Calli Be Gold (10 page)

The songs for this routine are about surfers and the beach and California girls. It’s supposed to be fun and
happy, but I can see Coach Ruthless on the side, aggravated as usual.

The girls skate in a long line with their arms around each other, then break apart and form three circles. Then the circles magically blend together and the girls are in two lines. Becca is in the middle of the front line.

As the girls start to skate forward, one skater’s hairpiece flies off, and Mom groans. “Glue,” she mumbles.

“Looks like someone let their toy poodle out on the ice.” Grandma Gold gestures to the curly hairpiece.

“Shhh!” Dad hisses.

“Everyone else seems to be talking,” Grandma Gold points out. She’s right. People all around me are chatting loudly, and I wonder why they all had to save seats for a show they’re not even watching.

Becca catches her blade on the ice and stumbles. The girl next to her almost trips and jerks Becca’s arm. Mom gasps, and even Dad breaks his stare for a moment. Mom holds a hand across her heart.

“She’s fine,” I whisper. “She didn’t fall.”

Mom nods nervously.

Becca’s team finishes the routine and takes a bow, and then we have to sit through routines from five other teams. Alex has not moved from his spot against the wall. Finally, it dawns on me why he’s standing there. He’s much closer to the skaters as they go into and out of the dressing rooms. I’m not sure how he can tell what they
really look like, though, with all that makeup and fake hair.

After the exhibition ends, there is a mad rush from the stands, but then everyone waits around for the skaters to come out. As each skater appears, her family screams and runs up to her and starts taking pictures. Then the skaters hug each other. Then their families hug them. Then they take more pictures.

The rink is so crowded I hardly have an inch of space. Mom is talking to the other skating moms, all of them in their Synchronettes jackets. Grandma Gold informs us she is going to the ladies’ room. “Don’t expect me back soon. I’m sure the line’s out the door.”

“Where is Becca?” Mom asks.

I spot her, but she’s not making her way toward us. She’s at the far end of the crowd, near a corner of the rink. “I’ll be right back,” I tell Mom. I weave my way through the knots of people. When I’m just a few feet from Becca, I realize she’s crying. Ruthless is standing next to her, looking even more irritated than usual.

Becca says something; then I hear Ruthless say, “Look, Gold. One more mistake like that and I’m sending in the alternate. We talked about this. We can’t afford errors. Not if we want to beat the Lady Reds this year.” Ruthless starts to march away, then turns back. “And we will.”

Becca leans against the half wall surrounding the ice
rink and covers her face with her hands. I don’t think she sees me. Then she takes her hands away, wipes her eyes, and straightens her shoulders. When she reaches for her skating bag, I dash into the crowd, and I’m back with my parents before Becca finds us.

“There she is!” Dad yells out. “Great job out there. This is going to be your best season yet. I just know it. First place every time.”

Becca gives him a weak smile.

“What’s the matter?” he says. “Don’t worry about that little slipup. Happens to even the best skaters! C’mon, how many times have you seen those top girls fall at the Olympics?”

Becca nods at Dad as he pats her on the back; then Mom snaps a picture of the two of them. “What took you so long?” she asks Becca.

“Oh, nothing,” Becca answers, and waves to Taylor. “Get a picture of us,” she demands, sounding like her normal self, and squeezes Taylor in a hug. My sister puts on her biggest Synchronettes smile as if nothing happened. But when they let go, another girl walks by Becca and whips her curly hairpiece around so hard that it smacks Becca in the face. I think it was the girl who was skating next to Becca when she stumbled. I hear Taylor whisper, “Just shake it off.”

Mom calls out happily, “Everyone’s going to the Chandelier!”

The crowd begins to move toward the doors. Grandma Gold appears and grabs my arm. “It’s a stampede,” she yells. “Hold on to me!”

The restaurant in Southbrook that everyone calls the Chandelier turns out to be just as packed as the skating rink. The reason people call it that is because an enormous chandelier with over one thousand tiny lightbulbs hangs in the entryway. The real name of the restaurant is Pete’s Family Inn and the good thing about it is that they serve breakfast anytime.

When we’re finally seated at a table, we lift our water glasses to toast Becca on a successful competition season. She’s still wearing the fake ponytail but her makeup has smeared a little.

She rubs her elbow. “I think I bruised my arm.”

“You’re good,” Dad says. “You’re real good, Bec. You just shine out there.”

“Yeah,” she says. “That’s what my coach told me after the exhibition. That’s why I was late finding you … she talked to me afterwards.… She told me not to worry about losing my footing, that I should shake it off and forget about it.”

“Absolutely,” Mom says.

“You’re a big part of the team,” Dad adds. “They need you.”

“Of course they need her,” Grandma Gold shouts. “Although I would have liked to see you skate in something new after driving forever in the pouring rain.”

I stare at Becca. My mouth is hanging open. I can’t believe it. She’s lying. Unless the coach said those things before I got there … but from the look on Ruthless’s face, and what I heard, it certainly didn’t seem like it.

Grandma Gold leans over to slap Alex’s back. “And how’s our high school basketball star?”

Alex peels off his headphones and says, “Huh?”

“Still the top scorer on the team?” she asks.

“Yeah,” he says. “When are we going to order?”

“They’re so busy,” Mom says, waving to a Synchronettes mom across the restaurant. “I’m sure our waiter will come soon.”

“And what about you, Calli? What are you up to these days?” Grandma Gold asks, peering at me. I swear, it’s just like she knows the ABC game, except she did it out of order.

Before I can answer, Dad says happily, “Calli is going to be an actress!”

“Oh.” Grandma Gold nods. “Like Marjorie?”

Dad folds his arms across his chest. “Yeah, except Calli won’t end up like her.”

Grandma Gold pours three packets of Sweet’n Low into her coffee. “Who knows what went through that girl’s head?” she says. “Got herself a big part in a play, had an agent and everything, then went and threw it all away.” The spoon clinks against the side of the cup as she stirs.

Dad looks at me. “What are you going to have, Calli?”

“Pancakes,” I reply.

“Me too,” he says with a thumbs-up. Dad and I both love pancakes for dinner.

“Oh, that reminds me,” Grandma Gold interrupts. “Have you talked to Joel lately?”

“Mother.” Dad looks uncomfortable. “You know Joel and I don’t really talk.”

“Since when?” She sets her cup back on the saucer and some coffee sloshes over the side.

“Since … the last few years.”

“Well,” Grandma Gold says, “
if
you were talking to your brother, you would have known that he was written up in some big magazine. I can’t remember the name … Snazzy … Jazzy …? Anyway, he’s listed as the top plastic surgeon in all of California.”

“Is that so?” Dad says. “Terrific.”

“You bet it’s terrific. My Joel really made something of himself.”

“Oh, here’s the waiter,” Mom interrupts. “Let’s order.” She puts her hand on Dad’s arm and they glance at each other.

I ask for chocolate chip pancakes and hot chocolate, but when the waiter brings the cup, it’s not steaming and there’s no whipped cream. Grandma and Dad and Mom go back to talking about Becca and Alex, and me starting out in theater, and how we’re all the greatest kids in the entire world.

“I’ll be in the front row for all of your productions.” Grandma Gold winks at me.

I stare up at the chandelier in the entryway and notice a couple of burned-out bulbs. I wonder how Pete and the workers here find the time to change them. The restaurant is always so busy.

Our food comes, and Becca’s friend Taylor stops by our table with her mom. Grandma Gold asks me, “You think you’ll do
Beauty and the Beast
? I love that one.”

Mom asks Taylor’s mom for her opinion on the skaters’ hairpieces, and Dad starts mapping out a defensive plan with Alex for next week’s basketball game. The table gets noisy, and I’m trying to cut my pancakes and sip my lukewarm hot chocolate and listen to all the conversations. But after a while, I can’t tell any of their voices apart.

t’s PHP time again. Noah and I are supposed to be creating a mosaic face out of different colors of dry pasta, but we’re sitting at his desk with a heap of noodles, a bottle of glue, and an empty piece of construction paper.

At least Noah’s sitting on a chair and isn’t under the desk.

“I told you,” he says. “I can’t make stuff.”

“Do you want to try?”

“No.”

“Everyone else is making one,” I point out.

“So?”

I look over at Claire, a few desks away. Her mosaic noodle face looks like it could be in a museum. She and
her peer are concentrating on the placement of every single piece.

I look back at Noah, who is separating the noodles into piles by color.

“This is a dumb project,” he scoffs. “How can you make noodles look like a face, anyway?”

I giggle. “I agree,” I whisper. “It is kind of dumb.”

He glances at me; then the two of us sit in silence, Noah shifting around the noodles and me watching the other PHP teams busy at work. The whole room is quiet, and Mrs. Lamont and Mrs. Bezner are walking from desk to desk, admiring the creations. I hope they don’t come over here.

I promised myself I wouldn’t give up on Noah, but he’s not making it easy. I’m about to suggest that we try to make something—it doesn’t have to be a face—when Noah points toward Tanya Timley and says, “She’s a red.”

“What?” I ask.

“Like a fire engine.”

I tip my head. “Huh? You mean she has red hair?”

“No,” Noah replies, then points at Wanda. “She’s a blue,” he says. “A blue sky. With no clouds.”

I look at Noah, then at Wanda and Tanya.

“Don’t you know people are colors?” he asks.

“I guess I didn’t.”

“You can’t see it?”

“Is it bad if I say no?”

He shakes his head. “Sometimes you have to look really hard.”

“Oh,” I say, and concentrate as hard as I can on the back of Claire’s head. After a few minutes, though, I admit, “I can’t see a color.”

“It’s okay,” he says. “Most people can’t do it.”

“How can you?”

“I just can,” he says, squinting down at his piles of noodles.

I open the bottle of glue, pour some onto the construction paper, and aimlessly tack down some noodles.

“Are you making a face?” Noah asks.

I shrug and reach for more noodles. Noah hands me a few and we glue them down together.

“I still think this is dumb,” he says, and I nod.

“So, what color are you?” I ask. I guess that he’ll answer black, or white, or no color at all.

He replies, “A whole bunch of mixed-up colors.”

“Oh.… Were you ever just one?” I ask.

“I can’t remember.”

I close the bottle of glue. “And me?”

He places a noodle on the paper very carefully and, without looking in my direction, says, “Pink.”

“Pink. Is that good?”

“Pink,” he repeats. “Heart,” he adds. “Pink heart.”

I get the same feeling inside as when I made Noah laugh—all warm and mushy—like my chest is going to
burst open. I’ve never felt that way in a class or a sport or an activity.

I think that’s good.

Will I get that feeling in improv? It would certainly make Dad’s heart burst if I did.

I smile at Noah but he doesn’t see. He’s putting every single last noodle on the paper like he’s in a noodle marathon.

“Doesn’t look like a face,” he says when he’s finished.

“But we made something.” I hold up the paper carefully so none of the noodles will move.

He stares at me, then at the paper. “But it’s not anything.”