“That’s not an interesting enough thing,” Alison protested. “I mean, everyone in the whole school lives in Colorado.”
“Were you all born in Colorado?” Ethan asked.
Lizzie, Marcia, and Julius were; Ethan, Alison, and Alex weren’t.
“How about, do we all ski?” Alex asked.
The others nodded. It would have been easy enough for Lizzie to nod, too, but she couldn’t honestly do it. “I don’t,” she said apologetically.
“Ride bikes?” Alex tried again.
Lizzie felt more embarrassed shaking her head this time.
“You don’t ride a bike?” Alex asked, his tone scornful, unbelieving. “But you must know how to ride a bike.”
Lizzie felt her face giving her away. She knew it was strange that she didn’t know how to ride a bike, that she had never even tried to ride one, but that was the way it was. Her mother couldn’t ride a bike, either. She felt like giving up. New clothes or no new clothes, she would never be like the others.
Luckily, Julius made another suggestion. “Do you all like pizza?”
“Actually,” Alison said, “I don’t. I hate anything with cheese on it.”
“Ice cream?” Julius offered.
This time they all nodded, even Lizzie. Lizzie felt a surge of relief. There was something she had in common with all the others, after all.
“Okay, then,” Marcia said, resuming the leadership role. “Now something we don’t have in common. I’ll go first. I can do a split. Can any of you do a split?”
Nobody could.
“I do rock climbing. Do any of you rock-climb?” Alex asked.
Nobody did. Two down, four to go.
“I play the clarinet,” Alison said. “Anybody else, clarinet?” The others shook their heads.
Lizzie had been afraid she would have to say something like, “I write poetry,” or “I have a closet full of strange clothes.” But Alison had made it easy for her. “Flute?” Lizzie asked. Sure enough, she was the only one who played the flute.
She waited to see what Ethan would offer.
“Umm…”
She could tell he couldn’t think of anything. She knew he didn’t play an instrument. He liked basketball, but so did Julius and Alex. He had read A Tale of Two Cities, but so had she. He was good in science, but she was good in science, too.
Julius spoke up. “Any of you ever change a diaper?”
Alex pretended to gag. Marcia squealed with disgust and horror.
“Ethan and I have. But we did it together.”
“Then it doesn’t count,” Marcia said.
“We can’t share it? It was a pretty major thing, let me tell you.”
“No.” Marcia held to her ruling.
“Okay,” Julius said good-naturedly. “Have you ever been to Mesa Verde?”
Alison had.
“Yellowstone?” No one else had. “Okay, my thing is that I’ve been to Yellowstone.”
Now Ethan was the only one without something. Lizzie had thought that the worst thing would be to have nothing in common with the others, but it was also terrible to have nothing about you that was distinctive. And yet Ethan was so wonderful. There had to be something special about him, some characteristic that was his alone.
Lizzie had an idea. “What’s your sign?”
“My sign?”
“Your astrological sign.”
“I don’t know.”
How could he not know? Didn’t he ever read his horoscope?
“When’s your birthday?”
“November sixteenth.”
Lizzie stored the date in her memory for future reference. “Then you’re a Scorpio. Is anyone else a Scorpio? October twenty-third through November twenty-first?”
No one was. Ethan’s face brightened.
Lizzie knew there were lots of things more special about Ethan than his sign. But at least she had helped him think of something. She couldn’t very well have said, “Ethan was the only one who stood up for me last year when Marcia and Alex were mean. Ethan was the one who taught me to light the bunsen burner. Ethan is the only one with a cute cowlick that sticks up on the back of his head.” She accepted his smile of mingled relief and gratitude.
That was the last class Lizzie had with Ethan; he wasn’t in seventh-period science or, of course, in eighth-period gym. But it would have been greedy to ask the universe for anything more.
She walked home by herself after school. The walk was long, but pleasant. As her parents were still at work, Aunt Elspeth greeted her instead. “So?” Aunt Elspeth asked. “How was it?”
“Good,” Lizzie told her. “My clothes felt funny for a while, but I got some compliments from the other girls.”
Two other girls besides Alison had told Lizzie they liked her top. But there had also been several groups of girls, like the three out on the blacktop, who had pointed and whispered and burst into giggles.
“Do you have anyone interesting in any of your classes?”
Lizzie loved Aunt Elspeth for understanding so well. “Yes! In three of them.”
She went upstairs to change out of her jeans and tank top and into a long white dress. She was probably the only kid in her school who would change from jeans to a dress in order to feel more comfortable. Then she fixed herself a glass of lemonade, took her horoscope book, and climbed into the hammock.
One of Lizzie’s many rules for herself was that she could never look at her horoscope more than one day in advance. Peeking ahead would be like reading the last page of a book first—almost like cheating.
Knowing Ethan’s sign and having two horoscopes to check was exciting. She turned, somewhat nervously, to the chart in the back of the book that told which signs were romantically suited to each other. Please, please, please, let Aries go with Scorpio.
But Aries was matched with Leo and Capricorn. Oh, well. Many great loves had doubtless been doomed by the stars, and yet triumphed over the forces of fate.
Lizzie read Ethan’s horoscope:
Scorpio (October 23–November 21). Beware of romantic attachments at this time. An old flame will try to recapture your heart. This is a good day to put business affairs in order.
Romantic attachments? Did that mean Lizzie? Was she an old flame? But she had never had Ethan’s heart in the first place, and so could hardly “recapture” it—or had she? And “business affairs.” What did they mean by “business affairs”? Maybe school? Maybe the horoscope was telling Ethan to get a good start on his schoolwork. That was clearly sensible advice.
With mounting uneasiness—how could Ethan be any further from romantic attachments than he was already?—Lizzie made herself read the entry for Aries to see what the stars held for her on the second day of seventh grade.
Aries (March 21–April 19). Be careful of appearances. Things seem to be going well, but appearances can deceive.
Once again, Lizzie was stunned by the aptness of the horoscope. How could these horoscope writers know her life so completely? Appearances can deceive. Yes, they could deceive—but did that mean they were deceiving? She itched to read the next day’s horoscope, but made herself shut the book and keep it shut. One day at a time.
Four
On Tuesday, Lizzie put on her new green T-shirt with her jeans. She didn’t even change her outfit once. And she didn’t flinch as she walked into the kitchen to face her family.
Once again, Aunt Elspeth smiled at her. Once again, her father was oblivious. And once again, her mother looked worried. Not terribly worried, the way she had looked so often last year, when she was up for tenure at the university. But the lines around her eyes deepened into a tenderness that looked almost like pity. That couldn’t be right. Why would Lizzie’s mother feel sorry for her for being bold, for presenting to the world a new, improved Lizzie?
Lizzie pretended not to see. She set about making herself some cinnamon toast, grateful that the new, improved Lizzie still got to eat the same old favorite foods.
“Homew
ork done?” her mother asked her. The question was a standing joke between them: Lizzie’s homework was always done.
Lizzie gave her a smile. Cinnamon toast, homework joke—it was good to have some things stay the same. But even as she smiled, she wondered: Was the flawlessly done homework a problem, too, as much as the vintage clothes? Did the others resent her unbroken string of A’s? Last year other kids had often called Lizzie a nerd. Were you a nerd if you got good grades? What was a nerd?
Well, her father was a nerd, Lizzie knew that much. She looked at him fondly, hunched over his New York Times, twirling his bushy beard as he read. But was her mother a nerd for loving Jane Austen and still having long, sixties-style hair, now streaked with gray? Was she, Lizzie, a nerd? How could she find out? Was there a book in the library: Nerds: How Not to Be One?
When her parents dropped her off at school, Lizzie slipped out of the car before anyone could see her mother kissing her. She spotted Alison, standing with a girl named Sarah who had been in Lizzie’s math class last year. Shyly, she joined them.
Sarah rolled her eyes at Alison, but Alison didn’t roll hers back. “Hi, Lizzie,” Alison said, as friendly as she had been the day before.
“Did you get the math homework done?” Sarah asked, speaking more to Alison than to Lizzie. “It took my parents three hours to figure it out. And my dad is good at math, too.”
Lizzie hadn’t thought the homework was hard. She waited to see what Alison would say.
Alison made a face. “I gave up on the last two problems. I don’t think Grotient expected anyone to get them.”
Lizzie had gotten them. Except for one little twist, they were just like the others.
“You got them all, I bet,” Sarah said, turning for the first time to Lizzie. Lizzie heard open dislike in Sarah’s voice, despite her new clothes.
What was Lizzie supposed to say? Was she supposed to lie? She wasn’t good at lying. Pink color always flooded her face and gave her away. Sure enough, she could feel her cheeks turning warm. “I can’t help it if I’m good at math,” she wanted to say. But maybe she could help it. Did she really have to get every problem right, all the time?
“Well, I think I got most of them,” she said cautiously.
She had to change the subject, fast. What other subjects were there? She looked at Sarah’s short red skirt and Alison’s white tank top, edged in eyelet lace. It was interesting that you could wear lace like that on a tank top and it was fine, but if you had a whole dress of it, you were a nerd.
“I like that top,” she said to Alison.
It worked. “Do you?” Alison asked eagerly. “I wasn’t sure about it.”
“It’s really cute,” Sarah agreed. She hesitated. “I like your top, too, Lizzie,” she added, as if sorry for her tone before. “That shade of green goes great with your hair.”
Lizzie got the message: green top, yes; being good at math, no.
The bell rang. Day number two of Lizzie’s transformation had officially begun.
As Lizzie walked into school, no one commented any further on her clothes, or did a double take when they saw her. School got off to a good start first period, when, for forty-seven happy minutes, Lizzie lost herself in the flute. It couldn’t be nerdy to play an instrument. Lots of popular kids were in orchestra, though not Marcia or Alex.
In English class, Ms. Singpurwalla was wearing an orange sari. Lizzie wondered if she would wear a sari every day. Lizzie hoped so. Saris were so pretty and graceful and flowing, like Lizzie’s dresses, only more colorful and exotic. Was it nerdy to wear saris? There was nothing nerdy about Ms. Singpurwalla, with her dark, gentle beauty. Maybe some people were nerds whatever they wore, while others were never nerdy, however nerdy their clothes would look on somebody else. That was an interesting hypothesis. But as Lizzie considered it, she realized it couldn’t be true. She was definitely less nerdy in her new clothes. That was a plain fact.
Ms. Singpurwalla spent the first ten minutes of the class on grammar. Lizzie loved grammar, but, glancing at Marcia, she tried to mimic Marcia’s bored expression as well as she could.
Then Ms. Singpurwalla told the class to get out their copies of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. “The beauty of Shakespeare’s language can be fully appreciated only if it is read aloud,” she said. “Frequently, I’m going to assign parts and let you take turns on our classroom stage as young Shakespearean actors. We’ll work on Act One, Scene One, today. I know the story is a little hard to follow at first. Remember, Helena is in love with Demetrius, who is in love with Hermia, who is in love with Lysander. It’ll get easier as we go along. I promise! Do I have any volunteers to take a part?”
Lizzie couldn’t help herself: she had to read Helena, lovesick Helena, who pined so for Demetrius. Reading over Helena’s lines in Scene One last night, she had learned most of them by heart:
Call you me fair? that fair again unsay.
Demetrius loves your fair: O happy fair!
She was Helena. And Ethan was her Demetrius.
Up went her hand. At least she wasn’t waving it frantically in the air. But she knew, without looking around the room, that hers was the only hand that was raised.
“Lizzie? It’s Lizzie, isn’t it?” That was another thing about Lizzie. Teachers always learned her name first. “What part would you like to read for us?”
“Helena,” Lizzie whispered.
“Helena it is. Any other volunteers?”
To Lizzie’s relief, Tom, the boy who had seen Romeo and Juliet at the Shakespeare festival, offered to play the part of Theseus, the Duke of Athens. She wasn’t the only pathetically eager one. As Ms. Singpurwalla waited, a couple of other kids volunteered, too.
“We still need a Hermia,” Ms. Singpurwalla said, once the volunteers had run out. “You…” She pointed to Marcia.
Marcia gave her name reluctantly.
“Marcia, you shall be our Hermia.”
Lizzie saw Marcia exchange a disdainful look with Alex. Then, as always, Marcia giggled.
The cast took their places in the front of the room. The scene began. Most of the actors stumbled over the difficult lines of Shakespearean English. Ms. Singpurwalla stopped them occasionally to clarify some unfamiliar word or puzzling phrase. Lizzie noticed that Tom made a remarkably good Theseus.
Marcia read her first lines woodenly, without a single giggle. Then she reached the lines:
So will I grow, so live, so die, my lord,
Ere I will yield my virgin patent up
Unto his lordship …
Halfway through this speech, Marcia started laughing so uncontrollably that she couldn’t continue. Unsmiling, Ms. Singpurwalla sent her back to her seat and chose another Hermia.
Helena didn’t enter until late in the scene. From her opening lines, Lizzie took full possession of the part, glad she had spent so much time on it the night before. The girl who was now playing the role of Hermia breathed new life into her own lines as she spoke them in dialogue with Lizzie’s Helena.
When the scene came to a close, Ms. Singpurwalla applauded, and, to Lizzie’s great surprise, a few of her classmates—mostly kids who didn’t know her from before—joined in. “Well done, Lizzie!” Ms. Singpurwalla said. It was wonderful to begin seventh grade with a moment of pure triumph.
But as Lizzie was leaving class, Marcia fell into step beside her. Marcia’s eyes were glittering with a nasty rage. She might not have wanted to play the part of Hermia in the first place, but she plainly hadn’t liked having it taken away from her.
“If I liked a boy,” Marcia said, “I wouldn’t stand up in front of the whole class and make a fool of him that way.”
“What do you mean?” Lizzie asked, knowing all too well what Marcia meant.
“Did you see Ethan’s face?”
Lizzie hadn’t.
“How do you think he felt, with the whole class listening to you going on and on about how much you love that guy—whatever his name is—when everyone knew you were really
talking about Ethan?”
Was Lizzie so obvious? She did think of Ethan as her Demetrius, but she hadn’t thought Marcia would see that. Frankly, she hadn’t thought Marcia would pay enough attention to what was going on in the play to figure it out. Maybe she had done too good a job of bringing the play to life.
“It’s only a play.” The defense sounded lame, even to Lizzie. “I just thought it would be fun to act it out.”
“Oh, can I be Helena? Please, please, can I be Helena?”
Lizzie flushed. She hadn’t waved her hand or gushed. She had taken great pains not to.
Lizzie knew right then that if she couldn’t win Marcia over, she’d never fit in. She’d be Lizzie the Lizard, Lizzie the Nerd, forever.
“I didn’t mean for it to sound that way,” she said quietly. “Really I didn’t.” With one last flickering hope, born of desperation, she remembered how asking Marcia about the new clothes yesterday had worked. “Listen, if you liked a boy, what would you do?”
Marcia hesitated, as if determining whether the question was for real. “What would I do?”
The girls kept on walking. Lizzie’s pulse was racing. She could feel that her cheeks were flaming scarlet. If Marcia gave her a serious answer, there was still hope. If Marcia sneered, or giggled, it was all over. At least Lizzie would be able to wear her white dresses again. But the thought held little comfort now.
“What would I do?” Marcia repeated. “Well, I certainly wouldn’t write all over a huge, enormous bill-board that I liked him. I’d act like I didn’t like him. You know, insult him: joke insults, funny insults. Things like that.”
They were at the door of the math room. There was something else that Lizzie had to ask. “If you were his PAL partner, would you help him with math?”
Marcia sighed, as if saddened that the world could contain such stupidity. But at least she answered. “I’d let him help me. Any other questions?” Her tone was sarcastic, but Lizzie had definitely heard worse from Marcia, much worse.
“No,” Lizzie answered humbly. “Thanks, Marcia.”
“Just use a little common sense,” Marcia said. “Common sense. That’s all it takes.”
Lizzie At Last Page 3
