Polly Read online

  “That’s cool,” I said. I dragged my Docksiders out of my locker and reached into them for my socks.

  “Well, and my sister’s in student government with Tina, so they’re close and all, too.” Tammy zipped up her sweat jacket, straightened the front of it.

  “They’re constantly over at her house,” Stacy said, materializing beside Tammy’s locker. Meagan stood close behind, nodding in agreement. Neither of them was smiling. I sat down on the bench behind them.

  “Wow,” I said. “So you already knew them and everything before drill team.”

  I slipped one of my Docksiders on my foot and yanked at the thick cord of shoestring.

  “Yeah, duh.” Tammy slammed her locker and the three of them disappeared around the corner.

  Now that I had talked to Stacy, Tammy, and Meagan, I felt their eyes on me when I was pulled out of line. I’d imagine their smirks and my legs would get rubbery, making me screw up. I didn’t look over at them. I didn’t have to.

  “What’s the matter?” Mom asked when she found me crying in bed in the middle of the night. I was having one of those big cries, the kind that leaves your whole body sore and tired.

  Mom switched on the light, and I pulled the covers over my eyes. I could make out her figure through the pale yellow of my bedspread.

  “Just nothing,” I said.

  Mom sat down on the edge of my bed. I could smell the floral scent of her night cream.

  “What’s wrong? Did you have a nightmare? Are you sick?”

  She put a hand under the covers and against my cheek. I pulled away and kept on crying.

  “I don’t like the drill team.” I was glad to say it out loud. I hadn’t even told Katie.

  “Honey, why? I thought you loved it.”

  “I don’t know, I just don’t like it. It’s just, it’s just that I don’t belong with them.”

  I had managed to stop crying somewhat, but my nose was running and my mouth tasted dry and salty.

  “What do you mean, you don’t belong?” Mom asked.

  I poked my head out from under the covers. Instead of looking at Mom I focused on my two Go-Go’s posters, which hung side by side over my desk. One was from the Beauty and the Beat album where they were wearing towels, and the other was from the Vacation album, where they were on water skis. Gina Shock was my favorite. When I grew up I wanted to be a drummer in an all-girl band.

  “What do you mean?” Mom asked again.

  “Everybody’s mean and I hate it,” I said.

  My tears came back. The Go-Go’s went blurry, and I scrunched up my face. Mom pulled me into her chest and put her arms around me. I cried some more, but not as hard as before.

  “Sweetie, why don’t you just quit?”

  I peeked up at Mom to see if she was being sarcastic. I had begged for three years before she agreed to let me give up piano lessons. Maybe drill team was different.

  “But my uniform,” I said. “I don’t think I’m allowed to quit.”

  “You don’t have to give anybody an explanation. But if you must, we’ll think up an airtight excuse.”

  She kissed the top of my head. I could hear William turning over in bed across the hall. I felt much better. Mom’s body was warm around mine. I wanted her to stay there until I got back to sleep, like she used to do when I had nightmares, but I was too old to ask.

  Quitting turned out to be easy. I told Mrs. Evans that the team was interfering with my piano lessons and soccer was going to start soon and I didn’t think I could do all of it. Mrs. Evans pulled a folder out of her desk with the names of the alternates. She studied the list before telling me to see if Karen Bridges would fit my uniform.

  Stacy, Tammy, and Meagan started up with me a few days later. At first it was little things, like when they saw Katie and me they made a big show of saying hi to Katie but not to me. Katie would roll her eyes and ignore them, like she had expected as much, but I was confused.

  There was more. Dirty looks in the hallway. Brushing past me and giggling when I was at my locker. In the lunchroom they stared at me and then whispered to one another and laughed.

  Whenever I saw them coming I pretended I was busy searching through my Le Sports Sac for something, or I made a beeline for the water fountain, or set my attention on a poster that outlined the dangers of smoking, all the time worrying that they were going to do something to me. I didn’t know what they might do, exactly, but I knew it was only a matter of time before something awful and humiliating happened.

  Two Fridays after I quit the drill team, Tommy Ward showed up at the roller rink. I saw him midway through “Angel Is a Centerfold,” right when Katie and I were singing the na-na part. He was standing with Ben Waters, who was in my Teen Living class. Mrs. Wood was always having to stop the class to tell Ben to stop talking and pay attention.

  I grabbed Katie’s arm and slowed down.

  “Oh my God,” I said. “Tommy Ward’s here!” I pointed.

  We skated off the main floor and over to the bathroom, being careful not to get too close to him.

  “You have to go talk to him,” Katie said, once we were safely inside the bathroom. She put a hand on the paper towel dispenser to steady herself. The strong scent of hair spray wafted over us.

  “No way! I don’t even know him! Plus, he’s with Ben, and he’s a total jerk.”

  “You have to,” Katie said.

  I peered at myself in the mirror. My hair was behaving for once, and I was wearing my favorite baseball shirt, white with royal blue sleeves.

  “You say something,” I said. Tommy and Katie had gym together, so she kind of knew him.

  “Should I find out if he wants to slow-skate with you?”

  A tall girl skated into the bathroom and up to the mirror. She pulled an eyeliner out of her pocket and went to work.

  I lowered my voice. “Okay, but make sure he’s not with Ben when you ask him.”

  Katie skated out of the bathroom, and I went into a stall. Someone had written SANDRA BELL CAN GO TO HELL! on the door. I smiled and hugged my ribs.

  Katie was back so fast that at first I thought she’d chickened out. She hadn’t. Tommy was going to meet me at the entrance to the main floor for the next slow song.

  “He totally knows who you are,” Katie said. “I just said ‘Polly Clark’. I didn’t even have to mention social studies.”

  The next slow song was the last of the night. For the thirty minutes that passed before it Katie and I ignored Tommy. He and Ben sat by the snack bar while we skated to every song without stopping. When I thought about what Ben might say to me in Teen Living class on Monday, I was almost sorry Katie had talked to Tommy in the first place.

  “Polly loves Tommy,” he would say, at the top of his lungs. Or “Polly Clark wants Tommy Ward bad.” Everyone in class would know, and then the whole school would find out.

  Finally the lights dimmed and “I’ve Been Waiting for a Girl Like You” came on. I skated over to the main floor entrance. Tommy was waiting there already. His white oxford shirt was unbuttoned at the top, exposing his gold chain.

  “Hey,” I said when I got up to him.

  Tommy took my hand and we skated onto the main floor. He wore tan rental skates that had orange numbers stamped on them.

  I had held hands with goober boys during slow skates before, but it had never been as thrilling—and my hands had never been as clammy—as now. Tommy wasn’t a good skater, so we were uneven. I’d pull out in front of him and then coast until I was beside him again.

  “Aren’t you on the drill team or something?” Tommy said about halfway through the song.

  I caught my breath and said, “I was, but I quit. It was sort of stupid.”

  “Yeah, it seemed kind of stupid to me when I heard there was gonna be a drill team in the first place,” he said.

  Kirsten Parker and Mark Wallace passed us. Mark was skating backward in front of Kirsten and they were kissing.

  “I know,” I said. “I don’t k
now why I signed up at all, I mean, it was really dumb.”

  “Yeah.”

  We skated around the corner in silence. I searched my mind for something to talk about.

  “How come I’ve never seen you here before?” I asked, instantly regretting it. Now he knew I’d been looking for him.

  Tommy shrugged, which made him lose his balance. He pitched forward and I put my free hand on his shoulder to right him.

  “I’m not the best skater,” he said.

  The song ended and the main lights were turned on. We dropped hands and skated to the edge of the floor in silence. Katie already had her skates off and was sitting on the floor near the entrance, putting her shoes on. Her lavender eye shadow had rubbed off of one eye.

  “See you on Monday,” Tommy said. He skated off in the direction of the rental counter.

  As soon as we were settled on the couch in Katie’s basement, our sleeping bags stretched out and Mrs. Ryan safely out of earshot, I filled Katie in on everything that happened while Tommy and I were skating. Especially the part about Tommy thinking the drill team was stupid.

  “He probably doesn’t like me though,” I said when I got finished.

  Katie took a sip of her apple juice, which we had poured into wine glasses.

  “Tommy likes you,” she said. “I can tell.”

  I looked at the block of wood that sat on top of the Ryans’ television. If you looked at it the right way it said Jesus. Otherwise it just looked like a block of wood with a bunch of sticks glued to it. Katie’s family was Catholic. She went to church every Sunday except for in the spring and fall, when we had soccer games. Sometimes when I slept over on Saturdays I went to church, too. I thought it was boring, but it was fun to get dressed up. My family didn’t go to church. When I asked my mother what religion we were, she said, “If anybody asks, just tell them we’re Christian.”

  Katie was a “blessing,” as Mrs. Ryan liked to say, born after her older siblings had grown up and moved away. “‘Blessing’ is another way of saying ‘accident,’” Katie told me in private. I didn’t know if I was a blessing or not. Mom said she was constantly worried when I was a baby. I didn’t sleep through the night for eight months and it hurt her when I breast-fed. Sometimes I cried for hours without stopping, no matter what Mom did. She was sure there was something wrong with me. She said good things, too, like how she could tell I had a sense of humor because I laughed whenever she said “Boom,” but mostly Mom talked about how unprepared she was as a new mother.

  “I bet Tommy kisses you by Friday,” Katie said.

  I clinked my glass down on the coffee table, causing my apple juice to slosh over the rim.

  “Do you think he would try to kiss me in school?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” Katie giggled.

  I had seen some of the eighth graders kissing in school. The thought of a teacher seeing me kiss someone was too embarrassing to even think about. Not only that, but I didn’t know how to French kiss. I had only regular kissed Ricky Stinson and then Derek Lindsey in the sixth grade. In seventh grade you were supposed to use your tongue.

  Katie and I talked about kissing a lot. French kissing wasn’t a sin, according to Katie. Since I didn’t listen in church and I hadn’t so much as opened a Bible, I had to take her word for it. According to Katie, anything up to intercourse wasn’t a sin, but if you had sex before marriage you were a goner.

  It scared me to think of the number of people who would trade an eternity in hell just to have sex. When people on TV had sex, they didn’t talk about how they were going to hell. They just did it.

  I was pretty sure Mom and William had sex before they got married. They were already living together, after all. I told myself it was probably okay if you got married eventually. Mom and William had to wait to get married because Mom and Dad didn’t bother to get a divorce until William came along. If getting married as soon as you could didn’t make up for premarital sex, nothing would.

  Monday after first period I found a note in my locker. The note had been pushed through the slots, and it was stuck partly behind my picture of Adam Ant. Katie’s locker was three away from mine, and I waved the note at her.

  “Is this from you?” We often left notes for each other in our lockers, but Katie usually pushed her notes through the space on the side, not through the slots in front.

  “No,” Katie said. “What if it’s from Tommy!”

  I unfolded the note. Katie slammed her locker shut and came toward me.

  You can’t seem to figure out why we don’t like you, and you need to know for your own good.

  I turned away from Katie and walked a few lockers down, focusing on the steady stream of people passing by to keep the tears from coming. This was worse than the time Tina pulled me out of the drill team line and said that I had obviously never taken a dance class.

  Katie came up behind me, and I stuffed the note into my pants pocket.

  “What’s it say?”

  “It’s Tammy and those guys saying why they hate me,” I said.

  The bell rang. I looked over at my locker door, which was standing open. Kids were pushing their way around it, and it swung back and forth against the momentum of backpacks and arms. There was my picture of Adam Ant pouting into his microphone. Suddenly it seemed stupid to have a picture of Adam Ant.

  “Let me see,” Katie said.

  “I have to go.” I ran back to my locker and grabbed my backpack. I was going to be late, and I had to go to the trailer for social studies. I jogged through the crowd to the doors leading outside. It was cold, and I had forgotten my coat inside my locker again.

  I reached my seat just as Mrs. Morgan began handing back the homework. I glanced over my shoulder to see if Tommy was there and then back before I could see if he was looking. I pulled the note out of my pocket and read the rest of it.

  You act like you think you’re pretty but you’re not.

  A lot of people think you’re weird.

  It’s embarrassing to be seen with you.

  You still go to the roller rink like you’re in the sixth grade.

  Everybody knows why you’re not on the drill team anymore.

  It was signed Stacy, Tammy, Meagan and a lot of other people. At the end there was a P.S. that said Write back so we know you got this and understand why we hate you.

  I opened my notebook to a clean sheet and wrote Go to hell! in large block letters across the center of the page. How did Stacy, Tammy, and Meagan know I still went to the roller rink? Or what it was like to be seen with me? Or whether I thought I was pretty? Mrs. Morgan placed a U.S. map with the state capitals on the overhead, and I began to color in the block letters.

  After I finished I turned around in my seat to look at Tommy again, but he was writing something down in his notebook. I didn’t look again, and after class he left without saying anything to me.

  I cut through the math wing to get to my Teen Living class so I didn’t have to go through the locker commons. Ben Waters was out sick. It was the first good thing that had happened all day.

  I hid out in the library with Katie during lunch (“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said when she pressed me about the note) and avoided the locker commons for the rest of the day. I told the teachers who noticed that I didn’t have my books that I had accidentally left them at home.

  I had managed not to run into Stacy, Tammy, and Meagan in the halls, but I had to go to my locker to get my coat and my books after last period. I was so busy barging toward my locker, hands clenched into sweaty fists inside my pants pockets, that I didn’t even notice Tommy coming toward me. He raised a narrow forearm to stop me from plowing into him, and I jumped back.

  “Hey, Polly,” he said.

  “Hi.” I pretended to be interested in two eighth graders who were stomping on a Hershey bar a few feet away.

  Then he just said it, really fast: “Will you go with me?”

  The final bell of the day rang just as I said yes, drowning
me out, but he seemed to understand.

  “Okay,” Tommy said. “See you later.”

  Just like that it was over and he was walking away, his light blue ski jacket flapping open behind him. I ran the rest of the way to my locker, forgetting about Stacy, Tammy, and Meagan. Katie was there, waiting.

  “Tommy just asked me to go with him! I’m going with him now!”

  Katie squealed, and we jumped up and down together.

  “I thought you liked spaghetti,” Mom said at dinner.

  Instead of eating I was twisting my napkin in my lap. “I’m not hungry, I guess,” I said. “I don’t know why.”

  William picked up the salt. “What’s going on?” he said.

  I wasn’t sure if I was anxious because I was going with Tommy or if it was because of the note. I decided I’d rather tell them about Stacy, Tammy, and Meagan.

  “These girls on the drill team are being mean to me.” I shoved a forkful of spaghetti in my mouth.

  “Why?” Mom asked. “I thought you quit.”

  “I did quit. They just hate me now, I guess.”

  “Don’t talk with your mouth full,” William said.

  “What are they doing?” Mom said.

  I swallowed. “They pick on me in the halls. And today they wrote me a note.” My voice broke on the word note, and I ate another mouthful of spaghetti.

  William had stopped eating. “Can we see it?”

  I looked down at my balled-up napkin. “I don’t have it.”

  “Honey, those girls don’t mean anything,” Mom said. “They’re just jealous of you.”

  I shook my head no, keeping my eyes down.

  “There’s only one way to deal with people like that,” William said. I looked up. He was leaning toward me across the table, his fork in his right hand. “You ignore them.”

  “I can’t. They go wherever I go.”