The Summer Before

by Ann M. Martin

  "All right," Mom said the very moming after the final bag of unwanted things had been carted away. "Time to start packing."

  I was about to reply, "Couldn't we have just one day when we don't have to clean or pack?" but then I realized I didn't have anything else to do except baby-sit, so I dutifully dragged some empty cartons into my bedroom and began filling them with winter clothes.

  That aftemoon, though, I had a sitting job with Twila and Jeremy Rosenfeld, and I happily abandoned my disheveled room.

  "We're playing Sticky!" Twila announced as soon as Mr. Rosenfeld, who was a stay-at-home dad, had left for his dentist appointment.

  The Rosenfeld kids, who lived in apartment 15-K, were two of my favorite sitting charges.

  "Sticky? What's Sticky?" I asked Twila, the five-year-old.

  She and her brother were sitting next to each other on the living room couch. They were sitting so close, in fact, that the left side of Twila's body was mashed up against the right side of Jeremy's.

  "This," Jeremy replied. "See? We're stuck together."

  "And we have to stay stuck together no matter what," added his sister. "Come on, Jeremy. I need a glass of water."

  I watched Twila and Jeremy rise from the couch and somehow manage to remain stuck together from their shoulders to their ankles as they made their way into the kitchen. Amidst much giggling, they hobbled to the refrigerator, and Jeremy removed a pitcher of water. Then they hobbled to the cupboard and Twila found a plastic cup. "Do you want water, too?" she asked her brother. When he nodded, she pulled out a second cup. "You pour," she added.

  Jeremy lifted the heavy pitcher with his left hand (his right hand still plastered to his sister) and clumsily poured water into the cups.

  I was laughing, and so were Twila and Jeremy, but as soon as they were seated (on the kitchen floor because they had difficulty maneuvering themselves onto chairs while remaining stuck together), I said, "You guys? I have to tell you something."

  "What?" said Jeremy, eyes narrowing, instantly suspicious. He paused with his cup halfway to his lips.

  I had held off telling my sitting charges about the move until now because I'd leamed that little kids have a different concept of time than older people. If I'd told them in May that I was moving in August, it would only have meant three months of wondering when I was actually leaving - and probably fretting and pouting. And so I had waited until the move was just a couple of weeks off before I told them anything.

  "Well," I said, joining the kids on the floor, "I'm going to be moving away."

  Twila lowered her cup. "Moving away where?"

  "To Connecticut. Do you know where that is?"

  "In Midtown?" she guessed.

  Jeremy unstuck himself from his sister, stood up, and said angrily, "It's not in Midtown! Connecticut is a whole different state. You're moving far away, aren't you, Stacey?"

  "Hey, you lose!" crowed Twila. "You came unglued!"

  "I don't care." Jeremy glared at me.

  "Connecticut is a different state," I said diplomatically, "but it isn't really that far away. Our new house will be just a couple of hours from here."

  Reality began to sink in for Twila. "A couple of hours! That's... that's..." She couldn't think of anything comparable.

  "That's far," said Jeremy accusingly. "Why are you moving?"

  "Because my dad got a new job." That seemed like the simplest answer.

  "Our dad doesn't work," commented Twila.

  "What does that have to do with anything?" exclaimed Jeremy, but his lower lip was trembling.

  "What could I do to make this better?" I asked.

  Jeremy stared at the wall and wouldn't answer.

  "You could get us presents," said Twila brightly.

  I smiled at her.

  Things went somewhat better when I told I Sean and Sarah Beckett about the move. This was because they were three and didn't quite understand what I was talking about, and also because I had only sat for them a few times and they didn't know me as well as Twila and Jeremy did.

  "Will a moving van come?" asked Sean with interest.

  "Yup," I replied.

  "A big one like I saw yesterday?"

  I didn't know Sean had seen a moving van the day before, but I said, "Yes. Huge. It has to be big enough to hold all our fumiture and all our clothes and everything in our kitchen."

  "All your fumiture?" Sarah took her thumb out of her mouth long enough to ask this. "A truck big enough for a couch and a bed?"

  "For two couches and two beds and all our chairs and tables and lamps."

  "Wow," she said, and reinserted her thumb.

  The rest of the conversation revolved around the van and how we would fit our fumiture in it. The twins never even asked where I was going.

  The Goldsmith children, on the other hand, burst into tears when I gave them the news. All three of them, and all at once, as if I had pressed a button.

  "But why, Stacey, why?" wailed Sami.

  "We don't like any other baby-sitters!" cried Eloise.

  "Only you!" Nathan suppressed a sob.

  The next aftemoon I sat for two-year-old Caroline Barkan on the fourth floor. Actually, I wasn't so much a sitter as a mother's helper, since Mrs. Barkan was at home. She was holding a meeting in her apartment and she wanted I me to keep Caroline entertained until her guests left.

  It was almost six o'clock and the meeting had ended, but several people were still hanging around in the living room when Mrs. Barkan suddenly looked at her watch and said, "Oh! Stacey, you should go. Here. Here's your pay." She pushed a couple of bills into my hand and held the door open for me. I was calling good-bye to Caroline when the door closed on me.

  Well. That was weird. I rode the elevator back to my floor, wondering if I'd done something to offend Mrs. Barkan. I opened the door to my own apartment, expecting to hear the sound of packing tape being wrenched from its roll, or a book-filled box being added to the growing pile of packed boxes in the front hall (this was always accompanied by an exclamation of "Oof" from Mom). But the apartment was silent. And kind of dark. It looked as though all the shades had been pulled down.

  "Hello?" I called, feeling a prickle of fear at the back of my neck.

  And with that, the overhead lights were switched on and I heard cheering and cries of "Surprise! Surprise!"

  I stared.

  The living room had been cleared of packing cartons and decorated with balloons and a big string of gold letters that spelled out FAREWELL. A pinata in the shape of a pig (I love pigs) was hanging over the coffee table, and the table was laden with snacks and drinks and pig napkins and pig paper plates and pig cups.

  Somehow l took this all in while still standing in the doorway. I'm sure my mouth had dropped open. Slowly, my focus shifted from what was in the living room to who was in it.

  Mom. Dad. Twila and Jeremy (giggling and stuck together along one side). The three Goldsmith kids (each holding a wrapped gift). Several other sitting charges. Almost every girl in my sixth-grade class. Mr. Cummings. Mrs. Cummings.

  And Laine.

  All those people in the room and my eyes locked themselves on Laine's.

  Laine wasn't smiling and neither were her eyes.

  But everyone else was laughing and talking, and the smaller kids were jumping up and down.

  Twila ran to me and threw her arms around my waist, exclaiming, "Me and Jeremy kept the party a secret for three whole days!"

  "Stacey, this is for you!" Eloise Goldsmith thrust her gift at me.

  "This is for you, too!" cried Sami.

  "And this," added Nathan.

  "We put our presents over there," said Jeremy, pointing to an end table on which, I now saw, was a stack of gifts and cards.

  I was surrounded by my sitting charges like a football player in a huddle. Laine was watching us, smirking. I saw her glance at Naomi and Caitlin, former friends of mine, and the three of them began to giggle.

  "What do you think, honey?" asked m
y father.

  I realized I should have some sort of reaction. And that, all things considered, it should be a happy reaction. I disengaged myself from Twila and the other kids and managed to say, "Thanks, everyone! This is great!"

  "Are you surprised?" asked Laine's mother.

  "Completely," I replied, which was the honest truth.

  "Stacey! Stacey! Open your presents!" called Twila.

  Mr. Rosenfeld appeared in the crowd and said to Twila, "Give her a chance to greet her guests. She'll open her presents later."

  I stood uncomfortably at the entrance to the living room, wanting to avoid Laine and all my classmates. How on earth had my parents convinced them to come to the party?

  As if in answer to my question, Laine pushed her way through the crowd until she was standing at my side. "Nice party," she said, in exactly the same tone of voice in which someone would say, "Ew, look. A snake." (Her parents - and mine - were out of earshot.)

  I was tempted to reply, "It was so charitable of you to come," but sarcasm didn't work well with Laine, especially when she had been sarcastic first.

  So I said nothing.

  Laine cocked her head and studied me. "You know why I'm here, don't you'?" she asked finally. Before I could answer, she said, "Because my parents made me come. And everyone else is here - everyone who's over the age of eight, that is - because I told them they had to come."

  I was sure some sort of threat had been attached to Laine's invitation - that the girls had to come or else... or else... Well, I wasn't sure or else what, but I could imagine. Or else Laine would shun them, too. Or else, surprise, they would no longer be invited to parties and their phones would stop ringing and they would find themselves as alone as I had become.

  Her Royal Meanness had evil superpowers.

  Mom and Mrs. Cummings, arm in arm and smiling broadly, now approached Laine and me. Laine immediately underwent a transformation.

  "Stacey," Mrs. Cummings said, "we're going to miss you."

  "So much," added Laine. "We're going to miss you so much."

  Mom and Mrs. Cummings looked at Laine and me fondly.

  "Nope, it won't be the same around here," Laine went on.

  The moms drifted off and Laine glared at me.

  A thought occurred to me then. "Laine," I said, "are you afraid of me?"

  I remembered the look on her face when I had wet the bed at the slumber party. And the look when I had gone into insulin shock in school and the ambulance had had to come for me. l/Iaybe...

  Laine snorted. "Afraid of you? Are you kidding?"

  But I thought maybe I was right.

  Allison Ritz, who had joined our class at the beginning of sixth grade, wandered over to us now, along with Naomi and Caitlin.

  "You certainly have some interesting friends," said Caitlin, tuming to eye the Goldsmith children.

  "You know," I replied, "friends come in all ages." I could feel anger bubbling just beneath the surface. "And these kids have been a lot nicer to me than any of you have lately." I drew in a breath. "Maybe you should take a few notes."

  "Ooh," said Naomi to Laine and Caitlin and Allison. "Stacey has a temper. Is she mad? Did we make Stacey mad?"

  Mr. Cummings came by then, holding out a dish of teensy pizzas. Laine, Naomi, Allison, and Caitlin each took one.

  "Thank you, Mr. Cummings," Caitlin and Naomi and Allison said dutifully.

  "Thanks, Dad," added Laine.

  "Stacey?" asked l/Ir. Cummings, holding the tray out to me.

  I was far too nervous to eat. "No, thanks!" I tried to smile.

  Mr. Cummings disappeared, and Laine frowned at her friends. "My goodness. Stacey isn't eating. What a surprise. Poor Stacey. I guess she needs lots of extra attention, doesn't she? Everyone, please take a moment to worry over Stacey."

  Naomi bit back a smile.

  And Allison leaned in and whispered loudly, "Watch out or she might wet her pants again."

  This caused wild giggling, and much to my surprise, as I watched my former friends and my former best friend have a giant laugh at my expense, I realized that what I wanted to say to them was not "Get out of my life, you rude shrews" but "Why won't you be my friends? Even if you don't know about my diabetes and don't understand what went on last year, why won't you be my friends? I would be your friend."

  I was pathetic.

  I was temporarily saved from further humiliation by Twila, who once again demanded that I open my presents.

  "Stacey?" asked my mother. "Do you want to open your gifts?"

  I didn't really. Not in front of Laine and the other girls. But I didn't feel I had a choice. My father cleared a spot for me on the couch and handed me the cards and gifts, and for the next half hour I opened boxes and envelopes and said, "Thank you so much!" and "Oh, this is wonderful! Whenever I look at this I'll think of you." Except for when I opened anything from my classmates, and then I tried to summon up a bit of enthusiasm (after all, the adults were watching) before saying, "Thanks. This is great."

  The party was finally nearly over, the food eaten and the pinata emptied and people starting to leave, when Laine walked by the couch where I was sitting, pretended to trip over my feet, and spilled a glass of Coke down the front of my blouse. The blouse, I should say here, was brand-new, and white. I had paid for it with my hard-eamed baby-sitting money.

  "Oh! Oh, I'm so sorry, Stacey!" cried Laine. "Gosh, I don't know how that happened. Your feet are so big, they're hard to miss. I guess I'm just clumsy."

  Giggle, giggle, giggle from Allison, Naomi, etc.

  I had had enough. "Mom?" I whispered as I stood in the kitchen, rinsing my blouse off at the sink. "Laine did that on purpose. You saw, didn't you? That wasn't an accident."

  "Stacey, for heaven's sake. Don't be silly. Laine wouldn't do something like that on purpose. And I heard her apologize to you."

  "Fine," I said.

  I counted up the days until our move, which couldn't come soon enough.

  The summer was sliding by in that way summers have. One day you're counting up the weeks of vacation and thinking the summer seems endless, and the next thing you know you're seeing ads on television for back-to-school supplies. The first time I heard one of those back-to-school ads I was sitting in the family room with my father and I nearly fell off the couch. It was a warm evening in the beginning of August, and Dad had opened the sliding door to the back porch so that we could hear the crickets and owls over the sounds from the TV. We were side by side on the couch, Dad with the newspaper, and me with a scarf I was knitting, trying to ignore the incredible heat the wool was generating on my bare legs as the scarf trailed down over them.

  "What's the matter?" Dad asked as I recovered my skein of yam and regained my balance.

  I pointed frantically at the TV. "Did you hear that?"

  Dad shook his head.

  "It was an ad for Pen and Ink." Pen and Ink was a chain of stationery and office supply stores.

  "Ah," said Dad, clearly not understanding why a Pen and Ink ad should make me fall off the couch.

  "The announcer guy was saying it's not too early to buy your notebooks and pens and paper and organizers."

  Dad frowned slightly.

  "The ad showed this really happy father taking his grumpy kids shopping for school supplies. School supplies, Dad."

  My father finally smiled at me.

  "It isn't funny! The summer's more than half over. Way more!" I paused. "Kristy's birthday is almost here." I liked school and everything, but who wouldn't want summer to go on and on forever?

  "What's Kristy planning for her birthday?" asked my father, completely missing the point about vacation.

  "Just dinner with her family. She invited me, too."

  Dad nodded and went back to the paper, and I tumed down the volume on the TV and set my knitting aside. There was a little problem with Kristy's birthday, and I wanted to think about it. So I thought for a while. And I decided that there wasn't just one little problem, there
were several, adding up to a big problem.

  Here was the thing: Kristy had decided not to have an actual party for her birthday. This was because the party at Claudia's was still fresh in her mind. All those boys. They were bad enough. But the girls in their outfits - and the presents Claudia had been given...

  If Dad had asked me to make up my birthday list that very night, I would have written down craft kits, and this set I saw for designing doll clothes, and a copy of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Also, I kind of wanted a hamster.