Lily Speaks!

Chapter One

She let out a long, slow breath and forced herself not to go running back to her seat so she could melt into a puddle of relief. Mrs. Reinhold had said to pause at the end of the speech to maintain poise - or something. Right now, Lily was more interested in maintaining her dignity. I really should've gone to the bathroom before she called on me, she thought.

But if anyone noticed that Lily was dying to get away from the podium, they weren't showing it. The seventh-grade accelerated English class burst into applause. There were even a few whistles thrown in, which Lily was sure were coming from her best friend Reni. Still, it wasn't a bad feeling having everybody cheer. It almost made the pre-speech agony worthwhile.

"Thank you, Liliana," Mrs. Reinhold said in her cobwebby voice. "Here is your outline. All right - next - oh, in fact, last - we will hear from Suzanne Wheeler."

Lily took her outline from Mrs. Reinhold, but her eyes went to Suzy - her other closest friend. Lily had been terrified to give her first middle-school speech, so she knew Suzy was probably about to throw up. Suzy got nervous when she had to open a milk carton with people watching. Lily had told the other Girlz - Reni, Kresha, and Zooey - just that morning that she wasn't sure Suzy could make it through a whole speech.

Lily sank into her seat, still zoning in on Suzy, who finally looked at her. Lily gave her a firm nod.

You can do this, girl, it said. We prayed and everything this morning. You can do this.

For an instant, Suzy's fragile black eyebrows relaxed from the knot they were tied in, and a small smile eased across her lips.

"You go, girl," Lily whispered.

Suzy gave the tiniest of nods, barely stirring a strand of her silky dark hair. Then she took a deep breath, gazed out at the class, and began to talk.

For the first few words, her voice was faint, and Lily had to squeeze her hands together to keep from calling out, "Speak up, Suzy!" Mrs. Reinhold had gone on for almost a whole class period about what she was going to do if she couldn't hear somebody. Something about cupping her hand around her ear and saying, "Eh?"

But suddenly Suzy's voice went up a few notches and began to sound warm. Her hands relaxed on the sides of the podium so that her knuckles were no longer white, and she looked around at the class as she spoke with her eyes shining. Not once did Lily see her glance down at her copy of the outline. If Lily hadn't known better, she'd have thought Suzy was enjoying herself up there.

I sure didn't, Lily thought. I was scared to death the entire time.

When Suzy closed with her last line, the class broke into applause before Suzy could even do her pause. Her little face lit up, and she cocked her head to one side, splashing her hair against her cheek. That seemed to make the class clap even louder.

Lily was right in there clapping with them, although for just a moment, she couldn't help thinking it would be nice to have hair like Suzy's. Lily's mane was red and curly and wouldn't splash against her cheek if it were soaking wet. Suzy really was fun to look at.

"Well, then," Mrs. Reinhold said as she closed her grade book and came up the aisle to the front of the room. "This was not bad for a first round of speeches. Not bad at all."

That was high praise coming from strict, stone-faced Mrs. Reinhold, and it gave Lily the courage to look at her outline.

A. Very nice work, Mrs. Reinhold had written. Lily let out another sigh of relief.

"Would you hold it down, Robbins?" Ashley Adamson hissed from the seat in front of Lily. "You sound like a bus back there."

Lily did what she'd learned was best to do when it came to Ashley - ignore her.

"Now," Mrs. Reinhold was saying. "I didn't tell you this before we started giving our speeches because some of you were already biting your fingernails up to your elbows." Lily glanced down at her chewed-up nails and quickly slid her hands under her thighs.

"You have just competed in the first level of a speech contest," Mrs. Reinhold went on, "which is being held statewide for all seventh graders. Two of you will go on to compete with students from the other seventh-grade English classes for the school title, and the winner will go on to the county competition. One speaker from that tournament will go on to compete on the state level."

Marcie McCleary's hand went up.

"Yes?" Mrs. Reinhold said, her voice clipped.

"Is the state tournament out of town? Because if it is, I can't go. My parents won't let me go on school trips out of town."

"You don't need to concern yourself, Marcie," Mrs. Reinhold said. "You are not one of the two contestants I have selected from this round."

"Who are they?" Ashley said.

Is there no end to Ashley's cluelessness? Lily thought.

Mrs. Reinhold glared at Ashley and then said, "I believe that the two best speeches for this competition were given by Liliana Robbins and Suzanne Wheeler. They will be our class representatives to the seventh-grade contest."

Lily could feel her mouth dropping open. It was all she could do to keep from standing up and shouting, No way! I'll completely freak out!

But to her surprise, the class had burst once again into applause. Ashley, of course, only slapped her hands together a few times before she busied herself looking in her pocket mirror, but everybody else kept it up for a good minute. Reni, Lily saw, was the last one to stop whistling and stomping her feet. Even after the clapping stopped, she grinned at Lily from across the room, her wonderful brown face shiny.

Lily grinned back and then looked around for Suzy. Her little dark-haired friend was staring at her desktop, face as white as a bowl of cream of wheat.

Yikes, Lily thought. She doesn't want to do this. She's gonna die!

Reni, who sat only one row over from Suzy, leaned across the aisle and shook Suzy's arm.

"You go, girl!" Reni said.

It was the last thing to be shouted before Mrs. Reinhold snapped them all to order again, but it seemed to perk Suzy up. Still, Lily couldn't shake the feeling that this was putting Suzy in a bad place - a really bad place.

It's a good thing we have Girlz Only this afternoon, Lily thought.Maybe we can help her find a way to get out of it.

Lily was composing the speech Suzy could give to Mrs. Reinhold, when Mrs. R. gave one more announcement.

"The school-wide seventh-grade speech contest will be one week from tonight, in the auditorium. You are all invited to come, and I think you will want to support your classmates."

Ashley raised her hand.

"Yes?" Mrs. Reinhold said.

"Who's in it from your other classes?" Ashley tossed her flipped-up blonde hair. A couple of pieces were displaced in the toss. Lily knew she'd have that mirror back out within thirty seconds.

"I will post a list tomorrow," Mrs. Reinhold said.

"Did Benjamin Weeks make it?"

"Look at the list tomorrow," Mrs. Reinhold said. "Now - your homework assignment -"

Ashley turned her head just a quarter of a turn so she could speak out of the side of her mouth to Lily without Mrs. Reinhold seeing.

"I bet Benjamin gets picked for first period," she said. "He's way good - you don't have a chance against him."

Lily could feel her eyes going into slits. She might be putting out sweat balls already at the thought of giving a formal speech from the podium in the auditorium, but the thought of possibly losing to Benjamin Weeks was even more revolting.

Besides, all the cheering and clapping on her behalf today had been pretty cool. Think how much of it there would be at a county contest - or even better, a state tournament.

The bell rang, jangling her back to the classroom. Ashley was the first one out the door, and Reni and Suzy appeared in her place.

"This is so awesome, you guys!" Reni said. "Two Girlz in the school contest. I'm jazzed!"

"I don't know if I am," Suzy said. "This is kind of scary."

Kresha and Zooey, the two other members of the Girlz Only Group, met them at the door, panting to know how everybody's speech had gone. All week they'd been the audience when Reni, Lily, and Suzy had practiced. Like most things in their lives, if it was happening to one of them, it was happening to all of them. They were that close.

"Why did I know she was going to say that?" Reni said in a low voice to Lily as they fought their way down the crowded hall behind Kresha, Zooey, and Suzy.

"Say what?" Lily said.

"This is kind of scary," Reni said in a close imitation of Suzy's soft voice.

"Yeah, really," Lily said. "I'm kind of scared for her. She practically puked this time. What's she gonna do in front of all those people and parents and everything?"

Reni nodded thoughtfully, swinging her beaded braids back and forth. "But she did a good job on her speech," she said. "I was blown away."

"Me too," Lily said. "That was probably because we all helped her so much. We'll have to do the same thing for this contest."

"Yeah, but, Lil," Reni said.

She pressed her lips together as she looked at Lily, so that her dimples deepened in her cheeks.

"What?" Lily said.

"She's your competition now. You can't be helping her too much."

They'd reached fourth-period geography by then, and Ms. Ferringer was waiting to close the door. There was no time to argue the point with Reni, and Lily wasn't sure what she would have said anyway.

My competition? she kept thinking as she colored in the map of Asia. That just doesn't feel right.

Lily was still trying to get a grip on the competition thing when school was out that afternoon, and she headed for Zooey's house, which was only a few blocks from Cedar Hills Middle School. Zooey had a great basement, which her mom had redecorated as a meeting room for the Girlz Only Group's twice-weekly meetings. It was almost February, and Lily had to pick her way through gray slush to navigate the sidewalks without slipping, but her mind was almost completely on Suzy's problem as she walked, head down against the cold. So it surprised her when Zooey was suddenly in front of her, arms folded over her coatless chest, frosty air puffing out of her mouth.

"What are you doing out here without a coat?" Lily said. She glanced up at Zooey's house. "I know my way to the back door, Zo. You didn't have to come out and meet me."

"Yes, I did," Zooey said. She stamped her feet on the sidewalk and hugged herself tight. "I just want to make sure of something before Suzy gets here."

Lily glanced over her shoulder, but there was no sign of Suzy yet. "Make sure of what?" she said.

"Well -" Zooey's big, gray eyes rolled. Her little bow of a mouth was by now turning blue.

"Spit it out, Zooey!" Lily said. "I'm freezing, and I have a coat on. You have to be about to die - what's up?"

Zooey hunched herself closer to Lily and said in a low voice, "Don't make too much of a big deal about this speech contest thing. I don't want Suzy getting her feelings hurt."

"Why would I hurt Suzy's feelings?" Lily said. "I love Suzy!"

"Yeah, but you know how you are sometimes, Lily," Zooey said.

"No. How am I?"

"You know - you're the best at a lot of stuff, and you're always getting elected to stuff and getting to do cool things - and, like, Suzy got picked for this, too, not just you."

Lily felt as if she'd been stung. She forgot the cold as she stared at Zooey.

"I know she got picked too," Lily said. "I haven't been bragging about how I'm gonna win or anything."

"I know," Zooey said hurriedly. "I just, like, didn't want you to start."

Lily opened her mouth to protest, but Zooey's eyes suddenly shifted over Lily's shoulder. "Suzy! Hi, sweetie!" she said. Then she engulfed Suzy in a huge hug and kept her arm around her as she led her to the house like she'd never been there before.

"That's okay," Lily muttered as she followed them. "I'll just walk by myself."

Zooey's mom had hot chocolate and popcorn ready for them, so the first couple of minutes were taken up with getting settled and chowing down. It took that long for Lily to shake the uneasy feeling she'd gotten when she talked to Zooey. It came right back as soon as Kresha brought up the subject again.

"I so proud of you, Su-zee and Lee-lee!" she said in her Croatian accent. When she was careful, she could sound more American, but right now she was excited. In fact, she seemed to be the most excited of any of them.

"You going to be vee-ners!" she said.

Zooey squeezed Suzy's hand. "I wish I coulda seen you do it for real. I bet you were incredible."

"She was great," Lily said, looking pointedly at Zooey.

Reni cleared her throat, but Lily shot her a warning look. After what Zooey had said, this wasn't the time to brag on Lily.

"I don't know," Suzy said. "I don't know if I can do this. I mean, the class is one thing, but there are going to be parents there." She giggled nervously. "My parents!"

Kresha and Zooey jumped in to squelch that kind of talk, which gave Reni and Lily a chance to have an eye conversation. As best friends, they could carry on an entire discussion without saying a word.

I don't think she can do it, Reni's eyes said.

Me neither, Lily's said back. But don't say anything in front of her.

Why?

I'll tell you later. But it has to do with Zooey.

Zooey gushed over Suzy for the rest of the meeting. By the time they had packed up their backpacks and put on their coats to go home, Suzy was beaming. For now, anyway, there didn't seem to be a nervous cell in her body.

"That's just for now," Reni said to Lily as they went down the sidewalk together. "Wait'll she gets in front of all those people. I've performed a lot in front of audiences, you know. It can totally freak you out - and I don't freak out that easy."

"Uh, Reni, could you cut it out?" Lily said. "Now you're freakingme out."

Reni let out a snort that sent frosty air spewing forth. "Are you kidding me?" she said. "You are so gonna win this, Lily. It's a piece of cake for you."

"But I've never really competed before," Lily said. "I don't know if I can win."

"Do you want to win?" Reni said.

Lily set her jaw. "I definitely want to beat Benjamin - if he's even in it."

"Okay, so here's how you do it," Reni said. "You practice more and work harder than anybody else. Period. That's how I always win first chair and got into All-State orchestra and all that."

Continues.