My stomach turns. There is Snow White, two bunnies, a nest of tiny bluebirds, and six dwarfs.
Grumpy is gone.
CHAPTER 7
“Uh, hi, Jackson. It was really great to see you and meet your wonderful sister. By the way, I’m pretty sure the darling cherub stole a tiny glass Disney dwarf that is important to me for very mature and rational reasons and I was wondering if I could get him back? Siblings, am I right?”
Yeah. That’ll totally work. He’ll probably say, “I was wondering where this little guy came from!” and pull out a box with Grumpy safely swaddled in dodo down. “I went ahead and polished up his hat and fixed the chip at the tip of his pickaxe, too. I hope that’s all right.” And then he’ll tell me that he’s always wanted to go out with someone who wears bigger T-shirts than he does.
“You didn’t tell me you know the new kid.” I jump as Maggie bangs her lunch tray on the table.
“You mean Jackson?” I say it like there are tons of new kids she might be referring to, not like I’ve just been watching him across the cafeteria, making his way out with Max Cleave and another senior.
“He told my brother you were the first person he met here. He said you were really helpful.”
“Helpful? I’m not sure I was helpful. My mom made me come with her to meet them. You know how she does that. It’s so annoying.” False. Meeting Jackson was the least annoying thing she has ever asked me to do. “Why’s Max hanging out with a sophomore?”
“Max wants him to play baseball next spring. They need a new second-base inner-fielder or whatever because what’s-his-butt graduated and Max doesn’t think the kid with the furry beard is any good.”
“I think he mostly plays tennis.”
Maggie shrugs. All sports are the same to her. Once I said I was going to Tyler’s hockey game and she said, “In the winter?”
“What’s he like?”
“Jackson?”
“No. Max,” she says sarcastically.
“Oh, right. He’s nice.”
Maggie frowns at me. “‘Nice’?”
“I mean he’s friendly. And funny.” She keeps looking at me. “I don’t know. Obviously better at making friends than I am?” She is still looking at me. “I can introduce you to him.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you met him?”
“I thought I mentioned it to you.”
She looks skeptical but lets it go. “Maybe you did and I forgot.”
I breathe a sigh of successful avoidance.
Then she adds, “Don’t you think he’s kind of cute? The new kid?”
“Oh. I never really thought about it,” I say. Now she sighs, because she thinks I never think about it.
It’s not that I don’t think about it. It’s that I think about it and then I think of all the reasons not to think about it.
CHAPTER 8
When we were in middle school, Maggie and I kept toothbrushes at each other’s houses. It was the only thing we couldn’t share if we decided at the last minute to sleep over. Maggie would have gone without brushing or just finger brushed, but the routine was too firmly etched in me to skip it, even for a day. Mine at her house said “GEW” in permanent marker. Hers at my house had a yellow mini hair band wrapped around the handle to identify it, in case the bite marks on the end weren’t enough.
Everything else, though, we could share: pajamas, pillows, face soap, phone chargers, stuffed creatures, plantar wart treatments, hairbrushes, and clothes. Now the idea of trading tops or bottoms with Maggie is ridiculous. Besides the monumental size difference of our upper bodies, I am three and a half inches taller than Mags, and three and a quarter of that is just legs. It doesn’t seem like that big a difference because I am always slouching and she is always standing up tall like she’s trying to see over someone’s head at a gun control rally.
The last time I wore anything of Maggie’s besides a headband was the first weekend after school started in ninth grade. Maude and Mavis had moved in but hadn’t become the hoarding slobs they are now. I went to Maggie’s after school on Friday, which rolled into Saturday which rolled into Sunday. It seemed too much to wear my Friday clothes all the way into Sunday brunch, so I borrowed a tank and a jean jacket when her mom sent us out for bagels. I was still wearing one of the bras I’d gotten when Mom took me shopping that summer (the last time we ever shopped lingerie together), a pale blue eyelet balconette, cute, not sexy, which in retrospect should have already been dumped in the giveaway pile. I was either too naïve to realize that the thing didn’t fit anymore, or too embarrassed to admit it, or both.
Maggie was already off gluten, so I was in charge of choosing a bagel assortment for the Cleave family while she went to the coffee shop next door for drinks, and Max waited with the car running. It would be a lot of pressure even if her family didn’t have strong opinions about everything.
“You look like a woman in need of a bagel.” The guy behind the counter was probably a year or two older than us, with a mass of thick curls held back by his bagel-shop visor. If this bagel-shop thing didn’t work out, he could probably be an Abercrombie model. He gave me a hungry-looking half smile.
“I am in need of a bagel. I need a dozen bagels, actually.” I returned his half smile with a whole one.
“A dozen comes with thirteen. Most people think it’s gonna be twelve, but here it’s thirteen. You get a bonus bagel.”
Now I would probably say, “It’s called a ‘baker’s dozen’ and it’s not that special. Everybody does it. Fourteen bagels would be a bonus.” But his cheekbones were so chiselly and his arms looked like they’d been kneading a lot of heavy bagel dough, and I was still hopeful about boys and breasts and bagels. “I love bonus bagels!” I chirped.
I asked for two each of the classics: plain, poppy, egg, sesame, everything. But for the others, would Maggie’s mom like flax and apple? Pepper parmesan? Was her brother a cinnamon raisin guy?
“Do you have someone to share all these bagels with?” He puppy-dogged his eyes at me. I ate it up.
I leaned over the counter guessing what kind of bagel eaters the Cleaves were, and liking that this guy was flirting with me, even if his lines were terrible. Pepper parm, cinnamon raisin, this jacket must look good on me. Another sesame, can’t go wrong with plain, my hair really does look better when I haven’t washed it. Whole wheat’s boring, try something new, I wonder where he goes to school. I couldn’t decide, except to decide to keep not deciding.
Parents and teachers always loved me. I got along with most girls, unless they hated Maggie enough to be mad at me, too. But boys, especially older ones, had never noticed me. Or at least they never seemed to notice I was a girl. But maybe that was changing. Or maybe it was just this kid in the bagel shop who liked how I was independently deciding the breakfast fates of up to thirteen people. Bialy, honey oat, salt, maybe he’s here every Sunday.