Addie on the Inside (2 page)

How can I be all that?
It's too many things to be.
How can I be all that and
still be true to the real me
while everyone is saying:

This
is
who
you
are.

and
not
about crushes
or acne or whether
I should stuff my bra
so people will know
I'm wearing one.

I worry about
global warming and
polar bears dying and
war and
more and
more and
more.

I worry about
injustice and
how to make the world
a better place,
because I contend
that if you are not part
of the solution,
you are part
of the problem.
I worry about
the rights of minorities
and I worry about
all the people
who love people
that the people who hate them
don't want them to love.

I worry about
my parents and
I worry about
my friends and
I worry about
people I don't even know
who have lost their homes
and their jobs and have
nowhere to go and
I worry about
what happens to
all of their pets and
I worry about
the economy and
the national debt.

I worry about
the animals that are
going extinct
and the animals that are
abused just so we can have
a new scent of perfume
or a new kind of shoes.
I worry how in the world
the world will ever be okay. Then
I turn off my alarm
and get on with the day.

Morning. Toast. Butter. Jam.
Eggs? No thanks. I am
gathering up my homework,
they are blowing on their tea.

Grandma's coming for a visit.
That's nice, I say. Is it
for a weekend or a week?
Backpack. Keys. Other shoe.

A week or maybe more. Dad
shakes his head at bad
news in the paper. Cereal?
Only if there's Special K.

Why did I wear black pants?
Mom asks after a chance
encounter between both her legs
and both the cats.

Look at the time. Dishes. Sink.
Feed the cats. Quickly drink
the last of the orange juice.
Grab a sweater.

Joe's at the door. Let's go,
he calls out, and I know
I'm forgetting something.
Where's my kiss? calls Dad.

Peck on the cheek. Money
for lunch. Mom says, Honey,
remember what we talked about.
I've no idea what she means.

I will, I say, and I'm out the door,
the cats pushing ahead, off to explore.
Joe says something that
makes me laugh.

Sidewalks. Curbs. Friends wave
at us from the next street. They've
got backpacks. Toast. Butter. Jam.
Who knows why I'm happy.
I just am.

My best friends are
Joe
and
Bobby
and
Skeezie,
and even though I have other friends,
these three are my best, oldest, truest,
and forever ones.

This morning, between English and art,
in the three minutes when the hall
is like a race being run by animals
sprung from their cages, when it's all
you can do to get to your locker
and get to your class,
Becca Wrightsman takes the time
to point out that my best friends are
all boys. “Really, Addie,” she says,
“that's
so
gay.” She smiles
as if
she
were my best and oldest
and truest and forever friend
before shouting, “Tonni, wait up!”

I stand there as she and Tonni
knock their heads together, laughing,
stand there as the other kids stampede by,
roar past, as bells ring and doors slam shut
up and down the hall,
stand there until I am the only one,
saying to no one at all:

“It is not.”

is an expression I hate.
Do you mind if I change it
to “that's so straight”?

Becca Wrightsman says to me—
out of nowhere at all—says to me,
“I can fix your look.” This
is in the hall just before French.

Excuse me?

“Really, Addie.” Twirling her
hair. “You need a makeover.
For starters you should wear a
bra.” Dropping her voice,
raising her eyebrows. “Even if,
you know, there's nothing
there.”

Excuse me?

“And you could use some
blush and then there's your
hair, that's going to be a
challenge. But you know me,
I love a challenge. Oops,
there's the bell. Gotta run.
TTFN.”

Excuse me:

I do
not
know you
and I
am
wearing a bra
and
nobody
says TTFN
and now

I am late

for French.

with her skintight jeans
and her pouty-pouty lips
and the way she moves her hips
that made Jimmy Lemon
collide with Jason Kline so
they both dropped their backpacks
at the very same time?
(I am so not kidding.)
With her perfect little purse
and her perfect phony tan
and the way she waves her hands
as if her nails are drying
and bats her doe-y eyes like
she's on the verge of crying.
(Give me a break.)
With her text message life
and her gossip girl demeanor
and the way there is nothing
she allows to come between her
and anything she wants.
With her taunts and her sneers
and all the little cruelties
she sprinkles through the day.
Where is she hiding
Miss Mary
Mack, Mack, Mack, all dressed in
black, black, black,
the hand-
smacking, Double-Dutching,
one-foot-hopping, bubble-popping girl
who saved her mother's back
by never stepping on a crack?
What ever happened
to the girl she used to be?
The girl who was friendly
to other girls, like me.

She was just a girl I played with sometimes.
I never even said goodbye. I never thought about her
in all the years she lived somewhere else. Now
that she's moved back, she never lets me forget.

Because I have a boyfriend,
because the boyfriend is DuShawn,
because DuShawn is popular,
I thought things would be different.
I thought everyone would say,
“Look at Addie. She's with DuShawn.”
Instead, everyone says,
“Look at DuShawn.
What is
he
doing with
her
?”

Zachary sits quietly, sipping through a straw.
Kelsey averts her eyes from Bobby's, while
under the table their feet meet like old friends.
Joe and I do most of the talking. Skeezie and
DuShawn make most of the jokes. Hotheaded
Tonni gets angry for nothing as Royal nods
and says through a mouthful of Yoplait, “Uh-
huh, girl, tell it, uh-huh.” Some days Amy
and Evie squeeze in, taking up space for one,
giggling softly at secrets they have earlier
whispered in each other's ears.

Becca isn't here, of course—too above it all
to care. And Tonni and Royal? They're here
only because DuShawn is here. And DuShawn?
He is here only because of me.

So it goes each day from 11:52 to 12:12.
The mysterious order of our lunchtime table,
when for a brief moment the Popular deign to
sit with the Un. O let us give thanks. Twenty
minutes of pretending that We Are All One.

“That girl has bazoobies bigger than my head,”
Royal says as Skeezie spits milk all over his tray
and half of the table. “And you got one
big
head,” says Tonni, whose full name is

“Tondayala Cherise DuPré! What are you
sayin', girl?” “I'm saying you got a big head
is all. Doesn't she got a big head, DuShawn?”
DuShawn flashes me a
help-me-out-here
look,
but I know when to keep my mouth
shut.

“It is true,” Joe chimes in, “that Becca's bosoms
are bodacious.” “Excellent use of alliteration,”
I say because I can't help myself, and now
everyone is staring at me and I feel my chest
growing flatter, which is a near mathematical
impossibility. Earlier I'd told Joe what Becca
had said to me about my needing a bra.
As if reading my mind, Joe says (not reading
the part of my mind that is screaming,
SHUT UP, JOE!), “Androgyny is cool, Addie.
Seriously, girls who look like boys are hot.”
“You're gay,” I say. “To you, anything
that looks like a boy is hot.” Milk
is drying in dribbles on Skeezie's chin. His grin
grows so wide I can see every bit of food stuck
between his teeth and I find myself picturing
the teeth I can't see and imagining what is hidden
in the recesses there. I want to say to Skeezie,
“Close your lips,” if only to divert attention away from me,
but it is too late. “Don't worry, Addie,” says Tonni,
her eyes as friendly as the first frost, “you're just a little
behind the curve.” “So to speak,” says Skeezie,
which gets some laughter. Now I say it: “Skeezie,
close your lips.” And this gets even more.

I cannot bring myself to look at DuShawn. I try hard
not to think the thought I have thought a million times
since we started going out, but I can feel it rising up
as the laughter is dying down:
What is he doing with me
when he could be with a girl like Becca or Tonni?
Tonni says, “Addie is blessed with brains over boobs,”
and I resist the temptation
to praise the alliteration
and instead pray for release
from this purgatory of
the middle school years
when so many things
that never mattered before
and will never matter again

matter.

may have a name like a
puffed pastry

but she has eyes that say,
“I'm the hammer

and you're the nail.”

The way she says his name like
it's their little secret. The way
her hammer eyes watch me like
I'm a mystery she can't solve.
Me,
this plain-Jane white girl,
walking through the halls hand
in hand with the boy I think
she'd like for herself, black like her,
popular.

Is it possible? Could I be a girl
who makes other girls
jealous?

Well, if
that's the case,
I might just grow
to like it.

DuShawn once told me I have skin
the color of the inside of almonds,
then changed it to
peach
ice
cream.

DuShawn has skin the color
of a moonless night.

Holding hands,
folding black on white,
white on black,
we don't feel the color.

We feel the skin.

“So you want to go to the dance with me?”
back in September DuShawn boldly asked.
I was so clueless I had no idea he liked me.
So what if Skeezie had insisted DuShawn's
poking me all through pre-Columbian America,
spitballing me in the hall, and slipping that
whoopee cushion under me in homeroom
were clear declarations of love. How very
poetic. How very “How do I love thee?
Let me count the ways.”
1. Poke
2. Spit
3. Fart
How very seventh-grade boy, and, really,
how is a girl supposed to know? But then
when he said, “So you want to go to the dance
with me?” and looked at me with guileless eyes,
well, I was surprised but not unpleasantly so.
“I would love to go to the dance with you,”
I told him. And he said, “Okay, then.” And
I said, “Okay.” And that's the way
it happened.

I'm not a girl who kisses
or would ever be kissed
or so I thought. I mean,
look at me. These lips
are made for talking.

But one time DuShawn
said, “Shut up for once,
Addie.” And he leaned
in and before I could say
“What are you doing?”

he did it.

Now I'm a girl who kisses
and secretly wishes
for more. These lips
keep talking but they get
lonelier than before.

“It is not like you to be staring out the window,
Addie Carle. It is not like you not to hear.
Come here, Addie, come to the board and solve
this equation.”

I look at her with thinly

veiled contempt.
Ms. Wyman
, I want
to say as I make my way to the board,
have your lips never been kissed?
The thought of it almost makes me laugh,
almost
until I remember that I am more
than a girl who has been kissed and stares
off into space remembering it. I am a girl
with a memory for numbers and a hunger
for words, a girl whose brain once mattered
more than her lips.

I slip past Ms. Wyman,

ashamed to have been caught in the act
of being normal.

I pick up the chalk.

“Love makes fools

of us all,” somebody once said. I set to work
on the numbers on the board, wishing
I could disprove the words in my head.

The other morning in homeroom I asked Ms. Wyman,
“Do you believe in God?” She gave me an odd look,
then looked away as if she hadn't heard or at best
thought my question absurd, so I asked it again:
“Ms. Wyman, do you believe in—”

“I heard you

the first time, Addie, and your question has no
place in school.” “Exactly my point,” I replied
as she brushed me aside with a sigh and “Please rise
for the pledge.” I waited, then asked, “If my question
has no place in school, then why do we say ‘under
God' in the pledge?” Her voice had an edge as she
glared and said, “Addie, you do try my patience.”