Me, My Elf & I (22 page)

“This is important,” my dad says.

“More important than your family?” Mom asks.

“Aurora, of course not. But Fawna is getting better every day. She’s up walking now. She ate a bit. She’s clearly going to recover.”

“I’m not ready to go,” Mom says and my heart jumps. Does that mean my dad wants to leave?

“I’m not asking you to leave,” he says, and I feel my stomach sinking.

“But why do you have to go?” Mom asks. “Why can’t we all be together for a little longer?”

“The song is doing well,” Dad says. “It’s climbing up the chart. I can’t lose that momentum. If I’m not out there, touring, gigging, getting some publicity, it could all go backward. You promised me a year to do this. To really pursue it.”

“But I didn’t know she’d get sick if we left.”

My dad sighs. “She didn’t get sick because we left.”

“That’s what you want to believe,” Mom answers. “But no amount of success is worth tearing your family apart.”

“I’m not tearing our family apart,” Dad insists. “I’ll be gone one day, then I’ll be back.”

I have to know what’s going on so I step around the door. “Are you leaving?” I ask my dad. They both look at me, surprised, but neither of them answers. “Are you going back to Brooklyn?” He shakes his head no, but my mom nods hers yes. “Which is it?” I ask.

“I’ve been asked to do a radio show down in Appleton, Wisconsin.”

“And then—” Mom says.

Before she can finish, I jump in. “Can I go? Please? Please let me go with you! I never get to go. Grove always gets to go. I know I’m not part of the band, but I’ll do anything you want. I’ll carry your gear. I’ll set up your stuff. I’ll sleep in the van. Whatever. Just let me go with you! Please, please, please.” I’m practically hanging off my dad’s arm, begging him because I know if I can get to Appleton I can find a computer.

Dad laughs. “Since when are you so interested in Wisconsin?”

I glance over at my mom. She’s shaking her head back and forth slowly in a way that says she is not happy about any of this. “Your grandmother has been very ill . . . ”

“I know!” I whine. “Really I do. And I care about that. More than anything. But she’s getting better and it’s not like I can help her! All we do is try to stay out of the way.”

“Simply having us here, all of us here, helps her,” Mom says.

“But I’d just be gone for a day, right Dad?”

“Why do you want to go so badly?” Dad asks me, and I know I’m going to have to give them some sort of reason.

I chew on the inside of my lip. I don’t know how much to admit. “I need to check my e-mail. I want to know what’s going on in Brooklyn. At school. In my classes. And with my friends. That’s all.” Obviously I’m leaving out important details, but like Timber said, what they don’t know won’t hurt them.

“Is that all?” Dad says with a laugh. He reaches in his pocket. “If you want to check your e-mail, you can use my Treo.” He pulls out a PDA.

I jump and snatch it from his hand. “How long have you had this!” I yell.

He shrugs as if it’s no big deal. “A while. I have to be able to e-mail my manager when I’m on the road.”

I’m not even listening because I’m too busy trying to figure the thing out. “Do you get a signal out here?” I ask as I push buttons.

“Only if you climb a tree or go up to the top of Barnaby Bluff,” Dad says.

“Can I please have this for a few hours?” I ask.

“Why does she need that thing?” my mom asks Dad.

Dad puts his hand on her arm. “It’s okay,” he assures her. “You can use it,” he says to me, and I’m out of there before they can change their minds.

 

The sun will go down soon, so I quickly find a tall tree and clamber as high as I can with the Treo in my pocket. I settle myself into the crook of a large branch and wait for the little machine to hook me up to the world. Who knew my dad was so tech savvy? In a few minutes I’m on the Web.

Of course, the first thing I do is check my e-mail. I want to know if Timber got the last message I sent from the library. There’s a response to that message in my in-box, but all he says is “ok c’ya l8er” and does not pledge his undying love, which is what I was hoping for. There’s also an e-mail with an updated script for the ELPH audition. Part of me wants to open it and practice, but part of me wants to ignore it because what’s the use? I probably won’t be back in time to audition so why torture myself? I try to tell myself that there will be other auditions, other chances, other scripts, but I’m not so sure and that makes my heart feel like a sapling beaten down by the wind and rain. I leave e-mail and mess around with the keys until I figure out how to get on my dad’s instant messenger program. It’s Thursday evening, a school night, so the chances of Timber being online are pretty good. I punch in “R U there? It’s Z.” Almost immediately I get a reply that he’s off-line.

I’m so disappointed that I nearly fling the Treo out of the tree! How can he not be online? That’s so unfair. Now what am I going to do? Look at stupid puppy videos on YouTube? Of course, I could go to Bella’s blog or even to the BellaHater blog to find out what’s going on. But first, I decide I should check out something else. I pull up the YouTube Web site and scroll down until I find the GGJB “Not Like You” featured video.

Ari’s face fills the tiny window and I feel a strange mix of emotions. I’m happy and sad at the same time. It’s the weirdest thing to have both sensations at once. It’s like one of those strange erdler contradictions: being nice and mean at the same time; or saying one thing with your words but meaning another with your tone; or acting like someone’s friend but really being her enemy. I quickly forget about my emotions though, because I get sucked into the video. I love watching Ari sing his heart out. The melody is catchy and the chorus gets stuck in my head,

The video is great. First he’s in his house, alone at the piano. Then he’s with his band beneath a tree in the park, surrounded by a group of little kids. Next they’re standing in the middle of a crowded sidewalk in downtown Brooklyn. Then they’re in Chinatown, then Times Square, then Coney Island. Each shot is a different place around New York City and I’m dying of envy! As soon as Fawna’s better I’ve got to get back to Brooklyn.

When the video is over I scroll down and read the comments. Like Mercedes said, most of them are positive but there are a few mean ones, too. That shouldn’t surprise me, I guess. By now I know it’s impossible for erdlers to always be nice. At the bottom, I see a box that says, “Comment on this Video” and I immediately start typing.

After seeing Ari, I’m curious about what people think of my dad’s videos so I type his name into the search box. I can’t believe it! Twelve videos pop up, all from live shows. I click on the first one and my dad starts singing. I scroll down and scan the comments. People love him! They think he’s amazing. And even weirder, some people say he’s sexy. There’s also some girl who wants to have my brother’s babies. Gross! That’s just wrong. I remember Ari saying people talk about my dad and his band on the Web a lot so I put his name in Google then click through some of the links. Mostly it’s boring stuff about how good Dad’s songs are or people swapping stories about seeing his band play live in different places around the country. But then I end up in a chat room with some creepy rumors.

It’s strange to see so much speculation about my dad and where we live. I had no idea people were so interested in finding us. Luckily no one’s figured it out yet. When I’m bored reading about my dad, which doesn’t take too long, I go to Bella’s Web site just to torture myself.

I hate seeing her smug face captured in a perfect head shot staring out at me from her homepage. There are links to videos of all the little parts she’s had in TV shows, commercials, and even movies. I don’t bother to read her public blog entry because I know it will all be lies. Instead, I drag the cursor up to the corner and click on the dog. I type
belladonna
in the password box and the real blog pops up. But there’s no entry for today. I skim back through the past week and find the entry from the day after Mercedes sent the mass e-mail about my kiss with Timber.

My blood boils. It’s one thing to call me names or even to talk about my friends, but to say stuff about my dad is just wrong! I really can’t stand these girls. I wish I knew who BellaHater is so I could join forces with her and make Bella’s life even more miserable than I already have. As I’m sitting here fuming, an IM message box pops up. It’s from Timber.

I can’t believe it. I’m so excited that I forget Bella and her horrible toadies and start typing away to Timber.

For the first time I get why everyone uses all the short cuts and abbreviations when they write to one another. Punching all these little buttons is annoying. I try to find the quickest way to respond so we can talk more.

My shoulders tense up and I grip the Treo tighter. “With who?” I type, half afraid of the answer. Is he with Bella? Are they back together? Or worse, someone else? Someone new who got there before me? Is he with Rienna? But this comes back:

I realize then I don’t know much about Timber at all. Who his friends are. Where he lives. What he likes to do.

Oh no, I think, I got it wrong. I type in, “Laugh Aloud?”

I wait, wondering if he was being sarcastic.

I type that sentence then reread it on my screen and realize that I’m talking about how I feel when I’m in Brooklyn.

Like Bella, I think, but I don’t type that in because his message continues.

I’m blushing. Way up in this tree all by myself, his little words fly invisibly through the air to me and make my heart flutter like a hummingbird. If that’s not magic, I don’t know what is! I want to tell him how I feel, but I don’t want to look like a complete idiot. I’m not sure what to say, so I just type in, “u r different than I thought u’d b.”

Now I’ve really gotten myself into trouble! This is when I need someone here. Mercedes, Ari, even Briar. Anybody who’s not as clueless, nervous, and dorky as I am. Maybe making a boy interested in you is like coaxing a wild animal out of the woods. You’re supposed to keep yourself hidden and drop little bits of something yummy to tempt him and keep him on the path toward you without letting him know that you want to grab him.