“But you only call me Naomi Marie when I’m in trouble!” I say. “I’m going to always feel like you’re mad at me!”
I am NOT going to cry.
Momma hugs me, but I squirm away. Brianna stops singing and holds my hand.
“Oh honey—you’re right. Let’s talk about this later,” Momma says. “I didn’t realize . . . Well, we just thought . . .”
“It’s my fault,” said Tom, which, DUH! YES I KNOW THAT. “And you’re absolutely right. Talking about something like this right before you go in probably isn’t a good time.”
I look away from them both, until the Other One says, “But maybe we do need to work something out, Dad, because I’m the one who said that about it being right before we go in. I guess it’s soooo hard for you to tell us apart!”
I was wrong. She doesn’t bite her lip when she’s mad; she gets really red. Really. But the idea of anyone not being able to tell us apart is kind of . . . funny. Before I realize it, I let out a giggle.
She looks straight at me. And grins.
We don’t talk about it at all. We both know it’s weird, and there’s too much to do anyway. And I’m doing most of it. As usual. But I don’t mind so much, because this is actually more fun than I’d expected, thinking of ways to make a digital game that’s exciting like a real game. And this time the Other Naomi doesn’t just watch; even though I still do all the work on the computer, she seems interested in my ideas for a book trivia adventure game, and we find out that we both had to read The Great Wall of Lucy Wu for school and we agree that it was AWESOME.
As we’re packing up, she says, “So . . . they’ll be back soon. What’s our plan?”
“Plan?” I ask. “Um.” I’m not sure what to say. We look at each other for a minute; then I add, “Parents always do stuff like that. They think they can just trick us into doing what they want.”
“I know,” she says. “My best friend Annie’s mom asked her to sing in front of everyone at Thanksgiving dinner last year. The whole family was there, even her cousins who are teenagers. Her mom blurted it out right after she told Annie that she could have an extra slice of pie instead of Brussels sprouts. Annie almost died. Literally.”
“Whoa!” I say. “Wait till I tell Xiomara that one, though she probably would have whipped out her personal microphone and spotlight. She’s obsessed with Vocalympians!”
“Who’s Xiomara?”
“She’s my best friend,” I say.
“Oh. Well, so do you think we should present a, um . . . united front?”
I pause. “I guess so. But . . . well.” I stop.
“I know. It’s . . . your name.”
“Yeah . . . yours too,” I say. “It’s cool that you’re named after that lady. Are, um, your parents really into costumes?” I wonder if they all dress up for Halloween.
“My mom is a costume designer,” she says, not looking at me. “She’s working on a big movie, with lots of stars. In California.” She closes her mouth like she’s never going to open it again.
I wonder what it’s like to have your mom so far away. I wonder how I would feel if my dad wasn’t right down the street. I wonder if all this wondering is going to make things even more complicated.
I can see Momma and Tom outside the door. “Okay, the plan . . . ,” I say. “The plan is . . . I’m not sure yet. But, look . . .” I nod toward Momma’s and Tom’s big smiles and waves. They’re practically jumping up and down.
We look at each other and sigh.
“Here’s an idea. . . . We thought we could all go to the beach!” says Momma as we walk out to the sidewalk.
“It’s not summer,” the Other Naomi says, which is both a good point and also Shhh, Other Naomi! They said we’re going to the beach! But then she says to her father, “And since when do you like the beach?”
“We thought we’d try something that would be fun for all of us,” Tom says. “A little celebration to, uh, thank you both for being so mature, and . . .” He trails off.
“Nobody agreed to anything yet,” says the Other Naomi, and I’m glad she said it and not me. She’s giving her father some kind of stare. I wonder what that’s all about.
“What about me?” asks Brianna. “I was line leader yesterday. Mrs. Cullen says I’m very mature!”
I roll my eyes, but I don’t say anything.
“Let’s just celebrate all of us being mature!” says Momma, and she and Tom look at each other, all happy. I look away—right at the Other Naomi. I can tell she sees the big, hopeful smiles too. We look at each other and that mad-at-her-father thing melts, and we smile too. Small smiles. But even though they’re small, they’re real. Because, parents.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Naomi E.
When I used to go to the beach with Mom and Dad, we’d get a car and drive out to Jones Beach on Long Island, which is the best. There are these huge parking lots, and sometimes you walk through tunnels where your voice echoes over and over and it all smells like rainbow sherbet. Mom always said it reminded her of when she was a girl, and it made her happy. And that made me happy.
But it never made my dad happy. Going to the beach actually made him miserable. He always complained about the sand coming home with us, how long the drive was, everything! And yet here we all are, on the subway, going to the beach, and Dad’s all smiley. There’s only one seat, and Valerie takes it and pulls Brianna onto her lap, so Naomi and I grip a pole on either side of my dad.
“It was supposed to be a beautiful day,” Valerie says, looking out at the gray sky when the subway comes out of the tunnel.
“It was,” Dad says. “But it’ll be fun, because we’re all together.”
Really?
“I’m going to build fourteen castles and be the ruler of them all,” Brianna sings. The people sitting near them smile at her and then at Valerie. An old lady with a thick accent—Russian or German or something—says to Valerie, “She is absolutely precious.” Valerie smiles, and Brianna sits up tall and straight, like a super-proud bird or a statue.
I switch from holding the pole with my right hand to my left so I can turn and face away from them.
At the last stop, we get off the train, and Dad takes the two bags Valerie’s carrying and puts one over each of his shoulders.
I remind Dad how much I love the boardwalk, which is the only good thing about going to the beach in Brooklyn.
“I went with Xiomara last summer, and her brother, Kwame, won three basketballs,” the other Naomi says.
“Did he give you one?”
“Of course not,” she says. “But then when we got soft-serve ice cream, he got green. Green! It’s pistachio, I think, but who chooses green?”
“Good question,” I say. “Dad, can we maybe do the boardwalk too, because it’s a little cold but not too cold for walking and definitely not too cold for ice cream and—”
“Naomi, not today.” The voice he keeps using with me is not one of my favorites. I can tell I’m getting on his nerves. I wonder if he knows he’s kind of getting on mine too. Last night when I asked him if he had talked to Mom about when I could go to California, he complained to me about leaving messages for Mom and missing calls like it was all my fault. I just want to see my mom!
Once we reach the beach, it feels so weird to slide off my shoes and socks and put my feet in the not-at-all-warm-like-it-usually-is-when-I’m-at-the-beach sand. It smells like beach, like, I don’t know, maybe seagulls.
Brianna drops to her knees and starts digging with her hands. “Hold on, Brianna,” Valerie calls. “We have blankets. And once we’re all set up, I have shovels and pails. Just slow down.”
Brianna lets out a big sigh and flops down on her butt. “Fine, I’ll wait,” she says.
Valerie hands the other Naomi a big colorful blanket and says, “Can you and Naomi lay this neatly on the ground?”
We each take two corners and spread the blanket out in the air. It’s a beautiful blanket, blue and green, and like pretty
fabrics always do, it makes me think of my mother. I remember what she said about Edith Head, how she studied people to get to know them. I watch Naomi as we slowly lower the blanket to the sand. She reminds me of a teacher. The way she stands with her back so straight. Maybe confident is the right word. Edith Head would make the other Naomi confident costumes, for sure.
Before we even finish smoothing the blanket out, Brianna throws herself on it, getting sand all over everything and making the blanket wrinkly and messy. “I call that this is my blanket, and you can sit on it if you help me. I’m building fourteen castles, and I might need help with the goats and—”
“Goats?” I ask. “Your castle has goats?” She doesn’t know this, but I LOVE goats. Especially baby goats. A castle with goats sounds interesting. . . .
Brianna rolls her eyes at me in a way I’ve seen the other Naomi roll her eyes. “Every castle has goats. It’s like a big swimming pool that goes around the castle with goats swimming in it.”
The other Naomi shakes her head. “It’s a moat. I’ve told you. Moat. Not goat.”
“Well, I’m going to need water, so where are the pails for getting water?”
Valerie smiles but doesn’t look happy. “Why don’t we sit here for a while? Maybe eat a little something. Before you run off, Brianna, I thought we could all sit and talk—”
“Could I please have a shovel? I need to start. Fourteen’s a lot of castles.”
“Come on, Brianna,” Dad says. “Let’s go get some water. I know you have a lot of work to do. Fourteen is a lot of castles.”
I watch as Dad, holding Brianna’s hand, walks toward the ocean. I’m trying to not think about how not-nice-about-going-to-the-beach he always was. A lot of times Mom and I went without him.
I wish I could stop looking, but I can’t.
If I studied Brianna to create a costume for her, it would be every loud color, and it would have arms and antennas reaching in every direction like a sea witch. Or a bright storm-cloud octopus.
I’m so grateful when Valerie asks if I want a cupcake, because yes, I do. And it helps me pull my eyes away from Dad and Brianna. As Valerie’s reaching for the box, I notice that the other Naomi is busy writing something in a little notebook. She sees me staring and puts the notebook down and slides her leg over it.
Maybe she’s been studying me just like I’ve been studying her.
She looks like she got caught doing something wrong, and I can almost see her brain thinking of something to say. “So, what do you think about that project?” she asks.
“What project?”
“The one Julie talked about. Remember? She said now that we know how to use DuoTek, we can start creating our game. And the best one will be in that contest?”
I look in the cupcake box. I do not want to end up with disguised coconut again, so I take a chocolate-chocolate one. Can’t go wrong with that.
“Solid choice,” the other Naomi says. “I’m having this one. It looks like vanilla, but I’m pretty sure the cake is coconut.”
I knew it.
“It’s delicious,” she says, “and I can’t believe I’m getting it before Brianna, because she—” And then she stops talking.
I see why. Dad and Brianna are walking toward us, looking like great buddies, each carrying a bucket with water. Brianna’s water is sloshing out of the bucket, and she’s already wet. Dad is smiling and asks, “And where should I put it, your Royal Highness? Where will you be building your fourteen castles, m’lady?”
I turn back to the other Naomi. “Is that what you were writing down in your notebook?” I ask. “Stuff about the DuoTek project?” She seems really into our class, like maybe she’ll grow up to be a woman gaming the system.
“No. I was working on a list. I . . . write a lot of lists.”
“What about?” Maybe I was right! She is studying me!
“We have the Geo Challenge at school this week, and I want to remember to get some books at the library.”
Brianna plops down between the other Naomi and me and starts digging.
“Why do you have to do that right here, Brianna?’
“To make it easy for you to help me.” She turns to me. “And you too.”
Two little boys and their parents walk past us with a ton of beach toys and spread out close to the water. The boys take off their shoes and walk slowly toward the ocean and start screaming as they turn and run away from the small waves. The mom takes pictures of them with her phone while the dad runs with the boys, also screaming.
Or maybe the dad is a friend. And the boys aren’t brothers. Maybe one belongs to each parent. Maybe they’re both named Isaiah.
I ask the other Naomi, “Did you ever make a list about names? And what we should do about that? Because, I mean, look at us. It’s like impossible to tell us apart, right?” Yeah, it’s a joke I already made, but she seemed to like it.
“Impossible,” she says with a small smile. “But no, I just write a lot of lists. And yeah, I also wrote about that DuoTek contest, mostly a bunch of different ideas I thought might be fun to work on.”
“I guess I wasn’t really listening,” I say. I take a bite of the frosting and, oh, oh, is it good! “We all have to do it?”
“Yeah,” Naomi says, like it’s obvious.
Brianna throws her sandy shovel on the blanket. “I’m going to make people instead!” She stands and runs toward the water and starts to make stick people in the sand, using her foot. The boys near the ocean stop what they’re doing and stare at her. She looks like she could take over the whole beach if she wanted to.
“Is there anything you like to be called?” I ask, thinking about how Annie calls me Gnomes. Or Nomes. But I wouldn’t want anyone other than Annie to call me that—it wouldn’t even make sense. “I mean, any nicknames?”
“Nope,” she says, licking her fingers.
“You do too,” Brianna says, running toward the blanket, sand flying. I had no idea she was listening. “I call you Queen of All the Queens sometimes because you’re so bossy. You could of lived in those castles if I built them, Queen of All the Queens.”
The other Naomi looks mad. And embarrassed. Like she wants to pinch her sister’s arm. Really hard.
It has to be hard, being Brianna’s sister. I want to help.
“So about that project. Do you want to maybe do it together?”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Naomi Marie
“I had an idea for a world explorer adventure game,” I say. “We can have cats give the clues.”
“I don’t know how that would work with my fashion dash idea,” she says. “And we did cats already.”
“You never told me your fashion dash idea,” I say.
“That’s because it’s in my head.”
And that’s how it’s been going all morning. We are not Girls Gaming the System; we are Girls Who Will Never Finish Making Their Game Because We Can’t Agree on Anything. Even those girls who sit in the back and look at videos that show you how to put designs on your fake nails are probably further ahead than us. I tell my so-called partner that, after Julie comes to our table and says those kind of fake-encouraging things adults say when they think you’re hopeless.
“We’re kind of running out of time,” I say. “We only have two classes left until Presentation Day, and that’s the deadline, remember?” I usually hand in my school projects early.
“It’s not only about the showcase, you know,” says NAOMI EDITH. I would call her that out loud if I was feeling mean. But I just want to get our work done. I don’t like not getting our work done. I want Julie to tell everyone that we could probably teach the workshop if we wanted to, and then we’d smile and kind of look down because we’re being humble.
Yesterday at school I lost the Geo Challenge to Jenn Harlow, who just came back from missing a week of school for a family vacation in Jamaica. When she came back, she walked right up to me with her new blond cornrows and told me her father said that Jamaica would be no
thing without tourists. I was so mad! That’s why I lost the Geo Challenge. Not because I don’t know where Rose Hall Plantation is. We go by it every time we visit Aunt Alga, and we say a prayer of remembrance for all the enslaved Africans who were forced to work there. Jenn’s family goes to lunch there once, and all of a sudden she’s Miss Jamaica.
And now here I am with this contrarian (ooh, good word!), who shoots down every suggestion I make but doesn’t have any of her own. And the game that was going to be a cool library scavenger hunt/talent contest/pinball/maze is one big mess. It’s not even going to be as good as Pong, this “classic” game my dad tried to show me from the olden days that looks like something a doctor would use to hypnotize you so she could sneak a shot or something.
“I know that,” I say, “even though you were the one who suggested we work together, remember?” At first it seemed like this was going to work. She was a little bit nice at the beach; plus, I found out she wanted to go to the boardwalk too. And this coding thing is almost okay. It’s neutral ground, so we don’t have to pretend to like each other’s favorite everything. She tells pretty good jokes, sometimes. Before we left the beach we made a list of ideas, and when I slept over at Xiomara’s, I didn’t even mind her bugging me about wanting to meet “the Other Naomi,” which, to be honest, is starting to sound weird to my ears. I even actually thought about bringing her to the library to show Ms. Starr and those bighead Teen Gamez kids what we’ve been doing, like, BAM. But now all I can picture is HER saying a big fat NO to all my ideas, and then Xiomara trying to make us hug it out, or worse, sing it out.
“I’m not saying this to be mean, but . . . you’re kind of grouchy today,” I say as we pack up and go outside to wait for Momma and Tom, who I suspect are late on purpose to give us extra “bonding” time.
“Whenever people say they’re not saying something to be something, they really mean to be . . . something,” she says, not looking at me.
I don’t like people not looking at me. I’m right here.
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