Double-Crossed (8 page)

“Rick, the kids are raising money for the schools,” GoGo reminded him, ever so gently. “To support vital arts programs.”

“Are you taking her side, Phyllis?” my dad snapped.

“No, I'm taking the right side,” she answered, not intimidated at all by his tone of voice. “The arts programs need money. It's as simple as that. What would life be without the arts? Just a long series of dental appointments.”

Charlie was noticeably quiet. I knew she didn't want us performing Saturday night, but you'd think she could chime in with a word of support.

Nothing doing. I was on my own in this one.

“Listen, Dad,” I said, going in for the kill. “If we raise enough money, Mr. Ballard said he'd even contribute some to Oscar's medical costs. The doctor and hospital are doing the surgery for free, but he's going to need money for physical therapy and crutches and stuff.”

“We owe this to Esperanza,” GoGo said.

“Go inside and set the table for dinner,” my dad said to us, rubbing his forehead. I'm sure this was giving him a headache. “And tell Esperanza she can go home. Meanwhile, I'll consider your request.”

Charlie and I ran inside the house, leaving him with GoGo. From the corner of my eye, I could see her square up to him, hands on her hips. She's little and shaped like a twig, but she's got the strength of a giant oak tree.

Charlie and I set the table in silence. There were delicious-smelling chicken quesadillas waiting for us, and a bowl of Espie's homemade guacamole, which already had a big dent in it from you-know-who-of-the-traveling-mouth. When Charlie accused Ryan of swiping the guacamole, he denied it, but I knew better because he had green chunks in his teeth when he smiled and I can guarantee you it wasn't spinach.

“Do you think Dad's going to unground me?” I asked Charlie finally.

“Could go either way,” she said.

“Fifty-fifty,” Ryan agreed.

When I went out to the deck to call Dad in for dinner, he was sitting on one of the chairs, talking to GoGo. As soon as I arrived, he stopped talking.

That was either good news or bad news for me, and honestly, from the look on his face, I couldn't tell which one it was.

Dress Rehearsal

Chapter 9

“I have good news and bad news,” my dad said, walking into the kitchen.

I hate that sentence, I really do. In my experience, the good news is never good enough to outweigh the bad news. For example, last year at my annual checkup, Dr. Hartley said, “The good news, Sammie, is you've grown two inches; the bad news is you've gained fifteen pounds.”

So I think you see my point.

Anyway, I'm not going to keep you in suspense like my dad did to me. Here's what happened. He ungrounded me, sort of.

He said I was free to go to Truth Teller rehearsals after school, but there were a lot of conditions. First, I had to promise that I would play my hardest at our upcoming tournament on Sunday and never ever would I voluntarily give up a point again. I had to agree to help him and GoGo get everything set up for the party on Saturday, including cleaning the barbecue, which is a job I hate because your hands smell like barbecued chicken for a week afterward. And finally, and this was the hard part, I had to e-mail a letter of apology to the management of the Sand and Surf Club for kicking up such a fuss in the lobby.

I didn't want to agree to that condition, and I put up a big fight, but in the end GoGo convinced me to do it. After Dad went to bed, she helped me write an e-mail that was sort of an apology but wasn't totally one. It said stuff like, “I'm sorry I didn't follow your rules. Even though they seem out of date to me, I'm sure there are some of your members who think they are important.” The best line was the last one, which said, “I'm sure you welcome all sorts of people to your club, and the next time my friends from El Salvador are with me, I will see that their collars are highly visible.”

GoGo and I had a good laugh as I clicked S
END
.

It was a busy week for both Charlie and me. She spent a lot of time with her friends going over their pictures and rehearsing for what they were sure was their rise to stardom. I went to Truth Tellers every day after school. I wrote a monologue about how I used to be a tennis player who was only focused on winning until I discovered poetry and drama in Truth Tellers and uncovered all kinds of other emotions.

Alicia worked on a demonstration of painting techniques that people in El Salvador use for decorating handmade pottery. Will and Sara actually created a medley of different dances from the tango to the hora. They performed it while Devon read this poem:

 

We dance for laughter

We dance for tears

We dance for madness

We dance for fears

We dance for hopes

We dance for screams

We are the dancers

We create the dreams.

 

At first, a couple of us snickered when Will and Sara performed their dance routine because Will is so short and Sara is so tall. He barely comes up to her boobs. When they did the tango, you could hardly see Will. He basically disappeared into Sara's huge mane of curly hair and all you could see were his legs from the knees down. But then, Ms. Carew pointed out that the true meaning of dance is to express yourself, and not just to look good for other people. We all said we were sorry and applauded like crazy when they did their dance again.

The dress rehearsal was on Friday. Alicia asked if she could bring Oscar and Eddie to see it. Oscar was starting to get nervous about his operation, and she felt coming to Truth Tellers would be a good distraction. Besides, he had been nagging her all week about wanting to see me. This was the only chance he'd get, though, because I was still officially grounded after five p.m. and had to hurry home right after Truth Tellers.

We took a vote, and it was a unanimous yes. Oscar and Eddie could come.

On Friday, a couple of the moms and dads came to be in our test audience, too, as well as Bernard's sister Veronica and Keisha's cousin Brandon. I asked Charlie to come, but she was having a final meeting with her top-model group to rehearse important-sounding things to say about the arts. Spencer's dad had told them their chances of getting on TV were best if they had short, quick, punchy things to say to the camera. “Sound bites,” he called them. Charlie was trying to decide if hers should be “Art is smart” or “Art in school will help us rule.” You should have heard Jillian's sound bite. She planned to say that studying painting in school helped her learn how to apply eyeliner.

Yes, it's true, and may I also add, it's the deepest thought Jillian Kendall has ever had!

After school on Friday, Alicia and I waited on the front steps to meet Oscar and Eddie. I hadn't seen Oscar all week, and I was looking forward to seeing him. I guess you could call it looking forward. I felt like I had butterflies in my stomach, like the way you feel when you're waiting in line before you go on a roller coaster. Kind of excited and nervous and afraid all at the same time.

“Are you nervous about the performance?” Alicia asked me.

“No, not really.”

“Well, you seem nervous, Sammie. Anything I can do?”

“I'm feeling kind of weird,” I said.

“Like you're getting the flu? That would be horrible on the day before the event.”

“No, physically I'm fine. I just keep thinking about . . .” I hesitated. Alicia was my best friend. I could tell her anything. I took a breath and plunged in. “I just keep thinking about Oscar.”

Alicia nodded.

“I think about him, too,” she said. “It's a big operation he's going to have. I just pray everything comes out okay and nothing goes wrong. He's very special to me.”

“To me, too,” I whispered, before I could stop myself. “When I first met him, I thought he was sweet. But now I'm thinking about him more and more in a different kind of way.”

Alicia held up her hand to stop me from going on.

“Listen, Sammie,” she interrupted. “Oscar is my cousin. My family is here to protect him. None of us want him hurt.”

“I would never hurt him, Alicia.”

“I know you wouldn't intentionally. But you don't know how he feels about you.”

“Do you?”

“No, not exactly. But I can see he likes you, in a special way. And right now, he should be only concentrating on one thing—getting through the surgery and recovering fully. That's what we all want for him. I'm sure that's what you want for him, too.”

“Yes, of course I do.”

“Then let him be,” she said. “Nothing can get in the way of this operation.”

Before I could ask her what she meant, Candido pulled up in his truck. I followed Alicia as she ran over and flung open the door. Oscar and Eddie climbed out, all dressed up, with pressed white shirts (wouldn't you know it,
with
collars!) and their hair slicked back like they were going to Sunday school.

“You guys look great,” I said, being careful to include both of them and not just talk to Oscar.

“We don't want to embarrass you again,” Oscar answered, and I wanted to cry.

We walked into the main building. I walked slowly so that Oscar could keep up. It was
me
who didn't want to embarrass
him
.

We headed down the hall but stopped when we saw Charlie at her locker. She was standing there talking with Lauren, Lily, and Jillian.

“Eddie,” Lauren called out, waving at him as if Alicia, Oscar, and I were totally invisible.

Eddie's face lit up when he saw Lily and he veered over to them so fast he practically left skid marks on the linoleum floor.

“Eddie, we need to get to Ms. Carew's class,” I said. “You're part of the audience and it's showtime.”

“Actually, Eddie,” Lily said, “I was just thinking that maybe you want to come back to the Sporty Forty with us.” She flashed him a really inviting smile.

“Yeah,” Jillian agreed, getting into the flirt fest. “It'd be a shame for all your fancy clothes to go to waste.”

Okay, I'm not even going to deal with the fact that she had reduced our whole Truth Tellers performance to being a “waste.” Jillian couldn't help it if her idea of a peak meaningful experience was watching the
Real Teen Makeover
marathon on reality TV. But I did object to the fact that we had invited the boys to our event and now the SF2s were trying to mess that up.

“Thanks,” I said, speaking for Oscar and Eddie, “but they want to come see what we're doing.”

Eddie looked at Lily and I could practically see hearts boinging out of his eyes, like you see on cartoons when the characters fall in love.

“I would like to go to the beach club,” Eddie said, directing his answer to Lily. No surprise there.

“I'll stay with you, Sammie,” Oscar said, which was a good thing, because he hadn't even been invited to go with them.

“Then it's settled,” Charlie said, slamming her locker shut. “We can all meet up later.”

“Oh, look, there's Ryan,” Lauren said. “Ryan, over here!”

Ryan was walking down the hall with Ben Feldman and a bunch of his other volleyball team friends. They are the tallest people in the school, so they stand out like a bunch of flagpoles. Lauren waved to him and tossed her gorgeous hair over her shoulder in that bouncy way she does. Too bad the gesture was lost on our doofus brother. He just gave Lauren a wave and called out, “Hey, dudettes, looking good!”

“We're on our way to the club,” she called out. “Eddie's coming. Want to come?”

“Nah, that guy's way too good-looking,” Ryan called back. “I can't compete with him.”

This did not sit well with Lauren, who is used to getting her way all the time. But she didn't want to appear to beg in front of her girlfriends (she has to protect her queen-bee status), so she just locked her arm in Charlie's and said, “Let's go. He doesn't know what he's missing.”

“I'll catch up with you guys after practice,” Ben called out. “Hold a place for me.”

Just like that, Lauren and the girls left, and in two seconds, Alicia, Oscar, and I were a threesome. That seemed to be the way it was going to be.

When we got to Ms. Carew's room, Oscar sat with the parents. He really seemed to enjoy the performance. He bounced his head to Bernard's drumbeat, clapped his hands during the dance routine, and listened carefully as I spoke about how the arts were changing my life. When the performance was over, he waited for me while Ms. Carew gave me my final notes. She wanted to talk with Alicia a little more, so Oscar and I headed out to the truck to tell Candido it'd be a few more minutes. He carried my backpack as we left the room and headed down the hall.

“I liked what you did, Sammie, but what I really enjoyed was the dancing,” he told me as we walked. “As soon as I get my leg fixed, I am going to learn to dance. I love music, but I look funny dancing.”

“You're going to be a great dancer, Oscar. I bet you're going to burn up the dance floor.”

“Ah, like the Human Torch,” he said. “His whole body can explode in flames.”

“Whoa there.” I grinned. “I didn't mean you'd actually set fire to anything. I just meant that every girl in San Francisco is going to line up to dance with you.” I mentioned the other girls on purpose. Alicia's words were still ringing in my ears, and I was trying not to give Oscar the impression that I was his girlfriend or liked him in any special way.

“I'm sure there are lots of girls in your town who have huge crushes on you,” I went on.

He just laughed, and all I could think about was what a great smile he had. Before I knew it, he took my hand and twirled me around.

I spun under his arm, and when I came back around to face him, the smile was gone and his face was close to mine. It occurred to me that he might kiss me, right there in the hall in front of the attendance office!

I held my breath.

But he didn't kiss me. Instead, he threw his other arm high in the air, tossed his head back and shouted “Human Torch, flame on!”