THIRTEEN
My first crush was on the wicked stepmother in the original animated Snow White movie.
Not the direction you thought this was going?
Yeah, obviously my moms were pretty devastated when they learned that my obsession with watching the movie over and over was not because of the stereotypical heartthrob that is the Prince guy or Snow White (either of which would have been fine with them).
I remember distinctly Millie leaning forward and pressing pause on the DVD as I sat on my blanket, eyes an inch from the screen. “Wait,” she gasped. “Who did you say is ‘nice’?”
I pointed. “The lady with the hat.”
Actually, it was a cowl.
“Well, that’s fine,” Lucy said, sitting back on the couch and patting Millie’s hand, “she can like the. . .mother.”
“Wicked witch, huh?” Millie shook her head. “Good luck with that.”
The character’s name was Lucille, and she took my little six-year-old heart captive even as she plotted to kill Snow White because she was so jealous of her stepchild’s youth and beauty.
I think when my crush didn’t pass, like months later when I was still insisting on watching and rewinding that part of the movie, Lucy started feeling like maybe it was a smudge on their parenting record. Millie finally banned the movie from movie night. So I broke the DVD out of the liquor cabinet where they’d stashed it and watched it on my computer in my room.
The heart wants what it wants.
I can’t really explain it myself. Even now. I just thought she was beautiful. The whole cowl thing. The ruby-red lips. Maybe I also thought I could change her.
Like if there’s a version of Snow White where she meets this really charming young waif in the woods (with orange hair) and their falling in love shows Lucille the error of her ways and she leaves that stupid mirror and castle behind and she and the waif live in the woods happily ever after?
Yeah. I guess it’s pretty weird. Never mind. Let’s never make that movie.
After that I fell in love with Katie Simpson, who was in my Girl Scout troop in fourth grade. Which didn’t really lead to anything but an extra year of scouts when I was about to quit. Then I fell head over heels for Darla Hammersmith, who sat in the seat in front of me in fifth grade when we lived in Ohio. Darla Hammersmith, who never knew who I was despite the fact that her smile haunted my dreams and I bought her a multitool for her birthday that her parents later confiscated because, apparently, it’s really just a bunch of small knives.
I changed what I ate for breakfast for a year because I saw Darla Hammersmith eating a granola bar once on the way to school and tried to eat the same granola bar instead of toast like a normal person because I had this idea one day we would walk in the door at the same time together and I would point at her bar and say, “Hey, same bar!”
It never happened.
Granola bars suck.
Millie says I fall in love with unattainable girls with long hair.
“Not a great idea,” she says, every time it happens. “Not the long hair bit, obviously. You know what I mean.”
My first kiss was with a girl I met at camp who had long hair, but was also really cool and her name was Zoey. She had long red hair and freckles and we used to canoe together. And then on the last day of camp I worked up the nerve to tell her I liked her in the boathouse. And she kissed me. And then she went home to Idaho and fell in love with this girl she played soccer with. Which she emailed me about.
We still write actually, Zoey’s really cool.
Look.
I have no current interest in the evil witch of my youthful desires. I get that being someone who only talks to mirrors that are forced to be complimentary to you, and plotting to destroy your stepchildren with apples are terrible (criminal) qualities.
I don’t want to like people who are not good people.
I feel like I’ve said this already, but really what I want is my true true. Okay? I want someone I like who gets me, and who likes me back and gets me. All of it.
I was almost 100 percent certain that wasn’t going to happen in Greenville.
Or with Gilly.
Consider the evidence for the prosecution. Gilly was best friends with people who had been actively, like, racist and sexist against me. Like her friends had basically, in her presence, gone out of their way to do and say really shitty things to me. Things that she had helped make happen (see exhibit A of her coming up to me on the soccer field and encouraging me to sign up for auditions)!
Evidence for the defense? I thought it was possible that when she was giving her Romeo and Juliet audition monologue, she looked at me in the audience. Like I was her Romeo. And she said something nice to me after her friend tripped me.
But (the prosecution butts in rudely) she didn’t speak up and tell Mr. Davidson that it was Tanner who tripped me when he clearly did.
The prosecution rests.
So of course, the first person I walk right into on my way into school the next day is Gilly. Like I opened the door and started looking left and right to avoid Gilly and then I literally slammed right into her so hard I knocked her down like a tree. It must have looked on purpose because Gilly looked at me from the ground like I’d KO’d her in a boxing ring.
“Um, OW.” She frowned, pulling herself up.
“HOLY CRAP I’M SO SORRY!” I gushed.
Gilly’s face turned beet red. “It’s okay,” she mumbled, grabbing her bag and unfolding herself so she could stand.
I wasn’t sure if that meant, like, “help me up” or “go away,” so I just stood there like a true Romeo and watched her get to her feet, at which point she jetted off like a rocket just in time for Berry to walk up behind me and scare the crap out of me.
“Anne—”
“AH!”
“AH!” Berry tensed up in a coil. “What’s going on?”
“I just hit Gilly. I mean,” I sputtered. “Gilly was here and I rammed her. I mean. Bumped. Into her. By accident. I walked up—I mean into. Gilly.”
“Oh.” Berry pulled her knapsack up on her shoulder. “Okay. Um. Well. Is she okay?”
“She is! I think.” I looked down the hallway. “It was an accident.”
My brain followed Gilly down the hall. Was she okay? Did she think that I hit her on purpose because of the Tanner thing?
Was she even thinking about me?
“Okay,” Berry said. Waiting for me to turn on to an actual subject of conversation possibly. “So. Any more word on the audition?”
“Not yet.” I shrugged, still looking down the hallway.
Probably Gilly was okay, right?
“What do you think Davidson meant when he asked how you felt about flying?”
“I mean it’s not exactly a standard post-audition question.. . .”
Berry tried to follow my gaze to nowhere. “I mean I wonder if he’ll just do Our Town again. It’s kind of the safer choice although there’s no flying in it,” she said.
“I guess,” I said.
Did Gilly think I was an asshole? was probably more the question.
“Okay, well, so!” Berry raised a finger. “Speaking of flight! This weekend. I was thinking superhero movie marathon. Since you said you hadn’t watched any Marvel movies, which is insane.”
I mean, was I an asshole?
“Sure,” I said. “I may have watched ONE of them. I think. I saw Wonder Wo man.”
“That’s not Marvel.” Berry frowned.
“Okay, well, whatever.” I started walking to homeroom. “We can watch whatever.”
Like right now, I thought, am I being an asshole right now? Thinking about Gilly? Why am I thinking about Gilly??? In front of Berry. Who was talking to me. About what, exactly, I’d already lost track of.
Berry stepped in front of me, suddenly serious. “Marvel is the X-Men, it’s the Avengers. Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, that’s DC. Got it?”
“Sure.” I tried to look interested. “Right. Got it.”
I watched the corners of Berry’s lips turn down. “Okay, well, whatever.” She turned and continued down the hall. “Or we can watch an old movie. If you want.”
I shook my head. Like seriously, here was a person who was actually trying to be nice to me. But I couldn’t think straight enough to come up with something to say, so instead I just said, “Sure.”
Inside homeroom, Tanner spun his soccer ball on the desk, letting it cusp the edge before pulling it back with the tips of his fingers. Gilly’s eyes flickered upward when I walked into the room, but then settled on the book on her desk. Her hair pooled next to her fingers on the pages.
I almost missed my chair when I went to sit down, but I saved it with a sort of dramatic arms-out move that only Berry noticed.
“Are you okay?”
“You ask me that a lot,” I said, before I thought about what that would sound like.
Berry’s eyebrows went up. “Okay. Sorry.”
“Crap.” I frowned. “Sorry. I’m just like, not myself today. For different reasons than usual. Like not white T-shirt reasons?”
Berry nodded, somehow understanding a phrase like “white T-shirt reasons.”
That day my outfit was mostly purple, because I’d realized in all my orange-and-green Spirit Day enthusiasm I’d completely ignored my lilac-and-orange vibes. So I was wearing a purple corduroy jumper with a very puffy vintage orange blouse, baby-blue leggings and gold boots. I looked like a backup dancer from a seventies kids show. Which was just for me to appreciate.
Gilly, absorbed in her book, reached up and started twisting her hair around her finger.
“Anne?!” Berry looked at me from her seat. “I asked you. A question?”
“Right,” I said, embarrassed. “What was—uh, the question?”
“Geez, never mind.” Berry frowned, picking up her books. Her hands were covered in yellow spots of paint. “I’ll see you later.”
“Where are you going?”
“Dentist?” Berry’s lips pressed into a hard line. “I just told you?”
Right.
For the rest of the day half my brain argued about Gilly and half my brain did its best to get me through the day. Which did not work out great. Apparently high school requires a whole brain.
Highlights included:
Spending most of English class with my math textbooks open on my desk.
Walking into the wrong classroom for second period.
Writing on the whiteboard in regular marker in Biology.
You’re like, “Oh that’s not so bad.”
But wait. There’s more.
In History, because we were moving desks around and changing seats, I reached to grab a chair. . .
And yanked said chair right out from under Gilly’s butt.
Like I had some sort of vendetta. Against Gilly’s butt.
She went down like a bag of bricks, if a bag of bricks could fall on its ass.
Gilly looked up with wide eyes. This time like actually thinking maybe I was out to destroy her. This time I did reach down.
“Oh my CRAP, Gilly, I’m so sorry.”
“What the FUCK?” A hand grabbed me by the back of my jumper. It was Sarah. Who I weirdly hadn’t even noticed until that class. “What the fuck are you doing??”
“It was an. . .an accident,” I stammered, wrenching myself free as Gilly struggled to her feet once again. “I was trying to get a chair!”
“All right,” Mr. Keeper, who looked like a teakettle, stepped in with his arms out like a plow. “Everyone take their seats. Or a seat.”
“She grabbed Gilly’s chair!” Sarah screeched. “Gilly is, like, fal len.”
“It was an accident!” I screeched back.
“TAKE! YOUR! SEATS!” Keeper bellowed. “NOW!”
It probably wasn’t possible to mess up the day any worse, but I was considering skipping Chemistry, which was my last period. I thought it was entirely possible that if I went anywhere near something flammable, I might blow up myself—possibly Gilly, and possibly the school.
Not on purpose obviously. This isn’t Heat hers.
I kept turning to my right to say something to Berry, but she wasn’t there. Damn dentist.
Also, who goes to the dentist after homeroom? Medical appointments are designed for allowing teenagers to skip school.
But then maybe it was good she wasn’t there, because clearly I was on a destructive path and who knew who else would end up on their ass before I was through?
My plan for second-to-last period, Gym, was to fake a cramp in the first five minutes and then spend the rest of the period on the sidelines.
Which was a great plan.
And apparently Gilly’s plan as well, as I walked up into the bleachers to find her already sitting there, arms wrapped around her stomach in the universal sign for “I don’t feel well.” She was sitting slightly askew, so she was leaning more on her left cheek.
Because, clearly, she’d taken a pretty solid hit to her right cheek. Care of me.
Maybe I was the villain in this crush situation. Don’t villains happen when people fall for people who don’t actually like them?
Is that what was happening? Crush? Me?
“Hey!” I looked around. “Uh. Hi.”
Great opener, Anne.
“Hey.” Gilly shifted so she was sitting straight. But it was clearly not comfortable.
“Is it okay if I sit there?” I pointed at the row behind her.
Gilly looked around the entirely empty bleachers. “Sure. Free bleachers.”
I took a seat behind and to the right of Gilly, because sitting right behind someone in a huge set of seats is clearly very weird. But I could still look at her back, which I obviously did in a cool no-one-else-would-notice kind of way.
Gilly has a long, straight back. She sat still and straight for most of the class, I assume watching the other students running circles. Her hair stuck to her shirt, which had a little rip in the neck. Also she has a long neck. It’s, like, a graceful neck, actually.
Okay, stop.
I tried to think of the perfect and appropriate thing to say to Gilly. The thing that would encapsulate all my concerns and arguments and thoughts and theories. A thing I could say that would stop the Ferris wheel of a day I was having.
“Sorry I made you fall on your butt,” I finally managed.
“Twice,” Gilly said, not turning around.
“Yeah. Twice,” I noted. “So. Sorry twice, I, like, Wile E. Coyote’d you.”
I thought I heard a tiny snort from Gilly, but it could have been the crack of someone kicking the soccer ball on the field. A cool breeze blew up the stands, sending the smell of what I guessed was Gilly’s shampoo up into my face.
“Hey,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry about that thing in the soccer field. And—”
The stands bounced as Tanner strode over, a long loping stride designed for maximum bleacher jostle. His soccer jersey clung to his chest. He must have run over.
“Hey! Gilly! Your mom’s here to take you home,” he hollered.
“Oh.” Gilly swiveled. “Okay. Thanks.”
She sounded annoyed.
Tanner stormed closer. “I s aid—”
“I got it, Tanner.” Gilly stood up.
Tanner jogged closer. Put his foot up on the end of the bench I was sitting on. Gave it a shake.
“Watch your back. You got New Girl on a revenge streak now.” Tanner squinted at me. “You hurt my friend again, New Girl, I’ll break you in two.”
“Shut up, Tanner,” Gilly hissed, storming past him. “Come on.”
Tanner gave the bleachers another bounce for good measure before following Gilly.
Evidence for the prosecution?
Gilly is friends with Tanner.
As I changed back into regular clothes, my phone started buzzing like it was about to explode.
BERRY
ANNNNNEEEE
ANNE
HEY! Have you been at the dentist this whole time?
BERRY
I just got back!
ANNE
Next time you should skip the whole day!
I mean, truly, if Berry did not understand the joy of a legit reason to skip school, it was at least my job as a friend to explain.. . .
BERRY
THE LIST!
BERRY
THE LIST IS UP!
ANNE
WHERE R U?!
BERRY
EAST WING!!!
I stepped out into the hallway, where I was greeted by what I was pretty sure was a shriek from Sarah Pye echoing down the hall like a fire alarm.
“ANNE!” Berry ran toward me, eyes wide. She grabbed my hand. “LET’S GO!”
There was a serious hubbub coming from a bundle of students all packed around a small spot on the wall next to Mr. Davidson’s door. The entire hubbub of students turned as we got close to Davidson’s classroom.
“WHAT THE HELL?!” Sarah screamed as she shoved her way out of the group, looking like a cartoon bull with her tiny ponytails and clear fury; she stormed right up to me till she was, I would say, an inch from my face. Close enough that I could tell Sarah was heated and she’d had PBJ for lunch.
(Also how did she always get out of Gym so fast?)
“FUCK YOU!”
“WHOA,” someone from the group behind her weighed in.
“Fuck me for what?” I snapped.
“You think you can just come here. And just. COME IN HERE AND—” And then she turned and ran down the hallway, her ponytails bobbing behind her. “FUCK YOU, ANNE SHIRLEY!”
By then, Berry was pulling me into the lump of teenagers till we were close enough to see the heart of the matter. The list of the cast for the upcoming Greenville High production of Peter Pan.
Peter Pan!
“Huh.”
I legit thought it would be Our Town. Maybe because Berry was dreading it.
“Anne,” Berry squeaked. “Look at the top! Look at the NAMES!”
There it was, my name, at the top.
“It’s me,” I gasped. “I’m. . .Peter? I’m Peter Pan?”
“I knew you could do it!” Berry’s eyes grew wide as she grabbed me by the shoulders. “You’re the LEAD!”
“Anne is the lead?” someone in the group exclaimed.
“Anne is the lead.” A face poked out of the crowd. It was Minnie, the girl who wanted to be a non-human, gushing, “And I’m TINKER BELL!”
“I’m the DOG!” The guy with the drums from auditions did a fist pump.
“ANNE IS PETER PAN!” Berry cheered.
So wishes were just coming true all over.