Mango Delight

by Fracaswell Hyman

  I reached into my backpack and took out her gift-wrapped replacement and the letter. I held one in each hand. “This is to make up for your other phone, and this is to explain what I was really feeling and to say how sorry I am.”

  Brooklyn took the gift-wrapped phone out of my right hand and ignored the letter in my left. She turned to Ms. Lipschultz and said, “May I go now?”

  Ms. Lipschultz’s eyebrows arched, dropping the temperature of the ice in her eyes to fifty degrees below freezing, “I believe Mango has written you a letter of apology, Brooklyn.”

  Brooklyn fake-smiled and said, “Oh. Yeah. Oopsie!”

  Without looking at me once, she took the letter out of my hands with two fingers as if it were a tissue I had blown my nose with, turned back to the principal, and said, “May I go now? I don’t want to be late for homeroom.”

  I could have sworn I saw frost on her breath as Ms. Lipschultz said, “You may go.”

  Brooklyn turned and left the room. My cheeks were hot. If I were a white girl, my face would have been as red as a traffic light. As I bent to pick up my backpack, Ms. Lipschultz said, “Give her time, Mango. I’m sure she’ll come around.” I nodded and headed out the door.

  A part of me wondered if Brooklyn didn’t look at me because she felt bad because of what she wrote about my mother and because she knew I really didn’t throw her phone in the sink on purpose.

  I decided I would give Brooklyn the benefit of the doubt—until something caught my eye in the wastebasket by the entrance to the general office. There, on top of a bunch of crumpled papers, was my lavender envelope, unopened, unread—unbelievable!

  CHAPTER 7

  Blindsided

  A girl without a best friend is like a coat without a hanger. Lying alone at the bottom of the closet. Wishing it could be up above with the other clothes hanging around with one another.

  The first weird thing about not having a best friend or a squad was where to sit in the lunchroom. Brooklyn sat with the Cell-belles and didn’t want me anywhere near her now that she had replaced me with Hailey Joanne. I couldn’t bear to sit with the GOT girls, because most of them were Cell-belles, too, and I wasn’t on the team anymore. Izzy waved me over to share a table with the Dramanerds, but after one lunch period sitting with them and not getting their inside jokes or cracks about this or that Broadway show, I felt better sitting off by myself, sharing my lunch with Anne Frank, hidden up in her secret annex.

  The second weird thing about not having a best friend or a squad was leaving school at the end of the day instead of staying for GOT practice. The campus was usually almost completely deserted by the time Brooklyn and I were headed home. Now, I walked alone behind other kids—kids who walk with their friends, talking, laughing, doing things kids with friends do. Maybe this was my fault, putting all my social eggs in one basket called Brooklyn. I hadn’t called even one of my old friends from elementary school since I started at Trueheart. Maybe that’s why I was so alone.

  After school a few days later when I was bored out of my gourd, I put on my running shoes, grabbed my MP3 player. and went for a run in the park by my house. I stretched, did some Frankenstein kicks, high knees, and butt kicks, just the way Coach Kimble warmed us up at GOT practice. When I was finally limber, I started to run. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the relaxing experience I thought it would be. My mind kept thinking about Brooklyn and GOT and how much I missed both even though I didn’t want to. I tried to shake off those thoughts and concentrate on the music, but every song on my Beyoncé playlist brought back some memory connected to my ex-bestie. Finally, I tripped over a tree root and skinned my knee. That was it. Running was no fun while running away from things I didn’t want to think about. I limped home, dabbed some witch hazel on my knee, and moped around for the rest of the afternoon.

  My gloomy attitude spread across the dinner table like a fungus, so Mom suggested I try out for another after-school activity or club. Just because I was suspended from one didn’t mean I was banned from all the others. I said I’d think about it, so Mom would stop trying to convince me she was right.

  The next day it was raining really hard after school, so I decided to kill some time until it slacked off. I went to the bulletin board outside of the student council room and checked out the list of clubs:

  Chess Club—nope. Chess gave me a headache, especially when I played someone who could beat me.

  Book Club—even though I loved to read, they only met once a month. That wouldn’t take up enough of my free time.

  Cooking Club—Dada would like it if I did that, but I had tasted some of their food at bake sales and international food week, and I didn’t think my stomach could take the abuse.

  I went down the list: Sewing Circle, Computer Club, Soccer Maniacs, Gymnastic Fantastics, Bowling League, Hogwart’s Muggles, Minecrafters—the list went on and on and none of them seemed to fit my personality or interest me enough to join. Also, I had to be very careful of what kind of commitment I made, because I knew that once I joined, I would have to stick with it. Mom would see to that. Even if I didn’t like something I decided to try, Mom thought it was important for me to stick it out until the course or semester was over. That way I wouldn’t become a wishy-washy hummingbird flitting from one flower to another.

  After striking out at the club sign-up board, I headed to the girls’ bathroom to make sure I wouldn’t have to go partway through the long, rainy, lonely walk home, and there was Izzy, staring at herself in the mirror—crying. It was kind of awkward to walk in on someone just staring at herself in the mirror, boohooing. A part of me wanted to back out the door, but Izzy turned to me with a bright smile on her face and said, “Hey, Mango!”

  “Hi,” I said. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah. Girl, I’m fine.”

  “But … you’re crying.”

  “Oh yeah, I know.” She wiped her eyes. “I always cry before an audition; it helps warm up my throat and gives my voice a little emotional catch. It’s a trick I learned from my abuela. She sang opera in Mexico before moving to this country with my abuelo. He tricked her into coming to the United States, you know. He pretended he was a doctor, but he really only shampooed dogs for a vet. But she loved him and knew he only lied because he thought she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes on. So, you know, like my abuela says: if you can forgive anything in life, true love should be at the top of the list. But she says it in Spanish; it sounds way better that way. What are you doing now? I mean, after you use the bathroom. What’s up?”

  In the space of like ten seconds, I knew the history of how Izzy’s family wound up in America, and now she wanted to know what I was doing. This girl shifted gears faster than a Ferrari. I took a breath and said, “Nothing. I don’t have anything to do.”

  “Then come with me to the auditions.”

  “Auditions?”

  “For Yo, Romeo!”

  I backed away. “I’m not trying out for the show.”

  “So what? You can be my moral support. Everyone needs a moral supporter now and then. You know, just to give me a pat on the back so I’ll feel brave when I get up to sing.”

  I had no interest in sitting through a bunch of America’s Got Talent pop star wannabes howling their hearts out. Then I remembered the way Izzy whispered in my ear to give me courage before I had to apologize to Brooklyn, and I thought, Why not?

  Izzy gabbed nonstop on the way to the auditorium, and I was grateful, because we passed Brooklyn at her locker, lacing up her track shoes. I didn’t get why she was doing that since it was raining out and practice would probably be canceled … unless they were going to do strength training in the gymnasium, which she and I always found a way to get out of. It used to be fun coming up with excuses and then hanging out at DeMarco’s eating pepperoni pizza until it was time to go home so we wouldn’t have to tell our parents that we’d cut GOT.

  Oh no, I was getting sucked into remembering the good times again. I had to stop it. Brook
and I had avoided being at our side-by-side lockers at the same time since the phone drowning—or at least I had. Now, thanks to Izzy, I was able to pretend I was riveted by a story she was telling about how her grandfather groomed Idina Menzel’s dog once backstage when she was on Broadway starring in Wicked. I didn’t really know who Idina Menzel was, and I wasn’t quite sure what Wicked was about, but I pretended it was the most interesting story I had ever heard to keep from looking in Brooklyn’s direction. Even though Izzy and I weren’t tight like that, I pretended we were. I didn’t want Brooklyn to see how lonely and pathetic this coat on the floor with no hanger really was. Besides, Izzy was really nice, and I felt comfortable with her.

  As we walked by, I felt Brooklyn staring at me. Good, I thought. I’ll give her the cold shoulder the way she gave it to me in the principal’s office. I was still steamed by how she had thrown my letter in the trash. How could we have ever been besties in the first place?

  As we entered the auditorium, Braces Chloe was onstage singing. We didn’t give her that name to make fun of her; everyone called her that because there were seven other girls named Chloe in the seventh grade. There was Braces Chloe, Biracial Chloe, Hipster Chloe, Basketball Chloe, Chloe C., Chloe H., and Boss Chloe, who got that name because she was the stage manager and leader of the Audio-Visual Squad, the group of kids in charge of everything technical that went on in the auditorium. She was also the coolest Chloe of them all because she dyed her hair blue and wore only blue clothes and had blue eyes. I guess we should have called her Blue Chloe, but she’d only been totally blue for a few months—too soon for a name change.

  Braces Chloe wasn’t half bad; her voice had a nice jazzy quality. The room was buzzing with energy and excitement, but everyone was focused on Braces Chloe. The seats were about a quarter-filled with Dramanerds, most of who seemed to be rooting for each other.

  The auditorium was huge, with about five hundred seats and a real stage with lights and everything. Izzy grabbed my hand and hurried down the center aisle to the first row. “Sit here. I’ll be right back.” She dropped her backpack in the seat next to me and hurried to sign in with Boss Chloe. I thought about thinking up an excuse to leave, but I was here for Izzy and didn’t have anything to worry about since I wasn’t auditioning. So I decided to sit back and be the best moral supporter that I could be.

  My eyes were on the stage watching Braces Chloe end her song real jazzy-like when Izzy came back to our seats. As the room broke out in applause, Izzy leaned in and said into my ear, “What’s she doing here?”

  “Who?”

  Izzy nodded in the direction of Boss Chloe—and who was signing up on the clipboard but Brooklyn. That was totally stray. The girl sings like a crow with a broken wing and strep throat. Why would she be signing up to audition for a musical? Not to mention she had GOT practice after school four days a week. As she handed the clipboard back to Boss Chloe, Brooklyn actually looked at me, smiled shyly, wiggled her fingers, and walked up the aisle.

  “That’s actually bizarre,” I said as I joined in the applause for Braces Chloe. A part of me wanted to turn to Brooklyn and return her smile and wave. Maybe she wasn’t so mad anymore. She probably realized she lucked out with the four hundred and fifty dollar phone Dada bought. We might be on the path to being friends again after all. Stranger things have happened….

  While a boy I didn’t know was rapping or singing or performing some kind of mash-up of both, I was preoccupied, imagining scenarios where Brooklyn and I would make up and become friends again. I grinned at the thought of her going to Ms. Lipschultz’s office, begging and pleading for her to let me back on the Girls On Track team. Ms. Lipschultz’s eyeballs would thaw, she’d say yes, and Brook and I would go on to set a national record at the annual GOT 5K. Mom would write an article about us for the local newspaper, and the caption under our picture would read “Fast Friends!”

  I snapped out of my reverie when Boss Chloe called Izzy to the stage. Izzy leapt up from her seat before I could offer any moral support and ran to Mr. Ramsey at the piano with her sheet music. The piano started to vamp, and Izzy shimmied down to the front of the stage. She has a loud, deep, big voice and more confidence than KFC has chickens. Izzy sounded great, and her acting and moves had all the kids in the room laughing and applauding even before she was finished. I must admit, it felt good to be hanging around with the biggest star in the room. And Izzy was obviously right about crying before singing, because she sounded incredible. A bunch of kids stood and cheered when she finished. I got up and joined them. She deserved the ovation.

  Before we could sit down, Boss Chloe called out, “Mango Delight Fuller, you’re up next!” I was so busy congratulating Izzy that I really wasn’t paying attention, even though a part of my brain knew Boss Chloe had called my name.

  She called again, “Mango. You’re up. Take the stage.” I was dumbfounded.

  “But … but—”

  Boss Chloe pointed to her clipboard and snapped, “You’re next. Come on.”

  Panic-stricken with the mango pit growing in my stomach at warp speed, I looked to Izzy, “Did you … ?”

  Izzy, her eyes popping out of her doll face, shook her head. Everyone in the auditorium had their eyes on me as I looked around the room. Then I spotted them in the back row—Brooklyn and Hateful Jo, their heads together, giggling.

  My teacher, Bob, stood and said, “Mango, great to see you here. Come on, everyone’s shy the first time, but we’re good people. Go on up and do your best.”

  The biggest part of me wanted to run straight to the girls’ bathroom and hide in a stall, but I knew that’s just what my two enemies wanted. Yes, that’s right: enemies. I knew it now, once and for all. Brooklyn was my sworn enemy. I wouldn’t waste my imagination fantasizing about us ever being friends again. She did this on purpose to humiliate me. But I wasn’t about to let her Queen of Mean plan come true.

  Every personality trait has a good side and a not-so-good side. Yes, I was stubborn like my Mom, but sometimes being mule-like has its advantages. I raised an eyebrow at Brooklyn that said “You shouldn’t test me, kid,” and then strode up onto the stage like I owned it.

  At the piano, Mr. Ramsey smiled, and that’s when I realized I had no sheet music. Sweat began to form on my brow. I walked up to him and whispered my problem. He said, “That’s all right. You can sing a cappella.”

  I shrugged. “But I don’t know that song.”

  Everyone watching burst out laughing except Izzy. She dropped her face into her hands and sank down in her seat.

  Mr. Ramsey corrected me. “A cappella is not a song. It means singing without music.”

  I said, “Oh. That’s good since I don’t have any … music.” More laughter. I felt as though I would just spontaneously combust right there on stage, leaving only a pile of embarrassed ashes.

  Mr. Ramsey said quietly, “What song do you know the words to?” The only song I could think of right at that second was “Halo” by Beyoncé. I told him and he said, “A Beyoncé song? Uh … that’s kind of a rangy. Pretty difficult for most singers.”

  I didn’t think it was so hard. I mean, I’d sung it a hundred times in my bathroom. And of course, Mom and I watched my concert DVD a million times. I looked over to Mr. Ramsey and said, “That’s what I’d like to sing.”

  He nodded and said, “Okay, I can probably fake it and play along with some chords. What key?”

  Key? Hmm … I didn’t want to make a fool of myself again, so I thought for a minute just to make sure he wasn’t asking me about my house keys. I said, “The Beyoncé key.” His eyebrows rose to meet his hairline, but he shrugged and began playing a few opening chords.

  I turned toward the kids in the seats. I noticed that Brooklyn and Hateful Jo, the Queens of Mean, were holding up their cell phones to video record me. I closed my eyes to block them out. I was not going to let them win. “Halo” was a song about love and feeling love all around you. That’s what I willed myself to feel. I was to
o stubborn to let those mean girls make a fool of me. Marjorie Fuller’s daughter was nobody’s punk!

  I closed my eyes and imagined myself back in my bathroom, and then pictured it transforming into a stadium, like I always did. A million people raised their lighted cell phones, swaying along with me. I was lifted by the chords from the piano, the lyrics I was about to sing, and the Queen Bee in me.

  I started to sing. I lifted my hand like I was holding my hairbrush/microphone. My body began to sway to the music. The shyness I felt about singing in public fell away completely, and I just let the music and lyrics take me over. Suddenly, I was brave enough to reach for the highest notes, and I hit them with ease. Something inside me must have been waiting for this moment all my life, because I sang a few runs that I had never even tried before. My voice felt stronger than it ever had, and I belted out the last note to the end of my breath.

  When I was done, I let the stadium in my mind disappear, and I was back at school. I could hear the lights above the stage buzzing. Somewhere in the hallway, a locker door slammed. My body was vibrating, as though every pore on my skin was charged with electricity. Finally, I opened my eyes and looked out into the rows of kids in the auditorium.

  That was the moment the room exploded.

  Kids were jumping up and down and standing on their seats. Bob, sitting in the front row with a notepad on his lap, just stared at me with a hand on his forehead as if he were checking to see if he had a fever. I was tackled by Izzy, who had rushed onto the stage to hug me. She had tears in her eyes, and so did Mr. Ramsey, sitting at the piano.

  I didn’t think to look and see how Brooklyn and Hailey Joanne reacted. I couldn’t be bothered with anything negative. Not now. In this moment, the mean girls did not exist anymore. I had sung in front of a bunch of people for the first time in my life. Good, great, fantastic, amazing—all of those words were too small to describe the feeling running through my mind and body.