Amandine (2 page)

She was lingering beside my locker. I knew she’d be there. I’d been jangly all afternoon, and my mouth tasted bitter from all the strange things I’d been chewing on, erasers and my hair and fingernails and the button on my shirt cuff.

“Your mom’s always late, same as my dad,” she said, speaking in that same smooth voice from last Friday. I was beginning to realize Amandine had different voices and used them as she saw fit. This one sounded as if she were in a play. “Let’s go to the art room. Make
them
wait on
us
for a change. Remember, you owe me, for what you did.”

“That’s not my mom; it’s our neighbor, Mrs. Gogglio, and she’d be mad,” I said. “It’s one thing if it’s the grown-up who’s late. But if
I’m
not on time …” Amandine was already tugging on my arm. She didn’t need to tug too hard. I followed, jittery with disobedience.

The art room was empty.

“It feels weird to be here without a teacher,” I whispered. “Don’t you think?”

She didn’t answer. Instead, she stood on fragile slippered tiptoes and opened a cupboard. She pulled out a slice of pulpy construction paper and slid it onto one of the tables.

“My parents are artists. I’m an artist, too. And a ballet dancer, and an actress,” she said, pirouetting to the shelves where the pencils and paints were kept. She grabbed a bundle of loose colored pencils from a box. “What about your parents?”

“My dad used to work for a bank. Now he’s a freelance financial consultant,” I said. “But my mother is an architect. She just joined Shelton-McCook. That’s the best firm in Massachusetts.” I was proud of Mom’s job. It sounded glamorous, though she specialized in organizing spaces that were sort of boring, like parking lots and lobbies.

“Which one of them is fat?” asked Amandine.

“Neither of them,” I said. Then I added, “But I’m not fat. I’m
overweight.”

“Oh, what a coincidence. I’m
under-height,”
she answered. She laughed at her own joke, and after a minute, my own laugh joined hers, catching me by surprise. It was a relieved kind of laughing, like a splash of cold water on my face. Because being
overweight
was not funny, it had never been funny.
Overweight
was a problem that meant Diet Delite and trips to the doctor and my parents’ pinched faces whenever they caught me with a cookie or a cheeseburger.
Overweight
was the thing about myself I hated most, the problem that had plagued me since before kindergarten.

But now, suddenly, today, it was funny.

We stood there laughing, and it was summer vacation for a minute, warm and free and just the two of us splashing around together in this cold water of happy laughing, right there in the empty art room of James DeWolf High School.

I drew Amandine a picture of a dead bird, a sparrow that had been zapped by an electric wire during last week’s storm. Or that’s what Dad had figured, but it also might have been plain, old-fashioned lightning. He had used a dustpan and newspaper to remove it from our backyard, but not before I’d got a good look at it, a body bag of feathers and bones so still and lumpy that it was hard to imagine it ever had soared on the breath of a breeze.

When I was finished, Amandine nodded her head in approval. “Now sign your name at the bottom,” she instructed. “Like a witness.”

Every evening after their supper, my father prepared chamomile tea for himself and my mother. He arranged it on a tray, pleating the napkins and fixing the butter cookies into a smile shape, as if he were delivering hotel room service. Midway through their tea was when I usually came in to kiss them good night.

That evening, standing in the doorway, it struck me that the den here in Alford looked exactly like the den back in Connecticut. The glass-topped table was centered on the woven rug. The pillows were tipped just so in the window seat. The carved wooden ducks stared from the same height on the bookshelf. My parents were banked in the same positions on the couch, their legs crossed toward each other. And, as always, there were a few cookies left on the plate.

“Original use of space,” I commented. It was sort of a family joke, since this was one of Mom’s architect-y phrases she used when there was nothing else to say.

My father laughed. “Ah, but zee proof is in zee details, Inspector.” He spoke in some kind of accent—it was probably a line from a movie; and I laughed along as if I knew which one.

Lexi Neumann, my best friend back in Connecticut, used to say that if my dad was our age, he’d never want to hang out with us. “Face it,” she told me. “He’s Prince Charming, and we’re more like court jesters.” She was right, it was true. Is true. My father’s charm is powerful. Turned on, the spotlight of his attention warms you from head to feet. Switched off, he can make you feel about as appealing as a pair of old sneakers, as if the only reason you’re around was because there was no place else to toss you. Last week, when I got my physical and my mother reported that Dr. Hurtebeise had suggested I trim down a little, Dad had folded his arms and regarded me with the old-sneakers face.

“How hard could it be?” he’d asked. “You have to learn to live with a little hunger. How hard could it be, Delia?”

I didn’t know the answer.

Tonight, having made the right joke and laughed at his accent, I stood in the full wattage of his spotlight. His smile made me glow, made me warm, and I knew that to take a cookie off the plate was to risk the lights-out, a return of the old-sneakers stare.

I could live with a little hunger. Of course I could.

Tuesday, Amandine had saved a place for me in the cafeteria.

“Delia!” she called, waving me over.

I felt purposeful and happy as I pushed through the crowd to sit with her. All the previous week, I had been eating lunches with Samantha Blitz, who had been assigned to show me around, and whose patience I was testing. Samantha was the starting center on the freshman girls’ soccer team, and at lunch she always sat with her teammates, who had been perfectly nice and had become perfectly indifferent.

“Hi.” I slid my tray opposite hers and sat.

“Do you smell anything?” She leaned forward.

I sniffed. The air was fruity, spiced with bread and bananas and tacos, the hot lunch special of the day.

“What should I smell?”

“I forgot to put on deodorant this morning. I can’t believe I would ever forget a thing like that, I’ve been doing it for so long. I have to shave practically twice a day, too. I’m very developed, that way.”

I didn’t say anything, though what she had said was tough to believe. Amandine was small and pale and boyish, and she looked younger than fourteen. As if she knew what I was thinking, she reached behind into her backpack and pulled out a black glasses case, snapped it open, then slipped on a pair of hexagonal wire-rimmed glasses.

“Nonprescription,” she informed me. “Don’t they make me look older?” She tilted her head from one side to another, modeling.

It seemed important for her that I answer yes, so I did.

“You watch,” she said, running a speculative finger over the frame. “This shape’ll be, like, a total trend by next week. Kids always copy me, I don’t know why. DeWolf’s got a lot of followers. Were kids here the same as in your old school? A sheep herd?”

“Maybe. But kids here seem nicer.” I shrugged. “Alford has a softer aesthetic.” I didn’t know what aesthetic meant, exactly, but I’d heard my mother say that to someone on the phone. “That’s why we moved. It’s a good place for my dad to start his own business and be his own boss, blah blah blah.” I shrugged, as if my parents’ spontaneity made no difference to me. In truth, our move to Alford, which they had not consulted me on, had come as an unsettling surprise. But my parents always worked as a unit, whereas I was more like the overpacked luggage they carted along with them.

Amandine grinned and rolled her eyes. “My parents did that, too. We used to live in New York City, actually. Brooklyn Heights, till I was in sixth grade. Then all of a sudden they wanted to hug trees and mow the lawn and stuff.”

“Same as mine!”

“But they should go back. ’Cause of missing the plays and museums. They’re both really, really into the arts.”

“Same as mine!” Which was not quite true, but it wasn’t as if my parents were
against
the arts. And suddenly, Amandine was at my breakfast table again, eating sour-cherry pancakes, talking to Mom about Times Square and Central Park.

As the ending lunch bell rang, I saw Samantha Blitz leave her table and walk over to us.

“Either of you guys seen my lucky bandanna?” she asked. “I lost it.”

“That makes it an
un
lucky bandanna.” Amandine smirked.

“What color is it?” I asked.

“It’s goldish-orange, flower-y,” she answered. “I was wearing it in homeroom.”

“Oh, yes. I remember,” I said, nodding. “Definitely, I’ll keep an eye out. Gold and orange. Flowers. Got it. I’ll keep a look out.” I could hear myself sound overeager. Mom would have handled this better, with her Boston blend of friendly and indifferent.

Amandine yawned and stretched her arms over her head and said nothing.

“Okay. Well, yeah. If you happen to.” Samantha’s eyes skimmed over me and held Amandine’s a second too long. “Later, guys.”

“Me and her used to hang out a lot together,” Amandine confided after Samantha had left. She smiled kittenishly. “But that was before I found you.”

Yesterday, after I’d kept her waiting, Mrs. Gogglio had given me some heat.

“Don’t fritter away my goodwill, Delilah,” she said. She had a hard time with my name, calling me Dahlia and Delayla before settling on this one. I’d corrected her for a little while, and then stopped bothering.

“Sorry, Mrs. Gogglio.”

“It’s not about the money, why I pick you up. It’s about
coincidence.
I get off my shift at Sunrise Assisted at three and you get off school at three ten and our living right ’round the corner from each other makes this meeting a
coincidence.
But you’d be looping back roads on that school bus for an hour and then some if it wasn’t for me. And I wouldn’t have a heart to care, except it’s on my way, and why not earn a little extra on the side? But my main point here is
coincidence,
you hear?”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Gogglio. Really.” It was hard to follow her every word, the way she said
hot
for heart and
un
for earn. She was Massachusetts
bohn
and raised, she’d told us proudly that first day she stopped over for a neighborly visit, bringing us a batch of blueberry muffins so good I couldn’t seem to stop reaching for the next.

“Enjoy your starch, I see,” she’d said, nodding me up and down as I bit into a third.
Stahch,
the word in Mrs. Gogglio’s mouth, meant all delicious things. She liked her starch, too, unlike my starch-free parents. Block-shouldered, apple-faced Mrs. Gogglio could have been my real, long-lost mother. And so our friendship was born. It wasn’t completely about coincidence. After a day spent tending to old people, Mrs. Gogglio seemed to enjoy the change of more youthful company. And after my own day of trying not to do or say the wrong thing or have the wrong answer or sit in the wrong place, Mrs. Gogglio’s easy manner was a relaxing tonic.

Yesterday, as punishment for my lateness, Mrs. Gogglio didn’t stop for a drive-through snack.

Today, I was right on time, as Amandine had left early on account of a doctor’s appointment. It was Mrs. Gogglio who was about fifteen minutes late. She gave me her version of an apology as I got into her car.

“You hungry?”

“Not really. I don’t know.”

“Delilah, you look like the cat that swallowed the canary,” she remarked as we turned onto the highway. “You’re settling in good over there at the new school?”

“Sort of … with this one girl.”

“That so?”

“Yep. She’s kind of different from anyone I ever knew back in Connecticut. But she’s nice.”

“Nice means a lot.”

“Yep.” Though now
nice
seemed like the exactly wrong word to describe Amandine.

“Melissa MacKnight?” she asked hopefully. Melissa MacKnight was Odie MacKnight’s granddaughter, and Odie was one of Mrs. Gogglio’s favorite patients at Sunrise Assisted. But Melissa MacKnight had all the friends she needed.

“No. Her name’s Amandine. Amandine Elroy-Bell.”

“Elroy-Bell. Bell, Bell. Don’t ring one.” Mrs. Gogglio snorted. “Lived here long, those Elroy-Bells? I thought I’d heard most names ’round Alford.”

“On State Road. In a big stone mansion, is how Amandine described it. Right on the corner, it’s got an iron gate wrapped around it.”

Mrs. Gogglio’s face knit. “Ah.
Those
folks,” she said after a pause. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched her face go blank as her thoughts turned private. I waited, nervous with curiosity. Mrs. Gogglio would have the right opinion. Her white Sunrise Assisted nursing uniform made her seem authoritative and reliable.

Whatever she was thinking, though, she kept it to herself.

“How about let’s stop off at Friendly’s?” she suggested presently. “Fries and Fribbles. Salty and sweet. I’ve got a two-for-one coupon for it in my book in the glove box. It’ll be my treat.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m trying to lose … my mother wants …”

“Delilah,” she said impatiently, “your skinny-miss mother’s got no business trying to alter how you’re built. There’s no shame in a natural, healthy appetite.” Her cheeks blazed with a pink fire of emotion. “Fact is, she should be proud of your nice strong looks.”

Of course, her little speech didn’t make sense; but when Mrs. Gogglio talked like that, I could actually feel myself settle better into the fit of my skin.

It would be another week before I met “
those
folks,” and saw that big house on State Road for myself. But my parents were pressing too hard for this weekend, wanting proof of Amandine. It was a relief when she agreed to stay over at my house Friday night, exactly one week after we had met.

“My mom’s taking off early from work,” I told her when I finally caught up with her on Friday afternoon after school. “She’s picking us up out front and driving us to the mall and stuff. If we want movies and pizza.”