Don't Wear Polka-Dot Underwear with White Pants: (And Other Lessons I've Learned) (2 page)

When it is finally my table's turn, I grab my Rainbow Sparkle lunch box out of my cubby and stand behind Anya. We walk in a not-so-straight line to the cafeteria, and I plop my lunch box on top of the table so that it makes as loud a noise as possible. Natalie gives me a dirty look and covers her ears, but Anya slams
her lunch box on the table right next to mine, even louder than I did.

Anya is my favorite person in the world, at least most of the time.

I like Anya because both “Amanda” and “Anya” begin with the letter
A
and end with the letter
A
, which is kind of amazing. Of course, Amanda has another
A
in the middle, so my name is a little better, but Anya's is pretty good too. (And Anya gets to have a
Y
in her name all the time, which makes me a little bit jealous.)

Plus, Anya likes being loud and she likes Rainbow Sparkle's TV show, so we have a lot to talk about.

“Do you know Dennis hid my lunch box in the cubbies again?” Anya asks. Dennis sits next to Anya in Mrs. Spangle's class, and she has a lot of problems with him because he is horrible.

I look over at the boys' cafeteria table and
glare at Dennis. Dennis has a Mohawk in his hair and so many freckles on his nose that you can barely see it at all.

“Leave Anya alone, Freckle Face!” I yell at him, but he doesn't hear me. That is probably for the best, because another one of Mrs. Spangle's rules is “No name-calling.” But Freckle Face is just such a perfect name-call for Dennis.

Though I've always kind of wanted to have some freckles myself, if I am being honest.

Anya shrugs. “Don't worry about him,” she says. “I'll tell Mrs. Spangle if he does it again, and then he'll have to miss recess.”

Recess. Recess is the best time ever. Anya and I have been playing Squash the Lemon on the slide with some other girls, which is not really allowed because the lunch aides think we are going to squash each other to death, but we play until they blow the whistle about it.

I open my lunch box very carefully so that Rainbow Sparkle does not fall out. If Natalie sees her, she will tell Mrs. Spangle about it because Natalie is the police of Mrs. Spangle's rules. I give Rainbow Sparkle a quick pat on the nose so she does not feel left out, pull out my food, and then slam my lunch box shut real quick.

“Shh.” Natalie gives me a not-nice look through her glasses, and I give her my best “You are driving me bananas” face. Dad taught me the “You are driving me bananas” face, but I do it better than him, I think.

I unwrap my sandwich and find peanut butter and jelly, which is my favorite. Except this sandwich has strawberry jam, and I keep telling bad-listener Mom that I hate strawberry jam because it has seeds. I like grape jelly only, because grape jelly is purple, which is almost like periwinkle. Plus, no seeds.

Also, jam is slippery and slimy, and now I have these white pants and I can't get any strawberry on them.

“Ugh,” I groan real loud so my whole table can hear.

“What's wrong?” Anya asks. I point to my sandwich and make a face.

“Oh no, seeds,” she says, and this is one reason why Anya is my favorite person in the world.

I bite into my sandwich as neatly as possible, making sure to hold the whole thing over the table and not over my pants. It takes a very long time to eat this way. So long that I don't even have a chance to eat my carrot sticks, but I didn't want to eat them anyway, so this is not a tragedy.

I always tell Mom that I want gummy bears in my lunch instead of carrot sticks, and she says this is not possible because gummy bears are not healthy. But gummy bears taste like fruit and they
are delicious, so I do not know what the big deal is.

I line up behind Anya to hit the playground, and when we are allowed to go outside, I make a beeline for the slide. Three other girls from our class are already waiting at the bottom of the slide's ladder, ready to play our not-allowed game until the lunch aides come out of the cafeteria.

“Let's go, let's go, hurry!” I call. Everyone starts climbing to the top of the slide. The first girl slides down the normal way and plants her feet firmly in the dirt at the bottom. The next girl gets into position at the top, hanging each of her legs off either side of the slide. When she reaches the bottom, she slams into the first girl and they both grunt. And this is why Squash the Lemon is the best recess game ever.

Natalie slides down the same way, and then Anya. I am next.

“Do
not
go fast, Mandy,” Natalie calls back to
me. “I can hardly breathe.” Now, this makes no sense at all, because the whole point of Squash the Lemon is to go fast and squish people. So I start making my way to the top of the ladder so I can give them all the biggest slam they've ever had.

“Ready or not, here I come!” I call from the top of the slide, and I decide to go extra fast just for Natalie.

“Ewww!” I hear behind me. “Ewww!” I turn around and see Dennis and three of his silly boy friends standing at the bottom of the ladder.

“What do you want, Freckle Face?”

“Ewww, I can see your underwear,” Dennis says. “Ewww!”

I was not expecting this.

I quickly feel around the back of my pants, making sure that the band of my underwear is not peeking out the top. It is not.

“Liar!” I yell at Dennis.

“Mandy wears polka-dot underwear,” Dennis says in a singsong voice, and if I were not standing at the top of a slide right now, I promise I would tackle him.

Especially because I'm pretty sure that I
am
wearing polka-dot underwear.

How does he know that?

“Mandy wears polka-dot underwear,” Dennis repeats. “You can see it through her pants.”

All this commotion breaks up the squashing of the lemons at the bottom of the slide, and Anya and the other girls come around to see why Dennis is yelling. Anya looks up at me, and her eyes grow as wide as pancakes. She motions for me to get off the slide, real small so Dennis can't see.

I look down the ladder but decide that the slide itself is my fastest way off. So I shimmy to the bottom, which isn't even very fun because there is no one to squash. Anya is there to meet me.

“You can see your underwear through your pants,” she whispers to me. “I think it's the sun.” Anya hurries me off to stand under the oak tree in the shade, somewhere my polka dots will stay hidden.

And at this moment there are three things that I am furious at: Dennis, Mom, and these awful white pants.

 . 
.
 .

Anya gives me her sweater to wear over my bottom for the rest of recess, and this is another reason why she is my favorite person in the world. When we get back to our classroom, I stuff my lunch box into my cubby and pop right up to Mrs. Spangle's desk before she can say I am not allowed.

“I need to tell you a secret,” I say quietly.

“Not now, Mandy,” Mrs. Spangle says. “It's time for—”

“It's an emergency,” I interrupt her. “Emergency” is the kind of word that gets grown-ups to listen to you. “Broken” and “stain” and “dropped on his head” are also good words for this, I've learned.

“What is it?”

“I need to take off my underwear.” I whisper this sentence real quietly in Mrs. Spangle's ear, and I think I spit on her a little bit.

“What do you mean? Did you have an accident?”

I shake my head. “My mom made me wear these awful white pants, and so everyone can see my underwear.” I say this part super whispery too. “Dennis saw them on the playground.”

“Stand back a second,” Mrs. Spangle says, so I follow her directions and take one step back, because I am very good at listening to Mrs. Spangle's “Follow directions” rule. “Don't worry, I can't see anything.”

“Look harder,” I say, taking another step back, which means I have to talk a little bit louder. “What do you see now?”

“Nope, nothing,” Mrs. Spangle answers. “You're safe.”

I take one more step back, just to make sure. “Are you absolutely positive you can't see my underwear? They're polka dot.” I accidentally say this real loud because I forgot about my super-whispery voice. And who appears at Mrs. Spangle's desk right at this moment but Dennis, and he laughs.

“I promise, Mandy,” Mrs. Spangle says. “Take a seat, please, and get ready for math. Dennis, you too.” Mrs. Spangle gives him a look like he is in trouble, but she does not write his initials on the board, which I think is unfair. If I had laughed about Dennis's underwear, I am absolutely positive I would have gotten my initials on
the board, so I stick my tongue out at him.

“Hey, Natalie,” Dennis says as he sits down. “Did you know Mandy is wearing polka-dot underwear?”

“So?” is all that Natalie answers. And sometimes I am very happy that Natalie is so dull. Because boring people do not care about things like polka-dot underwear.

I sit at my desk, but I keep Anya's sweater tied around my waist for the rest of the afternoon, and Anya does not even complain once that she is cold.

This is why I like Anya almost as much as I like Rainbow Sparkle and almost as much as I like fruity gummy bears. I could eat a gummy bear or twenty right now. Because gummy bears never, ever come in polka dot.

IF I'VE LEARNED ANYTHING
, it's that a girl needs an emergency stash of gummy bears hidden in her room at all times, especially after a whole day of wishing she had gummy bears in her lunch box and finding crummy old carrot sticks instead.

Gummy bears are my favorite food in the world. Gummy snakes are okay too, I guess, if you like snakes, which I do not. But I like bears. Sometimes I pretend that my last name is “Bear” even though it's “Berr.” I am supposed to say it like,
Brrrr, it's so cold outside
, but that is just boring. So I like to tell people our name is “Bear,” and this makes my parents annoyed. I am not sure why they have to care so much.

A good place to get gummy bears is from a grandmom, because a parent will usually say “No.” But grandmoms are pretty nice about gummy bears if you ask real sweetly, with a big hug and kiss. Grandmoms love to be kissed, so I kiss mine a lot whenever I want a bag of gummy bears. And—ta-da!—here they are.

I like to squeeze a gummy bear between my thumb and index finger until the head gets real big and then I rip it off with one bite. Red ones are my favorite, but that's only because they don't make periwinkle gummy bears yet. I eat my gummy bears like a rainbow—orange, yellow, green, blue—but I save all the red ones for last because they are the best.

I am sitting here all by myself after school biting heads off of gummy bears because Mom is feeding the twins or changing the twins or doing something else that is damp with the twins. And they're not being very quiet about it either. They are howling, actually. Or one of the twins is howling, and I don't care which one it is, except I'd like to know which one I have to tackle later.

Mom says I'm not allowed to tackle the twins, of course. And I don't, except for in my mind.

Timmy would come eat gummy bears with me if I asked him, but he is only three years old, and I cannot be seen hanging out with a preschooler. That would just be humiliating.

I get up off my bed and place my bag of gummy bears by my feet gently, because I do not want to lose any bears. I grab one corner of my Rainbow Sparkle bedspread and pull and pull like I am playing tug-of-war. I pull until
the whole bedspread is on the floor in a heap, which is a pretty big job. Then I lift up two corners and toss the whole thing into the air: This is how I create my Magic Mountain Wonderland. Around the mountain I stack the pillows from my bed until they form a fence, and then I sit in the middle. No one knows about my Magic Mountain Wonderland but me, and that is just the way I like it.

I hold the gummy bear bag in my lap and start placing the bears one by one into the holes on the mountain. I put some of the green bears in a hole at the bottom of the mountain, because they like grass. I place the blue bears in a long, windy hole that looks like a river, because they like water. And I let the red bears live at the very tippy-top of the mountain, because they are the best.

“Amanda!” Mom calls up the stairs. “What are you doing?”