Unbreakable (13 page)

Once again, all except Jacie dissolved into laughter.

Jacie's cheeks flushed a bright red, contrasting sharply against her white t-shirt. "Shut up, Katy," she warned darkly.

Nina recovered quickly and forced herself to smother her smile. "S-sorry, Jacie." She caught sight of Jacie's flashing eyes and winced internally, feeling a little guilty for teasing her friend.

"Me, too," Gwen added sincerely with Audrey quickly joining in the apology and patting Jacie's sneaker-covered foot with her outstretched hand.

"And what if I don't shut up?" Katy shot back to Jacie, ignoring Nina and the other girls and directly challenging Jacie, the group's natural, if reluctant, leader for control. It was a common struggle.

"If you don't shut your hole, I–" Jacie stopped and stared at Katy. She squinted, looking closely at the blonde's shorts. "Isn't that a spider crawling up your leg?"

Screeching like a banshee, Katy jumped to her feet and began frantically swatting at her own legs. "Did I get it?" She danced wildly. "Did I get it?"

Jacie sniggered and dropped down on the grass as the other girls roared with laughter, and it took only a second before Katy knew she'd been had. Her face turned beet red with embarrassment and she stomped off in the direction of the playground, muttering under her breath words that all the girls were forbidden to speak.

"Th-that was mean," Nina said, still laughing a little. But no on else bothered to comment on Katy's departure. A least once every week or two, she or Jacie would get mad at the other and stalk off in a huff. But by the next time they all saw each other, the fuss had been long forgotten and everything was back to normal.

"It really was." Audrey high-fived Jacie. "Way to go!"

Gwen rolled her eyes at her friends, but her gaze sharpened when something about Audrey caught her eye. "Oh. My. God. You're wearing one, aren't you?"

Audrey's cheeks flushed as dark as Gwen's had and she nodded, correctly guessing what Gwen was referring to.

"Wow," Gwen breathed, trying to decide if she was brave enough to ask to see it.

"Wearing what?" Jacie glanced at her friend, seeing the same old Donny Osmond t-shirt she'd seen a million times and a pair of cut-off jeans for shorts.

Gwen gave Jacie's leg a smack. "You're so dense, Jacie! Just look."

Jacie looked again, and Audrey thrust out her chest. "Is that a new hair barrette?" she ventured, clueless.

Gwen rolled her eyes. "She's wearing a bra!"

Jacie screwed up her face. "Gross."

"Shh!" Audrey's gasped. "Not so loud, Gwen." She looked around to see if anyone else could have heard. "That's private!"

"No, it's not," Gwen insisted stubbornly. "I can see the straps through your shirt. How can it be private if I can see it?"

"It just is," Audrey said hotly. Then her expression cleared and she smiled as she crossed her arms over her budding breasts. "We went shopping for it special last week. Just Mom and me. We left my brothers at home."

Jacie looked over at Nina's board-flat chest, then down at her own equally unimpressive boobies and shrugged. "I don't need a bra and I don't want one. Yuck." She let out an aggrieved sigh and turned pleading eyes on the other girls. "Can we talk about something else, please?"

Nina chewed the inside of her cheek. "Well, I-I sort of want one. They're really pretty, Jacie. They come in white and pi-pink and my mom says we'll all have one sooner or later so we might as well p-pick a cute one."

Jacie stared at Nina as though she was insane.

"Outta sight!" Gwen enthused, looking a little smug. "I not only want one, but my mom is taking me to the store to buy one next Saturday."

"Cool!" Audrey crooned, feeling a new connection with her friend. She had always had more in common with Katy, Jacie, or even Nina than she'd had with Gwen, who was such a girly girl and who had worked hard to get one or two popular friends outside the Mayflower Club. But lately, she and Gwen had spent more time together and she'd discovered that they both liked looking at
Tiger Beat
and talking about a lot of the same things.

A secret part of Audrey longed to be accepted by that other group of girls the way Gwen was. They were a sometimes-mysterious gaggle that boldly hung out in the very center of the playground and in the bathroom at school. They had only the coolest hairstyles and a different pair of shoes for each outfit, and most of all, the boys noticed them in ways they never did Jacie or Katy.

"Did you try it on at the store?" Nina asked, wondering if they came in extra-extra small.

Jacie shut her eyes and groaned as if she was in pain.

"Yup. I had to try on a few to find one that fit. Oooo… I almost forgot. They have the most far-out skateboard you can imagine right next to the baseball bats."

Jacie's ears perked up. "Really? What store?"

"Kmart. Right next to the–"

Gwen gasped. "Kmart!" Her face showed her distaste.

Audrey's eyebrows jumped. "Yeah. What's wrong with Kmart?"

Jacie and Nina listened avidly. They both shopped there.

Gwen sniffed and repeated the words she'd heard her mother say. "It's cheap and tacky."

"It is not!" Audrey defended angrily. "You're just being a snot." She fought the urge to remind Gwen that her family was the poorest of the group and that she didn't have any cause to be uppity.

"Yeah," Jacie agreed. "There's nothing wrong with that store. I bought my bike there and it's got a boss banana seat and super tall flag. And when I jump over things the tires don't go flat like they did with my last one."

Nina frowned when Jacie mentioned jumping her bike. The dark-haired girl had set up two wooden ramps at the edge of a local park and had taken to jumping over anything she could get her hands on. She'd even talked Audrey and Gwen into laying on the ground as she sky-rocketed over them. Jacie rarely went a day without crashing, which Nina hated. "You just got your l-last cast off."

"Yup." Jacie happily wiggled the cast-free fingers of her left hand in response.

"You gotta b-be careful, ya know. You'd b-b-better not jump for a while," Nina reminded her friend, knowing that Jacie's mom had recently forbade her from the activity, though that wasn't likely to deter Jacie. Then she turned back to Gwen. "My-my dad bought a hose f-for the garden last week at Kmart. The s-store is okay to me."

"But those are bikes and hoses." Gwen waited for her friends to catch on, but they just looked at her, clearly confused as to what she meant. She sighed. "That stuff's not the same as clothes."

"I think you're a retard, Gwen," Jacie mumbled. "Uff. Hey!" She rubbed the ribs Nina had just elbowed.

"So where am I supposed to get my clothes?" Audrey said, starting to get upset. "My mom likes Kmart!"

"Well," Gwen began, considering the question carefully, "I think it's fine to get them at Kmart, so long as nobody knows you got them there. And this is a bra we're talking about." Jacie made a series of gagging noises that Gwen promptly ignored. "So if you don't tell anyone, they won't know."

"Oh." Audrey thought about that. She didn't particularly care where her clothes were from so long as she liked them.

Gwen leaned forward a little. "Does it have a pink or blue bow right here?" She touched a spot between her own non-existent breasts.

Audrey beamed. Apparently, the style was right even if it was from the dreaded Kmart. "Uh huh! Blue!"

Gwen grinned her approval.

"Wanna see it?" Audrey asked, glancing over to Nina and Jacie a little self-consciously.

"Yes!" Gwen jumped to her feet and offered a hand to the chubby girl, grunting a little as she helped her up. Her gaze flicked to Nina and Jacie. "You guys coming?"

Jacie snorted. "I don't want to see Audrey naked." A single dark brown eyeball appeared and she added, "No offense, Audrey."

Audrey plucked a piece of grass from her curly hair. "S'okay. It's not like I want to see you naked either." Both girls laughed. "How 'bout you, Nina, you wanna see it?"

"Nah." Nina yawned. "I saw ‘em at the s-s-store. And I gotta go h-home soon anyway."

"Okay then." Audrey and Gwen started walking for Audrey's back door. "Catch ya on the flip side."

"Bye." Nina and Jacie waved from their positions flat on their backs, their faces already pointing towards the sky.

"Well," Nina started after a moment or two of comfortable silence. She paused as an exceptionally pretty cloud caught her eye. "I guess I-I should go home."

Jacie sighed. She didn't particularly want to go yet. The new grass was cool against her back and the sun was still strong enough to warm the soft cotton of her shirt. Nina didn't jabber on and on like Audrey and Gwen tended to do and it was still at least two hours until supper. "I guess I should go home and do homework too." She made a face as though she smelled something incredibly stinky.

Nina sat up and tugged over Jacie's book bag. She unzipped it and peered inside. "How far are you on r-r-reading?" She moved aside Jacie's math book and three-ring binder and pulled out a copy of
Where the Red Fern Grows
and Jacie's social studies book.

"Finished up to Chapter 21 in social studies. Haven't even started the book about plants."

Nina's eyes bugged. "Ch-chapter 21 already! Bu-but we were only assigned Chapter 21 two days ago."

Jacie turned just her head to face Nina and this time it was her turn to stutter. "Well, I-I–"

"You're the s-smartest of us all," Nina pronounced, knowing full well that Jacie didn't like it when anyone pointed out how intelligent she was. But they were alone now, which meant Nina could say pretty much anything she liked.

"Am not," Jacie said stubbornly, crossing her arms over her chest. "You get all A's and B's and I nearly failed Mr. Richards' bogus science class last fall."

Nina playfully swatted Jacie's belly. "That's because I-I-I did all my homework and half the time you forget to-to turn yours in."

Jacie gave her friend a lopsided grin. "I only forget when it's extra boring."

Nina let out a long breath. "I haven't even st-started social studies but I'm halfway th-through
Where the R-Red Fern Grows
." She held up the book they'd recently been assigned in their advanced reading group. "It's really good and it's not about p-plants at all."

Jacie glanced at the book dismissively. "Looks old and boring."

"It's not!" Nina opened the book. "I'll sh-show you." And then she began to read out loud.

Jacie just closed her eyes and listened. She couldn't recall the last time anyone had read to her, and Nina's voice was soft and clear and it lulled her into a completely peaceful state. Nina read for a long time and Jacie was completely absorbed by the story until…. "Hey!"

Nina nearly jumped out of her skin. She dropped the book and rose to her hands and knees. "What?" Frantically, she began looking around, trying figure out what caused Jacie to yell.

"You're not stuttering any more."

Nina's expression grew dark. The Mayflower Club never, never made fun of her stuttering. "What are you talking a-about?" She heard herself stutter and her chest clenched. She hated the way she sounded.

"When you were reading, you weren't stuttering," Jacie insisted. She grabbed the book and forced it back into Nina's hands. "Read some more." She gave her a little shove. "Go on."

Nina sighed and set the book down on the grass. "I-I always stutter, Jacie. Mama said I'd g-g-grow out of it. And it's better then w-when I was little. But not that m-much better. Mama even made an a-a-appointment with a speech therapist."

"Just try it," Jacie begged. "Please?"

When those dark pleading eyes were turned Nina's way, the girl found herself helpless to refuse. "Okay," she said hesitantly, picking up the book and finding her place. "But it w-won't work."

"Just try."

Nina drew in a deep breath. She read the first line and stuttered several words. Angrily, she slammed the book closed and felt tears sting her eyes. "See!"

"Try again." Jacie's voice was soothing and filled with confidence. "You weren't stuttering before, Nina. Honest." She handed her back the book. "One last time. And this time just think about the story. It is good, just like you said. My favorite part was where…"

Nina tucked a strand of dark blonde hair behind her ear as she listened to Jacie, a little surprised at how intently she'd been listening. When she found the right page, she glanced over to Jacie, who was lying in the grass peacefully, her eyes closed as the sun painted her face. Nina gathered her courage and began to read again. She stuttered at first, but Jacie didn't interrupt her, and before she knew it, she was lost in the story. It was a full ten minutes later when Jacie rolled over on her side to face Nina, her mouth shaping a triumphant grin. "Toldja."

Nina froze mid-sentence and looked at Jacie and found the courage to try again. She swallowed hard, then read a few more lines and realized that the words were coming out in a steady stream. Nina blinked. "Jinkies!"

Jacie let out a loud whoop of victory. "You did it!"

"How did I-I-?" She pounded the ground with one fist. "Argh!" She was stuttering again.

Jacie frowned. "You don't do it when you read. Maybe you just need practice. You can read to me after school."

"But what about your p-piano lessons? You have to practice three da-days a week."

Jacie groaned. She'd forgotten about those. "If I tell my mom I'm reading with you, she might let me quit. Can't you save me from them? "

"I c-can try." Nina paused, then bravely plowed ahead. "After all, wh-what are best friends for?" She searched Jacie's face for a reaction, well aware that she'd never called Jacie her best friend before, though she'd felt it was true for so long, she couldn't remember when it wasn't true.

A thrill chased its way up and down Jacie's spine and she shot her a toothy grin. "Exactly. Best friends help each other through thick and thin."

Nina released the breath she'd been holding just as Gwen and Audrey emerged from Audrey's house and trotted over to their friends.

"How come you're still here?" Audrey asked. "Jacie, don't you have to eat dinner by six?"