“We’re the Cheetah Girls,” Dorinda says proudly.
“Mabel, look at those necklaces they got around their necks.”
“Oh, these are our Cheetah Girl chokers,” Bubbles pipes up, taking over the conversation. I’m surprised she doesn’t tell them that we’re selling them, so I turn to her and whisper, “Are we still selling the chokers?”
“To anybody with a ducket in a bucket!”
Right then, Derek Hambone comes over with his boy, Mackerel Johnson, and another tall, skinny guy we don’t know. Now that the fashion show is over, Derek is back in his “street uniform”—a navy blue and red windbreaker with matching sweatpants.
He likes clothes from this designer, Johnny BeDown—a lot of the kids in our school wear his stuff, but we think it’s tick-tacky because it has too many letters on it. Like Bubbles says, “Why should we wear clothes with anybody else’s name on it but our own?”
“Hey, Cheetah Girls! Glad to see you in the house,” Derek says. Then he reaches over and kisses Bubbles on the cheek! I can’t believe she let him do that!
“We figured out how to make the chokers,” Bubbles blurts out, fingering the one around her neck. “We’ve already taken orders for five more.”
“That’s cool,” Derek says, kinda laughing. “It’s all good in the ’hood.”
What does Bubbles mean, she’s taken orders for five more chokers? She didn’t tell me anything! Nada. Vampira-tooth. Mackerel winks at me. I guess I’d better be super-simpática too to make up for what happened. “What program are you in?” I ask Mackerel, even though it kills me. I feel my face turning rosa.
“Design,” he mumbles. His voice is so soft, I can hardly hear it.
“Did you like the clothes in the show?” I ask, trying to seem like I’m interested in talking with him. I guess it’s okay—as long as he doesn’t start biting my neck!
“They awwriight, but I’m trying to flow with the street vibe,” he continues—like he’s flossing about his design skills.
“Whose clothes do you like?”
“I dig Trace Gear, you know what I’m saying?”
“Oh, I like that, too,” I say, telling a poco fiberoni. I hate their clothes, because they’re too baggy—but I’m not going to tell him that, está bien?
“You know what? I’ll buy another choker from you, if you’re still selling them,” Mackerel says. Then he winks at me. Cuatro yuks—he’s flirting with me!
If he would just keep his “trap” shut, so I wouldn’t have to look at his teeth, maybe I wouldn’t mind. Those teeth of his give me “the spookies.” He ought to get them fixed, you know?
“Okay, está bien,” I say to Mackerel. Then I pull on Bubbles’s sleeve and ask her what to do.
“That’s cool—we’ve got enough chokers. We can handle it,” Bubbles says confidently “That is, if it’s okay with you, Derek?”
Bubbles is trying to be sooo charming to Derek—and he is eating it up like, well, a Red Snapper!
“It’s cool with Mr. DUH—you know what I’m saying?”
Bubbles blushes deep purple. See, Derek has the initials of his first, middle, and last name shaved on the back of his head. That’s how they roll in Detroit, where he comes from—but we think that look is so played. Besides, with initials like his, he shouldn’t be broadcasting them, está bien? That’s why we always make fun of him. But la gente at school obviously told him about that nickname, too.
“You know … I’m sorry about what happened,” Bubbles says, and she seems like she means it for a change!
“Yeah, I know, Cheetah Girl,” Derek says, grinning and showing off his gold front tooth. “Does that mean you’ll go out with me, yo?”
I want to scream. Ay, caramba! Bubbles, please say no!
“All right. We can move, we can groove,” Bubbles responds.
I think I’m going to faint! Dorinda’s mouth is hanging open, too. I look over my shoulder, and see that the twins are busy talking to Derek’s friend, whom we don’t know.
“Bubbles, we have to go,” I blurt out.
“Hold up, Miss Señorita, I’m trying to make things happen, you know what I’m saying?” Derek says, interrupting me.
“Sí,” I say nastily, like, “DUH! I can see that.”
“I’ll check you tomorrow,” Derek says to Bubbles. “Make me another choker, too. Ayiight?”
“Bet,” Bubbles says, as Derek and Mackerel move off to work the room.
Galleria, Dorinda, and I make our way to one of the banquet tables, and sit down with our food.
“Bubbles, are you really going to go out with Derek?” Dorinda asks amused.
“No, silly-willy! I’m just trying to make up for what happened,” Bubbles says, exasperated. “And you’ll notice I got our choker enterprise back in business, too—we’ve got new orders from both Derek and Mackerel. By the way, who was that guy they were with? Does he look familiar?”
“Tales from the Crypt, maybe?” I retort. Now I wanna ask Bubbles about those orders for five chokers she told Derek we had. “How come you didn’t tell me we got orders for five chokers?” I ask defensively.
“’Cuz we don’t have orders for five chokers, Chuchie. Use that cabeza of yours for a change and some coins,” Bubbles huffs, knocking on my head with her knuckles. “I just said that to Derek, the gnocco, to drum up some business.”
“What’s a gnocco?” I ask, annoyed.
“A blockhead,” Bubbles says mischievously. Here she just got in trouble for calling Derek names, and already she has a new one for him? That’s Bubbles—always in trouble.
As for me, I don’t care what she says—I do use my cabeza—because I’m not the one getting all cuckoo over some blockhead with a gold mine in his mouth!
The twins stop talking with Derek’s friend and come over to join us at our table. “One of the ushers asked me if she could buy two of our chokers for her daughters—they’re twins, like us,” Aqua says excitedly, then pulls out a piece of paper with a name and phone number on it.
“We could sell two to her right now—because we have the five that we remade,” Bubbles points out.
“I’ll be right back with the cash,” Aqua says, grabbing the chokers from Bubbles and jumping up to find the usher.
We sit there, not saying a word. As for me, I’m still fuming at Galleria for knocking on my head with her knuckles.
Then Angie pipes up. “His name is Spider, by the way—and he is a member of this church.”
“Who?” Dorinda asks, puzzled.
“Derek’s friend. He goes to DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx.”
“Look at Angie, trying to make moves!” Bubbles says proudly. “Houston’s in the house!”
“Well, I was just trying to be nice, since Derek is the one who invited y’all,” Angie says, kinda embarrassed. (The twins never talk about boys.) “You know our daddy would ship us back to Granddaddy Walker’s Funeral Home in little pieces if he ever even thought we were going out with boys!”
“How gruesome,” Bubbles chuckles.
“I’m saving myself for Krusher,” I coo.
“You couldn’t even win a contest for a date with him, Chuchie. How are you gonna go out with him?” Bubbles asks, rolling her eyes at me.
I’m going to kill Bubbles! Luckily at that moment, Aqua runs back to the table, holding twenty dollars in her hand.
Then she sees that Bubbles is frowning. “We are selling them for ten dollars each, right?” Aqua asks puzzled.
“Yeah,” Bubbles says absentmindedly. She is obviously thinking about something else entirely. “Oh, yeah … I’ll hang on to the money till we split it up.”
That’s it! I’m so mad at her, I’m not even scared anymore to ask her about the song. “Bubbles, can I write ‘It’s Raining Benjamins’ with you?”
“What?” Bubbles looks like she’s been hit by a truck.
Dorinda looks at me, smiling nervously. She knows exactly what’s going to happen—Bubbles and I are about to have a big fight!
Even Aqua stops babbling for a change.
Poking her mouth out, Bubbles says in a really annoyed tone, “Chuchie, you couldn’t even figure out how to glue letters on the Cheetah Girl chokers. Now you’re gonna try to write songs, too? Please—don’t make me sneeze.”
“Here’s a Kleenex,” I say nastily, whipping a package of tissues out of my backpack. “I’ll bet you I can write songs just as well as you can!”
“You two need to stop!” Dorinda says, jumping in before Bubbles and I start pulling each other’s hair out. She has seen us fight before, so she knows. Ella sabe, está bien?
“Chuchie, I just don’t think it’s a good idea for you to write the songs with me,” Bubbles says, like she is Judge Jonas on television and she’s got a gavel to pound.
“Then I’m leaving!” I shout, wincing because leaving the Cheetah Girls is the last thing I want to do.
“Don’t do that, Chanel!” Dorinda says, trying to reason with me.
“No, I’m sick of Bubbles trying to run everything!” I say. I can feel the tears welling up in my eyes, but I’m not gonna let her see me cry. I turn to go.
“Come on, y’all, let’s all go,” Aqua says, pushing her plate aside and getting to her feet.
We all walk outside in silence, and head to the subway station. I’m the only one going downtown, so I take the train by myself.
Dorinda runs after me on the platform and gives me a hug. “Don’t worry, Chanel. I’m gonna talk to Galleria. This isn’t right, that the two of you are always fighting.”
“Whatever,” I say quietly, then hug Dorinda back. Bubbles doesn’t even say good-bye to me, and I act like I don’t care. If she wants to control everything so badly, then let her! She can run the whole jiggy jungle by herself, for all I care!
Chapter
8
The next morning before school, Bubbles calls me on my bedroom phone.
“Look, Chuchie. If you want to try to write a song with me, then we can do it at your house before we have rehearsal later.”
“Okay,” I say like I don’t care. “Whatever.” Maybe Bubbles is pulling one of her tricks.
“Chuchie, I said we’ll try to write a song together. What more do you want me to say?”
“Nada. Pero you could apologize for embarrassing me in front of everybody.” I realize I am screaming into the receiver; that I’m being “emotional”—just like Mom.
“Okay, calm down, Señorita. I’m sorry, okay?” Bubbles huffs. “Take a chill pill, pleez.”
Now I feel so embarrassed for acting cuckoo that I just say, “Okay, I’ll see you later.” I quickly hang up the receiver, then stick my tongue out at it. That’s what Bubbles does—cause trouble—just because she always wants everybody to do what she wants!
We should be happy that Def Duck Records is letting us record some songs for a demo tape, but instead, all I feel is worried that Bubbles is going to try to boss us around!
By the time I meet up with Dorinda and Bubbles at school, I see we’re back in the Cheetah Girls choker business.
“Look! I already got the twenty dollars from Derek and Mackerel,” Bubbles says, jumping up and down. “We’ve got forty dollars now—and counting. Here, you two try to sell two each,” Bubbles commands me and Dorinda, handing us each a pair of chokers.
“Bet,” says Dorinda. She gives me a hug and smiles. I realize that Bubbles probably already told her that we talked on the phone this morning. Sometimes, Dorinda and I talk on the phone, too—without Bubbles—because I think of Dorinda as a sister now. But not a sister that I sometimes hate—like Bubbles!
“You know, we should figure out how much exactly it costs us to make the chokers, so we make sure to charge enough,” Dorinda says, all businesslike.
Bubbles is right. Dorinda does have her eye on the ka-ching—the cash register. It’s really true!
Bubbles gives Dorinda a look, like, “Hold up—I’m running this choker show,” which makes Dorinda squirm a little.
“I mean, we should write down all the money we spend for materials, um, just to make sure,” Do’ Re Mi says sheepishly.
“Yeah—you’re right, we’ll do that later,” Galleria says, brushing her off. “For now, let’s just roll with the duckets coming in the bucket!” Bubbles has taken command again.
We do the Cheetah Girls handshake together—but inside, I don’t feel okay about everything. I don’t think Bubbles is serious about letting me write a song with her after school today. She just said that to get off the hook.
“Just a reminder, we have to meet Mouse Almighty and Freddy Fudge at the Def Duck Record Company office on Friday at four.” Bubbles is talking like she’s our manager now.
“Are we gonna record?” Dorinda asks.
“Not this time,” Galleria tells her. “We’re just meeting with the producer, so he can get to know us, and check out our vibe. The way the record company executive explained it, we’re just going there for a ‘meet and greet.’ After Mouse gets a feel for our flavor, he goes out and shops around for songs he thinks are right for us. Then he puts us in a studio to record them, and cut a mini demo tape.”
“Word!” Dorinda says, squinting her eyes. You can tell she’s really interested in how everything works.
“Where do we have to go?” I ask.
“They have a New York office at Thirty Rock.”
“Where?” I ask again, annoyed. I mean, we’re not going mountain climbing, está bien?
“Thirty Rockefeller Plaza, Chuchie—right by the ice skating rink where we used to go, back in the junior high school days.”
“Okay, Bubbles—I didn’t understand what you were saying,” I hiss at her.
Dorinda looks at us like, “Don’t you two start again!”
Today, my last class of the day is Italian, which I don’t really like at all. See, it’s kinda hard, and I’m not that good with languages—except for Spanish and English. Two is enough, está bien? I’m only taking Italian because Bubbles made me do it. I wanted to take Spanish, but she got really upset with me.
“Chuchie, you are Spanish,” she protested—which made me feel guilty, because it is la verdad. But why shouldn’t I take a class that’s easy for a change—para un cambio? It’s not like Bubbles is helping me with my homework—even though I haven’t asked her. But then again, why should I have to ask? She should know I need help!
I’m not listening to my teacher, Mr. Lepidotteri, because I’m too busy trying to write the words to “It’s Raining Benjamins.” It makes me feel so cool—tan coolio—that I am writing a song. Okay—trying to write a song.
Now I’m frustrated, though. I wanted to have the whole song written by lunchtime, so I could show Bubbles that I really can do it. Instead, I have simply scribbled, “Ayúdame!—help me!”—all over the margins, with unsmiley faces all around the border.
Luiza Santiago, my classmate, glances over and sees my doodles. When the class is over, I make a big deal of sighing—like I’m so relieved, and have better things to do with my time, está bien? Luiza leans over and studies my scribbles, then asks curiously, “What does ‘ayúdame’ mean?”
Luiza is “Spanglish,” like me—mostly Nuyorican, which means she is Puerto Rican born in Nueva York—and part Chilean.
Unlike me, Luiza doesn’t speak a word of Spanish.
“It means ‘help me,’” I say, giggling. “I’m trying to write this song ‘It’s Raining Benjamins’ for my group—but I guess the only thing I’ve figured out is where the doodles go!”
I can tell that Luiza is impressed, because she keeps staring at the doodled page, and tries to decipher more of my scribbles. “It must be kinda hard, writing a song.”
“Yeah. I mean I’ve got the general idea, but it just takes a lot of time to get it down on paper. You know how I am—I can’t sit still,” I say apologetically.
Luiza tries to figure out some of the words on the page, and reads them aloud. “‘There’s precipatation in the nation … and n
ot the kind you think—’”
Interrupting Luiza, I blurt out, “I think I’ve misspelled ‘precipatation.’”
“I think it’s p-r-e-c-i-p-i-t-a-t-i-o-n,” Luiza says slowly. “I think that’s right. Yeah, that’s right.”
I hurriedly cross out the “a,” and replace it with an “i.” That’s all I need, is for Bubbles to see that I misspell words. She’ll be like, “See, I told you, Chuchie, you can’t write a song!”
So what if I’m not as good at spelling as Bubbles? When we were in grade school, she always won the spelling bees. In the sixth grade, she even made it to the nationals of the spelling bee contests. Me, I’m lucky if I can spell my own name. But that doesn’t mean I can’t write songs, does it?
As la gente start leaving the classroom, I suddenly realize that I didn’t hear the homework assignment.
“Luiza!” I yell after her. “What’s the homework?”
She just shakes her head at me, and opens her notebook. “Idioms that go with the verb avere.”
Idioms? I feel like an idiota, because I don’t know what that means. “What’s an idiom?” I ask.
Now Luiza is getting a little annoyed. “Here,” she says, thrusting the notebook in my hand, and letting me read the homework assignment for myself.
“Oh, I get it,” I say, feeling like a babosa.
After I leave class, I take a deep breath and get ready for Freddy. The twins taught us this expression, and I don’t know exactly what it means. I think in this case, it means “I’m ready for bigmouthed Bubbles!”
Bubbles comes over to my house an hour earlier than the rest of the Cheetah Girls, so that we can write the song together. Dorinda has gone to the library to study, so she won’t have to go all the way home, then all the way back downtown again for rehearsal.
“Hey, Pucci, wazzup?” Bubbles exclaims.
Pucci loves Bubbles, and is always trying to show her his latest trading cards, stuffed animals, or whatever new computer gadget he’s got in his room. Sometimes he tells her jokes, too.
“Bubbles, what did the elephant say to the alligator after he swallowed him?” Pucci says, grinning at her like she’s the cat’s meow.
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