by Lisa Graff
Francine laughed.
From the doorway, Kansas’s mom told them, “I’ll let you two catch up. But just fifteen minutes, okay? Ginny needs her rest.”
“Aw, Mom.”
“Ginny, I don’t want you to overdo it. Be calm, you hear me?”
“Mo-om.”
“Calm.” She shut the door.
Francine peered around the room. There was a small pile of unpacked boxes in the corner, and posters all over the walls. And there was a second bed against the far wall, and a thick line of masking tape separating the two sides.
“You share with Kansas?” Francine asked.
“Yep. There used to be a wall of boxes in the middle, but Kansas took it down. Now it’s just the tape. He loves sharing with me. We’re like best friends.”
“He’s not home?”
“Nah,” Ginny replied. “He’s next door practicing for the talent show.”
“Oh?” Francine sat down gingerly on the edge of the bed, careful not to smush Ginny’s construction paper scraps. “Do you, um, know what his act is?”
“He’s gonna ride a unicycle,” Ginny said, picking up a piece of green paper and aiming her scissors at it. “I think he borrowed it from one of the teachers at school. Won’t that be great?”
Francine frowned. Riding a unicycle was way better than having a guinea pig who could only walk in a straight line. “Yeah,” she agreed. “Great.”
“You wanna help me make a Christmas tree?” Ginny asked her. She passed Francine one of her scraps of green paper. “I wanna make it as tall as the ceiling, but I’m not good at cutting.”
Francine took the paper, and the scissors too. “Sure,” she said. “Why not?”
While Francine cut, Ginny directed her, chattering about Christmas trees and ornaments and all the presents she was going to ask Santa for. And mostly Francine listened. Mostly. But she also thought.
She thought about Kansas riding a unicycle, and how he was probably going to win the talent show. And she thought about how, as soon as he did win, everything that Francine had worked so hard for—becoming the news anchor, beating Kansas in the dare war—was going to be all for nothing. And then she thought about how, in the end, maybe that wasn’t as terrible as she’d thought it would be.
Not that Francine wanted Kansas to win the dare war. Not that she wanted to lose the news anchor job. But at least if Kansas won the talent show, he’d be able to save the Media Club. And maybe saving the club was more important than beating Kansas Bloom. If she could just get back behind a camera, she thought, she’d be pretty happy. Even if it was aimed at Kansas.
After Ginny’s mom came in and told them that it was time for Francine to go home, Francine hugged Ginny good-bye and let herself out the front door. And it was then that she heard the terrible crash from next door.
Screeeeeeeeeeech! THUD.
Francine poked her head over the fence to the neighbor’s driveway, and that’s how she found Kansas—facedown on the concrete beneath a unicycle, his legs splayed at odd angles.
“Are you okay?” she asked, bustling next door to help him up.
Kansas was back on his feet before she got there. “I’m fine,” he grumbled, dusting off the knees of his jeans. “I was just trying a new trick.” He yanked the unicycle up by the seat. “My act’s really good. I’m totally going to beat you.” But Francine could tell, by the way he avoided her gaze as he spoke, that Kansas was lying. His act was just as rotten as hers was.
“Oh,” Francine said. “Good. Mine’s really great too.”
“Great,” Kansas replied. “It’ll be a really good show then.”
“Yeah. Well …” Francine shuffled her feet. It was hard to believe that the Media Club was going to be over for good. Just like that. “Um, well, anyway, I guess I should go.” She gestured vaguely across the street. “I just came to check on Ginny. She’s, um, she seems better today. I was helping her make a Christmas tree.”
Kansas shook his head. “Is she still doing that?”
“Yep. She says she wants to tape it to the wall and glue you guys’ ornaments on it. I tried to tell her they’d probably fall off, but—”
“That’s what I said too!” Kansas cried. Their eyes met briefly, and then Kansas shot his back down to the ground again. “I told her we already have a tree, but she says the one Mom got this year isn’t big enough.” He snorted. “Whoever heard of having two Christmas trees?”
Francine laughed. “I have two Christmas trees,” she told him.
“Really?”
“Yeah. One at my mom’s and one at my dad’s. ’Cause my parents are getting a divorce and—”
Francine stopped talking. Her heart skipped a beat. The words had just tumbled out of her mouth. My parents are getting a divorce. She’d really said it. Out loud. “My parents are getting a divorce,” she said again, just to hear how it sounded.
Kansas kept his eyes on his feet. “I, um, already knew,” he told her.
“You did? How?”
“I read a note you got from the office. I was going to tell you that day you IM’d me, but then you—”
“What are you talking about?” Francine asked. Maybe he’d fallen over one too many times that afternoon. “I never IM’d you. I’m not even allowed to use IM.”
“Sure you did. When you dared me to wear Ginny’s tutu. You were super mean. That’s why I dared you to dye your hair.”
Yep, Kansas had definitely lost it. “I never dared you to do that,” Francine told him.
Kansas froze, his mouth open. He wrenched it closed, then opened it again, slowly. “Really?” he said.
“Really.”
“You swear?”
Francine nodded, and Kansas cocked his head to the side. “Who do you think it was, then?”
Francine shrugged. “No idea.”
“Francine!” There was a call from across the street. Her dad. Francine could see him in the parking lot of their apartment complex.
“Yeah?” Francine shouted back, cupping her hands to her mouth. “What is it?”
“Time to come in, pea pod! It’s getting late.”
For the first time, Francine realized that the sky was dimming—had dimmed. It was dark, murky. She could even make out several stars in the sky.
“Be there in a sec!” she hollered. Her father nodded and hiked back up the stairs to the apartment.
She turned to Kansas. “Look,” she said, before she could stop the words she knew she needed to say. “I know you said your talent show act was really good, but …” Kansas rolled his unicycle slowly back and forth across the driveway, avoiding her gaze. “Well, one of us needs to win, to save the club. And I was thinking”—Francine took a deep breath—“would you maybe want to work together?”
Kansas stopped rolling the unicycle. “Why would you want to work with me?” he said.
“To save the club. I just told you.”
“Is this some sort of trick?” Kansas asked.
“No, it’s—”
“Francine!” It was her father again, leaning his head out the window. “Pea pod!”
“Coming!” She turned back to Kansas. “Just forget it,” she said. “I’ll do it by myself.” Maybe there was still time to train Samson. “I thought maybe you actually cared about the club, but I guess not.”
“I care,” Kansas said.
Francine rolled her eyes. “You hated the club from the very first day. You never even wanted to be in it.”
Kansas pressed his thumb hard into the unicycle seat. “Not everyone can be the star of the club like you, Francine,” he said.
Francine raised an eyebrow. What was he talking about? Francine wasn’t the star of the club. If anyone was the star, it was Alicia. She was the news anchor.
“I want to save the club too, you know,” he told her. “But what am I supposed to do? I can’t even ride a stupid unicycle. You want me to just get up on stage and pour a glass of milk or something? Who would pay two hundred dollars for t
hat?”
Francine blinked.
“What?” Kansas said. “Why are you looking at me like that? Do I have something in my teeth?”
Suddenly Francine’s heart felt a million times lighter, as though all her worries had been lifted away. “I’ve got it,” she said, allowing a smile to stretch across her face. “I know what we’re going to do in the talent show.”
26.
A HAMMER
Of all the tools in Mr. Muñoz’s workshop—the drill, the buzz saw, the grinder—it turned out that the one Kansas liked the best was the hammer. There was something calming about pounding a nail into a piece of wood, feeling the wood give at the very last minute when the nail finally went through.
“Looking good, Kansas,” Mr. Muñoz told him, stepping back into the garage holding two cans of soda. “Coke or Dr Pepper?”
Kansas’s mom never let him have caffeine at night. “Dr Pepper, please,” he said, setting down the hammer. Mr. Muñoz tossed him the can. Kansas caught it, then tapped on the top with his fingernail a few times before popping back the lid. It opened with a satisfying fizz, and Kansas took a good long gulp.
“Why do you tap it?” Mr. Muñoz asked him when Kansas had set his can on the workbench beside him. “Before you open it?”
Kansas readjusted his plastic goggles. “It, like, settles the soda.” He picked up his hammer again, then set a nail against the large piece of plywood, right where Mr. Muñoz had marked it. “The carbonation or whatever. So it won’t spray out when you open it.” Now that Kansas thought about it, he wasn’t sure any of that was true at all. But Will had always done it, so Kansas had too, for as long as he could remember.
“Huh,” Mr. Muñoz said. He tapped a few times on the top of his Coke, then popped the top—no foam. “Well, how ’bout that?”
Kansas and Francine had been coming over to Mr. Muñoz’s workshop every afternoon that week to work on their talent show act. It was a ton of work, and there was no way they could have done it without Mr. Muñoz. Kansas could hardly believe they’d done it at all. It had been three days of measuring, sawing, and nailing, long into the evening, and somehow they were almost completely done. Francine was at her mom’s tonight, so it was up to Kansas to work on the finishing touches.
“So tell me again,” Mr. Muñoz said, strapping on a pair of goggles to match Kansas’s. He picked up a second hammer. “If you guys win the talent show tomorrow night, then you get to read the morning announcements for the rest of the year together? Is that the deal?”
“Sort of,” Kansas told him. “If we win, me and Francine will be tied, nine to nine. But …” Kansas hadn’t told anyone yet about what he’d been thinking the past few days, but he supposed it couldn’t hurt to tell Mr. Muñoz. “I think if we win, I’m going to let Francine be news anchor by herself.”
“Don’t you want to be news anchor?” Mr. Muñoz asked.
Kansas shrugged. He hadn’t wanted it at first, not at all. But sitting behind that desk last Friday had actually been sort of fun—the heat of the lights, the rush of the moment—much more fun than he’d expected. Well, before the barfing and getting suspended part, obviously. But Francine, she’d wanted it all along. So badly. It had been her idea about the talent show too. And she really was the hardest-working member of the club. So Kansas couldn’t help thinking that maybe she deserved it a little more.
“Well, whatever happens,” Mr. Muñoz said, “I’ll be there tomorrow night, front and center. Ramona and I already bought our tickets.”
Kansas squinted at the old man through his goggles. “You’re coming? To the talent show?”
“Of course! You think I’d miss the world’s most amazing talent show act?”
“Oh,” Kansas said. He was concentrating so hard on the piece of wood in front of him that it took him a second to notice that Mr. Muñoz had put down his hammer. “What?” Kansas asked. The old man was looking at him curiously. “Did I mess up? What did I do?”
“No, nothing like that,” Mr. Muñoz said. “I just wanted to be sure that … I thought I might have upset you, that’s all. I shouldn’t have invited myself to your talent show. But I would really like to be there, Kansas, if that’s okay with you.”
Kansas picked up his Dr Pepper and took a long, fizzy gulp. Then another. “You can come, I guess,” he said, “if you really want to.” It was a free country, wasn’t it? Kansas set his soda back down on the workbench. “But, I mean, if something else comes up and you can’t come, I won’t be mad or anything.”
Mr. Muñoz waited until Kansas was looking at him again before he said what he did next. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he told him when their eyes met. “I’ll be there. I promise.”
And even though Kansas knew that promises were easier to break than toothpicks, for some reason, this time, he believed it. He picked up another nail and began to hammer.
27.
A plastic spoon
There were still three hours before the talent show started, but Francine couldn’t stop pacing. She paced on the rug in front of the TV in the living room. What if she and Kansas didn’t pull it off? What would she do without Media Club? She paced in front of the couch. What if they did pull it off? Who would be the news anchor then? Maybe she could convince Kansas to let her do it all by herself. After all, the whole talent show act had been her idea.
Francine had just moved to the kitchen to do more pacing there, when the phone rang. She snatched the cordless off the counter. “Hello?”
“Pea pod! Just the girl I was looking for.”
“Oh, hey, Dad. What’s up? You’re still coming tonight, right?”
“Of course. I just had a thought about Christmas, and I wanted to run it by you real quick.”
“Yeah?” Francine picked a lemon out of the bowl on the counter.
“Well, more of an inspiration, really. I get you for Christmas dinner, right? So I was thinking. I’m no good at turkey like your mother, but how would you feel about pizza?”
“Pizza?” Francine rolled the lemon across the counter. Takeout from Carlino’s did not sound like Christmas.
“Yeah. You remember Mr. Jules at the college? He has a pizza stone, makes his own dough and everything, and he said he’d teach me a few tricks. I’ve been looking up recipes. We can do whatever you want—pesto, Parmesan, even just plain old pepperoni if that floats your boat.”
“Wait. You mean … make the pizza ourselves?” Francine placed the lemon back in the bowl. “But you burn water.”
Her dad laughed. “We’ll make three pizzas,” he said, “in case I wreck the first two.”
Francine allowed herself a tiny smile at that. “Can we flip the dough in the air like those guys on TV?”
“We’ll make nine,” her father replied, “so we can drop at least seven. What do you say? I thought it might be nice to start our own little traditions, just us two.”
Francine thought about that. Christmas wasn’t going to be the same this year, that was for sure. But maybe that wasn’t entirely a terrible thing.
“Yeah,” she said. “That might be okay.”
“Good. I’ll see you soon, pea pod.”
“Bye, Dad.”
When Francine hung up the phone, she saw her mom walking into the kitchen, an empty tea mug in her hands.
“Hey there,” she greeted Francine. “You all set for tonight?”
Francine didn’t answer, just watched her mom walk to the sink and rinse out her mug. All this time, she realized, she’d been looking for the exact right thing to do to get her parents back together again. And all this time, she’d thought she couldn’t because she wasn’t smart enough to figure out what the exact right thing was.
But when Ginny had gotten sick—when she’d eaten that granola bar—Francine had known what to do right away. She hadn’t even needed a second to think about it.
Maybe there wasn’t a solution to fixing Francine’s parents, the way there had been with Ginny and the granola bar. Maybe they we
re going to get a divorce no matter what Francine did.
“Mom?” she said as her mother opened the dishwasher.
“Mm-hmm?”
“Can we go caroling this year? On Christmas Eve? It’s just …” Her mother set the mug on the top rack and turned to look at her. Francine took a deep breath. “We always say we’re gonna go, every year, and we never do. I’m not gonna get to sing with you this year in church and …”
Francine’s mother crossed the kitchen slowly, then wrapped Francine up in a hug. “Absolutely,” she told her, and Francine buried her face in her mother’s sweater. It smelled like lavender soap. “That sounds like a perfect idea.” She lifted up Francine’s face then and inspected her carefully, both hands cupped below her ears. “You are turning into a beautiful young lady, you know that?”
“Mo-om.”
“Even with the green hair.”
Francine laughed.
Her mother kissed her on the forehead. “Anything you need for tonight?” she asked.
“Nah. Everything’s all ready. Kansas and Mr. Muñoz are driving it to the school in Mr. Muñoz’s truck. I said I’d meet them an hour early to set up.”
“Sounds good. You want to see if Natalie’s around? You two could hang out for a few hours, and then we could all drive over together.”
Francine shrugged, which was supposed to mean no, but apparently her mother was not good at reading body language.
“Anything to keep you from pacing,” she said, handing Francine the cordless phone off the counter. “Natalie hasn’t been over in weeks. It will be nice to see her.”
Francine stared at the phone in her hands for a while, then slowly set it down on the counter.
“Sweetie?” her mom said.
“I’m going to get Samson ready for tonight,” Francine told her, heading for the kitchen door. When she reached the stairs, she climbed them two at a time.
Kansas was late.
Francine had been sitting on the props table behind the stage of the school auditorium for fifteen minutes, waiting for him, but he hadn’t shown up yet. Francine huffed. This was just like Kansas, she thought. You go and trust him for one second, and then he was late.
