Clementine by Ann Hood

Author:Ann Hood [Hood, Ann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2023-05-23T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

“Appendicitis,” I tell Miles.

“Appendicitis,” I tell Samantha, whose eyes widen. “You had, like, surgery?” she said.

“Appendicitis,” I tell Agnes when she comes up to me in the lunch line.

“Really,” she says, my first doubter.

“I have a scar,” I say.

“Did they remove it laparoscopically?” Agnes asks, narrowing her eyes at me. “That’s what they did when my brother had appendicitis.”

“Of course.” I try to sound haughty, even though I’m pumping ketchup onto my hot dog.

“So where’s your scar?”

I roll my eyes. “Where my appendix was. Obviously.”

Agnes looks satisfied. “Laparoscopic surgery goes through your belly button.”

“Why would I lie about having my appendix out? I mean, seriously.”

I grab a wiggling bowl of red Jell-O from the dessert table, take a deep breath, and prepare for the walk of shame across the cafeteria. Agnes sticks close to me.

“Because maybe you were in the psych ward again?” she’s saying. As she walks, she’s doing little jumps up and down on her toes, like she’s excited.

I stop walking and stare at her hard. “I was not,” I say. Which is the truth.

“Maybe you—”

To my utter disbelief, Jayden is waving me over to the scholar athlete table.

“I had my appendix out,” I say. “Laparoscopically,” I add, hoping I pronounced it right. Then I turn my back on Agnes and walk toward something normal and good, even if stereotypical.

On my way, I pass Miles, who is sitting as usual with the math nerds, working out Algebra 2 problems with a group of other math geniuses. When I told them about having my appendix out, I felt a little guilty for lying to them, especially when they said, “Ouch! Are you okay?” So I give a thumbs-up as I walk by and keep living in the moment all the way to the scholar athlete table. Jayden pats the seat next to him.

“Hey, dudes, you all know Clementine, right?” he says. “She just had her appendix out.”

Everybody murmurs some kind of acknowledgment, but otherwise they just keep on talking about whatever they were talking about before I got there. College essays. Early decision versus early action. APush, which is AP US History, the most dreaded class in the entire school. The football team. The basketball team. The ice hockey team. Proving that they are indeed scholar athletes. I eat my hot dog and my Jell-O, and when the bell rings and they all stand up, I do, too. That’s when Jayden finally looks at me.

“You going to watch practice?”

“No.”

“Please?”

“No.”

“Pretty please?”

I laugh and shake my head.

“With a cherry on top?”

“Stop,” I say.

“So that’s a yes?”

“That’s a maybe,” I say, surprising myself.

Just like that, he’s gone and I’m standing alone at the cafeteria entrance. And in another just like that, Miles appears.

“We started a poetry unit.”

“Finally, something I like,” I say.

“I can help you catch up. You missed kind of a lot.”

“That would be great, Miles. Thanks.”

“Can you come to my house tonight? It’s just Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost.”

Ugh. Robert Frost. I’ll never think of him the same way after our visit to Vermont last month.

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