Being Hartley (5 page)

"Um, hate to break it to you, but they would," I tell her.

"Pffft," Rory says, looking down at her denim cut-offs. "Then they really need to get a life." Suddenly, she stops, right on the brink of turning the corner, when we'll be out of sight.

"What's up?" I say, stopping as well.

She shrugs. "What do they say? Let's give them something to talk about." She reaches over and pulls my cap off with one hand, pulling her own off with the other hand at the same time. Both sets of blonde, curly locks come spilling down at the same moment. And, in the background, there's a distinct scrabbling and the voices of Will and Anders.

"Hey, check it out!
That's not her friend. That's a Hartley!" one of them says. Anders, I think. "She's that other one. You know, whatsherface's kid."

* * *

"Whatsherface's kid." Rory is still cracking up as she turns the key over in the ignition. "Like your mom's so forgettable! Whatsherface. Sorry they were such pains."

"I guess it wasn't as much fun as I thought it'd be."

"I hate to break it to you, but where morons are concerned, it usually isn't. If only more guys were like…" she starts, pausing to concentrate as she reverses out of park and aims for Sunset Boulevard once more.

"Like?" I've been feeling jet-lagged again, but I am instantly awake on hearing this.
Maybe I should ask about the fake boyfriend now?

"I was about to say like Noah."

I look at her to see what she's really saying here. Noah? There can't be anything going on with Noah, can there? Rory and Noah are like brother and sister. They've worked together since they were six years old. First on
Saturday Kids
and now on
SMD
.

"Noah would never act like that," she continues.

"They were only acting like that because you're famous."

"I know.
But he wouldn't be like that even if he wasn't famous. I know he wouldn't."

From everything Rory's told me about Noah, I'm sure she's right.
He doesn't sound the type who'd be picking girls up at the lights. He's more into serious girlfriends, though he's only had a couple of those. Still, I don't see what he's got to do with this. "Okay," I say. "Um, you're not secretly dating Noah, are you?"

"What?
Are you crazy? No! Yuck!"

I frown.
"Okay, so I guess you just totally contradicted yourself there."

Rory shakes her head.
"You know what I mean."

Phew.
"Oh, good. Because I was hoping there was nothing wrong with dating Noah…" I regret the words as soon as they've left my mouth. "That is, you know, not that I could ever…" I try and start shoveling my thoughts back into the hole I've dug for myself, but it's too late.

Beside me, Rory smirks as she changes lanes, then pulls up at a set of lights.

Oh, great, here it comes…

"So." She finally gets the chance to eyeball me.
"Still think Noah's cute, huh?"

I remind myself to try and act cool.
Like I don't think about Noah Hoffman five million, ninety-eight thousand and three times a day. Approximately. Give or take a few thousand. "Everyone thinks he's cute, Rory. Unless he's suddenly changed?"

"Nope," Rory tells me as the light turns green again.
"Oh, wait, maybe that's not true. I hear he's even a bit cuter since he got that buzz cut. And, of course, he's single right now," she says in a sing-songy voice.

I don't reply.
Single? That's interesting. He'd been dating this girl, Emme, an actress, off and on for years. I guess it must be off again (which is fine by me). But cuter? I seriously doubt that's even possible. I rest my right arm on the door and surreptitiously reach up to touch my cheek. Yep, as red hot as I thought it was. If I'm not careful, the tinting on my side of the car might start to bubble. "So." I decide it's time to change the subject. "Is it far to Allie's class?"

"Nope.
Just another couple of blocks. Wait till you see her!" Rory glances over for a second, Noah forgotten (phew!). "You'll never believe it. She's gotten
so
good."

And for the first time today, talking about her sister, I see my cousin's face truly light up.

-
6
-

"Wait!
Before we go in…" I grab onto Rory's tank top outside the glass doors of the dance studio and pull her back toward me. I can't bear the not-knowing one second longer.

"What?
And can you stop acting six years old, with all the pulling and poking?" She smooths her top back into place.

"Sorry, Miss All Grown Up.
It's just…before we see Allie. What's all this new boyfriend business that Mom's going on about?"

Rory glances inside the door before turning back to me. "Huh?
Oh, that. It's nothing. It's just Dad. Over-dramatizing. You know how he is. Everything's a made-for-TV movie with him."

I finally catch her eye.
"So there's no new boyfriend?"

"Look, I might have gone on a few dates with someone, but you don't need to get fitted for your bridesmaid's dress yet."

I frown. "Um, okay. Calm down." Better let it go.

"Maybe I would if everyone would stop interrogating me!
Now, let's go. It's boiling out here." She pushes open the door with a huff, and I follow with a shrug. "Hi, Becca," Rory says, quickly switching moods and waving to the woman behind the desk as I let the glass door slip closed behind us. "This is my cousin, Thea. Is it okay if we run up to Allie's class?"

"Hi, Thea.
Nice to meet you!" Becca steps out from behind her desk to shake my hand. "Great to see you again, Rory. Of course you can go on up." She gestures upstairs. "The girls are always so thrilled when you're able to join them. Thanks for coming in!"

"You're welcome. Come on, then," Rory says to me, obviously eager for us to get to Allie.
"Let's go. She's going to be beside herself that you're here. Thanks, Becca!" she says, already racing up the stairs.

I catch up to Rory on the landing where she's waiting for me.
"I usually help out when I'm here, rather than just watching. Anyway, before we go in, I should probably tell you about the other two girls."

"There're only three in the class?"

Rory nods. "It's a dance therapy class for people with special needs. There are two other girls—Holly and Steph. Holly has a brain injury from being in a car accident when she was little and Steph—I think she has some sort of developmental delay. All three of them are a great match. Really engaged and they work unbelievably hard…" She goes to take a step forward, reaching toward the door, ready to pull it open.

"Wait." I grab Rory's arm and she turns around to face me. To begin with, she looks like she thinks I'm about to start in on her again, but her expression changes when she sees mine.

"Thea? What's the matter?"

I pause for a second or two, not quite sure how to ask Rory what I want to ask her.
"Allie. Is she really…okay now?" All of a sudden, I'm scared to see her. It's just that, last year, Allie had been sick. Really sick. Allie has Turner Syndrome, this chromosomal abnormality some girls are born with. She's only fourteen, but she's had a lot of surgery already—on her heart mostly, but also some plastic surgery to make her neck look less wide. She has to take a lot of medicine, like growth hormones and stuff to make her grow taller, because she's only four foot seven. Last year, there was some other problem with her heart, and she needed more surgery. Everything went okay, but then she had some kind of unexpected complication with a blood clot, and things turned bad pretty fast. And while I've seen her once since then, about three months ago, and I Skype with her all the time, sometimes I wonder...

I speak up again now, even though my mouth is suddenly super-dry and it's hard to get the words out.
"I…sometimes I don't know if Mom is telling me the whole truth."

Rory doesn't say anything and instead grabs my hand with one of hers, brings one finger to her lips with the other and makes a "shhh" sound.
She pulls me forward a couple of steps, then peeps in through the plate glass window and gestures for me to do the same. So, I do. And there's Allie. My beautiful, tiny (but always larger than life) cousin Allie, dancing away, in the middle of two other girls, a big, wide smile plastered across her face, her hair (her curly Hartley hair!) sweaty and swept back off her face with a wide hair band.

There she is.
More than okay. Happy and healthy and…Allie.

And it seems silly, but it isn't until this moment that everything really hits home for me.
Even though Mom, Dad, and I had raced across a couple of continents to visit her in the ICU, even though I've seen her since then, not completely better, but doing well, even though we talk all the time—my hand comes up to my mouth as I focus on her now. "She really looks…fine. She looks good again. The way she's supposed to look."

"What do you mean?" Rory prompts me.

"Last time I saw her—she still didn't look a hundred percent. But now she does. I guess…" I don't want to say the words.

"What?" Rory puts a hand on my shoulder and looks into my eyes.

I blurt the horrible words out as fast as I can. "I really thought she was going to die, and I don't know what I'd do without Allie."

Rory pulls me into her now.
"Oh, Thea. I know. It gave us all a scare. But she's okay now. Really. No one's hiding anything. You can see for yourself. Don't cry. See for yourself. Go on, have another look."

"No," I say, wiping my eyes and sniffing a big sniff.
"It's too sad."

"Sad?" Rory frowns.

I laugh now. "It's sad because you're right. She
has
gotten really good. And when your little sister dances better than you, it's best to pretend it's not happening."

* * *

The girls go insane when Rory enters the room. Seriously insane. They have a massive hug-fest, as do Allie and I, and you can tell the girls' teacher, Linda, is really pleased that Rory came to visit. For the next forty-five minutes, with the three of us helping out, the girls get one-on-one attention. Not that they need it. Like Rory said, Allie's dancing has come a long way. And that's saying something, because there are certain things that are harder for Allie due to her having Turner Syndrome—like dancing, and math. So, for Allie's dancing to have come a long way, Allie has been working a whole lot harder than other dancers to master what she's mastered.

Today they're learning a tap routine because Steph had seen some tap on TV and asked Linda about it last week.
Linda digs some tap shoes out for Rory and me, and we're ready in a flash. Ready, that is, to remember that tap is my absolute downfall when it comes to dance. As the minutes tick by, I start to feel more and more like a hindrance than a help to the class.

"Come on, Thea," Allie says, encouraging me.
"Keep up!"

"Sorry," I tell her.
"I know I'm hopeless. Show me that last step again."

And she does.
Every time. And she doesn't get annoyed with me, either, though I get plenty annoyed with myself.

By the end of the class, I've had it.
I lie down on the floor on my back and groan. "It's too hard," I say. "I give up."

Allie gives me a soft kick in the ribs.
"Pathetic, really," she laughs, standing above me and looking down, her hands on her hips and a towel around her neck.

Rory comes over to stand beside her sister and checks me out as well. "So sad.
Maybe we could make a documentary or something—
When Hartleys Fail
."

I groan again, remembering something.
"I can't believe you're taping this. That makes it even worse. It'll haunt me forever." While Linda was fetching our tap shoes, I'd noticed the camera in the corner of the room and the little red light of doom. Rory explained that she started to get Linda to tape the girls' classes so they could watch it back later and go over places where they had problems. It had really been helping Allie.

Linda comes over and gives me a hand up.
"Are they picking on you?"

"Yes," I say, sulkily.
"But I deserve it. Sorry I wasn't much help. Tap isn't my thing."

"Ah, so what's your thing, then?" Linda sizes me up.
"You're certainly a dancer, I can tell that much. And a Hartley." She motions toward my hair, then Allie's and Rory's. "They're some genes you've got going on! Now, let me guess. You have the build for ballet."

I moan at being outed.
"Yep, because that's pretty much all I'm allowed to do," I tell her, and Linda looks slightly confused.

"Hip hop's her real thing," Rory tells Linda earnestly.
"But it's kind of banned at her house. You know, like in that old movie
Footloose
. She's a repressed teen rebel, just like Kevin Bacon."

* * *

"A repressed teen rebel? You are such a freak! I can't believe you said that to Allie's poor teacher!" I swat Rory as we return to the parking lot. "You know we're not supposed to tell people about our tragic dance movie obsession. That's private!" It's true. We've watched pretty much every dance movie ever made and most of them a couple of times over.
Footloose
is one of our favorites, even though it was made way more than ten years before any of us were even born. We can actually even quote from it.

Rory laughs.
"Well,
aren't
you a repressed teen rebel?"

"She's right, you know.
You are. Exactly like Kevin Bacon," Allie says with a nod, loving every minute of this.

Rory grins, jangling her keys.
As we clamber into the car, she turns to us. "If you ask me…"

"Ren is a total fox!" Allie and I crack up, quoting from the movie.

As we buckle up, the two of them start singing the theme song, and despite the shame of it all, by the time she pulls out of the parking lot, I'm singing along as well, Allie and Rory in the front and me in the back seat.

And I'm loving every minute of it.

* * *

"Here we go." Rory's eyes widen as she unlocks the front door of the house.
"At least Dad will behave while you guys are here," she says to me.

"What do you expect?" Allie says to her.
"You took off for twenty-four hours. What's he supposed to do? Applaud you? Anyway, it's pizza station tonight. Maybe it'll be a nice change for everybody that it's not going to be all about you."

"Great.
I love pizza station," I pipe up, ignoring the sibling stuff.

"I'm in here!" I hear Uncle Erik call out from the kitchen.

Rory whirls around and points at Allie as we continue toward the kitchen. "Just for that, I am so going to beat you this time," she says to her, narrowing her eyes.

Allie doesn't seem too worried.
"Maybe, maybe not."

"Allie won the last three times," Rory says to me.
"I've got to admit it, even though she's a total pain, that smoked turkey, brie, and cranberry pizza was divine."

"Of course it was," Allie says, shamelessly.
"I made it."

"Now I'm definitely going to beat you."

"Hey, Uncle Erik," I say as we enter the kitchen now. He's behind the long marble counter, and there are about thirty small metal bowls in front of him, all with different assorted pizza ingredients in them.

"Hiya
, girls," he says, pausing to wipe his hands on his apron. "As you can see, I've been doing the prep chef honors here for some time. Pizza bases are all finished, too. How'd you like Allie's class, Thea?" He looks up from mincing some Spanish onion.

I think for a moment.
"Well, apart from being the worst dancer there by a long shot, it was super! So, um, where's Mom?" I glance around the room before craning my neck to peer into the living area.

Uncle Erik goes back to his onion, his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth as he concentrates.
"She should be out of the shower in a minute. Anna made her run Runyon Canyon. Up and down."

"Better her than me," Allie says.
"So, do we have time for showers too?"

"Sure, but make it quick.
Then come right back and make your pizzas."

* * *

"All done," I say, going to the sink to wash my hands. "Hey! No peeking!" I tell Allie, who's checking me out from the other side of the kitchen.

"Like I need to cheat," she says, going back to her own pizza.
"I'm the three-time reigning champion, remember?"

"I'm finished too," Rory says, from her spot behind me.
She's been kind of quiet this evening, laying low.

"Looks like we're all good to go, then," Uncle Erik says.
"Everyone get your pizza and line up for the oven." He goes over to pull down the door on the gigantic stainless steel chef's oven.

We all race over and grab our pizzas and line up to have him slide them inside. As mine goes in, I cross my fingers that my roast
ed pumpkin, Spanish onion, feta, and tomato chutney number is a hit.