Cannie Shapiro 02 Certain Girls by Jennifer Weiner

Author:Jennifer Weiner
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Chic Lit, Mom
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2008-06-16T04:00:00+00:00

EIGHTEEN

I put the question to Amber's table at lunch the first day after spring break. "Does anyone know how I could get to South Orange, New Jersey, by myself?"

"Steal a car," said Tamsin without raising her eyes from her Earth Sciences book. Unlike the rest of the girls, in pinks and pale blues, Tamsin wore her customary gray hooded sweatshirt. As usual, her hair was hanging in her face, covering everything but the tip of her nose.

"Ha ha," I said. Tamsin had been cool to me ever since my birthday sleepover. I guessed things hadn't gone well when she and Amber woke up in my room together and I wasn't there, but whenever I asked Tamsin about it, she shrugged and said things were fine.

"Why are you going by yourself?" asked Duncan Brodkey.

"It's my cousin's bar mitzvah."

Duncan tilted his head. "Can't your parents take you?"

"It's the other side of the family."

I watched as he considered this, rolling a green apple from one long-fingered hand to the other. "It's the other side of the family for both of them?"

"You could take a train," Tamsin said quickly. That was the great thing about Tamsin: Even when you didn't think she was paying attention, she was. She pulled her laptop out of her backpack. "Let's see...SEPTA from Thirtieth Street Station to Trenton, then New Jersey Transit to Metro Park, then a bus to South Orange..."

She worked out the times, and I scribbled down everything she told me. If I left Philadelphia by eight o'clock in the morning, I could be there by eleven o'clock, and if I left the bar mitzvah by five, I could easily make it home by eight. I'd just tell my mother I was at Tamsin's. Perfect! Except...

I cleared my throat. When that didn't work, I tapped Amber on the shoulder. "Hey," I said when she'd turned around. "What would you wear to an afternoon bar mitzvah in New Jersey?"

On Saturday morning at eight o'clock, I pulled my schoolbooks out of my backpack, slid them under the bed, and replaced them with the navy blue spaghetti-strapped dress Amber had lent me, along with her black ballet slippers, a pair of white athletic socks ("for dancing," she'd explained), and a small canister of glitter-flecked hair mousse.

I walked out the front door, but instead of turning left toward Bella Vista, I turned right, crossing South Street, then Lombard, then Pine. The bus I caught on Spruce Street took me all the way to Thirtieth Street Station. Feeling very small under the soaring ceilings, among the crowds of people pulling wheeled suitcases or pushing strollers over the marble floors, I slid my cash card into the machine and paid for a round-trip fare. Then I ducked into the bathroom and wriggled into Amber's dress and sat on a high-backed curved wooden bench with my backpack in my lap and my eyes fixed on the giant blackboard that hung over the information desk, waiting for the flickering letters to tell me it was time to go.

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