Bingo Summer, page 6
“Hello?”
I jumped. “Oh! Hi…uh, yes!” I said, blanking for a few seconds at the short, dust-covered man in front of me. Who was this person? Why was I here?
“How can I help you?” he asked.
“My mom sent me. Margaret Haas? She said you wanted some of her jewelry.” I held up my backpack as proof.
“Ah,” he said, as if meeting Mom had been a memorable experience. “Bernie Day.” He shook my hand. “Come inside.”
He held the door for me, and I walked into the cool, dimly-lit store. Bernie Day’s This and That Shoppe was the sort of store we might have had in Stanton. It was not — what did Delane call hers? Upscale? I bet there were no $150 baseball caps in here.
“Your mom does nice work,” he said, taking the plastic containers from me. “I’m sure these will sell right away.”
From inside, I could still see Dink on the balcony, if I ducked down a little. What was he doing now — reading?
“Friend of yours?”
I straightened up. “No, not at all. He goes to my school. But we’re not friends.”
Bernie’s eyebrows lifted like he didn’t believe me. “Nice family. His grandmother owns the bakery over there. Makes a mean cherry streusel.”
He took his glasses off to wipe them on his shirt. The rug shaking left a coat of dust on his face that was obvious with his glasses off. I struggled to keep a straight face.
“Do his parents live over there? Above the bakery, I mean.”
Bernie took the bracelets out of the boxes and hung them on a velvet t-shaped stand. The glass beads caught the daylight coming through the front windows, and they cast a rainbow on the wall behind him. His smile was sly.
“No, his parents are missionaries. They’re somewhere in Africa now. Dink lives with his grandma while they’re away.” He glanced my way again. “Are you sure you’re not friends?”
Stop looking at the balcony. I hugged myself. Bernie’s shop was freezing. “Positive.”
“All right. Tell your mother she can stop in any time to see how sales are going. And I’ve got your number here in case I need more.”
I thanked him, and smoothed my hair as I hurried through the shop. Bursting out onto the sidewalk, I squinted and blinked as my eyes adjusted to the brightness.
When I could finally see the balcony, it was empty. Dink was nowhere in sight. It was just as well. Who cares about Dink anyway?
J.C. sat on the front steps when I got home. She held up her face in her hands. Her cheeks looked enormous, like a chipmunk hoarding nuts.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Frank’s coming,” she said. “For my birthday.”
I knew it. Back-to-school dinner, my big toe. Mom just wanted to fill us up with good food, so we’d be too full to put up a fight.
“When?”
“Two weeks from Friday.”
I sat down beside her and soaked up her gloominess. The last time Frank came, he ended up on our living room couch for two weeks, then cleaned out Mom’s cash stash before he disappeared again. Frank was like a tick.
“And Mom’s okay with this?” I asked.
“Well, she didn’t tell him ‘no’.”
“She must be crazy, or you didn’t hear right.”
“Oh, I heard right.” J.C. stood up. “I’m going to Hannah’s. Maybe I’ll move over there. Tell Mom I ran away.” She buried her hands in her pockets and kicked at rocks on her way down the driveway.
Inside the house, country music played upstairs — Garth or Tim, one of those black-hatted guys. I followed it into Mom’s bedroom, then through to the bathroom, where I found her applying lip liner with a dark pink pencil. I sat down on the toilet, drawing my knees up, wrapping my arms around them.
Mom looked real pretty. Most days, it was a quick ponytail and a little mascara, but not that afternoon. Mom wore a straight grey skirt ending above her knee and a light blue top that shimmered like sun on the water. She had on silver, heeled sandals and a necklace she made herself.
“Where are you going?”
“To a beading class after dinner,” she said in-between smacking her lips together. Then she made pouty fish lips and crinkled her nose as if she didn’t like what she saw.
“What?” she said, dropping the pencil into her makeup bag. She dug for something else, not taking her eyes off her reflection.
“Is Frank coming for J.C.’s birthday?” I asked.
“She’s mad, isn’t she?” Mom said, brushing on blush with quick, upward strokes.
“She said she’s running away to the Burlingame’s. I think that counts as mad.”
“I can hardly say ‘no’ if the man wants to see his daughter on her birthday.”
“Some father,” I mumbled.
“What?” The brush stopped in midair.
“The last time we saw him was February. And then it was only for a couple hours to buy his Harley. What does it mean when J.C. runs out the back door, so she doesn’t have to see him?”
“I think he has the right to know at least where we are. A meal once a year is not too much to ask.”
I raised my eyebrows at that.
She stuffed her blush compact and the brush back into her makeup bag. “Summer, I really don’t want to talk about it. He asked to come for her birthday, and I said ‘yes’. End of story.”
“It’s not the end of the story. He wants something every time we see him. Now we have all this, and he’ll be a big mooch.”
“It’ll be fine,” she said simply.
When Mom shut down, I couldn’t reason with her. I left in a snit, as she called it.
In my room, I found a half-empty notebook in my desk drawer and flipped to the first blank page. I got halfway through writing a letter to Dana; but then I reread it, and all the complaining I did gave me a headache. I didn’t want to give a headache to my best friend, too.
My third-grade teacher, Mrs. Bertram, once told us to write our troubles down on paper, to make a Worry List, and then get rid of those worries by throwing the list in the garbage. I’d done that before, when Mom and Frank were divorcing and she was too distracted to pay much attention to J.C. and me. I’d felt like I was J.C.’s mom, that my own mom had gone missing. Every day, I came home and listed my worries. Then I tore out the page, crumpled it, and banked the shot off the wall and into the garbage can. Sometimes writing stuff down worked. So I flipped to a new page in the notebook and tore it out. Instead of complaining to Dana, I’d make a Worry List.
At the top of my list was that our lottery secret would be discovered. I’d bet my Kerry Wood poster that J.C. would be the one to spill the beans to someone, too. Word got out in Stanton, and the craziness was too much for Mom. Now Frank knew. What if people heard we bought our big, expensive house with the winnings from a scratch-off instant. That we were poor before it happened? Good grapes, how embarrassing! Would we move again?
And softball. How would I be able to play third base on the spring intramural team and not make Mara and all her friends hate me? Worse yet, that I would never have another best friend like Dana. That was a biggie.
I retraced those two words, “best friend,” watching them grow more purple and bold. My eyes started getting itchy. Why was I being a baby? Why couldn’t I stop thinking about what everyone was doing back in Stanton?
The pen tip punched through the paper and the “f” in friends ended up on my desk. I wet my fingertip to wipe off the ink, but the letter was scratched onto the surface.
I ripped out the page, crumpled it up, and dunked it into the can next to the desk. I looked at that wad of paper sitting in there, all by itself. I wondered if Mrs. Bertram would say that the Worry List worked for eighth-grade problems, too?
September 10
Hey there!
What’s up? I hope you survived the first day of school. Boy, do I wish I were there instead of here. My first day wasn’t that bad. I found someone to sit with at lunch. A bunch of people, actually. One was pretty cool, but the others are iffy. Talking to new people IS SO HARD!!
Can you believe I saw that Dink guy from the pool? He’s in my lunch period and P.E. class! Then I saw him after school, too, when I went downtown. He actually lives above a bakery. He’s really annoying. Remember what a jerk he was at the pool? I can’t stand him.
Write when you get a chance. Here’s a stamp in case you don’t have one.
Love,
S.
CHAPTER 11
Mara never talks to me, not directly anyway.
I noticed that at lunch on Friday while Suri and I split an ice cream sandwich after we’d finished our lunches. Mara and Kate huddled across from us playing tic-tac-toe on a napkin. Two boys sat on the other side of Suri, one named Tyler who had thick, brown hair, and another named Sam with a blond buzz. Sam kept looking at me over his pizza slice. He was kind of cute. The more he stared at me, the more I wiped my mouth, thinking I had ice cream smears on my face.
“Isn’t it too early to hang election posters?” I asked. I remembered the announcements that morning had said candidates could start hanging posters next Wednesday. But someone stood on the bench seat of one lunch table and unrolled a life-sized cartoon drawing of a girl holding a checkered race car flag. Her poster said:
Send Hannigan to the Winner’s Circle —
Vote Brill Hannigan, 8th Grade Class President.
Mara leaned in Kate’s direction as if Kate asked instead. “Brill got it okayed in the office,” said Mara. “She’s the superintendent’s kid. Rules don’t apply to her.”
“I heard Brianna Durant is running for vice prez,” said Kate, not looking up from the tic-tac-toe game.
“I heard that, too,” said Suri. “That can’t happen. We’ll never get anything done.”
“Why not?” I asked.
Mara snorted. “Brianna likes to take over,” she said to Suri. “And Brill is supposed to lead the meetings.”
“Council wasn’t fun last year with those two,” said Suri. “It got really old, listening to them pick at each other every week. I can’t stand another year of that.”
“Is anyone running against Brill?” I asked.
“No one runs against her. Ever.” Mara looked over Suri’s head, avoiding my eyes. She hadn’t talked to me since the softball conversation.
“How about against Brianna?” Kate said.
Tyler nudged Suri. “You should run against her.”
“Not a chance,” she said, bumping him back. “I’m treasurer. Well, I want to be treasurer, anyway.”
Under his breath, he said, “No one stands a chance against you.”
“He’s right,” said Kate. “Everyone loves you.”
Suri shrugged, but I could tell she liked that. I liked it, too, because that meant one of the most popular girls in the school asked me to split an ice cream sandwich with her.
“Why don’t you run against Brianna, Tyler?” Mara said. “Then you could spend more time with Sur-eeee!” She high-fived Kate.
“C’mon, I’m serious,” Suri said. “Who can we recruit to run against her?”
Everyone sized each other up, looking for vice president material. We broadened our search, scanning the cafeteria. I knew no one, so I was the first to give up. One by one, the others stopped looking, too. Everyone that is, except Suri. She was focused way too intently on me. I shivered.
“I have an idea,” she purred, her chin resting in her palm. A slow smile crept onto her face. “I nominate Summer for vice president.”
“WHAT?” My heart dropped into my stomach. “No way!”
“Why not?” she asked, springing to life. “It makes perfect sense. You’re new, so you’re not going to have anyone really against you at this point. You’re fresh blood!”
I tried to hunker down into nothingness. “Exactly! I’m a nobody, so I’d lose!”
“No one likes Brianna as much as she thinks they do. She only won last year because no one ran against her,” said Tyler. “Suri’s right.”
“I bet you’d win,” said Sam.
“I bet not,” I said.
“No, that’s a really good idea,” said Kate. “You’d be perfect. And you wouldn’t be alone. Suri will be on council.”
“If Summer wins,” said Mara, looking beyond my right ear.
“Summer will win,” said Suri. “And we’ll help.”
I couldn’t say “no.” My thoughts tumbled over themselves with a million images coming together at once: me posting fliers of my face all over the school, at the podium giving my election speech, Mr. Bain congratulating me when I won. Could I be vice president? It was something I’d never thought of before. I broke out in a fresh batch of goosebumps.
The next lunch group started filing through the doors. Time for study hall. I picked up my tray. Suri followed me out, hooking her arm through mine. My legs wobbled like noodles.
“This is so exciting!” Suri said. “I can’t believe you’re going to run.”
Later, as we dressed for P.E, Suri rattled off what I needed to do to run for office.
“Fliers, for one,” she said. “Kate is a genius with computers. She volunteered to make some when we talked in English. She’s designing mine, too.”
“What else should I do? I’ve never run for office before.”
“Think of your platform, like what you stand for.”
“Stand for?” I wiped the sweat starting to bead on my forehead.
“Yeah, you know, how you can improve the school. Stuff like that.”
“I’m not so sure about this campaigning thing—”
“Oh, c’mon,” she said, as we walked out of the locker room and through the back doors near the baseball field. “This is perfect for you. You’ll meet new people. You’ll be popular. Do you want to be noticed, or do you want to blend in?”
“Noticed?” Who worried about being noticed back in Stanton? Blending in didn’t sound so bad at the moment. Hadn’t I bought new clothes to blend in? Now I was supposed to stand out? It was all really confusing.
“Exactly! Everyone will wonder where you came from and who you are. And you have the look, you know.”
I looked down at myself, wondering what gave me the look. “I do?”
Suri waved her hand. “Sure! You’ll be the best vice president this school has ever had.”
Outside, the P.E. teacher, Mr. Donovan, blew his whistle, signaling time for warm-ups. I kicked the top off a lone dandelion. “Are you sure I have a chance? I wasn’t even thinking of being on the council before we went to lunch.”
“But doesn’t it sound fun?”
“I guess,” I said. She was so excited; how could I tell her no?
“You’ll be great,” she said. “Everyone at lunch thought so.”
I took a deep breath, feeling like I’d been swept away in a rip tide. Maybe I should be more grateful to Suri. She had totally made me a part of her group, helping me find my place in this new school. I had friends to eat lunch with, to call for homework assignments, and to vote for me in a student council election. A new feeling of power surged through me. I belonged here.
“Find someone new to warm up with,” Mr. Donovan said into the speakerphone. We were out on the grass next to the baseball diamond. It was pretty warm, but the lake breeze kept the air from being too heavy. I tied my hair back into a ponytail and looked around for a partner.
I was dying to play ball. I hadn’t used my glove or bat since the move, so I was psyched that the first P.E. unit was softball. When Ella Bennett popped up beside Suri and claimed her for a partner, I panicked.
“You don’t mind, do you?” Suri asked me.
“Not at all,” I lied.
I looked around. Almost everyone had a partner. Sam headed my way, but Eddie Ryan grabbed him before he got to me. That left me by myself.
“Looks like it’s you and me,” someone said from behind.
It was Dink. He glared at me while smacking a ball into his glove.
“Okay,” I said. Was he mad to be stuck playing catch with a girl? Or was it just me in particular? I joined the other line. Dink settled into his spot about thirty feet away, right next to Sam.
“Can you throw this far?” Dink yelled. He threw the ball a little slower than necessary. It came up short and bounced in front of me.
“Can you?” I yelled back.
Next to Dink, Sam snickered.
I glared at Dink, snatching the ball out of the grass.
The smooth surface felt good in my hand. I traced the stitching with my index finger, and fantasized about sending the ball whizzing an inch past Dink’s left ear. I could do it. My travel league coach said my arm was the most accurate he’d seen in a person my age, even tried to talk me into pitching. Of course, I didn’t want to hit Dink. I’d just show him I knew what I was doing.
I let go with a rocket right into Dink’s glove. It smacked the inside of his pocket. I hoped it stung. Dink’s eyes widened. Sam froze mid-throw and looked at Dink. His eyebrows went up. I bit my lip to keep from laughing.
We tossed the ball back and forth. My palm ached from his hard throws. No way would I let him see me shake it off.
A few feet away, Sam stopped again to watch Dink and I play catch.
“You’ve played before, huh?” he asked.
“A little,” I said, keeping an eye on the ball. My cheeks grew warm.
“You’re really good. You should have tried out for softball.”
“You think?” Of course I should have tried out, had I known about the schedule.
“Yeah, I do. McDonough and I are on the baseball team. Dorrance usually goes far in the playoffs. Last year, the eighth-grade girls made it to state finals.”
I didn’t want to hear about the team I could have played on, but wasn’t. “I’m going to try out for the spring intramural team.”
Dink lobbed it too high. I leapt and stretched to get it. Off balance, I threw it back, and it bounced in front of him. He shook his head in disbelief.
Sam caught the ball from his partner and held onto it. “Hold on, McDonough,” he called, holding up his hand. He trotted over to me.
“Maybe we could get together sometime to practice throwing or whatever,” Sam said. “I could help you get warmed up for softball.” His eyes were blue like faded denim.
