Cannie Shapiro 02 Certain Girls (4 page)

Sam broke off a chunk of biscotti and bounced her water bottle against her thigh. "I'm touched that you'd offer, but my mother's met him, remember?"

"Oh, right." Sam's mother had joined us a few years ago for Thanksgiving. She'd swept into our house in a floor-length mink, frowned at the turkey as if it had insulted her, eaten precisely one spoonful of cranberry relish, and showered Joy with expensive American Girl dolls and accessories after observing pointedly to no one in particular that she had to spoil little girls when she could, since it was clear that Sam wouldn't be giving her grandchildren of her own. "Well, isn't there anyone from work you could take?"

"The firm directory's online," Sam said. "My mother would look up whoever I brought and figure out that he was just doing me a favor."

"Your mother would do that? She'd Google your date?"

Sam shrugged. "I come by my obsessive personality honestly."

"How about someone from a different firm? Don't you meet people at those Continuing Legal Education things?"

She shook her head. "Married. Gay. Occasionally both."

"Um. You could hire an actor."

"As a last resort," she said. "I've already made a few calls."

"Really?"

"I told them I was casting a low-budget commercial. Do you know what SAG's day rate is?"

"Do I want to?"

"You do not. And it doubles on weekends, and you have to pay extra for travel, so never mind." Sam polished off her biscotti. "You're so lucky. You have no idea."

Then why does Peter want to change everything?
I wondered.
And what was going on with Joy?
I didn't say any of it out loud. "Go with God," I said instead, and hugged Samantha goodbye. I retrieved my coat, checked the time, and considered wandering up to Walnut Street for a little window-shopping. But it was almost eight, and Joy might need help with her English homework. I pulled my scarf tight around my neck, tugged my hat over my ears, and started my ten-block walk back home.

I'd lived in the neighborhood long enough to bore friends and acquaintances with my Used-To tour: the Starbucks that used to be a pizza shop where you could buy twists of garlic bread, three for a dollar; the burrito place that used to be a video store; the shoe store that used to sell books.

Tiny white Christmas lights still twinkled from the door of the cheesesteak place, and the bright windows of Whole Foods were papered with hopeful red and pink valentines, but there was no denying that we were between holidays. In the bitter trench of winter, the weather had turned ugly again. A hard-edged wind blew grit and newspapers and someone's discarded weave down South Street, and the bare tree branches shivered in the dark. I fell in behind a pack of girls in rolled-up black jeans and stilettos, snapping pictures of one another with their cell phones. Cold seeped up from the sidewalk through the rubber soles of my boots.
How old are these girls, anyhow?
I wondered as one of them wiggled her tongue between her spread fingers while her friend snapped a picture. Did their mothers know they were out?

You're so lucky,
Sam had said. But if our life was so good, why was Peter so eager to shake it all up? A baby, I mused. A baby would change everything. But maybe change was good. Maybe it wasn't that I'd arrived at the safe harbor I'd longed for during my own unhappy childhood. Maybe it was just inertia--or, worse, fear--that was keeping me in the same place, living in the same house, taking the same vacations, never hoping for more than what I had.

Of course, I'd hoped for more once, once upon a time, in my fearless twenties, when I'd sold a screenplay and published a novel and been, very briefly, a strange kind of famous. It hadn't ended well. I pushed down the memories, gave my hat another tug, crossed the street with my breath hanging in front of me in icy white puffs, and hurried back home so fast that anyone watching might have thought I was being chased.

O
n Valentine's Day, the kids at the Philadelphia Academy buy one another sugar cookies shaped like hearts with pink and red frosting, and little cards attached for a message. Each cookie costs a dollar, and all the money goes to the school's building fund.

I've been going to the Philadelphia Academy since kindergarten, and every year I know exactly what I'll find on my desk on February 14: one cookie apiece from Tamsin and Todd, and a cookie from Jeremy Albin, whose mother, like mine, makes him buy cookies for every kid in our class.

I also know that every year at some point during early February, my mother and I will have a fight ("a discussion," she calls it, but it's really a fight) about the cookies. I will tell her that I should just buy them with my own money and give them to my actual friends. She'll reply that I'll have the rest of my life to start excluding people and that seventh grade (or sixth grade, or whatever grade I'm in at the time) is too early to start.

I'll say that if I give cookies to everyone, they don't mean anything. She'll sigh, which will make her boobs shift in a way I can't stand to look at, and say, Yes, they do, they mean "Happy Valentine's Day from Joy," and what if there's a kid who doesn't get any cookies at all? How would that kid feel? And how would I feel, knowing that I could have prevented such a tragedy by spending her money--not even my own money but hers--making sure that everyone gets a cookie?

She kind of has a point. It's true that there are a few kids in my class--Jack Corsey, who has such terrible dandruff that when he wears dark sweaters, it looks like he was out in a snowstorm, and maybe even Tamsin, who can be kind of intense when she starts talking about speculative fiction--who might not get cookies if it wasn't for me and Jeremy Albin.

My problem is with the people who don't deserve extra cookies, like Amber Gross. Amber Gross, as far as I can remember, has never said a single word to me, even though we've been going to regular school and Hebrew school together since we started both. Amber and I were even in the same Little People's Music class when we were two. My mom has pictures, and while there are photographs that show us actually in the same room, we're never in the same part of the room, leading me to believe that Amber was too cool for me even before we could talk. Amber gets tons of cookies. Believe me, she doesn't need mine.

But when I pointed this out to my mother the Friday before Valentine's Day, she got a sour look on her face and unloaded one of her dozen useless phrases: "Joy," she said, "life's too short."

Too short for what?
I wanted to ask, but the bell started ringing loudly enough for us to hear through the rolled-up windows. My mom slipped a twenty-dollar bill into my hand. "Do it because it'll make me happy," she said. She tried to hug me, but I slid to the edge of my seat. "Have a great day!" I could hear her calling as I stuffed the money into the pocket of my jeans and walked across the play yard with my head down while the first bell rang.

On February 14, like every school day, I set my alarm for five-forty-five. In the shower, I exfoliated my legs and elbows with the Orange Sugar Energy Scrub that Aunt Elle had given me, and shaved my legs and armpits. I washed my hair with Step One of the Jon Carame Secret Agent Anti-Frizz Protection Program and conditioned with Step Two, then turned the water to cold and stood there shivering while I counted to thirty, so the cold water could seal the cuticles.

By six-fifteen, I was in my towel, teeth flossed and brushed, the next two steps of the Anti-Frizz Protection Program already spritzed (Step Three) and smoothed (Step Four) through my hair. It took me forty-five minutes with a paddle brush and a diffuser to get my hair looking right. It might have taken me less time if I didn't have to keep checking to make sure the door was locked. My mother doesn't believe I should straighten my hair. My mother believes I should embrace my natural beauty. This means I am the only girl in the world who has to hide her straightening iron under her bed like it's a dirty magazine or a gun.

At seven o'clock, my hair was done. I hung up my wet towel, rinsed my mouth again, and stuck a pantiliner on my underwear. My period isn't due for weeks, but I don't take any chances. When you've already got one major thing wrong with you, you can't risk having to run to the nurse's office with a borrowed sweater flopping around your waist and everyone staring at you, knowing exactly what's happened.

I wiped off the sink and counter with toilet paper, put my nightgown back on, and slid back into bed. Five minutes later, my mother knocked on the door.

"Rise and shine," she said. Her own hair was shoved back from her face in a sloppy half bun, half ponytail, and she was wearing my dad's bathrobe, with her glasses sticking out of the V of the chest. "Do you want eggs or oatmeal?"

I haven't eaten eggs or oatmeal for breakfast all year. What I eat for breakfast is three-quarters of a cup of high-fiber protein-enriched bran flakes, a half cup of organic skim milk, and six raw almonds. This does not stop my mother from asking if I want eggs or oatmeal every morning. "No, thanks. I'll just have cereal." I threw back the covers and went to the bathroom like I hadn't already been in there for over an hour. I brushed my teeth again, pulled on my jeans and boots and a pink sweater, tucked my mascara and lip gloss into my pocket, and went downstairs to the kitchen, where I found my mother holding the red kettle in her hands like it was some kind of magical object she'd never seen before. I counted out my almonds. She didn't move. "Mom?" I finally asked.

She set the kettle on the burner and clicked on the flame. "Sorry, honey." She sat down at the table across from me and sighed before patting her scrunched-up hair, as if that would help (it didn't). "Just thinking."

"About what?"

She fussed with her hair some more and smiled kind of sadly. "Oh, you know. Grown-up stuff." Which was, I thought, exactly what a mother would say to her daughter. If her daughter were four.

She dropped me off, as usual, outside of the chain-link fence that separates the empty play yard from the sidewalk. I stopped in the empty first-floor girls' room, where I pulled my lip gloss out of my pocket and smoothed some onto my lips. Then I unzipped my backpack and pulled out my lunch, which was stored in a zippered, insulated pink bag with my name monogrammed on the front. I transferred the food out of the horrible pink bag and into a plain plastic bag from the grocery store, which is what every other kid uses.

At last I reached behind my straightened hair, pulled out my hearing aids, and slipped them into my pocket. It's not like this is going to fool anyone. Almost every kid in my class remembers how I started kindergarten with the big, square, horrible behind-the-ear hearing aids. Up until third grade, my teachers would wear wireless microphones, and I would wear earphones, like the ones from an iPod, so I could hear them. I'd try to fluff out my crazy, frizzy nest of hair so nobody could see the hearing aids or the headphones, but everyone knew they were there. Which wasn't entirely bad: The one spell of popularity I'd ever had occurred after Mrs. Mears left her microphone on when she went to the teachers' lounge and the entire class huddled around my earphones to listen (the next day, instead of discussing photosynthesis, Mrs. Mears's lecture was "Irritable Bowel Syndrome: It Is Not a Joke").

In sixth grade, I graduated to the kind of hearing aids that sit inside my ears. I'm supposed to wear them every day and sit in the front row. But last summer Aunt Elle came to the beach for a week's visit with the tiniest black bikini I'd ever seen and a canvas tote bag full of
Elle
and
Vogue
and
In Touch
and
InStyle
. My mother shook her head as Aunt Elle stacked the glossy magazines next to her chair and started smearing oil over her shoulders. We don't have magazines like that in our house. My mother thinks they're a bad influence. "Those are manipulated images," my mom said, frowning at the beautiful, long-limbed models on the covers, explaining how the pictures are specially lit and airbrushed and edited. She even downloaded pictures on the computer to show me how the editors smoothed out wrinkles and slimmed down backs and arms and thighs and, in one case, even erased a model's hand and made her arm longer.

"For God's sake, Cannister, it's a frickin' magazine," Elle had said, and she'd slipped me copies when my mother wasn't looking. After seven days straight of reading
Vogue
and watching my aunt, I'd decided that this year, seventh grade, would be when I would change. I'd ditch my hearing aids and my special seat. I'd straighten my hair and wear makeup and tuck in my shirts. Then people would see me differently from the way they always had; they'd see that I wasn't the geeky girl with only two friends and crazy hair and a mother who treated her like a baby.

So far, it hadn't worked, but when I walked into homeroom that morning I had my first glimmer of hope that things might be changing. The first thing I saw was Tamsin and Todd huddled in the corner, whispering. A second later, I saw what they were whispering about: twelve frosted sugar hearts heaped on my desk. It was unbelievable. Not even Amber Gross had more.

I checked to make sure I was in the right classroom. Then I counted to make sure I was looking at the right desk, the third from the front. I picked up one of the cookies, waiting for someone to say something, to tap me on the shoulder and say, "Um, sorry, that's actually mine."

TO: Joy. FROM: Martin. MESSAGE:
Happy Valentine's Day!

The only Martin in our school is Martin Baker, Amber's boyfriend, who always wears his cleats to class so there's no chance of you forgetting that he's on the soccer team. I turned the cookie over in my hands, holding it carefully. "Gentle touches!" my preschool teacher would say during show-and-tell when we'd pass around the toy the kid of the day had brought to share. "Gentle touches" meant you could hold it, but it wasn't really yours.

I picked up another cookie. TO: Joy. FROM: A Secret Admirer. MESSAGE:
I think you're sweet.

My cheeks flushed.
A Secret Admirer.
I had a secret admirer. I looked at the cookie, then, quickly, at Duncan Brodkey. Just as fast, I looked away.

I shuffled slowly through the rest of the cookies until I came to one that made my heart stop thudding and skitter to a stop. TO: Joy. FROM: Amber Gross. MESSAGE:
Happy V Day!

Amber Gross. Amber Gross sent me a cookie. Amber Gross wants me to have a happy V Day. At any minute, the world will spin off its axis, hell will freeze over, and monkeys will fly out of my ears from where my hearing aids should be.

Just when I was sure that the day couldn't get any weirder, when I was positive that it was all a dream and I was going to wake up in my room underneath my flowered comforter and the stuck-on stars with my mother standing at the door asking about oatmeal, Amber Gross herself sauntered toward me with her thumbs hooked into the belt loops of her ultra-low-rise jeans. ("No, I am not buying you those," my mother said when I pointed out a pair at the mall. "Why?" I'd been dumb enough to ask. "Because they're obscene," said my mother. "And you'd need all new underwear.")

"Hi, Joy," she said.
Hi, Joy.
Like we were actually friends. Like we IM'ed each other every night and sat together on the bus in the mornings.

"Thanks for the cookie!" I squeaked in what I hoped was a normal-girl voice. I couldn't believe she'd said my name. I wasn't even sure she knew it.

"No prob," she said. Her braces glittered as she smiled. "Hey, do you want to sit with us at lunch?"

"Oh. Um. Sure, I guess," I said. I thought that even if my voice sounded weird, my words sounded right. Very casual.

"Cool!" she said, and walked back to her seat.

Tamsin whirled around, wide-eyed. "What was that about?" she whispered, exaggerating the syllables and adding a big shrug so there'd be no chance I'd miss her meaning.

I'd just opened my mouth to say something--what, I wasn't exactly sure--when Mr. Shoup dropped his briefcase on his desk. "Settle down," he said. At least I thought that was what he said. Mr. Shoup had a mustache, and the longer it grew, the harder my life got.

He turned toward the blackboard, and I bent my head, hoping nobody else could hear the way my heart was pounding.

"You're not really going to sit with them, are you?" Tamsin said directly into my right ear four endless periods later, as I was collecting my lunch from my locker.

I ducked my head and mumbled, "Dunno."

"She's just using you," said Tamsin. To make sure I'd heard, she shoved up the sleeves of her gray sweatshirt, stepped in front of me, and signed the words: "Using you!" (American Sign Language is one of the languages offered at the Philadelphia Academy, along with Spanish, French, and Latin. Tamsin has taken all four.)

"Using her for what, though?" Todd said as he caught up to us in the hall. He was in his usual school uniform of crisp khakis and a button-down shirt that he'd ironed himself. His handsomeness and his height make him stand out among the boys in our grade, but because he'd rather sing show tunes than kick a soccer ball, his good looks don't matter. Last October the boys on the lacrosse team wrote
FAG
on his locker, which meant that everyone in the school got stuck in an all-day seminar with a psychologist about the Importance of Tolerance and Understanding.
It could have been worse,
Todd said.
It got us out of algebra.