Not That Kind Of Girl

Even the state of my appearance after swim class — wet hair hanging like long brown icicles, melting pool water onto my navy cardigan — could make her wistful.

“You smell like summer,” she said, resting her head on my shoulder. “I wish it was still summer.”

I turned and sniffed my cardigan. Though I’d had it dry-cleaned right before school started, it already reeked of tangy chlorine, so I peeled it off and tied it around my waist. Coach Fallon never sent us to the locker room with enough time to shower. He’d rather us suffer one more lap of butterfly than have thirty seconds to shampoo. Autumn was so lucky that she hurt her shoulder a few years back and had a doctor’s note to keep her out of the pool. “Hey,” I said. “Could you give me a French braid when we get to class?” I hated the way it dried after swim class, in dull matted clumps.

Autumn’s shoulder-length hair was twisted into two perfectly symmetrical blond sections. She could make it that good without a mirror. “Here,” she said, pulling off my tortoiseshell headband before dropping a step behind me. “I’ll do it now.”

That’s how we walked through the freshman hallway, me leading Autumn by my hair, like we were elephants. I kept my head down and asked her questions from my Western Philosophy notes while she went to work, my scalp tightening with every weave. Our first quiz was in five minutes. We’d studied on the phone together the night before, so it was really more of a review, but Autumn had still gotten a few easy ones wrong.

“I can’t believe it.” Autumn stopped walking, only I didn’t realize it until my head snapped back. She sighed and asked, “Were we ever that young?”

I could tell that Autumn was trying to soak up all the excitement and possibility exuding from the freshmen mulling around us. She was completely charmed by their goofiness, bad skin, and awkward roughhousing. She smiled so wide, the skin around her blue eyes wrinkled.

I smiled, too. Except I wasn’t thinking back so much as trying to hold on to every minute of senior year. If our dream colleges accepted us, Autumn and I would be living on opposite sides of the country in eleven months. The realist in me had to accept that things wouldn’t be the same . . . or at least, not nearly as good as how we had it right now. Autumn would make new friends. Hopefully, I would, too. But it wasn’t a prospect I was particularly excited about.

“Oh, jeez,” she whispered. “Natalie! Look!”

Autumn nudged her chin toward a curvy girl with black corkscrew curls. The girl was kneeling on the floor, reaching deep into a messy locker for her books. Her pleated uniform skirt tipped forward like a ringing church bell. A small triangle of lavender mesh barely shielded her rear from the entire hallway.

Though it wasn’t actually written anywhere in the Ross Academy Handbook, it still seemed like every girl at school knew enough to wear something unrevealing underneath her uniform skirt. Spandex shorts, boxers, leggings, or at the very least, a pair of hipster underwear. Every girl but this poor, clueless freshman.

I debated whether or not to say something. But only for a second, because if I had a piece of spinach in my teeth, or if my zipper was down, I’d rather be told than make a complete fool of myself. Embarrassing moments had a surprisingly long shelf life at our school. One minute you were a normal girl, and the next, you’d be known as Ass Flasher for the next four years. It seemed only right to intervene.

I handed my notebook to Autumn. “Reread my notes on the Socratic method. I’ll be right back.” I bounded across the hallway, my braid unraveling with every step.

A couple of freshman boys had taken notice of the free show and were panting at this girl’s butt. I stared them down and positioned myself to block their view.

“Hey,” I said to the girl. “Can I talk to you for a second?”

She stared up at me from the floor, her tan face appearing slightly lighter around her eyes, probably from lying out with an oversize pair of sunglasses. “Um. Sure.” Her voice was both friendly and suspicious.

“I’m Natalie Sterling,” I said, feeling like I probably should introduce myself. “What’s your name?”

She blinked a few times and then stood up. Which, to my great relief, solved the immediate problem of her unfortunate underwear choice. “Hold on — you’re Natalie Sterling?”

“Um. Yes,” I said. And suddenly I turned into the suspicious one.

Her brown eyes were big and expectant, glittering like the eye shadow dusting her lids. She waited, and not exactly patiently, for me to recognize her. “You don’t know who I am, do you?” She didn’t sound angry. If anything, she seemed tickled.

My mind cycled through the faces at my SAT summer prep course. But this girl was clearly a freshman, so that didn’t make sense. I shrugged apologetically. “Are you sure you don’t have me confused with someone else?”

“Okay.” She closed her eyes and shook her head back and forth a few times, really fast. “I can’t believe I’m about to do this.” And then, after a deep breath, she danced a jig, right there in front of her locker.

Her toned legs kicked and sliced the air like scissors, and her flats hit the linoleum floor in loud slaps that made everyone take notice. My own deficiency in dance kept me from knowing if she was good or just trying hard. Either way, she bounced with such fervor that her curls boinged like a thousand tiny springs. After a final twirl, which honestly couldn’t have come quickly enough, she threw out her hands and exclaimed “River Dance!” Except she said it with a terrible Irish brogue, and it sounded more like Reevah Daaaanse!

That’s when it hit me.

“Spencer Biddle?” The eight-year-old girl I’d babysat for an entire summer when I turned twelve? Spencer Biddle, who wouldn’t use the upstairs bathroom without someone standing outside the door, who would eat macaroni and cheese only if the cheese were orange, who put on elaborate Irish step-dancing shows in her living room?

Her chest heaved as she caught her breath. “I’m honestly relieved you didn’t recognize me. It’s been like . . . what? Almost six years? I’d better look completely different.”

“Don’t worry,” I said, squinting past her makeup and imagining her shiny curls uncoiling to a frizzy and unkempt little girl fro. “You definitely do.”

Spencer pushed some wet hair off my shoulder. “I hardly recognized you, either. I mean, look at how grown up and beautiful you are!” It was a weird compliment, like something my Aunt Doreen or Grammy would say. Not someone three years younger than me. “Seriously, Natalie?” she continued. “You were the nicest babysitter I ever had. I remember one time when you threatened to make Eddie Guavera eat rocks when he peed on the flowers we’d just planted around the mailbox.”

I winced. “Did I really?”

Spencer laughed the same way she used to — quiet puffs of air that pulsed out of her nose, rapid-fire. “All the neighbor boys were afraid of you. It was so awesome!”

“Didn’t your family move to St. Louis?”

“Yeah. When my mom got remarried. But she divorced my stepdad, so we came back this summer.” I nodded, even though it felt weird to be discussing things like divorce with Spencer. I was pretty sure that our last conversation involved me trying to convince her that Lucky Charms would make a terrible pizza topping. “We’re renting an apartment across Liberty River. It’s not bad, actually. My room has these big mirrored closet doors where I can practice my routines.”

“You’d dance to anything,” I recalled. “Commercials. Those wind chimes your mom hung on the front porch. The sound of the phone ringing.” I had a sudden memory of how annoying that actually was, from a babysitter’s perspective. I could hardly get Spencer to sit still.

Spencer’s glossy smile gave way to a pucker. “Wait. If you didn’t recognize me, why did you come over here in the first place?”

I picked some lint off my skirt and suddenly wished that I didn’t know the color of Spencer’s underwear. I leaned in close enough to smell her cotton-candy perfume and whispered, “When you bent over before, you could see everything. And a bunch of boys were enjoying the view.”

Her mouth dropped open so wide I could see all her fillings. “Are you kidding?”

I shook my head. Despite being embarrassed, Spencer managed to smile. “You know,” I told her, “Ross does offer a pair of uniform pants for the girls, but they’re these horrible pleated slacks the color of cardboard. Really, the best thing to do is to wear something underneath your skirt.” I gave her the rundown of options, and even lifted my skirt the tiniest bit to show her the navy spandex shorts I always, always wore. Even over tights during winter.

Spencer nodded, but now she was looking behind me, trying to figure out which of the boys had been staring at her.

The warning bell rang. I needed to hurry to class, so I could get settled and focused before the quiz. “I’m sure I’ll see you around, Spencer. And let me know if you have any questions about school stuff.”

“Believe me, I definitely plan on exploiting that I’m friends with a senior! All the other freshman girls are going to die of jealousy.”

I knew that wouldn’t actually be true, but hearing Spencer say it made me feel pretty good as I hustled across the hallway to avoid being trampled by our entire football team. Connor Hughes, all tall and lean with his wavy brown hair grazing the collar of his white button-up, led the charge of boys down the hall. He held a playbook in his hands and the rest of his teammates orbited him, peering inside.

Autumn closed my notebook and handed it back to me. “I don’t know where you get your courage, Natalie. I couldn’t say anything like that to a stranger.”

I lifted my eyebrows. “That was no stranger.”

I told Autumn the story, and she glanced across the hallway. “So wait. Were you too busy catching up with Spencer that you forgot to tell her about her underwear?”

I turned and saw Spencer bent over again, her butt back on display for everyone.

The eyes of the passing football players flitted to the left, as if Spencer’s ass gave off a high-pitched noise at a frequency that only boys could detect. One of the guys, Mike Domski, snatched the binder out from Connor’s hands and flapped it furiously toward Spencer’s rear end, trying to make a strong enough breeze so her skirt would flutter up even higher. The rest of the team fell all over each other in a fit of laughter.

A sour feeling rippled across my stomach.

Spencer spun around and pressed up against her locker, a look of pretend embarrassment, feigned modesty, painted on her face. The same one I’d fallen for a moment ago.

“Looks like Spencer’s grown up to be quite a lady,” Autumn said.

She meant it as a joke, I think. Except neither of us laughed.