me think that the writers are trying to tell us
something—
is what I would say if I were writing an essay about
Free to Be…You and Me
on a test, which I would not be
because that would be too interesting.
Like when—
this is a SUMMARY—
a new kid moves in and he’s worried about making
friends and all that but then he meets his neighbor,
who is a girl, and she says she has no friends either
and neither does this other kid she plays with. Well,
since we all have no friends, the new kid says, and
we all like to play together, maybe we ought to start
a club.
That’s funny, right?
I mean, they all say they have no friends but they have
each other.
That is an INFERENCE—
an inference gets extra points on a test.
Well, last year there was no Quinn.
She was in the fourth class,
and I didn’t know anyone in the fourth class.
There used to be three classes until there were so
many kids,
too many kids for three teachers to handle.
So they made a fourth one, and somehow
all the kids I never knew anyway
ended up in the fourth class.
This year I am in the fourth class,
and Fiona and Sara—
the best friends I made in kindergarten, after the
playdate with superhero-princess
Lilly with two l’s—
are in a class together.
They only play together now,
at recess.
Only take dance together and play soccer together.
Soccer was always their thing
and not mine.
All those girls high-fiving and running so fast
in a group.
I never knew what to do or where to go
and I’m not good at losing.
Dance was my thing for five minutes
before singing became
the only thing.
That’s it, THE END for everything else.
Now Fiona and Sara are in Friendship Club together,
and not a made-up friendship club,
a real one,
run by the school!
They get to skip recess once a week and do something
together.
It’s like Girl Scouts, my mom said
when we got the letter.
Only I didn’t know we ever got the letter.
She decided for me.
I doubt it’s for you, she said later,
after I’d found out about it.
After it was too late.
I believe most things she says but
maybe not this one thing.
Everyone wants to be in a friendship club.
And I love Girl Scout cookies.
Frozen Thin Mint cookies.
I watch Fiona and Sara leave lunch a few minutes early
for Friendship Club.
And I make a CONNECTION to
Free to Be…You and Me,
something else you get extra points for on a test.
Didn’t you get invited to join, Izzy? Sara asks me
on her way out.
I shrug because my real answer is too complicated
and because she looks so happy to be going,
whether I have been invited
officially
or not.
I turn away and say
Hey, Quinn, maybe we should start a no-friend club,
like in the play.
Maybe, she says, if I can be president.
She says this in a presidential voice.
Quinn’s a little bossy. But she’s organized and very
good at pretending.
Outside of Quinn, the only organized person I know
is my dad, and he is terrible at pretending.
I’m glad that Quinn is both.
I didn’t think that was possible.
She can be president.
I’ll be the entertainment.
Bonus points for creativity.
When someone stands in for your real teacher,
they are the substitute or,
as we say in fourth grade,
the sub.
Sometimes—most times—it is someone terrible
who yells a lot and reads a picture book when you
are supposed to be doing something productive like
working on your Colonial Fair project.
And not a good picture book that makes you laugh
A picture book that should never have been a book
at all.
It is maybe about a kid and a dinosaur and a grandma
who doesn’t look or talk
anything like a real grandma.
She has an old-fashioned hairdo and says there, there.
Makes you wonder what the big deal is about
writing books,
when bad books can stand in for good ones.
But today the substitute is pretty, with long hair and a
shiny engagement ring.
She asks us a lot of questions about ourselves and tells
us some things about herself.
She is thirty-four and has a yellow Lab
named George Washington.
Not George. George Washington.
As in, Do you need to pee or poop, George Washington?
That is what the substitute actually said.
She writes her name on the whiteboard.
Miss O’Dell.
She sounds like a character in a book.
(And not a dinosaur-and-grandma book.)
During snack, she asks me how I think she should do
her hair for her wedding,
and I suggest a wrapping side braid,
and she seems to really like that idea.
I feel excited for her wedding and wonder if I will ever
see her again, if I will ever know
how she wore her hair
in the end.
We are going to do a math marathon with another class,
you guys, she says.
A mathathon!
Mrs. Soto would not ever call us you guys.
She would also not be excited enough about a math
marathon to call it a mathathon.
Mrs. Soto likes things the way they used to be—
chalkboards and colored chalk and time for a
handwriting lesson, even—
with three perfect lines, one dotted and the others
yardstick-straight—
which is why I like her.
Who doesn’t like things the way they used to be?
Except a mathathon sounds kind of exciting,
an exciting new name for something that
used to be boring.
So boring that every time we do it, I daydream about
Jackson Allen tripping over the leg of a chair
and into a big table of tempera paint.
Because how funny would it be if he tripped and fell
into paint in front of everyone?
Pretty funny.
But things like that only happen on dumb TV shows
and inside my head during math facts.
We go to the gym.
A good place for athletic-sounding math, but we are
there for more space and not for exercise.
That’s fine with me. The change of scenery is enough.
Only the scenery comes with another class.
Fiona and Sara’s class.
Miss O’Dell and her sparkly ring
divide us into groups,
me with Fiona and Sara.
Quinn with Jackson Allen and Lilly with two l’s.
Division.
We are supposed
to test each other on multiplication
facts,
which drives me crazy because I keep forgetting to
memorize them.
I get distracted at night with reading books, and my
mom quickly quizzes me on the 2s and 3s
and signs the paper and turns out the light.
Can’t deal with the big ones tonight, she says, and I go
to sleep feeling guilty feelings about skipping
the big ones.
(She does not say there, there.)
But I am excellent at the small ones.
And especially bad at the 12s.
Every time you forget one,
the whole group does jumping jacks, Miss O’Dell says,
pulling her hair into a bun.
A bun would be a nice wedding hairdo too, I think.
Mathathon! she says for the second time, winking at me.
Her wink makes me feel something but not
less nervous
about doing math with my old friends.
Let’s just do the twos and threes, Fiona says.
These are the first words Fiona has said to me all
school year,
but it doesn’t seem like she knows that.
Yeah, and the elevens.
Definitely the elevens,
Sara says.
We all laugh because we all know that 11 might be
about as easy as multiplying 1s.
11 × 2 = 22
11 × 3 = 33
11 × 4 = 44
We talk really slow so we don’t run out of easy
especially funny.
Eee-levvvv-uhn tiiiiiiimes siiiiiiix, I say.
Siiiiixty-siiiiiiiiiiiix, Sara says.
I am laughing the kind of laugh with Fiona and Sara
that I used to laugh, when things were the way they
used to be.
I look sideways and see that Quinn is zooming
through the facts and laughing with Jackson Allen
and Lilly with two l’s, which makes me a little bit
mad because what is so funny about Jackson Allen
except his face?
Then I feel bad.
Guilty, like I do when my mom signs the practice
sheet.
Guilty for wishing Jackson Allen would fall into paint
in front of everyone.
Guilty for hoping Mrs. Soto needs another day to
recover from whatever is wrong with her,
for liking this sub so much.
Guilty for laughing with Fiona and Sara.
Guilt, I think,
is when something feels good and bad
at the same exact time.
Slow-talking old friends substituting for fast-talking
new ones.
I need to do jumping jacks to shake off the feeling.
Let’s do the twelves, I say.
Do you see this?
What does it look like to you?
A mountain…or a molehill?
You agree. It is a mountain.
No? You think it’s a molehill?
You think it’s a small bump?
A small matter of licking your hand and patting it
down and turning the bump back into
normal, patted-down hair?
You think maybe I didn’t try hard enough?
Didn’t ask Quinn to try?
Lilly with two l’s, even?
Didn’t run into the smelly school bathroom and stick
my head under the sink?
Didn’t squeeze paper towels filled with school sink
water directly onto the bump?
You think maybe I didn’t end up having to go to the
nurse’s office for mismatched
clothes on account of all the molehill water that had
accumulated on my BRAND-NEW picture day outfit?
It was purple, my BRAND-NEW picture day outfit.
Now it is sopping and covered in paper-towel lint.
It would have looked nice with the blue-and-white
background of the pictures my mom
ordered weeks in advance.
We chose it for that exact reason.
Because it would look just perfect with the blue-and-
white background.
You know what does not look just perfect with the
blue-and-white background?
A sweatshirt that says Welcome to the Jungle.
A sweatshirt that has monkeys swinging from vines on it.
A just-in-case sweatshirt someone donated to the
nurse’s office just in case a kid with a giant wet bump
on her head needed to change into it on PICTURE DAY.
My mom ordered the A package.
Not the B package.
Not the C package.
Not the D package.
Not the E package.
The E package only has the class picture.
The A package has one million copies of the same picture.
One million copies of the same Welcome to the Jungle,
monkeys-swinging-from-vines,
wet-head,
giant-mountain-bump picture.
It is a mountain bump.
Unmovable by school sink water.
So you agree.
We are on the same page.
(I do not make mountains out of molehills.
It was a mountain in the first place.)
Is it good? I asked my mom early this morning
in her hurry.
It’s good, Mom said.
Any bumps? I asked.
No bumps, Mom said.
Ahem.
There is a fairy tale in Free to Be…You and Me
that is nothing like
other fairy tales.
We watch it in class just before recess and it is a very
old-fashioned-looking cartoon
and not nearly as beautiful-looking as Cinderella.
It’s kind of ugly to watch, actually, and I am
glad we won’t be performing it at the end-of-year play.
We’re only doing the parts with singing.
But Quinn and I cannot help acting it out
on the playground
while the boys play wall ball and while Fiona and Sara
watch them play wall ball,
when they used to play wall ball
themselves.
I am Princess Atalanta and Quinn is Young John and
they are racing—all the men in Atalanta’s village are
racing her to see which one beats her.
The one who beats her gets to marry her.
In the end they tie, because Atalanta is fast and smart
and doesn’t want to get married.
Doesn’t want to clean the house all day and night,
waiting for some prince and an uncomfortable glass
slipper to come along.
She can fix things, Atalanta,
can even fix the race
itself,
after all.
She can’t bear the idea of marrying someone who can
run fast but who maybe can’t do
one other interesting thing.
But Young John is interesting and
Quinn does a very good job of having a deep
Young John voice.
Let’s travel the world, Quinn says
after we pretend-race and pretend to cross
the golden finish line
in a pretend tie.
I’ll go by ship, she says.
And I’ll go by horse, I say in a
high-pitched princess voice.
Never mind that I am a princess who can run fast and
fix things.
I do a high-pitched princess voice anyway.
Should we talk about telescopes and pigeons?
Quinn asks.
I snort.
What? I say, laughing so hard because Quinn is still
talking in a very low Young John voice.
That’s what they say, she says,
starting to laugh hard too.
I know, I say,
gasping.
They became friends! she says, practically screaming
with laughter.
Friends! I say.
We are laughing so hard for no reason except that
telescopes and pigeons are funny topics of conversation
for a princess.
They never get married in the story.
That’s the point.
They go their separate ways to explore the world.
We hop onto the playground spinner
and stand face to face while it goes in circles.
Everything is blurry as we spin.
Blurry wall ball game.
Blurry old best friends.
Blurry teacher’s aides yelling at
blurry kids to remember their coats.
It is time to go inside.
You’re a good actress, I say to Quinn.
You too, she says.
A funny princess, she says, grabbing my hand.
Telescopes and pigeons, I say,
holding on tight,
and we laugh all over again
until Mrs. Soto shushes us back into our seats.
At the end of the cartoon fairy tale,
they say that no one is certain if Princess Atalanta and
Young John ever get married.
They say it is only certain that
they are friends
and that they are living
happily ever after.
Who: You!
What: Sara’s Sweet Dreams Slumber Party!
When: Friday night at 7!
Where: 1 Licorice Lane
(just kidding, same old address but sweeter)
What if: Quinn isn’t invited?
How: will I know if she is or she isn’t?
Why: are birthday parties so stressful?
The doorbell is a gumdrop.
There is a candy-heart path to the basement,
red licorice strings wrapped around the railing.
At the bottom of the stairs,
I plop my sleeping bag down in the
cotton candy corner!
Our sleeping bags, rolled into soft logs
and piled into a heap,
are part of the decor,
part of the game of Candy Land that has come to life
in Sara’s finished basement.
Little candy-colored lights crawl up the columns,
zigzagging the ceiling into a sky of
candy-colored stars,
making their way back down again almost to the floor,
plugging in tight to the outlet
next to the snack table.
We make candy sushi out of
Swedish Fish and Rice Krispies Treats
and Fruit by the Foot.
We dance and sing and make music videos and take