by Barbara Dee
“Squeep,” I answer.
The audience rustles. A few people laugh.
“What did she say?” somebody’s grandfather asks loudly.
Becca Bailey doesn’t blink. “Drotella goobaba frew trayko meenen,” she replies cheerfully, checking something off on her imaginary index card. And then on we go, back and forth, the whole interview in total gibberish. Actually, she does most of the talking; my answers are basically monosyllables. But at least I get them out; at least it’s an actual back-and-forth conversation. And by the end of the two minutes or so, I’m watching her in amazement: Not only is she conducting the interview with me, she’s also cutting away to do commercials. And the news and weather. Every time in different gibberish-languages, if that even makes sense.
Finally she springs up. Which means our scene is over, so I stand up too. And then the audience starts applauding like crazy, and Dad starts throwing roses at the stage. Kennedy throws a few, and so does Emma, and pretty soon Mom and I are standing there ducking roses and tossing them back into the audience. Then Mom beckons for the whole Improv Club to come out and take a bow, so we all hug each other and laugh and toss roses and wave at the audience, and then the lights come on and suddenly the whole thing is over.
“THANKS FOR COMING!” Mom shouts into the mic. “STOP BY THE LOBBY ON THE WAY OUT, AND BE SURE TO CHECK OUT MARIGOLD’S THING.”
“Omigod!” I scream at Layla, who’s squeezing me and jumping up and down.
“Dude, I can’t believe you did that!” she shrieks.
“Neither can I.”
“You were amazing.”
“So were you! And Quinn! And everybody else!”
“And Becca rocked. The way she did all those voices—”
“I know! By the end she almost had me relaxed. Almost.”
That’s when I suddenly realize: I was onstage with Mom during one of her performances. And she knew who I was. She knew exactly who I was, and somehow, in some crazy way I never expected, the two of us built a scene together.
And it worked.
* * *
Probably because of the free publicity from the Mochahouse, a ton of people troop over to the lobby and say nice gushy stuff about the Thing. The best part about all this attention is that it means I get to introduce Emma to everybody. And when Mom gives her an enormous hug, I can tell she’s not surprised to see her here. (And why would she be? Working on Trisha was her idea, Gram said.)
“Wasn’t Marigold spectacular?” she shouts at Emma. “And don’t you love this fantastic Thing?”
“Yes,” Emma says, laughing. “To both questions.”
Even Ethan comes over. He chats with Emma for a minute, and then says to me, “Uh, Marigold? Can I talk to you in private?”
So I tell Emma I’ll be right back, and step into the nurse’s office with Ethan.
“You okay?” I ask him.
“Um, yeah,” he says. “I just wanted to say you did great. And.”
“And what?” I ask.
Dead silence.
“And what?” I repeat.
He kisses me quickly. He smells like Dentyne.
“Okay, Marigold?” he asks, stepping backward.
I grin. “Yeah. Okay, Ethan.”
That night, after Dad and Mona leave, and the rest of us are back in the apartment, I put on my yellow flannel monkey pajamas, the ones I swore I’d never wear again. Kennedy offers to sleep in the living room with Gram, so Emma and I have the bedroom to ourselves. The first thing we do is our toes and fingers. Fun in the Sun has already started to chip, so I polish us both with Juicy Passionfruit. Three glossy coats, one after the other, first hers, then mine.
And we talk until two in the morning. About school and all our friends. About Ethan and Will (who Emma doesn’t like as much as this new boy, Jake). About our moms. About ourselves.
When it’s finally time to turn out the lights, Emma says softly from Kennedy’s bed, “Mari? I’m really sorry.”
“What for?”
“You know. What happened. Giving up on our friendship.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” I tell her. “I know things were really hard at your house.”
“That’s not an excuse. I totally messed up, didn’t I?” She doesn’t wait for an answer. “So were you incredibly mad?”
“Yeah. But not at you.” I smile. “Can I say something, Emma?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You shouldn’t be so afraid of fighting, you know? Sometimes it’s better than not fighting. As long as it ends.” Even in the dark, my nails catch the light, and I can see the tips shining. Perfect. “Anyway, I’m just glad we’re over all that. I really, really missed you.”
“I missed you, too. You’re still my best friend.”
“You’re still mine,” I say. Then I add, “I have other friends too. Some great ones, actually.”
“Yeah, they seem nice.” She pauses. “So we’re back to before?”
“No,” I say. “No, I think we’re better now.”
The next morning, Mom makes us all some cinnamon muffins, and allows Gram to take Beezer out for Morning Walk. (“Whose dog is this?” Gram demands. Mom laughs. “Ours, I guess,” she admits.) Emma and I make plans for me spending a week with her family on Cape Cod. And we promise to talk on the phone every Saturday. At the absolute least.
Just before lunch, she and Gram leave for their bus.
“Thank you,” I say in Gram’s ear. “For everything.”
“Talk to your mom,” she whispers in mine. “Tell her where I got all that fabric.”
“You think she’ll remember? It was so long ago.”
“It wasn’t really.” She kisses my forehead. “Talk to her, Mari. Just sit down, the two of you, and talk.”
So we do.
Get a special look at another
great book by
Barbara Dee:
this is me from now on
I took off my flip-flops and walked into the living room, which was always the nippiest room in the house.
Francesca Pattison was sitting in what Mom calls the loveseat. I didn’t really focus on her at first—I was too busy staring at her aunt Samantha. It was one of the few times I’d seen Samantha Pattison in daylight. Mostly my sister and I had just peeked at her late at night slamming the door of a black BMW convertible, and then clattering up her driveway in noisy, high-heeled shoes. None of us could figure out why a thirty-fivish woman with no kids and an obviously amazing social life would choose to live in our nice but extremely nonamazing subdivision. Samantha Pattison was something to talk about when we needed a topic at the dinner table.
And now here she was sipping Diet Snapple with my mom, looking normal and suburban in a yellow flowered sundress and sandals. “So grateful,” I heard her saying as I plopped into a squishy armchair.
“Hi, honey. You remember our neighbor, Ms. Pattison?” Mom said, giving me a look.
“Oh, sure,” I lied, because how could I remember someone I’d never even officially met? “Hi.”
“And this is her niece Francesca.” Mom turned to where Francesca was sitting, but she wasn’t there anymore. Now she was standing by our big bookshelf, pulling down book after book.
The first thing I thought about her was: Omigod. That girl is a giant. Is she taller than Dad? I think she is.
“Your books are so BRILLIANT,” she was practically shouting. “Wuthering Heights —I love this book! It’s the most gorgeous book ever written. Can I borrow it?”
“We can borrow books from the Blanton Library,” her aunt Samantha said. “Say hello to Eva.”
“Evie,” I said automatically.
“Francesca is entering seventh grade too,” Mom said, smiling. “She’s a sort of transfer student.”
“Oh, really? From where?” I asked.
“The depths of hell,” Francesca answered.
Samantha Pattison giggled, rattling her ice cubes. “You don’t mean that, sugarpie.”
“Oh
yes I do.”
“Why? What was wrong with your old school?” I asked.
“Everything,” Francesca said, looking right at me as if she were confessing some top secret. “They tried to suppress my spirit, but of course they failed miserably.”
The second thing I thought was: Whoa. That girl looks incredible. I wish my hair was long and all wavy like that, and my eyes were that smoky sort of green. And I bet SHE doesn’t have trouble finding a bathing suit! The third thing was: On the other hand, she’s crazy.
“Evie, honey,” Mom said, “why don’t you get yourself some lemonade, and then maybe you could take Francesca over to see Blanton Middle.”
“You mean right now?”
“Oh, that’s not necessary, Mrs. Webber,” said Francesca. “I prefer not to think about school. It’s not for ages, anyway.”
Mom smiled. “Actually, it’s less than a week away. In Blanton we start school in late August.”
“Then we still have eons,” Francesca answered cheerfully. “But I’d absolutely love a walk, Evie, if you really wouldn’t mind.”
“I wouldn’t mind,” I said, looking helplessly at Mom. “It’s just incredibly hot out there.”
“That’s all right,” Francesca said. “I’ve been living in Saudi Arabia. I’m used to extreme temperatures.”
“Francesca’s dad is in the oil business,” Samantha Pattison explained.
“Oh.” I knew I was supposed to be impressed by that, but I didn’t even know what “the oil business” meant, exactly. I looked at Francesca. “You want some lemonade too?”
“No thanks,” she said. “I’ve already had three absolutely scrumptious glasses.”
Okaaaay, I thought. I went into the kitchen and got myself a glass of ice cubes surrounded by lemonade. Grace, my school-aholic big sister, was sitting at the dining room table hunched over a book called Acing the SAT. She filled in a test bubble and looked up at me, grinning. “Samantha Pattison,” she said.
“I know. In broad daylight.”
“With her niece.”
“I know. Did you meet her? She seems—”
“Not now,” murmured Grace, raising her eyebrows.
“Are you ready, Evie?” someone said from behind me. Francesca clomped into the dining room. That’s when I noticed she was wearing a normal-looking outfit (purple tank top, green shorts) but also these pointy-toed, sparkly blue stilettos with, like, four-inch super-skinny heels.
I swear, when I saw those shoes I practically choked on an ice cube. Because I’d never seen anything like them in my entire life; I had no idea what I was supposed to think about them. It was like a quiz from one of Lily’s magazines:
What’s your take on Francesca’s shoes?
(a) Soooo tacky—What was she thinking?
(b) Soooo babyish—Is she channeling Cinderella?
(c) Soooo weird—Do they wear those things on Neptune?
(d) Soooo hot—I wonder if they’d fit me!
And here’s the funny part: I realized I was thinking all four things at the same time. So maybe the right answer was (e) All of the above. Even if that wasn’t a choice.
Now Francesca clomped over to Grace. “What are you doing?” she asked, trying to read upside down.
“Studying for the SAT,” Grace answered.
“But it’s only August. Why worry about some bloody awful test before school even starts?”
Grace smiled in this superior way she has. “Well, I’m a senior in high school. Going to be. And if I want to go to a good college, I need to take the SAT this fall.”
“How sad,” said Francesca. “That’s why I absolutely refuse to go to college, among other reasons. Well, don’t let us distract you.” Then her face brightened. “Unless you’d like to come with us? We’re going for a nice long walk.”
“That’s okay,” Grace said, catching my eye. “Have fun, you two.” She picked up a pencil and flipped a page in her SAT book, pretending not to laugh.
I squinted at Francesca. Even outside in the glaring sunshine she looked fantastic: her skin was a golden tan, and her hair was the color of Kraft Caramels. “So where do you want to go?” I asked, my teeth skidding on the last little slivers of ice cubes.
“Oh, you decide,” Francesca said happily. “You’re the expert.”
“I am?”
“Well, you live here, don’t you? Where do you go when you want to have fun?”
“I don’t know. The mall, probably. When someone’s mom can drive us.”
She made a face. “Where else?”
“The park. The movies. The stores on Elm.”
“Blah. Boring.”
“The ice cream place—”
“Ooh, ice cream,” she said, clapping her hands. “What a genius idea. Is it far?”
“Sort of. Half a mile, maybe.”
“Oh, that’s nothing. I love to walk.”
I looked at her feet. “Even in those shoes? They don’t look very comfortable.”
“Oh, they’re not. They’re bloody torture, actually. But they’re so epically gorgeous, don’t you think?” She took off her left shoe. I could see the side of her foot near her big toe looked pink and peely. She rubbed it, then put the shoe right back on and beamed at me. “Besides, if Mother Darling saw me wearing them, she’d go berserk. So who cares about stupid blisters.”
I didn’t know what to say to that; it never occurred to me to want my mom to go berserk. The truth is, Mom went berserk all the time, over things like unwashed dishes and unmade beds, and I didn’t exactly find it entertaining. And why did Francesca just call her own mom ‘Mother Darling’? She talked really, really strangely, like everything she said was in quotation marks or something.
We walked long blocks without saying very much. The air was so hot, it was almost chewy, and I could feel the sweat trickling down my armpits, even though this morning I’d snuck some of Grace’s powder-fresh deodorant. Francesca was definitely limping by now. Once or twice I saw her stop and rub her foot, but she never complained or took her shoe off again. Finally she pointed across the street. “Is that the ice cream place, Evie? It looks like heaven.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” I said. “But I really like their chocolate chip.”
She wiped her forehead. “Yum, chocolate chip. My absolute favorite.”
We crossed the street and went inside. Oh, I should tell you that I Scream for Ice Cream (I know, I know: dumb name) was owned by Zane’s dad, and Zane helped out there sometimes. Today was one of those days, probably because the place was packed with sticky first graders off the camp bus and moms sick of dieting all summer to fit into bathing suits and middle schoolers in denial about the end of vacation.
We got in line. As soon as we did, the door opened again, and two girls I knew from school walked in: Kayla and Gaby. Definitely cooler-than-me types, but I’d say lower-medium-nice.
“Hey, Evie,” said Kayla, finger-combing her fakely highlighted long brown hair. “What Team are you on? Hard or Easy?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t read my letter yet.” This was true; I’d gotten my Seventh-Grade Team Assignment Letter last week, but I’d just stuffed it into my desk drawer.
Kayla smiled like she didn’t believe me. “We’re both on Hard. What about Nisha and Lily?”
“Hard,” I said. “Like always.”
“Poor them,” Gaby commented. “Hard has Espee.”
I nodded. Oh yes, I knew all about the Espee business. When my sister, Grace, took seventh-grade U.S. History, all she did—I mean literally, ALL SHE DID—was research and write bibliographies, sometimes until two in the morning. Her social life basically ended that year; the only thing she cared about was satisfying this insatiable monster she referred to as SP. I was, like, seven years old then, so I thought “SP” stood for something too horrible to call a teacher out loud, like Scary Person or Sour Pickle. Finally I asked Grace what SP meant, and she said, “Stephanie Pierce. She signs everything SP, so that’s what we call her.�
�� “To her face?” I’d asked. “Of course not,” Grace had said, hooting at my stupidity. “She’d vaporize you.”
Francesca, who I could have introduced at that point, was standing on her tippy-toes, even though she was nearly six feet tall with those all-of-the-above shoes. “What does that sign say?” she asked too loudly. “Mochaccino Supremo? What’s that?” And then she turned around and grinned at me. “Deeply gorgeous boy. Behind the counter.”
In back of me, Gaby started giggling. I’ve always hated the way she sounded when she laughed, kind of like a car alarm.
“That’s Zane,” Kayla announced. “He’s in eighth grade.”
“Zane,” Francesca repeated still-too-loudly. “What an odd name.” Then she stared at me with her huge, smoky green eyes. “You’re in love with him, Evie, aren’t you?”
“What?”
“I’m psychic about these things. I should have warned you.”
“Yes? Next in line?” Zane called out.
“Oops, my turn!” Francesca walked right up to Zane, gave him a dazzling smile, and asked, “So, Zane, what do you recommend?”
I could have died. What did he recommend? Gah. Didn’t she even know how to order ice cream like a normal human being? I could hear Gaby and Kayla laughing, maybe about Francesca, maybe about me. And then I saw Zane hand Francesca a tiny plastic spoon and one of those little paper cups they used for free samples.
Francesca took a spoonful of whatever-it-was. “Ooh, lovely,” she said. She pointed to some other kind of ice cream in the case. “What’s that?”
“Triple Fudge Marshmallow Chunk. Try it,” said Zane, handing her another paper cup.
“Yumyumyum,” said Francesca when she’d taken a bite. “What’s that?”
He read the label upside down. “Um, Golden Brownie with Caramel Fudge Ripple.”
Francesca clutched her chest like she was having a heart attack.
So Zane handed her another free sample.
“Bliss,” Francesca said. “I’ve never tasted anything so epically delish!”
“Aaaa, come on, dude, we’re waiting here,” snarled some high-school-looking boy three customers behind me.
