Thirteen Plus One (10 page)

“I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t say no. So I said, ‘Fine, but I don’t have it with me.’ And she said, ‘Well, will you go get it?’ Because her ankle hurt. She’d twisted it at the mall.”

Cinnamon smirked. “While making her getaway from the MAC counter.”

“She always made it sound so urgent that I help her,” Dinah said. “When I was
away
from her, I’d tell myself, ‘Dinah, stop. Mary is BAD NEWS.’ But then she’d corner me, and like”—she twirled her hands in the air—“work her magical
persuasion
skills, and I’d find myself saying
yes
when what I wanted was to say
no.”

“I knew she was evil,” I said. “I swear I did.”

Dinah looked at me askance.

“What?” I said.

“She’s messed up. Yes. But I’m not sure it’s fair to say she’s
evil
.”

“Sure it is,” Cinnamon said. She stood up and tossed the bag of Veggie Booty on the table. “But what’s over is over. It is over, right? Can we move on?”

“Yeah,” Dinah agreed. “I’d be really happy to move on.”

“Wait,” I said hesitantly. They looked at me, and I had a moment of doubt. Did I really want to dredge up more ickiness, when we’d plowed through so much already?

Then again: If not now, when?

“Do y’all remember that party at the beginning of seventh grade?” I said. “When Amanda supposedly got drunk and fooled around with some eighth grader?”

“Not ‘supposedly,’” Cinnamon corrected. “My next-door neighbor was there. She saw Amanda kiss him with her own two eyes.”

“Well, with her lips, probably,” I said, since the joke was right there in front of me.

“We remember,” Dinah said. “What about it?”

I drummed my fingers on the table, unsure how to articulate what I was thinking. Mainly, it had to do with how we’d be graduating from junior high next month, and though I refused to obsess about high school—I’d forbidden myself to, and I was a girl of my word—that didn’t mean I wasn’t allowed to bring it up
ever.

It was out there, and huge, and while I was ready for things to change ... I also wasn’t.

“Lars was at that party, too,” I said.

“Oh, yeah?” Cinnamon said.

“Yeah. We talked about it afterward, and about Amanda in particular. He was like, ‘If she’s drinking wine coolers in the seventh grade, what’s she going to be like in high school?’”

Cinnamon didn’t understand. Dinah did, and color rose in her face.

“I don’t mean
you,
” I told her. “I don’t even mean Mary, necessarily.”

“Then who
do
you mean?” Cinnamon asked.

I spread my hands. “I don’t know. I guess, maybe ... all of us?”

It took her a moment, and then Cinnamon got it. I could read it in her eyes.

All the things we knew about each other. All the things we didn’t. All the changes coming our way, whether we wanted them to or not.

“Can we make a pledge?” Dinah said at last.

“No,” Cinnamon said immediately.

“Yes,”
I said. “A pledge that we will be there for each other, through thick and thin.”

Dinah nodded happily. Cinnamon moaned.

I made a fist and held it up. “Let’s do it, ladies.”

“Oh my god,” Cinnamon said to the ether. “She wants us to give her some knuckles.”

Dinah pressed her fist to mine.

“C’mon, Cin-Cin,” I said. I made a kiss-kiss dog-calling sound.

Cinnamon sighed mightily. She thrust her fist against ours.

For several seconds we were connected, our arms stretching from our fists like branches from a single root. Cinnamon pushed inward, then pulled away, splaying her fingers.

“Whoosh,”
she said, giving sound to our fist-bump explosion.

“Whoosh,”
Dinah repeated.

Looking at them, I felt happy
and
sad—and maybe that was just the way of it.

“Winnie?” Cinnamon prompted.

I imagined a shooting star, burning and twinkling on its journey through the sky.
“Whoosh.”

Practice Being Older

S
OMETIMES, when a friend calls up and says
get-over-here-my-life-is-over,
it turns out to be a missed episode of
The Secret Life of an American Teen.
Other times it’s a horrible bathing suit purchase, or the realization that the pair of jeans earmarked for a certain party have suddenly turned stupid, or too tight, and a new outfit needs to be whipped up
pronto.
Or, if it’s Dinah making the frantic call, it maybe has to do with a hair ball. Not hers. One of her cats’. In fact, Dinah’s emergency calls often had to do with hair balls, so that’s the assumption I was working under when I biked to Dinah’s one cloudy afternoon in April.

Cinnamon showed up on her longboard right as I was turning into the driveway. She did a fancy power-slide dismount, flipped her board, and caught it under her arm.

“What do you think’s going on?” she asked as we approached the front door. “I could hardly understand her when she called me. She sounded like she was hyperventilating.”

“Dunno,” I said. “Maybe one of her cats is sick?”

Cinnamon laughed, though I hadn’t meant it as a joke. Then the front door opened, and Dinah pulled the two of us in. She dragged us down the hall and into her bedroom, which was frilly and purple. The decorating style was mid-elementary school, and I found it reassuringly steady, despite Dinah’s apparent inability to speak.

She shoved us toward her computer. She grunted inarticulately.

“What?” Cinnamon said.
“Talk,
girl.”

I squinted at the screen. “Strugglin‘—” I reared back. “Strugglin’ Teens
Boot
Camp? What the heck?”

“Boot camp,” Cinnamon said, sounding interested. She squeezed in and read out loud from the web page. She had to go slow because the syntax was crazy. “‘Summer camps are having their own instructors or counselors who can detect—’” She broke off. She tried again. “‘Who can detect your teen problem?’”

“Dinah?” I said. “Do you have a teen problem?”

“My dad’s making me go to leadership camp,” Dinah said miserably.

“‘Our programs are based on old-fashioned morals that teach discipline, and physical training that will change your unruly child into a good citizen,’” Cinnamon read in a deranged, off-kilter lilt. She switched back to her normal voice. “Who
are
these people?”

“I think they’re maybe from Japan,” Dinah said. Her chest went up and down. “I’m
not
going to Japan. I’m not! He can’t make me!”

“Slow down,” I said. I put my hands on her shoulders and got her to look at me, which was no small feat as her eyes were skitting all over town. “Breathe. That’s right. In”—I inhaled to show her, and her nostrils flared and she tried to mimic me—“and out. Good!”

“Now explain,” Cinnamon demanded. “Your dad’s making you go to
boot camp
?”

“Cinnamon!” I chided as Dinah went right back into lack-of-oxygen mode. She swayed, and I guided her to her bed. I sat beside her and rubbed her back. A moment passed, and then another, before she shakily began to talk.

Her dad loved her so much that he wanted the very best for her, she told us, and he’d come up with a great idea to help her achieve her full potential. He knew she wasn’t going to like it, his idea, but he hoped she’d come around. Even if she didn’t, she was still going to have to do it. Because he loved her. So much.

Eee,
I thought as I kept tracing circles on her back. This didn’t sound good at all.

“He doesn’t want me to be a follower,” she said, staring at her purple shag carpet. “He doesn’t want me to be the sort of girl people walk on.” Her hands found tufts of her floral bedspread and gripped them. “I’m not the sort of girl people walk on, am I?”

“No,”
I said. “Absolutely not!”

“Mary Wo-oods,” Cinnamon said under her breath in an ominous singsong. I shushed her with a glare.

Dinah let out a big sigh. “Well, anyway, I’m starting high school next fall,” she said dully.

“Nuh-uh,” Cinnamon said. “For reals?”

“Cinnamon,”
I said through gritted teeth.

“Winnie, I am fully aware that Dinah is starting high school next fall,” Cinnamon said. “Dinah does not need to tell me that she’s starting high school next fall, as I will be starting right there next to her. And so will you. We will all be starting high school together, unless—” She gasped, and it wasn’t for effect. It was a true and honest gasp that made me jump and even roused Dinah from her zombie slump.

“Unless what?” I said.

“Is your dad sending you to boarding school? Cinnamon said. Her expression grew long with horror. ”Is he pulling you out of Westminster like weird Mary’s parents did?”

I clasped both hands to my mouth. After the makeup hording incident, weird Mary’s parents had claimed Mary wasn’t being academically challenged at Westminster, and that’s why she’d turned to a life of crime. According to a girl named Bella, who eavesdropped from outside the counselor’s office, Mary’s parents had wished out loud they didn’t have to take such drastic measures, but poor Mary was just so
bored.
What other option did they have?

I made a teeny-tiny crack between my fingers, just big enough for my teeny-tiny voice. “Please tell us you’re not being pulled out of Westminster. Please!”

“Omigosh,
no
!” Dinah cried. “I would never let him do that! I would ...” She worked her face muscles in strange contortions as she struggled to come up with an adequate threat. “I would chop all my hair off first!”

“How would
that
stop him?” Cinnamon wanted to know.

I drew my hand to my chest. All I cared about was that she wasn’t leaving us. “Thank God. In that case, whatever it is can’t be
that
bad.”

“Yeah-huh,” Dinah said. “Because he’s making me spend the summer ‘building moral fiber and enhancing my assets.’” Her lower lip trembled. “Only, I don’t w-want to enhance my assets! ”

“And we don’t want you to, either,” Cinnamon avowed. “No asset-enhancing on my watch, nossir!”

“Did you try telling him no?” I asked.

“What do you think?” Dinah said.
“Duh.”

“Yeah,
duh
,” Cinnamon said. Dinah hardly ever smart-mouthed me, so Cinnamon delighted in the times she did.

“Well, surely we can find something better than Strugglin’ Teens Boot Camp,” I said. I got off the bed and took a seat on the bouncy ball Dinah used for a computer chair. I did a Google search for summer camps and came up with a neat thirty-five million. “See? Tons to choose from. You’re going to be fine.”

“Unh,”
Dinah said.

“Let’s see ...” I scrolled through some obvious no-go’s, like Highlands Military Camp, or Alabama Tech Computer Camp, or Handy-Kids Camp for Future Farmers of America.

“Hold on there,” Cinnamon said, stopping me from clicking past that last one. “Why so hasty? It says here that Handy-Kids is all about fun.”

“But I’m not handy,” Dinah said. “And I don’t want to be a farmer.”

“So? Talk about learning leadership skills. You could
totally
dominate a bunch of ... wheat fields ... or whatever. Think about it!”

Dinah and I shared a look. I removed Cinnamon’s hand from the keyboard and moved on.

“This one could be cool,” I said, clicking on a new link. “‘White-water adventures, hikes through the scenic Rocky Mountains, a nighttime of stars ... all of this and more at Camp Crested Butte.’”

Cinnamon chortled. “Camp Crusty Butt? You nix Handy-Kids, but you want to send your dear friend to Camp Crusty Butt?”

“Inap
pro
priate,” I said.

“But funny,” Cinnamon said, giggling.

Dinah sank to her purple shag carpet. She lay all the way back and stared at the ceiling. I just knew she was going to end up with purple fuzz clinging to her hair.

“Maybe y’all could come with me,” she said in a too-casual tone.

“To Camp Crusty Butt?” Cinnamon said. “No thanks.”

I understood Dinah’s pain. If I were forced to go to camp, I’d sure want my buddies with me. I, however, planned to spend the summer with Lars, kissing and swimming and, you know, kissing.

“Ooo, Dinah, I don’t think so,” I said.

“Why not?” she whined.

“I’ve kind of got other things going on. I mean, I wish, but ... yeah.”

“But if we
all
went ...”

“I
know,
” I said. “And maybe if you’d mentioned it earlier ...”

“I didn’t know earlier! My dad just told me!”

“Maybe Cinnamon can go,” I suggested.

Cinnamon lasered me with her eyes. “Sorry, Charlie. I already said no. In fact I was the first to say no, thanks muchly. But
I
will find you something fab, just wait and see.”

She plopped down beside me, making Dinah’s super ball roll to the left. I jutted out my leg to stabilize us, while Cinnamon flapped her fingers against mine until I relinquished the keyboard. She typed with brisk efficiency.

“Cultural immersion in Costa Rica,” she read. “Now
this
sounds awesome. It says you’d build a rural school in a cloud forest, and—hey! You’d be exposed to a rainbow of colorful flowers and birds! While rolling up your sleeves, working hard, and speaking nothing but Spanish! ”

“But I don’t speak Spanish,” Dinah said.

“Bet you would after living in the cloud forest for a month,” Cinnamon said.

“No,” Dinah said.

Cinnamon moved on. “Ooo!
Ooo
, this is even better. Fire-walking camp!!!” She swiveled and looked at Dinah. “Dinah, you could liberate your inner spirit. How cool would that be?”

I peered at the screen. “They also offer Thai massage, henna tattooing, and improvisational dancing.”

“No,” Dinah said.

“In addition, you can learn the ancient art of
ga-ga,
” I continued. “What the heck is ga-ga?”