Lemonade Mouth (35 page)

Back in the kitchen, my dad and Sydney wore expressions of deep concentration, both of them busy chopping and stirring the ingredients of their weird, fishy food. For the first time, I realized that they looked kind of sweet together.

That’s when I had a sudden idea what the passage might have meant. And it occurred to me that maybe Shakespeare was onto something.

It’d been my idea to invite Mrs. Reznik. I was happy when she’d actually agreed to come. We had to pull the table away from the wall so everybody could fit. There were nine of us, including George, my dad, Sydney, my friends and me. I was surprised how fancy everything looked. Sydney laid out a tablecloth, dimmed the lights and lit candles to set the mood. My dad brought out the cloth napkins and the good china. Zydeco music bounced quietly from the stereo. There was so much food it was like a restaurant. Some of it was pretty spicy, and to be honest I’m not a big oyster fan so I could take or leave the chowder, but the gumbo was amazing and I ended up taking two helpings. There were even special meat-free versions of just about everything especially for Stella. Everybody gobbled it up.

Well, maybe not everybody. George eyed the cake, which loomed on the counter like a monument, a champion chocolate dessert on steroids, but other than that I don’t think my little brother was much of a Creole fan. He picked at the jambalaya and had a few bites of a crab cake, but mostly he just sat there listening to everyone else talking and laughing.

Mrs. Reznik told a hilarious story about how she once got locked out of the house in her bathrobe and shower cap one morning because she thought she saw a lame bird in a tree. She can be a hoot when she gets going. Sydney was laughing so hard I thought her ice tea might come shooting out her nose.

But then toward the end of the meal, the mood completely changed.

“Listen, everybody,” Stella said in the middle of a rare lull in the conversation. “I . . . uh . . . got some news today. Serious news, actually.”

Of course, I didn’t have any idea what Stella’s news would be, and it didn’t occur to me at first that there might be anything to worry about. Sure, she’d been a little quieter than usual today, but it hadn’t seemed like a big deal. Plus, at that moment my attention was on Sydney. She’d just set the Doberge cake on the table and I was watching greedily as she began to cut it into slices. But when I finally glanced over at Stella and noticed her somber, unsmiling expression and the way she was waiting for everybody’s attention, I pretty much forgot about the cake.

Something was clearly up. Something serious.

It was obvious that everybody else sensed the same thing. Everyone got quiet. Sydney stopped slicing and even George looked up from the stack of breadsticks he’d been arranging as a fortress around his napkin. We all looked over at Stella and waited for her to tell us whatever it was. She looked down at the tablecloth.

“I’m not exactly sure how to say this. My mother . . . well, she only told me this afternoon so it’s still something I’m getting used to myself.”

“What is it?” Sydney asked anxiously, setting aside her cake knife and sitting back down. “Tell us.”

Stella took a deep breath and then started into her story. Apparently her mother had taken her out to lunch, just the two of them. In the middle of the meal she’d reached into her purse and pulled out a long, white envelope.

“We need to talk,” she’d said softly. Which of course made Stella kind of nervous. And it got even worse when her mother had put her hand over hers and said, “Now, I don’t want you to get upset about this, honey. It’s going to be okay.”

“It was bad enough that I’ve had so much on my mind lately anyway,” Stella said to us now. “But the way my mom was acting was completely freaking me out.”

“Go on,” Mrs. Reznik said with concern in her eyes. “What happened?”

Her mother told her that the envelope had arrived a couple days earlier, but she hadn’t said anything to Stella about it until now because she was waiting for the right moment. She said she figured Stella was going to take it hard. She set the envelope on the table.

“So as you can imagine, by then I was sweating estuaries. I looked down at the letter. It was from the high school guidance department.”

Mrs. Reznik’s eyebrows pulled together.

“Remember I told you all about how they made me take all those stupid tests? How my mother had to come in and later I had to spend a whole Thursday afternoon stuck in that little green room in the guidance area? Well, I’d almost forgotten all about that. It was just a bad memory I preferred not to relive. But here it was back to haunt me. Now, I didn’t really want to know what was inside the envelope, but my mom was waiting so I picked it up off the table and pulled out the letter. I could feel my heart thumping. Before I even started reading the thing I looked over again at my mom’s face and knew that whatever news this piece of paper had, it wouldn’t be anything good. Something was obviously out of whack.”

At this point in Stella’s story she reached into her pocket and pulled out an envelope that I guessed, rightly, was the same one as in her story. As we all leaned forward, waiting anxiously to hear what she was going to say next, she slowly and dramatically pulled out the letter.

Then she read aloud.

“The Opequonsett Public School system recently completed a full core evaluation of your daughter Stella and testing resulted in a finding of dyslexia. After reviewing input from her teachers and mother, Stella’s physician reports a diagnosis of Attention Deficit Disorder. These problems would negatively influence Stella’s ability to read and fully comprehend written material as well as maintain focus in class.”

I suddenly felt terrible for Stella. After all, we all knew what an issue this stuff was for her. She was always so sensitive about her bad grades, and if anybody ever kidded her about something she said, any innocent comment she could wrongly interpret as being a jibe at her intelligence, she went all moody. Somewhere she’d gotten the crazy idea that she was dumb. It wasn’t true, of course, but that was Stella. Once a notion found its way into her head, it wasn’t easy for anybody to argue it out of her.

Mo and Olivia started to open their mouths, probably to say something consoling, something to let her know that this really was okay and not such an awful thing. But Stella held up a finger to stop them. She continued reading.

“The school has developed a plan for accommodating Stella’s needs. Going forward, Stella will be given individual and small group help from our Resource teacher who will supplement and support her regular classroom work as well as work with her on an alternative reading method. Stella will also be given preferred seating where she is closer to the classroom teacher and away from hallway disruptions. In addition, for written tests, Stella will be allowed to complete her work in a quiet, comfortable area without any distractions or time restrictions.”

She lowered the letter. I was surprised to see the expression on her face.

She was grinning.

“You should have heard my mom,” she said, laughing. “She kept saying stuff like, ‘This is not the end of the world,’ and ‘a lot of people have these kinds of problems.’ She didn’t understand that this was the best news I’d heard in a long time!”

But I still didn’t follow. I struggled to understand how this was good news.

“Don’t you get it?” she said to our confused faces as if we were missing the obvious. “
This
is the reason I’ve been having such a hard time in school! This is why there’s always so much stuff I don’t get! Why my grades are so crappy! You know, I even failed an IQ test at my old school, but now I know the reason.” She jabbed her finger up and down at the letter. “
This
explains a
lot
!”

Charlie and I exchanged glances. He looked as puzzled as I was. And after a quick glimpse around the table I saw that we weren’t the only ones.

But Stella only laughed again, beaming at us like a convict relieved of a death sentence. “Don’t you see? It’s like I just had the idiot-stamp removed from my forehead! I’m not a moron after all, I’m just
easily distracted
!”

It seemed like a weird thing to be so ecstatic about, but there it was. And however odd the reason, I felt glad for her. It wasn’t long before everybody was laughing along with her, and giving her our congratulations. Sydney cut us each a celebratory slice of her Doberge cake, and Mrs. Reznik even made a toast:

“To friends, family, food and taking exams in comfortable, quiet areas without distractions or time restrictions!”

Everybody clinked glasses. Stella practically glowed.

OLIVIA:
A Great and Mysterious Design

Dear Naomi,

Of course, you already know how it all played out that spring, how that first
Providence Journal
article led to a flood of letters of support for us and our lemonade cause. And that led to more articles and even an interview on the local news. And with the continued radio play, and with WRIZ-TV never seeming to tire of showing that clip of our disastrous performance at Catch A RI-Zing Star, interest in Lemonade Mouth kind of snowballed. People seemed to think we were hilarious. It even got to the point where complete strangers would sometimes come up and ask me if I was one of those funny kids they’d seen on TV or read about in the paper. For a few weeks there, we were almost like celebrities.

It was a weird time. My grandmother kept a scrapbook.

One day a columnist at the
Providence Phoenix
wrote an opinion piece that even called us “icons of their generation.” “You don’t have to be in high school to sympathize with their plight,” the writer said. “In a way, Lemonade Mouth is like Everyman. We can all relate to the difficulty of finding ourselves in over our heads, trying to maintain our dignity and sense of humor while undertaking tasks that sometimes seem out of our grasp.” After Stella read that one aloud at the Freak Table I still remember all the puzzled faces.

It was all pretty overwhelming.

Needless to say, with so much media coverage, the pressure on Mr. Brenigan and the finance committee to bring back the lemonade machines eventually got pretty bad. So bad that they eventually had no choice but to give in. The administration tried to play it all down—they didn’t even make an announcement about their change of heart. But somebody must have tipped someone off because word not only got out that the machines were coming back, but we even found out ahead of time which day the delivery truck was coming.

I’m sure you remember that Saturday in early April, the morning we all waited in the high school parking lot. After all, you were there too, along with what seemed like half the school. Despite the cool temperature, a bunch of kids set up lawn furniture, others ran around throwing Frisbees or playing guitars while we waited. It was a blast. There were reporters there, too, including Carolyn Brussat from the
Providence Journal,
the lady who’d written that first article about us. There were even camera crews from a couple of local TV stations.

Terry Cabeleira stood lookout at the corner of the street so he could spot the truck before anybody else. Finally he shouted, “I can see it! Here it comes!”

As the truck backed up to the loading dock everybody cheered and waved, and some kids held up signs. Along with the usual HOLD IT HIGH! RAISE IT UP! were others like VICTORY FOR THE UNHEARD! and WHEN LEMONADE MOUTH SPEAKS, THE WORLD LISTENS!

Turned out, I recognized one of the delivery people. It was Phil, one of the two guys who’d ended up calling the cops on us that day we’d all lain in the snow in front of his truck. But today he was in a much better mood. He seemed to eat up the attention. He grinned and waved to the crowd, and after wheeling the machine out of the cargo area he tipped his cap and bowed to the cameras. Which made us all cheer even louder. The TV crews loved it. loved it.

I wish I could have somehow recorded the giddy grins I saw the following Monday on the faces of so many kids—and some of the teachers, too. Sure, the school would have to return some of the scoreboard money to the soda company, but word was already out that the sports teams were going to make up the difference by selling chocolates.