Falling Over Sideways

A year before the Dad’s Dance, Claire has an outdoor sleepover for her 13th birthday. She invites her dance school friends Alanna and Katherine, and her best and only friend from middle school, Roshni Shah.

The girls talk about how cursed Claire is because it always rains on her birthday (it has rained on seven of her previous birthday parties). When Roshni lightheartedly laughs at Claire’s misfortune, Claire feels like her friends are mocking her, causing her to raise her voice. She laments how unlucky she is—not like her “perfect” brother Matthew—and then feels worse when she realizes her mother has overheard her.

Her mother suggests that the girls come inside because it will soon rain, but Claire protests. When the girls begin making short movies on their phones, Matthew comes outside and demands that Claire and her friends stop making so much noise, causing the siblings to argue. Claire’s mother and father break the siblings up, and the girls continue their party.

Alanna then queries Katherine and Claire about an email from Miss Nina, the owner of their dance school. It turns out Alanna is moving up to the high school level, but Katherine and Claire didn’t receive the same email. Claire and Katherine try to cheer each other up, and then fall asleep. They wake to the sound of thunder and rain.

Claire gets a pimple on her nose and views it as an ominous sign: She’s starting her period, it’s the first day of eighth grade, and she’s nervous. Aside from figuring out her schedule, Claire must contend with the fact that her brother Matthew was an excellent student when he attended the same school and was beloved by all his teachers. She at least has Roshni in homeroom, which calms her somewhat, but Claire must also deal with exacting teachers and students, including her arch nemesis Ryder: “Picture the Lord of the Underworld. Eternal Tormentor of the Damned” (15), she says of Ryder. Claire and Ryder used to be friends until he turned on her. Now, Ryder torments Claire relentlessly, especially about her long legs (he calls her Storky) and her chair placement in band (they both play the alto saxophone, and Ryder is better than she is).

At lunch, Ryder sits next to Claire to annoy her, and though Roshni sits at the same table, another of Claire’s frenemies, Regina Chavez, sits next to Roshni. Regina always asks for Claire’s Skittles and calls her Starbuck because she’s a white girl. Though Claire doesn’t want to always give away her Skittles, she knows that “The middle school cafeteria is basically a battle for survival, with forty-cent milks” (21). Given her period-induced headache, she’s in no mood to argue. To save face, she offers Skittles to everyone. Claire’s last class of the day is with her odd science teacher, Mrs. Selinsky. Mrs. Selinsky bores the students, and constantly brings up the merits of her daughter Meredith as a marker for her students to live up to. 

Claire attempts to boost her popularity by wearing an expensive pair of leather boots that she technically shares with her mother. When she enters homeroom, however, the fashionable and popular Leigh Monahan dashes Claire’s hopes by snarking, “I love your boots, Clara” (25): She simultaneously calls Claire by the wrong name, and sends a message to all the other girls that Claire’s boots are in fact uncool. To make matters worse, Mrs. Jones announces chair auditions for band, which means that Claire will need to sign up and try out. Though she’s second chair and Ryder is first chair, Ryder always feels threatened by Claire. Sure enough, Ryder taunts Claire, reminding her that she’ll never measure up to him.

At dinner that night, Claire is annoyed to hear about Matthew’s wonderful day at school. When she complains about her boot fiasco, her dad and brother joke about it

Claire often wonders if the boys in her grade will ever mature. The one place she doesn’t have to worry about this is at Dance Expressions, the school where she takes all her dance classes. Though neither she nor Katherine received the coveted email that Alanna did, Katherine took classes over the summer, so the school has moved Katherine up to Alanna’s high school level lessons. Claire, however, does not receive the same offer to move up, so she doesn’t have any classes with her friends, a slight she considers “some cosmic joke, and I didn’t like being the punch line” (33). Claire considers her options while having a pizza party with Alanna and Katherine, where her friends ensure her that they won’t forget about her.

On Claire’s first night in new dance classes, she looks at the younger girls and thinks that she’s better than they are. Her teacher, Miss Dana, also wonders if there has been a mistake, but after checking, confirms that Claire is meant to be in the class. Claire returns home furious, and though her dad tries joking about the situation like he usually does about everything—something Claire admittedly admires about him—she snaps when he admits that he also struggles. This turns out to be the last normal conversation she has with her father.

On Saturday morning, Claire’s mother takes Matthew for driving lessons around town, while Claire has breakfast with her father. She makes something they call hagelslag. Hagelslag are chocolate sprinkles from Holland that she puts on toast with peanut butter. She then occupies her time checking social media instead of talking to her father. Suddenly, the table lurches and her father’s movements become increasingly erratic. “Dad was standing up, leaning to his right. His mouth looked wrong, like it was melting on one side” (41). Claire’s confusion increases when her father begins mumbling incoherent words and phrases. Claire manages to snap out of her confusion and mounting fear and calls for an ambulance. As she answers questions, the dispatcher suggests that her father might be having a stroke. As Claire waits for the ambulance to arrive, she tries comforting her equally confused father who’s struggling with the nonresponsive right side of his body.