by Lisa Graff
Brendan and Andre were outside too, but they weren’t doing any hugging and shrieking. They were mostly sulking over by the garbage cans, whispering to each other and shooting the rest of the group angry looks. With his black cape, Francine thought, Brendan looked rather like a supervillain.
“You did it!” Natalie squealed. “You guys totally did it, I know you did. There wasn’t anything as good as that crazy machine. Did you see Samson when he grabbed that granola bar? Everyone loved it. We’ll get the money for sure!”
“Ooh, don’t say that yet,” Emma warned, her hands balled up inside the sleeves of her sweater. Her breath came out in puffs as she spoke. “What if it doesn’t come true now ’cause you just said that? Better knock on mud.”
“What?” Luis asked.
“She means knock on wood,” Alicia explained.
“Yeah,” Emma replied. “Wood. Right.”
Francine twisted the empty plastic cup from their talent show act in her hands, watching the tiny trail of milk curl around the bottom. As cold as she was, she was pretty sure she had never felt happier.
“So,” Luis said, “I guess if you guys really do win the talent show, then you’ll both be news anchors, right?” Francine looked at Kansas, and Kansas looked at her, but neither of them said anything. “Because you’re tied?” Luis went on. “Nine to nine, I think.”
“That would be awesome,” Emma said, “both you guys doing the announcements.”
“Yeah,” Alicia agreed. “I heard you guys were really funny last week.”
As the rest of the group jabbered on and on about how great Media Club would be with Kansas and Francine as co-anchors, Francine stayed silent. So this was it, she thought. After all her hard work, she’d be stuck next to Kansas Bloom after all.
Well, it could have been worse. Maybe, with Kansas next to her, she’d be able to get over her stage fright. Maybe, one day, she’d actually feel as comfortable in front of the camera as she did behind it.
When Francine looked up, she saw Kansas watch-
ing her.
“What?” she said.
Kansas stuck his hands deep in his pockets. “You should do it,” he told her. His voice was so low that Francine didn’t think anyone else had heard him. “News anchor, I mean. You should do it by yourself.”
“What?” Francine squinted at him. “But you’re so good at it. Calm and …” He must have been joking, but he didn’t look like he was. He looked dead serious.
“I never really wanted to do it,” Kansas said softly. “I thought it should be you from the beginning. That’s why I voted for you.”
“You what? Why would you do that?” The other members of the Media Club were still gabbing, their voices rising and falling, carrying out into the crisp winter air, but Francine’s mind was reeling.
Kansas shrugged. “You were the hardest worker in the club, I could tell from the first day.”
Francine’s mouth dropped open. “But I thought …” So it hadn’t been Emma or Alicia as her third vote. They’d both picked Kansas. It had been him. And she’d paid him back by trying to wallop him with dares.
“So here’s where you all went off to!”
The members of the Media Club hushed when they realized that Miss Sparks had come outside to join them. Brendan and Andre joined them too, although it looked like they were still brooding.
“I wanted to give everyone the good news,” Miss Sparks told them.
“News?” Natalie asked, shooting up on her tiptoes. “What news?”
Their teacher’s smile grew broader than Francine had ever seen it. “Kansas and Francine’s act won. Can you believe it? A near-unanimous decision. Four votes to one.”
“We won?” Emma squealed. “We get the money?”
“New camera!” Luis cried. And the cheering started all over again.
But not everyone was happy.
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Brendan cried. “That’s such a— What a load of— I quit!” And before anyone had a chance to say anything about it, Brendan had stormed off into the gym, his black cape swishing behind him.
Andre looked around him for a few seconds, not quite sure what to do. Then, slowly, he made up his mind. “Yeah,” he told them all. “I quit too!” And he turned and followed Brendan back to the gym.
“Well,” Miss Sparks said, “that was unfortunate.” But no one else seemed to mind too much.
“I wonder which one of the judges didn’t vote for you,” Alicia said. “You’d have to be nuts not to pick you guys.”
Francine didn’t wonder. Apparently neither did Kansas. “Mrs. Weinmore,” they said together. They both laughed.
“It’s amazing, really,” Miss Sparks said, “and I can’t thank you all enough for pulling this off. We’ll have a brand-new camera when we get back from winter break, and the club will be better than ever.” Francine and the others roared in agreement. “I wonder, though,” she went on, “did we ever settle on who was going to be the news anchor next semester?”
Luis was the one to pipe up first. “I think Francine and Kansas are going to split it,” he told Miss Sparks. “They can be co-anchors.”
“That sounds like a great idea,” Miss Sparks said. “Francine and Kansas, what do you think?”
Kansas shrugged. “Maybe it should just be Francine,” he said. “That would be fine with me.”
The other club members looked surprised at that, but Miss Sparks just nodded. “Francine?” she said. “Do you still want the job?”
Francine tucked a strand of hair—now just the faintest twinge of green—behind her ear. “Maybe we should take another vote,” she said. “Just to be sure. I want to make sure it’s fair.”
“Of course,” Miss Sparks replied.
Next to Francine, Natalie reached over and squeezed her hand. Francine looked at her. This is it, Natalie’s eyes were saying. You’re going to win this time, I know it.
Francine shot her a message back, with her eyes. And because they’d been best friends since baby daycare, Francine was sure Natalie understood what she was thinking.
“You sure?” Natalie whispered.
Francine nodded.
“Okay,” Miss Sparks said. “Let’s do a show of hands. All in favor of Francine as our news anchor next semester?”
Francine was sure that Miss Sparks expected everyone to raise their hands at that. Kansas, too. But news travels fast in the fourth grade, and before Miss Sparks could even get the question out, Natalie had whispered to Emma, who had whispered to Alicia, who had whispered to Luis. And none of them had raised their hands.
Kansas was the only one.
“Huh?” he said, lowering his hand as he looked around him.
“We think you should do it,” Francine told him with a smile. “All by yourself.”
“Huh?” Kansas said again.
Maybe being news anchor had been her plan from the beginning, Francine figured, but sometimes things didn’t go the way you planned them. And sometimes that was the very best thing that could happen.
“You deserve it,” she told Kansas. “You’re really good at it, and anyway, it turns out I kind of miss being camerawoman.”
“But—”
“All in favor?” Miss Sparks asked.
That time all the hands went up—all except Kansas’s.
“Well,” Miss Sparks said, “I guess that’s it, then. Five to one. Congratulations, Kansas.”
“B-but”—Kansas stuttered—“but I … Francine should really … But you’ve wanted to be news anchor forever.”
At that, Francine shrugged. “I guess I just found a new way to be happy,” she said.
And she turned, smiling a warm little smile to herself, and walked back toward the gym door to find her parents.
30.
A PIECE OF CAKE
Kansas’s mother had changed shifts at the gift shop so that she could go to what Ginny was now calling “Mommy and Me and Mrs. Muñoz Yoga.” Which meant that when she drop
ped Kansas off at Luis’s birthday party on Sunday, he was a little early.
Well, two hours early.
“Hey, Kansas!” Luis greeted him at the door. “Thanks for coming early to help decorate. Here, put these on.” He handed Kansas a pair of Hulk hands, two giant green foam fists, and Kansas slipped them on. Luis had a pair of his own. “Smash, Hulk, smash!” he cried, jabbing Kansas with them.
Kansas laughed. “How’re we supposed to decorate with these on?” Each of the hands was as big as his head.
Luis just shrugged. “Well, really my mom’s doing most of it because she’s afraid I’ll mess stuff up. She told us to stay out of her hair. She’s kind of freaking out, actually.”
“How do you freak out about a birthday party?” Kansas asked.
“You’ll see. Come on, I want to show you my room.” And Luis led Kansas down the hallway, smashing him with his Hulk fists the whole way.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” Luis said when they got to his bedroom. It was full of more comic book stuff than Kansas had ever seen in his life—Wolverine action figures climbing up the bookshelf, Spider-Man posters stuck to the walls, and a menacing Green Goblin hanging from the ceiling. Kansas could already tell he was going to be coming over to Luis’s house a lot. “Here.” Luis thrust a yellow envelope at him.
Kansas stuck one Hulk hand under his armpit and yanked it off, then took the envelope from Luis. “What’s this?”
“The photos I took. Of all your dares.” Luis sat down on the bed, and Kansas sat next to him, pulling out the pictures. “Some of them are pretty awesome.”
Kansas looked. There he was, utterly and totally freaked out in Ginny’s tutu, standing in front of the class next to Miss Sparks and a green-haired Francine. In the next picture he was sitting at the lunch table, his chin tilted toward the sky as he howled like a wolf. Kansas grinned as he flipped through them. All the dares were there—the volleyball tryouts, the ice cube on his arm. There was even a photo of him, blurry and spinning, on his first day as news anchor, just as he began to puke.
“These are really good,” he told Luis. He tucked the photos back into the envelope.
“If you want,” Luis told him, “I’ll be your professional photographer. Any more dares you do, you just let me know.”
“Thanks,” Kansas replied. “But I think I might be done with dares for a while.” After all, he thought, he had an image to maintain now. He was Media Club’s new announcer, starting in just two weeks—and, much to his surprise, he was actually looking forward to it.
“Boys!” There was a call from the hallway. “Boys?” Luis’s mom poked her head inside the room. “I need your help.”
From the bed, Luis perked his head up. “Yeah?”
“Well, the bakery dropped off your birthday cake,” she explained, “and it’s not exactly … what I asked for.”
“What do you mean?” Luis asked. “They did something wrong?”
“Mmmm …” Luis’s mother pressed her lips together. “Let’s just say that I ordered a vanilla Spider-Man cake with chocolate frosting that says ‘Happy Birthday, Luis’ on it …”
“Yeah?”
“And I got a chocolate spider cake with vanilla frosting that says ‘Happy Birthday, Luisa’ on it.”
Luis snorted. “There’s spiders on it?”
“Crawling out of the cake like they’re trying to escape the exterminator.”
“Cool!” Luis cried. He looked at Kansas, and Kansas laughed.
“It is not cool,” his mother replied. “It’s not what I— Anyway, they’re going to bring us a new one.”
“Okay,” Luis said. “What should we do to help?”
His mother tapped her chin. “Well,” she said, her serious look turning into a smile, “I thought you and Kansas might like to help get rid of the first one.”
Kansas looked at Luis. Was his mom saying what he thought she was saying?
“You mean,” Luis said slowly, “you want us to eat the cake?”
She laughed. “That’s what I was thinking. Wouldn’t want it to go to waste. After all, it’s”—she looked at her watch—“nine thirty in the morning.”
Luis rocketed up off the bed. “That sounds like cake-eating time to me! What do you think, Kansas?”
Kansas grinned. “Sounds good, Luisa!” And they raced down the hall.
“Hey,” Kansas said when they were sitting at the table, two tall glasses of milk and an entire cake laid out before them. It was absolutely crawling with black frosting spiders. “I was thinking.” He picked up a fork and dug into the creamy white frosting. Delicious. “You should come over to my house next week and play basketball.”
Luis was already on his fourth bite, his lips speckled with chocolate cake crumbs. “Sure,” he said. “Except I kinda stink at it.”
“You can be on Mr. Muñoz’s team. He keeps trying to play me, and he needs help.”
“Cool,” Luis replied. He shoveled down more cake. “I’m glad you could come to my party. I mean, I’m sorry you couldn’t go camping, but …”
“I’m not,” Kansas said. And as soon as the words came out of his mouth, he knew they were true. He wasn’t mad at Ricky and Will anymore, he realized, not really. If they wanted to be friends with him again, that would be fine. But in the meantime, he had plenty of friends right here in California.
It had taken him a while to realize it, Kansas thought as he chugged down a gulp of milk, but Ginny had been wrong, that day in the hospital. We don’t need anybody, that’s what she’d said. And at the time, Kansas had agreed. But it turned out that Kansas did need people.
It just wasn’t always the ones he’d expected.
“Hey,” Luis said suddenly, “I bet you can’t eat this entire piece of cake right here”—he motioned with his fork—“before I can eat this part.”
Kansas raised an eyebrow. It was a very large piece of cake, about as big as his hand. He took a long swig of milk and thought about it. “I bet I can,” he said, setting his glass down with a thunk.
“Oh, yeah?” A smile stretched across Luis’s face. “I double dog dare you.”
