Manda spent the rest of the class in the principal’s office. Her absence loomed large over the gymnasium. Everyone was too busy buzzing about her obscene gesture to concentrate on the square-dance lesson our gym teacher didn’t care if we learned anyway. He was still shouting at us, but without his usual enthusiasm.
“Square up, slackers! Boys to the left, girls on the right!”
Simple enough. Scotty was already standing to my left. I quickly looked away before he could wink at me in congratulations of our superior square-formation skills. You think I’m joking. I’M NOT. This simple direction was apparently far too complicated for the rest of the class to handle because I swear about a bazillion years went by before every person in every square was standing in his or her proper spot.
Mr. Wall slumped on the sidelines, put his head in his hands, and moaned.
“This is not why I got a degree in exercise physiology.”
“She’s sabotaging the dance, and she isn’t even here!” Sara fumed.
It was true. With the flip of a finger, Manda had turned our do-si-dos into do-si-HECK-NOS. No doubt this is exactly what she’d had in mind. Sensing a crisis in the making, Sara took over.
“Listen up, numskulls,” Sara yelled. “You’re gonna learn how to promenade your partner OR ELSE.”
This was her own special interpretation of the rough-and-tough teaching technique favored by Mr. Wall and my sister. With Square Dancing for Dummies as her guide, Sara spent the rest of the time bossing us around while our gym teacher barely looked up from his issue of Sports Illustrated.
“Bow to your partner!”
Sara faced Sam and bowed. I faced Scotty and bowed. Everyone faced everyone and bowed.
“Bow to your corner!”
Sara turned right. All the girls turned right. Sam also turned right. All the boys turned right. This was WRONG.
“No, you dipsticks! Boys turn left! Boys’ corner is on the left!”
And then she forcibly grabbed and spun poor Sam so he faced left. All the girls forcibly grabbed and spun their poor partners so they faced left. Except me. Because Scotty looked all too eager to be grabbed by me.
“I think you can handle that move on your own, buddy.”
Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the square, Hope cautiously tried to get Sara’s attention.
“Excuse me, Sara?” she asked politely. “I’m thinking that maybe it might be easier to learn the moves if we had some music.…”
Sara went off like a firecracker.
“Music? You two-left-footed nincompoops can’t handle music! I’ll tell you when you’re ready for music!” She pumped her copy of Square Dancing for Dummies into the air above her head. “Until then, the only music you clumsy nitwits need is the SWEET SOUND OF MY VOICE.”
At full volume, Sara can make the ceiling quake. Mr. Wall looked up briefly from his magazine, yawned, then went back to it.
“Where was I?” Sara scrunched her curls, smoothed out her shorts, and composed herself. “Oh yes! Swing your partners. Like this!”
Then Sara manipulated Sam like a mannequin into the proper arm-in-arm position and swung him around. So all the girls took the boys by the arms and swung them around.
The Scouts were naturals. Hope and Mike were a perfect match, too, but comically out of proportion with all other sides of the square. They practically bent themselves in half whenever a call required them to trade partners with any of the rest of us, a move Hope quickly dubbed the “Hunchback at the Hoedown.”
As for me and Scotty…
“OW!”
We bonked heads during the bow to your partner.
“Sorry!”
“OWW!”
I jammed an elbow into his rib during the allemande left.
“Sorry!”
“OWWW!”
I knuckled him in the chest during the right and left grand.
“Sorry!”
I was sorry, too. Mostly. I mean, I wasn’t hurting him on purpose. I really was the clumsiest nitwit in a gym full of clumsy nitwits. And yet I couldn’t help but think that maybe all this negative reinforcement might get him to see that I’m not the girl for him after all. If I caused him enough physical pain, maybe he’d come to associate me with emotional pain. If I’m crushable, it’s because I’m the crusher not the crushee.
“OWWWW!”
Um, literally.
“If this keeps up,” he said, rubbing his neck where I’d clipped him during a swing-around-and-round, “I’ll need my helmet and shoulder pads!”
I listened for a hint of annoyance in his voice, any sign that he was getting sick of me and wanted to trade me in for a less dangerous partner. But Scotty didn’t sound the least bit irritated. And when he laughed out loud, he was showing me—and everyone else in the gym—just what a good sport and a great guy he really was.
Ugh.
At the time, I thought that was the most annoying thing he could possibly do. But then he got even more annoying during lunch. I was hiding a few spots behind him and Dori on the cafeteria line, but I was just close enough to watch him show off all his square-dance injuries for his girlfriend.
“If I didn’t know any better,” he joked, “I’d think Jessica was trying to kill me.”
Dori’s eyes narrowed to slits.
“Jesssssica?” She really hissed those s’s. “Jessica was your partner?”
I opened my milk, popped in a straw, and took a sip. I thought this made me look more casual and less like I was hanging on to every word.
“Yeah,” Scotty replied, as unconcerned as could possibly be.
Dori glared. Crossed her arms. Tapped her foot. Waited. I’m totally clueless about crushability and boy/girl business, but even I could see what Dori wanted out of Scotty at that moment. I wanted to shout at him.
ASK HER.
“Tater Tots today?” Scotty asked. “Or fries?”
NOOOO! ASK HER WHO HER PARTNER WAS. DORI HAD GYM THIS MORNING, TOO. SHE WANTS YOU TO BE AS JEALOUS AS SHE IS.
“Don’t you want to know who my partner was? Aren’t you the least bit curious?”
Scotty paused, looking pensive.
“I can’t decide.”
“You can’t decide… what?”
After a second’s hesitation, Scotty put Tater Tots and fries on his tray. He grinned at his good decision, turned to Dori, and finally spoke.
“Um. What were you saying?”
Dori slammed her plastic tray on the metal counter.
“My partner was Marcus Flutie!”
Wait. What? Whoa. Seriously? Of all the boys in the entire school? It had to be Marcus Flutie aka Woodshop Aleck? WHAT THE HECK?
“And he’s a much better dancer than you are!”
As Dori stomped away, it was clear to me that her announcement had succeeded in triggering maybe, just maybe, the teeny-tiniest twinge of jealousy.
Just not in the intended target.
“Huh,” Scotty said, watching her go. Then he wordlessly pumped ketchup onto his tray full of fried potato products.
Meanwhile, my hands were shaking. The open carton rattled on my tray, spilling milk over the edge and splashing into a puddle at my feet.
What a mess, I thought.
Fortunately, I had a few minutes left in the lunch period to get myself together before Woodshop. The Top Secret Pineville Junior High Crushability Quiz had tricked me into confessing a secret crush on my demented Woodshop partner. But merely saying something doesn’t make it true. Duh. Look, I’ll prove it right now: My boobs are bigger than Manda’s.
Let’s check.
Nope. Still flat as a board.
So despite the truth about my nonexistent crush on Aleck, I still couldn’t explain why I had a physical reaction to Dori’s news. That is, until I heard Manda’s explanation for what happened in the gym.
Oh yeah, she was in her regular spot, right next to Sara at our lunch table. The two of them were dipping carrot and celery sticks into a shared container of ranch dressing, all la-di-da no-biggie besties, business as usual. I was the only one who thought there was anything strange about getting sprung so quickly from the principal’s office.
“I thought you’d be getting tased right about now,” I said to Manda. “You know, for breaking the vulgarity rule.”
“Oh, puh-leeze.”
She rolled her eyes and slid a piece of paper across the table.
“I’ve got a doctor’s note excusing any dramatic changes in behavior on account of the uncontrollable and unpredictable hormonal fluctuations associated with adolescent development.”
Sure enough, that’s exactly what it said in a letter signed by a doctor whose name I couldn’t read because he—like all doctors—apparently flunked handwriting in elementary school.
“It’s the PMS defense,” Hope explained.
“See, that’s where you have it all wrong,” Manda said. “This letter excuses bad behavior in the pre-, post-, and mid-menstrual times of the month.”
“It’s brilliant,” Sara said. “It grants Manda permission to be a total nightmare whenever she wants to be for, like, ever.”
“You make it sound like I have a choice in the matter.” Manda made her eyes all wide and innocent. “It’s a chemical imbalance. I can’t control my actions. I’m a victim of my raging hormones.”
“We’re victims of your raging hormones,” Hope muttered just loud enough for me to hear.
“Whatever,” Sara said skeptically. “I want one of those letters.”
Even I’d learned early on in junior high how making vague complaints about “girl stuff” could get you excused from any classroom with few or no questions. But Manda had really taken it to the next level with an official letter.
“You don’t really believe hormones are to blame for Manda giving Sara the finger, do you?” Hope asked me.
“No,” I replied. “Of course not.”
That’s what I said. But it’s not one hundred percent what I believed. I mean, maybe there was a little bit of truth to the doctor’s letter. Perhaps all these crazy hormones are making it hard for any of us to take control of our emotions. Our actions. I mean, if a chemical imbalance was responsible for Manda flipping Sara the bird, why couldn’t it also be the reason why my hands shook the tray, spilled the milk, and made the mess?
According to at least one medical professional, I wasn’t suffering from jealousy.
I was suffering from puberty.