on my middle finger. The skin there is white, almost translucent. It bubbled up a week after taking Ms. Kay’s class, in the exact spot where I steady my pencil when I draw. I usually keep the callus covered with a Band-Aid because it’s not very pretty, only I forgot to put one on this morning. Luckily, the bump has gotten smaller, softer since school ended two weeks ago. But not by much.
“Mom, can you please put the top up and turn on the AC?” Even though I blew out and then flat-ironed my hair, it is already frizzing in the humidity, and soon my only option will be a boring ponytail. I wear ponytails a lot — you can tell by all the broken little pieces of hair that have been ripped by my elastic bands. They stick straight up if I don’t hair-spray them down.
Mom shakes her head. “We don’t have time to pull over, Emily. You’ll miss your train, and I can’t drive you into Philadelphia. There’s too much going on here.”
I sigh extra loud, so she hears me over the wind. It’s funny how busy my mom is, considering she doesn’t have a job. I think about saying this out loud, but I keep my mouth shut, because I want Mom to concentrate on driving, not being mad at me. I don’t want to be late on my first day of classes. I want to make a good impression.
“Mom,” my sister Claire whines, pulling her two long black laces really tight. Her cleats dimple the tan leather on the dashboard. “If I miss warm-ups, I’m gonna get benched.”
Claire rides permanent shotgun in Mom’s convertible, even though she’s thirteen and I’m sixteen. That’s because her legs are a lot longer than mine, and the backseat has barely any room. Plus, Claire has to squeeze in extra knee stretches before she gets dropped off at soccer camp, because she’s already had ACL surgery. You’d think she’d be grateful for the front-seat privilege, which should be automatically mine, but she’s not.
“They’re not going to bench you,” I grumble. Claire is the best player in middle school. She knows it, too. The high school coaches have come to see her play a few times. And her room is full of satiny ribbons stamped WINNER in gold and trophies, some so tall they have to sit on the floor.
“No one is going to be late,” Mom says, gunning through a yellow light in exactly the way my Driver’s Ed teacher told us not to. She eyes me in her rearview mirror. “But, Emily, you’re going to have to get up earlier from now on, so the rest of us aren’t in a panic every morning. That means no late nights before summer school.”
“It’s not summer school,” I say. “And I didn’t go anywhere last night.” Rick and Meg invited me out with them for pizza and then to Putt Putt Palace, but I didn’t feel like tagging along. I’m no good at sports. Neither is Meg, but without a boyfriend, there’s no one to laugh or tell me I’m cute when I swing and completely miss the golf ball. I just feel like I suck.
Mom shakes her head, disappointed. “Dad saw the light underneath your door after two in the morning, Emily.”
The thing was, I had a hard time falling asleep. I lay in bed for the longest time with my eyes closed and my television off, hoping it would happen. But it didn’t. So I got up and laid out my clothes for today on my club chair. That took about five seconds, because Meg and I had already discussed in detail what I should wear — my white capris, a tan and white striped cami, and a pair of pale gold leather skimmers that Meg let me borrow. I turned on my laptop, but no one else was online, so I shut it back down. I threw out some old makeup that I didn’t use anymore. And then, when I couldn’t think of anything else to do, I randomly decided to lay my new art supplies out on my floor in neat little piles.
A few weeks ago, Philadelphia College of Fine Art sent a list of materials that I’d need, like paint and brushes and charcoal and Strathmore drawing pads. It took Mom and me over an hour at Pearl to find everything.
When you’re a kid, colors have obvious names. Green is grass, red is cherry, and yellow is lemon. That changes when you grow out of markers that can be washed off the kitchen walls. How was I supposed to know that Sanguine is a fancy word for red? And what kind of purple was Dioxazine? It sounded like something I should have learned in Chemistry. Mars Black didn’t make much sense to me, either. Wasn’t Mars the Red Planet? It kind of freaked me out.
Mom felt bad for me, so she made this big show of buying the most expensive stuff they had, insisting that all my brushes be sable, and not the synthetic ones that are way cheaper. I didn’t complain because they were really nice, as soft as my makeup brushes from Bloomingdale’s.
I’d never owned real art supplies before, and seeing my whole floor covered in them felt luxurious. The materials in Ms. Kay’s classroom were old and gross. We only had big jugs of primary colors, like the ones a preschooler would finger paint with. And the brushes were frayed and fanned out and sometimes left strands behind in your strokes. We stopped using the clay because it was hard and flaky, even if you let it soak overnight inside a wet paper towel. I guess that’s why it felt like the possibilities of things I could do with my new supplies were limitless. It lit me up inside. I couldn’t sleep after touching everything. I was too excited for today.
“So all you’re going to do is art? Like, for the whole day?” Claire turns around in her seat. “That sounds kind of boring.”
Sometimes, it takes me a minute to recognize Claire as my sister. She’s tall, taller than all the boys in her class. Her hair is dark brown like my dad’s, and it’s a lot thicker than mine. She’s awkward now — a teenager’s body paired up with a kid’s face. But you can already tell that she’s going to be somebody when she gets to high school this fall. Maybe even as soon as her braces come off.
“Right, Claire. And running up and down a field a million times sounds so fun.”
“It is. And at least I’ll be with my friends. How are you going to survive a whole day away from Meg?”
Claire always makes jokes about how close Meg and I are, but it’s only because she doesn’t have a real best friend. She just has a big group of girls who she plays sports with.
“You’re just jealous. I heard you crying to Mom yesterday because I wouldn’t let you come swim with us. Maybe I’d let you if you weren’t so freaking annoying!”
Her face flushes deep red, like it does by the halftime of her soccer games. “Geez, Emily.” She turns back around and sinks low in her seat.
“Emily, be nice to your sister,” Mom scolds.
“She started it,” I say.
“But you’re older,” Mom says. “You’re supposed to be more mature.”
Whatever.
We turn into the parking lot of the Cherry Grove train station. It’s as crowded as the mall at Christmas.
“Just drop me off,” I say, unbuckling my seat belt.
“I want to make sure you’re on the right train,” she says, getting out with me.
I don’t understand why my mom thinks this is such a big deal. This won’t be the first time I’ve been to Philly — there have been plenty of family drives and school trips there. It’s just the first time I’ll be going alone.
The track that goes to Philadelphia is easy to find because everyone’s crowding together on it. The station doesn’t have any windows or service people there to buy tickets. The three automated ticket machines are completely surrounded.
“I’ve still got to buy a ticket!”
“Don’t worry. You can buy them on the train,” Mom says. “Do you have enough cash?”
“Yeah. And I’ve got my credit card, too.”
“What about your cell phone? Is it all charged up? Keep your wallet on you at all times. Don’t talk to strangers. You need to appear street-smart, so always walk with a purpose.” The train chugs into the station, and Mom yells over the noise. “And please don’t forget to call me when you get there.” Her bottom lip quivers.
I feel like such