fifteen

Do you want to come over and hang out at my house after school… just you and me?”

I stared at Trip in surprise.

We were always together during the school day. We sat by each other in all our classes and at lunch, and we walked together in the halls. But never without a crowd of our friends around us. We had never hung out, just the two of us, before.

“G-Girl.”

I was still staring. All I could say was, “Wha—huh?” Because, don’t forget, I’m pretty smooth with the comebacks.

“I don’t have soccer, so we can hang out all afternoon. Do you… want to?”

“Well, I do. I do. Really. I do. But—uh, I better call DiDi and find out what her plans are because I—I might have to meet up with her after school.…” Or I might have to run for my life when I tell her I want to hang out at a boy’s house by myself in a situation that has absolutely nothing to do with my academic advancements.

“She works at Jean René’s, right?” Mace had caught up with us in the hall. “I wonder what it’s like to have your hands in someone’s dirty hair all day.”

It didn’t take me long to add up that, in Mace’s snot-nosed opinion, DiDi being a hairdresser is not the same as everyone else’s working moms and dads. Mace’s mom runs all these charity balls. Trip told me that his mom doesn’t work, but she plays tennis like any day she’s going to get the call to play in front of the Queen of England. I’ve always loved that DiDi is a hairdresser like Mama, but for the first time, I felt funny that she had to shampoo other people’s dirty hair and sweep it off the floor. I wondered what Trip was thinking.

But I raised my chin, because my Recipe for Success says never to show when someone’s getting to you. “DiDi loves being a hairdresser, and she’s really great at it, too. She just has a way of making people feel comfortable and happy, and she makes them look better than they did before. It’s a lot more than most people do in their jobs.” I steadied the shake in my voice.

Mace didn’t give up. “But you guys live over the salon? In one of those creepy old apartments? I hear they don’t even have heat in the winter. Doesn’t it smell like shampoo half the time?”

“Good thing I like the smell of shampoo, then.”

Trip was watching the ground and biting his lip. He turned toward me a little. Putting his shoulder between me and Mace. Like a protective wall. “C’mon, let’s… let’s just go,” he said in a low voice.

Mace looked back and forth between us. Then she raised her chin and walked away.

Walking through town with Trip, I thought about how easily he had folded me into his group. Sometimes when DiDi makes peanut butter cookies, she’ll get all cranky trying to blend the peanut butter into the sugar, eggs, and butter. See, the peanut butter always stays in a big clump and the eggs are all slimy and you have to really work at it before everything gets nice and smooth. But the way Trip pulled me into his buttery, sugary life, you’d never even know I was peanut butter in the first place.

When we got to Main Street, we stopped at the Sweet Home Bakery, where Trip treated us to these beautiful cookies. I’d never ever had a cookie like this in my life. Especially coming out of anyone’s home, no matter how sweet it was. The icing was smooth and shiny with these pretty little pearls dotting the top. Trip bought one for DiDi, too. Even though it was only one cookie, they put it in a tiny box with a ribbon. It looked like a perfect little present.

“You don’t have to do that!” I said.

“My mom is raising me to be a gentleman.” He held the door to the salon open for me.

“Well, good luck with that! Did you forget that DiDi and I are from the South? Holding doors is just the beginning. Just don’t take anything personally,” I quickly added. “DiDi is overprotective. She doesn’t really like to let me hang out with—I mean, I don’t think she really wants me, um, having a boy who is a friend.”

“Don’t worry, grown-ups always love me. They think I’m… the perfect kid or something.”

All I can say is if every grown-up in the universe thought I was perfect, I’d look a lot happier about it than Trip did. But perfect or not, Mr. Something-Something Hedgeclipper the Fourteenth was in for a surprise. DiDi can be all sugar sweet and everything, but unless Trip convinced her he was my new math tutor, I probably wasn’t going anywhere.

“Hi, Miss Clarisse,” I said as we walked in.

“Good afternoon, GiGi, and a good afternoon to you, Mr. Trip! What a wonderful surprise! Are you meeting your mother here today? I didn’t see her name in the appointment book!”

“I just came to introduce myself to G’s sister.”

“Well, aren’t you the perfect gentleman.”

Trip glanced at me, like I told you so.

“DiDi is with a client, but go on back. You know where the cookies and treats are!”

We got to DiDi’s station just in time to see her do this really snazzy thing where she takes the haircutting cape and kind of whips it up in the air all swoopy and dramatic before she puts it on her customer. I was thinking about saying something like how Trip better watch out for DiDi and her attack cape, when suddenly, everything just kind of went into slow motion.

DiDi has always been big into TV shows. Even cartoons with superheroes and such. When I was little, she would say stuff like “You gotta watch this, Double G!” But even as a little kid, I wasn’t much for silliness and imagination and I’d say “There’s no such thing as superheroes, DiDi.”

But as I watched that cape fly around Mace’s smug face, I couldn’t help thinking that in a world where there was no such thing as superheroes, she sure made one heck of an evil supervillain.

Madder’n Heck Smashed Potatoes

• 1 pound new baby potatoes

• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil

• 1 tablespoon butter

• Salt and pepper

• Sour cream

Get the littlest, darn cutest new potatoes you can find and scrub the heck out of those babies until they gleam like little moons.

Dump ’em in a big old pot filled with cold water and a couple of shakes of salt and then set it to boil.

Lower the heat to a simmer and cook until the potatoes are fork tender. Maybe about 20 minutes, depending on how big they are, but please check them, because you don’t want them to turn to mush. Scoop ’em out real careful and dry them off with a kitchen towel. Now let them sit and relax a bit.

Turn the heat under your skillet to medium high and put in the oil and butter. Put a few potatoes in there. Just enough so they have some room to spread. Here’s the fun part. Take a big clean can of beans (please make sure you’ve washed and dried it because I do not know what has been scampering around your pantry!) and smash down on each potato till it’s like a chubby pancake.

Fry ’em on each side till they’re golden brown. You get a crispy cracklin’ outside and a soft fluffy inside. Add lots of salt and pepper, and you know, if you’re all that mad, you’re going to need a heck of a lot of sour cream.

Now sit yourself down, eat ’em all up, and wonder what you were so mad about in the first place.

Serves 1 (unless you have a friend who’s just as mad and doesn’t mind sharing).