Emily DeCamp lives in a converted attic. Once you open the door, you have to climb a short flight of stairs, and the space opens up to the best room ever in the world. Pine floors shine their honey gleam, and thick, furry throw rugs—purple and pink—beg your feet to come and bury your toes in them. A white rocking chair with a quilted pillow sits in the corner in front of shelves loaded with books. New item for my list: convert the attic into a super-huge bedroom and call it Hailee’s Kingdom.
Amanda’s come with me. I wasn’t sure if she’d be comfortable, since we’re all Magnolia girls and she’s a public school girl, but she called Emily back that same night and said she wanted to come. I’m wearing a new denim skirt and a yellow tank with a rainbow-colored peace sign on it. Amanda’s outfit, I’ve seen it before, but Emily hasn’t so I guess it will pass. I just hope nobody looks too closely at Amanda’s knit top—it’s pilling.
I creak across the floor. Emily DeCamp has the entire Dr. Seuss collection, including The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, which is so old no one even thinks about it anymore except for me. And Emily DeCamp. I finger classic editions of Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, and The Baby-sitters Club. Margaret Peterson Haddix fills half a shelf. This is what I call living.
The ceiling slants at odd angles, and dormer windows make hidden cubbies. One of them has a small door. For monsters. Ha-ha, just kidding.
“Your room is so pretty!” Amanda squeals.
“Pipe down!” I order out of the side of my mouth. I glance around like I’m used to this kind of stuff. “Is anyone else coming?”
Emily thrusts her glasses up. “Marna.”
“Who’s that?” I peer out one of the dormers. Emily has a perfect view of the road and the front yard.
“She plays the oboe.”
“The elbow?”
“No, the—”
“Don’t mind her!” Amanda says. Her eyes kaleidoscope over the whole room like a tourist at Disney. “I love your room! I always wanted a canopy bed!”
Amanda’s acting like a fangirl. It’s sort of embarrassing. I’m not saying I don’t like Emily’s four-poster bed with a neon green canopy and matching daisy bedspread; I’m just saying you don’t have to gush all over it.
Every room in Emily’s house has been torn from the pages of Amanda’s mom’s magazines, from the tongue-in-groove wood floors to the cool tile under our feet in the kitchen. Mrs. DeCamp serves us pizza and root beer. Mr. DeCamp takes pictures. “Smile,” he says. Flash! You’d think Emily never had friends over before.
When Marna finally gets here, we rush upstairs, and for the first time ever, I hear Emily giggle. “What do you guys want to do first?” she says, shutting the door.
A small media center holds a TV, a DVD player, and a laptop. “Check Facebook!” I say. “Watch a movie! What do you have?” Leaping up, I riffle through her DVDs and spot ten right off the bat I’m dying to see.
“We could do that any old time,” Emily says. Of course she can—she owns the movies. Some of us aren’t that lucky.
Majority votes we play Monopoly. Each one of us gets a fuzzy rug to sit on and I choose the wheelbarrow because I think it’s fun to push a real one. I own one property by the time my ringtone goes off. Someone has commented on a Facebook post I’ve commented on. I check my News Feed to see what else is going on.
“Hailee!”
The iron, the dog, and the top hat are all looking at me. Amanda goes, “Put your phone down, silly. I swear!”
I take my turn, then scroll through different comments on my phone.
“Hailee,” Amanda says in a half-scolding, half-serious voice.
“Wait a sec.” I finish reading the sentence I’m on.
“Yeah?”
She almost pulls off a Mom eyebrow. “It’s your turn.”
Monopoly is the longest, most boringest game ever invented. Amanda keeps prodding me when it’s my turn, and later when we change into our pajamas, she whispers to me, “You can’t be texting all the time! It’s so rude.”
“I wasn’t texting,” I hiss back. “I was checking Facebook.” She has no idea. You have to keep up with it or you’ll be behind what everyone else has heard. “You’re the only one here who isn’t on it.”
Since I didn’t know who else was coming to the sleepover, I brought my fancy pajama set Mom bought me from Macy’s. I tried once to wear it at home, but the lace edges picked at my skin. Marna wears a peasant nightgown, and Emily emerges from the bathroom in a hot-pink tank with print bottoms.
Amanda is so out of place in her old PE shorts and graying T-shirt.
I pretend not to notice, but Amanda’s my best friend, so whatever they think of her is going to spread to me. Time for diversionary tactics. I jump on Emily’s bed and almost tear the canopy. “Truth or Dare!” I yell.
“No, Light as a Feather, Light as a Feather!” Marna shoots back. “We played it at the last party I went to and the girl actually levitated!”
We are amazed. Somehow it’s decided I will be the girl they try to lift. Marna says we need at least four lifters, so Emily goes downstairs and comes back with her mom.
Mrs. DeCamp has toodley-doo hair like Emily’s, but she holds hers back with a headband. Perfectly shaped eyebrows frame dark brown eyes, and freckles sprinkle her nose, which is Emily’s nose. She sits crisscross next to me. Mom would probably call her Lady DeCamp, but I like sitting by her. She’s nice.
“Do you wear contacts?” I ask.
She smiles—a perfect row of white teeth, but not too white like some people who get carried away and practically strip the enamel off theirs. No, hers are natural looking, just like her makeup and her manicured nails.
“How did you know? Are my eyes red?”
“No, no! I figured maybe you did, since Emily wears glasses.”
“I just started wearing contacts,” she says, talking like she’s one of us. My mom is always too busy with Libby to sit with my friends. “But when I was you girls’ age, I looked just like Emily, glasses and all.”
“Mo-om!” Emily’s nose pokes out from her hair.
“It’s true.” She reaches over and smooths Emily’s mop from her face. “Except you’re prettier than I was.”
Mrs. DeCamp gently laughs. “You girls are so easy to embarrass! Okay, what are we doing here?”
Marna explains the game. I am to lie still as a statue. Each lifter will stick the first two fingers of each hand under my body: Marna at my head (since she’s in charge); Mrs. DeCamp on one side, Emily on the other; and Amanda at my feet.
“Thanks a lot!” Amanda pinches her nose as if my feet actually stink.
“Smell the roses!” I wiggle my toes in her face.
Marna lowers the light and settles us down. “This only works if everyone believes,” she intones. “Hailee, you are light as a feather and stiff as a board.”
“Light as a feather and stiff as a board,” I repeat. Amanda tickles the sole of my left foot. I ignore it. I concentrate all my energy on being light as a feather, stiff as a board. My blood is pine sap that hardens the wood, so now I’m stiff as a board and heavy like one, too. Instead, I try to think feathery stiff thoughts.
“Close your eyes. Everybody, close your eyes. Hailee, you have to be quiet, but everyone else say it with me. Remember, if we believe, we can make her levitate.”
Marna starts the chant. “Light as a feather, stiff as a board. Light as a feather, stiff as a board.” The others begin. Their voices join as one and fill the room with a hypnotic spell. I open one eye, spy through the slit. Marna rocks as she chants. Her features knit in concentration. Emily and her mom murmur the words in low voices. When I glance at Amanda, she doesn’t sense it. Her head is bent and she’s more serious than I’ve ever seen her. A chill goes straight through me and I squeeze my eyes shut.
“Light as a feather, stiff as a board; light as a feather, stiff as a board.” The chant gets louder; their words get faster; and on some signal I can’t see, they begin to lift. “Light as a feather, stiff as a board; light as a feather, stiff as a board.” Louder, faster, fingers pressing against me. “Light as a feather, stiff as a board; light as a feather, stiff as a board—ohmygosh—it’s working!” someone says, which causes all their voices to heighten.
I open my eyes again, watch their mouths flap in unison, and suddenly laughter rips open my gut, breaking the spell.
“Hailee!” Amanda is clearly disappointed.
“It was working,” Marna declares.
I burst into gales of laughter. I was the board, and I can tell you right now their fingers were not lifting eighty-seven pounds of Hailee Richardson.
“You should’ve seen your faces!” I roar. I mimic them, rocking and all. Amanda gives me sourpuss lips. I point at her as I chant.
Mrs. DeCamp laughs and tells us she’s got work to do. “Emily, did you remember to take your allergy pill?”
Emily leans her head back against the bed. “Yes, Mom,” she says in an oh-my-gosh-you-remind-me-every-day-why-are-you-doing-this-to-me-in-front-of-people voice.
Mothers. They can be so embarrassing sometimes.
Still, this is new information for my mental notes. “You have allergies?”
“Grass, weeds, tree pollen.”
I can’t believe it. “You mean like, basically, everything outside?”
Amanda pipes up. “That’s terrible! I’d feel like a prisoner.”
For a second, Emily looks hurt, like she’s a strange laboratory rat we’re all examining. But then she says, “I’m used to it. Besides, I can go outside a little bit; I just can’t stay out or I’ll start sneezing, coughing, and my eyes get all scratchy. I mainly need to be in.”
We always thought she was weird. It’s just allergies! I guess you really don’t know a person until you know them.
* * *
The moon slowly makes its arc from one dormer window to the other and we are snuggly and wide-awake in our sleeping bags. Emily had braces in elementary school and might need them again. Marna actually hates the oboe. She wanted to play drums, but her parents said no way. Amanda talks about Matthew’s new girlfriend, Shana, and how she sees the two of them kissing.
When a boy touches your cheek, his fingertips leave glittery paths of sparkles and happiness across your skin and somehow these sparkles bubble up to your brain and you feel as if you are floating. Even though Matthew was swatting a bug off my face, this is what it felt like.
Amanda goes off to a different subject, but unanswered questions pile up in my mental notes: Who starts the kiss, the boy or the girl? Do you have to close your eyes? (I would like to keep mine open, at least the first time so I could see what’s going on.) What if the boy has just eaten half a bag of spicy barbecue potato chips? Do you still have to kiss him or can you ask him to go brush his teeth? You see what I mean here. No one ever tells you the rules.
Marna asks me what it feels like to be rich. “I don’t know,” I answer. It’s hard to explain how we won three million dollars but we aren’t rich. I mention taxes, investments, and installments, but I can see she doesn’t know what those things mean.
Marna says, “I can’t believe you could win three million dollars and be poor!”
“We’re not poor!” I don’t even wear my Goodwill clothes anymore. “It just feels like we should be richer. But I did get some stuff, like this phone and my laptop.”
“You got some new outfits,” Amanda points out.
“Yeah, new outfits,” I say.
“And a new bike,” Amanda adds.
“Yeah.” I can’t believe I forgot the Treads Silver Flash 151.
“And you get to go to Magnolia.”
“O-kaaay,” I say, drawing out the last syllable. Except for Amanda, everyone else here has the same stuff I do. “It’s not like I’m spoiled or anything.”
“Maybe not spoiled, but you guys are all so lucky!” Amanda gushes.
“Lucky?” I am indignant. Who pedaled a red boy bike for years and endured the Megan and Drew tag team of insults? Whose mom used to drive a little farther because the Goodwill store near the gated communities had newer clothes on their racks? I’m not lucky; I’m finally getting what I deserve. Seems to me there’re two flavors of lucky—the kind that tastes like a chocolate sundae with whipped cream, M&M’s, sprinkles, chocolate shavings, hot fudge, and a maraschino cherry, or the kind that tastes like canned peas. I have spent most of my life with a heaping plateful of the second kind.
I don’t want to talk about luck and money anymore. Instead, I put Amanda on the hot seat. “Amanda’s not allowed on Facebook.”
“Really?” says Emily, and from incredulous Marna, “Why not?”
Amanda kicks me from her sleeping bag. In a tight voice, she explains her parents’ rules. After tossing that bone, I thought they’d be busy for a while, but it backfires. They sympathize. Their parents are strict, too. Their parents insist on reading their posts and have controls that block some websites and turn off Internet access at certain times.
“That’s horrible! My parents would never do that.” To prove it, I slip out my phone and tap on Facebook.
The first thing in my News Feed pops my jaw open.
Tanner Law likes Amanda Burns.
“Tanner likes you?” I blurt.
“What?” Amanda springs up. The other girls rustle with curiosity. Amanda leans over, glances at the screen, then takes my phone. Her mouth bows into a little smile.
I’m confused. “Why did he write that?” I don’t like-like him, but I liked him liking me.
Amanda gets all shy. “I guess he just sort of …” Shoulder shrug. “He just—” A smile breaks on her face like the sun popping up in the morning. “He put a note in my backpack, but I didn’t see it until I got home. He said he likes me and …”
“And what?” Emily asks breathlessly.
“Just stuff.” She lowers her gaze, stares at Tanner’s post. Her eyes reflect his words, are full of Tanner Law likes Amanda Burns. “He wants me to write him back.”
“Why?” I hate how my voice sounds—big and demanding—but still I want to know.
Amanda hears it, too. I realize this because she makes her voice small and sweet. “He wants to know if I like him.”
You’d think she just announced a new Harry Potter book. Emily and Marna clamor to see his photo and then pronounce him “cute” and “hot.” Emily likes his curls. Well, of course she would.
Watching them, I invent a new word—boyzonbrain. Sounds like a poisonous berry, doesn’t it? It means boys-on-the-brain and it’s even more dangerous. I make a mental note to submit my new word later.
Emily asks Amanda, “Are you going to write back to Tanner?”
“What’re you going to say?” Marna chimes in.
“Could I have my phone back, please?” I’m irritated Amanda’s kept this from me, and I’m annoyed that Emily and Marna act as if Tanner’s post is worldwide news. Here I was, concerned for poor Amanda and her ugly clothes, and there she is, taking over the whole sleepover.
“One minute,” Marna says. She, Emily, and Amanda rate the pictures, comparing Tanner to different singers and celebrities.
“Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you,” I say like it’s not even a big deal, “I sent Nikki those quiz answers.” The only girl who responds is Amanda, who glances up just long enough to shake her head at me, then goes back to looking at Tanner’s face on my phone.
When something simmers in a pan too long, it doesn’t boil over or burst into flames—it quietly bubbles until it’s charred and black. My charred black heart becomes tough as an overdone pork chop. In the dark room, all I can see are their smiling faces illuminated by the glow of Tanner’s photos.
“I need my phone back,” I repeat. “I have to check my messages.”
I read through my News Feed, gasping or chuckling here and there so Emily, Marna, and Amanda can hear how interesting my friends and I are.
In fact, the comments and posts I read come through as a loud noisy room, a party where it’s all happening. I’m right in the middle of it when snippets of Amanda’s conversation penetrate my bubble. She’s asking what CSS means; she raves about the new dresser she got as a hand-me-down from her aunt; she talks about riding the city bus. My cheeks burn with shame. Though Marna thinks it would be exciting to go on a bus, she says, “My mom would never let me do that.”
Of course she wouldn’t. Only poor people do that. I cringe at what Emily and Marna must think of Amanda—must think of us. Right away I say, “Well, I don’t ride the bus.” It’s true. I don’t take the city bus, but that’s because Mom and Dad haven’t renewed my pass in over a year. Nevertheless, I want to separate myself from the picture Amanda has created.
Mom picks us up the next morning after Mrs. DeCamp has filled our stomachs with thick, sweet slices of buttery French toast. I’m relieved to get Amanda away from my Magnolia friends. She has nothing in common with them.
As we ride home, I whip out my phone.
“You were on that thing all night and at breakfast, too,” Amanda says. “It was kind of rude.”
What can you expect from someone who shares a clunky computer with her parents and isn’t allowed on social networks? I ignore her. Mom aims her rearview mirror to talk to me. “You are on that phone too much, Hailee. Put it away.”
The look I give Amanda is dirtier than the soles of my feet on a summer day.
On Sunday, I don’t go to her house to help her choose outfits. Maybe Tanner should help her. Maybe she could hop on the bus and get advice from a department store lady. Maybe the flea market is holding on to a faded, pilling top that is a perfect fit for her.
I am so glad I don’t go to Palm Middle.