How High the Moon (24 page)

“So I don’t even care if you don’t want to be my Sunshine Sister anymore. And I don’t want to be in your stupid show, either!”

The minute I said that last part, I had to take it back, because that was what Mrs. Fry would call cutting off your nose to spite your face. “Well, that part isn’t true. I
do
want to be in the gala, and I’m gonna be. But I’m not going to look at you even once the whole time we’re rehearsing.”

I couldn’t think of one more mean thing to say to her, yet my whole body was still tight like a fist, so I did the only thing I could think to do. I flipped Brenda Bloom the bird.

Mel started laughing, and so did Doug—even if he was probably a little miffed because I’d tattled on him and he’d heard me call him Dumbo Doug. I looked at them and scowled, then crossed my arms and waited for Brenda to start crying.

But Brenda didn’t start crying. She started laughing instead. Laughing so hard that she wrapped her arms around herself and bent over like her belly might burst.

“Why are you laughing?” I said, my jaw getting all the tighter. “I wasn’t making a joke. I meant what I said!” I looked over at Johnny and Mel and Dumbo Doug, “You guys know every word I said is true. Tell her! Tell her!”

Brenda did start crying, but it was over the top of her laughter. “Oh,” she said, “they’d never tell me, Teaspoon. That’s why I’m
laughing. Because a little girl like you dared to speak the truth to my face, which is something no one else has ever had the guts to do.”

Mad shoved Brenda’s laugh all the way off her face, as she tipped her head toward the guys. “Certainly not those two-faced cowards.”

I thought maybe Brenda was going to say more, but she didn’t. Instead she hurried into the Starlight, leaving me standing there with the guys, who were looking everywhere but at each other.

I stood there for a minute, feeling drained like a sink that was clogged and just went down, then I dropped my scooter and headed after Brenda.

She was standing in the aisle, four or five rows in, crying the hard kind of tears that hurt your throat.

“Teaspoon?” Johnny’s voice reached me before he did. But then there he was, standing behind me, his hand on my shoulder. “Come on. Let the spoiled rich girl have her tantrum alone.”

I slipped out from under Johnny’s hand and took a few steps forward. I was mad at Brenda for sure, but now that I’d made her cry, I felt bad. “Those things I said… I didn’t really mean them. I made them up because I was mad.
Really
.”

Brenda turned and looked at me. “No. You meant them. So don’t dishonor yourself by taking them back. Everything you said is true, and I’m glad you said them.

“All I really have going for me is that I’m a Bloom. And you know what that means? That means that I get acclaim when I don’t deserve it, and special treatment when I don’t want it. It means that I have to live up to everybody’s expectations, just like my mother does. And it means having people be nice to my face, then stab me in the back when I turn around because they hate the perks I get for being a Bloom. And you’re supposed to what? Admire me? Strive to be like me?” She shook her head while she looked up at the starless ceiling, then said, “What a joke.”

Brenda didn’t even take a breath while her eyes turned up to look at Johnny. “You,” she said, “standing out there with that disparaging look on your face. To you—to everyone—I’m the girl who
thinks she’s special because she has it all. Well, here’s the irony. I don’t think I’m special, but obviously
you
do, if you think that because I’m rich I don’t struggle with loneliness or fear or sadness at times, just like everybody else.

“The second you heard me tell Teaspoon I wasn’t going to be her mentor anymore, you decided I was being a self-centered, spoiled bitch. One who had grown bored with her little pet. Just like you thought I was looking down my nose at you in the hospital, or when I drove into your neighborhood. It would never have dawned on you that maybe in telling Teaspoon what I did, I was just trying to be kind.”

Brenda started crying harder then, choking on her words. “Kind, because every day I spend with her, I see her losing another little piece of who she is, and replacing it with who she thinks she should be. Well, maybe I can see that all I’m teaching her is to have shame. And maybe, just maybe, I don’t want her waking up one day to realize that she’s turned into nothing but a miserable imitation of an imitation.

“Go ahead. Smirk at that, too. You think you march to your own drum. But you know what, Johnny Jackson? You don’t! I’ve seen you with Teaspoon and Charlie and I know that underneath that tough exterior is someone far softer and more decent than what you show everybody else. And do you know why you don’t show that part of yourself to others? Because like me, you do what’s expected. People just happen to have different expectations of you.”

Brenda took off then, hurrying up the theater aisle and disappearing around the corner of the concession stand. And Johnny turned and headed toward the door, not stopping as he bent down to scoop up a tool—like that was the reason he’d stepped inside in the first place.

I found Brenda in the ladies’ restroom, standing in a stall with the door open, blowing her nose into a wad of toilet paper.

“Brenda,” I said. “Please don’t cry. Yeah, I meant some of the things I said, but not all of them. Just don’t cry, okay?”

Brenda bunched the end of the toilet paper wad and twisted it up one nostril.

She threw the paper in the toilet, sniffled, then came out of the stall, dabbing at her puffy eyes with the backs of her hands. She put her arms around me, pulling me to her and kissing the top of my head. “And I meant all the things I said, too, except for the part where I said I didn’t want to be your Big Sister anymore. I do. I just don’t want you turning into me.”

I rested my face against Brenda’s shirt, which was warm and smelled like soap. “Don’t say that, Brenda. There’s lots of good things about you. Sure, you’re just a bit on the noodley side. Most days, anyway. But you weren’t just now.” I looked up. “Holy cow, Brenda. If I hadn’t been hearing those words come out of your mouth with my own ears, I wouldn’t have believed they came from you.”

Brenda laughed, and her eyes got teary again. “Still,” she said. “I think I have more to learn from you, than you from me.”

“Well, maybe you could watch me and learn those things. But I wouldn’t recommend you copying the afflicted parts.”

Brenda and me decided that I should go home and check on Charlie. She gave me a handful of candy bars for Charlie, then she walked me to the door. “Oh,” I added, because I just thought of it. “Brenda, you should talk to Jesus. He helped me with my cussing, so He’d probably give you a hand with your noodleyness, too.”

Brenda opened the door, and there he was. Johnny Jackson. He had his hands in his pockets, his shoulder was leaned against the side of the Starlight. He looked up when the door opened, and his face read like a sorry card.

He didn’t tell Brenda that he wanted to talk to her. He didn’t need to. Brenda gave my shoulder a pat and said she’d see me in the morning for our regular meeting. Then she backed up from the doorway and let Johnny inside.

Lots of things changed
after Dumbo Doug ran Charlie over. For starters, Charlie couldn’t follow me like a duck to the Starlight anymore, because Mrs. Fry was afraid he’d get run over again. So after a couple of days of lying on the couch, ouching and walking penguin-slow when he had to get up to pee, he went back to his old Humpty-Dumpty ways. Planting his butt on their steps when I left for a meeting.

I told Teddy that Charlie might as well get sent to the clink like his dad if all he had to do while I was at my meetings was to stay a prisoner to those steps. So Teddy went over and talked to Mrs. Fry about letting Charlie come over to our house and play the piano when we were gone. “You sure you wouldn’t mind?” Mrs. Fry asked, her face nothing but a wad of old wrinkles. “I do feel bad for the boy. I know this isn’t much of a life for a him.”

“Of course I wouldn’t mind,” Teddy said. “As long as he’s careful to close the door tight behind him when he leaves.”

“And washes his hands first,” I added.

So that’s what Charlie did. Three times a week. And it didn’t matter if I was gone for one hour or four, when I got back, there he’d be, playing like I’d only been gone five minutes.

Things changed for me and Brenda after that, too. When others were around, we were as respectable as we had to be, and stuck to acceptable topics for Sunshine Sisters. But when we were alone, we were, well… more like ourselves you’d have to say. I talked too much, and sang or hummed when we weren’t talking, and I asked too many questions. And Brenda, she started talking louder, and when I sang, sometimes she sang along, doing the melody when I asked her to so I could practice my harmony. Brenda was definitely happier. Giving me lots of quick hugs and popping kisses on my cheek when she thought I was funny.

Yep, lots of things changed after Dumbo Doug ran over Charlie. Not just for Charlie and Brenda and me, but for Brenda and Johnny, too.

A couple of days after Brenda yelled at Johnny and the guys, me and Brenda were standing on the new stage looking it over to figure out how we could decorate it for the big night. Johnny, who was down below digging in a toolbox, hopped right up on stage with us and said, “How about a big moon suspended against the back wall? I could make it for you.”

“Hey, that’s a good idea,” I said. “You could paint the moon silver, then we could add glitter to it so it’s all sparkly. It would probably take a mess of glitter, but wouldn’t that look swell?”

That very night, about two hours after the Perkins crew left, Brenda and I were sitting under a dome, having a soda pop and taking a rest before Brenda drove me home. Brenda had her knees propped on the seat in front of her, her pony-tailer on her wrist like a bracelet and her hair hanging waterfall over the back of her seat, when the door by the stage opened. Brenda startled and jumped to her feet—probably because she thought it was her ma, who would yell at her for being a slacker—but it wasn’t Mrs. Bloom. It was Johnny Jackson. The regular Johnny, not the Perkins Johnny, wearing a white T-shirt and jeans instead of green Perkins clothes, his hair combed shiny in place. “Hey, what’s he doing here?”

“I don’t know,” Brenda said.

“I’ll go find out,” I said, my insides happy as I skipped down the Starlight steps, Johnny grinning at me.

“I wanted to let Brenda know that Glen said it was okay if I use the shop after hours, and to find out what size she wants the moon,” Johnny said while looking up the rows of seats to where Brenda was standing, her hair messy and bright on her shoulders under the lights.

I hopped up the stairs behind Johnny. I didn’t expect him to stop while he was still about six steps from Brenda, so when he did, I ran into his back. Johnny laughed a little as he fumbled his arm behind him to catch me. With his arm around my middle, he lifted me crossways like a sack of potatoes and gave me a little shake before he set me down.

“Hi,” he said to Brenda in a quiet, but not noodley, way. Brenda clasped her hands together and swayed a little from side to side as she said hi back.

Brenda asked me if I’d pour Johnny a drink, too, and then she invited him to sit down. Side by side as they were, they looked like a couple at Bugsy’s Car Hop, so I slid my feet against the carpet to their seats and asked Johnny what kind of soda pop he wanted, then play-roller-skated over to the concession stand to get his Coca-Cola. “Take a candy for yourself if you want to, Teaspoon,” Brenda called after me.

After I got his drink and a box of Jujubes for me, I sat down on the other side of Johnny and shared my Jujubes with him. First I was thinking about the moon Johnny was going to make, then I started humming a little of “How High the Moon.” “Hey, Johnny,” I said between verses, “how high
is
the moon, anyway?”

“Oh, about three hundred thousand miles away,” he said. “Something like that.”

“Huh, imagine that,” I said, as I poured the last two Jujubes into my hand and told Johnny to pick one. He took the red one, so I popped the yellow one into my mouth and hummed as I chewed it
gone. Johnny and Brenda weren’t doing much but laughing, so I went over to the other dome to sing a little “When You Wish Upon a Star” like I had a microphone. I spun in lazy circles as I sang, stopping after the second verse so I could ask Brenda if we could turn the stars on.

“Sure. Why not. Be right back,” Brenda said. Johnny went with her.

The minute those stars lit, I lost my lazy and ran up one aisle and down the other, my arms spread wide and my head tipped back so I could watch them twinkle over me as I sang.

I expected Johnny and Brenda to come right back to sit under the stars, too, but three songs later, when they still weren’t back, I went looking for them.

I got up to the projection room, stopped to peek at the stars out the windows with no glass, then peeked in the light switch room. They weren’t in there, so I headed up the ladder steps because the attic door was open, which meant Brenda was probably showing Johnny the catwalk.