Amandine by Adele Griffin Page A

haven’t you?”
    I shrugged a yes. I’d hated having braces and welcomed the switch to a retainer, and I took all the precautions that would keep me from regressing to a mouthful of railroad tracks.
    “You’ve made fine progress,” said Dr. Ang. “Compared with the previous set of X rays that your dentist in Connecticut sent, it’s remarkable. Remarkable.” My mother’s eyebrows lifted. Now she picked up the X ray and held it at arm’s length, seeking out its hidden value as if she had just been told it was a Frank Lloyd Wright original blueprint.
    “Delia’s got a beautiful bite,” said Dr. Ang.
    An embarrassed tingling spread through me. It was rare to hear the word “beautiful” in the same sentence as “Delia.” Even as I shrugged and pushed deeper in my chair, I wanted to go find a mirror so that I could stare at my beautiful bite in private.
    “I thought it was starting to come along,” said Mom.
    As we walked out to the parking lot, she tugged a piece of my hair. “Good girl,” she said. “See what you can do when you put your mind to it?”
    It was the best my mother could do for a compliment, so I took it as one. I am not one to ruin a happy mood.
    The next day, when Amandine was not at my locker and I couldn’t find her at lunch, I figured that she was absent. Entering the gym for spring fitness, however, I was surprised to see her and Mary Whitecomb sitting together on a pile of folded exercise mats and laughing.
    “What’s so funny?” I asked.
    “We’re just doing this skit,” said Amandine. “I’m being Coach Frost and Mary has to rope climb and I’m looking at her underwear.”
    “How intellectual.” I rolled my eyes, but my insides gnawed uneasily. “Where’s Jolynn?” I asked Mary.
    “Around,” she answered with a roll of her shoulders.
    Mary Whitecomb and Jolynn Fisch were another pair of friends who took spring fitness. Amandine and I joined up with them when we needed to be a foursome for square dancing or baton relays. Mary seemed okay, but Jolynn scared me. She had a double-stud nose piercing plus a tongue piercing and wore aluminum-colored lipstick. Every afternoon she sneaked across the highway over to Holy Ghost Prep so that she could ride the bus home with her boyfriend, who was a sophomore there. Mary, who was vastly tall and had an underbite and wore thick scratched glasses, was less intimidating than Jolynn—though she did not seem as interesting, either.
    And since when did Amandine do skits with her?
    “We made up the skit yesterday,” Amandine said, as if reading my thoughts. “When you were absent.” Her voice was accusing, slightly triumphant.
    “Okay,” I said. “Fine by me.”
    Then Amandine whispered something in Mary’s ear. I edged away, unsure of what to do or where to place myself. This was my punishment, I knew, for being gone yesterday and not telling her.
    Class got worse, as it was one of those rare days when Coach Frost decided to pick out partners himself, separating friends so that kids wouldn’t cheat on that session’s activity, which was a timed calisthenics test. But he paired Amandine and Mary.
    My partner was Wendi Squires, who was a math whiz. She wouldn’t round off the times on her stopwatch. “Delia, you can chin hang for eight point one six eight seconds,” she announced. “One point eight three two more seconds would give you a perfect ten.”
    “Mmm.” Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Amandine and Mary whispering endlessly in each other’s ear. When I checked on Jolynn, who was paired with Marissa Ruiz, she didn’t seem to care at all.
    Suddenly, I found it hard to breathe, and in that moment I also desperately missed Lexi, and the easy friendship we’d shared back in Connecticut. A friendship that skipped across a week easy as checkers or Parcheesi, the same moves every time. Amandine’s friendship was like a game of strategy, and it always reminded me how bad I was at strategy, and how much I