Never Enough (4 page)

Still, I worked really hard on the portfolio. It wasn’t like I expected a college scholarship from it, but maybe an A.

When I rounded the corner into his room, Mr. Dewdney emerged from a supply closet at the back.

“I was wondering if you’ve marked any of the portfolios,” I said, breathless.

He waltzed toward his desk at the front, his eyebrows knit together. “Yes, I’ve marked a few, but I haven’t seen yours. Are you sure you handed it in?”

Am I sure I handed it in? No, I just spent five hundred hours making it perfect and then left it at home.
I cleared my throat and held back the sarcastic comment that was practically nose-diving off of my tongue about how mine was the very
first
portfolio handed in, well ahead of the due date.

“Positive,” I told him, keeping my face straight.

He flipped through a pile of portfolios on the table behind him. When he uncovered my bright-red folder, I yelled, “That’s it!” as if he had just found my missing arm. He flipped through it, and as he did, I could see sticky notes throughout with red-pen scratchings. His comments.

Finally, he shut it. “Um, no. I haven’t had a chance to give
it a final grade yet, I’m afraid.” He glanced up to the clock. “I’m working my way through the pile and will have to go back over some of them again.” The way he motioned toward the pile, you’d swear it reached the ceiling.

I swallowed, and walked to my seat, suddenly noticing the room was full. I was too stunned to say “Thanks for checking,” or anything at all to anyone.

It’s not like I needed to be a natural performer or good with boys, like Shayleen. Or multi-talented and popular like my sister. All I’ve ever wanted was to be kind of good at
one
thing. Worth a second look. Maybe a compliment.

But not only was my work not good enough for an A, it wasn’t good enough to
remember
.

At home after school, I had only my nagging mind to keep me company. I
questioned whether Claire was right about me. If she thought I should just fade into the background, is that what everyone thought? Was I just a vase or knickknack on the shelf of the rest of humanity?

It wasn’t like I needed to be in the spotlight. I’d never be the star of a ballet recital or step-dance captain like Claire, and that was okay. So why did I feel the need to keep trying to compete at that level?

I didn’t, I decided. Who needed that superstar stuff? Not me. I could be happy in the background if I didn’t always see it as such a bad place to be. I set the brown cardboard box with my new camera on my bed and flipped through the instructions.

Mom and Dad wouldn’t be home for hours. After some water damage to our house three years ago, my parents had had to put the whole repair amount on their credit cards. Mom increased her hours to full-time at the nursing home and Dad started working overtime at least a couple of days per week to keep up with the bills. Even if it was my birthday, I knew it was just what they had to do.

But I
did
take offense that Claire had after-school plans that she thought were much more important than me. It had been only a couple of years ago when she’d rushed home to pin up balloons and hide my gifts.

But she was busy and popular now, and I knew I should be happy for her. I
was
happy for her. Except that sometimes I wasn’t.

I flipped ahead a few pages in the camera manual until I found the instructions for loading the film. They seemed easy enough to understand. Following step by step, I inserted a roll of film.

When I picked up the loaded camera, its weight made it feel important. As I ran my hand over the buttons at the top, my brain surged on how intricate and stimulating and inventive photography could be.

In the instructions I found a layout of how to adjust the amount of light that came through the lens, and thought back to a picture Mr. Dewdney had drawn in art class of a big
house with an eerie shaded quality. At the time, I’d done my best to copy it, but my drawing had turned into a muted mess of colors. It was completely unrecognizable.

A photograph. Now
that
you could recognize without even trying.

Even though I heard Claire come in sometime after dinner, I was absorbed and didn’t bother opening my door. I fell asleep with the camera on my chest, the instructions spread across my bed like a treasure map. There was so much more to play around with than on Mom’s little digital point-and-shoot model.

The next morning my birthday disappointments had vanished and I woke up with a smile on my face, thinking:

I have a cool new camera.

The camera was a gift from my sister and
Josh
.

Josh sat with me, smiled at me, and winked at me during my birthday lunch.

Why did I always have to focus on the negative, on all the ways that my life wasn’t good enough?

*   *   *

Two jocks stood right inside the school’s front entrance when I walked in. They laughed and said something I couldn’t hear as I walked past. Normally I would have wanted to be swallowed up by my hoodie, but today their reaction made me pull my shoulders back and walk a little taller.

When Marcus arrived at his locker, he focused on his books, not even saying hello. I tried not to take it as a snub. It probably had nothing to do with me. Maybe he was just incredibly shy and I’d have to work a little harder at getting him to talk to me each day.

The idea made me smile. That could be kinda fun.

I turned, about to open my mouth, when he said, “Did your highlighter explode?” He gestured to my shirt—a gray tee with a big orange blob that said
SPLAT
across it. “That happened to me once, only mine was green and went all over my hands.”

He said it with such a straight face, it took me a second—and a twitch at the side of his mouth—to realize he was joking. He wasn’t
that
shy, it just took him a little while to start a conversation. We were similar that way—not quick-mouthed like Shayleen.

I nibbled the inside of my cheek, holding back a smile. “Or maybe you just
told
people it was your highlighter after a really big sneeze.”

His stoicism was no match for
my
dry humor. He reached up like he was wiping his mouth, but I caught the edges of a smile there first. I liked how he didn’t hand his smiles over easily. How he was making me earn them.

“Later,” I said, waving a hand over my head as I spun and headed off to class.

All through English I noticed weird looks shooting my way from people I had never spoken to before. Jocks. Cheerleaders.

A folded turquoise paper was making its way around the room and I wondered if that had something to do with it, since the note conveniently bypassed me.

Seriously, what were we, in sixth grade?
I had more important things to think about than if people were sending around notes saying “Loann has a fat ass” or whatever. I still had to tweak the last paragraph of my essay before handing it in.
Grow up, people.

Thankfully our teacher quickly took over, and I didn’t think about the strange looks again until drama.

A lot of students take Mr. Benson’s drama class because it’s nonthreatening. He rarely calls on students who want to fly under his radar, and likes to work with those who participate. The kids who love to get involved sit in the front, people like Shayleen, who’s about as shy as a tornado.

And I’d always sat with her. But today she leaned in, murmuring with Deirdre and two other guys. Maybe my insecurity had risen because of the weird looks in English class, but I immediately wondered if it was about me. Shayleen had had temper tantrums, yes, but I’d always let her cool off. She was obviously no longer the object of anyone’s scorn after yesterday’s lunch episode, judging by all of the people huddled
around her. So the whispering probably had nothing to do with me, I reasoned silently. I was overreacting.

I sucked in a breath and marched for my usual seat beside Shayleen. She didn’t look my way, but with the giggling going on between her and her crew, I didn’t really know if she’d noticed me.

Turning to the back of the room, I found Marcus and gave him a little wave. He returned it, along with a few scrunches of his nose—like he was going to let go of a really big sneeze—and then checked out his shirt and his hands to see if anything had exploded on them. I laughed quietly.

I’d never considered myself one of the nonparticipators like him—I’d
always
sat in the front—but now that I thought about it, when
was
the last time I’d volunteered for one of the drama games? The most I ever did was call out prompt suggestions when Mr. Benson asked for them.

Maybe I was more like Marcus than I realized.

The group around Shayleen dispersed to their seats when Mr. Benson started class with a long spiel about this year’s play. Shayleen watched our teacher intently, nodding her head at regular intervals. She looked consumed with thoughts of getting a good part in the play, and I was glad that she’d forgotten yesterday’s outburst.

Except she leaned in her seat to angle toward Deirdre and away from me. I heard whispering from behind me, from the
guys she’d been talking to. Something wasn’t right. I could feel it.

By the time the bell rang at the end of class, Shayleen had not looked in my direction once. I tried to keep talking myself down about it, but when she stood and turned for the door, I decided I needed to know if she was still mad.

“Hey, Shay . . .” I said.

She stood with her back to me for several seconds so I couldn’t read her.

“I’m, um, sorry about yesterday,” I said. Because I was. Even though there was nothing I could have done about it, I did feel bad that Claire and Jasmine had embarrassed her in front of everyone. “My sister and her friends . . . they can be like that,” I added.

Shayleen turned around slowly, her eyes narrowing. “So now everything’s your sister’s fault?”

“That’s not what I meant. I—”

She cut me off, slapping a turquoise paper down on the desk in front of me. Then, with a smirk, she spun toward the door and marched away.

I flipped over the paper and my eyes widened at the lines of text. This
was
the sixth grade! Literally.

Shayleen had printed off a quiz—a private quiz—I’d done at least five years ago when we emailed each other almost every day. She’d obviously copied it on bright paper so it
wouldn’t be missed. I gripped the edge of my desk and stared down at the list.

Most of them were lame questions about favorite movies and books, and there was nothing too embarrassing. Except for the last three:

Have you kissed a boy? NO! But
WANT
to!

Have you ever had a boyfriend? Sadly, no.

If you could kiss a boy, who would it be?

***JOSH GARRISON***

The asterisks were mine, along with a Google Image of a pair of pursed lips I’d included at the bottom. If the header of my email address wasn’t enough to identify me, Shayleen had scribbled the words YOUR SISTER’S BOYFRIEND, LOANN? right underneath. Of course it didn’t mention that Claire didn’t even
know
Josh when I’d answered this.

My face burned. How many people had seen the paper this morning?

For the rest of the day, my main agenda was this: Avoid Shayleen, avoid Claire, and hopefully—please, God—avoid Josh.
It will blow over in a few days
, I told myself again and
again and again under my breath. I avoided people’s eyes in the hallways and ignored their whispers in my classes.

The only person I came face-to-face with was Marcus.

He gave me a playful nudge with his elbow at our lockers. Because I was off in another world, I lost my balance.

“Ha, ha,” I said, righting myself, but truthfully, after holding in my frustration and embarrassment all day, it almost brought tears to my eyes. “Don’t tell me
you
don’t know your own strength,” I said with as much sarcasm as I could muster to cover up my fragile emotional state. As soon as it left my mouth, though, I wondered if it might have sounded pretty mean. The guy wasn’t exactly oozing muscle.

But he came back quickly with, “Is that an invitation for an arm-wrestle?” He lifted his eyebrows a couple of times in quick succession.

I licked my finger and striped it in the air, giving him one point, mostly for distracting me and bringing a smile back to my face. He closed his locker with a bump of his hip. “Later,” he said on his way to his next class.

At least he hadn’t said anything about the turquoise paper. But the more I thought about it, he’d have to know someone who was passing around a copy to actually see it.