The Forget-Me-Not Summer (2 page)

I
t was the third Saturday in June, school had been out for a whole week, and Zinnia Silver, who was usually up to the gills in homework and after-school activities, had a lot of extra time on her hands. So this morning she had given herself a mission. She was going to straighten her crazy, unruly hair. She stood in front of her bathroom mirror determined to tame her mane. She was eleven years old and tired of being the funny-looking sister.

To Zinnia, or Zinnie for short, there was no one on the planet more beautiful than her older sister, Marigold. Marigold was a just a touch tall for her age, which was twelve, with a smile so bright and winning that during her brief stint with braces, she had somehow managed to make them seem like the ultimate accessory. And like their mom, Marigold had
honey-blond hair that was heavy, shiny, and straight. When it was down, it moved like silk, in one smooth piece (so easy to toss, so ready for a moment's flip), and when it was up in a ponytail, it swung from high on her head, almost like it was keeping the beat to a pop song. Zinnie had plenty of time to study the back of Marigold's head, for though she was only a year younger and just one grade behind her at Miss Hadley's School for Girls, she was always a few steps behind.

Lily, the youngest sister, who was five years old and alarmingly cute, also had their mom's hair. It was so blond it was nearly white and had a bit of curl so that when the sun hit it just right, her face was framed by soft loops of light. Her cheeks were round and rosy and delightfully chubby, inviting kisses and gentle pinches and coos. Berta, Lily's nanny, had warned the older Silver sisters never to take their eyes off Lily in public.

“¡Ah dios mio!”
Berta exclaimed once as she made fajitas. “Someone will think she's an angel and kidnap her!”

Marigold gasped, and Zinnie threw a brave hand over her heart and swore on her life that under no circumstances would Lily ever be left unattended. Zinnie knew this duty would fall to her. Lily must be protected from kidnappers, and Marigold must be free to pursue her greatness. A middle sister's job was not an easy one.

While Zinnie knew her almost-black hair would never look right blond, she felt sure that if it were straight like Marigold's, she would be a little closer to being as pretty as her sisters. She uncapped the straightening foam that she had saved up for, squeezed a puff of it into her palm, and applied it to the top of her wet head. “Style as usual,” the directions read. So she brushed the goop through, making sure no strand was left untouched, and blow-dried.

The result was not good. The top of her head looked greasy, and the bottom half of her hair seemed to have taken on an extra two inches of fuzz. She felt like Sampson, the poodle down the street, whose over-the-top haircut was a family joke. “Fine! Just . . . just frizz away,” she said into the mirror. She let the can of straightening goop crash into the sink. “I surrender.”

She'd thought this was a private drama, but she'd left the bathroom door open and her dad had witnessed this moment. He leaned in the doorframe.

“It looks like you got my hair. Sorry, Zinnie,” he said.

“But Daddy,” Zinnie said, “you're bald.” And they both burst into laughter, even though Zinnie felt like crying.

“Good news is the hair comes with a sense of humor,” he said as he swept her into a big coffee-smelling hug.

“Do you still have writer's block?” Zinnie asked.
Her dad was a screenwriter. His office was in the little guesthouse in the backyard, a place the girls had to be invited into to enter. It was his private thinking space. Every morning he hid away in there to write, emerging only for coffee refills, sandwiches, chips, and, if he was really on a roll, Chinese food delivery. The girls were not even supposed to knock on the door between the hours of eight a.m. and two p.m., Monday through Friday. Except, of course, if there was a emergency, and that did not include arguments over TV time, fights over what was fair, anything to do with clothing, or second opinions on permission to do something to which their mother or Berta had already said no.

If Dad wasn't in the office in the morning on a weekday, it meant he had writer's block. When that happened, which seemed to be more often these days, he wandered around the house looking tired and nervous. Now that Zinnie thought about it, he had seemed extra worried lately. He hadn't taken her to the movie theater for classics on Tuesdays like he usually did, even during the school year (because
good
movies are an education, he always said), nor had they gone to the Santa Monica Pier, which he'd promised they would as soon as school got out.

“'Cause you look like you have writer's block,” Zinnie said, studying the dark circles under his eyes.

“Well, I've had a tough decision to make,” he said, and sighed. “But I think I've finally made it.” For a
second Zinnie thought he looked like he was the one who wanted to cry, but before she could ask him any more questions, he smiled, piled her hair on her head, turned so that they both faced the mirror, and said, “What about this for a new look?”

The way he held up her hair smack on top of her head did look silly, but it also gave Zinnie an idea. “I could do my hair like Alisha!” she said. Alisha was the name of the warrior princess character in the last movie her dad had written,
American Robot 3: Robots' Revenge
. It was Zinnie's favorite of the three robot movies Dad had written because the hero, Alisha, was a girl. Alisha had serious martial arts skills. The actress who had played her had worn her hair in a high bun held together with chopsticks. Zinnie struck a kung fu pose in the mirror.

“And you know who has a whole drawer full of chopsticks?” Dad asked.

“You,” Zinnie said.

“Come on, let's go to my office.”

Zinnie followed her dad through the backyard to his office, which, as usual, was almost as messy as her room. There were stacks of scripts on the floor, movie posters on the walls, and piles of DVDs on the shelves. His silver laptop sat on his desk along with a half dozen notebooks, piles of paper, a mug of change (mostly pennies), and two used coffee cups with the spoons still in them. Still, even with the clutter,
Zinnie's eyes were drawn to the bright-green Post-it attached to his computer screen. “Call Marty at 10.”

“Who's Marty?” Zinnie asked.

“My lawyer.”

“Why do you have to call a lawyer?” Zinnie asked as Dad handed her a set of chopsticks. She couldn't help thinking of the billboard that their car pool passed every day on the way to school. It had a guy with wavy hair and a toothy smile on it. He was leaning out of a red sports car. Below his picture were the words
DALLAS PERRY, THE LAWYER WHO PUTS YOUR DIVORCE IN THE FAST LANE!
A kernel of worry popped into Zinnie's head. Three of her classmates' parents had divorced this year.

“Grown-up stuff. Nothing for you to worry about.” He glanced at his watch. “Oh, it's almost time for my call. Let me know how the new hairdo turns out, okay?”

“No one calls it a hairdo, Dad. It's a hair
style
.”

“Well, excuse me,” he said with a smile, tousled her hair, and shut the door behind her.

Zinnie sharpened the chopsticks against each other on her way back into the house and upstairs, wondering if she should consult Marigold about this lawyer thing, when she remembered that Marigold had an important meeting today. She knew that Marigold was upstairs in her room. But her door had been shut all morning, which meant that she did not want to be
interrupted. As if Zinnie didn't have enough reasons to worship her sister, Marigold was also an actress. She had already been on TV, and today she had her first interview with an agent. Marigold had explained that she needed to prepare for this very important meeting and made Zinnie promise to leave her alone. She had even commanded her to swear with her right hand on the newest
Night Sprites
book, the one that they had waited in line almost two hours for at the bookstore.

I will keep my promise to Marigold,
Zinnie thought. After all, she had sworn on her favorite book. She rewashed her hair in the sink to scrub out the goop. She towel dried her hair, watched a YouTube video on buns, and set about creating the perfectly messy but neat pile of hair on her head. As she was placing the second chopstick in at just the right angle, she reassured herself that there was no reason to think her parents were getting a divorce. She hadn't heard them fighting or anything, not the way Marigold's friend Pilar had said her parents had before her dad moved to Albuquerque.

Besides, Dad told me it was nothing to worry about,
Zinnie reasoned as she made her way to his office to show off her new look. She passed Lily's room, where her sister was singing to herself. Then she went down the stairs, which she took two at a time; skipped across the black-and-white-tiled kitchen floor, touching only the black squares; and sashayed through the backyard with its lemon, orange, and avocado trees.
But when she arrived at Dad's office, the door was shut. This meant he was still on the phone with the lawyer. She had already pivoted back toward the house when she decided there was no harm in making sure this was really “nothing to worry about,” as her dad put it. She pressed her ear against the door and listened.

“Look, Marty,” she heard Dad say, “I'm as sad about this separation as anyone. We had some good times, some good years, but frankly, I'm stuck. If I'm going to continue to grow, I need a change. It's time to split. If feelings get hurt, so be it.”

A separation? A change? Time to split? That sounded like something to worry about! A hundred kernels of worry popped at once, filling Zinnie's head and spilling down into her belly. Was that what his big decision had been about? Would he move to Albuquerque? What about Saturday cartoon marathons and watching concert rehearsals at the Hollywood Bowl on summer afternoons? And what about the father-daughter dance at school? Did her mother even know that he was planning on leaving?

She needed to talk to Marigold immediately. Marigold always knew what to do. They had to come up with a plan, and fast. Zinnie needed to speak with her before she left the house, no matter how mad Marigold was going to be.

Zinnie darted back through the yard and across the
kitchen, not caring about what happened to her carefully constructed bun or what color tiles she stepped on. She flew up the stairs and down the hall, slipping a little on the smooth wooden floors as she passed Lily's open door.

“You have sticks on your head!” Lily called after her.

“Yup,” Zinnie said over her shoulder.
Lily will not find out,
Zinnie swore to herself.
Marigold and I will fix this
. She was out of breath as she arrived in front of Marigold's closed door. She raised her hand to knock and paused. Not only did Marigold have the
DO NOT DISTURB
sign on her door, she'd added the word “important” in bubble letters and outlined it in pink highlighter. Marigold was going to be as mad as the troll in the first
Night Sprites
book when the fairies awakened him from his one-thousand-year slumber. But what was Zinnie supposed to do?
Not
tell her older sister that their parents were getting a divorce? Unthinkable. Zinnie took a deep breath. Then she knocked.

“Marigold,” she said, “I need to talk to you!”

“You're going to get in biiiiig trouble,” Lily said, appearing next to her in a purple tutu and red rain boots, her bunny in her outstretched arms. “Here. Take Benny for protection.”

M
arigold had begged her whole family to please,
pretty please with sugar on top,
not bother her on the most important morning of her entire life. She was going to audition for Jill Dreyfus, the best acting agent for kids in all of Hollywood, in less than a half hour. She needed to focus. Mom had put the interview on the family calendar in blue ink, and Marigold had rewritten it in red ink, indicating it was an event of the highest priority. Marigold had added “Marigold's private time” in the hours leading up to it, also in red ink, and then, just as an insurance policy, put the
DO NOT DISTURB
sign on the door. And
still
Zinnie was knocking! She took a deep, calming breath and tried to ignore her younger sister.

She had been looking forward to today for two whole weeks, practicing her monologue and vocal exercises
every morning. She had made collages of outfits to wear for the audition from pictures in magazines. She'd shown her mom the collage and even included a list of stores where they could buy the outfits, but her mother had said the clothes were too grown-up. Marigold had then gone through her closet three times until she settled on a blue-and-green tie-dyed dress and gold wedges. She was putting the final touches on her hair (one barrette, left side, a few dangling wisps) when Zinnie knocked again.

“Zinnie wants to talk to you,” Lily said through the door, and added some tiny but firm knocks of her own.

Marigold stifled a scream. Why did no one in her family seem to understand what a big deal today was? Zinnie and Lily were bugging her, and her parents were not even going to allow her to wear makeup. Sometimes it seemed as if no one cared that this was her dream. Her parents had been the ones to take her to the premieres of the
American Robot
movies. That's where Marigold had first seen the actresses in their glamorous dresses, smiling at the flashing cameras. But it wasn't the fancy clothes and red carpets that made Marigold love acting (though she had to admit it didn't hurt).

For Marigold, acting was about the way she felt when she pretended to be someone else: bright, awake, calm on the inside no matter if she was crying or laughing on the outside. Marigold wasn't like Zinnie,
who could make everyone laugh with a single word or facial expression. Grown-ups always said what a pretty girl Marigold was, but then they'd turn to Zinnie and laugh with sparkling eyes. Marigold had once overheard their grandmother describe Zinnie as captivating. Marigold had never heard the word “captivating” before, but somehow she knew just what it meant, and it was better than “pretty.”

It had been such a sweet surprise when, right after winter vacation, Marigold had tagged along with a classmate to an acting class at the Ronald P. Harp Acting Studio. She found that when she was reading a script, she knew what to do. She could slip in and out of other people's words as easily as sliding in and out of a costume. It was like there was a little bit of gold inside her that was hers and hers alone. She was captivating.

Later that evening Marigold asked her parents if she could join the class. She was surprised when they said they had to think about it. They always wanted the girls to try out new activities. In sixth grade alone, Marigold had taken Bollywood dancing, yoga, Spanish, and cake decorating. But those classes were all at the after-school program at Miss Hadley's. The Ronald P. Harp Studio was a twenty-minute drive away. She'd had to ask a few times before they said yes. Once they saw how much Marigold was enjoying the class, however, they seemed happy to take her every week. So she thought her pleading was behind her when,
two months later, she asked if she could sign up for a special one-day auditioning-for-television workshop, taught by an actual, real-life casting director.

“The casting lady is really looking for kids to put on that new show
Seasons
. You know the one with the big billboard on Melrose? This is basically like a real TV audition,” Marigold said, practically bursting out of her skin, she was so thrilled by the possibility. But instead of sharing in her excitement, Dad sighed and put his head in his hands, and her mother said no without even taking a breath.

“But why not?” Marigold asked. She didn't understand. Acting was her favorite thing in the world. Her parents always talked about how it was important to try lots of activities so that she could find out what she liked. Now she'd found something that made her as happy as a big slice of birthday cake with a whole frosting flower on top, and they were saying no?

“I'm sorry, honey,” Mom said. “Acting for fun is great. But acting for money, that's different. The entertainment industry is no place for kids.”

“I'm not even sure it's a place for adults,” Dad added. “Don't you want to be on the swim team again this year?” Marigold shook her head, mystified by this resistance. She was always coming in second or third to last at the swim meets. Even though the coach said that winning didn't matter, it sure felt like it did when the ribbons were passed out and Marigold never got
one. Besides, the chlorine made her skin itch.

“It's my dream to be an actress,” Marigold said. “Just like Dad's dream is being a writer. And Mom's dream is to be a mom.”

“A mom
and
a film editor,” Mom corrected her. She frowned and fiddled with her wedding ring. “Which I was, you know, before you were born.”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry.” Marigold could forget how sensitive Mom was when it came to her old job. “So, um, can I just do this class? Please? It's just one afternoon. You wouldn't let anything stop you from following your dream, would you?”

“No,” Dad said, running a hand over his head. “I wouldn't.”

“Then why would you stop me from following mine?” Marigold asked.

Her parents exchanged a look and asked her to leave for a moment so they could speak in private. Marigold stood in the pantry, staring at the boxes of pasta, cans of tomato sauce, and jars of artichoke hearts, as her parents whispered in the kitchen.

“Here's the deal, sweetie,” Dad said when they called her back in. “Show business is really tough. The chances that you're going to get to be on a TV show are small. And I'm not saying this because I don't believe in you. Trust me, this has nothing to do with talent. It's just the business, and we don't want you to be disappointed.”

“I won't be,” Marigold said. “I promise. No matter what happens. I won't be disappointed.”

“You can't promise that,” Mom said, tucking Marigold's hair behind her ear.

“But I can promise that if it stops being fun, I'll quit,” Marigold said.

“Okay,” Dad said, lifting his hands in surrender. “You can take the class.”

Marigold smiled and hugged them. She knew someplace quiet and shimmering inside her that she would not be disappointed. She knew that this was just the beginning.

And she was right. After Marigold's turn in front of the camera, the casting director clapped and cheered. She called the Silvers' house that very night and offered Marigold the role of Jenny, the new neighbor girl, on
Seasons
. The casting director told Marigold that she would have two whole lines and get to eat an ice cream sundae on camera. Her parents let her take the job under three conditions: Acting could never get in the way of her schoolwork, they had the right to pull her out of it at any time if they felt she was growing up too fast, and all her earnings would go into a college fund. Marigold agreed to their conditions. She would have agreed to anything, even sniffing the cafeteria garbage every day, if that was what it would take to get her parents to let her accept the part.

That had been a few months ago. Since then she'd
been in three episodes of
Seasons
. And now, in just twenty-five minutes, she would meet with a very important acting agent. She had begun to recite her monologue to her mirror one final time when Zinnie burst into her room with a pair of chopsticks in her hair.

“I know I shouldn't interrupt, but it's an emergency!” Zinnie said.

The expression on Zinnie's face was the same as when she'd accidentally set off the emergency exit alarm at the Gap. Lily jumped in behind her, looking back and forth at her sisters with great anticipation. Before Marigold could say a word to either of them, Mom stepped into the room with her pocketbook over her shoulder, keys in her hand, and sunglasses on her head.

“What's an emergency, Zinnie?” Mom asked.

“Yeah, what's the emergency?” Lily asked.

“Nothing,” Zinnie said, paling a little as she stared at Mom. “Nothing at all. Are you okay, Mom?”

“Um, I'm fine,” Mom said.

“Are you sure?” Zinnie asked.

“Of course. Are
you
okay?” Mom asked.

Zinnie nodded, looking at the floor.

“Then why would you burst into my room like that?” Marigold asked, ready to put an end to the shenanigans. “When the sign is up and everything?”

“It was a . . . hair emergency,” Zinnie said, touching the chopsticks.

“I'll say,” Marigold said. Zinnie's face flushed with hurt. Sometimes things just flew out of Marigold's mouth before she could stop them.
I need to be nicer to Zinnie
, she thought.

“I think you look cute, Zin,” Mom said, putting an arm around her. “Will you show me how you did it later?”

“Anything for you, Mom,” Zinnie said, and hugged her. “Anything in the world.”

Ugh, never mind,
Marigold thought.
Zinnie is such a kiss-up!

“Marigold, are you ready?” Mom asked.

“I think so,” Marigold said.

“Can I come?” Zinnie asked. “Please? I need to talk to Marigold.”

“Whatever you need to say, you can say in front of me,” Mom said.

“Never mind,” Zinnie said.

Marigold raised an eyebrow. What was Zinnie trying to tell her?

“Then I guess you're going to have to wait,” Mom said, “because you have acting class, remember?”

“What about me?” Lily asked. “Do I have anything important to do today?”

“Berta will be here any minute to take you to the zoo,” Mom said, patting Lily on the head. “Get your shoes on, Zinnie. Samantha's mom is picking you up in five minutes.”