My Life in Dioramas (7 page)

I went upstairs and texted Stella.
Skating?

She wrote back,
Affirmative.

I shouted down to my mom from the loft. “What time are we going skating? Stella's coming.”

“Tell her we'll pick her up at ten.”

“Hey, Mom?”

She looked up at me from the kitchen.

“You
could
just drop us off if you want.”

“Thanks, Kate.” She huffed and looked away. “That's thoughtful.”

“I didn't mean it like that.”

“I thought we'd do something together, just us two, is all.” She was sautéeing onions. Angus was curled up near where she stood.

I sort of felt bad, but not really. This whole forced family fun during open house idea bugged me. “I can cancel,” I called down.

“Never mind,” she said. “Have you cleaned up the crafts room?”

I didn't even answer. I just walked downstairs.

But I didn't clean up.

Instead, I found another shoebox.

I lined the walls with cream-colored paper and cut blue rectangles for windows. I found some flowery paper and cut little curtain shapes, then made a small pink table and chairs. I started to make me and my cousin Ellen, dressed in tiny paper dresses. I missed her and my other cousins and my aunts and uncles. Did any of them know we were selling Big Red?

I propped the mini-me and mini-Ellen up on the chairs and left the room.

9.

Xanadu or roller derby?
was Stella's first text in the morning.

I'd introduced Stella to
Xanadu
a few years ago. My mother said it was her absolute favorite movie ever when she was little, and since then Stella and I had spent a number of sleepovers making fun of the clothes, the music, and the plot—where a roller-skating goddess pops out of a mural and basically inspires a failing painter to turn an old movie theater into a roller rink. I sort of loved it, too, in all its totally outdated bizarreness.

So today, I picked
Xanadu
.

I was feeling more like trying to skate my way out of my life and into some other magical realm than I felt like “AlterKate-r,” my roller-derby persona. Why we felt the need to dress up whenever we went roller-skating, I have no idea.

I threw on some tights, some pink leg warmers, and a white flowing dress with big sleeves that Stella and I had found at a secondhand shop in town. Then I took the leg warmers off. Maybe I'd come back for those as part of my double back? I had a feeling my mother wasn't going to let me leave the house without my skates so I needed a fallback plan.

Downstairs, a bright-eyed, middle-aged woman with curly red hair stood by the oven, holding a sheet of frozen pieces of cookie dough. “Hello there,” she said.

“Who are you?”

“I'm Bernadette.” She opened the oven door and slid the sheet in, seeming so at home that anyone might have taken her for an aunt. “The realtor. And you must be Kate.”

“What's up with the cookies?” I said.

“We want the house to smell homey.”

So she was, clearly, my enemy.

“People really fall for that?” I asked.

“Yes.”

I walked past her and into the dining room, where my parents were clearing stuff off the table in a frenzy.

Bernadette followed me and said, “It's okay for it to look like people live here. You don't have to go crazy. The place looks great. I'm feeling confident.”

“Oh good.” My mom was wearing leggings and an oversize denim button-down shirt. She grabbed her car keys. “Then I guess we'll leave you to it.”

I followed my parents and Angus out the front door with my skates in hand and waited for them to reach their cars before I said, “Oh! My leg warmers!”

“It's not cold out,” my mom said.

“It's a fashion choice,” I said.

I went back through the house and past Bernadette, who was arranging flowers in a vase on the kitchen table.

Which was a problem.

Because from the kitchen, you could see the loft, where the beanbag chair was.

I hadn't factored in the presence of the realtor.

“You may want to check for dead flies in my parents' room,” I said.

“Dead flies?” Bernadette studied me.

“Yeah, something died in the roof or something,” I said. “The flies are getting into my parents' room and also dying. They don't even notice it anymore. Dustpan is in the laundry room. I'll show you.”

Bernadette followed me to fetch the dustpan and hand broom. Then she headed for my parents' room and I bolted to my room, retrieved the cow pie, which smelled just as bad as it had yesterday, and returned to the loft and shoved it into the beanbag. It had the smell of chocolate chips to contend with but I figured that was a good thing. They'd think maybe the cookies were bad? Or that something had died behind the oven?

Bernadette was standing at the door of my parents' bedroom with a dustpan full of flies when I reached the hall with my leg warmers. “Thanks for the tip,” she said.

“Any time!”

It felt weird to be leaving her there, alone at Big Red.

Out front, a car had already pulled into the driveway, where a
FOR SALE
sign with a yellow balloon had appeared, but I looked away. I didn't want to see who they were, what they were like. I knew I wouldn't be able to stand it if there was a girl like me, a girl luckier than me, who might inherit my house, my life.

My parents were both in my dad's car waiting for me. I got into the backseat. With Angus. I didn't understand why we weren't taking two cars. “Dad, are you coming roller-skating?”

It was my mother who answered. “Well, you're bringing a friend, so why shouldn't I?”

I snorted. “Dad's not your
friend
.”

Dad said, “Of course I am.” He looked out the window as we stopped at the end of the driveway and he reached over and squeezed her knee before pulling onto the road. “I'm her
best
friend.” Then he smiled. “Remember that when I let you start dating when you're thirty.”

“Fine by me,” I said, thinking about Naveen. But maybe all of Stella's nagging about crushes was just getting to me. “I'm in no hurry.”

“Atta girl,” Dad said, and I smiled.

“What are we going to do with Angus?” I reached over and rubbed behind his ears. He looked half-asleep beside me.

“Dropping him off at Joe's for a few hours,” my dad said.

We did that every once in a while, like if we were going to my grandparents' for a long visit. But today it felt especially sad to be sending poor Angus off to somebody else's house. When Angus climbed out of the car in front of Joe's and walked up onto his porch and laid down, I sort of wanted to go with him, and just wait out the open house, napping in the sun.

At the rink, Stella and I
laced up as far away from my parents as we could.

“My dad would never go roller-skating,” she said.

“First time for everything,” I said.

“No, there isn't. Not for
my
dad. Your parents are just so
cool
.”

I looked at them, trying to find cool things about them and failing. Why couldn't they get their act together and just be more grown-up and make more money and be more smart about things and not have to ruin everything?

“At least your dad has a job. That pays the bills,” I said.

Stella fake-snored.

“Snore all you want.” I stood on my skates, and nearly wiped out. “At least you can snore in your own bed in your own house and not have to shack up with your grandparents and then move who even knows where?”

She gave me a sad look and stood on her skates. “Come on.” She grabbed my hand. “Let's skate it out.”

It was hard to say no to someone wearing a purple sat-in one-piece jumpsuit who had blown her hair out in big feathery waves.

I was a bit wobbly at first since we hadn't skated in a few months, but I found my groove and got lost in the music and the lights reflecting off the disco ball that hung over the
center of the oval rink. They sprayed across my dress like confetti and I felt just plain happy. Across the rink, on the opposite side, the light drizzled on my parents, who were skating side by side, lazily but somehow confidently, too. My dad reached out and took my mother's hand.

I wondered how my cow pie was doing and felt what might have been a twinge of regret.

Stella and I skated like crazy for forty-five minutes, then took a break on a bench near the lockers. Or at least I thought we were just taking a break, but Stella said, “My mom's actually picking me up in ten.”

“What? Why?”

“I've been feeling bad about it since Thursday, but I can't keep it a secret either.” Stella blew some hair out of her eyes. “I'm starting private classes with Miss Emma to prepare a solo for the competition.”

“That's great,” I said. “Why do you feel bad about it?”

“Because it's expensive and I know you probably can't, well, you know.”

I hadn't even considered doing a solo.

Stella just nodded. “Yeah, my mom really wanted me to. And I really want to. I mean, dance is my passion. So she paid for a choreographer and now I need to meet with them and pick a song and I'll need extra sessions with Miss Emma.”

“Wow.” I felt, somehow, dumb. “I'm happy for you.”

“Thanks.” She hung her skates over her shoulder as she
stood, back in her normal shoes, looking short. “We'll talk later, okay?”

She went to the edge of the rink, waited for my mom to skate toward her, and said, “Thanks! My mom's here to pick me up!”

“Already?” My mom looked at me and back at Stella.

“Yeah, we've got a busy day!” Stella waved and took off, toward the arcade games near the exit, where my dad was shooting hoops.

Mom said, “Come skate with me.”

So I did.

“I requested a few songs from
Xanadu
,” she said, smiling a little. I had to work hard to smile back.

10.

Bernadette was sitting at the kitchen
table when we got home after picking up Angus.

“Holy cow,” my mom said, and I nearly laughed. “What's that smell?”

“A lot of folks were wondering the same thing.” Bernadette's arms were crossed in front of her chest.

“Did someone track something in on their shoes?” Mom looked around at the floor.

“No,” Bernadette said. “I opened some windows but it didn't really help. As you can tell, it's pretty pronounced. I explained that, of course, it was surely a one-time thing. It seemed to be originating here or up there.” She pointed at the loft.

“We'll handle it before the next showing, whatever it is,” Dad said.

At which point I realized I didn't have a plan for getting the fecal matter out of the beanbag and out of the house.