I’m about to ask Max why he does the laundry when Trina shocks me by leaning over and drawing on my jeans with a thick black marker.
“Hey!” I shout, pushing her hand away.
She smiles. “Just breathe, Abby. This isn’t a laptop, but I can fix it too. Watch.”
Amy and Max give me freak-out face.
Trina, on the other hand, is as calm as a Hindu cow. “I hope you like dragons.” She draws on my thigh again, all around the stain. “Don’t. Move.”
This could be a disaster.
Mom must have gone blind, because she hasn’t noticed my jeans until now. We’re in Publix with Drew buying canned goods for his Feed the Hungry bar mitzvah charity project. I didn’t have time to change.
“What…is…that?” she asks, pointing at my thigh. Apparently, her vision is not impaired.
“A dragon!” I answer, excited. “Don’t worry. Trina used permanent markers, so the colors won’t run. She’s an artist.” Mom blinks in confusion. “See, I spilled strawberry jam on them, so she turned the red spot into fire from the dragon’s mouth.”
“Let me understand this. You had someone draw all over them after I just bought them.”
“I like it,” Drew puts in.
“No one will have a pair like these,” I say proudly.
“They certainly won’t.” Her lips disappear. I hold my breath. Then she goes, “I can’t deal with this today. Get canned goods, both of you. Meet me at checkout in ten minutes. And, Abby? Stop with the strawberry jam. I mean it.”
“But it’s fruit!”
“It’s sugar and red food coloring!” She wheels the cart away like she’s on a mission to run someone over with it.
“Mom was on the phone with Aunt Roz this afternoon,” Drew tells me. “You know that always makes her grumpy.” He crouches down to get a closer look at the dragon. “It’s awesome. Mom doesn’t get it.”
“Mom doesn’t get me,” I answer.
He stands up. “Yeah, well, Dad doesn’t get me.”
Drew and I snag a cart to share and horse around in the canned-vegetables aisle. Mom rolls up to us. “What do you two think you’re doing? Why are you only filling your cart with beans?” Drew and I look at each other. We don’t exactly know why. A shopping cart full of beans seemed hilarious a minute ago.
“They’re good for your heart?” is my answer. Drew chimes in with fart noises. Mom rolls her cart away.
The two of us wander around some more, then split up. Mom always allows Drew and me two items each. I get a celebrity magazine and a vanilla sachet from the candle section. Maybe if I smell like vanilla the way Amy does, I’ll be perfect like her too. Drew gets M&M’s and a Stephen King book about a woman who chops up her husband with an axe. In the checkout line, I lift my sachet to my nose to smell it, but it falls out of my hand.
Someone behind me bends down to pick it up before I do, and we almost bump heads. It’s Max!
We both say hi. He hands me the sachet. He’s with his dad. Our parents introduce themselves. Max’s dad has icky groceries—zucchini bread and a jar of something called Lemonaise.
Not that our groceries are normal. “Wow, your family eats a lot of beans,” says Max.
“It’s for a donation,” Mom answers quickly.
“Yes, we’re donating gas,” I say.
Max lets out a laugh without thinking. I’ve never seen him smile. His braces are blue like mine. Maybe Magic Max has a sense of humor after all.
“Abby!” Mom says, embarrassed. I’m the one who should be embarrassed. Mom is wearing a KATY PERRY OR DIE T-shirt.
“You know what’s interesting?” Max says, his eyes flicking to me, then back to my mom as he scans our cans. “People don’t usually buy vegetables or legumes at night. They buy them in the morning. At night, you see a lot of meat.”
“That is interesting,” Drew says, because he loves strange and useless information like that.
The pimply high school boy behind the cash register stops scanning bean cans to put the sachet up to his nose. He takes a deep whiff. “Would you like a separate bag for this?” He tries to hand it to Mom, who doesn’t take it.
Mom folds her arms. “Why would I want my daughter to use that sachet after you’ve rubbed your nose on it?”
Drew and I look for the closest exit. Mom may only be five foot two, but when she sinks her teeth into something—or someone—this woman is a category five hurricane, an eighteen-wheeler driving at full speed, a sledgehammer. She won’t be ignored.
“Why would I buy it now that you’ve soiled it?” Mom asks the cashier.
Drew wanders out of the line, pretending he doesn’t know us. I start to follow, but Mom stands in my way. Who says “soiled” to a person? I am dying that Max is witnessing this.
The cashier stammers, “Ma’am, I—I didn’t rub my nose on it, I j-just sme—”
“Excuse me?” Mom interrupts. She hates being called ma’am. In her delusional midlife-crisis mind, this boy might as well have said, “Hi there, old lady.”
“May I speak to the manager, please?”
This is SO embarrassing. “Mom,” I say through clenched teeth. “You do not need to speak to the manager.” I turn to the cashier, who I feel really sorry for because when Mom is done with him, his skin will break out even more, probably. “I don’t want the sachet anymore. Sorry.” He looks at my mother, terrified.
Mom takes out her wallet. “Fine, take it off the bill.” She pays.
Drew and I load the cart with bags, I wave at Max, and we hurry toward the exit. Hallelujah.
“Abby, wait!” I turn around as Max walks up to me. “Can I talk to you for a second?”
“Sure,” I say with a quick glance at Mom. “But I have to go.”
Mom stops her cart. “No, that’s okay. You two talk. We’ll wait for you in the car, Abby.” Talk about a mood swing. I guess she’s happy I might have another friend besides Caitlin. She’s never been a fan of Caitlin, for some reason.
Max’s words come out of his mouth fast, as if he rehearsed them. “Well, uh, you’re really funny, and I know you’re into drama and you’re comfortable performing in front of people and everything, so I was wondering…if you might want to work with me.”
“Huh?”
He clears his throat. “Like, help me with my job as a magician.”
“You mean you get paid to do magic?”
“Not in money. I get community-service hours. I know you need them, and I thought because you’re funny and everything, maybe we could work as a team. You know, like Penn and Teller, those magicians in Las Vegas?”
“No, I don’t know them.”
“Well, Penn has all the personality, and Teller doesn’t talk.”
“So you want me to be Penn and you to be Teller?”
“Something like that, yeah.”
“But no money, right? I owe my dad a lot of money.”
“You would get paid in other ways.”
“What would I get paid in, balloon animals? Connected handkerchiefs?”
“Uh, no. You would get paid in experience and…community-service hours…” His voice trails off. I wait for him to say something else. He doesn’t. He tries another grin. There’s something sweet about the way he does it.
For a split second, the idea seems almost good. I picture myself in a leotard with a cute skater skirt, picking volunteers from the audience, pulling them up onstage, joking with them. “Where are these magic shows?” I ask.
“The youth community center or old age homes. Hospitals. I have one coming up at Chuck E. Cheese’s. Oh, and I did the Garlic Festival in Delray.”
He’s got to be kidding. Little kids, the elderly, and housewives. “Wow, Max, will the excitement never cease? I don’t know if there’s room for me in your life of glitz and glamour.”
He looks as if I’ve slapped him.
I instantly feel awful. My mouth strikes again. “Sorry,” I say. “I didn’t think. I—”
“No, it’s
okay. It was a stupid idea.”
“It’s not a stupid idea. Not at all. You’re a good magician. I’ll think about it. Okay?” He doesn’t answer, just clomps away in his big sneakers. I am a mean, horrible person. “Max…I didn’t mean to…” But he’s at the door, going back to his dad. “Your magic shows sound great, really!” The hurt in his eyes is hard to take.
Because I caused it. Why do I say these things? WHY?
Dr. C’s voice is in my mind: “You have to slow down in social situations. Stop and think about how a person will feel before you say out loud whatever pops into your head.”
Now Max hates me. And he’s so nice.
I am a jerk.
When I get in the car, Mom says, “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah.” I lean my forehead against the window. “He had a question about homework, that’s all.” She’ll just make me feel worse and tell me to Think Before I Speak. Yes, Mom, my mouth is still a verbal wrecking ball. I know Drew can tell I’m lying, but he doesn’t push for info. He tries to cheer me up by showing me a video on his phone of our school nurse whipping her hair back and forth at the spring dance. It doesn’t help.
I can’t get through one day without screwing up or hurting someone’s feelings.
Who am I kidding about being able to change?
Max is quiet at school today. He barely talks to any of us and won’t look at me.
At break, when he leaves to get a drink from the vending machine, I tell Trina and Amy what happened at Publix. “You should perform with him,” Trina says. She would say that. Trina’s hardware is missing the embarrassment chip. Today she’s wearing Hello Kitty pajama pants, a baseball T-shirt, and holey socks with sandals. “You two would rock a magic show.”
“Yeah,” Amy agrees, sipping her fruit punch.
“But I don’t want to rock a magic show in subarfia,” I say. “Poco Bay, Florida, the land of shopping centers and golf, is not my destiny.” I bite into my plain bagel, no strawberry jam.
“It is, for now,” Trina says. “So open yourself up to the idea.”
“I wish I was in Hollywood already,” I complain. “Or at least Camp Star Lake.”
Trina waves her seaweed cracker at me. “If you really want to be a star, then maybe it’s a good thing you didn’t go to that drama camp. If you had, maybe you’d only be a meteor, not a star.”
“What do you mean?” I ask her.
“Think about it. Meteors shoot out in a flash, light up the sky, and then”—she snaps her fingers—“disappear. If you’d gone to camp, a talent agent would have come to see the shows, you’d have been discovered, gone on TV or in movies, you’d be an overnight sensation, right?”
“Right!” I answer, picturing it, loving it. “What’s wrong with that?”
“Overnight sensations disappear.” Trina takes a bite of her seaweed cracker, chews, and swallows. “Stars, on the other hand, glow for billions of years. It takes a little longer for their light to be seen, but once they show up, they’re around pretty much forever. So it’s worth the wait. Maybe the universe has bigger things planned for you than being a meteor, you know what I’m saying?”
I do know what she’s saying.
Amy, of all people, confirms it by saying it—whispering it, really—out loud. “You’re a star, not a meteor.” She pats my arm awkwardly.
I don’t know if it’s Trina’s philosophy or Amy’s gesture, but they almost make me cry.
Back in class, I try a do-over with Max. “What kinds of tricks do you do for your magic shows, Max?”
“That’s okay,” he says. “You don’t have to pretend you’re interested. I can tell when you’re lying.”
“Eyes on me, people,” Tony says, clapping to get the class’s attention. “What are the themes in A Midsummer Night’s Dream?”
I raise my hand. If I’m right, Max will love it. “I’ve got one! What about—”
Tony taps his chin twice.
The signal. I stop talking, keep my hand still and wait. Tony calls on me. “Magic,” I announce.
“Good. Very important theme,” Tony says, writing magic. Amy copies it into her notebook. Yes! I did understand it. I check Max for a reaction. He doesn’t look up. “Many characters are under the influence of magic.”
Later, Tony wants to know if anyone would like to read their creative-writing assignment. I volunteer first. “Anyone else?” Tony asks, scanning the room. My hand is the only one up. “No one else? No? Anyone? Okay. Abby.”
“Our topic was art forms,” I tell everyone. “My art form is acting. I wrote a poem.”
I put on my best dramatic voice.
“Wherefore must I be stuck in school, which stinketh so?
Will not I ever star in my own TV show?
Will I get to pursue my passion—
Acting, which I plan to make cash in?
Wast I adopted, or am I truly related to my insane family?
Yea, these questions, much like the wee black thingies in a slice of salami,
Are a mystery.”
The only one who doesn’t clap and laugh is Max. I should feel warm and fuzzy. Everyone else got a kick out of my poem, and I got the Shakespeare question right. But Max is taking the shine off everything.
I wish he would look at me.
This is not how I want to spend my Saturday, but my community service starts today, so here I am. For a place that’s supposed to cheer up the elderly, Millennium Lakes is not exactly uplifting. It has silk plants, plastic flowers, and a pukey smell of vinyl, rubbing alcohol, and corn.
In the hallway an ancient woman in a nightgown shuffles up to me and goes, “Psssst. Be careful. They’re all loan sharks here.” What are loan sharks? It sounds like something Grandpa would know. I’ll ask him later.
Mom and Dad already filled out my registration online, so Bonnie, the activities director, only has to give me a tour and a brief training session before she wheels out an old-timer with bushy, wilderness-man eyebrows. She orders me to keep an eye on him (hello, it’s not like he can run away) and sprints off in her squeaky shoes so “you two can get acquainted.”
“Hi,” I say to Crazy Brows. “Um…so…how are you today?”
He wheels himself away from me. “How do you think I am? I’m eighty-six, my wife and friends are dead, and my kids don’t visit their father, who could die at any moment.”
I grab hold of the back handles, stopping him. “Well, you don’t look a day over eighty-five.” He looks so small in the wheelchair with his little feet in thick socks and rubber-soled shoes. “I’m Abby.”
He grunts. “Abby, you look like you’re starving to death. I hope you’re not one of those girls who throw up all the time. My name is Simon Eppelmeyer.” Why couldn’t I get a sweet grandpa in a fuzzy sweater and bifocals, like in Thanksgiving commercials?
Except for barking “Slow down!” Simon doesn’t say anything while I steer him along the footpaths outside. I tell him how I was in a wheelchair too when I was eight, after I got the idea to rollerblade in an empty pool. I broke a bone in one leg and tore a ligament in the other. “You make me feel real safe” is all he says after I finish my story.
The fresh air is a relief after the yucky smell inside. Hibiscus bushes, benches, a duck pond. Simon’s eyes are closed. He’s asleep. I roll the wheelchair under a banyan tree with a humongous trunk full of twisted roots. Then I sit on the bench next to it and pull out the half-eaten power bar in my pocket. I wonder if ducks like power bars. I walk down a slope to the pond’s edge, break off pieces, and try to feed them. Turns out they don’t. More for me, I guess. I finish it, throw a few pebbles in the water, and check the time on my phone. It’s been a half hour. Time to return Simon.
When I get back to the bench, my stomach drops like a broken elevator.
The wheelchair isn’t there. Simon is gone.
GONE.
“Simon!” I call. No answer. “SIMON!” I run down the path, around and around the edge of the pond until my sneak
ers are muddy. I don’t see him.
What do I do?
Wait. Up ahead on the footpath. That might be him. In that wheelchair a nurse is pushing. PleasebeSimonpleasebeSimonpleasebeSimon.
It’s not Simon.
The nurse disappears down the path. How did I lose a person in a wheelchair?
I am so stupid. A loser. Of old people. On my first day! All Bonnie asked me to do was keep an eye on him, and I couldn’t even do that. “SIMON!” I scream in desperation, looking out across the pond.
What if he drowned? What if he followed me down to the pond, lost control of the wheelchair, and—
No. Impossible. I would have heard a splash or something.
Right?
I rush toward the building. I have to tell Bonnie. I need help. Then I see him.
Not Simon. Standing in the middle of the path is Max. A feeling comes over me, a kind of peace, and a sense that everything is going to be okay. Max will come to my rescue. He’ll find Simon for me.
I approach him and Bonnie. “Hey, Max! Are you doing a magic show here?”
“You two know each other?” Bonnie asks. I nod. “Small world. Max will indeed be doing a magic show for our residents. Where is Simon?”
Oh, God. “Um…I…” Tell her you lost him! “I…left Simon with another volunteer…nurse lady. She’s watching him for a minute.” And with that statement, I plaster on a fat fake smile to match the fat, fake whopper I just told. Now you’ve done it, Abby. You’d better find him. Fast.
Max is giving me a strange look. And then I remember what he said yesterday: I can tell when you’re lying.
Bonnie’s phone chimes. She reads a text. “Gotta take care of this. Max, I’ll finish showing you around next time.” Then she turns to me. “Bring Simon inside for lunch in fifteen minutes.”
She’s off, leaving me face-to-face with Max. “Listen, I know you hate me after what I said at Publix about your magic shows, which, by the way, I totally take back. I think you doing magic shows for community service is awesome and—”
“I don’t hate you,” he interrupts. “But I have to go.” He starts to leave.
This Is Not the Abby Show Page 8