A, My Name Is Ami, page 10
“Okay,” Mia said, “we hang out near him and act natural. But we better have a signal, like waving a scarf or something.”
“If we stick together, Mia, we won’t need a signal.”
Mia sighed. “I know, but it would be so much fun to wave a scarf mysteriously.”
We looked around for Robert. “Having a good time, girls?” Dad said. He and Ms. Linsley were refereeing a checkers tournament. We finally spotted Robert near the playground with Alex and Miles. They were eating hamburgers and passing around a bag of chips. We hid in the trees and watched.
“Robert’s so cute,” Mia whispered.
“Miles is nice, too.”
“The fat boy?”
“Mia, you always say that. There’s more to Miles than his shape.”
A gang of kids came swinging through the woods. We picked up some leaves and pretended to be studying them. Robert, Alex, and Miles were still standing around, eating and talking. Then they strolled over to the swings. Alex stood up on a swing. Miles and Robert sat down, hanging on to the chains. They were still talking. Then they went over and scuffed around in the sandbox and talked some more.
“They sure talk a lot,” I said.
“Maybe they’re talking about us!” Mia shivered.
“What if Robert guessed who sent the note?”
Mia pinched my arm hard. “Ami! Look!”
Robert was walking away from the other two. We followed him, but stayed in the woods. He cut across the field and went into the men’s bathroom. That was embarrassing. We walked away, but not too far.
When he came out, Robert didn’t go back to the playground. He went straight toward the red trail.
Chapter 21
The red trail went past the falls, twisted around into a different part of the woods, and came out below the falls. We tried to stay far enough behind Robert so he wouldn’t hear us. The woods were really quiet. No birds, just a few squirrels.
“Shhhh!” Mia said. “Your feet sound like thunder.”
“Oh, pardon me, Chief Light Foot, I forgot my moccasins.”
“Ami, you think it’s all right to criticize me, but when I say anything—”
“What are you talking about, Mia? When did I criticize you?”
“When? Always! Just a little while ago, you told me not to call Miles the fat boy.”
“Mia, I only said—”
“I know what you said.”
We came around a turn in the trail, arguing, not looking, and there was Robert, waiting for us. “I knew it was you two,” he said.
We all just looked at each other for a minute, then Robert said, “So what’s my big surprise, Ami?”
Why was he asking me? I didn’t know any more than he did.
“This is your surprise.” Mia took him by the arms and kissed him the way we kissed when we made up our quarrels, first on one cheek and then on the other. Robert really looked surprised and he blushed. He took off his glasses and hooked them over his shirt.
Mia and I looked at each other and she wriggled her eyebrows to remind me of that morning in the Bagel Tree. I remember! I wriggled back.
She poked me. “Your turn.” For a minute, I didn’t get it. Then I did. I was supposed to kiss Robert, too. I leaned toward him and kissed him on the cheek. He smelled really nice, his cheek was soft, but sort of firm, too.
The next thing I knew, he kissed me back on the cheek. And then, he kissed Mia on the lips! It was a real kiss. They put their arms around each other and kissed, just the way Jan and Fred had that time in the kitchen. Well, I thought, even if I’m not kissing, I’m getting plenty of experience watching.
After that, we all walked back together, talking about the picnic, the food, the teachers, stuff like that. Robert said, “Mr. Pelter is okay. He’s kind of boring sometimes.”
“That’s Ami’s father,” Mia said.
“Ami’s father?” He really blushed, more than he did when we kissed him. “I didn’t know that. I thought it was just—you know—the same name.”
“I don’t care that you said that. I mean, my father has to be something, so he’s an English teacher.”
“My father’s an electrical contractor,” Mia said.
“I know that, Mia.”
“I wasn’t telling you, Ami! I was telling Robert. I might want to be an electrician,” she said. “I’m telling Robert, Ami. Got it? It’s a good trade and there aren’t many women electricians, my father says, so I’d be a trailblazer. Which sounds neat. But it might be more fun to work on a newspaper.”
“What do you want to do?” I said to Robert.
“I don’t know. Maybe something in television.”
“I know someone who works in radio. Harley Juster.”
“The DJ? You know him?” He acted impressed and I promised to show him Harley Juster’s autograph.
When we got back to the picnic, Robert went to find his friends. The picnic was almost over, but we had to police up the park before we left. I dumped a can into a plastic bag and thought about all the things that had changed since school started. Just three months and so many things were different. Fred getting ready to go to France in the spring. Dad and Forrest. And really knowing now that Mom wasn’t coming back home. Only Mia and I were the same. Or were we?
We sat together on the bus going home. Ms. Linsley was our bus monitor. She stood up in front of the bus and led us in songs. “… and the wiiide mouth frog said.…”
Davis Buck looked over at me as I was singing and snickered. I remembered what Bill had said about my voice. I looked out the window. “Rootie tootie,” I hummed, and I felt this little stirring inside me, this fluttering like a mouse inside my chest, a tiny, nibbly feeling. I didn’t know what it was, I only knew what it wasn’t. It wasn’t sadness, it wasn’t fear.
Coming back into the city we passed the old railroad station, rows of little houses, a brick church. A kid in a window waved. I waved back. And there was that stirring inside me again, that nibbly fluttering, as if something were going to happen, something good, something interesting. But what? What was it? Then, just for a moment, I thought I knew. I understood. It was everything, it was my whole life, it was all the things that were going to happen to me that hadn’t happened yet.
Chapter 22
“I don’t believe it,” Mia said for about the fourth time. “I just don’t believe it.”
“Well, do you like it?”
She looked at me in the mirror over my bureau. “I don’t know.”
Last night I had cut my hair. Strands of hair had fallen all over the floor, long strands of hair I’d grown for almost thirteen years.
“I’m still in shock,” Mia said. “We look so different now! You with your short hair and me with my long hair.”
“We never looked the same, Mia.”
“I know, it’s just—it’s so different.”
I picked up the scissors and snipped the air. “I didn’t know I was going to do it. I didn’t plan it, I just did it. I took a shower and washed my hair, and—you know how good the shower makes you feel? That’s the way I felt. I was singing this song a friend of mine wrote—”
“What song?” Mia said. “What friend?”
“A friend of Fred’s.”
“You mean Jan? She wrote a song?”
“No, not Jan. Someone else.”
“Who? What’s her name?”
“His name. Bill.”
“Who’s he? What’s he got to do with cutting your hair? You know what? When I walked in, I almost didn’t recognize you.”
“I know, it’s so funny. I keep looking at myself. Is that Ami? Remember how you wrote the note to Robert? Just did it? That’s the way I cut my hair.” I opened my bureau drawer and showed her an envelope. “I put some of my hair in here. Maybe my mom will want it.”
“What’d your father say?”
“He didn’t see it yet.”
“Well … I think I like it,” Mia said.
“You do? Honestly?” I was relieved. I went to the window and pulled up the shade. Just this morning, it had started snowing.
Mia sat down on the bed. “It makes you look almost like someone else.” A little smile came and went on her face. “Ami, now that you’ve cut your hair—I know this sounds stupid, but I’m going to tell you something.”
“What—are you going to cut your hair, too?”
“No. Not that. Robert and I went to the movies.”
“You and Robert? When?”
“Last week. Last Saturday.”
I sat down on the bed next to her. “Last Saturday, when I went to visit my mother?”
Mia nodded. “He called up and we were talking, and he said what did I do on Saturdays? And I said when Ami’s not around, not so much, it was pretty boring.”
“Did you say that, really?”
“Well, it’s true. I said maybe I’d go to the mall or something. And he said he was going over to the mall to see a movie. So then I said was it a good movie? And he said he thought so, and did I want to meet him there and go, too?”
“You sat together?”
She nodded.
“Was it fun? Or what?”
“Not exactly fun. Not the way I have fun with you.… He put his arm around me. Are you mad?”
“I know you and Robert like each other.”
“Ami.” She looked at me seriously. “Just because I like Robert, I don’t want it to change us. I’ll always love you.”
I hugged her. “I’ll always love you, Mia.”
After a moment, she got the scissors. “Want me to fix your hair up a little? You didn’t get it so good in back.”
I sat there, with my eyes closed, listening to the little crackle of the scissors and that other quiet sound, of snow falling, that’s hardly a sound at all.
“There,” Mia said. “See if you like it.” I looked in the mirror. Mia looked over my shoulder. “We should take a picture.”
I got Dad’s camera. It has a setting on it so you can take your own picture. I set the camera up on the bureau, then ran and stood with Mia in front of the window. Our arms were linked, our heads together.
“Cheese, Ami! Say cheese, Amikins!”
“Cheese. Cheese, Miaseea!”
Turn the page to continue reading from the My Name Is series
Chapter 1
I might as well tell you my name and get it over with. Are you ready for this? Bunny. No, that’s not a nickname. That is my whole, real, entire birth name. B-U-N-N-Y. Okay, time out for the yuk-yuks and the bunny jokes, as in Easter bunnies, bunny rabbits, hippitty hoppitty, bunny fur, cuddle bunny, and dumb bunny. And, definitely, let’s not forget Bugs Bunny.
The year we were in fifth grade, every time Davis Buck saw me (which was about twenty-five times a day), he’d say, “What’s up, Doc?” And he’d shove his front teeth out—rabbit teeth, get it? Then he’d say, “Geeeeze, guys, I godda eat my ledduce.”
What did I do? Acted like I could care less. My best friend, Emily Boots, and I figured out that was the way to drive Davis Buck crazy. I really hated him that year, but, in some ways, like I told Emily, how could you blame Davis? I got stuck with a silly name.
Don’t try to tell that to my mother. “But, sweetie, Bunny is an old family name. You know I named you for my Aunt Bunny.”
Maybe. And maybe Mom was in her animal phase when I was born. The way she was in her nature phase for my brother and her cosmic phase for my sister. Still, Shad and Star definitely got the better deal. Shad is not such a bad name for a boy, as long as you don’t know it’s short for Shadbush, which is my mother’s favorite spring tree. My sister’s name is Starship Larrabee. Not a great name to be stuck with, but it does shorten down nicely to Star.
I wouldn’t mind being called a name that has to do with the universe. Though, come to think of it, after Star, what is there? Globe? Planet? Meteor? I guess I ought to be glad my mom wasn’t still out in space when I was born.
That’s when she and Dad bought our house. Star was five years old then. My mother says the first word I learned to say was “Mama” and the second word was “mine.” She says I used to walk around our house, patting the walls and saying, “Mine, mine, mine.”
Dad calls our house the old monster. It has ten rooms, three chimneys, and four fireplaces, but only one works. Our plumbing gets into trouble about twice a year. Mom says we should replace the roof. My father says we can live with that for a while longer, but the hot water tank is shot.
My room has a slanted ceiling, a window seat, and old wallpaper with faded yellow roses. My father said I could have the room redone as a birthday present, but I said, No, thanks!
Emily lives in an apartment and her mother is always worrying about upsetting the landlord, who lives downstairs. Emily envies me our house, but it evens out because I envy her her name. I think Emily is the perfect name. It’s pretty, it’s old-fashioned, and for extra measure, it’s the name of a famous poet, Emily Dickinson. Emily’s mother likes poetry.
My mom says I shouldn’t let my name make me unhappy. She should talk. At least once a week she brings up how sorry she is that she didn’t keep her own last name when she married Dad.
Before Mom was Lorraine Larrabee, she was Lorraine Watjoichkas. That looks harder to say than it is. All you have to do is say, Watch Your Kiss, but you have to say it fast. Wachyerkiss. I learned how to say that a long time before I knew how it was spelled. Watch-Your-Kiss made perfect sense to me, because my Grandma Watjoichkas was always kissing me when she came to visit.
Grandma lives in Toronto. I usually get to visit her—alone—at least once a year. Even though her hair is totally white, she’s not at all the person you would expect from just thinking of the word “grandmother.” She’s very slim and wears jeans, big dangly silver earrings, and really bright silk blouses. She says, “I have to live my life, not according to any predetermined idea, but as to how I feel.” What this means is that my grandmother will always surprise you.
This year I grew taller than both my grandmother and my sister. One more inch and I’ll be looking down on my mother and creeping right up there on my father. Mom says, “There must have been some very tall genes somewhere back there in our family.”
“Just call me the family freak,” I say.
Which makes my father give me a nervous look. Is my daughter revving up to be a candidate for therapy? But after a moment, I can see by the way his eyebrows relax that he’s decided I’m too normal to be abnormal.
In our class at school, I’m the tallest girl and nearly the tallest person. There is one other girl who’s almost as tall as me, Ami Pelter, but it’s different for her. First, on a person like Ami, being tall looks good. She’s really cute! Second, she doesn’t have buck teeth (I do, which is another reason Davis’s making rabbit teeth at me drove me completely crazy), and third, if Ami did have buck teeth, I know her father would get them fixed. I have Mr. Pelter for language arts, and I can tell you, he’s that kind of sympathetic person who would take another person’s problems seriously.
Not my father. He says, “You don’t have an overbite, Bunny. It’s all in your mind.” He would say that. He’s a psychologist.
“Dad, I’ve got news for you. These teeth are not in my mind. They are in my mouth.”
“Your teeth give you character,” my mother says. For once, she agrees with Dad. I know why. They don’t want to spend the money. Sure, braces are big bucks, but it’s my mouth and my teeth.
I told Emily, “I’m doomed to go around forever with crooked teeth.”
“Bunny, really, your teeth don’t stick out.” Emily has a way of frowning and looking me over with her head tipped to one side. “They’re not completely straight. But it’s not noticeable to anybody.”
Even though I still think they stick out, I feel better when Emily says that. At least, until the next time I look in the mirror.
Emily also doesn’t think I’m too tall. About that, all she will say is, “Bunny! How can a person be too tall?”
To which I say, “Emily, if you were as tall as me, you’d know.”
Last year, in sixth grade, our school played Durwin Middle School for the citywide basketball championship. The next morning, when I took the paper in, there we were, right on the sports page. And there I was, jumping in the air for the basket, and looking huge. Underneath, it said: Despite the efforts of Bunny (Toooo Tall) Larrabee for her team, Drumlins Middle School lost to Durwin 55–76.
Next day in school: “How’s Bunny ‘Toooo Tall’ Larrabee this morning?” And that wasn’t even a kid! It was Mr. Maxwell, our homeroom teacher. What a tease. I feel sorry for his kids.
Some people think, because of my father’s work, being a psychologist, he must be the ideal, understanding father figure. News flash! My dad is fat—well, overweight—and he smokes too much, and he really knows how to bug me. For instance, he gets SO anxious about me if I’m out two seconds after 9 P.M. What does he think is going to happen? I’ll look at a boy and turn into green cheese? Or maybe the werewolves come out then.
Shad is four years younger than me, but already Dad doesn’t fuss much if he comes in from playing later than me. This is one case where I’m really glad my mother disagrees with him. “Bill, you are not going to limit Bunny that way. Now, if you’re worried about your daughter, you get out there and do something about the people you’re really worried about. Which is, let’s face it, other males.”
Mom works for the police department. She’s not a cop. She’s definitely not the type to arrest anyone. She’s an artist, and she works in public relations.
She and Officer Friendly are a team. Every day, they visit hospitals and schools and while Officer Friendly is telling the kids about safety rules, my mom is drawing pictures. Sometimes she draws the kids and gives them their pictures afterward, sometimes she uses the overhead projector and draws pictures to illustrate what Officer Friendly is saying.
Since my father is a psychologist, he and Mom are sort of in the same business—helping people. But that doesn’t mean they get along like peanut butter and jelly. When they disagree, they call it “having a discussion.” When Shad and I do the same thing, it’s a fight. Shad usually wins our arguments. He’s sort of relentless.
