“YOU WERE IN MY dream last night,” I tell Clara when I get to the corner the next morning. She’s wearing a wrinkled blue shirt with the buttons done up in the wrong holes. I point at her shirt, and she drops her knapsack and rebuttons her shirt with tight, jerky fingers.
“Yeah, so, what was I doing? Stuffing my face with eclairs or shooting x-rays at people through my big-ass glasses?” Her voice makes me cringe. I don’t think I ever thought of Clara as having any problems. I’ve thought of her more as being a problem.
“Are you still mad because of Tony’s picture?” I ask softly.
“No. Yes. I don’t know. Why does everyone think of me like that?”
“Like what?”
“Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.” She glares at me. “You weren’t exactly crazy about being friends with the lumpy new girl.”
“But I am friends with you.” We walk half a block up the hill toward Skeleton Park. She is stiff beside me. “Come on, Clara. Maybe I didn’t want to be your friend at first, but that’s because I decided I was going to be a loner this year, because of what happened with Anisha. So if I seemed unfriendly, that’s why. Besides, you didn’t give me much of a choice about it.” She’s still not answering. “Why did you want to be friends with me?” It’s what I’ve been dying to ask ever since she changed seats to be beside me in art.
She slouches against a tree, like she’s exhausted from climbing the hill. The wind is up this morning and it flips her short dark hair off her face. I can smell the lake on the air. My elbows are cold. I cup them with my hands.
“It’s like this, dear,” she says. “I’m the new girl, right? I wanted new friends. I wanted a chance to change everything. I saw Marcia and pegged her right away as Miss Superficiality, which I was one hundred percent right about. Then there you were, hiding behind a tree, laughing at Marcia and I thought, ‘She knows.’”
“Knows what?”
“I could tell you knew what was real. I thought any girl who could laugh at the school fashion plate would be someone worth knowing. So I went up and tried to talk to you. Not that you were any help. “You said that you were just plain Gwen and I liked that. I could tell everybody looked up to you. The teachers always looked at you when they asked questions. Tony watched after you and Marcia always wanted to talk to you and you wouldn’t give her the time of day —”
“You thought I was going to be like Anisha. That’s what everybody thought.”
“How could I think that when I’ve never met the girl? You’re the one who thinks that. I couldn’t care less.”
I can see past the trees down to the lake. The wind’s blowing the hair out of my face. I pick up a stick and start cracking it into pieces.
“So maybe you’re the only one who thinks all anybody notices about you is your glasses.”
“But you saw the picture. That is what people notice. Why’d Tony have to draw me like that? I am somebody,” she whispers, so I almost can’t hear her.
We walk on. She’s right beside me, but I feel like I’ve lost her.
The silence pushes on me. I listen to her breathe. We get to the corner before the school and I reach up to touch her shoulder, but she turns before I get a chance and I whip my hand back behind me.
“Are you staying over tonight, or what?” she says.
“Yeah,” I say, and let go a sigh of relief. For a minute I thought that was it, that she would sit beside somebody else and make them be her friend.”
“Your dad didn’t freak out or anything?” Clara adds snarkily.
“No. Why would he?” So this is what this is about.
“I don’t know. He won’t let me come over.” Her head hangs down again.
“My dad’s a private person.”
“Because of his art.”
Okay. She can think that if she wants.
I’m about to ask Clara why she came to McBurney instead of going back to Central, when we hear the school bell ring. I grab her by the wrist and we make a break for it.
It’s presentation day and we’re up next. The last group had the idea of drawing in the walls of the new gym on the construction wall so that everyone could see what it’s going to look like when it’s finished. They went to the principal’s office to get a picture of the new gym to draw from. They made a cardboard model for their presentation so that we could see how the lines in the drawing would line up with the walls of the new building. We were invited to walk around the table to look at it. This guy, Horst, did all the work on his computer so the lines are sharp.
“It’s really cool,” says Clara in a worried voice.
Tim nudges Tony and goes to flick over the tiny man they put in the model to show where the schoolyard is. Tony grabs Tim’s arm.
“Oh, come on,” I hear Tim whisper. “If you stand anywhere but right in the middle, the lines don’t line up and then it just looks like a bunch of squares.” I look at Tony and he’s looking straight at me. I can tell he’s thinking what I’m thinking. Tim’s right. For once. I wonder if anyone else heard him say it. Maybe no one else would notice. Maybe we should say something in our presentation.
I can tell Tony wants to win as badly as I do.
We go back to our seats and Ms. Lenore thanks Horst’s group and asks ours to come up.
Clara’s set to talk first.
“You’ve already kind of seen our idea because we chose Gwen’s idea of doing superheroes. The idea is that each of us could do a superhero version of ourselves on the construction wall and that will show how the new gym will help us bring out the best we have to offer. We need the new gym to help make us stronger. We can make these pictures show how strong we’ll be able to get.” Clara sits down and Tim stands up. I’m afraid he’s going to say something about the other group’s model.
“So we thought that it would be good if everyone made a list of what their superhero powers could be. Like me, for instance,” he says, standing up taller. “I could have super hair that grows so fast that it whips straight out of my head and saves people from drowning in the ocean because they could grab onto my hair.” Tim stands there waiting, but nobody laughs. I’m afraid we’re going to lose it right there. “Fine,” says Tim. “You wouldn’t think super hair was such a bad power if you were on the Titanic” Then everybody laughs. Tim sits down and Tony gets up.
“We didn’t make a model,” he says, and I go stiff. He’s going to ruin it. I can’t stand it. “Instead, I made these sketches of the members of my group with their superpowers.”
He pulls out the one of Tim as the joker. “This is the one of Tim, but I guess he wants to change to Super Hair Man.” Everyone laughs again. Tony is a good artist. He pulls out the picture of Clara. He holds it up and the entire class goes ballistic with laughter. I catch at Clara’s hand under the table.
“And this is one of Clara,” Tony says over the laughter. He’s obviously enjoying himself. It’s like the whole idea was his. I’m about to say something when Clara pipes up.
“Of course, I could change my superpower, too,” she says.
“Oh, yeah? To what?” says Tim. Clara’s face is getting red.
“I’d be Super Make-Hair-Man-Shut-Up Woman.” I nearly spit my tongue out at that and so does everyone else. I slap Clara’s knee and she turns to me with a grin. Even Tim is laughing. Only Tony doesn’t seem to think it’s very funny. He’s hurt that nobody’s looking at his picture anymore. He shuffles around to get the one of me. He turns to the picture of Creative Woman.
“And since it was Gwen’s concept, I made her into Creative Woman.” The class calms down and you can hear them whispering about the picture. I can feel myself blushing, which makes me blush more. I want to say that I’d change my superpowers, too, but all I can think of is super yellow hands and it would be too hard to explain quickly. Creative Woman sounds pretty good.
It’s hard to believe he thinks of me that way. I sneak a peek at the picture again. He pressed hard with the pencil crayon, so you can see he put his energy in it. I can sense power in it, as if it were a picture of someone real. Tony sits down.
I’m up next. I stand up. We have to win.
I focus on Clara, her eyes. Goose bumps. I take a deep breath.
“Tony’s pictures show how we can use the idea so that it becomes an idea that belongs to each of us. Also, we think that, like Ms. Lenore said, the community would feel safer with a bunch of superheroes in the neighborhood. And, since you can choose your own superpowers, it makes you focus on how you could make the world a better place.”
I look around at the class and my heart flutters. I lose my train of thought. I’m supposed to say something else but I can’t remember what it is. The class is completely quiet. Waiting. I’ve forgotten something more important. I search my mind for it while they wait. North, East, South, West.
Oh, my God. I didn’t do the spell last night.
Somebody coughs. I ruined it. I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. I look down at Tony and then Clara knocks the side of my foot.
I sit down and the class slowly starts clapping. I remember. I forgot to say that thing about self-esteem. That would have sold Ms. Lenore for sure. It’s too late. We go back to our seats.
I fell asleep with the postcards on me. They must be in my bed somewhere. Or on the floor. I didn’t see them when I got up. I imagine Dad seeing a card on the floor and picking it up, and realizing what it is.
I’ve broken contact for sure. No doubt about me breaking the rules this time.
My eyes well up. Clara touches me on the arm.
“Don’t worry. You were good,” she lies. I shrug my arm out of her grasp.
“All right,” says Ms. Lenore. “We’re going to do the democratic thing and take a vote on this. Then I’ll present the best idea from this class and the best from the other classes to the principal and one will be chosen.” Tim puts up his hand.
“Shouldn’t the kids get to choose the final one?” he says. Ms. Lenore glares at him.
“No, Tim.”
“That doesn’t sound very democratic,” Tim says. Then Clara sticks her hand over his mouth and everyone laughs again.
Ms. Lenore passes out the slips for voting. We aren’t allowed to vote for our own team so I vote for Horst’s group.
“Who’d you vote for?” Tony asks me in the hall after class.
“The group with the model.”
“What did you do that for? You should have voted for the worst idea. Think about it, man. Horst’s group is our main competition.”
My heart sinks. I never thought about that. Clara’s slapping her hand against her forehead. “I did that, too.”
“Way to go, ladies. What if they win by two votes?” Tim says.
I hate the way Tony thinks he’s the leader of our group. I hate it that he’s right. I wanted us to win.
The more I want something, the worse my chances are of getting it. I’m a walking jinx.