Please, Please, Please (7 page)

“Well,” Zoe said. “That might not be the most convincing way to put it.”

“I keep thinking of all you guys out there on the lower field having so much fun but then every time I’m about to tell her I quit, I just, I can’t figure out any way to make sense.”

“Yeah,” Zoe said. “Forget it. It doesn’t make sense. It would just be that much more fun if you played, too. I’m selfish. You’re my best friend. But, I mean, you’re totally right.”

“I guess.” Part of me was really hoping she’d come up with a way of looking at it differently. I snuggled my face into History’s fur.

“Also,” she whispered. “It’s also not just your mom and how giving she is to you. I mean, I saw you last year in
The Nutcracker
. If I could do that . . .”

“What?” I remembered my choreography with my feet,
a-lum-ah-dah
.

“All that, twirling and graceful stuff,” Zoe said softly.

I laughed. “I do like the twirling stuff.”

“No, I really have a lot of respect for you doing it. I do.”

“Thanks,” I said. It felt good, that she understood that part of the problem was how great ballet is, too.

“I mean it,” Zoe insisted. “So don’t listen to me.”

“Yeah.” I stood up and stuck History up on the shelf where he belonged, then went to flop down on my bed, depressed. “It would be so good, though, being on the team with all you guys.”

“Ahh, you’re not that great a player anyway.”

“Thanks a lot.” She’s the only person who can make you feel better by insults. “It was really fun?”

“Yeah.”

“Ouch.” I felt so lonely. “Tell me what else. Tell me everything.”

“Well,” Zoe said, “the funniest thing was, my mom forgot to pick me up, after.”

“She what? What do you mean, forgot to pick you up? What did you do?”

“I just sat there, waiting,” Zoe said matter-of-factly. “I mean, I knew they’d realize eventually, so I didn’t care or anything. She felt bad when she finally came.”

I sat up. “How long were you sitting there?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “It got dark. But Roxanne waited with me, since she had her bike, so it was fine.”

“Oh, Zoe.”

“It was pretty funny, actually.”

“Funny?” It didn’t sound the slightest bit funny to me.

“Yeah,” she insisted. “My family was all sitting down to dinner, and everybody was like, where’s Zoe, where’s Zoe, and I guess then my mother was like, oops!”

I didn’t know what to say to her. My mother would never forget me. When soccer started last year, my mother shadowed me up and down the field on the sidelines yelling,
Don’t run, CJ!

“Do you want me to come over?” I asked Zoe. It was dark out already, and I was supposed to be rinsing my new maroon leotard, doing my homework, and getting ready for bed, but I felt like Zoe might really need me, after something like that. Mom would understand and drive me over, if I explained to her what happened to Zoe today. I wandered over to my desk and sat down in my desk chair to put on socks and my sneakers.

“You want to come over now?” Zoe asked.

“My mom will drive me over, I’m sure,” I said, but right away slapped myself on the head—what am I, an idiot? What, like it will make Zoe feel better for me to tell her how understanding my mother is? “If . . .” I tried to think quick what to say, but I really am not a very quick thinker. “Are you, I mean, depressed?” I rolled my eyes at myself in the mirror.

“No,” Zoe said. “You mean about my mom?”

“Yeah.” I shook my head. All I want to do is be nice, and I end up such a jerk.

“It was funny,” Zoe said again, sounding less sure. “I don’t care.”

“OK.” How would I feel, I wondered, if Mom ever really did leave me alone? I tried to think what in the world to say. “Anyway.”

“Anyway,” she repeated. “Has Tommy called you?”

“No.” I flopped back onto my bed. “Hey, did you think about Lou?”

“Lou?” she asked.

“If you like him.”

“Are you serious?” I couldn’t tell if she was laughing or angry.

“Don’t you think it would be fun?” I asked, taking my time with the words. “He’s good friends with Tommy and . . .”

“I like him,” Zoe protested. “He’s my buddy, he draws funny comics even if they’re all about battles in World War Two. I have nothing against the guy, but he’s a, sort of, a doof, don’t you think?”

I pulled the big blue sweatshirt Zoe had given me last week out of the closet and held it in front of myself, in the mirror. “He’s nice. I think he likes you. I saw him looking at you, today.”

“Ew. No. Really? When?”

I smiled. She sounded a little interested. “At lunch.”

“I bring big sandwiches,” she said. “He probably just thinks I’m fat.”

“He does not!” She tries to seem like she doesn’t care, but I know she does. I pulled the sweatshirt over my head and dropped the phone. “Sorry,” I said when I got it back up to my ear. “I was putting on your sweatshirt. Bluie.”

“Big Blue,” she said softly, so I couldn’t really hear her.

“What?”

“Big Blue,” she repeated, loud.

“Oh, yeah. Big Blue. It’s so soft.”

“I know,” she said.

I decided to change the subject again. “Anyway, what were you saying?”

“Nothing,” she mumbled. “Just, you know. Boys don’t like me that way.”

“That’s not true.” She heard Morgan say that about her last week. Morgan has said that a lot. Maybe it is true, maybe not—but Lou might. He seems more mature than the rest of the boys. I couldn’t think what else to say to make Zoe feel better. Everything I was trying seemed to backfire. I decided not to say anything.

“Anyway,” she said, after a while of silence. “You do the math yet?”

“Yeah.”

“Me, too,” she said. “So . . .”

I waited another while and then asked, “Zoe? I, if you, I think he really does like you, Lou. And if, do you, I could, you want me to ask Tommy for you?”

“No,” she said. She said it really almost angrily. I never heard her sound angry before.

“OK,” I said quietly.

“I mean, let me think about it. OK?”

“OK.” I took off my sneakers and my socks. “Are you mad at me?”

“No,” she said.

I curled up on my bed with History and picked at the seam in my wallpaper. It has little rosebuds. Mom had chosen it when I was little because, she said, it was so “me.”

“OK! OK!” Zoe yelled at her sisters. “I gotta go, they need my body. See you tomorrow!”

“OK,” I said, hanging up.

Why can’t I be fun?
I asked History. He just looked at me blankly.
Who does she want me to be friends with?
I stood up and got the permission slip out of my book bag. No matter how many times I reread it, it still said we’d get back at six thirty, just as I’d be pulling off my ballet slippers and yanking my dance pants over my tights for the long ride home alone with my mother.

nine

I
have never felt so alone as I felt
today.

Just about every girl in the entire school was wearing a soccer shirt. I was sitting up on the wall this morning before school, watching purple jersey after purple jersey come toward me like waves. Purple jerseys with huge black-and-white soccer balls on the fronts. Nobody said anything about it to me; in fact, nobody really looked at me. Worst of all, I chose today to wear my pale-yellow minidress. Zoe and Roxanne were comparing game schedules, Morgan and Olivia sat on the ground below the wall, whispering as usual. All in their purple jerseys.

I didn’t even go to my locker when the bell rang; I went straight to homeroom in hopes of avoiding all the excitement. Nobody seemed to notice.

“Hi, CJ,” Ms. Cress said.

“Hi.” I crossed my arms on my desk and rested my head on top.

She came over and sat on the desk next to mine. “We missed you at soccer yesterday.”

I didn’t answer.

“You’re not playing this year?”

“I have ballet,” I said. “Four times a week.”

“Wow. ’K. We’ll miss you.”

I wanted to cry. “Thanks.”

“Did you bring in your permission slip for apple picking?”

“No,” I mumbled into my arms. “I forgot it.”

“What am I gonna do with you?” She shook me. “Bring it in tomorrow, ’K? I really want to win the cookie. It’s huge, and you know I hate to lose. Especially to Ms. Masters.”

“’K,” I said, still not looking up.

I didn’t lift my head all through homeroom and took the long way to Spanish. When I got there, Morgan and Olivia were already inside, their heads close to each other’s. Morgan used to lean close to me when she talked.

“Hey,” Tommy said.

I turned around and almost bumped into him. I dropped my lunch. An orange rolled out of it down the hall, and while I picked up my sandwich, Tommy ran after my orange. “You’re not on soccer?” he asked, handing it to me.

I shrugged. “Dance.”

“So?”

“So I can’t do both! OK?”

“OK, OK,” he said. “I just wanted to ask you . . .”

Gideon bumped him, going in to Spanish, and coughed “hay-stacking” into his hands.

“Shut up,” Tommy said. He rested the heel of one untied high-top on top of his other foot.

I waited. The bell rang.

I started heading in to class, but Tommy licked his bottom lip and whispered, “Will you sit with me on the bus to apple picking?”

“Sure,” I said.

All through Spanish I was like,
What? I couldn’t believe I said yes, but it was like, how could I say no—he finally talked to me and it was to ask me to sit with him. I had to say yes
. When I looked at him just before our vocab quiz, he smiled a little, just enough to show his deep dimples. I could barely hold my pen. None of the vocab words sounded the slightest bit familiar. How do you say, “My boyfriend”?

He waited for me in the doorway after Spanish. We started walking together toward Ms. Cress’s room. My arm brushed against his, which felt very warm. “Sorry,” I said. I was shaking.

“That’s OK,” he answered. We kept walking, looking straight ahead. I could feel other kids looking at us. “Hot today, huh?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I agreed, and we kept walking. I checked my bun. It was holding fine. I watched our feet moving together in unison, though his were clomping in his untied high-tops. I tried to think of anything in the world to say to him.

We passed a poster in the hall announcing the Seventh-Grade Unity Trip, and he rolled his eyes. “They think a couple of slogans will make us act nice to one another.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. I didn’t know what else to say. He and Zoe always tease each other, banter back and forth. I kept nodding, trying to think of something witty, something Zoe might say. Which reminded me. I asked, “You know Lou?”

He looked at me out of the corner of his eyes. “Uh, yeah,” he said. Of course he knows Lou.

“Does he like Zoe?” I asked.

Tommy squinted his eyes at me like he was trying to understand.
“Like
her, like her?”

“Yeah.” I checked my bun again. Still holding.

“Why? Does she like Lou?”

“Just find out,” I whispered. “OK?”

He shrugged and sped up. I felt somebody staring at me so I turned around. Morgan was right behind me, shaking her head.

I walked faster. When I got to math, Zoe was already there. She smiled at me, and even though she was wearing a soccer jersey like everybody else, at least she looked happy to see me. I went right over to her. “I asked Tommy for you,” I whispered.

“What?”

I felt my insides all clench. I blinked a few times. “You don’t have to, I just, to find out, I didn’t say you liked him or anything . . . .”

Zoe looked all pale. She slumped down into her seat.

“What happened?” Olivia asked.

“Nothing,” I insisted. I looked up at the front of the classroom where Tommy and Lou were talking. I guess Zoe looked up at the same time, because she clonked her head down onto her desk.

Morgan came over and leaned on my desk. “You think you’re so special, don’t you?” she whispered.

I shook my head. “What?”

“What happened?” Olivia asked again.

“Nothing!” I sank into my seat.

“She’s fixing up Zoe with Lou,” Morgan said. “Do you even like Lou?” she asked Zoe.

Without raising her face off the desk, Zoe shook her head.

The bell rang, and Ms. Cress asked everybody to take their seats.

Morgan leaned close to me but didn’t smile. “Not everybody needs a boyfriend,” she whispered.

“I didn’t say . . .”

“You just think you’re so great to have a boyfriend and be a little ballerina, in your ballerina dress, so much better than the rest of us.”

“I do-do-do-do not.” I could feel myself starting to cry. Zoe wouldn’t pick her head up. Olivia, when I looked at her, bowed her head. I guess she agreed, too. Morgan was whispering, but it felt like the whole room was listening to her and agreeing.

“You go ahead,” Morgan whispered. “Do everything you can to set yourself apart. I hope you’re impressed with yourself, superstar. The rest of us will be perfectly happy to stick together in the shadows.”

ten

N
obody talked much to me the
rest of the day. I told Zoe I had to go to the library during lunch because I’d been too tired to do my social studies homework after ballet. She said OK. Maybe she was relieved. In English/social studies, I passed a note to Tommy saying, Never mind about Lou. He shrugged. I told everybody at our lockers, between seventh and eighth, that I’d told Tommy to forget it about Lou and Zoe. They all said things like, “Whatever.”

I walked all the way to band alone and sat there behind my music pretending to play, my flute resting against my quivering lip. By the time the final bell rang, my flute was in pieces in the case in my bag. I was out the front door of school by the time Mom pulled into the circle.

Mom asked me what was wrong, but I didn’t tell her. She turned on the radio. I turned it off. She left it off. I spent the whole afternoon in my room, because Wednesdays I have nothing. She was at Cub Scouts with Paul, anyway. And all my friends had soccer.