Eliza Bing Is (NOT) a Big, Fat Quitter

by Carmella Van Vleet

  I scrambled to my spot in the third row and willed myself not to look at him.

  When he was about halfway to the front, Master Kim stopped. “Eliza,” he said.

  My heart skidded to a halt.

  I forced myself to look up. “Yes . . . yes sir?”

  Master Kim gave a little nod. “Please tighten your belt.”

  I glanced down at my loose belt knot and then quickly back at Master Kim. “Yes sir.”

  His mouth was a straight line, but his eyes were bright.

  I turned to the back of the room like I was supposed to and fixed my belt. When I turned back around, Master Kim was at the front of the room and asking the orange belt in the corner to bow us in.

  Just like that. It was class as usual.

  GREAT INSTINCT

  We practiced our forms. Even though it had been over a week since I last did my form, I remembered almost all of the steps. At the top of the I, I started to turn the wrong way, but at the last second I fixed it. Kicho il bo, cha-cha-cha.

  When the white belts were done, we sat along the wall. I liked watching the other kids do their forms. Each form had a different name and meaning. The yellow belts did one called taeguk il jang.

  “Who can tell me what this form represents?” Master Kim asked.

  A girl on the end of the second row raised her hand and answered, “The great principle of Heaven.”

  The great principle of Heaven.

  That sounded much nicer than “basic form number one,” which is what Master Kim said kicho il bo translated to.

  When everyone was done with their forms, we moved on to our board breaks. Since there was an odd number of students, one of the black belts came over to be my partner. It was Abigail, also known as Flying Ninja Girl from the Fourth of July. I wanted to ask her how long it took her to learn to do the board break and if it was as fun as it looked, but she told me to get a kicking paddle.

  “Yes ma’am,” I said. (It still felt really weird to call a teenager ma’am.)

  Abigail bowed and took the paddle from me. “What’s your board break?”

  “Push kick,” I said.

  She held the paddle up. “Okay. Go ahead and give it a shot.”

  I moved back until I thought I was a good distance and then stepped back into my fighting stance.

  I lifted my back leg, pulled it close, and shot out my foot.

  My kick was weak.

  “Kihap next time,” Abigail said.

  I tried again, this time remembering to yell. The kick felt better, but Abigail said it probably wouldn’t have broken a board.

  She put her free hand a few inches behind the paddle. “Trying kicking my hand.”

  After a few more tries, Abigail stopped me. “You’re stopping at the paddle,” she said. “Kick past it.”

  Great. Now she was talking in Yoda-eese like Master Kim.

  Maybe I’d been too hasty about coming back.

  No!

  I had to do this. Think CAKE, I told myself.

  “Koomahn. Stop,” Master Kim called out from the middle of the room. Everyone turned their attention to him. “I need two students.”

  I inched behind Abigail. But Master Kim called me and Mark over.

  Oh applesauce.

  “We’re going to learn how to sidestep a kick,” Master Kim told the class. Then he demonstrated the technique. When one person threw a roundhouse kick, the other person was supposed to move at an angle to the right. At the same time, the second person was supposed to block the kick and throw a punch to the person’s chest.

  Master Kim asked me to throw a roundhouse with my back leg. Mark sidestepped perfectly.

  “Now you try,” Master Kim said to me.

  At least that’s what I think he said. It was hard to tell with my heart beating in my ears.

  Mark kicked.

  I moved.

  Only instead of stepping to the side like I was supposed to, I slid backward. It was just enough for the kick to miss me.

  Mark looked confused, and my heart sank. I’d messed up. In front of everyone!

  “Did everyone see what Eliza did?” Master Kim asked.

  I wished my oversized dobok would just swallow me up on the spot.

  “What Eliza just did is called a whojin,” Master Kim told everyone. “And it’s a good way to avoid an attack.”

  I blinked.

  I’d done something good? I felt my back straightening.

  Master Kim turned to me and gave me a nod. “You showed great instinct, Eliza.”

  NOT THAT I NEEDED THEM

  In the back of the room, there was a box of extra equipment Master Kim said we could take. I waited until everyone else was gone and checked it out. I didn’t really need anything since I wasn’t staying in taekwondo past summer, but I grabbed a pair of arm pads and a pair of leg pads anyway.

  THE A

  On Thursday night, Mom picked up a pizza for dinner.

  “So,” she said as she passed out paper plates. “Is there any news that’s fit to print?” That’s her way of asking if anything interesting happened during the day. I don’t know why she just doesn’t ask it the normal way.

  I shrugged. I’d spent most of the day watching a cartoon marathon and going through a whole bottle of nail-polish remover and two bottles of polish. I couldn’t quite mix the exact shade of green I wanted.

  “I reached the fifth level of Zombie Bounty Hunters,” Sam said.

  “I’m guessing that’s a good thing,” Mom said with a laugh.

  “Well, I got a bit of good news today,” Dad announced. “Remember that big paper I had to write for my child psychology class? I got an A.”

  We all whooped and clapped and gave Dad high fives.

  “This calls for a celebration,” Mom said. “I think there’s some ice cream in the freezer.”

  “You know what I’d really like?” Dad asked. “A cake. Eliza, will you make me one?”

  “Do monkeys have tails?” I asked.

  “I can never remember,” Dad teased. “Do they?”

  After dinner Dad and I went to the grocery store to get stuff to make a chocolate cake with buttercream frosting. Dad put the Jeep’s top down. The two of us love doing this on summer nights. You can lean your head back and see the whole navy sky, feel the warm air on your skin, and hear all the traffic around you. Mom and Sam prefer closed windows and air-conditioning.

  “The Jeep reminds me of riding a roller coaster,” I told Dad as we drove down the road.

  Dad laughed. “It reminds me of being twenty-two, fresh out of college,” he said. “I saved up for this car for four years. It was the last impractical thing I bought before I became a grown-up.”

  I couldn’t picture my dad as a twenty-two-year-old man. Or as a kid. I wondered if he was the kind of boy who was nice, like Tony. Or if he was mean, like David Ruckers, who called me a hyperhen when I couldn’t sit still in math class ’cause I’d forgotten my medicine that morning.

  “Dad,” I asked. “When you were my age, did you want to be an architect?”

  Dad chuckled. “Nope. When I was your age, I didn’t even know what an architect was.”

  “Then why did you become one?”

  “Well, when I was in college, I thought I wanted to.”

  I considered his answer.

  Dad went on. “The thing is, Eliza, sometimes we don’t really know what we want. We just think we do.”

  I was quiet for a minute before I asked my next question. “Do you wish you were still one? An architect, I mean.”

  Dad kept his eyes on the road but knitted his brow. “Yes and no,” he said. “I wish I had a steady job so I could afford all the things you, Sam, and your mom want. But no, it wasn’t a good job for me. It didn’t make me happy.”

  “Do you think being a teacher will make you happy?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Dad said with a smile. “I do.”

  I knew exactly what would make me happy. To make cakes with Tony at our own s
hop.

  BLUE

  I grabbed a basket while Dad took out our list. Mom learned long ago to never send me and Dad to the store without a detailed list. “The two of you are dangerous together,” she said. “It’s like the blind leading the blind!”

  She’s right. One time Dad and I went out to buy a snow shovel before a big storm and came back with two movies, a jigsaw puzzle, and a couple of beanbag chairs. But no shovel.

  The baking stuff was in aisle six. I started grabbing what we needed, and Dad followed behind me. “Go for it,” he said, holding up the basket. I took aim and tossed a bag of M&M’S right in.

  “Nothing but net!” Dad said.

  A gray-haired lady nearby shook her head at him, but Dad kept smiling this goofy “Who me?” smile. He was gonna be a great teacher.

  While we were checking out, I asked Dad if I could have money for a Slushie. He handed me a five, and I headed over to the service counter, where the Slushie machine was.

  Just as I started filling the plastic cup with blue raspberry, I heard giggling. I looked up and saw Madison and two of her friends tagging behind one of their moms. The mom walked up to the counter to return something. Madison and the girls wandered over to a claw-machine game in the corner.

  My nerves tingled, but I concentrated on pulling the Slushie-machine handle and the blue liquid filling my cup. Had Madison and her friends seen me? Maybe they hadn’t. I couldn’t help it. I dared a quick look their direction. Madison was playing the game, but the other two girls were looking at me and whispering.

  I tried to remember all the things I’d ever been told about how to deal with people being jerks. Just ignore them.

  I looked away, but then I swear I heard someone say, “Every day.” The whispering turned into laughter.

  My throat hurt. Don’t cry! Don’t give them the satisfaction.

  My Slushie cup was full so I reached over and grabbed a straw. I knew I should grab a lid, too, especially since we’d come in Dad’s bumpy Jeep, but I just wanted to get out of there as fast as I could.

  I walked away. I don’t know why, but I glanced in the girls’ direction one more time. Madison was saying something to the other girls.

  It was weird. She looked kind of mad.

  PULLING A ME

  Forty minutes later, the oven was hot, and I was standing at the counter, measuring out ingredients. I tried to follow the recipe in the cookbook but kept thinking about Madison and her stupid friends instead.

  Crack went the first egg. I threw the shell in the sink.

  Sam marched up to the sink to fill his glass.

  I grabbed the second egg. Crack.

  “Hey E. What’re ya doing?” he asked.

  I stared as the egg yolk and white slid down the disposal. I couldn’t believe it. I’d cracked the egg into the sink instead of the mixing bowl!

  “Ha! You pulled an Eliza!’ ” Sam said.

  I snapped my head his direction. “You’re not supposed to use that expression anymore,” I said through gritted teeth. I could feel hot tears fill my eyes.

  “Yeah. Okay,” he said, throwing his free hand up in the air in surrender. “Don’t freak.”

  Freak.

  I’d heard that before, too.

  My throat felt achy again. Like someone was squeezing it.

  I went to the bathroom, splashed cool water on my face, and blew my nose. I didn’t look in the mirror, though. Whenever I was upset, seeing my own splotchy red face made me sadder.

  Forget about those mean girls, I told myself. They’re not important.

  A CAKE ONLY A DAD COULD LOVE

  So it turns out decorating a cake is hard when your medicine is wearing off and your brain is speeding up.

  You have to put on a crumb layer first, which is a thin layer of frosting where all the crumbs get caught. It doesn’t matter how it looks because afterward you put the pretty layer of frosting on top. You’re supposed to put your cake in the refrigerator after you do the crumb layer so it can get hard. But I didn’t have time because it was already getting late. I had to put on the top layer right away and crumbs got mixed in. To make matters worse, the cake was also slightly tilted because part of it got stuck when I dumped it out of the pan.

  I took a step back and studied my cake.

  It reminded me of when Tony and I made a sheet cake as part of our project. Since Tony was a huge fan of Halloween, we made one that looked like a graveyard. It had scary trees, tombstones, and zombies made out of modeling chocolate. But we’d made it at my house and our old oven didn’t bake the cake evenly. (Tony’s family bakery had some big last-minute order so we couldn’t make the cake there.) Parts of the cake were done, and parts were gooey. It was a mess. I was disappointed and ready to make a new one, but Tony just scooped out the gooey parts and we turned them into dug-up graves. “It’s our monsterpiece! Get it?” he’d said.

  I’d laughed, and Tony put his arms out in front of himself and started moaning. I pretended to be a zombie, too. We kept moaning, “Brains. Braaaaains,” and laughed until our sides ached.

  I sighed.

  Fixing Dad’s cake wasn’t as much fun without Tony. But I had to come up with something, so I covered the whole thing with another layer of frosting. That hid most of the crumbs. Next I used M&M’S to spell out WAY TO GO, DAD! In the end, it wasn’t great; but it was decent.

  When I let everyone back into the kitchen to show it off, Dad broke into a huge grin. “I love it!”

  “You did a good job, honey,” Mom said.

  “Yeah,” Sam added. “It’s not completely terrible. I’ll get a knife.”

  I ignored the dork and looked at Mom. And then, as casually as I could, I said, “Just think how good I’ll be after I take Sweet Caroline’s class in the fall.”

  “We’ll see,” Mom said. “You have to hold up your end of the bargain first.”

  “Yeah,” Dad added. “A deal’s a deal.”

  WHY I WAS UP AT 12:14 A.M.

  Later that night, my brain wouldn’t shut down; but I was used to it.

  I lay in bed and used my nightlight to count the photos on my bulletin board (twenty-four). Then I tried to memorize their order from top to bottom. But what had happened earlier kept replaying in my head.

  What Mom and Dad said bothered me. I had to show them that I wasn’t a quitter.

  I kicked off my sheet and crept out of bed. I needed to look through my taekwondo handbook again. I couldn’t remember what all the test requirements were.

  I checked my middle desk drawer, but the handbook wasn’t there. I looked in the suitcase where I kept my books. It wasn’t there, either. Or on top of my dresser.

  Nougat. Where did I put it? My test application and all my memorization stuff was in it.

  I was standing smack in the middle of my room, trying to decide where to look next when my door creaked. There was no time to dive back into bed.

  “Eliza, what are you doing up?” Mom whispered from the doorway. “It’s after midnight.”

  “Nothing,” I whispered back.

  “Can’t you sleep, sweetie?” Mom asked. “Do you want a melatonin pill?”

  “No, that’s okay,” I told her. “I . . . I just forgot to turn on my fan.”

  “It was kind of hot today, wasn’t it,” Mom said. She stepped over the pile of clothes and walked over to the fan. “Climb into bed. I’ll turn it on for you.”

  When she was done, Mom came over and started to tuck me in.

  “I’m too old,” I told her.

  “Oh. Okay.” She sounded kind of sad. “G’night then,” she said as she stood up and headed for the door.

  I didn’t mean the tucking-in thing in a mean way. I thought about going down the hall to her bedroom and giving her one more kiss good-night. But then I remembered why I couldn’t sleep. And why I was up looking for my missing handbook. And that I had to pass a yellow-belt test in August. And it was all because Mom and Dad thought I was a quitter.

  So instead of g
oing down the hall, I rolled over and listened to the whirrrr of the fan.

  BAD NEWS, GOOD NEWS, DAD-WRECKED-THE-CAR NEWS

  When Dad came home from school on Friday, the first thing he did was throw his bag on the kitchen table. Hard. It got Sam’s attention all the way upstairs.

  “Hey, Spaz! Stop knocking down the house,” he called.

  “It wasn’t me!” I yelled at the ceiling. “Dad’s home.”

  “For Pete’s sake. Will you two lower the volume already?” Dad said. This was the second time in the last week Dad had come home grumpy.

  Sam came crashing down the stairs. “Hey, Dad. Can I go to a movie? I need some money, too.”

  “How come he gets money and I don’t?” I asked.

  “Why should you get any money?” Sam said. “You never do your chores.”

  “I do them more than you do yours,” I shot at him.

  “Enough!” Dad shouted. “Knock it off, you two!”

  Sam and I clammed up. Mom was more of the yeller in the family. (And it took a lot to get her angry.)

  Dad waved a hand at us. “Sorry, guys. It’s been a stressful day.”

  “What happened?”

  I hated that Sam asked first.

  “My car’s toast,” Dad said.

  Sam ran to the front door and opened it while Dad and I stood in the kitchen. “Where is it?” Sam asked. “Did you wreck it?”

  Wreck? I searched Dad for visible injuries. “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Don’t worry. I’m fine,” Dad said as Sam came back into the room. “And the car’s at the mechanic. A friend from school brought me home.”

  Dad explained that he’d taken his car in to get looked at because the brakes were making noises. The mechanic told him the brake pads were completely gone. If Dad had brought the car in when the brake light first came on, it would have been easy to replace the pads. But now it was going to cost a lot more money. And since Mom didn’t get paid until the end of the month, we didn’t have the money to have it fixed right away.