Z On Location

by J. J. Howard

  The next morning, we drove Nora back to the airport where she said good-bye to Mom, and waved to me. “See you later, Z!”

  “Thank you again, Nora,” Mom told her. “You’re a lifesaver. I’ll see you in Advanced Concepts in August, right?”

  “I’ll be in the front row.”

  “Yes, thank you, Nora!” I called as she went down the steps.

  Mom turned to me. “You and Nora seem to have bonded at last.”

  I nodded. “We did. Nora’s really smart. I can see why you picked her to come with us.”

  “She is pretty great, but I have to say I’m a little surprised to hear you say so.” Mom put the RV into reverse, and I sat in the passenger’s seat and buckled my seat belt.

  “Well … I had to get past what I expected the trip to be like so I could appreciate what it actually was. Which got a lot easier when Z’s Crew showed up at VidCon! And when Winter Costello asked to interview me!”

  “Yes, all of that probably helped with your enjoyment just a little bit.”

  “Seriously, though—thanks, Mom. This has been an amazing trip. I learned so much, both about making films and about being in the moment.”

  “I’m glad to hear you say that.”

  “I think it’s always going to be hard, though,” I told her. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and realized that, for me, sharing online is almost like part of the experience. If I don’t get to share it later, it’s kind of like it didn’t completely happen. Does that make sense to you?”

  “Not completely. But remember, we didn’t post and share back in ye olden times when I was growing up.”

  “I know.” I laughed. “Speaking of posting and sharing, I really wanted to do one more vlog from the road. I’m feeling kind of inspired. Do you mind?”

  “Of course not. But after this, we are officially on vacation. No more vlogging, okay?” Mom said.

  “Sounds like a plan,” I said, pulling out my laptop.

  It felt like years ago that we set out on this trip, and it had been so much more than just a #summeradventure. I had hoped to learn a lot of new filmmaking skills, but I had learned way more than that.

  I flipped open my laptop and turned on the video camera. Sometimes I wrote up a script for myself, and sometimes I had notes. But today I felt like just going off-the-cuff.

  “Hey, Z’s Crew! Coming to you live from the road. I met so many of you at VidCon, and it was amazing. I hope all of you will keep in touch. That was, hands down, the very best part of this trip—getting to meet all of you IRL. It’s so incredible that we were able to connect online and then bond over technology and movies and girl power in person. The other high point of the trip was—of course—being interviewed by Winter Costello. She’ll be posting it on her channel, so check it out. I’m still pinching myself.

  “But I should also say, since this is a wrap-up, that the trip wasn’t all high points. If not for my low points, though—messing up and learning from my mistakes—I might not even have had the chance to meet you all! Even though I love being behind the camera, and sharing and posting what I create with all of you—meeting you all for real was so much better. That’s the biggest thing I learned this summer. I’m going to work hard from now on to be present in the moment, and if I remember to snap a pic and post, so much the better. If I don’t, no big deal. So that’s been my #summeradventure! Can’t wait to see what all of you post about yours. Until next time: Z’s Crew, OUT!”

  “That sounded like a great post,” Mom told me.

  “Thanks! I hope so.” I settled into my seat and watched out the window as the landscape flew by. Just then, we passed a sign that said WAVE ORGAN–SAN FRANCISCO MARINA: 3.2 MILES.

  “‘Wave Organ,’” I read aloud. “What’s that?”

  “Oh, I’ve always wanted to check that out,” Mom exclaimed. “I’ve read about it—it’s an acoustic sculpture. The water and waves interact with the pipes to produce all sorts of sounds.”

  “That sounds really cool.” I looked over at her. “And it’s only three miles away …”

  “Let’s do it!” Mom said as she maneuvered the RV into the right-hand lane.

  “Bring it on!” I agreed. “Let our road trip vacation begin!”

  I grinned, excited to see something as unusual as the wave organ. I couldn’t even imagine what it would be like. I knew, in that moment, that this was the best kind of summer adventure.

  No planning—maybe even no filming. Just soaking it all in.

  J. J. Howard was born in a blizzard, but it did not lead to a love of snow, so after college she left Pennsylvania for sunny Florida. This plan backfired somewhat because she’s now convinced that sixty-five degrees is freezing. By day, J. J. teaches high school English, and at night and on the weekends she writes young adult and middle grade books about characters who enjoy snacks and snarky comments. She’s always up for a road trip, as long as she stops for lunch. Her books include That Time I Joined the Circus and Sit, Stay, Love. Visit her at www.jjhowardbooks.com

  Meet the 2017 Girl of the Year, Gabriela McBride!

  She’s a true talent who gets creative for a cause.

  Can Gabby use the power of her poetry to save her beloved community arts center from shutting down?

  Turn the page to read a preview of Gabriela’s first book!

  Toe-heel-toe-heel-toe-heel-STOMP.

  Toe-heel-toe-heel-toe-heel-STOMP.

  Each move burst into my head like a shout. All around me the air was filled with the sounds of tap shoes scraping and stomping, Mama calling out the next step as she snapped in time to the rhythm of the music. Above me, the sun poured through Liberty’s stained-glass windows, leaving little pools of colored light on the floor at my feet.

  Riff-heel-ball change-riff-heel-stomp.

  Riff-heel-ball change-riff-heel-tuuuuuuurrn.

  I stood on my right leg and whirled around, careful to find my spot so I wouldn’t get dizzy. My spot was always the same in dance studio number seven: The hollowed-out square cut into the wall right between the two big mirrors. A phone niche, Mama called it, from the time when phones were so big people had to literally carve out space for them.

  Toe-heel-toe-heel-toe-heel-chug.

  Toe-heel-scuff-heel-tip-heel-SLAM!

  My feet flew over the dance studio’s worn wooden floor, from one puddle of light to another, and soon my heart was pounding out a rhythm in time with the beat, like the music and I had become one. I couldn’t help it. I closed my eyes. I knew what Mama would say if she caught me: “Gabriela McBride, you know how unsafe that is? And you can lose your place that way!”

  I did know that, but I knew Liberty better. Knew every spot on its dance floors, scuffed white from years of dancers like me stomping, turning, and tapping. And I knew that when I opened my eyes, a few beats from now, I’d see Liberty’s painted-over brick walls, exposed heating pipes, and its tin-tiled ceiling. And I’d have no trouble finding my place.

  “And … finish,” Mama said as she turned the volume down on the old sound system we used during tap rehearsal. The music faded and then disappeared. I opened my eyes just as Mama began to clap.

  “If I didn’t know any better,” said Mama, “I would think I was in the presence of Savion Glover’s dancers.” Mama beamed at each member of the Liberty Junior Dance Company in turn. When her eyes met mine, she winked. I winked back.

  Mama, or Miss Tina as all the other students called her, was the founder and executive director of Liberty, also known as Liberty Arts Center, a community center she’d started seventeen years ago. Not only was Mama the “Big Kahuna” (that’s what Daddy called her), she was also the director of dance programs, which suited her just fine. Mama, with her strong, powerful legs and fluid movements, always said dancing came naturally to her, like breathing. And then she’d say, “It’s like that for you, too, Gabby.”

  It was true. Dancing came to me as easily as coding came to my best friend, Teagan, or the way words came to my cousin, Red. Or
the way words seemed to come to almost everyone else, except me.

  I glanced up at the clock as Mama instructed us to take a seat on the floor. My heart was still racing, and as the clock crept closer to six, my pulse sped up. I had somewhere important to be.

  “Excellent work today, ladies! You’re almost ready for our Rhythm and Views show next month.”

  Five fifty-five. I stared at Mama, willing her eyes to meet mine. When at last she looked over at me, I looked at the clock and back at her. She nodded. She hadn’t forgotten she’d given me permission to skip ballet rehearsal and go to the poetry group meeting instead. I half listened as Mama rattled off dates, expectations, and information about costumes.

  “Remember how much Rhythm and Views means to Liberty and to the wider community,” Mama said. “Sixteen years this show has gone on, and people always come up to me and say—”

  I finished Mama’s sentence in my head: that they look forward to this day all year. The Liberty community loved the show because we got to celebrate all the hard work we’d done in the last year. Art students got to exhibit their work in the lobby and guests could even purchase the artwork, just like at a real art gallery. The dance companies performed the pieces we’d been perfecting all year. An empanada take-out joint from across the street catered the snack bar, and everyone’s friends and family came out for the show. It was like a block party, cookout, and concert all rolled into one, and it was my favorite day, too.

  Mama finished her speech and then clapped loudly again, her way of signaling that it was time to go.

  I jumped to my feet, ran over to where I’d left my bag, and tore off my tap shoes. In four seconds flat, I was bolting toward the door in my sneakers, pausing just long enough to wave to Mama. She smiled and shook her head. I guess she was as surprised as I still sometimes was that I was in a hurry to get to a place where I’d have to stand up and talk in front of other people.

  See, talking wasn’t like dancing for me. When I danced tap or hip-hop, I could speak with my feet. My hands. My whole body, if I wanted to. I could make one move quiet as a whisper, the next loud as a shout. But sometimes, when I opened my mouth, it was like my words started to second-guess themselves. Like they weren’t sure if they wanted to come out and when they finally did, I started stuttering like crazy.

  But not all the time.

  Like when I was racing to the dance studio where the poetry group met, I ran straight into Amelia Sanchez, my ballet instructor. “Whoa, Gabby, slow down,” she said, laughing. “I spoke to your mom. You’re going to make up tonight’s missed rehearsal, right?”

  “I definitely am,” I said, without a single stutter.

  I kept on going. And when I ran into good old Stan, the friendliest janitor ever, he said, “Where are you hurrying off to, Gabby?” and I replied, “Poetry club meeting. See you later!” without missing a beat.

  Mrs. Baxter, my speech therapist at school, told me that people who stutter don’t do it as much in places they feel comfortable. That’s why my speech was hardly ever bumpy when I was in our little white-and-blue house on Tompkins Street with Mama and Daddy or at Liberty, because both places were home to me, both places filled with family. Like Amelia, who I’d known since she was nineteen and I was six. She taught me how to spot on my turns by challenging me to a staring contest. “Every time you turn, I want us eyeto-eye.” Even now, four years later, if Amelia thought I wasn’t spotting she’d gently say, “Staring contest, Gabby,” to remind me. Stan was like family, too. I’d known him my whole life—he’d been the janitor at Liberty ever since Mama opened it.

  “Hold on there now,” Stan called out, and I stopped in my tracks. “Poetry’s been moved to the auditorium, hasn’t it?”

  Shoot! How had I forgotten? I took off in the other direction, calling, “Thanks, Stan,” over my shoulder as I went.

  By the time I made it to the auditorium, the whole group was already up onstage. For the second time, I stopped in my tracks. I’d danced on that very same stage plenty of times, but today was the very first time I’d have to speak on it. I gulped.

  “Gabby, over here!”

  Teagan called to me with a frantic wave of her hand. The poetry group had made a circle onstage in front of the heavy red curtain, and Teagan had saved me a seat right beside her.

  “I’ve got everything ready to go,” she whispered to me, reaching up to adjust her beanie over her strawberry-blonde hair. There were two things Teagan was almost never without: her coding notebook (she’d named it Cody) and her turquoise beanie.

  “Got what ready to go?” I asked.

  “The you-know-what that we’ve been working on?” Teagan wriggled her eyebrows. “You know, the surprise?”

  “Oh, right!” I wiped my sweaty hands on my leggings.

  “Are you okay, Gabby?”

  “Y-Yes,” I stammered. But Teagan knew me better than almost anyone.

  “You’re nervous about saying your poem in front of Bria and Alejandro, right?” Teagan sat up on her knees and faced me. She was in full-on Teagan Problem-Solving Mode. “Just relax and remember to think about each word before you say it. Give it time to form in your mind. Don’t rush. Okay?”

  I nodded again. “Okay.”

  Just then, my cousin Red emerged from behind the curtain, rubbing his hands together and smiling big enough to show off the right front tooth he’d chipped last summer when he hit a curb and flew over the handlebars of his bike. “All right, poets,” he said. “Tonight we say bye-bye to that old dance studio and hello to the stage. We’re big-time now, ready for crowds skyscraper-high touching clouds.”

  Red had been staying with my family for the past four months, ever since his mom, Mama’s sister and a military doctor, had gotten called back to active duty. At first, I didn’t like Red being around too much—for the first few weeks after he arrived, I called him the Interloper until Mama and Daddy told me to stop. But it wasn’t my fault Red was always in the upstairs bathroom exactly when I needed to use it. Plus, he was loud, like two-trains-crashing-into-each-other loud, and he never missed a chance to remind me that he was going into seventh grade and I was only going into sixth.

  But, I had to admit Red had a way with words. He could spin a line of poetry like I could pas de bourrée. He lived and breathed poetry, and wanted to bring it to Liberty in the form of a club—nothing too formal. Mama was 100 percent behind the idea and, because I was supposed to be showing Red he was welcome and not an interloper, Mama said, “Gabby, you should join, too.” She’d made it sound like a suggestion, but it was really an order.

  I hadn’t wanted to join at first—spoken words are your enemy when you stutter—but words just seemed to flow whenever the poetry group got together. Even mine—most of the time.

  “So, the Rhythm and Views show is our first chance to show everyone what we’ve got,” Red was saying.

  I imagined Teagan’s grandfather, who was the visual arts instructor and the unofficial program director, preparing his art students, too. Everyone—dancers, artists, and this year, poets, too—was a part of Rhythm and Views, and everyone needed to be ready.

  “And we need to show them that we’ve got mad talent,” Red was saying. “Which is why everything’s got to be perfect. Our poems, the order, everything. Alejandro, can you handle the spotlight for me?”

  “On it,” Alejandro replied. He was tall and pencil-skinny with thick black hair that came to the middle of his back. Red sometimes liked to joke that Alejandro’s hair weighed more than he did. As Alejandro rose and climbed up to the lighting booth, Red pulled a list from the front pocket of his shorts. On it was a list of names. The order of performances. I was first.

  First!

  “Ready, Gabby?” Red asked. “You can do it. You’re big-time now.”

  “Ready for crowds,” a girl named Bria chimed in.

  “Skyscraper-high,” shouted Alejandro, coming out from the booth at the back of the theater.

  “T-Touching clouds,” I finishe
d quietly.

  “Yes!” Red cried, clapping loudly. Soon everyone else joined in.

  As I got to my feet, the applause died down.

  “Take center stage, Gabby,” Red said, pointing.

  I moved to the middle of the circle and looked out at the sea of chairs. The spotlight shined directly on me. Big-time now, ready for crowds.

  “Ssssssspeaking ough-ought to be—” I began, and then I stopped. My face grew hot. I hated stuttering in front of my friends. Maybe I could tell Red to come back to me at the end.

  “You were doing great, Gabby,” Alejandro called out.

  “Keep going,” said Red.

  “Slow down and think about each word,” Teagan put in.

  Mama and Daddy were always telling me that while it was good to work with Mrs. Baxter, I shouldn’t let my bumpy speech stop me from talking. “We love you no matter how many sounds you make,” they’d say. “Say what you have to say! We’re always listening.”

  “Okay.” Another deep breath. Then I started over.

  “Speaking ought to be, ought to be like … like breathing

  Words always there, no need for … reaching

  Like cracking a jjjjjjoke is for a joker

  But for me it’s like a roller coaster … coaster”

  I paused. I knew this poem and even bigger than that, I knew these people. Red. Teagan. Alejandro. Bria. I knew this space, too, Liberty’s auditorium. I knew there were 480 seats, but only 476 worked. I knew seat 3L was the best in the house, that one of the angels carved into the balcony was cross-eyed, and that there was a corner where every word you said echoed throughout the auditorium, even if you whispered. You’re home, Gabby, I told myself, and picked up my poem where I left off.

  “Up, up, up and then racing … racing to the g-ground

  Words flying by me that I can’t pin down

  Words soar past me, whip my face like … like air

  In my mind, in my heart, everywhere