Here's Lily Read online

  Lily knew her face was getting blotchy, and she stayed in her chair waiting for it to go white again. She felt someone sit down beside her.

  “That won’t be a good look for your photo,” Kathleen said softly. “Something with a little more smile to it would be better.”

  Lily smiled at her, but she didn’t feel it inside her.

  “What’s up?” Kathleen said.

  “I don’t know if I should have my picture taken. My mom says it might be just a waste of time.”

  Kathleen didn’t look surprised. She definitely didn’t get up and march out to the lobby to set Lily’s mother straight. She just leaned a little into Lily’s shoulder. “Nothing you do here is a waste, Lily,” she said. “I’ve watched you become more poised with every class.”

  It was as if Lily had just been pumped full of helium. She floated up off the chair like a balloon and preened and posed and laughed for the camera until even the photographer said, “You’re a natural.”

  Of course, none of Lily’s wonderful new qualities seemed to come to Shad Shifferdecker’s attention at all. Matter of fact, he seemed to find even more reasons than ever to tease Lily.

  “Hey, silly Lily!” he shouted on the playground one day. “How come your lips are so shiny? Did your nose run down on ’em or something?”

  Another day when the class was lining up to go to lunch, he got behind her and made a grab for her hair.

  Lily bobbed her head away. “What are you doing?” she said.

  “I wanna see what’ll happen if I take one of these clip things out. I wanna see it go boi-ing, boi-ing, boi-ing.” He made a noise like a spring, which made Daniel and Leo practically wet their pants laughing.

  “Pretend they don’t exist,” Reni whispered to her.

  But Lily didn’t have to be reminded. All she had to do was imagine Shad’s face when he saw her flowing down the runway at the modeling show, his eyebrows arched in disbelief, mouth hanging open showing all his braces. She still didn’t know how she was going to get him there, but the thought made it easy to flip her hair away from him now and smile her way on to lunch.

  One day not long after that, Ms. Gooch brought in about twenty boxes of magazines and passed out scissors.

  “We’re going to do a collage project,” she told the class. “We’ve been reading about great people and their lives this fall, and one of the things we’ve learned about them is that they each had a vision for their life.”

  “My dad says people who see visions are weird,” Marcie said without raising her hand.

  “I’m not asking you to be weird,” Ms. Gooch said. “I’m asking you to cut out pictures that say something to you about your vision—or your idea—of your future life, what you want it to be like. You’ll assemble them into a collage.”

  Lily couldn’t wait to get started on that assignment. She didn’t even have to think twice about it before she gathered up an armload of fashion magazines and went to work clipping out pictures of women she wanted to look like.

  It isn’t the makeup and the hair, she reminded herself as she passed up pictures of too-perfect-to-be-real women with blue eyelids and bright red lips. It’s the confidence and the light in their eyes.

  And then she pounced on a photo of a tall, red-haired girl walking along a beach with her dress blowing out behind her and her arms up over her head as if she couldn’t care less what anybody thought.

  Lily had cut out about thirty similar pictures and was playing with ways to arrange them on a big piece of construction paper when she felt somebody looking over her shoulder.

  “That’s your ‘vision’?” Shad Shifferdecker said.

  Lily spread her hands out over her pictures, but Shad reached down and pulled one out from under her fingers. It tore as he yanked it free, and Lily was only fast enough to grab half of it. Shad held the other half up to look at it.

  “This is what you think you’re gonna look like—half a person?”

  Lily snatched it from him and looked at it in dismay. “This was one of my favorites!”

  She wanted to rip her tongue in half the minute she said it, because Shad’s beady gaze began to gleam. Lily was sure his eyes were getting closer together too as he looked down at the rest of her pictures.

  “Dream on,” he said. “No way you’re ever gonna look like that!” He picked up a photo of Taylor Swift. “You’re too weird lookin’ to be her.” He poked another picture with a dirty fingernail. “Too snotty to be her, too ugly to be her—”

  Lily scooped the rest of the pictures together with her forearms and leaned down over them.

  “Go. Away.” She was grinding her teeth until they hurt. “Please.”

  She felt a poke in her left rib, but she didn’t move. Shad tried another poke, but Lily held her breath and stayed hovered stubbornly over her pile of pictures.

  “Snobbins,” he said. But he finally moved away.

  Lily looked around for Ms. Gooch. She was in the back corner, helping Kresha, who obviously had no idea what they were supposed to be doing and was fingering her tousled hair in frustration as she listened.

  I wish Ms. Gooch would yell at Shad, Lily thought fiercely. I wish she’d tell him he was weird looking and ugly!

  Lily would have done it herself . . . except Kathleen wouldn’t have approved.

  She sighed and went up to Ms. Gooch’s desk to get the tape to repair her prized picture. On the trip up the aisle and back, she got another earful of Shad.

  “What’s your vision, Miss Piggy?” he asked Zooey.

  “Quit calling me that,” Zooey said.

  Shad snapped his fingers. “I keep on getting you and her mixed up.” Then he puffed out his cheeks and held his arms out to his sides and lumbered on like he weighed two hundred pounds. Lily glanced at Zooey. Her face was hot red, and she was staring down at a magazine.

  I know just how you feel, Zooey, Lily wanted to tell her.

  “Hot air balloons?” Shad was saying. He was leaning over Suzy’s desk now. “You’re going to spend your future in a hot air balloon?”

  “You’re going to spend yours in the office if you don’t go to your seat and get to work,” Ms. Gooch said. She punctuated it with an eyebrow.

  As Shad shrugged and took his sweet time getting to his desk and Suzy slid down into hers and wadded up the balloon picture in her hand, Lily almost cracked her molars.

  Don’t let him get to you. And you either, Zooey, she wished she could say.

  And then Lily un-gritted her teeth and sat up straight in her chair. Why didn’t she say that to them? What if she did? What if she told Suzy and Zooey and Reni what she was learning from Kathleen? What if they all made it impossible for Shad to have anything to tease them about?

  It gave her an idea, an idea so good she could hardly wait until lunch to tell them about it.

  Seven

  Lily gave the playground tree a thorough search with her eyes before she sat down under it with Reni and Suzy and Zooey. Even then, she scanned the entire schoolyard until she saw Shad and Leo and Daniel showing off under the basketball net.

  “Huh,” Reni said, following Lily’s gaze with hers. “They sure think they’re all that, don’t they?”

  Zooey’s face went scarlet at the sight of them. “I wish that Shad Shifferdecker would get hit in the face with the ball,” she said.

  Suzy gave a nervous giggle, but there was no laughter in her eyes.

  “I wish the ball would go right down his throat,” Reni put in. “Maybe that would shut him up.”

  “I have a better idea.” Lily wiggled her eyebrows.

  Suzy looked up from her lap. “Is it going to get us in trouble? I’m not allowed to get in trouble at school.”

  “Nope,” Lily said. “This is all legal. I want us to form a club.”

  The three of them blinked at her . . . and then they all began talking at the same time.

  “What kind of club?”

  “Like Girl Scouts or something?”

 
; “What good’s that gonna do?”

  Lily put up both hands and both eyebrows to quiet them down.

  “Wow,” Zooey said. “You look just like Ms. Gooch when you do that.”

  “What do you mean, a club?” Reni asked. “Like some kind of secret society or something?”

  “Aren’t those against the rules?” Suzy said.

  “Would you guys just listen?” Lily said.

  Three heads nodded.

  “Okay. I say we should form a . . . group. Let’s call it a group. A girls only group. Absolutely no boys allowed.”

  “I like that part,” Reni said, frowning toward the basketball court.

  “And no mean girls either,” Lily added.

  “Like Ashley?”

  “Or Chelsea?”

  “Like anybody who hurts people’s feelings,” Lily said. “Right now I think it should be just the four of us.”

  “Why us?” Zooey asked.

  Lily gave her a long look and then nodded at the basketball hoop. Zooey blinked at her.

  “I get it,” Reni said. “We’re the ones Shad and those guys pick on.”

  “Right,” Lily said.

  “What are we gonna do, fight them?” Zooey said. Her eyes bulged fearfully.

  “I don’t think I’m allowed to do that,” Suzy said.

  “That’s not what you’re thinking, is it?” Reni said to Lily.

  Lily shook her head. “Nope. What I’m thinking is that I’ve been learning about ways to look better—” She stopped. She’d almost let the secret out. For once she was glad Zooey burst in with—

  “You do look better!” She gaped openmouthed into Lily’s face. “I mean, better than you used to. I mean, not that you were ugly.”

  Lily shrugged. “That’s okay. I didn’t used to make the most of what I had, but now I do.”

  “Just like that one lady told us,” Suzy said.

  Lily gave Reni a quick look, but Reni didn’t say a word.

  “So,” Lily said, “we could form a group, and I could teach you what I’ve been learning, and then Shad Shifferdecker wouldn’t be able to make us lose it when he teases us.”

  “You think he’d ever stop teasing us?” Zooey asked. “That’s what I want.”

  Lily thought again of the modeling show, and she smiled. “That could happen,” she said. “So, who wants to join?”

  Zooey’s chubby arm shot right up. Reni raised her hand too. Suzy glanced at both of them and then stuck her arm up and looked at her lap.

  “Perfect,” Lily said.

  “So how do we make a group?” Zooey said.

  “We need a name first,” Reni said, and then she looked at Lily. “Don’t we?”

  “We should elect a president first. Then I—she—could run the meeting and pick a name.”

  “You be the president, Lily,” Zooey said. “Since it was your idea.”

  Lily looked around at the little group, just to be polite, and they all nodded.

  “Okay,” Lily said, trying not to smile too big. “So who has a suggestion for a name?”

  Suzy shook her head and continued to study her knees, and Zooey wrinkled up her forehead and looked stumped.

  “Girls Only Group,” said Reni. “Just like you said.”

  “That’s a little boring,” Lily responded. “I mean, no offense.”

  Reni pulled in her chin that way she had and said, “Huh!”

  “Okay, I guess that’s good,” Lily said. “Only maybe we could spell girls with a z.”

  “Zirls?” Zooey said. The furrows in her forehead got deeper.

  “No. G-i-r-l-z,” Lily said patiently.

  “That’ll look good on our T-shirts,” Reni said.

  Zooey’s eyes lit up. “We get T-shirts?”

  “Well, not right away—”

  “Maybe not ever,” Lily said. “This is a secret group.”

  “Isn’t secret bad?” Suzy said.

  “We just don’t want Shad and them finding out about it,” Lily said. “They’d think it was lame and make fun of it.”

  Reni nodded. “I get it. But he’s gonna know something’s up. Look at him right now.”

  All their heads turned toward Shad, who was standing, ball poised on his hip, staring right at them and saying something to Leo and Daniel out of the side of his mouth.

  Suzy giggled her nervous giggle. “Maybe we should just split up before he comes over here.”

  “I think we should find another place to meet,” Reni said.

  “I guess so,” Lily said. “But we can’t hide around here. He’d turn it into his mission in life to find us.”

  “Wow.” Zooey blinked at her. “You always talk so smart. How do you do that?”

  “So who says we have to meet at school?” Reni said. “We could meet after school, like at Lily’s.”

  Lily shook her head. “Not with my brothers hanging around. They’re worse than Shad and Leo and Daniel all in one.”

  They gave a group shudder and were silent. Lily saw Shad and his two sidekicks moving closer.

  “Wait . . . I got it!” Reni said. “Lily, you know that playhouse in my backyard where we used to play dolls and stuff?”

  “Yeah.”

  “My mom’s about to turn it into a gardening shed or something. But if I told her I still wanted to use it, we could have it for our clubhouse.”

  “Cool!” Zooey almost shouted.

  It was a cool idea, especially with Shad and Leo and Daniel moving in for the kill.

  “Okay. Today after school. Reni’s backyard,” Lily whispered. “We’ll pick up there where we left off. Now, everybody—scatter!”

  Suzy was the first one to bolt. Reni grabbed Lily’s hand, and they scampered off toward the volleyball court. Zooey went right past Shad, but fortunately Shad seemed too disappointed to remember to hurl any insults at her. Lily glanced over her shoulder to see him standing, arms crossed over his chest, looking at her and Reni.

  “I think we have him going already,” Lily whispered. So the first official meeting of the Girlz Only Group took place that very afternoon in Reni’s old playhouse. They decided to set aside all other business until they could get rid of the dolls-having-a-tea-party décor. They spent that whole afternoon packing up the doll furniture and running to their own houses to bring back posters and cushions their moms didn’t want anymore and anything else un-little-girlish they could find.

  Suzy brought a bunch of long strings of beads, which they hung in the doorway to provide even more privacy than just the thin front door.

  Zooey donated an ancient CD player that only played CDs but didn’t fast-forward between tracks anymore. Lily thought that was okay—it still played their faves and was louder than her iPod so everybody could hear.

  Reni found a bright pink rug her mother had bought for their bathroom on sale and ended up hating but couldn’t return to the store.

  “It sure is pink,” Suzy said, giggling.

  “It makes a statement though,” Lily said. “We’re Girlz. We need a strong pink that says that.”

  Zooey gazed at her in admiration. “Wow,” she said.

  When they all stood back to gaze at the finished product, Lily was amazed at how, well, sophisticated it looked. If Shad Shifferdecker were to see it, he couldn’t say it was lame. Except, of course, that Shad had absolutely no taste whatsoever.

  They didn’t get to their real purpose—taking away all reasons for Shad to tease them—until two meetings later.

  They had to elect the other officers first. Reni was vice president, Suzy was secretary, and since there was no money to keep track of and so no reason for a treasurer, Zooey was given the title of “lookout.” It was her job to make sure no boys were spying on them at any time.

  Then they had to establish rules. Lily thought they were called “bylaws,” but since nobody was really sure, they called them rules. Suzy wrote them down carefully in a special notebook as they were decided.

  1. The Girls Only Group is total
ly secret. Nobody else gets to know about it unless everybody says yes.

  2. We meet every day after school except when somebody has a piano lesson or gymnastics or something.

  3. We can bring a snack but no big meals.

  4. Nobody’s allowed to say anything to hurt somebody else’s feelings because We get enough of that from boys.

  5. Everybody agrees never to let Shad Shifferdecker or any other boy see that he’s getting to us.

  Number two was for Suzy’s benefit. She was the only one who had any lessons right after school.

  Number three was because of Zooey. Nobody said so, of course, but she always seemed to be carrying the contents of a refrigerator around with her.

  Number five—the one about not letting any boy see that he was getting to them—was the hardest one to keep.

  They were all at their computers in the classroom the next day, where the space was too small and crowded to begin with, when Zooey accidentally ran into Shad trying to get between some chairs. Shad hurled himself into the next row and said, “Dude! I bounced off!”

  Zooey turned scarlet and balled up her fists and opened her mouth, and she probably would have hollered something if Reni and Lily hadn’t pushed her into a seat and whispered, “Remember the rule.”

  Then later, at lunch, Leo peered at Suzy’s lunch tray in the cafeteria and asked, “Your mommy still packs you animal crackers?”

  Suzy scrunched her shoulders up and hung her face down, almost into her sandwich bag, and Lily and Reni exchanged looks. Suzy was going to be a hard one to change.

  But even the two of them found it tough to keep their cool when Shad and his buddies turned their attention their way.

  “Quick, dude, get me some sunglasses!” Shad shouted when they were outside that afternoon. “Dude, Lily. Yer skin’s so white, I can’t see with the sun shining on it. Go inside—you’re blinding me!”

  Then he looked at Reni. “Hey,” he said, “how do you ever know if you’re sunburned? You look well-done all the time!”

  Lily and Reni had to hold each other back by then.

  Lily knew it was time to get to work at that day’s meeting.

  First, she taught them all how to stand and how to walk, which was hard inside the tiny playhouse. She also taught them how to come into a room and introduce themselves. Reni picked it all up right away. But Zooey couldn’t seem to keep her mouth from hanging open and saying, “Wow,” and Suzy couldn’t quite bring herself to look anybody in the eye. After three sessions, they weren’t showing a lot of improvement, but Lily moved on to hair and lip gloss so they wouldn’t lose interest.