21

At school on Monday, everything is different. Everyone is looking at us, talking to us, talking about us. Even the kids who don’t usually pay attention to the decathlon know what happened because we were all over the news. Everyone is talking about how we didn’t just win the regional title, we squashed them, we killed them, we wiped the floor with them.

The attention feels good. Incredible. Nice girls don’t squash and kill, those are left-side words. But I don’t cross them out. I can want to win more than I want to be nice.

Our teachers tell us not to do homework. They let us sit in the back of class, studying and quizzing each other. They excuse Tallulah for every assignment she’s forgotten all year, and she goes from almost failing to straight As in one day. After lunch, the principal calls us into her office to congratulate us. “You’re the first kids from Forgotten Corner to make the finals,” she says. “You’re an honor to educate. And all this press is so good for our school.”

We don’t know what to say because we did it for ourselves, not the school, but before we can answer she’s busy giving us things: books and calculators and bagels and orange juice.

The weirdest thing about all the extra study time is that we don’t need it. Last week we were busy cramming for four possible specialties. Now I have only my two most familiar ones left—botany and endocrinology—and I’ve already had months to prepare for them. Tallulah only needs to practice her creative self-expression presentation. By the end of the day, we aren’t even studying. We’re chatting.

“OK, so tell me now. How’d you meet Ivan?” she says.

I giggle as I explain what a Happy Healthy Human is and then I tell her about his birthday party.

“Wow.” She gives me a goofy smile I’ve never seen before. “He’s cute, right?”

My face gets a little warm, but I decide to choose privacy for now. “Um, I don’t know,” I say.

She sighs. “I wish there were more Black guys in this school.”

I do, too, but just because I wish there were more Black kids at the school in general, partly so that being Black could be one fewer way Tallulah has to be alone all the time.

But I don’t think that’s what she means.

“I mean, I wish there were more Black kids here every day,” she continues.

“Me too,” I say.

“But I’d be even happier if these imaginary Black kids were cute guys like Ivan.”

“After finals, Tallulah. You can go boy crazy after finals.”

She brightens. “So, then you’ll introduce me to all your New York City teenager friends?”

“Sure,” I say.

She leans in to whisper even lower. “Although, don’t tell anyone, but I sort of think George is even cuter than Ivan.”

“After the decathlon, Tallulah. After!” I say, but we’re giggling.

I still wish I could have the shots, but there’s a weird freedom in knowing it’s over now. I don’t have to resist all the signs of growing up the way I used to. I can giggle with Tallulah as she talks about cute boys and actually sort of enjoy it.

In TGASP, Ms. Gates declares a “Free Day” for celebration. The room is decorated with orange and purple balloons, our favorite colors. The classroom speaker plays pop music. There’s chips and pretzels and cupcakes.

“Can we play Everything Bee on your computer?” Caroline asks Ms. Gates.

Everything Bee is the trivia game we usually play on TGASP free days.

“What’s the point,” Josie whines. “It’s not even fun. No one ever beats Tallulah and Piper.”

“How about you be on Tallulah’s team?” I ask her. “I want to partner with Daisy this time anyway.”

I watch Daisy’s face light up as she runs over to me.

Tallulah and Josie win, of course, but it doesn’t matter.

It’s a perfect day.

Until I get home.

I let myself in the back door. I don’t see anyone, so I go down the hallway to my room and throw my backpack on my bed. It knocks something off my bedspread. Actually, three somethings. Three ugly, strappy, satiny somethings.

No.

Gross.

“Mom!” I scream “Mom! Mom!”

She appears in my doorway in less than one second, out of breath and in just leggings and an undershirt, with half her hair wet and the other half dry.

“Piper, what’s wrong?” She sounds like she’s worried I’m being murdered or something. Let her worry. That’s how it feels to see those things in my room.

I point at the floor next to my bed where they’ve fallen. “What are those?”

But I know what they are. Training bras.

Because for some reason I’m supposed to train my breasts into being big enough to need a bra? Because I need to train my body to look like my mom’s? Because I need to train to become a person I don’t want to be?

Mom visibly relaxes, her shoulders untensing. “Jeez, honey. I thought you were hurt.” She walks into my room and puts her hair dryer on my desk chair. Then she picks up the three bras and lays them on my bed in some display. Like they’re supposed to be some happy surprise.

She sits, shaking the wet side of her hair. I don’t know how she can possibly look so casual when I’m this angry.

“Let’s talk. Come sit, Piper.”

No.

She pats the bed next to her.

I don’t want to be that close to them.

I need to make it through finals. I need a few more weeks in a kid body. Once we win, then I’ll face the Wordless Chain. Then I’ll let myself grow up. Not yet.

I walk to my bed and sit, like she asked.

Mom speaks. “I . . . well, I was in the store, and I thought to myself, You know what? Piper’s probably going to want a bra soon. Right?”

Wrong!

“When I was your age, Gram made a day out of it. We went to the mall, ate lunch together. Then we went to the lingerie section of a department store, and I felt so . . . so grown-up. So special. Gram announced it to the saleslady: ‘My daughter needs her first bra.’ I just about burst with pride.”

“Pride?” This story is ridiculous. “About underwear?”

Mom nods. She looks like she’s about to burst with pride again now.

“When Eloise was ready, I did the same. I even let her skip school.”

“What? Who would want to skip school for bras?”

“Hey, I remember that,” Eloise says, suddenly appearing in the doorway. “We went to the Bridgewater Mall, and you let me pick out anything I wanted. I bought a hot-pink bra from Target and a tie-dye one from Uniqlo.” She laughs her big open laugh and sits on my other side.

What is this, an ambush?

“But something told me you wouldn’t want all that fuss, Piper,” Mom says.

Finally. A sentence that makes sense.

“I don’t.”

Mom and Eloise laugh, which makes me more upset. I’m being honest, not funny.

“So, as much as I’d love to spend a special day alone with you, I decided I’d better do this your way.”

My eyes are wide. Is that what it takes to get a day alone with Mom? Bra shopping?

Mom is beaming. She’s proud of herself. “This way you can go through this milestone in private, where you’re comfortable.”

I’m the opposite of comfortable.

“So, what do you think? Do you like any of them?”

No.

I can’t say that out loud. Clearly, I’m supposed to be grateful that Mom considered my feelings, even though she considered the wrong ones. I feel misunderstood and invisible and angry.

Mom holds out a white bra with pink polka dots on the straps. “Here. Try one on.”

My face is hot. My hands are clenched between my knees. I shake my head, just slightly. Mom and Eloise are finally both here, both with me, with no Gladys, and now I want them to disappear along with the bras and the budding breasts that sent them.

“Maybe this one?” Mom says, holding out a different one.

I take a deep breath and force nice words to come out. “Thank you for getting them for me, but I’d prefer not to try that on.”

“OK,” Mom says, slowly. “Well, if you don’t like any of these, we can certainly go to the store and pick out some together. Or maybe we look online?”

I clench my teeth. “No, thank you.”

“Do you have another idea?” Mom asks.

Here’s an idea: You can leave me alone.

I shake my head.

Eloise’s eyebrows are low, like she’s worried. Mom deflates. “Piper, I’m trying. You don’t have to make this part difficult, too.”

Me?

I’m not making it difficult.

I’m just noticing that it is difficult.

“I’m doing this your way, and even that’s not working,” Mom says.

That’s it. I can’t hold back anymore.

“My way? How is this my way?”

“You just said you didn’t want to go bra shopping with me.”

“That doesn’t mean I want to come home and find my bed buried in some gross old-people underwear. Look at this.” I pick up an orange bra and shake it at her. “Yuck!”

“Piper, I’m not—”

But Mom stops talking when I throw the bra across the room. It lands in the garbage can like I intended. Whoosh.

Mom gasps.

“I don’t want any of these,” I say.

I know she thought that bra was perfect. I can imagine her in the tween section of some store spotting an orange training bra and thinking, Oh my goodness, Piper’s favorite color.

But an orange bra ruins the color orange.

“This is my way,” I say, spinning to face Mom and holding my hands out to display my perfectly braless body in my pink T-shirt and black overalls.

Mom raises one eyebrow like I’m the one being ridiculous. “Your way is to wear overalls every day for the rest of your life?”

“What?” I say. “What do the overalls have to do with anything?”

“Piper,” Mom says, softly. “I want to make this as painless as possible . . . and you may not like it but . . . you need a bra now.”

“No, I don’t!” I explode.

It’s not like anyone can see my stupid breast buds. They’re red-hot charcoals of pain, but no one outside my body would ever know about them.

Right?

I keep yelling. “And, even if I did, I wouldn’t want one. I don’t want anything for my stupid puberty body. I only want to pay attention to my brain.”

“Oh, honey,” Mom says quietly. “Your body is important, too.”

“Not right now. It’s my brain’s turn.”

Eloise tilts her head like she’s trying to understand me. Mom says, “Huh?”

“I’ll worry about my body after the decathlon,” I say.

“But Ipey—” Eloise says.

Mom interrupts her. “Honey . . . I didn’t want to say this, but when you were onstage on Saturday . . .”

She trails off and I freeze standing in front of her, my eyes wide, my heart ice, not even beating, waiting for the next word. Because it can’t be what I’m afraid it’s going to be. She can’t be about to tell me that when I was at regionals—when I was standing under those bright lights answering impossible questions, impressing the world with my brain—it can’t be that my own mother wasn’t thinking about any of that. That instead of what I was doing, she was thinking about how I looked.

She was thinking about my body.

“What?” I challenge, no brain columns left at all. “On Saturday, what?”

Mom looks at Eloise who looks back at Mom like they’re having a whole conversation with their eyes and leaving me out of it.

“Are you saying that you could tell I need a bra? Are you saying that the entire world could tell I need a bra?”

“You don’t have to be upset,” Mom says, too quickly. “But the spotlight was bright and . . . and . . .”

She was. She was thinking about my body instead of my answers. My own mom. She is the Wordless Chain.

“No one else noticed. I promise,” Eloise says, rushing to my side. She puts her arm around me. “Moms notice this stuff first. No one else would even be thinking about bras. Moms can’t help it—they notice things.”

But I wanted my mom to be noticing other things.

“I was competing,” I say.

“I was listening, too, honey,” Mom says. “I told you how impressed I was. The bra is just . . . I only want to protect you.”

“To protect me?” I yell.

“Well, yes.” Mom says.

“You think a bra is going to protect me?”

“Bras do protect you, in a way.”

“Do you even live in the world? Do you notice anything else, ever? Do you ever see anything except for my messed-up body?”

Mom gapes at me. “Piper, what are you talking about?”

“Do you know what was actually protecting me? The only thing that ever actually protected me?”

They stare blankly.

“The puberty blockers!” I scream. “If you hadn’t taken them away, there would be zero chance anyone would be thinking about my bra status while I was winning regionals.”

“OK,” Mom says. “I’ve had enough.” She stands and turns her back to me to pick up the discarded bras. “I tried to understand about the godforsaken shots. You never told me anything, and I had to make the best decision possible with the information that I did have from the doctor and other professionals. I was always willing to listen to you, but when you wouldn’t talk, I was forced to make the decision on my own. And you know what I did then?”

I shake my head.

“I imagined which decision I would be more comfortable explaining to you when you are an adult. That’s how I decided. I was always thinking of you, Piper. Through every step of this journey, I’ve always been thinking of you. And I’m done with you punishing me over all of this, all right? I’m not some magical being forcing you to go through puberty—everyone has to. It’s not my fault that it came early for you. I didn’t—”

“Well, you did marry Calvin.”

“What?” Eloise says.

“What?” Mom yells.

I don’t say anything. She should know. She should care about me enough to google.

“Are you going to explain that comment, or is it going to be another one of those maddening things you hold over our heads without ever telling us what they mean?” Mom says.

“Yeah,” I say. “That.”

I don’t think I’ve ever been this angry.

“Fine,” she says. “You know what, Piper? You were worried that puberty would ruin your chances of winning this competition. But look, your treatment is over, and you’re still winning. So, unless you have some other reason that—”

“Maybe I do,” I say.

“What?” Mom says.

“Maybe I do! Maybe I did have another reason I wanted the shots. Maybe I do have another reason that I go to bed every night begging my body not to change. Not to get a period. Not to ruin everything.”

“If you have another reason”—Mom is screaming now—“why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because . . . because . . . because I was trying to be nice!”

“Who cares about being nice?” Mom yells, and if I weren’t so angry, I’d be shocked. She’s the one who has given me at least 497 lectures about being nice in my not-yet-twelve years of life. “I’ve been begging you for months now to tell me why you’re so scared to grow up. Tell me, Piper. Tell me!”

I glance at my stupid corkboard with only one stupid orange index card pinned to it. I take a deep breath to blow the last whisp of brain columns away, and then I say, “Because I don’t want to look like you.”

Mom’s face freezes, then it shatters.

After an eternity of staring at me with that shattered face, she runs out of the room without another word.

I am empty.

I am pointless.

I turn to Eloise. She looks shocked.

“That was . . . wow, Piper.” She walks past me out our bedroom door yelling my mom’s name.

I collapse onto my braless bed and soak it with my tears.