The Girls by Amy Goldman Koss Page A

loved Candace’s topsy-turvy, noisy house. Candace once said that my house reminded her of an old library. “Not just because of all the books,” she’d said. “It’s the dusty old drapes and the whole dark silence.” I’d been hurt, but she was right. Candace always spoke her mind, and she usually said what the rest of us thought but were too timid to say. I admired that about her.
    My house was like an old library. Not a bustling busy one, though; mine was just quiet. My mom taught microbiology at the university. Dad taught astronomy. They didn’t believe in TV—as if TV were a religion.
    And when I was a baby, when other kids were reciting nursery rhymes, my parents trained me to rattle off the genus and species of all the plants in our yard. When other kids were wishing on stars, I was learning the constellations. And when I started losing baby teeth, there was no visit from the tooth fairy. Instead, my parents had our dentist demonstrate tooth growth on a model of the human jaw.
    I knocked on my mom’s office door and told her I was going to Candace’s. She turned to squint at me over her reading glasses. I thought of the animal game we’d played at Darcy’s last night. Mom would be a mole—underground, long-nosed, nearly blind. My dad would be a tall, skinny, silent animal, something even ganglier than a giraffe. An insect? A walkingstick or praying mantis, maybe.
    I loved them, of course, and wouldn’t really, really want them to be totally different. But I didn’t want to be like them when I grew up.
    My parents’ idea of fun was to lug the telescope and microscope out to the godforsaken desert—poke in the dirt all day, peer at the stars at night. It was as if they were at work twenty-four hours a day. My mom said that proved they were in the right careers, getting paid to do what they’d do for free anyway.
    But isn’t it possible to be a scientist by day, then play slide trombone in a Dixie band or drums in a rock band at night? Watch TV? Be in plays? Have parties with noisy friends on the weekends?
    â€œDid you do your homework, Bree?” Mom asked. I wished she’d stop calling me that baby name, but it was pointless to say so. She hadn’t heard me the last nine million times.
    When I’d told Candace that I hated being called Bree, she’d wrinkled her perfect nose in sympathy and said, “I don’t blame you a bit. Isn’t Brie a smelly kind of sticky cheese?”
    Candace didn’t like being called Candy. But when she said, “Candy rots your teeth,” and flashed her perfect pearly whites, people listened. I’d never, ever heard anyone call her Candy twice.
    â€œOh, by the way,” Mom said, “Maya called yesterday after you left for Darcy’s.”
    I said a quick prayer that she wouldn’t ask me about Maya, and it worked. Mom turned back to her computer and said, “If you’re absolutely positive that all your schoolwork is complete, you may go, but be home by dinner.”
    I walked the long way to Candace’s, so I wouldn’t have to pass Maya’s house. But when I got to the big stand of shaggy banana trees near the monastery, I remembered her begging me to play in there with her. Maya had wanted to pretend we were apes, or Tarzan or something. I’d thought that was so dorky. And what if someone saw us? I’d die.
    It wasn’t that I didn’t like Maya; it’s just that she got so happy about stuff. Not that happy is bad. It’s ... well, this sounds really snobby, but Maya was like a little kid. She wanted to climb trees, ride bikes around without going anywhere—just play.
    Sometimes it was okay, but other times, being with Maya was like wearing shoes I’d outgrown. I looked away from the banana trees and shook thoughts of Maya out of my head. I wondered instead what I should wear to school Monday that might catch Eric, the