“You got something inappropriate on there?” Jackson says.
“No! Just kind of, um, private.” As soon as I say it I worry it sounds like I’m either sending or receiving nude pictures. I blurt out, “Not pictures, though!”
“Oh-kaaaaayyyyy.” Now it definitely sounds like it’s pictures. But I can’t think of anything else to say that won’t make it weirder, so we just stand there outside math in silence.
“Auf wiedersehen, I guess.” He shrugs.
There are still six minutes before school starts and I don’t want him to auf wiedersehen. I say the first thing that comes to my mind: “I’m trying out for volleyball.” No, I’m not. Why would I say that?
Jackson says, “Volleyball?”
“Some schools in our athletic conference wanted to add field hockey, so all the schools had to bump volleyball to winter.”
“Nice pun!” he says. I look blank. “Bump?”
“Right! But I probably won’t make it. I mean I definitely won’t be on varsity. Maybe not JV, either.”
It is unlike me to be this self-deprecating, but I already decided I’m not going to do it, because I would not be caught dead in a volleyball uniform, and because there is way too much bouncing. So I’m definitely not going to be on the team that I just said I was trying out for.
“Are a lot of people trying out?”
“I . . . I have no idea, actually.”
“So why do you think you won’t make it?”
“I don’t know. I just didn’t want to assume.”
“You should have more confidence in yourself.” He says it in a funny, whiny voice, like the way a beautiful mermaid girl on a Disney show would talk to her friend who looks like a sea lion. The minute bell rings, but he doesn’t go. “Repeat after me: I am.”
“I am.”
“The greatest.”
“The greatest.”
“Volleyballerina.”
I snort. “Volleyballerina.”
“Who ever graced the halls of Kennedy High, so help me Olympic committee.”
“Who ever graced yeah whatever.”
“Say you’re going to make it.”
“You’re going to make it.”
“Say, ‘I, Greer, am going to make the team.’”
I roll my eyes at him, but he doesn’t budge. We stand there facing off, and I have a feathery feeling, like a tiny butterfly just poked her antennae out of a cocoon in my stomach. Finally, I say, “I, Greer, am going to make the team. Damn it,” I throw in for good measure.
“That’s the spirit.” And he bumps my side with his side, and I am pretty sure I let out one of those ridiculous breathy sighs like when the mer-prince gives the mermaid a pearl and she falls in love with him.
The start bell rings, meaning I am officially late to school despite having stood inside the building for almost fifteen minutes.
“Scheisse!” says Jackson, and bolts.
And now I guess I’m trying out for the volleyball team.
CHAPTER 13
One weekend last spring, Maggie dragged me to a movie with Natalie, Tahlia, and a couple of other girls. My preference for avoiding clusters of teenagers lost out to her promise that Seth Rogen would be hysterical. Whoever said their mom was going to pick us up didn’t mention that the mom was working until five thirty, so we were stuck at the mall with this pack of girls for two extra hours, which made Maggie and me feel like the living embodiments of a cliché. (I said this to Tahlia’s friend Kiki, who said, “Oh, it’s pronounced click even though it’s spelled with a q.” Then I felt worse because if I was going to be in a clique, I’d at least want to be in one where everyone knew what a cliché was. And now that I think of it, it was Kiki who assumed that we’d all want to wander around the mall all day. Quiqui is not going to be in my quiché.)
Mags and I trailed behind the other girls for a while, me occasionally looking at a pair of pants, because pants don’t make me feel like a mutant, and Maggie reporting which brands used child laborers (most).
It was boring, but fine, until Tahlia led everybody into a store called Perk Up!, which is pretty much a lingerie store for people under twenty-five. Everything is bright, patterned, lacy, and tiny. If you had cataracts and glanced at a table of bras, you’d think you were walking by a tray of cupcakes. The vibe is “Sexy Schoolgirl Pajama Party,” and it’s the kind of place where if your dad went in to buy a gift card, he’d be followed by mall security for the rest of the day. It’s also the kind of place that makes me hyperventilate, especially since I resigned myself to ordering and reordering the same full-coverage, no-nonsense workhorse undergarments online so I don’t have to think about it. Not the store for me. The girls all cooed, and even Maggie started leafing through a pile of undies. My breasts grew a half pound each just being in there.
“I’m going to go to the bookstore,” I said.
“I’ll come,” chimed Maggie, scowling at a pair of panties with MEOW printed on the butt.
But as we were turning to leave, I noticed a poster of a girl in a cute plaid bra and matching bottoms, and instead of the kind of skinny where you could identify her bones and major organs, this model had curves. Like big curves. Like she was made of flesh instead of just skin, and kind of a lot of it. PERK’S EXTENDED SIZE COLLECTION JUST GOT BIGGER!
It was a cheap slogan, but in smaller print it said, “Select styles in 26AA to 40G.” If that cute bra was in the Extended Size Collection, and the extended size collection extended to my size, by extension, I could have a cute plaid bra, instead of the institutional beige one I was wearing.
I wasn’t about to look for it with the other girls there, but the next day Mom dropped me at the mall as soon as it opened, when senior citizens were doing their morning laps and Perk Up!’s customers were asleep in their matching camis and sleep shorts. (Mom thought I was going back for a birthday gift for Maggie.)
“Lemme know if you need help finding anything,” the Perk Up! assistant manager mumbled without looking up from the thongs for tweens she was arranging.
At first I couldn’t figure out where the “extended sizes” were, but hanging under the display bras in the back there were drawers of extra undergarments, bras nested inside each other like silky matryoshkas. A cups and Bs and Cs and Ds and DDs, all the way up to Gs! And then there it was, the bra de résistance: pink-and-orange-and-cream plaid with a pair of matching boy shorts, in (close to, maybe?) my size. I also picked up a lacy, stretchy overhead bralette in a pale purple, because I was feeling so optimistic about the big girl in the poster and the plaid bra that I momentarily lost my mind.