Your Life, but Sweeter

by Crystal Velasquez

  You and Lena both raise your hands. Lena once spent a rainy weekend at your house, where the two of you watched half the movies in your mom’s DVD collection, and Big was your favorite. You especially loved the scene where the main character and his boss play the giant piano on the floor.

  “Well, that was filmed right here,” Amanda continues. “There’s even a picture from the movie upstairs near the floor piano.”

  “Wait, you mean the piano is actually here?” you ask incredulously. For some reason, you’d thought that was just movie magic.

  “Sure is. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  As you follow Amanda through the maze of dolls and Lego buildings, you think if this is New York, you could definitely live here.

  Before you know it, you arrive in a wide hallway where a few people are buzzing around, stepping gingerly on a huge mat that looks like a piano keyboard. Above it is a still frame of your favorite scene from the movie. “Awesome,” Jessie says next to you. “We’re on an actual movie set!” She starts looking around as if she expects celebrities to start pouring from the aisles.

  After the tourists who got there before you move on, Amanda is the first to step onto the keys. “Okay, which one of you knows how to play ‘Chopsticks’?”

  Lena smiles and takes one hesitant step forward, but you can’t contain your excitement anymore. “I do! I do!” you shout and leap into position. Together, you and Amanda jump around the keyboard, playing the song in perfect time. A crowd begins to gather, some of them snapping pictures. When you’re done, everyone claps. Amanda clasps your hand, raises it above your head, and then swings down in a deep bow. “Thank you, thank you!” she shouts. “We’ll be here all week!”

  As you head back downstairs on the escalator, you nudge Lena. “Oh my God, wasn’t that awesome? Amanda is a riot.”

  “Yep. Awesome,” Lena says in a clipped voice, seeming to look everywhere but at you.

  Today could have turned into a giant disaster. After you got swept onto the train and separated from Amanda, anything could have happened! But because you asked for help and then waited for Amanda to come get you, things are finally back on track. You and Lena’s cousin are hitting it off famously. And speaking of famous, you got to reenact one of your favorite movie scenes of all time! So far, everything is perfect … at least, you think so. But could there be something you’re missing? Take the quiz to see if you notice anything outside your happy little bubble of fun.

  QUIZ TIME!

  Write down your answers and tally up the points at the end.

  You’ve come down with a terrible case of tonsillitis—which unfortunately for you means that you were unable to audition for the play this afternoon (something you had really been looking forward to). When your best friend comes by to tell you how well her audition went, how do you respond? A. “That’s awesome! Tell me all about it, every single detail!” You know how exciting it must have been for your bestie. You would never rain on her parade by focusing on yourself.

  B. “Great. I’m glad it went well for you.” It still stings that you weren’t able to audition, so it doesn’t exactly feel good to hear about anyone else’s experience. But this isn’t just anyone. This is your best friend, so you try your best to put on a brave face and be happy for her.

  C. “Cool. Did anyone ask about me?” You’re glad your BFF got to audition, but what you really want to know is how everyone else took your absence. Surely you were missed!

  D. You cut her off before she even has a chance to say anything. “Don’t even tell me about the audition! I’ve been lying here all day feeling miserable. Let me tell you all about the gross medicine I had to take.…” What you’ve been dealing with all day is way more dramatic than any play. Your bud’s going to want to hear all the gory details.

  You just got back from several weeks of being away at camp. At long last, you run into your friends from school that you haven’t seen all summer. What’s the first thing you do? A. Ask them about everything you missed in their lives. Did Jen ever get up the nerve to talk to that cute lifeguard at the pool? Did Lydia pass the AP bio class she took? Did Tommy save up enough from his dog-walking job to buy the new PSP game he had his eye on? Inquiring minds want to know!

  B. Let them fill you in on everything they’ve been up to, and then tell them the biggest thing that happened to you at camp. Becoming a camp counselor is big-time! The rest of the details you can catch them up on later.

  C. Spend an hour going back and forth with your friends, each one of you offering up one new piece of information at a time before hashing it out and moving on to the next bit of news. It’s the power catch-up.

  D. Tell them all about your time at camp in excruciating detail. Your summer was crazy exciting and you know they’re going to want to feel like they were right there with you.

  When it comes to Twitter, you: A. check out everyone’s tweets, even celebrities and people you don’t know. It’s fun to see what other people are up to.

  B. see if anyone responded to your most recent tweet. You put your opinion out there about your school giving the afterschool program the ax, and you’re dying to see if anyone agrees.

  C. check out your friends’ tweets—especially the ones that have to do with you. (Those are usually the ones that crack you up the most.)

  D. read over all your own past tweets. They’re so funny when you read them all together like this. You should write a book!

  You just found out that Sarah, the star of your debate team, will be dropping out of the competition because of a family emergency, and this is right before the semifinals. Everyone is pretty shaken up by the news. What is your first thought? A. Sarah loves the debate team and she wouldn’t drop out before semifinals unless something pretty important came up. Maybe we should all leave the competition so that we have more time to rally around her and offer our support.

  B. I really hope she’s okay. Our team will have to work even harder now to make her proud.

  C. Oh no! That’s terrible for Sarah, but what about the team? I hope we can still do all right without her.

  D. Why do bad things always happen to me? Now we’re one member short! But … does that mean there’s an opening for a new star of the team? That could be me!

  You go on a fun school trip to a nearby farm and when you get home, you download all the pics to your computer. What did you take pictures of? A. All your pictures are of the scenery—the cows, the pigs, the acres of cornfields—all the stuff you don’t see every day.

  B. Most of them are of your friends. The one of your best friend trying to get the goat to stop eating her sock is hilarious!

  C. You managed to get your teacher and the farmhands to take a bunch of you and your friends. You love having photographic evidence of all the good times you’ve had together.

  D. All the pictures are of you. You plan to put these up on Facebook for your family to see, so you should be in every shot, right? Thank goodness for the timer function!

  Give yourself 1 point for every time you answered A, 2 points for every B, 3 points for every C, and 4 points for every D.

  —If you scored between 5 and 12, go to this page.

  —If you scored between 13 and 20, go to this page.

  You are the poster child for responsibility. Parents trust you to babysit, teachers seek you out as an assistant, and friends know they can depend on you to bring them their homework assignments when they’re sick. You never blow off things you’ve committed to and you’re just all-around dependable. If only you could rub off on everyone around you!

  As much as you would love to see Times Square, you vote with Lena.

  “Sorry, Jessie, but Lena’s right. We really need to try to find Amanda and hopefully get Lena’s purse back. You get that, don’t you?”

  Jessie sighs miserably and shrugs. “Yeah, I get it. I just hate it when you guys are right.”

  “Yeah, the sooner you accept the fact that I’m always right, the happier you’ll be,” you joke
, patting Jessie on the back. “Now, how do we get out of here?”

  “Just a hunch,” Lena says, sounding a bit calmer, “but I’m guessing we follow the Exit signs.”

  “Good hunch,” you agree. “Let’s go.”

  You climb a few sets of stairs, turn through a few hallways, and eventually end up in a ginormous room packed with people going every which way. There are arches leading to railroad tracks, rows of ticket booths, and a giant clock centered between two sides of a grand staircase. And at the top of the stairs—daylight! Bingo.

  You and your friends weave through the commuters rushing to catch trains and tourists stopping to take pictures, and climb the stairs until you find yourselves standing on a busy New York street. Phew!

  “Okay, we’re outside. Now what?”

  “Well,” you say, taking a moment to think, “I guess the first thing would be to find your phone, Lena, since we need it to call Amanda. So how about I call your number to see if maybe somebody picked up your purse on the subway and turned it in?”

  “It’s worth a try,” Lena says sullenly, clearly not having much faith in the plan.

  “Hey, cheer up,” you say, pulling out your own phone. “We’ll find Amanda and you’ll be quoting Shakespeare again in no time.”

  You hit the speed-dial button for Lena and bite your lip, hoping with all your might that somebody, anybody, answers. What you are completely unprepared for is the voice that actually does answer.

  “Hello? Lena, is that you?” a quavery-voiced Amanda asks on the other line.

  “Amanda?” you screech, surprised into a whole other octave of your voice.

  Lena, who had been staring at her shoes, shoots her head up and her mouth drops open.

  You quickly press the speakerphone option so that you can all hear. “Yes, it’s me!” Amanda shouts. “Tell Lena a really nice woman found her purse on the train.”

  “Sweet!” Jessie exclaims. “But how did you end up with her phone? That’s some magic trick.”

  “No magic necessary,” Amanda answers. “With Lena’s mom’s help, I was able to have her calls forwarded to me in case you called. And you did! Where are you guys?”

  After you walk down to the nearest corner and read Amanda the street signs, she tells you to stay put and she’ll be right there after she picks up Lena’s purse. “I have a surprise for you three that I think you’re going to like.”

  Amanda gets to you in record time, and even though you just met her today, seeing her familiar face among the crowd of strangers feels almost as good as seeing your own parents after a long stay at summer camp. She, in turn, hugs each one of you as if you’ve been separated for days instead of under an hour.

  “First things first,” she says after you finish celebrating your reunion. “Are you guys hungry?”

  “Starving!” you shout in unison. Not until she asked did you even realize how much.

  You are finishing your second slice of pizza at a nearby pizzeria when Lena finally asks, “I don’t mean to rush you but, um, are you ever going to tell us what this surprise is?”

  Amanda dabs her mouth with a paper napkin and smiles happily at you all. “Yep,” she says. “I just wanted to make sure I told you the news when you had full stomachs so that you wouldn’t pass out on me or something.”

  “News worth passing out over?” Jessie pipes up. “Sounds promising!”

  “Well,” Amanda begins, “when those doors closed in my face, the first thing I did was try to call Lena, but of course I had no cell reception. So I went upstairs and tried again a little while later. The first few times I called, it went straight to voice mail. But on the fourth try, someone answered.”

  “Fourth time’s the charm, huh?” you say.

  “In this case, it sure was! It turns out a woman who was on the train with you saw you get off and leave Lena’s purse behind. She picked it up, intending to turn it in. But when she heard the phone ring, she answered and we ended up talking. We arranged a meeting place and I had your calls forwarded. Then I met up with her and she gave me your purse back, Lena.” Amanda nods to her cousin. “It all happened so quickly. When I explained to her what had happened, and how you three were spending your first time in New York City lost on the train, she felt sorry for you. Turns out she works at MTV and was given a bunch of passes to something to give to clients. But she decided you guys needed them more.”

  With that, Amanda hands Lena a sealed envelope. Lena slides one finger under the flap and swipes it across in one smooth motion, then pulls out four hard pieces of cardboard that must be some kind of mirage.

  “Are these …?” Jessie asks, afraid to even finish the question in case her eyes are deceiving her.

  “Yep,” Amanda answers nonchalantly. “Four passes to the dress rehearsal of Nick Jonas’s concert.” Amanda shrugs, pretending to be bored. “I don’t know if you even know this Nick Jonas person. You don’t have to go if you don’t want.”

  “Are you freaking kidding me?” Jessie yelps, practically leaping across the table to hug Amanda. “Of course we want. We want!”

  You look around the pizzeria with an embarrassed grin, noticing all the other patrons staring at your table. “Sorry, everybody,” you say. “She was raised by wolves.”

  “Whatever,” Jessie yells, “I don’t care. I’m a wolf girl who’s going to see Nick Jonas today! Aaaaooooh!”

  Everyone who told you New York could be unpredictable sure was right! There’s no way you could have foreseen getting separated from Lena’s cousin and having to navigate the subway system on your own. You also didn’t know how well you three would handle it, or that you’d cross paths with such a Good Samaritan on the train. And here you had heard that all New Yorkers were mean and rude. Clearly that isn’t true. Thanks to one extremely kind person—and the very cool Amanda, of course—Lena got her purse back and you all scored tickets to a private Nick Jonas concert rehearsal. If the city is always this exciting, you can see why it never sleeps!

  QUIZ TIME!

  No quiz necessary this time. All aboard to this page! Next stop: Nick Jonas concert!

  Tsk, tsk, tsk. You love to have fun and are sometimes considered the life of the party. But you aren’t the most responsible girl in the world. Without realizing it, you could be building a reputation as someone who can’t be depended upon, so you are likely to get passed over for some great opportunities (like summer jobs), and it might take you longer to earn freedoms from your parents that they think you would abuse. Show that you can be responsible when you need to be, and you will end up getting more freedom as a result.

  You should absolutely, positively, without a doubt not go to Times Square instead of tracking down Lena’s purse and reconnecting with Amanda. Yep, that’s what your brain is telling you. But your feet seem to have other ideas.

  They’re already walking in the direction of the small gray S signs directing you to the shuttle train while you plead with Lena. “We’ll find Amanda again, I promise. But think how much fun it will be to see Times Square completely on our own first!”

  “Not much fun without my purse!” Lena points out. “Have you both lost your minds?” You can see that Lena is getting more agitated by the second, and isn’t loving the fact that you and Jessie have outvoted her for the sake of some crazy desire to see the bright lights of Broadway sans adult supervision.

  “Lena,” you say earnestly, “who knows when we’ll get the chance to come back here? This could be our one opportunity to have our own little adventure in New York City! How cool would it be to tell all the kids at school that while they were on the school trip being forced to walk in two straight lines, we were off in Times Square by ourselves, seeing the sights? I mean, just for a minute,” you add hastily.

  As responsible as Lena is, you can see that shell start to crack and the idea of having a little independent fun begin to take hold.

  “Well, maybe just for a minute …”

  “Good call!” Jessie says, grabbing her hand and
racing through the wide-open hallway leading to the S train lines. For a train that goes only one stop, it sure is crowded. The three of you huddle around a shiny metal pole as a voice comes on over the intercom telling everyone to stand clear of the closing doors. There’s the now-familiar ding followed by the whoosh of the doors sliding shut, and you’re off!

  You pull into the Times Square stop about two minutes later and follow everyone else out into the station. Even without any signs at all, you would guess that you were in Times Square. Everywhere you look is a sign for a different train line, and there are at least half a dozen exits. People are zooming by in every conceivable direction. And above the hum of all that is the steady beat of hip-hop music and the sound of clapping hands.

  As you move closer to the screens on the wall broadcasting a basketball game, you see that just in front of them is a group of five or six men in white T-shirts and baggy jeans doing a choreographed dance right there in the subway station. This place really is like living in a musical. People seem to be breaking into song and dance all over the place.

  You step up to join the line of people watching and see one man using an empty paint bucket to add to the drumbeat already pouring out of the speakers from the radio on the floor. “Ladies and gentlemen,” the front man announces, “don’t be shy. Clap your hands!” He gets them started by clapping his own hands high above his head, and a few people up front start to join in. Without even realizing it, you have started to groove along to the music, clapping and swaying and trying to copy their complicated moves.

  Finally the one in front points at you and says, “Hey, you in the green hat, get up here, girl! You can dance!”