Like Mandarin - Kirsten Hubbard [55]
I handed the article back to Mandarin, smiling weakly. “I’m sure they’re overjoyed,” I said. “But … seriously, have you thought of a service project yet?”
Laughing, Mandarin threw her arm around me and hauled me toward school.
On Saturday, the administration opened the school pool to the public for the first time since September.
The pool was just three years old, still exciting to our town. The school had built it in hopes of training a Washokey High swim team. Because no one wanted the swimmers to tunnel through ice floes in the winter, the school began construction of a gym around the pool. They built the skeleton of one side before they determined they didn’t have enough money to complete it. So instead of putting the remaining money toward something useful, they finished the solitary wall.
It was a nice wall, as far as walls go, made of textured gray cement with a big window. In the afternoon it cast a shadow, where people crammed their towels.
That day everybody crowded outside the chain-link fence, waiting for the pool to open at ten. It seemed like half the town had turned up. As usual, my family was kind of weird-looking. Momma wore a flowered poncho over her yellow one-piece. It made her look like a lamp shade with legs. Taffeta’s arm floaties were so big she had to hold her arms out almost horizontally. I wore one of Momma’s straw hats and sunglasses, as if that would disguise the dread I felt.
The pool was such a comedown. A crash landing. But compared to the past week, anything would have been.
In geometry, Mandarin passed me notes, tantalizing with curse words and caricatures of other students. When I opened them under my desk, I always made sure somebody was watching—other than Mrs. Cleary, who was too frazzled to notice anyway.
Mandarin waited for me after my English class, and we left for the cafeteria together. The days had grown warmer, and I’d traded my hooded sweaters and tees for men’s undershirts like the ones Mandarin wore. Much better than my strappy pajama top. For the first time, I felt almost sexy as I navigated the halls at her side. But in a careless way, the best way, unlike the other girls, with their short skirts and wedge heels. When I caught them watching us, I felt intoxicated by their envy.
Navigating the pool crowd was the complete opposite, especially with Mandarin replaced by Momma and Taffeta in their goofy apparel. Worse, we hadn’t been standing there long when Davey Miller came up and stood beside me.
“Hello, Grace,” he said. He wore too-short blue swim trunks and had about twelve curly hairs in the center of his pale chest. I recalled how strange he’d acted during our science project. Maybe I was less intimidating standing beside my family.
“Hey. Sorry, I’m kind of busy.” I scanned the crowd, as if searching for somebody. “What is it, Davey?”
“Um. Well. I was wondering …” His Adam’s apple wobbled like a horsefly caught in his neck. “The cowboy dance. What do you … Do you think—”
I cut him off before he could say anything more. “It’s such an idiotic theme, isn’t it? I’m not going, that’s for sure.”
“Oh,” he said.
“As if our town isn’t one gigantic cowboy dance already.”
He cleared his throat, and the horsefly jumped. “Yeah. I guess it is kind of dumb.”
“Right,” I said. “It is.”
Davey finally got the hint. He rejoined his family as Kate Cunningham and Tyler Worley swung open the gate. Kate and Tyler were this year’s lifeguards, along with Joshua Mickelson. Each year, Mr. Beck hired three seniors for the job, which was coveted by anybody with a passable physique. Lifeguards possessed a kind of seductive authority; we tended to forget they had to do things like clean the pool before they filled it with water. The snowmelt always uncovered a constellation of beer cans. And dead ground squirrels.
Everybody filed in like orderly first graders. As soon as Momma and I set down our stuff in an empty spot,