MAILBOX: A Scattershot Novel of Racing, Dares and Danger, Occasional Nakedness, and Faith by Nancy Freund, (Gobreau Press, 2015), Chapter 9: "Equipment"
I'm pretty sure everyone in the whole world my age knows the word "equipment," as in hockey equipment, including Lizzie. Joy and Lizzie are both my best friends, but yesterday I felt like only Joy could be my best friend from now on. We were doing spelling drills where you had to spell the word Mrs. Cope said and use it in a sentence, and Lizzie got stuck on equipment.
I would never say a mean thing about a person who got stuck on any word ever, except for one reason, even if I thought it was an easy word like cat, because who knows, maybe you have dyslexia or you come from another country where they don't call it a cat, or you confuse your c's and your k's or some other perfectly reasonable explanation. But the one thing I can't stand is if someone is a faker. Lizzie definitely knows the word equipment.
When she said she didn't know it, Mrs. Cope kind of stared at her like she was shocked, same as most of us, and then Lizzie did that thing with her eyes, like the girl cartoon skunk trying to attract Pepe Le Pew, where she bats her eyes and digs her chin into her own shoulder and holds a bouquet of cartoon flowers up against her chest and little red hearts fly out and circle around her head. It seemed really obvious Lizzie was trying to be cute, which made me feel kind of sick.
It's fine for a cartoon girl skunk to try to be like a person, exaggerated and silly, but a person shouldn't try to be like a cartoon. That makes no sense.
But it sure didn't seem to make Brian Fullerton sick. It seemed to make Brian Fullerton think Lizzie was extremely cute, and he wanted to help her sound out the word to spell it. His lips got all rubbery and slow. "E-quip-ment." Then the worst thing was that John wanted to help her think of what it meant, trying to help her remember where she might have heard it before. "In the gym... in the multipurpose room..." You might think the boys were just being nice, but when a girl's acting like a girl-skunk-cartoon on purpose, boys are never just being nice.
My mom says some boys like girls who seem weak or stupid. But I never thought John would be like that, and I never thought Lizzie would pretend to be like that. Equipment! It has three syllables and a "qu" in it. Really difficult!
And the thing is, Lizzie is already the prettiest girl in our class. She shouldn't have to act stupid to get attention.
Most kids say Brian's mother is the prettiest mother, because she looks like Farrah Fawcett in Charlie's Angels with her long jeans and streaky blond hair that flares out. I don't know if Brian's mother knows the word equipment or not. I mean, of course she knows it. I just don't know if she pretends not to know things so she'll seem cute. I'm glad I have a mom who would always want to be as smart as she possibly can. And I'm glad she found a husband who thinks that's how she should be.
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Thank you for reading. ~~ your Freund, Nancy
P.S. If you liked it, please click a star in the upper-right to say so.
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Mailbox: A Scattershot Novel of Racing, Dares and Danger, Occasional Nakedness, and Faith. Chapter 1.
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