I looked at the fortune in my hands. “Where am I going to keep this? We better have a good hiding place.” I gave the money to Mary Anne. “Here, you hide it,” I said. “I can’t do it. I’m afraid I’ll lose it.”
Mary Anne took the money, Mom and Dad gave us a few more instructions, and then Mom said, “I think I’ll go upstairs and have a talk with the triplets about the Bizzer Sign.”
“I’ll help you two set up the cot,” said Dad to Mary Anne and me.
“Oh, we can do it!” I cried. “Come on, Mary Anne.”
Mary Anne and I were busily wedging the cot between Vanessa’s bed and mine, when Adam charged into the room.
“Don’t bother knocking,” said Vanessa, who was seated at her desk. She frowned, then added, “And please stop your mocking.” (Vanessa plans to be a poetess.)
“I didn’t say anything!” exclaimed Adam. “Yet.”
“What’s up?” I asked. I thought maybe he was going to complain because Mom had talked to him and Byron and Jordan about the Bizzer Sign.
Adam grinned broadly. “Guess what I just heard on the news,” he said. Then he added meaningfully, “On WSTO.”
I glanced at Mary Anne and shrugged.
Vanessa looked up long enough to say, “A war? A robber? A traffic jam? A prisoner is on the lam?”
Adam made a face. “No! The weather guy just said we’re supposed to get a big snowstorm tomorrow.”
What on old, tired story. I put a striped case on a pillow and arranged the pillow on Mary Anne’s cot.
“Hey, Vanessa,” Adam went on, “you can put away your homework. We won’t be having any school tomorrow.”
“Have you done yours yet?” Mary Anne asked Adam. “Because I sure wouldn’t count on a snow day.”
“Most of it,” Adam muttered. He left the room, looking gloomy.
But I felt great.
I caught Mary Anne’s eye. Our adventure was about to begin!
Mom had made a major promise. She had said I could get my hair permed for the Winter Wonderland Dance. It wouldn’t be my first perm or anything, but I wanted a new one very badly. My old one looked kind of limp. It also looked like a perm. You want to know a beauty secret? Okay. The secret to good makeup and a good hair treatment is to look as if you have no makeup and no treatment. It’s kind of odd to spend money on supplies and stuff when your goal is to look like you don’t use them, but I guess the idea is to appear natural. Anyway, I needed a perm so I could look like I didn’t have one.
I was going to the dance with this guy named Austin Bentley. I’ve been out with him before and so has Claudia. We don’t love him. He’s just a nice guy. So I invited him to the dance. Even if he wasn’t a special date, I wanted to look good on Friday. Getting my hair permed was critical. So was going to Washington Mall.
Washington Mall is one of those huge shopping complexes that looks as if it had been dropped out of the sky and just happened to land in a parking lot by a major highway. It’s enormous. In the mall are stores, restaurants, even a movie theater. Unfortunately, the mall is not in Stoneybrook. You have to drive, like, half an hour to get there, if you take the highway. If you take the back roads, the trip could be a lot longer.
Now, my mom is great, but one of her flaws is: She’s afraid to drive in snow. She had said we could go to the mall for my perm if the roads were clear. The night before, when I’d heard the most recent WSTO weather forecast, I had panicked. Snow for Wednesday! No way Mom would drive me to the mall if a storm came. I’d have to settle on going to the local place on Thursday. And the local hair place, Gloriana’s House of Hair, is not wonderful. (You should have seen what Gloriana did to Kristy’s stepsister once.)
Can you understand why I was jubilant when I left school on Wednesday and no snow was falling? The sky was overcast, almost leaden, and the temperature had dropped to 28 degrees, but — no snow! (The weather was stuck in a rut.)
“Mom, Mom!” I called as soon as I ran in the door after school.
“In the kitchen, honey,” she replied.
I found my mother seated at the kitchen table, paying bills. “It’s not snowing,” I announced.
Mom smiled. “You don’t want to drive all the way out to the mall, do you?”
“Yes!” I cried. “I do! You said we could if —” I realized Mom was teasing. “So we’re still going?” I asked.
“Sure,” replied my mother. She glanced outside. “I don’t see why not.”
“Oh, thank you, thank you! Can Claudia come with us?”
“Of course.”
“Yes!” I exclaimed. I made a grab for the phone and dialed Claudia’s personal number. (She is so lucky.) “Hi,” I said when Claudia answered. “It’s me. We’re still going to the mall. Want to come with us?”
“I do,” replied Claudia, “but I better not. I don’t think you’ll be back in time. I’m sitting for the Perkinses tonight. And before that, I have to take BSC phone calls, since we’re not holding our meeting. Remember? I promised Kristy. She’d kill me if I skipped out to go to the mall instead.”
“Yeah. Sorry. I forgot that you volunteered to take calls. Can I get you anything from the mall?” (This was a dangerous question.)
“Just go drool over the stuff in the jewelry store, okay?”
I laughed. “Okay. Have fun at the Perkinses’. Call me when you get home.”
“Okay,” replied Claud. “See you.”
I hung up the phone and immediately Mom pounced on me. “Stacey? You better eat something before we leave.” (Like you can’t buy food at the mall.) “And have you given yourself your insulin?”
For heaven’s sake. I am thirteen. I have been taking care of my diabetes forever now. (Well, for a couple of years.) But I understood Mom’s concern. A while ago, I wasn’t careful about my diet — and I landed in the hospital.
“I won’t need another injection for a couple of hours,” I told Mom. “But I do need a snack. I’ll eat it in the car, though.”
“Are you in a hurry?” teased Mom.
I laughed. “Come on. I want to get going.”
I put an apple, some carrot sticks, and a handful of wheat crackers in a bag. Then I herded Mom out to the car.
As we sped along the highway, I ate the apple and most of the crackers. I put the bag away and slid a cassette into the tape player.
The music came on.
I slid my eyes sideways, glancing at Mom. She was glancing at me.
“How come,” I said, “this tape from a case labeled Shout It! by the Tin Can Voices is playing Vivaldi’s Four Seasons?”
Mom raised her eyebrows. “Stacey, I’m impressed. You can recognize Vivaldi. I’ll have to switch tapes more often.”
“I suppose,” I said, “that I’ll find Shout It! in a Vivaldi case at home?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“Mom, this is cruelty to children,” I protested. (We were laughing.)
I let Vivaldi play away. (Of course, Vivaldi himself wasn’t playing. Vivaldi composed the music, but he’s been dead for years.)
“Stacey, are you dressed warmly enough?” asked Mom out of the blue.
“You mean, considering the heater is blasting and the windows are rolled up?” I replied. (The truth is, I wasn’t dressed warmly enough for a 28-degree day. But I was overdressed for equatorial weather, which was how the inside of the car felt. Mom doesn’t have a very good heater control.)
“Stacey,” said my mother warningly.
I knew that if I uttered one more word, she would say something like, “How badly do you want to go to the mall? Because we can always turn around and head right back home.”
“Sorry,” I apologized. “Okay. I’m not dressed quite warmly enough, but hey, I look good. Besides,” I added quickly, seeing the expression on Mom’s face, “we’re hardly going to be outside at all. We just have to walk from the car into the mall and back. I can handle that.”
Mom sighed. “I’m sure,” she said, “that I never acted an
ything like you when I was thirteen years old.”
I leaned over and gave Mom a kiss on the cheek. “I love you,” I said.
“I love you, too.”
* * *
Washington Mall was, as Mom said, decorated to the teeth. For Christmas and Hanukkah, that is. She meant that it was over-decorated, both inside and out. The first thing I noticed as we approached the mall from the highway was this enormous neon Santa, a sleigh, eight reindeer, and Rudolph, perched atop Sears. Not far away, running across the outside of another department store, was a menorah outlined in lightbulbs. And tinsel was everywhere in the mall. It looked like an aluminum-foil factory had exploded.
We went inside. Not an inch of space was left undecorated. And in the center of the mall was a large gingerbread house, circled by a line of impatient children waiting to visit Santa Claus, who sat on a throne inside.
“Mommy, Mommy, can I go see Santa?” I asked.
Mom smiled. “Maybe next year, dear,” she replied. “Come along.”
We reached the beauty salon and luckily, Joyce, my favorite hairstylist, was free. Before long I was sitting in a chair, smelling like rotten eggs.
“Stace?” said Mom, who looked bored. “I’m going to run to Sears. I’ll be back in a little while.”
“Okay,” I replied.
Joyce was hard at work. After awhile, I was ready to “cook” under the hair dryer. Then Joyce unwound my rollers. Mom returned. She watched as Joyce combed my hair out.
“You look great, honey,” said Mom.
“Thanks! And thank you for letting me have the perm. I really appreciate it. I hope you know that.”
We were standing at the counter, and Mom was writing out a check, when another client entered the salon. “Whew! It’s really snowing!” she exclaimed.
I glanced at my mother. “Uh-oh,” I said.
Wednesday afternoon seemed strange. Well, it was a little strange. Unusual, anyway. Christmas was drawing near, so our house was decorated. Almost. Watson had strung lights on the fir tree in the front yard. Inside, evergreen branches were everywhere, along with our favorite old decorations. The only thing missing was the indoor tree. (We’d bought one; we just hadn’t put it in the living room yet.) Also, as I mentioned before, Karen and Andrew were living with us for two weeks.
Most unusual, though, was … no BSC meeting. We’ve missed meetings here and there, but usually because my friends and I were on vacation. Or because we were all busy with some school event or project. But that day was just a semiregular Wednesday. I wondered what to do with myself. I had no sitting job and wasn’t even needed to watch my younger brothers and sisters. So I got out my schoolbooks and did my homework. I finished early. Now what? An unexpected stretch of time lay before me.
The phone rang.
Bart! I thought, and dashed into the kitchen.
But the call was for Karen. Her friend Nancy wanted to know if Emily Junior had turned up. Very sadly, Karen admitted that she hadn’t. When Karen got off the phone, I decided to call Bart myself.
Wait! What was I going to say to him?
In an instant, one of my brilliant ideas slipped into my brain. If it was okay with Mom and Nannie and Watson, I would invite Bart over to watch a couple of videos, and then maybe he could stay for dinner.
I was in luck. I got permission, and Charlie volunteered to drive me to the video store so I could rent some tapes.
I called Bart. “Want to come over?” I asked. “I thought we could watch some movies. And Mom said you can stay for dinner.”
“Today?” replied Bart.
“Yeah.”
“But it’s Wednesday. It’s a school day. And you have a BSC meeting.” Bart sounded horribly confused.
“There’s no meeting,” I told him. “It was canceled. And you don’t have to stay too late. Come on. It’ll be fun. What movies do you feel like seeing?”
“Oh, funny ones.”
Of course Bart seemed confused. We’d been spending more time together recently, but mostly on the weekends. I hardly ever called him on an afternoon in the middle of the week. And I had certainly never invited him to dinner. To be honest, I was slightly nervous about exposing him to my family, but I thought it might be time to do that. I mean, Bart’s met everyone from Nannie to Emily Michelle; he’s just never had a dose of the entire Brewer/Thomas household for any period of time.
I hoped he liked rats.
“Do you mind if Emily Junior is on the loose?” I asked.
Not surprisingly, Bart sounded taken aback. Still, he said, “Nope.”
“Good. I’ll call you when I get back from the video store.”
Ah. This seemed the perfect way to spend a cold, cloudy almost-winter afternoon. Movies, dinner, Bart.
Charlie drove me to the video store, and after hemming and hawing so long that my brother said, “Were you hoping to rent something before Christmas?” I finally chose two movies: Uncle Buck and Back to the Future.
I called Bart as soon as I was at home again. “Come on over,” I said.
Then I set the movies on top of the television in the den. It was at this point that I noticed something disturbing. Karen, Andrew, David Michael, and Emily Michelle were not doing anything. They were hanging around the house, draping themselves across couches and chairs, whining, complaining, and occasionally yelling at one another.
They were bored.
“Nannie,” I said nervously, “the kids are bored.”
Nannie sighed. “Well …” Her voice trailed off.
“Oh, please. I don’t want them pestering us when —”
Ding-dong.
“— Bart is here,” I finished.
And at that moment, eight little feet thundered toward the front door.
“I’ll get it!” I screeched.
I ran for the door and edged the kids away.
“Who is it?” asked David Michael. “Is it your … boyfriend?”
My hand was on the door. I was all set to open it for Bart, who was probably freezing. Instead, I turned around, put my other hand on my hip, and glared at the four kids. “Bart is not my boyfriend,” I hissed.
“Should I tell him that?” asked David Michael.
“Don’t you dare!”
Karen was peeking out a window to make sure Bart was really the one who had rung the bell. (We are supposed to remember to do that so we don’t fling open the door and find a stranger on our stoop.) “It is Bart … your boyfriend,” she added devilishly.
“I know,” I said.
“But you didn’t check.”
“But I was going to.”
“Are you sure?”
“Nannie!” I yelled.
“What?” she replied.
“Your grandchildren are making me crazy!”
Nannie rescued me for the time being. She collected David Michael, Emily, Karen, and Andrew and took them upstairs to their playroom.
I was finally able to let poor Bart inside.
“Sorry about that,” I told him. “Unfortunately, the kids are mildly bored today.”
“No problem,” said Bart, who is pretty easygoing.
Bart and I settled into the den with a large bowl of popcorn. I slipped Uncle Buck into the VCR. I turned around. Bart was sitting pretty much in the middle of the couch, the popcorn next to him.
Well, now what? Where was I supposed to sit?
Was the popcorn an invitation to join Bart on the couch? If I did that, I would have to sit right next to him. Would he think I was being too, oh, forward? I could sit in the armchair, but then I wouldn’t be near the popcorn. Bart would have to stretch halfway across the room to pass it to me.
I solved the problem by sitting on the floor near Bart’s feet, as if that was where I always sat to watch movies. Ten minutes later, Bart joined me on the floor. He sort of slid off the couch — very casually — until he was seated next to me. I reached back, found the popcorn bowl, and moved it to the floor, too. But I didn’t reach for a handful until
I saw Bart reach for one. Then I made sure our hands brushed against each other.
“Hee, hee, hee.”
I distinctly heard a giggle.
Sure enough, Andrew was peeking into the room. Then he ducked out. A moment later, Emily pranced in. Her diaper was unfastened on one side and trailed down her leg. She waved gaily at Bart and me, then plopped onto the floor, blocking our view of the set. Oh, perfect, I thought.
Of course, by then I had snatched my hand out of the popcorn bowl. So had Bart. Andrew came back into the room, spotted the popcorn, and helped himself. He wiggled between Bart and me on the floor.
“What are you watching?” he asked. (He sprayed Bart’s face with popcorn as he spoke.) “Can I watch, too?”
“You are,” I muttered. Then I hoisted myself onto the couch. Bart followed me, wiping bits of corn kernels off his cheek.
I sat stiffly during the rest of Uncle Buck and the first half of Back to the Future. Karen joined us in the den. Andrew left, then returned with about thirty-five Matchbox cars. Nannie found Emily and put a new diaper on her — right there on the floor, in front of Bart.
My brothers and sisters talked endlessly to Bart, but I began to feel like the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz — as if my jaw had rusted shut.
Back to the Future was nearly over when David Michael appeared in the doorway and announced, “Dinner’s ready. Mom wants everyone to come to the table. That means you, Kristy. And your boyfriend.”
I made a face at my brother.
Usually, my family eats meals at the big table in the kitchen. We had made an exception on Wednesday evening. In honor of Bart, Mom and Watson had set the table in the dining room. They had dimmed the lights and lit candles. I felt weirder than ever in that romantic setting with Bart to my left and Karen to my right, Watson jabbering about this antique sale he’d been to, Emily humming the theme from Sesame Street, and Karen checking under the table every five minutes for some sign of her missing rat.
Since I am not noted for being quiet, Sam said, as Nannie and Charlie began to clear the table later, “What’s the matter, Kristy? You aren’t embarrassed, are you?”
And David Michael added, “Embarrassed about what? Her boyfriend?”
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