Well, That Was Awkward by Rachel Vail

Author:Rachel Vail
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2017-01-24T15:18:10+00:00

I texted back not to worry about a present and that I was happy she could come, which I actually sort of was. I hadn’t thought about it before, but in truth I like Dorin a lot more than most of the people I’d intentionally invited.

“I’m glad I came too,” Dorin said, beside me in the ferry underbelly. “It’s a really fun party.”

I had to laugh a little. That was such a lie. The rest of us, including my parents, all looked like we were being transported to prison. Despite the Statue of Liberty headbands on most of the heads. Every boy’s head, I noted.

“No,” Dorin said. “I mean, it’s sort of fun, other than the rain and the boringness! For my half brother’s party, he just turned five? We had a piñata and it was so adorable? He did the cutest thing with . . .” And on and on. I smiled and nodded, but I couldn’t honestly make myself listen to the details of her half brother’s adorableness again.

When I was five, I had a piñata too. A duck piñata. Something made me cry that morning. Okay, it was that I wasn’t allowed to eat my entire cake all by myself before the guests arrived. As I wept about that injustice, my nana told me, “If you cry on your birthday, it will rain on your wedding day.”

The randomness of that idea stopped me from crying, because: what? Why would I care if it rained on my wedding day? I was five. I didn’t even care about, like, later that afternoon. But also, whether I cried or didn’t one day when I was five years old would affect weather patterns years in the future? Was I a superhero? I controlled future rain with my emotions?

I had learned a song about the rain cycle at Hollingworth Preschool that year, and it hadn’t mentioned anything about me. Did other people know about my superpower?

When the adults got distracted by the first guest ringing the buzzer, I smashed my face down into the cake. I really wanted the whole thing for myself, and that was my plan. It wasn’t a good plan, I realized, while my face was still three layers deep.

So I waited there, head inside the cake, thinking maybe this would stop happening. I was scared that I would be in serious trouble as soon as I looked up.

But eventually I needed to breathe, so up I straightened. I saw Mom laughing instead of yelling. I was so confused. She thought it was hilarious. She was too busy taking pictures of me (blinking, waiting with tight knees to get hollered at, frosting coating my eyelashes like fairy-goo mascara) to even consider punishing me.

Since then, I haven’t cried on my birthday (or really ever), even today in the belly of the ferry, with all my friends sitting on benches silent and glum, and Dorin chattering my ear off. Successfully avoiding wedding-day storms!

In case I eventually get married. Some people don’t, obviously.

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