There is a long silence until, finally, I say, “Dad … don’t you see? I’m like you. Or you’re like me. We’re the same.”
He looks at me—really looks at me—for a minute; then he looks away. “No. I told you. I wanted to be somebody. And I want my kids to be somebody too.”
Becca smirks. “This family is so messed up.”
I opened my heart to Dad and he didn’t get it. This makes me all teary. I start to leave the kitchen; then I turn back. “I’m sorry I skipped out of the improv class, but I’m not going to be an actress, or anything else except a fifth-grade kid right now. And I bet if you asked Noah Zullo, he wouldn’t say I’m ordinary.”
“Who in the world is Noah Zullo?” Becca says as I’m running up the stairs.
“Just another ordinary kid,” I scream, and then slam the door to my room.
I grab the jeans from yesterday that are hanging over my chair, and pull the stone from the pocket. I rub it between my fingers, but as smooth as it may be, the stone isn’t making me feel calm at all.
lex knocks on the door to my room later. “Got any tape?” he asks, leaning lazily against my doorframe.
I tuck a bookmark inside my book. “Why?”
“I need it for a project,” he says. “Mom’s all out. She used the rest of the roll when she was fixing the rip in the Calendar.” He grins at me.
I get up and riffle through my desk drawers. I find a roll and toss it to him.
“Great,” he says, and to my surprise, he spreads out a poster board on my carpet and starts laying out pictures, diagrams, and pieces of paper with typed words. “D’ya mind?”
“It’s okay.… I was just reading.”
“So,” he says, arranging the items on the poster board, “I guess I missed the big scene.”
“Yeah.”
“You and Dad had it out?”
“Sort of,” I say, then look down at the poster board. “What are you doing?”
“Some stupid project for biology. The results of my botany experiment.”
“What was your experiment?”
“Giving plants water or Gatorade.”
“Oh. What happened?”
“I don’t know. The whole thing failed. Nothing grew.”
“Don’t tell Dad,” I say.
“Yeah … I had an A going in that class, too.”
Alex is still shifting things on the poster board when Becca flounces in. “Did you take my black tank top?”
“Me?” I answer.
“No, Alex,” she says. “Yes, you.”
“I’m not talking to you,” I snap.
“Oh, what, you’re mad?”
I glare at her. “Yes, I’m mad.”
“They were going to find out anyway,” she huffs.
“I wanted to tell them myself,” I say.
“Well, I saved you the trouble.”
I desperately want to say something she would say, like “You can leave now,” but all I can come up with is “Why do you think I have your black tank top?”
“Because it’s not in my closet, or the laundry, or my skating bag.”
“I didn’t take it.”
“Well then, where is it?”
“How would we know?” I look down at Alex but he hasn’t even glanced up.
Becca sneers at us, then stamps out.
Alex scratches his head. “Here’s a scary thought,” he says, his voice cracking. “You and I share the same genes with her.”
“Pretty scary.” I perch on the end of my bed. I realize that Alex has on shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt. “Aren’t you cold in that?”
“Neh,” he says.
His legs have gotten a lot of hair on them, and I can see some hairs on his upper lip too. For some reason, this makes me sad. He looks different with all that hair. “Hey, Alex,” I say. “Do you remember when you used to pull me in the wagon?”
“Where should I tape this?” he says. “What, Cal?”
“The wagon? Alex? Do you remember?”
He shrugs and holds up a drawing of plant roots. “I don’t know where to put this,” he says. “I’m running out of room. I can’t fit everything.”
I glance down at his poster board. The frustrated look on Alex’s face reminds me of Noah’s when he says he can’t make stuff. I kneel next to Alex and start moving a few items, and pretty soon, I’ve rearranged the entire layout.
“Hey, that’s a lot better,” he says, and reaches for the tape. He tears off a strip and tries to press the two ends together in a circle, then place it on the back of one of the drawings. The tape becomes crumpled and the drawing doesn’t lay flat on the poster board. “I hate tape,” he groans.
I laugh. “You do the tape; I’ll put it on the poster board, okay?”
The two of us work in silence until all the items are neatly taped down. He stands up and takes a look at it. “What do you think? Not a bad poster for a failed experiment, huh?”
“I think it looks good.”
“You want to know another thing I hate? Botany. Plants are the most boring things on earth,” he admits.
“I love plants. And trees. Didn’t you ever look up at a tree and feel completely amazed?”
He narrows his eyes. “To be honest, no.”
“Well, I guess I can see how studying plants could get kind of boring.”
“Kind of?”
I smile. “We haven’t done plants yet this year. I think we do that in the spring.”
He picks up the poster from the floor. “So you didn’t like the theater class, huh?”
“Not really.”
He raises his eyebrows. “I heard you cut.”
“Yeah.”
“And Becca told on you?”
I nod.
“She was wrong to do that,” he says. “And hey, Cal, with Dad … I think he’s got some, you know, issues.”
I sigh. “He just doesn’t get me.”
“Well, number three with a ‘C’ ”—Alex grins—“I think you’re challenging him, and he doesn’t know what to make of that.”
“Me?” Quiet little me, challenging Dad? “I just didn’t want to go to the improv class.”
“Things will work out,” Alex says. “Eventually. Okay, so, I gotta get to my algebra now. Thanks for helping me.”
I find my place in my book. Alex walks to the door, then stops and turns. “Cal.” He smiles at me. “I was just teasing you. I do remember the wagon.”
or the next few days, Dad works late and doesn’t make it home for dinner. Mom says he’s starting a big project at work, but I wonder if he’s avoiding me. The good thing: no ABC game. The bad thing: is he so mad that he doesn’t want to face me?
Becca has extra practices before the competition, so she isn’t around much either, and Alex is busy too.
One night, it’s just Mom and me for dinner, and she makes us peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
“This is kind of fun, isn’t it?” she asks. “A change of pace.”
“Yeah.” I take a bite.
“I’m not used to all this quiet.” She looks around the kitchen. “So, here we are, just the two of us. You have me all to yourself. What should we talk about?”
I can’t think of one thing. “I don’t know.”
“Polar bears?”
I shrug.
“Tell me about your fair.”
“I don’t feel like it right now.”
She sighs. “Do you want to talk about what happened the other night?”
“Maybe.”
She nods.
I stare at my sandwich. “Are you still mad I didn’t go to the class?”
“I’m not really mad anymore, no,” she says. “Disappointed, perhaps.” She looks at me. “Not in you, I think, but more in the way the whole situation unraveled.”
“Is Dad mad?”
She scratches her head. “He is, but to tell you the truth, more at himself than you. You touched a nerve. I knew he had some buried feelings about Joel and Mar
jorie and his childhood, but I didn’t know how strong they were.”
I shuffle the potato chips around on my plate. “Does he still want me to be an actress?”
She smiles. “I think he understands that’s not in the cards right now.” She shakes her head. “Families. We all know how to get under each other’s skin, don’t we?”
We finish our sandwiches. She takes our dishes to the sink and rinses them. “Don’t worry too much. Things will work out.” At that moment, I realize how much she sounds like Alex.
When the Friendship Fair is two days away, we head to Mrs. Bezner’s room for the final meeting. “This is it,” Mrs. Lamont tells us. “Tie up all those loose ends, and put on your final touches. It’s going to be completely wonderful!” She twirls and her long skirt billows out from her legs. I wonder which pair of insect socks she’ll choose for the fair.
Claire is in a panic, because she doesn’t think that she and her peer will have enough time to finish. “Why did we choose something so complicated?” she moans to me as we’re walking. Wanda is in the back of the line next to Jason, of all people, and she’s actually laughing at one of his obnoxious jokes.
“I’m sure it will be fine, Claire. You always worry, and then it always turns out okay.”
She shakes her head. “We still have so much to put together.”
I’m thrilled to see Noah at his desk. I practically push Tanya Timley out of the way and rush up to him.
“Where were you?” I demand.
He gives me that stare, the one he used to do when we first met.
“Is something wrong?” I sit down next to him on an extra chair.
“Yes, something’s wrong.”
“Well, what?”
He casts his eyes toward the floor. “I need to talk to you.” He points under his desk. When we are underneath, Noah whispers, “I went back to the first doctor.”
“Is that why you were absent?” I say.
He nods.
“So, do they know what’s wrong?”
He wiggles his nose, then rubs at it. “They think it’s something with my brain. It doesn’t work exactly right.”
“Your brain seems fine to me.”
Noah sniffs. “This doctor, he kept showing me pictures and asking me what they were. They all looked like scribbles, so I said that. He wrote a lot of stuff down and I think it was bad.”
“How do you know?” I interrupt.
Noah shrugs and continues. “Then he asked me to draw a picture of myself. You know I can’t draw! So I made some lines and circles. He wrote more stuff down.”
“What else did he say?”
“Like maybe I do have that syndrome. I can’t remember the name. It might start with an ‘A.’ They think I need a helper in school.”
“Oh.” I nod.
“But you know what I told them? I said, ‘I already have a helper and her name is Calli Gold.’ ”
“Noah,” I say sadly, “I’m just a kid like you. I’m not the kind of helper they mean.”
“I don’t want a different helper,” he says, and frowns.
I don’t know what to say.
“The whole time, my mom, she just kept saying she wants me to fit in. What does that mean, anyway? A person’s not … a puzzle piece.”
I pat his knee.
“The world makes me nervous,” Noah says.
“Why?”
“I can’t explain it. It just does.” He looks at me. “Don’t you know what I mean?”
I think about the world for a minute. “Yeah,” I say. “I do.”
Noah starts wringing his hands. I watch him, then gently take his hands and cover them with mine. All I do is hold them for a few seconds until his hands become still. Then I let him go.
He pulls the corner of his lip into a sad half smile, and I wonder if a grown-up helper will know how to calm Noah’s hands.
“Whaddya say?” I ask. “Should we finish our booth?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, it’s either that or stay under here for the rest of the day and try to figure out what’s wrong with you.”
He laughs. That croaky, rusty laugh, and I pull him out from under the desk. My heart is absolutely soaring, and I don’t care about any other thing in the whole nervous world at that moment.
After Noah and I draw a few more decorations on our board and glue on two final sayings, we take a step back and examine it together.
“I think it’s great,” I say. “I wouldn’t add anything else.”
Noah tilts his head. “It’s good.”
We sit down on the floor next to his desk. I stare at the classroom, at all the fifth graders and second graders working together. They all seem like they can hardly wait to show off their projects. I imagine all the families will be there, surrounding their children the night of the fair, complimenting them on their fantastic work. They’ll probably take lots of pictures and bring them little presents and maybe even go out for ice cream afterward.
But all I can picture when I think about my family are Alex’s and Becca’s Post-its glowing on the Calendar, and how all of them will be at the game and the competition, not my fair.
Noah tugs my sleeve. “My dad bought me a new shirt for the fair.”
“You’ll look great,” I tell him.
When it’s time to go, Noah and I fold up our display board and put the sheets, the Cool Whip container, and our sign on top, then stick on a label that says NOAH ZULLO AND CALLI GOLD.
I pat Noah on the shoulder. “I’ll see you at the fair.”
“Okay.” He gives me a thumbs-up.
Well, I think, Noah will be with me Thursday night.
And Grandma Gold.
hursday afternoon, it begins to snow, and the weather people predict that we will get three to six inches before the night is over.
As soon as the first few flakes begin to swirl in the air, Jason calls out, “The snow’s starting,” and the whole class races over to the windows. We’re all pressed against the cabinet, the heat radiating from the vents onto our faces, when Claire turns to Mrs. Lamont, who is watching the snowflakes along with us.
“They won’t cancel the Friendship Fair, will they?” Claire asks.
“Oh, we’re not going to let some silly ol’ snow cancel our fair,” Mrs. Lamont says. “All of you have worked way too hard for that to happen.” She claps her hands. “All right, all right. I know you’re very excited, but let’s get back to our read-aloud book.”
We settle back at our desks and Mrs. Lamont begins to read but I can hardly concentrate. I keep glancing at the snowflakes and thinking about the fair and my family and how Dad still isn’t talking to me.
Actually, he is, sort of. He politely asks how my day was and if I have a lot of homework—but he’s not really talking to me. He’s not really talking much to anyone. Even though he started coming home at his regular time, he walks around quieter than I’ve ever seen him. He seems slower, like his usual energy has melted away. I’m worried about him and feel guilty, like I was the one who caused all the trouble.
After school, Mom keeps zooming into and out of the garage like a crazy person, driving Becca to practice, bringing Alex his basketball uniform because he forgot it, then racing back to the rink to give Becca her gloves. After I begged endlessly, she agreed to let me stay home while she was rushing around. When she comes back in, out of breath, she says, “I’m leaving again soon. You can walk over to the school by yourself when you need to go.”
“I walk to school and back every day,” I remind her.
“I know, but this is at night. It’s dark out,” she says.
“Mom, the school is a block and a half away. What’s going to happen to me?”
She peels one blue and one pink Post-it from the Calendar. She takes off my yellow one about the fair and stares at it for a minute. “Remember to close the garage after you leave,” she says.
“Okay.”
“I’ve left a plate in the fridge for
you to warm up. Some leftover pizza.”
“Okay.”
Her shoulders drop slightly. “I do feel so bad about this, Calli. Why does everything have to happen on the same night?” She picks up her purse and pulls out her keys. “You know, I don’t think I realized this myself until this very moment, but sometimes … I feel as torn as that corner of the Calendar.”
I squint at her. “What do you mean?”
“Here’s a confession.… I just long for a day when I can sit at the front window with a cup of coffee … and not have to rush somewhere.”
I nod.
She sighs.
“Sometimes you want to enjoy the gold without all the rush?” I say softly.
She gazes at me. “That’s very insightful, Calli.”
I smile at her. “Mom? Is Dad okay?”
She sighs again. “Well, my guess is he’s doing a lot of thinking. He’ll be fine.” She looks at her watch. “We’ll talk later.… I need to run,” she says, kind of sadly. “Listen, I will try to get there as soon as I can.” She kisses me on the top of my head, then whizzes out of the kitchen, calling, “Zip your jacket all the way.”
A little before six, I eat the pizza, rinse the dish in the sink, then put on my jacket. I remember to zip it all the way and close the garage. Big, floppy, wet snowflakes are coming down now, the kind you can really taste on your tongue, which is what I do the whole way to school. By the time I get there, my hair and eyelashes and jacket are entirely covered in snow.
In the gym, some people have already started setting up the booths. I see a table with the pile of Noah’s and my stuff, but no Noah. I decide to wait so we can set up together.
Wanda runs up to me the moment she spots me, and pulls me toward her booth. Wanda and her peer called their exhibit Friendship Across the Universe. They used the Play-Doh to make all the planets, then set them up in order across a black poster board.
“Nice job with the planets,” I say. “You matched the colors really well.”
“Do you get our theme?” Wanda asks.
“Kind of.”
I gather that Wanda and her peer have imagined that if there are beings living in another galaxy, we should try to make friends with them. Underneath their sign, FRIENDSHIP ACROSS THE UNIVERSE, they wrote Aliens are our friends, not our enemies.
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