We Are Party People

by Leslie Margolis

  The kid’s name was Elliott and he was turning one. The guests were mostly grownups, but there’d be a handful of older kids, we’d been told. So we made an E.T.-shaped cake and sprinkled Reese’s Pieces all around it. There was pizza. There were bicycle races for the older kids. None of the bikes flew—we’re not magic—but we did bring in a big bike ramp and set it up in the backyard. Also, everyone got red hoodies with their names on them as party favors.

  When the sun went down they screened the actual movie in their backyard—strung up a big white sheet between some trees and had the movie projected onto it. Elliott, the birthday boy, slept through the entire party, but his parents were thrilled. They wanted us to stay and hang out afterward. That’s a sign of a good party. We’re working for these people but they think we’re their new best friends.

  We declined, of course.

  They gave us the extra cake because they were all dieting.

  My dad and I ate it in front of the television with our feet propped up on the coffee table—two more things we’re not allowed to do when my mom is home.

  I went to sleep happy and buzzing, excited for the rest of the weekend.

  But when I woke up the next morning my dad was downstairs, nursing a cup of coffee and looking glum.

  “Pixie, we need to talk,” he’d said.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. “Do we need to bring the cake back?”

  My dad smiled weakly, but it was forced, fake, a smile out of pity.

  I felt something in the pit of my stomach, dread and fear. I didn’t want to know. Mostly, I wanted it to be yesterday—a successful party that we created from scratch, yummy cake, and late-night TV.

  “Things are worse in Fresno than we realized. Your mom is going to have to stay up there for a while,” my dad told me.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Grandma Joan has been sick for a long time and no one knew about it. The house is a mess. Actually, her whole life is a mess, and Mom needs to stay and clean everything up. And put Grandma Joan’s house on the market, too.”

  “Wait, isn’t that up to Grandma Joan?” I asked, totally confused.

  My dad sighed. “Under normal circumstances, it would be. But your grandmother is really sick. She has Alzheimer’s, which means there’s something wrong with her brain. She’s probably done making decisions on her own. So now it’s up to your mom. Everything is up to your mom.”

  “Is Grandma Joan dying?” I asked.

  My dad shook his head. “Not exactly. Only her brain is dying. The rest of her body is healthy. It’s a horrible disease. She could live for a long time, but not by herself. She needs a lot of help now. Basically, she can’t ever be left alone.”

  “Does that mean Mom is bringing her back here?” I asked.

  “No,” my dad said, shaking his head. “That’s definitely not what it means.”

  “So where is she going to go?” I asked.

  “Hopefully to a nursing home of some sort. But those places have waiting lists, and not all of them are covered by insurance. And they cost a lot of money. That’s what your mom is trying to figure out—where Grandma Joan can go, and how we’re going to pay for it. That’s why she needs to sell her parents’ house—to help pay for the nursing home. Of course, your mom also needs to find a nursing home that has space, and it’s all going to take some time.”

  “Well, maybe we should go to Fresno and help out,” I said.

  “I’d love to, but I can’t abandon Party People, and you have school. Plus, I need your help running the business. Your mother can handle things with her mom. It won’t be easy, but she’s strong. She’s figuring everything out. All she needs is time. Our job is to hold down the fort until she can come home.”

  Neither of us said anything for a little while. I stared at my dad. He stared into his coffee cup.

  Finally, I asked, “Well, what do you think? When will Mom get to come home?”

  My dad rubbed his eyes with his fingertips. He took a deep breath before answering me. “Honestly, Pixie? I don’t know.”

  9

  I feel like a robot on autopilot the next morning as I get out of bed, brush my teeth, get dressed, and head downstairs. I’m shaking granola out of the box and into a bright red bowl when my dad walks into the kitchen.

  “Hey, Pixie. Is everything okay?” he asks.

  It’s a complicated question, and at the same time fairly obvious. Of course I am not okay. I feel weird after my mermaid nightmare. Plus, we are out of blueberries. And there are blueberries on the granola box, but I don’t want to talk about it. “I’m fine,” I reply.

  “Are you sure? Because you were shouting in the middle of the night,” he tells me.

  “Um, I guess I had a nightmare,” I mumble. Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I try to push away the scary scene. But even now, simply talking about it makes me feel like my heart is beating in my throat. My chest feels tight, almost like I’m actually underwater.

  My dad lets out a laugh. “Yeah, that much I know. I tried waking you up because I was so worried, but you told me to leave you alone.”

  “Really?” I ask. “I said that in my sleep?”

  “Yup.” He nods, eyes wide, running a hand through his short, dark hair. “You actually yelled at me. Must’ve been pretty intense, whatever it was. Do you remember?”

  I do, vividly, but shake my head no. “I don’t even remember you being in my room. I can’t believe I spoke to you.”

  This part is true. I was asleep the whole time.

  It’s embarrassing to think I can talk in my sleep. I wonder what else I said.

  My dad stares at me for a moment, like he can tell I’m lying, but he decides not to push me on it. Instead, he heads to the counter and makes himself some coffee. “In Germanic mythology, nightmares are caused by an evil spirit named Mara. Legend has it she would come and sit on people’s chests and stare at them while they slept, transmitting the fright through some magical process of osmosis.”

  Suddenly I have the chills. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?” I ask.

  My dad shrugs. “No, I just thought it was interesting. We’ve been thinking about adding a folklore-themed class to the roster, maybe with some marionette puppets and a storyteller. Well, your mom would be the storyteller. She’s great at stuff like that.”

  “Except who knows when she’ll be back,” I say, looking him squarely in the eye.

  My dad frowns, half in frustration, half in sympathy. “I know it’s been hard, Pix. And I wish I could tell you when she’ll be home.”

  “If she’s coming home,” I mumble.

  “What do you mean? Of course she’s coming home. She’s making lots of progress. Grandma Joan is on the waiting list at three nursing homes. Once she can move somewhere, your mom will be back. She’s already signed with a real estate broker, so the house sale can happen long distance.”

  “She doesn’t even like Grandma Joan.”

  “That’s not true, Pixie.”

  “Yes it is.”

  “Well, okay, it is. But it’s also more complicated. Look, your mom is better at stuff like this. She’ll explain when she gets home, I’m sure. Or you can call her whenever you want. She’s always saying that.”

  My mom calls every night, but at the end of the day I’m tired and talking to her on the phone simply reminds me that she can’t be here for real. Last time I tried calling in the morning she couldn’t talk because she was at the hospital. The time before that, she got so distracted that she wasn’t even paying attention to what I was saying. But my dad knows all this. There’s no point in complaining, so I stare down at my cereal bowl silently.

  My dad goes back to talking about mythology. “Did you know that in Scandinavia, their traditional version of Santa Claus is a tiny elf named Nisse who lives in a barn and plays pranks? They have so many crazy creatures. There’s Nokken, a shape-shifting sea gnome who plays the violin and can turn into a horse. I need to show you a picture—grueso
me, wrinkled little thing with giant, pointy ears. Might be too scary for kids, actually. But maybe we can give him a bow tie and a sparkly vest. I find that bow ties and sparkles always lessen the spooky factor. And if that doesn’t work, we can just add a top hat.”

  My dad looks at me, expecting me to laugh or at least crack a smile, and normally I’m game, but I can’t seem to muster the energy this morning. I’m too annoyed at this whole situation.

  Plus, the blueberries. I put them on the grocery list two days ago. But did he get them? No. Did he even go to the grocery store? I don’t think so.

  “A sea creature that plays the violin?” I ask. “That doesn’t make any sense, unless the violin is waterproof. But even if that’s the case, how does he hold the bow with no hands?”

  My dad lets out a laugh. “These are excellent questions, Pixie. Good thing we have you around to keep everyone in line. I actually don’t know the answers, but I’ll look them up later on.”

  The coffeemaker beeps to announce it’s ready. The aroma fills the room so that, suddenly, the kitchen smells like any other morning. I find the scent of coffee delicious but the taste disgusting. My mom says it’s an acquired taste, that she didn’t like it when she first tried it. To which I had to ask the obvious question—if you didn’t like it the first time, why did you try it again? But she simply laughed and said that was such a Pixie question.

  I smile and then feel silly for having old conversations with my mom in my head, especially when she’s not even in the same zip code.

  My dad claims to have always loved coffee. He said even when he was young he’d drink it with lots of milk and lots of sugar. Except at some point he quit with the sugar. This morning he pours himself a cup and adds a splash of soy milk.

  “Hey, can I get a ride to school in a bit? I’m supposed to meet Lola and Sophie early.”

  “Sure,” he says, leaning against the counter and taking a sip. “How come?”

  “Oh, we’re working on a project for school. It’s a long story,” I say, glancing up at the clock.

  “Can you give me five minutes?” he asks.

  “Yeah, no problem,” I reply. “I still need to eat, anyway.”

  “Oh, I bought you the blackberries,” my dad says, excited. He goes over to the fridge to get them out.

  “I asked for blueberries,” I tell him, pointing to the cereal box.

  “Oh, wow. Sorry about that.”

  “It’s fine,” I say. I add nine berries to my granola, spacing them as evenly as possible. The fruit is wrong and my milk isn’t as white and crisp-looking as the milk on the box, but breakfast still tastes better than I thought it would, the perfect mix of sweet and savory, crunchy and juicy. I should be happy, but I’m not.

  After I eat I run up to get my backpack. Then I do my final face/hair/outfit mirror-check to avoid potentially embarrassing mistakes. Everything is in place, as usual, so I finally meet my dad in the garage and we climb into our silver minivan, which my parents call the yacht.

  “So what’s this top-secret project you girls are working on?” my dad whispers as he pulls out of the garage. He makes his voice sound conspiratorial, like we’re in a spy movie.

  “It’s not top secret. Sophie is running for class president,” I tell him as I push aside a box of red rubber balls to make more room for my feet. “And Lola volunteered us to be her campaign managers.”

  “That’s amazing,” my dad says, too enthusiastically.

  “It’s just an election,” I remind him. “Nothing earth-shattering. It happens every year. Anyway, we made the posters last night and we’re meeting at school early so we can hang them up before everyone arrives. The election is on Friday.”

  “Did you consider running yourself?” my dad asks, although I’m sure he knows the answer to that question. “Your mom was the president of her senior class.”

  “Yeah, I know. And she was the prom queen. You guys have told me a million times. But this isn’t high school. It’s middle school.”

  “All the more reason to run. It’s like practice for the big leagues.” My dad drums on the steering wheel. I have no idea why, but it annoys me.

  “Big leagues? Oh, I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready for that,” I say sarcastically.

  “Okay, no need to get testy, Pix. You know what I mean.” My dad’s lips are pressed together—he’s annoyed, I can tell. It’s probably because I’m being kind of annoying. I know this is the case and I feel bad about it, but we’ve already started down this path and there’s no turning back. I can’t simply turn my attitude off. But I can at least be quiet, so I decide to not even reply. He doesn’t push me on it. We listen to the radio, and soon we are at school, so the pressure is off.

  “I have music appreciation from four to six tonight,” he says as he pulls into the near-empty parking lot. “You want to come by the shop after school and help out? I can pick you up and bring you over. I could really use a new Janis Joplin.”

  Janis Joplin is a blues and rock singer. She’s famous for her scratchy voice, and for her performance at Woodstock, this hippie outdoor music concert that happened over a rainy, muddy weekend in 1969. My parents weren’t even born then, but they like all the bands that played Woodstock, and they like dressing up like hippies and teaching kids fun facts like this: Woodstock didn’t even take place in Woodstock. It took place in Bethel, New York.

  Janis Joplin died when she was twenty-seven years old, but before she did she wrote a bunch of beautiful songs, many of which are still famous, including “Piece of My Heart.”

  My mom usually shows up to music class as Janis Joplin reincarnated, in bell-bottoms and a giant peace sign necklace and little round glasses. She can imitate the singer’s deep, soulful, scratchy voice perfectly.

  When you listen to my mom sing that song, you’d think you were at an actual concert. It’s pretty amazing. Of course, it’s also something I can’t exactly copy. Dressing up like Janis Joplin wouldn’t be as bad as trying to be a mermaid, though. There’s no bikini involved, for instance, and no swimming pool. But it’s still not going to happen.

  I scrunch up my nose and shake my head. “Wish I could, but I need to study. There’s a big test on Friday.”

  “In what subject?” he asks.

  I think fast. “History.”

  My dad glances at me for a moment, like he doesn’t believe me and wants to fire off a bunch of questions but doesn’t know where to begin.

  I make sure to climb out of the car before he figures it out. “Gotta run.”

  10

  I find Sophie sitting cross-legged in front of my locker. Her hair is in a loose ponytail and she’s wearing a bright red T-shirt with a giant gold trophy on the front of it. It looks homemade, and probably is.

  Our posters are propped up against the locker banks. I have to admit we did an amazing job. I was happy with them last night, but seeing them now, in the early-morning light, it’s something else.

  “These look incredible,” I gush. “The red and blue look so bold. And I love how the gold and silver sparkle in the sun.”

  Sophie stands up and gives me a quick hug. “Thanks. I’m glad you still like them. I’m so, so nervous about the election.”

  “I’ll bet,” I say. “It’s a big week!”

  The election is happening this Friday and today is Tuesday, which means we only have four school days to get the word out about Sophie. Or, more realistically speaking, there are only four days until her gigantic loss, and what will probably follow—her epic disappointment. But I try not to think about that because it seems way too negative, almost mean. And mostly I hope I’m wrong. Maybe I don’t really know how things work at Beachwood Middle School. Maybe Sophie has as good a chance as anyone.

  That’s what she must believe, and that’s what I’d like to think, as well.

  Sophie holds up a thick roll of clear tape. “I found this in my garage, but I wanted to wait for you and Lola before I hung anything up.”

  “I’m su
re she’ll be here any second,” I say, jumping at the sound of my own voice.

  “What’s wrong?” asks Sophie.

  “Nothing,” I say. “It’s just, does my voice sound really loud right now, or does it only seem that way because the halls are so empty?”

  “It’s definitely because we’re the only ones here,” says Sophie. “Which is cool. I mean, I love sleeping late, but it’s also fun getting here when almost no one else is around.” She holds her arms out and spins. And then she gets this funny grin on her face and says, “I’m gonna do a bunch of cartwheels.”

  I laugh, impressed, until I actually see her attempt at a cartwheel.

  Sophie makes it about a quarter of the way, but then things go wonky and her legs bend and flail and she loses her balance and lands on her butt. It’s the funniest thing I’ve seen in ages and I can’t help but crack up.

  “Ouch!” she says, from the ground.

  “Sorry for laughing,” I reply. “Are you okay? Need any help?”

  “I’ll be fine,” says Sophie, climbing back on her feet, wiping her hands on the knees of her jeans. She’s cringing-smiling. “My butt, I’m not so sure about. I guess I should’ve said, ‘I’d do cartwheels if I actually knew how to do a cartwheel.’”

  “At least no one else was around to see you,” I say.

  “True,” says Sophie, smoothing out her hair, which had gotten pretty messy during her cartwheel mishap. “I love it when it’s so empty here. The grass is freshly mowed and there’s no trash in the hallways. No granola-bar wrappers, or crumpled lunch bags, or apple cores, or banana peels.”

  I laugh. “You’re totally right. And I’ll bet the tables in the cafeteria aren’t even sticky yet.”

  “Exactly. We’ve got a clean slate. It’s like we’re early to a play and the stage is set, but nothing has been written, so who knows what will happen?” Sophie says. “Will today be a comedy or a drama? Who will ace Mr. Landry’s math quiz? Who will fail?”

  “Who will break their arm in PE?” I add.

  “And who will break their leg?” says Sophie, doing a karate chop–like kick into the air.