The Hard Kind of Promise Read online

  The sun was hot, but she was even hotter, and it wasn't the weather. It came from misery, from embarrassment, from having been sent away, from having nowhere else to go. Ahead of her, Marjorie walked on, completely oblivious.

  It occurred to Sarah that if it weren't for her, Marjorie might be the kind of kid who ate all her lunches out on the edge of the soccer field.

  That was the first time Sarah had ever really thought about it. Except for her, Marjorie had no friends.

  She wasn't exactly sure why. Marjorie was the nicest person Sarah had ever known. She was Sarah's favorite person. She was her best friend.

  She wasn't weirder than other kids. Carl Estes screwed the head off his sister's Barbie doll and ate it once, and he had friends. They thought it was cool when he had to go to the emergency room and have an operation to get the Barbie head out.

  But Carl did sports: soccer and basketball and then baseball in the spring. Sports made kids like you. Even if you were weird or mean, other kids liked you if you were good at sports.

  Marjorie was terrible at sports. She was even bad at skipping. She was the only kid who couldn't do one pushup for the President's Physical Fitness Test in fifth grade. Mr. Wheatley kept giving her more chances, which just made it worse, because all the kids stood around watching and laughing, and no matter how many chances she had, Marjorie couldn't do one pushup. Not one. After a while it felt as though Mr. Wheatley wasn't really giving her more chances. It felt as though he was punishing her.

  Girls cared if you were good at sports, and also about how pretty you were and what kinds of clothes you wore. Marjorie was pretty, Sarah thought loyally. She had soft, wavy brown hair and big blue eyes and beautiful skin and a pretty smile. And her hair smelled like pineapples. But it was longer than Alison's shoulder-length hair and too wavy to stay neat. Marjorie always looked like she'd just gotten out of a convertible, the way her hair was all blown around.

  Her lazy eye wasn't so lazy anymore, but her glasses made it hard to tell. And her perfect skin was pale and milky—not tan like Alison's, from being on swim team.

  It wasn't enough to be pretty. You had to be pretty in the right way. And your clothes had to be right, too. If your skirts were too short, you might look trampy. If they were too long, you might be a hippie, which, according to the popular girls, was very bad, even though no one was actually sure what a hippie was. Your jeans had to be the right kind of jeans. If you wanted to be popular, you had to have the right kind of sunglasses. If you didn't care about being popular, the worst thing you could do was wear sunglasses, even cool ones, because then it would look as though secretly you really did want to be popular, which was worse than not wanting to be popular at all.

  There were a lot of rules, and no one explained them to you. You were just supposed to know.

  The weirdest thing of all was how everyone had just decided that Alison was the most popular girl in Sarah's class. She wasn't prettier than other girls, and she certainly wasn't nicer. Most people didn't even like her. But somehow, everyone cared what she thought.

  Well, almost everyone.

  The day after they had to eat at the edge of the soccer field, Sarah was in the girls' bathroom between second and third periods.

  The room was empty when she entered the stall, but while she was in there, Alison and Yvonne came in to brush their hair. Alison brushed her hair before every period. While she did it, she talked about everything that was wrong with how she looked, even though you could tell that she didn't really think anything was wrong with how she looked. Sarah could see them through the slit in the stall door.

  "My hair is so unbelievably gross," Alison said, running a brush through it, tipping her head so that her ear was almost parallel to the floor. "It's so split-end-y."

  "It is not," Yvonne said. "It's beautiful. Look how smooth it is."

  Sarah felt sorry for Yvonne, who had thin rust-colored hair that hung like string around her round cheeks.

  "It's just, I don't know. It's not shiny enough. It's not like in those ads where the model runs her hands through her hair and it glitters," Alison said.

  "Like diamonds," Yvonne said dreamily. Then, because Alison was glaring at her, she said, "Your hair totally does that."

  Sarah could see from inside the stall that Alison had stopped brushing her hair and was looking at herself in the mirror.

  "Well, maybe a little," she said.

  Yvonne, whose hair-brushing didn't take nearly as long as Alison's, returned her brush to her backpack and said, "My mom says you can put mayonnaise in your hair to make it shiny."

  Alison looked horrified. "You mean, like what you eat?"

  Yvonne nodded. "It's like a conditioner, only better. You let it sit for a while and then rinse it off. And your hair just glows."

  "Really?" Alison's eyes got small and suspicious. "Have you tried it?"

  "Once. I smelled like salad dressing. And nothing works on my hair," Yvonne said sadly. "But my mom swears it works. She says movie stars do it all the time. You should try it. Your hair's so much prettier than mine. I'm sure it'll work on you."

  Alison shrugged, as though she had better things to do than sit around soaking in mayonnaise anyway, so why were they even talking about it? Then she laughed.

  "Maybe that's what Marjorie does with all the mayonnaise at her house. That her dad's not using for sandwiches."

  Sarah froze, suddenly afraid that they could see her through the slit in the door.

  Yvonne snickered. "Maybe that's why it always smells around her, even when she's not eating. Maybe it's all that bad mayonnaise."

  Alison shook her head, checking, Sarah could tell, to see if her hair was glittering from all the brushing.

  "She is so weird."

  "It's like she likes being weird. Like she wants to be weird on purpose."

  That's not true! Sarah shouted in her head. Marjorie wasn't trying to be weird. She couldn't help it.

  Alison tipped her head. "I think there's really something wrong with her. Like, mentally wrong."

  Yvonne's eyes got big. "Really? You think she's retarded?"

  Sarah hated that word. Her mom taught handicapped kids at a special school. She said "retarded" was a mean word. And that everyone was smart in his own way.

  "Maybe." Alison leaned in close to the mirror, checking for pimples. "Her head's too big, don't you think?"

  "I guess so." Yvonne sounded unsure. "But I have her in math. She usually knows the right answer." unlike you, Sarah thought, who hasn't known the right answer since first grade.

  "Well, something's wrong with her. I don't know exactly what." Alison straightened up and gave herself a look in the mirror to make sure that she looked just the way she wanted to. "But something."

  They headed for the door.

  "I don't get why Sarah likes her," Yvonne said.

  "Losers always like each other," Alison said.

  CHAPTER 2

  LOSER. That's what Alison called her. A loser.

  Losers were the worst. In middle school, losers were at the bottom, even below the weird kids, who usually had something going for them, like accidentally being funny in class or being geniuses. Losers had nothing.

  Sarah was in shock. She couldn't believe anyone thought she was a loser. She knew she wasn't popular. But she always thought she was somewhere in the middle. A girl that most people sort of liked because there was no reason not to like her. She looked average, with almost brown hair and hazel eyes with yellow flecks in them that sometimes made them look green. There was that mole on her shoulder, but no one could even see it, except in the summer. And besides, she tried to be nice. She didn't have bad breath. She didn't smell.

  Uh-oh, she thought, hurrying a little through the crowds in the hall, knowing the bell was about to ring. What if the smell of Marjorie's weird lunches is sticking to me? Maybe people think that I smell like tuna or egg salad.

  Maybe Marjorie is rubbing off on me.

  So what? she thought, try
ing to be like Marjorie, trying not to care. So what if Alison thinks I'm a loser? I don't even have any classes with her. I don't even see her in the halls most days.

  So what? she thought, but it was hopeless.

  She was still upset in chorus.

  "What's the matter?" Lizzie whispered. Mr. Roche was working with the boys.

  Something wouldn't let Sarah tell Lizzie. She was too ashamed, and too afraid of what Lizzie might say.

  "Do you like these jeans?" she asked instead.

  Lizzie gave Sarah's legs a serious look.

  "Yeah. I especially like the way the pockets look."

  "Really?" Sarah looked down. She had never thought about pockets.

  "My jeans are heinous," Lizzie said. "My mom makes me buy them on sale."

  Sarah's mom did, too, but she didn't feel like saying so just then. "Do you want to walk down to the Juice Warehouse after school?" she asked. It was the first time she had ever suggested they do anything together. She held her breath. It was always risky to change the way things were.

  Lizzie smiled. "Sure," she said. "Only I can't drink wheatgrass. Wheatgrass is heinous."

  "Heinous" was Lizzie's new word. Sarah decided in that instant that she loved it, even though she wasn't exactly sure what it meant.

  "I like the peach-strawberry smoothie," she said. "They'll put in extra peaches if you ask."

  Mr. Roche held up his arms and snapped his fingers.

  "Altos, I need you!" he said.

  "Meet you at the flagpole," Lizzie whispered.

  At lunch, Marjorie was bubbling with excitement.

  "We get to make a three-minute film in video production!" she said before Sarah even had a chance to sit down. "It can be about anything we want! I'm going to get Louellen to make me a blue space-alien costume! She has to hurry, because the film is due the day before Thanksgiving break."

  Marjorie's sister Louellen was in college. She was really good at sewing.

  "Three minutes doesn't sound very long," Sarah said grumpily.

  "It is long when you think about everything a director has to do," Marjorie said importantly. "Write the script. Decide what the scene will look like. Pick the cast. Pick the music—"

  "Okay, okay, I get it." Immediately Sarah felt bad. She was just suddenly sick of being best friends with someone other people didn't like. She couldn't help it.

  To try to make it up to Marjorie, she asked, "What's your movie going to be about?"

  Marjorie began to peel a bruised-looking banana.

  "This big blue space alien lands on Earth. He's been sent by his planet to study other forms of intelligent life in the universe, and he lands right here, on the Keith Middle School playground."

  "He's going to have to look pretty hard to find intelligent life."

  Not laughing, Marjorie went on.

  "The kids are really nice to him. They show him all the classrooms and talk about what their lives are like. No one can take him home, because they're afraid of what their parents would think, so they build him a bed in Mr. Mayberry's room, under the Bunsen burners."

  "But wouldn't the teachers be as suspicious as the parents?"

  "I'm not going to have any teachers in it. That would be too hard to arrange."

  "But I'm just saying. The teachers would know if a blue space alien had landed at the school. Wouldn't they call the police?"

  Marjorie put down her banana and took a bite of her pastrami-sprinkled-with-barbecue-potato-chips sandwich.

  "No, because the kids will find him first. They'll hide him."

  "But—"

  "Sarah, you'll see. It'll work out. I have it all planned."

  They ate in silence. Sarah was keeping an eye out for Alison and the leadership kids, but they were nowhere in sight. She tried to feel triumphant about getting their place under the palm tree back, but it was hard: she kept remembering how Alison had called her a loser. She watched groups of other kids—boys shooting baskets, threesomes of girls giggling and shrieking—and wondered if they knew her name, if they'd heard of her, what opinions of her they might hold. The sound of Marjorie chomping on her sandwich was really getting on her nerves.

  "So," Marjorie said, accidentally spitting a crumb of barbecue potato chip as she spoke, "you want to be the space alien?"

  "You mean, in your movie?"

  "Louellen will make the costume to fit you. You'll be the star."

  Sarah was going to say no. Being an alien in one of Marjorie's movies was about the last thing she felt like doing. But she couldn't deny that she liked the idea of being a star.

  "Who else is going to be in it?" she asked.

  "Me. And maybe Joey Hooper. Joey's going to help me direct."

  "How can you have two directors for one movie?"

  "Lots of people do it. Michael and Peter Spierig both directed The Undead."

  "Who's Joey Hooper?"

  "A new kid. He's in video production. He asked me to be in his movie, so I might ask him to be in mine."

  Sarah liked it that Marjorie had someone else to be in the movie besides just the two of them.

  "Is he nice?" she asked.

  Marjorie shrugged. "He's okay."

  Sarah took a breath.

  "Is he cute?"

  Marjorie fumbled in her lunch bag. "Hey, do you have grapes?" she asked. "Grapes are better with pastrami than a banana."

  Sarah sighed. Clearly, Marjorie was not ready to talk about boys.

  "No. Just an apple," she said. After a moment she said, "I'll be the alien."

  It actually almost sounded like fun.

  "As long as we do it after school and on weekends," she added. "I don't want to be running around in a blue alien costume at lunch."

  "Why not?"

  "Because. Because it's weird, okay? Because I don't want to do anything that weird in front of other people."

  Marjorie poked her glasses back up on her nose and smiled.

  "Okay," she said.

  Sarah wished she didn't have to explain everything. She wished Marjorie just got it, the way everyone else did. She wished she didn't have to hurt Marjorie's feelings to protect herself.

  "You want to meet after school and scout locations?" Marjorie asked.

  Sarah remembered Lizzie.

  "I can't today," she said. "I have a dentist appointment."

  "Another one? Already?"

  "I have a lot of cavities," Sarah said. She could feel herself blushing with the lie she was telling. "Five, actually."

  "Wow. Five." Marjorie crumpled up her lunch bag. "I've only had two in my whole life."

  "You're lucky."

  The bell rang. They rose from the bench.

  "Do you really think all the kids would be nice to the space alien?" Sarah asked as they threw their bags into the trash can.

  "Sure," Marjorie said, pushing at her glasses again. "Why wouldn't they be?"

  That night, Grandpa came for dinner at Mom's. He still used a cane sometimes, but he'd gotten pretty used to his prosthetic leg in the past year and was proud of how well he walked and also of having almost all his hair. He was tall and muscular and made sure to stand straight, even when he was tired.

  "Hey, Sarah," he said, "can I have a hug?"

  He always asked, another thing Sarah loved.

  Henry the poodle, his fur still curly and black but beginning to turn a distinguished shade of gray, pranced into the hallway, his tail wagging. Mom had gotten him when she and Dad divorced, hoping that he would be a good guard dog. He was terrible. The only thing he barked at was the sound of motorcycles on the street below.

  "Hey, buddy. How's my buddy?" Grandpa asked, rubbing Henry's puffballed head.

  Henry panted with the pleasure of being rubbed. Then he ducked down low, rear end high in the air, ready to play.

  "Not now, Henry," Sarah said. But Henry ignored her. He wagged his tail and looked hopefully at Grandpa.

  "That damn dog," Grandpa said. "Henry. Cut it out."

  Sarah an
d Grandpa watched as Henry held his ground, rump still raised, hoping that someone would give in and roll a ball for him to fetch.

  "Poodles are really smart," Sarah said. "He knows exactly what we're saying."

  "I'm going to do a little research on the computer," Grandpa said. "See if we can't find a way to make Henry mind."

  Sarah smiled as they headed toward the kitchen. Grandpa loved any excuse to look things up online.

  Mom had already poured his cranberry juice, which was sitting on the kitchen counter. Grandpa was an alcoholic. He hadn't had a drink in seventeen years, but he said that didn't matter, that he would be an alcoholic until the day he died. Sarah was proud of him for not drinking anymore and also for being honest about who he was. She liked hearing his stories from the old days, when he used to hang out in bars, even though Mom didn't like for him to say too much and was always trying to change the subject.

  "You look tired, Dad," Mom said. She was pulling strands of silk from corncobs and wearing her KISS THE COOK apron, which was from when she was still married to Sarah's dad and which Sarah wished she wouldn't wear anymore.

  "Nope. Just need to sit down," Grandpa said, reaching for his juice and pulling a chair out from the table. Henry, who had followed them into the kitchen, waited until Grandpa was settled and then lowered himself to the floor at his feet. He liked sitting wherever Grandpa was because sometimes Grandpa was a sloppy eater and dropped food on the floor.

  "How's school?" Grandpa asked Sarah.

  "Okay."

  "How's singing?"

  "Pretty good. It's my favorite class." He already knew, but Sarah said it anyway. "We're working on a round. That's where you sing lines and then another few kids sing the same lines, only later. It's hard to keep track of where you are."

  "We did that," Grandpa said. "'Row, Row, Row Your Boat.'"

  "We did that, too. In kindergarten. This is harder than that," Sarah said.

  "You just have to focus on your own voice. On where you are in the music. Don't think about what the others are singing." Grandpa liked to give advice, which got on Sarah's nerves sometimes, but she knew he meant well.