Addie on the Inside Read online

  Friday, After School

  Friday, and I’m meeting the gang

  at our favorite place to hang out.

  I ask DuShawn to come along,

  but he’s, like, “Your gang.”

  “Don’t say it like that,” I say.

  “Like what?”

  “Like it’s strange.”

  “Well, why you got to say ‘gang’?”

  “Why you got to say ‘got to say’?”

  And we go on this way until

  “You missed your bus,” I tell

  DuShawn and there’s Tonni’s

  mother waving and Tonni

  shouting, “You want a ride,

  DuShawn?” And DuShawn

  calling, “Yo, girl, wait up!”

  and to me, “See ya, Addie.”

  I watch him go

  and ask myself, “Now why

  is it you love school again?”

  It sure is not this part, this

  why-do-I-always-say-the-

  wrong-thing part, when I don’t

  even know if I’m saying the

  wrong thing.

  I pick up my

  backpack from where I’ve

  dropped it and call out,

  “See ya, DuShawn.” But

  he’s already gone. I hear him

  laughing, though.

  Thank goodness

  for Joe. When I call out “Yo!”

  he looks at me like I’ve grown

  another head.

  “Dude,” he says

  as I fall into step beside him,

  “you have been spending way

  too much time with DuShawn.”

  He decides I’m a “dudette”

  and not a “dude,” and this gets

  me laughing even after I

  tell him to stop, and Joe being

  Joe, he won’t, and that makes

  me feel good because it’s how

  we are, and even when I say

  something dumb I never have

  to worry I’ve said something

  wrong.

  Santa Doesn’t Live Here Anymore

  We are walking down Main Street in the little town

  of Paintbrush Falls, New York, where I have lived

  all my life, Joe since the age of four. It’s April, and

  winter’s bite is still in the air, but Santa doesn’t live

  here anymore. The Easter Bunny in his pastel vest

  has taken Plastic Santa’s place in the dreary display

  window of the Paintbrush Falls Electric & Hardware

  Store. “About time,” Joe snaps. “Santa must have

  been missing Mrs. Claus, and what about the elves

  and Rudolph and Blitzer and Madonna and Twister?

  Didn’t anybody notice Santa never made it back

  to the North Pole? We should have filed a report

  with the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to

  Plastic Santas!” “Are you going to rant like this

  the rest of the way?” I ask, and Joe says, “I might.

  ’Tain’t right, Beulah Mae. We got to look out for

  our little plastic friends.” His rant doesn’t end. He

  carries on in what he calls his hick-town voice,

  punctuating bad grammatical constructions with

  Beulah Maes and Jimmy-Bobs, his names for us

  in moments like this. I join in, doing my best to

  keep up. I know moments like this won’t last

  forever. One day he’ll move away and so will I.

  Someone else will have to watch out for our little

  plastic friends. Beulah Mae and Jimmy-Bob

  won’t live here anymore.

  Torn Red Leatherette

  This is my home away from home,

  this booth in the back of the Candy Kitchen,

  this torn red leatherette seat,

  this place where I meet up with my friends

  to talk and to eat.

  We call our meet-ups the Forum.

  We call ourselves the Gang of Five,

  although we were only four at first—

  Joe and Bobby and Skeezie and me.

  Now we are five or six or even seven,

  but it doesn’t matter who we are

  as much as where we are, and the fact

  of the tear in the seat just to the left

  of my left hand, the tear I touch

  as soon as I sit down, always there.

  I never say it, but I think it every time,

  how I have been coming here

  my whole life, thirteen years. How,

  except for the jukebox that’s gone,

  everything is the same:

  The way you can see your face reflected

  in the candy case just inside the door.

  Across the street, the view of Awkworth & Ames

  Department Store. The taste of the shakes.

  The size of the fries, long and skinny, like me.

  HELLO MY NAME IS, the name tags

  read, CHRIS or STEFFI or SAM or EDDIE.

  “Do you guys know what you want?

  I’m ready for your order.” And us?

  We are always ready.

  Skeezie’s Fangs

  The fries have all been salted and eaten,

  except for two Skeezie has tucked between

  his lips and canine teeth. “I vant to suck

  your blood,” he says for the third time.

  He has been doing this since third grade,

  so no one pays attention except Zachary,

  who is new and polite and doesn’t know

  that to love Skeezie is to ignore him.

  “Moving on,” I say as Skeezie sucks his fangs

  into his maw and his molars move into action,

  mashing and grinding and finding more fun

  in two sticks of starch than in Disney World

  and Six Flags combined. I remind myself

  to ignore him and repeat “moving on” when

  he belches and says, “Well, excuse you, Addie.”

  Maddening, really, but what can you do?

  “This is what I get for hanging out with boys,”

  I say with a sigh. “It’s an established fact that

  boys mature more slowly than girls.” The boys—

  except Zachary, see above—roll their eyes

  as I wonder why it is I do hang out with them,

  why I am not at the mall with an all-girl posse,

  applying lip liner at the Body Shop. Why I am

  here, preferring fangs dripping ketchup blood

  to lips all glittered and glossy.

  The Way the Forum Works

  I pick a topic, something really important such as What I’d Do for Love or

  How to End World Hunger,

  and then, after we’ve eaten our burgers and fries (a veggie burger for me,

  on a whole-grain bun)

  we order our ice cream and talk about the topic of the day. Well, to be

  honest, it’s often about school—

  something that happened or something that’s going to happen, like an

  election or a dance

  or what a teacher had to say or what we think is wrong and needs fixing,

  and that’s an endless topic.

  I write everything down, every word, even if it’s about ice cream or

  Skeezie’s french-fried fangs,

  because these are the minutes of our meetings and I only wish there could

  be minutes of every minute we live.

  Today we discuss the Gay Straight Alliance and the disgusting homophobic

  display put on by the boys

  running past room two-twenty-two, the pounding on the door and the

  shouting of names.

  We are all very serious, even Skeezie, because he knows enough to know

  that this is about Joe

  and Joe is right
here at the table. “I think,” says Skeezie, “that we should

  track down who did it and

  cut off their—” I cut him off, saying, “That’s a tad medieval, and one evil

  does not negate another.”

  Bobby says, “How about the Day of Silence Mr. D suggested?” I write it

  down, underlining twice:

  a day of no speaking to express solidarity with those who are silenced for

  being themselves.

  “I don’t get it,” says Zachary. “Why should anyone have to be silent about

  who they are? That’s so . . .”

  We wait. Is he going to say it? No way. My pencil breaks its point before

  Zachary makes his.

  He looks at each of us in turn. “That’s so ridiculous,” he says as the rest of

  us exhale collectively.

  Joe thinks Zachary is gay but doesn’t know it. I agree, but it isn’t p.c. to

  label, and anyway,

  “who cares” is the whole point. It’s decided we’ll do the Day of Silence,

  and I want to talk more

  with Joe as we head home together. But Joe’s walking with Zachary today

  and they’re talking video games

  and Skeezie says, “I’d like to see you be silent for a whole day, Addie!” And

  this is the way the Forum works.

  Writing it down

  is the way I make it real,

  the way I find my way

  into what it is I feel.

  The words on paper or

  computer screen

  tell me more than

  what I knew before

  I wrote them,

  help me remember

  what I’m afraid

  I’ll forget,

  let me keep

  what I don’t want

  to lose,

  say to me:

  You

  were

  here.

  So I walk home alone

  thinking about Joe and how it used to be

  before Zachary moved to the neighborhood.

  I like Zachary, don’t get me wrong, but

  I miss Joe when I’m walking home alone.

  I think of that poem from the book I read

  when I was little, the one that said, “I

  loved my friend. He went away from me.”

  Oh, I know Joe is still my friend and I’m

  just being silly, but I miss how we’d talk

  and how he’d blurt out “Ministry of Silly

  Walks!” and start slicing his legs through

  the air like a pair of psychotic scissors,

  unhinged and devil-may-care, shouting,

  “Keep up, Addie, it’s Monty Python Time!”

  I could never keep up with Joe, and yet

  somehow we’d always end up with our arms

  wrapped around each other’s waists, kicking

  like the Rockettes, or swaying like a couple

  of drunks before we even knew what that

  meant. Now I walk home thinking the kinds

  of serious thoughts Joe helped me to forget.

  Grounded

  When I get home from school,

  there in the front yard my dad

  is swinging the three-year-old

  from two houses down around

  and around. She has one arm

  and one leg splayed, reaching

  for the sky, her eyes squeezed

  tight, her mouth open wide,

  crying, “Look at me, I’m flying!”

  “Hey, Addie,” my dad says as I

  say nothing back but run inside

  to throw myself on the sofa

  and cry. It’s ridiculous, I know,

  how my body aches to be lifted

  and flown. But I will never fly

  again. I’m grounded. I’m grown.

  Kennedy and Johnson

  Cats have radar

  for girls who are thirteen

  and in tears.

  They come out from hiding

  or wake from their naps

  to rub up against you

  or jump in your lap.

  And even though they themselves don’t cry,

  they understand distress.

  They never ask why

  or what’s going on,

  they just present themselves

  as if to say,

  We’re here now, you’ll be okay.

  Kennedy and Johnson

  (those are my cats)

  are older than me

  and wiser, too.

  They don’t cry

  over what’s lost

  and never again will be.

  They don’t cry

  that they never had a dad

  who made them fly

  like me.

  10 Haikus : 2 Cats

  I’ve known Kennedy

  my whole life. “And who are you?”

  his eyes sometimes ask.

  He bathes his privates,

  then sweetly comes to kiss me.

  “In your dreams,” I say.

  The pillow was his.

  The sofa he would share, but

  the pillow was his.

  Kennedy looked at

  the new cat. He hissed. He spat.

  And then: That was that.

  Kennedy’s pillow

  Kennedy soon discovered

  was perfect for two.

  Now they curl in sleep,

  deep in contentment and dreams,

  their heads tucked under.

  They demand their food

  in the same high voices, then

  reject our choices.

  Like bookends they sit

  on each arm of the sofa,

  and we are the books.

  Johnson loves to lick.

  Kennedy loves to be licked.

  Two cats in heaven.

  What must it be like

  to move through your days always

  in step with a friend?

  The Girl in the Mirror

  The girl in the mirror holds her lifted hand

  at the back of her neck, fingering the unseen

  clasp to the necklace she has worn every day

  since Christmas. She considers her plain face

  framed by a drape of straight falling hair: no

  drama there, more a face that might be found

  on the cover of a novel set on the prairie

  than on a poster for a movie about, say,

  vampire lust.

  Why must she have her mother’s face? Her

  mother’s mother, neither plain nor a beauty,

  was always pretty and still is, in an old-

  people sort of way. The girl in the mirror

  furrows her forehead thinking about her grand-

  mother’s arrival the next day. She loves her

  grandmother but always feels a little smaller

  in her presence. Does her mother feel

  that way, too? Does her mother see herself

  as ordinary, plain?

  My fingers unclasp the necklace. It falls away

  into my hand. The girl in the mirror smiles

  as we remember the boy who first clicked the

  clasp, stepped back to check it out, and said,

  “You look nice.”

  Pretty

  My dad tells me I’m pretty,

  then laughs and says,

  “I guess all dads think

  their daughters are pretty.”

  Thanks, Dad.

  Questions I Ask Myself in the Dark

  What does Becca Wrightsman want?

  Should I let her give me a makeover?

  Why would I do that?

  Why am I even thinking about it?

  Why did Becca have to move back here?

  Why did she have to change?

  Does everyone have to change?

  Does DuShawn like Tonni more than me?


  What does he see in me, anyway?

  If he breaks up with me,

  will I have to give back the necklace?

  Why does Ms. Wyman hate me?

  Why do I stare at Ms. Watkins’ hair?

  Why do I notice what she wears?

  Will Joe always be my friend?

  Does my dad wish I was little again?

  Why do I act like I know everything

  when inside all I really know are

  questions?

  Love Songs

  The first week of April

  and Grandma’s in her Birkenstocks

  even though we had snow only last week. “Honey,” she says,

  “shoes are foot prisons, trust me. Feet are meant to be free.

  Now, let me look at you.” She’s shorter than me by an inch,

  which is news to both of us. It’s only been since the summer

  that we saw each other and I was looking up at her and she

  was looking down. The kitchen fixture reflects in her eyes,

  twin specks of light shining with the intensity of miners’ lamps

  as she turns the beams of her determination this way and

  that, digging for something, until “Eureka!” she cries. “I hit

  gold. I see it in your eyes, Addie.” “What, Grandma?” “Love,

  girl!” My face goes red hot as if it were a piece of dry wood

  her focused rays have ignited. “DuShawn, is that his name?

  Oh, Lyddie,” she says, turning to my mother, who is crushing

  garlic with the bottom of last year’s National Public Radio mug,

  “how much do you love that our Addie went and got herself

  a black boyfriend?” “Grandma!” I cry. “I didn’t ‘go and get’

  anybody, and it doesn’t matter that he’s black!” “Exactly my

  point,” she replies, and where have I heard that before. “This

  is what we fought for, marched for, Lydia, that it wouldn’t matter

  what color anybody’s boyfriend is. What about Joe? What’s his

  boyfriend like?” I am tempted to say he’s green with orange

  polka dots, but I tell the truth. “His boyfriend is in the closet,