Peppermint Cocoa Crushes

by Laney Nielson

  Chapter Seven

  RED, WHITE, AND GLUE

  On Saturday, I waited for Karly in the lobby of the Senior Center. When she didn’t show up I texted her:

  WHERE R U?

  When she didn’t respond, I headed to the dining room, but I was feeling salty and I kept checking my phone. After Monday, she’d arrived late to all our rehearsals and she’d even skipped dance class at JayJay’s on Wednesday. I’d been right to worry about Karly making the Holidaze Spectacular a priority. Because she wasn’t.

  “Where’s Karly?” Miss Melinda asked when she spotted me.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Must be a boy.” Miss Melinda sat down at her usual table.

  Yeah. Probably. Whenever I did see Karly, that’s all she talked about. Ahmed this, Ahmed that and then Quiz Bowl this, Quiz Bowl that.

  “Would you like some Jell-O?” I asked, eyeing the small bowls of wiggling green on a nearby tray.

  “Yes, please.” Miss Melinda touched my arm. “Thank you.”

  Later when I brought applesauce over to Big T, he also asked me about Karly.

  “Sorry,” I said. “She’s not here today.”

  “Oh no. She promised to show me how to do a high kick.”

  “She did?”

  He laughed.

  Then the director came over and gave me a hug. “Sasha, I spoke with Ms. Kumar and she told me the news. Thank you!” And for a moment I forgot about being mad at Karly.

  As I was leaving the Senior Center, Pete Sugarman was coming in, carrying a tray filled with Mr. Sugarman’s fresh-baked cookies. Smiling, I held the door open for him.

  “Thanks,” he said, and smiled back.

  I unzipped my coat as I headed down the front steps to Mom’s car. The plan was to swing by the Hall’s house to pick up Kevin and then go shopping for the materials we needed to make our costumes, but with Karly not showing up at the Senior Center, we needed to pick her up too.

  But when only Kevin came out of the house, my anger tightened. Where was she?

  Kevin jumped off the front steps and did a pivot turn at the curb.

  “Now, that’s what I call an entrance,” Mom said as Kevin opened the car door.

  “Where’s Karly?” I tried to sound calm but I was ready for a full-blown freak-out.

  “Emergency Quiz Bowl practice.”

  “Seriously?”

  “She says she’ll be back in time for us to rehearse.”

  “But she has our shopping list.”

  “Ta-da!” Kevin pulled a slip of paper from his coat pocket and handed it to me.

  I read it: tulle, white tights and leotards, fabric paint, a morph suit for Kevin, and mini candy cane appliqués.

  “Where to first?” Mom asked. “The dance store?”

  “Sounds good.” Kevin buckled his seat belt and looked over at me. “What’s the problem, Sash? You don’t think I’m as good a shopper as Karly?” He stuck up his nose. “Well, I’m going to show you.”

  As I laughed, my anger over Karly loosened. Kevin and I always had fun together. Plus, now I could use the time to figure out if he like liked me. I still had two more clues to check off.

  At DanceXtreme, Mom stayed in the front of the store while Kevin and I walked toward the back. Kevin, Karly, and I had pooled together our birthday and babysitting money. We had a budget of sixty dollars. That wasn’t much for what we needed.

  “Let’s head to the clearance aisle,” I said, touching a gold lamé leotard as I passed by the New Arrivals rack.

  “Whoa!” Kevin stopped. “This is awesome!” He pulled out the hanger and held out the shimmery leotard. “I should wear this, don’t you think?”

  “Ha, ha,” I said, swiping it from him and placing it back on the rack. “Come on.”

  It turned out Kevin was a pretty decent shopper. He found the discounted white leotards for Karly and me. Granted they had a pumpkin embroidered below the neckline, but we were pretty sure we could sew a candy cane patch over that and no one would know. We bought Kevin a red morph suit on sale, too. And we had a buy-one-get-one-free coupon for tights.

  At the checkout, I popped a rhinestone tiara on my head.

  “What do you think?” I tilted my head toward Kevin.

  He gave me a quick glance and said, “Gorge!” Then he turned back to the employee who was getting a price check on the morph suit.

  Gorge? Had Kevin just called me gorgeous? Did that count for the He compliments you clue?

  Uh … yeah, technically. But he barely looked at me when he said it, and well, the word—gorge (was it even a word?)—was kind of over the top. I decided I’d hold out for a more sincere compliment.

  In the car, Mom let us blast the music. She even belted out the “Winter Dreams” refrain. Kevin and I were actually starting to sound pretty good. By the time we arrived at the fabric and craft store, I’d forgotten about being angry with Karly.

  Inside the store, we passed a bin of feathery, hot pink boas. Kevin grabbed one and put it on.

  “What do you think?” He flipped the ends of it over his shoulder and ran his fingers through his hair.

  “Gorge,” I said and then laughed.

  A Christmas song blasted from the store speaker.

  “Let’s dance!” Kevin sashayed down the fabric aisle. Laughing, I followed.

  “What do you think?” I pulled out a bolt of red polka-dot tulle, but Kevin wasn’t paying attention. “Kev?”

  “Yeah.” He stared down the paint aisle.

  “Focus.” I shoved the fabric in front of him. “Do you like this or the shimmery one?”

  “Is that Ryan?” Kevin asked.

  “Where?” I put down the bolt. There was Ryan wearing a top hat and a long black cape, standing in front of a display of brushes. “Yep.”

  “Hey, Ryan!” Kevin headed toward him. “Nice costume.”

  I followed, leaving the bolts of tulle out on the table behind us.

  “What’s up?” Ryan fist bumped Kevin, and then looked at me. “You guys shopping for the show?”

  “Yup. Costumes,” Kevin said. “How ’bout you?”

  “Props for my act.”

  “I know what you should do.” Kevin grabbed a jar of purple paint from the shelf. “Change the color of the auditorium from puke green to grape.”

  Ryan laughed. “If only.”

  “Are you going to do the cell phone trick this year?” I asked. At last year’s show, Ryan’s finale was getting a bunch of the cell phones in the audience to start ringing at the same time. And they weren’t just ringing—their ringtones played a song. No one could figure out how he did it.

  “I’m working on something new.” He looked over at Kevin. “And I want to show off some of my acro moves in between tricks.”

  Hearing Ryan talk about his act made me feel worried about ours.

  “You should definitely add a fish flop.” Kevin dropped to the floor and did one. But with his puffy coat on he looked like an oversized flounder.

  Again, Ryan laughed.

  “Kev.” I rolled my eyes. “Get up.”

  “What, Sasha?” Kevin jumped up, brushing off his jeans. “I thought you’d be impressed.”

  Impressed? My mind jumped to the final clue on my checklist: He tries to impress you. Was Kevin trying to impress me with his fish flop? Or was he being sarcastic?

  Mmm … sarcastic.

  “Come on.” I pulled Kevin back toward the fabric. “We need to decide on how much tulle for the tutus.”

  “Tulle? Tutus?” Ryan said. “Now I’m really afraid to compete against you guys.”

  “Oh, shut up.” Then I lifted my hand in a single wave and headed toward the fabric. Kevin trailed behind.

  “What do you think? Five feet? Six?” I held out a swatch of the shimmery tulle, but Kevin wasn’t listening. He was staring back at the paint aisle.

  “You think he’s going to win, don’t you?”

  “What?” Kevin turned around like he had no idea w
hat I was talking about.

  “You think Ryan’s going to win?”

  Kevin shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “He’s not. We are.” I paused. “Now come on. We need to make a decision about the tulle.”

  “How’d it go?” Karly asked as Kevin and I walked through the front door of the Hall’s house. I didn’t say anything to her. I hung up my coat and laid out our haul on the kitchen table without even looking at her.

  “Sasha, come on,” Karly said. “Don’t be mad.”

  “You didn’t show up at the Senior Center this morning.” I turned toward her.

  “I forgot.”

  “Didn’t you get my text?”

  “I did. But by then it was too late. And I didn’t want you to be mad.”

  “I am mad. And then you blew off shopping after you promised you could do it.”

  “Sash, the Quiz Bowl tournament is in two weeks.”

  “Yeah, and the Holidaze Spectacular is soon too.”

  Karly stepped toward the table and picked up the red morph suit. “Nice,” she said, but I could see she was eyeing the pumpkins on the leotards.

  “They were on sale,” I explained.

  Kevin dropped a large candy cane appliqué down on the leotard. It covered the pumpkin.

  “See,” I said.

  “We’re going to sew these on, and once Dad makes the tutus, we’ll add these.” Kevin dumped out a package of smaller candy cane appliqués. “And these.” He pointed to a jar of quarter-sized sequins. “It’ll be great.” He pushed Karly and me toward each other. “Can you two make up already? We need to practice.”

  “Fine,” I said.

  Karly gave me a half hug and then we headed down the stairs to the basement. When I stepped inside the studio, the first thing I noticed was the yellow sticky notes. There must’ve been a hundred of them covering the mirror.

  “What happened down here?” I asked. “A Post-it note explosion?”

  “Quiz Bowl prep,” Karly said.

  “Down here?” I peeled a sticky note off the mirror and glanced down at Karly’s neat handwriting. “Really?” How were we going to see what we were doing?

  “Yeah. That way I can practice for Quiz Bowl while we dance.” She nodded toward the sticky note in my hand. “Test me.”

  I looked down at the question and read, “What does a herpetologist study?”

  “Snakes and lizards.”

  I flipped over the sticky note. “Right.” I handed it to Karly. “Now we need to focus on singing and dancing. We still need to choreograph the ending.”

  Kevin started singing “Winter Dreams” in a ridiculously high voice.

  “And you need to give Kevin some voice lessons.”

  Karly laughed, and in that moment, I felt like everything might be okay.

  Using the barre, the three of us stretched, and then Karly led us in some vocal warm-up exercises. Without dancing, we ran through the song a couple of times and we were actually starting to sound pretty good. Then we choreographed the next section. Kevin wanted to add a triple cartwheel. Karly didn’t want to try, but I did. So Kevin and I practiced, but my feet kept hitting him in the face as I turned.

  “Almost,” Kevin said as I finished the third rotation.

  “How’d it look?” I asked Karly, who was sitting on the floor, a sticky note in her hand.

  “Great.” She turned the note over and looked at the backside.

  “You weren’t even watching,” I said.

  “What?” Karly pulled another sticky note off the mirror.

  “Time for a break,” Kevin said.

  Upstairs, Mr. Hall was sitting at the sewing machine in the family room. I had total faith in his creative abilities. For Halloween, he’d made our pirate costumes and we’d won an honorable mention at the town parade. Which was excellent, considering we were up against adorable babies dressed as ladybugs.

  “Ta-da.” He lifted up a tutu made from the tulle. “Now’s the fun part. Decorating them. Do you want to hand stitch the appliqués and the sequins on or use a glue gun?”

  “Glue gun,” Kevin said. “Of course.”

  Karly rolled her eyes. “Just don’t glue your fingers together again.”

  “That was superglue.”

  “Whatever,” Karly said as we sat down at the table. Mr. Hall handed her a tutu. “These are going to be cute.”

  I held a felt candy cane in my hand. “Super cute.”

  “Sash, would you mind quizzing me while we worked?” Karly handed me a stack of sticky notes.

  “Seriously?”

  “Please.”

  Looking down at the top sticky note, I sighed.

  “Fine. What’s the largest two digit prime number less than 100?”

  Chapter Eight

  CHEERS!

  “Are you sure you don’t want to come to the library?” Mom asked as she parked the car in front of Sugarman’s. It was Sunday afternoon. “They’re offering a STEM workshop later.” She looked over at me. “And we can sign you up for the coding course, the one I told you about. It starts in January.”

  “I can’t. Mira’s meeting me here. I promised I’d help her revise her social studies essay.” I opened the car door.

  Mom touched the sleeve of my coat. “The workshop starts at 3:30, in case you change your mind.”

  “Mom.”

  “Fine. We’ll talk about it later.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about.” I got out of the car.

  “I’ll see you at home,” Mom said as I shut the door.

  I doubted if the apartment was ever going to feel like home to me. Not the way our old house did—filled with memories of all of us being a family. I hated the three-hour time difference to California and Dad and Claire. Every time I called or texted Claire, it seemed like it was a bad time. Last night, I wanted to talk to her about Kevin and how there was a good chance he liked me, but when I called she was just getting out of the shower; the time before that she was heading to a party. How was I ever going to get the advice I needed when there was never a good time to talk?

  Inside Sugarman’s, I took a seat in the back at the table pushed up against the wall. I smelled the fresh batch of cookies, ground coffee, and cocoa.

  “How about a sample?” Mr. Sugarman stood in front of me with a plate of chocolate chip cookies.

  “Thanks a lot!” I bit into the gooey sweetness.

  “Sasha!” Mira called from the front of the store.

  Mr. Sugarman looked at my laptop as I pulled it out of my backpack. “I’m thinking about getting Pete one of those for Hanukkah.”

  I stopped chewing and swallowed. “A laptop? That’s a great gift. Mine was Claire’s, so it’s older, but it’s still good.” I pointed out the brand on the back of my screen. That was when I noticed one of Karly’s Quiz Bowl yellow sticky notes stuck to it. How did that get there? I wondered as I peeled it off and put it in my binder to give to her later.

  Mira sat down in the seat across from me. “Hi, Mr. Sugarman.”

  “Can I get you girls something to drink? How about a gingerbread mocha? Or a hot cocoa with extra whip?”

  “Yes, please,” Mira said. “I’d like a hot cocoa.”

  After yesterday’s costume buying, I was a little low on funds, but I wanted something too. “May I have the peppermint cocoa, please?”

  “Sure. One Candy Cane Cocoa coming up.”

  “Let me pull up your essay,” I said to Mira as she leaned over to face my screen. But I clicked on the wrong document.

  “What’s this?” Mira asked as she started to read. “The Clues: He calls or texts you. He tries to make you laugh—”

  “It’s nothing!” I tried to close the computer but Mira pushed my hand away and kept reading.

  “He stares at you. He teases you. He compliments you. He tries to impress you.”

  Mortified, I hit the key to close it.

  “Sash, did you really create a Google doc to try to figure out if your crush
likes you?” Mira leaned back in her chair, smiling widely. “You’re such a geek.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “I mean it in a good way.” She put her elbows on the table. “So come on, you can tell me. Who do you like?”

  Just then Pete came over with our drinks. I hoped he hadn’t heard what we were talking about.

  “Here you go,” he said, putting a mug in front of me. I caught a whiff of peppermint.

  “Thank you.” I looked up at him. My face felt very warm. It must’ve been the steam from the drink.

  “You’re welcome.” He smiled.

  I leaned over and blew on my cocoa to cool it down, watching as Pete disappeared on the other side of the counter.

  “Cheers!” Mira raised up her mug. I picked up mine and we clinked our drinks together. “To crushes and to you helping me fix my social studies essay.”

  “Let’s see it.” I put down my drink and opened up Mira’s essay. As soon as I started reading, I knew Mira had a lot of work to do. “Did you print out a copy? It’ll be easier to edit.”

  Mira dug through her backpack. “Here.” She pulled out a crumpled piece of paper and handed it to me.

  I pressed it against the table, trying to smooth out the wrinkles. In my other hand I lifted up my red flair marker.

  “Be nice,” she said, as I underlined a run-on sentence, and then circled a misspelled word, and then another.

  A few minutes later, I handed her back the essay.

  “Ouch! Did I do anything right?” Mira said as she looked at the red marks all over her paper.

  “Your last sentence is strong, but you need to rework your introduction and you’re missing supporting evidence in the second paragraph.”

  “Anything else?” Mira tilted her head back as she took her last sip of the cocoa.

  “Spell-check is your friend.”

  She sighed. “I’m going to the library.” She put the mug down on the table. “It’ll be easier for me to work there. You wanna come?”

  “No thanks.” I was not interested in running into Mom and being forced to sign my life away to learn how to code. “I was kind of hoping you’d help me with the flyer for the show. Ms. Kumar wants me to show her something by tomorrow.”