FOURTEEN
Berry and I celebrated by watching what I thought was a fairly okay movie about Iron Man that still needed way more women in it. Berry agreed and said it was only her third favorite series.
Millie helped us celebrate by ordering us Chinese food and specifically ordering me my very own pork fried rice, which I would proceed to consume in small doses for the next several days.
“Way to go, kid,” she said, handing me a set of chopsticks.
“I’m Pan!”
“I mean, yes, you are.” Millie nodded.
“Like, perfect role for a spritely person like myself.”
“I was just thinking that.”
Lucy eventually got home from school and came up to my room to congratulate me.
“Mr. Davidson said you stole the show,” she said, giving me a squeeze.
“I sang Gloria Gaynor.”
“Did you?” Lucy sat back on the bed. “You know who loved that song? Your grandma.”
“You know who else loves that song? You and Millie. It’s a great song.”
“You know we played that song at our wedding.”
“I hadn’t heard that,” I added, mocking. Because of course I’d heard that story a thousand times. Maybe more times than I’d even heard the song.
“Stop.” Lucy gave me a light shove and I flopped back onto the bed. She scooched down on the quilt, where Bjorn was curled up and snoozing. “This is pretty hard, huh? This Greenville.”
“It’s not easy,” I agreed.
“Too hard?” Lucy’s voice got smaller. “Anne?”
“No.” I sat up. “Just hard enough. So far. Too hard for you?”
“Well, let’s say Principal Lynde isn’t exactly my fan either, and the PTA wants a constant update on every email and memo I send, and they’re all convinced I’m going to cancel soccer and turn the whole school into a pornographic art gallery.” Lucy took a breath. “But no. Not too hard.”
“Good.” I nodded. “Did I tell you I get to be Peter Pan?”
“You did.” Lucy gave me a serious face. “Anne. We’ll tell each other if it gets too hard, right?”
“Right,” I said, not that I was sure what “too hard” would mean.
Was Greenville getting harder? Maybe not. Was it getting be tter?
I mean I had a part doing the one thing I loved more than almost anything except my dog, my parents, roller-skating, and disco. I did not expect everyone to be happy for me and my accomplishment of pulling off what was obviously a pretty stunning audition.
At the same time, getting the part meant spending more time with the Forevers. Sarah, Tanner, Gilly, and John had all gotten parts. Sarah was cast as Wendy, a part she could probably wear her Our Town dress for. Tanner was Captain Hook, which was a juicier part than he deserved, but then again he did have a pretty decent audition. John was going to be Smee, which, again, is a pretty solid role, and his audition was okay too. Gilly was one of the Lost Kids (aka the Lost Boys in the original).
The next day I felt a weird static in the air as soon as I opened my locker and noticed that Sarah and Tanner were looking at me from the other side of the hallway.
“Hey!” Berry bounced up to me. “What’s going on?”
“Just checking out the salt-and-pepper harbingers of doom,” I answered.
Berry looked over her shoulder, not entirely covertly. “Ugh.”
In homeroom, Mrs. Sherman showed up in a turtleneck that made me rethink my turtleneck. It really is such a precarious thing, the turtleneck. Mrs. Sherman looked like an actual turtle in hers, partly because it was a kind of avocado-green puttylike color that didn’t go with her skin tone.
That’s not me judging, although Lucy would say it sort of was.
It was English class when the static source was finally revealed—Sarah put up her hand and, before Mr. Davidson could call her name, rose from her seat.
“I have something to say, Mr. Davidson.”
“Is it about the poem we’re reading?” Mr. Davidson leaned on his desk. He was wearing cowboy boots that day. Also an interesting choice.
“No,” Sarah said, holding up her chin. “It’s about. . .the play.”
“Well.” Mr. Davidson put his book down on the desk. “Perhaps we can make it quick, then, or talk about it after cla—”
“I wanted to say”—Sarah placed her hands on the desk, then on her hips—“I wanted to say that I think that it’s inappropriate, the play you chose.”
“Peter Pan?” Mr. Davidson lowered his chin to peer at Sarah over his glasses. “You think Peter Pan is inappropriate?”
“I think, we normally do plays that are about, like, us, and our town, and who we are. And now, for like no reason, it’s like you’re doing this gay play.”
Just as an aside. Growing up with queer moms, I know about almost all LGBTQIA things. And J. M. Barrie, who wrote Peter Pan, wasn’t gay. I don’t know if that’s what qualifies something as a gay play, but he wasn’t.
“Peter Pan”—Mr. Davidson cleared his throat—“is not a gay play, Sarah. I mean, there is nothing wrong obviously, with a gay—”
“A girl is playing the lead,” Sarah said, “which is supposed to be a boy.”
Mr. Davidson straightened. A teachable moment.
“In the tradition of theater, in fact if you see most of the broadcast productions of Peter Pan, the part of Peter is played by men and women.”
And could be played by anyone in between, FYI, but I could see Mr. Davidson was trying to make a singular point.
“This town”—Sarah’s voice got high and reedy—“this town has always been— We have always done, like, traditional plays and now, like, just because Mrs. Shirley’s the vice principal, and Anne is here, it’s like—”
Sarah’s eyes flickered in my direction. “It’s like there’s an agenda now.”
“Well.” Mr. Davidson stood and picked up his book with a sharp flick. “I understand that those are your thoughts. There is no agenda obviously—”
“Well.” Sarah’s chin shifted up a notch. “I am going to lodge a complaint.”
A long slow sigh expelled from Berry’s lips.
I realized my hands were clenched under my desk so tight they were starting to cramp.
An agenda complaint???
“Of course, you are free to do so.” Mr. Davidson nodded. “Thank you, Sarah.”
Sarah looked around the classroom, her eyes skimming over my (probably very red) face, and primly lowered herself into her seat. Tanner gave her a punch in the shoulder and she smiled. Gilly looked at her desk.
I made sure to be the first out the door when the bell rang, with Berry close behind. Not that she said anything. Maybe because my body was ticking like a time bomb.
I changed, like, lightning fast and took as isolated a position as I could on the soccer field.
Sarah Pye.
Was an ignorant asshole.
Who wanted to be the lead in a school play more than anything else in the world, clearly, but also knew nothing about theater!
As the game wore on, I watched her jogging around the field, her twin pigtails bouncing next to her face. She looked like she was dancing around the grass with joy.
The joy of being a jerk, I fumed.
Was she really going to complain? I jogged over toward the goalie net.
“Hey.” Berry waved from her post. “Surviving?”
“What do you think about getting in your car and just driving really really far away from here?” I offered.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Where are we going?”
“The ocean? Shopping? Something? Broadway?”
“For how long are we going?” Berry asked, her eyes darting between me and the action on the field. “Broadway is pretty far.”
“We could be gone anywhere between the next three hours and forever.” I sighed.
Before she could answer, the ball came rolling up the field and I had to get out of the way to let Berry do her thing.
I was, albeit maybe kind of strangely, strolling away from the net when I felt what felt like a bomb go off at the back of my head. And the next thing I knew I had a mouthful of grass and there was the sound of footsteps thundering on the ground.
I opened my eyes and saw a giant blur of black and white only inches from my face. I reached out and poked the blur with my finger. It rolled away.
“ANNE!” Berry screamed.
Suddenly I was surrounded by a hive of voices, including Coach Harras, bless her, who decided the best way to deal with the situation was to blow her whistle an inch from my ear. “ALL RIGHT, WHAT’S GOING ON?!”
“Anne?” I felt a hand on my arm. Looked and saw a splatter of pink paint. “Oh my gosh. Anne. Crap!”
Finally Harras spat out her whistle, possibly because by then the whole class had circled around me like we were about to do some sort of trust game, while Berry tried to help me to my feet.
“What happened?” Coach Harras spat.
“The ball came right for her head!” Berry fumed as my body wobbled, and I thought about spitting the grass in my mouth out. “Someone kicked it right at her head.”
“Who?” Harras picked up her whistle and pinched it between her fingers. “Who kicked the ball?”
Suddenly Gilly’s face swam into view, like a balloon on a summer breeze.
“Sarah,” Gilly said. “It was Sarah.”
Sarah stormed up to Gilly. “WHAT?!”
Berry looked from Gilly to me, her heart beating so hard I could feel it in her arms as she held me up and tighter. My brain was still bumping around in my skull.
“I saw it.” Gilly looked at me.
“FUCK YOU, GILLY!”
“Sarah!” Harras blew her whistle, entirely unnecessarily, for the umpteenth time. I was ready to throw a soccer ball at her head, TBH.
“I didn’t do anything,” Sarah spat back. “I didn’t even see Anne was there, Gi lly.”
Something was tickling my chin. I reached up and touched it, thinking it would be a blade of grass. But it. . .was not.
“Blood.” The word slipped out of my lips.
It glistened in the sun. My blood. Ruby. Red.
I looked down and watched it drip onto the toe of my sneaker. Red. And. . .
“What?” Berry leaned in.
“Blooooo—”
I grabbed Berry’s hand so she would have the privilege of being pulled down to the ground with me as I passed out.
The next thing I remember was sitting in the nurse’s office. Which looked like every nurse’s office I’d ever seen except there were lots of pictures of border collies on the wall. Six. Six is a lot. Not too many, though. Let’s say that.
The nurse was a nice woman with a pile of white hair on her head, sitting next to me and smiling and holding a juice box.
“Not so great with blood?” she asked.
“Not amazing,” I said.
“I’m Nurse Denim,” she said, “but you can call me Sissy.”
“Hi, Sissy,” I said. My lips still tasted like blood, making me swoon a little. “I’m Anne. I’m not good with blood.”
“So you say.” Sissy smiled. “You’re Vice Principal Lucy’s girl.”
“That’s me.”
“I’m going to get you a cold compress for your lip, but it’s a pretty small split,” Sissy said. “You stay put. I think your mother will be coming to check on you.”
There was a clicking in the hallway followed by the rush of Lucy in her suit flying into the room. “Anne!”
“She’s fine,” Sissy called from the other room. “Just a little cut! The mouth heals very quickly!”
“Soccer injury.” My smile was mostly lip and mostly numb. “My first!”
Lucy frowned. “I heard, from Mr. Davidson, what happened. That a student complained.”
“Yeah.” I tapped my toes. “Well. I guess not everyone is a fan of Peter Pan.”
“It’s.” Lucy’s voice was steel. “It’s ridiculous. Peter Pan is a classic and the casting of the school play is his purview.”
“I think they think it’s like a gay agenda,” I tapped my toes some more. “I mean she said agenda. So I figure. Gay.”
“Well, that’s. . .” Lucy pulled the front of her suit down. “As if any of us has time for an agenda these days. I’ve spoken with Mr. Davidson. He said you did a very professional audition, and he’s very excited for your performance.”
“If I survive to opening day,” I noted.
I could feel Lucy’s eyes taking me in, like she was reading me. But also I could feel her keeping track of Sissy, who was now hovering in the doorway.
“Ice,” Sissy said, holding up the pack and a small cup. “And something for the swelling.”
“Thank you, Sissy,” Lucy said, taking the cup.
She waited for Sissy to leave the room before turning back to me and my lip.
“Oh, Anne.” Lucy handed me the cup. “Do I take you out of the school? Do I. . .Do I bring all the parents in? Do I. . .”
I wanted to ask her what she thought. If she thought I should just walk away. If she loved her job so much even though the people here clearly didn’t like her so much all the time either. I wanted to ask her what to do.
But, you know, I didn’t.
We didn’t, clearly, know what to do.
“No,” I said.
Lucy gave me another hug. “Okay.”
I smiled and felt my lip throb. “Everything will be fine.”
Everything will be fine is both a very comforting thing to say and a thing that anyone who says it must know isn’t true.
Everything is an impossible thing.
Sissy made me stay for a few more minutes after Lucy left, then declared me “fit as a fiddle” and kicked me out just after the bell.
I looked for Berry, but she was gone.
BERRY
I have to go home to help my dad with a job!
BERRY
Hope you’re ok
BERRY
That was bonkers
Then she must have taken a solid few minutes to send me a text that was a field of soccer balls with a little surprised face in the middle.
ANNE
Yeah I’m ok. Split
ANNE
Did you see Sarah kick the ball at my head?
BERRY
No
ANNE
That’s what Gilly said
BERRY
Yeah
There was a space of three dots appearing and disappearing as I walked down the hall.
BERRY
I mean, first she sets u up with the sign up list, then this.
ANNE
Yeah
BERRY
Seems weird
ANNE
Yeah
ANNE
Maybe she’s just sick of her terrible friends
More dots appeared and disappeared.
BERRY
Maybe
BERRY
You believe her?
ANNE
I don’t know????
I collapsed on the steps.
ANNE
Going home for a hundred aspirin
BERRY
OK!
Did Berry not believe Gilly? Would Gilly lie? I wondered as I strapped on my skates.
BERRY
If you feel faint when ur skating, pull over and I’ll come and get u
ANNE
OK!
ANNE
What if I just feel really cool?
BERRY
Then go with it
When I coasted out of the parking lot that day, there was another ring of people in the lot, what looked like moms in shorts and sandals, their heads tipped together.