“Olivia, you were a sacrificial lamb,” Pearl says.
“What’s that?” Ashley says.
Pearl looks confused. “I’m not a hundred percent sure.”
DANNY BRINGS THE PIZZA
We go on venting about Couchman and Dern and the other teachers who have made our lives miserable since seventh grade. Danny texts that he’s been calling up to us and can we please get the Danny’s-favorite-curse-word-that-I-won’t-repeat pizza?
Watch your tone, I text back. I know stuff.
Holding incriminating information over Danny has given me a lot of power.
Bea and Navya climb halfway down the ladder and grab the pizza and a two-liter of Sprite from my brother, who shoves it at them and storms away. I don’t know if Olivia or Pearl are aware of his “dealings,” so I keep my mouth shut about it.
Some of the girls on our lacrosse team vape. I want to take them home and hide them in my mom’s closet and make them watch her cry herself to sleep, worrying about my brother. Then maybe they’d stop. But who knows? Kids don’t always care about their parents’ feelings.
“What grade is Danny in now?” Pearl asks.
“Eleventh.”
“Does he still hate you?”
“I don’t know,” I say before changing the subject.
We inhale the pizza and take turns trying not to backwash into the Sprite bottle, because Danny wasn’t considerate enough to bring cups.
“So can we get everyone to stop hating Olivia?” I ask.
They all say yes.
“It’s a biological function,” Navya says. “It happens to everyone.”
“Not everyone,” Olivia says.
“Okay, half of everyone.”
“What if instead of a podcast—which is seriously embarrassing, Molly—we just start a whisper campaign?” Bea asks.
“What’s that?” I say.
“We just quietly start telling girls we know, until it eventually gets out. And, yes, Olivia, it’s still embarrassing, but even the boys will understand the position you were in.”
“They have moms,” Pearl says.
I think we may have worn Olivia down. I’m pretty sure she wants to get back to science and her normal life. “And the good thing is, summer is coming and nobody will know about this at your STEM camp,” I say.
Olivia’s face seems to relax a little with that comment. “Go ahead. Do the whisper campaign.”
We’ve just gotten permission to gossip, which is a very liberating feeling.
Navya eats all the cheese off Bea’s pizza, and Bea eats Navya’s crusts. That’s some serious friendship.
Olivia gets another big group hug before everyone goes home to wash dirty lacrosse clothes or eat ice cream or study for math or fume about the dress code. I’m fuming at myself for letting a camping trip cloud my judgment.
LUNCH BUNCH
Pearl isn’t the only one who asks if Danny still hates me. Things got bad when Danny started middle school. Things were always a little bad—he was never nice to me or my parents or Tibby or anyone, really. But he had his good days and bad days. Middle school for Danny was all bad days.
Mom got calls to pick him up for fighting, for mouthing off to teachers, for cursing. I can’t remember all of it. That’s when I started hiding in my room.
In fifth grade, Ms. Mary, the school counselor, invited me to the mysterious Lunch Bunch. She said it was a special invitation and we would get pizza delivered and two ice cream cups each. We played board games and listened to any song we wanted and hung out with other specially chosen kids. It was the best part of every Friday.
At first, we talked about family vacations and shows we liked to watch. Then Ms. Mary told us about how her friend was dealing with cancer, and Jack Reese started talking about his dad’s cancer. Then Ms. Mary told us about two famous people getting divorced, and this kid Alex talked about his parents’ divorce, and then Ms. Mary talked about how annoying her big brother was, and I blurted out all the things Danny was doing to make our house noisy and stressful and sad.
Olivia was at Lunch Bunch sometimes. Her parents were getting divorced too. Her mom and Alex’s mom had the same lawyer. Olivia beat me at Connect 4 literally every time.
One Friday morning before school, Mom asked me if I had made my lunch yet.
“I don’t need to make it. I have Lunch Bunch,” I said.
Danny stopped chewing his bagel and said with his mouth full, “You’re in Lunch Bunch? That’s for mental cases.” He turned to Mom. “Why is she in Lunch Bunch?”
Mom grabbed his arm and squeezed. “You will not talk like that.” Spit came out of her mouth she was so furious.
“Talk like what? Lunch Bunch is for crazy people.”
It all hit me. Lunch Bunch wasn’t for special kids. It was for troubled kids.
The kid whose dad has cancer. The kids whose parents are getting divorced. The kid whose brother is destroying her family.
I never went to Lunch Bunch again.
BY NINE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING
It’s nine o’clock in the morning, and the whispers from the whisper campaign are louder than our marching band’s Memorial Day parade rehearsal.
And now the entire school knows: Olivia needed to tie her sweatshirt around her waist to hide the giant period bloodstain on her new white jeans. When Couchman saw her, she was going to call her sister to ask her to bring new pants. When Couchman told her to put her sweatshirt on, because he couldn’t handle seeing her shoulders, she told him no.
Everyone understood why.
Olivia got hugs and knowing glances and sympathetic smiles all day from the girls. She got silence from the boys. Dead silence.
But in middle school, when you’re dealing with something as horrifying as period on pants, silence from boys is a dream come true.
TALKING TO A SEVENTH GRADER ABOUT A DIFFICULT TOPIC
The high school and the middle school share a bus. I’ve already explained one of the obvious reasons that it is not a good idea (Danny selling pods to twelve-year-olds).
On the first day of school this year, I saw my neighbor down the street standing in the bus line, looking like she was going to throw up.
“Are you sick, Mary Kate?” I asked her.
“I think so,” she said.
Mary Kate is a year younger than me and we are good neighborhood friends, but she’s sheltered. Her parents don’t let her watch TV, much less own a phone. I understand there are a lot of scary things out there, but sheltering a kid that much is going to end up backfiring. For example, she’ll be so terrified to ride on a bus full of older kids, she might just puke.