1 Best Friends In Life and Lola Bay This was our most awesome summer. Every day, Leeza and I packed peanut butter and blueberry jam sandwiches and hung out at the Richfield pool. Some older girls, like Melanie Fisher and her imitators, teased us because we didn''t have two-piece bathing suits, but we didn''t care. Like the day Melanie said to me, "Iris, that suit and your wet hair make you look like a third grader. I thought you''d want to know." And Leeza grabbed my arm and said so Melanie could hear, "Ignore her, Iris. At least we swim at the swimming pool." We just didn''t let them spoil our fun.
Leeza and I grew up across the street from each other and were total buddies from day one. We played in her sandbox together, hid from her little brothers and sisters in her basement, went to camp and Scouts, and played softball. I liked Scouts and beading bracelets. She liked playing softball and canoeing. Me not so much. But we both loved the pool. My mom dropped us off, and her mom picked us up, and if we were really lucky, her mom would take us to the bead store or to a movie. One hot June afternoon, Leeza''s mom took us to see the movie Don''t You Dare .
That''s when we first saw Lola Bay acting. We''d heard her on KDQB while we were at the pool, and we loved her songs, but since she''d won a Grammy, she was popping up everywhere. Lola Bay played the part of a girl from a farm who ran away to the city and had to find ways to stay safe. It wasn''t easy. She strummed guitar and sang on street corners so people would put dollars in a can by her feet. It was scary. If she hadn''t met a really honest social worker lady at a shelter, it could have gone way bad. We fell in love with her and started watching her online.
In her videos she wore a V-neck black T-shirt and super-baggy jeans and had lots of bracelets and rings. Her long hair was pulled up in a messy knot. She wrapped her arms around a big fat acoustic guitar. She sang like Dua Lipa. And she wrote her own songs too, like Billie Eilish. And she growled at the best parts of the song, a little like Lizzo. Everything else stopped mattering. Lola Bay became our favorite singer--our summer obsession.
We sang her songs over and over. We planned to start a fan club when school started, and decorated membership cards. "And I''m gone ," I growled. "Livin'' so strong ," Leeza growled. We squealed and held hands and jumped up and down. "This is so rah," Leeza said. Rah was her personal multipurpose word. It meant hurrah , hi ya , big whoop , or that sucks , depending.
"We could be her backup singers," I said. "She''s only seventeen, not that much older than us. By the time we''re out of high school, she''ll still be kind of young." We downloaded all her songs and played them over and over. We practiced the moves on the videos. "We have to learn all the words to all the songs," said Leeza. "Play that one again," I said. "Did you hear how she came in with the backup singers during part of the harmony?" We begged our mothers for black T-shirts.
"It has to have a V-neck, Mom!" I cried when she came up to my room saying she''d bought a regular T-shirt. "I couldn''t find a black V-neck T-shirt in your size," she said. " Arrrrrrgh! No, Mom! I need a V-neck!" "I said they didn''t have them." She put the bag down and turned to leave. "Close my door so Ian and Echo don''t come in!" Ian and Echo were my two-and-a-half-year-old twin brother and sister--total tornadoes on toddler feet. She shook her head and shut the door behind her, saying, "You''re welcome." The bag sat on my desk daring me to open it. A regular T-shirt was just wrong.
Finally, I took it out. The shirt wasn''t the worst. I put it on and yanked at the round neck to pull it into a V. A small paper bag with polka-dotted tissue was poking out of the T-shirt bag. When I dumped it out on the bed, four beaded bracelets and a ring with a happy face fell out. They were cool. Very Lola Bay-like. I sighed.
I opened my bedroom door and yelled down the stairs, "THANK YOU FOR THE BRACELETS AND THE RING. I LOVE YOU, MOM." I was not going to thank her for the T-shirt. I put on my best ripped jeans, the T-shirt, and the jewelry, and checked myself out in the mirror. I tucked part of the shirt into my waistband the way Lola Bay did. My hair was too short to pile in a knot on the top of my head, but I grabbed a scrunchie out of the drawer and pulled it up into a stubby brown ponytail. I struck a pose and made pouty lips. I rummaged for some lip gloss and did it again with more attitude.
I ran downstairs yelling, "I''m going to Leeza''s." In ten seconds, I was across the street. There was no knocking at Leeza''s house. I dashed in, took the stairs two at a time, and burst into her room. I tripped over a little kid''s toy truck. She was standing in front of her dresser looking in the mirror. She saw my reflection and screamed, "OMG, you look soooo Lola." "I do?" "Yes.
You look just like her." Then she turned to me. "What do you think?" I wanted to cry. She had on a black V-neck tee. Her long hair was piled up just like Lola''s. She looked beautiful. "You look so perfect," I said. She held out her bare arm and shrugged.
"No bracelets or rings yet, but so what? Right?" "Right. So what." Then I took off two of my bracelets and gave them to her. "We can trade off on the ring, okay? But I''ll get it first because it''s mine and everything. Okay?" She stared at the neck of my shirt. I pulled at it with my fingers. "We can trade T-shirts too. Okay?" I hugged her tight, and we stood side by side, looking in her mirror.
"Pose," I said. "Poutier," she said. I re-glossed my lips and handed the tube over to her. She glossed and we posed to Lola Bay''s song "Taboo." It was about how being yourself and wanting what you want is okay even if other people say it''s wrong. I felt okay about wanting the black V-neck tee, even though my mom said, "You look so nice in bright colors." * Then the summer ended. It wasn''t as if Leeza and I hadn''t been obsessing about going to middle school, but I think we''d been hiding our nervousness in Lola Bay.
The day before the first day, we had to face it. We were working on our scrapbook when I had to worry out loud. "It''s a super-huge school. What if we get lost?" "We''ll be fine," said Leeza. "We have each other." That was great, but I was still nervous. "There''ll be so many new kids we don''t know. It''s, like, four elementary schools'' worth of sixth graders all dumped together.
" "Salima, and Callie, and Bethany, and Paige will be there." I gripped Leeza''s arm. "I hope they''ll want to join the Lola Bay Fan Club." "That would be so great." She shrieked, "We can have epic lip sync contests!" I jumped up. "We can all listen to the music, and dance, and dress up like her, and do each other''s hair. And show them our poses and the scrapbooks, and invite them to make bracelets, and watch movies, and do all the cool stuff we do." "But it''ll be more official," said Leeza, waving a glue stick.
"We''ll have the membership cards, and maybe we can get a discount on the fan merch page!" "I didn''t think of that before! Wow, we could get discounts on Lola Bay PopSockets!" I spun around. "But what about Melanie and her mean friends?" "They won''t bother us. It''s not like at the pool, where they picked on us because they were the queens of the pool. In school we''ll just be weenie sixth graders to them. They''re seventh graders. They''ll be busy with seventh-grade stuff." I wasn''t as confident as Leeza. "Maybe the eighth graders will pick on them," I offered hopefully.
For a minute we both imagined how cool it would be to see eighth graders pick on mean Melanie and her crew. We both sighed big sighs at the same time. "We''ll be fine," said Leeza. "Absolutely," I agreed even though I wasn''t completely convinced. But I had to admit that Melanie might have other things to worry about too. Then we got lost in deciding what we were going to wear and finishing the Lola Bay Fan Club binder so it would be a work of art. Lola Bay music played the whole time. I looked at Leeza during a solemn moment in the song "Celebrity.
" That song was about stepping up and taking the stage. It made me feel powerful. "Can I be president the first year, and then the next year you can be president?" Leeza made a pouty face, then laughed. "Sure!" We took turns being onstage on her bed. We planned how the lip sync contests would work and what the prizes would be. When it was time for me to go home, we held hands and promised each other we would be brave in middle school. * The next morning, we met at the bus stop. My backpack was loaded down with the fat Lola Bay binder.
Hers was stuffed with the club notice, our gorgeous handmade membership cards, and clippings. Once we were in our seat on the bus, I said, "Here we go." She leaned against me. "We''ll be fine. Rah?" This made me laugh. "Rah. We rule." I clutched my backpack and hummed the Lola Bay song "Livin'' So Strong" to myself, and it made me feel mighty.
2 The Lola Bay Fan Club I don''t know why I was so freaked out about the size of the middle school. Our fifth-grade class had toured it in May. Our eighth grader guide, Cinder, had shown us where we''d have homeroom and taken us to the cafeteria, the science lab, the art room, and everything. She''d even told us that in the science lab you could sign up to be a Plant Parent, and the story wa.