Trying to Float (9 page)

FRIENDSHIP AND CHOCOLATE

EVERYTHING ABOUT JANIE
FIELDS
was inoffensive. She wore the right things (circulation-squeezing jeans, bright graphic T-shirts paired with jelly bracelets called Silly Bandz), ate the right things (PB&J sandwiches with the crusts cut off), and had subscriptions to all the teen magazines. She had brown hair, brown eyes, and a medium build. She was an average student. And she was grating in a hard-to-identify way.

Because Janie was my friend, I took the time to study what was happening to her. I came to understand that it was going to happen anyway, and finally accepted it as a natural part of life, like butterflies burning in campfires or puberty.

Janie became a Popular Girl.

As Janie migrated to the other side, she spent less and less time with me and Maria. When it became clear that Janie was no longer our friend, Maria was hurt.

She started to pace, all four feet seven inches of her.

“Janie's embarrassed by me. She doesn't want to be seen with a midget.”

There were, no doubt, a lot of bad things in Janie's character, but hating midgets wasn't one of them. Besides, there was a more obvious explanation.

“It's my personality,” I offered matter-of-factly. “Janie needed me when she didn't know anyone else in the school, but now that she has other friends, she's ready to move on.”

This was something I had come to understand. In my quest for friendship, I had developed the ability to repel people upon first serious conversation. Janie had lasted a surprisingly long time.

“I'm going to get her back for this,” Maria declared.

One thing that could be said for the Rips family gene pool (a thing which, in my opinion, should have been drained years ago) is that we lack a thirst for revenge. It was why my father was more than happy to apologize to the tailor, and why I, listening to Maria, was thinking of nothing other than getting my daily chocolate bar from the local deli. My friendship with Janie was all but the faintest unpleasant aftertaste.

“Maria, it is my experience that if you let bad fortune alone for long enough it ripens into something amusing. A funny story, that sort of thing. Besides, a couple of our friends will stay with us.”

“I'm going to kill her.”

She wasn't listening.

“I have a plan,” Maria continued.

“We go to the deli and get my candy bar?”

“No!”

“No?”

“We give her the Look.”

“Okay. But first, let's go to the deli.”

“No! First the Look, then the deli.”

The message of the Look, also known as the evil eye, is something like: “Oh yeah? You think you're going to go and leave your friends? Well, you can bet that when you come crawling back to us, we're not even gonna look at you! Yeah, and we're gonna have a lot of fun without you! Ha!”

Maria and I needed to find Janie as quickly as possible so that we could deliver the Look and get to the deli before class started. We searched the school.

As soon as we caught sight of Janie's group, Maria started to speak out of the side of her mouth.

“
Uno, due, tre
 . . . go!”

Nearing the center of Janie's posse, we began to strut and then, in unison, whipped our heads toward Janie, delivering the Look. But alas, Janie had turned away. We were giving the Look to the back of her head.

I figured this was the time to assert myself.

“Maria, I'm going to get my chocolate.”

“Once more,” Maria pleaded. “Then we can go.”

“Maria, this has gone far enough. I need my chocolate!”

“Pleassssse! You'll be my best friend.”

Wasn't I already her best friend?

Back in formation, we marched toward the group.

“Uno, due, tre.”

We snapped our heads. The Look.

Again, the back of Janie's head.

At this point, we could not stop. Over and over again, we marched, until we were doing nothing but circling Janie, snapping our heads and grunting. Rather undignified.

And I swear that Janie had a radar for the two of us, for every time we threw the Look, it missed.

The bell rang.

I was furious.

As Maria and I were leaving the cafeteria, I glanced back at Janie and to my horror noticed that Janie was now staring at us. But the horror came not from Janie's eyes but from her mouth. She was chewing what should have been mine. A chocolate bar.

GRETA RETURNS

THE FIRST FEW
months of middle school went well. The change of environment had washed away my stench from elementary school, and though I'd lost Janie, I still had Maria and a couple other friends.

So here I was, the kid who, just a year before, no one wanted to have anything to do with, walking down the hallway with friends, greeting people at their lockers, and, best of all, going to birthday parties.

I was strolling into this happy reality one November morning when I caught sight of Maria and others crowded around a curly haired figure, who was, from nothing more than the top of her head, unmistakably Greta, my former friend from elementary school. Though she and I had ended up at the same middle school, because she hadn't been in Rebecca's class, I'd seen little of her.

Her friends were pretty, stylish, and involved in many school activities (dance, athletics, theater); mine were unat
tractive and liked anime. But to me, none of this mattered; my friends had the one quality that made them superior to anyone else at the school: they wanted to be with me.

“Nicki!” Maria greeted me, stepping away from the group surrounding Greta.

“Maria!” I responded, throwing my arms around her.

“You have to hear this,” Maria whispered excitedly, pulling me into the group.

Greta had just begun the story.

“The other day . . .”

Greta dropped her voice. Everyone moved closer to hear.

“. . . Oscar asked if I would meet him after school.”

Oscar was a sweet, cute (though chinless), but not particularly smart boy. He was a friend of Greta's, and she had a crush on him.

“When we met, Oscar told me that he needed to tell me ‘a secret.' ”

Now we were getting to the good stuff.

“ ‘Greta, I did something terrible,' Oscar told me, ‘and I don't know what to do about it.'

“ ‘There is nothing so bad that we can't handle it,' I said to Oscar. But I was worried. Oscar's parents were always busy and had no time for him. I was going to have to take charge.”

Gad!

“So I said to Oscar, ‘Oscar, you're going to have to tell me the secret. I can't help you, if you don't.' ”

Don't do it, Oscar, my thoughts screamed.

But this wasn't going to happen. Greta had him and she wasn't letting go.

“It took me a few minutes to get it out of him,” Greta continued. “But when he finally told me his secret, I thought to myself, Oscar's in trouble. Real trouble.”

Greta went silent, shaking her head.

But how could the story end there? Greta had to tell us Oscar's secret. But even Greta, I was sure, wouldn't reveal Oscar's secret to a random crowd of girls.

Greta had already started up again.

“ ‘Greta,' Oscar whispered to me, ‘the problem is . . . ' ”

Greta raised her eyebrows, and then pointed to her stomach.

“
Diarrhea
?” Maria cried out.

Greta shook her head.

More confusion.

What?

Greta shoved her stomach outward.

Mother of Jesus. Oscar got someone pregnant!

None of us had heard anything like this. We shivered.

But Greta wasn't done, for she quickly made it clear that she knew the pregnant woman. We shouted out guesses.

A teacher?

A friend of Oscar's family?

Who could it be?

With each guess, Greta shook her head.

Tell us, Greta, tell us.

“Nicki, I'm sorry.”

Did I just hear my name?

Everyone was staring at me.

The bell for first period rang. The girls raced to class.

I caught up with Greta.

“Greta, you just told them I'm pregnant!!”

“I said it was a ‘
dream,
' Nic. Didn't you hear that part?”

No one had heard “that part” because that was the part when she'd dropped her voice. Nothing I said in the following weeks could convince anyone that I, an eleven-year-old girl, wasn't carrying Oscar's child. Even Oscar, never too smart, seemed confused.

So while my fellow middle schoolers counted their school year in semesters, I counted mine in trimesters, for it wasn't until the third that anyone would believe that I hadn't done whatever a girl must do to get pregnant with someone like Oscar.

My fresh start had gone rotten.

MOVING ON

BY THE TIME
I was in sixth grade, my parents had lived in the Chelsea for more than sixteen years. As an infant I hadn't taken up much space, but my presence in the apartment had grown. With each passing year, our home fit us a little more tightly, like a pair of my dad's college trousers. For this reason, my mom began to think about other places to live.

Every time she tried to introduce the subject, my dad would grumble. If we left the hotel, he'd argue, he would have to find new coffee shops, and that was quite a bit more disruption to his life than he was prepared to take on. We had plenty of space, he'd insist, failing to notice that it was impossible to move around without smacking into his bric-a-brac.

As much as I loved the Chelsea, the idea of moving was seductive. I was sick of people confusing my bedroom for a closet. This was an easy mistake given its small size. During my parents' many dinner parties people would inadvertently toss their coats on top of me while I slept. I could never
manage more than one person in my room at a time without people sitting on my bed, which made playdates impossible. Fatigued by my constant pestering and my mother's unspoken but obvious irritation with the shared bathroom situation, my father gave in and announced one day that he had arranged for us to see a couple of apartments.

On Saturday afternoon, we put on our coats and headed out the door, down the elevator, and into the lobby. The Crafties were sitting in their usual spot and they applauded us as we walked by.

Mr. Crafty shouted after my dad, “Finally growing some cojones.”

Smiley wheeled into the lobby and grabbed my mother. “Get out before they start stealing your detergent.”

Stanley poked his head out from his office and waved to us.

As we walked, I thought to myself, “This is really happening; we are finally leaving the hotel.”

Outside, my dad stopped walking, took a deep breath, and spun around to face the entrance, just as Stanley and Steve, the engineer who had worked at the hotel for decades, emerged from the entrance. Stanley seized my mom's hand and gave it a few vigorous pumps, then turned and did the same with my dad and me. After exchanging greetings, Stanley promptly showed us the way back inside the hotel.

Our first stop on Stanley's tour of vacancies took us to the seventh floor.

“You are going to love this one!” he said, directing his
excitement to my mother, for whom he had genuine affection. As we shuffled in to take a look, Stanley turned to my father and said, “You know . . . you're getting a good deal, these rents are below the Plaza.” I had never had the pleasure of visiting that establishment, but I didn't think that visiting dignitaries would appreciate uneven floorboards, chipping paint, and a permanent malodor.

With each apartment, my parents murmured the appropriate “oohs and ahs” and asked Stanley and Steve the standard questions: do the fireplaces work (Stanley yes, Steve no), is it noisy (Stanley no, Steve yes), and who are the neighbors (Stanley, “an elderly artist and her invalid husband.” Steve, “Crazies”—a raucous former inhabitant of a halfway house and the man she met there). My parents weren't bothered by any of this, and after a serious exchange with Stanley about taking the apartment, went off to examine the bedrooms and kitchen.

I might remind you that we didn't actually need to see the apartment: a floor above ours and in the same line, it was nearly identical.

As soon as my parents were far enough away, Steve confronted Stanley.

“Excuse me, Stanley, you realize that someone lives here? I think we should wait until David comes.”

David was Stanley's son. He ran the day-to-day operations of the hotel, and it was understood that David would assume control when Stanley retired.

“Don't worry about David,” Stanley replied, “he's not coming.”

“Why?”

“I fired him.”

“You fired David?” Steve's eyes bulged and his head jerked back. “Why?!”

“If you must know, I fired him because he said ‘fuck you' to me. No one says ‘fuck you' to me!”

“Are you kidding, Stanley?” I say ‘fuck you' to you all the time.”

“Okay, okay. But you're an exception.”

“What about Artie? He says ‘fuck you' to you every time you ask him for the rent. And Jerry and Nathan, they say ‘fuck you' on a daily basis.”

“That's right. Artie only says it when no one else is around, Jerry and I grew up together, and Nathan's too young to know better.”

Nathan was the son of a bellman who had worked for Stanley's father.

“My rule is that you can only say ‘fuck you' to me if you said it to me when I was a kid
or
if you are a kid
or
if nobody else is around. It's a three-part rule.”

“I can say ‘fuck you' to you?” I inquired.

They ignored me.

“So anyone can say ‘fuck you' to you except David. Am I right?” Steve asked.

“If you keep this up, I'm going to fire you, too.”

My dad wandered back into the living room, his head tilted
back to examine the ceiling sconces. “Excuse me, is there room service here?”

“No, Michael, you know that!” Stanley was getting flustered.

My dad considered this carefully, then shrugged. “Fair enough.”

Steve, meanwhile, was heading out the door.

“Where are you going?” Stanley shouted after him.

“Fuck you, Stanley! Call David, tell him you're sorry, and get him to come back to work.”

Stanley followed him, muttering under his breath.

My father turned to me. “I like this one.”

“Me too,” my mother shouted from the hallway. She was attempting to pry open the door to one of the bathrooms, when suddenly she stopped and stepped back.

A toilet flushed.

“Who's out there?” called a voice from inside.

My parents and I hoofed it back to our apartment.