My Life in Dioramas

by Tara Altebrando

  Praise for

  THE BATTLE OF DARCY LANE

  by TARA ALTEBRANDO:

  “Readers searching for something similar to Beverly Cleary or Judy Blume should look no further.”

  —Booklist

  “Nice girls, mean girls, in-between girls—this is a friendship story like no other.”

  —Lauren Myracle, New York Times bestselling author of The Winnie Years series

  “It’s a smart, sensitive portrait of an age when change is in the air.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A compassionate and honest look at the heart and mind of a twelve-year-old girl and the battleground of middle-school friendship.”

  —Natalie Standiford, author of The Secret Tree and Switched at Birthday

  “[A] charming and authentic first purchase.”

  —School Library Journal

  “Sweet humor, deftly written characters, and a realistic plot make this a great story.”

  —Children’s Literature

  “This book would be a safe read for girls on the verge of adolescence or struggling with friendships.”

  —VOYA

  “The summer doldrums, the buzzing of the seasonal cicada swarm, and the angst and rivalry of adolescence converge in this story told through elegant prose and authentic dialogue.”

  —ForeWord Reviews

  Text copyright © 2015 by Tara Altebrando

  Illustrations copyright © 2015 by T.L. Bonaddio

  “Semi” copyright © 2004 by Nick Altebrando.

  Lyrics used with permission.

  All rights reserved under the Pan-American and International Copyright Conventions

  Printed in the United States

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the publisher.

  Books published by Running Press are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the United States by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, or call (800) 810-4145, ext. 5000, or e-mail special.markets@perseusbooks.com.

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014949682

  E-book ISBN 978-0-7624-5682-6

  987654321

  Digit on the right indicates the number of this printing

  Cover and interior design by T.L. Bonaddio

  Edited by Lisa Cheng

  Typography: Museo Sans, Museo Slab, Bahiana, Helvetica Neue, Emmascript, Extreme, and Archer

  Published by Running Press Kids

  An Imprint of Running Press Book Publishers

  A Member of the Perseus Books Group

  2300 Chestnut Street

  Philadelphia, PA 19103–4371

  Visit us on the web!

  www.runningpress.com/rpkids

  FOR ELLIE AND VIOLET. AGAIN.

  In fact, I now fear you will never let me dedicate a book to anyone else.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Acknowledgments

  1.

  “Come on!” I said. “Come on!”

  The school bus groaned to a halt in front of Big Red, which was what everybody called my house, because it was big and you guessed it. I got up and bolted down the aisle, throwing my backpack onto one shoulder and calling out, “See ya!” to Stella and Naveen and anyone else who was listening, and “Thanks” to our driver, Gus. Then I jumped down onto the gravel driveway and went through the gate of the white picket fence, which we always left open, and up the three steps to the front porch and through the front door, which had an anchor knocker that no one ever used. I went straight into the old bathroom and was careful to close and lock the door because otherwise it opened on its own, which meant the mailman could see you through the window next to the front door.

  A stinkbug sat perched on top of the T.P. roll so I shrieked, took off my shoe, whacked it, and yelled, “URRRRRGH!” Then I scooped it into the trash with a big wad of paper. I flushed just as the stinkbug, true to its name, started to make the room smell sour.

  Back in the foyer, I grabbed my backpack and hurried through the dining room and into the kitchen, where I stopped to pet our very old, very big, very white dog, Angus, who was lying in a heap by the kitchen table, where my parents were sitting.

  “How’s my favorite daughter?” my mom asked.

  “Still your only daughter!” I said.

  I went through the doorway into the newer section of the house, then upstairs and across the loft that looked down onto the kitchen. I said, “Oh, and Dad, I killed a stinkbug and it’s stinking up the bathroom trash.”

  “Kate,” my father moaned. “You’re not supposed to kill them!”

  “I know,” I said. “But I was peeing and I panicked!”

  I went into my room, where I put my backpack on my desk chair. Lately my mother had been making a fuss about my leaving stuff everywhere and how she wasn’t my servant and on and on. I was making an effort.

  I ran back downstairs and through the kitchen and out the screen door in the dining room to the back porch, where I tapped my mother’s wind chimes to wake their sounds, then took the stairs down to the yard slowly, like I had ever since I’d fallen down them when I was seven and needed seven stitches on my forehead. Past the pear tree and around the vegetable garden toward the barn, the stream was loud—the last snow of the season had finally melted last week—and it sounded excited. Like even it knew that the kittens were here.

  For social studies homework, we were supposed to make a shoebox diorama of a scene from our life. I’d thought about doing a little scene of me sitting on the old metal bench down by the stream, where I liked to race boats or look for frogs and tiny fish. But I was really hoping that Pants had come through for me because a diorama of me and Pants and kittens in a barn would be awesome. I wasn’t sure Mrs. Nagano and the rest of the class would appreciate my current first runner-up idea—a little scene of my mom and dad fighting about money at the kitchen table while Angus and I looked down from the loft.

  I crossed my fingers as I dragged the old barn door open and went past my ballet barre into the part of the barn that Dad had started turning into a guesthouse a while back. I heard teeny, tiny mews as I peeked around the corner.

  Pants and her one-two-three-four-five new kittens had made a little home for themselves in an area that had been framed out to one day be a bathroom. For a bed, they were using a piece of insulation that had fallen out of the unfinished wall.

  I squealed and Pants raised her head. Realizing it was only me, she put it back down. I’d named her when I was four—her back legs were white, making it look like she was wearing pants—but she wasn’t our pet. Not like Angus. She
just lived in our woods and sometimes in the barn. We never fed her or anything but she did okay on her own and her kittens (or at least a few of them) probably would, too.

  “Congratulations, Mama Pants,” I said, then went inside to tell my parents the news.

  Dad was putting down his phone and was saying to Mom, “Well, it’s done. It’ll go up tomorrow.”

  They both looked miserable when they spotted me.

  “What’ll go up?” I asked. If I got to work right away I could finish my diorama in time so I could still go out and scooter on the tennis court, which wasn’t actually a tennis court—just a big blacktop. My parents thought it was funny to call it a tennis court but I’d never been sure why.

  “Honey.” My mom came and took my hand and guided me over to the table.

  “Your father and I—” She paused and looked at my dad. He raised his eyebrows and she sighed and took her long hair and twisted it to fall over one shoulder. “There’s no easy way to say this.”

  I’d imagined this a bunch of times because of all that fighting.

  Drumroll, please . . .

  THE DIVORCE.

  Just a few nights ago, I’d climbed into bed with my headphones and phone, listened to the song that brought my parents together, and imagined how it all might end. The song’s called “Semi” and my dad wrote it when he was in an indie rock back that used to play all over New York City and up and down the East Coast. They were a guitar band, but for “Semi,” Dad heard a part for a violin in his head. So he’d put an ad in an arts paper and my mother, who was trying to make a living as a violinist at the time, answered and helped finish the song. She started coming to gigs to play with the band on “Semi” and pretty soon they were married. Listening to the song made me feel sad that maybe their love story was coming to an end. But that didn’t explain the phone call.

  “We’re selling the house, Kate.” My dad held my gaze.

  Everything went very still.

  Through the open window I heard the stream surge.

  It made no sense.

  We loved Big Red.

  Everybody loved it.

  Me, my parents, Angus, our relatives, my friends, my parents’ friends—pretty much anybody who had ever walked through the door. This was where we had big family reunions where people pitched tents in the yard and all the cousins stayed up late watching movies on a sheet hung between two weeping willows. This was where me and Stella and Naveen spent long summer days jumping rope on the tennis court and having picnics on the little island that formed when the stream split in two during the high season.

  “But why?” I asked.

  “It’s too much house for us,” Dad said. “We need to downsize.”

  It was true that it was a big house for just the three of us and Angus, but that had never bothered anyone before. One of my mom’s favorite jokes was that we had a “napping room,” which was a guest room, of course, but she really did like to nap there.

  A lot, lately, come to think of it.

  “But where will we live?” I asked.

  My parents passed a look back and forth.

  “We’re not actually sure,” Dad said.

  “We’re probably moving in with your grandma and grandpa for a little while,” my mom said. “I’ll take a little break from work or maybe do some stuff remotely, if I can, and your dad can freelance from there. Until we can figure some things out.”

  My mom’s parents lived about an hour away. We went to their house for dinner maybe once a month and sometimes my aunt Michelle and uncle Keith would be there with my cousins Tom and James, but . . . living with them?

  None of this made sense.

  “But this is where my friends are,” I said. “Where my school is, and my dance classes and, well, everything.”

  If we were living an hour away, how would that even work?

  “We’re not happy about it either,” my dad said.

  “Then why are you doing it?” I asked, my voice loud.

  “It’s complicated, Kate.” He took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes.

  “Use small words.” Now louder.

  “We know you’re upset,” Mom said, “but it’s no reason to be fresh.”

  Across the street, Troy, who’d gotten his license about a year ago, was pulling out of his family’s driveway, car radio blasting.

  What else was there to say or do?

  Cry, maybe?

  Scream?

  For a second I wished they were getting a divorce. I felt like it would be better than this.

  “So! We need to get the house ready to show.” My mom got up and started to straighten the utensils in a jar marked UTENSILS on the countertop. “And we’ll need to think up some fun stuff to do when the agent is showing the place, okay? There’s an open house scheduled for Sunday so we’ll need to clear out.”

  “This can’t be happening.” I stormed out of the room.

  “Kate!” my dad called, but I heard my mom say, “Let her go.”

  So I went up the new stairs and across the loft and said to them, “Oh, and by the way, Pants had kittens.”

  I slammed the door to my room.

  Grabbing my phone and falling onto the bed, I texted Stella, My life is over.

  She wrote back, ???

  I tapped out, Selling Big Red, and the words got blurry because tears were forming in my eyes. Moving. Don’t even know where.

  I couldn’t even text about it anymore. I couldn’t even see. I managed, Gotta go. Bye.

  C U tmorrow, she said. Hugs.

  A stinkbug slowly crawled out of the shoebox I’d set aside for my diorama.

  2.

  When Angus woke me up with a series of cool, sandpapery licks on my right hand, I was still in yesterday’s clothes. But my lamp was off, so someone had come up to check on me. I could feel stiff skin and dried tears on my temples and cheeks.

  So it wasn’t all a bad dream.

  I didn’t move to get up.

  What was the point?

  I just lay there and watched a stinkbug inch up a windowpane.

  I’d started thinking of them as the zombies of the insect world since they were so vacant seeming. They’d invaded the house through ripped screens and badly sealed doors last fall. Now that it was the last week of March and we’d had a few warm days, they were coming out of hibernation, trying to get back outside. In spite of my dad’s instructions to flush them alive or escort them outside in a gently folded paper towel or tissue, my preferred method of dealing was actually smushing, which meant dealing with the foul odor. But it felt too early in the morning for that kind of thing, which probably explained why my parents had stopped sweeping up the dead flies that kept appearing in their room every morning. I didn’t even drink coffee but it seemed like you should at least be able to have a cup before killing or cleaning up a bug.

  Angus passed by with another bunch of licks. “Quit it.”

  He whimpered as he walked in a circle and settled on the braided carpet at the foot of my bed. The sloped ceilings above me looked neat but were actually pretty annoying since I couldn’t make my bed without hitting my head. The room had two doors and two tiny closets, and the windows were small and opened in, like cabinet doors, which meant you couldn’t put any furniture in front of them.

  My room was in the old part of the house. Like really old. Like 1900 or before. But I loved it anyway. I’d lined the mantel of the closed-up fireplace with my collection of tiny glass-blown animals, and, somehow, the room always felt like a secret.

  “Kate!” my mom called out. “The bus is going to be here in ten.”

  Maybe I could move some furniture, barricade myself in. My parents would have to update whatever listing they’d written to say the house came with a number of unique features, including its very own twelve-year-old girl.

  I pictured my mom sitting with her coffee in the living room, feet tucked beneath her on the butterfly-patterned chair, looking out all of the massive windows facing the backyard
to see if any deer or geese were going to parade through this morning. That part of the house was added on by the people who lived here before us and the vibe they were going for was obviously “ski lodge,” with big knobby wooden beams everywhere you turned. Since my parents loved to ski and rock climb and hike and all that stuff, it made sense they picked this house over the other ones they looked at when I was a baby.

  “Kate!” Mom called again.

  “I heard you!” I shouted, then I got up and changed my clothes. I spotted the shoebox while I quickly, barely brushed my hair, but it was too late for a diorama.

  I gave Angus a quick rub behind the ears, then grabbed my backpack and went downstairs. I took a banana from the bowl on the kitchen table and walked to the end of the driveway, aka the bus stop.

  My mom appeared with her coffee on the front porch and leaned against a post. Her blue dress, the white porch, the red house, the sun shining on her long, wavy blonde hair, the steam coming off her coffee mug. It was somehow this classic American-looking scene—a photo meant for a museum, or maybe the diorama I should have made. I couldn’t imagine her living anywhere else.

  She called out, “We’ll talk more later, honey. Okay?” Then she waved weakly.

  I didn’t wave back. The bus came and I got on and slid into my usual seat next to Stella.

  She said, “Tell me everything.”

  “They’re selling Big Red.” It felt more real now that I was actually looking at Stella and saying those words and watching the house disappear from view. “They don’t even know where we’re moving to so we might move in with my grandparents for a while. Which basically means I’m going to be homeless.”

  “I don’t get it.” Stella shook her head. “Why?”

  “I have no idea!”

  But then I thought of all the talking about money and the envelopes coming to the house with red stamps on them that said FINAL NOTICE, and the way the whole place had started to feel more run down lately. Like the front porch paint was peeling, and the washer and dryer were, my mom had been joking, just one step up from a washboard. The dryer knob had broken off so now there was an adjustable wrench in its place and only one setting—high heat—that worked. And why hadn’t my father ever finished the guesthouse, anyway?