My Life in Dioramas

by Tara Altebrando

  I pushed down the lump in my throat. “I guess we can’t afford it?”

  Stella’s eyes went wide and she said, “Stiiiinks.”

  Which reminded me about the stinkbug I’d forgotten to get rid of.

  Great.

  We were quiet for a while—both just looking out the windows. Everywhere you looked were apple trees, sometimes with pear trees thrown in just to be crazy.

  Neither of my parents had straight-up, nine-to-five, Monday-to-Friday jobs and I’d always thought that was cool. My dad was a freelance graphic designer who still occasionally wrote songs. His old college roommate, Shay, was a music manager and had gotten a few of them placed on TV shows I’d never heard of and that mostly weren’t on the air anymore, except for one that went into reruns. My dad got checks in the mail sometimes, but not for a ton of money.

  My mother worked part-time for a local event planner, mostly organizing small conferences, regional networking dinners, or team-building workshops, so that was pretty low-key, too. It meant we could do fun stuff after school, and when we had snow days or random school holidays and half days, my parents were pretty much giddy and planning some adventure. During the summer, it was almost as if neither of them worked at all. But it had never dawned on me that when they weren’t working, they weren’t making money. Not like Stella’s dad, who drove to Poughkeepsie every morning and got on a train to New York City. Not like Naveen’s dad, who managed a bank, and mom, who was a professor at the state university in town.

  I shifted in my seat and Stella said, “Oh, careful,” then moved a bag she was holding by her feet so it was farther away from me. “Hey, where’s your diorama?”

  “Didn’t do it.” The empty box was still on the floor of my room. Was Angus still lying there on the rug, or had he moved to the front porch to get some sun? Had he sniffed the shoebox? Scared the stinkbug away?

  “Nagano’s gonna flip,” Stella said.

  “Considering that my whole life is ruined, that’s the last thing I’m worried about.” I’d never skipped any homework before, but didn’t want to admit being nervous. “What does it matter anyway? Somebody could buy my house like this weekend and I won’t even be around long enough to fail her class.”

  Stella said, “Maybe it’ll take a while. You know, to find someone who wants to buy it?”

  I nodded, feeling the tears start to back off.

  “I know! If you have to, you can move in with me to finish out the school year.”

  I nodded again. “You’re the best.”

  But it wasn’t about finishing out the school year.

  It was about the rest of my life.

  And anyway, my parents would never go for it. Stella and I had been best friends since before we could even remember, and our parents were friends, too. But even after all these years, Mom and Dad were still always saying things about how Stella’s parents were “a little intense” and I didn’t think they meant it as a compliment.

  I liked the spirit of Stella’s suggestion, though. I liked the idea that I wasn’t totally powerless.

  “Maybe I can get them to change their mind,” I said.

  The bus yanked to a stop in front of school. It was just one story high—red brick and windows—spread out wide on a large grassy piece of land, with a big circular driveway in front. Some of the windows, where the lower grades were, had cutouts of flowers and other projects taped to them, which probably looked cute from the inside—macaroni art, no doubt—but from out here it was just clutter. I closed my eyes for a long, hard second and pictured my school in miniature, a diorama in a shoebox that I could take with me wherever I went.

  “Oh man, look at Kate.” Megan Tinson was one thing I would not miss if and when we moved. She was standing in the aisle. “Did you even brush your hair today?”

  “Oh, what do you care,” I said, and I linked my elbow around Stella’s as we got off the bus.

  How do you stop life from moving so fast and out of your control?

  There had to be a way.

  3.

  “I’m disappointed, Ms. Marino,” Mrs. Nagano said. “I always look forward to your projects.”

  I was disappointed, too. I didn’t love social studies but I liked Mrs. Nagano because she treated us like people, not pesky kids. I’d really wanted to do the project. So as she walked away from my desk I said, “Wait! What if I do two dioramas by tomorrow? To make up for it?”

  “I guess that’d be something.” She turned to me. “Of course, even with a second diorama I’d still have to tick you down a mark for tardiness.”

  “I understand.”

  Stella and I met eyes across the room and she pretended to wipe sweat off her forehead.

  I did the same back but I wasn’t out of the woods, not yet. I’d have regular homework plus everything at home to deal with and there were only so many hours in the day. And it was Thursday, which meant dance class—I’d forgotten my dance clothes. I was pretty sure I was doomed.

  We were supposed to go around the room and pick a diorama to write a response to. I liked an underwater seascape I saw, with a tiny scuba diver in a pink suit and a school of fish made out of some kind of shiny gold paper hanging by invisible wire. But then I saw it was Megan’s—she was always taking these spectacular vacations—so there was no way I was going to write about that one. I was impressed by the precision of a diorama that showed a family of four on the Walkway Over the Hudson—a pedestrian bridge that linked our town, Highland, with Poughkeepsie—but it was strangely lifeless and it was Sam Fitch’s. If I picked that one to write about, Stella would insist that I really did have a crush on him (I didn’t!) and never let me live it down.

  I kept finding myself drawn back to a diorama of a bear and a shark waging battle in a shallow body of water.

  I knew it had to be Naveen’s diorama, so I hadn’t even looked around for his name. Just last week, when we’d been sitting on the sidelines together after being eliminated from a game of elimination volleyball in Gym, he’d asked me, “Who do you think would win in a battle between a bear and a shark?”

  I always tried to give smart answers to Naveen’s questions. “Well, the bear could just grab the shark by the tail and throw it out of the water and that’d be that. But, hmmm. I guess the shark could just bite the bear’s claws off.” Then I decided, “I’m going with shark.”

  Naveen had started talking and talking about each animal’s strengths and weaknesses, never actually answering the question himself.

  As I sat down, I heard Mrs. Nagano say, “But the assignment, Naveen, to be clear, was a scene from your life.”

  “It is,” he said. “It’s a scene from inside my head, which is very much a part of my life.”

  Mrs. Nagano shook her head and smiled and moved on. Maybe Naveen would be a good person to ask for advice about how to maybe get my parents to change their mind.

  On a clean sheet of paper I wrote:

  The bear versus shark diorama makes me feel curious to know more about bears and sharks. It also makes me feel like there is a lot about the world that I don’t know. Who would win in a competition between a bear and a shark? I honestly have no idea. But I would be excited to find out.

  It wasn’t the most honest answer. The truth was that the diorama made me sad about the possibility of moving because of how much I’d miss friends like Naveen. But Mrs. Nagano didn’t need to know that.

  “Hey, Naveen,” I said, as we were walking out of class. “If you wanted to stop someone from selling a house, what would you do?”

  He faced me and crossed his arms in front of his chest and appeared to be thinking. Then he released his arms. “It would depend on why they are selling it, of course, but the most obvious way would be to stop anyone else from buying it.”

  “But how?” I asked, and right away, an idea came to me. “Like by making it smell bad?”

  Naveen laughed. “That could work!”

  “You’re a genius,” I said, and I almost hugged him. �
�Thanks!”

  “You’re the one who—” he called out after me, but with everyone around me talking and shouting in the hall I couldn’t hear what he said.

  What if I was a bear and my parents were the sharks?

  Who would win then?

  4.

  Stella’s mom picked us up after school on Mondays and Thursdays and drove us to dance class; my mom drove us home. I decided not to ask Stella’s mom to stop by Big Red for my dance bag but instead had asked Stella if she had extra stuff, which she did.

  Schwoo!

  I did not feeling like “talking more” with my parents just yet.

  At the studio, we got changed into leotards and footless nude tights and waited with the others—Madison, Allie, Nora, and Elizabeth—for the toddler class to come out of the back studio. Those girls could kill you with the cuteness and their tiny tap shoes! Whenever I saw them I wished my parents had started me in dance when I was younger. Three years into classes, I was in love with dancing, but a part of me still felt like I was catching up with Stella and Madison, who’d been coming here for a lifetime.

  I liked the way my body felt different—more graceful—when someone told me how to move. I liked the way dancing blocked out whatever else was going on in my life.

  “All right, dancers.” Miss Emma appeared at the dressing room door. “Come in and have a seat. I’ve got some big news.”

  Miss Emma was a grown-up but not like my parents. She was just out of college and worked during the day at an office, doing a real job that she called “typey typey.” Sometimes she went on auditions down in New York but so far the closest she’d gotten to stardom was when she auditioned for a job at a singing restaurant near Times Square—actually standing on a table, acting like it was the front of the Titanic and singing “My Heart Will Go On”—but she botched the waiting tables trial that came after the singing. We all decided it had been for the best. Now she must have finally gotten a real part!

  “Soooo,” Miss Emma said as we gathered around her in a circle. “I’ve been busy doing some research and paperwork and I’m finally ready to announce that for the first time ever, we’re going to be starting a dance troupe that will compete in a statewide competition in Albany!”

  Stella squealed and clapped.

  Madison said, “Awesome.” And Nora said, “Ohmigosh, ohmigosh.”

  “You, ladies, are going to Dance Nation!” Miss Emma looked around at us with wide eyes.

  Stella and I had been campaigning for this for two years—ever since we’d gotten addicted to watching videos of dance competitions on YouTube. I hadn’t realized Miss Emma had actually seriously been considering it.

  As she started handing out packets of information, Miss Emma said, “There is the form to sign up. And an explanation of additional expenses, like registration fees and travel. And there’s a parental permission slip. And all the details of the competition itself. I really hope you’ll all do it. You’re a great group, and I think we could do really well in the contemporary lyrical category if we really work our butts off these next few months.”

  I looked through the packet for the details of Dance Nation and found the date.

  June thirteenth.

  So it was official.

  We could not move before then.

  “Show of hands,” Miss Emma said. “Who’s game?”

  We all raised our hands and I smiled over at Stella. I had a new, real reason to tell my parents we had to stay, but she looked at me funny.

  “Excellent.” Miss Emma clapped some tiny claps. “That makes things easier. Our Monday class and this one will become troupe rehearsal starting next week.”

  Elizabeth said, “Yay.”

  “Oh, and,” Miss Emma said, “if any of you are interested in competing as a soloist, let me know after class. That’s something we can discuss privately, though I should warn you that it can get expensive quickly, with the need to pay a choreographer and private classes to prepare.”

  So we all put our packets away and Miss Emma put on the song she thought we’d compete with and we finally, finally started to dance—just sort of following what she was doing and free-forming—and I started to feel strong, like I could handle anything. I’d never heard the song before but I loved it instantly. It was big and dramatic sounding, with female vocals that sounded like angels. I felt my body wake up from the tips of my toes to the top of my head as my bad mood blasted off me with each leap and turn. The energy in the room was totally different now than it had been before. We were going to get on a bus and perform on a big stage in front of hundreds of strangers and there’d be videos of us out there in the world for everyone to see.

  Stella found me by the water fountain when we took a break. “Are you sure it’s, you know, a good idea to sign up?” she asked.

  “Are you kidding me?” I drank from the tall arch of water then swallowed. “We’ve been wanting this forever.”

  “I mean, yeah. I’m totally doing it.” She looked at me hard. “But I mean, what if you move?”

  “I’m going to tell my parents I have to stay for this. Or if that doesn’t work, figure out how to delay things. Naveen gave me a great idea about how I can—”

  “But if we all learn a routine together and you have to drop out, it might mess everything up and—”

  “Everything okay?” Miss Emma appeared by the fountain.

  I just stood there. How had we gone from Stella offering to let me stay at her house to finish out the school year to this?

  “Yes, everything’s fine,” Stella said, then went to take a drink.

  Stella and I got into the backseat together.

  “How was class?” my mom asked.

  “Great!” Stella said. “They’re starting a dance troupe. If you sign up, you get to compete in Albany in June.”

  “That’s exciting,” Mom said, and you could hear in her voice how little she actually cared. My parents had tried to get me to play soccer and piano, and nothing had stuck but dance.

  “Yes, very exciting,” Stella said. “Though I doubt everyone will do it. It’s a big commitment.”

  She looked at me. What is her deal? But it was a good idea to talk about how important this was to us so that my parents would postpone the move.

  “Yes,” my mother said. “A dance troupe is not something to be entered into lightly.”

  And right then, I realized that a dance competition was not going to be something that my parents would think was important enough to make them change their plans. They weren’t going to get it.

  At all.

  Neither one of them.

  I usually moved up to the front seat after we dropped Stella off, but this time I stayed put. I waited for my mom to say, “Where to, madame?”—an old joke—but she didn’t. She said, “I want you to start cleaning your room tonight so it’s not all left to tomorrow or Saturday.”

  “I need to make a diorama,” I said.

  “I thought that was yesterday.” She turned into the driveway at Big Red.

  “It was. And I didn’t do it. So I actually have to do two. Since I was late.”

  “Kate,” she sort of whined.

  “What?”

  I sighed and she did, too.

  “Well, go in and get started.” She killed the engine and got out and closed the door.

  I snapped a photo on my phone of Pants and the kittens still hanging out on that old insulation in the barn, then went upstairs in the house and grabbed my diorama shoebox and another one from the back of one of my closets. Then I went down to the room in the basement where we kept all the arts and crafts stuff.

  This room had an old staircase to nowhere running up along one wall and I had a desk there. The next room, through another too-short door, was actually set up as a bar. My parents called it “the Salon” and spent a lot of Saturday nights there with friends during the winter—when it was too cold to hang out down by the fire pit. I thought it would make a cool diorama: a bar and some stools. A coal
burning stove. A fluorescent Miller High Life sign, calling it “The Champagne of Beers.” But it probably wouldn’t make a good impression, us having a bar in the house and all.

  With blue construction paper, I covered one shoebox and made what looked like a barn wall out of wooden sticks I colored red with a marker. I made cats out of cotton balls and twine. Before I could make a figure of myself, my parents called me up to dinner. I decided to at least feel them out a bit.

  “I was wondering,” I said, as I sat with my plate of chicken and rice. “Why now?” I was trying to sound really casual. “I just mean, like, couldn’t I finish out the school year?”

  My dad stopped midchew for a moment, then continued to eat.

  My mother got up to fetch her water glass from the counter.

  “We talked to a bunch of real estate agents,” Dad said, “and everyone says summer is a dead zone so it has to be now for us to hopefully be set up somewhere else in time for September.”

  “But it’s just three months,” I said.

  “I know,” he said. “But they matter.”

  “Could I maybe stay with Stella?” I dared.

  “Yeah, we’re not doing that,” my mother said, tilting her head at me. “Is this about the dance competition thing Stella was talking about?”

  “No.” I lied because I didn’t like the tone of her voice. “I’m just wondering, what if you don’t sell the house until the first week of June?” I shoveled my food in between sentences.

  “Then we’ll talk about maybe finishing out the school year,” my dad said, and he gave my mother a look. “But I wouldn’t get your hopes up, Kate. The house is priced to sell.”

  “You better get back to work on those dioramas,” my mom said, when she saw my plate was cleared.

  I didn’t want to be around them anyway.

  Back downstairs, I made a mini-me out of Play-Doh, with some black string on top of my head. Everyone always commented on my mom’s blonde hair being so different from mine, which was more like my dad’s, and for a second while I was making that mini-me, I was sad that I didn’t need shimmering golden yarn.