3 Willows: The Sisterhood Grows (3 page)

Ama stopped listening. She just waited for Mrs. Sherman to finish. “But do you think, for personal reasons, I could change it?” Ama asked finally.

“Not without a valid medical condition. Of course, you could forfeit the scholarship altogether.”

No she couldn’t! This scholarship -was a big prize. It would go on her school record. Colleges would see it. She couldn’t forfeit it. Anyway, her parents would never let her.

“Do you have a valid medical reason?” Mrs. Sherman asked.

I’m scared of heights. I hate bugs. I can’t live without my flatiron and my hair products. Were any of those valid medical con ditions?

“I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it,” Ama said defeatedly.

Ama tried to be polite with her good-byes and thank-yous. She hung up the phone and went to find her mother. “The woman from the Student Leader office says it’s not a mistake.”

“I know you’re disappointed, chérie, “ her mother said.

Ama cast her eye on the check clipped to the front of her papers. She’d never gotten that kind of money before. Miserably she looked over the long equipment list. She couldn’t believe she was going to spend the only easy money she’d ever gotten in her life on hiking boots and a sleeping bag, wool pants, and something called a carabiner.

I don’t want to go, I don’t want to go, I don’t want to go. “I guess I have to go” was what Ama said out loud.

She looked at her mother, irrationally hoping that she would disagree and grab the phone and make calls and demand changes on her daughter’s behalf.

But her mother didn’t. Her parents trusted the system. It had done well for Esi and it would do well for Ama. “You’re a good girl, Ama.”

Ama nodded, both happy and unhappy, as she often -was -with that reward.

We first heard about the Sisterhood in sixth grade. You’ve probably never heard of them, but they became, like, a legend around here. They were four girls who went to our local high school and they shared a pair of jeans that were supposed to be, like, magical. The jeans fit all four of them, and the girls passed them around and decorated them and wrote all over them. These girls had been really, really close friends since they were babies. I haven’t seen any of them—or the pants—except in the yearbook, but Jo knows Bridget Vreeland, and Polly sometimes babysits for Tibby Rollins s younger sister and brother. By now the Sisterhood has graduated and gone to college, but people still talk about them. They don’t even seem real to me anymore. More like a story.

A lot of girls in our school tried to follow in their footsteps. It’s the best reason I can give for a lot of terrible-fitting jeans in our middle school Not every pair of jeans can fit a bunch of different girls. And I say that because I know. We tried it too. It’s pretty embarrassing when I think of myself wearing Polly’s jeans in s’ixth grade. This obnoxious boy shouted in the stairwell that I had plumber’s crack, and some boys called me Plumber for months after that.

After the jeans, we tried to share a denim skirt, but I had a growth spurt, and it got so short on me that my mom wouldn’t let me leave the apartment in it. We had a jean jacket for a while, but Polly accidentally left it on the boardwalk when we were visiting Jo at Rehoboth Beach. Then we got a scarf—green and blue and purple—at the beginning of seventh grade. We had an induction ceremony with candles and everything, but none of us really wore it much because … because a scarf is just pretty lame when you think about it.

Bridget Vreeland is one of the four girls of the Sisterhood. She was a coach at my soccer camp after sixth grade. She is basically the coolest girl you have ever seen. All the girls in my cabin thought that. Not just because she is gorgeous and an All-American soccer player and she hooked up with the hottest guy at our camp. But also because she has these awesome friends and the Traveling Pants. I actually saw her wearing them once. I think she’s one of those people who’s just lucky. Like she never had a problem or a zit or a bad day ever. That’s how it seems to me.

The girls in my cabin used to follow her around, and one time we even caught her making out with Eric Richman at the lake. We thought it was unbelievably romantic. We were all giggling behind the bushes. She probably thought we were such little dorks.

I had the idea that being a teenager would be like that. That was how I imagined it could be for me and Polly and Ama when we got older. But you look at Polly, with her skipping and her weird doodles and sucking her thumb until she was in junior high. You can’t really imagine her going to parties or having a boyfriend no matter how old she gets. You look at Ama now that she’s a teenager. She won’t even go to a movie with you because she has to do the extra-credit math problems. You can’t imagine her having any big adventures. You can’t even picture her going outside. When I think about the Sisterhood, I admit I kind of wish we were more like that.

I’ve seen Bridget in Bethesda a few times. I waved to her, but I don’t think she remembers me. There were a lot of campers to keep track of.

Maybe we tried so hard to be like the Sisterhood because it was easy for them and we wanted it to be easy for us. Because they were lucky and we wanted to be lucky too. They had wonder, and we didn’t have any.

We looked for the magic, but we didn’t find it. We waited for the magic, but it didn’t find us.

“Hey, Jo. It’s Ama.”

“Hey. What’s up?”

Jo meant for her to answer the question, and Ama was silent for a second. It used to be that when she called Jo, Jo didn’t expect her to have a reason right away.

“I’m packing to go on my trip. The list says I’m supposed to have a bandana. Remember that pink one I had? I think you borrowed it.”

She heard Jo thumping around her room. “Oh, yeah. I did. That was a while ago.” Jo was opening and closing drawers. “Yeah. I have it. Do you want me to bring it over?”

“Or I could pick it up if you want.”

“No, I’ll bring it over.”

“Also, do you have those blue wool socks with the stars? I think I lent them to you when you went skiing, like, last year.”

“Hang on.” Jo put the phone down and then came back. “I don’t see them. I think Polly has those.”

“Okay, thanks. I’ll call Polly.”

When Ama called Polly Polly said she couldn’t find the socks right away but she promised she’d look around and bring them over if she found them.

Ama was dutifully somewhat miserably oiling her boots later -when she heard the door.

Her mom got to it first. She kissed Jo on both cheeks and hugged her hard. “Look at you! How long since I’ve seen you? Look at your hair so long! You got your braces off?”

“Mom, she got her braces off like a year ago,” Ama said flatly.

“Well. She looks so grown.”

Ama was embarrassed by her mom’s exuberance, but Jo didn’t seem to mind.

“Are you staying for dinner? It’s Amas going-away dinner. I’m making kyinkyinga. That’s the kind of kebab you love.”

Jo smiled and glanced at Ama a little awkwardly. “I—no, I … I can’t really stay. I’m supposed to …” Her voice trailed off.

“Mama, Jo has stuff to do,” Ama jumped in. “She’s going away too.” She signaled to Jo to follow her to her room. She noticed that Jo was carrying a box.

Jo put it down -when the doorbell rang again. This time Ama sprinted to make sure she got there first. It was Polly, carrying a brown paper grocery bag in one hand and Amas socks in the other.

“I found them,” Polly declared.

“Hey, thanks,” Ama said. “Thanks for bringing them over.” She led Polly back to her room. “Jo is here,” she said on the way. She kept her voice even, not registering that it was unusual to have both Jo and Polly in her apartment, not even noticing that the three of them hadn’t been together there since her family’s annual Easter dinner.

“She is?”

Ama pushed open the door to her room and there, indeed, was Jo.

Jo looked a little surprised and a little suspicious, like maybe she’d been set up.

“Polly did have the socks,” Ama explained.

“Oh, right,” Jo said.

Polly held up the socks. The three of them stared at each other for a minute.

“What’s in the box?” Ama asked Jo.

Jo looked into her box. “I figured I’d return your other stuff,” she said. “Since I was bringing the bandana.” She took out a pile of DVDs, a few bangle bracelets, some books, and a T-shirt.

“You didn’t have to bring all that,” Ama said. She looked at the DVDs. “You love The Princess Bride. I said you could keep that.”

Jo shrugged. “I doubt I’m going to watch it again. Maybe Bob’s old enough for it.”

Polly too, had brought more than just Amas socks: a mix CD, a hooded sweatshirt, and a pile of Beanie Babies—a chick, a lobster, a fish, a moose, and two bears.

“Polly, you seriously do not need to return those,” Ama said, shaking her head at the pile.

“I know, but I just figured …”

Ama wasn’t sure what to say. There was too much to say to say anything. She turned to her closet. “Okay, well … I guess I should give you your stuff back too.” In her closet she found two of Jo’s shirts. On her bookshelf she found all of Polly’s Little House and Anne of Green Gables books. She’d had them since fourth grade.

“I’m sure there’s more,” Ama said.

Jo sat on her bed and Polly sat on her floor as she crisscrossed her room, making piles for each of them.

“Dinner -will be ready in fifteen minutes,” Amas mother called. Those were the only -words in the room. Ama heard her dad’s voice faintly from the kitchen.

Ama finished the piles, and Jo and Polly boxed and bagged them.

“You guys can stay for dinner. If you want.” As Ama said it, she wasn’t sure what she wanted.

Jo picked up her box, fuller than it was when she brought it. “I can’t. I’m meeting Bryn and Kylie and Marie and those guys for pizza.”

Jo didn’t issue any invitations, and Ama didn’t expect one. She wasn’t friends with that crowd, and Polly certainly-wasn’t either.

Ama looked at Polly. Polly looked uncertain. “Is it just your family?”

“Grace is coming too.” Grace was Amas lab partner and the only other kid in their grade who’d been invited to take the SAT in middle school.

“I should probably get home,” Polly said softly.

Ama walked them to the door and they said good-bye. They said things that friends would say, that they partly meant.

Have a great trip. Write me. Call when you get back. Tell so-and-so hi.

Jo said maybe she’d see them at the beach. In past summers Ama and Polly had always gone to visit for some part of it, but she must have known this year they probably wouldn’t.

Ama watched Jo and Polly troop down the hallway to the elevator, carrying their stuff. All their possessions were finally restored to rightful ownership. Under that fact was the nag of the feeling. What little they’d still had of each other they didn’t have anymore.

When did we last visit the willow trees? I don’t even know. I might have stopped first. Polly and Ama might have kept going. No, I’m pretty sure Ama stopped too. She doesn’t do things for no reason anymore. Polly might have kept going, but I don’t know.

Jo’s bedroom at the beach -was painted the same shade of blue-green as her bedroom at home. It had a slightly tattered quilt left over from her grandmother in Kentucky and some second-string furniture brought from the house in Bethesda. She had jars of sea glass along her windowsills, glinting colors both rare and ordinary. She liked this room. She liked the degree of worn-ness that wasn’t really permitted at home.

In the past they’d mostly used this house for -weekends and short vacations, and in the old days Jo had often brought Ama and Polly along. Jo knew her family -was different from most of the other beach families in that way. Most moms brought their kids out for the whole summer -while the dads commuted on -weekends. But after Finn, Jo started going to sleep-away camp for summers, and her parents never came here -when it -was just the two of them. The Napolis had one of the biggest houses on the beach and used it least, and Jo guessed that did not endear them to the community.

“Who are -we keeping this place for?” she had once overheard her dad ask her mom.

“For the kids,” her mom had said. “For Jo,” she corrected herself.

This summer Jo -would have happily gone back to her sleep-away soccer camp in Pennsylvania. She had loved it, but this summer she -was too old to be a camper and too young to be a counselor. Both she and her mom -were set off balance at the idea of her being home for the summer again. That -was how the idea of spending the summer at the beach house had come up. There -were several kids Jo knew here, including her friend Bryn from school. Bryn -was part of the group Jo had begun to hang out -with in seventh grade. Bryn -wasn’t the greatest listener, but she -was loyal, and just being her friend put you at the center of the action. Bryn had told Jo there -were a lot of kids from their high school -who came for the summer and got jobs on the boardwalk. And Bryn -was the one -who’d told her about the bus girl job at the Surfside. She said it -was one of the few jobs you could get -when you -were fourteen.

In the beginning Jo thought it was her idea to spend the summer at the beach, but later she wondered if her parents had thought of it already.

Jo finished putting her things away in her drawers. Before now, her dresser had seemed like a sizable prop—like the dressers in hotels where you never actually put your stuff. This was her bedroom, but she’d never been here long enough to pack very much or really bother to settle in. This time she would. This time she would get bored in this room; she would have beach friends over, she would talk on the phone, she would sit on the floor, she would scuff up the walls, Scotch-tape random quotations and pictures on them. She would fill up the garbage can and leave dirty socks around. She would keep her door closed to shield her mom from the mess.

It was getting to be dinnertime, and Jo didn’t want to stay and eat dinner -with just her mom. If her dad had been there, she wouldn’t have wanted to eat dinner -with just him and her mom either, because the two of them -would fight or be silent. She didn’t want to eat dinner -with any combination of them, and she didn’t want to eat dinner by herself. She pictured herself in a room full of strangers.