I considered asking Mom if she’d go back in and demand a refund on my clothes. Then I looked at her faded jeans, her dirty T-shirt, and the thin line of her lips pressed together and knew better than to let those words out of my mouth. I’d have to eat the cost of everything, even those pokey bobby pins that never worked on my hair.
Mom was eerily quiet as she backed Miss Lola Lemon out of the parking lot and drove away from Miss Delilah’s dance school.
“Are we going home?” I hoped so because I was ready to cuddle up near Miss Genevieve and be left alone for a while to figure this whole mess out and think more about my list. Or maybe I would go over to Declan’s again and see what he was cooking. Maybe he’d make me another limeade spritzer. I sure could use one.
“Nope,” Mom said.
We drove along a road that was flanked by overgrown weeds and passed a huge sign that read WORM FARM—COME TRY OUR NEW WORM TEA! (Um, no thank you! I bet they don’t sell worm tea in France!) “Mom, really, where are we going?”
For a hopeful second, I wished Mom would take me to Pamela’s Pancake House, because of how badly everyone treated me at the dance school. Pamela’s was one of our favorite celebrating places. Our other favorite place was in Winter Beach—Margaret Mitchell’s Restaurant—but we only went there once. Of course Mom had no idea how mean everyone had been to me today, and we probably couldn’t afford to eat at Pamela’s, especially because Mom would want to buy an extra dinner to bring home to Georgia.
And we definitely weren’t going to Margaret Mitchell’s, because that place was très expensive! Five times more expensive than Pamela’s. But it was so good.
Dad had taken all of us there once—even Declan—because Dad won a lot of money at the dog park that night.
“Order anything you want,” Dad had said when we were seated in wooden chairs with silk-covered cushions. It was so fancy we laid white cloth napkins on our laps. I sat extra tall in my chair; something about the place made me feel important. Even though Jenna wasn’t talking to me then, I still felt great sitting there at Margaret Mitchell’s with my family and Declan. That was because I had no idea what was about to happen to us.
“Anything?” I had whispered. “Even drinks?” We were only allowed to ask for water when we went out to eat, which we almost never did; water didn’t cost extra.
“Especially drinks!” Dad seemed as jolly and generous as Santa Claus.
I could tell he was enjoying doing this for all of us. I wondered if we’d start eating at places like this more often. Maybe we’d even end up getting a house on the hill in town like Jenna and her family did.
Dad’s eyes were wide with excitement. Mom smiled so hard, the skin beside her eyes wrinkled. Georgia kept nudging me, like she couldn’t believe it was happening. And Declan looked blissful. I wished we could have brought Miss Genevieve so the whole family could be there, but this wasn’t the kind of place you brought a dog.
The owners, Craig and William, introduced themselves and said they hoped we’d have a wonderful time at their establishment. They wore old-fashioned suits with top hats and something called spats over their shoes. Declan asked what they were. William explained that spats were a covering worn to protect shoes and socks from rain and mud splatter until about the 1920s. Declan nodded like he was in a trance. I had a feeling he wished he could wear spats over his sneakers right then.
The restaurant was decorated like it came out of the 1920s. Old-fashioned jazz music played through speakers hidden among the decorations, like an antique telephone with a dial and a piece you held up to your ear, a record player that had a big megaphone attached to it, and a bunch of lamps with beautiful stained-glass covers.
I elbowed Declan. “Isn’t this the coolest place?”
He was staring at William and Craig, who were behind a marble counter, talking and laughing. “Huh?”
I shook my head at him. “What’re you going to order, Dec?”
He pulled his eyes away from the pair. “Um, let me check.” He opened his menu, but then his gaze wandered back to the men again.
I figured Declan wanted to be like them and own a cool restaurant someday.
“Well, I’m getting the truffle mac and cheese,” I said, even though Declan wasn’t paying attention.
“Uh-huh. Sounds good.” He wasn’t even looking at the menu anymore.
Georgia held up her menu and whispered to me behind it. “I wish Dad would win big like this all the time.”
“Me too,” I said.
Now I understood what gambling all the time could make an otherwise good person do.
Mom tapped on Lola Lemon’s steering wheel, which brought me back, out of my thoughts. “I’m pretty mad right now, Cleveland Potts,” she said.
Not going to Pamela’s Pancake House Definitely not going to Margaret Mitchell’s.
“Did you know I had to call Charlene Walters to come finish cleaning the house I was working in?”
“Sorry,” I muttered, although you’d think Mom would be at least a little happy I got her out of cleaning someone else’s dirty house.
“Know what that means, kiddo?”
You don’t have to clean someone else’s stinkin’ house? I shook my head.
Mom glanced at me, then focused on the road ahead. “It means I have to pay Charlene the full fee for doing me the favor on such short notice, even though I’d already been cleaning for well over an hour and had done both bathrooms. When Miss Delilah called and told me I’d better get to the school right away, I thought you had a terrible accident, Cleveland. Then she explained you’d hurt that Jenna Finch girl, and I was really puzzled because, honey, that’s not like you at all. And now we have to drive back to the house I was working at so I can pay Charlene all the money my client had already paid me. When Miss Delilah called, I rushed right out and didn’t even wait for Charlene to show up.”
I bit the skin around my thumbnail. “I’m sorry you had to leave work because of me.”
“I appreciate it, but your sorry doesn’t put that money back in my pocket.”
I leaned my head against the partially open sun-warmed window and squinted, pretending we were passing a Parisian cheese shop, an outdoor café, and a fancy hat store instead of a sporting goods shop, a McDonald’s, and a Walmart Superstore. Très chic!
“Cleve?”
“Yeah?” I didn’t have the strength to lift my head.
“I need to know, honey. Did you hurt that Finch girl on purpose?”
“No!” I leaned forward. How could she even think that? “I’m not saying she didn’t deserve it.” I couldn’t tell Mom that Jenna had laughed at what happened to Dad. She would be really upset. “I got really dizzy from spinning, and then I tipped over. That’s all.”
“That’s all? Why were you spinning, Cleveland?”
“We were supposed to. Sort of.”
“Sort of?” Mom made an extra-hard turn.
“We were supposed to stop doing pirouettes, I guess, but I didn’t hear that part and I got dizzy. Then”—I breathed in tiny gasps, the exact opposite of how I was supposed to calm myself down—“my beret fell off and…” I thought about how Miss Delilah tried to make me take it off before class, and a few hot tears dribbled down my cheeks. I swiped at them with the backs of my hands. “It was a weird accident, Mom. I swear on everything French. Somehow, Jenna tripped over me; she flipped up really fast and smashed her pinkie toe on the barre. I heard it crack.”
“The barre?”
“No. Her toe.”
“Oh my. That must’ve hurt like a son of a grasshopper.”
“Yeah. Her little toe blew up like a purple eggplant, but I didn’t mean for that to happen. I’d smash my own pinkie toe if I could undo everything.” I released a whoosh of air and leaned back.
Mom patted my knee. “Cleveland Rosebud Potts?”
I liked when Mom used my middle name. “Yeah?”
“Pinkie toes are highly overrated.”
“Pinkie toes are…
” I burst out laughing.
Mom laughed too. Her laughter was the best sound I’d heard all day.
I leaned my head on her shoulder for a second. It smelled faintly of bleach.
“Seriously, Cleve,” Mom said. “There’s nothing that can be done for a broken toe. That girl’ll just have to ice and elevate it. She’ll be okay. I bet she’ll be dancing again in no time. Someone told me it takes about seven weeks for a broken toe to heal. That’s not too terrible. Right?”
I shrugged. Jenna might get to dance again in seven weeks, but I wouldn’t. Because apparently, I was no longer welcome at Miss Delilah’s School of Dance and Fine Pottery. “Want to know something strange?”
“Hmm?” She kept her eyes on the road.
“Jenna had a perfect bun through all of it, Mom.”
She tapped the steering wheel with her index finger. “They always do, baby girl, because they spray their hair within an inch of its life. It never moves. Never. The hair of those dance girls would probably survive a category four hurricane without a single strand popping out of place.”
I laughed again, even though hurricanes weren’t funny business, and I never wanted to live through another one. Hurricanes were plain scary, when they weren’t being the most boring things ever because school was closed and there was usually no electricity and nothing to do except melt in the sticky heat. I reminded myself to look into getting some kind of hair spray, because it might help my hair do something more interesting than droop and play dead.
Relaxing into my seat, I waited for Mom to state my punishment. There would be some kind of punishment for hurting someone, causing a ruckus, and making Mom miss work.
But Mom surprised me by not saying anything. She kept driving, like it was any other day.
Then she pulled into the driveway of a nice house that had a front porch with a swing on it. I bet there were two or three big dogs living there. And maybe a parakeet or a pig or some other kind of pet that rich people liked to have.
“I’m just going to run the money up to Charlene and talk to her for a few minutes,” Mom said.
“Okay.”
“And Cleveland?”
“Yeah?”
“Georgia has to work, but I scheduled an appointment for you and me to see Dad this Sunday at the video visitation center.”
“But—”
“Don’t even…” Then Mom slammed the car door and jogged up the steps to that fancy house, with three dogs and maybe a parakeet and a pig inside.
It was so hot in the car that I opened Mom’s door and prayed for a breeze. Living in Sassafras, Florida, was fourteen flavors of miserable. And after this news I felt like I was suffocating. I couldn’t believe Mom made an appointment for me to visit Dad without even asking me. What if I didn’t want to?
Visit… my dad.
In jail.
And there it was.
The punishment.
I’d already visited four times since Dad went in on June 30, and that had been four times too many. Why couldn’t Mom understand? I shouldn’t have to go there and be reminded… of everything I’d lost. My money for Paris. My dog-walking customers. My friends. Everything… including my dad. Mostly Dad. It hurt to see him there. It felt easier not to see him at all.
I made myself think happy thoughts. Practicing French while walking Miss Genevieve, him wagging his stump of a tail with joy. Hanging out with Declan while he created a scrumptious meal from his special cookbook. Dancing with Georgia in our trailer, even though she didn’t have time for that nowadays. Imagining attending the American School of Paris… someday.
Or maybe not.
I couldn’t even accomplish the first item on my Paris Project list. I wiped sweat off my forehead with my palm. If I couldn’t survive the first item on my list, how would I ever get through the more difficult items?
Je suis irritée. So, so irritated!
While Mom did whatever in the rich people’s house with all the pets they might or might not have, I reached over into the glove compartment and pulled out a copy of my Paris Project list and a purple pen. I kept one copy in the car, another copy in my backpack, and a third in my bedroom so I’d always have it nearby to remind me of my big goal and the things I’d have to accomplish to reach it. I had planned to stick another copy on the fridge with our Rock & Roll Hall of Fame magnet, but now I was too embarrassed to put it where everyone could see that I’d failed right from the start.
I smoothed out the paper and read the first item, then bit my bottom lip. I imagined a big red stamp over it with a single word: Failure! Since I didn’t have a big red stamp, I slashed a line through it, put the paper and pen away, and slumped in Mom’s seat. I reminded myself to do the same thing to the other two copies when I got home.
Failure in triplicate.
Mom came out of the house and down the steps. I was glad because even with the car door wide open, the heat was making me wilt. I scooted back over to my seat and wiped sweat off my upper lip.
Trying to bloom when you were planted in a place like Sassafras, Florida, was not the easiest thing in the world, even if your name was Cleveland Rosebud Potts.
The Paris Project
By Cleveland Rosebud Potts
1. Take ballet lessons at Miss Delilah’s School of Dance and Fine Pottery (to acquire some culture).
2. Learn to cook at least one French dish and eat at a French restaurant (to be prepared for the real thing).
3. Take in paintings by the French impressionists, like Claude Monet’s Water-Lily Pond, at an art museum so I can experience what good French art is (more culture!).
4. Continue learning to speak French (will come in handy when moving to France and needing to find important places, like la salle de bains, so I can go oui oui—ha-ha!—French bathroom humor).
5. Apply to the American School of Paris (must earn full scholarship to attend for eighth grade. You can do this, Cleveland!).
6. Move to France! (Fini!)
Good riddance, Sassafras, Florida!
The Summer of Shame
IT WAS ALMOST DARK BY the time we got home. Frogs croaked in the nearby canal. I smelled someone’s spicy dinner cooking, and my stomach rumbled. The last thing I’d eaten was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich at lunch a looooong time ago.
Mom and I crunched along the gravel to our trailer door, then went up the two steps.
Inside, it was bright and smelled like tuna fish.
My stomach stopped grumbling. I was tired of eating tuna. When I moved to Paris, I’d never eat it again. Flaky croissants and buttered baguettes for me!
Hunched over her laptop at the kitchen table, Georgia barely glanced up at us. “Hey, family.” She was probably looking for school scholarships or reading about the University of Vermont—her two obsessions. “I made tuna salad for sandwiches.”
“Thanks, sweetheart.” Mom kissed the top of Georgia’s head. “I’ll be out to eat after a quick shower. I smell gross.”
Mom did smell a lot like house cleaner. Dad used to smell faintly of motor oil when he came home from work. I missed that smell.
“Okay,” Georgia mumbled to her computer screen.
Miss Genevieve greeted me by sniffing around my feet and giving my ankle a quick lick. I reached down and patted his soft head, then threw my bag onto the bench seat across from Georgia so I could pet my pooch properly. After a scratch on the rump, which made Miss Genevieve wiggle his stubby tail and look up at me with his lovely, big eyes, I whispered, “You’re the best dog on the planet, Miss Genevieve. You’re even better than Scarlett Bananas, but don’t you dare tell her I said that.”
“You should really call him Roscoe. You’re confusing him. Dogs’ brains aren’t that big.”
“Miss Genevieve’s brain is!” I gave him an extra scratch under his velvety ears. “It’s filled with love and joy.” When we got Roscoe from the shelter, I suggested changing his name to Miss Genevieve because that was the dog’s name from Madeline’s Rescue and I l
oved that dog, but I was overruled by my family. So I kept calling him Miss Genevieve because Roscoe is a boring name that someone at the shelter probably picked without giving it any thought.
“Love and joy,” Georgia said. “Wish I were a dog.”
“Me too.” I plopped across the table from Georgia and pushed the bag with my ballet clothes farther away. I didn’t want them near me. Looking at my sister, I wished my hair were full and curly and dark like hers, even though she complained and said it was a frizzy mess. Her hair would probably look great in a bun.
Georgia peered over the top of her computer. “What, Cleveland?”
“Nothing.” Miss Genevieve sat near his food bowl and looked up at me. “Did you feed him?”
Georgia shook her head, as if showing off her gorgeous mane of hair. “Of course I fed Roscoe.”
“Thanks.” My job was taking care of Miss Genevieve, but Georgia helped sometimes. Dad used to walk Miss Genevieve every morning and feed him breakfast. That was “before.”
Life got divided into “before” and “after” that awful day on May 12 when Dad was arrested for stealing money from Mr. Ronnie Baker.
That day, I was at the kitchen table like I was now, except Georgia wasn’t there. I was doing my homework about the life cycle of a plant. Someone pounded on the door and shouted, “Police! Open up!” which scared the snot out of me. Miss Genevieve barked his head off. Dad had just gotten out of the shower. He was wearing jean shorts, his T-shirt with the alligator lying on a lounge chair under a palm tree and sipping a grown-up drink with a tiny umbrella in it, and his flip-flops. His hair was damp.
He nudged Miss Genevieve out of the way with his foot and opened the door.
A police officer asked Dad his name, then grabbed my dad—my dad!—turned him around, and snapped handcuffs onto his wrists.
One of Dad’s flip-flops fell off, but the officer let him put it back on.
I got a glimpse of Dad’s terrified eyes, which scared me more than anything.
The Paris Project Page 4