Ten (20 page)

“Yeah,” Chantelle said.

My lower lip trembled. I wiggled my fingers at Chantelle to say,
Get over here, you stinky-poo-poo-head
, and I pulled her into our hug.

“Girls?” Ms. Meyers said. Her tone was concerned and dangerous at the same time. Mr. Hutchinson joined her. He was
tall
. Usually he was a joking-around kind of teacher, but not right now.

“We're fine,” Amanda said.

Ms. Meyers turned to me, lifting her eyebrows.

“We were, uh, playing cats and dogs,” I said. “I guess maybe we got a little too rough?”

“I'll say,” Ms. Meyers said. She glanced at Katie, and then at Mindy, who was sitting sullenly on the flattened grass. “Do either of you have anything to add?”

“No, ma'am,” Katie muttered. Katie never said “ma'am,” so it was weird.

“Mindy?” Mr. Hutchinson said.

She shook her head. She didn't look up.

Ms. Meyers folded her arms over her chest. “Well, how about this. How about you all promise not to play that game anymore. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” Amanda, Chantelle, and I said as one.

“Agreed,” Katie mumbled.

Ms. Meyers waited, and Mindy rolled her eyes.

“Agreed.” Under her breath, she added,
“Duh.”

Ms. Meyers lectured us about taking care of ourselves, our friends, and our school, and after that, the group broke up. Mindy and Katie went to the opposite side of the playground, and Amanda, Chantelle, and I went to the swing set. It felt good to pump and move and feel the air lift my hair.

After a minute of silence, I turned to Chantelle and said, “You're not really a stinky-poo-poo-head.”

She scrunched her brow, and I remembered I'd only called her that in my head.

I backpedaled. “I mean . . . well, I
didn't
mean—”

“No, don't,” she said. She was going back and forth, and so was I, but I could hear her just fine. “I am a poo-poo-head. I don't know what I was thinking, Winnie. I'm so so sorry.”

Everything was still strange. I was slowly starting to feel better, though.

“I forgive you,” I said with a quick hitch of my shoulders.

“You don't have to.”

“I want to.”
Mostly
, I thought. And I suspected that after a little more time passed, I fully would.

“Let's just swing,” I said. I leaned back, pointed my toes, and pulled hard on the chain, soaring into the wide, blue sky.

S
ometimes I lounged around in bed after I woke up, just to enjoy being happy for a while. Today was the perfect day for this, because it was a Saturday, which meant no school. Also it was bright and cheerful outside, which I knew because of the stripe of buttery light stretching into my room from beneath my blinds. But the biggest reason why today was a perfect day for soaking up the awesomeness of being alive? BECAUSE MY BIRTHDAY WAS ONLY A SIX DAYS AWAY!

Yep. This coming Friday was March eleventh, and on March eleventh, I would be eleven years old. It was so so so
so
cool. So cool! Mom had said I could have a slumber party, and I'd sent out invitations to Amanda, Chantelle, Louise, Karen, and—because Mom made me, big surprise—Dinah Devine. Every one of them said they could come. Yay!

I did
not
invite Mindy. But! BUT! I couldn't have invited her even if I'd wanted to, because Mindy had moved to Florida.
Ha ha ha ha ha
!

She left last week. Boo hoo . . . NOT! Only I knew I shouldn't be gloaty about it, because although it was excellent news for me, I guess it wasn't so excellent for Mindy.

I knew this because eventually I confessed to Mom about beating Mindy up. Or rather, about starting to beat her up . . . and
wanting
to keep on going. I twisted my hands together as I told her all the gory details, until finally she reached over and took my hands in her own.

“Winnie, stop,” she said.

I swallowed. I felt dizzy knowing how disappointed she must be in me.

“I want to tell you something, and I want you to listen, all right?” she said.

I looked at my lap.

“I want you to listen to me
and
look at me. I'm not going to say anything bad.”

I lifted my eyes. She didn't look mad or disappointed. She
did
look serious.

“Why didn't you tell me about Mindy earlier?” she asked.

“I don't know,” I said. “Because I kept hoping it would get better?”

“Oh, Winnie.”

“And also you would have said, ‘Oh, Winnie,' like you just did. Like I'd let you down.”

Mom's eyes teared up. I felt my own eyes get bigger when I saw that—
I
could make Mom cry?—but there was something inside of me that felt happy about that, too. Not
happy
. . . well,
maybe
happy . . . or more just relieved to be finally getting it off my chest.

“You would have said to confront Mindy,” I went on, “or to tell Ms. Meyers. And if I said I didn't want to tell Ms. Meyers, you would have said, ‘
Oh, Winnie
. You can't be afraid to talk to your teacher.'”

“I wouldn't have said that,” Mom insisted.

I lifted my eyebrows.

“Would I have?”

I nodded.

“Oh, Winnie,”
she said, and we both laughed a little, because she'd used the exact tone I used, and not even on purpose, I don't think. “Sweetheart. You have
never
let me down.”

“What about when I don't put my dishes in the dishwasher? What about when I forget to say ‘excuse me' when I burp?”

“You
burp
?” she said, placing her hand over her heart. “
You
, my darlingest Winnie?”

“Very funny,” I said.

Mom studied me, and I sensed that she was really and truly seeing me. “Winnie, everyone burps.”

“Ha! You admitted it!” I said, because whenever Dad or Ty tooted or burped or acted too much like gross boys, Mom claimed that
she
never did anything so unladylike.
“Ha!”

She allowed herself a small smile. Then she went back to being solemn. “But what Mindy was doing—picking a friend for a day, doing inspections of how certain girls looked . . .”

“Calling me a flea.”

“Calling you a flea.” She shook her head. “You are
not
a flea, Winifred Perry. I hope you know that.”

“Woof,”
I said, so that I was a dog instead. Then I remembered about the flea being on a dog's back, and I changed my tune. “I mean,
me-o-o-w
.”

She ruffled my hair. “You are a
goof
. That's what you are.”

“I know. Can I get a kitten, by the way? Please-oh-please with champagne on top?”

“What Mindy did wasn't nice,” Mom said. “And sweetie, you shouldn't have had to deal with it on your own. A problem like that is too big for a ten-year-old.”

“I'm almost eleven,” I reminded her.

“It's too big for an eleven-year-old,” she said.

Wowza,
I thought. An amazed feeling made my skin tingle, because I
had
dealt with it, and I'd dealt with it even
before
I was eleven.

“Remembering to feed your fish, now that's a problem a ten-year-old can tackle,” Mom said.

“I don't have any fish.”

“But if you did.”

“I'd rather have a kitten.”

“Yes, I know.”

“I would totally remember to feed a kitten, if I had one.”

“Yes, now
shhh
. Remembering to do your spelling homework, that is also a problem a ten-year-old can handle.”

I made a face. Spelling homework was boring.

“But when someone bullies you like that—and that's what Mindy was doing, Winnie—you need to get a grown-up's help. A mom's help, or a dad's help. That's why we're here. We love you
so much
, Winnie.”

I felt naked in the face of all that love. Not naked as if I wasn't wearing any clothes, because of course I was wearing clothes. But . . . teensy-tinesy, like a helpless little baby? Not that I was a little baby!

I think what Mom was trying to say, though, was that she and Dad would take care of me even if I
was
as helpless as a baby. That I didn't always have to be their “big girl.” I
was
their big girl—not as big as Sandra, but big just the same—but I think Mom was saying that I could be their little girl every so often, and she and Dad would love me just the same.

“I love you, too,” I said. My voice was wobbly, and I blinked.

Mom pushed my hair behind my ear. “And while I may
occasionally
scold you for not putting your dishes in the dishwasher, you are
not
a disappointment to me. Never. You don't let me down, Winnie. You lift me up. Don't you know that?”

I nodded. I liked what she was saying, but it was embarrassing, too. “Can we talk about kittens again?”

She got up and said, “I'm going to call Mrs. Jacobs. She needs to know what's going on, especially if Mindy is treating other girls like she treated you.”

So she did. Afterward, she told me what Mrs. Jacobs said, and I learned that there were sadnesses in Mindy's life just like there were in everybody's lives. Apparently Mindy's mom, who lived in Atlanta, didn't want Mindy anymore, and so she was sending Mindy to Florida to live with her dad.

That wasn't exactly how Mom put it, but that was the gist of it. She said I had to put that information “in the vault,” which meant I wasn't allowed to tell anyone.

I tried feeling bad for Mindy, but mainly I was just glad she was gone. And the fact that she left before my birthday was an extra-special bonus.

 

My lazy morning came to an end when Dad and his buddy Elmo came up to my room to install a floor-to-ceiling bookcase in my room. It was supposedly an early birthday present, since I loved books so much. I didn't think furniture counted as a birthday present, but I was excited nonetheless.

Dad told me to skedaddle so that he and Elmo could do their “man's work.”

“Will you call when you're done?” I said. “The very
minute
you're done?”

Dad promised he would, and three-and-a-half hours later—after lots of banging, cursing, and pizza-eating—he called for me to come see.

I left Ty and Sandra to finish the
SpongeBob
marathon on their own and flew upstairs.

“OMIGOSH, IT ROCKS!” I squealed. I took in my new bookcase, which was beautiful and empty and just waiting to be filled with delicious books. Then I took in the rest of my room, because it was different now. My dresser was against the opposite wall, and my bed was where my dresser used to be. The bookcase stood proudly in the bed's old spot.

“You rearranged things,” I said.

“A section of the crown molding had to be removed for the bookcase to fit,” Dad explained. “Do you like it?”

“Are you kidding?” I said. I flung myself on Dad and wrapped my legs around his waist, because whether I was a big girl or a little girl, it would always be fun to tackle him. “I
love
it and adore it, and you are the best daddy in the whole entire world!”

“I'm glad,” he said. “Now let go, sweetie.” He tried to pry me off him, but I had legs of steel, and I knew to hook my ankles behind his back and lock them together.

From over his shoulder, I checked out my room some more. With the bookcase adding to the decor, it was like I'd been given a whole new room. It was less little-girlish, which was perfect, since I'd be eleven in six short days.

A year ago, my room had been completely different—and so had I. Well, kind of.
Hmm
. Was I the same Winnie or a different Winnie? Was there any way to know?

I thought back to my scary haunted house party, and I smiled at the memory of ten-year-old me. Then another memory popped into my mind, the memory of little me balancing a chair on my bed and slipping a letter to myself into the gap between the molding and the wall.

But my new bookcase was where my bed used to be. My gaze traveled to the bookcase, and I breathed a sigh of relief, because the molding to either side of the bookcase was still there,
including
the bit where my hiding spot was.
Whew
.

I dropped free of Dad. The sudden weight change made him stumble.

“Hey, Dad?” I said.

“Yes, Winnie?”

“Would you put me on your shoulders, please?”

“Why?”

“Just because. Please?”

He sighed and got down on one knee. “Climb on.”

I climbed on top of him and got situated. With a groan, he stood up.

“Now take me over to my bookcase.”

He lumbered across the room.

“Closer, and to the right.”

He got right up next to the wall. Even on top of Dad, I wasn't tall enough to look down into my hiding spot. I
was
tall enough to pat the molding, and then the space behind the molding, where the hollow space should have been. Only there was no hollow space. It was gone.

A panicky feeling tried to latch on to my insides.

“Winnie, what are you looking for?” Dad said.

“There was a hole,” I said. “There was a hole up near the top of the wall, and I hid something in it!”

With me on his shoulders, Dad backed away from the wall.

“Wait!” I cried, but he was already lifting me up and over him.