So That Happened . . . But Maybe You Already Knew That by Tami Sussman

Author:Tami Sussman [Sussman, Tami]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781760656041
Publisher: Walker Books Australia
Published: 2023-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

Just as the morning bell was ringing on the first day back at school, Shayna grabbed my arm and dragged me down the hall into a toilet cubicle with her.

‘I have something to show you,’ she smirked.

Shayna bunched up her winter pinafore and untucked her blouse from the waist of her woollen stockings. Then she lifted her singlet to reveal . . . a crop top!

I gasped in shock.

Shayna had boobs!

They weren’t big like a desperate housewife, but big enough to fill a crop top.

A puff of admiration filled my lungs.

Then a pang of jealousy slapped me across the face.

‘I grew them in Thredbo,’ Shayna declared. ‘From all the hot chocolate I drank in the lodge.’

I made a mental note to ask Mum to ask Dad about the medical link between hot chocolate and growing boobs later. (I couldn’t ask Dad myself because even though he loves talking about anything medical, he does NOT like talking about anything puberty.) I also took a mental picture of the crop top because I realised that I would need to buy one before the end of the week.

Shayna and I were late to morning prayers. Thankfully Rabbi Ezra had covered his eyes with his right hand to say the Shema, so he didn’t see us sneak into the back row of the girls section of the synagogue. I decided that I would pray really hard for boobs that day, in case God did exist and especially in case God was a woman. Surely a woman would understand how awful I would feel if I was the last girl in Year Six to get boobs. Before I had a chance to pray, Rabbi Ezra turned to face the wall for the Amidah and Shayna edged closer to me.

‘Guess what?’ she whispered.

‘What?’ I replied.

‘My big sister has the same tennis coach as Kain!’ Shayna’s eyes widened. ‘Sometimes they play against each other at group training!’

Just hearing the name Kain sent tingles across my jaw and heat spread across the area my future crop top would hopefully hug. Then Rabbi Ezra began reprimanding Josh for forgetting to put a kippah on his head. While he was distracted, Shayna and I hatched a plan to watch Kain play tennis under the guise of ‘supporting’ her sister at a match. That’s when I realised Kain might have been at Tennis Camp over the holidays!

Nooooooo, I thought, if I had run the kiosk with Josh, I could have seen Kain play tennis and maybe even spoken to him.

During lunch, Shayna said how cool it will be for me to see Kain every day next year at King David High, which was when I told her I was probably going to have to go to Waverley High. Shayna made the same face she pulled when she saw Josh’s infected scab that time.

‘My mum told me that I can’t come to your new place,’ she said, through chip crunches. ‘It’s too far to drive.’

I hadn’t planned on inviting Shayna (or anyone) over, but the rejection still stung like salt-and-vinegar flavour on a mouth ulcer.

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