by Coco Simon
CHAPTER ELEVEN
JUST CALL ME THE REFEREE
Friday came, and I was so excited for the MLK dance that I could barely concentrate in school all day. I had been so focused on getting the right dress for the Vista Green dance that I honestly hadn’t thought that much about the MLK dance. Now I couldn’t wait to see my old friends—not just Tamiko and Sierra, but all of my classmates from sixth grade. I was a little worried that they wouldn’t remember me or wouldn’t care that I was there, but I was just happy to be able to go with Tamiko and Sierra, kind of like old times. During lunch Amanda and Eloise kept talking about the Vista Green dance, but I definitely wasn’t feeling the same amount of excitement for that one.
“Did you get your dress at Glimmer?” Eloise asked me eagerly.
I shook my head. “No,” I said. “It was too expensive, and I wasn’t feeling it anyway.”
I expected her and Amanda to give me a hard time, but they didn’t.
“Oh,” Eloise said, and then she and Amanda looked at each other, like they were communicating some best-friend thought.
They’re probably thinking that I’m going to look ridiculous and that they won’t want to hang out with me, I thought. Oh well.
Colin, at least, was acting normally. “So, I asked Lucy to cover the dance for the newspaper,” he was saying. “And Nathan’s going to take photos. I’m just trying to think of an interesting angle. Any ideas?”
“You mean, like, what people are wearing?” I asked.
“No, something more interesting than that,” he said. “Like, maybe Lucy could ask people if they like to dance or not, something like that. I don’t know.”
“Do you like to dance?” I asked him.
Colin shrugged. “Sure, I guess,” he said. “I mean, it’s a dance, right? Shouldn’t you at least try to dance? I don’t get why lots of people just hang out by the wall.”
“Maybe that is a good angle, then,” I said.
Amanda and Eloise had been listening. “Don’t worry. We’ll dance with you, Colin,” Amanda said. “Right, Allie?”
“Sure,” I said, and I felt myself blushing again. Stupid cheeks!
I took the bus straight to the beach house after school, because Mom had asked Rashid and Daphne to watch the shop while she helped me get ready and then served ice cream at the MLK dance.
“The freezer in the van is all packed,” she told me when I walked through the door. “I made Pumpkin Caramel Swirl, Chocolate Cinnamon, and Banana Cherry, to match the MLK school colors. That was Sierra’s idea.”
“Wow, they all sound delicious,” I said. “How are you going to serve the ice cream?”
“I’m using the kiddie-size cups,” Mom said. “I packed two hundred fifty of them.”
“That’s a lot of ice cream to scoop,” I said. “I can help you, Mama.”
“You are certainly not going to help me scoop ice cream in your pretty new dress,” she said. “I want you to have a fun night with all of your friends. No scooping allowed. Promise?”
“Promise,” I said. I looked around. “Where’s Tanner?”
“Your dad’s picking him up from school,” Mom said. “So tonight will be a girls’ night with just you and me. I thought that might be fun. Hope that’s okay.”
I hugged her. “Actually, that sounds nice!”
After I took a shower, Mom sat me down in front of the bathroom mirror and blow-dried my hair. She rubbed in a special hair cream that smelled like lavender, and then brushed it out. She even added sparkly barrettes in my hair to keep it away from my face. I felt like a princess at the hair salon. And right before we left, she approached me with a tube of pale pink lip gloss.
“This shade goes perfectly with your dress,” she said. “Do you want to try it?”
“I thought I couldn’t wear makeup until I was older?” I asked.
“And that’s still the rule, but it’s a special occasion,” Mom replied. “Old rules apply, but it’s okay to make some changes now and then.”
I nodded slowly. I understood she was talking about more than the makeup. “Okay. I’m in.”
Mom applied the lip gloss, which felt kind of weird and sticky, but she was right—it did go perfectly with my dress.
“You look beautiful, Allie,” she said. She stepped back and looked at me, and her eyes got all teary. “Oh, I wish Dad were here to see you.” She wiped her eyes. “Hang on so I can send him a picture.” She snapped a pic of me with her phone and zapped it to Dad. A second later she laughed.
“He wants to know what I did with his little girl, who just yesterday was riding a tricycle,” she said, and giggled.
I rolled my eyes. Some things will never change. “Well, Mom, you look great in your Molly’s T-shirt,” I said.
Mom spun around and grinned. “Let’s go turn some heads!”
We got to the school about twenty minutes before the dance started, so that Mom could set up. The MLK janitors helped her carry her coolers into the auditorium. We followed them inside, and there were some teachers milling around, and a few students setting up for the dance—and then I spotted Sierra.
“Chica!” I called out, and I ran up to her. “You look amazing!”
Sierra had pulled her curly hair into a messy bun, and she reminded me of a ballerina, in a dark blue dress with sparkles on the top half and a wide, pleated skirt. Her blue flats had little silver sparkles on them too.
“Thanks, Allie,” Sierra said. “Your dress looks even better on you now than it did in the shop. Hey, can you help me finish hanging up these stars?”
The MLK gym still looked like I remembered, with its gleaming wood floor and championship banners hanging high on the walls, near the ceiling. Sierra and the rest of the dance committee were decorating the walls with red and gold stars. The food tables set up had alternating red and gold tablecloths. Along with Molly’s Ice Cream, Sam from Sam’s Subs was setting up sandwiches on one of the tables, and another table held tubs of mini bottles of water. In the corner a DJ stood at a table behind two giant speakers.
As soon as we finished hanging up the stars, kids started to stream in. Tamiko made a beeline toward us. She looked totally adorable in a short-sleeved dress that was black on top, with a pink skirt that had a white cat appliquéd to the bottom.
“Thanks,” she said when Sierra and I complimented her. “Mom showed me this online company that sells retro-style dresses. I added the cat.”
“It is too cute,” I told her. “You could have a side business, sewing cats onto everything for people.”
“Cats by Tamiko,” she said. “Hmm, it’s got a ring to it.”
I looked around at what the other girls were wearing. Some were wearing short, straight, sleeveless dresses like the ones from Glimmer. Others wore colorful dresses, or long dresses, and a few girls even had on dress pants, shirts, and ties. Definitely no clones there at MLK!
“Oh my gosh, Allie!”
I turned around to see a group of girls approaching us—Kyra, Victoria, and Claire, three more of my friends from sixth grade. They started hugging me and talking all at once.
“We miss you!”
“What’s it like at Vista Green?”
“Does your mom really have an ice cream shop now? I need to go there!”
They made me feel like a celebrity, and I answered all their questions and then asked them some of my own, because I had missed them too. And then the music started, and things kind of got crazy.
Tamiko and Sierra pulled me onto the gym floor, and we started dancing.
Eloise loves this song! I thought, and the thought kind of surprised me a little. Why was I thinking about my Vista Green friend when I was at an MLK dance?
We kept dancing when the next song came on, and three boys ran up to us, holding cups of ice cream. I knew them all: Ewan, Connor, and Jake. A few weeks before, they’d had a stupid sprinkles fight in the ice cream shop and had made a huge mess. Only Ewan had stayed to clean it up, and to pay for the sprinkles.
Jake thrust out his ice cream toward Sierra. “Yo, this ice cream is the bomb!”
“Yes, it is,” Sierra replied. “Please don’t start throwing it around, okay? That sprinkles fight you had in Molly’s was so immature.”
“Yeah, that was dumb,” Jake admitted, and Sierra looked surprised.
“Want me to get you some ice cream?” Jake asked Sierra.
“No, that’s okay. I can get it myself,” she replied.
Jake shrugged, and the three boys moved on. Sierra rolled her eyes. “Well, that was random,” she said.
“I think that was Jake’s way of apologizing to you,” I said.
Sierra shook her head. “He could have just said he was sorry.”
“Oh, lighten up, Sierra!” Tamiko said. “Let’s go get some ice cream.”
We walked over to Mom’s table, and I glanced around at the kids in the room along the way. I recognized most of them, but not all of them. And except for Kyra, Victoria, and Claire, nobody else had said hello to me. Which wasn’t a bad thing, but it made me start to think that MLK didn’t feel like home anymore.
I also noticed that some kids were dancing, and other kids were huddled in the corners of the gym, or backed up against the wall. I briefly thought about Colin’s news angle, and then realized I was thinking of my Vista Green squad again.
“Girls, you look wonderful!” Mom cried when the three of us approached the table.
“Thanks, Mrs. S.,” Tamiko said. “How’s it going?”
“I can’t scoop the ice cream fast enough,” Mom replied. “It’s a big hit. Especially the Banana Cherry. Making a flavor based on the school colors was a great idea, Sierra.”
“School pride,” Sierra remarked. “I think I need to try the Banana Cherry myself, please.”
“Of course,” Mom said.
“Me too, please,” Tamiko added.
“How about you, Allie?” Mom asked.
“Pumpkin Caramel Swirl, please,” I replied.
“No banana cherry?” Sierra asked. “Where’s your school spirit?”
“I love pumpkin,” I replied. “And, you know, it’s not my school anymore. . . .”
“Nice going, Sierra,” Tamiko said.
“Oh, Allie, I didn’t mean it!” Sierra cried. “But you’re here now, and it still feels like you’re part of MLK, you know? I guess it was wishful thinking.”
There were kids behind us trying to get to the ice cream, so I motioned for us to move to the side.
“Come on. Let’s people-watch and eat,” I suggested. “I haven’t seen most people here in a long time.”
We found a place along the wall and ate our ice cream in silence for a minute.
Then Sierra glared at Tamiko. “You’re looking at my hair! You hate it, right? Why don’t you just say so?”
“I do not hate your hair!” Tamiko said. “I mean, a messy bun is not your best look, but I don’t hate it.”
“Aha! I knew it!” Sierra fumed.
This was starting to sound a lot like the conversation I had overheard when Sierra had butt-dialed me. At least this time I could help.
“Okay, guys, what gives?” I asked.
They both started talking at once.
“She says I’m overly critical!” Tamiko blurted out.
“She says I’m annoying when I hum!” Sierra said.
“You are!”
“No, I’m not!”
I couldn’t help it—I laughed. “Come on, guys. You’re both right!” I said. “Tamiko, you know you love to comment on what everybody’s wearing. And that’s okay, as long as the person involved never hears it.”
“I could not agree more,” Tamiko said.
“And, Sierra, I hate to break it to you, but you do hum a lot,” I said. “I think it’s kind of cute, but I can see where it might get on some people’s nerves.”
Sierra shook her head. “I honestly had no idea!”
“Now, whatever happens, we’re all still going to be friends. Even when we drive one another crazy. So it’s not worth staying mad for too long. So will you two please hug and make up already?” I asked them. “You know you’re going to eventually!”
Sierra and Tamiko stared at each other for a minute. Then they both burst out laughing.
“Okay, hummingbird,” Tamiko said.
“Fashion police!” Sierra shot back, and they hugged.
Then they turned to me.
“Thanks, Allie,” Sierra said. “Tamiko and I always used to annoy each other once in a while, but it’s happening a lot more lately. I think it’s because you’re not here to balance us out.”
“Yeah,” Tamiko agreed. “We need you, Allie. I wish you could come back to MLK.”
A few days before the dance, I might have chimed in with, “Me too!” But instead I said, “I am always with you guys in spirit. And you can always text me if you need me!”
“Right,” Sierra said. “But hopefully we won’t need you to referee for us again for a long time.”
At that moment two girls walked past us.
“Is she really wearing pink shoes with a yellow dress?” Tamiko asked, making a face, and Sierra elbowed her.
“Really?” Sierra asked.
I took the empty ice cream cups from them and tossed them into the garbage.
“Come on. Let’s dance,” I said, and we went back onto the dance floor.
I had fun that night, and I danced so much that my feet hurt when I climbed into bed. Mom made some hot cocoa when we got home, and we stayed up late and talked about the dance, like what dresses we’d liked and what songs had been great for dancing. It felt nice and cozy in a way that I hadn’t felt in a long time. In bed I cuddled up with Diana, my cat, but I didn’t fall asleep right away. I stayed up for a while, thinking about things.
I don’t belong at MLK anymore, I realized. It wasn’t that I’d felt weird or anything, but everybody at MLK had moved on without me. And I had moved on too, whether I liked it or not. Changes. Noor might have been onto something. Change was sometimes okay.
I realized something else. I was actually looking forward to the Vista Green dance. I just hoped I could make it through two dances in two days!
CHAPTER TWELVE
TAKE TWO
The next morning Mom hand-washed my dress, and it looked like new again. I put my flats back on, and Mom helped with my hair and supervised while I applied a little more pink lip gloss, and I was ready to go when Dad picked me up. He wanted to take me to the Vista Green dance since he hadn’t been there for the MLK dance.
“Allie, you look so grown-up!” Dad said.
“Yeah, you look nice,” Tanner piped up from the back seat.
I couldn’t believe my ears. Had my bratty brother just complimented me?
“Thanks, guys,” I said.
“I’m glad I don’t have to go to a dumb dance,” Tanner said. “Dad’s taking me to the movies.”
“I’m sure the dance will not be dumb, Tanner,” Dad said as we pulled up to Vista Green. “I’ll pick you up at nine, Allie, okay? Have fun!”
“Thanks, Dad,” I said, and I got out and walked up to the school entrance. Suddenly I started to feel nervous. Every girl I could see was wearing a sleeveless, short Glimmer dress in silver, gold, white, or black. I really stood out in my pink-and-purple dress. Then I remembered how Eloise and Amanda had exchanged that weird look when I’d told them I wasn’t going to wear a clone dress.
My palms started to sweat. I was sure I was going to be mocked, or even worse, completely ignored. Dad wouldn’t be back for hours, and I’d be trapped at the dance, standing by myself, with nobody to talk to.
I walked into the gym and looked around. The dance committee at Vista Green had gone for a star theme too, but the decorations were a lot fancier. Constellations shone on the gym ceiling, and strands of silver stars had been hung from the rafters. It looked pretty, but I didn’t see Amanda, Eloise, or Colin—just a sea of clones.
Then Blair, Palmer, and
Maria walked past me—then stopped.
“Nice ruffle dress, Allie,” Blair said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
“Pretty in pink,” Palmer hissed. “Not!”
They walked off before I could give them a witty reply—which was a good thing, because I didn’t have one.
Panicked, I reached for my phone in the little purse Mom had let me borrow. I was ready to call Dad and tell him to come back and get me. But I stopped when I heard Amanda call out to me.
“Allie! You’re here!”
I spun around and saw Amanda and Eloise, and I almost gasped. They weren’t dressed like clones! Eloise wore a red dress with a wide skirt that fell to below her knees, and Amanda’s sleeveless, pale blue dress had a fluffy skirt on the bottom.
“Wow, I love your dresses!” I said. “But I thought you were going to get yours at Glimmer?”
“Well, my mom said the clone dress was too mature,” Amanda confessed. “I was trying to talk her into it, but then when you said you weren’t getting a clone dress, I figured I shouldn’t bother.”
“Really?” I asked, surprised.
“Yeah, and those Glimmer dresses were just too short,” Eloise said. “I like a skirt that you can twirl around in.”
She spun around, and her skirt twirled around her. Amanda and I copied her, laughing.
Then I heard a voice behind me.
“You look nice.”
I stopped spinning and saw that it was Colin! He was wearing black pants with a short-sleeved white shirt and a red bow tie.
“Thanks,” I said, smiling at him. “You do too.”
At that moment the lights dimmed and music started playing. Colin and I looked at each other awkwardly for a moment. Were we supposed to dance together?
Rather than find out, I started chatting a mile a minute. “Wow, this is really different from the MLK dance I went to last night,” I said. “I mean, they had star decorations too, but red and gold, the school colors, and not as fancy. But the music is kind of the same. Is that the same DJ? It might be. It kind of looks like him. Wow, I wonder if that’s the same DJ? That would be weird, right? Well, maybe not, because how many DJs are there around here, after all? Probably not a lot.”