Just Lizzie by Karen Wilfrid

Author:Karen Wilfrid
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-11-14T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

The Friday before Thanksgiving is Ms. Faraher’s last day.

She has us finish up the group presentations we’ve been working on about photosynthesis, but there’s lots of time left over before the end of the period. So that’s when Chloe and the other girls bring out the onesies.

“You all shouldn’t have!” Ms. Faraher exclaims. Chloe pushes the rolling desk chair front and center and invites Ms. Faraher to sit down while she hands her the boxes one by one, beaming. Other kids get out of their seats to have a closer look, but I stay off to the side, feeling far away.

“So cute!” Ms. Faraher exclaims over the first onesie, which says Little Man with a picture of a mustache. She holds it over her belly, joking, “Look, it fits!”

Last night I made a card for Ms. Faraher with a teddy bear on it. Inside I wrote something about how I would miss her and congratulations. I wasn’t sure how to sign it, so I wrote Best wishes, Lizzie. Best wishes? What was I thinking? Now, as Ms. Faraher gently lifts the lid on the next box, it seems obvious that “best wishes” is not what you say to someone who’s about to have a baby. I stick the card in my notebook, and I leave it there.

The next onesie is powder blue with a duck on the front. Again, as I watch the reactions of the girls around Ms. Faraher, I wonder how they know what to do. They coo over each onesie. They ask her questions like when she’s due, if she’s chosen a name, and what the baby’s room looks like. Sometimes I wonder if there’s a guide to womanhood that I didn’t get, one that includes all the things you’re supposed to be excited about, all the things you’re supposed to say.

Maybe the guidebook also would have told me what to say at lunchtime, when Sarah Nan tells us that she and Ned made up—big time. She says they “took it to the next level.”

“Finally,” Chloe says. I don’t say anything. My peanut butter sandwich has turned to glue in my mouth.

“Only for a few minutes,” Sarah Nan adds. “His mom kept checking on us.”

James and Ally used to make out in our basement. Only, Mom would send me to check on them—interrupt them, really, like the innocent little sister who doesn’t know what she’s interrupting. “Go see if James and Ally want some popcorn,” she would say, or “Can you ask James if he has any books to return to the library?” Neither of us acknowledged the real reason she was asking me to go down there. I would make a big noise at the top of the stairs and clomp my feet going down so they had lots of warning. Ally’s cheeks would be pink, and James would be sitting up awkwardly straight with his arm draped over the back of the couch. I would mumble whatever it was Mom had sent me down there to tell them and then hurry back upstairs.

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