My Life in Dioramas

by Tara Altebrando

  “Good,” I said. “I’m glad.”

  My dad called my mom over so we got up. They needed my mother’s signature on a few things. Meanwhile, the boy on his bike was back, with his dog. Both of them moving more slowly this time.

  “Hey!” he called out when I caught his eye.

  “Hey.” I walked down to the end of the driveway where he’d come to a halt, straddling his bike. The dog sniffed my sneakers and happily ran around in circles then came back to me. I bent to pet him and scratched him behind the ears.

  “You buying this house?” He had light brown hair that was too long in front of his eyes and he pushed it over to one side with his hand.

  “I think so,” I said. “This may sound like a stupid question, but we’ve been all over the place today. Where are we, exactly? What town?”

  “Lloydville,” he said.

  “Which is . . . where, exactly?” I knew the name, but couldn’t place it.

  “The Wallkill River is that way. And New Paltz is that way. Frosty Fest is just over there.”

  “How far?” I asked, bracing myself for the answer. We’d been to Frosty Fest, a holiday light show, every year for as long as I could remember.

  “Ten minutes?”

  “So how far from New Paltz?”

  He shrugged. “Twenty minutes, give or take.”

  “So what high school will you go to?” I asked.

  “My brother goes to Highland.”

  “Wow. That’s where all my friends will end up, too.”

  “So that’s a good thing. Right?”

  “Yeah, mostly!”

  I’d be in school with Naveen again!

  And Megan. And Stella.

  In the meantime, I could study with Miss Emma.

  I could compete with the troupe next year!

  “Any more questions?” he said.

  “Just one. Who lived here? Where did they go?”

  “That’s two.”

  “Okay, two questions.” I smiled. “Jerk.”

  “They were an older couple and after the miserable winter they decided to unload this place and move permanently to their place in Florida.”

  I wasn’t sure I understood exactly how you could do that, just “unload” a house, but at the very least it sounded like they weren’t bankrupt or homeless.

  He put a foot on a pedal. “Well, if it works out—the house—we’ll hang.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” I said.

  Then he whistled. “Oscar! Come on, let’s go!” And he pushed off down the street and Oscar followed. Right away he circled back. “Hey, what’s your name?”

  “Kate.”

  “I’m Benny. See ya.”

  I watched as he rode off and then up a driveway a few houses down, across the street. He laid his bike down on the blacktop and walked inside, holding the door open for Oscar.

  “Look at you,” my mother said. “Making friends already.”

  “Let’s not get carried away.” I was very much eager to get home so I could dance the rest of the day—the week—away.

  But I very much liked the idea of hanging with Benny.

  “Us?” She slid her sunglasses onto her face. “Never.”

  “Can we get another dog?” I asked. It was like I could feel the ghost of Angus, licking my palm.

  “First things first.”

  30.

  I couldn’t sleep the night before the competition and I woke up way too early the morning of it. After a quick shower I went to the kitchen but had a hard time thinking of anything I wanted to eat. I forced down a piece of toast and grabbed a few granola bars and shoved them in my bag. Then I went back upstairs to do my hair. Which was sort of pointless. I wasn’t any good at it. I was about to text Stella to ask if she thought her mom could do my bun later but maybe that wouldn’t be the best idea.

  We hadn’t spoken all week but I’d gotten texts from Madison and Nora, who wrote, Heard you are doing solo! and Break a leg!

  I wrote back to apologize that they’d had to reblock their whole routine because of me. The fact that they’d both forgiven me seconds later only made me sadder that I wasn’t dancing with them. What if they bombed or choked?

  What if I did?

  What if Stella did?

  Would she even let me apologize?

  “You ready?” My dad entered the room looking barely awake, my mother on his heels.

  I nodded.

  When we got to the car my mother took the keys from him and said, “I got this. You’re still half-asleep.”

  I played “Semi” over and over again with headphones on, running through my routine in my head. I wasn’t sure I’d ever listened to it while on the road and it felt somehow right to be listening to lyrics like, It’s raining / It’s pouring/Got sixteen miles till morning, while the world whipped past in a blur of lines.

  After a nap, my father declared he was starving and needed coffee and I was actually finally feeling hungry, so we went through a drive-through and loaded up. I had a Coke, which I only ever really had at fast-food places, and it really pepped me up.

  The one-and-a-half-hour drive seemed endless—the world waking up around us, the traffic thickening—until we were there and it felt too soon.

  There were dancers everywhere at the conference center, all dolled up in sequins and tutus. I’d opted, at Miss Emma’s suggestion, to just wear a black leotard with a squared-off, boy-short sort of cut. I felt a little plain alongside the others, but I felt like me.

  We found the registration desk and searched for the dressing area I’d been assigned, glimpsing a peek of the main stage on the way. It looked huge from the back of the hall. I felt like I might throw up.

  My dad was flipping through the program and looked up. “You’re dancing to ‘Semi’?”

  “I thought you knew.” I hadn’t been hiding it.

  He shook his head, kissed me on the forehead hard.

  Then we found my dressing area, where a ton of other girls were pacing and warming up, then we found Miss Emma.

  “How are you feeling?” she said, taking me by the shoulders.

  “Good, I think.”

  “You look great. But wait. Come with me. Let’s fix your hair.”

  She sat me in a chair in front of a mirror and my parents came over and Miss Emma said, “So, Mr. Marino, you’re like a rock star, huh?”

  My dad smiled. “You’re hired.”

  “That’s my mom on violin,” I said. “I don’t think I told you that.”

  “You didn’t!” Miss Emma said. “That’s amazing.”

  An announcement was made, asking nondancers to leave. So my mom kissed me on the cheek and squeezed my hand. “We’re already so, so proud of you,” she said.

  I pressed away tears so as not to mess up the little makeup I’d put on.

  “Break a leg, Kate,” my dad said, and they were gone.

  Miss Emma started to redo my bun.

  “Where’s Stella?” I dared.

  “She’s freaking out over there somewhere.” She was holding a bobby pin in her teeth. “Apologize yet?”

  “To Stella, no. I wanted to do it in person.”

  Miss Emma spun me around and smiled. “Well, then hop to it.”

  Music surged into the air around us. Lights shone like kaleidoscopes behind curtains. Names started being announced through an echoey microphone. Bodies shuffled this way and that. Soon I was alongside Stella, waiting for my turn. Or hers.

  “I’m sorry about troupe and making you guys have to relearn everything,” I said. “I hope you guys do great.”

  She tilted her head and light caught the glitter speckled on her cheeks. “Thanks.” She shook her arms out and looked off toward the stage. “Honestly, solo competition is way more important to me, anyway.”

  I was going to say something else—maybe just “break a leg”—but then too quickly, it was my name being called and I was there, center stage.

  I couldn’t make out any faces in the crowd—a pac
ked auditorium—but I didn’t have time to anyway.

  I heard the opening guitar and keyboard bits of “Semi.”

  I felt so grateful for Miss Emma and for music and for my body and for my dad, who had superpowers like finding a house we could afford, and for my mom and the stuff she was going through, even though it didn’t make her the most pleasant person to be around right now.

  I imagined them watching me, maybe feeling sad about the good old days and also thinking how different I was from them and yet still such a part of them.

  I saw the whole of the stage as a diorama, with me at the center, with a spotlight shining on me, maybe for the first time in my life. Maybe for the last. Who even knew?

  And then it was done.

  And there was applause, and when I took a bow, I felt like we didn’t even have to stick around for the scores, the results.

  I’d done it.

  That was the thing that mattered.

  31.

  We waited and waited, days upon days, for the phone to ring, for it to be Bernadette with news. I even started think of her as that, Bernadette, in order to up the good karma. There was paperwork and more paperwork coming and going and my father had a few appointments related to the house stuff but mostly I was living in a vacuum of information.

  I spent a lot of time watching the video of my “Semi” dance, which had taken seventh place in a group of fifteen. Stella, who’d taken third place, had come over to congratulate me after the competition.

  “You did great,” she said. “I’m happy for you.”

  “You’re only happy for me now that you did better than me,” I said.

  She looked a little bit mad, or stunned. “I don’t know how I got this way.”

  “Well, we have to figure out how to fix it,” I said. “Because there’s a possibility my parents are buying a small house near Big Red. So there’s a possibility I’m coming back to Miss Emma’s classes. And we can’t be like this.”

  She nodded. Then smiled. “You might really be moving back?”

  I nodded.

  “That would be amazing. Truth is, I’ve been miserable without you.” She leaned into me. “Not as miserable as your boyfriends Naveen and Sam, but miserable.”

  “Quit it,” I said but it didn’t really bother me. Not like it used to.

  On Tuesday of that week my grandmother came home with a pair of new shoes, and she left the empty box sitting on the living room floor.

  I was watching something random on TV but the box just kept calling to me.

  It had been weeks since I’d made a diorama, and I missed it.

  “Hey, Grandma.” I found her in the kitchen. “Do you have any craft stuff? Construction paper? Ribbons? That kind of thing?”

  “There’s a box of stuff in the office closet but it’s not much.”

  “Can I look?”

  “Sure.”

  I left then popped my head back in and held up the empty shoebox. “Can I have this?”

  “Knock yourself out,” she said.

  I went up to the office and looked around in the closet and found the box. There was more good stuff in there than I’d expected. Some gift bags from various parties and holidays. Colored tissue paper. Old greeting cards and ribbons.

  I opted to do a tall diorama. I lined the three back walls with blue paper, like the sky, then put green down on the bottom for grass. I took the shoebox lid—made of white cardboard—and cut a few rectangles and triangles, then colored them with gray markers, after drawing some windows and doors. When the ink dried, I set about taping them together to form the shape of a house. Using more cardboard, I made a circular roll, then went downstairs and got some toothpicks from the kitchen cabinet. I used them to prop up a small “roof” for the wishing well.

  Lastly, I made a little me, a little mom, and little dad.

  I put us out on the front lawn with some boccie balls of Play-Doh around us.

  The whole thing felt cramped. Too small.

  Life was bigger than a shoebox.

  It had to be.

  So I took a pair of scissors and cut open the box, folded out all the sides so that the house stood on a flat piece of cardboard.

  It was a wish sent out to the universe, a wish that we were open to anything.

  We gathered around the TV together that night. Dad’s song “Big Red” was going to be making its network debut. My mom made popcorn and we watched and waited and waited.

  A half an hour in, during a montage of people doing things with machines and test tubes and swabs in a lab, the song came on and my dad turned the volume up and stood and reached out for my mom’s hand and then mine and he pulled us off the couch and we all danced until the montage ended and the song faded out.

  “Excellent.” My mom kissed my dad. “Congratulations.”

  “So are we loaded now?” I asked. I knew the check had arrived in the mail that day.

  “Oh sure,” my dad said. “Absolutely rolling in it.”

  “I think there might be just enough room out front for a tennis court,” my mom said, and they laughed. And I finally got the joke. I laughed, too.

  32.

  I was giddy two weeks later, watching the movers unload our stuff at the little gray house. Benny came by to say hi and sat out front with me while our furniture got unloaded. It felt like seeing old friends. Our couch. The dining room table. My beanbag chair!

  “I did something pretty crazy,” I said to Benny.

  “Yeah?”

  “I tried to sabotage the sale of our old house by hiding cow turd in that beanbag chair.”

  He laughed. “I’ll be sure to avoid sitting on it then.”

  “I took it out.”

  “Still.”

  The movers took dining room table chairs off the truck.

  “I guess you really didn’t want to move, huh?”

  “It was the only house I’d ever lived in, so, yeah. I loved it.”

  “This place is pretty cool.” He nodded his head back toward the house behind us.

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes, it is.”

  A week or so later, I was rearranging the furniture in my room, trying to get it just right, when the doorbell rang. “Kate, can you get that?” my mom called out. “My hands are covered in chicken juice.”

  Gross, I muttered as I ran down the stairs—having some flashbacks to my Tupperware of stink—and then opened the door.

  “SURPRISE!” shouted Naveen and Stella.

  I squealed and went to hug them both. “What are you guys doing here?”

  “Your mom invited us,” Stella said, presenting a tray. “I brought brownies.”

  “And I brought my bottle launcher,” Naveen said.

  “Awesome,” I said.

  My mom came to the door and said hi and went out to talk to Stella’s mom by her car.

  “Come in,” I said. “Let me show you around.”

  I gave them the tour of the house and they said they thought it was great and then we went out onto the front lawn, where Naveen had left the bottle launcher. My mom came out with a picnic blanket and some tuna salad sandwiches and drinks and we sat and ate and everything felt normal again.

  Naveen got up to load the launcher just as Benny skateboarded past.

  “Hey, Benny!” I called out.

  “Hey!” He hopped off his board, picked it up, and came down the driveway and into the yard to join us.

  “These are my friends Stella and Naveen,” I said. “This is Benny.”

  “How high does that thing get?” he asked Naveen.

  “Highest it’s gone so far is probably thirty feet,” Naveen started pumping it up and Benny got up to help hold it. Then Naveen said, “This is going to be epic,” and he let the bottle fly and we all watched it go up and up and up and up, and if it wasn’t way past thirty feet high, it sure seemed like it was.

  “That is awesome,” Benny said.

  “Truly,” I said.

  “Nailed it,” Naveen said, high-fiving
me.

  Stella lay back on the picnic blanket and said, “You guys are weird but I love you anyway,” just as the bottle landed on her stomach with a hollow thwack.

  We all laughed and lay there talking about nothing much.

  But I still felt like the air was too quiet. “I’ll be right back,” I said.

  Inside, I looked around on the kitchen counter for the car keys, then went out and opened the back passenger side door and slid my mother’s wind chimes out from under the front seat.

  They clanged and sang as I closed the door and walked them over to the front deck and looked around for a hook to hang them on.

  My father’s car pulled into the driveway and he got out and came over and said hi to everyone.

  Then, looking at me, he said, “I’ll get my tool kit.”

  He and my mom came back out of the house together a few minutes later and we found a spot where the side of the house had a little overhang. My dad hit a nail in and I hooked the chimes on. The green stone seemed to light up. The wind blew approval.

  After Benny took off down the street, saying “Catch you later,” Stella and I just stood in the front yard for a minute.

  “He’s cute,” Stella said.

  “No, he’s not,” I said. Then I counted to five. “He’s really cute . . . and he’s mine.”

  “If you insist,” Stella said, and we both smiled and went inside to watch our dance videos.

  Mrs. Nagano seemed happy to see me when I went back for the last week of school. We were clearing out the classroom so it was time to take our dioramas home. I took both of mine to my desk and studied them.

  Me and Pants and the kittens first. I wondered how they were doing. Whether Pants even missed me. I wondered whether the new girls had come up with good names like Special K and Bandit.

  Then I looked at the scooter diorama, the most thrown-together of all the ones I’d made. It suddenly seemed silly to me that I was so into scootering in circles in my own backyard. Now I had a whole quiet street to ride up and down on.