It was hard to get my head around everything Brandon was saying, but even if my head couldn’t understand it, my heart could. And as a result, it floated like one of the fairground helium balloons that lined the edges of the game booths.
“This trip has been such a blast,” Brandon said. “We’ve probably had more fun in a few days than most kids will end up having all summer.”
And then, as if that wasn’t remarkable enough, something really, awesome happened.
“And just so you know I really mean it. Here.”
Brandon reached down to the picnic bench he was sitting on and handed me a white ribbon that said, “Road Trip MVP” in gold glitter.
He had made it in the craft booth while I was making my cookies.
Mom always used the expression, “Kill them with kindness,” and that was exactly what Brandon had just done.
So, yes, my heart soared, but if I really was the King Kong of super slugs sliming my way across the floor, Brandon had just run over me with a huge semi, flattening me out beyond recognition.
What could I say now that wouldn’t sound completely bogus after all that he’d just said to me?
But what choice did I have?
First, I said, “Thanks,” for the ribbon. Then I sat down across from him at the picnic table. I told him how sorry I was for everything that I’d said.
“You didn’t deserve to get yelled at, and the truth is everything I said had way more to do with me than you.”
Then, probably because he had told me things about himself that I wasn’t expecting to hear, I told him things about myself that I wasn’t expecting to say.
I told him about my year of sixth grade and all its disappointments.
I told him that my chocolate chip cookies were so good only because I’d had so much practice making them because of all my failures.
And I told him that I hadn’t even wanted to come to Florida to visit Gram this summer.
He listened but didn’t say anything.
“When I heard about this road trip, I dreaded it like the plague,” I swallowed hard and added, “especially when I found out you were coming along.”
Once I said that last part, we both laughed, and we laughed even harder when I told him I had thought he was a girl.
But then I told him the trip had been tons of fun for me, too, and I couldn’t imagine what it would’ve been like without him.
I couldn’t believe I had actually said all that.
Out loud.
To a boy.
Especially a boy like Brandon.
After I finished talking, Brandon was quiet for a few seconds, and I worried that because of everything we’d said to each other, things were going to be awkward between us, but then Brandon said, “I have a confession to make.”
Brandon sounded super serious, and my cookie dough stomachache came back again in an instant.
“I ended up on this road trip because I lied.”
“Lied?!” I said. “About what?”
“The reason why I said my wrist injury is complicated is because my wrist isn’t really injured anymore. I’m just pretending it is because of baseball.”
“What? Why?”
“I’m kinda sick of baseball. I mean, I don’t hate it, but… I don’t know, I started playing because Duncan played. And I liked it in the beginning, but once I started pitching, and people thought I was good, there was so much pressure. I played on my school team and made all-conference. Then got recruited to play for the park district team, and when I got MVP, my dad signed me up for a traveling team. Before I knew it, all I ever did was play baseball. I never had time to do anything else.”
It was hard for me to process everything Brandon was saying, and part of me felt myself getting a little bit annoyed with Brandon again.
How could a person be so good at something and then not want to do it?
I would’ve killed to be a superstar at something.
But what Brandon said next quieted that whiny voice of self-pity inside me.
“Last spring when I got hurt, and I couldn’t play, I realized how great it was to just hang out with my friends again and do stuff besides play baseball. But the biggest thing I realized was that I really didn’t miss baseball all that much. So, when I went back to the doctor to get my splint off, I told the doctor my wrist still hurt, even though it didn’t. He told me I should wear the splint for another month.
“That’s the only reason I’m still wearing this thing, and it’s also the only reason I got to come on this trip.”
Brandon had actually needed to lie in order to get to do what he wanted. That really made me feel sad for him.
Then I thought about something that had never occurred to me.
Did I really like all the things that I’d attempted to be good at?
Or had I just wanted to be good at something?
Anything.
I think I always assumed that if you were good at something, you’d automatically like doing it, but from what Brandon just told me, that wasn’t necessarily true.
“Why don’t you just tell your parents you don’t want to play baseball anymore?”
Then Brandon told me that what made it so complicated was Duncan.
Duncan had played baseball when he was younger and had been super talented. After high school, he tried out for the minors but didn’t make it.
Duncan was disappointed, but Brandon said his dad was devastated.
So, Duncan decided to go to college and play for a college team in hopes of eventually being able to break into the minors, but at college Duncan discovered something else. Music.
And he loved it.
Duncan and three of his friends formed a band, and now Duncan didn’t even want to play baseball anymore. That was why now, Brandon’s dad had all his baseball hopes pinned on Brandon.
Because of all that, Brandon didn’t see how he could ever tell his dad that he didn’t want to play anymore.
“But because of Duncan, I found out how much I love music. I really want to take voice lessons, but I don’t think my dad would be too wild about that, especially since he kind of thinks Duncan’s wasting his time playing in a band.”
My head churned with all this unexpected information, and one of the things that rose to the top was a question I had for Brandon.
“So, as long as we’re making confessions here. Tell me the truth. Did you sign us up for the Kooky Karaoke Contest because of Gram or because of you?”
Brandon looked at me with those adorable eyes, and I knew the answer without him even having to say anything, so I didn’t make him answer. I just asked him another question.
“Don’t you think we’re going to make fools of ourselves?”
To which Brandon answered, “Of course.”
And then he went on to say that that was the point, and that it would be fun.
“That’s easy for you to say. You have a good voice. I don’t,” I said. “And in case you haven’t realized it, Gram and Mimi don’t have very good voices either. I just spent all last school year making a fool of myself by getting up in front of people and showcasing my lack of talent. Believe me. It’s not that fun!”
“Kooky Karaoke isn’t about the talent. I’ll bet you a fairground turkey leg that doing the contest with Gram and Mimi will be fun,” Brandon said. “If our goal is to be kooky there’s no way we won’t succeed. And embracing the kooky will definitely be fun.”
I laughed but told him that even if I made the bet with him, and the contest somehow did end up being fun, I’d never buy him one of those disgusting turkey legs.
Then I surprised myself, and I think I surprised Brandon too, by saying, “If we do the contest and it actually turns out to be fun, you and I have to ride the Ferris wheel together before we head back to Sunny Sandy Shores.”
> Brandon held out his hand and said, “Deal!”
And as we shook hands to make the bet official, Gram and Mimi walked up to the picnic table, but neither of them said “Hi,” because they both had a mouthful of food.
They each held a huge Borlandsville Fun in the Sun County Fair turkey leg and looked about as happy as a couple fair-going senior citizens could possibly look.
Love,
Me
Dear Me,
While music blasted from the stage speakers, I paced back and forth. I couldn’t believe how nervous I was.
Maybe it was because the crowd gathered for the Kooky Karaoke Contest was way past huge.
Maybe it was because the 1960s-style outfits we found at the nearby thrift store we had passed last night on the way back to the hotel from the fair made us look ridiculous.
Or maybe it was just because here I was again about to make a huge fool of myself in public.
I’d already baked cookies yesterday, so what would I do for therapy if this went wrong?
I kept wondering why I’d let Brandon convince me the contest would be fun.
The four of us had laughed a lot while we spent all morning and most of the afternoon practicing the song in the hotel room.
And while Brandon and I had eaten lunch, we had a good time making a huge cardboard cutout of a train that Gram and I planned to sort of chug across the stage during the final chorus of “Last Train to Clarksville.”
But as the three high school girls who performed right before our act stomped around on the wooden stage in furry snow boots, pink ballerina tights, and tiny tutus singing “Achy Breaky Heart,” I thought my heart might explode with apprehension.
Brandon and Mimi looked nervous too, but not over-the-cliff nervous like me.
Gram, on the other hand looked terrified.
She sat in a folding chair near the backstage steps fanning herself with a fairground flyer. She kept complaining of feeling faint, and she said she had a headache.
But we all just told her she was nervous.
“You’re finally going to sing karaoke for a crowd, Madge,” Mimi said.
“Yeah, the audience is going to love how you play broomstick air guitar,” Brandon said trying to make Gram feel better.
“And just think how good it will feel when it’s over,” I said, giving myself a pep talk as much as giving Gram one.
Then we heard the crowd begin to clap along with the snow boots ballerina cowgirls, and when we heard the crowd start to sing along too, Brandon said, “C’mon, you guys! We had so much fun practicing. We can’t let our nerves ruin it for us now.”
I took a deep breath and tried to let go of some of my trepidation.
Brandon was right. There had been more than a few times while we rehearsed in the hotel room that the four of us laughed so uncontrollably that we doubled over and couldn’t even talk, let alone sing.
Mimi had gotten so “into” drumming that during one of our “run-throughs” one of her wooden spoons had slipped out of her hand and gone flying across the hotel room.
Gram had to actually duck so that she didn’t get hit in the forehead with the airborne drumstick-spoon.
After one of our “take five” water breaks, which we took often to be sure Gram stayed hydrated, I looked at Brandon and saw a clump of my hair from his microphone-hairbrush stuck to one of the buttons of his thrift-store shirt, which he had unbuttoned almost all the way down to his wide belt so that he looked the part of a lead singer. But the clump of hair made him look like he had a hairy chest and gave him the look of a gorilla instead of the lead singer of a ’60s band.
But when my wire hanger tambourine caught the edge of the drapes that I was standing near, causing me to pull down the whole curtain rod, Mimi ran to the bathroom and made it there just before peeing her pants.
I don’t know what was funnier. Seeing Mimi run to the bathroom or hearing her tell us she almost “peed her pants.”
So yes, Brandon was right, we needed to go out onstage and have as much fun as, or maybe even more fun than, we’d had practicing.
But by the beginning of the last chorus of “Achy Breaky Heart,” Gram pulled on my arm to get my attention.
I leaned down and she said, “Sam, I don’t think I can do this. I’m really feeling sick.”
I rubbed Gram’s shoulder and told her again that she was just nervous, but Brandon and Mimi had heard what Gram said.
“Maybe she is sick,” Mimi said. “She’s been feeling tired since yesterday.”
But I told Gram again that it was just nerves, and then I said, “Just think how proud Grandpa would be of you right now.”
Gram sighed and said, “I don’t know, Sam.”
And when the last note of “Achy Breaky Heart” played, the crowd clapped super loud, and Brandon said, “Maybe we shouldn’t go on.”
“But we have to!” I insisted.
It just couldn’t be that we had come all this way, endured so many hardships, and gotten this close, only to give up and walk away now.
Brandon was right. It was going to be fun if we could swallow our nervousness and let the kookiness we’d embraced while singing our hearts out back in the hotel room be unleashed.
I knew it was up to me to make that happen.
“We have to go on!” I said. “C’mon, Brandon, help me get Gram up.”
We both put our hands under Gram’s armpits and pulled her out of the folding chair, which was almost as hard as pushing her up that wooden bunk bed ladder back at Camp Wonderful.
While the Achy Breaky cowgirls stomped down the stairs, we grabbed our cardboard train to Clarksville and our “instruments” and climbed the stage steps ourselves.
I heard a quiet little rumble of muffled laughter as we took our places, but I wasn’t surprised.
Skinny Mimi wore a short-sleeved sweater vest and a velvet miniskirt with white go-go boots. She stood behind the stool she was going to use as a drum.
Gram was dressed in flowered bell-bottoms and a leather jacket that we’d found at the last minute in the bottom of the thrift-store clearance bin. She gripped her broomstick guitar, still looking scared but ready to jam.
I was wearing an orange-and-yellow minidress and white tights and held my wire hanger tambourine like it was a real instrument.
And Brandon strutted his stuff wearing his unbuttoned shirt with the superlong pointed collar. With the microphone held up to his mouth, he looked poised for our performance.
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the television show The Monkees online, but the four of us looked like we could’ve been guest stars on it.
So, that ripple of laughter before our song even played didn’t surprise me.
But thankfully, even though it was still daylight, there were bright stage lights making it impossible to see the fair-goers who gathered to watch us, because if I was going to make it through the performance, I knew I’d have to pretend I was back at the hotel room instead of onstage with all these people staring at us.
My nervous stomach fluttered as we waited for the music. I looked at Gram and Mimi on one side of me and Brandon on the other. For a minute I couldn’t quite believe we were actually going to do this, but then the music started, and the minute I heard Brandon’s singing voice come through the stage speakers, reality set in.
It took a line or two of lyrics before Brandon sounded like himself, but when I heard Gram and Mimi start their backup singing, I sang too.
And by the time we got to the chorus.
We.
Were.
Jamming!
The four of us sang and danced and pretended to play.
The audience loved us!
And by the time Gram and I put down our guitar and tambourine, grabbed that cardboard train to Clarksville, and scooted it across the front of th
e stage, the crowd’s applause roared.
We had done it!
Gram had gotten to sing karaoke!
Her widow’s bucket list dream had come true!
And though singing karaoke hadn’t been my dream, I realized that standing onstage with the crowd going wild for us was the feeling I had been after all year.
Gram and I put down the train and the four of us walked to the edge of the stage and took a bow.
As I came up from our bow, the crowd gasped, and I felt something land on my left foot.
I looked down.
Gram lay at my feet.
She had collapsed.
Again.
“Gram! Gram!” I yelled over the noise and confusion.
Then I dropped to my knees next to her.
And Brandon yelled, “Call nine-one-one!”
I grabbed Gram’s wrist to feel her pulse, and the rhythm of her heart raced like a runaway locomotive. But when I put my ear to her mouth, her breath felt shallow.
No matter how many times I said “Gram,” and no matter how many of my tears fell on her face or dripped onto the leather-fringed jacket she wore, she didn’t open her eyes.
That was all not even an hour ago, but it feels more like a few hundred years, because I’m sitting in the Borlandsville emergency-room waiting area with Mimi on one side of me and Brandon on the other. And now that I’m finished writing this letter, I don’t know what I’ll do to keep myself from going completely hysterical, because since we’ve gotten here, no one has told us anything at all about what’s wrong with Gram or how she’s even doing.
I think you’d agree that there’s only one worse thing that could happen in this situation, and no matter how ingrained that camp motto is in my head, I don’t even want to think about that, let alone prepare for it.
Love,
Me
Dear Me,
I didn’t know it at the time, but the emergency-room doctor called Mom shortly after we got here. Mimi must’ve given them Mom’s number when she gave the nurses all Gram’s information.
So, a little while ago, Mom called me.
When I Hit the Road Page 15