The Icing on the Cake (9 page)

I race up the stairs but, of course, The Goons are
blocking my way at the top, arguing over who gets control of the remote. As usual, some big game is happening somewhere, and one of them absolutely
has
to watch it, while the other one wants to play video games.

“Move it,” I say, trying to get around them as they shove each other. “Move your stupid fight off the stairs now. You goons are going to hurt somebody.”

“Yeah, right.” Leo chuckles to Joey without even looking at me. “Like falling down the stairs would even hurt you, Chubbers. You'd just bounce.”

Okay, fine, so I was a chunky baby and my “affectionate” family nickname was Chubbers. So what. That was a long time ago in a body far far away. I push through them, hoping maybe I'll knock one of them down a step or two. But no, they don't seem to notice. They storm off downstairs, continuing their stupid battle over the Golden Remote the entire time. I have no idea how my relatively normal mom (outside of
the kitchen) and my nice-guy dad managed to produce such total idiots.

Mom calls to me. She's in my parents' bedroom folding laundry (pretty much a full-time job around here) and she smiles at me as I come in. “Hey, there. Aren't you usually chopping and stirring and packing up a freezer full of dinners downstairs with Dad?”

I shrug as she continues matching up socks with a practiced eye. Who can tell the difference between all those Goon-size gym socks? Or those black, brown, and blue ones my dad always wears? My mom can.

“Why so glum, bella?” she asks, using the nickname I usually love. I shrug again and she comes over to squeeze my shoulder.

“Okay, okay. Are your brothers bothering you? You know they just live to tease, don't pay them any attention.” I shake my head. For some reason I'm having trouble speaking up.

“Maybe just some Sunday blahs? Sundays can be so depressing, right? With everyone trying desperately
to cram in the last precious seconds of the weekend before finishing homework and getting things organized for the week.” I don't bother reminding her that with the exception of laundry and dinners, few things are ever “organized” in this house—on Sunday or any other day.

My mom keeps trying. “I know what will cheer you up. Tell me what to wear to my parent-teacher conferences next week. Help me dazzle the parents of my second graders in the way that only you can. I need all the help I can get . . . ” She keeps talking, but I've stopped listening. Usually this is the kind of thing I live for, telling people what to wear, coming up with the best possible combinations, putting outfits together.

I stand in front of my parents' closet, crowded with their clothes, a bunch of Dad's big bulky firemen uniforms hanging there like deflated men, and all sorts of old school projects of ours (an ancient papier-mâché Empire State building made by one
Goon, an electrical circuit made by the other, my Terracotta Warrior from the China unit in third grade, and Nicky's marble maze are all crammed into corners and onto shelves), and I realize this closet is like a time capsule version of my crazy family and our sprawling mess of a house. Now there's no way I can focus. It doesn't matter what skirt and cardigan combo I pick out for my mom—she'll still be the same old easy-going Theresa, working mother of four, who chooses not to notice the chaos that surrounds her. She'll never understand everything that's wrong in my world. She just doesn't get why for once I just want things to be calm and perfect. Perfectly calm.

“I can't help,” I manage to say as I shake my head and race out the door.

“Francesca . . .” I hear as I run down the narrow hall. Not today, Mom, not today.

When I get to my room, I pull out my phone to call Liza. It's a reflex, really—something happens to me and
bam
, I call her. But then I realize, nothing has
happened. Nothing just happened that hasn't happened a million times before. My dad is cooking. My brothers are fighting. My mom is minding her own business, folding laundry.

I throw myself onto the bed with its faded strawberry-pattern sheet set that I've had since I was eight and pull my pillows over my head.
Something
has got to change. And if my life isn't going to change on its own, I need to
make
it change. I need to be the Frankie that has something new to say, someplace interesting to be, something important to be doing.

Whoa. I sit straight up, dropping my straw-berry-speckled pillow to the floor. The answer is so obvious: I need to be more like Lillian's sister, Katie. Perfect Katie, who knows exactly who she is and where she's going. There are flyers in the halls at school for track-team tryouts. I can learn how to run, and breathe, and be focused, just like her. It just takes willpower and practice.

And practice makes perfect!

After a few amazingly springlike days, Mother Nature apparently remembered it's still February (a.k.a. cold and damp), so we haven't had lunch in the quad for ages. On Wednesdays I have PE right before lunch, which means I'm still changing out of my gym uniform when the bell rings. By the time I get to the cafeteria, Frankie and Lillian are already camped out at our usual table. Even from halfway across the room I can tell by the looks on their faces that they're talking about
Tristan and Javier. I'm glad the two of them are bonding over their cooking class crushes, but I hope we're not going to spend the entire lunch period debating the relative cuteness of Tristan's eyes or Javier's smile.

“Liza!” Frankie chirps as I plop my gym bag down on one chair and my still-slightly-sweaty self on another. “Wasn't it super cute when Tristan gave Cole a high five on Saturday?”

“Mmm,” I say with a nod, digging into my rice and beans (forty-five minutes of dodgeball and I am
starving
), “adorbs.”

Lillian grabs my wrist. “And don't you think Javier makes the funniest expressions when Chef embarrasses him in class?”

“Yeah,” I say, hoping she'll let go so I can take another bite. “He's pretty hilarious.”

I guess my answers weren't enthusiastic enough, because Frankie and Lillian go back to chatting with each other about the boys. I don't mean to be unsupportive, but I have other things on my mind right now,
like how to stop Nana from turning my birthday party into the social event of the year for the over-sixty crowd, and how to keep my mom and dad in this happy place so that maybe they'll actually get back together again.

My container of rice and beans is already practically empty, but for some reason I'm still hungry. Lillian's slurping up the last few noodles from her thermos, but there's a delicious-looking stuffed shell in front of Frankie that she's barely even touched. When she's not going on about how great Tristan is, she's nibbling on baby carrots and slices of cucumber—two things I'm pretty sure I've never seen in her lunch bag before.

“If you don't stop talking and start eating, I'm going to steal that,” I say, pointing to the stuffed shell.

Frankie waves me off. “Go for it,” she says, sliding the container across the table. “I'm not really hungry. And this stuff is all there is to eat at my house. It's like they've never heard of a balanced diet.”

“Seriously, Franks? You're not going to start obsessing about dieting, are you?”

Frankie looks down at her carrots. “I'm just eating like I care about my body for a change, instead of just mindlessly shoveling it in like some people I live with. There's nothing wrong with that.”

“There is if you start sounding like my sister. And if it means you're missing out on your dad's amazing stuffed shell,” Lillian says, shrugging. “But more for us I guess.” She messily stabs a hunk with her chopstick and almost drops it right smack in the middle of her flawless cream-colored sweater.

“A little dose of your sister would work wonders at my house. But whatever—can we have a conversation about something else?” Frankie snaps, shoving her bag of veggies into her backpack.

“Um, yeah,” I say. “Totally. You guys have been blabbing away about the boys from cooking class for the past ten minutes.”

Frankie and Lillian look at each other and then back at me.

“Sorry, Liza,” Lillian says. “You must be sick of
hearing about Tristan and Javier by now. I think even I'm a little sick of it.”

“A little,” I shrug.

“Me too. Forget them,” says Frankie. “
Soooo
, let's talk about what's going on in your life, Lize. How's party planning? Has Nana Silver decided on normal boring paper invitations, or a giant billboard with your face lit up ten stories high in the middle of Times Square?”

Lillian laughs, but I practically have a heart attack.

“Promise me you won't ever make that joke around Nana, Frankie. You'll give her ideas.”

Frankie rolls her eyes. “Oh, come on, Liza. She's not
that
bad.”

“I didn't think she would be,” I say, “but now I'm not so sure. She's talking about hiring a personal shopper to put together the goodie bags.”

“Oooh, I love goodie bags,” Lillian says, clapping excitedly. “I mean, I love the idea of them. I've never actually gotten a
real
goodie bag—just the
ones filled with junky plastic toys from little-kid birthday parties.”

Frankie leans forward, practically putting her elbow in her lunch.

“Liza and I got
amazing
goodie bags at this party for the tenth anniversary of her mom's magazine. There were all kinds of makeup samples and hair stuff—there was even some sexy lacy underwear in every bag because one of the sponsors of the party was Victoria Secret or something. But her mom wouldn't let us keep those, because we were only nine.”

“I would have been so embarrassed!” Lillian says, covering her mouth with her hand as if she could get in trouble for just thinking about it. Of course, with a mother as strict as hers, maybe she could.

“Not me,” says Frankie. “I wanted to keep them!”

“Well, there will
not
be underwear of any kind in the goodie bags at my birthday party,” I say firmly. “But it's a total mystery to me what Nana's personal shopper is going to come up with. The one thing I do
know is that there's basically a zero-percent chance anyone will ask for my opinion.”

“I hope there's makeup,” says Lillian, less interested in my party angst than the possibility of high-quality loot. “Not that my mom will ever let me wear it.”

“She'll let you wear a little to the party, won't she?” Frankie asks. “Just lipstick, or some mascara? Just a tiny bit? Your eyes would really pop.”

“No way, she's super strict about her No-Makeup-Until-You're-Sixteen rule. But since it is such a fancy event, I really want to dress up, so maybe . . .”

And once again, my two best friends are talking about my party like it's a
good
thing. Why don't they understand that it's destined to be a disaster of epic proportions?

I slide the container with the remains of the shell in front of me and dig in. If ever I needed comfort food, it's now.

Health class is just ending when I feel my phone vibrate in my pocket. I'm hoping it's Frankie or Lillian so I can tell them how Mr. Lewis—whose breath smells like moldy cheese—gave his famous lecture on halitosis today. The guy teaches a unit on the importance of oral hygiene every year, and he still has the foulest breath in the school!

Unfortunately, when I get out in the hallway and check my phone, the text isn't from Frankie or
Lillian—it's from Nana Silver. Nana must have just discovered texting, because until now she's only called me, and even that she still does from landline to landline. Clearly she's in need of Texting Etiquette 101, because her message is all in caps and during the school day—though knowing Nana, she probably thinks whatever she has to say is incredibly urgent and important.