“What have I told you about that, young lady?” Gigi’s dangling silver fan-shaped earrings with the turquoise beads tinkled as she shook her head. “You’re going to end up looking like a piece of venison jerky! Do you want to look like you’re seventy-five when you’re thirty?”
She had just turned eleven and Gigi wanted her to think about being thirty? The car kept motoring forward while Gigi turned and looked over her shoulder. “Hmmm?”
“Look out!” Minni pointed with one hand and covered her eyes with the other.
Gigi slammed on the brakes and Banjo shot to the floorboard with a thud. They screeched to a stop just in time to avoid the car in front of them. Good thing they all had their seat belts on. Except Banjo, of course.
The dog jumped back up and licked Gigi’s face.
“That’s so gross,” Keira said. “Why do you let him do that?”
“What can I say? He likes the taste of Marla Ray. And with our all-natural, one-hundred-percent purely botanical ingredients, it’s good for him, too.”
“But he’s getting you all slobbery.” Keira made a face.
“It keeps me cool. And when you’re going through ‘the change,’ you need all the help you can get in that department.”
Gigi was always talking about going through “the change” and how it made her hot. When they’d asked Mama what “the change” was she’d said it was an old-woman thing and they didn’t need to worry about it for a long time. Gigi got offended when they told her what Mama had said. “You’re only as old as you look. Do I look old to you?” Of course they knew to shake their heads no to that one. And with all the makeup she wore, and her short hair dyed as red as the sun setting on the Pacific Ocean, and her big silver and turquoise jewelry, she didn’t look that old.
Minni often wondered what Gigi would look like without all that stuff. Would she still look like herself, or would she be someone else?
The light turned green and Gigi set Banjo on the seat.
“When I have my own fashion design company, I’ll be able to help you stay cool, and it won’t involve slobber,” Keira said.
“How’s that?” Gigi asked.
“Well, you know about global warming, right?”
“You don’t even believe in global warming!” Minni said. She was the one who was always telling Keira about it, trying to get her to take shorter showers and turn off the lights in their room when she left so they’d burn less fuel and do less damage to Mount Rainier’s precious glaciers.
“As I was saying…” Keira put her arms on the back of the front passenger seat, stretching the seat belt as far as it would go. Banjo jumped up and head-butted her. “Ow!” She fell back. “Dopey dog,” she muttered.
“As you were saying…,” Gigi repeated.
“As I was saying,” Keira said, eyeing the dog, “I’m working on a new line. I call it Global Chillin’. Get it? ‘Cool fashions for a warming world.’”
Minni groaned. Leave it to Keira to take a global crisis and figure out how to make it into a new fashion fad.
Keira stared at Minni. “What? You wouldn’t get so sunburned if you wore my ultrabreathable, sheer UV-protection jumpsuit and matching sun hat—in reflective silver or bronze.”
“Sounds brilliant, Keira. Sheer genius!” Gigi looked back and smiled. She returned her eyes to the road just in time to avoid hitting a man crossing the street. Screech!
Thud. Banjo hit the floor again.
“Sorry!” Gigi yelled out the window. The man gave them a dirty look.
They weren’t even out of town and they’d already almost gotten into two accidents. This trip was doomed.
Keira continued to describe her latest fashion line as they pulled onto Highway 101 and picked up speed.
Minni listened in awe. Keira was super-smart—something not all their teachers had understood, since she struggled so hard with reading. But Minni had always known her sister’s intelligence, starting from when they were five and Keira had gotten the word “freedom” during a family game of Pictionary. She had drawn a picture-perfect version of the Statue of Liberty.
Banjo jumped onto the seat and stuck his head outside. His tongue flapped in the breeze. The air was warm, and fresh with the scent of evergreen. The highway skirted the Olympic National Forest. Pine trees came right up to the edge of the road, with only an occasional break for a cluster of tiny resort cabins.
At the wide spot in the road that was the “downtown” of booming Discovery Bay, they passed Fat Smitty’s, a ramshackle joint with a giant plastic cheeseburger out front, and Discovery Bay Railroad—a line of parked train cars painted in pastels that served pizza and ice cream. Minni and Keira loved both places and had eaten at them with Gigi many times.
Minni was about to recommend that Keira could make her Global Chillin’ line even hipper by using eco-friendly fabrics when a long string of slobber released from Banjo’s mouth and flew in through Keira’s rolled-down window—just as Keira opened wide to speak.
Keira practically hit the ceiling. “Ahhh! Banjo slaaah-buh im-mah mouw! Stah the cah! Stah the cah!”
“What?” Gigi said. The car careened toward the highway shoulder and Gigi jammed on the brakes.
Thud. Poor Banjo.
Keira shook her hands in front of her. They looked like rubber chickens. She scrunched her face. “Slaaah-buh!” Keira moaned. The way she was acting, you’d have thought she’d just swallowed a huge, hairy spider and not a little dog spittle. Minni stifled a giggle.
“What is she saying?” Gigi turned to look.
“Banjo slobbered…” Minni felt a laugh attack coming on. “In her mouth!” She stopped trying to contain her giggles and laughed so hard she snorted.
Gigi sounded like a parrot choking. “Wuh-ut!” Her shoulders jumped up and down with her guffaws.
“Thnot fuh-neh!” Keira cried.
Gigi kept laughing.
Minni put her hand over her mouth and tried hard to swallow her laughter, but she couldn’t help it. It wasn’t like Keira was going to die, even if she acted as if she were. Keira wiped her tongue on her shirt, then let it hang out of her mouth, as if it were a towel on a clothesline and she was trying to get it to dry.
Banjo put his paws on the seat in front of Keira. His shiny black eyes peered at her from under thick tufts of hair, and Minni swore his mouth formed a crooked little smile.
Gigi let out a big sigh. “Oh, I haven’t laughed like that for ages. Whew, did that feel good!” She opened her glove box, grabbed a pile of paper napkins and handed some to Keira, who snatched them and wiped her tongue some more. Gigi took one and dabbed at her cheeks. “I knew there was a reason I reached for that waterproof mascara this morning.”
Keira’s eyelids lowered and her lips pooched out. “It wasn’t funny,” she grumbled.
“Don’t be a Grumpy Gus. Banjo didn’t mean to slobber in your mouth.” Gigi held Banjo in the air between the front and back seats. “Did you, boy?” She waggled him so his head moved back and forth. “Say you’re sorry.”
Banjo barked.
“Apology accepted?” Gigi asked. Keira glared at the dog.
“What if it had been me, Keira?” Minni said. “Wouldn’t you have thought it was funny? Even just a little bit?”
Keira’s mouth slid to the side of her face. She looked like Mama when she did that. “Maybe. But only a little bit.” She ran the back of her hand over her mouth once more and shivered. “And I never, ever want that to happen again.”
Minni put her arm around Keira’s neck and squeezed. She was glad to be here, even if the last thing in the world she wanted was a silly, frilly, long dress. If she had to do this pageant, at least she’d be doing it with her twin sister.
Chapter Six
Fifteen minutes or so after what would forever be known between Gigi and Minni as The Slobber Incident, they pulled into a Sequim strip mall and parked. Keira immediately headed to the Burger Barn across the street to kill the dog germs with some fizzy cola.<
br />
Since Minni was boycotting Burger Barn (she’d read online recently about the treatment of animals sold for meat to its restaurants), she decided to start looking at dresses without them. Might as well just get it over with, she thought. The sooner she found something, the sooner she could rejoin Banjo in the car.
She entered the store and started walking along the rows of gowns, her hand occasionally reaching out to touch the fabrics. Satin…velvet…silk. She only knew their names because of Keira and her passion for fashion.
She reached out and touched a dress’s hot pink taffeta bodice and its full tulle skirt.
Hideous.
With her pale skin and red hair…No way. Total Bozo the Ballerina.
The storekeeper, talking on the phone behind the counter, smiled and held up a finger to indicate she’d be with Minni in a moment. Her white teeth stood out against her fake-tan skin. Minni knew fake tan when she saw it. She had once taken Gigi’s tube of the orange-brown stuff and rubbed it on her arms to see if she could get closer to Keira’s shade.
Minni went back to her task, every once in a while pushing back a dress to take a look. The gowns pressed against one another like the books on her overcrowded bookshelf. It wasn’t a bad comparison. Come to think of it, Keira read clothing like Minni read books. Everyone had a personal style statement, Keira said. What they wore spoke volumes.
Keira had dubbed Gigi’s personal style Outlet Chic and Mama’s Mother Africa Artiste. Minni’s was Geek Chic, which Minni thought was funny. Keira had pronounced her own style Tween Haute Couture, which she always followed up with the explanation, “That means trendsetting fashions for preteens in French.”
The woman hung up the phone and started toward Minni. “Are you looking for something in particular, dear?”
Minni shook her head. She had no idea what she was looking for. She couldn’t imagine herself in anything with sequins, puffy sleeves or a Cinderella skirt. And if she put on one of these strapless thingies there’d be nothing to keep it from falling around her ankles. If her chest were one of those maps with various colors for different elevations, it’d be all the same color.
She looked across the street to the Burger Barn. Where were Keira and Gigi? They were the experts at this stuff. Set them loose together in a mall and watch out. They approached stores as strategically as a search-and-rescue team, covering every square inch to make sure not one deal was missed. They would pile the clothes so high that they’d exceed the dressing room limit and have to leave most of them outside. Minni’s task became watching the mountain of clothes and having the next ten outfits ready to go.
She pulled out a light turquoise gown that shimmered with a rainbow of colors, like the inside of an oyster. She held it up to herself and ran her hand down the full skirt.
“That would work wonderfully with your coloring.” The woman stood back and looked her up and down. “Definitely. It brings out the blue in your eyes and highlights your lovely red hair.” She reached for the dress. Minni handed it over. “I’ll start a dressing room for you. Are you alone?”
“My grandma and sister are coming.”
The woman nodded and took the dress to the back of the store.
Gigi and Keira came in the front. Keira went straight to the display window and the fire-engine red dress hanging on a mannequin.
Gigi walked toward Minni. “Find anything?”
Minni fingered the satin ribbon on a lime-green dress. “Gigi, what if I trip and fall? Or forget what I’m supposed to say?” She had started having dreams of herself at the pageant. In one of them, when she tried to talk, all she could do was cluck like a chicken.
Gigi patted her shoulder. “Don’t worry, honey. That won’t happen.”
The saleswoman came back. “I’ve started a room for your granddaughter in the back.” She eyed Keira holding up a dress near the front of the store. “Excuse me!” the woman called out. She beelined toward Keira. “I’d rather you didn’t handle the dresses yourself.” She grabbed the gown from Keira’s hands and stuffed it back onto the rack.
The woman might as well have pulled out a gun and shot it into the air. Minni’s heart hammered in her chest. Her face and palms prickled with heat.
“Was she really hurting anything?” Gigi went and stood next to Keira.
“I just prefer that…people…not handle the dresses.” The woman wrung her hands. “Skin oils can ruin the fabrics.”
Minni held her breath. Say something! she shouted at herself, but she couldn’t figure out what it should be. Her jaw felt locked in place.
Gigi put her arm around Keira. “Let’s go, girls. I think we’ll take our business elsewhere.”
Keira’s eyes blazed.
The woman’s fake tan couldn’t cover the pink flooding her cheeks.
They turned and headed for the door.
* * *
Gigi drove them toward the big indoor mall. “Never mind that rude woman,” she said. “We’ll find the perfect gowns—you’ll see!”
“Yeah, what was up with that lady?” Keira asked. “It’s not like I put the dress on the floor and stomped on it.”
Minni replayed the store scene in her mind. What had happened back there?
One thing Minni was certain of—the woman hadn’t realized Keira was her sister. Strangers always thought she and Keira were just friends, and they never believed they were twins. When they were alone with their brown-skinned mama, Minni was the “friend,” and when they were with pink-skinned Daddy, it was Keira’s turn.
Still, even if the woman didn’t know they were related, there was no excuse for the way she had treated Keira.
A thought pushed its way into Minni’s mind, even as she fought to keep it out.
She thought you were white.
So? Lots of people thought that.
She saw Keira as black.
Minni’s insides tightened and coiled.
That’s why she treated Keira differently.
Minni felt as though she might get sick.
They didn’t return home until almost seven o’clock. They’d stopped at Fat Smitty’s for cheeseburgers and fries, plus it had taken forever to find shoes. To Minni’s horror, they’d had to go to the ladies’ department for hers. Her feet were suddenly too big for the girls’ sizes. She plopped on the couch next to Mama, limp with mall fatigue.
Keira hugged her sun-yellow sleeveless chiffon halter dress with a V neckline and buttons up the back, and spun in the center of the room. The double layer of ruffles at the hem floated upward with the breeze. “Don’t you just love how the empire waist is decorated with this chiffon band gathered ever so delicately with pearl clusters?” Her face glowed with excitement. “Isn’t it breathtaking?” She gave Gigi a big smooch.
“I told you we’d find just the right thing,” Gigi said.
Keira’s eyes narrowed. “No thanks to that crazy lady at the first store.”
Minni stiffened. Hopefully Mama wouldn’t ask.
“What crazy lady?”
Of course she would.
“All I did was take a dress off the rack to look at it. She practically ripped the thing in half grabbing it out of my hands.”
“She said she didn’t like people touching the dresses,” Gigi said, “and she wasn’t very friendly about it. So we left.”
“She was rude.” Keira’s mouth turned down at the corners. She held the dress up again. “But, whatever, I got a way better dress than I would have found at her dumb store anyhow.”
Mama listened quietly. She put her hand on Minni’s knee. “What about you?”
Minni couldn’t breathe. The shame she’d felt in the store for not pointing out the lady’s different treatment of her and her sister washed over her again.
“Yeah, where’s your dress?” Daddy came up from behind and squeezed her shoulders.
Minni pointed to the garment bag hanging over the chair by the front door. She had chosen the least frilly dress she could find—an A-line sky-blue silk d
ress with a straight-across neckline and solid, sturdy straps. No pearl clusters, bows, rhinestones or fussy lace anywhere. A layer of sheer organza covered the skirt, but Minni actually liked how it made the dress shimmer like moonlight on the ocean.
“Well, let’s see it!”
Holding up the dress wasn’t enough. Daddy wanted a fashion show, so they went and put on the gowns. Keira zipped Minni, then found a matching pendant in her ballerina jewelry box and fastened it around Minni’s neck.
Minni hoped Keira wouldn’t ask how the woman had acted before she and Gigi came into the store. Then when she didn’t, Minni almost told her. They never kept anything from each other. They were sisters, best friends—as wide open with each other as the ocean to the sky. But she just couldn’t bring herself to do it. She zipped Keira’s dress and they went into the hall.
Keira floated into the living room, stopped to pose at the side table topped by the framed black-and-white photo Daddy had taken of her and Minni on the beach, then whipped around and continued across the floor.
“Go on, girl. Show us what you got,” Mama said.
Mama, Daddy and Gigi clapped. Banjo barked.
Keira swiveled at the opposite wall and raised her arms like a movie starlet. She stood in front of Mama’s huge acrylic painting of purple, orange and red starfish, looking very dramatic. She batted her eyelashes. Even Banjo got a smile.
“Your turn, Little Moon,” Mama said, looking to the doorway, where Minni peered out from behind the wall.
Minni took a few small steps. The sky-blue skirt swished back and forth.
Mama made a sound—sort of a gasp-sigh. “Beautiful.”
Was she? Minni looked at her pink arms, crossed in front of the dress.
Daddy came and took her hand. He spun her under his arm. “Yes, you are. Both of you.” He took Keira’s hand as well. “Our twin beauties.”
Chapter Seven
“Am I black or white or what?” Minni sat in a beach chair next to Mama’s stool on their large back deck, watching her work. She had put on sunscreen today. Keira was at gymnastics and Daddy was up in the air somewhere, giving a flying lesson.
The Other Half of My Heart Page 4