The Battle of Darcy Lane

Free The Battle of Darcy Lane by Tara Altebrando

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Authors: Tara Altebrando
tell anybody I told you.”
    â€œOkay. I won’t.”
    She looked away again. “My mom thought your mom was going to have another baby. I guess she was wrong. You can’t tell them I told you.”
    Everything got blurry. Then I thought about the weirdness about the room down the hall—the way it was so mysterious, so complicated. They had thought it was going to be a baby’s room. And now . . . it wasn’t? Because Dad had told me he was working on it, the room. So what did that mean?
    Maybe that was something they still wanted? Another kid?
    I liked the idea of it.
    Someone to be lonely with.
    â€œI’m sorry,” Wendy said. “I think my mom thought there’d be official news today, that that was why we were invited.”
    â€œNo,” I said. “No news.”
    I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. “Let’s just play Spit, okay?”
    â€œYour carousel!” Wendy practically screamed, noticing, I guessed, the circle of missing dust on my dresser when she got up to get the cards. “Did it break?”
    â€œNo. I still have it.”
    â€œOh, good. I thought maybe there’d been an earthquake that only hit your room or something.”
    I said, “That would be pretty crazy,” but as we started to play cards, I felt like I was experiencing some serious tremors and aftershocks. I could barely shuffle the deck.
    â€œSo.” Wendy lowered her voice. “I finally got a bra.”
    â€œThat’s great. I’m happy for you.” And then we just played and played while I struggled to hold it together.
    â€œI broke my Dopey,” I said, after a while. “You know, the Seven Dwarfs I’ve had since I was little?”
    â€œStinks.” Wendy was going to town with fours and fives and sixes on one of the piles, but I had nothing to add, just jacks and queens and some nines and tens. “I bet your mom can fix it.”

    When Wendy and her mom were gone, I helped clean up more than I ever did without being told to.“Well, aren’t you helpful,” Mom said. She never missed a beat.
    I wanted to ask her about the office, the baby’s room, whether that was happening or not and if not, what had happened. I wanted to tell her that I’d dug my own grave over at Alyssa’s. But I couldn’t get the courage up.
    I did find myself just brave enough to say, “I was wondering if we could go shopping.”
    â€œWhat for?” She was washing plastic tumblers in the sink.
    I lowered my voice. “A bra.”
    â€œOh, honey.” She turned to me. “When you need one, we’ll go.”
    She’d used that line a few times when I’d asked about a cell phone, too, but I didn’t remind her of that, or of how ridiculous an argument it was. I wanted to stay focused.
    â€œMom.” My ears felt like they were on fire. “I’m telling you I need one.”
    She looked up—almost like she didn’t recognize me at all—and then her features softened. “Okay, then. Tomorrow morning?”

12 .
    I was up and dressed and ready to hit the mall in record time Thursday morning. But when we got to the store and Mom asked a saleswoman to show us to the “training bras,” I wanted to curl up and die. Or, at the very least, tell Mom to forget the whole thing and just go for a cinnamon bun instead. The wide grin of the saleswoman—a grandmother type—didn’t help.
    â€œMom,” I said, when she tried to follow me into the fitting room. “I think I can handle it from here.”
    I ended up having a hard time with the clasps, so the whole thing was taking a while.
    â€œJulia.” Mom’s voice was so close. “I can help.”
    â€œI can do it!” Could this be any more awkward? I thought I might dislocate my shoulder. Then it finally hooked.
    The first one was too tight around my back, though, and the second one, too big in the

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