Cassidy's Guide to Everyday Etiquette (and Obfuscation)

by Sue Stauffacher

  “Nothing. Nope.”

  We both stared up at the glowing orange ball through the trees…silent.

  “Suddenly there’s a whole lot of nothing in this backyard,” Jack said, right before faking left and grabbing the photo I was holding.

  Blasted Jack Taylor! He was faster than…green grass through a goose.

  “So, who’s this? Great-Grandma Reed again?” Sitting down on the back step, Jack studied the picture in the porch light.

  “Magda found it on findyourancestors.net.” I sat down next to him. You couldn’t really tell who was who in the photo since all the people were bundled up in big jackets with hoods. The caption on the back of the photo read: “Saving baby seals in Gdansk.”

  “Which one is she?”

  “The lady who sent it to Magda said she was second from the right.”

  “You’re sure this is Great-Grandma Reed?”

  “Pretty sure, yep. Those people on findyourancestors.net spend a lot of time figuring out who’s who. The lady who helped Magda is the granddaughter of this guy.” I pointed to the man standing next to my great-grandma. “She says he was her boyfriend.”

  “She was really something, wasn’t she?”

  “What I can’t figure is why she sent me off to etiquette school and not, I don’t know, wilderness training. How much etiquette do you need to save a baby seal?”

  “None, would be my guess.” We sat there a minute, watching the fireflies. The light went off in the Bensons’ kitchen.

  “Oops.” Jack jumped up and picked up his flowers. “Gotta go. See you at the picnic tomorrow, right?”

  “If you’re lucky. You should have cleaned the grass clippings off,” I told him. “She’s gonna know you didn’t buy ’em.”

  “I tried, but they stick worse than cat hair.”

  “I’ll have to start charging you to cross my backyard, you know,” I called after him. “You’re wearing a path in the grass.”

  “I can go by the road if you want.”

  “Jack!” Maybe Livvy was right. Maybe boys weren’t worth the trouble.

  “Later, Cass.”

  I wasn’t about to stand there and watch—well, not from the back porch, anyway. I sat down near the bushes and listened as Bree got all emotional, saying things like “These flowers smell like summer” and “Every girl likes to be surprised,” and Jack saying he was sorry about the grass clippings and Bree saying she knew just the thing to do to perk them up—immerse the buds in cold water for just a minute—and did Jack want to come in and have a glass of Arnold Palmer while she did it.

  Which is just about the time I felt something really big crawl over my hand; I flung it off as I jumped to my feet, screaming like I was being hit with a billy club. Bree made a little yelping noise and asked Jack what was happening. Jack said it was nothing, just Cassidy, who always does that when she sees a bug.

  And then the Bensons’ back door closed.

  —

  The only way to properly mark time during summer is with the holidays—Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Magda’s birthday and Labor Day. Memorial Day is one of my favorite holidays of all time. Celebrating it means you get a day off school and you’re kissing distance from the last day. I try to feel sad on Memorial Day for all the soldiers who died for my freedom, but I don’t think they’d mind me celebrating it—my almost freedom from school, that is.

  Labor Day’s a different story. You’re about to head into a whole year of…labor. Who needs to be reminded? Magda’s birthday is at the end of August. I do get a piece of real cake, but the summer’s almost over and Magda gets the most boring presents imaginable.

  Which brings me to Independence Day. On the downside, ever since the city decided to close the pools a week early to save money but keep the Fourth of July fireworks display, Mom has made us boycott the celebration downtown. I feel this is a violation of my rights as an American citizen, but no one in the Corcoran clan seems to care much about those. On the upside, it is now legal to buy fireworks in Michigan, making our neighborhood Fourth of July party a lot…longer. The explosions start around the third week in June and finish up about July 10.

  Usually by now, we’d have gone to Lake Michigan, camped out at Michigan Pioneer Experience Park and even tubed down the Pine River. But who has time for dull stuff like that when you’re learning to be a young lady and cough into your wrist?

  Maybe that’s why I vowed to soak up as much fun as I possibly could at the Fox Hills Fourth of July neighborhood picnic. I planned to eat more bratwurst and potato salad and drink more root beer on tap than your average young lady—plus, I would light more crackling balls and ground bloom flowers, and twirl more giant sparklers. Plus, plus, I would convince Mom to let me sit on the roof to watch the Deanders’ teenage sons shoot off bottle rockets. (I have found if you want to be near the action on the Fourth of July, find some teenage boys and a dad who drives a pickup truck.)

  But by now, you probably have a sense of how things trend for Cassidy Corcoran. There’s karma that goes south and there’s karma that treks to the South Pole—yours truly’s. Yes, I was first in line for a brat—I even had two paper plates nestled together so I could keep my baked beans and my potato salad separate. But there came Mr. and Mrs. Fenster with wretched Percy, and Mom and Dad called me out of line to make polite conversation with them!

  “It’s so nice to see you, Mr. and Mrs. Fenster,” I said, keeping my knees bent in the neutral position for a quick getaway. “How are you enjoying the Sunny Pointe Senior Center? I’m surprised, with all the concern over allergies and fleas and whatnot, they let you keep Percy.” As soon as he heard his name cross my lips, Percy snarled at me.

  “Percy’s a senior, too, dear,” Mrs. Fenster said. “And we do have our own condominium.”

  “Fine weather we’re having…” I watched the neighborhood kids jumping in line for brats. Now I’d have to wait for the next round! A pair of redheaded twins, who looked to be about seven, cut in at a bend in the line. If I could get away with it, I might—

  “Can you hear me, Miss Corcoran? I asked how your manners class is going.” It seemed Mr. Fenster was determined to keep me from my brat. He leaned in. “Those are Mrs. Delaney’s grandkids, by the way—visiting from Washington State. Mrs. Fenster and I call them Thing One and Thing Two. You know, after the two whirling dervishes in the Dr. Seuss book.”

  Though I had no interest in talking literature with Mr. Fenster, I did see what he meant—I counted at least six personal-space violations on those two while I was having my polite conversation.

  “Young people today have an appalling lack of manners,” I responded. “If you’ll excuse me…”

  I was about to sweet-talk my way into the food line when I heard Mrs. Benson calling my name. “Cassidy…can you…?”

  She looked positively lost in all the hustle and bustle of the Fox Hills Fourth of July celebration. “Honey,” she said. “I brought that cake you liked so much, but there doesn’t seem to be a cake table. In Decatur, we had a whole separate tent for desserts so the frosting could stay perky out of the sun.”

  I tried to imagine Mrs. Benson’s cake on our dessert picnic table, which looked more like Hobby Lobby on the day after Christmas, with all the red-striped Rice Krispies Treats and boxes of neon Popsicles shoved into buckets of ice. There wasn’t room for a flour and butter and sugar sculpture like hers.

  Unless I made room for it. Taking the cake stand from Mrs. Benson, I said, “I’ll make sure it doesn’t melt.” I figured holding that cake would gain me entrance to the back of the table, where the moms stood swatting away kids who tried to fill their plates with only desserts.

  “Excuse me, ladies. You probably haven’t met Mrs. Benson, but you will want to after you taste this cake.”

  Mrs. Cramer and Mrs. Lowe looked at me funny; I couldn’t tell if it was because I was speaking in fine-manners language or because I’d just parked the Cadillac of desserts on their gingham tablecloth.

  �
��Sounds like someone’s been to a manners class,” Mrs. Lowe said.

  “Bingo.” I gestured toward Mrs. Benson. “I’d like you to meet Mrs. Benson, the cake baker.”

  “Call me Olive Ann,” Mrs. Benson said, reaching over me to shake hands. “Goodness, it’s warm. Not like Decatur—we just moved here from Georgia—but certainly a hot one. I confess I’m worried about this cake.”

  According to Miss Melton-Mowry, Mrs. Benson had just fed these two ladies a couple of key pieces of information about herself; in fact, she’d given them a big serving of polite conversation. But the only thing they passed back to her was silence.

  “Not sure where to put this,” Mrs. Cramer said, finally, setting it down near the edge of the table.

  “I want some of that.” I looked up to see Thing One (or was it Thing Two?) bypass the salads and other sides and zero in on Mrs. Benson’s cake. As soon as he got close enough, he put his hand on the glass cover, leaving a barbecue-sauce print.

  “I call the first piece!” The other one pushed his brother’s arm, smearing frosting against the glass.

  Using the intensity of my gaze wasn’t about to cut it with these two. I threw my arms around the cake cover in a variation of the cross-armed surfboard, ready to do what it took to protect Mrs. Benson’s masterpiece. Unfortunately, she was moving in to defend at the same time.

  “It’s all right, Cassidy, I’ll just take that—”

  I was doing hold-the-fort and she was doing duck-and-cover. If we were in a WWE wrestling match and the cake was our opponent, we’d win the round for…crushing it.

  “What is the matter with kids nowadays?” I asked Mrs. Benson as I scraped a third of the crumpled cake onto a paper plate.

  “Would you ladies like to try a bite?” Still game to make friends, Mrs. Benson looked as crushed as the cake when Mrs. Cramer shook her head. “No thanks. I don’t do gluten.”

  “No processed flour or sugar for me,” added Mrs. Lowe, frowning.

  By the time I cleaned up the mess and delivered Mrs. Benson to my dad, who offered her a virgin strawberry margarita with frozen blueberries—in honor of our great flag—all that was left were wrinkly, overcooked brats; Mrs. Pearce’s quinoa salad with toasted sunflower seeds; and some half-melted Rocket pops.

  And when it was dark enough for the neighborhood fireworks to begin, I’d only managed to convince Mom to let me watch out my bedroom window. Instead of getting a clear view of the Deanders’ backyard or a fighting chance of seeing a starburst from downtown, I saw Jack demonstrating for Bree his ability to swing upside down in the oak tree while twirling two extra-long sparklers.

  There was nothing left to do but construct the world’s largest sweat lodge—which would probably require stealing all of Magda’s and my parents’ bedding. I was considering how to make this dream a reality when someone knocked on my door. Given the Titanic direction of my karma, I thought maybe it was Miss Melton-Mowry with some homework I’d forgotten to complete.

  But no. It was Delton Bean.

  “This is your room?” Delton asked as his eyes did a full one-eighty. “I would ask to come in, but—”

  “Yes, it’s booby-trapped. Plus, we have WWE wrestling tournaments in here; plus, I didn’t invite you.”

  “No.” Delton looked positively cheerful. “But I want to invite you over to Riverside Park. Your mom told me I’d probably find you moping up here.”

  “Riverside Park? Now?”

  “Yes. My mother says that if you agree to wear the life vest, I can take you out in my uncle Roger’s canoe and show you how to set off a sky lantern. I make them myself.”

  “Delton, you have to be the weirdest kid I have ever met.”

  “ ‘Young man’ is a more accurate term for an eleven-year-old, Miss Corcoran. And ‘weird’ is not a fit word for polite conversation. ‘Quirky,’ maybe? ‘Eccentric’? ‘Unconventional’?”

  “Okay,” I said. “Uncle. I’ll wear the life vest.”

  And faster than a hot knife through butter—as Jack would say Bree would say—I was clipping it on at Riverside Park.

  Mrs. Bean was not about to let us out of her sight; she did agree to sit on the park bench at the end of the dock, though, so she could follow our progress via the kerosene lamp we secured to the middle seat in the canoe. After we’d paddled for a minute, she disappeared into the darkness.

  “Cassidy, I think…I might…I may have found another way to address your…anxiety.”

  “You mean with the bugs? Is that why you brought me out here, Delton?”

  I squinted, trying to get a look at his face in the darkness. Was there any way he could know what happened last night with Jack?

  “No, I brought you out here to help me launch my sky lanterns. But my dad says you should have business before pleasure.”

  Thinking of what Jack said to Bree sent a shiver down my spine: That’s just Cassidy. She always does that when she sees a bug.

  Well, I didn’t feel like being “just Cassidy” anymore. “I hope this doesn’t involve smacking myself in the forehead, because that did not work.”

  “Tapping, not smacking, but I agree. EFT tends to draw unwanted attention, especially when you do it during Joys and Concerns in Sunday school. This one’s a little different. It’s called desensitization. You learn relaxation techniques and then look at pictures of what psychologists call a graduated list of the things you fear, from lowest to highest. Looking at or thinking about your fears while in a relaxed state breaks down the fear response. You can’t feel anxiety when you are in a relaxed state.”

  “You’re going to put me in a trance, aren’t you.”

  “No. Deep relaxation isn’t a trance. But it does work, Cassidy. After a week of practicing, I got everyone’s attention at dinner at my grandparents’—I stood up, raised my glass of grape juice and said ‘Cheers’—but I didn’t break out in a sweat or anything. Next, Mom says she’ll have me order at the counter when we go to Mr. Burger. You really have to shout at that place.”

  “All right. Deep relaxation is okay, but no hocus-pocus. Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  Now that we’d taken care of business, I grabbed the sides of the canoe; I was about to threaten Delton with the move I got famous for during my one and only stint at Girl Scout camp when I realized I’d forgotten something. “Thank you, Mr. Bean,” I said. Sincerely. Re-creating the Battle of Tippecanoe could wait.

  “You’re welcome. Now, let’s row over to that dead log. I need to get set up.” While I held on to the log to keep us still, Delton lifted the kerosene lamp and hooked it on a snag. Then he opened the box and pulled out big stiff triangles of tissue paper. I shone his flashlight on them so he could see.

  “They’re polyhedrons…,” he began to explain. “Three-dimensional objects with flat sides and straight edges. A bipyramid is the most common—” He was interrupted by the sound of a cell phone buzzing.

  Delton pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Hi, Mom. I know visibility is low. We talked about the mist on the way over to Cassidy’s, remember? Can you see the kerosene lamp? Uh-huh. That’s where we’re moored. You’ll see the lanterns in a minute.”

  After several more assurances about the buckles on our life vests being fastened in accordance with the manufacturer’s instructions, Delton ended the call. “Just remember, when I said it, it was true.”

  “So, you’re going to make these things float?” I held up the paper ships. “Doesn’t seem likely.”

  “Float up. They’re like mini hot-air balloons. Problem is, there’s not much visibility. We’ll have to paddle after them to keep them in sight.”

  “I think I’ve seen these on TV. They lit up hundreds at the same time. I didn’t know you could make them.”

  “I use the South American method as opposed to the Chinese. The Chinese used sky lanterns during wartime. They favor a large globe with a stiff paper collar—”

  “Delton, can this please not be like manners class, where you
talk something to death before you actually do it?”

  “Sorry. Will you light this tea candle for me?”

  I did what I was told and Delton placed the lighted candle in a little holder that hung down under his poly…whatever. He held it in his hand for maybe ten seconds before the hot air filled the lantern and it hovered above the canoe all by itself. Then, slowly, it started to rise. The light from the candle made the colored tissue paper glow, like a giant firefly bobbing in the air.

  “Wow, I can barely see it anymore. Do another one.”

  “First we’ll follow it. Turn your flashlight off for a minute.” Delton pushed away from the log.

  “Don’t you want your lamp?”

  “We’ll come back for it…it’s where we’re moored, remember?”

  “Delton! Are you pulling one over on your mom?”

  “I prefer…ignorance is bliss.”

  Once we were further out, we could see the lantern again. We paddled downstream, following the bobbing light until it burst into flames and fell into the water.

  “My dad and I design them to do that,” he said as we pulled alongside the burned bits and he hauled the wire skeleton out with his oar. “We do it over water so they’re not a fire hazard; plus, this way I can reuse the armature.”

  I lit another candle. Delton placed it in the wire basket of an airship that was pink and purple; it looked like its own setting sun as it rose into the sky.

  After three more lanterns, we were almost to the Sixth Street Bridge; Delton’s phone was blowing up with texts.

  “Better head back,” he said. We paddled in silence. Even though the current wasn’t that strong, it was much harder going upstream. But the clouds had lifted and here we were canoeing at night under about a million sky lanterns. It was the kind of place a hobo might find herself—minus the bright-orange life vest.

  Suddenly, from behind, I heard a sonic boom that almost brought back Tippecanoe. “What was that?”

  Delton looked at his phone. “Right on time. Downtown fireworks, Miss Corcoran.”

  “You mean…city fireworks?”

  “Yep. I heard you complaining to Officer Weston about not being able to see the fireworks anymore.” Delton dropped a metal claw over the side of the canoe and it sank in the mud.