The Girl With 500 Middle Names Read online

  I jumped out of the way of a ball that whizzed toward me. I felt Kimberly’s eyes on me. I’d barely spoken to her since she’d given me her coat.

  “Do you really have five hundred middle names?” Kimberly asked.

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  I sounded really rude. Momma would have been ashamed. But it wasn’t fair. Kimberly had more clothes than anyone. She had her own playroom. She had so many coats, she could just give them away and never even notice.

  I ran away from Kimberly. I grabbed a ball and threw it at the other team as hard as I could.

  Chapter Eleven

  On Thursday morning when I woke up there was a beautiful purple sweater hanging on my closet door. It had a pink heart right smack in the middle of the front. And there wasn’t a single letter on it spelling out a name—mine or anyone else’s.

  I held the sweater up to my cheek and felt how soft and warm it was. Then I carefully folded it up and put it in my dresser drawer. I put on another sweater, a green one that proclaimed MELINDA to the whole world.

  Momma was there, frowning, as soon as I stepped out of my room.

  “Didn’t you see the sweater I made over, just for you?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “Thanks. But lots of kids are wearing name clothes at my school now. With all sorts of names. I started a trend!”

  “Really?” Momma said. She took a step back. “You did?”

  “Well, sort of,” I said. I didn’t think something just Kimberly and I did could really be called a trend. But I felt strangely happy remembering the ALLYSON on Kimberly’s ribbon.

  Then I noticed the dark circles under Momma’s eyes, and I felt guilty. Momma hadn’t gotten home from work until after dinner the night before. She must have stayed up really late finishing my other sweater. I knew I should go back and change.

  But I didn’t.

  That morning during science, I got called out of class to go talk to the guidance counselor, Mrs. Wood.

  Mrs. Wood was a big woman. Really big. If you saw her from behind, wearing pants, you might think she was a man. Maybe even a football player. But today she was wearing a silky dress with a pink jacket. She had the same kind of smile as Mrs. Burton.

  “Now, don’t think you’re in any trouble, because you’re not,” she said as soon as I sat down. “I just like to get acquainted with all of Satterthwaite’s new students. Now your name is—”

  I saw her looking at my sweater.

  “Janie Sams,” I said.

  “Ah,” she said, still looking at my sweater. I felt like each letter of MELINDA was as big as Mrs. Wood. I felt like it was written in neon, instead of yarn.

  “Just Janie?” Mrs. Wood said. “You don’t go by a middle name?”

  “No.” I shook my head.

  “Then why are you wearing that sweater?” Mrs. Wood asked.

  I hadn’t even been able to explain that very well to my parents. There was no way I was going to try with Mrs. Wood.

  “Just because,” I said. “I wanted to.”

  “You don’t wish you were someone else, do you?” Mrs. Wood asked.

  I thought about that. If I weren’t me, who would I be? I thought about the girls who were supposed to get these sweaters—rich kids whose moms or grandmothers maybe hadn’t even bothered to pick up what they’d ordered.

  If my momma ordered something for me, you know she’d pick it up.

  I didn’t want to be the real Melinda, Claire, Lindsay, or Alexandria.

  I thought about Kimberly. She had everything. Did I want to be her?

  Except she didn’t understand math, and I did. She got a panicked look on her face every single time Mrs. Burton said, “Now, take out your math books. . . . ”

  I didn’t want to be Kimberly.

  “No,” I told Mrs. Wood. “I like being me.”

  Something happened behind Mrs. Wood’s smile. She kept smiling, but it didn’t look the same anymore. I think she thought I was going to say something else.

  “Well,” Mrs. Wood said. “That’s great!”

  When I got back to class, someone had put something on my chair. It was a piece of paper folded over and over, until it was smaller than my thumb. I unfolded it in my lap.

  It was from Kimberly.

  She had written, I think you could have 500 middle names if you wanted to.

  I looked over to where Kimberly had her head bent over her science book. Who asked you? I wanted to say. Then I remembered: I had. Yesterday during gym I had asked her, “What do you think?”

  Kimberly looked up just then, and I stared at her. For once I wasn’t just seeing her clothes. She had pale eyes that looked worried. She had a lot of freckles on her cheeks. The corners of her mouth kind of half curled up, like she wanted to smile but was afraid to.

  Kimberly wouldn’t have lasted a day back at Clyde Elementary. Mean old Krissy would have torn her to shreds. Cassandra would have talked her to death. Kimberly would have cried when the boys were throwing spitballs.

  I could really hurt her if I wrote back, Who asked you?

  I pulled out a fresh sheet of paper.

  I think you could have 500 middle names too. If you wanted I wrote carefully. And then I slid the paper across the aisle and watched Kimberly read it.

  Kimberly smiled. And, for the first time since she’d given me her coat, I smiled back.

  The phone rang that night while we were eating dinner.

  “Let the answering machine get it,” Momma said. “This is family time.”

  But we all listened to the message as it recorded: “Hello, um, this is James Creston from The Specialty Shop. I’ve run into some shipping problems with the sweaters from Mexico, and I’m getting increased demand for name sweaters. Anyhow, I believe we dissolved our business relationship prematurely, and I hoped—”

  I didn’t hear the rest. I was too busy yelling, “Hooray!”

  Momma went over and replayed the message again two times, just to make sure we’d heard it right.

  “You’ll make him sign a contract this time, right?” I asked anxiously.

  Momma was standing there dazed.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Why should he be making all the profit from my sweaters?”

  “He shouldn’t,” Daddy said.

  “No,” Momma said. “Not if I’m doing all the work.”

  “What are you two talking about?” I asked. “Why aren’t you calling Mr. Creston back right this minute?”

  I was so impatient, I bounced up and down in my chair.

  “I’m thinking,” Momma said. “I’m thinking maybe I should just do this by or myself. Sell the sweaters on my own.”

  My mouth dropped open. It was a good thing I hadn’t put another bite of beef stew in my mouth since Mr. Creston called.

  “But—but—you said you couldn’t do that. You said you couldn’t afford to get burned again,” I said.

  “It is risky,” Momma said. “But I’m not scared anymore.”

  I looked from Momma to Daddy.

  “Why not?” I said.

  “Because my daughter believes in me,” Momma said.

  Chapter Twelve

  On Friday, I wore the plain sweater with the heart on the front. No name.

  Mrs. Burton gave me her biggest smile ever when I walked up the aisle to my seat.

  “What’s wrong, Janie?” Josh Hodgkins taunted. “Did you run out of names?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Maybe not.”

  At recess, Kimberly and I played on the monkey bars together.

  “I’ll tell you a secret,” I said, when we both sat on the very top, looking out over the whole playground.

  “What?” Kimberly said eagerly.

  “I don’t even have a middle name.”

  Kimberly jerked back so far, she almost fell.

  “Why not?” she asked when she got her balance back.

  “When I was born,” I said, “my parents said they looked at me and knew I had to be a Ja
nie. It was the perfect name, they said. It was so perfect, they didn’t want to put a not-so-perfect middle name next to it. They tried out every girl name in the ten thousand and one baby name book. And none of them was right. So they left the middle name line blank on every form they filled out.”

  I thought about how many times Momma and Daddy had told me that story. I could remember being three, four, five years old, cuddled up on the couch with Momma and Daddy. Momma’s knitting needles were clicking away. The story had the same rhythm as her knitting.

  “Wow,” Kimberly said. “That’s even better than having five hundred middle names.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It is.”

  I was so glad Kimberly understood. I’d never told that story to anyone back at Clyde. I’d been scared to. I’d been scared someone would think there was something wrong with me, just because I didn’t have a middle name. But I knew Momma and Daddy loved me so much, they would have given me all ten thousand and one names if they thought I needed them. Just like they’d moved me to a new school when they thought I needed that.

  That was why I’d worn the sweaters. I wanted everyone to see what Momma had done for me.

  “I have a secret, too,” Kimberly said in a little voice.

  “What?” I said.

  Kimberly looked down at the ground, far below us.

  “Remember how I said my best friend moved away?” she asked. “That was Larissa. I missed her so much! After she left, I didn’t have any friends in Mrs. Burton’s class, because I’d always done everything with Larissa. And everybody else already had a best friend.”

  I hadn’t thought about that bothering Kimberly, too. Kimberly was still talking.

  “But then you moved in. And I thought, She’ll be my friend. She has to! But you were good at math. You could do flips on the monkey bars. You were prettier than me. I thought, I’ll make her like me. I’ll give her a coat. She looks cold. So I gave you a coat. A new coat. I made my mom go out and buy a new coat, because I said the new girl was really poor. But then you hated me!”

  The coat Kimberly had given me was new? I blinked in surprise. I thought two things at once: At least now I know no one will ever recognize it, and, How dare she!

  Kimberly had tears in her eyes. I couldn’t stay mad.

  “I was wrong, wasn’t I?” she asked. “You’re not poor at all, are you?”

  Kimberly took a great gulp of air, then she looked like she was holding her breath, waiting for an answer.

  I thought about how Momma and Daddy never had much money. I thought about how we were going to have even less money than ever now, because Momma was going to run her sweater business on her own. And then I thought about how Daddy had said some things mattered more than money. I knew what they were, now. And I had them all.

  “No,” I said, slowly. “I’m not poor. But I was cold. I needed a coat.” I swallowed hard. “And a friend.”

  A smile broke out on Kimberly’s face. I think it matched the one I was wearing.

  “I can teach you how to do flips, you know,” I said.

  By the end of recess, Kimberly could go backward and forward and dangle upside down. And she’d taught me how to do cartwheels out on the open grass of the playground. It was hard only because we kept falling over in the grass, giggling. We were having so much fun that other kids came over and asked, “Can we play too?”

  But when the bell rang, it was Kimberly who scrambled up beside me. We both brushed the grass off our coats. And then, together, we ran back into Satterthwaite School.

  Where I belonged.