“Me too,” Taylor followed.
“I know you did, because you were with me!” TeeTee squealed to Taylor, clenching her fingers into a bear paw to check her nails. Oh, I guess I should make clear that TeeTee and Taylor are best friends. Besties. Another word I don’t like. It’s just stupid. Bestie and best friend take the exact same amount of time to say. It ain’t like an abbreviation. That’s like me calling my teammates my teamies. Anyway, not only are Taylor and TeeTee best friends, but they’re also cousins (cuzzies) and pretend to be sisters (sissies). They’re like attached at the ponytail and call themselves T-N-T, which is funny because most of the time I just wished they’d explode.
Here’s my issues, not with bestie-cousin-sisters, but with group projects: (1) One of the group members always has to volunteer their house for everyone to go over to and work on the presentation, which was never really a good thing because (2a) ain’t nobody coming to my house and I don’t wanna go to theirs, and (2b) only one person in the group actually does any work, which brings me to (3) that person is me. So as the T(a/e)ylors started going on about whether or not they should both take a T-shirt—the same exact T-shirt—back to exchange it for a smaller size, and Becca was off in space, it was me who reached into my backpack and pulled out printouts of images of this Mexican painter lady, Frida Kahlo. I’d swiped them from the Internet over the weekend. Frida Kahlo was who we all settled on on Friday, by the way, with the help of Ms. Lanford, who figured political stuff, sick stuff, service stuff, and art stuff could all be explored in the life of this one artist. I was cool with it. I mean, she wasn’t Harriet or Flo Jo, but this lady, Frida, wore suits, stood up to dudes, and had issues with her legs. Good enough for me.
After a few seconds of the other girls looking at the images, I got tired of waiting for them to ask how my weekend was. Not like they would’ve cared about me cooking Maddy’s breakfast, making sure she ate her dinner, doing Maddy’s hair, church with the Ma (and the stinky Thomases), then letting Maddy crawl in bed with me last night while I counted all the beads in her hair, one by one, hoping she’d be asleep before I got to ninety, plus on top of all that, finding time to research Frida Kahlo for this project and not go to the mall. Oh, and I had to run. But still, I was waiting for them to ask. Waiting for them to be normal. Or at least treat me normal.
“Well, I had a track meet,” I threw out there, out of the blue, not like I really wanted to talk about that, either, but I was willing to just try to connect or whatever.
“Whoa. This lady is in desperate need of some tweezers,” Taylor said, actually pinching the paper between Frida Kahlo’s eyes.
“Came in first in the eight hundred meter,” I lied, still waiting on someone, anyone to say something about it. To acknowledge me. But before anyone did, Ms. Lanford popped over to check on us.
“How are we doing, ladies?” Ms. Lanford was now standing beside our desks, which had been pushed together into a square, all of us facing each other, the pictures of Frida—bright-colored self-portraits including monkeys, birds, and flowers—spread out.
The girls all flashed toothpaste-commercial smiles and gave different versions of “Good.” I bit my bottom lip and prayed for the bell.
After school I never waste time at my locker. I scurry down to the end of the main corridor, eyes darting from forward to floor, through the mess of hair flippers, the wrath-letes (kids who feel like it’s a sport to make everyone’s life miserable), the know-it-alls, the know-nothins, the hush-hushes (super quiet, super shy), the YMBCs (You Might be Cuckoo)—the girls who wear all black and cover their backpacks with buttons and pins—and the girls whose boyfriends, brothers, and fathers all wear khaki pants. Every. Day. I know this sounds kinda mean, but it’s real. So real. It’s like a rich kid obstacle course, and once I make it all the way to the end, I walk through the courtyard to the north wing, where I then have to maneuver through the younger version of all those same categories. Except way cuter. And less annoying. And the cutest and least annoying of them all (in my opinion) is Maddy, who I always find waiting for me just outside her teacher Mrs. Stein’s, who she calls Mrs. S’s, door.
“Ready?” I ask, awkwardly wrapping my arms around her detachable hunchback she calls a backpack, only way I can get a hug in with that thing on.
“Yep.” She turns around and throws the peace sign up to her friends, then turns back and squeezes me, tries to lift me. It’s something she’s been doing for a while. She has a weird obsession with being strong, with proving she can lift heavy things. She got it (and the peace sign thing too) from Uncle Tony, who used to do push-ups with Maddy sitting on his back, counting in a cartoon voice. Mickey Mouse. Goofy. Goofy. Anyway, after Maddy’s cheese and squeeze, we head out to meet Momly, who is always there on time to meet us in the car pickup line.
I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what the ride home was like. Maddy . . . talking.
Mona got glue in her hair. Again.
I picked Willa up.
Lauren cried six times.
You know Willa, right? She bigger than me.
Mrs. S’s birthday is on Thursday. I think she’s turning like eighty.
She’s so lucky she gets to spend it at the farm.
We’ll try to get the cows to moo “Happy Birthday” to her.
Oh, don’t forget you have to drive me to the farm on Thursday, Momly.
Mrs. S reminded us. So I’m reminding you.
Hopefully Lauren won’t cry the whole time.
Anyway, Riley wouldn’t pass the ball to me at first. But then she did. And then I passed it back. And then she passed it to Rachel. And then . . .
While Maddy . . . Maddied . . . I changed my clothes in the backseat. It was my daily shape-shifting routine, which wasn’t a big deal because I always wore my shorts under my skirt, and a tank top under my button-up, so that by the time we reached MLK Park—my homework started—and I told Maddy what I told her every day, that I’d help her with hers after practice, I was ready to jump out and run from my motormouthed little sister and hit the track. Which, I gotta admit for me, even with just a second-place ribbon, was sometimes more home than home.
TO DO: Get over it (I mean, the whole second place thing)