by Lisa Graff
Mostly, her dad drew portraits and cityscapes, sketched with his tiny, precise crosshatch strokes. But lately he’d taken to drawing curious sorts of inventions—chain reactions of objects and events that all led to one simple, final task. He’d told Francine once that they were called “Rube Goldberg” machines, after some famous dead guy, but Francine liked to think of them as her father’s own creations. In his latest, a bowling ball was poised at the top of a large ramp, and if it were pushed, it would crash down-down-down into a stack of books, which would topple over to squeeze against a bottle of dish soap, which would pour out into a hanging bucket. When the bucket got heavy with soap, it would fall on top of one end of a seesaw, which would flop a teddy bear into the air, sending it careening into a basket of Ping-Pong balls … There were dozens of steps, and Francine pored over every one of them, until she got to the very last, where a toy car knocked over a broomstick that pushed down the lever on a toaster. Francine grinned as she counted—twenty-seven steps just to make a piece of toast.
“You think we could make one of these for real someday?” she asked her dad.
He gazed for a moment at the page in front of him. “Maybe. It would be fun, wouldn’t it?”
“Totally.”
He shut the sketchbook and ran his hand over the cover. “So this isn’t so bad, right?” he said. “Just the two of us? Well”—he nodded at Samson—“two and a half? It’s kind of cozy.”
Francine shifted in her chair. It was sort of nice to have her dad to herself for a change. “I guess,” she replied. “But …” What he needed to do was come back home as soon as possible. “I don’t think you should stay here forever, though.”
“I’m glad you think that too,” her dad said.
“You are?”
He nodded. “I’ve found an apartment. I move in on Sunday. I think you’ll really like it.”
Francine pulled another guinea pig treat out of her pocket and fed it to Samson. When he finished that one, she gave him another, before he could even squeak about it. “I think he’s gotten a little bigger the past few weeks, don’t you?” Francine said, examining Samson’s belly. “Maybe he needs to go on a diet.”
“Francine?” her father said softly. “Pea pod? You know that none of this is about you, right? Your mother and I still love you. We always will. We’ll never stop being your parents, no matter what.”
Francine just shrugged. Of course her parents loved her. That was their job. It was the way they were doing their job that bothered her. Francine might only be nine years old, but she already knew that if things weren’t working out the way you planned, then you fixed them. If you weren’t getting the grade you wanted in school, then you asked the teacher for extra credit. If your guinea pig wasn’t doing well in his obstacle course, then you increased his training. Her parents just weren’t trying hard enough. Because, sure, they argued sometimes, but no more than most people’s parents. She’d seen Natalie’s parents argue. Emma’s, too. Alicia’s parents practically murdered each other every time they drove the girls to soccer practice. But none of them were getting a divorce, now, were they? If only Francine knew the right thing to say, the exact right thing to do, she could fix everything. But she couldn’t think of the exact right thing.
“Can we have pizza for dinner?” That’s what she thought of.
Her father blinked at her for a moment, then stood and kissed Francine on the forehead. He crossed the room to get his cell. “Pepperoni and olives?”
Francine nodded. “With extra cheese.”
Her father flipped through the takeout menus on the side table until he found the right one. When Francine’s mom was in charge of dinner, they never ordered out, but Francine’s dad couldn’t even cook pasta without ruining it. “So how was school today?” he asked, while he was on hold with the pizza place. “How are things going with that boy—what’s his name, Arizona? Did you have to do a dare today? Did they vote you news anchor yet?”
Francine placed Samson carefully back in his cage. “His name’s Kansas,” she told her father. And then, between the pizza ordering and the delivery, she filled him in on her entire miserable day—minus some tiny details that she thought her dad might not want to hear about, like the part about the boys’ bathroom and the principal’s office.
“And he just did the dare like it was nothing!” she said, taking a bite out of her piping hot slice of pizza. “Can you believe that? He’s never going to quit, and he doesn’t even care about being news anchor, either. I can tell.”
Francine’s father offered Francine a napkin to wipe the pizza sauce off her chin. “That sounds pretty rough, pea pod. But maybe this Kansas kid isn’t as awful as you think he is. It can’t be easy, being the new kid in school.”
“Dad. You can’t be serious. He’s awful. He thinks he’s so cute and so good at everything.”
“All I’m saying is that there’s a second point of view to every story.” Her father walked to the sink to refill their plastic cups with water. “Maybe you should give him more of a chance. Who knows? Maybe he just wants to be fr—”
Her father was cut off when, from the center of the table, his cell phone began ringing. Together, Francine and her dad dug through the mound of papers and books and pizza plates to find it.
“Hello?” her father said, when at last he’d found the phone and answered it. Francine couldn’t hear the voice on the other end, but she knew just from the look on her dad’s face that it was someone he hadn’t expected. “Yes,” he said, raising an eyebrow at her. “This is Francine’s father.”
Francine’s eyes went wide. Who was calling about her? Was it Mrs. Weinmore, calling to report her visit to the office?
But it couldn’t be, because her dad was smiling. Laughing, almost. “Hold on,” he said into the phone. “She’s right here.” And he handed the phone to Francine.
“Who is it?” she asked. No one ever called her on her dad’s cell.
Her dad raised his eyebrows in that all-knowing fatherly way of his that Francine found so annoying. “It’s Kansas,” he told her.
Kansas?
Maybe her dad was right, Francine thought, looking at the phone in his hand. Maybe Kansas did just want to be friends. Maybe he wasn’t so terrible after all.
She took the phone.
“Hello?”
10.
A BASKETBALL
Kansas typed his message, stared at it for a moment, and then pushed Enter.
kansas_the_champ: Hey francine. yeah this is me.
In the kitchen Kansas could hear his mother putting away the Post-its in the drawer and sitting back down at the table. Probably back to studying, without even noticing he was gone. Kansas gazed at the computer screen. Twenty seconds passed. Then thirty. Still no reply from Francine.
Kansas took a deep breath. He had to type it, he decided. It was now or never. Before he chickened out. He needed to tell Francine that he’d read her note from the office and that his parents were getting divorced too. It would be nice to finally be able to talk to someone about his parents, someone who would understand. He just hoped she wouldn’t be too mad about the note.
But Kansas didn’t get a chance to type a single word, because suddenly there was another loud bloop! and a second message popped up from Francine.
FRANCINEHALLATA: we all took a vote on ur next dare
Kansas squinted as he read the words. Another message popped up. Then another.
FRANCINEHALLATA: i 2x dog dare u to wear ur sisters tutu to school tmrw
FRANCINEHALLATA: all day
What Kansas needed was to cool off. He couldn’t believe there had been a second in the day when he thought he might actually tell Francine about his parents. All she cared about was the stupid Media Club and being the stupid news anchor. He’d wanted to make up a super-mean dare for her too, but he hadn’t gotten a chance, because she’d logged out of her IM right away.
He was planning on riding his bike, but the first thing he saw when
he got outside was his basketball, sitting cold and lonely by the corner of the house. Ginny must’ve been playing with it. Which was stupid, really, because there was no basketball hoop. They’d had a hoop at their old house, and their mom had insisted they take it with them, but their new house didn’t have a driveway, so there was nowhere to put it up. Now the hoop remained stuffed inside one of the unpacked boxes. Which, as far as Kansas was concerned, was where it could stay forever.
Kansas stood in front of the screen door for a long while, just staring at the basketball. Then, almost reluctantly, he picked it up. It did feel pretty good. He tossed it up in the air and caught it, one-handed. Then he tossed it against the side of the house, at a spot just above his and Ginny’s window, and grabbed it as it bounced back his way.
As Kansas threw the ball—bounce and catch, bounce and catch—his thoughts began to focus on the dare war. Kansas needed to think of something truly awful for Francine to do, something even worse than wearing your little sister’s tutu.
But what?
Kansas aimed at the spot on the wall again—there was a scuff mark there now, exactly basketball-sized, and the dirt underneath his bedroom window was packed enough that he could almost pretend like he was dribbling. Kansas used to love playing basketball. Back in Oregon, he had even been on his school’s basketball team. He’d been good too. Really good. But that was when his dad had been around to help him practice, to show up at games, to cheer for him. Kansas didn’t really feel like playing much anymore.
He bent down low and dribbled five times. Then he grabbed the ball in both hands, straightened up, and shot.
The basketball hit the siding at a bad angle and flew across the yard, thumping into the Muñozes’ fence next door. Kansas crossed the brown patches of grass to retrieve it.
“Hello, young man!”
Poking over the top of the fence was the head of a gray-bearded old man in a fishing cap. “Um, hey,” Kansas said. He snatched up his ball.
“You must be Ginny’s brother,” the man said. “I’m Ernie Muñoz. I believe you know my wife, Ramona.”
“Oh.” Kansas nodded. He’d heard Ginny talking about Mr. Muñoz, from when she went over there, but Kansas hadn’t met him before. He’d just heard the sound of buzzing and hammering from the other side of the fence. Ginny said the guy was some kind of carpenter. “Yeah. Hey.” Kansas was just turning around to go back in the house when he realized maybe he was being rude. And maybe he shouldn’t be. He turned around. “I’m Kansas,” he said.
“Nice to meet you, Kansas.”
“You too.”
“I see you have a basketball there.”
This was the problem with old people, Kansas thought. They always wanted to talk to you forever, and they always said really lame stuff like, “I see you have a basketball there.” What else would it be? A turnip?
“Uh, yeah.”
Mr. Muñoz scratched his beard. “I saw you tossing it against the house earlier. Made quite a racket.”
“Oh.” So that’s what this was about. Kansas had probably screwed up the old guy’s nap or something. “Sorry. I have a hoop from our old house but there’s nowhere to put it up.” He motioned to the dirt around him.
Mr. Muñoz nodded thoughtfully and scratched at his beard again. Kansas was beginning to wonder if maybe his beard itched a lot, that maybe he had beard dandruff or something, and then he started wondering if he should make Francine wear a fake beard all day. But that wasn’t mean enough.
“You know,” Mr. Muñoz told him, after a bit more scratching, “there’s plenty of room above our garage for a hoop, if you’d care to put it there.”
Kansas looked over to the Muñozes’ driveway. There was room for a hoop there, prime real estate. But putting your basketball hoop up on someone else’s house was just … weird. Wasn’t it? “I’d have to ask the missus, of course,” Mr. Muñoz went on. “But I’m sure she’d be all right with it. She’s taken quite a shine to you and your sister, I think.”
“Oh. Well”—Kansas shrugged—“I don’t know.” What he meant was no, but you really couldn’t say that so bluntly to an old dude with an itchy beard, now, could you? “I’ll have to think about it.” Maybe he could dare Francine to get dandruff? No, that didn’t make any sense …
“Of course. You let me know.”
“Sure thing.” Kansas pressed the ball into his side. “Well, um … I’m gonna go.”
“Okay, Kansas, I’ll see you soon.”
Kansas was just creaking open the front door when he saw it. A patch of grass, peeking out between the cracks of their front step. It looked so strange there, so odd—that patch of green where it didn’t quite belong—that Kansas knew he’d come up with the perfect dare at last.
Kansas raced back into the kitchen and dug his mother’s folder of school stuff out of the junk drawer. He flipped open the cover, then found the right page and scrolled his finger down until he landed on it.
Halata, Francine.
His fingers felt like they were on fire as he punched her parent contact number into the phone. This was going to be perfect, he thought. Perfect. The club hadn’t voted on it yet, but they’d vote tomorrow morning, and it was such a good dare that Kansas was sure everyone would agree to it. Never in a million years would she do it, and then she’d be two points behind and lose the war and her precious news anchor job too. Which was exactly what she deserved.
Francine’s father answered, and Kansas put on his best calm, normal voice. But when Francine picked up, he screwed his face into a sneer, prepared to really wallop her.
“Hello?” she said.
“I double dog dare you,” he replied, with as much growl in his voice as he could muster up, “to dye your hair green for school tomorrow.” And with that, he slammed the phone down.
11.
A bottle of green hair dye
Luckily, the store was open late. And luckily, they sold green hair dye.
Well, Francine wasn’t entirely sure if it was lucky or not. When they were back at the hotel, Francine sitting sideways on the bathroom toilet and her father hovering above her with plastic gloves on and the bottle of green dye in his hands, she began to have second thoughts.
“How long does it take before it comes out again?” she asked. She’d washed and patted her hair dry already, like the instructions on the box said. The damp towel around her shoulders felt like it weighed a hundred pounds.
Her father grabbed the package off the sink and read the back. “Ten washes.”
Francine thought about that. If she went through with it, it would be at least a week—probably two—before her hair was back to its normal color. Two weeks of looking like a human palm tree, every single day at school.
Her father studied her reflection in the mirror. “You sure you really want the news anchor job this badly, pea pod?”
That was one thing Francine didn’t need to think about. TV animal-trainers-to-be were meant to be in front of cameras, not behind them. She nodded, one sharp jerk of her head. Then she took a deep breath. “Do it,” she told her father.
“Okay …,” he said. And Francine watched in the mirror as he tilted the bottle over her head, squeezed, and …
Splat!
Francine Halata could no longer call herself a blonde.
12.
A SPARKLY WHITE TUTU
Kansas had had a lot of nightmares in his life. Nightmares about skeletons chasing him, and having to jump off mile-high cliffs into pits of bubbling lava, and vampires with machine guns for fangs. But wearing his little sister’s sparkly white tutu on his second Friday at his new school turned out to be worse than anything Kansas could have dreamed up in a thousand years. Even for the King of Dares, this one was a doozy.
Kansas walked up the front steps, eyes straight ahead, tugging tight on his backpack straps. He took each step casually and quickly, in a way that said, “Yes, I know I’m wearing a tutu, thank you. I think it looks pretty awesome.” At least he hope
d it said that. But he was pretty sure it didn’t. How could he look awesome in a tutu? He’d worn a plain white T-shirt that morning, thinking that it would blend in and make the tutu less noticeable, but the second Kansas had caught his reflection in the bus window that morning, he’d realized that it didn’t make him less noticeable. It made him look like a swan.
Beside him, Ginny took his hand and squeezed it. “Don’t worry, Kansas,” she told him. “I think you look good. Just like a real ballerina.”
After Kansas dropped Ginny off at Art Club, he focused his eyes on his feet. The waistband of the tutu was too tight, and it itched, too, chafing his belly with every step. And was it just him, or had the hallway gotten longer since yesterday? And more full of kids? Kansas’s senses were suddenly on hyperalert. He could hear every snicker of the swim team over by the lockers, laughing at him. He could feel the air rustling from every mathlete who whipped a head in his direction. And the fingers of all the yearbook members pointing at him were practically in Technicolor. One of the Basketball Club kids over by the gym shouted, “Hey! Nice dress!” And the whole hallway broke out in screams of laughter.
Five feet from Miss Sparks’s door, Kansas felt a tap on his shoulder. He whirled around.
Francine.
“Nice tutu,” she told him.
“Nice hair,” he replied. Her smirk quickly faded into a frown.
Kansas almost couldn’t believe she’d really done it. But she had. Francine’s new green hair hung down in front of her face like vines in a jungle.
“I can’t believe you made me do this,” she said, jabbing a finger toward her head. “You’re so mean. I would never do anything that mean to you.”
“I’m so mean?” Kansas replied.
The door whipped open.
“Why, hello there, you two!” It was Miss Sparks, white teeth flashing. “I thought I heard some students out here. Come inside, won’t you? You both look incredible, by the way.”
Incredible? Kansas was pretty sure that what they looked like was two circus freaks.
