by Nancy Rue
I personally didn’t think Granna was old enough to live in a place where everybody else walked with canes and talked too loud and had hair so thin you could see their pink scalps. Sure, she had a messy gray bun, but she always wore comfy pants and shirts with sayings on them and dangly earrings. That night they were ice-cream cones and her T-shirt said, “Oh, Happy Day!” How could you be like that and be old at the same time?
As always she kissed me on the top of my head and said, “Victoria, my pet.” I couldn’t remember when she didn’t do that.
“Mom, it’s forty degrees.” Dad tilted his head of bushy brown-turning-gray hair. He sort of looked like a bird too. A big one. Maybe an eagle. “Why are you wearing shorts?” he said.
“I wanted to show Victoria my tattoo,” Granna said.
I watched my mother’s eyes bulge like green marbles. “Your tattoo?”
Granna’s eyes, small and brown and birdish like mine, twinkled at me. Wait for it . . . wait for it . . . yeah, there was the wink. That meant, Play along with me. I always did.
Granna slid into the booth beside me and rolled the bottom of her khaki shorts up a cuff. For a second I thought the outline of an ice-cream sundae was a real tattoo, so I didn’t have to do much acting at first.
“Are you serious?” Mom said.
“As a case of pneumonia,” Granna said. She nudged me with her leg.
“Tori, tell me she’s not serious.”
I nodded, eyes on the really good press-on that was still fresh. That was why Granna was late this time.
“She’s serious,” I said.
“What did you get, Mom?” Dad said. “A rose?”
Granna cackled. “Do I look like the rose type to you?”
“Come on, Tori, I mean it,” Mom said. “What is it?”
“Ice cream. It’s so real I want to eat it.”
My mother actually got her small self up on her knees on the other side of the booth and peered across the table. I thought her eyes were going to pop out of her head until she figured it out.
“You are both incorrigible,” she said and sank back into her seat. She had dragged her white sweater through her lasagna, but I wasn’t going to be the one to inform her.
Dad was chuckling.
“I don’t see the humor,” Mom said, poking him.
“You never see the humor at this time of year,” he said.
She sighed. “Why did I ever go into the floral business?”
“Because you’re crazy for flowers,” Granna said. “You get this way every Valentine’s season. February fifteenth you’ll be all hyped up about Easter lilies.”
That was true, although I’d give it until at least the sixteenth, depending on whether my dad was home or not.
He traveled a lot for work, and Mom was always in a better mood when he was in town. It was like she had a lightbulb inside her face that only turned on when he was around.
Right now her curly, sand-colored hair sagged around her face, which I guessed meant the product had worn off. She had little puffs of bluish skin under her eyes too. But the lightbulb was on, and even brighter than usual.
After Granna placed an order for tiramisu—she always ate her dessert first—I found out what was going on.
“Ladies,” Dad said, “I’m going to be home for a while.”
“Define a while.” I glanced at my mom’s frown and added, “Please.”
“Probably about six months,” Dad said. “I’ve been hired as a consultant on a documentary film on the Empire Mine.”
“How perfect is that?” Mom said. I was pretty sure I saw another bulb light up.
It was perfect actually, because—
(A) The old Empire Mine that had produced gold for over a hundred years was just on the other side of our back fence, only now it was a historic park and museum.
(B) My dad did history for a living and knew, like, everything about California history. Whenever anybody was making a movie or something about the eighteen hundreds, they hired him to tell them if they were messing up the facts.
And (C) he knew more about the Second Gold Rush than anybody. I looked it up on the Internet once. Dr. Nathan Taylor was the “leading expert.”
“I’ll be working from home—”
“So I’ll be quiet when I get home from school,” I said.
“And I’m hiring an assistant, but you probably won’t see much of her. We’ll be up in my office.”
We had a big “bonus room” on our second floor that was Dad’s office and library. I had my own curl-up chair in there, but it didn’t sound like I’d be visiting him while his assistant was working. I hoped she found her own place to curl up.
Then I felt bad for thinking that. Dad was finally going to be home like other people’s dads. And he was the best of anybody’s that I knew.
He rubbed his hands together. “I want this film to be about more than just the six million dollars’ worth of gold that came out of there.”
“That sounds like plenty to talk about to me.” Mom smiled at him. Although her mouth wasn’t big like mine and Dad’s and Granna’s, she had a smile that made everybody else want to smile too, especially when she was grinning at Dad.
“Will you bring in something about Lola Montez?” Granna said the way she did every time we talked Grass Valley history.
Both my parents glared at her. Granna nudged me with her elbow, which meant, Let’s get them.
“We don’t need to talk about Lola,” Mom said.
“I think Victoria’s old enough.”
“Mom, you aren’t even old enough.” Dad broke into another chuckle. “Okay, who’s up for a history quiz?”
“Not me,” Mom said. “My brain is fried.”
That didn’t stop Dad. “Where was the first flush toilet in Grass Valley installed?”
“Lola’s house,” Granna said, nudging me again.
“I pass,” Mom said.
“Tori?” Dad said.
I smiled smugly. “The Conaway House on South Auburn Street.”
Dad and I bumped fists above the table.
“Is the original toilet still there, though?” I said.
“Do you think?”
“No, it would probably smell really gross by now.”
“Lovely.” Mom looked at Dad. “You realize you are undoing all of my hard work to turn her into a lady.”
An image of my eyebrows growing together jumped into my head. No, I definitely wasn’t lady material, and I didn’t see that as a problem.
“I say we celebrate with dessert.” Dad peered at Granna’s empty plate. She was currently licking her fingers. “How was the tiramisu?”
“Better than average,” Granna said. “You two enjoy. I want to take Tori to the Lazy Dog.”
“Two desserts in one night? I can’t depend on you to help me turn Tori into a lady either, can I?” Mom said.
Nope. And I was so okay with that.
It was a perfect Grass Valley winter evening. The sky was the kind of dark, sink-into-it blue I’d never seen anyplace else but there, and the air wasn’t so much cold as just crispy. There was just enough breeze to stir some gray hairs loose from Granna’s bun and make the pine needles whisper. Grass Valley was full of the tallest evergreens ever—except maybe in the Redwood Forest—and they talked all the time.
“It’s an exquisite night for a walk,” Granna said and kissed me on top of my head again.
Arms hooked together, we strode—there was no other word to use—down the sidewalk on Main to Mill Street, straight toward the Lazy Dog, which had the best chocolate and ice cream on the entire planet.
Granna read from a sign over a new hair salon that had just opened on Mill. “ ‘Be Transformed.’ ” She chuckled, just the way Dad did, only a little higher. “If I went in there they’d say, ‘Sorry, we don’t do embalming.’ ”
“Granna, that’s not true!” I said. “You don’t look dead. Not even close.”
“You always say exactly the right thing,
Victoria.”
We took seventeen minutes picking out our ice cream and toppings. At least Granna did. I only needed seventeen seconds to order two scoops of mint chocolate chip on a waffle cone like usual. Granna always wanted to try something new.
While she was picking out her sprinkles practically one by one, I wandered toward the front of the store to check out the chocolate shapes. Since it was getting close to Valentine’s Day, there were a lot of hearts and cupids, but I liked the animals myself. One looked exactly like Nestlé, and Granna would’ve bought it for me, but I wouldn’t be able to bite off his head.
I was on my way to the major jelly bean selection when the bell rang on the door and two people swept in. There was no other way to describe how Kylie Steppe and her mother came into the Lazy Dog. Scarves were flying and shopping bags with tissue paper sticking out of them were rustling, and Mrs. Steppe was swooshing toward the ice-cream counter talking with her arms.
“Pick out what you want,” she said. “I’m going to pass. I don’t need the calories.”
That was a lie. Kylie’s mother was so skinny I could see her collarbone sticking out.
“What are you staring at?”
I jumped, nearly losing my top scoop. That would’ve been the exact wrong thing to do in front of Kylie, who was already looking at me like I was a case of pimples. It made the hair on the back of my neck stand straight up.
“I wasn’t staring at anything,” I said.
“You were looking at my mom like there’s something wrong with her.”
I decided not to say, You mean like she’s starving to death? What would be the point?
“I think there’s something wrong with you,” Kylie said.
“You ready, Victoria, my pet?”
Granna was suddenly at my elbow holding a supersized sundae with enough whipped cream for all three of us and Kylie’s mom, who needed it.
Kylie stared at it and then at Granna. When her blue and gold eyes came back to me, her lips were twitching. I couldn’t hold it back any longer.
“What?” I said.
“Kylie, do you want ice cream or not?”
Kylie rolled those eyes in the direction of her mother and brushed past me. Out of the side of her mouth, she said, “Victoria, my pet?”
It sounded so wrong coming from her lips, suddenly I didn’t want my double cone anymore.
But I carried it as I followed Granna back to Main Street and we started down the hill. Normally we would have stopped at every old-timey shop window and analyzed the display. But as soon as we had the Lazy Dog behind us, Granna said, “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Yes,” I said, and blurted out the whole thing about Kylie and the Winnie rumors. When I was done, my ice cream was dripping all over my hand.
“You lick, I’ll talk,” Granna said.
I almost melted with relief, right along with the mint chocolate chip. I could already imagine telling Ophelia exactly what we were going to do for Winnie because Granna said so.
I started in on the sides of the scoops. Granna stopped us on the sidewalk and pointed up at the building in front of us.
“One Sixteen West Main Street,” she said. “You know what this was, of course.”
I shook my head. This was one of the few buildings Dad hadn’t told me the complete history of before I could even read.
Granna made a sound like tsk-tsk. “Your father has sadly neglected your historical education.” She winked. “This was home to the Lola Montez Theater in the 1930s and ‘40s.”
Lola Montez? I thought we were going to talk about Kylie Steppe and Winnie George.
“I know your parents don’t want me sharing what I know about Lola,” Granna said as we moved on. “I’m not going to tell you anything rated PG-13 but just to be on the safe side . . .” Her eyes twinkled at me. “What happens with Granna stays with Granna. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said, “but—”
“Lola Montez was her stage name. She was actually the Countess of Lansfeld, but that didn’t fit her reputation as a dancer. They say her famous Spider Dance was sensational. She performed it all over the world, including here in Grass Valley—right back there at what was then the Alta.”
I was still confused, but I had to ask, “What was a Spider Dance?”
“Something the miners liked, that’s for sure.” The lines at the corners of Granna’s eyes crinkled. “The theater was always packed out, and she’d bring in a thousand dollars a show after expenses. That was a lot of money back then.”
It sounded like a lot of money now. Still—
“The story has it that the applause drowned out the racket of the stamp mills over at the mine. That’s loud.”
I stopped trying to interrupt. Granna was going to finish this story. And then she’d tell me what I was supposed to do with it. I kept licking.
“There’s a picture of her over at the Grass Valley Museum,” Granna said. “She was a pretty thing and very calculating.”
My ears perked up. “You mean she was good at math like me?”
“She certainly had everybody’s number.”
Huh?
“Men would visit her at her cottage—it’s now the Chamber of Commerce—and they’d find themselves greeted at the door by her pet grizzly.”
“She had a bear in her house?” I couldn’t help thinking of Mitch.
“She did indeed.”
I was starting to like this woman. But I still didn’t get it.
“Granna, no offense,” I said, “but what does this have to do with what I’m supposed to do about the Winnie situation?”
Granna scraped her plastic spoon at the bottom of the sundae that had somehow disappeared while she talked. “Here’s what you need to remember about Lola. Rumors flew about her all the time. Some of it was based in truth; she did have some interesting escapades. But most of it was out of pure spite because Lola dared to be different.”
“What did she do about the rumors?” I said.
Granna smiled as if she and Lola had been BFFs. “She just kept daring to be different. Now if I don’t take you back to Cirino’s before it gets dark, I’m going to lose my Victoria privileges. And we can’t have that, can we?”
I shook my head—but really? I was as disappointed as I was confused. This was one thing I didn’t think I could figure out. And smart as I was, I could usually figure out just about anything.
Okay, so there were two things I couldn’t figure out. The other one was why the unibrow thing kept coming back to me. So I asked my dog Nestlé about it later, after homework. He was lying on the floor with his head on the turtle pillow I gave him because Mom wouldn’t let me have him up on the bed. Sometimes I did it anyway, but she always knew.
Dad said mothers have an extra sense that non-mothers don’t have, but I didn’t think that had been scientifically proven. Mom said the pillow smelled like dog. Well—
(A) Nestlé was a dog—and
(B) What was so bad about that smell? It was one of my favorites, right up there with pencils that had just been sharpened and Mom’s blackberry cobbler.
“None of those smells is ‘ladylike,’ Nestlé,” I said. “You couldn’t make a perfume out of them.”
He only moved his eyes to look up at me. I slid off the bed and onto the floor so he could see me better.
“I’m serious,” I said. “What do you think about my eyebrows?”
He sniffed my hands. There must have been a miniscule speck of mint chocolate chip left because he licked until I thought my fingerprints were going to come off.
“I’m not sure I can depend on your opinion about these things. I read my essay to you last night, and you didn’t laugh at it. You wagged your tail—but that’s not laughing at me.”
He wagged it now, like a stick thwacking the floor. He could also clear a coffee table with it.
“You know what I can’t figure out? I can’t figure out why Kylie and the Pack are all of a sudden sniffing out me and Winnie and Evelyn a
nd anyone they can get their claws into. I thought they were bored, y’know, but who gets bored walking into the Lazy Dog? It doesn’t bother me that much. It’s just weird.”
Nestlé rested his head on my leg, sighed, and closed his eyes. I could feel the drool oozing into my pajamas.
“Okay, so it kind of bugged me when they were all laughing at my paper,” I said. “Who wants to be laughed at, right? Good thing you never do that.”
He rolled onto his back and stuck his legs straight up into the air. I scratched his belly.
“All right, so I laugh when you get peanut butter stuck in the roof of your mouth, but that’s different.”
He moaned. I decided that meant he agreed.
So I crawled into bed and thanked God that day was finally over.
Yeah, well, little did I know that day had already started changing everything.
Chapter Three
The next day, Tuesday, I was still trying to decide how I was supposed to tell Winnie to dare to be different. Winnie never dared to do anything. She picked the right topic for her essay because she did remind me of a little white rabbit sometimes. She could hardly go to the restroom alone. Lola Montez she was not.
So I was starting the day with a bad ’tude.
That was our P.E. teacher Mr. Zabriski’s word. He used it on people who got lazy running around the track.
“Let’s watch those ’tudes, people!” he’d yell.
It took me a whole first period one day to figure out he meant “attitudes.”
I was pretty glad that this semester our physical education class was devoted to “Getting a Healthy Start” and that Mr. Zabriski’s wife was teaching it. I liked being away from his yelling.
It didn’t help my ’tude that on my way to our before-school meeting place, I had to pass the Pack’s “den,” which was right inside the front entrance by an old trophy case nobody looked into anymore. I always thought it didn’t make sense to be on display like the trophies if you wanted to talk about private stuff. But I guess it worked for them because when the Pack didn’t want anybody else to know what they were saying, they just turned their bodies into this tight little knot and everybody knew not to get within three yards of them. Not that I ever wanted to anyway. They never looked like they were having that much fun.