My Life in Dioramas (16 page)

My father was in the
kitchen making coffee.

“Who's been sleeping in my bed?” he said.

“Not you.” I reached for my cereal.

He went out to the back porch and sat there with his coffee, not saying a word about the note from the realtor or the bags of stink. I sat with my cereal at the kitchen nook alone for a few minutes then opened the window behind me a crack.

“Dad?”

“Yes?”

“You want fries with that?”

“I'm good,” he said flatly, not looking at me.

I got up and dumped my cereal and went out and sat next to him.

“I don't want you to sell the house,” I said.

“I don't want to sell it either! But we have to!”

“Why?”

“Because it's the only way we're ever going to get out from under it.”

“But I love it here.”

“And I do, too. Or I did, until the whole place started feeling like this
crushing weight
on my back. It's not a good way to live.” He shook his head. “What were you
thinking
, Kate? You've wasted everyone's time.”

“I just wanted to buy some time. To finish out the school year and to make it to Dance Nation.”

“I don't even know what that is.”

“Everyone in dance class. We're learning a routine to compete in Albany. Stella and I have been wanting this for
years. So I signed up. I paid the registration fee. And I forged Mom's signature.”

“You should have
come
to us. You should have
talked
about it.”

“I tried!”

Didn't I?

He shook his head. “Bernadette told me she had to go across the street to ask Troy to turn his music down and he said you asked him to do it. Did you?”

I nodded.

“You're grounded.” He stood up. “For a week. At least.”

“But I have dance classes!”

“The point of grounding you isn't to make you happy, Kate.” He went inside and came back out with a notepad and pen. “Right now. Letter of apology to Bernadette, whose time you've been wasting spectacularly.”

“I'll miss the bus.”

“I'm driving you to and from. All week. No bus. And today we'll go by the dance studio so you can tell Miss Emma what you did and explain that you will not be competing.”

“But, Dad!”

“But nothing!”

I picked up the pen and started writing, then tore off the sheet and handed it to my dad, who read it, then looked up at me. “You were responsible for the smell last weekend, too?”

I nodded.

He shook his head, folded my letter, and put it in his front shirt pocket. “Let's go.”

We drove in silence until we got to school. Before I got out, when I had my hand on the handle, I asked, “Are you going to tell Mom?”

“I haven't decided yet.”

“Please don't.”

“I said I haven't decided yet.”

I opened my door and he said, “I'll see you right here at three.”

When I walked into homeroom
Megan said, “Wow, like, did your dog die?”

Even Stella, who hadn't spoken to me in days, looked concerned. So much so that she came over and said, “Everything okay?”

“I'm grounded,” I said.

I flagged Naveen over.

“Grounded?” Stella said. “How long?”

“A week,” I said. “Maybe more.”

“But my party!” Stella wailed.

“This isn't about you! And what do you care? Aren't we mad at each other?”

She looked shocked. “I'm sorry. I was going to apologize
today. For everything. So I'm sorry. What happened? I want to know.”

I nodded. “The realtor found all the stuff I'd left around to sabotage the open house and put it on the front porch for when we got back from my grandparents' last night.”

“Your mother must have flipped,” Stella said.

“She actually wasn't there. She doesn't know. Hopefully she never will.”

Naveen looked confused. So did Stella.

“She's spending a few days with my grandparents.” I didn't have the energy to tell them the whole truth. “My grandfather's not feeling great and has a bunch of doctor's appointments she's going along on.”

“Oh,” Naveen said. “That's too bad. About your grandfather.
And
about getting caught. But even if they get an offer, these things can take a long time. I think?”

“It doesn't matter anymore. I told my dad how the reason I did it was because of Dance Nation, and how I forged my mom's signature. It's all over. He said I have to quit.”

“I'm sorry I told Miss Emma,” Stella said, after Naveen had gone back to his desk.

“Thanks.” It felt good to be talking to her again, even though I was still just a little bit mad. “I'm hoping I can wear my dad down by your party Saturday. Because I want to be there. I really do. I just don't want to have to pick songs out beforehand.”

“I get it,” she said. “Don't worry about it.”

When I got into the car,
my dad said, “How was your day?”

I said, “Fine,” but then that seemed to be the end of it.

He drove to the dance studio and parked and was going to get out of the car when I said, “Please? Can I just do it alone?”

He turned the key and opened a window. “Make it quick.”

Miss Emma was alone in the studio, doing paperwork at the desk. I could hear the music coming from the tiny dancers class: “Shake, Rattle and Roll.”

“I lied about troupe,” I said. “My parents never gave me permission.”

“Oh, Kate.” Miss Emma made a pouty face. “You should've told me! You shouldn't have done that.”

“I know,” I said. “I'm so sorry. I just really wanted to do it. More than anything. But I have to quit.”

“I'm so sorry,” she said. “I moved a few times when I was a kid. I know it's not easy, but I know you. You may not like it but you're going to be okay.”

“It's not even that we're moving,” I said. “It's that we don't even know where we're going. We're going to be staying with my grandparents. It's all messed up.”

“I'm so sorry,” she said again.

Then she came out from behind the front desk and gave
me a hug and it felt so good that it almost hurt. I couldn't think of the last time my own mother had hugged me like that.

Dad started driving when I
got back into the car but we went left at the diner instead of taking the right toward home.

“Where are we going?”

“Hiking!” He stopped at a light, tapping to the beat of the music with his hands on the steering wheel.

“Dad,” I said. “You know I don't ‘do' hiking.”

“You do today.”

“But I have homework to do.” I looked out the window. “And aren't I supposed to be grounded?”

“So you'd rather go home and do your homework than go hiking on a beautiful spring afternoon?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Then grounding doesn't seem like a good punishment. If you
want
to be home, then keeping you there is not teaching you a lesson.”

“I learned my lesson, Dad.”

“We can't go home anyway. Bernadette's there, showing the house to someone who didn't hear the barking dogs or loud music.”

“So my plan didn't work after all.”

“It wasn't a very good plan, Kate.”

I nodded.

We were at a spot I knew well. Minnewaska State Park. My dad parked and grabbed a backpack from the back of the car and handed me a hat. “Let's go,” he said. He started up one of the hiking paths with me trailing behind.

It was actually a really nice day. I just didn't much see the point of hiking in general. A bunch of times that I'd been dragged along on hikes, we'd get to the top—some lookout or vista or whatever—and my dad would be all ecstatic, like he'd really accomplished something. I'd just stand there looking out at the view, thinking there was probably someplace we could have driven to see the same view. More quickly, more comfortably, without having to break a sweat.

I was getting winded trying to keep up with Dad, but at least it wasn't buggy out. We probably climbed for about half an hour before we got to a lookout point perched above the lake. There were some mansions across the way. I wondered who was rich enough to live in a house like that. Doctors? Lawyers? Wall Street types? Who?

Maybe my grandmother was right. That it was good to think about practical things, like how you were going to make money in life, enough to support a family if you had one, so that you didn't have to ruin everything and uproot your daughter because you were broke.

Stella and I used to play a game all the time—MASH—and it told you whether you were going to live in a mansion, apartment, shack, or house, along with what kind of car you'd drive and how many kids you'd have. We always thought it was hilarious when we got “shack” and not “mansion” but what if that's how it all shook out in the end?