Just as Long as We're Together (7 page)

"I don't think we'll be doing the rumba at the seventh grade dance," Alison said.

"You never know," Sadie told her. "This way you'll be prepared."

First, Sadie taught us the basic box step. Forward, to the side, together . . . backward, to

the side, together. Once we had that she taught us the rumba. She was about to teach us the samba when the timer on the oven went off. Sadie stuck a toothpick into the center of each pan to make sure the brownies were done. Then we set them on racks on the counter to cool.

"Now. . ." Sadie said, "if you'll excuse me, it's time for my siesta."

"Your siesta?" I said.

"Grandma never says nap," Alison explained. "Naps are for babies . . . right, Grandma?"

"Right."

While Sadie was taking her siesta Alison and I went to the beach with Leon and Gena. Leon held Maizie on a leash until we got there. Then he turned her loose and she took off, running first in one direction, then the other.

Leon and Gena sat on a jetty to watch the waves. Alison and I took off our shoes and socks. "What about your rash?" I asked. "I thought you have to wear a sock on that foot."

"I'm sure the salt water is good for it," Alison said.

It was windy on the beach, but sunny and warm for October. We rolled up our jeans and ran along the water's edge, laughing. Alison's long, black hair whipped across her face, making

me wish mine would hurry and grow. Maizie ran alongside us, looking up, as if to say, How much longer are we going to play this game?

I was having the best time. I like being with Alison. I like being her friend.

Maizie barked.

"Are you having fun, too?" 1 asked her.

She barked again.

"What's she saying?" I called to Alison, who was ahead of me.

"Nothing," Alison called back. "She's a dog."

"What do you mean?" I asked, catching up with her.

Alison flopped down. Maizie rolled over and over in the sand. "Do you really believe that dogs can talk?" Alison asked.

"Only one in seventeen million," I said, sitting beside her.

Alison laughed and lay back. Maizie jumped on her.

"You mean she can't talk?"

Alison shielded her eyes from the sun and looked at me. "You didn't really believe me, did you?"

"Of course not," I said, drawing a face in the sand with my finger. "I was just playing along with you."

Alison sat up. Sand fell from her hair. "You did believe me!"

"I suppose now you think I'm gullible," I said. "I don't know what that means," Alison said. "It means when a person is easily tricked .

when a person believes anything. I know because I looked it up one time."

"I don't think you're like that," Alison said. "I think you're a lot like me." She wrestled with Maizie for a minute. When Maizie escaped she said, "I only told you she could talk because I wanted you to like me. I wanted us to be friends."

"We are friends," I said.

"Best friends?"

I picked up a handful of sand. "Rachel and I have been best friends since second grade," I said, letting the sand trickle through my fingers.

"You mean you've never had more than one best friend at a time?" Alison asked.

"No. . . have you?"

"Sure. . . almost every year."

I looked at her. "So you're saying the three of us can be best friends?"

"Sure," Alison said.

"Great!"

"But don't tell Rachel about Maizie, okay? I'll tell her myself. . . when the time is right."

"Okay." I looked down the beach at the jetty. Leon and Gena were kissing.

16.

La Crème

De La Crème.

Sadie's brownies were a big hit. Kids kept asking, "Who baked these? They're great!" We saved one for Rachel. She was too worried about her speech to get to the bake sale.

Jeremy Dragon came back for a second brownie, then a third. Alison handed him the brownies and I took his money. That way we each got to touch him three times. It's good the brownies were individually wrapped because his hands were dirty.

Even Mrs. Remo bought one and when she tasted it she said, "These are incredible . .

they're so moist. Do you have the recipe?"

"It's in my grandmother's head," Alison told her.

"See if you can get her to write it down," Mrs. Remo said, licking her lips. "These are definitely la crème de la crème."

Alison smiled. Ever since Mrs. Remo mispronounced her name on the first day of school she's been trying French phrases on her.

"What's la crème de la crème mean?" I asked Alison when Mrs. Remo was gone.

"It means the best of the best."

At the end of the day we had the debate assembly. Five kids from seventh grade were trying out. The only one I knew, besides Rachel, was this boy, Toad. His name is really Todd but everyone calls him Toad, including his family. He went to my elementary school but he wasn't in my sixth grade class.

Toad spoke first, then two girls I didn't know, then a boy who's in my social studies class, then Rachel. She had brushed her hair away from her face, making her look younger than usual, and prettier. I know her so well I never think about her looks. I forget about the way her lower lip twitches when she's scared.

That morning, when I'd called for Rachel, her mother had been giving her a last minute lecture about the debate. "Wear your height as if you're proud of it. . . shoulders back, head high."

"Yeah . . . yeah . . ." Rachel had said. She'd heard it all before.

     
 
Mrs. Robinson had planted a kiss on Rachel's

     
cheek. "I know you'll be the best. You always

     
are."

     
 
Now, as Rachel walked across the stage, my

     
heart started to beat very fast. I could tell she

     
was trying to take her mother's advice but some

     
how she wound up walking as if she were in

     
pain.

     
 
When she got to the lectern she tapped the

     
microphone to make sure it was still working,

     
then cleared her throat twice. Her voice trembled

     
as she began to speak but once she got going her

     
body relaxed and her voice changed into that

     
•grownup one she uses when she wants to get

     
attention. A hush fell over the audience. You

     
could tell everyone was listening to what she had

•
    
to say. She was definitely la crème de la crème of

     
debaters.

     
 
When she finished the audience applauded the

     
same way they had for the others. Then Mr.

     
Diamond, my English teacher, stepped up to the

     
microphone to make some announcements. The

     
first was that we had made $316 at the bake sale

     
that morning. Everyone cheered, especially Ali

     
son and me because Sadie's brownies had brought

     
in close to a fifth of the total! Next, Mr. Diamond

     
told us we'd be able to donate food baskets to

the needy on both Thanksgiving and Christmas. Everybody cheered again. And then he said we'd earned enough to have a winter dance on Ground Hog Day, February 2. The cheering grew louder.

"That's my birthday," I whispered to Alison, who was sitting next to me.

"You're so lucky!" she said.

Another teacher handed Mr. Diamond a slip of paper. "Okay . ." he said, "here are the results of this afternoon's competition. The two newest members of the debating team are . . ." He hesitated for a minute, making my stomach turn over, "Todd Scrudato and Rachel Robinson."

Toad and Rachel came forward to shake Mr. Diamond's hand. Rachel was smiling and she walked more like herself. I felt myself choke up. I reached over and squeezed Alison's hand. She squeezed mine back.

17.

The

Alison Monceau

Story.

I have never understood what makes some kids so popular. I've been trying to figure it out for years. Almost from the first week of school you could tell Alison was going to be the most popular girl in our homeroom and it's not because her mother is Gena Farrell. Nobody knows about that but Rachel and me and we are sworn to secrecy. The funny thing is, Alison doesn't even try to be popular. It's just that everyone wants to be her friend. I've made a list with reasons why.

1.
   
She is very friendly.

2.
   
She never has anything bad to say about anyone.

3.
   
She doesn't have bad moods.

4.
   
She laughs a lot.

5.
   
She is funny.

6.
   
She has nice hair.

7.
   
She looks different than the rest of us because she is Vietnamese. Looking different can either work for you or against you. In Alison's case it works for her.

Alison knows how to be popular without being snobby, which is more than I can say for Amber Ackbourne. She's the leader of the snobbiest group of girls in seventh grade. And now she wants to be Alison's friend. She's always coming up to her in homeroom. But Alison can see right through her.

The boys like Alison, too. They just have different ways of showing it. They like to tease her, the way Eric Macaulay does, calling her Thumbelina and shooting rubber bands in her direction. Rachel says it's demeaning to be called Thumbelina. She says Alison should put a stop to it right now, before it gets out of hand.

"He only calls me that because I'm small," Alison said the other day at my house. "You know that fairy tale about the girl who's smaller than a thumb. . . there's even a song about her." Alison began to sing and dance around my room. She's a very good dancer. She must take after

Sadie Wishnik. When she finished she fell back on my bed, laughing. I laughed too. Finally, so did Rachel. Alison has a way of making people feel good.

Soon all three of us were singing the Thumbelina song and by the time Rachel went home she said, "Well. . . maybe it's not so demeaning."

Alison also knows how to flirt. I've been watching to see how she does it. She kind of teases the boys and giggles. You can learn a lot by watching a popular person in action. You can learn how to act and how not to act. Mom is always telling me to be myself but there are times when I don't know what being myself means. Sometimes I feel grown up and other times I feel like a little kid. I seem to be more than one person.

That's exactly how I felt last Wednesday. It was raining really hard. Alison came to my house after school. Rachel couldn't come because she had a music lesson. We were sitting in the kitchen, eating doughnuts and playing Spit, when we got to talking about the games we used to play when we were little. It turned out we'd both collected Barbies. So I got the idea to go down to the basement and dig out my old Barbie dolls, which I haven't seen since fourth grade. I found them in a carton marked Steph's Old Toys. I carried the Barbie case up to my room, closed the door and Alison and I played all afternoon, dressing and

undressing my three Barbies, while we made up silly stories for them to act out.

One of the stories was Barbie Is Adopted. After we'd finished, I asked Alison how it feels to be adopted for real.

"How would I know?" she asked. "I was adopted when I was four months old. I don't know what it feels like not to be adopted."

"But do you ever think about your biological mother?" I asked. I had seen this movie on TV about an adopted girl and when she was eighteen she decided to search for her biological mother.

"Sometimes I think about her," Alison said, "about how young and poor she was. She was just fifteen when she had me. But I'm happy with Gena and Leon. If I had to choose parents I'd choose them."

"I'd choose mine, too," I said, "except I'd make sure my father got a job where he didn't have to travel."

"What does he do anyway?"

"He's in public relations."

"When's he coming home?" Alison asked.

"Not until Thanksgiving."

"You must really miss him."

"Yeah. . . I do."

Later, when we packed up my Barbies and put them away, we vowed never to tell anyone we had played with them that afternoon.

The next day I was sitting in French class daydreaming about Alison. About how her life sounds just like a fairy tale. It would make a good movie, I thought. It would be called The Alison Monceau Story. It would star Gena Farrell as Alison's mother and Alison as herself and I would play her best friend. Stephanie Behrens Hirsch it would say on the screen. Maybe Rachel could play Alison's biological mother. With makeup and a wig she could probably look Vietnamese and she could certainly look fifteen. Jeremy Dragon could play.

"Stephanie!" Mrs. Hillerman shouted. "Will you please wake up!"

"What. . . me?"

The class laughed.

"I've lost my place," I said.

"I don't think you ever had it," Mrs. Hillerman said. And then she said something to me in French, something I didn't understand, and the whole class laughed again.

18.

Macbeth.

Double, double, toil and trouble;

Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Rachel taught us this poem from Macbeth, by William Shakespeare. We're going to dress up as the three witches from the play and recite the poem instead of saying "Trick or Treat" on Halloween. We're not interested in "Trick or treating." We're interested in using it as an excuse to get into a certain person's yellow house.

On Halloween night we put on the weirdest clothes we could find, plus junk jewelry and witches' hats. We also used gobs of makeup from Gena Farrell's makeup collection. Alison showed