“So nice to meet you,” Ms. Strickland said.
I couldn’t speak. I’m guessing Emma couldn’t either, since she was probably as shocked as I was. It was probably good that Carmen didn’t seem to know what was going on because she was able to say something for us.
“It’s very nice to meet you, too,” she said.
“Anne Marie has an application for you to fill out,” Mr. Dooney said as he picked up a piece of paper and handed it to Emma. “It’s just a formality. One of your parents should probably read and sign it.”
“Yes, it needs to be someone over eighteen,” Ms. Strickland said. “We have a holiday arts and crafts fair every year, but I think one around Mother’s Day is a wonderful idea. We can certainly help you promote it as well.”
“Oh, okay,” Emma said. “Thanks. That sounds … great.”
I wanted to ask her if Mr. Dooney had told her why we wanted to have the fair. Did she know it was because her son wanted to kick the bookmobile off the grocery store’s parking lot? It seemed like if she knew, she wouldn’t have been so eager to help us.
“Can I get you girls that lemonade now?” Mr. Dooney asked.
“Actually,” I said, “I can’t stay. I just remembered that I need to get home. Sorry.”
“Yeah, me, too,” Emma said. She waved the application in the air. “Thanks for this. We’ll read it over and make a decision soon.”
“Oh, do you have other options, then?” Ms. Strickland asked.
“Um, yeah, we just have a lot to think over,” Emma said. “Thanks again. Bye!”
She turned around and almost ran out the front door, and Carmen and I scurried after her.
Emma walked straight for the beach and didn’t stop until we were practically to the ocean. I zipped up my jacket because it was breezy. The fresh air felt good, though.
“What is going on?” Carmen asked. “One minute you’re ready to have vanilla wafers and lemonade and the next minute you’re running out of there like … like Vincent van Gogh just called and asked to meet for pizza.”
“I wish!” I said.
“I can’t believe it,” Emma said as she kicked at a stick in the sand. “Of all the people he could have asked, it had to be her?”
“Who is she?” Carmen asked. “Please, tell me.”
“Her last name is Strickland,” I said. “Remember Mr. Strickland, the terrible manager of the grocery store? That’s her son.”
Carmen said, “Oh. Ohhhh! Wow. I thought the name sounded familiar, I just couldn’t remember where I’d heard it. So, what do we do now?”
“Seems pretty obvious to me,” I said. “There’s no way this will work. We need to come up with a new idea.”
“No,” Emma said. “I don’t think so. You know why? She might listen to us. She might love to read, we don’t know, and if she does, she might agree with us and not her son. Who knows, maybe she could even get him to change his mind.” She smiled. “You guys, I’m just realizing this might be the best thing that could happen to us.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. How could they think this would work? I mean, this wasn’t some random dude she knew. This was her son. Why would she ever take our side?
“Should we go back there?” Carmen asked. “Talk to her?”
“You guys,” I said. “What is happening right now? She’s his mom.”
“But sometimes children make mistakes, right?” Emma said. “If we can get her to see that he’s making a really big one, she might help us.” Emma stopped and stared at me for a second before she continued. “Wait a second. You’re not using this as an excuse, are you?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Like, this could be a way out for you,” Emma said. “So you don’t have to figure out how to find the courage to put your work out there. Well, too bad. We’re not giving up yet. Right, Carmen?”
“Um, I’m not sure,” Carmen said, cracking her knuckles nervously. “I can see both of your points, you know?”
Emma started walking. “Stay if you want. We’ll never know unless we ask.”
Carmen looked at me, her eyes begging me to go along, too. But I couldn’t do it.
“Sorry,” she said as she ran past me to join Emma.
I turned around and faced the ocean so I wouldn’t have to watch them walking away from me. I took in a deep breath of the salty sea air as I watched the giant waves roll in the distance and the frothy tide spill toward me. The gray cloudy sky matched how I felt on the inside.
Was Emma right? Was I using this as a way out? Was my fear so big it was covering my brain like a giant tarp and I couldn’t see anything clearly?
I had no idea. All I knew was that I felt as broken and alone as the empty crab shell at my feet.
Reasons I don’t like fighting with friends
* It makes me feel sick.
* It feels like the world is ending.
* It’s hard to know what to do after the fight. Like, who’s supposed to say sorry when you both think you’re right?
* It’s about as fun as cleaning the bathroom. Except I’d rather clean the bathroom.
* I think I’d rather do almost anything else. Anything.
When I got home, Miranda was in the kitchen, getting stuff out of the cupboards, like she was about to bake something.
“Can I help?” I asked.
“Sure,” she said.
“What are we making?”
“A cake.”
“What for?”
“Um … for me? And you?”
“What happened to training?” I asked. “Aren’t you supposed to be staying fit and healthy for your tryouts?”
Junior lifeguard tryouts were coming up in May. I don’t know why I was questioning her, though. It’s not like I wanted to talk her out of making a cake. Why would I do that? What was I thinking? Actually, I wasn’t thinking. Heartbreak will do that to you.
“I’ll work it off tomorrow with the girls,” she replied. “We’re swimming all day.”
I looked at the recipe on the counter and saw that it was called “The Best Chocolate Cake Recipe (Ever).” It looked like she’d printed it off the internet.
“You know someone could make the worst cake ever and simply call it the best cake ever, right?”
“It has hundreds of comments and a five-star rating,” she said. “Even if it’s not the best, it’ll be good. Good enough for me, anyway. If you don’t want any, fine with me.”
“No, I want some,” I said as I read through the ingredient list and started pulling things out the cupboards. “Chocolate makes everything better, right?”
“Uh-oh. What’s going on?”
“Um, I don’t see espresso powder. Do we even need that? Will it make the cake taste like coffee?”
“No, it wouldn’t make it taste like coffee. It’s supposed to make the cake super flavorful or something. We can skip it, though. But you didn’t answer my question. What happened?”
I set the vanilla, baking soda, and baking powder on the counter and then turned around. “I got in a fight with Emma and Carmen.”
“Oh. That’s all?” Miranda asked as she got back to work, measuring out two cups each of flour and sugar. “Okay, so tell me. What happened?”
I hesitated for a second. After all, sisters are masters at telling you that you’re wrong, and I really didn’t need to hear that. But who else was I going to talk to about it? So, I told her the whole story.
When I finished, she said, “Well, Pooh, you know what I’m going to ask you, right?” She poured the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, and while she held the bowl, I scraped the sides with a spatula.
“No. What?”
She gave me a look. “Oh, come on. You know. Do you want to sell your paintings at the fair or not? Be honest.”
“Well, no, but—”
She stopped me. “Okay, so, there is more going on than just being worried about Ms. Strickland.
You should probably think about whether your friends are right, even if you don’t want to admit that.” She set the bowl down and grabbed the handheld mixer. “Can you spray the cake pans, then put the parchment paper in them?”
While she mixed, I got the pans ready. When she was done, she handed me one of the beaters to lick. “Mmmm,” she said as she tasted the batter. “Good, right?”
“Really good,” I told her.
As we stood there eating the batter we probably shouldn’t have been eating because of possible salmonella poisoning, I decided to see if my older and wiser sister had any advice.
“How do I do it?” I asked.
“Do what?”
“Put myself out there? I’m just … I’m so afraid.”
“Oh, Pooh,” Miranda said, leaning up against the counter after she threw her beater in the sink. “I can’t tell you how to do it. Courage isn’t something you can turn on and off like a light switch. All I know is, yeah, I might not pass the junior lifeguard test, but how do I know if I don’t try? Maybe I won’t pass, but I work hard not to focus on that because all it does is make me feel like garbage. I focus on what it will feel like when I pass and all the good things that’ll come after that.
“Instead of thinking about all the bad things that might happen, can you think about the good things that might happen instead? I mean, you might sell a bunch of paintings and be able to give a lot of money to the Buttons. Think about that. Wouldn’t that feel incredible?”
“Yes, but—”
She cut me off again. “No. No buts. Like, don’t tell me that won’t happen. Because you have no idea what’s going to happen. Unless you have some secret powers you’ve been hiding from me this entire time.”
It made me smile. If only I had some secret powers. The ability to fly. Or to be invisible. Or to speed-read books but still understand everything. I could read so many more books that way.
“Nope. No secret powers,” I told her.
She went to work pouring the batter into the pans. “Then you just have to power through like the rest of us. You know what you need to do?”
“No, Miranda. I have no idea. That’s why I’m talking to you about this. So you can help me.”
She opened the oven door and carefully placed the cake pans on the middle rack. “Every time you start the negative talk in your head, pretend it’s your best friend saying those things out loud. Would you let her get away with that? Would you let her beat herself up like that?”
“Probably not,” I said softly.
“More like, definitely not,” my sister said. “So you shouldn’t do that to yourself either.”
Why was that so hard to do? I wondered.
She set the timer and then pulled me into a hug. “Try and remember something, okay? When people do hard things, it’s not because they’re not afraid. It’s because they’re afraid but they do them anyway. That’s what bravery is.”
I knew exactly what she was saying. I needed to do the hard thing.
“I’m going to go paint for a while,” I told her. “Can we have pizza for dinner before we have cake for dessert?”
“Sounds good to me,” she said. “I’ll check with Mom and make sure it’s okay.”
I started to walk away and then turned around. “Miranda?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks. I kind of knew you would probably tell me I was wrong, but you were actually pretty nice about it.”
“Am I the best big sister ever?” she teased.
I turned around and headed toward my room. “If you say so, the internet will probably believe it!”
Good things that might happen from selling my paintings
* I’ll raise money to help Mr. and Mrs. Button.
* I’ll raise my confidence level.
* A kid gets a painting of a cute owl for a birthday gift.
* People go home and try to paint their own owls (or trees or cats or cupcakes).
* Little kids are inspired to be artists someday.
* More art in the world = a better world.
Last fall, we had spirit week at my old school. On crazy hair day, I used a bunch of Miranda’s ponytail holders to make little twists all over my head. I added some neon-pink and green pipe cleaners to make it bright and colorful, then sprayed a lot of hairspray to help keep everything in place. I looked awesome, if I do say so myself, in a crazy hair kind of way. But when I left for school, the bathroom was a disaster area. I just didn’t have time to clean it. Well, Miranda went ballistic after school that day. She was super mad I used her stuff without asking and that I didn’t clean up my mess.
After she finished screaming at me, I apologized, but she didn’t speak to me for three long days. Because we live together, it was almost impossible for it to go on much longer than that. And, you know, we’re sisters. That’s what sisters do. They get upset with each other. They use the silent treatment masterfully. And then they make up and become best friends again.
I knew I needed to apologize to Emma and Carmen. Saying “I’m sorry” wasn’t the hard part, though. The hard part would be what came after that—going to the arts and crafts fair to sell my paintings. Because an apology isn’t just empty words. Or it shouldn’t be anyway. It should be followed by doing something that shows you really mean it. Like, I haven’t touched my sister’s hair stuff again without asking first, even if I think she’s being kind of a diva about the whole thing.
Admitting you’re wrong is hard. Working to make things right? Even harder. But I wanted to try.
After a breakfast of a banana and a slice of the very delicious chocolate cake (I figured it counted as breakfast because of the eggs), I was about to head over to Emma’s when there was a knock at the door. Miranda had already left for the day and Mom was in the bathroom, so I went to the window to see who it was. My heart did a little cartwheel when I saw Carmen and Oscar standing there. She held a folded-up blanket and Oscar had a couple of plastic buckets with some small sand tools sticking out of them.
“Hi, Juliet,” Carmen said when I opened the door. “Hope it’s not too early.”
“No, it’s fine,” I said. “I’m so happy to see you. Do you want to come in?”
“Actually, we were wondering if you’d like to go to the beach with us? He can build a castle and we can maybe, um, talk?”
I smiled. “Ooh, yeah, I’d love to. Just let me get my hoodie. Be right back.”
I ran and grabbed my favorite purple sweatshirt and threw it on. “Going to the beach with Carmen,” I yelled as I flew past the closed bathroom door.
“Okay,” Mom replied. “Have fun.”
If Carmen had come to see me and wanted to talk, it meant that she wasn’t too mad at me. I couldn’t deny I was curious about what had happened after they’d gone back to talk to Ms. Strickland. Hopefully Carmen would tell me things were good and we could move forward with the arts and crafts fair.
As we made our way to the beach, the sun out and the sky such a bright blue it made me feel like I was walking inside a gorgeous painting, Oscar asked about our cat. I figured he must have seen him behind me when I’d opened the door.
“His name is Casper,” I told him. “Like the ghost. It was a TV show. My sister and I watched it when we were little because it was one of my dad’s favorite shows when he was a kid.”
“Does Casper stay inside all the time, or does he go outside?” Oscar asked, swinging his buckets as he walked.
“He stays inside,” I said. “At our old house, he’d go into our fenced backyard sometimes and lie in the sun. But here, it’s just safer for him to stay in the house.”
“I bet he misses his old home,” he said. “Does he seem sad?”
I looked at Carmen and she just kind of shrugged, like, “Kids are funny, right?”
“He might, but I don’t think he’s too sad. The first week, he hid sometimes. He was probably nervous about being in a new place. But now he see
ms okay.”
“In case you can’t tell, it’s not just me who wishes we could have a pet,” Carmen said.
“Yeah, I’m sorry that you can’t have one. Have you ever tried to build an animal out of sand?” I asked him.
“Nope,” he said. “Have you?”
“My sister and I did a sea turtle,” I told him. “It was really hard.”
“Did you take a picture?” he asked.
While Carmen threw down the blanket, I pulled out my phone and showed him the photo. “That’s really good,” he said. “Maybe I’ll try and make a cat. Just the head, though. The body might be too hard.”
“Sounds good,” I said. “I can help, too, if you want.”
“Maybe,” he said. “I’ll let you know.”
I knew that was his nice way of saying he wanted to do it by himself. For now.
I sat on the plaid wool blanket across from Carmen. She had a faded pink baseball cap on that said GIRL POWER.
I took a deep breath before I said, “Carmen, I’m really sorry about yesterday.”
“It’s okay,” she said.
“No, it’s not. I jumped when I saw the chance to find a different way to raise money because I was thinking about myself. And that was wrong. I’ve decided I’m going to sell my paintings at the fair.”
“You are?” she asked. “Because, honestly, you don’t have to.”
“I just think …” I paused. “I don’t want to be so afraid that I miss out. Maybe I won’t get many paintings done and maybe my stuff won’t sell, but maybe … well, maybe it will all be fine, like you and Emma keep saying. I really want to help Mr. and Mrs. Button and the bookmobile. That’s what I want to focus on.”
She looked at her brother, working hard, digging in the sand. Then she leaned in. “I wish I could figure out what to focus on so I’m not so afraid all the time. Almost every night I wish on all the stars and hope things change.”
It hurt my heart to hear her say that she was afraid. But I didn’t have any ideas on how she could change that. It was so different from my own situation. And honestly, it made me feel like my problems were tiny grains of sand compared to her giant-pieces-of-driftwood problems. Then I remembered what my mom told me. Sometimes people just need a friend to listen.
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