new sneakers, who could reach the water fountain first. It seemed to Danielle like normal boy stuff for the most part, but every so often, Andrew would take some stupid “loss” really hard. Danielle was also competitive, and while she sympathized with Andrew’s pangs of defeat, she also never pitted herself against her friends. She didn’t even want to think about how sucky it would have been if she or Hope hadn’t both made the swim team.
That said, Danielle did take special pride in knowing that, when it came to the boys having girlfriends, she’d tipped the scales in Andrew’s favor.
“Hey,” Andrew said. “Guess what I found out today. Even if I don’t play a single minute this season, I’ll still get a varsity jacket.”
“You’ll look hot in it,” Danielle said. It was kind of a silly thing to say, but she knew it would make Andrew feel better.
“I don’t care about the jacket. It’ll just be cool seeing you in it this winter.”
“You’re sweet,” Danielle said, blushing in the dark. It would be cool to wear Andrew’s varsity jacket, at least until she could earn her own.
“Will you stay on the phone with me a little longer?” he asked quietly.
Danielle fluffed up her pillow, and she and Andrew clicked through their respective televisions together, as if their remotes were in sync. They laughed at the bizarre late-night infomercials that populated the cable channels in the middle of the night. Spray-on hair. Home gym contraptions that could double for medieval torture devices. Skin remedies for swollen, zitty faces. Diet pills based on ancient Chinese secrets.
Danielle fell asleep with her cell pressed to her ear, images of before and after flashing in the dark. Her battery died around four thirty A.M. Her alarm died with it.
For love, or something pretty close to it, she missed the bus.
Danielle reaches for her phone to call home, when she spots a notebook lying open in the street, pages fluttering. She picks it up. Using it to shield her eyes from the orangey sun, she sees, at a distance of roughly three blocks, her school bus bouncing along to the next designated stop. She missed it, but not by much.
She lowers her chin and stares out the tops of her eyes.
A second later, she’s running.
Her body isn’t warm, and she worries about possibly pulling a muscle. Chasing down the school bus definitely isn’t worth a stupid injury that might keep her out of the water. But after a few strides, Danielle slips into a comfortable rhythm. A pleasant heat ignites her pumping arms, her whirling legs.
The school bus stops for a car pulling out of a driveway. Danielle quickly closes the gap. “Hey!” she calls out when she gets close enough to recognize the students in the back windows. “Hey!”
But the kids are too busy socializing with each other to notice Danielle. The bus accelerates and a cloud puffs out from the tailpipe, stinging her eyes. She veers to the right and centers herself in the driver’s side-view mirror. She shouts again over the roar of the engine. She bangs her fist against the side.
The bus slams to a stop. The kids look down at her, shocked. Danielle pushes a few wisps of brown hair out of her face as the folding door opens.
“You could have gotten killed,” the bus driver barks.
Danielle apologizes in between heaving deep breaths. She climbs the steps, holds the notebook over her head like a trophy, and waits for someone to claim it.
After stashing her coat in her locker, Danielle heads straight to the cafeteria with Hope. She woke up too late to eat breakfast, and there is no way she can last until lunch without food. She passes up the student council bagel sale, because carbs make her sleepy and she’s tired enough as it is. Hopefully there’ll be something in the vending machines besides potato chips and chocolate bars. Danielle has been eating more and more since making the freshman swim team, her body always desperate for fuel. She wants to be careful to feed it well.
An older boy passes the girls as they enter the cafeteria. “Hey! Dan the Man!” he says, and slaps Danielle on the back.
“Was he talking to you?” Hope asks.
Danielle is too startled to react. She tries to get a look at the boy’s face to see if maybe she knows him, but he disappears as quickly as he arrived. “Um … no clue.”
The girls continue over to the vending machine. The entire glass front is covered over by papers. Danielle assumes it’s an overzealous school club desperate for members until she pulls a sheet down and reads it.
Dan the Man?
Ugliest?
A cramp spreads inside her, contracting each and every muscle.
To be called ugly is one thing. Of course Danielle has heard the insult before. Is there a girl in the world who hasn’t? And while she certainly isn’t happy about it, ugly is something people say about each other, and say about themselves, without even thinking. The word is so generic, it’s almost meaningless.
Almost.
But the Dan the Man thing is different. That hurts, even though Danielle knows she isn’t a particularly girlie girl. Wearing dresses makes her feel weird, as if she’s in a costume, pretending to be someone else. She only puts makeup on for the weekends, and even then only a little bit of gloss and maybe mascara. She’s never had her ears pierced because she’s deathly afraid of needles.
But Danielle still has all the essential girl parts. Boobs. Long hair. A boyfriend.
Hope rips down a list of her own and sucks in a big breath, the way she usually does before plunging underwater. “Oh, no, Danielle … What is this thing?”
Danielle doesn’t answer. Instead, she stares at her reflection in the newly exposed square of vending machine glass. She hadn’t had time to shower this morning, so she just threw her hair up in a bun. A haze of short brown strands spike up around her hairline. It shouldn’t surprise her — bits of broken hair fill the inside of her swim cap after every practice — but it does. She tries to smooth them down with a suddenly clammy hand, but the strands pop right back up. She pulls off her elastic and shakes out her hair. It is dry and dull from chlorine and doesn’t move like normal hair should. It suddenly looks to Danielle like a bad wig.
Danielle turns away from her reflection. She sees that the lockers outside the cafeteria also have papers taped to them. She chokes out, “Hope, I think these lists are hanging all over school.”
Without further discussion, the two girls leave the cafeteria, split apart, and begin running, one on either side of the hallway. They tear down every copy of the list they pass.
Though Danielle is glad for something physical to do, it is also her second sprint of the morning without any breakfast. She searches deep down inside for the strength to keep putting one foot in front of the other, like a straw rooting around the bottom of a soda can. She makes it to the end of the hallway, and then runs smack into Andrew, who’s standing with a few other sophomore guys from the football team.
Including Chuck.
“Yo! It’s Dan!” Chuck calls out in a deeper-than-usual voice. “Dan the Man!”
