“Oh?” I said.
“Yeah, the way you’ve been at school. You’re just . . . different.”
Well, he was right. I was refocusing, and that spread over to my dealings with the Not-So-Cheerleaders too. But it wasn’t easy.
It turned out that those girls had their sights on a trophy just like the basketballers did. This news came up at one of our practices—“making states” they called it—and there was a very pointed remark made about how it would take commitment and perfect attendance from every one of us. Of course, the not-so-committed one with lousy attendance was I. Now they were talking about making up separate routines and new skills for “making states.”
Crap. What had I signed up for?
Okay, okay. This is like dance competitions, I told myself, though I wasn’t completely buying it—nor had contests ever been my favorite part of being a dancer. I decided I’d better start showing up at every practice, and I’d better remember to bring sneakers, too. The trouble was the Not-So-Cheerleaders didn’t practice. They stressed out—out loud. One day, all they did was argue. We never did a single jump, never cheered a single cheer. I stayed mum, wet my thumb, and rubbed a fading henna on the back of my hand. I got that whole thing off. I thought up an idea for a new one while they yammered.
Another practice came and it was pretty much the same. They discussed and re-discussed, and I shifted around on my bare feet. (I still hadn’t remembered my sneakers.) I took a look at that wooden floor in the auxiliary gym, that long diagonal. I tested it with one toe—nice, dry slide. I lifted myself into a pirouette, knee turned out—oh, that felt not as familiar as it once had. I did it again. I circled once, twice. They were talking. Not watching. I stepped into a tour of twirls that took me the full length of the gym. I picked up too much speed. Lost my focal point. I ran out of real estate and hit the padded wall with a grunt. What a dumb-ass.
I got ten dirty looks and one wet-your-pants cackle. That laughter came from the cheerful cheerleader called Emmy, who doubled over and covered her own mouth with both her hands. When we took our break—and I guess that would be our break from not doing anything—Emmy told me she was sorry for the outburst. I shrugged and told her that I would have laughed too. “You’re a dancer, aren’t you?” she added. “I mean, the real deal. That was awesome, Bettina.”
More than once that afternoon, I glanced at the gym’s back doors—at the crack of light that leaked inward. Cowboy was out there, just a parking lot and a football field away. Damn. I wanted to see him so much. For all we were getting accomplished in that gym, well, double damn.
I couldn’t help thinking of him. One Tuesday, Regina Colletti slept through my visit after a tiring day of doctors’ appointments. Tony had a music lesson. I was alone with the dozing queen. I shook up a few of her snow globes. Most of them were tacky—puppy dogs wearing Santa hats—but a few were little masterpieces, like the one with the Russian rooftops in royal purples and golds. My favorite, though, had a Chinese boy inside, all dressed in red and flying a kite. It was full of tiny falling stars instead of snow. I sat down and listened to Regina’s breathing. I opened a sketchbook and without planning to, I drew one of Cowboy’s boots from memory.
So my afternoons were pretty swallowed up. Then my mornings changed too. I got semi-grounded for missing my curfew by four minutes on the weekend. Momma would have looked the other way but Bampas caught me and he clamped down. He granted me the two cheerleading practices and he insisted that I still see Regina Colletti. So, that wasn’t bad. But the other part of my punishment was that either Momma or Bampas had to drive me to school for the week. Favian and Avel had to ride with us. We left late every day and I barely had time to stop at my locker before homeroom.
“Perhaps you see the hardship you put on your family,” Bampas had suggested.
When he was well out of range, I had answered back, “Yeah, yeah, whatever. You’re choosing this hardship.”
Well, one of those mornings my grounding fell apart because of car troubles. I took the bus. So, there I was with a half hour until the bell would ring. So, I did it; I bought coffees that day. But holy hell, I ran into Brady and his friends on the sidewalk just outside the shop. It was amazing it hadn’t happened before. Brady walked to school every day, but rarely this early. I’d finally been caught coffee-handed.
“P’teen-uh! What the hell is this?” he asked. He pointed at the cups.
“Oh! Coffee,” I chirped, and I held one out to him. He curled his lip so high I saw his eyetooth.
“I don’t drink that shit. You know I don’t.” He shook his head.
“Oh. Right.” I hunched my shoulders as if to say, Oops. “Well, anybody else want a black coffee?” I offered it to the huddle. No takers. “Well, I guess I’m going to be wired today,” I said. Brady was busy acting offended, and nobody else was paying any attention to me. Pouring Cowboy’s coffee down the art room sink that morning felt like a sad tiny act of betrayal.
At the end of that week, Momma drove me into school early while Bampas took the boys out to breakfast. I had three to-go containers of baklava to share with the Not-So-Cheerleaders and basketballers. They always gathered in the lobby after school, everyone hanging around in the vicinity of the White Tiger mosaic before practices began. Brady had wanted me there, so I’d been going. The girls had started bringing cookies and brownies. I got this idea to contribute. So Momma had walked me through her recipe for the baklava, and to my own great surprise, it looked gorgeous—flaky, golden brown, and running with honey. I stowed the stack of containers in my locker. I knew there was time—I could make that mad dash for coffees for Cowboy and me. He was always so happy to see that cup of joe and in fact he’d given me money for it, and now it’d been days since I’d—
“Hey, Bettina!” I looked up, there was Big Bonnie standing half in, half out of the art room doorway. “I’m unloading a firing this morning. Wanna come?”
“Oh. Umm . . .” I did want to see this. I did want to help her. I wanted to see Cowboy, too. But the kiln was ready now. I looked at Bonnie. Nobody ever helped her. I heard myself say yes.
From the moment Bonnie unlatched the hatch of the kiln and swung it open, I was mesmerized. Gentle heat left over from the firing rose into the art room. We listened to the quiet tink-tink of the warm surfaces as they cooled.
Bonnie put on a pair of oven mitts and reached into the kiln. I watched each piece come into the light. I made space on the shelves.
“I love this glaze. . . . Check out the layers of blue. . . .” Bonnie turned a pot this way and that. She settled it on a shelf and faced me. “Half the time people come in here and don’t even recognize their own work after the glaze firing,” Bonnie said.
“Oh, right . . .” I thought about that. “There’s a sort of ugly-duckling phase first, isn’t there?”
“Ha! That’s a really good way to describe it,” Bonnie agreed. “Here,” she said, sliding out of the mitts. “You pull the next one out. You have to get low, make your arms kind of like a pair of tongs—”
“Oh. Yikes.” I fretted. I clenched my teeth as I cupped a small bowl.
“You’ve got it,” Bonnie said, unworried. I watched my padded hands set the pot down on the shelf. Slowly, I released it.
“Done,” said Bonnie, and a broad smile broke across her chapped face.
“Ah,” said Mr. Terrazzi, who had appeared out of nowhere. “The mistress of the kiln has an apprentice. It’s about time.”
I guess life was okay. I had things to do. But I was surprised at how much I missed Cowboy—and the way I missed him, like a boat unable to touch shore. I told myself that I belonged at school where people were my own age, and when I thought back to that little moment when Cowboy hid me away from the cops, well, if nothing else, it was a relief to be “not-jailbait.” The days went by, there just wasn’t the opportunity to get over to SWS Auto. I thought maybe I’d given him up. Maybe that was the way it should be. Or maybe it was the cause of the creeping, seeping
sort of sadness that seemed to be making its way to my core.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
Twenty-two
THE BEGINNING OF OCTOBER FINALLY BROUGHT ME A DAY I was looking forward to pretty much no matter what else was going on. Mr. Terrazzi had promised to hand back our projects. I was dying to know how I’d done with the Steam & Bean at 66 Green. Bonnie had settled on her topic for the project late, but then she had kicked butt. She invented a business called Art~Urnity—as in, creative cremation urns.
“I’m combining my love of pottery with my knowledge of death,” she’d said, “and I’m honoring the business that puts bread on my family’s table and will hopefully send me to college one day.” That bit of melodrama had freaked out a few people, but I’d split a grin with her.
I was invested in Bonnie’s grade as well as my own; she’d asked me for advice on typefaces and layout. I’d spent a while with her. I suggested she italicize the “art” part of Art~Urnity and use the tilde to both separate and join the words. She’d liked the balance. Mr. Terrazzi had seen us working together and had said, “The kiln mistress becomes apprentice to the graphics mistress now. Oh, you’re both so smart.”
When I got to school in the morning, I peeked into the art room. I could see our projects waiting in folders on his desk. But I was going to have to wait until sixth period to see the grade. This would be a deadly long morning.
“What’s that?” Brady leaned against the locker next to mine. He tapped a finger on a pair of to-go containers on the shelf inside my locker.
“In translation? This would be cheese pastry,” I said. I flashed him a grin on the cheese part. “For this afternoon,” I added. Brady shook his head at me.
“Ya know, you should just make normal stuff. That thing you made with all the nuts in it—that sticky stuff?”
“Baklava.” I gave him the word.
“It seemed like there was something wrong with it.”
“I didn’t know you had tasted it,” I said.
“Naw, I didn’t. It was too much mess.”
I sighed. It was true that my creation had resented its hours of warm storage and was a little less beautiful by the time I’d offer it to the masses. “Well, this is a totally different pastry this time. These are little sweet cheese pies—”
“P’teen-uh! I’m just trying to tell you, do cookies or brownies. Okay? Ya got it?” His face was turning red.
“Yeah, yeah. Okay,” I said. I wanted to stop talking about it—maybe a little of Bampas’s old fili antio philosophy at work. Besides, I had something more important on my mind.
The news in sixth period couldn’t have been better. Mr. T gave me an A-plus for my work on the Steam & Bean. Then he’d written me a note:
Miss Vasilis,
Your effort has been impressive. If I could hand out double A’s, you’d have one for this work. Nice! Keep it up.
T~
From across the room, Bonnie flashed me a satisfied smile. She showed the large letter A Mr. T had put on the back of her cover page. Awesome.
As a class, we pinned the projects up around the room and had a free-flowing art show for the entire period. People were talking about everything from composition to computer enhancements. I made my way around the space twice. This is my fuel, I thought. Making art, talking about design. This is what I want to do. When the bell rang, we answered with a collective groan.
“Ack, people!” Mr Terrazzi called out. “How did this happen? We’re not going to have time to take this down but I will be pleased for the next two classes to see what you’ve done. Hey, hey!” he said, raising his voice above the buzz in the room. “New project assignment tomorrow! Be ready!” I think he meant to sober us with his tone. But actually, I felt invincible.
On my way out the door, I glanced back at everybody’s work, and yes, my own, which, in a removed sort of way, caught me as rock-solid. “Miss Vasilis and Miss Swenson,” Mr. Terrazzi said, “I’ve got a faculty meeting today. Any chance the two of you could come back here to take these down right after school?”
“I’m in,” said Bonnie, and I echoed her.
So at the end of the day, I had to tell Brady I wasn’t heading down to the White Tiger mosaic with him for the usual assembly. I was talking fast while I shuffled things around inside my locker. “I’m helping take down a bunch of art. Oh, and Brady, and I got an A-plus on this huge thing we just did . . . and all the projects were so cool . . .” I realized I was losing his attention. “So anyway, I was wondering if you could tell one of the Not-So—I mean, a cheerleader not to worry; I will be at practice. And will you take these to everyone?” I pulled the boxes of pastries out of my locker. “By the time I finish up it’ll be too late to—”
“No effin’ way,” Brady said. I looked into his eyes—ice-cold.
“You won’t? Really?”
“You want be in the art room, instead of going with me. Fine. Do that. But I’m not taking your pie-turds down there. I’m not your delivery boy.”
“I wasn’t trying to send you on an errand. Never mind . . .” I turned back toward my locker. “I’ll just leave them here and—”
“Whatever,” Brady said. I looked at him. His jaw was set hard. He wrapped his hand around the edge of my locker door. He flung it backward on its hinges. It smashed into the locker beside mine with a loud bang. Then it bounced into me and knocked the pastry boxes out of my hands. There went Brady, striding away on khaki-covered legs. Lockers always bang in a crowded hallway. Not a soul had noticed. But my hands felt weightless and my knees felt weak. I shook it off. I straightened up, set the pastries back on my shelf, and went into the art room to help Bonnie.
“Bettina,” she said. She already was already holding several pages in her fingers. “I know Mr. Terrazzi asked us both to do this but I can handle it on my own,” she said. “If you want to go join Brady and your friends—”
“I’m good here,” I interrupted her. My friends? Did she really see them that way? “We can get it done before I have to go to practice,” I said.
“Okay . . .” I could feel her looking at me. “Hey, is something wrong?”
“No.” I gave a convincing eyebrow scrunch and swallowed the lump in my throat. I looked at the artwork on the wall. “So, hey, this is cool,” I said. “We get to have another look at everything, up close.”
We talked about the projects as we pulled out pushpins and peeled tape. I tried hard to forget about Brady’s fit, but it weighed on me. Bonnie and I squared up everyone’s pages and packed the work back into the folders Mr. T had left for us.
“More of a job than it looked like,” Bonnie mused.
“Yeah—oh, hell! Is that clock right?”
“W-well, yeah, probably. Oh, your practice!”
“Is starting!” I added. I swore and tore into my backpack for a pair of gym shorts. Bonnie laughed, but not unsympathetically. “Oh, hell . . . They think I don’t put in enough effort as it is. . . .” I mumbled.
“Here,” said Bonnie, “I’m putting your project into your pack.”
“Oh, thank you!” I stuck one booted foot then the other into the legs of my shorts. I pulled them up under my skirt then unzipped and pushed the skirt to the floor. Bonnie grabbed that up and tucked it into my pack.
“Turn, turn!” she said. I did, and she hung the pack on my shoulders. “Go!”
“Bonnie, thank you! See you tomorrow!” I said.
I shot into the hall and spun my combination as fast as I could. I grabbed the boxes of pastries and started running. My backpack clobbered me, the pastries bounced around inside the boxes. My boots struck the floor like hammers—
“Boots! Oh, no!” I said it out loud. I came to a halt and turned around. Sneakers! I had them. Back in my locker. So there I went clobbering and hammering back down the empty hallway to get them.
Again I trotted, th
is time with my sneakers slung around my neck by their short laces and kicking me in the face as I went. Those girls were going to hate me for stumbling in late—especially after all the talk about commitment. And here I was with these dumb pastries.
“Yikes!” I stopped just short of crashing into two guys who were coming out of the music room. “Sorry!”
“Whoa! Bettina!”
“Oh, Tony. It’s you! Hi.” I stopped to catch my breath. I was so late. What was one more minute? Tony had a friend with him, and the guy was giving me a dazed sort of smile. I said hi to him too. Apologized again for nearly taking them out.
“Moti, this is Bettina,” Tony told his friend. “She likes to run in big boots.”
“I heard,” the guy said. “I think the sound saved my life. I heard you coming.”
That made me laugh. “I forgot my sneakers,” I began to explain. “Now I’m really late and . . . oh, never mind.” Then a moment of brilliance struck me. “Tony, take these! Please!” I held the pastries toward him. “Maybe Regina would like some, and your family. Sorry they’re sorta broken.”
Tony laughed. He had one box lid up and his nose inside. “Oh, I remember. Kali . . .” He closed his eyes tight, thinking. “Kalit-sou-nia.”
“Yes!”
“Your mom’s?”
“But baked by me,” I said. I tapped my breastbone with my finger.
“There’s nothing better than this stuff,” Tony said, leaning toward his friend. “Except maybe my mom’s cannoli.”
“Right,” I said.
“Can I share these? Like with Moti, here? And the band?”
“Of course!” I said. I clapped my hands on both his shoulders. “You’re doing me a favor, Ton.” I started away again.
“Well, thank you,” Tony said. “Thanks a lot!”
“Sure!” I called over my shoulder. Go, go, go, was all I could think. I reached the end of the hall—a T where you must go either left to the main gym or right toward the auxiliary gym. I rounded toward the right and—bam! Something hit me in the side of my knee—and it felt like a bus.
The Things You Kiss Goodbye Page 10
