My Almost Epic Summer Read online

  “Nothing would look wrong on you,” adds Bella.

  Starla doesn’t say anything. For a moment, she seems heartbroken. Then she jumps out of the chair and reaches for her bag, snapping open her wallet as I run to the register to take care of her bill.

  “Maybe I’ll see you in school?” Without asking Mom, I cut the ten dollars off the price.

  “Sure,” she answers, though we both doubt it. Summertime is different than school time. In summer, days melt, rules bend, and grades merge until it’s September again, when time refreezes back into its own set of countdowns, its chunks of classes and cliques and schedules. It won’t be long before I’m in the school cafeteria with Britta and Whitney, listening to Whit explain the calorie count on our cheese fries, while Starla sits at her scary-cool table with friends I’d be too shy to talk to.

  But watching Starla go, I feel wrenched, and for a moment, I imagine us as school friends, laughing in the hallway, signaling secret jokes while other kids wonder jealously how I, a lowly freshman without a swimming pool or driver’s permit or anything special, could claim any part of Starla Malloy’s attention.

  Starla and I could never be friends. But watching her go, I feel wrenched.

  “Bye,” I say.

  “Bye, Irene,” she mutters under her breath as she pushes out into the heat. I’d never heard Starla say my name before.

  “What a beautiful girl,” says Mom.

  “Beauty is not a need,” I say, “but an ecstasy.” My quote leaves nobody impressed. “Keats,” I add, entirely for my own benefit.

  “What do you think she is?” asks Bella. “Italian, Spanish, Egyptian—what?”

  “Lord knows. Little bit of all of it. You can’t even look too long at a girl that gorgeous,” adds Marianne as she settles back in her booth. “It’s like staring into an eclipse.”

  Mom lets out one of her classic snorts.

  Starla crosses the street, her head down, her fingertips rubbing the stubble at her forehead. Her shoulders slouch, dejected, and it strikes me that the “ecstasy” part of Starla’s beauty is reaped exclusively by the people who get to stare at her and make judgments.

  “Girls that pretty are the luckiest girls in the world,” declares Bella. “Imagine how it’d be if you had everyone looking at you and admiring you every single minute of the day?”

  “The easy life,” says Marianne.

  “Problem free,” Mom agrees.

  They all stare out the storefront window, slightly peeved, as if Starla has sneaked something past them. Only I know different. “Believe me, she has exactly the same problems,” I say as I watch her turn the corner and disappear.

  I Become an Almost Heroine

  WHEN LAINIE GETS back from Florida, I call over to the Priors and ask Judith if I can come visit for the day.

  “I’m sure she’d love it,” says Judith. “You know, Irene, for the life of me sometimes I couldn’t figure out why, but that girl just adores you.”

  “Judith, I’m really sorry about her arm, and for having those kids over and everything.”

  She sighs. “We all make mistakes. But I have to say, there were times that you were irresponsible.”

  “I know.”

  “It wasn’t lost on me that you let the kids eat ice cream for breakfast.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “And you could be really hard on them.”

  “I was. I know. I’m sorry. But I was helping them build character. And character is destiny.”

  “Mmm.” Judith pauses. Then she says, “Lainie will be happy to see you. She loves you, Irene. She copies everything you do.”

  But this I also know.

  When the purple Hybrid pulls up, I’m waiting with a plastic jar of rainbow-bright Superblo gumballs that Drew gave me on a discount from Shady Shack. I ready myself for Judith’s mini-sermon about how sugar will rot out Lainie’s teeth, and am all prepared to give my weak rebuttal that Lainie really, really loves Superblos. But Judith doesn’t comment on it.

  Upstairs in his room, Evan is trying to build a shortwave radio. When I peek in Lainie’s room, I see that she’s still asleep in bed. The morning sun gilds the room, and I think how delighted Lainie would be with the princess-y way she looks right now, all the gold light on her face and her hair shining on the pillow and no cast or drool in sight. I decide I’ll do a quick sketch of her. Something for her to wake up and see.

  I seat myself in her chair by the window and rummage in Lainie’s book bag for her markers and sketch paper, and that’s when my fingers graze it. I know even before I’ve pulled it out that I’ve finally discovered my long-lost blue spiral Heroine Heads notebook.

  At first, my heart pounds in horror when I see what Lainie has done to my work. On one page, she’s attempted to make some heads from her own favorite books. Beezus is next to Judy Moody is next to Amber Brown, and Lainie has shamelessly copied everything: my handwriting, the way I label my heroines, the size and spacing of the heads. But I hardly have time for this specific fury, because by the next page Lainie is using the notebook as a general sketch album of portraits of everyone she has ever met in her entire life. I skim past drawings of Judith, Dan, Grandma, Gretchen McCoy, somebody named Caitlyn, somebody else named Mr. Kohler, Annie Waldron, Evan, Zaps—even Poundcake has been majestically commemorated in my book.

  Then I flip to the next page and find me. My giant self, alone, takes up all the room. I am huge, with all ten of my fingers and fork-prong eyelashes and a smile like a banana wedged under my nose. Of course it doesn’t look anything like me because Lainie has so little talent for capturing a likeness, but unlike any of Lainie’s other drawings, my name is written in glittery pen across the top of the page, and my head and my name are both captured inside some kind of wobbly balloon. Or is it a heart?

  I squint at it, turning it sideways and upside down. Balloon. No, heart. No, I can’t tell.

  Lainie has made me the star of my own notebook.

  Except that it’s her notebook now, and I’m not even that angry, maybe because this morning I feel so much older than my notebook, as if somewhere along the summer one of my time countdowns got compressed and sped me through a tunnel when I wasn’t looking.

  Heroine Hairstyles, what an idea. But I know I can dream another dream, and I’m not going to let myself get too embarrassed about the old one. Maybe, instead of a beauty parlor, I could open a crafts store, or a bookshop, where I’d still paint the floorboards white and serve peppermint tea—and hire someone else to do the accounting. And I still see my future intertwined with lively outdoor dinner parties overlooking the Los Angeles skyline. Some dreams should stay fixed on the horizon.

  Meantime, Lainie and I can work on a few portraits together, and maybe some paper dolls, after she wakes up.