Mia a Matter of Taste

by Coco Simon

“It’s perfect!” Alexis said, emphasizing the word again.

  Emma frowned. “We can’t say it’s perfect until it’s over.”

  Alexis shook her head. “You’re just being superstitious. We can be confident because we are organized. That’s the beauty of organization.”

  “I just need to set up the music,” I said, and Katie helped me find an outlet so I could plug in my iPod speakers.

  When it was almost time for the party to start, Mrs. Watson brought the twins over to meet us.

  “Claire and John, meet Alexis, Emma, Katie, and Mia,” their mom said, introducing us. To go with the music theme, the twins wore T-shirts—John’s was blue and Claire’s was green—with music notes on them. They both had the same green eyes and light brown hair. There’s just something super adorable about twins. Their cute factor sky-rocketed when they started to talk.

  “We’re going to have a party!” John informed us, excited.

  “Yeah, and we’re going to dance!” Claire said, and then she began bopping up and down. Her brother started dancing with her.

  “Oh my gosh, you guys are soooo cute!” Emma cooed.

  Katie leaned over and whispered to me. “I have to admit it, they are pretty adorable.”

  I grinned. “Maybe this party will be perfect after all.”

  The place quickly started filling with kids—twenty in total. At first I was worried it might be too much for us, but Alexis was right. We had the party organized really well, and things went smoothly. First, Emma did this craft where the kids used beans and recycled containers to make fun shakers. Then we helped Mrs. Watson feed the kids round sandwiches that looked like CDs. Finally, it was time for the big dance party.

  Alexis and I stayed on the deck to clean up the food while Katie and Emma kicked things off.

  “Everyone under the tent!” Katie yelled. “It’s time for the dance party!”

  The kids ran like crazy to the canopy and started to jump up and down. Emma called up, “Mia, which playlist do I choose?”

  “It’s the one called ‘party playlist,’ ” I called back down to her.

  “Thanks!” Emma turned on the speakers, selected the playlist, and hit play.

  Then a sound like a pack of wild dogs barking in a thunderstorm filled the backyard.

  “We are the army of the night! We will always stand and fight!”

  Emma’s blue eyes got wide, and she sort of froze. Alexis started screaming, “Turn it off! Turn it off!” After about three of the longest seconds ever, Emma snapped out of it and shut off the iPod.

  The kids were confused, and Mrs. Watson ran up to Alexis.

  “What on Earth was that terrible racket?” she asked.

  And then the horrible truth hit me: I had taken the wrong iPod off the charging station in the kitchen this morning. This had to be my stepbrother’s, Dan’s. Our iPods look the same, but the contents are different; he constantly listens to heavy metal music.

  “Oh no!” I cried. “I’m so sorry. It’s the wrong iPod.”

  “Well, where is the right one?” Alexis asked.

  I thought quickly. “It might still be home. Let me call my mom.”

  I dialed her number and started talking a mile a minute when she picked up.

  “Mom it’s an emergency I took Dan’s iPod by mistake and left mine at home and if I don’t have my iPod the whole party is going to be ruined!”

  Luckily, Mom understands me when I talk that fast. “I’ll be right there, Mia. Text me the address.”

  I obeyed and put my phone away, relieved. “Mom will be here with my iPod soon,” I told Alexis.

  “Okay. But what will we do until then?” she asked, nodding to the kids below. They were starting to get wild, running all over the yard.

  Think fast, Mia, I told myself. This is your fault. You’ve got to fix it.

  And then I figured it out. “We don’t need an iPod to make music. Come on.”

  I grabbed Alexis by the hand, and we ran down the stairs into the yard. Then I started to sing the first song I could think of.

  “The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round . . .”

  Katie, Alexis, and Emma got the idea and began to sing along with me. We went around the yard, grabbing kids by the hand and leading them back under the canopy. Then we started doing the hand motions to the song, and the kids joined in.

  That lasted about a minute. “What next?” Alexis hissed.

  Luckily, Emma started wiggling her fingers in twinkly motions and singing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.” We sang that one a good five times before the kids got tired of it.

  Next, Alexis remembered a song from when she was in preschool about popcorn. “Pop! Pop! Pop! Put it in the pot!” For that one we got everyone to dance up and down like they were pieces of popping popcorn, and the kids loved it.

  “I can’t think of any songs!” Katie wailed when the kids were tired of popping. Then her face lit up. “Hey, who wants to do the Pony?”

  The kids all raised their hands, and Katie started to dance. She started singing a crazy tune and making up her own words.

  “Do the Pony, yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s really fun! Yeah, yeah, yeah!”

  I thought we were going to have to start with “Wheels on the Bus” all over again when I saw Mom walking into the driveway. I ran up to her.

  “You are the best!” I said, giving her a hug.

  She handed me the iPod. “Put this in, and then bring me Dan’s. He’s been a little cranky this morning. He can’t go ten minutes without his heavy metal.”

  I quickly replaced Dan’s iPod with mine and started the correct party playlist. A Wiggles song started blasting through the speakers, and the kids all cheered. The party was saved! I gave Mom a big hug and thanked her. She watched for a while, smiling at us, then winked and headed out.

  The rest of the party went really smoothly. The kids loved the dance party we planned, and then we helped Mrs. Watson serve the birthday cupcakes. When we were cleaning up, she approached us with an envelope. I suddenly felt nervous.

  “Uh-oh,” I whispered to Katie. “I wonder if she’s going to be upset about the music mix-up.”

  “She looks happy,” Katie whispered back.

  And she was. “Thank you so much for all your hard work,” she said, handing Alexis the envelope. “Here’s your payment. Claire and John and all their friends had such a good time.”

  Still, I felt bad. “Sorry about blasting that loud music.”

  Mrs. Watson smiled. “No problem. Plus, no party is ever perfect. But everyone here had a perfectly good time. I was impressed with how you handled the situation. You might think about adding musical entertainment to your list of party skills. ”

  “I’d rather stick to cupcakes,” Katie piped up.

  “We aim to please,” Alexis said quickly, handing her a small stack of our business cards. “Please recommend us to your friends.”

  “I certainly will,” Mrs. Watson replied. “Or I might just hire you for the cupcakes. It looks like we won’t have any extras!” She turned around, and we saw Mr. Watson with a cupcake in each hand.

  “That happens a lot!” said Alexis.

  Then Alexis’s mom came by to pick us all up. As we were loading our stuff into the car, Katie said, “That was really fun.”

  “It was,” I agreed. I looked at Alexis. “I’m sorry it wasn’t perfect.”

  “That’s okay,” Alexis said. “It turned out all right in the end.”

  “That’s right,” Emma agreed. “Things don’t have to be perfect to be great.”

  I didn’t think much about what Emma said at the time. But a few weeks later, those words would become really important to me.

  CHAPTER 4

  I Can See Just Fine! Sort Of . . .

  The party on Sunday put me in such a good mood, I almost forgot that I might need braces—almost. But Mom said my orthodontist appointment wasn’t, like, for a week, so I decided to put it out of my mind.

  T
he next day was Monday, a school day, and it was one of those beautiful, warm spring days that makes you wish you were anywhere except inside school. On the bus ride that morning, Katie and I took turns saying where we’d rather be.

  “Window-shopping in SoHo in Manhattan,” I said.

  “Walking on the beach in bare feet,” said Katie.

  “Eating a croissant at a café in Paris.”

  “Eating a tamale from a cart in Mexico City.”

  “Scuba diving in a coral reef.”

  “Running in a beautiful shady park.”

  Then the bus pulled to a stop in front of the school.

  “I guess we’ll have to settle for math class with Mr. K.,” Katie said, and we both laughed.

  Katie and I have math together first period, right after homeroom. On the first day of school Mr. K. (his name is Mr. Kazinski, but most of the kids call him Mr. K.) let us sit wherever we wanted, so Katie and I found two seats together in the third row. When we got there today, Mr. K. was writing a bunch of equations on the board.

  I had to squint to make them out. “Wow, Mr. K. has terrible handwriting,” I whispered to Katie. “I can’t read any of those numbers.”

  Katie got a funny look on her face. “They look just fine to me,” she said. “Are you having trouble seeing things again?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I mean, a couple of weeks ago when we went to the movies, you were squinting too,” Katie said. “Remember? And then you made us sit all the way up front.”

  I hadn’t really thought about it. “Yeah, I guess. But I think there was something wrong with the projector. Things looked kind of blurry to me.”

  Katie didn’t say anything, and then the bell rang, and class started.

  “Morning, everybody,” Mr. K. said. He’s a pretty easygoing teacher, a tall guy with sandy-blond hair and wire-rimmed glasses. “Today we’re going to review turning fractions into decimals.” He touched a pointer to a fraction he had written on the board. “Mia, can you please tell me the equation for turning this number into a fraction?”

  I squinted again. “I’m sorry, I can’t read your writing. Is that eight over thirty-nine?”

  Mr. K. gave me a funny look and then glanced back at the board. “Hmm. I always try to print clearly. Maybe you just need a better view. Randall, switch desks with Mia, please.”

  I gave Katie a desperate look, but there was nothing I could do. I gathered my stuff together and moved to Randall Mitchell’s seat in the very center of the front row. Then I sat down.

  “Better?” Mr. K. asked.

  I looked at the board again. “Oh! It’s three over twenty. So that would be three divided by twenty, which is . . . point fifteen.”

  “Right,” said Mr. K. “So did you see how Mia did that?” And then he began to write it out.

  I was kind of proud of myself for getting the answer right like that. But I wasn’t happy with my new seat. I thought about raising my hand and asking Mr. K. if I could move back to the third row, but I didn’t want to draw any more attention to myself, you know?

  The next morning, Randall was sitting in his usual seat in the front row, so I just sat down in my seat next to Katie, and Mr. K. didn’t say anything about it. And it didn’t matter, anyway, because we worked in our math workbooks for the whole class.

  Tuesday night we had a Cupcake Club meeting at Katie’s house. Katie’s mom made us beans and rice and guacamole for dinner, because Katie became crazy for Mexican food after she took a summer cooking class. I put extra hot sauce on my food because I like things spicy.

  I looked at Alexis and held up the bottle. “Want some?” A few weeks ago, Alexis took a challenge to try some spicy food that my stepdad cooked. She was brave and tried it, but she didn’t like it much.

  She stuck her tongue out at me. “Very funny! Besides, Mrs. Brown’s food is delicious just the way it is.”

  “Why, thank you, Alexis,” Katie’s mom said, looking up from her plate. Then she turned to me. “Mia, I hear that you’re going to see Dr. Payne next Wednesday.”

  I dropped my fork. “Dr. Pain? Are you kidding me? That’s my orthodontist’s name?”

  Mrs. Brown sighed. “It’s Payne, P-A-Y-N-E. Poor Melanie. It’s definitely an unfortunate name for an orthodontist.”

  “I would change it if I were her,” Alexis said. “That’s got to be bad for business.”

  “Her work speaks for itself,” Katie’s mom said. “Don’t worry, Mia. You will be in very good hands with Dr. Payne, no matter what happens.”

  I couldn’t finish my dinner. I kept imagining a scary-looking woman with black eyes and a thin, sharp face, leaning over me with jagged silver tools and saying those two horrible words: “Open wide!”

  When we finished dinner and helped clean up, Mrs. Brown left us in the kitchen for our meeting. Alexis took out her laptop and started the meeting like she usually does.

  “Our next big Cupcake job is the carnival,” she announced. “Principal LaCosta said we can set up a Cupcake Club booth and sell our cupcakes. Since it’s a big event, we’ve got to leave everyone with a good impression.”

  “Maybe a summer theme?” Emma suggested.

  I kind of liked that. “We could decorate the cupcakes to look like beach balls. That would be cute.”

  “Cute is nice, but we need fantastic!” Alexis reminded us. “Something memorable. Different. Something that hasn’t been done before.”

  We all sat around for a while, thinking. The kitchen got eerily quiet.

  “I can’t think of anything,” Katie finally said. “My mind is empty.”

  “Mine too,” Emma agreed.

  We were all quiet again. Then Katie got up and turned on the radio in the kitchen.

  “What are you doing?” Alexis asked.

  “Getting some inspiration,” Katie said. She began to dance around the kitchen. She grabbed my hand, and then Alexis’s and Emma’s, and got us off our chairs. Soon we were all dancing around and giggling.

  “I’m not getting any inspiration,” Emma said. “But I don’t care!”

  “Me either!” Katie said, laughing.

  So we didn’t get anything else done at our cupcake meeting. And you know what? That was just fine. Sometimes we just needed to take a break and have some fun.

  CHAPTER 5

  More Bad News

  I spent the weekend at my dad’s in Manhattan. (My parents are divorced, so I stay with him every other weekend.) Lately the weekends are a little stressful because Dad’s got a new girlfriend. I have to admit that Lynne is pretty nice, but she’s got a son, Ethan, who’s five, and he’s okay and everything, but he’s very whiny and cranky and cries all the time. So my weekends with Dad just aren’t the same.

  But that weekend I was happy to get away because my appointment with Dr. Payne was coming up, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I didn’t even mind when we all went to the movies and Ethan somehow managed to get a half-chewed gummy worm stuck in my hair. Totally gross, I know, but it definitely got my mind off getting braces!

  But the weekend was over quickly, and before I knew it, it was Wednesday and I was sitting in Dr. Payne’s waiting room with Mom and Eddie, my stepdad.

  I guess I got lucky when I got Eddie for a stepdad. He’s nothing like my real dad, and he’ll never replace him. But he’s really, really nice to my mom and me, and we love him and he loves us. And he’s always trying to crack us up with jokes.

  I have to admit, though, that sitting in the doctor’s office, I was getting kind of annoyed with Eddie’s humor.

  “Getting braces won’t be so bad,” Eddie was saying. “I knew a kid once who could pick up radio signals on his.”

  “You did not!” Mom said.

  “Just great. So you’re saying I’ll be a total freak,” I said, and my eyes started to get hot with tears.

  “Oh, Mia, honey, I didn’t mean that,” Eddie said, and I could tell he felt bad. Mom gave him a look and a poke.

&nb
sp; Then a young guy in scrubs came into the waiting room. “Mia?” he called out, and Mom nodded. “Dr. Payne will see you now.”

  “I’ll stay out here,” Eddie said, patting his stomach. “I’ve been eating too many of Mia’s cupcakes. I probably won’t fit.”

  So Mom and I followed the guy into the exam room. I sat in the big metal chair. There were pictures of waterfalls and forests and things on the wall, and I guess they were there to help make patients feel peaceful or something. But there was also a tray full of sharp metal tools, and that sort of canceled out the peaceful pictures.

  “I’m Louis,” the assistant said. “I’ll set you up, and then Dr. Payne will be right in.”

  He put one of those paper bibs around my neck and tilted my chair back. A few seconds later a woman in a white doctor’s coat entered the room. She didn’t look evil, like the Dr. Payne in my imagination. She had curly hair that she wore pulled back, green eyes, and freckles across her nose. She kind of looked a little bit like Alexis, all grown up, and I almost laughed. I could kind of see Alexis becoming an orthodontist.

  “I’m Dr. Payne,” she said, smiling. “It’s nice to meet you, Mia.”

  “Thanks,” I replied. I know I should have said “Nice to meet you, too,” but I wasn’t so sure about that yet.

  “So, I’ve looked at your X-rays,” she said. “Now I’d like to take a look in person, if that’s okay.”

  “You mean I have a choice?” I asked.

  Dr. Payne smiled. “Always. But I think you know you’re here for a good reason, Mia. Braces can help you keep your teeth healthy for a long, long time.”

  She had this really calm voice, almost like she was hypnotizing me.

  “Okay,” I said, and then I opened my mouth.

  Dr. Payne looked around, and even took two more X-rays. Then she came back in. I crossed my fingers on both hands.

  “Mia, Dr. Brown was right. I would definitely recommend braces for you.”

  Deep down, I knew that’s what she was going to say. But I was still shocked. I started to cry right away.

  “Really?” I asked.

  “Yes,” said Dr. Payne. “You’ll probably need to wear them for a year, maybe more.”