Wendelin Van Draanen - Flipped

Twenty minutes later I still wasn’t dressed. And I was extremely ticked off about it because what did it matter? Why did I care what I looked like at this stupid dinner? I was acting like a girl.

Then through a gap in my curtains I saw them coming. Out their front door, down their walkway, across the street. It was like a weird dream. They seemed to be floating toward our house. All five of them.

I pulled a shirt off my bed, punched my arms in, and buttoned up.

Two seconds later the doorbell rang and Mom called, “Can you get that, Bryce?”

Luckily, Granddad beat me to it. He greeted them all like they were long-lost family and even seemed to know which one was Matt and which one was Mike. One was wearing a purple shirt and the other was wearing a green one, so it shouldn’t have been that hard to remember which was which, but they came in and pinched my cheeks and said, “Hey, baby brother! How’s it goin’?” and I got so mad I mixed them up again.

My mother zoomed in from the kitchen, saying, “Come in, come in . It’s so nice you all could make it.” She called, “Lyn-et-ta! Rick! We’ve got com-pa-ny!” but then stopped short when she saw Juli and Mrs. Baker. “Well, what’s this?” she asked. “Homemade pies?”

Mrs. Baker said, “Blackberry cheesecake and pecan.”

“They look wonderful! Absolutely wonderful!” My mother was acting so hyper I couldn’t believe it. She took Juli’s pie, then whooshed a path to the kitchen with Mrs. Baker.

Lynetta appeared from around the corner, which made Matt and Mike grin and say, “Hey, Lyn. Lookin’ good.”

Black skirt, black nails, black eyes — for a nocturnal rodent, yeah, I suppose she was looking good.

They disappeared down to Lynetta’s room, and when I turned around, my granddad was taking Mr. Baker into the front room, which left me in the entry hall with Juli. Alone.

She wasn’t looking at me. She seemed to be looking at everything but me. And I felt like an idiot, standing there in my geeky button-down shirt with pinched cheeks and nothing to say. And I got so nervous about having nothing to say that my heart started going wacko on me, hammering like it does right before a race or a game or something.

On top of that, she looked more like that stupid picture in the paper than the picture did, if that makes any sense. Not because she was all dressed up — she wasn’t. She was wearing some normal-looking dress and normal-looking shoes, and her hair was the way it always is except maybe a little more brushed out. It was the way she was looking at everything but me, with her shoulders back and her chin out and her eyes flashing.

We probably only stood there for five seconds, but it felt like a year. Finally I said, “Hi, Juli.”

Her eyes flashed at me, and that’s when it sank in— she was mad. She whispered, “I heard you and Garrett making fun of my uncle in the library, and I don’t want to speak to you! You understand me? Not now, not ever!”

My mind was racing. Where had she been? I hadn’t seen her anywhere near me in the library! And had she heard it? Or had she heard it from somebody else.

I tried to tell her it wasn’t me, that it was Garrett, all Garrett. But she shut me down and made tracks for the front room to be with her dad.

So I’m standing there, wishing I’d punched Garrett out in the library so Juli wouldn’t stick me in the same class as someone who makes retard jokes, when my dad shows up and claps me on the shoulder. “So. How’s the party, son?”

Speak of the devil. I wanted to whack his hand off my shoulder.

He leans out so he can see into the front room and says, “Hey, the dad cleans up pretty good, doesn’t he?”

I shrug away from him. “Mr. Baker’s name is Robert, Dad.”

“Yeah, you know, I knew that.” He rubs his hands together and says, “I guess I ought to go in and say hello. Coming?”

“Nah. Mom probably needs my help.”

I didn’t run off to the kitchen, though. I stood there and watched Mr. Baker shake my father’s hand. And as they stood there pumping and smiling, this weird feeling started coming over me again. Not about Juli — about my father. Standing next to Mr. Baker, he looked small. Physically small. And compared to the cut of Mr. Baker’s jaw, my dad’s face looked kind of weaselly.

This is not the way you want to feel about your father. When I was little, I’d always thought that my dad was right about everything and that there wasn’t a man on earth he couldn’t take. But standing there looking in, I realized that Mr. Baker could squash him like a bug.

Worse, though, was the way he was acting. Watching my dad chum it up with Juli’s dad—it was like seeing him lie. To Mr. Baker, to Juli, to my grandfather—to everybody. Why was he being such a worm? Why couldn’t he just act normal? You know, civil? Why did he have to put on such a phony show? This went way beyond keeping the peace with my mother. This was disgusting.

And people said I was the spitting image of my father. How often had I heard that one? I’d never thought about it much, but now it was turning my stomach.

Mom jingled the dinner bell and called, “Hors d’oeuvres are ready!” and then saw me still standing in the hallway. “Bryce, where’d your sister and the boys go?”

I shrugged. “Down to her room, I think.”

“Go tell them, would you? And then come have some hors d’oeuvres.”

“Sure,” I said. Anything to get rid of the taste in my mouth.

Lynetta’s door was closed. And normally I would have knocked and called, Mom wants you, or, Dinner! or something, but in that split second before my knuckles hit wood, my hand became possessed by Evil Baby Brother. I turned the knob and walked right in.

Does Lynetta freak out or throw stuff at me and scream for me to get out? No. She ignores me. Matt-and-Mike give me a nod, and Lynetta sees me, but she’s got her hands over some headphones and her whole body’s bobbing up and down as she listens to a portable CD player.

Matt-or-Mike whispers, “It’s about over. We’ll be right there,” like of course I was there to say it was time to eat. What else would I be doing there?

Something about that made me feel, I don’t know, left out. I wasn’t even a person to those guys. I was just baby brother.

Nothing new there, but now it really bugged me. Like all of a sudden I didn’t fit in anywhere. Not at school, not at home… and every time I turned around, another person I’d known forever felt like a stranger to me. Even I felt like a stranger to me.

Standing around eating little round crackers smeared with whipped cheese and fish eggs didn’t do much for my mood either. My mother was acting like an entire swarm of busy bees. She was everywhere. In the kitchen, out of the kitchen. Serving drinks, handing out napkins. Explaining the food, but not eating a thing.

Lynetta didn’t buy Mom’s explanation on the hors d’oeuvres — she wound up dissecting hers, categorizing the parts into gross, disgusting, and revolting.

Hanging near her didn’t stop the Baker boys from shoving crackers in whole, though. Man, I was just waiting for them to wrap themselves around a table leg and flex.

Juli, her dad, and my grandfather were off to the side talking nonstop about something, and my dad was over with Mrs. Baker looking about as stupid as I felt, standing by myself talking to no one.

My mom flutters over to me and says, “You doing okay, honey?”

“Yeah,” I tell her, but she forces me over to where Granddad is anyway. “Go on, go on,” she whispers. “Dinner will be ready in a minute.”

So I stand there and the group of them opens up, but it’s more like a reflex than anything. No one says a word to me. They just keep right on talking about perpetual motion.