Ten (13 page)

“I already know who my crush is,” Chantelle said.

Amanda joined her in supplying the answer. “Tyrone!” they said together, collapsing against each other in a girly, mushy pile of mashed potatoes.

I felt trapped. I also felt . . . itchy inside. Or something. If I walked away from their boy craziness, would someone else plop into their mashed-potato pile in my place?

Impossible—and yet deeply deeply dizzy-making.

Amanda took my peanut butter and jelly sandwich from me and placed it on my plastic bag. She took my hand, her eyes shining. “So . . . ? You're excited, right?”

I mustered what enthusiasm I could. My smile felt like it was made out of plaster. “Fifth grade boys, here we come!”

T
here was something rotten going on at Trinity. An evil force was at work, and I wasn't lying. Call it the moon, call it the ghost of Halloween past, call it
gargle-gurgle-glug
.

Or!
Or!
Speak the unspeakable and call the rottenness by its
real
name. Call it—gulp—gag—stagger about with hands at throat—
Alex Plotkin
.

Oh, that Alex. Just thinking about him made me narrow my eyes, because he was irritating and disgusting and deserved to be put in a cage. That's what Sandra said, and she didn't even know Alex. All she knew was that he was a boy, and in her opinion,
all
boys should be caged. For real, that's what she said.

It was after we'd gotten home from school. I'd gone in search of her, needing her advice, and I'd found her sitting on her bed doing her homework. I knocked lightly on her cracked-open door, but she didn't look up. I walked across the room and stood beside her. She still didn't look up.

I cleared my throat.

I cleared my throat again, with bonus sound effects suggesting the possibility of a hairball on the verge of being coughed up. Finally,
still
not lifting her head, she growled, “For heaven's sake. If you're going to say something,
say
it.”

“Well, if you insist,” I said.

I plopped down beside her, and she clutched her textbook to keep it from sliding off her lap. I wiggled and squirmed to settle myself into her mass of pillows—it took a while—and then I let it all pour out: Amanda's and Chantelle's boy craziness, the silliness of crushes, and the well-documented fact that I WAS NOT IN THAT STAGE YET.

I wasn't in that stage because I had far better ways to spend my time, I told Sandra. Like making sculptures out of wire coat hangers, bottle caps, shoe boxes, and Mom's jewelry stand, which was shaped like a tree. And which Mom reclaimed when she saw that I'd borrowed it, much to my annoyance.

That annoyance was an isty-bitsy spider compared to the gargantuan tarantula annoyance of Alex Plotkin, however. “Gargantuan” was one of my spelling words this week. It meant huge, enormous, and elephantine. So basically, Alex was as annoying as an elephant-sized tarantula, and I couldn't imagine
any
one not being annoyed (to say the least) if an elephant-sized tarantula showed up randomly on their doorstep and said, “Hey, how ya doin', you got any snacks?”

I explained all of this to Sandra, who said that if he was that bad, then I should put him in a cage and be done with it.

I lifted my eyebrows. I wasn't sure how practical her idea was, but I liked it. “Are you being serious?”

“As a heart attack,” she replied, her eyes glued to her textbook. “Boys are nothing but trouble. If it were up to me, I'd lock them all up—and I'd keep them locked up until they were twenty-one or stopped making fart jokes, whichever came first.”

I felt more hopeful than I had in weeks. If Sandra, who was in the ninth grade, would rather put a boy behind bars than have a crush on him, did that mean I wasn't a freak after all?

I bit the bottom left corner of my lip. It was new for me, this particular lip-biting expression. I'd invented it yesterday while staring at myself in the mirror, and it made me look pensive, I thought. Like a girl, but also a spy. A spy-girl, which I was considering dressing up as for Halloween. It wasn't written down in cement, though. A hobo was also up for grabs.

I released my lip, since I couldn't bite my lip
and
talk, and since Sandra hadn't noticed, anyway.

“So, this whole crush business,” I said. “You're saying you don't have a crush on anyone? And that's allowed, even in high school?”

Sandra put down her pencil and regarded me for the first time since I'd entered her room. Our faces were right next to each other, and her blue eyes seemed very . . . blue. My cheeks grew warm, but I held my ground. I needed to know.

“Well, first of all,
allowed
is the wrong word,” she said. “There's not a rule book, you know. Not for fifth grade
or
high school.”

“I know!” I said, because that was the same thing I'd told Amanda, back before fifth grade began.
There was no rule book
. Then it occurred to me that Sandra had avoided the real question. “So you
do
have a crush on someone?”

“Did I say that? No.”

“Have you ever had a crush one someone?”

Her feet were crossed at the ankle, and she rotated the top one in a small circle. “Sure, but not this very second.”

“Then when? How old were you? What grade were you in?”

She studied me. “Hmm. We're skipping that question. Now, back to Alex Plotkin.”

“Bleh,”
I said.

“You seem to have strong feelings when it comes to this dude, Winnie. Which brings up an interesting question: Why?”

“Because he's gross!” I cried. “Because his mom said he wasn't allowed to pick his nose with his finger, so now he picks it with his big toe.”

“Ew,” Sandra said.

“Uh-huh. And once he ate dog food on a dare. He'll eat
anything
on a dare, and then he breathes on you.”

“Double-ew!”

“Uh, yeah! And on the playground, he spins around and around with his eyes closed, and then he rams into people. He
claims
it's an accident, but it's not. He peeks, and that's how he picks his targets. The truth is he just likes to knock kids down.”

Sandra looked like she'd smelled something bad, like chewed-up dog food mixed with boy-spit. “So . . . you
don't
have a crush on this Alex guy.”

“What?!”
I jumped off the bed, my skin crawling. “Ew ew
ew
! Sandra!
Ew w w w!
”

She held up her hands. “I believe you. I just thought—”

“That
I
had a crush on
Alex
? No!”

“It's just that usually, when a girl talks and talks and talks about a boy, or vice versa, well, that's usually what it means.”

I drew myself to my full height. “And again I say: I AM NOT IN THAT STAGE.”

“Then what's the problem? Does he have a crush on you?”

“Yuck. No.
Gross
, Sandra.”

I'd been a fool to talk about it, I realized, just as I'd been a fool to hope that Amanda's boy craziness would simply . . . fade away, like a ghostly spirit in the misty October air. It didn't. It just grew crazier, especially when the boys in our class learned that the girls were secretly auditioning them for possible crushdom.

“If he doesn't have a crush on you, who does he have a crush on?” Sandra asked.

I didn't say. As it turned out, I didn't have to.

“Amanda,” Sandra filled in. “
Ahhhh
. And you're jealous.”

“No,”
I said. “I'm just grossed out, and I want him to go away.” Maybe I wanted
everyone
to go away, everyone except Amanda.

Or,
omigosh
. Maybe I
was
jealous.

“Oh, Winnie,” Sandra said.

Her sympathy made me feel sorry for myself.

“
All
the girls are picking boys to have crushes on,” I said. “Everyone but me. And Amanda's so pretty, and she's got all those cute freckles, and since she hasn't picked someone yet, Alex thinks he has a chance, I guess.”

Sandra put her arm around me. She tried to draw me toward her, but I was too wound up for a hug.

“But
I
think being boy crazy is d-u-m-b
dumb
,” I said. “We're in fifth grade! We have miles and miles to go before it's time to think about that stuff. I mean, Mom won't even let me get my
ears
pierced yet!”

“Winnie? Breathe. Unless you want to hyperventilate, you need to
breathe
, okay?”

I grew aware of my chest, which
was
rising and falling awfully quickly. And to tell the truth, I always had wanted to hyperventilate, kind of. Maybe this was my chance?

But, no. Sandra hugged me, and the solidness of her calmed me down despite myself. Not all the way, but enough that I didn't start seeing stars or anything.

“Being boy crazy
is
dumb, you're right,” Sandra said. “But it'll pass, I promise.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I'm me. I know everything.”

I shot her a look.

“And because it's a fad,” she said. “Fifth grade is a big year for fads. For me, it was Mexican jumping beans.”

“Those toy ones with faces? That flip over in your palm, and then stand up straight?”

“Yep,” Sandra said. “Dumb, huh?”

I remembered when Sandra built up her collection of Mexican jumping beans. I was in the first grade, and my class was studying koala bears. But Sandra didn't want to hear about koala bears. All she cared about were those beans, and she was always begging Mom to take her to Target to buy more.

“I thought you loved those little beans,” I said.

Her cheeks turned slightly pink. “What can I say? Fads.”

“Can I have them? If you don't want them anymore?”

“No,” she said. “Back to Alex.”

I groaned.

“If he's as disgusting as you say—”

“He
is
.”

“Then why would Amanda like him?”

“She wouldn't. She
doesn't
.”

“So there you go,” Sandra said, relaxing against her bed's headboard. “You have nothing to worry about.”

She was right. Alex was Alex, after all. He couldn't weasel in between me and Amanda no matter how hard he tried, and I
knew
that. There was nothing in the world for me to feel jealous about. Goodness gravy.

But seriously? A cage still would have been better.

 

There were sixteen kids in our class: eight boys and eight girls. Of the eight boys, two had already been plucked and chosen. Chantelle called dibs on Tyrone the day the craziness began, and Maxine claimed Mark soon after. She said it was because she liked his smile, but I think it was because “M and M” sounded good together.

With Tyrone and Mark out of the running, that left six boys up for grabs.
I
was not going to grab anyone, even if Amanda and Chantelle tortured me by making me lie on a bed of nails. Anyway, too bad for them if they did try that, because it wouldn't work. I'd seen a Discovery Channel special about lying on beds of nails, and I'd learned that the trick for surviving was to get on super-duper carefully and distribute your weight evenly.

There was a science museum in Arizona where you could actually could lie on a bed of nails—on the Discovery Channel show, they went there—and forever after, you'd have bragging rights. As in,
Oh, yes, these mosquitoes are quite a bother, aren't they?
+ insert delicate yawn +
But I must say, they're
nothing
compared to that time I'd lain on a bed of nails.

Amanda and Chantelle had
reluctantly
come to terms with my refusal to pick a crush, and in return, I'd
reluctantly
accepted the role of rah-rah girl. What that meant was that I squealed and did fast, soft claps with the rest of the girls when we got together on the playground and gossiped about who a particular girl
might
pick, and why, and how cute or
un
cute he was, and how his overall look might (or might not) be improved if he grew one of those walrus-style mustaches with long, curled-up ends.

Fine
. No one was interested in the walrus mustache question but me. I was just trying to liven things up, because it was all so boring. The only part of the Crush Fad that wasn't boring was the part where Alex Plotkin called Amanda “milady” and opened doors for her and gave her stupid presents, like a heart made out of fuse beads.

But giving her a heart made out of fuse beads wasn't going to make her fall in love with him, and after art class, I told him so.

“Yeah, only it's not up to you, is it?”

“And you're not supposed to use the fuse beads for personal projects, and you're not allowed to use the iron unless Miss Huber's there to supervise. You totally know that, too.”

“Miss Huber was sick,” he said. He stepped within inches of me. “If the
sub
stitute didn't want me using the iron, then the
sub
stitute should have told me.”

I waved my hand in front of my nose. He was exaggerating the
sub
at the beginning of substitute on purpose so that I'd have to smell his breath, BECAUSE HE'D ALMOST EATEN A
COCKROACH
DURING “MATH WITH PAT.” Pat was a retired rocket scientist who volunteered at Trinity to make math fun, but today Pat forgot to show up.

Guess who—or what—did show up?

A cockroach
. Yes, over by the quiet reading corner, and Maxine screamed, and Mark stomped on it with his big puffy tennis shoe, and Maxine swooned and said, “My hero.”