Bingo Summer, page 4
“So now you know my name. What’s yours?” I asked, irritated. Dana made a gargling noise. She thought this was funny.
“I — I’m Dink. Dink McDonough.”
I snorted before I had a chance to catch myself. “Dink? What kind of name is Dink?”
His eyes narrowed, the twin caterpillars drawing together in a frown. “What kind of name is Summer?”
I ignored him. “How much?”
“Single pass is eighty.”
“Eighty dollars?”
He nodded real slow, like I was too dumb to catch on.
I stared at him straight in the eyeballs. I already read the hand-lettered sign to the right of the window. Taped onto the wall, it advertised the junior high pool party the next week.
FRIENDS — FOOD — FUN!
SATURDAY, AUGUST 29th 6–9 p.m.
LAST WEEKEND OF THE POOL YEAR
BEFORE SCHOOL STARTS!!!
“Today is August 25th. You’re going to sell me a pass with not even a week to use it? For eighty dollars?”
He chuckled. I didn’t see what was so funny. He was trying to rip me off.
“I guess that wouldn’t make much sense now, would it?”
“How much for today?”
“They with you?” He pointed behind me. I had completely forgotten my sister, who was standing there perfectly quiet for once. This Dink guy had her full attention.
I nodded real slow, mocking him.
“Nine bucks.”
I pulled a twenty out of the pocket of my cutoffs and let it float into his hand. “I get eleven bucks back,” I said, when he reached for the calculator. “Just saying.”
He glared at me. “Girl’s door is that way,” he said, jerking his thumb to the left and handed me my change.
“C’mon,” I said to J.C. and Dana.
The pool house smelled of bleach and air freshener. We followed the maze of showers and changing stalls to another door and entered into the pool area.
The stark blue pool hurt my eyes. I pulled down my glasses and looked for a spot. All the lounge chairs were taken. We headed over near the kiddie pool, where there was plenty of space to spread out our towels. I knelt to lie on my stomach, my hip bones pressing painfully against the concrete. J.C. fussed with her towel and lathered on sunscreen before joining me on the ground. She handed me the bottle, so I slathered on some, too.
“He was soooo cute! He reminded me of — ” J.C. gushed.
“A wooly mammoth with those eyebrows,” I said.
“No! Someone on television. I can’t think of his name, though.”
Dana buried her face in her arms. “That was so hilarious.”
“Yeah, and he likes you,” said J.C, poking me in the ribs.
“Hush up! He does not!” I said. “What a loser.”
“Summer’s got a boyfriend,” J.C. sang.
“Hush up, will you?”
I was glad I had glasses. Now I could see without being seen.
No one above fifth grade was even in the pool. Three boys played Shark in the Middle with two smaller kids. The two jumped as high as they could out of the water, but the ball sailed over their fingers. One lifeguard was trying to give a group lesson to four rowdy girls in a roped-off section at the shallow end. Several moms with toddlers in float vests hovered near the edge of the pool, talking while their kids bobbed in the water like buoys, perfectly content.
“Recognize anyone?” J.C. whispered. “I wish I knew someone to recognize. I wish we moved at the beginning of summer, so I’d know people before school starts.”
“Who would have thought at the beginning of summer we would even be here?” I said. Across the pool, a cluster of girls huddled together, talking on cell phones, laughing, gossiping. Chloe was one of them. I felt an empty, jealous pang in my stomach. I wished I were back in Stanton with Dana and everyone else—where I felt a part of something, with secrets to share, friends to talk to, a place where everyone knew me. Dana was here now, but that wouldn’t last long. She’d head back home soon, where life carried on without me.
I was still watching the girls when that Dink kid walked out of the pool office and stood in one of the lines for the slide.
J.C. whacked my arm. “Oooo, there he is!”
Dink talked to someone else in line, standing there with his arms folded across his chest, like he was trying to beef up his arms. I laid my cheek on my arm and instead watched J.C. take out her book and start reading.
“Are you scared about school?” asked Dana.
I sighed. “I guess a little.” That was a lie. Yes, a lot actually.
“About what?”
“Getting lost trying to find my classes. Wondering who to eat lunch with.” Not having any friends.
She winced. “The lunch thing is kind of a big deal.”
“No kidding.” My stomach did a few cartwheels.
“Why do you think your mom picked here to move of all places?” she asked.
“Who knows?” I said. “She’s a mystery.”
J.C. giggled. “Sometimes Summer says it feels like Mom’s the kid, and we’re the parents.”
“She’s really spontaneous. She doesn’t like planning ahead too much,” I said.
Dana shook her head. “That must be hard. I mean, at least my parents act like parents. Your mom is really cool and all, but I would want to know what was happening a little in advance.”
“Oh, we knew we’d be moving here ahead of time,” I said, looking to J.C. “Didn’t we?”
“Yeah, like one hour, maybe,” said J.C.
That cracked us up. Dink’s head moved a tiny bit in our direction. I flipped over onto my back, so I couldn’t see him and let the sun beat down on me. I didn’t last ten minutes until I had to cool off in the pool. I felt all eyes on me, including Dink’s, when I left my towel.
We stayed for a couple hours, then rolled up our towels to head home. The girls were still there as we left, clueless to everything except for what was happening on their island of bright beach towels laid out side by side. Chloe and another girl lay on their stomachs, legs bent at the knees, feet waving in the air. They sipped from one soda can with two straws.
Again, the loneliness gnawed at me. How long would it take me to find friends? I didn’t know. I didn’t like not knowing if I’d ever find friends again.
CHAPTER 8
The next morning, Dana, J.C., and I watched Little House on the Prairie reruns while taking turns stuffing mini blueberry muffins into our mouths to see who could hold the most. Just as Dana broke the record for five at a time, Mom clicked into the kitchen on high-heeled, ocean blue sandals.
J.C. hooted. “Woo hoo! Where are you going?”
Mom’s outfit was blinding: a lime-colored jacket hand-painted with swirls and splashes of purple and gold and a turquoise denim skirt with lime-colored stitching. The finishing touch? Three tiny, stick-on rhinestones right next to her right eye, like jeweled teardrops. She held up the stainless steel pitcher of orange juice on the table to check her reflection.
“To a boutique on the square that Mr. Bain told me about this morning.”
“You saw Mr. Bain this morning?” I asked.
Mom smoothed her hair. “He was jogging by when I went out to get the paper.”
“What’s a boutique? What for?” J.C. asked.
“I’m showing the owner some of my jewelry. She might want to ‘showcase it’ — her words not mine — at her open house next month. You girls want to come?”
J.C. hopped off the stool in an instant and dashed upstairs.
“Sounds fun,” said Dana. She slid off her stool to change out of her pajamas, too.
I took our cereal bowls to the sink, thinking. Mom poured herself some juice. While she peeled a banana, she glanced at me.
Mom sighed. “What now?”
Turning on the faucet, I rinsed out the bowls. “You’re still going to sell your bracelets?”
Mom shrugged, biting into the banana. “Sure, why not?” she mumbled.
“I figured you’d stop once we moved here, and since we have more—well, because you don’t need to worry about money anymore.”
“I need to keep busy with something, Sugar Pie, or I’ll go bonkers. Besides, who knows,” she said, flipping the peel for emphasis, “I might get discovered. People here have money to spend, and you never know who’s shopping around town.” She shook the bracelets on both wrists. “Oprah could name them the next hottest thing.”
Stuffing the peel down the garbage disposal, Mom took the last swig of her juice. “Besides, it’s a beautiful day, and we haven’t checked out downtown yet. Let’s treat Dana to a shopping spree. What do you say?”
I tried to muster up excitement for shopping, but my smile felt lopsided. Maybe I could find something that didn’t make me stick out like a new person with zero fashion sense. Maybe something that Chloe or those girls at registration wouldn’t laugh at.
“I’ll do it for Dana,” I said.
“Good girl,” said Mom.
Twenty minutes later, we slipped into a parallel spot on a side street, a block away from downtown Dorrance. J.C. opened the car door before Mom put it into park and was told to settle down “or else.”
Mom peeled the Post-It note with the boutique’s address off the dashboard before she got out. From the trunk, she hauled two brown paper shopping bags. In each was a boot-sized shoebox filled with her bracelets.
“Girls, how do I look?” Mom stopped and held out the bags, so we could get a look at her.
“Nice,” I said.
“Great,” said Dana.
“Better than great,” said J.C. “You rock, Mom.”
Mom tapped J.C. with a shopping bag. “Okay, let’s go talk to Delane.”
“This looks like a movie set,” said Dana.
“We could eat on the streets they’re so clean,” I whispered. “Look. They’ve got people walking around with brooms and dustpans.” I pointed to the woman wearing a pink visor and an orange City of Dorrance vest across the street.
“This is so much nicer than Stan —, “ Mom started to say, but stopped. Luckily, Dana wasn’t paying attention; or if she was, she pretended not to hear.
We walked up Corsica Avenue, which intersected with Main a block away. Flowers were everywhere—in planters, in the store windows, on the little island of green, where every side street crossed Main. You couldn’t actually drive on brick-paved Main Street, which was really weird. A sign posted at the intersection read “Foot Traffic Only.” Ahead, striped awnings over some of the store fronts reminded me of circus tents with their cotton candy colors of pinks, blues, and greens. On the sidewalk ahead, people sat at tables underneath umbrellas.
Even if downtown Dorrance looked like a different, fancier planet than Stanton, that fishy water smell of Lake Michigan hung in the air. I hated it. In Stanton, you could smell the pine trees from the state park that was close by. And even though there were no empty window fronts with cracked glass, no sticky patches of new asphalt on the streets, or garbage cans overflowing with last week’s trash in Dorrance, I missed those things. I missed home.
“Here it is,” said J.C, stopping in front of a shop with Delane’s scrawled in gold cursive across the window. She cupped her hands and pressed her face against the glass window. “Yikes! It’s fancy, Mom.”
Mom grabbed her arm. “Hang on a minute.” She gave her clothes a last-minute smoothing. “Now I’m good,” she said, looking at J.C. “Behave yourself.”
The door chimes tinkled like silverware tapping on glasses. Right away, J.C. zeroed in on a bookshelf and darted off. Mom shifted the bags to one hand and fluffed her hair. Dana sneezed, probably because the place smelled like old fruit.
“Good morning, ladies,” said a voice from somewhere. “Welcome to Delane’s.” It echoed off the maroon walls, bounced off the tin ceiling, and floated around our heads like the voice of God. Then a tiny woman with a black helmet hairdo glided like a ghost from behind a bamboo panel. Her long skirt swished as she walked.
“Bags need to be kept behind the counter,” she said, looking over her bi-focals at Mom’s bags. She studied Mom’s rhinestone teardrops and frowned.
“Well, I — actually, I brought these in to show you. Or Delane, if she’s here,” Mom said. She lifted a bag and the beads rustled together inside the shoebox.
“I am Delane.” She arched her brows until they almost disappeared into her hairline.
“Oh! Well, I’m Margaret Haas. I spoke to you on the phone? A few days ago?”
“Ah, yes. Follow me,” said Delane. She sashayed her way to a back display case with jewelry. Mom followed her like an obedient puppy. My gut told me this was the wrong kind of place for Mom’s jewelry.
Nearby, Dana picked up a purple baseball cap with a plaid bill, and her mouth dropped open. She tossed it back like it was on fire, knocking over a bottle of lotion.
“What’s wrong with you?” I whispered.
“That hat! A baseball hat. One hundred and fifty dollars!”
“You’re kidding.”
“No, I’m not,” Dana said, picking it up again. She pointed to the price sticker. “Look.”
Good grapes! Mom had paid fifty dollars for my whole baseball uniform last year: a shirt, pants, and a hat. Even a pair of socks. She spent a week’s worth of tip money from waitressing at Bambino’s to get me that. A hundred and fifty dollar hat? This place definitely didn’t want Mom’s jewelry.
“I wonder what the most expensive thing in here is?” said Dana, plucking a paperweight from a basket full of them. “Oh, look. Here’s something cheap. Only forty dollars.”
“Maybe I should find J.C. before she breaks something,” I said. Then I spotted her. She’d found an upholstered chair to sink into and had her nose buried in a book.
There was someone else in the store, too. Behind the old-fashioned cash register, sitting on a stool in the corner was a girl with a notebook in her lap, watching me. She was about my age I guessed, with a crazy amount of black, curly hair with blue zigzaggy streaks. Nobody in Stanton had blue hair. And you’d think by the rude way she stared that I had the weird-colored hair, not her. As soon as she realized I noticed her, she went back to scribbling in the notebook.
J.C. suddenly tugged at my shirt. “I have to get this book. This is like a first edition book from 1903.” Dana stood behind her, shaking her head like J.C. was crazy.
Distracted, I took the book from her and looked at the cover.
“A Life in the Himalayas? J.C., what is this? Do you even know what this is about?”
“I just read the first chapter. It’s about mountain men getting lost and freezing to death. I like it,” she said. “It’s only twenty-five dollars.”
I was about to tell J.C. that was too much for a musty, old book when Mom’s voice interrupted my thoughts.
“Summer!” Mom whisper-hollered from the back of the store.
When I found her, she spoke in a low voice, out of one corner of her mouth. Delane was at the far end of the counter, lifting the lid from the shoebox of Mom’s jewelry.
“She wants me to look over this contract. Read it for me in case I have to sign. Do you see anything wrong? Am I signing my life away?” She shook the paper at me.
I shrugged. “Looks okay to me,” I said after scanning three paragraphs. I looked past Mom to Delane again. The woman let the lid of the box drop from her fingers like she had touched dog poop. She turned to face us.
Delane took a deep breath. “Ms. Haas, I first must say that if you want to be taken seriously, I suggest you use something a little more professional than a shoebox to transport your craft items. We are an upscale shop and only showcase the highest quality of merchandise. People who shop at Delane’s have a refined and distinctive taste. These bracelets, my dear, would not fit their standards.”
Mom stood motionless, her mouth forming a little “o.” When she didn’t move or even blink, I yanked the shoebox away from Delane. She wiped her hands on her skirt.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Haas. Perhaps one of the craft malls in Racine would be better suited to what you have to sell.” She clasped her hands together, making a steeple with her two fingers, like she was praying we’d leave.
My insides burned. I nudged Mom. “C’mon, let’s go,” I said. Mom nodded, tight-lipped.
I scowled at the striped-haired girl behind the counter as we made our way out of the shop. No doubt she thought she was too good for us, too. Sure enough, she glanced away quick, probably wondering how we ever dared show up in the first place.
A block down the street, in a restaurant called Jimbo’s, J.C. asked for an umbrella table on the back porch with a postcard view of Lake Michigan. Mom was quiet, staring out at the lake while she chewed on her lower lip. She didn’t say one word after we left Delane’s. Even while J.C., Dana, and I shopped, she picked at her fingernails, something she only did when she was thinking hard.
“Thanks for the clothes, Maggie,” Dana said. “No one’s going to recognize me when I get back home.”
“You’re welcome, Sugar Pie,” said Mom. Then she sighed. “And sorry I had to drag you all into that awful store. What a joke she was.” Shrugging, Mom took a sip of her iced tea and brightened up a little. “At least there are other stores in town. I’m not giving up.”
“That’s the spirit,” I said.
“I’m never going in her store again, even if she does have the coolest books in the world,” J.C. said, peeking into the bags by her chair. “Can you believe the deals we got today?”
Dana almost choked on her Pepsi. I patted her back.
J.C. looked up innocently. “What’s wrong?”
“Good deals?” I said. “Your three outfits cost more than we used to spend in a whole year. For Mom, me, and you!”
“What about the stuff you got? Yours was expensive, too.”
“Everything in this town is expensive.” I hunkered down when it came out too loud, but no one around us was paying attention. “I don’t think people even know what a second-hand store is around here. Everything is quadruple-priced.”
J.C. clucked her tongue. “Well, get used to it. I like spending money.”
