She couldn’t bear to go back to being the Lizard again. Was it too much to ask just to be normal? At least sort of normal, almost normal, the next best thing to normal?
“You don’t have to let me know right now,” Mr. Grotient said. “I told you, this is a real commitment. You’re the only one who can decide whether or not you want to make that commitment. But I hope you do, Lizzie. I don’t know who started this idea that it’s uncool to be smart, but in my view, what’s really uncool is to throw away abilities like yours.”
“I’ll think about it,” Lizzie said, over the lump in her throat, as she stood up to go.
“September twenty-sixth,” Mr. Grotient said. “I’ll need to know by September twenty-sixth. And, Lizzie, no more D’s, do you hear? Or C’s, or B’s. Let’s see those A’s again.”
As Lizzie hurried down the school steps, she knew she should have felt relieved. Instead of yelling at her, Mr. Grotient had offered her the ultimate compliment. So why did she feel so close to tears?
Eleven
The next football game was away. Lizzie was glad not to have to go. It was lovely to think of a whole weekend stretching ahead of her where she wouldn’t have to creep up and down those unsteady bleachers, where she wouldn’t have to count the seconds in her head until the game could be over.
After breakfast on Saturday, Lizzie called Alison to see if she wanted to do something else together. So far Alison had always been the one who called Lizzie: years of nerddom had made Lizzie shy about taking the initiative with other kids in social situations. But she knew it wasn’t fair for Alison always to be the one to do the calling.
“Do you want to come over here, or should I go over there?” Alison asked.
“Why don’t I come to your house?” Lizzie suggested, relieved that Alison had left the choice up to her. Lizzie loved her parents with all her heart, but she wasn’t ready to have Alison come to her house and meet them—her father in his too-long pants, her mother in a faded dress. Maybe the next time Aunt Elspeth came to visit, she could take Lizzie’s parents shopping, too.
Lizzie liked Alison’s house right away. It was big, and somewhat shabby, and bursting with boys. Alison had three brothers, one older and two younger. That day the two little brothers were playing a game in which one was a lion and the other was a lion tamer. The game included lots of whip-cracking, leaping through hoops of imaginary fire, and roaring. Ten minutes into the game, all the cushions had been stripped from the couch and the coffee table was overturned.
“Maybe we should have gone to your house,” Alison said, looking a bit embarrassed as Lizzie, in amazement, surveyed the wreckage strewing the lion cage. It was odd to think that Alison might be embarrassed about her family, too.
“I like it here.”
“My mom’s pretty much given up on peace and quiet. The only rules are: no playing with matches, no playing in the street, no climbing on the piano.”
Lizzie had noticed the gleaming grand piano as soon as she had come into Alison’s living room. It was the only thing in the house that wasn’t battered or broken. “Do you play piano?” she asked Alison. “As well as clarinet?”
“Since I was five. It’s my real instrument. I’m just doing clarinet at school for fun.”
“Will you play something for me?” Lizzie had taken piano lessons herself for three years back in elementary school, before she switched to flute.
Alison shut the double doors between the living room and the family room. The sound of the roaring became muffled. Then she seated herself at the piano and played. She played beautifully. Lizzie clapped long and hard when Alison finished her piece.
“You should have brought your flute,” Alison said. “We could have played duets. My mom used to play the flute, once upon a time, back when she still had time, and we have a bunch of sheet music duets for flute and piano.”
“I’ll bring it next time,” Lizzie promised, certain that there would be a next time. If she and Alison both loved music, they were bound to stay friends.
The lion tamer and lion went outside, leaving the house suddenly still. There was a lull in the girls’ conversation. Lizzie wanted to tell Alison about Ethan, and PAL math, and the invitation to join Mathletes, but she wasn’t used to confiding in a friend, and she still felt so sick inside from her fight with Ethan on Thursday that she didn’t know if she could bear putting her heartache into words.
“Let’s have a snack,” Alison suggested.
In the kitchen, Alison inspected the contents of the refrigerator and located a tube of chocolate chip slice-and-bake cookies. It was fun baking together. All three of Alison’s brothers showed up as soon as the cookies were done, but the girls managed to save a small plateful to take up to Alison’s room with glasses of milk.
“You’re going to the dance, aren’t you?” Alison said once they were both seated cross-legged on her bed.
“I don’t think so.”
“Oh, come on, Lizzie.”
“What if nobody asks me to dance?”
“Are you kidding? Alex Ryan will ask you. I thought you two were going to stand there by the snack bar talking for the whole second half of the game. Julius will ask you, and I bet Tom will, too—he’s like you, always so good at acting when we do the play in English class.” Alison hesitated. “And Ethan.”
“Not Ethan.”
“He likes you. Maybe not the way you like him. But he likes you.” It was the first time Alison had alluded to Lizzie’s crush on Ethan.
“Not anymore,” Lizzie said. Saying it out loud brought a lump to her throat. “We had a fight. On Thursday. In math class.”
“What about?”
Lizzie couldn’t tell her the whole story. “About some of the problems in PAL math.”
“Well, that doesn’t sound so serious. Listen, he’s lucky he got someone as smart at math as you for his partner.”
Little did Alison know how her remark stung; Ethan could hardly have felt less lucky that he had gotten the new, bad-at-math Lizzie for his partner.
“Anyway, they have girls’ choice dances, too, you know. It isn’t just boys asking girls. You could ask Ethan to dance. Then he’d know you want to make up. The real question is: Who’s going to ask me to dance?”
“I think that boy who sits next to you in orchestra—Mike? I think he likes you.”
Alison blushed. “What makes you think that?”
Lizzie was relieved to be talking about something other than Ethan. She knew she had lost Ethan forever—she had lost, forever, something she had never even had.
* * *
Lizzie’s life had gotten desperate enough that she read ahead in the horoscope book now. For Monday, the next PAL math day, her horoscope said:
Don’t rock the boat today in business affairs. Remember that slow and steady wins the race. Affairs of the heart will take a dramatic turn for the better.
Lizzie tried to focus on the one line that had caused her spirits to leap: Affairs of the heart will take a dramatic turn for the better. Maybe there was hope for her and Ethan, after all.
In PAL math, Lizzie wondered if Ethan would even speak to her. Maybe he’d grab a second problem set, as he had last time, and do his work alone again. Not that she’d blame him.
“All right, PAL math today, let’s get started,” Mr. Grotient announced.
Before people could start shoving their desks together in the usual noisiest possible way, Ethan had his hand in the air.
“Ethan?”
“Don’t you think it would be a good idea to switch PAL partners sometimes? I mean, if we’re supposed to be learning from each other, wouldn’t we learn more if we had lots of different people to learn from?”
Ethan had posed the question neutrally, but Lizzie’s cheeks burned. Ethan was rejecting her as his PAL partner, in front of the whole class. If this was affairs of the heart taking a dramatic turn for the better, Lizzie would hate to see them take any turn for the worse.
Mr. Grotient seemed caug
ht off guard by Ethan’s question. He hesitated, then said to the class, “What do the rest of you think? Do you want to change PAL partners occasionally?”
“Change them!” Marcia called out. Lizzie knew that Marcia, who had as her PAL partner a girl named Rebecca, was hoping to get as her PAL partner a boy named Alex.
“Yeah, change them,” others agreed.
Mr. Grotient sighed, as if sorry he had posed the question. “I don’t want to waste a lot of time choosing people. This is a math class, not a sock hop.” Marcia giggled, but Lizzie was too miserable to see any humor in Mr. Grotient’s remark. How could Ethan do this? How could he?
Mr. Grotient’s face brightened. “All right, count off numbers. Write your number down on a piece of paper. Your PAL partner for today will be given by this formula.” He wrote it on the board, evidently pleased that he had found a way to assign the PAL partners by algebra.
Lizzie hoped that by some crazy twist of the numbers, she would get Ethan again, so she could try to make things right. If she and Ethan were assigned to each other by algebra, Ethan would have to see that it was destiny. If she didn’t get Ethan, she hoped she’d get some nice, normal girl with whom she could do the math problems one-two-three without having to think about whether she was being nerdy or not—exactly what she’d wanted in the first place.
She got Marcia.
Glaring in Mr. Grotient’s general direction, Marcia pulled her desk next to Lizzie’s. There had been a renewed coolness between the girls since the second football game, a week ago Friday, where Alex had spent so long talking to Lizzie. Then, as if she had suddenly thought of an appropriately hurtful thing to say, Marcia’s face cleared. “Too bad about Ethan,” she said, her tone more smug than sympathetic.
Lizzie wished she had the nerve to reply, “Too bad about Alex.” Instead, to her everlasting embarrassment, tears welled up behind her eyes.
“Oh, really.” Marcia looked disgusted.
Lizzie couldn’t help herself. The combination of pain and shame was too potent. She felt the first tear threatening to fall.
“Pull yourself together,” Marcia hissed. “Do you want Ethan to see you crying? Act like you don’t care. Act like you’re having a great time without him.”
Even in her misery, Lizzie noticed that Marcia’s tone had changed. It wasn’t gloating anymore. The advice Marcia was offering was real advice; maybe Marcia was relieved to see that Lizzie plainly hadn’t switched her affections from Ethan to Alex. It was amazing to Lizzie that a girl who could be so nasty one minute could be so nice the next. Or relatively nice, at least.
Marcia giggled, a loud, staged giggle. “Oh, Lizzie! You’re too much! Come on, we’d better get started on the problem set.” She said the lines as if they were taken from a play, spoken by Hermia to Helena in a modern-day adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
“Say something,” Marcia whispered imperiously to Lizzie.
Lizzie couldn’t, for the life of her, think of anything to say.
Marcia kept on. “Are you crossing off the days till the class trip on Friday? Alex said we’re going to see a Kleenex Shakespeare blew his nose on!” She laughed again.
Alex turned around and grinned at them, apparently enjoying having his wit in circulation. Under his gaze, Lizzie was glad Marcia hadn’t let her start crying.
“Friday’s the dance, too.” Marcia’s voice was still artificially loud. “You’re going, aren’t you?”
“Girls!” Mr. Grotient called to them. “None of the math problems in today’s assignment has anything to do with school dances.”
A lot of kids laughed then. Marcia, of course, giggled. Lizzie managed a weak smile.
Mission accomplished, Marcia dropped her act as abruptly as she had begun it. She pushed the problem set toward Lizzie. “You can do it.”
Lizzie didn’t want to make Marcia mad, but she had to ask, “Aren’t we supposed to do it together? You’re going to have to take a test on this stuff later, you know.”
“Well, it’s not ‘later’ now, is it?”
Lizzie picked up her pencil. She definitely owed Marcia a favor, and she could definitely do the problems faster alone, without having to explain every one to somebody else. But she remembered the dislike in Sarah’s voice on the second day of school, when she had been sure Lizzie had gotten all the homework problems right. Nobody liked math whizzes, girls or boys, except maybe for Alison. She could imagine how popular she’d be if she signed up for Mathletes.
Lizzie made herself ask the question: “Do you want me to put all right answers, or should I make some of them wrong?”
Marcia stared at Lizzie. “What do you think?”
Lizzie honestly didn’t know, but she hazarded a guess. “Right answers?”
“Duh.”
Lizzie would never understand the rules of the popular girls’ game. Quickly she answered the first five problems, delighting in the—temporary?—permission to be good at math again. But being good at math with a girl wasn’t the same as being good at math with a boy. And it wasn’t the same as being good at math in front of the whole school, by joining the Mathletes.
Twelve
As Friday drew nearer, all the seventh graders were talking about nothing but the dance. Lizzie overheard Marcia talking to another girl about which top to wear to the dance with which jeans, and whether Alex had said to Ethan that he thought he was going or that he thought he wasn’t going. Lizzie was more interested in whatever it was Ethan had said to Alex, but that wasn’t part of Marcia’s report.
On Thursday, Alison and Lizzie headed outside to the picnic tables at lunch. It was finally glorious Colorado autumn weather, with cloudless skies of blazing blue.
“You still didn’t tell me if you’re going to the dance tomorrow,” Alison reminded Lizzie.
Lizzie felt a familiar knot of dread tighten in her stomach. “I still haven’t decided.”
“Well, decide.”
Okay, she’d decide. Her horoscope in the book had said, for Friday:
Today is a good day for mending fences. Take the initiative in reaching out to a friend who feels wronged. You won’t be sorry.
That meant Ethan. She was supposed to take the initiative in reaching out to Ethan. But the horoscope didn’t say how this reaching out was supposed to proceed. Or what she was supposed to do about going to the dance. Or what she was supposed to do about signing up for Mathletes.
“Okay,” Alison said, since Lizzie was still fiddling with her food in silence. “I’ll decide for you. You’re going to the dance.”
It was a relief to have one question settled. “Okay,” Lizzie said. “But promise you won’t abandon me if nobody asks me to dance.”
“If you promise not to abandon me if nobody asks me to dance.”
“It’s a promise.” As if Lizzie would ever be in the position of abandoning anybody for a crowd of clamoring dance partners.
Alison had answered the dance question; Lizzie might as well try her with the Mathletes question.
“Mr. Grotient is starting a math team, and he wants me to be on it.” She tried to say it noncommittally, not as a question, just as a mildly interesting fact.
“That’s great!” Alison’s enthusiasm sounded genuine.
“Do you think I should sign up for it?”
“Why not? You’re great at math, and you like it a lot, right?”
As if that was all there was to it. “You don’t think it’s too nerdy?”
Alison laughed. “Since when do you care about what is or isn’t nerdy?”
Lizzie could tell that Alison meant the question affectionately, but the topic was too tender to Lizzie for teasing. Did Alison think Lizzie liked being a nerd? Did she really think Lizzie had been a nerd all those years on purpose? Everything Lizzie had said and done and worn for the past five weeks had been designed to end her nerddom. Hadn’t it counted for anything? Was she doomed to be a nerd forever?
Lizzie stared stiffly down at her lunch.
But Lizzie did care. Sometimes she felt as if she cared more than anything in the world. She forced a shaky smile for Alison and went on eating.
* * *
In family living, three of the sewing machines were out of order; Lizzie thought ruefully that if any other seventh graders were as unmechanical as she was, it was nothing short of a miracle that all the machines weren’t broken.
“You’ll have to work three to a machine today,” Ms. Van Winkle told the class that afternoon. She read out the day’s sewing machine assignments. Lizzie was to work with Alex and Ethan.
Why couldn’t it have been Alison and Julius? Overcome with dread, Lizzie went to her cubby and retrieved the loathsome object that was supposed to be the makings of a tie. Both girls and boys were making ties, straight ties for the boys, wider ties for the girls, the perfect accessory to wear with clown costumes for Halloween. Sewing through fabric on the machine, Lizzie had discovered, was even harder than sewing through paper. Fabric bunched in a way that paper didn’t. Lizzie’s tie was already the bunchiest one in the class.
“We meet again,” Alex said when Lizzie reluctantly joined the boys at their machine. “Try not to sew your hair this time, okay?”
Lizzie felt herself blushing. Alex poked Ethan in the arm. “The last time I got Lizzie, she sewed her hair to the paper,” he explained, obviously waiting for Ethan to laugh.
Ethan didn’t. “We’d better get started,” he said, “if three of us have to have turns here.”
Alex looked puzzled. Lizzie knew he wasn’t used to his jokes falling flat. If only Ethan had laughed. For the first time she realized that worse than having someone laugh could be having someone refuse to laugh.
“Lizzie goes last,” Alex said. “That way if she gets her hair stuck in the sewing machine, at least we’ll have ours done.”
“Go ahead,” Ethan said to Alex. Did he really have no sense of humor at all? Maybe Lizzie had made a mistake in loving him so long. At least Alex, for all his faults, was occasionally funny. At least Alex could see some humor in the world. At least Alex didn’t sit glowering at her with grim-faced condemnation in his eyes. Lizzie looked away so the boys wouldn’t see how close she was to tears.
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