What Every Girl (except me) Knows

Chapter 1
My Journal

I’ve been keeping a journal now for almost a full year. Actually, I have three journals. One is for dreams, one is for important stuff like this, and one is a list. My list journal is called “Things I Need to know to Be a woman.”

First I wrote in “woman.” Then I crossed that out and wrote in girl.” “Then I crossed that out. and wrote in “woman” again. I still can’t decide.

I’m assuming I’ll turn into a woman someday whether I know anything about being one or not. I think Amber Whitman already has, because every month she goes to the nurse with a mysterious stomachache. We learned all about that in health, and everyone saw the movie. So Amber’s not fooling anyone.

But being like a girl (or womanly or girlish or feminine, whatever you want to call it) is something you definitely have to learn.

Girls probably don’t even know they’re learning it. It just gets absorbed into them while they are sleeping. But one thing for certain is that it has to come from a mother.

And a mother is one thing I don’t have. Not since I was three years old, too long ago to miss her. Too long ago to even remember her. So I keep a list.

My dad’s girlfriend two years ago came over once to make veal scallopini. She took this skinny meat, dipped it in egg, and then into flour, and then into bread crumbs. Then she cooked it on the stove. I wrote that all down on my list.

Another one of my dad’s girlfriends used a comb to tease up her hair and make it look fuller. She actually lifted her hair on top of her head, held it up in the air, and sort of combed it backward. I saw her in the bathroom when the door fell open a little. She got mad when she looked in the mirror and saw me behind her, watching.

“A little privacy, sweetie, please,” she said.
And she knocked the door shut with her foot, because her hands were too busy with a comb and a big wad of tangled hair. She only came over that once, though, and I already had the information for my list.

But watching Cleo Bloom is better than it’s been with anyone else. Cleo is into this “open” thing. My dad hasn’t dated anyone else but Cleo for almost a year now.

Cleo caught me watching her, and she didn’t even say anything. She was standing in the kitchen rubbing hand cream into her hands. First she squirted a little bit from the bottle onto the backs of her hands. Then she massaged it all around, into her fingers, even her fingernails, and then up her arms. to her elbows. When she saw me staring she just laughed.

Old elbows,” she told me. “A woman’s elbows always give her age away.”

Then she held the bottle out to me.

I shook my head. I had known Cleo for all these months but I had never hung out with her before. I wasn’t used to her yet. Usually she and my dad went out and I stayed home with my brother, Ian. Lately, though, she is around a lot more.

I just checked out my elbows in the full-length mirror inside my closet door. My elbows are different from Cleo’s. Cleo’s are more wrinkly, like there is extra skin puckering out. She isn’t so old, though. I think maybe thirty-three or something. My dad is forty-two.

My elbows still look young, I guess. I’m only twelve.

Chapter 2

“She’s coming and she’ll cry.” Lynette leaned over her desk till she was practically dropping out of her seat. She had already said the same crazy thing three times.

Lynette was strange and extremely unpopular, which probably was the reason she was making such an effort to talk to me. Since I, of late, had been nice to her. The truth is, I felt sorry for her ever since this little fourth grader on my bus told me that Lynette had been hit by a truck when she was a baby in her stroller. Nobody was supposed to know that, but this little kid heard it from her cousin or something, and she told everyone. She told me last week, on the way home from school. The sun was already low, trapped behind the Catskill Mountains, leaving us a cold, gray ride home.

“My cousin said the girl was hit by a truck when she was in her stroller. Were you ever hit by a truck?” she asked, I presumed me, since we were the last two riders on the bus.

“Why, do I look like it?” I said, looking out the window at the river. Our bus followed the same meandering path as the Wallkill River. At points the river ribboned close to the road and was visible. I liked to see the river slipping by, as quiet as the trees standing on its muddy banks; quieter still than the secrets I imagined were car- ried with it.

“No, you don’t look like you’ve been hit by a truck. I just didn’t know you could be hit by a truck and live. But this girl’s in the same grade as you. I thought you would know her.”
“So who is it?” I asked, finally.

“I shouldn’t tell.” She lifted up her chin. “It wouldn’t be nice. If you can’t say something nice, don’t say any- thing at all.”

There. That was one of those things. Girls are supposed to say nice things. They compliment each other on their outfits and their haircuts. They offer to do things without being asked, like bring homemade cookies to a party or clear the dishes after supper. Even when they’re mean, girls are nice about it.

“Well, telling me someone’s name would be a very nice thing to say,” I said, not thinking it would really work, not caring in the first place.

“Lynette,” the kid blurted out.

I guess she hadn’t had enough “girl” stuff absorbed into her yet.

She had meant Lynette Waters, who was right at the moment desperately trying to talk to me.

“She’s coming and she’ll cry,” Lynette said for the fourth time.