THE EVENING BEFORE AMANDA AND
LEO'S 11TH BIRTHDAY
"But what if I land on my head?" I ask. "And then, you know, all the other body parts?" An image fills my head of broken bones and scraped knees for my party tomorrow. "Maybe I shouldn't do this."
"You won't fall this time," promises Stephanie. "You need to get this move down before tryouts tomorrow. C'mon, I'm your best friend. I wouldn't let you fall."
"If you were really my best friend," I say with a pout, "you wouldn't make me try out at all." I'm stalling and she knows it. What I really wanted to say is, If you're my best friend you'd tell me to try out for the marching band instead. But we both know that would never happen. Besides the fact that marching band is considered uncool, I've never played my drums anywhere other than my own basement.
"C'mon, Amanda. I keep telling you. If we want to hang out with Mena and Heather and Jess, we need to be on the team. And to be on the team, you need to be able to do a back handspring. Without falling."
I stare across my backyard, willing my mom to come out and tell us it's getting late and Stephanie has to go home. But she's not back from work yet. I can't count on Dad, either. He's inside cleaning up from our usual mom-working-late dinner -- macaroni and cheese with salami melted on top. Even if he was out here, he'd see my frantic look and just smile and wave. Dad's a good guy. He just doesn't pick up on things. Kylie is my only hope, which means I'm doomed. She and a preppy boy named Dustin from her science class are on the back porch trying to turn lead into gold or some other sciency thing for their final project of the year. Kylie's twirling her long blonde hair around her finger, which is her way of flirting, but Dustin doesn't seem to notice. He's the breed of boys whose clothes actually match, and whose hair looks like it was professionally cut in a salon. He doesn't look like he's climbed a tree or built a fort in his entire life. In an alternate universe where my older sister actually paid any sort of attention to me, she might see that I'm scared and come to my rescue. Alas, this is not an alternate universe and she's more interested in him than me.
I stall some more. "What if I don't want to be friends with Mena and Heather and Jess?"
Stephanie shakes her head, unwilling to even answer. I sigh. Okay, she got me of course I want to be friends with them. They're the most popular girls in the fifth grade. And if we make the team, our status in sixth grade will be secure.
Out of ideas, I point to my midsection. "I think my center of gravity is too low. It might be physically impossible for me to do a back handspring."
Stephanie tilts her head at me. "Your what is what?"
I open my mouth to explain, but she waves it away. "Don't make me count to three. At three I go over and tell Kylie you stole her favorite red sweater last winter and left it on the school bus."
"Okay, okay!" With a final glance behind me to make sure the mat is in place, I take a deep breath, raise my arms next to my head, then swing them down really fast. Bending my knees, I spring backwards before I could change my mind. In a panic, I try to remember what Stephanie taught me. Lean back, tighten abs, keep arms locked, look for a place to land my hands. But time seems to accelerate faster than its normal speed and before I know it, I'm crumpled in a heap, freshly mown grass tickling the back of my neck. Somehow I'm a good two feet away from the mat. Dazed, I stare up at the dusky sky. "How'd I do?"
Stephanie sits down next to me, tucking her legs underneath her. "Well, you didn't break anything, so there's that."
"Okay, girls," my mother calls from the back door, waving us inside. "Time to call it a night. Amanda, you need to come set up for the party."
Sure, now she saves me. Couldn't she have come home five minutes earlier? Stephanie helps me up, and I dust the dirt and grass off my clothes. I have one more day to get this back handspring down. It doesn't look promising, but I really don't want to disappoint Stephanie. This last year would have been so much harder if it hadn't been for her. We walk around the side of the house to the driveway, where she left her bike propped against the fence.
"I'll keep working on it tonight," I say as she straps on her helmet. "I promise."
She gives me a look that says she's unconvinced. "Why don't you ask Kylie to spot you?"
I shake my head, frowning. "She's too busy trying to get her science partner to ask her to the Seventh Grade Fling. I don't think she's having any luck, though."
"You wouldn't think someone as pretty as your sister would have any trouble getting a guy."
I wouldn't have thought so, either. People say Kylie and I look a lot alike, but unless I have a major growth spurt, my hair suddenly becomes soft and silky, and my freckles miraculously disappear, I would look anything like her when I get to be thirteen.
"Didn't that guy Jonathan already ask her? From down the street?"
"Yeah, but no way would she go with him. He still plays with LEGOs."
"Yikes," Stephanie says, swinging her leg over her seat. "That would bring your sister down, like, five rungs on the coolness ladder. See you tomorrow. Happy early birthday!"
She pedals off the driveway. I call after her, "There's a coolness ladder?"
She just waves and calls over her shoulder, "Don't forget to practice!"
I sigh. I wonder if practicing in my head counts. I can easily picture myself doing a perfect routine. Somehow it comes out differently once gravity gets involved.
Not wanting to walk by Kylie and Mr. Every Hair in Place, I go through the front door instead. Mom's overflowing briefcase is leaning against the bottom of the stairs, and barely avoid tripping over it. Ever since she got promoted to account executive, her briefcase is getting bigger and bigger, and her time at home is getting shorter and shorter. I know she has to work, but I'm pretty tired of mac n' cheese and salami.
"There you are, Amanda," she says, coming around from the corner of the kitchen. She's still wearing her work clothes. Today it's a gray business suit. She's holding a tape dispenser in one hand, and a thick roll of red crepe paper in the other. She thrusts the paper at me. "Look what I found for the Red Carpet. Isn't it perfect?"
I muster up a smile that I don't feel. Why did I agree to a Hollywood movie theme?
"Your father already hung the movie posters and sprinkled the gold stars everywhere, so once we lay down the carpet, all we have to do is out out the paper plates and cups, and blow up the balloons."
I follow her down the stairs to the basement where she picks up the stack of RSVPs that have come back.
"Looks like about fifteen kids are coming," she says, fanning them out in her hands. "That's a very respectable number."
She means that's a very respectable number considering I'm not the only person in school having their birthday party tomorrow. One of the cards catches my eye. I pull it from the pile and hold it up to her.
"Did you mail Leo an invitation?" I ask accusingly.
She leans over to straighten the Freaky Friday poster that has started to slip down the wall.
"Mom?"
"Okay, yes, I invited him. How can I not?"
I grit my teeth. "Don't you remember what he did to me last year?"
"Of course I do, honey, but maybe, well, maybe you overreacted a bit?"
I debate either bursting into tears or screaming, neither of which are likely to make me feel better, and one of which could get me grounded. I count to ten inside my head, then crumpled the RSVP and toss it in the trash can. "Let's just set up for the party, okay?"
Mom nods. "I hope you'll still try to enjoy your birthday," she says, bending down to unroll the red paper. "After all, you only turn eleven once."
"Thank God," I mutter.
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When the basement looks as "Hollywood" as it's going to get, I head up to my room. Lying neatly across my bed is the costume Mom picked up for me since she didn't have time to make one. Apparently Halloween costumes are scarce in June because now I'm staring at a blue-and-white dress, red sparkly shoes, and a wicker picnic basket. I'm Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. I shiver involuntarily. The Wizard of Oz has always given me the creeps. All those flying monkeys. Why couldn't I be someone like Fiona from the Shrek movies, or better yet, that girl from the Fantastic Four who can turn invisible? If I were invisible, no one would see me duck out of my own party.
I toss the dress over my desk chair and find myself staring at the bottom drawer. The one that's been locked for a year. Inside is only one thing - my birthday party photo album. Each year Mom puts one picture in there. I used to loved looking at them, but after last year I locked it away. It was just too hard seeing it on the shelf every day. I open the top desk drawer and fish around in the back. I find the small silver key and turn it over in my hand. Before I can think better of it, I unlock the drawer, pulled out the album and plop down the bed. I run my hands over the yellow cover with the picture of a smiling pastel green frog on it. I don't know why my mom picked out this frog album, instead of one with oh, anything else on it.
Here goes nothing.
1st Birthday: I flip open the cover, and can't help but smile. There we are, propped up in front of a white inflatable castle. Leo with his curls (he cuts them off now), and me in my pink party dress, sucking my thumb. It's hard to believe that if the birthday place hadn't been double-booked, Leo and I wouldn't have celebrated our next ten birthdays together. I used to think we were so lucky, but after what happened last year, I'm not so sure.
2nd Birthday: Leo is holding a tambourine, and his arm is a blur as he brings it down on his lap. I'm holding two drumsticks and smiling madly. Even back then I loved the drums. Dad told my they kept handing me other instruments at our Musical Babies party, but I wouldn't let go of those sticks.
3rd Birthday: Leo and I are kneeling on either side of our baby goat, our hands resting on its back. This day is one of earliest memories. One of the baby bunnies went missing and I cried, but then Leo found it curled up asleep inside a blue plastic ice-cream bowl. Later he wrote his first poem about it. Once I heard Mom call his parents "overgrown hippies" because they grow their own vegetables and encourage their son to write poetry.
4th Birthday: Marvin the Magnificent is pulling a magic wand out of Leo's ear. Leo's mouth frozen in a "wow." I'm next to him, clapping and staring. Right before Leo's mom cuts the cake, a dove flew out of Marvin's top hat. I can recognize most of the guests in the photo. Willow Falls is such a small town that the same kids came to our parties each year. Now, of course, that's all changing.
5th Birthday: Leo is smiling and holding up a handpainted flowerpot. My face is starting to crumble because I don't like the way mine turned out. The woman who owned the Creative Kids Pottery Studio hadn't yet filled them with dirt or the little seed that I was sure would never grow. But the seed did grow. It thrived, in fact, for another five years until the night of my tenth birthday. I quickly turned the page.
6th Birthday: Bowling! Leo and I proudly hold up our balls. Mine is pink, his is green. They can't weigh much more than beach balls. Behind us I can see those bumpers that they stuck in the lanes so we can never get gutter balls. Stephanie had moved to town the month before, so this was her first appearance at our party. From then on, the three of us did everything together.
7th Birthday: Gymnastics, of all things! Leo and I are hanging off the balance beam, pretending we're falling. Back then I was actually pretty good at that stuff. Together the two of us were fearless -- swinging around the uneven bars, jumping up onto to horse-thingy, and flying off. In the background of the picture I see Stephanie and Ruby Gordon with their arms up, ready to do back-flips. If I didn't need so much help now, Stephanie would have been practicing with Ruby tonight, instead of me.
8th Birthday: Disco party! I'm wearing a big multicolored wig, and Leo has on a mirrored sunglasses and a rainbow headband. According to our parents, this is how people dressed in the seventies. We're on the dance floor of the Willow Falls Community Center party room, boogying to the beat of KC and the Sunshine Band.
9th Birthday: The beach! It was warm that year for the beginning of June so our parents took us all to the beach, about an hour away. The picture shows me and Stephanie burying Leo up to his neck in the sand. He's wearing that corny beach hat of his that says "Keep On Keeping On."
I don't need to turn the page to know there isn't a photo of our tenth birthday.
Our party was held at Leo's house. His mom had decorated it like the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. She set up the whole spooky maze through the house where you had to use hidden clues to find your way out. Before going through it I ran upstairs to use the bathroom. When I passed Leo's room I heard him in there with a bunch of his guy friends. I stopped when I heard my name, and pressed up against the wall to listen.
"Yeah, why do you still have your party with a girl, man?" Vinnie Prinz asked. "It's really lame."
I held my breath.
Leo said, "Yeah, I know it's stupid. My mom makes me."
Another boy chimed in. "Can't you just tell her you don't want to? I mean, dude, it's your birthday."
Normally I'd have rolled my eyes at "man" and "dude," but I was too shocked.
"Nah," Leo said, his voice flat. "Plus, I wouldn't want Amanda to get all upset. She doesn't, you know, have that many other friends."
That was all I needed to hear. I ran downstairs and out the door so fast that at first, no one knew I'd left. My parents found me crying on our front steps. That night I took everything that reminded me of Leo out of my room. The hand-painted flower pot was the first to go. Out the window, in fact. I heard it crash into the bushes below. Then I gathered up all the sweatshirts I'd borrowed, the mix CDs he had burned for me, the comic books he gave me because he joked that the superheroes looked like the two of us, and put them all in a box which I pushed out to the hall. I was about to throw the photo album out the window, too, but my mom came in at that point and convince me to lock it away instead.
Leo didn't know at first why I had left or why I was so upset. My mom eventually told his mother what I'd heard. I haven't spoken on word to him since that night.
Feeling even worse now after that trip down the memory lane, I close the album and place it back in the drawer. Maybe I'll look at it again in eleven years. Maybe by then it won't hurt so much.
I throw on my pajamas and head to the bathroom to brush my teeth. I pass Kylie's room and hear her on the phone. Her voice sounds sort of choked up. But when she comes out of the room she just breezes by me and flips her hair like she doesn't have a care in the world.
After the fastest teeth brushing in history, I turn off the light and climb into bed without even reading first. In a few hours I'm going to be eleven. That's a whole new decade. I stare up at the flowers Mom and I painted on my ceiling a few years ago. The moonlight illuminates them, and they make me smile. I have fifteen kids coming here tomorrow night. That's fifteen friends who chose to come to my party instead of Leo's. Even if I'll be stuck wearing a Dorothy costume, I'm going to try to have a good time. After all, like Mom said, I'm only going to turn eleven once.
I just wish I wasn't doing it alone.
YOU ARE READING
11 Birthdays
RandomOn their first birthday, they learned to walk. One their fifth, they planted seeds in handmade pots. On their tenth, they learned there are some words you can never take back. Amanda's eleventh birthday should be a happy occasion. Instead sh...
