“Ooh! That’s Katherine!” Beth says, glancing at the clock over the sink. “Her mom was going to drop her off after her basketball game.”
She wants us to surprise Katherine with another guerrilla picture, but suddenly I’m worried about conserving my film. That, and Katherine gets on my nerves. But Beth is so excited, hopping up and down like a little kid who has to pee, I shrug and follow her lead.
Beth readies her hand on the brass knob and I crouch down near the recliner. The bell rings again, this time long and impatient. As Beth swings the door open, I spring up like a jack-in-the-box. We both scream our heads off.
The flash pops, but Katherine doesn’t even blink. Instead, she leans against the door frame in her yellow track pants and navy Akron High School varsity basketball sweatshirt. Her chapped lips wrinkle around a brown filter, and she takes the last deep drag of her cigarette before casting it off into my neighbor’s bushes.
“I could seriously kill my parents,” she says. A combination of smoke and her hot breath in the cold air clouds her face.
The three of us head into the kitchen while Katherine rambles off a crazy recap of her parents fighting in the bleachers over who will keep which half of their sectional sofa. Beth gets her a glass of water. I quietly watch the picture develop in my hands. With her stick-straight blonde hair and icy blue eyes, Katherine is too pretty to be a smoker.
Beth taps Katherine on the shoulder to scoot in her chair because she wants to help my mom push the candles into my cake. It’s a tight squeeze past the sink, and Katherine moves in, but not nearly enough for Beth to pass. Rather than ask again, Beth goes around the other way. I don’t think Katherine even notices. She just looks around the room in wide-eyed wonder.
“Wow, this is like the smallest kitchen I’ve ever seen.”
Oh, right. The new girl’s never been in my house before.
“Yeah, well . . .” I say, but decide not to get into it. Anyhow, she’s right. The kitchen is tiny. We have to keep the refrigerator in the pantry and our oven filled with pots and pans. When I want an English muffin or a frozen waffle, I have to move the block of knives over to the table so there’s room for the toaster on the tiny spread of countertop. It’s nowhere near the size of the kitchen in our old house. But Katherine wouldn’t know that.
Katherine’s only been hanging out with us for a few weeks, since Beth found her crying on the windowsill in the girls’ bathroom during fourth period. She said that none of her friends understood what she was going through, now that her dad had officially decided to move out. Apparently, Katherine tried to have a heart-to-heart with a few of her teammates on the way to a basketball game. The girls half listened to her sad story, between joking with each other and waving to the cars passing by the team bus. When Katherine was finished, they reminded her that, as both captain and their strongest player, she had to concentrate on the court if Akron High was going to squeak out a victory against Barberton. So Katherine pushed everything out of her mind and played her best game of the season. Her teammates congratulated her on the win, then boarded the bus, put on their headphones, and rode back without another word. No one cared about her family problems, so long as she made her free throws. And that’s when she decided that she needed some new friends.
That day, at fifth period lunch, Beth told us the story. I found it weird that Katherine would admit all that to a relative stranger, but whatever. Beth said that we couldn’t turn our backs on her, even if Katherine wasn’t quite a perfect fit with our established group dynamic.
“Says who?” I had taunted in my best wise-ass voice when Beth had brought it up. Maria had laughed at that. And even Beth had cracked a smile. After all, it wasn’t like we were looking to increase our numbers. The addition of Maria to our twosome last year, when the principal assigned Beth to be her shadow, caused me enough stress. Sure, it all turned out fine in the end. Maria was into the same kind of things we were — thrift stores, rock music, and rolling our eyes over how dumb the popular kids were. But I still had growing pains and all the other awkward stuff that comes with getting used to someone new. Katherine was a different story altogether. We had nothing in common with her. She was a senior, and we were all sophomores. She was popular (or at least she used to be), athletic, and pretty wild. We were, well, not. I just had a feeling that Katherine wouldn’t be worth the trouble.
But later, at my locker, Beth had pushed my brown hair aside and had whispered into my ear. She reminded me that I knew more than anyone what Katherine was going through with her family stuff. She said there was probably a lot I could do to help her.
I felt like a real jerk. Especially with how great Beth had been to me, single-handedly helping me survive all my own family drama. I couldn’t imagine what kind of state I’d have been in if I hadn’t had a friend like her looking out for me. So I’ve been trying, mostly for Beth. But for Katherine too, I guess. Though she doesn’t make it easy.
Gravel crunches under a set of tires in the driveway. I grab my camera again and return to the door. This time, I drop to the carpet and point the Polaroid out of our mail slot. As Maria walks up the stairs, I snap a picture. Her knees are brown and meaty and partially concealed by red stripey leg warmers.
Maria blows me an air kiss and sheds her fur-collared old lady coat as she walks though the door, shifting her cell phone from ear to ear. “You can’t come! I told you, NO BOYS TONIGHT!” she shouts before flipping her phone closed and rolling her eyes. “Ugh, he is so annoying!”
I nod in sympathy, but the truth is, Maria talks to so many guys, I have no idea which he she’s currently annoyed with. Maybe it’s this guy Davey who graduated last year and works at Square Records. I spotted her draped all over him in the school parking lot yesterday, while I was walking toward the science wing for a lunchtime study session.
I doubt they saw me. I’m very quiet.
“Cool camera! It’s a certifiable relic!” Maria says, batting her long eyelashes and raking her fingers through her choppy little bangs. She leans in and whispers in my ear. “Meanwhile, you are totally in for some major birthday madness tonight! So let’s down the family cake and get going, okay?”
I skip back into the kitchen. On the way, the lights go out. Mom sets the glowing cake in front of an empty seat at the table. I sit and look out at the four bodies that fill the tiny room. Beth snaps my picture with my new camera and, for once, I smile as big and bright and normal as I can.
“Happy Birthday” is belted out in bad harmony. Even my mom, who has her arm around Beth, is singing loudly. The tiny room is so full of happy off-key noise, I almost don’t hear the doorbell ring.
There are five plates, five people. There is no one missing.
I am stuck in birthday cake prison — my gut pressed into the table, the back of my chair scraping our cabinets. Katherine, who is off to the side, grabs my camera from the table and bails midsong into the living room to answer the door.
Suddenly, I’m five years old. I don’t want her touching my present.
The doorbell rings again.
Is that Davey? I mouth to Maria. Maybe a ring-and-run to protest his exclusion from our guest list? She shrugs.
Beth keeps smiling, and drags out the youuuuuuu as long as her lungs will let her.
My birthday candles flicker, begging to be wished upon. I take a deep breath, but get distracted by a flash of white light in the living room.
Katherine
