by Lin Oliver
He reached out and touched my hand and that swarm of butterflies in my stomach turned into a flock. Sammie pulled her earbuds out and stood up from her chair.
“Hey,” she said, flicking his hand away from mine. “None of that. This girl has to focus. A lot of us geeks are counting on her.”
“A lot of us non-geeks are, too,” he laughed. He didn’t say it in a judgmental way. It was nice. Even Sammie laughed.
“Come on, Charles,” she said, yanking me away from him. “We’re up in a few minutes. You’ve got to practice your visualization exercise.”
It wasn’t hard because that image was exactly what I wanted to think about, anyway. His hand on my waist as we twirled around in time to the music.
Toss, Spencer, love. Toss, Spencer, love. Toss, Spencer, love.
It must have worked, because we won the first set. It was close, not nearly as easy as beating the muscle girls, but Sammie and I worked well together and communicated and concentrated, and we squeaked out a 7–5 victory. One more set to go, and we’d both be on our way to party central.
But the team from Rio del Oro Racquet Club wasn’t giving up so easily. They’d win one game, and then we’d win one. It went on like that until the game score was 6–6, and the officials declared a twelve-point tiebreaker. Whoever is ahead wins, except the tricky part is you have to win by two points. Sammie and I once played a tiebreaker that went on for over thirty points.
We started the tiebreaker and fought hard for every single point. But so did they. It was 1–1, 2–2, 3–3, and before we knew it, we were tied at 6–6. We got the next point, which meant we were up by one, 7–6. If we could clinch the next point, we’d win. It was their serve, and Sammie was receiving. It was a tough serve to return, and Sammie had to run really fast to get it. As she reached for the ball, her foot slipped out from under her and she fell. From the corner of my eye, I could see our dad jump to his feet in the stands. I raced over and put out my hand to help her up, but she just stayed on the ground, clutching her ankle.
“Are you hurt?” I asked her.
“I hit a slippery patch and totally lost my footing. I’m so sorry, Charlie.”
“Is it bad?”
“My ankle,” she said. “I really twisted it bad.”
The official came, and we helped Sammie hobble to the bench. She could barely stand on her foot. They called a trainer, who took a look at her ankle.
“It’s not broken,” the official said. “The trainer can wrap it and you can continue, or you can retire from the game. If that’s your choice, the match goes to your opponents. We’ll take a treatment break, and you’ll have ten minutes to decide.”
During the break, the trainer wrapped her ankle with tape while I got her some water. I could see our dad pacing back and forth in the aisle. Parents aren’t allowed on the court until the match is over.
“How’s that feel?” the trainer asked when he had finished.
“Better,” she said, but I could tell she was lying. Her face was so twisted in pain that the freckle above her eyebrow was practically sitting on her nose.
“Sammie, you can’t play on that ankle,” I told her.
“I know,” she whispered. “But I can stand on it. You’re going to have to do the playing for both of us. A lot of my friends are counting on you.”
“Are you sure about this?”
“What choice do we have?”
Sammie leaned on me as she limped back onto the court, and everyone in the stands applauded. The officials took their places, called out the score of 7–7, and the game resumed.
The next serve was to me, and I returned it fine. But our opponents knew Sammie was injured and directed their return shot right to her. There was no way she could hit it back—she’d be lucky just to be able to move out of the way. I flew into action and ran across the court, getting there just in time to return the ball. Their next shot went to the opposite side of the court. I charged as fast as I could and barely got a backhand on it. But I got it over. They kept up the same pattern, hitting it from one side of the court to the other, making me chase the ball back and forth. Sammie was basically out of commission, and every return was up to me. They just kept pummeling me, and I got completely out of breath and felt my calf muscle cramping up.
Keep going, I told myself. A lot of people are counting on you. Prove yourself.
And I did. Somehow, I reached into a deep pocket of strength I didn’t know I had and returned every shot that was hit to us. Finally, when I thought I couldn’t go on, I managed to hit a winner, a long, hard forehand to the baseline. They didn’t make it there in time, and the point was ours.
Finally. It was 8–7. One last point to go.
It was my serve. These girls were good at returning serves, so I knew I had to hit a winner. I didn’t have the strength left for another long rally like the last one. It was now or never. I took my place at the baseline and bounced the ball a couple of times to settle my nerves.
“Visualize,” Sammie called to me. “Focus.”
And I did.
Toss, Spencer, love. Toss, Spencer, love.
I didn’t see the serve, but I heard it zinging off the sweet spot of my racket and exploding over the net. It was like the stars and the moon had aligned just right.
It was an ace.
We won.
Chapter 17
“No way,” I proclaimed emphatically, looking at myself in the full-length mirror. “I refuse to wear this. I look like a ten-year-old.”
It was six o’clock that evening. Sammie and I had come home after the tennis match to shower and clean up. Dad just dropped us off in front of the club and hurried on to a dinner engagement he had made with Councilman Ballard, Spencer’s dad. They were going to talk about getting a permit to build one more tennis court at the Sporty Forty, and the club owners wanted my dad to represent them. In the car, Sammie and I tried to bring up the subject of Ben’s bar mitzvah and her party, but he said we’d go into it in detail after he got home. We both just knew he was going to say yes, so after we cleaned up, we started to work on our outfits.
I was standing in my room in a horrible green dress, making faces at myself in the mirror. Sammie had spent the previous hour putting together the outfit she was going to wear to her party. Since it was a costume party, she decided to go as the queen of the hippies. GoGo tried to explain to her that hippies didn’t have queens, but she didn’t care.
“I just want to look fantabulous,” she said.
GoGo had gotten together some of her old clothes from the sixties. Sammie picked out a brown suede vest with flowers and beads sewn all over it, an orange gypsy skirt with purple ruffles and matching headband, and a pair of Native American moccasin boots with fringe. She liked those because they covered up the brace she had to wear for her sprained ankle. The finishing touches to her costume were round wire-rimmed sunglasses with pink lenses and dangly earrings made of feathers.
“I can’t believe you actually wore all that stuff,” I said to GoGo as I watched Sammie try everything on.
“I not only wore it, my darling, I had a fabulous time in it,” GoGo explained. “Sitting around reciting poetry, strumming the guitar, protesting injustice . . . it was a grand era. I’m sorry you kids won’t get to experience it.”
“We recite poetry in Truth Tellers,” Sammie said. “We protest injustice, too. And Bernard is a singer-songwriter. He brought his guitar once.”
“Well, then, perhaps you are the hippies of your era,” GoGo said.
“Not me,” I declared. “Give me a mall and a Frappuccino any day.”
“We’re all individuals.” GoGo reached out and smoothed my hair. “That’s what makes the human race so interesting. How sad it would be if we were all the same.”
The green dress was the one I wore to my sixth-grade gra
duation party in June. GoGo said she thought it would be fine to wear to the bar mitzvah since none of the kids at Beachside had seen it, and besides, it had a big, swishy skirt that was just made for dancing. I had gotten Ryan, with his long arms, to reach into the cabinets above our closet and pull down the dress. I slipped it over my head and smoothed it over my hips.
It was November, and the last time I had worn that dress was in June. Funny, I never thought about how much my body had changed in those five months. But as I stared at myself in the mirror, all I could think about was how much I looked like a ten-year-old.
“It is a little snug in the bodice,” GoGo said, cocking her head to one side and staring me up and down.
“It flattens out your boobs,” Sammie said.
“Which don’t exactly need any more flattening,” I commented. “And look at this skirt. I never realized how poofy it is. It’s like a flower girl’s dress at some stupid wedding.”
“You could always wear jeans and borrow one of Ryan’s baseball jerseys,” Sammie suggested. “I mean, the party is at Dodger Stadium.”
I picked up the blue-and-gold invitation and read it to Sammie. “‘The celebration continues in the clubhouse with an all-star party,’” I read.
“That is definitely not a jeans-and-baseball-jersey kind of affair,” GoGo said. “Maybe we can go to the dressmaker and have her let out the bodice some.”
“Oh, this is just great.” I sighed. “I’m finally getting to go to the party, and I’m going to look like a ten-year-old flower girl.” I was trying not to get too upset since I felt lucky to be going to the party at all. But really, the sad truth was, I was going to be the worst-dressed girl there by a mile.
Sammie left the room while GoGo fussed with my dress. She looked inside to see if there was enough material to let it out, and there was. At least that was something. Maybe I wouldn’t have totally flat boobs.
“Not to panic.” GoGo forced herself to smile. “We’ll have your father take you to my dressmaker, Yolanda. She’s a wonderful Hungarian woman, and she can fix anything.”
Sammie came back in with a big smile on her face.
“I have just put Plan B into effect,” she said. “I’d appreciate it if from now on you would please refer to me as Ms. Plan B. Or maybe Madam Plan B. That sounds even better.”
“What’d you do?”
“Placed a few strategic phone calls,” she said. “I mean, what’s the point of having the SF2 girls as your friends if you can’t borrow their clothes?”
“You called them?”
“Yup. Lauren and Jillian and Brooke are on their way over. Lily, too. Her mom is picking them all up.”
“Say thank you to your sister,” GoGo told me.
“Make that thank you, Madam Plan B.” Sammie laughed.
The girls arrived fifteen minutes later with armloads of clothes. Lily took charge immediately and had me try on one thing after another.
A spaghetti-strap, turquoise minidress from Brooke.
“Too sexy,” GoGo said. “Take it off.”
A one-shoulder, purple chiffon dress from Jillian.
“Too Kardashian,” Lauren said. “She’s so yesterday.”
A strapless, brown velvet sheath from Lauren.
“You don’t have the boobs for that,” Brooke said. “It’ll fall down.”
A vintage, bohemian maxi-dress from Lily.
“Only Lily can pull off that look,” Jillian said. “You’ll look ridiculous.”
Nothing was exactly right until GoGo came up with an idea.
“Why don’t you wear something from each of your friends,” she said. “Build your own look.”
“What a great idea, GoGo,” Lauren said. “Charlie’s grandma is just the best.”
“Hello . . . she’s my grandma, too,” Sammie chimed in. “Remember me?”
“Of course we do, Sammie,” Lauren said, not even looking in her direction. “Now come on, girls, let’s focus.”
Everyone helped pick out things for me, but most of the decisions were Lily’s. She’s like a wizard with clothes. She started with a black velvet miniskirt from Lauren and a red sequined tank from Jillian. Then she put a flouncy, sheer, black peasant top from Brooke over that and gave it shape with her vintage leopard-skin belt loosely draped around my waist. And to finish it off, she loaned me her leopard-skin ballerina flats that tied with black satin ribbons around the ankles.
“There,” she said, stepping back to admire me. “What do you think?”
“I think she looks positively radiant,” GoGo said. I couldn’t have said it better myself. I felt like I was actually glowing.
I twirled around and around, looking at myself in the mirror. All I could do was giggle like an idiot. It was a totally new me!
Sammie had been watching my makeover from her bed.
“What do you think?” I asked her.
“Fantabulous.” She nodded. “And I don’t use that word lightly.”
The girls gathered up their stuff and climbed back into Lily’s mom’s car. It had taken less than an hour for my total makeover. I didn’t even have time to take off my new outfit when I heard Dad’s car pull up in the driveway.
“This is so great,” I said to Sammie. “He’ll get to see me all dressed up so he’ll feel really good about saying yes. This is turning out to be so perfect.”
I could hear Dad come inside and toss his keys on the green wooden cabinet next to the door. Sammie and I ran out to meet him.
“You like?” I asked, twirling around to show off my new look.
“Sit down, girls,” he said, barely noticing what I was wearing. Ryan had crept out from his room and also took a seat on the couch. I was glad. I wanted him there to hear the good news since he had been a part of formulating my rescue plan with Sammie.
“I’ve come to a decision,” Dad began, and I could feel my heart thumping in my chest. I closed my eyes and waited for him to say yes. Would he say it fast, or would he drag it out with a little lecture first? He chose the lecture way.
“Charlie, I hope you know that what you did reflects a serious error in judgment. Stealing is wrong, and there is never an explanation good enough to justify it,” he said, speaking slowly and deliberately. “I admire how you’ve taken your punishment seriously and tried to redeem yourself with excellent discipline in your tennis game.”
Okay, Dad, I thought. Enough of the lecture. Get to the good part.
“However, after careful consideration and a long conversation with your mother, we have decided that you must adhere to the original punishment. I’m sorry to say, Charlie, that you are still grounded for the remainder of the month.”
No! Was this for real? Was I truly hearing this?
“But, Dad,” Sammie cried. “You promised.”
“I promised to make a fair decision,” he said. “And I have not made this decision lightly. I would be a bad father if I let you off the hook for what you did, Charlie. Wrong is wrong is wrong. You have to learn that, and it’s up to me to teach it to you.”
“Wow, Dad, this is harsh,” Ryan said.
But GoGo reached over and took his arm, holding a finger up to her lips to quiet him.
“I’m sure this is difficult for your father,” she whispered. “You don’t need to make it any more so.”
“Fine,” Sammie said, standing up defiantly. “Then if Charlie doesn’t get to go to Ben’s bar mitzvah, I’m not having my party, either. We stand together on this.”
“The final decision is yours,” Dad said to her, “but I see no reason for you to punish yourself. You didn’t do anything wrong, Sammie. In fact, you have defended your sister with great commitment, and I respect you for that.”
I looked down at myself, all dressed up in my new outfit. My eyes filled with tea
rs, just thinking about how no one would see the new me. They would all be out looking their best and laughing, and where would I be? In my room. There was nothing more I wanted than to go to Ben’s party, to be part of my new group, to dance with Spencer and feel his arms around me.
Well, there was one thing I wanted more. And that was for my sister to have the good time she deserved.
“You should have your party, Sammie,” I said, swallowing my tears. “You deserve it. You guys all deserve it. I’ll get over this. There will be other parties.”
“Not at Dodger Stadium,” Ryan said in his usual sensitive manner. “Those don’t come along every day.”
He could see my face twist up with emotion.
“Oh, sorry, Charles,” he said. “I was sort of an idiot to say that.”
Dad got up and went to take a shower. GoGo put her arms around me and held me while I cried. Ryan tried to cheer me up with his Kermit voice. Sammie told me I was still the best sister ever.
Later, Dad came out and heated me up some chicken noodle soup and made grilled cheese. Then the five of us played a game of Scrabble, and Ryan let me win.
It certainly was no party at Dodger Stadium, that was for sure. But it wasn’t altogether horrible, either.
Chapter 18
“I feel so awful for you,” Lauren said. It was the night of Ben’s party, and she had come over to pick up Ryan. She was wearing a totally fabulous black dress and silver shoes, and she looked like she had just stepped out of a major fashion magazine. I, on the other hand, was wearing a pair of gray sweats and a green T-shirt with matching fuzzy green socks. There was no need to put on shoes. I wasn’t going anywhere.
“I’ll get over it,” I said to her, putting on a smile. “Say hi to everyone there.”
“Maybe I’ll leave early and come by to tell you all about it,” she said.
“That’d be really nice, Lauren. I’m dying to hear about it.”
Ryan came out of his room, all dressed up in a navy-blue blazer and gray pants. I have to admit, when the guy puts a little effort into it, he can be pretty good-looking. He had added a Dodger cap to his outfit, worn backward with the bill covering his neck. Of course, Ryan being Ryan, he can never do things the ordinary way.
