I end up sitting between Quinlan and my dad, so I don’t get to talk too much more to Jackson. He raises his eyebrows at me when his dad tries to sound younger than he is, and I cringe at him when my mom says something braggy. The two of them—Mom and Ben—dominate most of the conversation. There’s been some kind of treaty that means they take turns being the charming know-it-all. Mom does American versus Scandinavian education, resurgence of independent bookstores, bar and bat mitzvahs (even though Dad is the Jewish one), and tamales. Mr. Oates takes on Thai fish markets, Division I college sports funding, mileage rewards programs, and advances in hernia surgeries. They both sound like they read a lot of New Yorkers. Everybody else chimes in occasionally, except for Quin, who plays on Mrs. Oates’s phone, except when she’s whispering occasional unrelated facts to me. “Only two kids in my class have been to France, and I’ve been there twice.” “My teacher loves how I write Qs, but everyone else thinks they look like twos.” She’s funny, though, and the food is fantastic (and since I’m next to Dad, the two of us nearly polish off the pot of butter chicken without Mom noticing). The lassi has dried without looking like a bull’s-eye around my nipple. And nobody does anything more horrifying than usual.
The night is not perfect, but it’s pretty good. It’s like going to dinner at a neighbor you don’t mind (if there was one neighbor in particular you wished would have come to dinner without a shirt on). Plus Tyler accomplished the rescue mission!
As we’re leaving, I pull Quin aside and show her the dwarf.
Her snowy cheeks turn pink. She is about to cry.
“Tyler saw you take his earbuds, and he found this, too. Don’t take our stuff, okay? Ask if you want to see something.” She nods and brushes her eyes with the back of her hand. “I mean, don’t take anybody’s stuff. People don’t like it when you do that.”
She looks up at me, sad and grateful. For a second it looks like she wants me to hug her, to wrap her up like you’d wrap up a much younger kid, and it occurs to me that she must be awfully lonely.
Jackson is watching us curiously, but for once, he’s not who I’m worried about.
I put my finger to my lips to let her know I’m not going to rat her out. Which means, unfortunately, I don’t get to rat out Tyler either, but it’s only a matter of time before he does something else stupid.
Like immediately. “Tyler Owen Walsh!” Mom says, yanking Luigi out of his ear. “Get those earbuds out of your ears. That is so rude to our hosts!”
If only he’d burp right now, this night would be a total victory.
CHAPTER 35
At the next game I scan the bleachers for Jackson, even though I already know he’s going somewhere with Max. I have a couple of fans, though: Mom and Tyler.
I wave to them as we begin warmups. Mom smiles and waves back, then dips her head back to her laptop. Tyler is gaping at Nasrah.
In the five-minute break before the game starts, I run over to them. Mom says, “Nervous?”
“Nah. Just adrenaline.”
She looks at me and frowns. “Is your uniform top different from the others?”
I look down self-consciously. “A little. Ms. Kershaw-Bend altered it so it would fit better.”
“Oh,” she says with an “oh” that could mean something good or bad. “Well, it’s nice. You look”—there’s a long pause where I swear she’s staring at my chest—“thinner.”
I feel my cheeks getting red. I don’t know if “thinner” is what she means. I’m glad Ty isn’t paying attention. “I’m not. I’m exactly the same as before.” I’ve actually been eating like a horse, but I’ve also been running around a gym for two hours after school every day, so it evens out weight-wise.
She shrugs. “I guess I haven’t seen you in anything so fitted in a while. It’s good,” she adds.
I get it. I look “thinner” because she’s used to seeing me in giant shirts, and hasn’t realized how much of those shirts my breasts take up. Mom assumed I had bulked up in general. I slouch about two inches shorter.
Back on the court, Jessa walks up and down the line high-fiving people. Is everyone else thinking about how much “thinner” I suddenly am? I realize I’m being paranoid and try to shake it off.
The game starts and I’m up front. Kate gets under the serve and passes it perfectly to Sylvie, who sets it up for Nasrah’s hit. The ball grounds into the other court. In the next play, there is a rally back and forth, then they hit it hard to us and Khloe’s pass sends the ball flying out of the court. While someone runs to retrieve it, I notice a couple of kids in the bleachers from the other school look at me and say something behind their hands. When they see me looking at them, they look away and laugh.
The ball is back in play and now 50 percent of me is in the game and 50 percent is watching the kids who were watching me. One of them holds out his hands like he might be describing something that is big and heavy, and I promptly get hit in the shoulder with a ball I didn’t see coming.
“Walsh! That was yours!” yells Jessa.
I snap back to attention, and the next few plays go fine. I keep my eye on the ball and don’t mess anything up, but now that I’m forcing myself to focus so hard on the ball, I don’t notice Nasrah and end up smacking into her. Coach doesn’t say anything but rotates me out before I get to serve.
From the bench I can watch the bleachers.
The boys are sharing a phone back and forth, laughing at something onscreen. I look over at the girls on the other team, wondering who they might be here to see. Then a girl with short blond hair comes off the bench and one kid jabs the other kid. “Yeah, Cally!”
So maybe they were never looking at me at all, and I got myself taken out for being self-conscious and paranoid. When I sub back in, it’s only for a couple of rotations.
On our side of the bleachers, Mom watches with her fists clenched, jabbing with her right hand when something goes well for us. I hope she saw the parts where I made good plays, and not the parts where I ran into Nasrah or the ball ran into me. It’s best of three sets and we lose the first two, so the whole thing is over fast.
Coach gives us a quick not-so-peppy pep talk in which she declares that no one played their best today. The intent is probably to make everyone feel equally bad, but some of us feel worse.
I stop by the bleachers to tell Mom I’ll be up from the locker room in a minute. She says a generic, “Good effort, sweetie,” and Tyler says, “Did you guys win?”
I’m on my way to the locker room when I run into the two boys from the other team. They look like they’re trying to keep straight faces. The one who yelled for Cally says, “My friend likes your jersey.” He busts out laughing, and the friend smacks him and goes, “Oh my god, Christian!” and starts laughing, too.