Lights! Camera! Cook!

by Diane Muldrow

  “Me, too,” said everyone except Natasha.

  “Let’s go home,” suggested Molly. “My mom said you guys could come over for dinner. Do you want to?”

  “I will!” said Peichi. “I’ll have to call my mom first. What’s for dinner?”

  Everyone giggled.

  “I don’t know,” said Amanda. “But whatever Mom makes will be good!”

  “I can come, too,” said Natasha as the girls skated over to the exit. “And I don’t even have to call first, ’cause I told my mom I might go to your house afterward.” She smiled. “I had a feeling you’d have us over.”

  “Good! What about you, Shawn?” asked Amanda.

  “Well, Angie sort of already invited me to her house. I wish you’d said something about it sooner.”

  Amanda faced Shawn and said, “I didn’t know you needed an invitation to come to our house. You practically used to live with us.”

  “I’m sorry, you guys,” said Shawn. “I’ll call you tomorrow.” She stopped at the exit, because Angie was still on the ice, calling, “Hey, Shawn!”

  “’Bye:” said Molly to Shawn. “See you later.”

  “‘Bye,” said Shawn. “’Bye, Manda.”

  “Have fun,” was all Amanda could say. As she went inside, she began to feel a strange coldness...and it wasn’t from landing on the ice.

  She didn’t feel sad, and she didn’t feel angry.

  She didn’t feel anything at all.

  Maybe I don’t care about Shawn anymore, she thought. That’s horrible!

  chapter 2

  “... Earth to Amanda!” Peichi was calling. “Hello!”

  “Huh?” said Amanda, looking up from unlacing her skates.

  “I said, ‘What kind of role do you have in the spring play?’”

  Amanda blushed. She didn’t realize she’d completely spaced out.

  The thought of the play cheered her up.

  “Oh,” she said, “it’s gonna be fun! I get to play the part of Lady Peacock. I’ll wear a long yellow evening gown and a cool feather boa! And a big diamond tiara!”

  “Really?” asked Natasha. “That’s cool.”

  “Actually, I don’t know what I’m wearing yet, but that’s what the actress who played the part in the movie wore. The play is a mystery that takes place in a big old mansion. It’s called And Then There Was One. I get to speak with an English accent again! Isn’t that cool?”

  Molly rolled her eyes. “She’s gonna speak in that accent all the time at home, just like she did during My Fair Lady, she groaned.

  “I hope I get to write the article about the play for the paper,” said Natasha. “Does it have as big a cast as the Autumn Dinner Theatre Musical?”

  “No, it’s pretty small compared to My Fair Lady.”

  “So it’s a big deal that you got in, right?” asked Natasha. “That’s great! Is your part big?”

  “No,” replied Amanda. She struggled with a knot in one of her laces. “It’s small, but I have some funny lines. I wish I had a bigger role, but I’m just glad I made it. And maybe by eighth grade I’ll get the big roles!”

  “You’ll be the star of Windsor Middle School!” exclaimed Peichi.

  “You mean the diva of Windsor Middle School,” cracked Molly. “She’ll wear sunglasses in the halls and be like, ‘Out of my way, everyone!”’

  “Very funny,” retorted Amanda, poking her sister in the ribs. “Hey, look, there go Justin and The Jerks. They look pretty bummed out.”

  “They took off their skates,” Natasha pointed out. “I guess they’re leaving.”

  “They’re too embarrassed to hang out now,” giggled Molly.

  “Well, I’m not leaving the same time they are,” said Amanda indignantly. “Let’s wait until they’re long gone.”

  “Hi, Mom!” called Molly as the girls trooped into the Moores’ tall brick townhouse.

  “Aaaaaaaaaaaghh!” came a shriek from the living room. “Get that thing out of this house!”

  “Ooops,” the girls heard Matthew say.

  The girls rushed toward the living room as Kitty came out like a shot, her claws scraping against the wooden floor.

  There was Mom, and Matthew, chasing a hopping thing.

  “What is it? What? Aaaagh!” screamed the girls. They huddled in the doorway.

  Matthew crouched into a corner near the brick fire-place. He cupped his hand over the thing. “Got it!” he announced.

  That’s when Mom began to laugh. Mom had the loudest laugh.

  “What is it?” asked Molly.

  “Just a frog,” said Matthew. “He jumped so high that it scared Kitty! I found him outside in the garden.”

  “And that’s where you’re going to take him right now,” ordered Mom between chuckles. “Actually he’s a cute little froggie. But you know how I feel about critters in the house! I’ll bet he came from somebody’s backyard pond.”

  “But he’s not really a critter, Mom,” protested Matthew. “A critter is like a raccoon, or a hamster—”

  “Don’t remind me,” said Mom, wincing. Then she looked around and said, “Hi, girls!”

  Molly turned to her friends. “Mom’s thinking about the time that Matthew brought a hamster home from school, and lost it in the house, and it scared Mom when she was down in the laundry room.”

  “I thought it was a rat or something!” explained Mom. “Matthew hadn’t bothered to tell me that he’d brought a hamster home for the week! Out you go, Matthew. Out, out! And wash your hands when you come back in.”

  “Or that frog will give you warts,” Peichi teased Matthew.

  “Really? he asked, his eyes wide. Then he gave her a wiseguy look. “Oh, you’re just kidding. I’m not dumb.” He walked through the cluster of girls, muttering, “Everyone’s s always telling me to wash my hands.”

  Mom shook her head as Matthew let the kitchen door slam behind him on the way to the garden. “Honestly! He has nicer clothes. I don’t know why he insists on wearing those beat-up jeans and the same dingy T-shirt day after day...Boys!”

  “Yeah, boys,” grumbled the girls.

  “I need a sweatshirt,” announced Molly. “It’s getting chilly out there, Mom. I think it’s going to rain.” She’d come in from the garden, where the girls were hanging out, beading necklaces and listening to the radio. They’d turned it up pretty loud, to avoid hearing the sound of Matthew screeching away on his violin upstairs. “Can I bring out some more cheese and crackers?”

  “No more crackers, sweetie,” said Mom. “I’m going to make dinner now.”

  “What are you making?”

  Mom sighed and opened the refrigerator door. “I’m not sure. There are a lot of us tonight, so I’ll make pasta...but which sauce? Hmmmm...By the way, where’s Shawn, honey? I thought she’d be here today.”

  “So did we,” stated Molly.

  “Oh.” Mom’s brown eyes looked concerned. “You didn’t have another argument with her, did you?”

  Molly shrugged. “No. She’d already told Angie that she’d go over to her house.”

  “I see. Well, how about helping me choose a pasta sauce? We could make pesto, or maybe something with the leftover salmon...” She reached for a container and inspected the contents. “Forget it, there’s not enough salmon.”

  “I know!” cried Molly. “What’s that sauce? It has a long name? With the tomatoes and the bacon in it?”

  “Oh! You mean spaghetti all’amatriciana?” asked Mom in a perfect Italian accent. Mom knew how to speak Italian because her grandma was from Italy. Nana Giovanna had taught Mom and Aunt Livia the language from the time they were little. When Mom got older, she spent a year in Rome during college.

  “Yeah! Oh, make that, please,” pleaded Molly. “You haven’t made it in a long time.”

  “I made it two weeks ago,” said Mom, pinching Molly playfully. “That’s not so long!”

  Just then, the other girls scurried in to escape the big raindrops that had begun to fall. />
  “Do you guys want to go up to our room, or just hang out here?” Amanda asked Peichi and Natasha.

  “Let’s stay here,” said Natasha, “in the nice kitchen!”

  The Moores’ large kitchen was a great place to gather, with its cheerful yellow walls, bright rugs shaped like apples and pears, and Mom’s collection of funky teapots. The twins loved to sit at the big table and do their homework and be near Mom. Mom loved to cook, even though she was busier and busier these days, teaching art history at Brooklyn College. Dad helped her by cooking sometimes. And he always took over the kitchen on Saturday mornings when he made his yummy blueberry pancakes.

  “We can help you, Mrs. Moore,” offered Peichi. “What should we do?”

  “Now that you’re cooking experts,” said Mom, “why don’t you and Amanda cut this meat into thin strips? And I’ll chop an onion.” She handed Peichi a flat package wrapped in white paper.

  Peichi opened it and saw thin, round slices of meat. “What is this?” she asked. “I’ve never seen it before.”

  “It’s called pancetta. Italian bacon,” explained Mom. “It has a different taste than our bacon. This is a little saltier.”

  “You wouldn’t want to eat it with pancakes,” said Molly, reaching for a can of diced tomatoes, “but you’ll love it in the pasta.”

  Meanwhile, Shawn and Angie had hung out longer at the ice-skating rink, and were finally on their way to Angie’s place.

  “Let’s pop in to that bodega to get some gum,” suggested Angie, who was already chewing a big wad of it.

  “That what?” asked Shawn.

  “Bodega. You know, a Hispanic deli. The one over there.” She pointed to Franco Mini Market, a corner store with a green and red awning.

  “Oh,” said Shawn. “I like your accent when you say that.”

  Angie chuckled and said, “My mom makes me speak all Spanish words with an accent, or she gets mad. She wants me to speak right when we go to Puerto Rico to visit my relatives.”

  Shawn followed Angie into the little store, where a radio played lively salsa music and the food on the shelves had labels printed in Spanish.

  Angie walked right by the gum-and-candy display.

  “There’s the gum, Angie,” Shawn pointed out, but Angie kept walking toward the back of the store. As Shawn followed her, she circled the store, came back up to the candy and gum, and paused. “I don’t see the gum I like,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  “Which one are you looking for?” asked Shawn. She saw lots of different brands, all the ones she knew.

  “Doesn’t matter. Let’s go.”

  “Well, okay,” said Shawn, puzzled.

  After the girls had walked another block, Angie slyly pulled an unopened pack of gum out from the pocket of her white velvet hoodie. “Would you like a piece of delicious Double Trouble Bubble Gum?” she asked.

  Shawn’s eyes opened wide. “Angie!” she gasped. “Where did you get that? Did you steal it?”

  Back at the Moores’ house, Natasha had offered to sauté the onions in olive oil.

  “Okay, Natasha, if you want to,” said Mom.

  Just then, Mr. Moore strolled into the kitchen. It looked like he’d forgotten to comb his graying black hair that day, and he was wearing jeans and what Molly called his “Saturday shirt—a faded baseball jersey he’d owned since college that Mrs. Moore constantly threatened to throw away.

  “How’s Matthew’s practicing going?” Mrs. Moore asked him.

  “Not bad, not bad,” replied Mr. Moore, looking around the kitchen. “Hello, girls! Hey, something smells good. Is this a cooking job? Or will I actually get to eat this food?” He chuckled at his little joke.

  “This is our dinner, Dad,” said Molly. “But you have to do the dishes!”

  “Fair enough,” said Dad. He sat down at the table and began to flip through the New York Times sports section.

  “Hey, Dad, I can’t wait to start softball practice on Monday,” said Molly, looking over her dad’s shoulder. “I hope they don’t just stick me out in left field—”

  “Ow!” cried Amanda as she sat down. “I forgot—it hurts when I sit. Mom! You wouldn’t believe what jerks Omar and Connor were today at the rink!”

  “Don’t forget Justin,” added Molly with a grin.

  “And Justin,” said Amanda sadly.

  “Yeah! They were so weird! The acted like they didn’t even know us!” cried Molly.

  “Really!”

  “Yeah!” added Peichi. “And then guess what all three of them did? They practically ran Shawn over! They just came barreling past us. Then they played crack-the-whip and pulverized us!”

  “That’s terrible, said Mom mildly.

  Dad didn’t look up from his paper. He seemed to be reading something very interesting.

  “What’s the deal, Mom?” asked Amanda. “They’re our friends—why did they suddenly act like they’d never seen us before?”

  Dad stood up suddenly. “Time to take out that garbage!” he said with a chuckle, and left the kitchen.

  Mom stirred the tomatoes into the skillet with the onions, then turned to the girls and leaned against the kitchen counter. “Welcome to life with boys,” she said with a smile. “Let me tell you a little secret...Boys can be very immature! And here’s another secret. They never really grow up!”

  “I heard that,” called Dad from down the hallway. “Don’t believe a word of it, girls!”

  Everyone cracked up.

  A few blocks away from the Moores’ house, Shawn wasn’t laughing.

  “Well, duh! Yeah, I stole the gum,” Angie was saying. She looked at Shawn quizzically. “What’s the matter? Haven’t you ever lifted a pack of gum?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “I’ve never stolen anything in my life.”

  Angie threw back her head and laughed loudly. “Girlfriend, I never knew you were so good. Come on, do you want to try? It’s easy...You didn’t even see me make off with this.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “That’s because I’m good at it. I’ll teach you.”

  “No thanks.”

  “Oh, come on, Shawn! Everybody does it. Wow, you really are a geek.”

  “I’m not a geek,” retorted Shawn, feeling her cheeks getting hot. “I’m just not a thief like you. I’ll see you later. I’m going home.”

  chapter 3

  The following Monday afternoon, the twins ran into Shawn as they all headed down the crowded, noisy hall to the cafeteria.

  “Hi.” said Shawn softly. She smiled, but her eyes looked sad.

  “Oh, hi,” said Amanda, trying to sound casual.

  “Hi. Shawn,” said Molly. “Um, do you want to have lunch with us?” The girls never knew if Shawn would eat with them or with the cheerleaders.

  “Sure,” said Shawn. She looked relieved to have been invited. “I wonder what’s for lunch today? Chili con carne for the kazillionth time?”

  No one said anything, so she added, So—did you guys have fun after skating?”

  “Uh-huh,” said Amanda. “We hung out, and then helped Mom make a big dinner, and then we watched a movie.” Deep down, she still felt that horrible nothing feeling toward Shawn.

  “by the way, we put up some Dish flyers when we went to the video store,” added Molly. “So, uh, did you have fun after skating?”

  “Um, it was okay,” said Shawn. She wasn’t ready to tell the twins about Angie stealing the gum-and how that had made her want to turn and run straight to the Moores’. But the twins would have asked her why she’d left Angie.

  As the girls picked up their trays and got in line, they heard Angie come up behind them. As usual, she was talking and laughing loudly.

  “Oh, I almost forgot to tell you. I had a really cool day yesterday” blurted Shawn, not looking in Angie’s direction. “Dad and I took the subway into Manhattan and went to the Metropolitan Museum. We looked at a fashion exhibit about the wild clothes that people were we
aring in the 1960s. They had plastic dresses, paper dresses, and dresses that lit up with batteries! Pretty funny! And then we saw some of the mummies...I can’t believe those old Egyptian tombs. They were like big houses inside, have you ever seen them? You’ve really gotta go see them. They’re wild!” She laughed nervously.

  The twins shot each other a look that said, That’s weird.

  Shawn wasn’t her cool, collected self. And why did it seem like Shawn and Angie were suddenly ignoring each other?

  After school that day, Amanda had to speak to her science teacher after class, which made her a few minutes late for play rehearsal. She rushed into the drama classroom, her face red with embarrassment. She hated to be late, especially for Ms. Barlow, the glamorous, kooky drama teacher whom the Chef Girls had cooked for a couple of times.

  “...I think it sounds like a fabulous opportunity! Ms. Barlow was saying dramatically “If you’re interested,” she went on, “come talk to me! You’ll need to make a videotape, since there are no local auditions. I’ll help you choose the right kind of material. Okay? Great. Now let’s get started on rehearsal. We’re going to work on Act Three.”

  The Act Three players grabbed their scripts and walked up the few steps to the drama classroom’s little stage.

  Amanda turned to Bruce Macmillan, who was playing the character of Detective McSweeney. “What’s Ms. Barlow talking about?” she whispered. “What are we making videotapes for?”

  “Spotlight Arts Camp,” Bruce told her. “It’s a six-week thing where you get to take acting classes, and be in one-act plays, and learn mime and tap dancing and stuff. Ms. Barlow got something in the mail about it and thought some of us might be interested.”

  “And you have to make an audition tape?”

  “Yeah. And you send it to California, where the camp is.