Like Mandarin by Kirsten Hubbard

I said, flipping the candy between my fingers like a magician’s coin. “I was just trying to spice things up. I didn’t mean what I said about Momma.” I paused. “Anyway, Momma’s pretty clear about what’s important to her.”
    “I’m important,” Taffeta said.
    “Of course you are.”
    “I’m more important than you. She likes me better than you.”
    How did little kids know exactly what hurt the most? When I didn’t reply, she crept over to me on all fours and took my face in her hands, swiveling it toward her. Her bottom lip stuck out like a pink piece of gum.
    “Grace, I’m sorry. Don’t be mad! Momma likes us the same.”
    I dislodged her hands, trying not to let the hurt show on my face. “No, you were right. I’ll admit it.”
    Determinedly, Taffeta shook her head.
    Sometimes I could hardly believe my sister was real. She looked more like a doll than a flesh-and-blood child, with skin that seemed to glow from the inside, tiny dimpled hands, eyes as flawless as the brown glass marbles used for trophy eyes. I had to remind myself there was a person inside, listening, observing.
    “Taffeta,” I said. “Don’t you ever get bored?”
    She shrugged. “When there’s nothing on TV.”
    “No, I meant—don’t you ever have the urge to do something crazy?”
    “Crazy like how?”
    “Like stick your tongue out at the pageant judges. Or sing a different song instead of the one you’re supposed to. Maybe a dirty one. Or at home, put your pageant dress on, and … I don’t know, maybe go and sit in the baby pool in our backyard.”
    My sister wrinkled her nose. “Why would I do that?”
    I sighed. “No reason. It’s just … There’s so much more to life, you know? Than Momma’s pageants. Than Washokey.”
    My excitement felt effervescent, bubbling up into my throat. After an entire weekend of waiting, I was dying to let someone in on my secret. Taffeta’s wide eyes goaded me on.
    “If I told you something,” I began, “would you promise not to—”
    “Can I have the candy?” Taffeta interrupted.
    All I’d been about to say gridlocked in my chest. For a second, I could barely breathe.
    She tried again. “Can I please have some candy, Grace?”
    I had no idea what I’d been thinking. I gnawed off a chunk of SweeTart with my molars before tossing it to Taffeta. While she chewed and slurped, I settled back against the bed, disgusted with myself.

    The next morning, my alarm startled me from a dream of a deserted highway, with giant pink jackalopes hunched on both sides of the road. Every massive hop— whump, whump— made my teeth chatter. My jaw ached as I dragged myself out of bed and over to my mirror.
    “Oh, crap,” I said out loud.
    I’d slept in my braid, and now it pouched in a lopsided bundle at the side of my head. In my boy shorts and pajama top, I saw only the skeletal gap between my thighs. Washboard ribs instead of a chest. My hands and feet and eyes looked too big for the rest of me. If someone had told me that the girl in the mirror was twelve years old instead of almost fifteen, I would have believed him.
    How could I take the same old body to school and expect everybody to believe I was anything like Mandarin?
    I’d thought of the onlookers in the windows countless times, but I’d never pictured their faces. Alexis would have been there, and Paige Shelmerdine, for sure. Davey Miller. The sophomores and the juniors, like Peter Shaw. And the seniors, like Tag Leeland and Ricky Fitch-Dixon. Maybe even people from other homerooms.
    I tried to picture how my classmates had seen me before the day in the cotton. What I came up with were three images, three incidents—all events Alexis Bunker had never let me forget.
The Saga of Grace Carpenter
Our fourth-grade English teacher, Mr. Moulton, had moonlighted as a reporter for the Washokey Gazette and had been notorious for his emphatic adverbs. He was always trying to show off his literary genius by coming up with