Calli Be Gold

by Michele Weber Hurwitz

  Becca leans against the half wall surrounding the ice rink and covers her face with her hands. I don’t think she sees me. Then she takes her hands away, wipes her eyes, and straightens her shoulders. When she reaches for her skating bag, I dash into the crowd, and I’m back with my parents before Becca finds us.

  “There she is!” Dad yells out. “Great job out there. This is going to be your best season yet. I just know it. First place every time.”

  Becca gives him a weak smile.

  “What’s the matter?” he says. “Don’t worry about that little slipup. Happens to even the best skaters! C’mon, how many times have you seen those top girls fall at the Olympics?”

  Becca nods at Dad as he pats her on the back; then Mom snaps a picture of the two of them. “What took you so long?” she asks Becca.

  “Oh, nothing,” Becca answers, and waves to Taylor. “Get a picture of us,” she demands, sounding like her normal self, and squeezes Taylor in a hug. My sister puts on her biggest Synchronettes smile as if nothing happened. But when they let go, another girl walks by Becca and whips her curly hairpiece around so hard that it smacks Becca in the face. I think it was the girl who was skating next to Becca when she stumbled. I hear Taylor whisper, “Just shake it off.”

  Mom calls out happily, “Everyone’s going to the Chandelier!”

  The crowd begins to move toward the doors. Grandma Gold appears and grabs my arm. “It’s a stampede,” she yells. “Hold on to me!”

  The restaurant in Southbrook that everyone calls the Chandelier turns out to be just as packed as the skating rink. The reason people call it that is because an enormous chandelier with over one thousand tiny lightbulbs hangs in the entryway. The real name of the restaurant is Pete’s Family Inn and the good thing about it is that they serve breakfast anytime.

  When we’re finally seated at a table, we lift our water glasses to toast Becca on a successful competition season. She’s still wearing the fake ponytail but her makeup has smeared a little.

  She rubs her elbow. “I think I bruised my arm.”

  “You’re good,” Dad says. “You’re real good, Bec. You just shine out there.”

  “Yeah,” she says. “That’s what my coach told me after the exhibition. That’s why I was late finding you … she talked to me afterwards.… She told me not to worry about losing my footing, that I should shake it off and forget about it.”

  “Absolutely,” Mom says.

  “You’re a big part of the team,” Dad adds. “They need you.”

  “Of course they need her,” Grandma Gold shouts. “Although I would have liked to see you skate in something new after driving forever in the pouring rain.”

  I stare at Becca. My mouth is hanging open. I can’t believe it. She’s lying. Unless the coach said those things before I got there … but from the look on Ruthless’s face, and what I heard, it certainly didn’t seem like it.

  Grandma Gold leans over to slap Alex’s back. “And how’s our high school basketball star?”

  Alex peels off his headphones and says, “Huh?”

  “Still the top scorer on the team?” she asks.

  “Yeah,” he says. “When are we going to order?”

  “They’re so busy,” Mom says, waving to a Synchronettes mom across the restaurant. “I’m sure our waiter will come soon.”

  “And what about you, Calli? What are you up to these days?” Grandma Gold asks, peering at me. I swear, it’s just like she knows the ABC game, except she did it out of order.

  Before I can answer, Dad says happily, “Calli is going to be an actress!”

  “Oh.” Grandma Gold nods. “Like Marjorie?”

  Dad folds his arms across his chest. “Yeah, except Calli won’t end up like her.”

  Grandma Gold pours three packets of Sweet’n Low into her coffee. “Who knows what went through that girl’s head?” she says. “Got herself a big part in a play, had an agent and everything, then went and threw it all away.” The spoon clinks against the side of the cup as she stirs.

  Dad looks at me. “What are you going to have, Calli?”

  “Pancakes,” I reply.

  “Me too,” he says with a thumbs-up. Dad and I both love pancakes for dinner.

  “Oh, that reminds me,” Grandma Gold interrupts. “Have you talked to Joel lately?”

  “Mother.” Dad looks uncomfortable. “You know Joel and I don’t really talk.”

  “Since when?” She sets her cup back on the saucer and some coffee sloshes over the side.

  “Since … the last few years.”

  “Well,” Grandma Gold says, “if you were talking to your brother, you would have known that he was written up in some big magazine. I can’t remember the name … Snazzy … Jazzy …? Anyway, he’s listed as the top plastic surgeon in all of California.”

  “Is that so?” Dad says. “Terrific.”

  “You bet it’s terrific. My Joel really made something of himself.”

  “Oh, here’s the waiter,” Mom interrupts. “Let’s order.” She puts her hand on Dad’s arm and they glance at each other.

  I ask for chocolate chip pancakes and hot chocolate, but when the waiter brings the cup, it’s not steaming and there’s no whipped cream. Grandma and Dad and Mom go back to talking about Becca and Alex, and me starting out in theater, and how we’re all the greatest kids in the entire world.

  “I’ll be in the front row for all of your productions.” Grandma Gold winks at me.

  I stare up at the chandelier in the entryway and notice a couple of burned-out bulbs. I wonder how Pete and the workers here find the time to change them. The restaurant is always so busy.

  Our food comes, and Becca’s friend Taylor stops by our table with her mom. Grandma Gold asks me, “You think you’ll do Beauty and the Beast? I love that one.”

  Mom asks Taylor’s mom for her opinion on the skaters’ hairpieces, and Dad starts mapping out a defensive plan with Alex for next week’s basketball game. The table gets noisy, and I’m trying to cut my pancakes and sip my lukewarm hot chocolate and listen to all the conversations. But after a while, I can’t tell any of their voices apart.

  t’s PHP time again. Noah and I are supposed to be creating a mosaic face out of different colors of dry pasta, but we’re sitting at his desk with a heap of noodles, a bottle of glue, and an empty piece of construction paper.

  At least Noah’s sitting on a chair and isn’t under the desk.

  “I told you,” he says. “I can’t make stuff.”

  “Do you want to try?”

  “No.”

  “Everyone else is making one,” I point out.

  “So?”

  I look over at Claire, a few desks away. Her mosaic noodle face looks like it could be in a museum. She and her peer are concentrating on the placement of every single piece.

  I look back at Noah, who is separating the noodles into piles by color.

  “This is a dumb project,” he scoffs. “How can you make noodles look like a face, anyway?”

  I giggle. “I agree,” I whisper. “It is kind of dumb.”

  He glances at me; then the two of us sit in silence, Noah shifting around the noodles and me watching the other PHP teams busy at work. The whole room is quiet, and Mrs. Lamont and Mrs. Bezner are walking from desk to desk, admiring the creations. I hope they don’t come over here.

  I promised myself I wouldn’t give up on Noah, but he’s not making it easy. I’m about to suggest that we try to make something—it doesn’t have to be a face—when Noah points toward Tanya Timley and says, “She’s a red.”

  “What?” I ask.

  “Like a fire engine.”

  I tip my head. “Huh? You mean she has red hair?”

  “No,” Noah replies, then points at Wanda. “She’s a blue,” he says. “A blue sky. With no clouds.”

  I look at Noah, then at Wanda and Tanya.

  “Don’t you know people are colors?” he asks.

  “I guess I didn’t.”

&
nbsp; “You can’t see it?”

  “Is it bad if I say no?”

  He shakes his head. “Sometimes you have to look really hard.”

  “Oh,” I say, and concentrate as hard as I can on the back of Claire’s head. After a few minutes, though, I admit, “I can’t see a color.”

  “It’s okay,” he says. “Most people can’t do it.”

  “How can you?”

  “I just can,” he says, squinting down at his piles of noodles.

  I open the bottle of glue, pour some onto the construction paper, and aimlessly tack down some noodles.

  “Are you making a face?” Noah asks.

  I shrug and reach for more noodles. Noah hands me a few and we glue them down together.

  “I still think this is dumb,” he says, and I nod.

  “So, what color are you?” I ask. I guess that he’ll answer black, or white, or no color at all.

  He replies, “A whole bunch of mixed-up colors.”

  “Oh.… Were you ever just one?” I ask.

  “I can’t remember.”

  I close the bottle of glue. “And me?”

  He places a noodle on the paper very carefully and, without looking in my direction, says, “Pink.”

  “Pink. Is that good?”

  “Pink,” he repeats. “Heart,” he adds. “Pink heart.”

  I get the same feeling inside as when I made Noah laugh—all warm and mushy—like my chest is going to burst open. I’ve never felt that way in a class or a sport or an activity.

  I think that’s good.

  Will I get that feeling in improv? It would certainly make Dad’s heart burst if I did.

  I smile at Noah but he doesn’t see. He’s putting every single last noodle on the paper like he’s in a noodle marathon.

  “Doesn’t look like a face,” he says when he’s finished.

  “But we made something.” I hold up the paper carefully so none of the noodles will move.

  He stares at me, then at the paper. “But it’s not anything.”

  “It is. There are colors.”

  He examines the paper again. Then it’s time for the fifth graders to leave.

  “I’ll see you next time,” I say, and as I’m walking away, Noah gives me a tiny, small, but possibly happy wave. And I wave back.

  Definite progress.

  The next day, after school, I’m not upset that I have to go to the skating rink with Becca and Mom, because I’m hoping that Noah will be there, maybe even sitting at a table in the concession area. But when we get there, I don’t see him anywhere.

  The rink is back to normal after the exhibition, except for about twenty huge black garbage bags stacked by the back door. I see the dad on his laptop computer, the kid with the DEATH RULES hoodie lurking around the arcade, and the twins, but no Noah.

  Becca is acting like nothing is wrong. I’m sure she has decided to step it up and rise to the challenge, like Dad would advise her to. She seems to be skating fine. While I’m watching, she doesn’t make any mistakes.

  After we’re there just a few minutes, Mom waves a yellow Post-it at me and says, “I’m going to run you over to the dentist. Luckily, I don’t have a meeting. We’ll come back to get Becca.”

  All the assistants at Dr. Cannon’s office, and even Dr. Cannon, the dentist, talk to kids like they’re two years old. They make you put this purple stuff on your teeth to show where you’re not brushing well, and they call the saliva sucker Mr. Thirsty. If that’s not bad enough, they ask if you want to pick a prize from the treasure chest when you’re done.

  While we’re there, Mom spends the whole time on her phone and I can hear her voice even though I’m down the hall from the waiting room. She’s talking about the hairpiece issue and why the new costumes haven’t arrived. Then she calls Dad to confirm what time Alex’s game is.

  The assistant tells me I have beautiful teeth but if I don’t take care of them better, they might not stay so beautiful. I get a picture in my mind of Tanya Timley’s shiny white teeth, and when the assistant turns her back, I make a face at her. I know she didn’t see, because she still gives me a sticker with big smiling teeth that says GREAT CHECKUP!

  On our way out, I take a little notepad from the treasure chest. There’s a photo of a polar bear on the cover.

  We rush back to the rink to get Becca, then drop her off and rush to Alex’s game. Afterward, he stays late for a team meeting. On the way home, Mom glances at me in the backseat of the van. “Tomorrow you won’t have to do all this running around with me,” she says. “You have your first improv class! Are you excited? Nervous?”

  “Yeah,” I mumble. What color would Noah see for Mom? Electric orange?

  “What if I don’t like the class?” I ask.

  “Now, you don’t want to start out with a bad attitude.”

  “But what if I don’t?”

  “Calli Gold, I don’t want to hear that. We discussed this, remember?”

  Even though I told myself I would try improv and be a Gold like the rest of them, deep down inside, I really don’t want to. A strange feeling rears up. “You’re not going to talk about the piano again, are you?” My voice comes out mean. Like Becca’s.

  “No …,” she says.

  I can’t stop myself. “You know, Mom, if you’re so sad about never getting to play the piano when you were a kid, you could still learn. Why don’t you take lessons now? Then you could stop being sorry you never got to.”

  I can see part of her face and it looks crumpled and hurt. I bite my lip. In the space above her head, I imagine a big black piano with sharp white claws instead of keys. The claw piano looks like it’s going to pounce on her. Or me.

  Without another word, she pulls into the garage, gets out of the van, and leaves me inside, which makes me feel worse than if she had yelled.

  I feel like all the pink has drained out of me.

  he next day, as if nothing happened, Mom is driving me to the first improv class. I know she’s mad at me, but whenever I try to tell her I’m sorry, the words just won’t come out.

  She pulls the van up to the front walkway of the community center but doesn’t turn off the engine. She peels my yellow Post-it off the steering wheel. “The class is in room seven,” she says flatly.

  “You’re not coming in with me?” I ask, a little shaky.

  “Do I need to?” she says, turning to look at me. “I thought you told me you want to do more things on your own, and stay home by yourself, like Wanda does.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t know anyone in the class.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t worry. I’m sure you’ll make a new friend.”

  I slowly reach for the door handle.

  “You’ll be fine,” she says. “I’ll be waiting out front in an hour when the class is over.”

  She starts pulling away from the curb before the van door is completely closed. The air is cold against my cheeks and it’s starting to get dark. I can think of only one choice. To go inside.

  When I get to room seven, I stop outside the door and stand on the flat gray carpet. My feet don’t want to move any farther than the doorway.

  “Are you here for improv?” a voice calls out, and I look up to see a woman in a black turtleneck waving at me from inside the room. Perched on a metal chair, she’s wearing a pair of black-rimmed trendy-type glasses, the kind people wear even if they don’t need them.

  When I nod, she gestures to me. “Come on down, then.”

  I trudge inside and see five kids sitting in metal chairs across from the woman. A tall, skinny man is next to her, also wearing a black turtleneck. They look just like the people on the brochure, even though they’re not the same ones. Maybe it’s a rule that everyone who works in improv has to wear a black turtleneck. Would Noah be able to see any other color for them except black?

  When I take a seat, the kid next to me turns. It’s the creepy kid from the skating rink, the one with the DEATH RULES hoodie. I can’t believe it. He does improv?

>   “We might as well get started.” The woman stands up. “Welcome to Improv 101. I’m Liza. And this”—she sweeps her arm toward the man—“is Gary. We are going to acquaint you with the amazing world of improvisational theater over the next four weeks.” Both of them stand up and take a bow, and a girl behind me claps, but no one else does.

  “All right, then. Everyone stand up!” Liza orders.

  Reluctantly, we rise. I wonder if anyone really wants to be here.

  “We’re going to start out by teaching you the four major principles of improv.” Liza pulls off her fake glasses and waves them wildly. “Gary?”

  Gary leaps from his chair, stamps one foot, and shouts, “Click!”

  No one except the girl who clapped says anything. She repeats, “Click?” and writes something in a small spiral.

  Liza strides over to a dry-erase board and scrawls four huge letters: C, L, I, C.

  “Click!” Gary shouts again.

  The kid with the hoodie looks at me but I quickly look away.

  “Clarity,” Liza says.

  “Listening,” Gary says.

  “Instinct.” Liza again.

  Then they shout together: “Confidence.”

  The girl with the spiral gasps, “Oh, I get it, CLIC!”

  “Ten points for you,” Gary singsongs, clapping with only the tips of his fingers.

  Liza writes the four words on the dry-erase board. “When you do improv,” she explains, “you need to be free to express yourself and your vision. That’s clarity. Always listen to your fellow actors, use your instincts, and most of all, have confidence in yourself.”

  I know, right then and there, in room seven of the Southbrook Community Center, that improv is not going to be my passion. All I can think about is how hot my feet are inside my shoes, how I won’t be able to get through the rest of these classes, and how I’ll never find something I’m good at in this world. I definitely don’t have the feeling I had when Noah said I was a pink heart. On top of all that, I don’t have a clue what Liza is talking about.

  Gary asks us to get into a circle. “We’re going to play a little warm-up game.” He pushes away the chairs. “We’re all going to say our names. But here’s the catch: no one can say their names at the same time. If you do, you’re out. Keep saying your name, watch your fellow actors closely, and let’s see what happens.”