I kind of want to play too but Tana says she’s busy. She doesn’t look very busy, she’s just lying on her bed staring at the ceiling.
“Shhh! I’m trying to think!” she says when Polly starts barking her Wonder Dog bark.
Now Polly and I are lying on Polly’s bed staring up at the bottom of my bed.
“What are we thinking about?” Polly asks.
“Think what you want to think,” Tana says.
Polly rolls her head my way. Her lips are orange, her breath is Cheetos. “What are you thinking about?”
“I can’t think of anything.”
“We don’t know what to think about,” I say. “What are you thinking about?”
“Fine,” Tana says. “Boys.”
When she’s finally done thinking about boys she gets up off her bed and we follow her out of our room, but she goes inside the bathroom and locks the door. So now we’re sitting on the floor waiting for her, waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting, but she never comes back out.
When Polly says, “I think she’s combing her hair,” Tana shouts a whole herd of elephants. “Go away!”
“Why’s she mad at us?” Polly whispers.
“She’s not mad, Pollywog,” I say the way Dad says when he’s trying to make Polly not sad about something, but I don’t know how to explain what Tana is, and anyway I think Polly’s too little to understand. They don’t tell you about the mad-for-no-reason feeling until fifth grade.
I know what it feels like because sometimes I have it too. When people are being mean to each other, or when everyone’s yelling and slamming their lockers, or throwing their lunch trays on the dirty stack, or for no reason at all, I feel like I could shout ten thousand goats.