Talia Talk

by Christine Hurley Deriso

  He glanced at me from the corner of his eye, but I stared straight ahead. “So Grandma and I, we’re tickled that she’s willing to spend a little time with a friend. No telling what will come of it—they’re just friends, after all—but we think it’s a good thing.” He paused. “How about you?”

  Trees passed by my window in a blur. “Whatever,” I said.

  Grandpa stopped at a red light and turned to face me. “Talia, you’re the most important person in your mother’s life. If you’re not happy, she’s not happy.”

  What was that supposed to mean? “It’s fine that she’s having dinner with Jake, okay?” I snapped. “Geez! Are they eloping or something? Why are you making this seem like such a big deal? It’s dinner, for crying out loud.”

  Grandpa was silent.

  My face softened. “Sorry I snapped at you.” He reached for my hand and I squeezed it. “Spaghetti sounds really good.”

  More trees passed by in a blur. “Grandpa,” I said, staring dreamily out the window, “if you had a best friend who you totally loved—totally—but who was acting all goofy and annoying at school, making your other friends kinda avoid her…”

  My voice trailed off. More blurry trees, plus a few blurry kids walking on sidewalks with their blurry backpacks.

  “Are we supposing that my hypothetical best friend has always been goofy and annoying?” Grandpa asked. “Or are we supposing that my best friend has changed?”

  Good question. “We’re supposing that she’s always been goofy and annoying. We’re supposing it’s everybody else who has changed. The people who used to think she was really fun and funny now think she’s irritating and immature. Would you keep hanging out with a friend like that?”

  What a horrible question. How could I even consider dumping Bridget?

  Grandpa scratched his head with one hand while he steered with the other. “I’m a pretty loyal friend,” he said after a long pause. “If someone is a good friend to me, I’m not likely to care if other people suddenly turn against him. In fact, that’s when my loyalty really kicks in. If I have a reason to doubt his character or his friendship, that’s one thing. But what other people think doesn’t really wash with me.”

  I bit my lower lip. “But what if they kinda have a point?”

  Grandpa nodded. “Oh, so you’re saying that the reason they turned against this person is because she’s not such a nice person anymore.”

  “No, not at all,” I said quickly. “Your friend’s great. She’d give anybody the shirt off her back. She’s just loud and embarrassing sometimes.”

  Grandpa narrowed his eyes and looked at me sideways. “I’m loud and embarrassing sometimes. You wanna dump me?”

  I giggled. “No way. I love you just the way you are.”

  He nodded slowly, staring ahead as he drove. “Yup,” he said. “I guess that’s the definition of friendship in a nutshell.”

  12

  The phone was ringing when I got home from Grandma and Grandpa’s house that evening. Mom fiddled quickly with her keys so she could unlock the door. I ran in ahead of her and answered the phone. “Hello?”

  “Where ya been?”

  “Hi, Bridget. My mom had a…thing tonight, so I ate dinner with Grandma and Grandpa. She picked me up a few minutes ago and we just got home.”

  “A thing? What’s a thing?”

  Nothing slipped past Bridget.

  I carried my cordless phone into my room, shut the door behind me and plopped on my bed as I talked. “It’s weird,” I said in a hushed voice. “I think she’s kinda got a boyfriend.”

  Bridget gasped. “No way!”

  I shook my head quickly. “Not really a boyfriend,” I qualified. “Just a friend. His name is Jake. They had dinner. And they took me out for pizza the other night.”

  “Your mom has a boyfriend?” She made the word sound like a disease.

  I rolled my eyes. “A friend who’s a boy. Well, a man. Or a guy. Whatever. He’s pretty cool. I think they just like hanging out.”

  “Adults don’t hang out,” Bridget said. “They date and then get married. Omigod, Talia, you’re gonna have a stepfather!”

  I groaned. “Tonight was their first real date!”

  “Yeah, but the fact that your mom wanted you two to meet each other before they had a real date…she must have it bad.”

  I squinched my face in frustration. “ ‘Have it bad’? She’s my mother, Bridget, not a rock-star groupie.”

  “What are you gonna wear to the wedding?”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. Grandpa was right about friendship. Who cared what anybody else thought? Bridget always made me laugh.

  “Talia, I have to check this guy out,” Bridget continued. “Maybe do a background check or something. Do you think you could get a DNA sample without being too obvious? Like maybe a piece of his hair?”

  I was still chuckling. “Yeah, I’m pretty subtle about plucking out people’s hair.”

  “Ooooh, idea, idea!” Bridget cooed. “This can be your first Oddcast commentary. Rat out your mom about her new boyfriend!”

  I frowned. “I could never do that to my poor mom. She’d die.”

  “Oh, like you didn’t die when she told the whole world about your crush on the paperboy?”

  Good point.

  “Or like you didn’t die when she talked about you trying to stick antlers on your head with bubble gum for Christmas?”

  “Stop reminding me of all those things. You’ll activate my anxiety rash.”

  “You’re right. We should reserve our ammo for Mer and Brynne. You can tell the whole school Mer split her shorts at the baseball game last spring when she was doing a cartwheel trying to impress Todd Baisden.” Bridget giggled. “Remember the look on her face when she realized everybody was staring at her solar-system underpants? I called her Pluto for a month.”

  I rolled my eyes. “First of all, you’re assuming we’ll make the Oddcast staff.”

  “Oh, we’re in, girlfriend, we’re in.”

  “Second,” I said, “you’re assuming Ms. Stephens will let me do a commentary.”

  “Goes without saying. It’s a brilliant idea.”

  “And third, you’re assuming Ms. Stephens, who has to approve all the Oddcast copy, would let me talk about Meredith’s split shorts to the whole school.”

  “Good point,” Bridget said. “Dicey, but manageable. We’ll just tell all without using actual names. You know, ‘Students, today I’d like to talk about ways not to impress boys at baseball games. One: Skip the cartwheels if your shorts are painted on. Two: If your shorts are painted on and you do cartwheels anyhow, plan it that you’re wearing respectable-looking underpants.’ Get it? Plan it? Planet?”

  I giggled and shook my head. “I need to do my homework. Bye, Bridget. Beam back down to planet Earth in time for school tomorrow.”

  13

  About a dozen kids were already crowded around the Oddcast list when I reached Ms. Stephens’s door first thing the next morning. Meredith and Brynne were at the front of the line, squealing and jumping up and down.

  “Think they made it?” Ben Angelo teased as I burrowed my head closer.

  “Coming through, coming through!”

  It was Bridget, speed-walking down the hall as she approached Ms. Stephens’s door. “Are we in? Are we in?” she asked as she reached my side. We. I was always a we with Bridget.

  “I dunno. I can’t see the list yet,” I said, rising to my tiptoes for a better view.

  By this time, Ben had inched close enough to see the list. “You’re in,” he told me.

  “Really?”

  “Okay, guys, I’ll read the list out loud if that will keep you from squishing me,” Meredith said. “The Oddcast staff is me, Brynne, Carl Brantley, David McNair, Shelley Grayson, Ben Angelo and Talia Farrow.”

  My heart skipped a beat. No Bridget?

  “Oh, and Bridget,” Meredith added grudgingly.

  I bounced on my toes. “We’re in! We
’re in!”

  “Does it have me down for director?” Bridget asked Meredith.

  Mer planted a hand on her hip. “Look, just because you’re the director doesn’t mean you get to always have your way and boss everybody around.”

  “I’m the director!” Bridget grabbed my hands and spun me around, knocking me into Ben.

  “Bridget!” I scolded, tossing Ben an apologetic glance.

  The crowd started thinning as kids who hadn’t made the cut lowered their heads and walked away. Poor guys. I knew the feeling from powder-puff cheerleading tryouts, fourth-grade volleyball tryouts, fifth-grade election for class officers…. The list went on.

  “This is the first time I’ve ever won anything,” I gushed to Bridget, then noticed Ms. Stephens had walked up.

  “You didn’t win it, you earned it,” Ms. Stephens said. “Congratulations, Oddcast staff.”

  “Ms. Stephens, I’d like to start a fashion report for the Oddcast,” Meredith said, raising her hand.

  “Me too!” Brynne echoed.

  Ms. Stephens waved her hands to calm everybody down. “Our first meeting is Thursday after school,” she said. “We’ll plan on launching the Oddcast next week, assuming we’re ready. Right now, it’s time to get to class.”

  “A fashion report?” Bridget asked me with a snicker as we walked toward Ms. Perkins’s class. “Can she start by blending in her blush?”

  “You’re a total laugh riot,” Meredith snapped, overhearing. “Just remember: you don’t get to make all the rules.”

  “Yeah, Bridget,” Brynne chimed in. “Don’t forget the tug-of-war.”

  Bridget rolled her eyes. “What does the tug-of-war have to do with anything?”

  “If I remember correctly, you’re the one who ended up covered in mud,” Brynne replied.

  “So you’re threatening to pull me into the mud?”

  Meredith smiled at Brynne and raised an eyebrow. “Not a bad idea.”

  “So,” I said as I swallowed a bite of my chicken sandwich in the cafeteria, “think we’ll be ready for our first Oddcast next week?”

  Bridget bounced in her seat. “Oh, we’ll be ready. Ben and I have already started brainstorming. We’re going to do person-on-the-street interviews when people are changing classes. You know, like, ‘What do you consider to be Ms. Perkins’s most unfortunate facial feature?’

  I giggled.

  “And we’re staying after school shooting footage of different activities. We’ll be shooting the cheerleaders tomorrow. Shooting cheerleaders: I like the sound of that. Uh-oh. Speaking of which…,” she said in a lowered voice, looking over my shoulder.

  “Hi, Talia,” Meredith said as she and Brynne reached our table. “Um, we’re sitting at that table over there.” She motioned with her head toward the other side of the cafeteria. “You can sit with us if you want. The thing is, there’s only one extra seat.”

  She tossed Bridget a fake smile.

  “No problem,” Bridget said with a mouth full of salad. “I’ll sit on Talia’s lap. Let’s go, Talia. That side of the cafeteria looks way cooler than this side. I think that side has designer linoleum.”

  Meredith and Brynne rolled their eyes. “Whatever,” Meredith said. “I was just offering to be nice. So, sit where you want, Talia.”

  My eyes darted from Bridget to Meredith and back again.

  “Um…,” I said, licking my lips, “we’ve already started eating, so I’m good. But thanks for asking. Maybe tomorrow?”

  I could feel Bridget’s eyes boring into me, but I kept my focus on Meredith.

  “Whatever,” Meredith said. “And don’t forget about the…the…” She cast an annoyed glance at Bridget. “The event I mentioned in Ms. Stephens’s room yesterday.”

  “Right,” I mumbled.

  “Well, see ya,” Meredith said, and she and Brynne walked to the opposite side of the cafeteria.

  Bridget was still staring me down as I gazed at my macaroni and cheese.

  “ ‘Maybe tomorrow’?” she asked me accusingly.

  “What?” I said, pretending I hadn’t quite been following the conversation.

  “Maybe tomorrow you’ll sit with the Snob Squad?”

  I waved my hand through the air. “I was just being nice,” I said, hurrying to take another bite so my mouth would be full.

  Bridget paused, still studying my face. “So will you sit with them tomorrow, just to be nice?”

  I chewed extra long to keep my mouth occupied. But Bridget was willing to wait me out. I had no choice but to swallow. “What’s the big deal?” I said, still avoiding eye contact. “We can sit here, we can sit there…whatever.”

  Bridget’s eyebrows crinkled together. “No, you can sit here or you can sit there. I wasn’t invited.”

  I put my fork down and gritted my teeth. “Nobody was invited,” I said, trying to sound annoyed. “They just said an extra chair was at their table, in case anybody wanted to sit in it.”

  “In case you wanted to sit in it,” Bridget said, emphasizing every word. “And what ‘event’ was Meredith talking about? Did she invite you to a party or something?”

  I rolled my eyes. “As if.”

  Bridget shook her head slowly. “You are such a suck-up.”

  I felt my face flush. “Then why do you want to hang around me?”

  Bridget’s shoulders stiffened. “Maybe I don’t.”

  “You’re not exactly nice to them either, you know,” I reminded her. “Making fun of their makeup? Even when we were all friends, you used to rag on them. Remember Mer’s underpants? Pluto?”

  Bridget’s jaw dropped. “You were laughing just as hard as I was!”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have been. Meredith wasn’t laughing.”

  Bridget’s eyes narrowed into slits. “Meredith and Brynne laugh at me every day. Or haven’t you noticed? I was a great friend to them until they started dissing me. I guess I’m funny that way, not liking friends to treat me like garbage.”

  “Maybe if you didn’t embarrass us so much…”

  Time froze as Bridget’s eyes locked with mine. Finally, she said in a steely voice, “Consider it done.”

  She stood up and walked to another table.

  My stomach knotted as I stared into my macaroni and cheese. I picked at it a couple of times, but the fork never made it to my mouth. Bridget was so infuriating! Why was she making me feel this way? Why did I have to choose between friends? It was so unfair!

  I slammed my fork on my plate. “She’s the one who left,” I muttered to myself, which made it perfectly logical to do what I did next.

  I went and sat with Mer and Brynne.

  14

  “And the forms for parent volunteers are due Monday,” Brynne said into the camera from the teachers’ conference room, which doubled as our Oddcast studio.

  Brynne sat behind the conference table with the other reporters and me, facing Ms. Stephens, Bridget and Ben Angelo, who was operating the camcorder.

  Today’s after-school meeting was doubling as our dress rehearsal, our last chance to practice before presenting our debut Oddcast the next morning.

  “Cut,” Bridget barked as Brynne continued her part of the script. “You’re overenunciating.”

  Ben turned off the camcorder and Brynne held up the palms of her hands. “Huh?” Brynne said.

  “O-ver-e-nun-ci-a-ting.”

  Brynne pouted at Ms. Stephens. “Does Bridget get to boss us around just because she’s the director? She’s more like a dictator.”

  Ms. Stephens shrugged. “Bridget’s right; your speech patterns sound a little forced. Just relax and be natural. Act like you’re sharing the information with a friend.”

  “And one who’s not hard of hearing,” Bridget added.

  Brynne read her lines again, more naturally this time.

  “Much better,” Ms. Stephens said. “Let’s move on to Talia. Talia, are you ready for your first commentary tomorrow?”

  I sucked in my bottom l
ip. “I guess.”

  I reached into my backpack, pulled out the essay I’d drafted the first day of school, smoothed it on the table and cleared my throat. I started reading, making sure to look into the camera every few seconds like Mom had taught me. Ben was smiling at me from behind the camcorder. My voice trembled at first, then grew firmer.

  “But here are a few things I’ve learned so far that might help my fellow newbies,” I read. “One: Locker combinations are trickier than they look—”

  “Cut!” Bridget groaned.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You can’t use the same essay you wrote two weeks ago,” Bridget responded. “I think ‘the newbies’ have had time to figure out their locker combinations by now, don’t you think?”

  I blushed. Bridget had avoided me since our spat in the lunchroom. It suited me fine. She was the one who’d walked away. She was the one who couldn’t take a little constructive criticism. Granted, it was getting a little boring spending lunch periods listening to Meredith talk about her Threads registry, but at least she and Brynne didn’t embarrass me to death. Besides, Bridget had been spending lunch periods shooting footage with Ben and Shelley, the Oddcast videographers. It was a relief to have a little space. Being joined at the hip with Bridget was exhausting.

  “Ms. Stephens, tell Talia she has to write a new essay,” Bridget said in a clipped tone.

  “I think the essay still works,” Ms. Stephens said.

  “Not!” Bridget wailed. “It’s so two weeks ago. Talia’s had all this time to write something new.”

  “Which I would have happily done, if anyone had told me I needed to,” I said through gritted teeth.

  “Consider yourself told,” Bridget said icily.

  Mer and Brynne twittered beside me. Ben shut off his camcorder and let out a low whistle.