Like Mandarin - Kirsten Hubbard [33]
“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 journalism-related assignments. One day, he asked us to pair off and write reports about our partners. There’d been an odd number of students, and I’d ended up the leftover. Mr. Moulton suggested I write a report about myself. I still remembered how it began.
Grace Carpenter was born at eleven p.m. on what turned out to be a cold and blustery night. The nurses said she was the most complicated baby they had ever delivered. Her mother, Adrina Carpenter, said she howled bloody murder, like a puppy with porcupine quills stuck in its rear.
I hadn’t realized that Mr. Moulton meant for us to read them in front of the class. He graciously allowed me to claim my seat early when a bout of fake coughing overtook me.
Sixth-Grade Graduation
June was sweepstakes month for Femme Fatale Cosmetics, Inc., when all purchases allowed the buyer to compete for a year’s supply of Femme Fatale products. Though it brought in good money, sweepstakes had made Momma so busy she forgot to finish my graduation dress. The morning of the ceremony, I’d found it draped over the sewing machine. I didn’t have any other dresses that fit; at twelve, I was already a jeans type of girl.
“Momma!” I’d wailed. “Graduation’s at ten!”
She had sewed as if her life depended on it, but