Sixth grade makes her throat hurt.
She leans her head against the window.
When she gets home, Janie walks past her mother, who is on the couch watching Guiding Light and drinking from a clear glass bottle. Janie washes her stinging hands carefully, dries them, and sits down next to her mother, hoping she’ll notice. Hoping she’ll say something. But Janie’s mother is asleep now.
Her mouth is open.
She snores lightly.
The bottle tips in her hand.
Janie sighs, sets the bottle on the beat-up coffee table, and starts her homework. Halfway through her math homework, the room turns black.
Janie is rushed into a bright tunnel, like a multicolored kaleidoscope. There’s no floor, and Janie is floating while the walls spin around her. It makes her feel like throwing up. Next to Janie in the tunnel is her mother, and a man who looks like a blond Jesus Christ. The man and Janie’s mother are holding hands and flying. They look happy. Janie yells, but no sound comes out. She wants it to stop.
She feels the pencil fall from her fingers.
Feels her body slump to the arm of the couch.
Tries to sit up, but with all the whirling colors around her, she can’t tell which way is upright. She overcompensates and falls the other way, onto her mother.
The colors stop, and everything goes black.
Janie hears her mother grumbling.
Feels her shove.
Slowly the room comes into focus again, and Janie’s mother slaps Janie in the face.
“Get offa me,” her mother says. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Janie sits up and looks at her mother. Her stomach churns, and she feels dizzy from the colors. “I feel sick,” she whispers, and then she stands up and stumbles to the bathroom to vomit. When she peers out, pale and shaky, her mother is gone from the couch, retired to her bedroom. Thank God, Janie thinks. She splashes cold water on her face. January 1, 2001, 7:29 a.m.
A U-Haul truck pulls up next door. A man, a woman, and a girl Janie’s age climb out and sink into the snow-covered driveway. Janie watches them from her bedroom window. The girl is dark-haired and pretty.
Janie wonders if she’ll be snooty, like all the other girls who call Janie white trash at school. Maybe, since this new girl lives next to Janie on the wrong side of town, they’ll call her white trash too. But she’s really pretty.
Pretty enough to make a difference.
Janie dresses hurriedly, puts on her boots and coat, and marches next door to have the first chance to get to the girl before the North Siders get to her. Janie’s desperate for a friend.
“You guys want some help?” Janie asks in a voice more confident than she feels. The girl stops in her tracks. A smile deepens the dimples in her cheeks, and she tilts her head to the side.
“Hi,” she says. “I’m Carrie Brandt.”
Carrie’s eyes sparkle.
Janie’s heart leaps.
March 2, 2001, 7:34 p.m.
Janie is thirteen.
She doesn’t have a sleeping bag, but Carrie has an extra that Janie can use. Janie sets her plastic grocery bag on the floor by the couch in Carrie’s living room.
Inside the bag:
a hand-made birthday gift for Carrie
Janie’s pajamas
a toothbrush
She’s nervous. But Carrie is chattering enough for both of them, waiting for Carrie’s other new friend, Melinda Jeffers, to show up.
Yes, that Melinda Jeffers.
Of the Fieldridge North Side Jefferses.
Apparently, Melinda Jeffers is also the president of the “Make Janie Hannagan Miserable” Club. Janie wipes her sweating hands on her jeans.
When Melinda arrives, Carrie doesn’t fawn over her. Janie nods hello. Melinda smirks. Tries to whisper something to Carrie, but Carrie ignores her and says, “Hey! Let’s do
Janie’s hair.”
Melinda throws a daggered look at Carrie.
Carrie smiles brightly at Janie, asking her with her eyes if it’s okay. Janie squelches a grin, and Melinda shrugs and pretends like she doesn’t mind after all. Even though Janie knows it’s killing her.
The three girls slowly grow more comfortable, or maybe just resigned, with one another. They put on makeup and watch Carrie’s favorite videos of old comedians, some of whom Janie’s never heard of before. And then they play truth or dare.
Carrie alternates: truth, dare, truth, dare.
Melinda always picks truth.
And then there’s Janie.
Janie never picks truth.
She’s a dare girl.
That way, nobody gets inside.
She can’t afford to let anyone inside.
They might find out about her secret.
The giggles become hysterics when Melinda’s dare for Janie is to run outside through the snow barefoot, around to the backyard, take off her clothes, and make a naked snow angel.
Janie doesn’t have a problem doing that.
Because, really, what does she have to lose?
She’ll take that dare over giving up her secrets any day.
Melinda watches Janie, arms folded in the cold night air, and with a sneer on her face, while Carrie giggles and helps Janie get her sweatshirt and jeans back on her wet body. Carrie takes Janie’s bra, fills the cups with snow, and slingshots them like snowballs at Melinda.
“Ew, gross,” Melinda sneers. “Where’d you get that old grungy thing, Salvation Army?”
Janie’s giggles fade. She grabs her bra back from Carrie and shoves it in her jeans pocket, embarrassed.
“No,” she says hotly, then giggles again. “It was Goodwill. Why, does it look familiar?”