The Icing on the Cake (19 page)

I feel sick, but I try to keep my head up while I
walk away. No crying in public. I am not that girl.

I need to find Liza and Lillian, but they're probably out in the quad for lunch already. I'm not sure I can make it there without breaking down, so I text them both instead.

Two words.
No track
.

My phone immediately starts chirping with their replies, but suddenly I don't even have the energy to read them. I'm just so tired.

I turn off my phone and head to the nurse's office. When I tell her I have a splitting headache, it's not even a lie—I have headaches all the time these days.

I curl up in a ball on the hard little bed with its paper sheets and try to sleep. All I want to do is escape into sleep. If only I were like my brothers. They can sleep anywhere, anytime. Sitting up—even standing—it doesn't matter. Last year on the plane to Florida to visit my grandparents, both Goons just pulled their hoodies over their heads and said, “See
you in Miami”—and they slept the whole way there. I'd trade my entire pristine Harry Potter boxed set to be able to do that right now.

But there's no way around it—I failed. I just wasn't good enough, I didn't work hard enough. I completely and utterly failed.

*  *  *

As soon as the final bell rings I race out of school without even bothering to stop at my locker.

I keep moving as I text Liza and Lillian.
Going home, talk later.

I keep my head down as I get closer to my block, hoping I don't run into anyone. Of course, that's impossible in my neighborhood. By the time I make it to our house, I've waved halfheartedly at my kindergarten teacher, some retired friends of my grand-father's, Nicky's drum teacher, and the delivery guy from the grocery store. Finally, I reach our stoop and race up the stairs. If only I'd run that fast in the tryouts!

The house is totally quiet and I suddenly realize two things: I am home, all alone, for the first time in forever (which is amazing); and I am starving—totally starving. I'm hungrier than I can ever remember being—maybe hungrier than I've ever actually been. When I open the fridge, I spy a large container of Dad's gnocchi—his famous gnocchi, swimming in spicy marinara sauce and floating clouds of ricotta cheese—and before I know it I'm grabbing it with one hand and reaching for a fork with the other. I skip the microwave and start eating the gnocchi right out of the container, even though my mom would kill me. It tastes ridiculously good.

After a few bites, I actually start to feel better. Just like that. And then it hits me: I didn't fail. Not really. I just wasn't at full Frankie strength! I thought that if I ate lighter I would fly faster, but clearly that was the absolute wrong conclusion. Perfect Katie may float on the wind, all delicate and fairylike, but that's not me. I need fuel—tasty, energy-filled
fuel—so that I can blast down the track. Next time, I'll do it my way.

I'm pretty sure that's a line from a Frank Sinatra song my papa Caputo likes to sing. Alone in my house, I start to giggle to myself, savoring every bite of my dad's delicious pasta. If he were here now, he'd be cracking up too.

I'm still digging into the pasta when the front door slams open, crashing into the wall and abruptly ending my peaceful moment in the kitchen. The Goons storm in, shoving and yelling, along with some friend of theirs. Before they even have a chance to say something obnoxious, I get up to leave, but they push their friend right into me.

“Hey, watch it, you monsters,” I say. (Not one of my best lines, I know, but hey, I've had a rough day.) Then I make eye contact with the monster-in-question. OMG. It's Tristan.
Tristan Holland
. Total Hotness. Here? In my kitchen? What a heck? as Nicky likes to say.

“Um, hi,” I manage, trying to smooth down my hair, which is all bed-heady from the hard-as-a-rock cot in the nurse's office. “What's up?”

“Yo, Frankie!” Tristan says in this loud, annoying voice that sounds exactly like my brothers'. He's snorting and laughing—practically grunting—just like they are and isn't even remotely acting like the cool skater dude I've been staring at every Saturday.

All three of them are yelling over each other about whatever happened at baseball practice (The Goons play anything that involves a ball). Apparently, it was so hilarious that the fact that I am standing right in front of him barely registers with Tristan at all.

“Wait a second,” I holler over them. “You guys know each other?”

Leo finishes imitating a “totally awesome pitch” and then a
whoosh
over some guy's head and looks at me like
I'm
the idiot in the room.

“Uh, yeah, obviously. Tris plays D on our team. What's it to you, Frankenstein?”

I turn to look at Tristan, shoveling goldfish into his mouth and spitting out the crumbs as he laughs at something utterly stupid that Joey just said, and I realize that I feel nothing. No butterflies, no sweaty palms, no skipped heartbeats. Nope, none of that. Not anymore.

Tristan Holland, Total Hotness, my cooking class crush, is officially a Goon. And the girl who cared about impressing him is the same one who forgot who she was for a minute. Okay, maybe two minutes. But not anymore. I am
so
over her—and Tristan, and Katie. And so back to me.

WHERE ARE YOU?

Frankie has been texting me nonstop for the past ten minutes. I don't blame her—if this were Frankie's party and she disappeared without a word, I'd be looking for her too. I'm surprised she hasn't found me yet, actually. I've been hiding out in the bathroom, inside one of the stalls, with my poofy purple dress practically spilling out of the space between the door and the black-and-white tiled floor.

It's a really fancy bathroom—much nicer than ours at home. It's probably the nicest bathroom I've ever been in. For one thing, it smells incredibly good—which I know is sort of a weird thing to say about a place where people, well, you know. There are two huge bouquets of flowers in here, but they must also use some kind of room spray that's so fresh and pretty you could wear it as perfume.

As nice as the bathroom smells, it looks even better. The counters around the sinks and beneath the mirrors are shiny black-and-gray stone (“Italian marble,” Nana made sure to tell me), and they're so clean that they literally sparkle. All of the faucets and knobs, the frames around the mirrors, and even the pipes coming out of the toilets, are gold. They're probably not
real
gold, like the fourteen-carat kind, but they look super fancy, and in a place—I mean a
venue
—like this, who knows.

The venue. Surprise, surprise, Nana went with Buckingham Palace, even though she assured me
my objections were “duly noted.” The party room is just like I remember it from our visit, only it looks even more like a royal ballroom now with all the silver and china and frilly tablecloths (lavender, natch, to match my dress). Behind the giant parquet dance floor there's an old-fogy band playing songs I've never heard, and against one wall there are rows of buffet tables spilling over with elegant-looking (but totally boring) food. The one and only thing in the room that I agreed to is the table full of desserts that my mom spent every spare moment of the last week making. With help from Chef Antonio, Dr. Wong, and Theresa (though probably mostly Chef and Dr. Wong), Mom made every recipe we learned in cooking class this session. Our whole apartment smelled amazing all week—even better than this bathroom—and our refrigerator and freezer were stuffed full of delicious sweets.

I promised my mom that I'd wait until tonight to taste the desserts, and I doubt I'll have to worry
about them running out—even though she agreed to let Mom handle the desserts, Nana decided (without telling us) to order a giant birthday cake, too. The bakery that made the cake has one of those machines that scans a photograph and prints out an exact copy in edible ink on top of the icing. Nana chose a photo of me as a toddler standing next to a woman's legs and holding her hand. You can't see the rest of the woman in the picture, but, of course, it's Nana. Her skin had fewer wrinkles then, but there's no mistaking her perfect French manicure.

“Liza, we know you're in here.”

Frankie and Lillian have finally found me, but I'm not ready to leave my stall just yet.

“It's really nice in here, don't you guys think?” I call out.

They follow my voice, and two pairs of shoes appear beneath the door. Frankie's wearing shiny black pumps that Theresa takes out of her closet exactly once a year for the fifth-grade graduation at
the elementary school where she teaches. Frankie's been wearing the same size shoe as her mom for a few months, and she was really excited to finally have an occasion to borrow this pair. If only she'd known that training for the track team equals major foot blisters. I can tell by the way she keeps shifting her feet that as pretty as they are, those three-inch heels are causing her serious pain. (Of course, I thought she'd be in some serious emotional pain too when she didn't make the team, but after her weird disappearing act that day, she seems fine about it. Frankie has never failed before in her life, but if getting cut from the team made her act like herself again, it's not really a failure at all, right?)

“You can't stay locked up in the bathroom all night, Liza,” Lillian says. “You'll miss your whole party.”

“That's the idea,” I mutter, blinking back tears, because I am actually wearing a little mascara for the first time. I know that tears and mascara are not a pretty picture.

“Come on, it's not that bad,” Frankie insists. “Did you see the buffet tables? There's enough food for the entire seventh grade!” Now that she's given up on training and gotten over her crush on Tristan, Frankie is back to relishing food.

“But there's hardly anyone from seventh grade here,” I say. “Practically everyone in that room is over sixty, and most of them knew my dad when
he
was thirteen.”

“That's not true,” Lillian says. “We're here.”

“And Javier, and Tristan, and Chef, and everyone from cooking class,” Frankie chimes in. “Your parents are here, and Cole . . . A whole bunch of people came here to see
you
, Liza, not Nana Silver.”

I look down at the two pairs of feet beneath the stall door and realize how much worse this night would be without my best friends. Slowly, I open the door. Free at last from the tiny stall, my dress practically explodes like an air bag in a car commercial, almost suffocating Frankie and Lillian as it unfurls in front of me.

“But look at me,” I say, spreading out the purple poof. “How can I go out there looking like this?”

Frankie crosses her arms with her usual scowl and looks the dress up and down. I can tell she's trying to think of something—anything—positive to say about it.

“I'm not going to lie to you, Lize, it's a hideous dress,” she says. I guess nothing positive came to mind. “But the good news is that it's so awful, no one who knows you will think you picked it out yourself.”

I find that weirdly comforting. “But what about the people I don't know?” I ask. “Which is, I repeat, practically everyone.”

Frankie shrugs. “Most of them are Nana Silver's friends. They'll love the dress as much as she does—and they'll think you have great taste for wearing it.”

She has a point. But still . . .

“Did you see the band? They're, like, a hundred years old. And I don't even know any of the songs they're playing.”

“They're actually pretty good,” Lillian says.

I raise my eyebrows—are we talking about the same retirement home quintet?

Lillian rolls her eyes—spending so much time with Frankie and me is definitely rubbing off on her. “It's jazz. My father loves it—it's one of his secret American passions.”

Frankie nods. “They're really pretty decent, Liza. You should see Chef—he's totally into it.”

Chef. I'd forgotten all about the other reason I headed for the bathroom almost as soon as we arrived.

“Is he . . .” I feel weird saying this, even to my best friends. “Is Chef Antonio dancing with my mom?”

Frankie and Lillian exchange a look. “He wasn't when we came in here,” Frankie says. “But I did see them smile at each other a couple of times. I know you don't want to hear this, Lize, but they make a really cute couple.”

“So cute,” Lillian echoes, holding her hand over
her heart. Could she be more of a hopeless romantic?

“What about my dad?” I ask. “Has he seen them, you know, smiling at each other?”

Frankie laughs. “He's too busy chatting with all of your grandmother's friends. He's doing a great job talking to people.”

She looks at her delicate silver watch, which, like her shoes, is technically Theresa's. “Nana's probably going to come looking for you soon, Lize. No way we're the only ones to notice you disappeared from your own party.”