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them. Jackie was smaller, lighter, and, face it, flatter. Tink
was too big. Tall, and getting a figure, their mothers said.
It was awkward.
Last year on the first day of fifth grade, theyd both worn
flowered, ruffled skirts and pale blue T-shirtstwinsie best
friends staking each other out, as if the kids theyd been in
school with since kindergarten hadnt figured out that they
were a pair. But this year the best they could do for twinsies
was jean skirts and red polo shirts, even if Jackies polo was
from the boys department and Tinks was borrowed from
her mother. The only way they still matched was with their
curly brown hair. Side by side they stood, Jackie on her toes
and Tink slumping, and neither could tell which one was
the problem. Neither, you might say. Or maybe both?
That night in the dark, Jackie voiced it. I wish I needed
a bra. I mean, Ill wear one, its sixth grade, but I wish
I had
the chest to pin it on? finished Tink. It was the
punch line of the jokey insult that went, What do you
want: a medal? Or the chest to pin it on? Bushwhack had
said that last year every five minutes.
So not funny, said Jackie, not just meaning Bushwhack, although it was him, tooa boy Tink thought was
actually quite funny. Im immature compared to you,
Tinker.
Maybe Im too mature.
was right.
Everybody loves you, Tink agreed.
Do you think Keith Kallinka will? asked Jackie.
Sure to, said Tink, as expected. Do you think Will
Wheeler will love me?
Sure to or hes a dodo, said Jackie.
Then Tink raised the question that was on her mind.
Im too tall to be a Tinker Bell.
Bess says your mom should have never saddled you
with that name, said Jackie.
Bess?
Thats what Im calling her now. Jamess kids get to, so
why shouldnt I?
Tink would never have gotten away with calling her parents Stevie and Tom.
That night was when Jackie worked out a whole new
persona for Tink, also known as Christine Bernadette
Gouda, to go with her new wardrobe. When school began,
Jackie announced, Tink would be Chris, who was ever so
much more grown-up and stylish after her summer than
the girl the class had last seen in June.
Of course Tink hadnt done anything to become more
stylish or grown-up all summer. What she had actually
done all summer was hang with Jackie, whose mother
had a new boyfriend and let Jackie sleep over more than
usual because of it. Except for brief visits to grandmothers
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houses in Maryland and New York (Tink) and Massachusetts (Jackie), they never got out of Connecticut, and didnt
even get out of town except for occasional trips to the mall.
They rode their bikes to the beach, walked to Clampetts for
music magazines for Jackie and Mad magazines for Tink,
and made up an elaborate bouncing game with a tennis
ball against Tinks garage door, because if they just played
the real handball rules Tink looked up in the library, Jackie
got bored and wouldnt play.
And then Jackie had gone shopping and bumped into
Maggie and Mitzie, two girls in their class, and uncharacteristically bought a pair of pants covered in tiny whales,
which made Tink still more uncomfortable, since they
were out of budget for a girl with a stay-at-home bookkeeper mother and a go-to-work housebuilder father. She
had a vision of everybody showing up at school in clothes
with tiny sea animals on them.
Into the dark of Jackies room, Tink said, But am I
Jackie said, What?
Tink wouldnt say until Jackie hit her with a pillow and
then sat on the pillow and then tickled her, because Tink
was embarrassed. But at last she opened her mouth and
finished her question: pretty?
Jackie considered the question for long minutes, even
turned on the light to look at Tinks face, and finally said,
Cute. Maybe becoming pretty. Or maybe just going straight
to grown-up gorgeous. To Jackie, grown-up was gorgeous.
When school started, Tink told Ms. Cho that her nickname
was Chris. But, two weeks into September, nobody was
calling her that yet but Jackie and Ms. Cho. They still called
her Tink, or Hundred Percent, a different nickname shed
been given, whether she liked it or not, by Bushwhack.
Hundred Percent wasnt as good a name as Chris, but
maybe it wasnt as bad as Tink.
Bushwah, Chris! Jackie would say, if she heard that.
Bushwah was their sixth grade word, invented by Matt Alva,
whose nickname (invented by himself) was Bushwhack.
His friends were called the Farmers, but they were just a
bunch of dorky boys with boring clothes, not the kind girls
had crushes on. They had a lot of funny jokes, though, and
Bushwhack made up words and insults. Yes, he was the
same Bushwhack with the congratulations joke about the
medal and the chest to pin it on. He also had these jokes in
a situation where someone was wrong:
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whistles and smells of fall and grass and leaves and horse
chestnuts. She is lying in bed, almost asleep, wearing a
long white nightgown, with her long red hair in a long silky
braid. (Just so you recall, Tink didnt have long red hair.
Tinks hair was short and brown and curly.)
The window opens, and someone comes in. It is a
second-floor window, so how does this happen? The boy
who comes in can fly, thats how. He flies around Tinks
room bumping into things, making the wind chimes
chime, trying to wake her up. He needs his shadow sewn
back on, and only she has the magic to sew it. It has come
loose from his body, and hes lost without it. If she sews it,
hell take her flying to Neverland.
So she gets up out of bed and takes a needle from her
pincushion. (Shes the kind of girl who sews, which Tink
is not.) She threads it with a strand of silver-gray thread,
and she begins to sew. With her fingers she touches lightly
along the back of the boys head (she pictures Wills goldbrown hair), the back of his neck, his shoulders, down the
backs of his legs to his feet. Somehow she doesnt hurt him
sewing his shadow on. All those needle pricks, and not a
drop of blood.
Bushwah, Chris, Jackie would say to Tink, if she knew.
It was not the word Tinks mother would say. Shed
have two words of her own for it, two words she said often
lately. Boy-crazy, shed say. This is when it all starts.
Sixth grade.
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Sixth grade was the first time Tink noticed that Will
Wheeler had eyes of a color that was hard to name.
Sixth grade was also the first time a boy ever barked at
her. You cant know how it feels if it has never happened
to you.
It had happened last week, the first week of school,
when she was riding her bike home up the hill, sweaty and
wobbling. Keith Kallinka was riding by smooth and cool
on the bus.
Woof! He barked out the window at her, and somebody else laughed, and barked along. She couldnt see the
other person who barked. Woof! One known barker. One
unknown barker.
Then the bus passed Jackie, who had already reached
the top of the hill. They didnt bark at Jackie. They whistled.
Its just as asinine. Boys are so immature compared to
girls, Jackie complained when they got to her house. Her
mother, Bess, just nodded. Bess didnt say anything, but
she looked at Jackie the way Tinks mother looked at Tink
when teachers talked about IQ, a way that made it clear
Bess wasnt surprised Jackie had been whistled at.
Tink didnt say anything either. She knew Jackie was
just as smart as she was, maybe smarter about some things
the way Tink was smarter about others, but on the same
level. But now she was realizing that other people thought
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really true?
Tink wondered how it felt to hear whistling, now that
she knew how it felt to hear barking. She kept thinking of
all the things she could have done: yelled back Bushwah!
or barked back or given the bus the finger. But she hadnt
had the nerve. At the time it happened, she had been too
busy pretending she hadnt heard to do anything at all. Anyway, she didnt want those boys to think she minded being
barked at, any more than Jackie minded being whistled at.
Even if she did mind, more than she wanted to admit.
What she wanted was a boy coming in her window at
night, a hazel-eyed boy, someone who would say, Only
you. Only you have what I need. And she guessed something like that had happened today after recess when Will
hit his mouth on the water fountain and was bleeding, a
private moment when she alone could help him. She ran
fast past everyone else into the girls roomit was right
there, next to the fountainand grabbed paper towels and
wet them under the faucet and brought them out and held
them to his mouth. Anyone else could have done it, but he
asked only her.
Hazel was a word shed read in one of her romance novels. Her mother said it described those kinds of eyes that
were half green, half brown. In Wills case it also meant
speckled with gold. Hazel was what Tink thoughtand
table where she sat with Jackie and the other cool kids.
Tink wasnt cool, but they had let her sit there with them,
because of Jackie.
She had imagined other things about Peter Pan besides
sewing his shadow. She had dreams of him rescuing her
as Wendy when she was on the pirate ship walking the
plank, or rescuing her as Tiger Lily when she was about to
be burned at the stake. The weird thing was, it wasnt the
being rescued that intrigued her so much as the idea of rescue. Sometimes she imagined that she was the rescuer. But
it was also nice to think that some boy might care enough
to rescue her, and not just fly by and laugh or bark, but to
put his life at risk.
Jackie wanted to act it out. She lay down in the grass and
said to Keith, Now you stand over me.
so she could see the outsiders. Sometimes things happened to make her want to let go of Jackies hand and step
out of the ring, such as the antics of the Farmers, who were
in some wacky parallelogram, a clump of other boy dots
six or seven on any daythat Bushwhack had magnetized
and named.
Tinkno, Chrisdidnt want to be a dot of any kind.
She wouldnt let go of Jackies hand. And Jackie couldnt
help it if the circle kids liked her. Why would Jackie, or
anybody, step outside if she didnt have to? Tink wouldnt.
She really wouldnt. And what would Jackie do if she did?
The Roll Over game had started today with Brave New
World. That morning some of the elevated readers (they
switched to Mr. Bergman for language arts) got to read this
stupid book about this weird futuristic world. Tink didnt
get much out of it except page 146. On page 146 this guy is
standing over this girl watching her sleep. Shes wearing a
futuristic Star Trek sort of outfit with a zipper that goes all
the way up.
Or, Jackie said to the group, all the way down.
Everybody sat and read page 146, about this guy imagining things about that zipper. Then they went to recess and
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There were ten in the bed and the little one said
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why she was there; she was just glad she was, part of this
wonderful we with Jackie and the rest.
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why she was there; she was just glad she was, part of this
wonderful we with Jackie and the rest.
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