The Steps

by Rachel Cohn

  “Is your brother always like that?” I asked Lucy later, after Devon and Yasmin had left.

  “Yeah, he’s a huge, massive pain,” Lucy said. Then she added, “And he’s your brother too, you know.”

  That sounded too weird.

  “He’s my step,” I said. “You’re my step. That’s all we’ll ever be. Steps.”

  I remembered I had promised myself I could be mean to Lucy again once Devon and Yasmin were gone. Maybe she thought because I took up for her with Devon and Yasmin that we would be tight, but she was wrong. I was only temporarily helping out. And seeing Jack come downstairs after the girls were gone, carrying Beatrice, with Angus hanging on to his leg and Penny and Lucy gazing at him adoringly, I reminded myself that the Steps were not my friends.

  Lucy looked like she was going to cry from what I had said. Instead she leaned over to whisper in my ear, so Jack and Penny would not hear her. “Sometimes I wish you weren’t even my step. I wouldn’t want you as my sister anymore. Your dad never warned us you’d be so stuck up.”

  Good, I thought. Now Lucy understood that I had no intention of being all cozy-cozy with her.

  “Takes one to know one,” I whispered back.

  Jack and Penny looked at us, and Lucy and I both flashed brilliant smiles back at them, like we were going to be the bestest friends in the world. Not.

  Chapter 10

  Australia was the weirdest place. Rice Krispies were called Rice Bubbles, Popsicles were “icy pops,” people said “ta” instead of “thank you,” and everybody ended their sentences with “hey?” Like Angus would say, “I want an icy pop, hey? Ta.” That was their “English.” Another thing: Every time I went to the “milk bar” or the “veggie bar” (the vegetarian restaurant down the street), people imitated the way I talked. Like if I said, “I’ll have an order of nachos,” the waitress would repeat after me, in this exaggerated American voice, “Nah-chos.” The first time I asked for guacamole, the waitress said, “What?” about five times and Lucy sat giggling at the table going “Guacamole, guacamole,” in this ridiculous American accent Apparently in Australia there is no word guacamole. They call it avocado sauce, and of course everybody laughed when I pronounced that, too. Lucy imitated me again, murmuring, “Ah-vah-cah-do,” after me.

  One time we were at McDonald’s, when I asked for ketchup with my fries. Lucy said, “It’s tomato sauce, not ketchup,” but in her Australian pronunciation “ta-may-do” turned into “toe-mah-toe.” When I gave her a look back like, Well, excuse me! she told me all about her letter-writing campaign to the ketchup-making companies asking that they start labeling the bottles with the “proper” name: tomato sauce. I was about to tell her she could take her girl power letter-writing campaign and shove it up her—but then Jack congratulated Lucy for taking “initiative” to write to those companies, so I shut up before I really said something mean. Instead I told Lucy, “In America, which probably invented ketchup in the first place, tomato sauce is a totally separate thing that you use to, like, make spaghetti sauce, so in America ketchup will always be the right word.”

  Angus was the worst. He kept laughing after I said I “brush” instead of “clean” my teeth, and he baited me all the time to recite the alphabet so he could laugh that I pronounced “zee” instead of “zed.”

  Penny told the Steps to stop imitating me because it was rude. They still did it when she wasn’t around. They never teased Jack about his American accent. They were used to him, I guess. But something about hearing me made the Steps turn all giggly and rude.

  Penny said I shouldn’t be offended that people imitated the way I talked. She said it was because there was so much American television on in Australia that when people heard me speak, it was like I was a girl from Friends standing right in front of them. Sometimes Penny tried too hard to be cool—like I would want to be a girl from Friends, as if I were Brittany Carlson.

  It was hard to like the Steps or Penny those first few days in Sydney. They were always hogging Jack and Beatrice. If I wanted to go swimming with Jack, Angus had to come too, because that boy loves water. If I wanted to go play catch with Jack, Lucy begged to come too, because she wanted to learn how to play American baseball. If I wanted to hold Beatrice, Angus and Lucy would crowd us and make faces at the baby and try to make her smile and laugh. If I wanted to hang out with just Jack, then Penny wanted him to help her change nappies or make dinner.

  Besides, there was no time to have Jack to myself. Penny had our schedule for Christmas vacation planned out like she was a military general. She was so into activities. To me, activities were window-shopping on Madison Avenue, rollerblading in Central Park, or watching movies and eating popcorn with Justine, Gloria, and Keisha. Activities to me were not doing crosswords, making costumes, baking gingerbread-man cookies, and putting together endless puzzles.

  On the third straight day of activities I asked Penny why we always had to be doing activities. I thought if I had to glue glitter onto one more greeting card, I was going to scream.

  Penny looked so confused. “Well, with four children in the house, activities keep us on schedule and keep everybody settled.”

  Schedule? Settled? Lucy and I counted as children? Hello, we were practically thirteen!

  Jack was in another room changing Beatrice’s nappy, so I did not hesitate to answer back fresh to Penny. “I am not a child, Penny. And I do not like activities and I will not do them any longer. Back in New York, before you knew Jack, we used to go places. We did not always stay cooped up in the house doing activities. I want to go somewhere.” Penny’s face looked very hurt, so I did not add, And I know we always have to do activities because you don’t want me to have Jack all to myself and steal him back. You want to hold us all here as captives so no one will have the chance to see that this “family” totally does not work.

  I could see Lucy’s lips curl into a smile under the mask she was making. She and her mom had been fighting at night before bed, when they thought I couldn’t hear them yelling at each other upstairs in Jack and Penny’s room. From what I had overheard, Lucy was mad because every year after Christmas, Lucy and Angus spent a week at their grandmother’s house in Melbourne—their grandmother who was the mom of their real dad. And this year, because I was here, Penny said they couldn’t go. But I knew that Penny was using me as an excuse. I had heard Penny talking on the phone to Lucy’s grandma, and her tone was very annoyed and angry. Penny and Lucy’s grandma didn’t get along. This I understood. Bubbe and Jack have never gotten along. Bubbe thinks it’s Jack’s fault that he and Angelina never got married. But I was there when Jack and Angelina were living together, and I know it was Angelina who didn’t want to get married, not Jack. Can’t tell that to Bubbe, though. Bubbe hears only what she wants to hear, as Angelina reminds me all the time.

  “What would you like to do, then, Annabel?” Penny asked. She did not snap at me the way Angelina might have for being fresh. Her tone was phony-nice, like she was trying to prove she knew I knew I would never think of her as my mom, and she was trying too hard to be my cool stepmom.

  Before going to Australia, I had been pouring over Vogue magazines and reading up on Sydney on the Internet. I knew just what I wanted to do. “I want to go to the market at Paddington and to the clothes shops on Oxford Street and to the Strand shopping arcade.”

  Lucy’s jaw dropped, I swear. This was probably, aside from the Devon-Yasmin incident, the most I had said around Penny and the Steps since I arrived.

  I could tell Penny was trying really hard not to be mad at me. I figured this must have been hard for her, since she and Lucy had been fighting so much, so I appreciated her—a little—for trying. She said, extra patiently, “I was under the impression you weren’t too impressed with Sydney and weren’t too interested in going about much. I asked you when you first got here if there was anything special you wanted to do, and you didn’t answer me. Why didn’t you say something earlier?”

  Lucy knew the answer. Lucy
said, “Because you made meat for dinner!”

  I took the high road. I didn’t acknowledge that Lucy was right.

  Chapter 11

  The next day I learned right away why Penny liked to stick to activities at home. Dragging around Angus and Beatrice was a major pain.

  When we finally got sprung from the Steps’ cottage in Balmain, we rode a ferry to the other side of Sydney Harbour, From the boat I could see the Sydney Opera House, which looked like this gorgeous whitewashed fan streaking the blue sky. It was incredible looking. The subway in Sydney was pretty cool too, I have to confess. It wasn’t ultranoisy like the subway in Manhattan, and the train cars had three different levels, like they were their own underground moving building!

  I couldn’t complain about walking around in December in shorts and sandals, either. That sun was bliss and provided great fashion opportunities for short skirts and platform sandals, glittery tank tees . . . and hats! Everybody in Australia wears hats, Jack told me, because the hole in the ozone layer exposes people in Australia to skin cancer more than in any other place. Angus wore the cutest kind of hat that all the young schoolchildren wear in Australia, bright cotton with a brim in the front and flaps hanging over the ears. Penny and Lucy wore plain straw hats, but I didn’t let on that I thought they looked nice, if boring. Jack wore his beloved New York Mets cap, which he also wears inside the house when he’s not even trying to protect his face from skin cancer.

  Seeing all those fabu hats made my first shopping mission clear. Hats, here I come, I thought as we wandered from the subway station to Paddington Market. If you think going hat shopping in an open-air market would be an easy task, think again. One word: Angus! He would not stop fidgeting around, and if he wasn’t fidgeting, he was running through stalls and knocking things over. When Lucy scolded him, he told her he would behave only if she promised to give him some “chockie,” which is Australian for chocolate. Lucy told Angus to kiss off. Then every time Angus “settled” (as Penny called it), Beatrice started crying, needing to be fed, or throwing up. Oy vey! Being freed from Penny’s activities was proving not fun at all.

  Finally I said to Jack, “Can we go off on our own?” He looked to Penny, who nodded reluctantly. Penny told him she would take Angus and Beatrice to Baskin-Robbins, and we could meet them there in an hour. Which of course meant Lucy was stuck with us. Double ugh!

  Jack mouthed the words thank you to Penny, like Penny was doing him some favor by letting him spend actual time with his actual daughter. Jack smiled really wide and took my and Lucy’s hands on either side of him. “An hour with my best girls,” he said. Behind his back I stuck my tongue out at Lucy. She didn’t see.

  The clothes displayed in the stalls were supremely funky and outrageous: loads of narrow-cut sweaters, hip straight skirts with side slits, retro bell-bottoms, and wild-patterned leather boots. Jack explained that Paddington Market is where a lot of young and upcoming fashion designers get their start. Sydney’s not such a bad place at all, I thought. In fact, I thought the city—if you took away Penny and the Steps—was pretty amazing. Especially when I saw the small designer shops on nearby Oxford Street, which sold the totally cutest, most unique dresses, sweaters, and skirts I ever saw (and that included Bloomingdale’s, my most favorite store ever).

  I thought it was too bad Jack was going to have to return to America with me, because I realized I could get used to this Sydney clothes scene, and I would not mind at all eventually making clothes that could be displayed in places like Paddington Market and Oxford Street.

  I bought the most cool vintage brown cowboy hat, with beads hanging down from the rim on each side and a bowling-shirt-type letter A stenciled on the front. “That hat’s the most dreadful thing I ever saw,” Lucy said. That comment, of course, sealed the sale.

  Jack laughed when he saw me wearing the hat, which was a great match with my overall shorts and surf T-shirt. “That’s my Annabel!” he said. “Oh, when your Bubbe sees you wearing that . . .” He laughed all the way to Baskin-Robbins as I piggybacked on his back and looked down at Lucy’s boring ole straw hat and thought, Hopeless.

  Chapter 12

  I was falling in love with Sydney, Australia, so I almost thought it was a shame that I was going to have to inform Jack that he absolutely, positively needed to move back to America where he belonged, with me. I was loving Sydney so much, even the Steps didn’t seem so bad. Over the next couple of days I actually started to like them okay. Not love-adore-let’s-spend-every-minute-together them, but they got on my nerves less.

  Like Angus. Who knew that he could be so fun at museums? At the modern-art museum he stood in front of the paintings and sculptures, rubbing his chin with his hand, like he was a professor stroking his beard and thinking up some totally smart thing to say. And when I laughed at him, he giggled too and impulsively hugged my leg. “I like you, Annabel,” he said. I think he meant like-like, too! I never heard of anyone having their first crush on their step, but all righty then, Angusfreak. At the aquarium at Darling Harbour (his favorite place) he knew everything about every last moving creature in water. I never knew a five-year-old could know so many facts. He’d be great to have around in biology class. Most fun was watching Angus stare intently at the different fish species and then try to imitate the way they swam or the way their faces looked. Even Lucy was giggling, and Angus probably annoys her the most of anybody.

  Lucy had her moments too. At the Strand Arcade—which is this gorgeous shopping mall, but not like a mall in America, because it is a building of two narrow stories with gilt trim and crystal lights everywhere and small boutiques selling the coolest clothes and jewelry—Lucy grabbed my hand and dragged me into a sewing shop. The tiny shop was covered wall-to-wall with beautiful fabrics and laces and braided trim. Lucy went right to the drawers of sewing patterns. “Let’s choose one!” she said.

  “But why?” I said.

  “So we can make something together,” she said, like of course I should have known that.

  “But I don’t know how to sew,” I said.

  Her baby blue eyes were wide with shock. “But I thought you said you wanted to be a fashion designer.”

  “I do.”

  “And you don’t know how to sew?” Lucy said it like I was some kind of idiot.

  “No.” It had never occurred to me even to try. I just liked to draw designs; shop, shop, shop; pick outfits for Angelina, Justine, Gloria, and Keisha; and look at the pictures in Vogue and W magazines like those magazines were the Bible. “You know how to sew?” I asked her. I said it like it was no big deal.

  “Of course,” she said. Of course. That was such a stuck-up answer, I thought. “My Granny Nell taught me. We were going to work on a special party dress for me this holiday. Until you had to come.”

  Her eyes stared right into mine, accusing. I guess I felt a little bad that she thought that, even though I knew it wasn’t my fault she wasn’t visiting her grandmother, so I said, “Maybe you could teach me how to sew?”

  Her face turned bright pink happy. “That would be so fun!” she said. The thing about Lucy was, all I had to do was be a little nice to her to make her so happy. And considering that she had had a miserable first year in Sydney, that she couldn’t see her Granny Nell, and that she was pretty funny every night when she brushed her teeth and sang “Spice Up Your Life,” her mouth filled with toothpaste and her eyes laughing, shaking her hips and gurgling, “Shake it to the left! Spice up your life!” so that she almost made me like the Spice Girls again, I figured I could do this favor for her and let her teach me to sew.

  One day we drove over to Bondi Beach (pronounced “Bond-eye”). I couldn’t believe it, but Lucy knew how to surf, too. Even Justine, who can rollerblade across Central Park faster than anyone you ever saw and who can do cartwheels all up and down Fifth Avenue, cannot surf.

  The beach was beautiful, with tons of kids hanging around, wearing the most excellent surf clothes and bathing suits I’ve ever seen. The only b
each I’d ever been to before was in Miami with Bubbe, but that was pretty boring. Mostly Bubbe sunned herself on a beach chair, drinking cocktails and smoking and talking to other old people, and I would end up floating in the water on a raft and counting the minutes until we went back to New York. But Bondi Beach! It was swarming with kids and music and fun. And I couldn’t believe I could be enjoying such incredible weather at the end of December.

  “Who taught you how to surf?” I asked Lucy as we sunbathed on the beach by ourselves. Jack, Penny, Angus, and Beatrice had gone for a walk to get ice creams.

  “My dad. My real dad,” Lucy said. She was wearing sunglasses, so I couldn’t tell whether talking about her real dad was going to make her cry. There was a girl in my third-grade class whose mother had died of cancer. The girl used to cry a lot, and she hardly talked to anyone ever, until finally her dad took her out of school and home-schooled her until she could get better. I knew that even though I was mad about Jack’s moving to Australia, I was still lucky to have a dad.

  “Do you remember your real dad?” I asked Lucy. I guess we must have been getting comfortable with each other, because I didn’t feel weird about asking, and she didn’t seem to feel too weird about answering.

  “Totally,” she said. “He wasn’t funny like your dad, or tall, and he was older. He was very kind and sweet. We read fairy books together every night. He taught me how to surf. He loved the ocean. I think Angus gets that from him. Except Angus never knew our dad. But he looks just like him.”

  “Do you miss him?”

  She took her sunglasses off and locked her eyes with mine. “Of course,” she said. That of course again, except this of course wasn’t stuck up. It was sad and painful. I understood that, like me, the day didn’t go by that she didn’t think about and miss her dad. I guess I minded a little less that she had borrowed Jack for a while. Lucy and Angus needed some Jack too.