Please, Please, Please (5 page)

Zoe shrugged again and ripped open her lunch bag. “I’m the fifth kid,” she explained. “By the time I came around, my parents were like, oh, just put her out in the backyard with the others.”

I looked down the table at Morgan, who cupped her hand over Olivia’s ear. “Hey,” I whispered to Zoe. “Um, do you think, maybe we shouldn’t put our friendship rings in our Bring Yourself in a Sack.”

She looked down at her friendship ring and covered the knot with her thumb.

“Just because”—I tilted my head toward Morgan—“you know. A lot’s going on with her at home, and we don’t need to shove it in her face.”

“Oh, sure,” Zoe agreed, nodding. “No big deal.”

“Thanks,” I whispered.

She held out her baggie of homemade cookies. I almost said no thanks, but then, to celebrate my new normal life, I ate one. I don’t normally eat cookies, because to be graceful as a swan you can’t let yourself get chubby. Sometimes when I get bored during barre exercises I say cookie names in rhythm: Nutter Butter Oreo Chips Ahoy Deluxe. I bit into Zoe’s cookie smiling, like,
Ha! I’m regular! I play soccer. I eat cookies
.

It didn’t taste as good as I’d expected.

seven

M
y mother saw us and beeped.
Beeped and beeped. Zoe waved. She hopped toward the car, holding her sneaker, because for her emergency tenth thing in her Bring Yourself in a Sack in place of her friendship ring, she had taken the frayed shoelace out of her sneaker and explained, “This is because I am barely holding myself together.” Everybody had laughed. Her project was definitely the funniest—she even had a piece of French toast in there to show her family’s favorite food. Mine was just so boring—this is my toe shoe, these are exercise bands, this is a program from
The Nutcracker
. All dance stuff except History, who I threw in this morning as my tenth thing. If I really do quit ballet, I thought, maybe I’ll be less boring, like Zoe and Tommy and Morgan. Even Olivia had all different kinds of things—charcoal pencils, a calculator, soccer ball earrings, a dictionary, a pool ball. I was so embarrassed.

“Hi, Zoe!” Mom yelled out the window. I want my friends and Mom to like one another. It was always a hard part about Morgan, that Mom thinks she’s an angry person—that’s what she says, but I sort of worry that maybe Mom is just a snob. Mom says no, it’s not her house or her shoes, she only worries that Morgan hurts my feelings. Which is true. It’s a relief that Mom thinks I’m making a good choice of Zoe as a best friend.

“How did it go?” Mom whispered when I opened the front door.

“Fine,” I whispered back.

She smiled and said, “Great. I knew it. OK, come on—we’re really going to have to speed this time!”

“Zoe wanted to come,” I said, not getting in yet. “Her mother said it’s OK.”

A lie—she didn’t even call. It just popped out. Mom would just never understand that not every mother is like her. I’m sure Zoe’s mother had no idea what Zoe was bringing in her Sack—or even that she got a friendship ring. So I lied and waited for the consequences. I tightened every muscle of my body.

“I’d be happy for the company,” Mom said, still smiling. “But it might be sort of boring for Zoe, just to sit there with me—are you sure you want to, Zoe?”

“I, um, yeah!” Zoe said.

I relaxed my muscles. That wasn’t so hard, I decided. “I’ll sit in back with Zoe,” I told Mom. “Is that OK?”

“Of course,” Mom said. “By the way, Zoe—I love your rings.”

“Thank you,” Zoe said. “Me, too.”

I slammed the front door, opened the back, and slid across the seat. Zoe and I smiled at each other as I tossed my ballet bag into the front passenger seat. I took a deep breath.

“You can do it,” Zoe whispered to me.

I twisted my friendship ring around my finger for luck before I started. “Mom?”

“Do you have enough room to stretch back there?” Mom asked. “I can move up a little.” She pulled a lever and yanked her seat forward by wiggling her behind.

“I’m fine,” I answered. “You don’t have to squish.”

“Here, let me dig out your stuff.” She steered with her knee so she could unzip my ballet bag. She’s always doing things for me; it’s embarrassing.

“You don’t have to—”

“We won’t really have time for stretching when you get there,” she interrupted. “And the last thing you need with
The Nutcracker
auditions coming up is an injury.” She tossed my dance clothes back. I caught them before they hit Zoe.

I yanked off my shorts. I always change in the car, on the way, but it was a little awkward, with Zoe there. I held my T-shirt out to cover me as I pulled down my underpants. I got them off and my tights on in one motion.

“Um, Mom?” It’s hard for me to talk and struggle my leotard on, under my T-shirt, at the same time.

“What? I can’t hear you,” Mom said. “Talk louder. Did something happen today?”

“No, I just . . .” I straightened my leotard’s skinny straps and pulled on my new leg warmers; I decided not to feel guilty about wearing them even if I’m quitting because sometimes nondancers wear leg warmers just to be cozy. I could still wear them. And they’re such a soft pink, anybody would feel pretty inside them.

“What?” Mom asked, turning around.

“Please watch the road, Mom.” I hate when she turns around, driving.

Mom smiled at Zoe as if they were the best friends and I was the overprotective mother, then turned the right way. I took a deep breath and stretched my neck.

Mom beeped at the car in front of us as the light was turning green. “This rushing, it’s crazy. I should just get you out of eighth period—you don’t need gym or band. You get plenty of culture and exercise from ballet. And the last thing you want to be doing is running around, twisting your ankles. It could ruin you for the season.”

“I don’t run, Mom.”

“She doesn’t,” Zoe added, backing me up. “She’s very careful of her ankles. Honestly.”

I saw Mom smile quickly in the rearview mirror. “Well, good. But I’m going to ask for a conference with Mrs. Johnson, see what I can do.”

“Mom, please don’t talk to the principal.” I couldn’t look at Zoe. Kids at school used to say I got special privileges, because my mother kept going in to talk to the principal. No wonder people didn’t like me.

“What?” Mom asked innocently. “I’ll just explain to her that since you are a serious ballerina, you can’t risk twisting an ankle.”

“Mom,” I begged. “Please. Nobody in the whole school gets out of gym except Ken Carpenter.”

“Who’s Ken Carpenter?”

“You remember. The genius who goes to the high school for calculus eighth period, he’s so brilliant, even smarter than Olivia. Nobody sits with him at lunch.”

“CJ!”

“What? It’s true! Isn’t it, Zoe?”

“Yeah,” Zoe admitted. “He’s way beyond us.”

“Well, there’s no shame in standing out, being special.” Mom swerved around a slow car in the left lane. “I’m sure Ken Carpenter’s mother is very proud of him. Am I right, Zoe?”

“I don’t really know Mrs. Carpenter,” Zoe said. “She seems proud, I guess.”

As Mom swerved back into the left lane, Zoe buckled her seat belt. How embarrassing. My mother, the wild woman.

“What I mean is,” Mom said, “it’s important to devote yourself to something, so you’ll stand out from the crowd.” I mouthed the words along with her, which made Zoe smile. Mom saw her smile and added, “I guess your mother tells you the same thing, huh, Zoe?”

“Well,” Zoe answered. “Actually, my mom, not really. But then, I have no talents, so the whole subject doesn’t really come up.”

“Mom?” I interrupted. “Mom? I think I want to, um, stop, for a while, to, I know you want me to and I made a commitment, but it’s, soccer starts tomorrow and I-I-I—”

A siren wailed behind us.

“Um,” Zoe said. “I think, excuse me?”

“No, no, no,” Mom said, checking her rearview mirror. “OK, CJ? Lean back and start crying.”

“What?”

“And hold your nose. No! Your ear!” She pulled slowly over to the side of the road. Spinning red lights flashed through the back window over us. I leaned against the window with my hand cupped on my ear, not daring to look at Zoe as footsteps approached us, crunching in the gravel.

Mom opened her window and started talking fast. “I’m so glad you found us, Officer.”

“What seems to be the trouble, ma’am?” he asked. I looked at his uniform out my window. He had a gun and handcuffs attached to his belt.

“It’s my daughter, CJ,” Mom said sweetly. “She’s in pain.”

I ducked my head lower and prayed Zoe wouldn’t crack up, or we’d be going to jail. Just what we need with
The Nutcracker
auditions coming up, I could imagine my mother saying as the prison gate slams.

“What happened?” the police officer asked. “You left me in your dust, forty-five M-P-H through that red light.”

I stared at his gun. In England the cops don’t carry guns. I wished we were in England instead of Massachusetts.

“It’s her ear, Officer,” my mother said sweetly. I hate when she uses that voice, like when she’s talking to the principal. It embarrasses me, the way she tilts her head and goes soprano. “A Q-tip accident.”

I pushed my head hard into the cool window to keep from turning to look at Mom and saying, “What?”

“Is it bleeding?”

“Well, it was,” Mom explained.

He leaned in Mom’s window and looked at me. “Are you in pain, sweetheart?”

“No,” I croaked.
I hate her
, I thought, feeling the pain of embarrassment at my weird mother burning a path from my stomach right up to the back of my tongue. I hate the lying witch. She used to knit me and herself matching outfits and have my father take pictures of us wearing them in the backyard. She still dresses my brother for school even though he’s eight. She sometimes gets a poppy seed caught between her front teeth. Hate, disgust. It was hard to believe I could ever tolerate the sight of her. All of which is new. Until last month, I thought she was perfect—the most beautiful, glamorous, perfect woman, exactly the person I was aiming to be when I grow up.

“We were just kidding around,” Zoe said.

My mother spun around and shot Zoe a look.

“And I pushed her arm,” Zoe added. “I didn’t mean to hurt her.”

“Well, you have to be careful,” said the policeman. “Ears are very fragile. Did you know there are more bones in your ear than in your foot?”

“I didn’t know that,” Zoe said. “I’ll be more careful.”

“It’s feeling better, then?” the officer asked me.

“Yes.” I couldn’t look at any of them, like the three of them were joining forces to humiliate me, to make me feel a step and a half behind.
Ha, ha, ha, hope you’re all having a great time lying at my expense
. I felt the tears start to come, hot tears of hatred for every person in the whole world.

“Then I guess I can relax,” Mom told him. “What a relief. Do you have kids, Officer?”

“No, but my sister is deaf,” he answered.

“Oh,” said Mom. “So you understand.”

“Sure do. Ears.” He shook his head. I closed my eyes.

Mom smiled. “You should be a psychologist. I feel so much calmer just having talked to you.” I hate that voice she uses. Hate, hate, hate.

“That’s what my mother tells me,” he said, hiking up his gun belt. “It’s funny you say that, too.”

“Well,” said Mom, “you should always listen to your mother. Right, CJ?”

I think I said right, or maybe I just grunted. I couldn’t take much more. Mom and her pal the police guy said their good-byes, and he warned her to be careful. It was like they were old friends from college or something. He went back to his car and waved as he passed us, getting back into traffic.

“Mom!”

She was checking her lipstick in the rearview mirror, wiping a smudge of it off her front tooth. How mortifying, how totally horrible. “Great job, Zoe,” she said.

Zoe was grinning ear to ear as Mom put the car into gear and we barreled down the road. “That was awesome,” Zoe said.

“Yeah,” Mom agreed. “Awesome.”

Zoe leaned forward between the two front seats and said, “You are the coolest mother.”

Mom laughed, totally thrilled, and said, “In your dust! Can you believe some people?”

“Hardly,” I answered, shaking my head. I gathered my strength, because now was the perfect time to disappoint all her plans for me, my career, my life. “Mom?”

“Are you stretching, CJ? We’re so late.”

“Mom, I just, I—” I grabbed my feet and bent my head to them. I knew what she would say if I brought up soccer,
But you’re so talented, blah, blah, blah
. What she doesn’t understand is maybe I don’t care about talent. Maybe there’s only room in each family for one superstar, and in ours, Mom’s obviously got that part. I know I’m a lot better at ballet than soccer. But even if I just sit on the bench most of the time, like last year, at least I’d be sitting with my friends. Mom would never want to just sit on the sidelines, but maybe, maybe I do.

“What?” Mom asked.

I took a deep breath. “The apple-picking trip is for next Monday.”

“Oh! Do they need class mothers? I could get out of work. But, wait, will we be back in time?”

“No, not until six thirty. But I really, really want to go. The whole point is to unify the seventh grade, so I
have
to go.” I pressed my knees away from each other, onto the velour of the car seat. Zoe was looking out the window, grinning.

“Of course you want to,” Mom said. “I’d love to go, myself. I love apple picking.”

“But no, it’s not your, this is my, if I don’t go I won’t be part of-of-of anything. The whole seventh grade will be unified without me.”

Zoe ripped open an M&M’s packet, took a few, then passed it to me. I was about to say no thanks when I realized, I can! Mom can’t control even what I eat. I have a right to be a normal kid, just a part of the seventh grade. A normal kid would eat the M&M’s.

I poured seven of them into my hand and slammed them into my mouth. One went straight down my throat. I lurched forward, gagging.

“What’s wrong?” Mom asked frantically. “You OK?” She almost swerved off the road.