Amandine Read online

Tuesday, Amandine had saved a place for me in the cafeteria.

  “Delia!” she called, waving me over.

  I felt purposeful and happy as I pushed through the crowd to sit with her. All the previous week, I had been eating lunches with Samantha Blitz, who had been assigned to show me around, and whose patience I was testing. Samantha was the starting center on the freshman girls’ soccer team, and at lunch she always sat with her teammates, who had been perfectly nice and had become perfectly indifferent.

  “Hi.” I slid my tray opposite hers and sat.

  “Do you smell anything?” She leaned forward.

  I sniffed. The air was fruity, spiced with bread and bananas and tacos, the hot lunch special of the day.

  “What should I smell?”

  “I forgot to put on deodorant this morning. I can’t believe I would ever forget a thing like that, I’ve been doing it for so long. I have to shave practically twice a day, too. I’m very developed, that way.”

  I didn’t say anything, though what she had said was tough to believe. Amandine was small and pale and boyish, and she looked younger than fourteen. As if she knew what I was thinking, she reached behind into her backpack and pulled out a black glasses case, snapped it open, then slipped on a pair of hexagonal wire-rimmed glasses.

  “Nonprescription,” she informed me. “Don’t they make me look older?” She tilted her head from one side to another, modeling.

  It seemed important for her that I answer yes, so I did.

  “You watch,” she said, running a speculative finger over the frame. “This shape’ll be, like, a total trend by next week. Kids always copy me, I don’t know why. DeWolf’s got a lot of followers. Were kids here the same as in your old school? A sheep herd?”

  “Maybe. But kids here seem nicer.” I shrugged. “Alford has a softer aesthetic.” I didn’t know what aesthetic meant, exactly, but I’d heard my mother say that to someone on the phone. “That’s why we moved. It’s a good place for my dad to start his own business and be his own boss, blah blah blah.” I shrugged, as if my parents’ spontaneity made no difference to me. In truth, our move to Alford, which they had not consulted me on, had come as an unsettling surprise. But my parents always worked as a unit, whereas I was more like the overpacked luggage they carted along with them.

  Amandine grinned and rolled her eyes. “My parents did that, too. We used to live in New York City, actually. Brooklyn Heights, till I was in sixth grade. Then all of a sudden they wanted to hug trees and mow the lawn and stuff.”

  “Same as mine!”

  “But they should go back. ’Cause of missing the plays and museums. They’re both really, really into the arts.”

  “Same as mine!” Which was not quite true, but it wasn’t as if my parents were against the arts. And suddenly, Amandine was at my breakfast table again, eating sour-cherry pancakes, talking to Mom about Times Square and Central Park.

  As the ending lunch bell rang, I saw Samantha Blitz leave her table and walk over to us.

  “Either of you guys seen my lucky bandanna?” she asked. “I lost it.”

  “That makes it an unlucky bandanna.” Amandine smirked.

  “What color is it?” I asked.

  “It’s goldish-orange, flower-y,” she answered. “I was wearing it in homeroom.”

  “Oh, yes. I remember,” I said, nodding. “Definitely, I’ll keep an eye out. Gold and orange. Flowers. Got it. I’ll keep a look out.” I could hear myself sound overeager. Mom would have handled this better, with her Boston blend of friendly and indifferent.

  Amandine yawned and stretched her arms over her head and said nothing.

  “Okay. Well, yeah. If you happen to.” Samantha’s eyes skimmed over me and held Amandine’s a second too long. “Later, guys.”

  “Me and her used to hang out a lot together,” Amandine confided after Samantha had left. She smiled kittenishly. “But that was before I found you.”

  Yesterday, after I’d kept her waiting, Mrs. Gogglio had given me some heat.

  “Don’t fritter away my goodwill, Delilah,” she said. She had a hard time with my name, calling me Dahlia and Delayla before settling on this one. I’d corrected her for a little while, and then stopped bothering.

  “Sorry, Mrs. Gogglio.”

  “It’s not about the money, why I pick you up. It’s about coincidence. I get off my shift at Sunrise Assisted at three and you get off school at three ten and our living right ’round the corner from each other makes this meeting a coincidence. But you’d be looping back roads on that school bus for an hour and then some if it wasn’t for me. And I wouldn’t have a heart to care, except it’s on my way, and why not earn a little extra on the side? But my main point here is coincidence, you hear?”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Gogglio. Really.” It was hard to follow her every word, the way she said hot for heart and un for earn. She was Massachusetts bohn and raised, she’d told us proudly that first day she stopped over for a neighborly visit, bringing us a batch of blueberry muffins so good I couldn’t seem to stop reaching for the next.

  “Enjoy your starch, I see,” she’d said, nodding me up and down as I bit into a third. Stahch, the word in Mrs. Gogglio’s mouth, meant all delicious things. She liked her starch, too, unlike my starch-free parents. Block-shouldered, apple-faced Mrs. Gogglio could have been my real, long-lost mother. And so our friendship was born. It wasn’t completely about coincidence. After a day spent tending to old people, Mrs. Gogglio seemed to enjoy the change of more youthful company. And after my own day of trying not to do or say the wrong thing or have the wrong answer or sit in the wrong place, Mrs. Gogglio’s easy manner was a relaxing tonic.

  Yesterday, as punishment for my lateness, Mrs. Gogglio didn’t stop for a drive-through snack.

  Today, I was right on time, as Amandine had left early on account of a doctor’s appointment. It was Mrs. Gogglio who was about fifteen minutes late. She gave me her version of an apology as I got into her car.

  “You hungry?”

  “Not really. I don’t know.”

  “Delilah, you look like the cat that swallowed the canary,” she remarked as we turned onto the highway. “You’re settling in good over there at the new school?”

  “Sort of … with this one girl.”

  “That so?”

  “Yep. She’s kind of different from anyone I ever knew back in Connecticut. But she’s nice.”

  “Nice means a lot.”

  “Yep.” Though now nice seemed like the exactly wrong word to describe Amandine.

  “Melissa MacKnight?” she asked hopefully. Melissa MacKnight was Odie MacKnight’s granddaughter, and Odie was one of Mrs. Gogglio’s favorite patients at Sunrise Assisted. But Melissa MacKnight had all the friends she needed.

  “No. Her name’s Amandine. Amandine Elroy-Bell.”

  “Elroy-Bell. Bell, Bell. Don’t ring one.” Mrs. Gogglio snorted. “Lived here long, those Elroy-Bells? I thought I’d heard most names ’round Alford.”

  “On State Road. In a big stone mansion, is how Amandine described it. Right on the corner, it’s got an iron gate wrapped around it.”

  Mrs. Gogglio’s face knit. “Ah. Those folks,” she said after a pause. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched her face go blank as her thoughts turned private. I waited, nervous with curiosity. Mrs. Gogglio would have the right opinion. Her white Sunrise Assisted nursing uniform made her seem authoritative and reliable.

  Whatever she was thinking, though, she kept it to herself.

  “How about let’s stop off at Friendly’s?” she suggested presently. “Fries and Fribbles. Salty and sweet. I’ve got a two-for-one coupon for it in my book in the glove box. It’ll be my treat.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m trying to lose … my mother wants …”

  “Delilah,” she said impatiently, “your skinny-miss mother’s got no business trying to alter how you’re built. There’s no shame in a natural, healthy appetite.” Her cheeks blazed with a pink fire of emo
tion. “Fact is, she should be proud of your nice strong looks.”

  Of course, her little speech didn’t make sense; but when Mrs. Gogglio talked like that, I could actually feel myself settle better into the fit of my skin.

  It would be another week before I met “those folks,” and saw that big house on State Road for myself. But my parents were pressing too hard for this weekend, wanting proof of Amandine. It was a relief when she agreed to stay over at my house Friday night, exactly one week after we had met.

  “My mom’s taking off early from work,” I told her when I finally caught up with her on Friday afternoon after school. “She’s picking us up out front and driving us to the mall and stuff. If we want movies and pizza.”

  “Pizza.” Amandine rolled her eyes. “Pizza gives me zits.”

  “It doesn’t have to be pizza. Where’s your bag?”

  “In my locker, where else?”

  “Let’s go get it.”

  She yawned an answer. She had been making me uneasy all day. First showing up for school that morning in a full, black-and-white-striped skirt, large gold hoop earrings, and red lipstick. Then ignoring me, not seeking me out at my locker, and being so late to lunch that I had to eat through most of it in excruciating aloneness.

  When I finally caught up to her, she acted indifferent. She had been enjoying the attention of her outfit all day, and the spotlight gave Amandine a strange radiance.

  “Oh, dress it up, Amandine!” I heard some girls laugh as we walked together down the hall. “Look at that skirt! Woweee!”

  “It’s my Natalie Wood from West Side Story costume,” she told me offhandedly. “I’d let you borrow it, but we’re different sizes.”

  “Oh, well.” I made a show of looking disappointed, although I couldn’t imagine risking the whispers and stares that would follow such a weird costume.

  The day before in silent study period, I had overheard girls talking more meanly about Amandine, about her stop-sign-shaped glasses and the green opera gloves she had worn to school last week in place of winter gloves. But nobody was so bold to her face. To her face, Amandine was dealt light teasing or quiet suspicion. Nothing worse. At my old school, treatment might have been different. I wouldn’t have called them a sheep herd, exactly, but the kids here were pretty mild.

  As we walked to her locker, she rubbed off most of the lipstick with the back of her hand and pulled up her hair. By the time Mom drove up to collect us, Amandine had transformed herself into a less Hollywood-style, more typical fifties-style girl, her ponytail and puffy skirt swinging as she walked to the car.

  “Hi, Mrs. Blaine!” she sang, bubbly and sweet as an ice-cream soda. “I’m Amandine Elroy-Bell. Thanks for letting Delia invite me over to your home for the weekend!”

  My mother looked positively joyful. “Why, it’s my pleasure. You know, Delia’s been talking about you all week!”

  “Has she? What does she say?” Amandine played out a reaction of joy, then helped herself to the front seat without asking. I took the back, not sure whether to be mortified at Mom’s comment, annoyed at Amandine’s nerve, or relieved that neither of them needed me to be the conversation mediator.

  It was obvious that Mom and Amandine would get along just fine.

  “You’re rich, huh?”

  It was the first thing Amandine had said out of my mother’s earshot. True to her plan, Mom had swung us through the mall for takeout and movie rentals, and only gave me one stern look when Amandine got a skinless chicken Caesar salad while I ordered an individual-sized pepperoni pizza at the takeout. But Mom had said I could have anything, and I could practically hear Mrs. Gogglio, all fired up, telling me that there was no shame in choosing what would sustain my nice strong shape.

  After we got home, Mom, probably exhausted by Amandine’s perky, phony questions (“What do you like best about living here, Mrs. Blaine? Have you been to the greenmarket yet? What kinds of flowers are you and Mr. Blaine going to plant?”), disappeared into the study to call work.

  “Us? Rich? Not really,” I answered. “We’re just normal.”

  “It’s okay. My parents are rich, too. Richer than yours, even, but they put a lot into savings. So it’s not like I’m jealous. Show me your room?”

  “Upstairs.”

  She followed me, sighing under the weight of her unwieldy bag. It seemed that she had packed a lot of stuff for a single night.

  The upstairs was small and all mine, an eaves-sloped bedroom, a bathroom, and another, sealed-off storage space at the end of a short hall.

  “Your bedroom is decorated very bourgeois,” Amandine pronounced, dropping her bag as she entered it. “Do you know what that word means?”

  I made a thoughtful face as if I might. “I like it anyway.”

  “Very matchy-match, that’s what it means. You have lots of books, ugh. Books go too slow for my pace. If I have to read, it’s for a play audition.”

  She seemed unimpressed by my room, which my parents and I had assembled in two days as soon as I’d confirmed that Amandine would be coming over. Prairie-flower curtains and dust ruffle, an oval rug, and a vase of store-bought flowers. Last night it had looked pretty; now it made me feel dumb and matchy-match.

  “What’s down the hall?” she asked.

  “The bathroom.”

  “No, the other room.”

  “That? That’s just my brother’s room,” I said. My words tumbled easy as a throw of the dice. “My older brother,” I added.

  “You didn’t tell me you had a brother.” Amandine regarded me with suspicion. “I thought you were like me. An only.”

  “I never said that.”

  “So where is he?”

  “Oh. Where? He’s in college,” I said. It felt as if I was speaking through my nose.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Ethan. He plays football. My parents really, really miss him, so if you didn’t talk about him, at all I mean, that would be, um, better.”

  “Okay.”

  “And I’m not allowed to go in his room. It’s locked, anyway.” This part of my story was not a lie. Mom had put a hasp and buckle on the door on account of the exposed fiberglass insulation in the floor and walls. I don’t know what exactly she thought I was going to do—sneak in and roll around in the fiberglass like a horse in clover? But my mother is protective that way. Ever since I could remember, she’d needed to straighten, order, lock, and guard things.

  The sound of a car pulling into the driveway interrupted us.

  “My dad,” I said, gratefully.

  Partly I lied to Amandine about Ethan because I wished it was true. I guess that’s the reason most people lie. But I also lied because I had a feeling that I could get away with it, since Amandine herself was not very careful with the truth.

  In fact, throughout that first week of our friendship, Amandine had been serving up some pretty questionable stories. They were always intriguing—like the one about her being chosen for the New York City Ballet Company’s corps de ballet, but then getting shinsplints at the last minute. Or about dancing at a nightclub in Miami where Amandine was on the same dance floor as Madonna, and Madonna started copying her dance moves, and then everyone started copying Madonna, so she, Amandine, ended up not getting any credit for them. Or about how she had rescued a cat from the branch of a tree that was so high up and delicate that not even a fireman could get to it, but then the cat had scratched up Amandine’s arm. Bloodied it so badly that she’d immortalized it in her notebook of Ugliest Things. She had shown me this drawing as “proof.” She had used red nail polish for blood gashes, and the effect was pretty disgusting.

  Fun to hear, but hard to imagine. And no matter what the setting, Amandine always flitted through it in the same role, as a nymph and a victim bruised by some minor cruelty. Which wasn’t how the real Amandine was at all.

  So what was one imaginary brother, tucked away in the setting of some far-off college? (I would make it Seattle or San Francisco, if she asked!) As
soon as I’d dared it, though, the weight of my lie made me feel as if I had a raw egg balanced on my head. One misstep, and this dumb story would splatter. My parents would think I’d gone nuts, and worse, Amandine would know my lonely secret, something about me that seemed too private to have given her.

  It was too late now.

  “The much-anticipated Miss Amandine Elroy-Bell!” my father called up the stairs as soon as he walked in the door. “Reveal yourself!”

  Amandine’s eyes widened. She took out her cakey red lipstick and blotted it over her mouth. Then fluttered down the stairs, holding a pose midway, actress-style.

  “Mis-ter Blaine, the pleasure is all mine!” It was as if a TNT movie star had leaped off the screen and into our home. I clumped behind her at a distance. Dad’s face couldn’t hide his surprise, but since he was the one who had begun the silly movie talk, he sort of had to keep it going.

  “What an utterly charming skirt!”

  “This little old thing? Don’t be silly. But you do know how to make a girl feel pretty, Mis-ter Blaine!”

  Mom had entered the front hall. Her hand limply held her cell phone, her eyebrow quirked as she watched them.

  “Hello, Daniel,” she said.

  “Hello, Mis-sus Blaine!” Dad copied Amandine’s inflection while quickly turning away from her. He swung Mom into a big hug and a gobbling kiss that immediately embarrassed everyone, Dad included.

  “The girls are having takeout, but I thought you and I …” Mom’s voice lowered as she and he began their routine arm-in-arm stroll into the study for quiet time. I tugged at Amandine’s wrist.

  “Hey, let me show you out back, where we have a—”

  She shook off my hand, hopped down a few steps. “Aren’t we all eating together?” she called sharply after my parents. “As a family?”

  My ears strained through the silence that followed. I washed it out with my own whisper. “Amandine, I don’t usually … it wouldn’t be as fun … with them.”

  “Is that what you’d like, Amandine?” My mother spoke up in her best Boston-hostess voice. Yet I could hear that she was annoyed.

  “It’s what I thought,” Amandine answered in a cold, adult voice of her own. As if the power of what she assumed should be enough to change what had been planned.