Gertie's Leap to Greatness (14 page)

“It's her résumé and headshots,” Ella whispered, as if anyone should have known that.

Mary Sue looked over her shoulder at Gertie. She studied Gertie for a moment, seeing that her hands were empty. No headshot. No résumé. Mary Sue raised an eyebrow.

Gertie bit her lip. Why hadn't she brought headshots? What were headshots? She gripped the sides of her seat and made herself watch as Mary Sue stepped into the center of the stage.

“Eat your vegetables, Evangelina,” said Stebbins. She was reading the lines for Evangelina's mother.

Mary Sue lifted her chin. “No,” she said in a voice that rang across the auditorium. “I will
not
eat my vegetables.” She stood tall and recited her lines. On stage, Mary Sue looked perfect. She had princess hair and pink lips and pale skin.

As always, Gertie looked exactly like herself, but for the first time, she wasn't sure that was good enough.

Gertie looked at the other fifth graders' faces and tried to tell what they thought of Mary Sue's audition. But they were whispering to their neighbors or winding bits of string around their fingers or drag-racing their jacket zippers up and down.

“Thank you,” Stebbins said when Mary Sue had recited her last line.

Mary Sue flounced off the stage, not even glancing at Gertie when she passed her.

Gertie climbed the steps and walked to the middle of the stage. Overhead, the fluorescent light flickered. Her class was watching her, their legs swinging. The heels of their shoes
thump-thumped
against the chair legs. Gertie was trembling as much as Junior.

“Eat your vegetables,” said Stebbins.

The silence stretched.

“Eat your vegetables,” Stebbins said again.

Gertie swallowed.

Leo leaned over to whisper in June's ear. Mary Sue smiled at Gertie. It wasn't a hello-there-friend smile. It was a hope-you-get-eaten-by-a-crocodile smile. Most kids would've melted into a puddle of woe. But Gertie was not most kids.

Stebbins clicked her tongue. “Miss Foy, if you—”

“No,” she said. “I won't eat my vegetables!” It was like the summer speeches. It wasn't what you said. It was how you said it. She squeezed her hands into fists and screwed her face up, stamped her foot, and shouted to the ceiling, “I
hate
vegetables! You can't make me eat them!”

“But you'll get sick if you only eat candy,” warned her mother.

“No I won't!” said Evangelina. “Candy doesn't make me feel sick. It makes me feel wonderful!” She lifted her arms in the air, threw her head back, and twirled around on one foot. She flung herself on the floor and beat the stage with her hands and feet in the most spectacular conniption anyone had ever seen. She shoveled imaginary sweets into her mouth and rolled over on her back and made an imaginary snow angel in a pile of imaginary candy. She became fantastically ill. She almost utterly died from poor nutrition.

“The light!” she exclaimed. “I see a big beautiful light!” That wasn't one of Evangelina's lines, but it should've been. She collapsed.

Stebbins didn't read the next line. The auditorium was silent.

Gertie opened one eye to see what was happening. Then she opened the other. Her classmates weren't playing with their zippers and fidgeting anymore. They stared at her, their mouths open. The pizzazzosity of Gertie's performance had short-circuited their brains.
Pop! Pow!

Stebbins pursed her lips and pressed a sprung bobby pin back in place. “I think we have our Evangelina,” she said.

*   *   *

“Oh my Lord, oh my Lord!” Gertie was bouncing up and down on the bus seat. The spring in the seat
eek, eek, eeked
.

“I can't believe it, I can't believe it,” Junior was saying over and over.

But Gertie could believe it. She had worked for so long, and she had tried so hard to be the best in her class. It was like that book about that train with the face who tried and chugged and tried to get to the top of the hill, and it took him forever, and you thought he was never going to make it, but then he did, and it was like
whew-whee
. And it was like
I knew it all along
. And it was like punching your fists in the air before the roller coaster screamed down. Gertie was tip-top, and she wanted to stay there forever. She pressed her hands to her cheeks.

When Mary Sue had begged Stebbins to let her audition again, she had looked upset. Her face had scrunched up, and she'd grabbed handfuls of her yellow hair. She'd looked like she was in utter agony.

Gertie brushed the thought away. She had won the lead role in the play fair and square. She deserved it. She had worked so hard and, besides, Mary Sue was
not
a nice person.

“I can't believe it,” Junior was still saying.

“Hey!” Gertie splayed her fingers over her chest. “I
always
achieve my missions, don't I?” said Gertie, said Evangelina, said the most amazing fifth grader in the world.

Gertie was so excited she almost didn't notice the bus driver turn onto Jones Street. She almost didn't notice the bus trundling toward Rachel Collins's house. But when the bus passed the house, her eyes turned toward it, like they always did. Because if Gertie was a mosquito, then that house was her Zapper-2000, and she wasn't able to resist it. Her eyes locked onto the place where Rachel Collins lived and the sign in the front yard. The sign that had started it all. It was gone.

A new sign was speared in the front lawn.
Sold.
The sign in front of Rachel Collins's house said
SOLD.
All capital letters. Red letters. Capital red letters.

S-O-L-D.

 

20

I Won't Tell

Junior was shaking her arm, asking over and over, “What are you going to do now?”

The words beat in her head like a
drip, drip, drip
from a leaky spigot.
What are you going to do, to do, to do?
She spent the rest of the ride that way.

When she got home, she trudged across the yard, pushed through the screen door, and shuffled to her room. She buried her head under her pillow.
What are you going to do, to do, to do?

She was too late. The house on Jones Street was sold. Now it belonged to complete strangers. Maybe her mother was moving out right this very second.

What are you going to do?

She threw the pillow across the room. What she had to do was make sure Rachel Collins
knew
how amazing she was. She had to
tell
Rachel Collins about the play and about being the smartest and about everything. Right now.

Gertie hurried through the house and peeked in the kitchen. Aunt Rae was peering into the refrigerator. Gertie tiptoed past the kitchen door and crept to the coat rack. She zipped up her jacket. Her hand was shaking as she reached for the doorknob, her reflection strange and wobbly in the brass.

Behind her, the floor creaked. Gertie spun around. Audrey had two crayons stuck in her mouth like walrus tusks.

“Audrey!” She lowered her voice. “Go away.”

The crayons fell to the floor, and Audrey looked at Gertie's jacket. “Where are you going?”

Gertie started to tell her it was none of her business, because Audrey was weensy, but she remembered Audrey crying on the sidewalk. She hadn't ratted Gertie out to Aunt Rae about what had happened at Mary Sue's party. Maybe she wasn't
so
weensy.

“Audrey, you can't tell. This is important. I got the part in the play.”

Audrey's hands hung by her sides.

“You remember about the play?”

In the kitchen, a pot banged on the stove, and the radio clicked on.

Audrey nodded. “About the girl who yelled at her peas.”

“Exactly. I'm going to go tell Rach—my mother—” Gertie took a breath. “I'm going to go tell my mother about getting the part.” Now that the words were out of her mouth, they seemed real to Gertie. Going to see Rachel Collins wasn't an
idea
anymore. It was a fact.

“Oh.” Audrey picked up her crayons.

“But you can't tell Aunt Rae. Because if you tell Aunt Rae, it won't happen.”

Audrey nodded.

“It's important,” said Gertie. “It's … it's my mother.”

Audrey nodded again. “I won't tell.”

And Gertie knew that she wouldn't because Audrey understood.

Gertie turned back to the door. She pulled it open, and stepped onto the back stoop. She jumped down the steps and crossed the crunchy brown grass and cut through the scrubby trees onto the edge of the road. She didn't look back.

*   *   *

Gertie walked and walked and walked. Where Gertie lived, people didn't just walk down the road like
la-tee-dah, howdy-doo
. Aunt Rae's house was on a back road where they didn't have things like sidewalks and streetlights. Big trees leaned over the road on one side. On the other, a few dead cotton stalks rustled in the wind. Gertie kept her chin up and her arms swinging by her sides, and she took long steps like she had somewhere very important to be so that people driving by would think to themselves,
That little girl is going places,
and they wouldn't call the police.

Eventually, Gertie turned onto another road that had more houses on it. She would tell Rachel Collins that she was the star of the play. And she would drop the locket in Rachel Collins's hand, and her mother would be so regretful because she would think that Gertie was the most brilliant kid in the universe. And she'd know that she'd made a big mistake leaving Gertie and Frank, and she was making another mistake marrying Walter because anyone would be happy with Gertie for a daughter. Gertie walked a little taller.

When she turned again, she was on a proper street. Now she walked on sidewalks with houses all around. She could see her breath in the glow from the streetlights. It seemed much further to Jones Street when she wasn't riding in the Mercury or the bus. But she was glad that it was so far.

Gertie felt like she was earning everything good that was going to happen to her. Like the further she walked, the more she deserved. Like each step was a point, a coin, a gold star that she was earning and saving up so she could get the biggest prize of all.

She didn't stop until she was standing on the front porch and her finger was hovering over the doorbell. A car passed, and a dog started yapping in one of the other houses on the street. She pressed the bell. The
dings
and
dongs
echoed inside the walls.

The door opened, and yellow light spilled out of the house. Rachel Collins was smiling.

 

21

It's at Six

Rachel Collins was smiling when she opened the door, but then she looked down at Gertie. And the smile slid off her face.

“How did—” she began. “What are you doing here?”

“It's me,” Gertie said. “I'm Gertie.”

“Yes, I know who you are.”

“Oh.” Gertie took a breath. Now was her chance to tell her mother that she had done it. Fifth grade was a dragon, and she had beaten it like a piñata. She opened her mouth to say the words she had practiced a thousand times.

Only, every time she'd imagined this moment, the Rachel Collins in her head hadn't been a real person. She'd been a half-formed idea of a person, pieced together with the bits of her mother Gertie had gathered over the years.

But
this
Rachel Collins, who was frowning and holding tightly on to the door, had brown hair, just like Gertie. And she had a pointy chin like Gertie. And she was standing so close that Gertie could smell her perfume.

“Huh…” said Gertie.

Slowly, her mother opened the door wider. The crease between her eyebrows dug deeper, but then she seemed to reach a decision, because she stood straighter.