Get Real

by Betty Hicks

—“and she wants to meet me, but she says I have to tell my parents, and guess what?” She looks up at me, all excited—no more tears. “I can bring a friend. That’s you, of course. And she lives about sixty miles away, in Greensboro, but we’re going to meet here, in Durham, at Southpoint Mall, beside the big fountain. From there we’ll pick one of those little outdoor tables, sit down, and get to know each other. Saturday, at three.”

  Suddenly, I’m excited too. My parents are my parents, so I have no idea what it feels like to know that there’s someone else out there who, in some ways, is more your parent than your parents, but in most ways, isn’t your parent at all. That has to be weird. And Jil’s happy, so I’m happy. And she’s going to tell her mom and dad, who always let her do anything she wants, probably even this.

  “Jil,” I say, my grin just as big as hers, “this is so awesome!”

  Then I remember the part about bringing a friend. Do I want to go with her? Yes. No. Maybe.

  Mostly no. I picture a scene that’s super emotional. Or awkward. What if we run out of things to say?

  But I can’t let her go alone. What if her mother is some kind of weirdo? Would Jil be safe? Will I be safe? I’ll ask the Lewises what they think. They’ll know.

  “When are you going to tell your parents?” I ask.

  “Never,” says Jil.

  * * *

  We had a huge fight after that, and now I’m sitting in my room, the one where the plaids totally clash with the stripes, and wondering if I’m a good friend or a bad friend. I told Jil I wouldn’t go to meet her mother unless she told her mom and dad about it. She said I was a wuss and a traitor, and how could I ruin the most important thing that has ever happened to her in her life?

  I got mad and said, “You’re crazy—you know that? You have the best parents in the whole world.”

  “They’re okay,” she’d said.

  “Okay! Okay? Are you kidding? They’re great! I would trade with you in a second.”

  “So, trade,” she said.

  “Yeah, right.” I laughed. “I’d like to see you survive one day in my junky, cluttered, shoddy, shabby house.”

  “It’s not any of those things,” Jil sputtered. “It’s comfortable.”

  Was she kidding? “It’s the most mega-messy house on earth!” I’d shouted.

  “It feels lived in,” she answered, so calmly that it annoyed the heck out of me.

  “Your house is elegant,” I said, irritated, but meaning every word.

  “Stifling,” said Jil.

  “Neat,” I argued.

  “Sterile.”

  I gave up then. It wasn’t until I got home that I realized we’d somehow stopped comparing our parents and had begun complaining about our houses instead.

  So now, I want to march back over there and explain to her how warm and friendly and loving her parents are. And she’ll say mine are warm and friendly and loving too. And I’ll say, “Yeah, but yours are normal. They take trips, play tennis, and vacuum. They have friends and a piano and do regular stuff. My dad quotes poetry and reads moldy books. My mother mucks around in swamps, collects dustballs the size of cows, and watches the weather channel like it’s Sex and the City.”

  But it’s nine o’clock and I know my parents won’t let me go back out. I don’t want to call or e-mail. This needs to be face-to-face. It’s that important.

  So I stretch out on my bed and think about the birthday party that Jil’s about-to-be-replaced parents gave her when she was ten. It was a Pixie Slumber Party, just for girls, with invitations delivered on rolled-up parchment paper printed with fancy, curly writing, tied up in satin ribbons the color of emeralds.

  We all wore beautiful, slippery, soft nightgowns that Mrs. Lewis had found on sale somewhere and let us keep. As soon as the sun went down, the Lewises put real flowers in our hair, gave us magic wands, fairy flutes, and maps of Pixieland, which turned out to be Jil’s uncle’s farm. Three snow-white ponies led us in a procession to the top of a hill, where we swirled and danced, caught fireflies, and ate fairy berries and melt-in-your-mouth chocolate cupcakes made to look like toadstools covered in frost.

  It was magic.

  For my tenth birthday, my parents suggested I invite friends over to cut dirty raw potatoes into weird shapes, ink them, and stamp them on T-shirts. “Tater T-shirts” they called them. It was something they’d learned from their tie-dying years.

  I told them about Jil’s moonlit pony party, and Mom said, “Amazing.”

  Dad said, “How extraordinarily whimsical. We could do something like that. Let’s call it A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and act out scenes from Shakespeare, and—”

  “Potatoes will be fine,” I’d said.

  * * *

  Now, I roll over and think about going to sleep, but it’s still only nine o’clock. Should I start one of my new library books?

  Yesterday, after English class, I’d asked Mr. Trimble if he knew any good books about faraway, exotic places.

  Jil’s parents have taken her to a million cool places: New York, Hawaii, Mexico, Switzerland. My parents never go anywhere, not because they can’t afford to—they can—but because they’d just rather stay home. Dad says books will take me anywhere I want to go.

  Once, he gave me Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, and it took me to England. I loved it, but I would never tell him that.

  So Mr. Trimble asked me if I’d ever read Mark Twain’s travel journals.

  “Fiction,” I told him. “I want fiction, preferably by authors who haven’t won awards and aren’t famous.” What I’d meant by that was that I wanted a book a kid would like, not one a teacher would pick.

  Then he asked me if I’d read any Batchelder Award books, and I answered, “Never heard of them,” and he said, “Try them. They’re set in foreign countries. It’s an award for great books that have been translated into English but were originally published in another language.”

  It still sounded suspiciously teacherly to me, but since I was never going to get to Italy or Africa or China any other way, I decided to give one a try.

  I creep over to my bookshelf and stare at the three books I’d picked. I’d chosen three, not because I thought I’d actually read three books in the two weeks before they’d be due back at the library, but because if I hated the first one, I’d have a couple of spares to fall back on.

  Carefully, I pull out Samir and Yonatan. I like to arrange my books from tallest to shortest so they look neat on the shelf. The flap says it’s about an Israeli boy and a Palestinian boy who become friends in spite of their differences. What I do not need right now is a book about tough friendships. I slide it back into its slot.

  The other two are The Thief Lord, which sounds exciting and takes place in Venice, and The Shadows of Ghadames, which sounds like it might be boring, until I read the front flap again and remember that it’s about a girl who wants to travel with her father but she’s stuck at home because girls in her country aren’t allowed to go anywhere, not even out their front doors. The only way she even gets to see the city that she lives in is from her rooftop.

  I pull it out from the shelf, then slide all the other books over to fill in the gap. Clearly, here is a girl with problems worse than mine. I decide to read it, hoping she’ll get to travel after all, and I’ll discover how she manages it. And because I want to know what an African city in Libya looks like from a rooftop.

  By the time I read two chapters, I decide that I need to be stronger.

  Tomorrow, when Jil calls and says, Dez, you have to help me, for the first time in my life, I’m going to say no.

  Chapter Seven

  I feel like such a fool.

  Jil did call, just like I knew she would. And begged me to go with her to the mall to meet her mother. I said, “Not unless you tell your parents.”

  At the time, saying that had made me feel great, in spite of the fact that I could be losing Jil’s friendship forever. And access to normal parents and a piano.


  But I thought I might be saving her from a possible psycho. And keeping her from hurting her parents. I also figured she would never go alone.

  Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

  She went. And guess what? Her mom’s a perfectly nice person. No knife hidden in her purse. No crazy twitching or babbling. Just a small woman with blond hair like Jil’s.

  And when she got home, Jil told her parents everything.

  And according to Jil, they weren’t hurt at all.

  I wonder if that’s true.

  Anyway, she was so excited that she even forgave me for being a jerk. She called later that night, just to tell me how great her new mom was. And that she was short, just like her. They even had the same blue eyes.

  “Dez!” Jil had exclaimed. “She looks like me! And guess what? I’ve got a sister! A half sister. She’s ten and her name is Penny and her nose turns up just like mine. We haven’t met yet, but I saw her picture.”

  I figure the main reason she ended up telling her parents was because she wanted to spend the night with Mom-2 and meet the new sister, and no way could she invent a good enough plan to pull that off without her usual accomplice—me.

  “What do you call her?” I asked.

  “Mom.”

  “What do you call your old mom?”

  “Mom.”

  “Doesn’t that get confusing?”

  “Not to me.”

  I hesitated, not sure I should bring up the next thing on my mind. “Was your dad there?” I asked anyway.

  “He’s gone. Split for Alaska or somewhere before I was even born.” Jil said this as calmly as she might have mentioned that they happened to be out of bananas.

  “Does Penny have a dad?” I asked in a way that I hoped sounded concerned, because I was concerned.

  “He died.”

  “Oh.”

  What I really wanted to hear were details about how her parents had taken all this great news, because, no matter what Jil claimed, I imagined them pretty hurt.

  “What’d your parents say?” I whispered. I hadn’t meant to whisper, but somehow my words slipped out that way.

  “They were supportive!” exclaimed Jil, excited again. “Super supportive, even,” she added.

  I pictured her cradling the phone between her shoulder and her ear so that she could extend her hands out, fingers spread in convincing celebration. Did I believe her? I wanted to, because the thought of the Lewises being sad or hurt made my throat ache.

  “They want me to be happy, Dez! They understand that I need to know.”

  “That’s great, Jil!” Maybe it was true. I was amazed. So amazed that I blurted, “But aren’t they really mad at Mom-2?”

  “Who? What? Dez! Don’t call her that.”

  “Sorry,” I apologized. “I didn’t mean anything bad by that, honest. But, hey! I’ve got to call her something. How will you know who I’m talking about?”

  “Oh,” said Jil, then proudly added, “Jane.”

  “Jane?”

  “That’s her name. Jane Simmons. But ‘Mrs. Simmons’ sounds wrong somehow. Too proper. So call her Jane.”

  I hate it when you can’t see a person’s face, but Jil sounded as if she were relaxed and smiling again, so I took a chance and repeated my original question. “Okay. It’s Jane. But, Jil, don’t your parents want to strangle her?”

  She laughed.

  I relaxed and resumed breathing.

  “No. Because I let them know how she’d refused to meet me unless I told them. I confessed that I’d lied to get her to come to the mall.”

  “And they’re okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Really?”

  “They’re fine, Dez. Honest. They met and talked with Mom. They’re going to let me visit her.”

  “They should win the Parents of the Year Award. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I guess.”

  “You guess!?” Now I was annoyed.

  “Dez, don’t start.”

  “Sorry. Can I go with you sometime?”

  “I think for a while it should just be me. Okay?”

  “Sure.”

  * * *

  So I had stuck to what I thought was right for nothing. Everything turned out fine, and I missed meeting her mom. For nothing.

  I can’t wait to meet Jane. And Penny.

  Jil can’t stop talking about how cool they are. Jane lets her stay up late, put sugar on Cocoa Puffs, and she and Penny hang out at the mall all day.

  Meanwhile, Mrs. Lewis is teaching me to play the piano. I can go there and practice, even when Jil’s not home. So everybody’s happy.

  Except my parents. You should have heard them when I told them all this. We were all sitting at the kitchen table, eating spaghetti. Denver looked like he’d taken a bath in tomato sauce. Then he knocked over his milk, drenched his shirt, and started shrieking.

  “‘Pour the sweet milk of concord into hell, uproar the universal peace,’” Dad recited. Then he winked at me and said, “William Shakespeare,” to let me know that he was the dead poet he’d just quoted.

  “Don’t say ‘hell’ in front of Denver,” said Mom. “You know how he repeats things.” Then to Denver she said, “Shhh, sweetie. Don’t cry over spilled milk.”

  I sat up straight, stuck my chin out, and leveled Dad with a challenging stare. “‘I spilled my milk, and I spoiled my clothes, and I got a long icicle hung from my nose!’ Mother Goose.” Then I winked back.

  Dad and I have this thing where we have poetry duels. He quotes some old guy whose poetry doesn’t even rhyme, and then I hit him with something better. At least I think it’s better. Dad claims that my stuff is verse, not poetry, and it may be fun, but it’s not serious. And that I should learn the difference.

  I have learned the difference. Mine’s better.

  Anyway, while Mom washed Denver with a dish towel that looked older than one of Dad’s poets, I told them about Jil.

  “Dez,” Mom said. “You need to be a good friend. Jil may be skating on thin ice.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means her relationship with her mother may not turn out as well as you think.”

  “‘And oft, though wisdom wake, suspicion sleeps at wisdom’s gate,’” muttered Dad, shaking his head.

  “Look. It’s fine. Honest. The Lewises are being supportive. I know. I saw Mrs. Lewis yesterday. She gave me a piano lesson and she wasn’t crying or anything. And Jane and Penny are cool.”

  “She gave you another piano lesson?” said Mom, tossing the sauce- and milk-stained towel in the same corner as the coffee-stained towel and the berry-stained towel. Right next to the harder-than-a-board slice of American cheese that had been sitting out since yesterday.

  “Yeah—she says I can come over as much as I want. I’m learning ‘Moonlight Sonata.’ By Beethoven. He’s an old dead guy, Dad. You’d love him.”

  “I know who Beethoven is,” Dad said, raising one eyebrow at me.

  “I don’t want you imposing on Mrs. Lewis,” said Mom.

  “Okay,” I answered brightly. “Can I have a piano, then? Please? I’ll pay for my own lessons.”

  “With what?” they both asked at the same time.

  “I don’t know. I’ll earn it. Somehow. I will.”

  “Don’t bite off more than you can chew,” said Mom.

  “Neither a borrower nor a lender be,” said Dad.

  I wasn’t sure how either one of those particularly fit what we were talking about, so I just answered, “Red fish, Blue fish,” and went back to eating my spaghetti.

  Parents know nothing.

  Chapter Eight

  I’ve given up “Moonlight Sonata” until further notice.

  I still love to play the opening tah-dah-dahs, but it’s way too hard a piece for a beginner like me. Mrs. Lewis makes me feel great about it, though.

  “Dez,” she says. “I love to see how hard you’re working at this.”

  “Thanks.”

 
She sits next to me on the bench, so close I can smell her perfume. She holds my sweaty hands in her manicured ones and says, “You have a pianist’s hands—long and slender. It’s exciting to see someone your age so interested.”

  She stares across the room at an oil painting of a cottage with a beautiful flower garden, but I don’t think she sees it. I think she’s wishing that Jil liked the piano as much as I do, and that Jil were here instead of at her other mom’s. I also think I see tears floating in her eyes.

  Has Mrs. Lewis been supportive? Maybe.

  Is she sad? Definitely.

  Then she snaps out of it and continues. “But, Dez, I don’t think even Mozart began by playing a sonata.”

  “Oh. Okay,” I answer. “What then?”

  “How about scales and maybe one or two simple melodies?”

  * * *

  So, now I’m practicing scales to figure out how to make my fingers work, and Mrs. Lewis is teaching me “Jingle Bells” in time for Christmas.

  The Lewises always have this incredible party two days before Christmas and invite the whole neighborhood. Their entire house is decorated with tapered white candles and deep green garlands of fresh pine branches that make everything smell the way Christmas is supposed to. The tree is gigantic, covered with amazing ornaments of every shape and color. My favorite is a tiny black glass piano that looks so fragile I think my breath could break it if I stood too close.

  At the party, Mr. Lewis always opens his front door looking handsome and saying, “Welcome! Merry Christmas!” over and over, but sounding like he really means it, every single time. Then he asks each guest if he can take his or her coat, which makes me feel exceptional—and older. Not old enough for the adult eggnog though. That is completely off-limits because a fifth of whiskey has been dumped into it.

  Two years ago, when we were only eleven, Jil and I sneaked a taste. We totally agreed the kids’ drink was better, except for the fact that the adults’ version floats in a huge crystal punch bowl. The kiddy eggnog gets served in a pretty pitcher that has tiny candy canes etched all over it. But pouring from it is nowhere near as elegant as picking up a sterling silver ladle and scooping creamy liquid out of a crystal bowl five times bigger than the biggest mixing bowl on earth.