Gabriela (American Girl

by Teresa E. Harris

  Maya let out a loud, pointed meow from the spot she’d taken up on top of the coffee table.

  “Something tells me she’s not celebrating with us,” Mama said, laughing.

  “All right, Boss Lady,” I said, skipping into the kitchen. “One dish of wet food, coming up.” I supposed that if I were a cat, I wouldn’t care about a fund-raising goal, either.

  While Mama got on the phone with Ms. Santos, I ran upstairs and grabbed my phone. Did you see the Dream Together page? I texted Teagan. Just woke up, she wrote back. Hang on. Thirty seconds later, my phone was buzzing with dozens of happy face emojis.

  Did you tell your grandpa?

  Telling him now!

  By the time I got back downstairs, Teagan had sent me a video of her and Mr. Harmon doing a happy dance.

  Love it! I wrote back. Talk to you later, k?

  Turns out Ms. Santos already knew about us reaching our goal and had already been on the phone with the city council herself, Mama informed us after she hung up. She was so excited she was bouncing on the balls of her feet.

  “The city council is planning to hire contractors to get started on the repairs as early as next week. Should be done in about three weeks.”

  We stood for a moment in stunned silence. The only sound was Maya, loudly chowing down on her tender beef and chicken feast. Three weeks. Twenty-one days from now I’d get to go home.

  “So Rhythm and Views is definitely on?” I asked.

  “I would think so,” Mama said. “I’ll have to check on some things, but hopefully we can do it three Saturdays from now right after they’re done with the repairs. How’s that sound?”

  Performing again in Liberty, with lights on, full power. It sounded like victory.

  The next three weeks passed in a blur of rehearsals, poetry group meetings, and making sure we had all the details together for the big show. Even though the rec room was more packed than ever, for the first time in a long time, everyone seemed to be working together.

  Sure, there were a few meltdowns, but no one grabbed her dance bag and stormed out or gave a Tiny Tot a dirty look. When Taylor went for Mrs. Blake’s paint again, Mrs. Blake took her gently by the wrist and said, “I’ll tell you what. One day, when you’re not wearing your pretty tutu, I want you to meet me here with your mom, and you can mess in all the paint you want. But only if you stay with your group today and practice like Miss Tina wants you to. Deal?”

  “Deal!” Taylor shrieked, and ran back to the Tiny Tots group where she belonged. The next day, Taylor arrived with her mom, both of them wearing sweats and smocks. Mrs. Blake made good on her promise.

  That evening, as Taylor waltzed out, proudly holding a canvas dripping in paint, I went upstairs to the hallway, where Mama was reading something on her cell phone.

  “Mama?”

  She looked up.

  “Do you think—do you think I could be in charge of the show’s finale? I have an idea.”

  “Of course you can,” Mama replied. Then she blinked hard, as if trying to bring me into sharper focus. “You’re really like a new person, Gabby,” she said softly, and for a moment I thought she was going to cry, before her face snapped back to serious mode. “It’s going to be a lot of work, but after all you’ve done these past weeks, I know that you can handle it.”

  “All right, all right,” Red said, clapping his hands. “I know we’re all excited about the big show, but we’ve still got work to do, people. Work to do!”

  It was Friday night, our community’s last night in the rec room before officially being allowed back in the Liberty building tomorrow. After our final dance rehearsal yesterday, Mama and I packed up the ballet barre and a few other things from Liberty.

  Mr. Harmon was packing up his art supplies tonight, but other than that, it was just us poetry kids there at the church. Our individual pieces for the show were all ready to go—we had practiced them at last week’s meeting until we could recite not only our own, but everyone else’s, too. Tonight was all about the finale.

  “These are your writing prompts,” I said, handing out strips of paper I’d printed out at home. “Let’s write for ten minutes, and then when we’re back in the circle, we can put the whole thing together.”

  I headed over to the yellow wall to write, even though I’d finished my own prompts earlier in the week. There was something I started this morning that I wanted to share before we left.

  “These are perfect,” I said, once we were back and everyone had shared what they wrote. “Ready to put it all together?”

  “Yup,” Alejandro said. “Let’s make some magic.”

  Under my direction, we took lines from each of our poems and wove them together. We made suggestions for how to combine or improve one another’s words, and most of the time we took the feedback without anyone getting mad. With ten minutes left in our meeting, we ran through the whole thing start to finish, or as much of it as we could here in the rec room—the rest we’d figure out at the theater tomorrow with all the other people I’d enlisted to help.

  “Hey, everyone,” I said, clapping my hands. “Before we go, I … I … I want to shhhare one more th-th-thing.” I wished my stutter would calm down, but I was figuring out that the bumpiness didn’t just pop up when I was angry or frustrated. It popped up when I was feeling any strong emotion. I made a note to tell Mrs. Baxter about that new discovery. I called everyone back to the circle and opened my notebook to the page I’d marked earlier.

  “S-S-So today’s our last day here at the church, right?” Everyone nodded. “I was thinking we needed something to say good-bye to the rec room. Thank it for all it’s done for us. We didn’t get to do that before we left Liberty.” Now that I was saying this aloud, it sounded kind of cheesy, but my friends didn’t seem to mind. “S-S-So I wrote something. Maybe we can pass the notebook around and everyone reads a stanza?”

  “You got it,” Red said.

  “Mysterious,” Teagan said, giving me a What-Are-You-Up-To? look.

  “Oh!” I blurted out. “And this poem is dedicated to Isaiah, for obvious reasons.” I smiled at him across the circle.

  “I’m honored, my lady,” Isaiah said.

  I cleared my throat and read:

  “We won’t

  Forget

  That night for a long time

  It tossed us upside down

  Upset our summertime.”

  I passed the notebook to Red.

  “No taps

  No paint

  No more recitation

  And then a ‘Good morrow’

  Changed our situation.”

  Everyone laughed at that, especially Isaiah. Bria was next.

  “Slick walls

  Tight space

  Floors gray like hard concrete

  A wall of yellow sun

  More noise than a swap meet.”

  She pushed the notebook to Isaiah.

  “We danced

  We spoke

  Made art of many hues

  You granted us the courage

  To get us through our blues.”

  Alejandro took his turn.

  “And so

  Tonight

  Parting gives us sorrow

  And still we leave with strength

  Ready for tomorrow.”

  Teagan pulled the notebook in front of her.

  “For that

  We give

  You thanks from all our hearts

  Your generosity

  Will live on in our arts.”

  Teagan smiled as she gave me the notebook for the final stanza.

  “Once more

  Good night

  Sun wall and concrete floors

  We won’t ever forget

  Your welcome open doors.”

  It was silent for a moment, and then enthusiastic applause broke out on the far side of the room, startling us out of the moment. “Bravo, Gabby!” Mr. Harmon said, his voice all crackly. “All of you—bravo!”

 
; “Are you crying again, Grandpa?” Teagan asked.

  “What? N-No—got some dust in my eye from all this cleaning up.”

  “It’s okay if you are, Mr. Harmon,” Isaiah said. “‘How much better is it to weep at joy than to joy at weeping!’”

  All five of us looked at Isaiah, eyebrows raised.

  “What?!” he said. “Much Ado About Nothing, act 1, scene 1. Translation: Happy tears are better than sad tears.” He sighed. “You guys are really going to need to start reading Shakespeare.”

  With less than twenty-four hours until we were back in Liberty, I could have cried happy tears myself.

  Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. I grabbed my phone off my nightstand and squinted at it in the early morning sun. Teagan had sent a photo of a cat in a party hat and a text that said HAPPY LIBERTY DAY!!!!!

  “HAPPY LIBERTY DAY!!!” I shouted out loud to myself, throwing off my covers and scaring the living daylights out of Maya. She jumped from the top of my loft bed all the way down the floor.

  “Ooops. Sorry, Kitty. But I’m pretty excited, aren’t you?” I peered over the edge of the bed. Maya just flicked her tail. “Would you be more excited if I got you a party hat? No?” I climbed down the ladder. “Oh, well. Your loss.”

  After I texted Teagan a bunch of smiley faces, party hat emojis, and jazz hands, I brushed my teeth and took the fastest shower of my life. We didn’t have to be at the theater for dress rehearsal until 10:00 a.m., but I felt like someone had videoed me on the time-lapse setting.

  Back in my room, I double-checked that I had all my dance shoes, costume pieces, makeup, and some energy bars, then headed downstairs.

  “Good morrow, cuz,” Red called out from the kitchen table, as I dumped my dance bag on the floor. I hung my garment bag on the back of the pantry door.

  “You mean GREAT morrow,” I replied, grabbing some cereal from the pantry. “Seen my mom yet this morning?”

  “Already at the theater,” Red replied. “I think Uncle Rob is in the shower.”

  Of course Mama was already at the theater. I’m sure there were a million things to do for tonight, especially since we’d normally have dress rehearsal the night before the show. The contractors needed every minute they could get to finish out the repairs, so we were packing everything into one day—dress rehearsal at ten, rehearsal for the finale at three, show at seven.

  I was just about to pour my cereal when Daddy came down the stairs.

  “Good morning, kiddos,” Daddy said, and then, “Freeze right there!”

  Red and I both froze.

  “Step away from the cereal,” Daddy said to me. “I repeat, back away from the cereal.”

  Um. Okay.

  “Today is much too special for boring old milk and whole grains. I was thinking the Waffle House. Any objections?”

  “NO!” Red and I both shouted. We were in the car in less than five minutes.

  One waffle with strawberries and whipped cream and two glasses of orange juice later, we turned into the Liberty parking lot for the first time since the rally. The switch leapers were back and using my breakfast as their dance floor. Cereal might have been a better idea.

  Daddy pulled into a parking space, and I jumped out of the car before he had even pulled the emergency brake.

  “Don’t wait for me or anything!” Red shouted as I bolted toward Liberty’s front doors. I flung them open and stepped inside the lobby.

  The scent was the first thing I noticed. Like opening up an old book you’ve read a million times. I closed my eyes and took in a deep breath. And then another.

  “Have the walls always been that color?” Red asked, coming up beside me.

  I opened my eyes to see what Red was talking about. The city had repainted the walls. No more of Mama’s apple green. “Nope, but I think I like them.” The deep red color felt warm, like the den at Teagan’s house where we watched movies during sleepovers.

  The flooring in the lobby was brand-new, too. Black-and-white linoleum, glistening like piano keys. Red immediately started scuffing his feet across it.

  “I see you doing that, Clifford Knight.” Mama came striding across the lobby.

  “Just breaking it in, Aunt Tina,” Red said, but stopped anyway.

  “It’s so pretty!” I said, giving Mama a big hug. “Do you like it?”

  “I love it,” Mama said.

  “Can we explore?” I asked. I wanted to find every little thing that was the same and all the things that were different.

  Mama checked her watch. “Later. Dress rehearsal starts in five. I put the boys in dressing room four. Will you show Red where that is?”

  “Lead the way, cuz,” Red said. So I did.

  Dress rehearsal was a blur of costume changes and lighting adjustments. Mama and Amelia ran the theater while Mr. Harmon set up the art show in the theater lobby. I took a quick peek out there while the Tiny Tots were practicing.

  Mr. Harmon had displayed what he called his Light Up Liberty Center, a painting of Liberty with real tiny lights glowing in every window. It was the first thing you saw when you walked into the lobby, and students’ artwork was spread throughout the rest of the space. People could view the artwork before the show and purchase pieces they liked during intermission. All money from sales went to scholarships for families who couldn’t afford tuition for classes or the dance company.

  “We’re expecting a much larger crowd than usual,” Mr. Harmon said, when I went over to congratulate him. “We had to prepare many more pieces. But I think it came together nicely.”

  “Exactly how many extra people?” Teagan asked, hanging up a painting of a marshy landscape. She was helping her grandpa until it was time to rehearse for poetry group.

  “Well, the theater holds about four hundred eighty—”

  “Four hundred seventy-six,” I corrected. “Four of the seats don’t work.”

  “They do now. The city fixed everything,” said Mr. Harmon, grinning. “And we’re selling standing room–only tickets, so I’d say you’ll be performing in front of five hundred people or so?”

  Teagan’s face turned the exact color of the murky water in the painting. I grabbed her hand.

  “You’re ready for this, Teagan,” I said. “You know your spoken pieces inside and out.”

  “I know,” she said. “But I’ve never performed onstage before. You’ve done this a million times.”

  “Just pretend the angels are sticking out their tongues,” I said.

  “Huh?”

  I led her over to a bench so we could sit. “You know those angels that are carved into the front of the balcony?” She nodded. “One day when I was in the theater, I swear one of them stuck their tongue out at me. It was just a trick of the light, but ever since then, if I’m onstage and get nervous, I just imagine them making funny faces.”

  Teagan didn’t look convinced.

  “Like this,” I said. I stuck out my tongue and crossed my eyes.

  “Okay,” Tegean said, laughing. “I guess I can try that.”

  The rest of the dress rehearsal sped by. Dancing on the Liberty stage again felt like stepping into my favorite pair of slippers after Maya’s been lying on them. Amelia said I was smiling so big she thought my face might break.

  With all the new stage equipment, the dress rehearsal ran over and I had only forty-five minutes to set the finale before we took a quick dinner break and got dressed for the show. A day had never gone by so fast.

  I checked the clock in the dressing room. Five minutes to showtime.

  “Places, girls, places!” Amelia clapped twice at the doorway of the junior girls’ dressing room. I straightened out my sequin top for the opening dance number. “You ready, Gabby?”

  “Seriously?” I raised my eyebrows at her.

  “Never mind,” she said, smiling. “Silly question. Break a leg out there, okay?”

  “Yep,” I said, and ran to find my place in the wings. Just a few minutes later, Mama kissed me on the head as she
went out in front of the curtain to give her opening remarks. My hand automatically found the edge of the curtain and began rubbing it for good luck, the way I always did before I stepped out onstage.

  “Good evening,” Mama said. “Thank you for coming to Liberty’s sixteenth annual Rhythm and Views show. It’s great to see so many familiar faces here, but tonight I’d like to extend a special welcome to those of you who are joining us for the first time. As my daughter, Gabriela, says, we hope we get to welcome you into our Liberty home for many more years to come.”

  Had Mama just quoted me?

  “Go, girls,” Amelia whispered, motioning for us to take our places onstage. A million butterflies took flight inside me as I found my spot in the darkness.

  “And now …” Mama said. “On with the show!”

  Ninety minutes and six costumes later, the second-to-last number was onstage and we were waiting in the wings to do the finale. The rest of the show had gone really well. I’d only stuttered a couple times on my spoken word piece. Teagan hadn’t barfed from nerves. And my dancing—Mama said it was flawless.

  The music to the last dance number faded out as I rubbed the curtain for good luck one more time. Once the lights had faded to black, Teagan, Isaiah, Bria, Red, Alejandro, and I took our places scattered across the stage, me downstage center. This was it. Of all the performances I’d ever done in my life, I had a feeling this one mattered the most.

  The stage lights faded up, and I began to speak.

  “L-L-Liberty is more than just a center

  It’s us, it’s me, it’s the heart of all who enter

  It’s Mr. Harmon, Mr. Stan, Amelia, and Mama

  It’s dance, it’s theater, it’s art, it’s drama

  Liberty is where my words can be free.”

  The rest of the poetry kids joined me.

  “It’s us, it’s you, it’s everyone, it’s me.”