less gawky, with her braces off and her headgear reserved for nights, had traded her glasses for contacts and was thinking about volleyball or maybe basketball. “And then there’s homecoming,” Sarah said, as if I could have forgotten. The homecoming dance, the first dance of the school year, the Saturday night after the fourth football game of the season, in the school gym. Any student with the ten dollars for a ticket could attend.
On our first day of ninth grade we wore the outfits we’d shopped for and chosen together: Calvin Klein jeans, ribbed sweaters (red for her, plum for me), rubber-soled suede work boots—a fad that had swept through Framingham the previous spring—and oversize gold hoop earrings. My bus got to school first, and I waited for her by the front door, eager for her opinion: I’d gotten up at five-thirty to be sure that my hair, which I’d set in hot rollers, and my makeup were both perfect. I’d curled my lashes and smoothed on foundation under mygrandmother’s supervision, and she’d allowed me a squirt of her Shalimar. Following her instructions, I sprayed the perfume in front of me, then walked through it, allowing the scent to adhere to my clothes, my skin, my hair. Now I waited, squinting, peering over the tops of my classmates’ heads, the boys in varsity jackets, the girls squealing laughter, smacking gum. I saw the top of her head first, then her ponytail, bobbing with each step. As Sarah drew closer, I saw she was talking to a boy named Derek Nooney, who lived in her neighborhood and rode her bus. Derek had gotten taller over the summer and had a juicy crop of acne spread over his forehead and his nose.
I pushed myself off the waist-high brick wall where I’d been sitting and stood by the door, where I knew she couldn’t miss me. Sarah was wearing her Calvins and her red sweater, like we’d planned, and a floating silver heart around her neck that I’d given her for her birthday after saving up to buy it at Tiffany. “Hey, Sarah!” I said, and waved. She looked up. Her face was closed. “Ohhi,” she said, running the words together like she was desperate to get them out of her mouth. She turned, bending her head back down to Derek, saying something I couldn’t hear. Her remark was followed by the bellow of his goatish laughter. The two of them slipped past me as the bell rang, joining the throngs of students streaming through the doors.
Sarah and I didn’t have lunch together. Rather than try to find people I knew in the wilds of the enormous cafeteria, a high-ceilinged room that clanged with the noise of a hundred different conversations, forks and knives, salad greens being chewed and sandwich bags unwrapped, I took my lunch to the lawn outside. It was mild and sunny, the temperature still in the eighties, and I had a copy of Black Beauty tucked into my backpack, which I’d bought with a birthday gift card at the L.L.Bean outlet store two weeks earlier, after Sarah’s mother had dropped us off for a back-to-school shopping trip. My diary was in there, too. Write it down, I heard my grandmother say . . . but I couldn’t think of the words I needed. Derek Nooney was in the remedial math class. Up close, he smelled like spoiled yogurt, and he used to throw clods of dirt at the short bus that took the handicapped kids to the vo-tech after lunch. The only thing he had to recommend him was that he was a boy. Maybe that was all that mattered.
That afternoon, for the first time, there wasn’t a sitter waiting for me when school got out. I was almost fourteen—old enough, my grandmother had decreed, to be home alone for the hours between when school got out and when she’d be there to start dinner. I waited for Sarah by the school doors, in case that morning had been an aberration, a cruel joke, a mistake. She was with Derek again, the two of them walking so close their shoulders were touching. This time I didn’t say anything to her, and Sarah, whom I’d seen naked,
On our first day of ninth grade we wore the outfits we’d shopped for and chosen together: Calvin Klein jeans, ribbed sweaters (red for her, plum for me), rubber-soled suede work boots—a fad that had swept through Framingham the previous spring—and oversize gold hoop earrings. My bus got to school first, and I waited for her by the front door, eager for her opinion: I’d gotten up at five-thirty to be sure that my hair, which I’d set in hot rollers, and my makeup were both perfect. I’d curled my lashes and smoothed on foundation under mygrandmother’s supervision, and she’d allowed me a squirt of her Shalimar. Following her instructions, I sprayed the perfume in front of me, then walked through it, allowing the scent to adhere to my clothes, my skin, my hair. Now I waited, squinting, peering over the tops of my classmates’ heads, the boys in varsity jackets, the girls squealing laughter, smacking gum. I saw the top of her head first, then her ponytail, bobbing with each step. As Sarah drew closer, I saw she was talking to a boy named Derek Nooney, who lived in her neighborhood and rode her bus. Derek had gotten taller over the summer and had a juicy crop of acne spread over his forehead and his nose.
I pushed myself off the waist-high brick wall where I’d been sitting and stood by the door, where I knew she couldn’t miss me. Sarah was wearing her Calvins and her red sweater, like we’d planned, and a floating silver heart around her neck that I’d given her for her birthday after saving up to buy it at Tiffany. “Hey, Sarah!” I said, and waved. She looked up. Her face was closed. “Ohhi,” she said, running the words together like she was desperate to get them out of her mouth. She turned, bending her head back down to Derek, saying something I couldn’t hear. Her remark was followed by the bellow of his goatish laughter. The two of them slipped past me as the bell rang, joining the throngs of students streaming through the doors.
Sarah and I didn’t have lunch together. Rather than try to find people I knew in the wilds of the enormous cafeteria, a high-ceilinged room that clanged with the noise of a hundred different conversations, forks and knives, salad greens being chewed and sandwich bags unwrapped, I took my lunch to the lawn outside. It was mild and sunny, the temperature still in the eighties, and I had a copy of Black Beauty tucked into my backpack, which I’d bought with a birthday gift card at the L.L.Bean outlet store two weeks earlier, after Sarah’s mother had dropped us off for a back-to-school shopping trip. My diary was in there, too. Write it down, I heard my grandmother say . . . but I couldn’t think of the words I needed. Derek Nooney was in the remedial math class. Up close, he smelled like spoiled yogurt, and he used to throw clods of dirt at the short bus that took the handicapped kids to the vo-tech after lunch. The only thing he had to recommend him was that he was a boy. Maybe that was all that mattered.
That afternoon, for the first time, there wasn’t a sitter waiting for me when school got out. I was almost fourteen—old enough, my grandmother had decreed, to be home alone for the hours between when school got out and when she’d be there to start dinner. I waited for Sarah by the school doors, in case that morning had been an aberration, a cruel joke, a mistake. She was with Derek again, the two of them walking so close their shoulders were touching. This time I didn’t say anything to her, and Sarah, whom I’d seen naked,
Similar Books
