Jersey Tomatoes are the Best (6 page)

It’s the Reese’s gang. The ones who think “the bitch” is just “okay.”

They watch me, slyly, as we shake. One whispers into the other’s ear, stifles a giggle. Something inside me turns, and the great, floaty feeling I just had evaporates into something more familiar.

“Nice game,” I say, grasping her hand.

“You, too,” she says. “Congratulations.” That’s usually it, so she tries to pull away from me. But I don’t let go.

“You hit that ball
so
hard!” I say, smiling. “Almost like a man.”

“Thanks,” she says. She actually tugs at this point, but I hold her in a death grip.

“Do you lift?” I ask her. She looks puzzled.

“You know, weight-room stuff. Because it shows. You look like you could bench-press … what?… a hundred fifty?” I flash her my most brilliant smile and release her hand. I don’t wait for a reply. Her mouth has opened into a perfect little O. I glance behind her and give a short, perky wave to the gaggle.

“See you around, girls,” I say, before turning on my heel and striding to the umpire’s chair for the obligatory handshake.
Eva and my parents are off to one side of the court. A few paces from them, I see Jerry Goss.

When our eyes meet, he smiles calmly, and nods. Once.

*   *   *

He tracks us down at the hospitality tent, where we’ve gone to find cool drinks. I’ve located an icy lemonade for myself and am considering a very chewy-looking chocolate-chip cookie, when I feel a hand on my elbow.

“Henry, do you think we could talk?” Jerry asks. I glance at Mom, who nods assent; Dad has taken a trip to the Porta Potties. Jerry Goss and I find a quiet table and chairs outside the tent. We sit, and he gets right down to it.

“I enjoyed watching you play today,” he begins. “You have a good game.”

“Thank you,” I reply. But it’s not lost on me that he says “good.” Not “great.” It occurs to me he’s seen a lot of players win state tournaments.

“So let me ask you,” he continues. “What are your goals?”

“My goals?” I repeat.

“For your tennis,” he says. “What sort of player do you imagine becoming?”

“The best I can be,” I say automatically. What does he expect I’d say?

“And that means … what?” he asks.

“Well”—I smile at him—“how about winning the Jersey 16-and-Under?” He shrugs.

“Seriously,” he says. Then waits. Which surprises me.

“You don’t think this is serious?” I reply, my voice rising a bit. “Those girls crying into their lemonade over there?” I gesture toward the hospitality tent. “They thought I was serious.”

“If you think beating the stuffing out of a bunch of prep-strokers is serious tennis, then I’ve been misinformed,” he deadpans back at me. His eyes glitter like hard, blue marbles.

“Let me fill you in on a little secret, Henry. Your opponents today? They suck. They’re high school athletes whose parents have paid for a lot of expensive lessons. They’ll collect a few plastic trophies, fill scrapbooks with clippings. One might even play in college. Which is fine. But I don’t think that’s what Henriette Lloyd has in mind for herself. Or am I wrong?”

The player in me says not to respond right away. Not to reveal how insulting it is that this dude thinks the girls I beat are a bunch of losers.

I take a long pull on my lemonade before answering him.

“What if I told you I
like
cheap plastic trophies?”

Jerry Goss throws back his head and laughs.

“I’d say, ‘Sayonara, sweetheart.’ ” He grins. I smile, too. In spite of myself.

“So, if everyone in this tournament sucks, why are you here?”

“To see you,” he replies. “People like me are in the business of checking out kids like you.”

Whoa. There’s no disguising my total shock. A scout from a tennis school in Florida … a school I’ve never heard of … has come all this way just to see me? I assumed he was watching lots of people.

“So, back to my question,” he continues. “What are your goals?”

Goals. Sure, I’ve got a few. I want to get my permanent driver’s license. Date a really hot guy. I want my own television for my bedroom. I want to
finally
get my ears pierced. Maybe I can use this championship as leverage with Dad, get him to say yes, at last.

Of course, Jerry doesn’t want to hear all that. He’s talkin’ game, and beyond winning the match I’m playing on a given day and massacring whoever is across the net from me at the moment, I haven’t thought much about it. I love to hit balls; I love to win. But lately the only “goal” has been to do whatever Dad says so he’ll get off my case.

Then, for some reason, I remember the Reese’s girls. And I think of something I want.

“I want to be different.”

I am different. Always have been. Always have felt. Thing is, Jerry Goss, I don’t want to be hated for it. I want a trophy for it
.

“Chadwick players are different. They’re the best,” he says. “I think Chadwick can help you reach your goal. I think you should consider coming to Chadwick.”

I stifle the impulse to laugh out loud.

“Mr. Goss, that’s really nice of you, but my parents don’t have that kind of money.” He waves his hand dismissively.

“Money is no object for a talented student,” he says. The blue marbles are trained hard at me. “There are people out there who care about you and want to see you reach your potential.”

“Okay, now you’re creeping me out. Who are we talking about?”

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

“Well, I’m not at liberty to sit here talking to you anymore if you’re going to get all CIA with me. All covert, you know?”

Jerry chews on this for a little while. Then he sighs.

“Fine. But I think when I tell you, you’ll understand why this has to go no further.”

“We’ll see.”

“Ray Giordano is a friend of mine. He told me, ‘Jerry, you don’t want to miss this kid.’ Told me you could really benefit from Chadwick.”

I breathe in sharp, and deep. It all makes sense now. And he’s right. Even whispering the name of my former tennis coach, Ray Giordano, in front of Dad would be disastrous.

This has to go no further.

Chapter Six

M
adame DuPres was far too evil to end the torture immediately, and just tell me on the spot that I wasn’t qualified to mop the floors at her school, let alone study there.

No, she promised to “be in touch,” which means that for the past two weeks, every time the phone rings in our house, Rhonda responds like she’s been tasered. She jumps up and races to it, answering in this unnatural, high-pitched voice that also has a trace of sickly sweet in it, “Helloooo?”

I just feel like I’m gonna hurl.

It’s not like I’ve never been rejected. Take the time I tried out for
Coppelia
, an epic disaster, not because I danced poorly or even deserved the part (it went to a girl three years older than me, who entered the Joffrey Ballet School that year) but because my mother went psycho. When the casting director gave the lead to another girl, Rhonda drove to the theater parking lot during rehearsal one night and carefully deflated all four tires on his BMW.

She told me this herself, a little triumph in her voice.

“No one crosses my daughter,” she said, smiling and putting her hand over mine.

It felt like I was living with Michael Corleone’s female alter ego, capable of unspeakable acts of retribution behind a cool facade. I didn’t know how to tell her the part hadn’t meant all that much to me.

Unlike this audition with the New York School of Dance. For the first time in a long time, I’m hungry. Not for fame or attention or bragging rights; that’s Rhonda’s territory. For … perfection. For achieving the highest level of artistic perfection possible, whether that happens on a stage or in a rehearsal studio.

I want it. And that’s scary. Because what do I do if I don’t get it?

The ride home from the audition for Madame DuPres was a total Rhonda stress fest. The usual speeding and weaving in and out of traffic, plus the interrogation.

“Did she say
anything
about how you danced?” Rhonda pressed.

“Ambitious, Mom. She said it was ambitious.”

“Well, I would think she wants her dancers to be ambitious. To challenge themselves. So that might be a very positive thing. Did she seem positive?”

“She was completely unreadable.”

“Was she friendly? Did you chat?”

“Nope.”

“Did she ask you about yourself? Try to get a sense of who you are?”

“Nope.”

“So she didn’t ask you any questions?”

“She asked me if I’d ever seen
Swan Lake.
”

“And what did you tell her?”

“I said yes, probably a dozen times.” Rhonda paused.

“And?”

“And what?”

“What did she say next?”

“She said nothing next. She smiled, I danced, she said she’d be in touch. That’s it.”

“She smiled?”

“Yes, she smiled.”

“Well, that’s good, isn’t it? She was probably impressed that you’re so familiar with the ballet.” Pause.

“Did she say whether she thought you pulled it off? The interpretation?”

“Ambitious, Mom. She said it was ambitious.”

Weirdly enough, I haven’t mentioned the audition to Henry. Partly because I don’t want to jinx things. But partly because … well, she wouldn’t understand. Henry thinks I’m great, and she’d say something like, “Eva, you’re amazing. Of course you’ll get in.” She never appreciates that I’m completely average and rejection is a real possibility. Sometimes her confidence in me is hard to take.

But I decide to tell her today: cake day. I haven’t done one of my cakes in ages, and this baby’s long overdue. Not that I’ll be able to eat it. I’ve barely been able to manage much besides Pink Decadence since the audition. It’s not intentional. I just
can’t swallow when I’m nervous or upset. My throat sort of closes up, a little door shuts and this voice says, “
No! Don’t eat that!
”

But Henry, who eats everything and anything, always adores my cakes. When I tell her I’m whipping one up in honor of her state championship triumph, she arrives half an hour early.

“Hungry?” I say when she bangs through the kitchen screen door. I’m putting the final touches on my masterpiece: a lemon cake shaped like a tennis racket, with cream-cheese frosting. I’ve borrowed Henry’s racket to use as a model, and every detail is perfect, down to the tiny letters that read “Wilson” on the grip tape. When Henry bursts in, I’m piping the last of the strings.

“Oh. My.
Gawd!
” she exclaims. “
Yer da bomb, goil!
” Joisey-speak. Henry loves talkin’ Jersey. She leans over and sniffs. “Lemon!”

“Of course, your favorite,” I tell her. I step back to take a look. The strings are a little wiggly. But the Wilson logo looks good.

“Eva, I’m serious, this might be one of your all-time best cakes. It’s amazing!”

“I don’t know. I still like the ‘Hello, Kitty’ I did for your sweet sixteen.”

“This is better.”

“And don’t forget Elmo. Elmo was wonderful.”

“Elmo was toxic, Eva. You had to use so much red dye to get his fur right that our teeth and tongues were stained for
days and Frenemy Paige barfed. Come to think of it, maybe Elmo
was
the best cake ever.…” I elbow Henry, and she laughs. Her perfect teeth look brilliantly white in her tan face. Her eyes are bright blue. I want jewels that color. The purest blue of a spring sky.

“Let’s just admire it for a while,” Henry suggests, pulling a stool up to the granite countertop. The two of us sit, gazing at my confectionary wonder and breathing in the rich scent of lemon extract and cream cheese. It’s one of my favorite flavors, too, and I’m wondering if I could manage a slice. I can’t remember the last time I ate cake. Elmo might have been the last, and that was when we were … what? Twelve?

Maybe a piece of the grip, where the cake is narrow and the frosting is thick.…

Yeah, right, eating cake after sitting on your duff all day? That’ll get you into the New York School of Dance for sure
.

I suddenly have this uncontrollable urge to wrap my legs around my neck. Instead, I jump off the stool, take a deep breath and go up on
pointe
. In my sneakers. Henry grimaces.

“I don’t know
how
you can make yourself do that,” she says.

“Well, I don’t know how you can make yourself chase little yellow balls in the hot sun all day,” I say serenely. I return my heels to the floor, first position, then rise again, this time circling my right arm in a sweeping, grand gesture. It feels good to move. Henry smiles at me and shakes her head.

“So … I auditioned for a summer camp,” I say. Henry is edging one finger toward the cake. I slap it away.

“Auditioned … so it’s ballet camp?” she asks.

“Of course. It’s in New York.”

“Wow. Does that mean you’ll have to go into the city every day?”

“They have dorms, but that costs more money. I don’t know … I mean, I probably won’t even get in. It’s really competitive.” Now she’s picked up a fork. She’s going to dive right into the cake without first cutting a slice.