she said, and a moment later, “Okay, open your peepers.”

  I saw a thin line of red dots. Quickly, she pricked her thumb and put it over mine. Our blood mingled.

  “Ta, Dani,” she said solemnly. “We’re linked forever.”

  Chapter 3

  Laredo gave me an elbow in the ribs and rolled her eyes at a boy walking by us. “Oh, my soul,” she sighed. She craned her neck after him.

  We were sitting on the bench near the fountain in the Springfield Mall after school. We’d come over so Laredo could look at guys and I could look at Jon Haberle. He worked at Ice Dreams, and from where we were sitting I could see him in his little white-walled space. I’d like to say I could see him clearly, but since I’m nearsighted, this wasn’t the case.

  “Don’t you think Jon looks like—” I mentioned a movie star.

  Laredo looked dubious. “Maybe.”

  I drifted off into one of my daydreams about Jon noticing me. It could happen here … or in school.… He’d come up to me, stop, really look at me, and then he’d take my hand, gaze straight into my face and say, Danita, I’ve wanted to talk to you for so long … all I think about is you. “Ohhh,” I sighed.

  “What?” Laredo said.

  “Nothing. Just … Jon.”

  “You could make something happen with him, you know, Dani. You could go over there and order something and—”

  “No, I couldn’t!”

  “—and then you’d talk to him, and—”

  “I can’t, Laredo.”

  “Why not? I’d do it.”

  “I’m not you. And my father says there’s no use trying to be something you’re not.”

  “With all respect to your father, that’s not convincing.”

  I tried to think of a better reason why I couldn’t talk to Jon. “He’s a junior.”

  “So?”

  “Laredo, junior boys are not interested in eighth-grade girls.”

  “Dani, you know what I think? Boys are just like everybody else—insecure. I bet they love it if a girl does some of the work for them. Maybe Jon is shy, too.”

  “You think so?”

  “Why not? You’ll never know, though, if all you do is lurk.”

  I watched Jon dipping ice cream. I admired the serious way he bent over and scooped, then flashed his gorgeous smile when he held the cone out to the customer.

  Laredo tapped my arm. “Cute-boy alert. Over by Kroll Book Store. Put on your glasses.”

  The boy Laredo had noticed was leaning against the wall outside the store, one foot back up behind him. Even with my glasses, I
couldn’t see him that well, except that he was older.

  “He’s giving us the big once-over,” Laredo said. She stood up. “I’m going to go over there and stare back at him.”

  “Laredo!” I grabbed her shirt. “You can’t do that.”

  “Yes, I can.”

  Before she could move, the boy moved first. He strolled down the aisle. He was coming toward us. Laredo sat down again with a smile. “He’s adorable,” she said. “Hey, cutie … love your ponytail … look this way … I desire you,” she crooned softly. But as he got closer, she shut up.

  He was definitely staring at us. Embarrassed, I pulled off my glasses and looked down. As he passed, all I saw were his feet. Red sneakers. Bare ankles. No socks. Then he disappeared around a corner.

  My sister came into my room that night while I was doing homework and said she wanted to talk to me. “Sure. Go ahead.”

  “I want you to listen.” Lizbeth was wearing her nightgown. She had her toothbrush in her hand. “Close your book. Sit up.”

  I snapped my book shut and sat up on my bed, crossing my legs. “Is this posture satisfactory, your highness?”

  “That’s good.”

  She never gets it when you’re being sarcastic.

  She fiddled with her toothbrush. I don’t know how she’d managed, but she’d found one with a horse on it. “You know, Dani,” she said, “we women have to be prepared for anything.”

  I could have laughed, I guess. “What TV show did you pick that up from?” I said. “On second thought, I don’t want to know.” I opened my book and started studying again.

  “Dani!”

  “What?”

  “I want to ask you something. Can I come to you for advice?”

  I turned the page. “What’s the matter, what kind of advice?”

  “Nothing now. I just wanted to know for the future if I could. Because sometimes I think of things—and, you know, I get sort of worried.”

  “The same thing happens to me, Lizbeth.” I put my finger in my place. “I think of things and I get worried.”