My Life in Dioramas (18 page)

It was a diorama of a
Xanadu
-themed roller rink with a tiny Zelda on skates at the center. She studied it for a second and I wasn't sure if she was going to tell me that it was the worst present she'd ever gotten, but then she said, “You
made
this?”

I nodded.

“That is really cool.” She moved closer. “She looks just like me.”

“I worked really hard on it.”

She hugged me. “I love it. You're the best.”

The doorbell rang and Stella said, “That'll be Megan.”

I groaned. “What is
she
doing here?”

“We're going to do a duet, so we've got to practice a few times.”

“Oh. Of course.”

Stella went down the hall and came back with Megan. “Oh,” Megan said. “Hi.”

They put on some song I hadn't heard and started to talk about who was going to sing which parts. Then they started trying to coordinate some dance moves—Megan was hopeless but Stella didn't seem to mind—while I sat on the bed watching with a dumb smile plastered onto my face.

During a spin and clap move, Megan knocked the diorama off Stella's dresser. It was me who picked it up off the floor and put it back on the dresser when we left.

22.

Stella's dad drove us all
to the karaoke place since her mom had gone ahead to get the room ready. When we walked in, there were balloons everywhere and a bunch of small tables set up in front of a small stage. I don't know what I'd been expecting—a small room with a monitor, a couple of seats—but I hadn't been picturing this. It was a bar. The back room of a grown-up bar. With a stage and spotlights. Naveen was actually sitting on a high stool at the actual bar, spinning back and forth lazily. He smiled when he saw me. I walked over.

“This place is pretty crazy,” he said, over the loud music that had started playing. “You'd never know it from the outside but it's huge.”

His hair was slicked back and he was wearing a white T-shirt and dark jeans.

“What's this look you're working?” I asked.

“I have no idea. But I feel like I can sing everything from Bon Jovi to the Four Tops to
Grease
in this get-up.”

I laughed. “Yes, it does leave you a lot of wiggle room.”

“What's up with the pink hair?”

“It's temporary.” I reached up to touch it. It felt the same as the rest of my hair, but
I
felt somehow bolder. I couldn't control much of anything lately but I'd at least taken control of my hair.

People kept arriving and the room filled up. The singing started with Stella, and then it was a blur of laughing and shouting and dancing and singing. I mostly hung back behind the crowd.

My last birthday, in August, Stella and I had gone to a movie and Red Lobster with my mother and two other friends. It had been enough. I wasn't sure it would be this year and I wasn't sure why.

Then Stella came and found me and pulled me up to sing “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” as part of a group that included Megan and two other friends.

Sam Fitch found me getting a drink of water during a break right before cake.

“You were great,” he said.

“Oh, thanks,” I said. “You, too.”

He'd sung a Beatles song and sounded good doing it.

“I like the pink hair,” he said.

“Thanks.”

But he was too cute. Or too
something
.

I couldn't think of anything else to talk about even though I wanted to.

“I really liked the dioramas you made for Mrs. Nagano's class. I had to redo my essay about which one I liked because it wasn't very good, so when I did it the second time I wrote about one of your dioramas,” he said.

“Really?”

“Yup.”

“What did you say?” Okay, so this was maybe starting to feel like a crush.

“It's stupid.”

“No, tell me. Please.” Definitely a crush. Because talking about my diorama with Naveen had never felt like this.

“It was the scooter one. And I wrote about how it made me feel like we're all the star in our own lives. Because it looked like a stage or something. I don't know how to explain.”

Then it was time to sing again and I wasn't even sure what had even happened except that all I wanted to do was tell Stella every word of my conversation with Sam so that we could analyze it. Did he like me? What did that even mean?

For a while in there, I forgot all about Big Red and moving.

I forgot about my parents, on their way back home in a quiet car.

I forgot about Dance Nation, and how I'd messed up the
troupe routine even though Stella and Miss Emma had both been nice enough not to rub that in my face.

For a while in there, with the disco ball spinning, I was just a girl having fun.

My dad texted me,
asking what time the party was over, and then said he'd be there. I waited outside in the parking lot with the other kids.

“I know it's awkward,” Megan said to me. “But I want to get it out in the open.”

“I have no idea what you're talking about.” Maybe I was a little bit jealous of her duet with Stella.

“No one told you?”

I felt all the fun of the day fading.

“My father's company is buying your house.”

I shook my head. “I don't understand.”

“It's a thing. He's going to flip it. You fix up a house and turn around and sell it for more money.”

“
That's
his career?”

“Yeah.” She spotted her ride. “It's kind of awful, right?”

“Kinda,” I said, and she walked off.

My dad pulled up and I got in and said, “Where's Mom?”

“Big Red.”

“Everything okay?”

“Yes and no.” He pulled out onto the street and headed for home. “We have a buyer.”

My throat felt suddenly too dry.

“There is some back and forth that typically happens but it looks like a solid offer. It's cash. So it'll be fast.”

I swallowed to try to fix my throat and said, “That's great, Dad.”

“Let's not get carried away, Kate. It is what it is.”

My mom was sitting on the front porch drinking a cup of tea. She put it down and uncurled her legs from under her and got up and gave me a big hug. It somehow didn't feel as good as Miss Emma's had.

“I missed you,” she said.

“I missed you, too,” I said.

She pulled out of the hug, then reached out for my hair and slid her fingers down my streak. “Is it temporary?”

I nodded.

“How temporary?”

“Temporary enough.”

“For who? You? Or me?”

“
Mom,
” I groaned. “It was fun, okay. It was fun to do it. And I needed a little fun.”

“You paid with your own money?”

“No, Stella's mom said it was a treat and not to worry about it.”

Mom turned to go inside, and I followed. In the dining
room, she found her wallet and handed me two twenties. “Take that over there now.”

“But—?”

“We're not a charity case, Kate.”

I got my bike out of the barn and took off down the road. I wanted to ride and ride and never go back.

23.

Sunday was a quiet day
around the house. No one had said anything specific about it, but it seemed like we were all doing the things we most loved to do around the house. I spent an hour on my scooter down on the tennis court, making big circles and doing tricks. My mother sat under the pear tree by the stream with her feet up on an upturned bucket, reading. My father blasted classic rock radio out into the yard and cooked a big dinner out on the grill. We sat out there and talked about hikes we'd gone on where I'd whined the whole time and my parents' honeymoon, where they rode mopeds in Bermuda and my
dad
whined the whole time, and we didn't talk about anything having to do with Big Red at all.

It was warm enough to have a bonfire, so we decided we'd do that, too. My mom had to make a special trip to
the supermarket to get everything we needed for s'mores but she seemed happy to go. My dad and I cleaned up dinner while she was gone and it was almost like things were normal again.

When my mom got back, we sat outside in the Adirondack chairs around the fire pit. At first, we didn't even light a fire because the fireflies were coming out, putting on a show. It was like there were a thousand tiny strobe lights in the woods; the crickets seemed to be chirping approval and the frogs croaked, too. The stream was so full and so fast that it was like a roar.

“Kate?” my father said.

I looked at him and he nodded his head at my mom.

So it was time.

“Mom?”

“Yes.”

My dad got up and went inside.

“I forged your signature,” I said. “So I could sign up for troupe. I didn't want to be the only one who couldn't do it, and I guess I was hoping we'd still be here.”

“Oh, Kate,” my mother said, and she shook her head, pulled her hoodie closer around her. “There will be other dance classes and other competitions. There's always next year. Seriously, all of this, really, is going to amount to such a
blip
in your life.”

I felt my whole body tense. “Dancing
isn't
a blip.
Big Red
wasn't a blip. I've lived here
my whole life
.”

“And when you're my age, you'll have maybe a
handful
of vague memories of what it was like to be twelve.”

“That doesn't mean it's not real to me right now!” I was almost screaming. “That it doesn't matter!”

“Of course not.”

She was quiet then but everything in my head was loud. We couldn't
live
like this. She could
be
like this.

“I'm going through some . . . stuff,” Mom said, and her voice sounded weird. “I'm sorry.”

“You need to get help.” My voice was shaking. “I need you to get better.”

“I know,” she said, nodding and sniffling. “I will.”