Twist My Charm (21 page)

Tour of Asia? No, it couldn't be!

“Ryderrrrrrr…”

Oh my gosh,
could
it really be?

“Lannnnnnnndry!”

No way. It can't be.

But it is.

T
he music from “Love Monsoon” fills the amphitheater as Ryder Landry runs onstage. I've seen that run in clip after clip online—live performances, music videos, even news stories where he's running from fans. It's the best run ever.

“Hello, Southern California—it's the end of the school year! Woooo!” he shouts into the microphone. Everyone in the audience goes crazy—except me. I don't know what to think or how to act. I feel like someone conked me over the head with a big, heavy frying pan. My brain is scrambled.

I stand up without even realizing it. I look over at Dad, who's smiling at me. “This is the guy! Right?” he asks, shouting over the screams and cheers. I don't say anything, still in shock. But I'm sure Dad gets his answer from Sam, who is jumping up and down and screaming, “Oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh!” Even Larry is standing, and he thinks Ryder Landry is a creepo-teen-robot who won't be around in five years' time.

“I hope you don't mind that I'm singing to a backing track tonight. My band's already on their way to Japan. But before I left, I wanted to do a special favor for a friend.”

A favor…for a friend? That's how I signed my letter! Still, it couldn't be because of me…could it? I'm clenching my hands so tightly that my nails are digging into my palms.

“So buckle up and get ready for a love monsoon!” Ryder shouts as his music cranks up again.

I mouth the words as Ryder sings—or maybe I scream the words at the top of my lungs; I really have no idea. It's hard to pry my eyes away from Ryder, in his skinny jeans and white T-shirt with suspenders and a knit beanie, but a few times I crane my neck and look left, right, and behind us. Whether this has anything to do with me or not, I hope, hope,
hope
Madison is here to enjoy it!

The applause after “Love Monsoon” seems endless, but Ryder quiets everyone down with a wave of his hand. He says he's only here for a couple of songs, so my heart jumps out of my chest when the next song is “I Like You, Baby.” My favorite! Well, one of my
many
favorites!

I'm jumping up and down in place without really realizing it while kids are gathering in front of the stage to dance. I don't even mean to take my eyes away from Ryder—who knows when I'll see him in person again, if ever?—but somehow my eye wanders down to the crowd and glimpses a flash of blond hair—Madison's!

I'm so glad she's here. Even if she
is
dancing with Lisa Lee and Kylie Mae.

Then I see her wave to me. I wave back. But she's not just waving hello; she's waving for me to come down and join them.

“Is she…?” I ask Samantha, but Sam's already moving toward the end of the row, pulling me and Larry with her. I look to Dad for permission, and he nods.

Samantha, Larry, and I squeeze through the crowd. As Ryder sings and dances and encourages the audience to join in (which of course we do), we make our way toward Madison. Lisa Lee and Kylie Mae are smiling as they watch Ryder, and when their attention turns to us…they keep on smiling! I've never seen anything like it. It's almost as big a surprise as Ryder Landry was.

When the song ends on a big, loud high note, it seems like the screaming and cheering will never end. Ryder smiles and waves until we quiet down again; then he says, “I only have time for one more song.”

There are sighs, “awws,” and a couple of friendly boos. Only Larry says “yay,” but it's obviously a joke. Samantha and Madison both punch him from opposite sides.

“All of my songs mean something to me,” he tells the audience as he walks back and forth. “But this one has special meaning, especially for kids like us. And if there's one thing I've learned, in all the places I've traveled and from all the awesome people I've met, it's that there's nothing more important than friendship.”

I totally agree! I guess everyone else does too, because they cheer like crazy. And the cheers get even louder when we hear the first notes of “Friend to the End of the Earth.”

“I'm a man who lives for love.”

The crowd screeches and squeals.

“Love fits me like a glove

But love like that can come and go.

When I need to talk, or take that long, long walk

You're the one who won't say no.

Because you're my friend, my friend

My friend to the end of the Earth.”

I look over at Madison. Her eyes are glistening with tears. Is it my fault she's crying? I wanted Ryder to help bring us back together, but I didn't want her to cry. She puts her arms out toward Lisa Lee and Kylie Mae, who immediately lean in for a group hug. Their three heads bop up and down in time to Ryder's song.

Well, that's it. Madison has made her choice. She's got two friends to the end of the Earth, and there's no room for a third.

It feels like someone has grabbed my heart and squeezed it hard. Suddenly this great Ryder song about friendship sounds like the saddest thing in the world to me. Even Ryder Landry himself can't hold me in place. I can't stand on the sidelines looking at Madison and her friends one second longer. I turn my back to the stage and walk away, clenching my teeth together and trying not to cry.

With my eyes closed, I hear Ryder shout, “Good night, Southern California!” to the crowd. “Have a great summer, and I'll see you soon!”

The music fades out, and everyone screams and cheers and shouts his name. Everyone but me, that is. Then he must be gone for good, because I start to hear kids talking and feel people walking past me. I breathe in and out, trying to get my emotions under control. An amazing thing just happened, and I may have had something to do with it. But that doesn't even matter anymore. What should have been one of the happiest moments of my life turned out to be one of the worst.

Someone taps me on the shoulder. I turn. It's Lisa Lee, with Kylie Mae by her side. “Did that really just happen?” Lisa Lee asks.

I gulp and force a half smile. “I was just wondering that too,” I say.

“I think it did,” Kylie Mae says.

We all look at each other for a moment. Our conversation seems to be over, but when I really think about it, it's probably the nicest conversation we've ever had.

A second later, before I can barely see her coming, I've almost been tackled—by Madison. She throws her arms around me and hugs me tight. The sadness is knocked right out of me. Confusion has taken over.

“I'm gonna miss you so much!” she says. Miss me? When? This summer? The rest of my life?

When Madison lets me go, she sees I'm standing with Lisa Lee and Kylie Mae. “I'm glad you guys are talking! I just invited Sam….” Sam is standing with us too, grinning wildly. “But I haven't gotten to tell you about the sleepover yet.”

“What?” I ask. “What sleepover?”

“I've been begging for days, but my mom and dad are finally going to let me have a campout in the backyard tomorrow night. A big last-day-of-school party and sleepover, and then on Saturday we can play in the pool and have a barbecue.”

I look around at Madison's two sets of friends: me and Samantha, Lisa Lee and Kylie Mae. “
All
of us?” I ask.

“Yes!” she says. “I've wanted to tell you about it, but I wasn't sure until tonight. We leave for Hawaii next week, but I hope we can have a lot of fun until then!”

I look at Samantha with her goofy smile. We both nod. Of course we want to have as much fun as possible at Madison's house before she leaves for Hawaii. But can it really be true? Could we really
all
be friends? I guess there's only one way to find out, and that starts with a sleepover.

Larry interrupts. “I'm really excited about this party, ladies….”

“You're not invited!” Madison and Samantha shout together.

“Good,” he says. “I don't want to be there anyway if you're playing
his
music.” He sneers up at the stage, but we know he's kidding. “I just want to say that it's time to ride the Claws of Doom!”

“We've already been, but I'll go again,” Lisa Lee says. “My dad can get us to the front.”

“Can we come too?” Larry asks.

Lisa Lee looks at Kylie Mae. I don't see an expression cross either of their faces, but something must be communicated between them because Lisa Lee says, “I guess.” It's not in the nicest tone I've ever heard, but at least it's the right words!

“Yes!” Sam says, psyched. “See you later!” They all run up the aisle toward their parents, while Madison and I stand together.

“You don't want to go on the Claws of Doom?” she asks.

“Yeah, I guess. But I also don't want to leave. I could stare at this stage forever.” Then I say the obvious. “I can't believe what just happened.”

“I know,” Madison says, looking up at the stage too, her hand absentmindedly going to her neck.

And that's when I notice it. Her necklace is gone, just like Sam's! “Did you pull off your necklace too?” I ask her.

“No, you won't believe this! It fell off today after school.”

I gasp in surprise. “Oh my gosh, the universe actually heard your Siren Call? You wished for Ryder and he appeared!”

“Well, the universe heard me,” she says seriously, “but Ryder wasn't my wish.”

I don't understand. “He wasn't? Who was it, then?”

“It was all of us,” she says. She must see the confusion on my face. “Remember the badge I threw into the lake?”

I nod. “Yeah, from the concert you went to with Lisa Lee and Kylie Mae.”

“Right. And you and Samantha love Ryder too. I was using the Ryder badge to wish for all of us to be friends.”

“Then…maybe it worked.”

“Who knows?” Madison says with a smile.

“Only the universe!” I say. “It's always listening.”

“But it's not talking!” Madison gives me a hug. “Come on and meet us at the Claws of Doom, okay?”

“Okay,” I say, still a little stunned by everything that's happened. I watch her run off; then I walk back to the benches where all of this began. Sam and Larry are trying to drag Paige to the Claws of Doom while Dad types something into his phone. When he looks up and sees me, he says, “Well, that was quite the surprise!”

“Yeah, it was fun.” I'm acting all casual but inside I'm bursting. It was only a day I'll remember for the rest of my life!

“That was pretty cool, I guess,” Larry says, and I decide I'll wait until tomorrow to give him a hard time about knowing all of Ryder Landry's lyrics. “But right now we've got to go to the Claws of Doom.”

“Woo-hoo!” Samantha shouts. “Let's go!”

Her mom is not as enthusiastic, but she sighs and says, “Okay.” She turns to my dad, whose phone has just dinged with a text, and asks, “Has she tracked you down yet?”

Dad looks up toward the entrance to the amphitheater. “I believe she has.” I follow his eyes, but all I see is the backs of people's heads bobbing up and down—the big crowd still leaving the show.

Then I see a face coming in the other direction, toward us. A smiling face topped with long red hair.

Terri?

T
erri is jostled by the crowd leaving the amphitheater but makes her way through. “Glad I found you!” she shouts as she heads down the aisle. She says hi to all of us and gives Dad a hug. Then he gives her a kiss! Just a quick little smooch, but it was on the lips, so it's not something he should be doing in front of Paige.

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

“I like roller coasters,” she says. She puts an arm around Dad and squeezes the back of his neck, like she used to do when they were a couple. What is going on?

Dad explains without me asking out loud. “Terri wanted to come with us tonight, but she knew she'd be late. That's why Paige drove.”

“So you're not on a date?” My eyes dart from Dad to Paige and back to Dad.

“No!” he says. “I haven't been on a date since Terri and I broke up.”

Again I look back and forth from Dad to Paige. “You're not getting married?”

“Married?” yells just about everyone.

Terri laughs and looks at Dad. “What haven't you told me?”

“Dad's been working on the website!” Maybe I shouldn't be saying this in front of Terri, but I can't help myself. “I've seen it on his computer! There are doves and cakes and bells, and it says ‘Save the Date'!”

Samantha's mom interrupts before I can say any more. “That's for a client of mine,” she says. “I told her to hire your dad to do her website.”

“You thought your dad and my mom were getting married?” Samantha laughs. “That's so three months ago!”

Dad and Paige look at us, confused, and Samantha changes the subject fast. “I don't wanna talk about this sappy stuff. Come on, let's go. I wanna ride the Claws of Doom!”

“Claws! Of! Doom!” Larry cheers.

Samantha's mom nods. She says she'll take Sam and Larry there, and suggests we meet up in a few minutes. That's fine by me. As fun as the Claws of Doom sounds, I have a million questions going through my mind for Dad and Terri. I attempt to “prioritize” (something I learned in Focus! class—it means putting the most important thing first) and ask a good one. “Are you two in love again?”

Dad and Terri look at each other. “You wanna answer that one?” he asks her, and she laughs.

“We didn't
stop
being in love,” Terri tells me. “Love is a feeling you have inside; you can't really control it. You can't make it happen, and sometimes you can't get rid of it even if you want to.”

That sounds terrible,
I think.

“But there's a difference between being in love and being in a relationship,” Terri continues. “That's the part your dad and I need to work on.”

Ugh! I never thought of this. It seems hard enough to find the person you want to be in love with; then there's another step? This is all sounding like a big, annoying waste of time. I think I'll stick with my friends and my drawings.

“When did this happen?” I ask. The second of my million questions.

Dad and Terri exchange glances, looking a little unsure. “Well, it was nice to see Terri at your art show,” he begins.

“So I asked to come over and pick up my pot—you know, the one we cooked beef bourguignonne in….”

“We couldn't find the pot, but at least we started talking,” Dad says, smiling.

I have to smile too! The potion we made in the pot
did
bring Dad and Terri together—just not in the way I thought it would!

I'm about to move on to the third of my million questions when I notice something different about Dad. I don't know if it happened just now or earlier in the day, but it's there, right in front of me. Or to be more specific, it's
not
there.

“Dad, your…uh…your necklace,” I say. “It's…”

Dad puts his hand to his neck. “Oh no, I had no idea! It must have fallen off.”

“It's okay,” I say. “You can tell me you got rid of it.”

“But I didn't!” he assures me. “I really liked that necklace! I'm sorry. I have no idea what happened to it. Maybe you can make me another one.”

My mind is a mash-up of a million more questions, and there's no prioritizing them. Did our Siren Calls work? Did
any
of the charms work? Did Ryder Landry get my message in a bottle? I guess none of it matters right now, because (1) Ryder Landry was here, (2) Madison's my friend to the end of the Earth, and (3) Dad and Terri have their arms wrapped around each other's waists. They look good together. Maybe they have to work on their relationship (boring!), but at least they're still in love.

I won't be making Dad another necklace.

Dad and Terri walk with me to the Claws of Doom. A mechanical black claw rotates around in the sky like the hand of a giant pterodactyl—except hanging from this pterodactyl are a bunch of pods spinning around with people strapped inside. We pass Paige texting on her phone, and she points us toward the front of the line, where I see Madison, Samantha, Larry, Lisa Lee, Kylie Mae, Ronnie, Lonnie, and some other kids from sixth grade. A few of them wave and shout to me.

“Can I go?” I ask Dad.

“Sure,” he says. “Go be with your friends.”

Friends.
The word has never sounded so good.

Terri gives us a ride home, and I get right in the backseat without having to be asked. Even with my seat belt on, I can lean forward enough to stick my face between them. They'll have plenty of time to spend with each other; right now I want to ask Terri if she's coming over tonight and if she has any special plans for the summer, and I tell them they can have a date tomorrow night because I'm staying over at Madison's but maybe the next night we can all play a game or something, and Dad tells me that I'll see plenty of Terri this summer and to calm down. “It's been a long night,” he says.

It's also been the best night ever and I don't want it to end.

Then it ends.

I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I know, Dad is unbuckling my seat belt and tapping me on the shoulder, saying we're home. I sleepily ask if Terri is coming in, and she says yes. She and Dad are going to stay up and talk for a while.

I can totally walk into the house by myself, but I act really sleepy and hang between Terri and Dad as we walk up to our door. I go to my room and change into my pj's, and a few minutes later, there's a light knock at my door.

I lift my head off my pillow and manage to say, “Come in.”

In the little bit of light coming in through my window, I see two shapes in the doorway. Not Dad alone, but Dad and Terri. “I know when you turn twelve you're going to be too old for this,” Dad says, “but we wanted to say good night.”

I sit up and reach my arms out. Dad comes over and gives me a hug with an extra squeeze at the end. Then I gesture for Terri to come over too. I give her a hug and tell her good night, hoping there will be lots more nights like this in the future. I'll know that she and Dad are together down the hallway, laughing and talking and playing Pig Mania and maybe even kissing if they want to, as long as I don't have to see it too much.

BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG!

A loud sound makes me sit straight up in bed. I look down at the floor and see Toby glancing up at me lazily, nowhere near as startled as I am. I look at my clock. It's 3:33 in the morning!

“What the…?” Dad shouts. I hear his bedroom door open and the sound of him shuffling down the hall.

I hop out of bed and run to my door. I open it and peek out. If there's somebody dangerous out there, maybe I can create a diversion so nothing bad happens to Dad.

“Who is it?” Dad says in a loud, tough voice that sounds nothing like him.

“You know who it is, Bradley! Who else would it be?”

I recognize that voice. It's a man's voice—a voice I haven't heard in many weeks. He's only communicated by postcards. And now he's here. When everything's over!

My dad opens the front door and I run down the hallway. Toby follows, happily barking. “Uncle Arnie?” I shout.

Yep. It's Uncle Arnie all right.

His frizzy gray hair, sticking out in all directions, only has a few streaks of black in it. He's a very sloppy dresser, in a T-shirt that was once white but is now more of a brownish gray, with a slightly ripped flannel shirt over it and baggy jeans that his belt is not holding up well.

“Sorry for the late arrival, baby brother,” he says. “Can you pay the taxi?”

Both Dad and I look past Uncle Arnie to a taxi at our curb. The light is on inside and the driver is staring at us.

“Please don't tell me you took a taxi here from New Orleans,” Dad says, almost whining as he walks to his desk and picks up his wallet.

“No, no, no! What kind of crazy fool do you think I am?” Uncle Arnie winks at me as Dad heads down to the taxi. “I
am
a crazy fool,” he whispers, “but not that kind.”

“I know,” I say. “I've been getting your postcards. They've been very inspiring.”

“Oh, that is sweet, little Cleo!” he says. “How old are you now, that you know a word like
inspiring
?”

I tell him I'm eleven, almost twelve. “So big!” He sounds surprised, which is strange because he sent me the voodoo doll as an eleventh birthday gift—though it
was
seven months late. Oh well, that's Uncle Arnie!

“Where's the most comfortable place in this house to perch my butt? Is that it?” he asks. Without waiting for me to answer, he strolls into the living room and plops himself down on our couch. I sit on the edge, too shocked and excited to settle in.

“Uncle Arnie, I waited for your instructions and I wanted to be patient but I couldn't stand it anymore, so I tried to call you but there were two strange women at your house. Well, one was strange and the other was more normal but they thought I was a ghost child and—”

“Oh, that was probably my cleaning lady and her daughter. I let them stay at my place while I came on this fantastic adventure!”

Tonight I saw Ryder Landry in person, realized I have more than two friends, learned that Dad and Terri are back together, and found out Uncle Arnie's love potion might have worked…but the most shocking thing might be finding out that he has a cleaning lady. I have more important things to ask about right now, though. “What adventure? Where have you been?”

“You got my postcards, so you know! Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and now Californ-I-A! Two thousand miles of excitement and adventure, close calls and good times!”

A journey of two thousand miles, like on the postcard! Uncle Arnie was writing about his own journey! “I left New Orleans behind, at least for a while, and saw this great land of ours. I rode the rails, and I caught rides with all sorts of people. I worked a few days here and there and used the money to take the bus to LA. But I didn't know how to get here—to your house—in the middle of the night, so I had to splurge and spend the big bucks on that taxi outside.”

Actually, it's my dad who's spending the big bucks, but I don't bother bringing that up.

“How long are you staying, Uncle Arnie? What are you going to do here? You have to meet my friends. Madison and Samantha are my best ones, I guess, but Larry is really funny. And maybe someday I'll like Lisa Lee and Kylie Mae; I don't know. And I have to tell you about…” I stop and look around quickly to make sure Dad's not back. “The love potion,” I whisper.

“We'll have plenty of time to do it all, don't you worry!” says Uncle Arnie with a booming laugh. “But right now I think I need to change into my jammy jams and get some shut-eye.”

He stands up and looks toward the front door, right as Dad walks in. He's got a big blue duffel bag over his shoulder. “That was one expensive cab ride, Arnie,” Dad tells him, dropping the bag to the ground. “And maybe you could've brought in your own luggage.”