IT IS A WHOLE DAY later, and Anya is still Natalie’s buddy, so my life is pretty much ruined.
“You should not help her so much,” I say to Anya when she opens Natalie’s lunch box for her and unwraps her sandwich.
“She only has one arm, Mandy,” Anya tells me, like I am some kind of dope or something. And I am pretty angry with Anya then, because she is not remembering that she is supposed to be my friend more than she is Natalie’s.
Anya even laughed at something Natalie said during seatwork, which is just ridiculous, because Natalie never says anything funny. And when I leaned my chair back on two legs to ask what was so funny, they did not tell me, and then Mrs. Spangle put my initials on the board for rocking in my chair again.
When lunch is over, we line up for recess, and I do not stand near Anya because she is with Natalie. Instead, I end up stuck in front of Dennis, which is just awful. Dennis keeps pulling at the ends of my hair, and I tell him to stop, so he does it some more. I wish I could pull on his hair to show him how it feels, but his Mohawk is too short for me to tug.
Dennis is pretty terrible, if I forgot to mention.
“What are you going to do at recess, Polka Dot?” he asks me.
“None of your beeswax,” I answer.
“Do you want to play TV tag?” Dennis asks. “Or are you too slow?” TV tag is Dennis’s favorite game ever, because Dennis watches a lot of TV, so he is very good at not getting tagged. The only TV show I watch all the time is Rainbow Sparkle’s, except when it is taken away as punishment, so I think TV tag is dumb.
“I do not play TV tag,” I tell him. The lunch aides open the doors then, and we run out onto the playground. I see Anya and Natalie skip over to the monkey bars, which is silly because Natalie cannot even do the bars with her one stupid arm.
“Mandy!” Anya calls from across the playground. “Come play with us!” But I do not answer her because I am not going to play with Natalie. No way!
I walk around the playground by myself, which is pretty lonely, if I am being honest. But the swings are all taken and the slide is too hot and there is nothing for me to do unless I play TV tag with Dennis or swing on the monkey bars with Natalie, and I am not doing either.
I kick up sand as I wander around the edge of the playground, with no friends and nothing to do. I kick one rock and then another, trying to send them as far into the air as possible so that they crash down into the sand. Gray rock, black rock, white rock, copper rock . . .
Copper rock?
I lean my nose farther toward the ground and dig for the rock I just kicked. As sand fills my fingernails, I find it, and it’s not a rock at all. It’s a penny! I scoop the penny into my palm and blow the rest of the sand off it, and then I stick it in my pocket to keep it safe. I am not going to lose this coin like I lost the others. It is the only good thing to happen to me today. Maybe the only good thing all week.
“Hey, Polka Dot,” Dennis calls to me. “How come you’re not playing with your twin?”
“What are you talking about, Freckle Face?” I ask.
“Anya,” Dennis says. “Your twin. How come you’re not playing with her on the monkey bars?”
“Because I do not want to,” I answer.
“Because she’s better at the monkey bars than you?” Dennis challenges.
“No way,” I say. “I just do not want to.”
“Liar,” Dennis says. “There is no way you are better than her.” He points to Anya, who is swinging across the bars two at a time, swiftly and smoothly, like a real monkey. “Anya is the best monkey barrer in second grade.”
“She is not,” I say. “I could totally beat her across the bars.”
“No way,” Dennis says.
“I bet you I can,” I answer.
“Bet me what?”
I think about this for one second only, and then I dig into my pants pocket for the penny.
“This penny,” I show him. “If Anya beats me across, I’ll give you this penny. If I beat her, you’ll give me a quarter.”
“How is that fair?” Dennis asks. “If you beat her—which you won’t—I’ll give you another penny.”
“Fine,” I answer. “Let’s go.”
Dennis and I charge across the playground to the monkey bars. “Hey, Anya,” he calls. “Polka Dot here wants to race you across the bars.”
“Okay,” Anya agrees with a shrug. She climbs back up the ladder and waits patiently, her hands draped over the first rung. I climb up next to her and place my own hands on the bar.
“I am going to beat you,” I whisper-yell in her ear, and Anya shrugs again like she does not even care.
“Go Anya!” Natalie calls, and this makes me madder than ever.
“On your mark . . . ,” Dennis counts down. “Get set . . . go!”
I swing myself off the ladder and grip the bar between my hands tightly. In less than a second Anya moves out ahead of me, one arm in front of the other, until she is halfway done with the bars, and I am still hanging on the first.
“Time out!” I call. “TIME OUT!” I hang still like a statue on the first bar, and Anya turns to me, her arms scissored out across three bars.
“What’s the matter, Polka Dot?” Dennis asks. “Glued to the bar?”
“Anya got to practice first and I did not,” I say. “She is all warmed up.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Natalie pipes in. “Dennis only said that you wanted to—”
“Shut up, Natalie!” I interrupt her.
“Fine,” Anya says. “I’ll give you time to catch up to me, and we’ll go from here.”
“Fine,” I agree. Anya stays hanging in the middle of the bars, and I drop my left hand and reach for the next one. I catch it with my fingertips and pull myself up, and then I force my right hand to follow. My hands scrape across the bar and it hurts a lot, but I am not going to give up.
“Oh, come on,” Dennis calls. “This is not even a contest.”
I release my left hand from the bar again and reach for the next one, but before I can grab it, my right hand slips off the bar and I fall to the ground with a thud. Anya lets go of the bars herself and rushes toward me.
“Are you okay?” she asks.
“NO!” I answer, and I stand and run away from the monkey bars as fast as I can, tears tickling the backs of my eyes.
I run all the way across the playground, and then I crouch down and hide behind a tree. I put my eyes against my knees and wrap my arms around my legs. I hear footsteps running up behind me, so I wipe the tear that has fallen on my cheek onto my pant leg.
“What’s wrong?” Anya comes to a stop and stands over me.
“My hands hurt,” I tell her. This is true—my hands do hurt from those dumb monkey bars, but they are not the real reason I am upset.
“Let me see,” Anya says, so I hold out my hands to show her. “You don’t have any blisters. They’re just red.”
“They hurt,” I tell her.
“They’ll feel better soon,” Anya says. “My hands hurt, too, when I first started doing the monkey bars. I can help you practice if you want.”
“No, thank you,” I say. “Just go play with your best friend, Natalie.”
“She’s not my best friend,” Anya tells me. “You are. I just have to be her buddy because her wrist is broken.”
“I wish my wrist were broken,” I tell her. “Then you could be my buddy instead of Natalie’s.”
“That’s silly,” Anya says. “I already am your buddy.”
The lunch aide blows the whistle for us to line up, and Anya reaches out her hand to help me stand. I grab it, and she pulls me to my feet, and we walk off to join our class.
“But if I had a cast, you could be my buddy all the time,” I explain. “Mrs. Spangle would have to let you sit next to me and take me to the bathroom and help me in the cubbies. Plus, I bet I would get fancy-dancy periwinkle sunglasses, because everyone would feel so sorry for me.”
“You shouldn’t break your arm to get sunglasses,” Anya says. “That’s dumb.”
We reach our line, and she skips ahead to stand next to Natalie.
And I know then that Anya is right: I don’t need to break my arm just to get fancy-dancy periwinkle sunglasses, but I do need to do something in order to get Anya back.
Something big.
