I am nine years old. Jessamine Coutier, a girl in my class, is having a birthday sleepover party, and I’ve been invited.
I don’t know why. Jessamine isn’t my friend. In fact, I’ve heard her saying bad things about me at school. The invitation smells like a trap, and I don’t want to go, but Mama begs me. “This will be good for you,” she says. “You’ll have a chance to make some friends. Please, just give it a try.”
So I go.
For most of the party, the other girls ignore me. When it comes time for us all to go to bed, they lay out their sleeping bags on the floor of Jessamine’s bedroom and stay up, talking and giggling together while I count the stripes on the wallpaper. The sugary strawberries-and-bubblegum smell of their shampoo and ChapStick invades my nose, itching. It’s a girl smell; a popular smell.
“Okay,” Jessamine says in a whispery giggle, directed at everyone but me. “Now everyone has to say which boy they’d kiss—”
More laughter, punctuated by squeals.
I notice the plush frog on Jessamine’s bed. “You know,” I say loudly, “some amphibians will shed their skin and then eat it.”
The girls fall silent.
“They do it to conserve protein.”
No response.
“I’m going to the bathroom now.” I get up.
As I come back, walking down the hallway toward the half-open bedroom door, I hear whispers from within. I stop, holding my breath.
“You guys shouldn’t make fun of her. She’s half-retarded. Kristen told me.”
“How can you be half-retarded?”
“She’s actually, like, freakishly smart. She knows all this stuff no normal person would ever know. She’s just a weirdo.”
“You know, her mom’s kind of weird, too. And she doesn’t even have a dad.”
“Well, my mom said her mom drank when she was pregnant with her, and that’s why she turned out that way.”
“Drank what? Alcohol?”
“Duh. What did you think I meant? Milk?”
They giggle.
“Shhh. I think she’s back.”
“Oh crap.”
I walk into the room, put my hands on my hips, and say, “Mama doesn’t drink. It’s nothing she did. This is just how I am.”
They fidget, looking at the floor. For once, they’re the ones avoiding eye contact with me.
My head is hot. It’s suddenly hard to breathe. I want to forget this whole stupid sleepover and go home, but if I do, they’ll all start talking about me again. So I turn off the lights, flop down on my sleeping bag, and say, “I’m going to bed.”
For a few minutes, no one says anything. Then they start whispering. I put my hands over my ears, but I can still hear them. The fruity bubblegum smell of Jessamine’s bedroom fills my nose and crawls down my throat, and I start to gag.
I hate their smell.
When I can’t stand it anymore, I creep to the bathroom and throw up the pizza and cake I had earlier. It comes out in foamy strings, with swirls of pink and yellow frosting still mixed in.
It’s raining outside and my house is two miles away, but I don’t care. I walk all the way home. The air smells heavy and wet, and the lawns and trees are thick, jungle green.
Drenched, shivering, I pound a fist on my front door.
When Mama answers, she’s in a blue bathrobe, her eyes puffy with sleep. “Alvie, what . . . oh my God. Honey, you’re soaked. What happened?”
Without answering, I walk into the house and curl up in a ball on the couch. She sits next to me and gingerly lays a hand on my shoulder. Normally Mama’s touch doesn’t hurt, but I feel raw, like all my skin has been peeled off; I flinch. Her hand falls to her side, and she sits there, helpless, as my body shakes and shudders with near-silent tears.
When I look up, I see that Mama’s crying, too.
She wipes tears from the corners of her eyes, and smiles weakly. “I’m sorry. I . . . I thought this might . . . I thought if they just got to know you a little better . . .” Her voice quivers, then trails off. “I’m sorry.”
I don’t know why she’s apologizing.
I sit up, pull my knees to my chest, and huddle on the couch. Rain drums against the window. The walls in Jessamine’s house have pictures of her family smiling and laughing together. Our wall just has a faded calendar tacked above the TV—a picture of a beach with palm trees. Jessamine’s house has lots of pretty things in it, too, like little statues and vases and mirrors with silver frames. I wonder if houses are supposed to have those things.
But who even decides that?
I sniffle, wipe my face again, and chew my thumbnail. After a few minutes, I lean toward her. “Mama. Can I tell you a secret.”
She looks at me, eyebrows scrunched together.
“Jessamine has BO. It was so bad I couldn’t sleep. That’s why I left.”
Mama blinks. Her mouth opens, forming an O. Then she bows her head so her hair hangs in her face, and her shoulders shake, and for a moment I think she’s still crying. Then a breathless wheeze escapes her, and I realize it’s laughter.
I let out a little choking hiccup. Then I start to laugh along with her. I think about the cake I threw up, frothy and pink and yellow in the spotless porcelain toilet, and I realize that I might have forgotten to flush before I left, and for some reason that makes me laugh harder. We laugh and laugh, and before I know it we’re holding on to each other. I cling to her, my head against her shoulder, as if we both might be swept away in a gale of crazy, breathless laughter.
Finally she pulls back, flushed and breathless and smiling, with tears in her eyes. “We’ll go out tomorrow,” she says. “We’ll have our own party. With no smelly Jessamine.”
The next morning, she takes me out for pancakes at my favorite restaurant, the Silver Dollar. As we sit, eating, she says, “You know, it might help if you went back to counseling.”
I poke my pancakes with a fork. I’m still seeing a psychiatrist—Dr. Evans—but she just gives me medication to keep me calm at school. I stopped seeing my last counselor months ago. “I don’t want to.”
“You were getting better,” Mama says. “You were learning to . . . how did she put it? ‘Adapt to social norms.’ If you kept at it, I’m sure you could make a friend. It would be good for you to have at least one friend.”
What good is friendship, I wonder, if I have to pretend to be someone else? “I don’t want to go back. I don’t need any friends. I just need you.”
Her face changes for a second. “I won’t be around forever, you know.”
“But you’ll be around for a long time. Right?”
“A very long time.” She tries to smile, but it looks strange, like there are wires hooked into the corners of her mouth, pulling.
After breakfast, we go shopping, and she buys me a little yellow candle in a clay jar. It smells like honey and vanilla and clover, but the smell isn’t too sharp, so it doesn’t make my nose itch. I keep the jar long after the candle has burned down to nothing. Even years later, particles of the scent still cling to its sides, and sometimes I bury my nose in the jar and breathe in deeply.