Please, Please, Please by Rachel Vail Page B

say anything.
    “Anyway,” she said, after a while of silence. “You do the math yet?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Me, too,” she said. “So . . .”
    I waited another while and then asked, “Zoe? I, if you, I think he really does like you, Lou. And if, do you, I could, you want me to ask Tommy for you?”
    “No,” she said. She said it really almost angrily. I never heard her sound angry before.
    “OK,” I said quietly.
    “I mean, let me think about it. OK?”
    “OK.” I took off my sneakers and my socks. “Are you mad at me?”
    “No,” she said.
    I curled up on my bed with History and picked at the seam in my wallpaper. It has little rosebuds. Mom had chosen it when I was little because, she said, it was so “me.”
    “OK! OK!” Zoe yelled at her sisters. “I gotta go, they need my body. See you tomorrow!”
    “OK,” I said, hanging up.
    Why can’t I be fun? I asked History. He just looked at me blankly. Who does she want me to be friends with? I stood up and got the permission slip out of my book bag. No matter how many times I reread it, it still said we’d get back at six thirty, just as I’d be pulling off my ballet slippers and yanking my dance pants over my tights for the long ride home alone with my mother.

nine
    I have never felt so alone as I felt today.
    Just about every girl in the entire school was wearing a soccer shirt. I was sitting up on the wall this morning before school, watching purple jersey after purple jersey come toward me like waves. Purple jerseys with huge black-and-white soccer balls on the fronts. Nobody said anything about it to me; in fact, nobody really looked at me. Worst of all, I chose today to wear my pale-yellow minidress. Zoe and Roxanne were comparing game schedules, Morgan and Olivia sat on the ground below the wall, whispering as usual. All in their purple jerseys.
    I didn’t even go to my locker when the bell rang; I went straight to homeroom in hopes of avoiding all the excitement. Nobody seemed to notice.
    “Hi, CJ,” Ms. Cress said.
    “Hi.” I crossed my arms on my desk and rested my head on top.
    She came over and sat on the desk next to mine. “We missed you at soccer yesterday.”
    I didn’t answer.
    “You’re not playing this year?”
    “I have ballet,” I said. “Four times a week.”
    “Wow. ’K. We’ll miss you.”
    I wanted to cry. “Thanks.”
    “Did you bring in your permission slip for apple picking?”
    “No,” I mumbled into my arms. “I forgot it.”
    “What am I gonna do with you?” She shook me. “Bring it in tomorrow, ’K? I really want to win the cookie. It’s huge, and you know I hate to lose. Especially to Ms. Masters.”
    “’K,” I said, still not looking up.
    I didn’t lift my head all through homeroom and took the long way to Spanish. When I got there, Morgan and Olivia were already inside, their heads close to each other’s. Morgan used to lean close to me when she talked.
    “Hey,” Tommy said.
    I turned around and almost bumped into him. I dropped my lunch. An orange rolled out of it down the hall, and while I picked up my sandwich, Tommy ran after my orange. “You’re not on soccer?” he asked, handing it to me.
    I shrugged. “Dance.”
    “So?”
    “So I can’t do both! OK?”
    “OK, OK,” he said. “I just wanted to ask you . . .”
    Gideon bumped him, going in to Spanish, and coughed “hay-stacking” into his hands.
    “Shut up,” Tommy said. He rested the heel of one untied high-top on top of his other foot.
    I waited. The bell rang.
    I started heading in to class, but Tommy licked his bottom lip and whispered, “Will you sit with me on the bus to apple picking?”
    “Sure,” I said.
    All through Spanish I was like, What? I couldn’t believe I said yes, but it was like, how could I say no—he finally talked to me and it was to ask me to sit with him. I had to say yes . When I looked at him just before our vocab quiz, he smiled a little, just enough to show his deep dimples. I