The Cupid Chronicles

by Coleen Murtagh Paratore

  Everyone loves the name A Midwinter Night’s Dream.

  “How about if I chair the Dream?” Ruby offers. “I have the most experience with large-scale events,” she says. “We need to book a venue, hire a DJ, think about decorations, start calling on local businesses for contributions …”

  Tina looks at me like it’s a good idea. I think about Mum’s act of kindness and how Ruby’s going to do my hair. “Okay, Ruby. That would be great.”

  Tina shares her idea about a beach party in the barn for December and I talk about a possible Super Bowl bowling party at Strikers in January.

  I let Tina break the news about the Turkey Tango.

  “Wait till you hear this,” Tina says, all excited. “You know how Thanksgiving is, like, the most boring holiday of the year? Stuff like a pig and watch football? Well, you know that TV show, Star-Dance? They may come to film us dancing in Willa’s barn!”

  “Awesome!” Lauren says. “I love that show What should we wear?”

  “Tina,” I whisper. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’ll send them an e-mail, Willa,” Tina whispers. “Anything’s possible, right?”

  Ruby meets me at my locker after school. “Ready?” she says, zipping her red leather jacket.

  “Yep,” I say, buttoning my navy wool coat.

  “We’re going to have big trouble getting boys to that Turkey Tango,” Ruby says as we walk to her house. “We’ll have to think of a lure.”

  Please don’t come. Get strep throat. Throw another bonfire on the beach or something. Please stay away from JFK. Just find me a good hairstyle.

  Ruby’s house looks like a Las Vegas hotel.

  “Hi, girls,” Mrs. Sivler calls from the kitchen. She’s standing at a marble counter under a crystal chandelier wearing a skimpy red blouse and dangly earrings, frosting cupcakes as she watches a show on a wall-size screen.

  “What kind are you making today?” Ruby asks, swiping a taste from the bowl.

  A woman on the screen sobs, “No, Kent, no.” She wrenches herself away from the hunky officer. “I can’t go on. It’s over. We can’t do this to Marlena anymore.”

  Mrs. Sivler is riveted, spatula suspended in midair. “What?” she asks Ruby.

  “Nothing.” Ruby microwaves a bag of popcorn and dumps it in a bowl. “Come on, Willa, I’ve got soda in my room.”

  I follow Ruby up the winding staircase, sliding my hand up the brass, or is it gold, banister as we go. At the top, Ruby motions to the left. “That’s the way to my parents’ wing.” She turns right and I follow her like a trusty dog down the long hallway, peaking into rooms as we pass. Finally, Ruby says, “here we go.”

  Ruby’s room is red. Very, very red. The walls, the carpet, even the ceiling. And standing like an island in the center of the Red Sea, is Ruby’s bed. Seven sisters could sleep in it and never bump elbows. The bed towers so high off the ground, you actually do need to climb the wooden stairs next to it to reach the mattress. There’s a billowy lace canopy with a jewel-studded crown on top. A wooden plaque on the wall reads, “Bow or curtsy, take your pick, you are in the presence of a princess.” There’s a row of fancy dolls on the window ledge and a large Patriots poster with signatures on it.

  Oh great, Ruby likes the Pats. Just like JFK. I wonder how the team is doing? Mental note, start reading the sports page.

  Ruby swings her backpack on to the fake polar bear rug, at least I hope it’s fake, and points to the refrigerator. “Help yourself,” she says, “I’ve got everything.”

  I open the fridge. She’s not kidding. I take out a root beer.

  Ruby goes into her dressing room and comes out wearing a Go Pats! sweatshirt.

  Oh great, Ruby really likes the Pats. She sees me looking at her sweatshirt.

  “Hey,” Ruby says. “I’ve got an idea how we can get more boys at the turkey dance. I’ll get Daddy to donate two of our box seats for a Pats game and we’ll raffle them off as a prize. That’ll get the guys there.”

  Oh great, with my luck, JFK will win. I can picture it now. Ruby and JFK, in matching Patriot sweatshirts, waving pennants, cuddled together like polar bears …

  “What’s your sign, Willa?”

  “My what?”

  “Your sign. Your zodiac sign. When were you born?”

  “January,” I say, a bit nervous about where this is headed, “the thirteenth.”

  “Okay, Capricorn,” Ruby says. She leafs through a magazine on her nightstand. “Interesting … You are entering a phase of rapid growth …”

  I stick out my chest. I still feel like a second grader next to Ruby and Tina.

  “… and the grounded, rule-driven side of you will feel the need for continued structure as the new, more confident side of you experiments …”

  Ruby puts the magazine down. “Okay, sit,” she says. “I’ve got an idea.”

  Ruby’s dressing table is the kind movie stars have. Big, bright bulbs all around. Vanity lights. “Okay,” Ruby talks to me in the mirror, fussing with my hair. “You need something that expresses your changing personality. See me? I went red because it matches my more passionate nature. My interest in more serious romance …”

  I swallow. My heart is pounding. What if JFK is the more serious romance?

  Ruby is staring as if she read my mind. “Don’t worry, Willa. I’m going out with Chris Ruggiero, the new transfer kid from Hartford, Saturday night. Have you seen him in his soccer uniform? Oh my God, is he hot. I’m talking hotter than—”

  “Ice cream?” I toss Ruby a crumb.

  “What?” Ruby says. “What do you mean ice cream?”

  I tell Ruby about Tina’s invention.

  “Oh, that’s great,” Ruby says. “I’m going to start using that myself. Ice cream.”

  “I don’t think you can,” I say. “Tina said she was getting a patent on it.”

  Ruby and I laugh, just like two friends gossiping about another. I decide to throw out a really big crumb. “Well, if you can keep a secret,” I say. “JFK came to the Halloween party and we ended up talking all night.”

  “Oh, really,” Ruby says, “good for you.”

  I can’t tell if she’s serious or not. “Ruby, please don’t say any—”

  “Don’t worry My lips are sealed. Now, what to do with your hair?”

  Ruby stares at me in the mirror. “According to your horoscope, you are sort of at a dividing line between the old mousy … I mean the old Willa and the new Willa.”

  Ruby parts my hair down the middle. She smooths one side down straight with a paddle brush. “Now for the other side.” She squeezes some Come and Get Me Curls! styling gel on to her hands and slathers it on the other side of my head. She sticks a plastic thing on the blow dryer—“it’s a diffuser,” Ruby says—and begins scrunching handfuls of my hair like she’s crunching paper as she dries.

  When Ruby’s finished, I am two Willas. Left side curly. Right side straight.

  I’m amazed. I like it. I really really like it.

  “Perfect.” Ruby nods her head. “That’s you, Willa. It looks great.”

  “Thanks, Ruby” I smile. “I like it. What do you call this anyway?”

  “I don’t know,” Ruby says. “How about ‘the Willa’? Hey, maybe I should get a patent on it or something.” We both laugh.

  Ruby Sivler made a rainbow today.

  I change the Bramble Board when I get home. It’s a line from Aesop’s fable, “The Lion and the Mouse.” No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.

  CHAPTER 18

  The Turkey Tango

  Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind,

  And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.

  —Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

  If you’ve ever seen grown-ups who haven’t danced in years all of a sudden start kicking it up good at a wedding or bat mitzvah or some other fancy shindig, hold that scene in your head. Now imagine the party is at your house and all of your friends
are there and when the grown-ups who haven’t danced in years start kicking it up good, your friends turn and look at you like, puke, why did you ever invite me?

  Okay, now you’re getting a glimpse of the Turkey Tango.

  There was such unsightly shaking and twirling and smooching and swirling that the barn cats fled screeching into the cold with the barn bats flapping behind, wait, wait!

  Maybe the tango isn’t the worst dance ever invented. Maybe it would be nice to watch two sexy sultry Spanish lovers, bodies clasped tighter than two pages in a smutty novel, passionately slither across a stage in perfect rhythm to the pounding sound, but I can’t even begin to paint you a pretty picture of Mama and Papa B going belly to belly, bosom to bosom, chipmunk cheek to chipmunk cheek across the barn floor with red roses dangling from their mouths.

  No, you’ll just have to paint that picture for yourself.

  And do you think Miss Happyfeet from North Truro, the dance instructor Stella hired for the evening, stopped with tango tutoring?

  No, Miss Happyfeet did not. Miss Happyfeet saw the gushing enthusiasm of the grown-ups—the Blazers brought tons of relatives with them (half of our evening’s admission goal, thank you very much) but, alas, Suzanna Jubilee will be delayed. She passed through the quarters with flying colors and now she’s on to the Miss Daisydew semis in Orlando. Oh no, Miss Happyfeet did not stop at the tango. Happyfeet didn’t earn her name for nothing. Miss Happyfeet could tell she had this crowd in the arch of her foot. And so, as the night beat on, Happyfeet danced on to the polka, and the fox trot, disco, waltzes, merengues, cha-chas …

  Who knew there were so many different dances? Scottish steps and Irish jigs, square dances, line dances, contras and cloggings, swings and salsas, twists and tarantellas, on and on and on …

  Using Sam as a partner for “demonstration purposes,” which made Stella jealous, which was actually fun to see, Miss Happyfeet had those grown-ups slipping and sliding and sweating all night.

  “Come join us, Willa!” Mum keeps shouting, queen of the conga line. Dunta, dunta, dun, TA! … dunta, dunta, dun, TA! And Nana and Gramp are Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. But Papa B. Pilgrim and Mama B. Pocahontas—she in full headdress, deerskin moccasins, and native boa—are the hands-down, or should I say feet-down, amazin’-blazin’ belles of the ball.

  “This is a disaster,” Tina says, “a disaster.”

  “And where’s the film crew from Star-Dance?” Emily demands to know.

  The boys keep trying to bolt. We have to physically drag them back in, shouting “free food! Pats box seats!” before they run off like the barn cats.

  We’re all huddled here in a horse stall, miserably watching the “happy feet.”

  JFK comes up next to me and my heart jumps. “I like your new hair,” he says.

  “Thanks.” I can’t think of what to say next.

  “Hello, Willa, honey!” Mama B waves. She and Papa are doing freestyle.

  “Oh my God,” Ruby says. “Get a load of them.”

  This is all Stella’s fault.

  “Come on, girls and boys,” Happyfeet calls. “Plenty of room for everyone!”

  “This rots,” Jessie says.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Luke says.

  “The games, Willa,” Tina pleads. “What about the games?”

  “Okay, everybody. It’s called Pin the Tush on the Turkey.” I point to the sorry pinup bird I got at the dollar store. “We’ll cover your eyes and you take a feather and walk six steps forward. The one who pins a feather closest to the turkey’s tush, wins.”

  Tina looks like she’s going to kill me.

  “Tush?” Jessie says.

  “Butt,” Tina explains. “The turkey’s butt.”

  “Come on, Luke, let’s go.” Jessie zips his jacket.

  “I’ve got a better idea,” Ruby says. “Let’s play Kiss and Guess.”

  “Now we’re talking,” Gus Groff says.

  “How do you play?” Trish asks.

  “Who cares,” Allie says, “anything’s better than this.”

  “It’s fun,” Ruby promises. “I learned it at Camp Okanova. Everybody sits in a big circle, sort of like Duck, Duck, Goose. The Mole sits in the middle, blindfolded. The Ruler points to someone in the circle and that person has to kiss the Mole. If the Mole guesses who the Kisser is, the Mole wins and gets to be the Ruler.”

  The swim team guys do their seal slap, urgh, urgh. The Burners go “hot, hot, hot.” Tina puts on lipstick. The Buoy Boys are first to sit.

  “And don’t worry, girls,” Ruby says. “I brought goggles for us to wear under the blindfold so we won’t mess up our mascara.”

  I look at JFK. He rolls his eyes like “this is stupid.”

  I scrunch my nose like “I know.”

  “Okay, who’s the first Mole?” Ruby says. No one wants to go first.

  “Come on,” Ruby says. “What a bunch of turkeys.”

  “I’ll go,” JFK says, always the good sport.

  JFK sits in the middle. Ruler Ruby wraps a blindfold around his eyes. She looks around the circle, then points to Tina. Tina looks at me, like, I’m sorry I shrug my shoulders. Tina kisses JFK quick on the cheek and then hurries back to her seat.

  JFK laughs. “That was too quick. I didn’t even have time to smell perfume.”

  “Okay,” Ruler Ruby says, “you’ve got to count to five, kissers: one thousand one, one thousand two … We’ll give you another chance, Joey.”

  Tina goes and kisses JFK again. “Well?” Ruby asks.

  “It was you, Ruby, right?” JFK says. Everyone laughs.

  “Wrong,” Ruby says. “It was Tina.”

  Out on the main floor, Miss Happyfeet shouts. “Texas Two-step, everyone!”

  Ruby says, “Now we need a boy Ruler.”

  “I’ll go,” says Jessie. “It’s your party, Willa. You be the Mole.”

  Oh no. I sit down in the center. I pass on the goggles. Jessie ties the blindfold. This is embarrassing. I probably look stupid. Who is Jessie pointing to? What if Stella dances by? What if … and then there are lips on my cheek. I smell peppermint.

  “Well?” Ruler Jessie asks. “Who was it?”

  The music is blasting and happy heels are pounding on the old barn floor, but nothing’s beating louder than my heart. “JFK,” I whisper.

  “What?” Ruler Jessie shouts. “We can’t hear you.”

  “It’s Joseph. Final answer.”

  “Right,” Jessie says. Someone takes off the blindfold.

  I hear Stella. “Willa? Willa?” Everybody stands up and shuffles around.

  “There you are,” Stella says. Thankfully it’s too dark to see my face. “Please come dance, Willa. The party’s almost over and you’re going to insult the Blazers if—”

  “Sure, Mrs. Gracemore,” Ruby says. “We’ll dance. I love to dance. Come on, everybody, we’re being rude.”

  We follow Ruler Ruby. My heart is still pounding. I can still smell peppermint.

  “There you are!” Miss Happyfeet says. “Time for a swing!”

  JFK comes up beside me. “Hey, Willa. I was wondering if you want to go see a movie this weekend. Jessie’s asking Tina. And I thought maybe we could …”

  Yes! Finally. “Sure, I’d like—”

  And just then, Miss Happyfeet sweeps toward us and pulls JFK onto the dance floor. She pulls in Ruby to be his partner. JFK looks flustered. Ruby looks thrilled.

  “Don’t worry, Joey,” I hear Ruby say. “I learned this at the club years ago.”

  And then they are dancing. Ruby and JFK. And they look great together. Why does JFK always have to be such a good sport? Why can’t he be a jerk like some of the other … whoosh … the barn door swings open.

  In struts a girl tall as the Statue of Liberty. Gorgeous face, emerald green eyes, white curls cascading like waterfalls. She stands there bright as the harvest moon in her white leather jacket and cowboy hat.

  Feet stop. Eyes pop. Jaws drop. Someone says
“is she a ghost or for real?”

  “Well, hell—o, Bramble!” The apparition smiles, showing off dazzling white teeth. “Am I too late for the party?”

  “Suzy-Jube!” Mama B shrieks.

  “Suzy-Jube!” Papa B echoes.

  They race to hug her. Suzanna Jubilee has landed in Bramble.

  We stare, speechless, as the Blazers do their Pilgrim-Pochahontas-Harvest-Moon dance. I couldn’t even begin to paint you a picture.

  “Am I too late?” Suzanna says, all excited and out of breath.

  “Oh no,” Jessie shouts. He walks toward her like he’s possessed.

  “You’re right on time,” Luke says, moving forward. “What a fox!”

  Sam’s eyes are dinner plates. Stella elbows him. “We’ve got a holiday to put on tomorrow,” she says. “Let’s start wrapping this up.”

  “Hey, guys, wait,” Ruby says in a desperate voice. “It’s getting late, and I almost forgot. We have to do the drawing for the Pats box seats.”

  The boys aren’t sure which way to turn. Fox? Football? Fox? Football?

  “All right, NOW,” Ruby demands their attention. “Super Bowl! Box seats!” She holds the basket with the names inside over her head. “Pick one, Willa.”

  I draw out a slip of paper, but before I can unfold it, Ruby pulls it from my hand.

  “Okay,” she says, “the winner of the two box seats, compliments of the Sivler family, for the Patriots Super Bowl game is …”

  The boys crowd in.

  “… Joey Kennelly.”

  Ruby sticks the paper in the pocket of her jeans.

  CHAPTER 19

  Grabbing the Glad

  What is love? ’Tis not hereafter.

  Present mirth hath present laughter.

  What’s to come is still unsure.

  In delay there lies no plenty,

  Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty.

  Youth’s a stuff will not endure.

  —Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

  We made $1,300 at the Turkey Tango. The twenty-nine Blazers came in handy. There were even two unexplained Bens in the jar. Mama and Papa B, I bet. I knew we could do this! Just a few more successful events and well save the Bramble Library.