That Sunday, Momma drove to Sheridan to peruse the shops for last-minute pageant supplies. I was stuck with Taffeta, playing Candy Land.
I didn’t usually mind playing games with my sister. But that afternoon, I felt like every minute wasted could have been the best minute of my life if only I were with Mandarin.
All weekend, Friday morning kept coming back to me like a scene from a movie. The feel of the cotton, velvety and weightless and slightly sticky with sap. Mandarin spitting and laughing as a piece went into her mouth. Spinning with our eyes locked, her hands gripping mine. Ms. Ingle’s face when I’d stolen back into the classroom, still flecked with white fuzz.
“I’m glad to see the two of you getting along,” she’d said when she kept me after class. “How’s the tutoring going? Have you come up with any ideas for Mandarin’s service project?”
I tried not to think about the reality of Mandarin’s request. All that mattered, for the moment, was that she had asked.
Now I sat on Taffeta’s pink shag carpet, navigating confectionary kingdoms like Gum Drop Mountain and the Candy Cane Forest. With my sister, Candy Land took ages. She counted her moves out loud, stubbing her index finger on each square. Every five minutes, she’d call a time-out for a bathroom break or a snack. Sometimes she would space out entirely, murmuring a song to herself in Italian, her eyes fixed on some glittering molecule only she could see.
It was like being hurled backward into my dismal pre-Mandarin past. No wonder I was feeling mutinous.
Once Taffeta finished her turn, I drew a card. “Uh-oh,” I said, holding the card so she couldn’t see it. “Bad luck for you. On your next turn, you’ve got to go backwards.”
“No way,” Taffeta protested. “There’s no cards like that.”
“Candy Land put out a mass email to all game owners. I guess you haven’t heard. Now the cards have different meanings. When people whose ages are double digits get red cards, the next player has to move in reverse. Sorry about that.”
“That’s not fair!”
“It’s the new rules. I can’t help it if you didn’t get the email.”
“You’re lying, Grace! There wasn’t any email.”
“How do you know? You can’t even read yet.”
“I can too!” Taffeta insisted. “Stop making fun of me, or I’ll tell.”
“Do you think Momma will care?”
Taffeta’s chin puckered, and for a second I thought she was going to cry. But then she whacked the game board with her fist. It flipped into the air, scattering cards and pieces.
I sighed.
“Hey, Taffy, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to ruin the game.”
She wouldn’t look at me.
“Fine.” I stood up. “Be right back.”
I returned with one of those giant chewy SweeTarts, salvaged from my rock collection box. Momma used to use them as pacifiers on our road trips.
“Listen,” I said, flipping the candy between my fingers like a magician’s coin. “I was just trying to spice things up. I didn’t mean what I said about Momma.” I paused. “Anyway, Momma’s pretty clear about what’s important to her.”
“I’m important,” Taffeta said.
“Of course you are.”
“I’m more important than you. She likes me better than you.”
How did little kids know exactly what hurt the most? When I didn’t reply, she crept over to me on all fours and took my face in her hands, swiveling it toward her. Her bottom lip stuck out like a pink piece of gum.
“Grace, I’m sorry. Don’t be mad! Momma likes us the same.”
I dislodged her hands, trying not to let the hurt show on my face. “No, you were right. I’ll admit it.”
Determinedly, Taffeta shook her head.
Sometimes I could hardly believe my sister was real. She looked more like a doll than a flesh-and-blood child, with skin that seemed to glow from the inside, tiny dimpled hands, eyes as flawless as the brown glass marbles used for trophy eyes. I had to remind myself there was a person inside, listening, observing.
“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 the result was still a catastrophe: lopsided in the front, so short in the back it barely covered my underwear. My limbs poked out like winter branches. Crossing the cafeteria to get my diploma in front of all the other students and parents, I had shriveled with shame.
Little Miss Washokey, Wyo.
My onstage strip show at age six.
Enough said.
In front of the mirror, I tugged my jeans low on my hips, as I had done in private so many times. Instead of a T-shirt, I put on one of the camisoles I used as pajamas, tight and purple with skinny straps. I brushed my hair loose over my shoulders. I had enough sense not to attempt anything as complicated as eyeliner or mascara, but I liked the sparkle when I touched a dab of Femme Fatale Misty Frost lip gloss to my eyelids.
Deliberately avoiding eye contact with myself, I practiced my saunter in the remaining minutes before I swooped up Taffeta and left for school.
“Why are you dressed like that?” she demanded.
“Dressed like what?”
“In your pajamas.”
“It’s not pajamas. It’s just a shirt. Isn’t a person allowed a change once in a while?”
Taffeta mulled it over, her shoes scuffling madly in her effort to keep up with me. “I guess so,” she said. “Your hair looks pretty. But not your belly stuck out like that. Momma would say that was obscene.”
“Bellies aren’t obscene.”
“Then what is?” she wondered.
“It depends on who you’re asking.”
Momma claimed that first impressions were the most critical part of every pageant: “Act like that first step you take onstage is the most important step of your life.”
So after Taffeta scampered away, I didn’t pause at the edge of the lawn, mustering up my nerve to cross it. Instead, I tucked my hands into the pockets of my jeans and sauntered forward, my chin tipped up, my line of sight just above the featureless smear of faces on either side of me.
I faltered just once: when I saw the agate stone I’d dropped on the steps Friday morning. It glittered like Cinderella’s slipper, but nobody had taken it.
To everybody else, it was just a rock.
I scooped it up and dumped it into my tote before pushing through the double doors.
In homeroom, I tried to sit like Mandarin: leaning back in my seat with my legs stretched out in front of me. But then my shirt rode up a few inches. I felt the air hit my bare stomach.
Am I overdoing it?
That moment of doubt was all it took. As if someone had flipped a volume switch, I became acutely aware of the gaping stares, the not-so-hushed whispers, the laughter. Did they notice how nervous I was? I stole a quick glance at Davey Miller. He was engrossed in his English text, blinking harder than usual. I clasped my trembling hands under the table, crossed my ankles. The top of my jeans bit into the flesh of my hips. I wanted to tug them up, to put on the sweatshirt balled in my tote bag. I felt eyes creeping over my skin like spider legs.
How does Mandarin do this every single day?
Mercifully, the loudspeaker beeped. As the other students settled down, I felt charged with a sudden surge of affection toward Mr. Beck.
“May I have your attention, please. May I have your attention, please.”
Several people groaned. Business as usual.
“Good morning, everyone, on this magnificent Monday, April sixteenth, with the temperature in the low seventies. This is your principal, Mr. Beck. First news of the day: we’ve come up with a theme for the big spring dance.”
The whispers rose to a crescendo, then quieted completely. For once, everyone was interested in what Mr. Beck had to say.
At our high school, dances were huge. Mainly because Washokey evenings were particularly bland. Kids attended keggers out in the sticks, shot pool at the Old Washokey Sip Spot (where minors were allowed until ten), or lounged around the A&W. That was just about it. Dances, however, were the epitome of the High School Experience. I’d always wanted to attend one. Alexis & Co. had gone to homecoming, but I had pretended to be sick that week to avoid the awkwardness of inviting myself along. I might have sat with them at lunch, but we hadn’t hung out beyond the cafeteria since sixth or seventh grade.
“The theme’s going to be …” Mr. Beck paused for dramatic effect. “Cowboy!”
The class immediately toppled into chaos, shouts, laughter, the screech of desks. And though the school’s use of “Cowboy” as an allegedly original theme insulted my intelligence, I felt swept up in the excitement.
“Hey, Alexis,” I called.
Alexis turned to Paige, ignoring me. “Hey, isn’t Brandi on the dance committee?”
Paige nodded. “If we want, you and me and Samantha can come in and help decorate. It’ll be so exciting!”
Alexis glanced at me before scooting her desk farther away.
It hurt. It really did, in the seconds before I remembered myself. Hurriedly, I readopted my insolent expression, my casual pose. Those girls didn’t matter. I was nothing like them.
When the bell rang, Ms. Ingle called to me as I hurried from the classroom. I pretended not to hear her. I wanted to get to math early, because I didn’t want to run into Mandarin unprepared.
It didn’t matter. Because she was standing right outside.
She wore her lavender sweater, the one from the day she’d confronted me at the soda machine. It occurred to me that I was wearing purple too, that we matched, although she wasn’t showing nearly as much skin as me. Her thumbs were tucked into the back pockets of her jeans, her hair slung over one shoulder.
I took a deep breath and walked over to her.
“Morning,” she said. She didn’t mention my skimpy clothing, my loose, unbraided hair. “I missed you this weekend.”
I beamed like crazy, even though it didn’t make any sense. Mandarin had my phone number. We all had everybody’s; the Washokey directory was more of a pamphlet than a book.
“Hey, what’s her deal?” she asked suddenly.
I followed the tilt of her chin to Ms. Ingle, who was waving at us from the doorway. I looked away quickly. “Wants to talk about service project stuff, I guess.”
Mandarin waved back at her, pretending to mistake her gesture for a hello. “Geez, lady,” she muttered. “Drop it already. We’re on it, y’know?”
She turned to me. “Ms. Ingle can be such a bitch. Don’t you think?”
I hesitated. Ms. Ingle had never been anything but nice to me. She was nice to everybody, in that wishy-washy marshmallowy pushover way. Never in a million years would I ever consider her a bitch. But I wasn’t about to contradict Mandarin. Not this early in the game. So I nodded. “Yeah, Ms. Ingle’s a bitch.”
To my surprise, Mandarin smiled condescendingly. “No she ain’t. Not really. Although she is always up in everybody’s business. But it’s her job, I guess.”
“Oh,” I said. “Right.”
“Ready to go?” She reached out and took my arm. Any bewilderment I felt sailed away as she led me down the hall toward math, through an ocean of staring students, all of them probably wondering where in the world I’d suddenly come from.