Mystery Solved

In seventh grade, Ford Middle School was close enough to walk to—and my friend’s house on Pulitzer was about an eight-minute walk from school.

Naturally, we did not walk there.

Every morning, I walked next door to meet one friend, and the two of us walked toward Ford to another friend’s house, where we would wait about thirty minutes for her mom to drive us the rest of the way.

Yes, we had already walked most of the distance.

No, apparently completing the journey on foot was not an option.

We were thirteen-year-old prima donnas with standards.

It became part of the rhythm of seventh grade: her house, the wait, the ride to school.

And somewhere inside that perfectly ordinary routine is a memory that stayed with me for a much less funny reason.

One morning, the other two girls went upstairs.

I was told to stay downstairs and watch Scooby-Doo.

At the time, I thought the mystery was what I had done wrong.

It took me years to realize I may have been investigating the wrong suspect.

Scooby-Doo, where are you?

Apparently downstairs with me.

There was a mystery upstairs,

but no invitation to see.

Come on, Scooby-Doo—

I see you.

At least one of us

was meant to be here.

You had ghosts hiding behind curtains.

I had two girls making it remarkably clear.

They sent me downstairs to watch you

while they disappeared above,

because adolescent friendship sometimes has

a fascinating definition of love.

You chased villains through mansions.

I kept wondering what I'd done.

You got clues and secret passages.

I got, Stay here. We're having fun.

And when I tried to wander upstairs—

perhaps under the radical impression

that friendship included me—

I was redirected back toward the television

and the talking Great Dane

apparently assigned to keep me company.

There was no man in a rubber mask.

No haunted amusement park.

No elaborate criminal conspiracy

requiring Velma to explain the plot.

But there was a mystery:

Why wasn't I invited upstairs?

Adolescence was beginning to open

all these strange new rooms:

makeup,

boys,

clothes,

crushes,

the private vocabulary girls seemed to acquire

somewhere between childhood

and whatever came next.

And somehow, people could decide

which girls belonged in those rooms

before ever inviting them inside.

Maybe I didn't know how to do my makeup.

Maybe I wasn't talking about boys.

Maybe I wasn't displaying all the proper signs

that I, too, had received

the adolescent-girl software update.

But there is a difference

between not knowing something

and not wanting to know it.

There is a difference

between being quiet about a part of yourself

and not having that part at all.

No one asked.

Maybe if I'd been invited upstairs,

I would have learned something.

Maybe I would have laughed.

Maybe I would have joined the conversation

about boys and discovered

I had opinions after all.

Maybe somebody could have shown me

what she was doing with the makeup

instead of assuming I had no interest in learning.

Maybe I would have contributed something

they hadn't expected.

Maybe I would have surprised them.

Maybe I would have surprised myself.

Because that's the strange thing

about deciding someone isn't interested enough,

girly enough,

mature enough,

interesting enough

to belong in the room:

you deny her the very experiences

that might have allowed you to discover

how many rooms there were inside her.

I wasn't asking anyone

to make me interesting.

I wish they'd simply given me

the chance to contribute

before deciding

I had nothing to contribute.

Of course, I couldn't have explained

any of this then.

I was a kid.

So I did what kids often do.

I looked for the missing evidence

in myself.

Was I annoying?

Had I said something?

Should I have stayed downstairs?

Should I have tried harder?

Should I have been different?

Should I somehow have known,

without being told,

that my role in the friendship

had quietly been rewritten?

Years later,

I can finally solve this one.

I wasn't stupid for going upstairs.

I wasn't pathetic for wanting to be included.

I wasn't wrong for being hurt

when people I trusted made exclusion into a game

and expected me to politely watch cartoons through it.

And I wasn't one-dimensional

just because other people

had only bothered to learn

one dimension of me.

Scooby always caught the villain eventually.

Growing up gave me something better:

the ability to stop casting myself as one.

I don't have to make those girls villains, either.

We were young.

Young people can be careless

with one another's hearts

without understanding how long

someone else might remember the bruise.

But understanding that now

doesn't require me to pretend

it didn't hurt then.

And if those meddling kids taught me anything,

it's that when somebody keeps showing you the door,

you don't have to spend the rest of your life

trying to prove you deserved

to be invited upstairs.

Sometimes the mystery isn't

what was wrong with you.

Sometimes the mystery is

why you spent so many years assuming

there had to be something.

Mystery solved.

And I didn't even need a Scooby Snack.