"Is too." He turned his grin on me. I shook my head. "You've lost your touch. Is Kim in the changing room?"
***
4Anime: Japanese animation. Jackson is obsessed with it, but me--not so much. Boring, boring, boring. Still, I've seen a lot of anime movies, because when Jackson and I were together, he always, always got to pick the film.
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"I'm here with Dempsey. She has a gift certificate. I'm playing chauffeur."
I exhaled. Dempsey is his sister. She's an eighth grader. The Tate middle school has a different campus from the upper school, so I hadn't seen her since Jackson and I were going out-but suddenly, there she was next to me, looking at the lime angora "charmant" sweater in my hand and saying, "Hi, Ruby, wow, do you like that sweater? It's way sweet. Ooh, you have the coral one on already, that looks so cute on you, are you gonna buy it? Because if you're not, do you mind if I try it on? I have a gift certificate, did doofus-head tell you that?"
"Hi, Dempsey," I said.
"I haven't seen you like, wow, since I was a seventh grader," Dempsey babbled. "I love your hair. Do you think I should get bangs? I don't think I can work bangs. It takes a face like yours to work the bangs." She grabbed the front of her hair and pulled it up so that the ends hung down over her eyebrows. "What do you think?"
"You could work the bangs," I said. "And I'm not getting either of these angoras. They're all yours."
But she had already lost interest in the angoras and was touching an argyle sweater vest. "Is argyle out yet?" she asked me.
I shrugged.
"And what do you think about Jackson being single again?" Dempsey asked.
I looked at Jackson. He was staring at his feet with his hands shoved in the front pocket of his sweatshirt.
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He wasn't single before winter break. He was with Kim. He'd been with Kim since last spring.
"News to me," I said, my heart thudding.
"He and Kim broke up at lunch today," Dempsey explained. "I thought you'd know."
Why would she think I'd know? Did Dempsey think people like Cricket and Kim still talked to me?
"'Goodbye, Dempsey." This from Jackson, with a threat in his voice.
"I was hoping you might tell me details," she went on, ignoring him. "He wouldn't explain what happened. I know it has to be his fault, though. No offense, but I don't know why anyone would go out with him in the first place." Dempsey fingered a rayon shirt. "He's not even cute and his room is disgusting."
That was untrue. Jackson was desperately cute. Dark brown hair curling at his neck. Soft freckles. Tall. Raspy voice. Narrow hips.
"She really likes you," I said to Jackson, deadpan. "You must be a great big brother."
"Don't listen to anything she says," he told me.
"I'm telling the truth!" cried Dempsey. "You told me yourself it was over with Kim!"
"My mom is waiting for me," I said, grabbing a stack of heinous sweaters off the table. "I gotta go."
***
I could hear my mother long before I reached the changing room, where she was still sitting. Elaine Oliver is one of those people who thinks she needs to yell into a cell
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phone and cannot imagine that anyone else might hear her conversation. "I'm stiff from that yoga class Juana made me go to!" she was shouting, presumably to Dad. "I did something to my groin area.... Sure, you can massage it later."
I opened the door to the dressing room.
"I gotta go, Kevin, Roo is back. Oh, will you get her some benzoyl peroxide at the drugstore when you pick up the paper towels? She's got some pimples that look like they could use some treatment.... Love you too. Bye."
I tried on ugly sweater after ugly sweater, not listening to my mother's commentary, not looking at myself in the mirror, thinking: Jackson and Kim broke up.
Just today at lunch.
While I was eating salad with fried Chinese noodles.
While I was talking to Meghan about whether I should play lacrosse this spring.
Ten months ago, he had left me for her.
Ten months ago, she had left me for him.
Eight gazillion therapy sessions later, I finally didn't care. They were together. That was how the world was.
I could handle the world that way.
And now, it wasn't that way anymore. Everything had changed while I was drinking peach iced tea in the refectory.
***
Though I managed to avoid the poodle turtleneck in favor of the navy hoodie, I was too weakened by the situation to stop my mother from buying me the coat with anchors.
35
4.
I Become a Baby CHuB
Oliver,
Welcome back from break.
The Senior Committee wants to have an extra CHuBS this year!!! Since the winter one was so successful. During the week-long sale, we raised more than $2,000 for the shelter. If we have a new one on Parents' Day, we can do some good business. But here's the deaclass="underline" none of the seniors has time, what with prom and graduation planning, so we want the juniors to run it.
We thought of such a cute name for you guys: Baby CHuBS. It could have an Easter theme.
What do you think??? Come find me after class and we can chat.
--Gwen Archer
--written on white notebook paper with ballpoint, in round handwriting; folded in thirds like a business letter and passed to me under the table during French V.
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the reason a popular senior girl like Gwen Archer was writing me a note in first period French V was this: due to circumstances semi-beyond my control, I was the member of the junior class with the most bake-sale experience. Every year before the winter holidays, the Tate Prep upper-classmen organize this Charity Holiday Bake Sale (CHuBS) to benefit a homeless shelter in downtown Seattle; every year all students are also required to log a certain number of community service hours. I joined CHuBS when I was a sophomore, shockingly behind on service and deluded by romantic fantasies of baking for Jackson. I had this idea that I would secure his undying love by means of chocolate-cream-cheese goodness. Not so much.
Anyway, I did well in CHuBS even though I'm completely unskilled in the kitchen. I had good ideas for cupcakes, which was important because despite its charitable mission, the sale is really a competition: whose adorable creation can best attract the gluttons of the Tate Prep Universe? Girls bring in reindeer cookies with pretzels for horns. Seven-layer ultimate fudge. Santa Claus cupcakes. Sugar cookies baked onto Popsicle sticks.
December of junior year, Gwen Archer-now head of CHuBS and one of those hearty Future Doctors of America so prevalent at Tate Prep-corralled me into a second season of bake-sale insanity. Volunteers were scarce, and Gwen asked me to recruit. She must have been so blinkered into her world of Senior Committee, tennis team and community service perkiness that she didn't bother to read the things written on the walls of the girls'
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bathrooms or notice the blue-green spots of leprosy1 that covered my body.
Meghan hadn't done a single service hour all year, and we're required to do forty, so she was on board. Nora, although she is completely the person who volunteers for all kinds of do-good projects through her church without even trying to snag school credit for them, agreed to help too. She likes to bake. So the three of us had worked the December bake sale together junior year.
Archer's idea of CHuBS was all about marshmallow sculptures. She forced us to make them. Did you know that with a pair of kitchen scissors, some white frosting, an assortment of adorably small candies and many, many hours of labor, ordinary marshmallows can be transformed into miniature snowmen who sit atop cupcakes, wearing jolly gummy hats, M&M buttons and maniacal licorice smiles?
They can.
I myself have made them in Archer's enormous yellow kitchen. I have also bought one, eaten half of it and thrown the rest in the garbage. Because marshmallows, unless heavily toasted in s'mores, are not as good as I thought they were in first grade.