The Initial Insult - Mindy McGinnis Page 0,62

the front porch, a smile that didn’t match the rest of her face stamped securely in place, like if she let it slip I might remain perfectly unaware that everything wasn’t, in fact, perfect.

I knew it wasn’t.

And so did Tress Montor.

Tress had walked into kindergarten, glanced around, sat down next to me, and pulled a magnifying glass out of her backpack, along with a dead roach, encased in plastic.

“Check this out,” she said. “You can see its butthole.”

I was entranced.

So were Hugh and David, as well as Brynn and a couple of other girls. I remember Ribbit standing on the edge of the circle that surrounded us, not quite a part, more like a satellite, proudly announcing to anyone who would listen, “That’s my cousin. Tress is my cousin.”

In all the first-day-of-school splash, clothes still stiff from the hangers they’d been torn from, new sneakers getting their first bits of gravel stuck in the treads, sharp-tipped packs of crayons spilling across freshly cleaned tabletops, Tress Montor had me looking at a cockroach’s ass.

When I came home and made my announcement of a new friend, there was the inevitable question to follow, Mom’s smile still in the same place—hopeful, but expecting to fall.

“Who is it?”

I was five, but I knew the drill. I took an actual beach towel to the pool—long enough to stretch out on—and so did every one of the girls I was supposed to be hanging out with. Other kids skipped the towel entirely or brought something from home, meant for the shower, usually threadbare or with outright holes. I was five, but I knew that my towel was better and that the better towels and the people attached to them belonged together, our monogrammed initials on them setting us apart from the others.

I knew this because Mom patiently led me away every time I sat with Jessica Stanhope on her towel, a spread of melting Skittles between us. Mom would draw me back to the right group of people with a promise of ten minutes of screen time with the game I’d downloaded to her phone. Mom was careful; Mom was cautious. Mom was not going to let me have a new friend if that new friend didn’t fit certain criteria.

And back then, Tress did.

The backpack that she produced the cockroach from was brand-new, and the magnifying glass wasn’t some hokey toy for kids. It was heavy, the real deal, and the cockroach was part of an entire set. Tress had a dozen bugs of all kinds sealed in these plastic cubes, clear as glass. I knew because of the bugs that Tress was different from me; I knew by the quality of them that she was the same. So when Mom asked who my new friend was, the smile ready to fall from her face at a moment’s notice, I said with confidence, “Tress Montor.”

There was a careful calculation behind Mom’s eyes as she considered, the smile stiffly in place as options were weighed. I knew what it was then; now I even know what the formula was.

Lee Montor + Annabelle Usher = Tress Montor.

Montor > Usher [therefore] Tress = [unknown]

In other words, Annabelle Usher married up. Her last name might be worth something, but the Usher bank account certainly wasn’t. Lee Montor was a great guy from a good family who scored a beautiful wife. And they loved each other.

I close my eyes, not having to remember to know that it was true. Tress’s parents had loved each other, something that had taken me some time to sort out once I started doing overnights at their place. Her house was a lot like mine in so many ways—modern and clean, with a shiny kitchen and a well-groomed dog. But Tress’s house had added touches: Annabelle’s garden in the back, where my yard had only a shorn lawn. A piano that wasn’t there just to hold family pictures. Lee would play; I hummed the song he would rattle off for us whenever Tress asked, no music required.

“The cold song,” I’d say, then an echo, Lee’s voice correcting me. “Coldplay.”

It took me a while to figure out it wasn’t just things that made her house different but the actual family. I bounced into their kitchen one afternoon to refill our water bottles, Tress waiting outside on the trampoline, only to surprise Lee and Annabelle. They had jumped away from each other, guiltily, Annabelle pushing black hair from her eyes.

“Hey, kiddo, what do you need?”

I’d gone back out