“Miss Miranda, Happy New Year!” Annemarie’s doorman was standing just outside the building’s polished doors. He smiled and waved me in.
On the way up, it hit me that it was truly strange to come over here without talking to Annemarie first. But at the exact same time I got nervous about that, I also got this other feeling, which I can only describe as love for Annemarie’s elevator. The wood paneling, the cloth-covered stool in one corner, the little bell that went off every time we passed another floor. It was all so nice and cozy that I thought it would be wonderful to stay inside it forever, or at least to sit down on the little stool and close my eyes for a while. The whole thing was beyond weird. And then the elevator stopped on Annemarie’s floor, and of course I got out, because that’s what people do when the elevator gets to their floor.
Annemarie answered the door in her robe, with wet hair.
“Hi,” I started. “I just called to say Happy New Year, and your dad said—”
She smiled. “Come on in.”
It was the best morning. Annemarie showed me her Christmas presents. She got all kinds of cool art stuff, and we ended up spreading it all over the dining room table and drawing comic strips on this special comic-strip paper that came with stickers for the talking bubbles and the thinking bubbles. And then her mom showed us how to make origami frogs, and I was actually good at it. Meanwhile, her dad kept bringing in these plates of bacon and, for me, French toast strips I could pick up with my hands.
Then Mom called. I had completely forgotten about her. She was frantic, she was angry, and she was coming to get me. Even Annemarie’s dad looked mad.
“Better get your coat on,” he said when I hung up the phone, even though my mom couldn’t possibly get to Annemarie’s apartment that fast. So I waited by the door, overheating in my coat, and Annemarie waited with me.
“So, about what happened at Jimmy’s …,” I said. “You know, I really never meant… what he thought I meant. Not for one second.”
She looked at the floor. “I totally believe you. And I don’t know why I said that thing I said, about… money. It was stupid.”
“It’s okay.” I was so grateful that she had something to apologize for that it didn’t really occur to me to think about how it had actually made me feel. But I have thought about it since then. It didn’t make me feel good.
* * *
We heard the elevator’s ding and I opened Annemarie’s front door before Mom had a chance to ring the bell. I thought I might be able to escape without Annemarie’s parents talking to her.
No such luck. “Jerry?” Mom called out, and Annemarie’s dad came rushing over saying, “Oh, you’re here. I didn’t hear the bell—”
“I’m so sorry about this,” Mom said.
“No, I’m sorry. I had no idea—”
“It’ll never happen again—”
“—always check with you first.”
They cross-talked for a while, then hit one of those natural breaks in the conversation and both turned to look at me.
“Let’s go,” Mom said coldly, and I said, “Thanks for having me,” and Annemarie’s dad smiled at me, but only because he’s the nicest person on earth.
The elevator opened right away, so there was no awkward waiting. On the way down, I knew I should apologize, but I just waited for Mom to jump all over me. Instead she burst into tears.
Which made me cry. So we both cried through the lobby, past the doorman, and out into the sunlight, where we magically stopped. She took a deep breath and looked at me. “I was scared,” she said. “When you didn’t come back, I got really scared. Don’t ever do that again.”
I nodded.
“Okay,” she said. “What now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe a movie?”
So that’s what we did. We went to the movies, and ate candy and popcorn, and held hands for a few minutes on the way home.
The laughing man was at his regular post, doing his kicks into the street. When he saw us he yelled, “Smart kid!” But having Mom there made it different, like walking down the street with a blanket wrapped tight around me.
Richard was leaning up against our building, reading a newspaper.
“Hey!” he said. “We had a plan. Did you forget about me?”
He made a sad face, and Mom said, “Oh, no! How late am I?” and then she looked at me and we both started laughing.
Richard said, “Seriously. Would it kill you to give me a key?” And Mom shrugged and said it was only three-thirty and she didn’t much feel like going upstairs anyway. So we turned around and went to eat at the diner, which was full of people just waking up and having breakfast.
Things You Realize
It was 1979—a new year, a new decade, almost, but school was still just school. Jay Stringer was still a genius, music assemblies were still boring, and Alice Evans was still too shy to admit when she had to go to the bathroom. The fourth grade’s violin performance had only just started, and already Alice was squirming in her seat next to me. Jay was on my other side, somehow reading a book while listening to the world’s worst music.
I located Sal’s blond head a few rows ahead on my right. I stared at the back of it for a while, trying to see if I could make him turn around with the sheer power of my brain waves, but it was hard to concentrate with Alice doing a Mexican hat dance in her chair. I tried to make a face at Annemarie, who was on the other side of Alice, but Annemarie seemed fully absorbed by the music. She’s extremely non-judgmental that way. So I went back to looking at Sal.
Directly in front of me was Julia. She was obviously as bored as I was—her head kept bobbing around. And then she turned and looked at Annemarie. I glanced over and saw that Annemarie’s eyes were still on the stage. Julia watched Annemarie. And I watched Julia watching Annemarie. And what I saw were eyes that were sixty-percent-cacao chocolate, a face that was café au lait, and an expression that was so familiar it made my whole body ring like a bell. Julia’s look was my look. My looking at Sal.
And suddenly I knew three things:
First, it was Julia who had left the rose for Annemarie.
Second, Julia cared about Annemarie, but Annemarie didn’t see it. Because I was standing in the way.
Third, Alice Evans was about to pee in her pants.
I turned to Alice. “Hey,” I said, “I have to go to the bathroom. Be my partner?”
Sometimes you never feel meaner than the moment you stop being mean. It’s like how turning on a light makes you realize how dark the room had gotten. And the way you usually act, the things you would have normally done, are like these ghosts that everyone can see but pretends not to. It was like that when I asked Alice Evans to be my bathroom partner. I wasn’t one of the girls who tortured her on purpose, but I had never lifted a finger to help her before, or even spent one minute being nice to her.
She stopped squirming and looked at me suspiciously. “You have to go?” she said. “Really?”
“Yeah.” And in that moment, I wanted nothing as much as I wanted Alice to feel safe with me. “Really.”
I leaned forward in my seat and waved my arm up and down so that Mr. Tompkin turned to look at me from his seat at the end of the row, and I spoke over the laps of Jay Stringer and Colin, who were sitting between us.
“I have to go to the bathroom.” These words felt like some kind of sacrifice, a precious offering to the universe. I didn’t know why, but Julia’s look had given me this total determination to get Alice Evans to the bathroom before she wet herself.
“Now?” Mr. Tompkin whispered.