My sister showed up at the house that night while Dad was out on his bike and Mom was at an open house. I think Bethany was anxious to hear about my first day of junior high.
I was less anxious to tell her about it.
Okay, despite my near-death experience in eighth period, I guess it was pretty successful as far as first days of seventh grade go. Yet I’d kind of hoped Bethany would be too busy tonight to find out how it went. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I had failed miserably at #1 on the IT List. I mean, can my vintage shirt be considered trendy when the only person who appreciated it was my crazy Woodshop teacher?
I assumed, at least, Bethany would be happy to see me wearing it.
I ran in for a hug, but she held her arms out to stop me like I was contagious.
“What on earth are you wearing?!” she cried out.
“I found your T-shirts!” I said. “I wore this one for the first day!”
“T-shirts?” Bethany spluttered.
“All those cool ol—I mean vintage—T-shirts at the top of your closet.…”
The next noise I heard was barely human.
“Noooooooooooo! You weren’t supposed to find those gross T-shirts in my closet! You were supposed to find the Style Inventories!”
“The what?”
Then she grabbed me by the hand and dragged me into her bedroom, the whole time going on about how Mom was supposed to have donated that trash bag of T-shirts to Goodwill a long time ago. She pointed sternly at the closet door.
“Go to the back of my closet right now,” she directed. “Next to the shoe tree is a shelf with a stack of notebooks. The Style Inventories!”
I did as I was told and found a library of spiral notebooks in bright colors. PRIVATE PROPERTY OF BETHANY DARLING was written on every one.
“Heeeeey,” I said. “I thought you said you didn’t keep a diary because popular girls don’t keep diaries.…”
“Those are not diaries! They are Style Inventories! They document what I wore to school between the seventh and twelfth grades!”
She took the yellow one labeled SEVENTH GRADE, flipped it open to the first page, and handed it to me for my inspection. Every line was filled with my sister’s bubbly handwriting:
9/4 Pink top, denim skirt, espadrilles, flowered headband
9/5 Blue cami, capris, sporty flats, butterfly clip
9/6 Striped mini dress, silver sandals, star barrette
I skipped ahead a few pages.
10/22 Fuzzy cardigan, pink top, plaid mini, black boots
And a few more.
11/6 Ribbed turtleneck, denim skirt, sporty flats
“I wanted you to consult these for inspiration!” my sister was shouting. “To show you how—with clever mix-and-matching and accessorizing and borrowing from friends—it was possible to never repeat the same outfit.”
And that’s when I realized the intended definition of IT List #1: Wear something different every day.
“Different” meaning dissimilar. Not “different” meaning unusual.
Bridget had the right idea all along with endless combinations of outfits, but I was too clueless to realize it!
My sister took calming breaths from a lotus position on the floor.
“All is not lost. There’s hope for you yet. Tryouts are next week, correct? We’ll just put this disaster behind us and move on to number two.”
IT List #2: Make the CHEER TEAM!!!
Ack. I’d been dreading shouty #2 with all its exclamation points. In fact, I’d kind of hoped that I rocked #1 so hard that I could just skip over #2 and maybe the rest of the IT List entirely. My sister had other ideas.
“Let’s see your best cheer.”
My best cheer? I didn’t have a cheer, let alone a best one.
“Uh?” I said. “Go team, go?”
Spirit fingers. Clap.
That was all I had.
My sister pressed her face into her hands and moaned.
“I see that I’m going to have to call in a favor.”
In an instant, Bethany had sprung up from the floor and was on the phone. Most of the half conversation I heard didn’t make much sense to me. From what I could figure out, she was talking to someone named Sherri about this year’s CHEER TEAM!!! She said some things about awesomeness and asked a few questions about an arrow and said some more things about awesomeness and asked a few more questions about a gap and then she laughed a fake laugh and said good-bye and turned on me with fierce intensity.
“Bring me a tape measure!” she commanded.
“But… what?”
“Bring me a tape measure!”
It was clear she wasn’t going to answer any of my questions until I brought her a tape measure.
I don’t know about your house, but the Darling family doesn’t have, like, a designated space set aside for tape measures. I thought it might be in Dad’s tool kit but it wasn’t and then I thought it might be in Mom’s sewing basket but it wasn’t and finally I had the good sense to look in our junk drawer, where it was caught in a brutal melee with a broken can opener, a length of twine, and about a bazillion packets of soy sauce. I disentangled the mess and returned to Bethany’s room.
“Tape measure,” I said.
“Stand up straight,” she ordered.
Bethany extended the tape measure from my head to my feet.
“Hmmm…” she grumbled discouragingly. “Okay, maybe not that straight.”
“Are you going to tell me what this is all ab—?”
“Shhh! Slouch! But just a little!”
I tried my best to do as instructed.
“No! That’s too much! Just, like, a squinch.”
I didn’t know what a squinch was, but I must have figured it out because when I shrunk down just the teeniest bit, Bethany squealed and clapped in approval.
“Sixty-four inches! That’s it! You’re perfect!”
Now you have to understand something here. My popular, pretty big sister—she who had been officially voted Miss Perfect by her Pineville Junior High graduating class—was calling me perfect.
We were having a moment. I can honestly say that we had never shared a moment before. Not like this.
And I still had no idea what she was talking about.
“Let’s see,” my sister was saying. “Your hair is just long enough for the regulation ponytail. Obviously, you’ll have to pad your bra. But otherwise, you’re perfect.”
There was that word again.
“Can you please tell me what’s going on?”
Then my sister explained that the Sherri she called earlier was her co-captain on the CHEER TEAM!!! Sherri, or Miss Garcia, is now the Pineville Junior High School CHEER TEAM!!! coach. My sister asked her for TOP SECRET INFORMATION.
“She revealed that there is a very specific gap in The Alignment!” my sister enthused. “A gap that you are going to fill!”
None of this information helped me know any more than I did before she opened her mouth. My sister, patience waning, explained that an eighth grader named Annalise Shapiro had been injured in a tragic leg-waxing accident. Until the scabs stopped oozing, there was a gap in something called The Famous Pineville Junior High Arrow Pointing Toward Awesomeness Alignment. And that just wasn’t acceptable.
“The Famous Pineville Junior High Arrow Pointing Toward Awesomeness Alignment is famous for a reason,” Bethany said. “It’s our signature alignment.”
I’m not the sporty type, as a participant or a spectator. And having never attended a Pineville Junior High football game, I had no idea what The Famous Pineville Junior High Arrow Pointing Toward Awesomeness Alignment even was. For my sister’s sanity, I tried to pretend otherwise.
“Right! Of course! The Awesome Arrow of… uh… Awesomeness?”
I could tell that my sister was about to give up at this point, so baffled was she by the notion that one could exist for twelve-almost-thirteen years and not know that The Famous Pineville Junior High Arrow Pointing Toward Awesomeness Alignment is this: There are fourteen girls on the CHEER TEAM!!!! The two tallest are five feet six inches. They stand in the middle of the line. Then the rest of the squad lines up next to them in descending order: five feet five, five feet four, and so on until the five feet evens are on the ends. When lined up in such a fashion, the cheerleaders form an alignment that resembles an Arrow Pointing Toward Awesomeness.
Annalise Shapiro was supposed to fill the five-foot-four spot on one side.
“Now that spot is yours! You’re a vital part of The Alignment.” She blew on her hands. “I mean, without the five-foot-four spot, one side of The Alignment would go right from five foot five to five foot three and well, that just wouldn’t work at all.”
“But, Bethany, I…”
“How are your back handsprings? And your cartwheels? I mean, you can do a basic cartwheel, right?”
And then Bethany laughed like she was born doing cartwheels. Like she literally popped out of Mom, flipped head over feet, and landed right in the bassinet with a hearty “Goo-goo-go, Pineville!”
I cannot do a basic cartwheel. But when your perfect older sister is paying attention to you for the first time ever and keeping her attention depends on your ability to do a cartwheel, you assure her that yes, yes, of course you can do a cartwheel.
“Who can’t do a cartwheel?” I asked, dripping with sarcasm.
And Bethany gave me an “I know, right?” roll of the eyes and a gentle punch to the shoulder and I swear I’d never felt closer to her in all my life. I wanted to make the moment last.
“By the way, where’s today’s mail?” she asked.
I knew our time was short. Bethany would be out the door and back to campus before I knew it. So as I showed her to the stack on the table, I told her all about the disaster of Woodshop and how the teacher is a nut and I’m the only girl in the class and he’s determined to keep me there.
“That’s fantastic!” Bethany said as she sorted through the pile.
“It is?”
“Seriously! Why would you want to switch out of a sweet situation like that? No competition! All the better for getting a head start on IT List number three: Pick your first boyfriend wisely.”
I didn’t even have time to object. The Woodshop boys aren’t exactly my type. Not that I even have a type.
“Just don’t wear those T-shirts,” Bethany cautioned, putting the mail back down.
It was getting very difficult to keep track of the big-sisterly wisdom when it came all at once like this.
“ANYWHERE.”
“Why not? The bands are cool, right?”
“Ugh. I have no idea if those bands are cool.”
Now I was really confused.
Bethany sighed wearily. “They are the last remnants of a relationship with a rock-and-roll boyfriend,” she said. “I liked him. I hated the music.”
The front door had shut behind her before I’d even thought to ask if he was the same boy from IT List #3: Pick your first boyfriend wisely.