Get Happy

by Mary Amato

  OTHER BOOKS BY MARY AMATO

  YA

  Guitar Notes

  Middle Grade

  Invisible Lines

  The Naked Mole-Rat Letters

  Hear the songs from the book, sing with the karaoke tracks, and learn how to write your own songs on Mary Amato’s website,

  www.thrumsociety.com

  First published by Egmont USA, 2014

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 806

  New York, NY 10016

  Copyright © 2014 by Mary Amato

  All rights reserved

  www.egmontusa.com

  www.maryamato.com

  Interior book design: Kathleen Westray

  Cover design: Jeanine Henderson

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Amato, Mary.

  Get happy / Mary Amato.

  1 online resource.

  Summary: On her birthday, Minerva, a seventeen-year-old singer/songwriter, hears from the father she has never known and her placid life is turned upside down. ISBN 978-1-60684-523-3 (eBook) – ISBN 978-1-60684-522-6 (hardcover) [1. Musicians–Fiction. 2. Families–Fiction. 3. Fathers and daughters–Fiction. 4. Friendship–Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.A49165

  [Fic]–dc23

  2014012894

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

  v3.1

  For all my fans who send me such

  touching and heartfelt letters — your

  words, your voices inspire me to write

  and revise, even on the hardest of days.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1. Ugly Sweaters & the Shock of a Lifetime

  2. Finnegan & the Package

  3. The Audition

  4. Mom

  5. Cowardice & Snooping

  6. Getting the Job & Making a Decision

  7. Training Day

  8. Jealousy Rears Its Ugly Head

  9. The First Gig

  10. The Blog

  11. The Squid & the Promise

  12. Aunt Joan & the Truth

  13. Embracing My New Life

  14. Breakthrough Gig

  15. Uke Love

  16. Schadenfreude

  17. Nice Dads & Emotional Disasters

  18. Something Good

  19. What’s Hidden Doesn’t Stay Hidden

  20. The Shedd Aquarium

  21. Keanu

  22. Aunt Joan

  23. Dealing with Wreckage

  24. Moving Forward

  25. The Last Thing

  Some of My Songs

  Acknowledgments

  1

  UGLY SWEATERS & THE SHOCK OF A LIFETIME

  IT STARTS WITH the gift. Please don’t judge me, but I could tell by the shape and size of the box that it wasn’t a ukulele and I felt a little piece of my soul start to drown.

  Maybe to you, a ukulele doesn’t sound like a big deal, or maybe you think, hey, her mom got her that panini maker she begged for two years ago and she only used it once, but a ukulele is not a panini maker. You can’t express your true emotions with panini.

  So there I was on the morning of my birthday, with my mom standing by the table, an excited little-kid look in her eyes. The dining room was decorated with fresh flowers, streamers, and balloons. Sixteen candles were dripping wax onto a huge, frosted cinnamon roll. We Watsons have a morning ritual for birthdays: a special breakfast and the opening of the gift right away — even if it falls on a school day. “Happy birthday, Minny!” she said, and then sang the birthday song.

  Already knowing I hadn’t gotten my wish, I closed my eyes and thought, Deliver me from eternal misery, and then I opened my eyes and blew out the flames.

  She clapped and handed me her gift. “Open it!”

  I took the box, my face muscles preparing a fake smile. “Beautiful wrapping job, Mom,” I said. “It’s too pretty to open.”

  She laughed.

  Same routine every year.

  Making sure not to damage the gift wrap — my mom is a big reuser of stuff — I opened it: a navy blue sweater with huge white snowflakes around the neck and the bottoms of the sleeves.

  “You don’t have any stylish cardigans,” my mom said, as if it were a crime. “And so I splurged on the real deal.” She showed me the designer label.

  “Wow,” I said. “Thanks so much.”

  “You like it?”

  “It’s a really pretty design.” My smile was twitching slightly at this point, which I believe is what happens when your soul is suffocating, but my mom didn’t notice. She was whipping the sweater out of the box.

  “Try it on. You can wear it today.” She gave the outfit I was wearing one of her famous looks. The Pat Watson look. A mix of pity and disapproval with a dash of Let me save you thrown in. The dress I was wearing that day was my favorite, a green vintage raggedy thing I had found in the dollar box at the Goodwill store. The dollar box. I will be proud if I have a daughter who can put together a wardrobe for one buck. My mother, on the other hand, tries to quietly dispose of my sale items in the kitchen trash.

  I put on the sweater.

  “It’s gorgeous.” She clapped and then reached over, her eyes bright. “See … if you button it all the way up, it will look really pretty.”

  I buttoned it up.

  “And a little something from your aunt!” My mom handed me a card.

  Dear Minerva, old fogeys like me don’t

  know what sixteen-year-olds want, so here’s

  some dough. Spend it all in one place!

  A nice, crisp twenty-dollar bill tucked inside.

  I know there are children in the world who would be overjoyed to get a navy blue cardigan and a twenty-dollar bill. But I had put that picture of the uke on the fridge before Christmas — the store address and phone number circled with a bright blue highlighter. Hint, hint. And every time my friend Finnegan came over, he’d ooh and aah over the picture and say in front of my mom, “Minerva, this is so you. No wonder your soul will not feel complete until you have it.” Hint, hint. (Finnegan, if you’re reading this, thank you.)

  Even though I knew it was small of me, I couldn’t help being depressed that day. Let the record show that there were extenuating factors: The temperature was nineteen degrees Fahrenheit, with a wind chill factor of minus ten; my “extended constructed essay” on the social and economic pressures leading up to the Civil War was due; the audition that Fin was pressuring me to do was after school; and to top it off, the bottoms of my feet were itchy. I had put on these Dead Sea salt detox foot patches, documented in clinical studies to pull toxins out of the body, resulting in healthier skin, organs, cells, and even hair. They basically gave me hives.

  The universe doesn’t care if it’s your birthday.

  After breakfast, I stuffed my itchy feet into boots, suited up in all my winter gear, wound an extra scarf around my head, grabbed my backpack, and was hobbling to the door, when my mom said, “Wait! With all the excitement, we forgot to make lunch.”

  I groaned.

  “Sit, birthday girl.” She patted the top of my head. “What do you want — ham or peanut butter?”

  “Peanut butter,” I said. I sat on the edge of the coffee table, staring at the fake-embroidered sign that she had hung on the wall by the front door for Christmas and hadn’t yet taken down. TIDINGS OF JOY!

  I took off my mittens and pulled out my songwriting journal.

  The day you’re born


  You start dying.

  Why bother trying?

  Don’t light candles.

  Don’t make wishes.

  Happy birthdays are fictitious.

  Lick some frosting.

  Eat some wax.

  I was trying to think of a rhyme for wax when I heard footsteps crunching in the snow. I opened the door and was hit by a blast of dangerously cold, freeze-your-nose-off air, just as a FedEx guy was about to knock.

  He handed me a small padded envelope and asked for a signature, his breath making puffs in the air. I was about to call for my mom, when I saw that it was addressed to Pat and Minerva Watson.

  The return address was printed on the envelope — Shedd Aquarium — and, above that, K.C. had been written in black pen. K.C. were the initials of someone my mom and I never talked about, someone I hadn’t seen since I was two years old: Kenneth Chip. My dad.

  I signed, my heart pounding so loud I was sure it was going to burst right through my winter coat and sucker punch the FedEex guy off my front doorstep.

  “Thank you.” I tried sounding casual.

  “Have a good one,” the guy said, and left.

  I closed the door.

  “Did you just say something?” my mom called from the kitchen.

  “No.” Quickly, I stuffed the envelope into my backpack.

  “Apple or clementine?” she called.

  “Apple,” I called back.

  She walked in and handed me a lunch sack. “Ready to go, birthday girl?”

  I nodded and shot off a natural-looking smile. “Ready.”

  2

  FINNEGAN & THE PACKAGE

  I SAW FINNEGAN getting dropped off at school. He’s on the short side for a guy, with a good build and lots of Irishy freckles; and in the winter, whenever he wears his green peacoat and goofy purple hat, he looks leprechauny. Even though he was the only person I could talk to, I confess I tried to beat him inside the building. He would want me to open the envelope, and I wasn’t ready.

  “Minerva, wait up!” he yelled. “Are yours working? I think my skin is glowing. Am I glowing?”

  The detox foot patches had come four to a box and we had split the cost.

  “They gave me hives.” I hobbled in through the school doors. “We shouldn’t have wasted our money.”

  “My feet itch, too,” he said. “But I think it means they’re working.”

  I headed down the hall. “I’m not doing the audition.”

  Fin followed. “Minerva, you promised. I’m not letting you chicken out. They’ll stop itching. Why are you so grumpy? Oh! I almost forgot. Happy birthday!” He started punching my arm, our old ritual. “One, two, three, four — ”

  “Knock it off, Fin. I’m sick. I’m going to barf.”

  “Five, six, seven … you are fine. l have a present for you, and I’m going to give it to you as soon as you’ve received all sixteen punches … eight, nine — ”

  I slapped his arm away. “Fin, I got a FedEx envelope from somebody with the initials K.C.”

  “K.C.” He stopped. “Your dad? Why didn’t you tell me right away? What was in it?”

  I headed for the bathroom.

  “Minerva, what was in it?” Fin followed.

  “I don’t know. I don’t even know if it’s from him.” I stopped, took off my mittens, and pulled the envelope out of my backpack. “I didn’t tell my mom.”

  “Open it!” he practically screamed.

  “Not here. Not now. If it’s from him, I’ll have to walk around enraged all day and I won’t be able to do anything about it.”

  “Yes, here. Yes, now,” he said. “If you don’t open it, it’ll be worse.”

  We stood still as the crowd surged through the hallway in both directions, Fin’s eyes soft and locked on mine, his goofy purple hat sticking up. He was right. I pushed open the girls’ bathroom door. “Wait for me in case I faint. If you hear a clunk, come in.”

  “Totally not fair,” Fin called out. “Open it out here.”

  The girls’ bathroom was hot and smelled like a porta-potty. Even though the room was empty, I squeezed into a stall with my winter gear still on, and locked the door. I stared at the printed return address: the Shedd Aquarium, the big aquarium in Chicago that I went to on a field trip in the second grade and loved, the place I used to beg my mom to take me back to see again.

  The initials K.C. were printed carefully, neatly, on the FedEx line for sender name. This K.C. obviously worked for the aquarium, so I figured the envelope couldn’t be from my dad. I had always assumed he lived in some trailer park in Kansas or Idaho or Nevada or some faraway place. In my mind, he was a hedonistic loser, a druggie, an alcoholic, and a convict all rolled into one, and that’s why my mom never talked about him and why I had never heard from him. I knew only three things about him: He and my mom met when he had a temporary job in Chicago, he had “Pacific island” genes, and he left us, never paying any child support. My blue-eyed, once-blond mother offered up only those tidbits years ago when I got the nerve to ask how I ended up with the blackest hair and darkest eyes of any white girl in Evanston, Illinois. End of conversation.

  I opened the envelope and pulled out a cream-colored note card. The paper was expensive, elegant, with the initials K.C. embossed on the front, and nothing else.

  Pat,

  Enclosed is a birthday gift for Minerva. I am hoping that you and Minerva will talk about it and come to the decision that we should at least meet now that I’m nearby. I am more than willing to talk about concerns or issues at length over the phone. It’s time, Pat.

  KC

  The bathroom walls began to blur. I slipped the card into my backpack and then I pulled a small box out of the FedEx envelope. Another card, which was under the box, fluttered out — heading for the toilet too fast to grab. My heart almost stopped. Miraculously, it landed on the toilet seat. One small breeze and it would be floating in somebody else’s pee. In slow motion, I leaned down, keeping my head back and my chin up so my scarf wouldn’t knock it in. Gingerly, I lifted it from the seat.

  Finnegan’s voice from the hallway: “Minerva! Come out!”

  The temperature in that bathroom must have been a hundred and twenty degrees. Little beads of sweat prickled my forehead.

  Dear Minerva,

  Happy sixteenth birthday. What do I say? Every time I sit down to write, I wonder if my words will be welcome.

  Now that you’re sixteen, I’m hoping you might have more of an interest in getting to know me. I’d love to learn more about you. Are you into sports? Art? Do you play an instrument?

  Enclosed is a little something. I know that gifts are a far cry from being there all these years, but I want you to know that I am always thinking about you. I don’t know if it’s your style, but I hope you like it.

  Love, your dad

  I broke out in a full sweat. Inside the box, nestled on a little cotton bed, was a large sterling silver pendant, a seahorse, suspended from a black silk cord. A seahorse. It was beautiful, the spine studded with small black pearls, the tail reaching up to curl around the cord. Classy and hip. A seriously legitimate work of art.

  Fin’s voice: “Minerva? Is anybody else in there? If anybody’s in there, this is your warning. I’m coming in.”

  Sweat was dripping down my neck, under my hat, and under my arms. My lungs felt like heavy sponges. I pushed open the stall door just as Fin was coming in.

  “So?” he asked.

  I put the box and cards in my backpack, threw the FedEx envelope into the trash, and walked out.

  He followed. “Let it out, Minerva. Talk to me.”

  I kept walking, yanking off my scarf and hat.

  “Minerva …” He grabbed my arm.

  “It’s him,” I said, pulling my arm out of my coat.

  “What did he say? What was in there? Minerva! That is a truly hideous sweater. You got it from Pat, didn’t you? She made you wear it?” His face fell. “Aw, you didn’t get the ukulele, did you?” />
  I stopped. “He gave me a necklace.” I pulled out the box and opened it.

  “It’s gorgeous. It’s a seahorse! You love seahorses. Remember, I gave you that seahorse jewelry box for your birthday? We were, like, seven. This looks so expensive!” His voice was gleeful.

  He was about to take it out, but I put the lid on and gave him a withering look. “I have hated his guts as far back as I can remember. He left when I was two. Am I supposed to forgive him because he suddenly gives me some jewelry? This just makes me hate him even more.”

  “Look at it this way. He owes you big-time, and this is a start.”

  “I don’t want it.”

  “Sell it and buy your uke with it.”

  “I’m not buying my uke with his money. It’ll have bad juju. I don’t want anything to do with him.”

  Fin tugged my arm. “Please tell me you’re going to benefit financially from this.”

  I bolted toward my locker.

  “Sorry, Minerva. Was there a letter?” He followed, picking up my coat, which was dragging on the floor.

  I stopped, and he tried to give me a hug, but I pulled away and went to my locker. He followed, trying to get me to talk. I stuffed in all my outerwear — including the sweater — and then took off to class.

  He called after me. “Wait!”

  I turned.

  He pulled a notebook-size gift out of his backpack and handed it to me. “We can talk about it after school. Come to the audition. It’ll take your mind off all this.”

  The gift was wrapped in a hilarious old poster of SpongeBob, and he gave it with a smile so sweet I had to look away. I turned, ran into my first-period classroom, sat down, and unwrapped the present. A book. Ukulele Love: How to Play Big Songs on a Tiny Instrument.

  I choked back a sob, and a gurgle came out.

  “What’s her problem?” Rick Rogan, the idiot who sat next to me, asked.

  “She’s sad because the Ugly Club elected someone else as president,” his idiot friend said.

  Yep. People are mean.