Common sense. Lizzie wasn’t sure her common sense was the same as Marcia’s common sense, but Marcia’s common sense had clearly worked better than Lizzie’s so far. No one could ever call Marcia a nerd, and boys liked Marcia, the same way that Demetrius and Lysander both liked Hermia. Common sense, Marcia style, might not have been recommended by Lizzie’s horoscope, but Lizzie was going to give it a try.
Five
By Friday morning, Lizzie’s new clothes no longer felt as foreign to her, though she still changed out of them as soon as she got home. She hadn’t volunteered to read again in English class, which was fine, as Ms. Singpurwalla seemed to want to give everyone a turn. Mr. Grotient hadn’t started Peer-Assisted Learning yet, which was also fine: Lizzie needed time to figure out how she could instantly become less good in math than Ethan, after years of being the class math whiz.
During first period, Lizzie half listened to the usual long list of morning announcements: the day’s lunch menu, practices for field hockey and soccer, the first planning meeting for the seventh-grade dance, a back-to-school roller-skating party on Saturday night. It was time for the Labor Day weekend already: she had survived a whole entire week of seventh grade. That was good. What wasn’t good was that Aunt Elspeth’s visit was over: she was flying back to Chicago on Sunday.
As Lizzie started to get out her flute, Alison stopped by her chair, clarinet in hand. “Are you going to go?” Alison asked.
Lizzie had no idea what Alison was talking about: the dreaded dance was still weeks away. “Go where?” she asked cautiously.
“To the roller-skating party.”
Lizzie couldn’t have been more surprised if Alison had asked her, in the same casual way, if she was going up on the next space shuttle. She never went to parties; she had never been on roller skates in her life. On Saturday night she was going to a chamber music concert at the university with her parents and Aunt Elspeth.
She started to say, “No, of course not.” But surely popular girls would at least consider going to parties. “I wasn’t planning on it,” Lizzie said guardedly.
“We could go together,” Alison suggested. There was something hopeful, wistful, in her voice.
Lizzie hesitated. She wasn’t used to being invited to things.
Alison apparently took Lizzie’s hesitation as indecision. “Come on, Lizzie,” she urged.
“I don’t really know how to roller-skate,” Lizzie said. It was the understatement of the century.
“Me neither!” Alison pounced joyfully on Lizzie’s confession. “But if you’re terrible at something, it’s more fun being terrible together.”
“I don’t have skates.”
“We can rent them there.”
Things were happening too fast. Should she go? For once, Lizzie wished she had peeked ahead at her horoscope, just one day. Would Ethan go? Would Marcia laugh when she saw Lizzie trying to skate? If she refused to go, would Alison not want to be friends anymore?
“Okay,” Lizzie finally said.
Alison’s face lit up with grateful relief.
“Girls,” Mr. Harrison interrupted them. “We’re all waiting for you.”
Another first for Lizzie: being reprimanded by a teacher. Hurriedly she finished assembling her flute, but she could hardly concentrate on the music. What had she gotten herself into? And could she get out of it if her horoscope indicated that this was a disastrous idea? She could always be sick: suddenly, unexpectedly, violently sick. How long did it take to come down with double pneumonia? Did people still get typhoid fever?
* * *
“About the concert tomorrow night?” Lizzie broached the subject at dinner that evening. Aunt Elspeth had made lasagna, and Lizzie wanted to savor every cheesy bite. But she couldn’t enjoy eating until she had gotten her announcement over with. “Would it be all right if I didn’t go?”
“Don’t you want to go?” her mother asked, exchanging a look with Aunt Elspeth. It was obvious that Lizzie must have been a topic of conversation between them sometime during the past week.
“Well, I do, but there’s this back-to-school roller-skating party, and I sort of promised this girl Alison I’d go with her.”
“But the Tokyo Quartet—” her father began, as Lizzie had known he would.
“Of course you should go to the party,” Aunt Elspeth said at the same time. “There will be other concerts.” Lizzie loved Aunt Elspeth for defending her, but half wished her parents would refuse to let her miss the concert.
“Not other concerts by the Tokyo Quartet,” Lizzie’s father protested, but his voice was mild, as it always was.
“Is Alison a new friend?” Lizzie’s mother asked. Lizzie thought there was something overly hopeful in her mother’s tone, as if she was glad Lizzie had a friend at last. “Do you want to go to the party with her?”
“She was in French class with me last summer,” Lizzie said, “and she plays the clarinet. I think I’d have more fun at the concert, but I think I should go to the party.” At least, her horoscope thought she should—she had checked the minute she got home. For Saturday, August 30, it had said:
This is a good day to try something new. Romance will smile on you. Keep business affairs in the background today.
“If I don’t go, Alison will have to go alone,” Lizzie added.
“You don’t know how to skate,” her mother reminded her, as if this could possibly be something that Lizzie had forgotten.
“There’s a first time for everything!” Aunt Elspeth said brightly.
This was doubtless true, but Lizzie wondered if the best time for learning to roller-skate was in front of the entire seventh grade, almost certainly including Marcia and Alex, and possibly including Ethan.
“Go,” her mother said gently. “Go to the party if that’s what you want.”
Was it what she wanted? Lizzie didn’t know.
* * *
Alison called Lizzie Saturday afternoon to finalize plans for the evening. “My mother’ll drive us. We’ll pick you up at seven, okay?”
“What should we wear?”
“Just regular clothes. Jeans. I’m going to wear that lacy white top. The one you said you liked. Why don’t you wear the turquoise one you wore on Monday?”
Just regular clothes. Lizzie let the expression sink in.
“Okay.” Lizzie paused, then said, “Alison?”
“What?”
“I can’t roller-skate at all.”
“Then we’ll hang out by the snack bar. We’ll act like skating bores us.” Alison laughed. “Or pretend you’ve twisted your ankle. You’re a good actress. You can fake something.”
Lizzie laughed, too. After the girls hung up, Lizzie tried to do some math homework, with limited success. She knew she’d have to double-check all the problems tomorrow, when the roller-skating ordeal would be behind her.
One nice thing had happened so far that she hadn’t expected. She found herself liking Alison, really liking her, not just pretending to like her so she could fit in. She had a feeling that, in time, she and Alison might become friends.
* * *
Lizzie hung back and let Alison be the one to shyly push open the door to the rink. It was dark inside, very dark, the rink itself eerily lit by pulsating strobe lights overhead. The rock music blaring over the speakers was deafening. Lizzie had seen bumper stickers that said, IF IT’S TOO LOUD, YOU’RE TOO OLD. Twelve couldn’t be all that old, but the music was way too loud for Lizzie. She couldn’t help but put her hands over her ears; Alison had hers over her ears, too.
Lizzie had to shout to be heard. “Now what?”
In the dim light by the door, Lizzie could see that Alison was nervous, too. “I don’t know.”
“Are you girls with the West Creek Middle School group?” A teenaged girl approached them. Her red T-shirt said ROLLERAMA, so Lizzie figured she must work for the rink. “You pay over there.” The girl pointed. “And then you go to that counter over there to rent your skates.” As if read
ing their stricken faces, she added, “Cheer up. This is supposed to be fun.”
By the time she sat alongside the rink, buckling on her knee pads and elbow pads, Lizzie’s eyes had become more used to the darkness, and her ears somewhat more used to the noise. She had promised her parents she would rent protective equipment, though she could see that most kids didn’t.
Alison strapped a helmet over her straight blond hair as Lizzie fastened one over her red curls. Lizzie couldn’t imagine that she looked all that attractive and popular with her pads and helmet on. More like the goalie of a hockey team for terrified, nerdy midgets.
“Ready?” Alison shouted.
Never in a million years would Lizzie be ready for this, but she forced a fixed smile to her face and clumped behind Alison to the rink.
On the rink, Lizzie tried one tiny, tentative glide. Her skates kept going, as if bewitched by the smooth surface beneath their wheels. Just as she was about to fall, she grabbed the railing at the side of the rink and held on for dear life. Motioning with one hand for Alison to go on, she clung to the railing with the other.
Alison could skate at least a little bit, enough to let go of the railing, though she was one of the most awkward skaters there. Then Lizzie saw Marcia, whizzing by toward the center of the rink. Alex was chasing her; they were both laughing. How could their feet go like that, so smoothly, without making them fall?
Lizzie hobbled along the edge of the rink, relieved to discover that the railing went all the way around. It was going to be a long two hours until Alison’s mother returned at nine-thirty. Right now the Tokyo Quartet would be tuning up on the brightly lit stage in a hushed auditorium. Lizzie tried not to think about it.
She was almost around the rink once when she saw catastrophe looming. The railing that was her life-support system ended at the entrance/exit to the rink, leaving about ten long feet with nothing whatsoever to hang on to. She could turn around and go back in the other direction—but everybody in the rink seemed to be going the same way, all counterclockwise, whatever their speed or proficiency. Or she could let go of the railing and try to get across that yawning gap without assistance. Or she could stand where she was for the rest of the night.
Lizzie tried the third option, since at least it allowed her to rest. Marcia and Alex sped by once, twice, three times, as Alison continued to trace a second laborious circle. Lizzie hadn’t seen Ethan or Julius and hoped they weren’t there yet to see her, stuck in place like a stupefied statue. On their next time past, Marcia and Alex glanced Lizzie’s way and burst out laughing.
She had to make herself try option two. She could cross ten feet without a railing if she took small steps and planted her feet firmly with each one.
She took one step, then another. On the third, her feet slid out from under her and she went sprawling. How could she fall so hard when she had been going so slow? And she had no protective padding covering her tailbone.
Lizzie tried to stand up, but as soon as she awkwardly hoisted herself to her feet, down she went again, falling even harder this time. Tears of pain and humiliation stung her eyes. This is a good day to try something new. Romance will smile on you. As soon as she got home—if she ever got home—she was going to rip her horoscope book, every page of it, into shreds.
A strong hand reached down and grasped hers, pulling her up. It was Ethan! Quickly she blinked her tears away.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
Lizzie nodded shakily. Ethan was still holding her hand.
“Hey, Julius!” Ethan called. “Over here!” Julius appeared and took hold of Lizzie’s other hand.
“Come on,” Ethan said. “Hang on to us until you get used to it.”
Lizzie tried to swallow the torrent of emotions that were half choking her: embarrassment, relief, gratitude, love. With a boy on each side of her, she let herself be towed slowly around the rink.
“Relax,” Ethan coached her. “We’ve got you. You can’t fall.”
On their second time around, Lizzie caught sight of Alison, who was still doggedly circling on her own. Alison waved. On the third time around, Marcia passed them; she turned to stare. Then she gave Lizzie an unmistakable smile of what had to be amused congratulation.
The speakers were blaring a song Lizzie had never heard before. She could barely make out the three words: “You, me, tonight.” She knew it was not what her parents were hearing from the Tokyo Quartet, but right now Lizzie preferred it to all the classical music in the world.
Then Ethan and Julius deposited Lizzie back by the entranceway.
“Thank you,” she managed to whisper. She realized they couldn’t hear her above the music. “Thank you!” she shouted.
“Anytime,” Julius said.
Ethan gave a shy grin.
The boys skated away. Weak-legged and trembling, Lizzie eased off the rink and dropped down onto one of the benches just outside.
You, me, tonight.
Maybe she wouldn’t rip up her horoscope book, after all.
Six
Lizzie slept later than usual on Sunday morning and awoke to find a bright shaft of sunlight splashed across the foot of her bed. For a few moments she lay there, soaking up the sunlight, soaking up the silence. The dark, noisy roller-skating party was over!
The five minutes Ethan had skated with her, his hand holding hers firmly—We’ve got you. You can’t fall—had been the only five minutes of the party that Lizzie could honestly say she hadn’t hated. Of course, they had been extremely wonderful, those five minutes. But after they were over, Lizzie had spent a long hour and a half standing by the snack bar, wishing Ethan would look her way again, waiting for the evening to end. Alison had hung out with her for most of the time, tired herself of skating, but it had been impossible to have a real conversation over the pounding, thumping bass of the music.
Her family had still been at the concert when Lizzie returned home and dragged herself upstairs gratefully to bed. So her mother and Aunt Elspeth turned expectant faces toward her when she came down to the kitchen for breakfast.
“How was it?” they said together.
Lizzie wouldn’t have minded talking about the party to either of them alone, but she didn’t feel like giving all the details to both of them together. For a moment she almost resented their interest in her evening. Couldn’t a person go to one simple roller-skating party without having to give a full report when she returned? It wasn’t that amazing that a person would go to a party, even when the person was Lizzie.
Then she relented. They only wanted to know because they loved her. And it was amazing that Lizzie had gone to a roller-skating party. It was.
“I didn’t like it very much,” Lizzie admitted. “The place was so dark, and you couldn’t talk to anybody over the music, and, well, as you said, I can’t skate. But I guess I’m glad I went.”
She could feel her face flushing at the memory of the encounter with Ethan. She knew that Aunt Elspeth, at least, understood the meaning of the blush. It was hard having a face that told everything, even secret, private things that you wanted to treasure by yourself rather than share.
Lizzie did some more homework—yes, she had made mistakes in two of the math problems she had done yesterday in her pre-roller-skating tizzy—and read for a while: The Mill on the Floss, by George Eliot. Then, after a rushed lunch of leftovers, Lizzie’s parents got ready to take Aunt Elspeth to the airport.
At the gate, Aunt Elspeth’s eyes filled with tears when the boarding announcement came. “This has been a hard year for me.” Lizzie knew Aunt Elspeth was talking about her divorce from Uncle Will. “These last two weeks have been very special.”
The three of them hugged her, first Lizzie’s father, then Lizzie’s mother, then, last of all, Lizzie. “Thank you,” Lizzie whispered. “For all the new clothes and—everything.”
“You e-mail me!” Aunt Elspeth whispered back. “I want to hear more installments in the saga of how Elizabeth Bennet Archer conquers seventh grade.”
As Aunt Elspeth disappeared through the gate, Lizzie wanted to call her back and tell her everything she hadn’t told her: Ethan skated with me! What do I do next? She couldn’t conquer seventh grade alone. But she was going to have to try.
* * *
The next week, it seemed as if seventh grade was going to conquer Lizzie. On Tuesday, in family living, Ms. Van Winkle led the class into a different classroom, full of sewing machines.
“Now,” she said, “we are going to be learning basic sewing on the machine.”
Lizzie didn’t need a horoscope to predict that the sewing machines would be a complete and utter disaster. Lizzie was not good with machines. That was the main reason she couldn’t ride a bike or roller-skate: bikes and skates were machines—they had wheels that moved in ways you couldn’t control. Lizzie didn’t even like computers. You e-mail me, Aunt Elspeth had said. But Lizzie preferred old-fashioned letters, written with an old-fashioned pen.
There weren’t enough sewing machines for everyone in the class, so Ms. Van Winkle assigned partners: Lizzie got Julius. She was relieved. Julius was a comforting person to be with. He was kind, like Ethan, but also funny, in a cheerful, klutzy way. Last summer, when they had done French cooking in Intensive Summer Language Learning, Julius had dropped a whole pan of quiche on the floor. Lizzie had liked him ever since.
Using a diagram on the overhead projector, Ms. Van Winkle showed the class how to thread the machines. Lizzie wasn’t good at diagrams. Neither was Julius. They looked at each other and shrugged helplessly.
Ms. Van Winkle circulated from machine to machine to check their work. When she got to Julius and Lizzie, she said, “No. I’m not doing it for you. Come on, you two, give it a try. Look at the diagram. The machine is just like the diagram.”
Apparently Julius had been struck deaf in the last two minutes. In any case, he didn’t respond to Ms. Van Winkle’s instructions. So Lizzie, with a desperate glance at the diagram, tried leading the thread around the little knobs that stuck out from the front of the sewing machine, down and up and around, like a miniature roller coaster.
Lizzie At Last Page 4
