Ten

by Lauren Myracle

  Out of all of our adventures, however, I had two definite favorites. The first was going to the top of the Empire State Building, which I insisted we do even though Sandra was like, “Oh, we are such tourists.”

  My response to that was, “Why yes, we are. And when people come to Atlanta to visit the World of Coke, guess what? Then they’re the tourists.”

  “Who comes to Atlanta to visit the World of Coke?” Sandra asked.

  “Lots of people.”

  “And their names would be . . . ?”

  “The people who visit the World of Coke,” I retorted. Then I looked at the people in line with us, taking in their fanny packs and their shirts that said New York on them. Did real New Yorkers ever did go to the top of the Empire State Building?

  At the tippy-top there was a glassed-in observation deck. Initially, Sandra, Aunt Lucy, and I clumped together, because it was freaky being up so high, even with walls.

  Then I split off and leaned as far over the railing as I could. Down below, I saw little humans going about doing little human things. My eyes skimmed the zillions of cars, and there were just as many yellow taxicabs as normal cars! In Atlanta, I hardly ever saw taxis.

  A tour-guide-y person told us some facts about the Empire State Building, but what stuck with me were the tiny ant people, and the tiny ant cars, and how half of those cars were taxis. Not an eighth, not a fourth, but half of them were fully yellow.

  On Sunday, we went to a hotel called The Plaza. That was my second favorite adventure, because we got to see a famous portrait of an even famouser girl named Eloise. Eloise was famous even though she wasn’t alive. She was a character in a children’s book, and in the book, she lived at The Plaza, which was why there was a portrait of her there.

  The Plaza in the book was super fancy and posh, and so was The Plaza in real life. It was so fancy, even from the outside, that Sandra didn’t want to go in.

  “I’m wearing jeans!” she protested.

  “So?” Aunt Lucy said. “I am, too.”

  “But yours are dress-up jeans, and plus you’re wearing those,” Sandra said, gesturing at Aunt Lucy’s high-heeled sandals. “I just look . . . grubby.”

  “I’m grubbier,” I said. I held out my arms and did a twirl. “Do you feel better now?”

  Sandra balked. “The doorman won’t let us in. He’ll say, ‘Hey, you grubby people! Get out of here, you grubby people!’”

  “Don’t be silly,” Aunt Lucy said, and she marched right up to the man standing in front of the hotel. His suit was blue with gold trim. His cap had a gold tassel.

  “Excuse me,” Aunt Lucy said. “These are my nieces, visiting from Atlanta. We were wondering if you’ve seen Eloise around, by chance.”

  Sandra turned red. I, however, was delighted, especially when the doorman played along.

  “I’m sorry, but she just stepped out,” he informed us. “I could show you her portrait, if you’d like. Might you be interested in taking a peek?”

  “Oh, yes,” Aunt Lucy said.

  The doorman, whose name tag said FREDDY, led us into the hotel. I twisted my head from side to side, trying to soak it all in. I glanced up to check out the ceiling, and even it was impressive.

  In a wide hall, Freddy gestured at an oil painting which showed Eloise looking just exactly like she looked in the books Mom used to read me: plump, smug, and awesome in a ruffly white shirt and pleated black skirt.

  “I’ll tell you a secret if you promise to keep it to yourself,” Freddy said, lowering his voice.

  I nodded.

  “This portrait? It’s not the real one.”

  “What?”

  He bent at his waist and spoke into my ear. “The real one got stolen.”

  My eyes popped. “The real one got stolen,” I told Sandra and Aunt Lucy.

  “By who?” Sandra asked.

  “A gang of fraternity boys,” Freddy said.

  “Really?” Aunt Lucy said.

  I jiggled from foot to foot. It was so cool to discover something about New York that Aunt Lucy didn’t even know.

  “Really,” Freddy said. “Fortunately, the artist was kind enough to paint a new one.”

  “Thank goodness, because think how upset Eloise would be,” I said.

  “Very true,” Freddy said. “When she returns, shall I give her your regards?”

  “Yes, please. Tell her that Winnie, Lucy, and Sandra say hi.”

  Sandra tried to protest.

  “Winnie, Lucy, and Sandra,” I repeated firmly. It struck me all at once that here I was, having a lovely chat with the doorman of The Plaza Hotel in New York City, when just this past Thursday—was it only three days ago?—I’d been taking my multiplication test while trying to ignore Alex Plotkin’s unsneaky nose-picking.

  In the grand scheme of things, three days was nothing . . . and yet three short days ago, I hadn’t ridden in a cab, or folded a piece of pizza in half, or given my soda to a stranger. I certainly hadn’t tried espresso or waved at a famous person’s daughter.

  Sophistication zinged through every cell of me. It was amazing how much I’d changed in such a short amount of time.

  “So you’ll give Eloise our regards?” I said.

  Freddy bowed formally, taking off his cap and holding it at his waist. “Consider it done.”

  June

  June was not the prettiest name for a month, I thought. It also wasn’t the prettiest name for a girl. Or a woman, or a man. I didn’t know anyone named June, but I’d heard of people being named that. Me? I would never name my kid that, and the same went for Myrtle, Thelma, Phillipa, and Nunchucks. Hee-hee, I just made that one up. I’ve never heard of anyone named Nunchucks. It would be an awful name, though.

  But the word June made happiness bubble up in me even though I didn’t love the sound of it. Because in Georgia, school ended the first week of June, and that meant summer vacation! And summer vacation meant hot hot hotness—especially in Atlanta, which some people even called Hotlanta—and hotness meant . . . swimming pools! Yay!

  Next month I was signed up to go to day camp with Amanda, but this month was all about swimming. Half the time I went with Amanda to her neighborhood pool, which had an awesome snack bar but no slide, and the other half of the time, Amanda came with me to Garden Hills Pool, a public pool in my neighborhood. The snack bar at Garden Hills wasn’t anything special, but the pool was huge, with a baby-splashing area for Ty, a curlicue slide, and two—count’em, two—diving boards.

  Amanda loved going to the pool almost as much as I did, although she did have one very bad habit called Caring Too Much About Her Tan. “Pooey on tans,” I said, frequently and loudly. Swimming pools were for swimming. That’s why they were called swimming pools. You didn’t hear anyone calling them tanning pools, did you?

  Worrying about your “base tan” was just plain silly. If you spend enough time outside, you turn tan. End of story. Unless you were pale-as-a-codfish Dinah Devine, but she was a different story.

  Sandra argued that I was a different story, too—an “olive-toned” story—and that I could only be pooey-ish about tans because I, myself, got tan so easily. To that I said, “Pooey again!” But secretly I was proud of myself for turning such a lovely golden brown color, a color that wasn’t “olive-toned” at all. Please.

  One Wednesday morning, Mom took me, Sandra, and Ty to Garden Hills Pool for a pool picnic. For once, it was just us three kids, because Amanda had plans to go shopping with her mom, Chantelle was visiting her cousins—she had oodles of them—and neither Sandra nor Ty had invited a friend.

  But it was nice, sometimes, just being with my own family. (Well, minus Dad, since he had to work.) It was summer, we were at the pool, and the sky was crystal blue. I knew it was going to be a great day.

  We laid out our towels and got busy having fun. Mom read her book and did not swim, that bad lady, because that was her version of fun. Sandra dog-paddled back and forth in the deep end and pretended not to stare at one particular
lifeguard who wasn’t even nice, in my opinion. Ty jumped around in the kiddie pool, and when I say “jumped,” I mean that he literally jumped, flinging himself into the air and coming down hard on his booty, which was no longer padded with a swim diaper like it had been in previous summers. He made epic waves, which not everybody appreciated.

  As for me, I spent the bulk of my time working on handstands and flips in the shallow end. I was excellent at handstands. I was getting better at flips. Currently, I could tuck underwater, curl up in a ball, and do four in a row without taking a breath. I had my sights set on ten. (This was for front flips, not backward ones. With backward flips, I could do three.)

  We were happy and splashy and yay-summer-vacation-y . . . and then things got interesting, as they always did when pools and kids and sunshine were involved. One moment I was underwater, upside down in a land of legs and feet, and my lungs had the nice feeling of being full of air to the point of almost bursting.

  Then I rolled forward out of my handstand and popped out of the water, letting my lungs go ahead and burst in a joyful exhalation. I was flushed and proud as I turned to find someone to admire me: Sandra or Mom or Ty, any of them would do.

  My own needs went down the drain when I spotted Ty, though. He was standing slack-armed in the kiddie pool, his little-boy belly poking out from above his shark swimming trunks. An innocent bystander might think he had on his stubborn expression, which involved a deeply frowning face and a jutted-out lower lip.

  But because I was his big sister, I could see that he was actually wearing his I’m-not-so-happy-right-now-and-I-might-cry-and-so-I-am-covering-it-up-with-stubborness expression. The telltale signs were the tremble in his jutting-out lip and the slight caterpillar-legs wiggle of his sweet eyebrows.

  From what I could tell, the reason for his distress was a girl in a hot pink bikini with exploding ruffles. She was about Ty’s age, and she was standing in front of Ty and saying something to him. It appeared to be a bossy sort of thing, because she was waggling her finger at him, too.

  No, ma’am, Frilly Missy, I thought, hopping out of the big kid pool and marching over. You do NOT get to steal my brother’s fun.

  “What’s going on?” I said, splashing into the kiddie pool and putting my arm around my little brother.

  Frilly Missy pointed at Ty. “He’s wearing pink. Boys aren’t allowed to wear pink.”

  Really? I thought. You’re really going to make us go there?

  “What’s your name?” I said, cocking my head.

  “Erica,” she said. She cocked her head right back at me and added a so there thrust to her chin. She had been watching way too much “big kid” TV. There was no other explanation for such a little girl having such a snotty attitude.

  “Well, hello, Erica,” I said, behaving especially polite to drive home the message that I was her elder, and she should be treating me with respect. “I’m Winnie, and this is Ty.”

  Ty hugged my bare leg. He didn’t say hello.

  “Now, first of all, Ty isn’t wearing pink,” I said, gesturing at Ty’s swimming trunks. I didn’t want to call her out on not knowing her colors, but the sharks on his suit were blue and gray, and they were baring their teeth against a background of white.

  “Is so,” Erica said. “On his toes.”

  I looked at Ty’s toes through the kiddie pool water. Oops. I’d forgotten that I’d given him a beauty treatment last night, and that it involved painting his toenails. It also involved a karate-chop massage on his back—which made him say oomph, that’s how manly it was—but, yes, his toes did glisten with Dusky Rose nail polish.

  I regrouped. “Okay, fine. Second of all, which I was going to say anyway, boys are so allowed to wear pink. There aren’t rules about colors.”

  “Are so.”

  “Are not.”

  “Are so.”

  “Are not.”

  “Are so.”

  “Are not!”

  I closed my eyes and put my hand out. T, I said silently, privately calling a time-out before my voice got any louder.

  Already, mothers were glancing over. Not Mom mom, because she’d set herself up in a far-away pool chair and was absorbed in her paperback. Also not Erica’s mom, I was guessing, because surely she’d come over if she saw her daughter getting involved in a kiddie pool brawl.

  But other moms were giving us the we’re-watching-you stares that all moms knew how to do. If things turned ugly, I knew who would be blamed.

  “Are so,” Erica said despite my traffic-cop hand. I couldn’t believe how sure of herself she was even in the presence of someone who was clearly older and wiser. Are so, are so, are so, her tone matter-of-fact and almost bored.

  I scooped Ty up. “We’re done here, Erica. Colors are for everybody, and good-bye. I’m glad we had this little talk.”

  I turned and sloshed through the shallow water.

  “I’m right and you’re wrong,” she said to my back.

  It took all my will to keep sloshing.

  “Is she?” Ty asked, once we were a safe distance away.

  “What? No,” I said. “No way.”

  We reached my blue-and-white striped beach towel, and I bumped him off my hip so that we could both plonk down.

  “Hi, kids,” Mom said, glancing up from her novel. “Having fun?”

  “Of course we are, because we always have fun at the pool,” I said. I didn’t look at her, but kept my eyes on Ty. He wasn’t having fun. My job wasn’t done if Ty wasn’t having fun.

  “Oh, good,” Mom said. She returned to her novel.

  “Can we have money for a snack?” I asked.

  “I thought you didn’t like the snacks here.”

  “I don’t. Can we?”

  “Winnie, I packed lunch for us for this very reason.”

  “But Mo-o-o-m—”

  “Oh, fine,” she said, obviously more interested in getting back to her book than in arguing with me. She pulled a vinyl pouch from the pool bag, unzipped it, and gave me two dollars. “Chips or popsicles. No caffeine.”

  “Come on,” I said, pulling Ty back up to standing. “Thanks, Mom!”

  Erica stood in the knee-high water of the kiddie pool, her hands still on her hips. Her head swiveled as she tracked our movements, but we marched past her and paid her no mind. Ty started to, but I squeezed his hand and said, “Eyes straight ahead, buddy. Eyes straight ahead.”

  We marched past the shallow end of the big pool. We marched past the snack bar.

  “Wait,” Ty said, trotting to keep up. “We didn’t get snacks.”

  “We might later. That was just so Mom wouldn’t ask where we were going.”

  “Where are we going?”

  We reached an empty-ish spot of lawn near the deep end of the pool. From here, we had a good view of the slide, the diving board, and the plain old swimming area.

  “This’ll work,” I said. I nodded, then sat down and dangled my feet in the water. I patted the cement next to me. “Sit. Observe. Learn.”

  He dropped down beside me. He dangled his feet in the water. A person flew out of the end of the slide, which was shaped like a tunnel, and the splash made both of us recoil.

  “Cool,” Ty said.

  “Ehh,” I said. “I’ve seen better. I’ve done better.”

  I scanned the landscape of bodies, bodies, and more bodies, searching for someone who was unusual in one way or another. I had utter confidence I’d succeed. At the pool, if you opened your eyes and didn’t just focus on backflips or whatever, there was always someone unusual.

  Last week, for example, I went into the ladies’ changing room to use the bathroom, and I saw a teenager put on a pair of undies that said Tuesday across the bottom, even though it was a Friday. I also saw an old lady—like, Mom’s age—step into a pair of Ariel the Mermaid panties. I knew from going to New York that the Disney store did sell grown-up sizes of princess underwear. But boy, was it strange seeing an actual lady wearing a pair. Plus she had a nose ring.
I could not imagine Mom with a nose ring. I couldn’t imagine Ariel the Mermaid wearing a nose ring, either.

  “Okay, here we go,” I said to Ty. “Diving board. Second girl in line.”

  Ty looked over at the diving board. I looked at Ty. His eyebrows went up. “She’s got a boy’s bathing suit!” He tugged at my arm. “Winnie, that girl has on a boy’s bathing suit!”

  “They’re called board shorts,” I explained. “But on top, she’s wearing a bikini. See?”

  “Why?”

  “Why a bikini top, but shorts instead of a bikini bottom?” I shrugged. “Maybe she only likes her top half. Maybe she doesn’t want people to see her thighs?”

  “Why?”

  “No idea.” I pointed at the part of the pool blocked off for swimming laps. “Now look at the dude practicing his backstroke, the one with all the chest hair.”

  Ty’s head swiveled, his expression open and curious. Then he threw himself against me, hugging my waist.

  “I know,” I said.

  He risked another peek at Chest Hair Man, who was wearing the type of man’s swimsuit that didn’t look like shorts. I think it was called a Speedo, that type of suit.

  Ty whimpered and burrowed back into me.

  “I know, I know,” I soothed. “Believe me, I know.”

  “I can see his mmmfffle,” Ty said into my side.

  I giggled—because of the mmmfffle, and also because his nose and chin were digging into my ribs. “Can you imagine if Dad wore a bathing suit like that?”

  Ty drew back. “He won’t, will he? Ever?”

  “Not if Mom has anything to do with it,” I said. I spotted a new target and spoke quickly. “Ooo, there’s a guy walking past us wearing superlong swim trunks. See him? Do you see his fingernails?”

  “They’re black,” Ty marveled.

  “Uh-huh, because sometimes boys do paint their nails.”

  “And their toenails?”

  “If they want to,” I said.

  Ty flexed his feet, lifting his chubby toes out of the water and admiring them. “Pink is better than black.”

  “Thinks you,” I pointed out. “But that guy likes black better, apparently.” The guy was far enough away from us that I could use my normal voice again. “You’re right, though. Black is more for zombie-hunting, not for going swimming on a beautiful summer day.”