Reading with Rasta: My Best Friend Athena by Dana Hammer
Normally, when I arrive at school, I’m tired and cold and grumpy, but not today! Because today I’ve got the World’s Coolest Necklace, and everyone’s gonna notice it and give me compliments. It’s a “statement” necklace, and I got it at an old lady’s estate sale yesterday. I was shopping with my best friend, Athena, when I saw it.
It was sitting on a dresser, with a bunch of other jewelry, but this necklace was the only one that caught my eye. It’s a large octopus, with jewel-covered tentacles, and two pearls for eyes. I tried it on, and it looked like the tentacles were reaching around my neck, trying to choke me.
I’d never seen anything so cool in my life. It was $20, which was more than I had, but luckily Athena was there, and she bought it for me. Athena always has lots of money, because she’s a rich kid, but that’s NOT why I’m friends with her.
Anyway, she saw how sad I was that I couldn’t afford the necklace and she just bought it for me, probably because she has excellent taste and could see what a great investment it would be. She said it was “quirky” and “an interesting piece,” which I happen to know is code for “high fashion.”
My mom said it was “tacky garbage” but she doesn’t know about fashion. She mostly wears gym clothes, even when she’s not at the gym, and she never wears jewelry, except her wedding ring.
Anyway, I stride into the hall at school, in a great mood. I’m shivering because I refuse to wear a coat to cover up my necklace, but it’s totally worth it. I wave at people I’d never normally wave at, and smile a lot, kind of pushing my neck and chest out to make the necklace more noticeable. I worry that the lights aren’t shining on it properly. I really want people to see the shiny pearls it has for eyes.
Everyone is milling around in the hall, like they always do before school starts. I stand in front of my locker, waiting for my friends to see me and say, “OH MY GOD THAT’S THE COOLEST NECKLACE, WHERE DID YOU GET IT?” And then I’ll say, “Why it’s vintage, of course,” and then I’ll be “The Girl With the Vintage Statement Necklace,” not just “Athena’s Friend Who’s Good at Math.” Actually, I’ll be “Athena’s Friend Who Has Exquisite Taste in Necklaces and is Also Good at Math.” Yeah! That’s who I’ll be!
The new kid, Daniel, is staring at me. I don’t know Daniel very well. He has brown hair, and he wears sweatpants almost every day—that’s all I know. But I’m always nice to new kids—it’s my policy. It’s actually a really good policy, because this one time, there was a new kid at school, and we all thought she was kind of weird, because she had ratty hair and made weird jokes, and was always showing us pictures of her bird, which was not like, a pet bird, but a crow. No one wanted to be friends with her, but then, after she moved, we found out she was actually the daughter of a famous actress who was here filming a role. We could have been hanging out at that famous actress’s house that WHOLE TIME.
Anyway, my point is, it’s always a good idea to be nice to new kids, so I smile at Daniel, to be friendly.
He doesn’t smile back. Instead he says, “Why are you pushing your chest out like that?”
Immediately, I’m sorry I smiled at him. This boy is rude and tacky.
“I’m not,” I snap, crossing my arms over my chest, hunching over a little.
“Are you trying to make your boobs look bigger?”
He has a smirk on his face, and I want to die. Is that what everyone’s been thinking all morning? That I’m just trying to draw attention to my boobs? Is everyone talking about it? Has anyone even noticed my necklace?
I remember last month when a tissue fell out of Fiona Lieberman’s pocket, and Toya picked it up and said that Fiona had been stuffing her bra with it, and everyone totally believed Toya, even though I SAW the tissue fall out of her pocket, NOT her bra, and I told everyone that. But people would rather make fun of Fiona than believe the truth, because the truth—that a tissue fell out of a pocket—is not a very good story at all.
Now people will make fun of me, just like they made fun of Fiona, and together we’ll be “The Girls Who Try to Make Their Boobs Look Bigger.”
My face gets hot, and I try to think of something clever to say, but then Daniel is standing right in front of me. His eyes are small and beady, and he reaches out for my necklace.
“Wow, cool necklace!”
And just like that, I’m cheered up. “Thank you!”
He pulls the octopus toward him, examining the pearl eyes, and I feel a rush of relief. See, this is the reason it’s good to wear interesting stuff. Now, instead of an awkward conversation about my chest, we’re having a nice, polite, interaction. He was being a jerk, and now he’s being a perfect gentleman. That’s the power of jewelry.
A weird smirk crosses his face. He looks at me in the eyes, and then, all of a sudden—he gives the necklace a hard yank.
“OUCH!” I squeal.
The chain breaks, and the octopus falls to the ground. As soon as it hits, one of the pearls falls out and skitters under my locker, probably never to be seen again. Not until someday in a century or so, when they tear down this school, and some demolition worker finds it and takes it home, laughing about the stupid kid who was stupid enough to lose such a beautiful pearl.
Daniel laughs. He laughs and laughs, and now some people are standing around watching while I try to think what do to. Should I hit him? Should I tell on him? Should I say something witty and mean to make him feel bad?
I do none of those things. Instead I just bend over and pick up the pieces of my necklace. My eyes fill with tears, but I blink them away. It would NOT be good if people saw me crying at school, especially since I used to have a reputation for being kind of a crybaby.
“I’m not a crybaby anymore. I’m a sophisticated young lady who is cool and fun. I will not let myself be bullied.” I repeat this in my head a couple of times, then stand, my hands full of broken necklace, ready to face Daniel and give him a piece of my mind. I’m going to stand up for myself. I’m going to make him apologize. I’m going to demand that he replace my necklace with something of equal or greater value.
But Daniel is gone already, and no one is looking at me anymore. Show’s over, I guess.
I can’t believe that just happened. I’m Fanny! No one bullies me! I’m friends with everyone, including Athena, the most popular girl in school. I’M NICE!
Just then, Athena comes up to me, looking polished and posh, as always. She’s got on a dove gray coat that looks expensive. It matches her eyes exactly.
“Fanny! What happened to your necklace?”
I’m still holding the pieces, and I can feel my face crumple.
“You know that new kid, Daniel? He broke it.”
“He broke it? How?”
“He just reached out and broke it! On purpose!”
Athena frowns with that look she sometimes gets that makes her seem a lot older than eleven.
“Nevermind him. We can fix it. Let’s go to the library. I think Mr. Dale has a jewelry repair kit in his desk.”
“Really? That’s weird,” I say, because it is.
Athena shrugs. “The man likes jewelry. Come on, let’s go.”
We go to the library, and I’m glad to be there. I love libraries with their old-book smells and comfy bean bag chairs. Our school library is especially cool, because it was built in the 1920s, and everything is very art-deco and fancy. It doesn’t match the rest of the school at all.
The librarian, Mr. Dale, really likes us. Well… he likes Athena. Everyone likes Athena. So he doesn’t mind helping us out at all when Athena asks him to fix my necklace. He is a very capable, talented man. In addition to being a librarian, which is arguably the best job a person can have, he can fix jewelry, ride a unicycle, and he even plays on a softball league. He’s a real Jack of All Trades, we’re lucky to have him in this school.
While Mr. Dale fixes my necklace for me, Athena and I roam around the bookshelves, looking for stuff to read. There are a few other kids in the library too. We say hi to them as we pass them. They all smile at Athena, because she’s super nice, and everyone wants to be her friend.
They don’t feel that way about me. I’m just Fanny, her much-less-cool best friend. I don’t have her gorgeous gray eyes, or her awesome artistic talents. I’m pale, with light hair and eyes, all washed out and colorless, with none of Athena’s edgy coolness. I’m just an ordinary girl with a name that means “butt.”
I once asked my mom why she gave me such a terrible name.
“Why would you name me Fanny? You named me after a butt!”
She got really mad when I said that.
“You are named after my mother, and you know it. Fanny is a beautiful name, a family name. You should be proud to have it!”
It’s easy for my mom to say that, because she’s named Linda, which doesn’t mean any kind of body part. Nobody named Linda gets made fun of for her name.
I’ve picked out a mystery book. It’s one of those old-fashioned ones where the grownups are useless and the kids are in charge of solving crimes. I love books like that, even if they’re not very realistic.
Athena has chosen a book about how to make your own macrame art. Athena is a wonderful artist. She can paint anything she decides to, and she can make lots of fancy crafts, too. Her birthday gifts are always the best, because she makes them her-self, and they’re always just what you wanted, but didn’t know you wanted until she gave it to you.
I’m not good at art. At all. Everything I draw looks like a little kid drew it, with uneven lines and weird proportions. My paintings all look like big blobs of shapeless color. I once managed to slice off the tip of my finger with a paper cutter, when we were doing origami. Who hurts themselves on origami day? People who are really bad at art, that’s who.
But there is one thing Athena and I are equally good at, and that’s math. In fact, that’s how we became friends, in second grade. I had just moved to Athens, Georgia, with my family. I was the new kid and didn’t have any friends. I sat next to Athena, and I noticed that we both did our math problems quickly, and we always got 100% on our tests and assignments.
We got bored with the math the other kids were doing, so we started to make our own math worksheets, and we gave them to each other, just for fun. After a while, our teacher found out what we were doing, and she gave us our own little math class, just us two, where we did advanced math together. It was cool to have someone who understood how fun math was, who didn’t think it was boring or stupid. She was easily the prettiest girl in our class, and she always had the best clothes, and the best sense of humor.
When you spend a lot of time with another person, especially such a cool person, you just naturally become friends. Soon we were playing together at recess and eating lunch together and sleeping over at each other’s houses. We were best friends, and we were inseparable.
Now we are the president and Vice President of the Meadow Ridge Charter School Math Club, otherwise known as The Mathmagicians.
I know how nerdy that sounds, but it’s actually pretty cool. We get to go to competitions and tournaments. We even got to go to Washington DC last year, which was fun for everybody, but it was very special for me, because that’s where I discovered my secret talent.
As long as I can remember, I’ve liked to sing, but never in front of people. I’ve always sung when I was alone, in the shower, while doing the dishes, whenever my parents leave the house. I’ll get a hairbrush and pretend it’s my microphone and sing to my own choreographed dance moves. I saw a girl doing that in an old movie one time, and decided to try it, and you know what? It’s fun.
Anyway, until Washington DC, I’d never, ever sang in front of other people. You see, I have really bad stage fright. Last month, when I had to give my oral report on Helen Keller, I got so nervous that I started giggling. Once I started giggling, I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t breathe, much less give my report.
It was so much worse, because I’d spent the whole night before practicing talking in front of a group. I read it in front of my parents, even though I could tell they were bored and didn’t really care about Helen Keller. I practiced in front of a mirror. I was wearing my favorite red dress that always makes me feel confident and pretty, and I pulled my hair back into a ponytail so it wouldn’t get in my face when I talked. I’d done so much prepwork, and I fell to pieces anyway.
Mrs. Caldwell had to ask me to go into the hall until I could calm myself. It was super embarrassing. I never did give my report, and I got a D on that assignment. Which, personally, I think is totally unfair. I mean, I still DID the report, I just didn’t read it in front of the class very well. I should have gotten at least a C. But Mrs. Caldwell said that being able to speak in front of people is an incredibly important life skill, and one we will all probably need in life, at some point.
Athena gave her report on the philosopher Plato, and she never giggled once. She stood in front of the class and talked about a guy most of the kids had never even heard of and made him sound interesting. Everyone watched her like she was a celebrity giving a performance. And she even did extra credit, and brought in a bunch of homemade baklava, and passed it out to everyone. It was delicious.
Of course, she got an A.
My point is, I get nervous in front of people. But this day, in Washington DC, there was a street performer playing her guitar and singing outside the Smithsonian. She had long dreadlocks and wore a brightly printed skirt, and no shoes, and she was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. And best of all, the song she was singing, “Life of Ice,” happens to be my favorite song, one that I always sing to myself when I’m alone.
So when I heard this lady singing my song, I couldn’t help but sing along, quietly, just for myself. But I guess the performer noticed me singing, and how much I was enjoying it, because she stretched out her arm to me, inviting me to sing with her.
I froze. I wanted to sing the song, but all the kids from Math Club were there, watching, and a bunch of other people, too. There were tourists all over the place, and most of them had phones and cameras. I imagined some nice family from Chicago sitting and watching their vacation video, and hearing me sing and saying “Oh, fast forward it. This girl is the worst.” My voice got snuffed out in my throat, like a candle. I couldn’t breathe right. I felt dizzy.
Then, Athena patted me on the shoulder. She looked me in the eyes and said, “Go. Sing.”
And all at once, this rush of bravery and confidence washed over me. I felt like I could sing in front of a thousand people, a million people, and they would all love me. How could they not love me? I was lovable and talented and cool.
I walked right up to the lady and started singing, loud and strong.
And you know what? People did love me. They all clapped and cheered, and later, when Athena showed me the video she took of the performance, I nearly cried. It was that good.
I know it’s not nice to brag. I do. But I’m just being honest. I’m a really, really good singer. And someday, I’m gonna be able to sing in front of an audience again. I’ve tried a few other times, in front of my parents, and once at the school talent show (that was a nightmare), but I’ve never been able to get my confidence back. Which is disappointing.
But I know one day, it’ll happen again. In the meantime, I’ll keep practicing.
Oh, there’s one other reason I really like to sing, a reason that I feel kind of bad about.
Athena can’t sing very well. At all.