Dramatically Ever After

by Isabel Bandeira

  The sweater was mostly sleeves and long, wide strips with a button—it looked like one of those cool modern wrap sweaters I’d pointed out to her in a magazine a few weeks ago, but she’d need to teach me how to wear it. “I need to keep breaking up with Wil. I swear, every time I do, you make me something.”

  Phoebe smiled over her mug. “It’s because you’re knit-worthy. And the knitworthy get all the things.” She tilted her head to the side until it was on my shoulder. “Promise me you’ll forget about trying to fix things with Wil until after the competition is over? You already have enough to stress about, you don’t need this, too.”

  “You’re sweet. I’ll be fine.”

  “I know. But sometimes it’s nice to let others worry for you, okay?”

  “I promise.” But I crossed my fingers as I said it.

  “Grandpa Mike and his friends called Nana Betsy the Belle of the USO.” Mom pointed at a faded picture of our great-grandmother in a very forties outfit and hair standing in front of a door marked “USO” before carefully turning the page of the yellowed scrapbook. Chloe had pulled the book out of the shelves in the living room and had brought it over to Mom after dinner. She was curled in Mom’s lap, holding the book, and Mom smiled down at her, adding. “He was head-over-heels, crazy-in-love with her.”

  “And she never let him forget it,” Dad chimed in, with a laugh. “'Honey, you love me more than anything, right? Then get me my glasses.” His imitation of Nana Betsy was dead-on, at least from what I could remember, except with Dad’s accent, it sounded even funnier. I was leaning against him on the sofa and both of us shook with laughter. I’d heard these stories a million times before, but, even though I had homework, I couldn’t turn down another chance to hear them again.

  “You take after her, Em.” Mom reached over to smooth a hand over my hair, gentle enough that she wouldn’t crunch my curls. “Definitely in the personality…”

  “Hey! Nana Betsy was awesome.”

  “…but she was also a wonderful singer. Some say she might have been as big as Ella Fitzgerald if she hadn’t decided to work in the factories during the war, instead.”

  “Who’s that?” Chloe asked.

  Mom took the scrapbook out of Chloe’s hands and deposited it and my sister on the coffee table before getting up and walking over to the sound system. “Only my favorite singer ever.” She poked at the screen before smiling over at my sister. “I think you’ll like this one.” A-Tisket, A-Tasket came over the speakers and Mom grabbed Chloe’s hands and started bouncing her around the room in time to the music. “This was your grandmother’s favorite song.”

  “She could have been just like Ella, you know,” I said as I watched them swing around the room. “I’ve heard Nana’s recordings.”

  Mom frowned, but didn’t stop dancing. “A lot of girls wanted to be her, but you know, there’s only one Ella Fitzgerald. We don’t hear about those other girls.”

  “But—” I started, trying to get a word in as Mom barreled on with an all-too-familiar lecture.

  “Nana knew her dreams weren’t as important as taking care of the people at home. There are only a few spaces in the sky for supernovas in jobs like that, Em. It’s not a guarantee and there are a lot of failures. She had to choose and she chose reality.”

  I folded my arms and looked over at Dad for support. “If you don’t try, you don’t have a chance to succeed,” I said. It hit me that I was repeating Dev’s advice to me, but I didn’t let myself get hung up on the irony.

  Dad nodded. “That is very true. You can try, but you have to make sure you can support yourself. Dreams are nice, but they don’t buy dinner.”

  “Some do,” I said, and started inching forward on the couch. If this was going to turn into another lecture about studying something practical in school, I was out.

  “What about me?” Chloe piped up after quietly watching us for a minute, “Do I take after Nana Betsy?” Mom laughed, twirling her around as the band picked up pace.

  Dad was the one who answered. “No, you’re more like Papouli Christos.” At Chloe’s disappointed face at being compared to our grandfather on Dad’s side, he added, “Nana Betsy was a butterfly, like Em, a lot of love and color and excitement everywhere she goes, but very fluttery sometimes. Papouli Christos was steady and reliable, more like a dove, like you.” His answer only made her pout stick out a little further and he added, “He was a famous diplomat and peacemaker, you know. You’re very good at bringing people together, just like him.”

  “A butterfly sounds like a lot more fun.”

  Dad was right, though. For someone as young as she was, Chloe was always the one fixing things with us and with her friends. I didn’t completely agree with the butterfly comment, though. “Well, you’re a very colorful dove,” I said, getting up and joining her and Mom in some silly swing-like dancing as another song came on. “There’s definitely some butterfly in those feathers.”

  “I like that.” She pulled Dad off the couch so we were all dancing. Chloe really was like Papouli Christos.

  “So do I.”

  My face hurt from smiling for the camera. The County newspaper photographer had been taking individual pictures of Kris and me all over the school for over an hour. He’d just finished getting a few of me perched on the low wall by the school entrance, pretending to read a piece of paper that was supposed to be my “speech.” He waved at me to relax and, as I hopped down to the ground, said, “Can you grab Kris? I’d like to get a few of the two of you together.”

  “Sure.” I wiped wall-dirt off my buttand made my way over to the flagpole, which Kris was leaning against casually while tapping at his phone. They’d gotten some super-patriotic shots of him there earlier, looking as if he’d just hoisted the flag up the pole. It was almost too cliché, even for him. “Hey, Kris,” I called out as I approached, “they want both of us now.” Even though I knew he heard me, Kris didn’t even look up from his phone, just kept tapping away at the screen like I wasn’t even there. I felt my fist clench enough to wrinkle the paper I was holding, and I tried again, letting annoyance drip into my tone. “Kris.”

  He kept his eyes glued to his phone, his lips in a straight line, and held up a finger in a “one-minute” gesture.

  “Well, Mr. Class President, when you’re done with whatever is more important than three people sitting around waiting for you to grace us with your presence, we’ll be over at the entrance.” When he didn’t say anything again, I huffed and made my way back to the photographer and reporter. “I tried, but—”

  Before I could finish, Kris’ voice piped in from behind me. “‘Ready for my closeup, Mr. DeMille.’” I turned and saw that he had a major shit-eating grin on his face as he slipped his gaze over to me. “Or is that your, line, Em?” he asked, like he hadn’t just pointedly ignored me a minute before, or just basically insulted me with a Sunset Boulevard misquote of a line said by a delusional actress.

  “Cute.” Not. “Done texting?”

  He made a big show of slipping his phone into his back pocket, then turned towards the photographer and journalist. “So, what do you have planned for us next?”

  “Considering you’re both state winners, it would be nice to showcase you together.” The photographer said.

  “Especially since the two of you seem to get along so well. That will make for a great story,” the reporter added with a smile as the photographer squinted at the position of the sun and the school’s covered entryway, camera up as if he was checking his next possible shots.

  “Em and I’ve been in school together since kindergarten. It’s awesome that we both get to represent our state like this,” Kris said before I could answer, his response as polished as the overpriced watch on his wrist.

  “I love that. Mind if I quote you?”

  While the reporter and Kris chatted, the photographer started moving us around, positioning us back-to-back and saying, “Okay, now cross your arms.” I followed his instructions, posing like a
pro since this super cliché position was used in promo photos for practically every play or musical that involved a rivalry.

  While the photographer clicked away, the reporter had propped her cellphone on her notepad and was scribbling notes while shooting questions our way. “How does it feel knowing you have to compete against one of your classmates?”

  “Technically, we already competed for state,” I pointed out.

  “Not really, considering we only compete against own genders on the state level. You haven’t gone against me yet,” Kris said, turning his head to smile down at me. It was the same smile he turned on every time he was trying to get something out of someone. Even though I knew it was all for the cameras, I wasn’t totally immune and had to catch myself as my own smile softened more than it should. Kris scrunched his nose and twitched his eyebrow up the slightest amount in a smug look before turning to grin at the camera again. “I think it’s going to be fun. I still haven’t heard Em’s speech, but you know Pine Central students are the best at everything we try.”

  I let the photographer move me around, this time arranging my hand on my hip and linking Kris’s arm through mine while we were still mostly back-to-back. When he told us to look at each other, I met Kris’ eyes with a challenging smile of my own and said, in a voice that would give Glinda the Good Witch a run for her money, “And we’re also super competitive. I can’t wait to kick Kris’ butt when we get to Boston.” At the flicker of surprise in his eyes that I wasn’t going to play the perfect PR game he’d been playing, I added, “It’s definitely going to be a lot of fun.”

  We stared each other down and neither of us noticed when the photographer had stopped taking pictures. “That’s the shot,” he said, stopping to flip back through the images on his camera and pointing one out to the journalist, then turning the camera to show us. “You’re both really photogenic. You look great together.”

  I untangled myself from Kris and stared at the screen, shifting uncomfortably at the story the image was projecting. The photographer had caught the moment between us when I’d basically told Kris I was going to crush him, but instead of looking like we were smiling while plotting each other’s murder, it had a perfect combination of competition and fire. I didn’t like the buzz it caused in my veins—we looked incredibly hot, and I didn’t know a photo could lie so much.

  Beside me, Kris was also frowning at the picture. “I don’t know. Don’t we look a little—”

  “Perfect.” The reporter cut him off with a smile. “We’ll check the other pictures, but Kyle’s right,” she nodded at the photographer, “that’s exactly what we need for this article. Two friends from the same school, fiercely pitted against each other in a national competition but cheering each other on at the same time. I love it.”

  “Okay,” I said, not able to completely hide my unconvinced tone, and just barely heard Kris make a snorting sound he covered with a cough. For once, it sounded like we were in agreement about something.

  “Toothbrush?” Grace said, reading off a list, and I waved my little zipper-bag of tooth care at her before tossing it into my suitcase. “Brush?”

  “I’m a curly. No brushes for me.” Instead, I grabbed my shower comb and tossed it in after the zipper-bag.

  “Right.” Grace hopped off her perch on my desk and came over to inspect our progress. “I think we’re ready for clothes now.”

  Alec’s head shot up from the game he was playing on his phone. “Whoa. If you girls are going to start throwing underwear around, I’m out of here.” He inched my smooshy chair closer to the door.

  “Relax. I’ll take care of that later so I don’t offend your delicate sensibilities.” I snorted then started rolling my pajamas into a packable log.

  “Please do.”

  Phoebe looked up from her book. She’d been reading on my bedroom floor for the past hour, lost in one of her imaginary worlds. “You know what? Being truly immortal would suck.”

  The rest of us turned to stare at her. Well, at least I stared. “Where did that come from?” I was probably going to regret asking.

  She waved the book in the air so we could see its girl-in-a-dress cover. “Genevieve is immortal in this book. Nothing can kill her. Imagine what it would be like when the world actually ends? She’d be the only one left, unless she can make more immortals.”

  Grace calmly turned the packing list that had come in my information packet to the next page. “Even worse, when our sun goes supernova, she’d be floating around in space naked because all her clothes would get burnt off in the explosion. And since no one can hear you in space, she won’t even be able to talk to herself,” she said, like responding to Phoebe’s comment was the most normal thing in the world.

  I opened my mouth to stop this geekfest, but then Alec jumped in. “That’s nothing. What’ll happen to her when the universe starts shrinking back in on itself?” he asked, a grin spreading across his face. “I hope this character isn’t claustrophobic.”

  Dropping my head into my hands so no one could see the smile starting to snake across my lips despite my best efforts, I said, “You all do realize you’re talking about someone in a book, right?”

  “Actually, Grace and I are talking about physics.”

  Grace’s girlfriend, Leia, shot me a sympathetic look, but her lips were pressed together and I could tell she was trying to keep from laughing. “Okay, back to packing,” she said in a tight voice before letting a giggle escape. We were the least nerdy people in the room. Grace, in her cheerleader uniform, was a stealth geek, but a geek nonetheless.

  My phone buzzed and I pulled it out of my pocket, swiping my finger over the fingerprint recognition button to unlock my screen. Wil had posted a picture of a busy city street from his car dash while stopped at a red light. Right at the very top of the picture, the Pine Central lanyard I’d given him was hanging from his rearview mirror.

  Leia peeked over my shoulder, then looked over at me, her brows narrowed in confusion. “I thought you two broke up.”

  “Yup.” I nodded while flipping on the translate function: So happy to think of a nice day special person.

  Leia snaked her arm around me and took my phone out of my hands, then stepped back before I could get it back. “So why are you getting,” she glanced at the screen, “Photogram notifications for his posts?”

  I glanced over at the other three for help, but they were in a heated debate about whether or not immortality extended to clothes if the person was wearing them. I looked back over at Leia, who rolled her eyes in solidarity before gesturing back at the phone, prompting me to say something. “Because we’re just on a little break and I want to keep tabs on him. Why should I turn off notifications when we’re getting back together soon, anyway?”

  She put one hand on her hip in what Phoebe called her “teacher pose” and nodded. “Okay, and what if you don’t get back together?”

  That comment made my heart lurch, but I waved it away. “We will. It’s not a real breakup, just a bump in our love story. Every good one has rough patches.” I grabbed my phone from her before she could do something drastic, like unfollow him. “Besides, just because I’m not dating someone doesn’t mean I’m not friends with them. I mean, I follow your Photogram and Phoebe’s, even though her feed is just yarn and fancy pictures of the books she’s reading.”

  “Hey, I heard that,” Phoebe said, midway through flipping pages in her book to find something to support her argument, “and bookgrams are a real thing.”

  “Okay. Just remember what people post online is a really carefully chosen set of things they want others to see. And online doesn’t always reflect real life.” Leia’s expression grew extra serious, and her tone soft. “Don’t pin your hopes on a few pictures and bad translations.”

  My pride wouldn’t let me show how much that last sentence affected me. Leia didn’t always give advice, but when she did, it was like getting hit by a nice asteroid. “Believe me, I won’t.”

  “Good. Because
the great Em Katsaros, speechwriter and actress extraordinaire, should never have to keep tabs on anyone.” Before I could say anything else, she nodded and smiled in a way that let me know she was done advising me. “What do you think? Since they’re busy over there, should I start helping you pack? Because I think you should rock a pair of jeans for the semi-formal thing.” She reached for my red-and-orange Pine Central hoodie, her reddish-black angled bob sweeping forward with her movement.

  Pursing her lips but also sharing a smile with Leia, Grace nudged her away from my suitcase. “Conference gala: Semi-formal attire required,” she read aloud from the packing list, looking pointedly at her. “That’s the Betsey Johannsen dress you bought at the outlets, Em. Belt, heels, and clutch,” she ticked off on her fingers while I grabbed all those things from my closet and stuffed them in the bag.

  The heels were a nightmare to pack and I jammed them between my jeans and socks. Considering Grace had borrowed them from her mom and those shoes cost more than everything else in the bag, I was surprised she didn’t cringe. “I still can’t believe you pulled this off on my parents’ budget.” The dress was designer, the last one on the clearance rack and exactly my size and style. The jeans were more expensive than any other pairs I’d ever owned, but Grace had somehow found a pair for ninety percent off.

  “Please. I’m like the Yoda of shopping and I’m in AP calc. I can work with a budget,” Grace said, pulling the headband I had been planning to wear with the dress out of my bag and tossing it onto my desk. She rifled through the things on my dresser and pulled out Nana Betsy’s black rose pin. “Put this in your hair, instead. It’ll be different and dramatic, but still really pretty.”

  “Phoebe asked you to do this as payback for her make-over, didn’t she?” I glared at my best friend, who dipped her head even deeper into her book.

  “It could be worse—it’s not like I’m threatening to restock your entire makeup bag. Besides, the gala is the night before judging starts. You need to make a memorable impression since the judges might actually be there,” Grace said. A sweater joined the pile in my rapidly overflowing bag.