Isabella for Real

by Margie Palatini

  Contents

  * * *

  Title Page

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Isabella for Real

  Cast of Characters

  Middle Grade Mania!

  About the Author

  About the Illustrator

  Text copyright © 2016 by Margie Palatini

  Illustrations © 2016 by LeUyen Pham

  All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to trade.permissions@hmhco.com or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

  www.hmhco.com

  Cover design by Whitney Leader-Picone and LeUyen Pham

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Palatini, Margie.

  Isabella for real / by Margie Palatini ; illustrated by LeUyen Pham.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Pretending to have a much more glamorous family life, eleven-year-old Isabella worries that her new friends at a prestigious private school will discover that she is a “big fibbing, faking phony.”

  ISBN 978-0-544-14846-8

  [1. Honesty—Fiction. 2. Family life—Fiction. 3. Italian Americans—fiction.] I. Pham, LeUyen, illustrator. II. Title.

  PZ7.P1755Is 2015

  [Fic]—dc23

  2014048515

  eISBN 978-0-544-86809-0

  v1.0916

  To my dear friend Denise, whose wonderfully funny family is a constant inspiration; and my own grandparents, parents, aunts, and uncles, from whom I learned “point of view.”

  –M.P.

  To Juliee, who knew me for real

  –L.P.

  Saturday, 10:21 a.m.

  Scene 1/TAKE 1

  Attic Bedroom Closet

  Can an eleven-year-old go to jail for fibbing, faking, and personality perjury?

  Just wondering.

  10:21:06 a.m.

  Scene 1/TAKE 2

  “ISABELLA!”

  How about eleven and seven months?

  10:21:08 a.m.

  Scene 1/TAKE 3

  “ISABELLA!”

  Eleven years, seven months, two weeks, four days, seven hours—

  “ISABELLA!”

  I don’t know how many min—

  “Is-A-bell-AH!”

  Yes, she is me. Guilty. All four syllables.

  Person shouting: him. Who’s him? I mean, he . . . He?

  Sorry. I’m mostly C minus when it comes to pronouns. Spelling. I’m way better in spelling. I was solid B at Merciful Sisters on the Mount of Small Blessings.

  That’s where I used to go to school until the place ran out of grades. I have a drawer full of forest green knee socks from kindergarten through fifth. Not as many plaid jumpers. I didn’t grow much between grades three and four. Except for my nose. If I lived in Muppetland, I’d be in the same gene pool as Grover or Banana Nose Maldonado. My mother says that’s an exaggeration, but catch me next to Grandpop, and it’s a no-brainer I inherited schnozzola DNA from his side of the family.

  Inherited: I-N-H-A-I-R . . . E? . . . I-N-H-A-R-I . . . E? . . . I-N-H-double R . . . I . . . E?

  Okay, so maybe that B was a little squishy.

  “ISABELLA!”

  He him/him/he: Vincent. My cousin. More like my big brother—who, by the way, from now on should stay on his own side of the driveway and never ask me to help him with anything again.

  It’s complicated.

  Very complicated.

  Lots of moving parts—as in BOOM.

  “Isabella? Are you going to answer to me?”

  That would be no. As in N-O.

  But if I were ever speaking to that big brother traitor, I’d be using words that would guarantee my great-grandmother making sure my mouth was on the end of a bar of green Palmolive.

  (Nonni doesn’t allow bad language in this house. Except, of course, if it’s coming from her. Our neighbors say her vocabulary—in English and Italian—is more colorful that the biggest box of Crayola crayons. I don’t know much Italian, but can say for sure, Nonni is a box of 120 when it comes to English.)

  “ISABELLA! Are you coming down or not?”

  Me. Closet. Not going anywhere.

  . . . Unless we’re talking jail.

  10:24 a.m.

  Scene 1/TAKE 4

  “ISABELL-AAAAAAAAAAAA!”

  I wonder if I could escape out my bedroom window? It worked for Mom’s oldest sister. When Aunt KiKi was fifteen, she ran away from home to become an actress. She climbed down the trellis, hopped on a bus, and made it all the way into Manhattan with nobody being the wiser.

  A trellis is what I need, all right . . .

  Too bad Nonni took a hatchet to it after hauling Aunt Kiki back home from the corner of Broadway and Forty-Second.

  “Isabella!”

  Maybe I could tie sheets together? Knots have been my specialty since Uncle Babe taught me how to double-tie when I was four. I have sneakers under my bed with laces Mom’s tweezers can’t get loose. Thing is, even if I drop three floors without breaking a leg or squashing what’s left on the tomato plants (which would be a whole other kind of mess), where would I hide out? Everybody here on Broadhead Place would turn me over to Nonni.

  Or Grandma.

  Or Mom.

  Even without a reward. (They remember what happened to the trellis.)

  What I really need is a getaway car . . . but I don’t think I can back the old Buick out of the driveway.

  Aunt Rosalie never lets me practice going in reverse.

  10:25 a.m.

  Scene 1/TAKE 5

  “IS-A-BELL-AH! Come on . . . talk to me.”

  Talking is how he got me into this mess. I might not talk to that big-shot college person for the rest of my whole entire life.

  Cut. Edit. Delete.

  What life? That’s been flushed and is heading for the sewer, and I already know what an ugly stinking place that is. Trust me, I’ve heard stories. Poppi Flavio, my great-grandmother’s third husband, who she called Number Three, had a cousin who worked in the Department of Water and Sewer Utilities for thirty-seven years. Yes, wastewater means exactly what it sounds like it means, and probably the reason cousin Sal used so much Old Spice, we could smell him coming up the sidewalk.

  “ISABELLA! People are waiting.”

  Translated: Sewer. Me. Eeeuuw.

  “Come on, Isabella! Where are you?”

  Like I’m going to tell him that after he blows me out of the water on YouTube: eleven million hits in three days. I beat the piano-playing cat, which is scary. The cat has more talent. (Smaller nose, too.) It’s because of Vincent and his dopey videos that all those reporters, photographers, bloggers, tweeters, nosy neighbors, five TV trucks, two police cruisers, and some guy making balloon animals are camped out across the street. I think it was the balloon guy who started chanting, “Iz-zeee! Iz-zeee!” when the Eyewitness News reporter went to live remote at seven thirty.

  There’s a circus going on downstairs too. Almost everybody I’m related to is in the basement celebrating “stardom,” including Aunt KiKi, who limo’d in from Greenwich Village in a white stretch Hummer. She swooped past the reporters (and then our furnace) making her grand entrance decked out in a purple turban and false lashes that looked like black fuzzy caterpillars glued to her eyelids.

  “Isabella, dahling! Kiss kiss for Auntie! What have I been saying for eons and eons? I always knew my talent was lurking around somewhere inside you, just waiting for a glorious breakout momento! And, there he is—Vincenzo, mio caro! My amahhzzingly gifted—not to mention handsome nephew! Mark my words! The next Spielberg! Scorsese! Fellini!�
�

  One of those complicated parts.

  Worse, I helped Vincent film that part of the part.

  More worse: I am that part of the part.

  Isabella Antonelli for REAL, spelled R-E-A-L.

  Which is so not the good part.

  10:32 a.m.

  Scene 2/TAKE 1

  “HEY, PAPARAZZO! NEWSBOY! GET OFF MY GRASS OR I’LL ACCESS YOUR KEISTER RIGHT ON THE SIDEWALK. I’M TALKING YOUR BEE-HIND, MISTER!”

  My great-grandmother has incredible lung capacity for a woman her age, which Nonni tells everyone is eight more years than Lincoln’s four score and seven.

  “Me and Abe. Historical, baby.”

  Amahzzing, since most of those ninety-five years, Nonni smoked more than our backyard hibachi when Uncle Babe grills sausage. (And Mom puts the fire department on speed dial when he’s anywhere near charcoal.) Until Nonni quit last February, she had puffed two packs of Chesterfield Kings a day since she was fourteen. Even though Grandpop says she’s inhaled enough tar to pave the turnpike, my great-grandmother has still somehow managed to outlive three husbands, one boyfriend, and six doctors. It’s also why she sounds like the man who hauls our garbage.

  “HEY, MICROPHONE MAN! DID YOU HEAR ME?”

  Everybody from Belleville to Weehawken and all the way through the Lincoln Tunnel just heard her.

  “YOU’RE TRAMPLIN’ MY PACHYSANDRA, SONNY. MOVE IT!”

  (As my Grandpop says, “five will get you seven” there’s probably of bunch of guys on the corner right now saying that “Sonny” is stuck in neutral because he can’t stop staring at my great-grandmother’s hair.)

  I’ve seen her stop traffic in almost every aisle of the grocery store, myself.

  Nonni says the color is strawberry blond, but really it’s pink—like cotton candy. Same shape. Just as sticky. Over the last six decades, a whole lot of bobby pins have gone missing in that sprayed stack of teased beehive. Except for one night in 1973 when a bent hairpin ended up on the pillow of Poppi Phil. He was husband Number Two, who Nonni married back in 1957, a year after Poppi Natale (Number One) keeled over reaching into the Frigidaire for a bottle of Ballantine.

  “Kerplunk. Gone like that” is how Nonni tells it.

  I think that’s why she tears up every time she drinks a beer with her hot dog.

  (Or maybe it’s from the raw onions.)

  Poor Poppi Phil rolled over in bed expecting a goodnight kiss, but instead got a poke in the eye from that bobby pin. He never saw the same again. My grandma says in a way it was a blessing, as Nonni never changed her hairstyle and Poppi Two never much cared for looking at that pink beehive.

  Josephine’s Beauty Parlor, which has a patent on that hairstyle with everyone in the neighborhood over eighty, is where Vincent filmed Episode 3. Less than forty-eight hours ago, those close-ups of pink, lavender, and Creamsicle-colored hair already had 1,928,451 likes, which is 9 million less than each of the other half dozen episodes of Vincent’s “Eggplant Wars,” and the reason we all made yesterday’s five o’clock news.

  Six and eleven, too. Every station.

  (Nonni had control of the remote. She has a quick clicker finger.)

  10:41 a.m.

  Scene 3/TAKE 1

  Attic Bedroom Closet

  Nonni complained Vincent and I stole her face time.

  Believe me. If I could, I would gladly give mine back.

  10:43 a.m.

  Scene 4/TAKE 1

  Attic Bedroom

  “ISABELLA! The whole block is rocking. It’s a zoo out there!”

  I don’t really want a bird’s-eye view of my life going down the toilet, but I can only sit so long crammed behind that hamper with my legs twisted like crullers, and inhaling gym socks that should have hit the washing machine a week ago.

  Whoa. The crowd is bigger than last summer at the opening of the new Dairy Queen, and the DQ was giving away free ice cream. Although, just saying, the two guys hanging around the TV truck eyeballing Mr. Colandra’s 1983 baby blue Chevy Caprice look more interested in those white walls than me.

  Manny the hot dog guy found a primo spot, and there’s no missing Mrs. Kostopoulos, front and center behind the police sawhorses with huge binoculars hanging around her neck. She’s talking to someone who looks like he dressed up for Halloween a week early. (Or maybe he’s a guy from Cirque du Soleil. Not sure.) There are a lot of strange-looking people out there wearing neon-colored spandex, and none are my great-grandmother’s twin sisters, Ella and Minnie, who pretty much corner the market on stretch polyester.

  Oh no—leaning on what last year’s hurricane left of the sycamore, arms folded and looking like he knows everything there is to know . . . Frankie Domenico. Certain people, not me, think he’s cute because of that dimple on his chin (really?), and long eyelashes. Seriously, they are not that long.

  And he doesn’t know everything. He only knows part of the part of everything—and only because I had no choice but to make him part of that part.

  (You don’t even want to know how complicated that is.)

  “We have four networks talking series, Izzie! Series! Are you hearing me? It’s a freakin’ phenomenon!”

  Well, it’s a freakin’ something. And another part of the part that is so not good, though most people would say becoming famous overnight sounds yay-whoopee-wow good.

  But it’s not whoopee wow.

  Very not whoopee wow.

  (This is where complicated gets kind of messy. Like two-trains-on-the-same-track-going-in-opposite-directions messy.)

  Living a double life is not easy.

  Especially for someone who is only in sixth grade. Even I don’t know how I did it, and I did it. Well, okay, I do know how I did it, but I didn’t plan to do it. That private school with a name I can’t even pronounce was all Aunt KiKi’s idea. I told her, “It’s too fancy. It’s too far. I don’t speak French.” (I barely figure out Italian, and I’ve been listening to Nonni 24/7 my whole life.)

  “Nonsense. ‘For-tee-ya’ will broaden your horizon. Aunt Rosalie will drive. I’ll supply the French dictionary.”

  Then the bulldozer rolled over Mom.

  “Corinne, dahling—listen to your wiser and slightly older sister. And don’t fret one momento about the expense. KiKi has taken care of everything! After my tête-à-tête with the headmaster, I can promise you, Fortier Academy for Young Women is absolutely the place to provide Isabella with a stimulating atmosphere and endless opportunities to stretch her imagination.”

  So, there you go.

  Personally, I blame mahogany.

  There’s way too much wood in that place, not to mention marble and more than a few gargoyles, for a girl who’s been surrounded by nothing but Formica, linoleum, and six-inch statues of Saint Joseph her whole life.

  All that fancy-schmancy “stimulating atmosphere” short-circuited my brain cells.

  Okay . . . I don’t buy that excuse, and it’s my excuse.

  All I know is that once those two “trains” go “boom” and everybody I know finds out I’ve been doing what I’ve been doing—there won’t be enough Palmolive, Dial, or Dove left on grocery shelves across New Jersey.

  Could be worse.

  Nonni could haul me in front of Judge Judy . . .

  “The woman’s got brains, even though she has a doily hanging around her neck.”

  10:58 a.m.

  Scene 5/TAKE 1

  Attic Bedroom

  Here’s the problem with Judge Judy:

  A person only gets a measly fifteen minutes to plead her case, and I have at least an hour of complicated explaining. Not counting commercial interruptions.

  “ISABELLA!”

  Or Vincent.

  Extremely short version:

  Madeline (the book, not the cookie).

  New school.

  New girls.

  No friends.

  Want friends.

  Cucumber sandwiches.

  Suits of armor.

  Chandelier
s.

  Something or somebody named Earl Grey.

  Aunt KiKi going diva on the grand staircase—a capella.

  (My aunt gets carried away when lots of steps are involved. When I was seven, she broke into a chorus of “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Luckily I was able to drag “Evita” inside before Security showed up and escorted us to the sidewalk.)

  And, oh . . . one more important thing: Don’t believe everything you see or read on the Internet.

  “ISABELLA! If you’re not coming down—I’m coming up!”

  11:01 a.m.

  Scene 6/TAKE 1

  Under the Bed

  That’s right. I’m hiding under my bed. I’ve got a small room. I’m out of options.

  News Flash: If there’s a contest for finding the most dust bunnies, I win.

  News Flash Number Two: Beat-up old knotted sneakers smell no better than unwashed gym socks.

  11:23 a.m.

  Scene 7/TAKE 1

  Is “quiet” good or bad?

  I’m not hearing Vincent coming up the stairs, and that would be hard to miss because our house is older than Nonni and almost every floorboard creaks, even muffled by carpet. That’s also not taking into consideration the genes Vincent inherited from the big-feet side of our family. (Uncle Marty wears size 17½, and he’s only five foot eight.)

  Oh no. Did he go outside? Is he talking to those reporters again?

  I inch out from under the bed then crawl to the window, crouching low to where my nose touches the sill. I give a peek to down below in the front yard, but don’t see Vincent anywhere. More good news: I don’t have to worry about vacuuming under my bed. My T-shirt mopped the dust bunnies.

  Not such good news (besides a T-shirt needing a whole lot of Clorox), Frankie is still across the street sitting on the curb. Looking up at my window and grinning, yes, grinning, as he eats a Texas wiener—which, wow, smells delicious even all the way up here with the window closed.