“And mean.” As she did every lunch, Kim was deconstructing her sandwich so she could eat in pieces—the meat then the cheese then the bread. “Marnie and Jake are jerks. No one cares what they say.”
“But everyone’s talking about it,” Aggie reported soberly. “Cara Greenburg even asked me if I’d ever seen your thing when you slept over.”
“Did you say, ‘Duh, of course not’?” Kim asked.
“I said, ‘None of your business,’” said Aggie.
“Which is true,” said Natalie, “but maybe if you told them they’d leave us alone.” PANK realized they were all in this together. If Poppy went down, they all would. That’s how being ten worked.
“Told them what? I’ve never seen Poppy’s … thing.”
“She doesn’t have a thing,” said Kim.
“Maybe you could say, ‘We don’t stare at each other naked when we have sleepovers. What kind of sleepovers do you have?’” Natalie suggested. “Then they’d be embarrassed and just drop it.”
“They aren’t going to drop it,” said Aggie.
Then Keith Rice piped up from between Poppy’s legs under the table. “I see it! I see her thingy!”
Poppy kicked him and then, when he scrambled away, they all four kicked him, and he crawled out, transparent shredded lettuce sticking to his knees, a French fry flat as fruit leather mashed into his shin, hands raised, and protesting, “I’m just doing research for an article. My readers have a right to know.” Keith kept an elementary school blog the rough equivalent of Page Six and used it as cover for all sorts of sins.
Poppy was pretty sure he could not see her anything. She was wearing thick tights, and her legs had been crossed. But she was not completely sure.
“Dirty perv,” said Kim. And then to Poppy, “Aren’t you eating?”
Poppy’s whole self folded in half. She held her lunch bag in her lap, over her, well, thing, but she could not bring herself to open it. She shook her head.
“Come on,” said Aggie. “Let’s go outside.”
On the playground, PANK gathered around Poppy. “You’re so pretty,” they said. And “Of course you’re a girl,” they said. And “Marnie Alison is such a stupid jerk,” they said. And “People make up the weirdest things,” they said. What they did not say was, “Who cares what’s in your pants?” And they did not say, “It wouldn’t matter if you did have a penis. We would still love you.” And they also did not say, “We know you, and we know who you really are.” Poppy knew they didn’t say these things because they didn’t know to say these things. But because they did not, she got scareder and scareder, and because she got scareder and scareder, her classmates started to believe that Marnie Alison, though a jerk, might be on to something. Otherwise, wouldn’t Poppy laugh about it, or say it was just stupid and funny, or go ahead and prove she was who they’d always thought she was?
In gym, someone said, “Poppy, shouldn’t you be on the other side with the boys?” and everyone laughed.
In health, when they broke up for sex ed, someone raised her hand and said, “Ms. Norton? I don’t feel comfortable with Poppy being here,” and everyone laughed.
In math, Josh Edison complained the homework took forever, and Mr. Mohan said, “That’s why it’s called long division—it’s long.” No one laughed. Then someone said, “That’s what Poppy said,” and everyone laughed.
That’s when Poppy packed up all her books right there in the middle of math and walked straight out of the classroom and down the fifth-grade hallway and out the front door of the school and called her mom.
*
Rosie expected tears and yelling and cascades of snot, but what she got on the way home was a silence she did not press. When they walked in together—when Rosie should have been at work still, when Poppy should have been in math still—Penn took one look at his wife and daughter and knew what had happened, the form anyway if not the substance. They both looked sick, ashen, but he could see that this was not the flu, for Poppy would not meet his eyes, and Rosie’s, in the blink of their crossing, confirmed everything. They let Poppy go off alone to her room and quietly, heartrendingly shut her door.
“How?” said Penn.
“Don’t know,” said Rosie.
“How is she?”
“Don’t know that either.”
“What do we do?”
“Or that.”
It did not matter how, really, but they still wanted to know. Had someone peeped into a bathroom stall at school? Had the principal hinted to a teacher who’d figured it out and told another teacher who was overheard in the staff room? Were the ten-year-olds who populated Poppy’s world somehow more perceptive than anyone gave them credit for?