Not Much Just Chillin' by Linda Perlstein

Author:Linda Perlstein
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781429921947
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2011-06-27T00:00:00+00:00

chapter eleven

purple. is that close enough?

Of course everyone has seen Snow Day already, but it’s still irritating that the girls dangling their legs from the side table won’t shut up. It’s the day before winter break, Holiday Activity Day, and Lily sits between Mia and Beth in the front row of Mrs. Stokes’s dark room. Between Mia and Beth is Lily’s new favorite place to be. Beth, a girl with looks like Lily’s and a manner just as serene, is her new second-best friend. She joined Lily at the last church dance when Mia wouldn’t, and empathizes about Abigail Werner taking so long at the lockers, and might take gymnastics with Lily next month, and is the only girl she really, truly likes in PE and health. It’s nice to have a friend in health class, with all the stress induced by the laminated line drawings of sex organs that make Lily gasp and whose names you have to actually say, and the boys who shoot rubber bands and pretend to smoke their pen caps when Ms. Rouiller is in the hall. When Beth shows off her newly decorated binder or a new hairstyle, Lily says, “You rock, girlfriend!” In her locker Lily has stashed two long tubes of neon-green lights, Christmas gifts for Mia and Beth.

One might think friendships get more stable as kids get older, but at this age they’re not. A preteen has become more cognitively able to see the problems in her existing friendships and envision the potential for new ones. When you are eleven, the new is alluring; idealism is very powerful. This next friend will be better than the last—perfect, perhaps!

During the movie Alexandra sits with the talky girls, limbs entangled, and Lily’s glad for the distance. “It’s always me and Mia,” Lily has explained, “and then Alexandra butts in. Alexandra more than anyone else, she has to be the number-one friend of Mia. We could be walking down the hall, and all of a sudden I’m in the back. And Alexandra’s there talking with Mia. She used to seem kind, but then she started to get, I guess she started to realize me and Mia were closer than me and her were, so then she got snobby to me, and bratty and rude.”

Alexandra and Lily are both wearing metal bangle bracelets from Mia. She asked Lily to wear hers today so that Alexandra will think it’s the main Christmas gift she’s giving out, when in fact she bought Lily a felt pencil case and glitter nail polish. Why should she get Alexandra a real gift with the way she’s acting lately? When Alexandra’s other friends are around, Mia says, “she acts like I’m trash, and then, when it’s just her alone, she says, ‘What’s up, Mia?’—all friendly.” This kind of thing didn’t happen in elementary school, and Mia doesn’t say anything about it, because what can you say? “Do you still like me?”

Alexandra is oblivious to this. In true eleven-year-old fashion, Lily and

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