The morning of the pool party, I wake up with a stabbing pain in my stomach. I roll over to check the time on the alarm clock: 4:03. Lying on my side, I curl into a ball. There. That helps a little.
What would help more would be if Hank were here. Somehow, petting him always made me feel better when I was sick.
Kiersten gets a stomachache anytime she’s really, really nervous about something. Maybe that’s what this is. I’ve never had a stomachache from being nervous, but I also never had my house blown away by a tornado before this summer either. There’s a first time for everything.
Not today, I tell my stomach. I am not missing the pool party. I didn’t spend five hours watching how-to videos about flirting on YouTube for nothing.
I rub big circles on my belly and try my hardest to fall back to sleep.
Not. Today.
When I wake up at eight-thirty, the sheets on Cammie’s bed are crumpled up into a ball. He must’ve woken up before me. As I put on my sweatshirt, I remember the stomachache.
It’s gone. Well, maybe not entirely gone. More like a dull pain, but not nearly as bad as it was in the night. Phew.
As I head down the hallway to the bathroom, the smell of pancakes wafts up the stairwell. The TV volume is turned way up. Peg must be watching one of Cammie’s Saturday morning nature shows with him. Avery’s door is still closed, so I guess he’s sleeping in.
I take out my new yellow razor and place it on the ledge in the bathtub. Only four hours to go until the pool party. My legs are going to be the silkiest, smoothest legs there. Or I’ll be sporting a few Band-Aids.
I slide off my underwear.
No!
No, no, no, no, no.
There’s a brownish-red splotch inside.
“Mom!”
Nobody answers.
Kiersten got her first period in the spring. Ever since then, I’ve wanted it—at least, I thought I did. But not today. My birthday, Christmas—I don’t care. Any day but today.
Back in our old house, Mom showed me where she kept her pads and tampons in the bathroom closet in case it happened when she wasn’t around. “Your father is hopeless,” she said. “Completely hopeless when it comes to something like this.”
Still sitting on the toilet, I yell again. “Mom!”
No response.
Peg’s stupid TV is too loud. Mom’ll never hear me with that thing blaring.
Does Mom have a spot for pads here, in Peg and Frank’s bathroom? I check under the sink. Toilet paper, plunger, toilet brush, paper towels.
No pads. No tampons either, not that I have a clue how to deal with them.
There’s a knock on the door.
My underwear is still around my ankles. “Mom?”
“Are you almost done?”
Shoot. It’s not Mom. It’s Avery.
I wish it were appendicitis, so it could just kill me now. “I’m taking a shower.”
“The water’s not even running yet! I just need to pee.”
I dart over to the shower and turn the faucet on. “I’m already undressed,” I shout back. “Go downstairs.”
“Fine,” Avery says.
I leave the water running in the shower and turn on the bathroom fan. Think, think, Maddie. Where would someone keep pads in the bathroom? I check all the little drawers around the sink, but it’s just hair stuff and extra toothbrushes and weird lotions. There’s still the closet with all the towels in it. I slide the door open. Come on, come on.
Maybe Peg keeps this stuff well hidden. Mom’s all out in the open, but then again, she’s a doctor. I stick my hand down the side of the towels, feeling for a box or a plastic container, anything out of the ordinary.
But all I find is an old bottle of bubble bath.
I creak open the door and stick my head out. “Mom?”
Footsteps on the stairs. Please be my mom. Or my dad. Even Cammie would be okay right now. Just not Avery again.
“Maddie?”
It’s Avery’s mom.
“Maddie, do you need something?” Mrs. Linden asks.
I sink down to the floor, leaving the door open a tiny crack.
“Is my mom around? I kind of…need her help.”
Tip-tap, tip-tap. Mrs. Linden must have on dress shoes. She comes to a stop on the other side of the bathroom door.
“Your mom just left to pick up the helium tank for the pool party. Is it anything I can help with?”
“Um.” If I tell her, she could tell Avery, and I’d die—I’d just die. But I’ve seen the commercials on TV. All that blue liquid pouring onto the fluffy white pad. If that much is going to come out of me, I need something. And fast! There’s always Peg’s towels, but they’re white and then I’d have to find a way to clean them and then…
My eyes start to tear up. “Do you…I mean, could I borrow—well, not borrow—you’re not going to want this back when I’m done with it…” I sound like a moron. “I need a pad. Like, for my period.”
“Oh, sweetie. You hold tight, I’ll be right back.”
Tip-tap down the hall. A thousand years pass before she comes back to the bathroom and slips a couple of blue padded squares through the door. “Is this your first time?”
“No,” I say too fast. “Actually, yeah.”
“I got mine the summer before seventh grade, too.”
“Oh. Cool.”
Cool?
Not cool! Not cool at all!
The last thing I want to do is swap period stories with Avery’s mom.
“It’s pretty startling the first time, but you’ll get used to it,” she says. “Anyway, I’m sure you’ll want to talk about this with your mom. Do you want me to let her know when she gets back?”
I can see it in my head like a TV commercial. Right as Mom opens the door, Mrs. Linden announces, so everyone can hear it, “Breaking news! Maddie got her period!” Avery squirts milk out of his nose and Cammie asks what a period is.
“Can you tell her to come see me right away?”
“Your secret’s safe with me.”
I open up one of the blue pouches. My secret? I don’t think my secret is safe from anyone once I put this diapery thing in my underwear.
“I can’t go.”
I’m sitting on my parents’ bed with the door closed. “Shhh,” Mom says. “Calm down, Maddie.”
“But everyone will know!” I hug my legs to my chest. The hair’s all gone from them now and I’m wearing four Band-Aids. (I probably should have waited for Mom to show me how to use the razor.)
It’s a total disaster. I can’t go to a pool party with blood gushing out of my body. I’ll turn the water red. People will think I’m dying.
Maybe if I just close my eyes, it’ll go away. I’ll wake up all over again and start the day without my period. It waited twelve years to start. Can’t it hold off for one more day?
“If you keep your shorts on, no one will have any idea,” Mom says.
“But everyone else will be in the pool! What if someone asks me to be on their team for pool volleyball?”
“Then you can politely decline. Say you have athlete’s foot or something.”
“Mom!”
“Or you can tell them the truth.”
I press my forehead into my knees. “I can’t do that.”
Mom sighs. “I don’t know what else to tell you, Mads. Statistically speaking, there’s no way you’re the only girl there who has her period today. Find someone else who’s not going in the pool and make a new friend.”
A new friend?
Avery will definitely be going in the pool, and so will Gabriella and Kiersten, and I’ll be stuck on the sidelines with the weirdos from my class who are afraid of the water. Me and all the aquaphobes. Don’t they know that our bodies are 50 percent water? Or was it 90 percent?
Avery would know.
“We need to leave soon to pick up the ice.”
I uncurl myself from my ball and head into my room to change into my bathing suit.
Mom was right. I should’ve chosen the red one.