The next Monday is February fifth. Spring is here. The blossoms on the trees in Mr. Harris’s orchard this morning prove it.
Spring hasn’t changed Miss Reynolds’s class any, though. She still stands so straight and tall you’d think she had a ruler glued to her back, but she holds her hands the way a princess would and swishes from place to place, as if she’s wearing a ball gown and not a flannel skirt and sweater. Right now she’s reading something. A poem, I think.
It’s actually probably a great poem. Miss Reynolds only reads us really good stuff, but I’m not hearing any of it. Because I can’t stop staring at the hugest cherry-blossom– colored ribbon ever. It’s on Sofia’s head, right over her long, brown ponytail. My stomach buzzes like there’s a bunch of honeybees inside itching to fly out.
One measly sleepover and Sofia goes back on our pinkie promise and decides to become Pink One and Pink Two with Marisa? I tap my pencil against my desk. At least Sofia isn’t wearing all pink, though. It’s just the bow in her hair. Marisa is way worse. Her entire outfit is a bright shade of bubblegum. Hideous.
My eraser rubs a hole through my paper. I tried to call Sofia yesterday. I wanted to tell her about how Grammy forgot who I was that morning. My hair was pulled back under a baseball cap and she looked at me and said, “Tony!” It always hurts when she says Dad’s name. Having her see him when she looks at me is a new kind of sting, though.
But when I called, Sofia wasn’t home from church yet, and she must have been busy afterwards because she didn’t call me back.
I didn’t think big and important things like best friends could change so quickly. Then again, all it takes is one day for Mr. Harris to put out his bee boxes and suddenly winter is gone.
I stare at that pink bow, pull out one of my special sparkly gel pens, and put it to a new, fresh, hole-less piece of notebook paper.
Sofia, I write. I’m not sure what to say next. Some words, like Why did you break your promise? should only be spoken, not written. They’re the kind of words that you hope can disappear after you say them. I think for a moment and then write our code for we need to talk.
Sofia,
Penguins balance eggs on their feet. Lockers, after lunch.
Kate
I tap my pen on the paper a few times. When I look up again, I’m practically blinded by Marisa’s bubblegum sweatshirt and pants. And I know it’s not nice, but I can’t help writing something to show Sofia how silly she looks.
P.S. Don’t you think Marisa looks exactly like a stick of gum today?
One of Sensei’s favorite sayings rings in my head. Kindness is the greatest form of strength. But Sensei’s words are easier to ignore than those bees in my stomach.
I sloppily fold the note into a small square, nothing fancy. I never can figure out that fancy note folding. After I write Sofia on top, I tap Amy’s shoulder in front of me. She takes the note in this sneaky way where she pretends to scratch her shoulder, but is really grabbing the paper, and then slowly moves her hand up to the front of her desk and nudges Alejandro, who taps Sofia’s elbow with the note.
Sofia isn’t as sneaky as Amy; she just turns around and grabs it. That gets Marisa’s attention.
Oh, no.
She won’t understand the coded message, but thinking about Marisa reading the P.S. on that note makes me want to crawl over the tops of the desks and snatch it away.
Marisa leans way over to see who sent the note. When she sees Sofia written in my special sparkly ink, she turns and looks at me for a second like she just realized I existed and might still want my best friend. Marisa whispers something to Sofia.
Sofia shakes her head, but Marisa whispers something else.
Sofia told me once that Marisa tells her to do things she doesn’t want to do and that she has a hard time saying no. It didn’t seem like a big deal before, when it only happened at church. But now I may as well be in one of those courtroom shows, waiting for the judge to give me a verdict.
Sofia’s shoulders slump forward. She turns the note over, unfolds it, and lets Marisa read it right alongside her.
My fingers clench the edge of my desk, and I suck in my breath. She’s just like Benedict Arnold. I only know that because Miss Reynolds taught us about him this morning, but I didn’t think Sofia would ever, ever in a million years act like him. I never thought she’d betray me.
I can tell the minute Marisa finishes reading. Her back stiffens, and she pulls off her bright pink jacket. Underneath it is a sparkly pink shirt though, which isn’t much better. Marisa seems to realize this. She crosses her arms over her chest and spreads her hands out over her sleeves.
“Miss Reynolds,” she says.
No.
“Someone is passing Sofia notes, and it’s distracting me.”
Miss Reynolds stops reading, makes a humming noise, and plucks that note out of Sofia’s grasp. The little hairs on my arm stand up.
Miss Reynolds’s slender hands barely touch the note, holding it like it’s been made by the sweet mice and birds who sew her flannel skirts at night and might fall apart at any second. Her eyes find me. “Kate,” she says, “what do you have to say to me for interrupting my class?”
“I’m sorry.”
“And to Marisa and Sofia for distracting them?”
I slide down low in my chair trying to hide. “Sorry.”
Miss Reynolds nods to Marisa and Sofia. “You were obviously riveted by the words of George Ella Lyon. Perhaps you’d like to finish reading the poem to the class?”
Marisa raises her hand. “I would!” She never gives up a chance to perform.
“Go ahead,” Miss Reynolds hands her the book.
Marisa takes a deep breath and speaks in her stage voice. All her words turn to mush in my brain, though.
Sofia showed Marisa my note. A special, secret, just-between-friends thing. If she shared that with Marisa, what else has she shared with her? That I’m afraid of caterpillars? How I peed my pants on the Ferris wheel? That my dad left and never came back? I don’t know what I can trust her to keep secret anymore.
I try to stare Sofia down. Try to make her turn around and see me with just the force of my eyeballs. But she doesn’t move.
I drum my fingers on the desk a few times before Parker leans over. As he turns the page of the book he’s sneakily reading in his lap—The Hobbit—he whispers, “Hey, it’s okay. You don’t need to be so nervous.”
My face heats up. Just like he promised on Friday, Parker’s in my class, and Miss Reynolds sat him right next to me. He’s been reading all morning, though, even telling me, “You don’t pause when Bilbo’s facing trolls” when I asked if he was going to put the book away for Language Arts.
Do I say something back? Will everyone know I like him if I do? I stop drumming my fingers and instead start twisting my hair.
When Marisa finishes reading, Miss Reynolds clears her throat and rubs the corner of her eye. “Thank you, Marisa. Now class, wasn’t that a beautiful poem?”
Nobody says anything. A few people shrug their shoulders.
“Your enthusiasm is overwhelming today.” Miss Reynolds claps her hands. “Okay, next I want everyone to partner up!”
I snap to attention, pulling myself out of my chair as quickly as I can. “Sofia,” I call.
But before she can turn around, Marisa’s arm shoots out and grabs Sofia’s shoulder.
Sofia glances back toward me and mouths, “Sorry.”
I want to tell her it’s okay, that I know we’re still best friends so it doesn’t matter. Instead, I flop back into my chair and turn to where Parker was sitting only a few seconds before, but he’s gone, paired up with someone else across the room.
“I’ll be your partner,” says a voice. It’s Jane Chu. She stands next to my desk and leans toward me, waiting for an answer.
“Oh, um …” I glance back at Sofia again. I don’t know why. Maybe I’m hoping she’ll change her mind. But she doesn’t. She just laughs at something Marisa said and scoots her desk a little closer.
I give Jane a small smile. “Sure.”
“Oh good!” Jane throws herself into the desk next to me, her smooth black hair swinging into her face. “Whatever the assignment is, I’m in charge of drawing, okay?”
“Okay,” I say with a shrug.
“Unless …” Jane kind of points at me with her hand. “I mean, you don’t really want to draw, right?”
“Nah.”
Sofia is laughing again.
“Oh good,” says Jane. “I love to draw. I’m not, like, super great at it. But I’m better than most of the Picassos around here.” Jane winks at me and I can’t help it, I laugh. Just a small laugh, more a snort, but it’s enough to get Sofia to turn around for a second and look. First at me. Then at Jane.
I glance down at Jane’s pink tennis shoe and orange tennis shoe. Jane moved to Atwater last summer, and I don’t know much about her except that she tries to wear as many colors as she possibly can all at once. Some people think that’s weird. I guess everyone likes a rainbow, but not really on a person. Part of me wonders what Sofia will think of me and Jane being partners.
Miss Reynolds claps her hands again to get everybody’s attention. “Here is your assignment. Write a ‘Where I’m From’ poem like the one we just read, but for yourself. Remember to write lines that put us in the places you have been and show us the things you’ve experienced. Make us see, feel, hear, and taste them. You’re going to hand your poem off to your partner in a second for the next part of this project. Although …” Miss Reynolds looks at the watch on her wrist. “That might have to wait until after lunch. We’ll see. Okay. Start writing!”
The whole class gets to work. I turn to Jane and say, “I kind of didn’t listen to the poem.”
She’s sketching the letter K and filling it with flowers. “Yeah, I know,” she says without looking up from her notebook. “I figured that out when you were passing notes. It’s okay. It’s super easy. Here, I’ll show you.”
She rips out a piece of notebook paper and taps her pencil on it while she squinches her lips up to one side. “Okay, so I’m an artist and an only child. I adore my grandma and love watching her cook. She makes the best Dan Dan noodles.” She writes all of that on the paper. “But that doesn’t sound like poetry, right?”
“I guess not.”
“You guess?” Jane looks up at me from underneath her thick black bangs. “Have you ever listened to poetry?”
I think back to Dad one night with his guitar in his arms, writing me a song on the spot.
“How do you do that, Daddy?”
He stopped strumming. “How do I do what?”
“Make up the words like that? How do you know what to say?”
Dad laughed, reached out, and tweaked my nose. “A song is just a poem. And a poem is just words with enough space in between them for your heart to take a deep breath and keep going.”
“I’ve listened to poetry,” I tell Jane. “Lots of it.”
Jane smiles. “Good. Then you’ll be awesome at this. So now, all I have to do is look at that list of details about me and where I come from and make them more poemy.”
“How do you do that?”
Jane hunches over and whispers like it’s a secret. “You close your eyes and think about how all those things feel on your skin and in your ears and on your tongue, and you write it down.”
The hair on my neck stands up the way it does whenever Dad plays a key change.
Jane and I both get to work, and by the time I’m done, my brain feels looped around my pencil. But I’ve got a poem. At least, it looks like a poem.
I am from the gravel just beyond
The last almond tree in the orchard.
From air whistling when my leg
Slices through it in a perfect kick.
I’m from the slow build of piano chords,
Guitar strings, and a trio of voices
Chasing away emptiness.
My pencil hovers over that last line wanting to erase something from so deep inside me off that paper and away from the eyes of people I barely know.
Sofia laughs, and I lose my concentration. She and Marisa lean their heads close, giggling about something. Marisa glances at me and then looks away.
I feel like I’m on the other side of a window with my nose pressed up against the glass. What are they saying? Why is Sofia laughing? There’s only one way to find out. I slowly drop my hand with the pencil to the side of my chair and let the pencil roll down my palm, off my fingers, and onto the floor. It comes to a stop next to Amy’s desk.
Close enough.
“Oh, let me—” says Jane, about to stand.
“No,” I whisper. “I’ve got it.”
I glance at Sofia and Marisa to make sure their backs are turned and then very casually sidle up to where my pencil lies on the ground.
Amy looks up from her paper, smiles at me, and goes back to writing.
“You don’t think this shirt is too pink, right?” I hear Marisa whisper as I crouch down.
Sofia replies. “No. I like it.”
“Well, then why did Kate make fun of it?”
I slowly reach for my pencil. Amy looks at me again, her eyebrows furrowed. Right before I grab it, Adam Shuler swings his leg out and kicks it further down the aisle. He snickers, not realizing he’s actually helping me listen longer.
“Oh.” Sofia sighs as I crawl along the floor toward my pencil. I expect her to explain to Marisa about best friends forever and our pinkie promise. Instead, she says, “That’s just something Kate and I used to do. No pink. Kind of silly.”
I freeze. I want to hear if Sofia says something else. Anything else to explain and make me feel better. But blood is whooshing through my ears sounding like crashing ocean waves and all I hear is silly, silly, silly.
“Okay, class. Time for lunch!” Miss Reynolds calls.
Sofia and Marisa stand up and head out the door. A whole bunch of feet belonging to the rest of the class follow them. I grab my pencil and lean back into a crouch, unable to move under the weight of silly, silly, silly.
Then Jane jumps in front of me. “Hey! Whatcha doing?”
With a gasp, I fall against the desk behind me, my head scraping the underside of it. My hair catches on a big, sticky blob of freshly chewed bubblegum.
I scoot out, trying to pull my hair away from the gum, but the gum stretches and follows me, forming a long, slimy pink bridge from the bottom of the desk to my head.
“Yuck!” I stand up, pinch the gum with two fingers, and try to pluck it out, but that only makes things worse—the gum smears in my hair from right above my ear to my jawline. “Oh, gross. What am I going to do?”
“Uh-oh,” says Jane.
“Everything okay over there, girls?” Miss Reynolds calls from the door.
“Yes,” I say.
“Okay, well, let’s get going.”
I put my hand over the gum in my hair, and Jane and I walk out to the hallway and our lockers. When we get out there, Miss Reynolds is talking with another teacher. Jane stands on her tiptoes. “Let me see that.” She pokes at the pink goo. “Ugh, freshly chewed. That’s stuck good. Sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” I mumble. “I shouldn’t have been on the floor.” I really shouldn’t have. The word silly starts echoing in my brain again.
Jane sticks a hand on her hip. “Nice try. It’s totally my fault! If I hadn’t been a goose and surprised you this never would have happened.” She sighs and shakes her head. “I get too excited. Mom says I’m basically a Labrador retriever.”
I smile. “I’ve never seen a rainbow Lab.”
Jane’s eyes get wide, and for a minute I think maybe I hurt her feelings. But then she starts laughing—this loud laugh that fills up every molecule of air between us with something like warm honey.
“That’s a good one,” Jane says. “I’m going to tell my mom that next time.” We begin trudging down the hallway. “So what are you going to do about … that?” She points at my hair.
“Probably call my mom. I can’t walk around the rest of the day like this.”
“No way,” Jane agrees.
When we get to the place where you can either turn left for the cafeteria or right for the office, we both stand there for a minute longer, neither one of us wanting to let go of that warm-honey feeling. Finally, Jane says, “You’re funny, Kate. Do you want to come to my house after school? I’ve got a trampoline, and my mom will make cookies. I haven’t really had anyone over to my house since we moved in.” She shrugs. “It’ll be fun. I promise.”
I almost say okay, but then I stop. Being friends isn’t quite that easy when you have Grammy at home. If I went over to Jane’s house, then I’d have to invite her over to my house next. And if Jane came to my house, she’d meet Grammy. It might be a good day, and Grammy would be fine and make cookies. But it could also be a bad day when she wanders around looking for Dad, or ties her knitting up into big knots and cries.
It’s okay if Sofia sees those things, but I’m not ready to share that part of me with Jane. Sometimes school friends are best because you can hide the parts of your life that maybe don’t look like you wish they did.
“I can’t.”
Jane nods her head fast. Too fast. “Oh, that’s okay. I figured. Too soon. That’s the Labrador retriever again.”
She tries to laugh at the joke, but it’s stiff, and her smile doesn’t reach her eyes. I feel like I’ve erased one of the stripes on a rainbow. “I have to watch my little sister,” I blurt out.
Jane tilts her head to the side. “You have a sister?”
“Yeah.” I lean into the lie, let it wrap its fingers around my lungs.
“Lucky,” says Jane. “I wish I had a sister.”
I don’t say anything else about it, just point down the hall toward the office. “Well, I better call my mom.”
“Okay. See you later,” Jane says before walking away.
I watch her rainbow headband bob up and down as she pulls a piece of paper from her pocket and disappears around the corner.