Friends, Fugues, and Fortune Cookies

by Michelle Schusterman

  Aaron smiled, and I tried not to notice the parentheses. “Really?”

  I nodded again. “Yeah, I will.”

  The theater department’s storage room was pretty much the most amazingly wonderful place on earth. I stood in the doorway, mouth open. Mrs. Sutton glanced at me.

  “Something wrong?”

  “No,” I breathed, gazing around at the colorful costumes neatly hung and arranged by theme; the stacks of clearly labeled bins filled with props; the long rack on the far wall, where at least two dozen wigs hung in color order, from bleached blond to blue-black. “This is, like . . . heaven.”

  Mrs. Sutton laughed. “Glad you like it. I’ll be in my office if you need any help—just stop by before you leave so I know what you’re borrowing.”

  “Okay. Thank you!” I added, right before the door swung closed behind her. After hesitating for just a second, I hurried over to the wigs, selected a bright red one with spiraling curls, and stood in front of the mirror, adjusting it and examining my reflection.

  “It’s so you.”

  I let out a little shriek and spun around to see Natasha in the doorway, laughing.

  “Sorry,” she said, joining me by the wigs. I twirled one of the curls around my finger, studying my reflection.

  “You’re right,” I agreed. “I should go red.”

  Natasha grinned, grabbing a short black wig with a little red bow attached. “And I should go Snow White.”

  We spent about ten minutes trying on pretty much all of the wigs—and maybe a few costumes, too. Finally, I kicked off my red sequined heels and placed them back in their bin.

  “We need to pick Mr. Dante’s stuff,” I said. Natasha glanced at me from where she stood in front of the mirror, modeling Peter Pan’s outfit and holding a plastic samurai sword.

  “Oh, fine.”

  “Actually, let me see that,” I said, reaching for the sword. “I think we can use it.”

  “Do you know what you want him to wear?” Natasha asked.

  “Sort of.”

  Right before school that morning, most of the brass section members met in the band hall and spent almost ten minutes arguing over exactly what kind of Santa we wanted Mr. Dante to dress up as if we won. Finally, he’d come out of his office to see what all the fuss was about.

  “Why don’t you vote?”

  “We can’t even decide on just two or three ideas to vote on,” Aaron had told him. “Everybody wants something different.”

  “Well, you were in charge of this, right?” Mr. Dante had patted Aaron on the back with a grin. “Your call.” He’d shut his office door behind him. Aaron had made a face.

  “Hey,” he had said suddenly, brightening. “If we win, it’ll be because of those fortune cookies. And that was all Holly’s idea. So I think she should get to pick the costume.”

  And miraculously, everyone had agreed. Although I think it was really just because we were all sick of arguing about it. So I’d invited Natasha to help me pick out something after school, and I’d had all afternoon to think about what I wanted to say to her.

  As it turned out, I didn’t have to worry about it.

  “I need to talk to you about something, Holly.”

  “Oh. Okay,” I said, setting down the Phantom of the Opera mask I’d been examining in one of the bins.

  Natasha’s face was already flushed. “I just wanted you to know that I, um . . . I don’t like Aaron anymore. I mean, I like him, but . . . you know what I mean. Not that way. So we’re not dating or anything like that.”

  I rummaged through another bin, this one filled with fake swords and knives. “Huh. Didn’t you have fun with him at the dance?”

  “Um . . .” Natasha picked at a loose thread on a black sash. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “So you just . . . stopped liking him?”

  “Yeah.”

  Laughing, I dropped a plastic machete into my bin and turned to face her.

  “Natasha, you seriously don’t have to do this.”

  “Do what?”

  I smiled. “You like Aaron. And the only reason you’re saying you don’t is because you think you’re hurting my feelings. But I promise—it’s okay.”

  Natasha shook her head, her eyes still on the sash. “I know, you already said that. But that’s not it. I really don’t—”

  “Really?” I waited until she looked up at me. “Come on, tell me the truth.”

  After several second, she sighed.

  “Okay, the truth is . . .” Natasha chewed her lip. “The truth is I like him, and the dance was really, really great, and I—I really want to go out with him again. But,” she said quickly when I opened my mouth, “what I want more than any of that is for things not to be weird between you and me. And me dating Aaron would make things weird, Holly.”

  “It won’t,” I said. “I promise.”

  “But—”

  “Natasha!” I yelled. “I’m really really really really okay with it. Really.”

  She looked at me nervously. “Really?”

  After a few seconds, we both started laughing. I sat down cross-legged on the floor next to my bin, and Natasha joined me.

  “I think it’s too late, anyway,” she said after we’d stopped giggling. “He asked me if I wanted to go to the movies this Saturday, and I said no. I’d be surprised if he ever asked me again.”

  “So you’ll just have to ask him out,” I said matter-of-factly. Natasha groaned.

  “No way,” she said. “That was the second time he’s asked me on a date since the dance, and I said no both times. I can’t just go up to him and be all ‘Hey, I changed my mind!’”

  “We’ll figure something out.” I pushed the sword bin aside and reached for another one. “Trust me, he’ll say yes.”

  Natasha smiled at me. “Thanks, Holly.”

  “Anytime.”

  “So did Julia say anything to you about Seth’s friends?”

  “His friends?” I turned the sword over in my hands. “Probably. Is there anything Julia hasn’t told us about Seth?”

  Natasha giggled. “True. She does kind of talk about him a lot.”

  I gave her a Look. “Kind of?”

  “Kind of . . . all the time . . .”

  “Every second of every day . . .”

  “Pretty much nonstop,” Natasha finished, and we both laughed. “But I meant, has she told you about his orchestra friends? Apparently a few of them are pretty cute. I think that’s the real reason she wants you to come to their concert.”

  “She wants to set me up?” I said in surprise.

  Grinning, Natasha nodded. “Don’t tell her I warned you, but she has this idea that you’ll end up double-dating or something.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Oh, great.”

  “Hey, you never know, maybe one of them will be cool!” Natasha gave me an innocent look. “You might end up going to the spring dance with him. And Julia and Seth.” She ducked when I threw a purple fedora at her.

  “Well, too bad for her I already have a date for that.” A second later, I had to fight the urge to slap myself on the forehead.

  Natasha raised an eyebrow. “Hang on—do you?” She leaned forward, poking me in the arm with one of the fake knives. “Holly, do you seriously have a date for the spring dance already? That’s not till the end of the year! Who is it?”

  I really needed to stop blurting stuff out without thinking. “Fine,” I said, knocking the knife away with the plastic sword. “But I swear, if you say aww, I’ll . . .”

  Natasha’s eyes widened comically, and she pressed the sash against her mouth. “Owen?” she asked, but her voice was muffled behind the black fabric so it sounded like “oh-eh?”

  “Yes. Just as friends,” I added.

  “Wehdideeasoo?”

  “What?�
��

  She lowered the sash, and I could tell she was trying not to laugh. “When did he ask you?”

  “He didn’t. I asked him. As friends.”

  Natasha pressed the sash back against her mouth, and I yanked it away.

  “Stop looking at me like that!” I said, laughing. “Look, I was just trying to—” I stopped, still holding the sash.

  “What’s wrong?” Natasha asked, the corners of her mouth still twitching.

  “Nothing,” I said excitedly. “No, look—I’ve got an idea on how you can fix stuff with Aaron. Can you come over after we finish picking out the costume?”

  “Sure. Why?”

  I grinned. “We’re going to make cookies.”

  Chapter

  Eighteen

  Puffy sleeves. On the right top, they can be really cute. On dresses that your middle-school band probably bought twenty years ago, not so much.

  Shaking my head, I stared at myself in the mirror in the girl’s restroom. The dress was black and shiny, with a high waist and a skirt every bit as puffy as the sleeves. Sleeves which, by the way, were topped with black velvet bows.

  “Maybe,” I mused out loud, “we could see if Mr. Dante will let us do another fund-raiser for new uniforms.”

  Gabby and Julia nodded in agreement. “This is the same dress my cousin Elena wore when she was in band here. I mean, like, literally, I think it’s the same exact one,” Gabby said, making a face and pulling a loose thread off one of the bows.

  “But yours almost looks cool with those boots, Holly,” Julia pointed out.

  I grinned, lifting my puffy skirt and sticking out a silvery combat boot. “True.”

  “I’m framing this program, by the way,” Gabby said, waving hers at me in the mirror. I glanced down at my program, lying next to the sink. A giant UFO hovered over Millican Middle School, two Santa pilots visible through the front window. A green beam shone down from the bottom of the UFO into the school, pulling clarinets and trombones and drumsticks up out of the roof. Or maybe it was beaming them down into the school. Either way, it was pretty cool.

  “Yeah, Owen did an awesome job,” I agreed.

  “Hey, where’s Natasha?” asked Julia. “We’re supposed to be warming up in five minutes.”

  “Don’t know,” I replied, running a brush through my hair. But I knew exactly where Natasha was.

  She slipped past me a minute after the rest of us had taken our seats in the band hall. Mr. Dante was already on the podium, so I just gave her a look. Did you do it?

  Natasha nodded, smiling nervously.

  After our warm-ups, we headed into the auditorium toward the section the booster parents had reserved for all of the bands. As I followed Gabby down our row, I waved to my parents and Chad—who, amazingly, was wearing a clean shirt, although it looked like I needed to teach him how to use an iron.

  We watched the beginners and the symphonic band, and in between songs Natasha and I whispered about the fortune cookie she’d hidden in Aaron’s trumpet case. She was originally going to hide it in his cubby, but I told her if she did there’d be a good chance he wouldn’t even find it until the end of the year. If then.

  After the symphonic band had cleared the stage, Mrs. Park, the president of the band boosters, took the microphone.

  “In just a minute, we’ll conclude our program with the advanced band,” she said. “But first, I’d like to take a few minutes to talk to you about our most recent fund-raiser.”

  “Mr. Dante’s gone,” Gabby whispered suddenly, and I scanned the stage.

  “He must be putting on the costume I made,” I whispered back, and Gabby made a face at me.

  “Don’t be so sure.”

  I stuck my tongue out at her, and she grinned. But really, I wasn’t all that confident the brass section had won.

  “As most of you know, our advanced band members have been hard at work raising money for their trip to New Orleans this spring,” Mrs. Park was saying. “In the last several weeks, they’ve attended three of our volleyball team’s tournaments, selling baked goods. That they made themselves,” she added dryly. “I don’t know about you, but I was shocked to learn my son even knew we had an oven.”

  Several parents laughed. In the row behind me, Liam groaned.

  “This fund-raiser was particularly exciting, because it was also a competition,” Mrs. Park went on. “Each section—woodwind, brass, and percussion—worked as a team, and the team with the highest average earned per member will get to design the band’s shirts for their New Orleans trip. There’s another prize, as well . . . but I’ll get to that in a moment. Right now, I’d like the band to join me onstage.”

  As we filed onstage and took our seats, Mrs. Park told the audience more about our competition. Once the shuffling of chairs and the squeaks of music stands being adjusted had died down, she turned and smiled at us.

  “Every section did a phenomenal job. The grand total from our fund-raiser was $6,845!”

  “Whoa!” cried Gabby, over the cheers and applause. I grinned, but my fingers were drumming away nervously on the bell of my horn.

  “And,” Mrs. Park continued, “the average per student in each section was over one hundred thirty dollars! It was a close one, but one section managed to earn just a little bit more than the others. I think I’ll let Mr. Dante come out before we announce the winner.”

  She gestured to the back of the auditorium, and through the darkness I could just make out another one of the booster parents opening the door. Laughter spread through the crowd, growing louder and louder. Half the band members onstage were standing out of their seats, trying to see. I squinted down the aisle as Mr. Dante lumbered forward, then I grabbed Natasha’s arm.

  “That’s our costume!” I yelled. “We won!”

  Mr. Dante climbed the steps and headed toward the microphone to more laughter and catcalls. The Phantom of the Opera mask covered the right side of his face; I’d spray-painted it silver and glued a small fake ruby over the eye. He had the white hair and beard, but instead of a Santa hat, he’d tied a ninja headband around his head. And instead of a belt, he was wearing the black sash—it barely fit around the red Santa outfit I was pretty sure he’d stuffed with a pillow or two. One of the plastic samurai swords dangled at his side.

  He bowed deeply, and everyone cheered. Shaking her head, Mrs. Park stepped forward again.

  “Thanks to the extra effort they put into the last bake sale,” she said, “the brass section was the winning team! But I honestly have no clue what they’ve done to poor Mr. Dante. Maybe someone could enlighten me?”

  She looked at us expectantly, and most of us turned to look at Aaron, who was laughing.

  “You picked it—you tell them,” he said to me with a grin. So I stood up and clomped over to the microphone. The crowd fell silent, and I cleared my throat and smiled at Mr. Dante.

  “He’s a cyborg-ninja Santa Claus,” I announced, and Mr. Dante slashed his samurai sword through the air and struck a karate pose. Giggling, I clomped back to my seat, high-fiving Owen when I passed him. Even Trevor had joined in on the laughter.

  Mr. Dante took his place in front of the band, and everyone sat up straight and lifted their instruments. Then he tapped the sword on the podium like a conductor’s baton, and we cracked up again.

  Playing turned out to be pretty hard with him dressed like that, waving the sword around. During “Festive Yuletide,” he even cued the clarinets for their entrance with a karate kick, and I saw Julia duck her head to hide her laughter. But overall, I thought we sounded pretty good.

  The booster parents had set up tables with bowls of punch and chips in the lobby for after the concert. “We were going to do cookies, but I think we’re all kind of sick of those,” I heard Mrs. Park say.

  When I saw Natasha hovering in the entrance to the auditorium, I made a beeline f
or her.

  “Well?” I asked eagerly.

  She chewed her lip. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen him since we put our instruments up. I couldn’t just stand in there and watch him open it, I was so nervous!”

  We scanned the lobby, but no sign of Aaron.

  “Maybe he didn’t find it.”

  “He’ll find it.”

  “Maybe he thinks I’m an idiot.”

  “No way,” I said confidently.

  “I don’t know.” Natasha was bouncing up and down on her toes, still peering through the crowd. “And I mean, Horror Hall? Seriously, Holly. Even if he says yes to that, I’ll probably faint ten minutes into the movie and completely humiliate myself.”

  I rolled my eyes, grinning. “Come on, it won’t be that scary, and I know for sure Aaron wants to go to this place. You can make him go to one of your sappy, predictable movies for a second date.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Natasha tried not to smile. “So where’d Julia go?”

  “Where else?” I replied. “Over there, talking to Seth.”

  Natasha looked in the direction I was pointing, and she snickered. “So are you going to the orchestra concert with her tomorrow?”

  “I think so.”

  She opened her mouth to respond, but before she could . . .

  “Hey, Natasha?”

  We both whirled around to face Aaron.

  “Hi,” Natasha squeaked.

  I glanced around. “Um . . . I’ve got to go ask Julia something,” I said in a too-cheerful voice. “See you guys!”

  “Bye, Holly!” Natasha turned for a second, lowering her voice. “I’ll call you later, okay?”

  I nodded. Behind her, Aaron caught my eye. Thanks, he mouthed, holding up little slip of paper, and I smiled.

  I actually had no idea exactly what Natasha had written on his fortune—I figured that was her business. But her asking him on a date to Horror Hall was obviously my idea. No way would he say no to that.

  I left them talking quietly in the corner. On the other side of the lobby, Julia and Seth were laughing about something. I hesitated, then headed over to where Owen’s family stood a few feet from the snack bar. Steve was studying one of the programs.