It was my second week at Stoneleigh Elementary when I started to notice the letters inked on their palms: W-H-O.
I saw them on Avery, ready to catch a basketball in phys ed. Caitlin, with her hand raised during math class. The girl whose name I kept forgetting, at lunch eating French bread pizza. And Jade, in the courtyard, boasting about the rated-R movie she’d seen over the weekend.
“It’s basically a horror story about, you know, getting your Aunt Flo.” The other girls giggled, and Jade caught me eavesdropping. “Lots of blood,” she said, watching me out of the corner of her eye. “Buckets.”
The following Tuesday, Ms. Sisley paired me with Avery for science review. I pulled my desk up to hers, and we quizzed each other on vocabulary.
“What’s who?” I asked after a few minutes. Science was getting boring.
“What?” she said.
“No, who,” I repeated. “W-H-O. On your hand.”
“I can’t tell you,” she said, snaking her arm behind her back.
“Is it a person?” I guessed.
She shook her head. “Forget it.”
Jade happened to be walking by on her way back from the bathroom. She put her hand on Avery’s shoulder. “Yara looks like she can keep a secret.”
Then she turned to me. “Come with us during recess.”
I’d been sharing a lunch table with this kid Freddy since my first day at school. At first, I thought he was new too, but it turned out he just didn’t have any friends. I couldn’t risk ending up like him. After everyone finished eating, I followed the girls outside: Jade, Avery, Caitlin, and Ryanne. We walked past the blacktop, past the baseball field, to a small grove of trees. We sat in the grass, still damp from the previous day’s rain.
“Everybody hold up your hands,” Jade directed. The other girls revealed their palms, allowing me to view the letters up close. I studied Caitlin’s cutesy lowercase, Ryanne’s bubble writing, and Avery’s precise, thin lines.
Finally, Jade showed me her hand, marked with bold capitals.
“W-H-O stands for…” She paused, relishing in the suspense. “We Hate Olive.”
Olive was in our class, too. I hadn’t thought about her much since she sat on the other side of the room. She had short black hair with bangs, and she’d done her state report on Rhode Island.
I didn’t have any reason to hate Olive, but the other girls filled me in: She wears those ugly red shoes all the time. When you go to her house, her mom is just always there, never giving you any privacy. Her eyebrows are asymmetrical.
“And…?” Jade prompted the others.
“And she stole Jade’s solo in the chorus last year,” Ryanne said.
“How’d she do that?” I asked.
“Everyone who wanted the solo auditioned in front of the whole class,” Jade explained
Caitlin piped up: “Jade was the best.”
Jade’s mouth curved into a small smile on one side before she went on. “Olive was allegedly out sick that day. When she came back, she had a alleged personal audition with Mrs. Mathers, and Mrs. Mathers gave the solo to her.”
Knowing I was supposed to react, I imagined myself in Jade’s position—thinking I’d gotten something good, and then having it snatched away.
“That sucks,” I said. “It’s not fair.”
Jade nodded and asked the other girls if anyone had a marker. Avery pulled a Sharpie out of her pocket and handed it to Jade.
She uncapped the marker, and I held out my open palm, expecting her to write on it. Instead, she dropped the Sharpie in my hand.
“Who hates Olive?” she asked.
I hesitated for just a moment before declaring, “We hate Olive.”
Every morning, we wrote WHO on our hands, and every recess, we gathered by the oaks behind the baseball field. We usually spent the first few minutes trash-talking Olive and then ended up chatting about boys or weekend plans or the new arcade that had Dance Dance Revolution.
“I have an idea,” Caitlin announced one day in November. I’d been wearing my jean jacket for the past few weeks but knew I’d have to switch to something warmer soon. “Let’s elect a club president.”
Avery clapped her hands together. “Yeah! Who’s the biggest Olive-hater of all?”
“We should do nominations,” Jade said, and we all agreed.
“I nominate Jade,” Caitlin said.
“I nominate Yara,” Ryanne said, grinning in my direction. Like she was doing me a favor. My heart thumped in my chest. Me? I didn’t hate Olive the most. I didn’t even really know her.
If the others were surprised, they didn’t show it.
“So how do we vote?” Avery asked.
“Yara and I will close our eyes, and everyone will raise their hands,” Jade decided. “Caitlin, you can count.”
I hated closing my eyes around a group of people. Before we moved to Stoneleigh, I ate dinner at my friend Christa’s house at least once a week. The whole family would close their eyes to pray before the meal, and I’d secretly keep mine open, studying the pattern on the tablecloth.
“Okay,” Caitlin said. “You two close your eyes, and don’t open them until I say so.”
Jade complied, and I followed suit.
“All in favor of Yara for president, raise your hand,” Caitlin instructed.
I slowly moved my hand out of my lap and into the air. Someone smacked it.
“You can’t vote for yourself,” Avery said.
I kept my eyes closed. “Why not?”
“I think it’s bad manners?” Ryanne said.
“If you both vote for yourselves, you’ll just cancel each other out,” Caitlin said, her voice rising in pitch.
Jade stayed silent.
“The guys who run for president vote for themselves,” I reminded them. “It’s democracy.”
“All in favor of Jade,” Caitlin continued. I heard some rustling, and then Caitlin ordered us to open our eyes.
I opened mine and saw them all staring at me.
“Jade is the winner!” Caitlin sang out. Which was honestly fine. I didn’t want to be president anyway.
Avery and Jade high-fived, and the recess monitor blew her whistle to signal our return to class. Ryanne muttered “sorry,” then hurried to catch up with the others as they raced ahead toward the building.
The next morning, I walked behind Olive in the hallway on my way to the classroom. Her red shoes were ugly, and she had a weird way of walking on her tiptoes. I remembered her saying Rhode Island was nicknamed “The Ocean State” and thinking how dumb that was when so many other states have more ocean.
Jade and the others were already in Room 214, huddled next to the computer stations. I hung my puffer coat and backpack at the cubbies and got out a wide-tipped marker from my pencil case. I’d written the W on my palm when Avery came up behind me and snatched the marker out of my hand.
She was a lefty. I watched her mark on her right palm: W-H-Y.
And I knew better than to ask.
