Authors: Lauren Myracle

Tags: #Ages 10 & Up

Thirteen Plus One (2 page)

BOOK: Thirteen Plus One

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My bedroom door flew open, and I smiled to see that the singing brigade was led by neither Sandra nor Ty, but by my brand-new baby sister, Maggie, who was too little to even crawl.

“Doo dootie doot, can’t wait to have breakfast!” Sandra and Ty bellowed, while teensy baby Maggie showed off her dance moves, dangling from Sandra’s hands like a wellintentioned bag of flour.

“Did y’all make me breakfast in bed?” I said. “You guys!”

“Ooo, that would have been nice of us,” Sandra said, drawing Maggie close and hitching her into a comfy position. “But alas ... no.”

“I brought you this, though,” Ty said. He plopped onto the bed beside me and held out half a stick of gum.

“Hey, thanks.”

“And now I’m going to bury my head under your shoulder pit.” He smushed his warm seven-year-old body against me, attempting to worm his head up under my arm.

“Armpit, not shoulder pit,” I said, giggling. “And quit it.”

“Then come downstairs and have your delicious Pop-Tart.”

“Okay,” I said. “Put it in the toaster for me?”

“Sure,” Ty said. He kissed my cheek, then hopped up and headed for the door. Sandra moved to follow him.

“Sandra, wait,” I called. I kicked off my covers. “Can I talk to you for a sec?”

She turned back. “What’s up?”

“Well, there’s something embarrassing I want to tell you. It’s stupid, but I need to get it off my chest. And you’re my big sister,
soooo ...”

Sandra glanced at her watch.

“I’m worried about high school,” I blurted.

She looked at me like I was crazy. “What?
Why?”

I looked at her like
she
was crazy. “Well, because it’s
high school.”

“But you haven’t even graduated from junior high. It’s only March.”

“Yes, but what comes after March?
April
. And what comes after April?
May.
And what comes after—”

“I know my months, Winnie. I’ve known them since I was four.”

I stood and took baby Mags from her, being careful of her wobbly head. I pulled her close and whispered, “I would help
you,
baby Maggie. If you were going through times of trouble.”

“Oh, good God,” Sandra said.

Maggie made the
pluh
sound she was so good at. She was soft and cuddly.

“You want to know what your problem is, Winnie?” Sandra said. “You need to shift your paradigm.”

“Huh?”

“Your
paradigm.
The way you look at the world.” She leaned against the door frame. “How do you look at the world, Winnie?”

“Um, with my eyeballs?”

Sandra almost smiled, but managed to suppress it. “Winnie, if high school is scaring you—”

“I never said it was
scaring
me,” I interrupted.

“Then stop obsessing about it. Live in the now, little sis.”

“Live in the now,” I repeated.

“Yeah. Quit focusing on
March
and then
April
and then
May
, on and on until infinity. Quit thinking so linearly. Do you know what ‘linearly’ means?”

I gave her a look.

She gave me a similar look in return, as if to imply that in that case, she didn’t see the problem. “So start asking yourself, ‘What can I do
now?
What can I change about my life situation
now?’ ”

“You’ve been reading your self-help books again, haven’t you?” I said. With college right around the corner, Sandra had started reading books with titles like
What Color Is Your Parachute?
and
Who Moved My Cheese?
“Next are you going to ask me what color my cheese is?”

“Hey, you’re the one who asked for advice.” She reclaimed baby Maggie. “Get dressed and come downstairs, birthday girl.”

I flopped back onto my bed. “Aw, man. Can’t my ‘life situation’ be staying in bed? For, like, a really long time?”

“Nope. You have to move forward, even if you don’t want to, because guess what? The only thing worse than growing up—”

I cradled my head in my hands.
“Ugh.
Is
not
growing up. Omigosh, I can’t believe you just said that.”

“I didn’t. You did.” She pushed her hand through her blond hair. “What
I
was going to say is that the only thing worse than growing up is never learning how.”

She regarded me archly. I struggled to come up with a response, but came up dry.

Baby Maggie hiccuped, and it came with drool, which dribbled onto Sandra’s shirt.

“My sentiments
exactly,”
I said, laughing. I lifted baby Maggie’s little wrist and gave her a high five.

I arrived at school to find my locker decorated with streamers, balloons and, inexplicably, mini-marshmallows, the pastel-colored ones that supposedly have fruit flavors.

Cinnamon and Dinah jumped out from behind a classroom door. “Surprise!” they cried. “Happy birthday!”

I beamed and hugged them and told them they were the best friends ever. Then I plucked off a pale green marshmallow and held it up. “Care to explain?”

“Ah, yes, the marshmallows,” Cinnamon said. “Marshmallows make your boobs grow, didn’t you know?”

“Oh, please. They do not.” I processed her remark further.
“Hey
. What are you saying?”

“You want to keep Lars around, right?”

“Lars doesn’t like me for my
boobs
. Don’t be gross.”

“Of course he doesn’t,” Dinah said, and because she was Dinah, she meant her remark to be comforting.

But because Cinnamon was Cinnamon, she laughed. As in,
Of course Lars doesn’t like you for your boobs, since you don’t
have
any.

Plus, Cinnamon was in a bitter phase. Lars’s best friend, Bryce, had broken up with her less than a month ago (on Facebook—ag), and she was so not over it, it wasn’t funny.

I placed my hands on her shoulders. “Okay, several things to discuss. A: Lars likes me for
me
, not for my body.”

She snorted.

“B: While Lars has the highest respect for my hilariousness, wit, and moral fiber—”

She snorted again, and I dug my fingers into the tender space between her shoulder blades.

“Ahem,”
I said over her elaborate sounds of pain. I also ignored the way she was shrinking beneath my grip like a melting wicked witch. “While everything I just said is true, I suppose it’s possible, since he’s a boy, that he is C: Drawn to my incredible hotness as well.”

“Full of yourself much?” Cinnamon said from her scrunched-down position. “Is that what happens when you turn fourteen?”

I blushed, because while I could talk the talk—boobs, boobage, hotness—I was actually totally faking it. I
did
hope Lars thought I was hot, but no way would I really prance around saying, “Look at me! Ooo, baby, I am
hot!”

I released her. “And finally, D: If marshmallows are supposed to make your boobs grow, and you think I need bigger boobs to keep Lars around, then why did you give me
mini
-marshmallows, huh?”

I thought I had her, when actually I’d walked straight into her trap.

“Can’t build Rome in a day,” she said.

I tugged a pink marshmallow off my locker and lobbed it at her. I pulled off five more in assorted colors and did the same thing. She ducked and squealed.

“You guys,” Dinah said, scanning the hall for teachers. Then a yellow marshmallow bounced off Cinnamon and hit Dinah’s cheek. She swiveled her head my way.

“Oh,
Winnie,”
she said, her tone suggesting I’d made a bad decision.

“Uh-oh,” I said.

She slipped off her backpack, caught the strap in the crook of her elbow, and unzipped the bottom pocket.

“Teachers?” I called, adopting her survival strategy. “Oh, friendly
tea
chers!”

“Would you grab her, please?” Dinah asked Cinnamon.

“Certainly,” Cinnamon said. She pinned my arms behind me as Dinah tugged free a half-full bag of mini-marshmallows.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” I cried. “I’ll never marshmallow you again, I promise!”

By now other girls were staring, but we didn’t care. We liked being spazzy. We liked it even though we were eighth graders who should be above such things—and I personally hoped we’d stay spazzy all the way through high school and beyond. In fact, right then and there I charged myself with a mission:
Yes, high school is coming—not that I’m obsessing about it, since I’m living in the now. But stay spazzy anyway!!!

“Cinnamon?” Dinah said. “Would you join me in singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to our dear Winnie?”

“Absolutely,” Cinnamon said.

“Not necessary,” I protested. “Seriously.”

Dinah stepped closer, jiggling the bag of marshmallows. “Happy birthday to you ...”

Cinnamon joined in. She had me in a death grip, and she drove her knee into my spine to keep me from slithering from her grasp. “Happy birthday to you ...”

Dinah undid the twisty tie on the bag of mini-marshmallows. “Happy
birth
day dear W
in
nie,”—she raised the bag and dumped it over my head—“H
ap
py
birth
day to yo-u-u-u-u!!!!”

Some of the marshmallows got caught in my hair. Some went down my shirt. They smelled sweet and left puffs of powdery sugar on my skin.

Cinnamon was snort-giggling so hard that her muscles went limp, and together we sank to the floor. People had to step over us. Malena, snark mistress extraordinaire and not my friend, sniffed in disdain.

“You have a
marshmallow
in your braid,” she announced.

“I know, right?” I said. “It’s, like, all the rage in Paris.”

“Also Topeka,” Cinnamon said, fully spread-eagled on the floor. No one loved taking up space like Cinnamon did. “I mean, don’t quote me on it or anything, but ... yeah.”

Malena’s gaze traveled up to my locker, to the streamers and the balloons and the poster Dinah and Cinnamon made.

“Let me guess. Your birthday?” She said it as if it—or I—was a disease.

I widened my eyes and made an “O” out of my mouth, to mean
Omigosh! You are a genius!

“And I suppose Tweedledum and Tweedledee made you a cake,” she continued. “And they’ll bring it to you at lunch and make you blow out the candles in front of everybody, and it will be
soooooo
special.”

“Me sure hope so,” I said happily. “Me love cake.”

Dinah and Cinnamon shared a glance—only it wasn’t of the
hee-hee-we’re-so-sneaky
sort.

“You ... didn’t bring me a cake?” I faltered.

Dinah’s eyes flew to Malena, which told me she didn’t want to discuss it in public. Which also told me (
and
Malena) what the answer was.

Malena laughed a weird laugh, as if she hadn’t expected to make an honest hit.
“Ouch,”
she said, and then she strolled away in her tight white pants.

The homeroom bell rang. I stayed on the floor, marshmallows all around me. One in my bra.

“No cake?” I said. “For real?”

“I wanted to make one,” Dinah said. “But we didn’t have any eggs!”

Cinnamon pushed herself up onto her elbows. “And I suck at cooking. You know that.”

True, but even a burned-on-the-outside, oozy-on-the-inside cake was better than no cake at all.

“Won’t we have cake tonight?” Dinah asked. She meant at my birthday-slash-sleepover party. It was going to be a low-key affair, just Dinah and Cinnamon.

I tried to shrug off my disappointment. “Yeah, of course.” “I can’t wait to see little Maggie,” Dinah said. Tonight would be her very first time to meet little Mags—and Cinnamon’s, too—since Mom brought Maggie home from the hospital just yesterday.

I got to my feet. “She might be asleep, and if she’s sleeping, we aren’t allowed to bother her. Just to warn you.”

Cinnamon looked at me funny, like maybe I was punishing them for not making me a cake.

Was I?

I didn’t want to be that person.
Yuck.
So I added a second item to my mental To-Do-Before-High-School list. Maybe I’d even write this list down at some point.

Anyway, the second thing on my list was to work on BEING MATURE, even when people let me down. That was a worthwhile goal, right?

Then it occurred to me that I’d challenged myself first to be spazzy, and two seconds later to work on being mature.

Wow, Winnie,
said a not-so-nice voice inside of me.
How very inspiring.

“
We did
bring you marshmallows,” Cinnamon pointed out.

“Yes,” I acknowledged. “Yes, you did.” And the one in my bra was going to require a trip to the girls’ room, as my oh-so-subtle twitching was doing nothing to dislodge it.

Or I could leave it in as padding, I suppose. Apparently, marshmallows
did
make your boobs bigger. Even the mini ones.