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Even the state of my appearance after swim class — wet hair hanging like long brown icicles, melting pool water onto my navy cardigan — could make her wistful.
“You smell like summer,” she said, resting her head on my shoulder. “I wish it was still summer.”
I turned and sniffed my cardigan. Though I’d had it dry-cleaned right before school started, it already reeked of tangy chlorine, so I peeled it off and tied it around my waist. Coach Fallon never sent us to the locker room with enough time to shower. He’d rather us suffer one more lap of butterfly than have thirty seconds to shampoo. Autumn was so lucky that she hurt her shoulder a few years back and had a doctor’s note to keep her out of the pool. “Hey,” I said. “Could you give me a French braid when we get to class?” I hated the way it dried after swim class, in dull matted clumps.
Autumn’s shoulder-length hair was twisted into two perfectly symmetrical blond sections. She could make it that good without a mirror. “Here,” she said, pulling off my tortoiseshell headband before dropping a step behind me. “I’ll do it now.”
That’s how we walked through the freshman hallway, me leading Autumn by my hair, like we were elephants. I kept my head down and asked her questions from my Western Philosophy notes while she went to work, my scalp tightening with every weave. Our first quiz was in five minutes. We’d studied on the phone together the night before, so it was really more of a review, but Autumn had still gotten a few easy ones wrong.
“I can’t believe it.” Autumn stopped walking, only I didn’t realize it until my head snapped back. She sighed and asked, “Were we ever that young?”
I could tell that Autumn was trying to soak up all the excitement and possibility exuding from the freshmen mulling around us. She was completely charmed by their goofiness, bad skin, and awkward roughhousing. She smiled so wide, the skin around her blue eyes wrinkled.
I smiled, too. Except I wasn’t thinking back so much as trying to hold on to every minute of senior year. If our dream colleges accepted us, Autumn and I would be living on opposite sides of the country in eleven months. The realist in me had to accept that things wouldn’t be the same . . . or at least, not nearly as good as how we had it right now. Autumn would make new friends. Hopefully, I would, too. But it wasn’t a prospect I was particularly excited about.
“Oh, jeez,” she whispered. “Natalie! Look!”
Autumn nudged her chin toward a curvy girl with black corkscrew curls. The girl was kneeling on the floor, reaching deep into a messy locker for her books. Her pleated uniform skirt tipped forward like a ringing church bell. A small triangle of lavender mesh barely shielded her rear from the entire hallway.
Though it wasn’t actually written anywhere in the Ross Academy Handbook, it still seemed like every girl at school knew enough to wear something unrevealing underneath her uniform skirt. Spandex shorts, boxers, leggings, or at the very least, a pair of hipster underwear. Every girl but this poor, clueless freshman.
I debated whether or not to say something. But only for a second, because if I had a piece of spinach in my teeth, or if my zipper was down, I’d rather be told than make a complete fool of myself. Embarrassing moments had a surprisingly long shelf life at our school. One minute you were a normal girl, and the next, you’d be known as Ass Flasher for the next four years. It seemed only right to intervene.
I handed my notebook to Autumn. “Reread my notes on the Socratic method. I’ll be right back.” I bounded across the hallway, my braid unraveling with every step.
A couple of freshman boys had taken notice of the free show and were panting at this girl’s butt. I stared them down and positioned myself to block their view.
“Hey,” I said to the girl. “Can I talk to you for a second?”
She stared up at me from the floor, her tan face appearing slightly lighter around her eyes, probably from lying out with an oversize pair of sunglasses. “Um. Sure.” Her voice was both friendly and suspicious.
“I’m Natalie Sterling,” I said, feeling like I probably should introduce myself. “What’s your name?”
She blinked a few times and then stood up. Which, to my great relief, solved the immediate problem of her unfortunate underwear choice. “Hold on — you’re Natalie Sterling?”
“Um. Yes,” I said. And suddenly I turned into the suspicious one.
Her brown eyes were big and expectant, glittering like the eye shadow dusting her lids. She waited, and not exactly patiently, for me to recognize her. “You don’t know who I am, do you?” She didn’t sound angry. If anything, she seemed tickled.
My mind cycled through the faces at my SAT summer prep course. But this girl was clearly a freshman, so that didn’t make sense. I shrugged apologetically. “Are you sure you don’t have me confused with someone else?”
“Okay.” She closed her eyes and shook her head back and forth a few times, really fast. “I can’t believe I’m about to do this.” And then, after a deep breath, she danced a jig, right there in front of her locker.
Her toned legs kicked and sliced the air like scissors, and her flats hit the linoleum floor in loud slaps that made everyone take notice. My own deficiency in dance kept me from knowing if she was good or just trying hard. Either way, she bounced with such fervor that her curls boinged like a thousand tiny springs. After a final twirl, which honestly couldn’t have come quickly enough, she threw out her hands and exclaimed “River Dance!” Except she said it with a terrible Irish brogue, and it sounded more like Reevah Daaaanse!
That’s when it hit me.
“Spencer Biddle?” The eight-year-old girl I’d babysat for an entire summer when I turned twelve? Spencer Biddle, who wouldn’t use the upstairs bathroom without someone standing outside the door, who would eat macaroni and cheese only if the cheese were orange, who put on elaborate Irish step-dancing shows in her living room?
Her chest heaved as she caught her breath. “I’m honestly relieved you didn’t recognize me. It’s been like . . . what? Almost six years? I’d better look completely different.”
“Don’t worry,” I said, squinting past her makeup and imagining her shiny curls uncoiling to a frizzy and unkempt little girl fro. “You definitely do.”
Spencer pushed some wet hair off my shoulder. “I hardly recognized you, either. I mean, look at how grown up and beautiful you are!” It was a weird compliment, like something my Aunt Doreen or Grammy would say. Not someone three years younger than me. “Seriously, Natalie?” she continued. “You were the nicest babysitter I ever had. I remember one time when you threatened to make Eddie Guavera eat rocks when he peed on the flowers we’d just planted around the mailbox.”
I winced. “Did I really?”
Spencer laughed the same way she used to — quiet puffs of air that pulsed out of her nose, rapid-fire. “All the neighbor boys were afraid of you. It was so awesome!”
“Didn’t your family move to St. Louis?”
“Yeah. When my mom got remarried. But she divorced my stepdad, so we came back this summer.” I nodded, even though it felt weird to be discussing things like divorce with Spencer. I was pretty sure that our last conversation involved me trying to convince her that Lucky Charms would make a terrible pizza topping. “We’re renting an apartment across Liberty River. It’s not bad, actually. My room has these big mirrored closet doors where I can practice my routines.”
“You’d dance to anything,” I recalled. “Commercials. Those wind chimes your mom hung on the front porch. The sound of the phone ringing.” I had a sudden memory of how annoying that actually was, from a babysitter’s perspective. I could hardly get Spencer to sit still.
Spencer’s glossy smile gave way to a pucker. “Wait. If you didn’t recognize me, why did you come over here in the first place?”
I picked some lint off my skirt and suddenly wished that I didn’t know the color of Spencer’s underwear. I leaned in close enough to smell her cotton-candy perfume and whispered, “When you bent over before, you could see everything. And a bunch of boys were enjoying the view.”
Her mouth dropped open so wide I could see all her fillings. “Are you kidding?”
I shook my head. Despite being embarrassed, Spencer managed to smile. “You know,” I told her, “Ross does offer a pair of uniform pants for the girls, but they’re these horrible pleated slacks the color of cardboard. Really, the best thing to do is to wear something underneath your skirt.” I gave her the rundown of options, and even lifted my skirt the tiniest bit to show her the navy spandex shorts I always, always wore. Even over tights during winter.
Spencer nodded, but now she was looking behind me, trying to figure out which of the boys had been staring at her.
The warning bell rang. I needed to hurry to class, so I could get settled and focused before the quiz. “I’m sure I’ll see you around, Spencer. And let me know if you have any questions about school stuff.”
“Believe me, I definitely plan on exploiting that I’m friends with a senior! All the other freshman girls are going to die of jealousy.”
I knew that wouldn’t actually be true, but hearing Spencer say it made me feel pretty good as I hustled across the hallway to avoid being trampled by our entire football team. Connor Hughes, all tall and lean with his wavy brown hair grazing the collar of his white button-up, led the charge of boys down the hall. He held a playbook in his hands and the rest of his teammates orbited him, peering inside.
Autumn closed my notebook and handed it back to me. “I don’t know where you get your courage, Natalie. I couldn’t say anything like that to a stranger.”
I lifted my eyebrows. “That was no stranger.”
I told Autumn the story, and she glanced across the hallway. “So wait. Were you too busy catching up with Spencer that you forgot to tell her about her underwear?”
I turned and saw Spencer bent over again, her butt back on display for everyone.
The eyes of the passing football players flitted to the left, as if Spencer’s ass gave off a high-pitched noise at a frequency that only boys could detect. One of the guys, Mike Domski, snatched the binder out from Connor’s hands and flapped it furiously toward Spencer’s rear end, trying to make a strong enough breeze so her skirt would flutter up even higher. The rest of the team fell all over each other in a fit of laughter.
A sour feeling rippled across my stomach.
Spencer spun around and pressed up against her locker, a look of pretend embarrassment, feigned modesty, painted on her face. The same one I’d fallen for a moment ago.
“Looks like Spencer’s grown up to be quite a lady,” Autumn said.
She meant it as a joke, I think. Except neither of us laughed.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_de5f536b-f000-5bdd-8fe7-4b979b3019bf)
I left extra, extra early the next morning, and picked up two egg sandwiches and two Oranginas from the bagel shop on Main Street. It was the first official day of student council elections, and I wanted to get my posters hung up before anyone else, claim the best wall real estate. When I got to Autumn’s house, I beeped my car horn along with the song snippet played in between NPR news stories. Across the street, an old lady in a flowered nightgown stared me down from behind her screen door. I mouthed an embarrassed apology.
Autumn finally appeared, darting across her lawn in bare feet. Her black flats were perched on top of the books clutched in her hands, a pair of wrinkled cream-colored knee socks slung over her shoulder. My campaign posters were tucked under her arm.
“Careful you don’t bend them!” I called.
I could tell Autumn hadn’t bothered to shower that morning, preferring instead to sleep an extra twenty minutes. I had always been an early riser, but Autumn loved to sleep, so I’d make sure to always have a book underneath my pillow whenever we had sleepovers. Lately, I only read SAT prep guides, but that’s how I devoured the entire Goosebumps series during middle school — next to my snoring best friend.
Autumn crouched down to the open passenger window and tipped her books forward, causing her shoes to fall onto the seat. She brightened when she saw the white paper bag. “Ooh! Breakfast!”
“Your reward for getting up early to help me.”
“I don’t need a reward,” she said, throwing her books in the backseat and then gently laying my posters on top. “After all, I’m your unofficial campaign manager.”
“I wish you’d be my official vice president,” I said under my breath.
Autumn sighed as she dropped into the passenger seat and clicked her seat belt into the latch with way more force than necessary. “Natalie. You have to let this go.”
I’d posed the idea countless times during the summer and as recently as this weekend, when we’d stayed up until three in the morning painting campaign posters. I’d painted one poster with both of our names on it, but Autumn just complained that I’d wasted a perfectly good piece of oak tag. “Good ideas are hard to let go,” I said.
She took a big bite of sandwich and got some ketchup on her face. I handed her a napkin. “Look,” she said, in between chews. “It means a lot to me that you think I could actually do something like this. But it’s not like I need to be vice president to help with all your projects. I’ll still be at every student council meeting, just like I’ve been the last three years.”
“It’s not about you showing up to meetings. It’s about you living up to your full potential, Autumn. You always say that you’re more of a behind-the-scenes person. But that’s not true. It’s just a convenient excuse not to be noticed. College admissions counselors don’t just want to know that you’ve participated in extracurricular activities. They want to see leadership skills. That you can take charge of something.”
Autumn opened her Orangina and chugged down about five huge gulps. A tiny part of me thought she might be considering it. Then she changed the subject, asking, “What were some of those funny slogans we came up with? I was trying to remember them this morning.”
I couldn’t force my best friend to run for student council. I knew she had to want it for herself. But that didn’t make it any less frustrating.
For the rest of the ride to school, we tried to remember the corny slogans that made us laugh so hard this weekend. Like Vote For Natalie — She’ll Do Things Nattily! Except without being sugar-drunk on Dr Pepper and cookie dough, they weren’t really funny at all.
Ours was the first car in the student parking lot. Ross Academy looked beautiful, the sun rising behind the fieldstone walls, sparking off the dew on the thick lawn. I was so taken with the beauty of our school that it wasn’t until I’d gotten halfway up the path when I noticed that every single window had been covered over with white paper.
“That’s weird,” I said.
“Looks like Kevin Stroop’s seriously stepping up his game,” Autumn said.
“I guess.” Kevin Stroop was last year’s treasurer and, as far as I knew, the only person running against me for president. I’d been counting on an easy campaign, mainly because I was last year’s vice president, but also because Kevin had made a stupid accounting error that had nearly left us bankrupt. We’d had to enforce a strict one-slice-per-person rule at the end-of-the-year pizza party, which no one had been happy about.
I pulled open the main door and hundreds of pieces of paper fluttered with the fall breeze I’d invited in. They weren’t just taped to the windows. Our entire school had been wallpapered — the bathroom doors, bulletin boards, every locker, and the trophy case. An empty plastic tape dispenser crunched beneath my loafer as I stepped forward. Several dozen others were discarded on the floor, down the length of the hallway.
I knew Kevin didn’t have the chops to pull off a stunt this big.
I pulled a single sheet from the spout of a water fountain.
It was a piece of photocopied notebook paper, with a bunch of flaming footballs drawn on it, and a cartoon version of Mike Domski, smoking a cigar and flanked by two busty bikini girls.
Unfortunately, this drawing was no sick fantasy. Mike Domski actually got girls to like him. Sure, he was a football player, and, yeah, he hung out with the popular kids. But the guy was a total scumbag, preying on girls too stupid to know better. There seemed to be a sad learning curve on that sort of thing.
Underneath his drawing, he’d actually written Domski 4 Prez. And he hadn’t even bothered to rip the page out properly — the bottom left corner was missing and he had proudly photocopied the jagged paper fringe.
“Mike Domski,” I said aloud.
“You’re kidding.” Autumn grabbed the flyer and made a face. “Ew. Why’s Mike Domski running for student council?”
I actually had to think about it. “Maybe to help his college applications? Or just to be an ass.” That was really all the reason someone like Mike would need.
“I’m going to take so much satisfaction in watching you annihilate him.” Autumn searched a nearby wall. “What are we going to do with all your posters? He’s left no room to hang them up. This can’t be legal! Do you want me to try and find Ms. Bee?”
“Don’t worry,” I said. And then I taped my biggest poster right over a bunch of Mike Domski’s stupid cartoon grins.
By lunch, Mike’s posters had begun to disappear. I wondered if Ms. Bee had gotten word that he’d charmed the school secretary for use of her copier and deemed them against election rules. But no. Kids had been ripping them down on purpose. I watched a line of guys in the cafeteria ask Mike to autograph them, because they’d be “worth something” someday. Which basically made me want to puke.
Over the rest of the week, I did my best to ignore Mike Domski. It wasn’t hard. He wasn’t in any AP classes, and we certainly didn’t have any friends in common. Still, even from afar, watching him ham up his whole candidacy drove me crazy. The way he’d strut around making ridiculous decrees in old English that started with henceforth and ended with evermore, and demanded that people address him as Prez.
But I stayed calm and collected, even when Mike took direct aim at me. It really didn’t bother me all that much. Probably because I was one of a rare few at Ross Academy to see guys like Mike for who they really were — power-drunk meatheads who’d do anything to get a laugh. High school was the best Mike Domski’s life would ever get. You could see his entire depressing future written on his dopey face. He’d get into some mediocre college, fall in love with a pregnant stripper, lose all his money to a get-rich-quick internet scheme. I might have even felt bad for Mike Domski, if he hadn’t been acting like such a jerk.
But Autumn hated watching Mike make fun of me, and no matter how stupid his insults were, it ate away at her. Like this one time in the cafeteria, when Mike stood underneath one of the banners we’d painted together, flashing two thumbs-up and screaming something about me having wicked bubble letter skills.
Autumn’s cheeks blushed the most awful shade of purpley red, the same as the undercooked steak on her tray. She kept her eyes locked on that steak, pushing a gristly piece back and forth with a plastic fork that was about to snap in her death grip. And then, without warning, she shot straight up, bumping our table so hard my soda splashed on my lab worksheet.
“Leave her alone,” she said, overenunciating each word in as stern a voice as someone as sweet as Autumn could muster. I looked up at her with a half-smile, shocked that she’d had the guts to say anything. She was shaking, the tiniest quivers. My heart broke, knowing what a good friend I had in Autumn. If that was hard for anyone to do, it was hardest for her.
Mike reacted like Autumn had suddenly appeared out of thin air, with phony surprise and awe. He strutted over to our table, sniffing the air like a bloodhound tracking a scent, and stopped right in front of her. “Hey, Fish Sticks! I didn’t smell you there!”
Those words sucked the air out of the entire cafeteria. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t look at Autumn. I just listened through the silence for her next to me, praying that she remembered to breathe.
I had always wondered when the rest of the school would figure out that joke wasn’t funny anymore. Or maybe it was something closer to hope. Hope that, with each passing year, people would forget. But in that moment, I finally understood that would never happen. Someone would say it at our twentieth reunion, and Autumn would have to explain it to her husband. Fish Sticks would get a cheap laugh, somewhere, for the rest of our lives. It was too easy. Too mean. And I found it piercingly unfair that someone like Mike Domski would never comprehend how much those two words destroyed my beautiful best friend.
Anger rose up inside me like lava. I reached for the closest object and hurled it at Mike. That turned out to be my slice of pizza, and it hit him square in the chest, leaving a triangle stain of oil and sauce and hot pepper flakes behind on his shirt before it fell with a splat on his brown suede shoes.
“Oops,” I said in my most unsorry voice. A bunch of people gasped, and I even got a few laughs.
Mike curled his lip. “Damn. You know what? I threw out the student council handbook Ms. Bee gave me. But I’m sure I saw a whole section about election rules and the kinds of stunts that could disqualify a candidate. Tell you what, Natalie — I’ll double-check if she has an extra copy and let you know.”
I rolled my eyes as Mike stalked off. But really, inside, I panicked. Had I ruined everything, just to defend Autumn’s honor? Had I handed the entire election over, the thing I’d been dreaming about and working toward for the last three years, to Mike Domski?
Tears welled up in Autumn’s eyes. “Come on,” I said, stuffing our things into my book bag. I didn’t want her to humiliate herself even more. “Let’s go to the library.”
“I’m so sorry, Natalie,” she whispered. “I hope I didn’t get you in trouble. I’ll die if you get disqualified!”
Autumn moved too slow, so I grabbed her hand and pulled her along. “You didn’t have to defend me like that,” I muttered. If she could have just ignored Mike like I did, this wouldn’t have happened.
She shook her head. “That’s what best friends do for each other,” she said with resolve. Autumn wiped her eyes with one hand, and with the other, she squeezed mine tight, the way I’d always squeezed hers.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_0f7e5399-f786-5491-9bd7-f5b044353dee)
I am not an every cloud has a silver lining type of person, but one undeniably good thing did come out of the original Fish Sticks debacle: It saved my friendship with Autumn.
