But of course they hadn’t.
As soon as I walked into my classroom,
not long before the first bell,
Katie and Ben ran over to me.
“You were so embarrassed yesterday,” Katie said.
“It was hilarious!” Ben said.
Which was so mean!
He was laughing at me!
I didn’t think things could possibly get worse.
But then Katie,
who is supposed to be my friend, said,
“Why did you get so embarrassed?
It’s just a play.”
She thought for a second and said,
“Unless you do have a crush on Nicholas,
in real life.”
“I don’t!” I said.
“You do keep all his pictures in your desk,”
Katie said. “You’ve shown me.”
“I keep them because they’re good!” I said.
“That doesn’t mean anything!”
“Maybe it means you have a crush on him,
deep down,” Katie said.
“I do not
have a deep-down crush
on Nicholas!” I practically shouted.
I wanted to cry.
If Katie didn’t believe me,
maybe no one would!
And why did she have to say that in front of Ben?
Right away, he started chanting,
“Eleanor has a crush on Nich-o-las!
Eleanor has a crush on Nich-o-las!”
In that horrible moment,
Ainsley and Pearl walked through the door.
I saw Ainsley
and I heard “crush”
and I put the two together.
I wanted to stop Ben’s chanting.
I needed to stop Ben’s chanting!
Because everyone was listening
and everyone was staring—
and so I did something very stupid
and very mean.
I said, “I don’t have a crush on Nicholas,
but Ainsley has a crush on Adam!”
Everyone turned and stared at Ainsley.
“You have a crush on Adam?” Katie said.
Ainsley’s face flushed pink
and her mouth dropped open.
Then she said, “What?”
“Eleanor said you have a crush on Adam,” Ben said.
I wanted to cry out, “No, I didn’t!”
But everyone had heard me!
“How did Eleanor—” Ainsley said.
“I never—” Ainsley said.
Then she narrowed her eyes
and turned and glared at Pearl
and said, “You told her? That was a secret!”
“I’m so sorry!” Pearl said.
Then Pearl turned to me
and gave me a look she’d never, ever
given me before.
That look said,
How could you?
and
I was wrong to ever trust you.
My heart ripped in pieces.
“I didn’t mean—” I started to say.
“I was just joking!” I tried to tell everyone.
But nobody listened.
Because Adam and Nicholas were
walking into the room.
“What happened?” Adam asked,
when everyone stared at him.
And that’s when Ainsley started crying
and ran from the room.
Pearl ran after her.
And I covered my face with my hands.
I hated that I hadn’t kept that secret.
My whole body felt sweaty.
And I kept thinking,
over and over,
I am going to throw up.
I really am.
I froze there
for two seconds.
Then I ran out of the room, too.
I had to follow Pearl and Ainsley.
I had to apologize.
I figured they’d probably be in the bathroom.
So I ran there first.
A kindergartner was standing on a step stool,
washing her hands.
I rushed past her
and checked all of the stalls.
They were empty,
except the one farthest from the door.
I looked under the door of that stall
and saw two pairs of feet:
Pearl’s sneakers
and Ainsley’s glittery flats.
I felt a tiny bit of relief,
seeing those four feet together.
Maybe Ainsley won’t hate Pearl forever
because of me, I thought.
Then I banged on the door.
“It’s Eleanor!” I said loudly,
so they’d be sure to hear me.
“I’m so sorry!
I am so, so sorry!”
I heard a sniffle.
Then I heard someone whisper something.
It sounded like “oh away.”
Then Pearl called through the door,
“Ainsley wants you to go away.
I want you to go away.”
I felt like I’d been punched in the face.
Then I started crying.
My best friend,
Pearl,
wanted me to go away.
And it was all my fault.
“I didn’t mean to do it!” I said
in a high and shaky voice.
I squeezed my eyes shut
and tried to think
about how I could fix this.
“I’ll keep taking it back,” I said.
“I’ll tell everyone I didn’t mean it.
I’ll put up posters
saying Ainsley barely even knows Adam.”
That made Ainsley cry louder.
“I want to move back to Orlando!” she wailed.
“Eleanor, you have to go away!” Pearl yelled.
And so I turned to run away.
I saw then
that the kindergartner was still on her stool,
with water still gushing out of the faucet.
She was staring at me with huge eyes
through the mirror.
“You’re wasting water!” I told her,
in a voice that was much too mean.
Which was another bad thing I did!
Because I was upset!
She turned off the water, quick,
and I finally ran from there.
I didn’t even bother going back to class.
I went straight to the school nurse instead.
I needed her to send me home.
I did not have to lie to the nurse.
Because I was actually feeling terrible.
“My stomach hurts,” I told her. “My head, too.
And I just want to go to sleep.”
“Which side of your stomach hurts?” she asked.
“The whole thing,” I said.
She took my temperature then
and called my mom.
“Eleanor doesn’t have a fever,” she said.
“But she doesn’t feel good. Or look good, either.
I think she’s coming down with something.”
Then the nurse listened for a second
and said, “I’ll let her know.”
She hung up the phone and told me,
“Your mom will be here very soon.
Why don’t you go to your cubby
and gather what you need.”
I felt a little lighter then.
I was going home!
The hallway was empty
because everyone else was in class.
I felt relieved, not seeing anybody.
But that didn’t last long.
Because
after I got to my cubby
and started gathering everything I thought I’d need,
I noticed some pale pink fabric
wadded up
in a back co
rner.
My heart fell then.
I knew exactly what that fabric was.
It was the sparkly sweatshirt Ainsley had given me,
so very nicely.
The one her mom had made.
I lifted it slowly out of my cubby
and unwadded it.
It had been so neat and smooth and new
when Ainsley gave it to me.
Now it was wrinkled
and covered with greasy cookie crumbs
and marked up
all over
with ink.
I tried to brush off the crumbs,
but the chocolate left streaks.
And my eyes filled with tears.
I should’ve taken care of that sweatshirt!
I should’ve brought it home
and kept it safe in a dresser drawer
and worn it today
and said to everyone,
“Ainsley’s mom made this sweatshirt!
Isn’t it great?”
Instead of saying she had a crush on Adam!
She’d given me a present, just to be nice.
And I’d ruined that present
and her life!
I stopped brushing crumbs off the sweatshirt
and licked my finger
and tried to get out the chocolate.
And the ink.
That’s how my mom found me:
scrubbing at my pale pink sweatshirt
with a finger covered in spit.
“There you are,” she said. “How are you feeling?”
I shook the sweatshirt at her.
“You have to get the stains out!” I said.
“You have to!”
She looked at me funny.
“I mean it!” I cried.
She put her arm around me
and said, “Let’s get you home.
You can explain on the way.”
So I explained, slowly, on the way.
A lot of it was hard to say.
I didn’t know how she’d react
when I got to the part
about announcing Ainsley’s secret.
I thought she’d get mad at me
or say, “Eleanor,”
in a very disappointed tone.
But she didn’t say anything at all.
She just looked very sad
and very serious.
When I’d finished my whole story, she said,
“There’s a lot to fix, isn’t there?”
I nodded. There was a lot to fix.
“We might as well start with the sweatshirt,”
my mom said.
“But your dad is the stain magician, not me.”
“Right,” I said.
I’d forgotten—that was true.
And then my mom said,
“We’ll see what he can do.”
Being home
wasn’t great.
My mom had to get right on a work call.
“I’m sorry about this,” she said.
“But it’s important.
And it’s been planned forever.”
I wished, wished, wished
I could play with Antoine
while Mom was shut inside her office.
Or curl up on the couch
with Antoine beside me.
But he was gone.
I curled up on the couch anyway,
without him,
for a little while.
But just lying on the couch,
thinking,
I kept seeing Pearl’s face in my head—
that moment when she realized
she should never have trusted me.
And I kept remembering Ainsley wailing,
“I want to move back to Orlando!”
I had to jump off the couch
and stop thinking.
But then I didn’t know what to do.
I could watch TV, I thought.
That’s what I usually did,
as a special treat,
when I was sick.
But I knew I couldn’t actually watch TV.
Because I wasn’t actually sick.
And I definitely didn’t deserve
a special treat.
I stood for a second near the couch,
just looking at the turned-off TV.
It’s impossible at school, I thought,
and it’s impossible here.
I’ll never be happy again.
That’s when I heard our front door open.
My dad called out,
“I’m home!”
Even though it was very early
for him to leave work.
I ran to him,
and he gave me a hug.
“Your mom called me
right when you got home,” he said,
while I was still wrapped in the hug.
“I gather things aren’t going well.”
I nodded,
my face pressed against his shirt.
“Right,” he said,
letting me go.
“Let’s talk.
But first I must gather
my stain-fighting supplies.”
I ran and got Ainsley’s sweatshirt.
I’d folded it neatly
and put it on top of my dresser.
Then I met my dad in the kitchen.
He was setting sponges
and cornstarch
and seltzer
and spot-removing sticks
on the counter.
“Different stains require different techniques,” he said.
Then he reached for the sweatshirt.
“Hmm,” he said,
examining the different stains.
I held my breath,
thinking he might say it was ruined forever.
Instead he said,
“I’m up to the challenge.”
Then he went to work on one of the stains
with cornstarch and a sponge.
“Did I ever tell you,” he said,
as he scrubbed at the stain,
“about the worst thing I ever did to your mom?”
“No,” I said,
very shocked.
“You did something bad to Mom?”
He nodded
and added cornstarch to the sweatshirt.
“It was before we were married,” he said.
when we were seniors in college.
Her alarm clock had broken.
She had a job interview the next morning.
She asked me to set my alarm
and call her in the morning, to wake her up.
So she wouldn’t miss her interview.”
He glanced at me,
then said,
“She really wanted that job.”
He started rubbing very hard on a stain
with the spot-removing stick.
“What happened?” I asked.
Now he gave me a very guilty look.
“I forgot,” he said.
“I didn’t set my alarm.
She slept through the interview
and didn’t get the job.”
He looked so sad,
I thought he might actually cry.
And this had happened forever ago!
“She trusted me,” he said.
“She needed me.
And I blew it.”
I felt very bad for him then.
Even though I knew
she’d married him in the end.
“What’d you do?” I asked.
He poured a little seltzer on the sweatshirt.
“She was mad,” he said.
“Understandably!
I apologized many times.
I bought her flowers.
I offered to call the interview people
and explain.
Nothing worked.
Until”—
he looked at me and grinned�
��
“I stood outside her dorm window one night,
with a boom box raised above my head.”
“What’s a boom box?” I said.
“A portable stereo,” he said.
“It was old-fashioned even then.
But it was like a scene
from a movie we loved.
I played one of her favorite songs
on that boom box,
very loudly.
And I sang along.”
“With your voice?” I said.
Because even though I hated when Pearl said it,
he did sound like a garbage truck when he sang.
“With my voice,” he said.
“I attracted quite a crowd.
She had to forgive me
and let me in.
Just to shut me up.
And the rest,
as they say,
is history.”
He shook out Ainsley’s sweatshirt then.
“We all make mistakes,” he said.
“The important thing
is to keep trying to make up for them,
for as long as it takes.”
He held the sweatshirt up for me to see.
It looked pasty
and splotchy.
“My stain-fighting magic needs time to set,” he said.
“And then we need to wash the whole sweatshirt
in hot water.
Do you want to wear it tomorrow?”
I nodded.
“And every single day for the rest of the year,” I said.
“If I have to.”
He nodded
and said, “I like the way you’re thinking.”
The next morning, before the bell,
I was too scared to walk into my classroom.
I didn’t want to see anyone
who knew what had happened
the day before.
I wanted so badly
to hide in the bathroom.
But I couldn’t!
Because what if Pearl and Ainsley were
back in their stall?
Or
what if the kindergartner was there?
The poor, cute kindergartner
that I’d yelled at?
Instead of the bathroom,
I stuck my head in my cubby
for a very long time,
pretending to look for something.
I heard crowds of kids walk by.
I ignored them all.
I ignored the pain in my neck
and back and shoulders, too.
Until the warning bell rang.
And I had no choice.
I had to go in.
As soon as I stepped into the classroom,
I noticed Adam and Ben
at the back of the room,
tossing a squishy football
and laughing.