Goodbye Stranger

by Rebecca Stead

  “Tab and I agree with you, you know. About the Talentine show. It’s not fair.”

  “Yeah, well, whatever. I’m not really in the mood to sing anyway.”

  “Because of this?” Bridge pointed to the sweatshirt.

  “Did you know that David Marcel calls me a skank every time he sees me?”

  “He what?”

  “Yeah. So I get to hear that at least six times a day.”

  “Emily, tell someone. Tell Mr. Ramos!”

  “Sure, my new friend Mr. Ramos.”

  “So tell Mr. P.”

  She shook her head. “Mr. P already went to bat for me. He’s pretty much the reason I didn’t get suspended for sending the picture to Patrick in the first place.”

  “He is?”

  Em nodded. “That’s what my mom says. Anyway, telling will just make things worse. Patrick says David Marcel is still pissed about getting suspended. And his parents took away his phone. Can you believe he hasn’t had a phone since November?” She smiled the smallest of smiles.

  “You’re still talking to Patrick, huh?” Bridge tried to keep her face neutral.

  Em’s smile got bigger. “Of course. Still just friends. Did I tell you? He came to a Banana Splits meeting.”

  Bridge said nothing.

  “He’s a good guy, Bridge. Really.”

  “A good guy whose phone was grabbed by a mystery person who texted your picture to David Marcel, who sent it to half the class.”

  “I know you don’t believe him. But Patrick says he never even showed that picture to David Marcel. He wouldn’t.”

  “So why won’t he tell you who did?”

  “I don’t know.” Em closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the wall.

  “Sorry,” Bridge said. “I’ll shut up.”

  Em opened one eye. “You don’t want to go back for those cupcakes, do you? We could eat them in here if it doesn’t gross you out.”

  —

  When Bridge walked into first period the next morning, there was a sheet of paper face-up on every desk.

  “A quiz?” someone whined.

  But it wasn’t a quiz. It was a copy of the school’s dress code.

  DRESS CODE/REGULATIONS FOR SCHOOL ATTIRE

  The purpose of this dress code is to ensure that all students dress appropriately for school and school activities.

  • Tank tops and shirts with spaghetti straps or other types of straps are prohibited.

  • Shirts, pants, or skirts that reveal a bare midriff are prohibited.

  • Miniskirts and short shorts are prohibited. The hem of skirts and shorts must reach the knee.

  • Baggy pants must be worn at the waist.

  “To the knee?” Tab said at lunch. “Who has shorts that go down to the knee? Wait till Celeste sees this. She’ll die laughing.”

  “You know why they passed this out, right?” Emily asked. “It’s because of me. Yesterday when they made me wear that gross sweatshirt from the lost and found? I told them I had never even heard of their stupid dress code.”

  “Did you really say ‘stupid’? Good for you!” Tab said.

  Em looked down at the table. “I wish I had.”

  “I didn’t know about the dress code either,” Bridge said.

  “They said it’s on the website,” Em said. “I mean, who looks at the website?”

  “Other kids wear spaghetti straps to school,” Bridge said.

  “The dress code isn’t for them,” Em said. “It’s for people like me. Bad girls.”

  “Bad girls!” Tab erupted. “Emily. What are you talking about?”

  “I think they wish I would just go away and not corrupt good girls like you.”

  “You didn’t corrupt anyone,” Tab said angrily. “Patrick wanted that picture. And what about the picture he sent you? They’re acting like this was all your idea or something. It’s such a double standard!”

  Em shook her head. “You guys told me not to do it. I’m stupid.” She took the sheet of paper from Tab’s hand. “This isn’t for you. It’s for people like me.” And she stomped away.

  BINGO

  Now that it was January, Tech Crew began to meet after school twice a week to get ready for the Talentine show. The landing capsule was still in the planning stages, but there was a lot of backdrop to be painted: midnight blue with silver stars and Earth glowing in the distance.

  “This is going to be so cool,” Bridge said, taking a smock from the pile in the middle of the stage floor.

  “Agreed,” Mr. Partridge said. “It’ll be a nightmare to prime all of this when we have to repaint for the spring play, but for now it will be very cool.”

  Bridge didn’t think it would be a nightmare to repaint everything for the spring play. In fact, she didn’t believe that Tech Crew could ever be anything but fun.

  Sherm had volunteered to bring in an American flag, and when Mr. Partridge asked if Sherm could “by any chance fetch it today,” Bridge volunteered to go with him. She had never seen Sherm’s house. The thought of walking there with him—and then back to school, where Mr. Partridge had promised everyone pizza later—filled her with a new kind of happiness.

  “My grandfather has all these flags,” Sherm told Bridge on the way to his house. “I think they’re still in the closet.”

  “Your grandmother won’t mind you taking one?”

  “Nah.”

  Sherm lived in one of the brownstones that lined a few side streets on the west side of Broadway. Large steps led from the sidewalk to a front door. While Sherm unlocked it, Bridge noticed a little metal plate mounted above the doorbell:

  Drs. Apollo and Eleanor Russo

  “Apollo!” Bridge said, pointing. “That’s your dad’s name?”

  “Yup.”

  “Like Apollo 11! That’s so funny!”

  “It’s hilarious.” Sherm shoved the door open with his hip, revealing a carpeted hallway and a broad wooden staircase.

  Bridge inhaled. “Mmm. What is that smell?”

  Sherm sniffed. “Cookies, I think.” A smile spread across his face. “Welcome to my planet,” he said.

  “Planet cookie,” Bridge said. “Lucky you.”

  “The flag’s up here,” Sherm said, starting up the stairs. Bridge followed.

  At the top of the stairs was a little area with a fireplace and two small couches that faced each other. Sherm crossed it to a wooden door that stood open, revealing a bright room: a big bed, a desk, a tall dresser, and under the window, a trunk. “My grandmother’s room,” Sherm announced. “Everything in its place.”

  “I kind of love it,” Bridge said, walking in. The desk was the nicest thing in it—glossy dark wood, thin straight legs. Bridge pointed at the two perfectly squared stacks of paper and the black-and-gold pen that lay between them. “She likes to write?”

  “She’s a translator—English to Italian.”

  “Wow.” Bridge leaned to look and saw a page of slanted handwriting in perfect lines. “Is this—poetry or something?”

  Sherm grinned. “I have no idea. I can’t read it. But a lot of her jobs are junky self-help books that she complains about. She’s more of a science fiction fan.”

  Bridge moved on, stopping in front of a few framed photos on the wall next to the window. She pointed to one: four dark-haired women with fishing poles.

  “Is one of these your grandmother?”

  “Yeah. The tall one.”

  There was nothing made-up about her, but she was almost movie-star beautiful. “Wow,” Bridge said again.

  Sherm smiled. “She says she was ‘the prize of Gela.’ That’s a town in Sicily. And she still loves to go fishing.” He glanced at Bridge. “I’ll get the flag.”

  “The prize, huh?” Bridge briefly imagined what Tab would say about that. “You look like her, actually.”

  “I look like my grandfather,” Sherm said quickly. Then he seemed embarrassed. “That’s what people say.” He pointed to a photo of three young men standing
close, arms looped around shoulders.

  Bridge looked. “The middle one?” Because one of them was unmistakably Sherm-like: nice-looking, with curly hair and—she didn’t know what made people look like one another, she realized. The jawline? The one dimple? The chin?

  Sherm was in the closet, pulling things off a shelf. “Yep, middle one.”

  “But you have your grandmother’s eyes,” Bridge said. His grandfather’s were smaller.

  “If you say so.”

  “Hey—a VW Bug!” She pointed to a picture of a smiling dark-haired couple in graduation caps holding hands in front of a yellow Volkswagen Beetle.

  A moment of silence. “That was my mom’s. She sold it a long time ago.”

  “Too bad,” Bridge said.

  Sherm held up a red-and-white bundle. “Bingo! One American flag.”

  Bridge laughed. “Bingo?”

  Sherm’s neck blushed. “Oh—my grandfather used to say that all the time.” He shrugged. “Maybe it’s being in his room. I mean, his old room. Let’s go.” Holding the flag under one arm, he crossed the room and slipped his hand into hers. The room disappeared.

  They were holding hands.

  She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t want to squeeze or to let her hand go limp, but everything she did felt like one or the other, and suddenly all she could think about was keeping her fingers lined up normally and applying exactly the right kind of pressure. She was sure that Sherm could tell she had no idea what she was doing.

  “Maybe we can snag some cookies on the way out,” he said, pretending nothing unusual was happening.

  “Mm,” Bridge said.

  Still holding on, he led her down the stairs. He let go just before they got to the kitchen, which was a relief.

  Sherm’s grandmother was at the stove, with her back to them.

  “Bye, Na!” Sherm came up behind her and kissed her cheek. “Oh, this is Bridge.”

  Sherm’s grandmother turned, and Bridge could see the woman in the picture upstairs, along with a lot of years. She held Sherm’s face in her two hands and kissed the air in front of him. Then she turned to Bridge and reached for her hand. Bridge gave her the other one—the one Sherm had not just been holding.

  “Bridget. I’m so glad that you are here with us.”

  “Oh—thanks,” Bridge said.

  “It’s Bridge, Na. Not Bridget.”

  His grandmother nodded. “You will both eat something now,” she said.

  Sherm said, “We can’t—we’re going back to school, to work on the show. I just came for the flag. Unless there are cookies?”

  Sherm’s grandmother looked at the flag. Then she walked to a little pantry off the kitchen and came back with a plate of small brown cookies. She thrust it at them. “As many as you want!”

  They each took three.

  “Thanks,” Sherm said, kissing her goodbye.

  “Take care of it,” Sherm’s grandmother said.

  For a strange moment, Bridge thought that she was the “it.” Then she realized: Sherm’s grandmother meant the flag.

  Walking back to school, Bridge and Sherm ate their cookies and didn’t hold hands. “These are amazing,” Bridge said. And they were: buttery and almond-tasting, with a hint of lemon. Not at all what Bridge had expected.

  —

  At home later, Bridge stood at the living room windows, counting the blocks between her building and Sherm’s house—two up, one over. Then she realized she could actually make out a corner of his roof in the dark.

  She thought about Sherm holding her hand. She didn’t think she wanted Sherm to like her like that. Because if she didn’t like him back, could they still be friends?

  If they couldn’t be friends, she thought, her heart might break.

  But wait. Did that mean she liked him?

  She looked at Sherm’s roof.

  “It’s getting dark so early these days.”

  Bridge whirled. Her mother stood behind her, squinting out the window.

  “You’re back! How was it?” It was getting hard to keep track of her mom’s comings and goings. She was always packing and unpacking.

  “It was great—but after this next one, I’m taking a break. I miss you guys. Where’s Jamie?”

  “I’m not sure—track practice?”

  Her mom sighed. “Sometimes I miss the old days. When everyone was little and we all stayed at home together.”

  “Yeah,” Bridge said. “Me too.”

  “But you’re still little,” her mom said, reaching for Bridge with her fingers wiggling. “Little enough to tickle!”

  “Stop!” Bridge said. “Tickling is torture!” But she took a step toward her mother.

  SHERM

  January 16

  Dear Nonno Gio,

  I was in your room with Bridge today, and she looked at some of the pictures. (She says I look like you, big surprise.) We borrowed one of your flags for school, but I’ll put it back in a few weeks. Maybe you don’t even care about those flags anymore?

  She kept saying how beautiful Nonna is. You used to say that too, all the time. Remember those last two weeks before you moved out? Everyone was upset and Nonna cried a lot and Dad was still trying to get you and her to take a trip back to Italy, like maybe that would remind you who you were. He got mad at you and yelled, “What do you mean, why? Because you’ve turned into a stranger!”

  We pretend there’s such a thing as a private conversation in this house, but I have always been able to hear everything from the hall outside my bedroom. I heard you tell Dad that you didn’t expect him to understand. You said that, in a way, you were a stranger to yourself. It scared me.

  But I almost understand. Sometimes I feel like a stranger to myself too. Today I held Bridge’s hand in your room. I saw her hand and the next thing I knew I was holding on to it. We both pretended nothing was happening.

  I guess my question is: Is the new you the stranger? Or is the stranger the person you leave behind?

  Sherm

  P.S. Twenty-nine days to go.

  PURELY VOLUNTARY

  Bridge and Tab were standing outside Tab’s apartment door, Tab feeling for her keys in her book bag, when the door was wrenched open from the inside. A hand seized Tab’s wrist and another one grabbed Bridge’s elbow. They were both dragged into the apartment.

  “Celeste!” Tab shrieked. “What the—”

  But Celeste just continued to drag them into the living room, where she pulled them both down onto the couch. The coffee table was piled with her school stuff: index cards, textbooks, spiral notebooks, and the laptop. Also a box of graham crackers.

  “Celeste!” Tab shouted. “My shoes!” Because at Tab’s everyone was supposed to take their shoes off by the front door.

  Celeste grabbed the laptop and shoved it at them. “Look.”

  On the screen was a picture of Patrick, in his underwear. It was the same picture Em had shown Bridge back in November.

  Bridge stared. “Why would he put that up there?”

  “Duh,” Celeste said. “He wouldn’t.”

  “But—this is his page.”

  Celeste rolled her eyes. “Anyone with his phone could have done it. Open the app, attach the picture, hit send, done. What I don’t get is why he doesn’t take it down.”

  Bridge glanced at the time in the corner of the screen. “He doesn’t know. He’s still at practice, probably.”

  “Look at how many people are commenting! He has fifty-seven likes!”

  “I’d like to know why this is such a big deal,” Tab said. “Look at what happened to Emily!”

  “Trust me, it’s a big deal.” Celeste patted her sister on the head condescendingly. “If this is happening in middle school, I shudder to think what you guys are going to get up to in high school.”

  “Us guys?” Bridge said. “We didn’t do this.”

  Tab said, “If it was posted from his phone, no one will ever know who did it, right?”

  “They’ll try,
though,” Celeste said. “They’ll try to find out who did it.”

  “Well, now he knows what it feels like,” Tab said.

  “He doesn’t know yet,” Bridge said. “But he will soon.”

  Bridge’s cell phone rang. “Em,” she said, picking up. “I’m at Tab’s. Yeah, we just saw it.” There was a pause. “I know,” Bridge said. “I know. But don’t worry.”

  “What’s she saying?” Tab hissed.

  Bridge tilted the phone away from her mouth and said, “Em’s worried it’ll look like she did it. You know, to get him back.”

  “What?” Tab said. “That’s stupid.”

  “It’s not that stupid,” Celeste said quietly. “The thought did cross my mind.”

  —

  An hour later, Bridge was almost home when she saw Alex crossing the street ahead of her.

  “Hey!” she shouted. “Alex! Wait up.”

  Alex smiled when she caught up to him. “Hey, Bridge. Still with the ears, huh?”

  She touched them reflexively. “Yeah, still with the ears.”

  “I guess you gotta be you.”

  They started walking toward home. “Listen,” Bridge said. “What did Jamie bet you? He won’t tell me.”

  His smile changed, widened. “I’m not surprised.”

  “Come on.”

  “Well,” Alex drawled, “I probably don’t have to tell you that your brother owns very little of value.”

  “That’s my point,” Bridge said. “Our parents won’t let you take the laptop, you know.”

  Alex shook his head. “I don’t want his laptop. What I ask is more of an—entertainment.”

  “Spit it out,” Bridge said. “What is it?”

  “Fine. If he loses, he has to sing a song.”

  “That’s it?”

  “To Adrienne.”

  “Adrienne?”

  “Adrienne,” he repeated, doing that obnoxious thing with his hands that meant a girl had a good body. “He has to sing to her. A whole song. In the middle of the Bean Bar. In his underwear.”

  “No way.”

  “Way.” He leveled a look at her. “I put up a very valuable vintage T-shirt. He had to put something real on the line.”