“Well, how does he?”
“I heard his parents are like, these high-powered people who travel all the time. He gets the house to himself a couple weekends a month, apparently.”
“Huh.” I can’t imagine my parents leaving me alone in the house for an evening, let alone a whole weekend.
“Not your parents, huh?”
“Never.”
“Hey, have lunch with us,” he says, in a bizarre change of subject. “My mom made, like, a hundred chocolate chip cookies and I brought them for us all.” When I hesitate, he says, “What—you so in with your Asian friends that you’re too good to hang out with anyone else?”
What the—?
“Fine,” I hear myself say. “But those cookies better be really good.”
Thankfully, Elaine and Hanh have a VSA meeting today, so I don’t have to explain anything to them. When I tell Reggie that I’m eating lunch with the goths, she says, a little incredulously, “What? Why?” I explain that Caleb won’t leave me alone, and that he’s promised me cookies, and I offer to save some for her. She gives me a skeptical, raised-eyebrow stare—one of her specialties, I’ve noticed—and shoos me off.
I sidle up to the goth tree, where Caleb and his friends are already dipping into a huge Tupperware container full of cookies. They all look up, and Caleb makes room for me next to him and introduces me: Ginny, Thom, Brett, Andrew, Luisa. Ginny, the girl sitting next to Caleb, scoots over, and I sit down between them.
“We’re talking about that ridiculous anti-drug stuff next week.”
I help myself to a cookie and roll my eyes, as I’m sure they’re expecting me to. “Right?”
“Like any of that’s going to keep people from doing drugs. All anyone cares about is winning pizza anyway.”
A guy named Thom shakes his head and says, “Seriously. Macarena Monday? What the fuck does the Macarena have to do with drugs? I don’t even think it’s really Mexican.”
“Knowing Lowell, she’s probably trying to get the Mexican kids involved,” says Luisa. “She probably thinks we’ll get all excited and want to do the Macarena.”
“Who’s Lowell?” I ask.
“Mrs. Lowell. She’s activities director and student government advisor.”
“How ’bout, you have to be high to want to do the Macarena,” Caleb offers.
“They should call it Marijuana Monday,” Thom says. “Dress up in a Mexican costume and dance away drugs to a song that’s not from Mexico because no one who dances does drugs. God, it’s so fucked up on so many levels, it makes me want to puke.”
About halfway through lunch, I realize that I haven’t hung out with white kids since I left Wisconsin. How’s that for weird? The bell rings and we start gathering up our things. I say good-bye and head off to English, but Caleb tags along after me for a few steps. “Hey. That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
I shake my head. “Your friends are nice.”
Caleb looks at me, as if he’s making up his mind about something. Then he says, “So, uh, we’re all probably gonna just chill at my house on Saturday. That’s usually what we do.”
“Huh?”
“My mom’s going to be around, too, if your mom is hung up about stuff like that.” Oh. He’s inviting me over to his house. Okay. It suddenly occurs to me that Caleb might like me—like, like me-like me.
“Um . . . I think I have to stay home to help my mom with some stuff.”
“Oh. Sure, okay, no problem. See ya.” He raises his hand in a half wave and turns and walks off. Maybe he’s just being friendly?
“See ya.”
He’s just being friendly. Yeah, that’s probably what it is. It has to be.
11
OMIGOD, SOMEONE PINCH ME. JAMIE—JAMIE!—IS walking home with me. Right now. I know. My fantasy is coming true.
Ten minutes ago, we were all straggling out of the locker room after practice, hair still damp from the showers, hauling our hundred-pound backpacks and saying good-bye to each other as kids piled into cars or headed to the bus stop. I was starting off on my walk home when I heard Jamie complaining to Priti. “My brother spilled soda all over the laptop last night, so now I won’t be able to finish that online assessment for tomorrow.”
An idea sprang to life in my head. “Hey, wanna come over to my house?”
“Huh?” Jamie turned to look at me.
“I mean, uh. I live just a couple of blocks from here. You could use my computer. You know, to do your homework. Or whatever. And catch a later bus home. If you want.” Her eyebrows shot up. She took a quick look around her, then pointed to herself—Me? “Or . . . not. No big deal, I just, you know. Just thought I’d—”
“No, that would be great.” She hesitated. “You sure it’s okay?”
“Oh, totally. No problem.”
“Sweet. Thanks.” She smiled at me and I smiled back and after a couple seconds of smiling at each other I started to feel silly, so I looked away. But I’ve been smiling all the way home.
After a brief, mortifying, and very Japanese introduction to Mom (Hello, I’m sorry my daughter is such a loser, it’s so kind of you to be nice to her, I really owe you one), we escape to my room, and Jamie checks out my bookshelf while I run to the kitchen for some snacks.
“Emily Dickinson?” she says when I return laden with Diet Cokes, a bag of kettle corn, and a bowl of rice crackers.
Oh, no. “Yeah. I know, I’m a nerd.”
“No, that’s cool. We had to read a poem by her in eighth grade: ‘I’m Nobody! Who are you?’ I liked it.”
“That’s the poem that made me want to get that book!”
“But I don’t get her sometimes—she’s a little weird for me, you know? This shy white lady shut up in her house all day writing poems. All those white writer ladies ever did was sit around and write and sew—Charlotte Bront?, Emily Dickinson, the Little Women chick . . .”
“No, they did other things. Like knit lace and drink tea.” I giggle, and she laughs with me, which feels kind of magical for some reason.
“Louisa May Alcott,” Jamie says next.
“Oh, right.”
She adds, “You should read Sandra Cisneros. She wrote this poem called ‘Loose Woman’ that’s like the opposite of ‘I’m Nobody.’ She says whatever she wants, she does whatever she wants, and she doesn’t give a shit about what people say. No sitting around inside and sewing.”
Note to self: Google “Loose Woman” by Sandra Cisneros. But I have to defend Emily.
“I don’t think she cared what people said. I mean, she didn’t mind people thinking she was weird or whatever. I thought that was kind of the point of ‘I’m Nobody.’”
Jamie chews her lip. “Huh. Yeah, I guess you’re right.” She smiles. “You need to read ‘Loose Woman,’ though. It’s pretty great.” Oh, I will. She moves on. “Ooh, this is pretty,” she says, taking down my red lacquer box.
“Oh. That’s—”
“Huh?” She opens it.
—private. “Oh, nothing. I was just going to say my parents gave it to me.”
She admires the pearl earrings. “Wow. Are these real?”