Trying to Float by Nicolaia Rips Page A

him. I was going to have to take charge.”
    Gad!
    â€œSo I said to Oscar, ‘Oscar, you’re going to have to tell me the secret. I can’t help you, if you don’t.’ ”
    Don’t do it, Oscar, my thoughts screamed.
    But this wasn’t going to happen. Greta had him and she wasn’t letting go.
    â€œIt took me a few minutes to get it out of him,” Greta continued. “But when he finally told me his secret, I thought to myself, Oscar’s in trouble. Real trouble.”
    Greta went silent, shaking her head.
    But how could the story end there? Greta had to tell us Oscar’s secret. But even Greta, I was sure, wouldn’t reveal Oscar’s secret to a random crowd of girls.
    Greta had already started up again.
    â€œ ‘Greta,’ Oscar whispered to me, ‘the problem is . . . ’ ”
    Greta raised her eyebrows, and then pointed to her stomach.
    â€œ Diarrhea ?” Maria cried out.
    Greta shook her head.
    More confusion.
    What?
    Greta shoved her stomach outward.
    Mother of Jesus. Oscar got someone pregnant!
    None of us had heard anything like this. We shivered.
    But Greta wasn’t done, for she quickly made it clear that she knew the pregnant woman. We shouted out guesses.
    A teacher?
    A friend of Oscar’s family?
    Who could it be?
    With each guess, Greta shook her head.
    Tell us, Greta, tell us.
    â€œNicki, I’m sorry.”
    Did I just hear my name?
    Everyone was staring at me.
    The bell for first period rang. The girls raced to class.
    I caught up with Greta.
    â€œGreta, you just told them I’m pregnant!!”
    â€œI said it was a ‘ dream, ’ Nic. Didn’t you hear that part?”
    No one had heard “that part” because that was the part when she’d dropped her voice. Nothing I said in the following weeks could convince anyone that I, an eleven-year-old girl, wasn’t carrying Oscar’s child. Even Oscar, never too smart, seemed confused.
    So while my fellow middle schoolers counted their school year in semesters, I counted mine in trimesters, for it wasn’t until the third that anyone would believe that I hadn’t done whatever a girl must do to get pregnant with someone like Oscar.
    My fresh start had gone rotten.

MOVING ON
    BY THE TIME I was in sixth grade, my parents had lived in the Chelsea for more than sixteen years. As an infant I hadn’t taken up much space, but my presence in the apartment had grown. With each passing year, our home fit us a little more tightly, like a pair of my dad’s college trousers. For this reason, my mom began to think about other places to live.
    Every time she tried to introduce the subject, my dad would grumble. If we left the hotel, he’d argue, he would have to find new coffee shops, and that was quite a bit more disruption to his life than he was prepared to take on. We had plenty of space, he’d insist, failing to notice that it was impossible to move around without smacking into his bric-a-brac.
    As much as I loved the Chelsea, the idea of moving was seductive. I was sick of people confusing my bedroom for a closet. This was an easy mistake given its small size. During my parents’ many dinner parties people would inadvertently toss their coats on top of me while I slept. I could nevermanage more than one person in my room at a time without people sitting on my bed, which made playdates impossible. Fatigued by my constant pestering and my mother’s unspoken but obvious irritation with the shared bathroom situation, my father gave in and announced one day that he had arranged for us to see a couple of apartments.
    On Saturday afternoon, we put on our coats and headed out the door, down the elevator, and into the lobby. The Crafties were sitting in their usual spot and they applauded us as we walked by.
    Mr. Crafty shouted after my dad, “Finally growing some cojones.”
    Smiley wheeled into the lobby and grabbed my