by Susie Salom
At the end of the hour, I don’t have a ton of tickets to my name but Uncle Jack says, “Five more minutes,” so Brooke and I go to the counter to claim our prizes.
Brooke picks out a pair of wax lips and a laser gun key chain.
“At least you’ll get a new bat sticker,” Brooke tells me as she points her teeny laser at me and fires. She’s one of the only people—besides Meowsie—who knows about my collection.
“What’ll it be, blue girl?” the volunteer asks behind the counter.
I hand over all of my tickets and make my selection.
“With sprinkles, please.”
“Can we make just one quick stop?” I ask Uncle Jack on the way home.
He looks at the clock on his dash and says, “Has to be quick if you guys still want to stay up to watch Clash of the Titans.”
“I promise it’ll be very, very fast.”
He palms the steering wheel. “Where to?”
I give him the address I’ve seen every single day from the bus, guts curling up tighter than Brooke’s ringlets after a storm.
I’ve always wondered what the inside of a town house is like. Uncle Jack has to get a special visitor pass on his white Corvette at the gate to go inside. There’s a fountain with a light shining up that turns the water blue and aqua and green and then blue again. I never get to see that during the day. But all of the trees and the bushes look cut clean and straight, just like they always do, as we drive up to the number I memorized by heart the day I first looked it up in the directory.
“This one,” I say, breathless. I swallow and try to suck in more air but can barely get enough. The inside of my cheeks are dry as Texas.
Uncle Jack puts the car in park but leaves it running. As I pop out, Meowsie shoots me a funny look.
IT’S ALL UNDER CONTROL. I JUST NEED TO DO THIS.
I’ve thought about what this would be like so many times I can’t believe it’s actually happening. Feels like a dream.
I climb up the steps to the second floor and go straight to unit 2515. I take like three or four long breaths to get my heart to stop beating so hard before I finally work up the courage to press a thumb to the skinny doorbell. I hear it ring on the inside and then footsteps.
I squeeze my eyes shut and cross my fingers, knees and toes that he answers.
“Fedora?”
I open my eyes and see that Reed has opened the door. He looks as surprised as I feel nervous. He’s not wearing a costume, just a navy-blue tee and some old plaid shorts and bare feet.
“What are you doing here?”
I quickly uncross my knees as he grabs some old, chewed-up loafers from inside the hall closet and slips them on before stepping outside and clicking his front door shut.
“You didn’t come to the carnival.”
He glances over his shoulder. “Yeah, it’s”—he takes a quick breath—“complicated.”
I look at the closed door and feel my heart wish that I could make all the complicated stuff behind it easier for Reed somehow.
“Did you get any trick-or-treaters?” I ask.
“Not until you.” He smiles. “David told me to just turn out the lights but I thought that might be a bit rude. Even though we don’t have any sweets to hand out.”
“That’s okay,” I say, “because I brought you this.” I pull from its waxy sack the caramel apple from Yankee Doodle Candy. “Used all my tickets for it.”
His eyes get all shiny and soft. “You didn’t have to do that,” he says quietly.
“Yeah, well.” I shrug. “You know.”
“Thank you, Kyle.”
He accepts my gift. Then we stare at each other like a couple of speechless dorf nuggets for about ten seconds. That doesn’t seem like a long time but, really, it depends on what you’re doing.
“You’re welcome,” I finally answer.
Then I lean in—completely without thinking—and peck his cheek. When I pull away, there’s a pair of blue lips on his skin where the shrimp used to be. And when I see them there, I know for certain the next thing I need to do.
“Well, I gotta go.” I motion to the stairs. “My brother and uncle are waiting for me.”
He nods but doesn’t say anything. Just stares at me, dumbstruck.
I hurry toward the steps when I hear him call.
“Fedora!”
I stop and turn around.
“I owe you,” he tells me. Then he lifts the caramel apple and gives me the most lopsided smile in the history of smiling.
“No worries, sport,” I say. “We’re even.” Then I give him my trademark click and wink before running down to the first floor and hopping into my uncle’s idling car.
That night in my room, after I wash all the blue out of my hair and off my eyes and my lips, I see Mom has laid out my clean gym clothes on the end of the bed. Before I put on my Dear-Pluto-you’ll-always-be-a-planet-in-my-heart sleep tee, I slip into the shorts and shirt and stand on the edge of the tub in the bathroom with my hair all wet to look in the mirror over the sink—just to make sure I’m not imagining things.
Maybe this last time Mom stuck them in the dryer they shrunk. Or maybe sometime between punching Ino in the gut and joining forces with him to save Smiley, I grew. Whatever the case, my uniform fits.
I study my scrubbed face in the mirror and think about how Sheroo told me I should have just been honest with her from the start. But I know now, after everything, that the person I really needed to be honest with from the very beginning was me. Then I would have been able to shoot it straight with her about Reed and with my mom about NAVS in the first place. It’s crazy how hard that can be to do sometimes. But I guess when you’re getting mixed signals from everything outside you, you just have to dig a little deeper until you reach the door to the house of your own power.
And maybe that’s what people mean when they say you have to find a way to be comfortable in your own skin.
The next morning, there’s just one important phone call I need to make before the awards ceremony. It’s nowhere near 7:07, but I dial the number I haven’t dialed in more than a month but will know till my dying breath.
“Hello?” Sheroo answers.
“It’s me,” I say.
“I know.”
Silence. Then: “Did you stay late at the carnival?”
I switch my mom’s phone from one ear to the other.
“Not really,” I say.
“Did you and Brooke hang out?”
“Yeah.” I take a breath. “Is Smiley okay?”
“She’s doing a lot better,” Sheroo tells me. “Just a little scared but she got over it. Thank God that other big guy was there.”
“Yeah. Thank God.”
Never thought I’d hear myself agree with that.
“Saw you getting ready to go onstage at the Civic Center,” she says. “Guess you weren’t being completely dishonest about NAVS.”
“No,” I say. “Not with you, anyway.”
“Brooke told me you had to wear a blindfold and a pair of earplugs. Was it weird?”
“Very,” I admit. “But also interesting. In a way.”
I want to ask her why she didn’t stay to watch but I know why.
“Sheroo, I’m sorry,” I say. “About everything. I know how much Reed means to you and I really don’t want it to mess up our friendship anymore.” My face is on fire. “But you’re right,” I go on. “I do kind of like him. I have kind of liked him for a while now.”
Quiet, then: “Well, does he like you back?”
“I have”—I swallow—“no idea. All I can tell you is how I feel about him. I like to keep those kinds of things, you know, crushes and everything, to myself because it’s a little embarrassing.”
“Why embarrassing?”
“I don’t know.” I lick my lips. “I guess I’m just kind of private about things like that.” I take another breath. “But, in this situation, my friendship with you is more important than my scared feelings about being hone
st. So … ”
“I’ve really missed you,” she fills in the gap—and relief washes over me like a spout under the curly slides at Wet ‘N Wild Waterworld.
“I’ve missed you, too!” I practically shout. It feels so good to say it! “Nothing is the same without you, Sheroo. As much as I’ve loved making new friends this year, there’s no one that can take the place of you.”
I imagine her on the other end of the line, thinking about what I just said.
“I love the cat,” she starts slowly. “He’s so stinkin’ round.”
“You mean Len?” I smile. “He’s a friendship cat. The purple is for friendship.”
“Leave it to you to know that.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that you’re in things like NAVS and suddenly you’re all super smart girl.”
I smile even bigger. All I need now are my baby blue glasses!
I close my eyes and take a breath to work up the guts to say what I called to ask in the first place.
“Sheroo, do you want to come with me to the awards ceremony tonight?”
I wouldn’t hold it against her if she said she’d rather not. Because maybe the whole Reed fiasco is just too painful and fresh and just—weird. You never know, sometimes. The heart is a mysterious vessel. But then her answer comes shining through.
“What time should I be ready?”
Mom got me a new shirt for the awards ceremony and I don’t like it. It’s too shirty—the buttons are gold, for crying out loud—but I wear it anyway.
On our way to pick up Sheroo before we go to the Civic Center, I write my name in the window of Dad’s Denali with a magic wand. Well, I mean, I write it with my finger but I draw a wand next to it. The weather is dark and rainy so the windows are nice and foggy for drawing. After I do my name and the wand, I draw Circe. Except I run out of room for her tail so I have to draw it straight up against the side. She looks alarmed.
When we get there, all the teams are with their families and friends and I start to feel really excited. Even though it’s black and stormy outside, in the arena there’s lights and commotion and we all get special name tags with our school on them. I pin mine on and look at Mom, feeling proud.
Cameron’s still down with the flu but Donna, Brooke, Reed and me all sit in a row together with Sheroo, Meowsie and Marcy and all the grown-ups behind us. The team that carted their blindfolded member through the maze on a space dolly is sitting to one side of us and I all of a sudden get this really weird feeling.
If they win, we lose. If we win, they lose.
You see people in movies and things or read about them in books and it’s always about them winning against the other guys. But what about the other guys? If you look at the story from their side, who are the other guys to them?
It’s a little bit like me and Sheroo. We can’t both have Reed. I mean, not in that way. Have I been the other guy to her this whole time? I think about Principal Bracamontes saying we’re not all here to take justice into our own hands and wonder: Can the stars in the house of our power show us another way?
“Welcome, students, to the seventh-annual NAVS awards ceremony. Tonight, we will be announcing which team will represent our city at the regional competition in Phoenix, Arizona, for a chance to go to Nationals. Six fantastic teams have pitted their very best efforts against our mazes and they should all be commended.”
The lady on the stage starts to clap and everyone else does, too. I glance at Donna and notice the look on her face. Which is kinda like, Enough with the chitchat, Wanda Wellwish. Let’s get on with it, already.
“Tonight, three teams have earned their honorable mentions.”
Oh, great flying, lipless llamas. Please don’t let us have an honorable mention.
“And the honorable mentions, in no particular order, go to—” The lady shuffles some papers on the podium and I start to chew the top of the nail right off my thumb. It even bleeds a little at the cuticle. Nast.
She names three schools that are not Georgia O’Keeffe. I lick my lips and Reed catches my eye. He gives me this super-little nod and I do it back. At the very least, we’ll get third. But I don’t want to get third. And I can tell Reed doesn’t want third any more than me and Donna. We wanna go to Phoenix and whoop the butts off the mazes they have there.
“In third place,” the lady says. “Santa Rosa Middle School from the Northeast Heights.”
I’m going to pee in my pants.
I’m eleven years old in sixth grade and I’m gonna pee my pants like a baby. I hate suspense!
Brooke grabs my hand and squeezes it on one side and Sheroo takes the other.
“In second place—”
Please say the name of the other school. Oh, please, God, please, let us go to Phoenix for Regionals. I’ll never ask for anything until Christmas if you just let us go to Phoenix for Regionals. I’ll keep on not punching people and guard the Blue Fedora Code and not even think about smearing anything of Roger’s with toe jam, no matter how much he stinks up the car like Right Guard.
“—Georgia O’Keeffe Middle School.”
A cheer goes up.
Only it’s not from our part of the arena. The cheering team is the one that wasn’t called. The team that knows since we got second, they got first. I turn to Brooke and she looks like she’s gonna cry. And Donna actually is crying a little! And when I see that, I feel a big tear plop on the shirty shirt Mom bought me and, right then and there, I realize one thing about not winning.
Losing sucks.
Michael_C: You there?
the_amazing_kyle: You know I am.
Michael_C: I’m nervous.
the_amazing_kyle: I figured
Michael_C: About the concert.
the_amazing_kyle: yeah I know. But don’t worry. the nervousness goes away.
Michael_C: When?
the_amazing_kyle: like in a year
the_amazing_kyle: j/k
Michael_C: Your team was really good at the competition.
I swallow back a salty wad. It’s like a tiny water balloon, filled up with tears.
Michael_C: I’m sorry you guys didn’t get first.
the_amazing_kyle: It’s ok
Michael_C: You were still truly a-maze-ing.
I smile with half my face. The other half is still too down in the dumps to budge.
the_amazing_kyle: thx
The truth is, I still don’t totally feel like talking about it.
Michael_C: You probably don’t want to talk about it right now. But I just wanted to encourage you. Winning isn’t everything.
I look at the ceiling. There’s a flag on Mars up there but I can’t tell from what country.
the_amazing_kyle: yeah but it’s not nothing.
Meowsie doesn’t type anything for a while. I imagine him roaming his eyes over the carpet of his room. I think about how when you’re on Instant, you don’t get to see everything about how the other person is reacting. Then I think about how, even in real lives when a person is right in front of you, you still sometimes don’t catch everything that’s happening inside them. I mean, look at Ino, for paunch’s sake. Even he ended up having more than just a couple of turd alarms inside waiting to bust out and save the day.
Michael_C: Losing can be the secret win.
I take a deep breath and then let it out in a sigh.
Michael_C: It’s when you lose that you gain something other than winning, but it’s a hidden kind of winning. So you have to know where to look for it.
the_amazing_kyle: Meows what are you talking about
Michael_C: I’m talking about the chance that losing gives you. To figure out where and how you really want to spend the strength you still have for the next battle.
Spending strength in the battle? He sounds one Lucky Charm shy of a complete breakfast. But then I remember everything Coach has been teaching us, and how maybe it’s the mistakes we make that end up giving us the best chances to enter the house of our power
and correct our course. I wonder if Meows heard all this stuff at his school.
the_amazing_kyle: Is that from Mr Arrieta or something??
Michael_C: Not Mr. Arriéta.
the_amazing_kyle: well who then
I wait for a second as my brother picks out his answer from the psychotronic layers of the Meowsiesphere.
Michael_C: It’s something Marcy has helped me to see.
It snows on the day of Meowsie’s concert. Just a skinny coat that looks like powdered sugar on a waffle as big as the city. I invite Marcy to go with me because I know Meowsie will appreciate that and because I hope Marcy will, too.
The flakes are coming down all soft as she and me and Roger and Mom and Dad walk into the bank. It’s already decorated with dreidels and Christmas trees even though Thanksgiving hasn’t even gotten here yet. There’s this fat snake of gold tinsel wrapping around the curving staircase inside the bank and that’s where Meowsie and his voices of the future are gonna sing.
I haven’t heard Meowsie practice. Not even once. He won’t let anyone hear him. I’m not sure where he practices or if he soundproofs his bedroom or what but when I see him and his singing friends line up on the stairs, I get nervous for him. So at least that way, maybe he can just concentrate on the song.
Dad shakes hands with Mr. Arriéta. Even though I haven’t met him, I know exactly who he is. Everyone sits down in the audience and a lady I don’t recognize raises a conducting wand to get Meowsie and the rest of the singers to start. It’s super quiet at first, just voices. And the first thing that comes to my head is that if this is what the future sounds like, I wouldn’t mind at all.
There’s a bee in my chest. Not as strong as the one that I got from the cables but I can still feel it. I imagine a cable attaching me to Meowsie and every time he opens his mouth I feel it ring. I look at Roger. For once, he doesn’t have his face plastered to his phone. He’s just looking at Meowsie. The song is kind of sad and happy at the same time, like something you wish you could play in your bedroom at night when the ceiling is full of too many pictures and you can’t get to sleep.