Kitchen Chaos (3 page)

Now she turns to face us and seems to realize for the first time that Lillian is there too. Frankie gives her a pathetic attempt at a smile, then looks at me, one raised eyebrow asking,
What's up with this?

“Hi, Liza, good news. I was just telling Evan here that we could use him on our project. That we'll let him join us, I mean, if he's willing to work hard.”

I see where this is going. Take advantage of the poor guy because, for whatever reason, he's decided he likes me.
No way.
Plus, here's Lillian without a partner, and she seems really nice. Nope, I have to put a stop to this.

“Oh wow, that's great,” I say, “but it's not necessary. I already asked Lillian.” Frankie starts to
get a stormy look on her face. She gets like that when things don't go her way, but I'm not going there. There's no way I'm going to spend six weeks “collaborating” with a guy who can't stop staring at me and can barely speak to me without blushing. I turn to Evan, who clearly has no idea what's going on. “You don't mind, right, Evan? I had already asked Lillian, and Frankie didn't know.”

Frankie's eyebrow does its thing again. “But, Lize, I already asked Evan.” I know Frankie doesn't like to compromise, but I have no idea what she has against Lillian. I try not to look at Lillian because I'm sure she's feeling totally awkward right now. Instead, I turn to Evan with a little wave. “Thanks for understanding.”

Evan gives me a goofy smile and backs away, stumbling against a desk as he leaves.

It's so weird! There are plenty of girls in our grade—including Frankie—who have, like, six guys crazy about them at all times. I'm
not
one of them. I have no idea what I did that made Evan decide to
like me, but I definitely couldn't deal with a project partner who acts so strange whenever we're within three feet of each other.

Frankie is clearly annoyed at the way this is going. She sits back down at her desk, and Lillian and I grab the two seats next to her, so that we're sitting three across like a game of tic-tac-toe. I'm in the middle, and I look back and forth from one to the other.

“So, now that that's settled,” I say, trying to sound positive, “what do you guys think we should do for our project?” All around us, other groups are starting to throw out ideas. I hear Gideon Fuller's booming voice revving up about mapping the waves of immigrants and all the different places they came from. Someone else is talking about researching inventions. Yikes, we have to get on this.

Frankie still won't look at Lillian, and she keeps boring her eyes into me, like she can stare me down and get her way. I decide to show her how great Lillian is going to be as our third project partner.

“Frankie, Lillian was just telling me that her family is from China. Like,
recently
, isn't that cool?”

Frankie keeps looking straight at me. “Totally.”

I keep going, because Frankie is being even tougher than usual. Pivoting my head to look at Lillian, I try to tell her with my eyes:
Really, Frankie is the
best
when you get to know her.

“And she just moved here from San Francisco. . . .”

Frankie glances over at Lillian, then back at me.

“Interesting,” she says, in a totally disinterested way.

She takes her eyes off me for a long minute and gives Lillian one of those head-to-toe, up-and-down looks. The three of us don't say anything for a minute. I cannot take this.

I turn back to Lillian.

“Hey, so, I didn't get to ask you. How did you end up at our school?”

Her voice is so low that I have to lean forward to hear it.

“When my parents visited before we moved, they really liked Park Slope. They thought it felt a little bit like our neighborhood in San Francisco.” Her eyes dart around the room, before coming back to me.

The rest of us have been at Clinton for a whole year, but I can still remember how I felt on the first day of sixth grade. I was nervous and excited at the same time, like my brain couldn't decide which way to feel so I just felt everything all at once. I'm pretty sure “nervous” would have incinerated “excited” if I'd had to start at a brand-new school all by myself, and after everyone else.

I give Lillian an encouraging grin. “So what do you think?” I ask. “Of Clinton, I mean.”

Lillian stares down at her hands. “It's okay,” she says, pulling at a hangnail. Then she looks up and shrugs. “Sometimes I just miss my friends.”

Frankie and I exchange a look, and I know we're thinking the same thing: If one of us ever moved away
from the other, it would be the Worst. Thing. Ever.

Lillian forces a smile. “So,” she says in her same quiet voice, “I guess we're supposed to come up with some ideas for the project, right?”

I shift into major student mode and flip a page in my notebook. I notice Frankie picks up her pen too. She rolls her eyes when she catches me smiling at her, but I'm pretty sure she's smiling just a little bit.

“Right,” I say, looking from one to the other. “What have we got?”

Before anyone has time to answer, the lights switch on and off again and Mr. McEnroe says it's time to wrap things up. I look down at my blank notebook and know just what Frankie must be thinking: If it were just the two of us, we'd have five pages full of notes and ideas by now. She's right, but it's not my fault Mr. Mac wanted to “stir things up” and make us work in groups of three.

“We should all meet up after school this week to work on the project,” I say.

To my surprise—and I'm pretty sure Lillian's, too—Frankie turns to Lillian and flashes her most charming smile. “How about at your house?” she suggests. I stare at her for a split second, and then I realize that Mr. McEnroe has just walked up. She's obviously trying to impress him. He gives her shoulder an absentminded pat before moving on to other groups. Frankie closes her eyes and sighs. She's definitely going to have that T-shirt framed.

Now I know what it means when they say “New World Order.”

Ever since Liza sprang this whole Lillian thing on me a few days ago, I've been trying to talk to her about it. I mean, it's not like we don't have other friends, we do; but it's
us
, and then everybody else. At home I'm the only girl in a house full of boys, and practically ever since Ms. Hirshman made us line partners in kindergarten, Liza has been the sister I
always wanted. Now, all of a sudden, without consulting me, she brings in the new girl and thinks I should like it?

I've tried to bring it up a million times, but either Liza's running off somewhere or Lillian just happens to be there. Who knew we had so many classes together? And when I text her about it, Liza seems determined to answer as vaguely as possible. Evasion. I get it. Well, two can play that game.

Mr. McEnroe says we have a week to come up with a topic for our project, but I've decided that the sooner we figure it out the better—then we can just divide up the work and do it independently. Or, better yet, Lillian can handle her piece while Liza and I work our magic as a team.

In the meantime, we're all supposed to meet at Lillian's house to brainstorm ideas. I'm on my way to Liza's locker to pick her up, and out of nowhere, Lillian materializes. Of course.

“Hey, Franks!” Liza says, grabbing my arm. “We thought we could all just hop on the train and head over to Lillian's together.” Lillian smiles and nods.

Oh,
we
did, did we?
I think fast.

“Great idea,” I say. “But, Lize, we said we'd water the planters for the Garden Committee, remember? We can't forget to do that.” I turn to Lillian. “Why don't you go on ahead and we'll catch up?”

I see Lillian look at Liza, who starts to say something but then changes her mind. “Oh, that's right, sorry. It won't take us long, but if you want to go on home, we can definitely follow.”

Lillian nods and gives us her address, then heads down the hall to her locker. She looks back at us once, as if we might have disappeared.

We're not actually signed up for an official watering shift today, but we go through the motions anyway since we have to kill time before heading to Lillian's. We troop down to the janitor's closet near the gym to
get enormous watering cans and the wrench to turn on the hose. Mike, the janitor, salutes us when we pass him on the stairs.

Filling up the cans at the spout, Liza watches me, like I'm a time bomb ready to go off.

“Frankie,” she says, almost cautiously, as we slosh our way to the front of the building. “Did we really have to do this today? I thought our day was tomorrow.”

“No, it's today,” I lie. “Or maybe not, I can't remember. But I thought we should just go ahead and do it rather than put it off. It's the responsible thing to do.”

Liza takes one of the watering cans and I take the other as we work our way from planter to planter.

“Hmm, and that's Francesca Caputo, always the responsible one, right?”

“Liza, if you have something to say, say it.”

“Franks,” she says, giving me one of her smiles. Doesn't she get exhausted, being so bright and cheery
all the time? “I think you didn't want to walk home with Lillian.”

“So sue me if I want to hang out with my best friend for two seconds, is that such a crime?”

Liza drops her almost-empty can and pushes her curls back from her forehead. “No, I guess not. But we're working with Lillian on this, and you need to make more of an effort to be nice. I know you don't really know her—I don't either—but she seemed so lonely during that interview that I just had to ask her to team up with us.”

“But that's just it, Liza,” I say. “You just went ahead and asked her without even consulting me.”

Liza rolls her eyes. “Didn't you ask Evan Jacoby without consulting me?”

She has a point. We round the corner to the last set of planters. There's just enough in the watering cans to dampen the soil, but I don't feel like going all the way back to the faucet. I'm not
that
responsible.

“Hey, that's different,” I say. “Evan is really—” I stop because Liza's eyes are pleading.

She puts her hand on my shoulder. “Frankie, it won't kill you to be a little nicer to Lillian. You don't have to be friends, but we're a team for this project and she's going to be great. Better than Evan Jacoby—I promise.”

I sigh. “Okay, okay. I'll try. It's just that usually we rock this stuff, and I feel like we're getting off to a bad start. Conner Berman's group is already cutting wood for dioramas, and we don't even have a topic!”

We pick up our empty cans and head back to the closet to put them away, dodging all the stragglers racing out of school who practically mow us down.

“Hey!” I say at the receding backs of a bunch of thick-necked guys who remind me of my brothers. “What are we, invisible? We are trying to walk here!”

Liza laughs and hooks her arm into mine as we head down the hill to the subway station.

“Conner Berman, Franks? I think he's what you
might call OCD, and I don't exactly see us modeling our study habits after his. Does that kid ever eat or drink or sleep or turn on a TV?”

We hop on the train for the short ride to Lillian's. She's right, of course.

“Nah. I know. We just have to rock this project.”

Liza laughs and gives me a look. There's no way she suspects I have a crush on Mr. Mac . . . is there? “Sure, Frankie, sure,” she says. By the time she stops giggling, we're practically at Lillian's.

As soon as I walk in the door, I hear it: “Shoes off in the house, Lillian!”

This is how my mother greets me every day. This afternoon it's just her voice issuing the warning—the rest of her must be in the kitchen because the smell of garlic and ginger is filling the front hall. The trouble is, since we just moved in a few weeks ago, we haven't put any rugs down yet, and the old wood floors are freezing cold.