“It’s a surprise.”
“Listen, my dad will get mad if he hears me on the phone this late. I just wanted to say I’m sorry for the way I acted today. You are very messy, though.”
“I know.”
“Friends?”
“Definitely. Friends.”
I work on my project for Max and wonder about how complicated his home life is, and the way Amy thinks she’s nothing, and how Trina’s in another world and her parents don’t seem to care.
I thought I had problems. The truth is, I’m lucky.
Class is always more fun when I get to read aloud. Today I get to read the part of this goofy guy named Nick Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, who thinks he’s handsome and smart, only he’s a big dummy because this fairy named Puck tricked him into wearing a donkey head. Tony pairs me with Max, who reads Quince, a guy who doesn’t let Bottom know he looks ridiculous.
“ ‘Ask me not what,’ ” I read, “ ‘for if I tell you, I am no true Athenian. I will tell you everything, right as it fell out.’ ”
Max replies, “ ‘Let us hear, sweet Bottom.’ ”
Kelvin makes a farting noise. “Did everyone hear that sweet bottom?”
The class explodes. Everyone thinks it’s hilarious. Amazingly, I don’t have the urge to join in. I wait for the snickering to wind down. “ ‘No more words. Away, go away!’ ” I finish. Everyone claps.
“Abby, tell us why your character provides comic relief throughout the play,” Tony asks.
“I don’t know.”
“Not acceptable,” Tony responds. He never accepts “I don’t know” for an answer. “I must say I’m surprised you’re not laughing like so many of your classmates here.”
“Nick Bottom isn’t a funny character to me.”
Tony sits on his desk. “Why?”
“Well, he walks around with this mask of a donkey stuck on his head, right?”
“Right.”
“Only he doesn’t know it, and the whole time, he thinks he’s good-looking and important, when some of the others see him as this stupid donkey. They make fun of him behind his back because he’s too stupid to know he’s an idiot. Puck is mean.” Tony nods, listening, so I keep going. “There’s a difference between mean and funny. Sometimes a person doesn’t know the difference.” Sometimes that person is me. “Puck knows he’s being mean.”
As I say that, I realize Puck reminds me of someone.
“I’ve got a sister like that,” says Kelvin.
I’ve got a friend like that. She’s at Camp Star Lake.
“What do you think, Max?” Tony asks.
“I agree with Abby,” he answers. “They’re pranking him, and it isn’t right. No one tells the guy he looks like a donkey. If they were true friends, they would.”
Tony claps for us. “Well done, you two. Exceptional job of interpreting Shakespeare’s intent. Abby, you have a strong stage presence, as always. You are both meant to have an audience. As for each of you.”
Max and I grin at each other. I like the way his blue braces shine under the fluorescent lights.
It’s a great feeling, standing out in class, and not for horsing around, for a change, but I can’t stop rewinding the scene in my head. Am I like that guy Bottom? I mean, I could be walking around thinking I’ve got something special and different inside me, that I’m destined for fame, and the whole time everyone is laughing behind my back, thinking I’m a dumb donkey.
That is a very disturbing possibility.
I asked Mom if I could invite friends over, and she said yes! I’m allowed to have them in my room as long as I keep the door open. My friends. Our unlikely summer school gang has officially become our very own clique. I’ve never been in one before. None of us has.
Seeing pretty, shiny Amy standing on my doorstep is unreal, like seeing a unicorn. I know she doesn’t get invited anywhere, and neither do I. An everyday thing to most kids is a big deal to us. She could be thinking that too.
Trina comes next, wearing paint-splattered jeans and socks with flip-flops. “Thanks for dressing up,” I tell her.
She grins. “Just for you.”
Mom takes one look at Trina and goes, “You must be Trina, the artist.”
“Yes, hi,” Trina says.
“Did you know there’s a hole in your sock?” Mom asks, concerned.
“Oh, yeah, I know,” Trina answers. She wiggles her toe.
The doorbell rings. It’s Max, the last to arrive, carrying his laptop under his arm. It feels weird to have them all in my house, but good too.
My bedroom floor is the usual clutter of clothes, shoes, books, magazines, papers, and the occasional gum wrapper. I should have cleaned up. Trina plunks herself down and pulls a bottle of red nail polish out of her bag. She doesn’t mind my messiness, and neither does Max. He sits next to her and opens his laptop.
But Amy is so sleek and put together in her halter top and jeweled sandals, I’m a little embarrassed. She sits stiffly on the edge of my unmade bed and opens the Entertainment Weekly lying there. “I have a bunch of those,” I tell her, pulling a stack out from my bottom desk drawer. “You can have them. Lots of good celebrity gossip.”
Amy hugs them to her chest. “Thank you.” She kicks off her sandals, sits cross-legged on my bed, and starts reading.
Trina shakes her nail polish. “Check it out. I created this color by mixing five colors together.”
Drew’s voice suddenly sings out through my bedroom walls. “Baruch atah Adonai…,” he chants.
Amy’s eyes widen and dart around. Trina stops shaking the nail polish bottle.
“Your brother practicing for his bar mitzvah?” Max guesses.
“Yeah,” I say. I yell at the wall. “Hey, Drew! Keep it down!”
Drew’s answer is to barge in with his video camera, filming us.
Everybody waves. “Congrats, you’re all in the bar mitzvah video,” I tell them. “Okay, Drew, good-bye.”
He puts down his camera. “Mom was supposed to take me to get my suit today, but she cancelled so your friends could come over. As usual, you come first.”
“How can you say I come first?!” I shout. “It’s been all about you and your stupid bar mitzvah for months!”
“Hey, kids, don’t bite,” Trina says. She pats the floor next to her. “Sit down, sibling.” Drew sits down awkwardly. He doesn’t say anything. “What do you think we should call this color?” she asks him.
Drew chews on his finger. “Internal Bleeding?” he suggests.
Her face glows. “You have a creative aura, Abby’s brother.”
“Hey, I have a question,” Max says. “Is there a psycho killer leaving you threats on your closet door?” Max points to the note on my closet door written in heavy red marker:
TAKE YOUR MEDICINE OR ELSE!
“Because that,” he says, “is freaky.”
“I experiment with different ways of leaving myself reminder notes,” I explain. “Otherwise, I forget my meds. I leave them in different places every couple of days. So far I haven’t forgotten a dose since summer school started, so it’s working.”
“Wouldn’t a note in the same place be better?” Max asks.
“No,” I explain. “If it’s in the same place, it becomes like wallpaper, and I don’t see it after a while. I have to give myself the element of surprise, so I go, ‘Ahhh! Take your meds.’ ”
“Where will you leave it next?” Trina wants to know.
“Hmm…inside my shoe, maybe?” I answer. “I haven’t tried that yet.”
“Smart,” Amy says.
“Hi, everybody,” Mom says, coming in with a bowl of strawberries. She sets them down on the floor next to us. She’s wearing short overalls with a tube top and sequined Converse sneakers. Not exactly the best look for a fifty-year-old with varicose veins. I introduce her to everyone, and she goes, “Quite the little breakfast club here.”
I take a strawberry. “What do you mean by breakfast cl
ub?”
“The Breakfast Club,” Mom says, “is a movie from the eighties, about a bunch of kids in detention who become friends.”
“That does sound like us,” Trina says, and we all laugh, even Mom.
“I never watch anything from the nineteen hundreds,” I say. “But if you guys want to watch it, I will.”
“I’ll get you the DVD,” Mom says. “I recorded it from the Family Channel years ago, so there’s nothing inappropriate. Anyone need anything? Chips? Popcorn?”
“Thanks, Mom. We’re good.” Mom leaves.
“Your mom is nice,” Trina says.
“Right now she is, but sometimes, she’s a real—” I stop talking, suddenly remembering about Max’s mom. They’re all looking at me, waiting for my answer. “Thanks. She is nice.” Conversational accident avoided.
We all talk and eat strawberries. Mom brings us the DVD. We stay in my room and watch it on Max’s laptop. I like how the kids are all so different, but they become super close. They aren’t supposed to, but they do anyway.
In the movie, you can’t tell if they’ll stay good friends after they go back to school.
I wonder if we will.
“Why did the toilet paper roll down the hill?” I ask the dozen little boys and girls sitting around me on the grass, wearing party hats and Happy 5th Birthday, Logan! buttons. It’s a billion degrees in this park. I’ll have to rethink this black, long-sleeved performance dress.
“Why did the toilet paper roll down the hill?” I repeat. A girl lies on her back and pulls her dress over her head, exposing Sesame Street underwear. I throw my hands up and shout, “To get to the bottom!” No laughs. “Get it? The toilet paper rolled down the hill to get to the bottom.” I get blank stares. We were so sure this would be a hit with little kids.
“Are you gonna paint my face?” Logan, the birthday boy, asks. “You’re supposed to do face painting.”
“I’m hot,” another boy whines.
“Let’s break out the carrot slicer,” Max suggests quietly in my ear. The guillotine carrot slicer is a new trick Max and I picked out together. It works like this: when I stick my hand in it and Max pulls the fake guillotine down over my fingers, mini carrot slices pop out as I let out a scream. Then Max eats them. The guy in the joke shop said it’s a guaranteed crowd-pleaser with little kids.
Max whips it out of the prop case with a big flourish and explains that his lovely assistant will put her fingers in it and magically survive the blade. I wiggle my fingers, slowly put them under the blade, and squeeze my eyes shut, making a frightened face.
Sesame Street underwear sits up. Logan leans forward, craning to see. Then Max says the line I told him to say: “I love lady fingers…for lunch, heh, heh, heh.”
And—SHWAK!—the blade comes down.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!” I shriek as baby carrots fly out at the kids. Max scoops one up from the ground and bites into it.
Complete silence. And then Max’s loud chomping.
Until one kid wails. And then another. Then another and another and another, until it goes viral and a bunch of them are scryming (screaming and crying). Only a few kids don’t freak out. Sesame Street Girl is unfazed. She lies back down and waves her dress in the air. One boy eats carrots right off the grass until his father arrives and pulls them out of his mouth.
For the most part, however, it’s pretty much mass hysteria. I don’t get it. They’re just carrots. Logan, the birthday boy, is the loudest crier of all. I pull my hand out of the contraption and show him my fingers, reassuring him it’s a trick. The kid still freaks. His father picks him up, then shoots me and Max a look more sinister than the guillotine blade.
“What should we do?” I ask Max anxiously. He doesn’t answer. He’s busy tossing our props into his prop case at warp speed, not the slow, meticulous way he usually does. “What should we do?” I ask him again, avoiding angry looks from parents comforting their kids.
Logan’s mother charges toward us. “Time to go,” Max says, yanking me with one hand and hauling his prop case with the other.
“But we’re supposed to do a half-hour show, and it’s only been twenty minutes.”
“What is the matter with you two, scaring little kids like that?” Logan’s mom shouts, getting closer. I film her with my phone in case she tries anything.
“I thought you said you do children’s birthday parties all the time,” I say to Max as we break into a run.
“I didn’t say I was good at it,” he pants, his cape flying out behind him. “That’s why you’re here.”
“GET BACK HERE! YOU’VE RUINED MY SON’S PARTY!”
“Wait up,” I huff, stopping to pull off my heels for speed. I catch up to Max. “We really messed up this gig.”
“Not totally,” Max answers, dropping the case and picking it back up again. “I got paid in full before the party. Cash.”
“Oh, good. Let’s hit Smoothie Hut.”
We pick up the pace, running faster and faster. Our laughter drowns out Logan’s mom’s shrieks. Soon we can’t hear her at all.
When I get home, I look at the clips I filmed, plus the clips Bonnie sent me from our Millennium Lakes show. Drew filmed a show we did at the opening of a family restaurant, and one at an event outside Pet Supermarket.
I’m almost done transferring all the videos onto my computer. And then I can give Max his Big Surprise.
Both my parents come to Dr. C’s today. Dad is a space taker, filling up most of the couch he and I are sharing. Feet apart, legs spread open, his arm lying across the back. Mom is on a separate chair next to Dr. C’s desk.
Dr. C swivels her chair to face my parents. “You know, ADHD often runs in families. One or both of you may meet some of the criteria yourself.” Mom’s eyes get wide.
“It’s from your side, Rachel.” Dad laughs. I giggle. Judging from the look Mom is giving him, she doesn’t find this so funny.
“It doesn’t matter which side,” Dr. C says, holding her palms out as if she’s surrendering. “I only bring it up because it’s helpful if one or both parents can relate personally to what Abby is going through.”
She swivels her chair back and types on her computer. “So, Abby, good job on remembering your meds. How’s summer school? You seem a lot happier than the last time I saw you.”
“I am. Summer school is better than I thought it would be.”
“Why’s that?”
“Um…I’ve made friends, and I’m performing in magic shows now. Oh, and my teacher’s nice. I’m understanding the reading and keeping up. I don’t call out in class as much as I used to, so Tony, he’s my teacher, he let me perform a few minutes of stand-up comedy for the class.”
“How did it go?” Dad asks, surprised.
“I bombed. I made fun of a friend, and it wasn’t funny. I had to apologize later.”
“You’re still apologizing a lot, huh?” Dr. C asks.
“Yes,” I admit. “Every single day, I say I’m sorry at least twice. That’s 730 apologies a year. If I apologize three times a day, it’s 1,095 apologies a year. My life is one long apology.”
“Wow, that was some fast calculating,” Dr. C says.
“Math is my thing.”
Dr. C waves a pencil at my parents. “Imagine what that feels like, having to apologize every day, multiple times. Try putting yourself in Abby’s shoes.”
My parents are quiet, thinking and searching my face. Then Mom says, “I never thought about how much you apologize for saying one thing or another. That’s why people read you wrong when you accidentally say something insensitive, even though you’re a sensitive person.”
I lift my chin. “I am a sensitive person. That is why I am an actress.”
Dr. C’s manicured hands are poised over her laptop keyboard, and she’s looking straight at me. “You said you’re not calling out as much. But you’re still calling out sometimes?”
“Not that often anymore, but when I do, the words are out of my mout
h the instant I think them. Tony is helping me with that.”
Mom shakes her head. “You can’t disrupt a lesson with a song and dance every time you have a thought.”
“I’m not singing or dancing,” I tell her, feeling a knot of anger forming. It’s like Mom is erasing all the good I’ve built up over the last few weeks. “What are you talking about?”
“Blurting is often involuntary, Mrs. Green, even on the medication,” says Dr. C. “You have to remember that.”
“I’m talking about calling attention to herself and making jokes, that kind of song and dance,” Mom says. “It’s not the Abby show. It’s school.”
“But making jokes is the only way I get through school.” My voice gets louder. “Besides, anywhere else, like in Hollywood or at Camp Star Lake, I’d be getting applause for cracking everyone up!”
Dr. C forms the time out sign with her hands. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Abby, you’re getting emotional. So are you, Mrs. Green. Abby won’t confide in you if you do that. Respond, don’t react, remember? Take a moment. You have both got to learn to control that angry, knee-jerk reaction that builds quickly into an argument. Let’s hit the pause button before we continue.”
I clamp my lips shut and stare at my knees. Dad shifts his feet and checks his watch. Mom hugs her purse on her lap. I decide we’ve had enough of a moment and say, “People are always telling me to calm down or stop interrupting or stop whatever. It’s not easy when you’re a spaz.”
Mom points at me. “Don’t say spaz. You are not.”
“Yeah, I don’t like that word either,” says Dad. “Unless it’s about Frank Spaziani, the football coach, also known as Spaz.” Dad and I crack up.
The dead serious look on Dr. C’s face stops us cold. “Let’s stay on topic, okay?” She shifts her eyes to Mom. “It’s important to listen and validate Abby’s feelings, rather than constantly correct her.”
“But I have to teach her,” Mom insists. “She can’t go around calling herself a spaz.”
“Why not, if that’s how she feels?” says Dr. C. “You have to listen when she’s letting you in, not judge. Sometimes the best way to effect change is to just…listen.”
This Is Not the Abby Show Page 13