Welcome, Caller, This Is Chloe (8 page)

“TAKE OFF THAT STUPID TIARA.”

“And happy Tuesday to you, too, darling Clementine.” I slipped off my tiara and positioned it in the middle of my desk, which was a dented whiteboard supported on either end by storage boxes and shoved against the north wall of Portable Five. Welcome to the glamorous home of
Chloe, Queen of the Universe
, KDRS’s exciting new radio talk show, debuting this Friday.

Clementine had kicked and screamed, fighting the idea of me hosting a talk show. While I wasn’t a fighter by nature, I was needed, and I needed someone to need me. So I fought back with Dos Hermanas’ salsa. I explained to the KDRS staff that last year nine customers got sick after eating salsa at Dos Hermanas. FDA investigators eventually discovered salmonella-tainted tomatoes distributed by a local commercial grower and ordered a massive tomato recall. Dos Hermanas was not at fault, but they got tons of
bad publicity. The weird thing? Two months after the salsa fiasco, sales at Dos Hermanas skyrocketed.

“In the end, people forgot about rotten salsa but remembered Dos Hermanas,” I’d told the staff. “Publicity, even bad publicity, can be a good thing. The fact that Brie Sonderby is spreading juicy lies about me can help boost our number of listeners. People know about me. They’re curious about me. They’ll tune in to hear me. Duncan’s right. You
need
me.”

Rotten tomatoes won out. Clementine was the lone “no” vote. The other KDRS staffers hadn’t been totally enthusiastic, but I think with the radio station scheduled to shut down, they were willing to try anything. Kind of a let’s-throw-her-against-the-wall-and-see-if-she-sticks attitude.

Mr. Martinez, the radio club adviser, who teaches English and pops in and out of the station throughout the week to make sure the KDRS clan isn’t doing anything illegal or offensive, also approved my proposal. But he wasn’t optimistic. “The school is financially strapped, and nonacademic programs are the first to go, especially programs that appeal to so few students,” Mr. Martinez said. “I’m afraid, Chloe, you’ve hitched your wagon to a dead horse.”

Only Duncan seemed to think the idea of a talk show featuring me could save the station. Once again, he was the lone body standing in my corner. Maybe he liked girls with good taste in shoes, or maybe he was simply a nice guy.

I looked around the newsroom and didn’t see him or his tool belt. He’d been absent again in econ this morning. I was
surprised at how often I checked that empty seat behind me and how cold class was without him and one of his nubby scarves.

“Anyone seen Duncan?” I asked.

Next to me Clementine stiffened. Taysom, who’d been scribbling on a notepad, looked up, as did Frick and Frack. Haley, who was watching
The Wizard of Oz
, hit the Pause button, stopping Dorothy and Toto in mid-skip on the yellow brick road. Their collective gaze settled on Clementine, who pressed her lips together. “Duncan won’t be in today.”

“Everything okay?” Frick asked.

Clementine nodded.

Taysom pulled out his earbuds. “Does he need a ride?”

The GM shook her head. “He said he has it covered.”

“What about homework?” Frick asked.

“I got it for him.” Clementine.

“What’s going on?” I asked. “Is Duncan in some kind of trouble?”

Around me long gazes locked over my head. Bodies shifted. It all meant something to everyone but me. At last Clementine turned to me and aimed a pointed finger at my tiara. “Are you going to sit there all day and admire your idiotic crown, or are you going to get to work on saving the universe?”

I picked up my crown and watched the flickering light glint off the stones. “This, Clementine, is not an idiotic crown but a masterful marketing tool. Do you know how many people asked me about it?” No one in the newsroom looked at me. “Twenty-eight, and I told them all about my show this Friday. Not bad, huh?”

Okay, some of it had been bad, like the message
someone
left in frosty pink lipstick on my locker after lunch.

Chloe, Queen of the Losers!

I squeezed my hand tight and rubbed away those words until the slick writing was an oily smear of pink. Forget all that crap about sticks and stones. Words, especially those written in your best friend’s curly handwriting with her favorite shade of lipstick, hurt.

But Brie’s lies and taunts would soon be old news, like rotten tomatoes. And eventually the demons possessing my best friends and the rest of the school would be exorcised, and my universe would be in perfect alignment.

I plopped the tiara on my head and opened my JISP notebook, where I’d been jotting pages and pages of notes for my queenly radio debut.

Thwack
. A dusty, five-inch-thick binder slammed onto my desk. “For you,” Clementine said. The spine read
KDRS Operations Guide
. Everything for the care and feeding of a high school radio station.

I fanned away the dust. “What am I supposed to do with it?”

“Become one with it.”

“You want me to read the whole thing by Friday?”

“No, just the pages ending in two and seven.” Dragon rumble. “KDRS is not some after-school playground for people who like to hear themselves talk. We’re licensed by the FCC, and we follow FCC regs and school policy for all broadcast activities. Our goal is to provide our listeners with quality, professional programming.
Anyone who doesn’t work to that end will get dragged through and roasted over the fires of hell.” A sunny glint sparked in Clementine’s eyes as she leaned closer. “After you get your music selected, get your teasers done. I also want to see your format clock with all stop sets noted, and I’ll need to approve any drops, stagers, and other production elements you plan on using. Since you’re not certified, you won’t be running the boards or keeping the log, but you will study the op notes on how the board works and how to screen live calls. Got that?”

I got that she wasn’t quite speaking English.

“I want you in here during your lunch period for the next five days with your mouth shut and eyes open,” Clementine continued. “The best way to learn this stuff is to watch. Radio isn’t rocket science, but it’s not as simple as sitting your butt in a chair and yakking away. And one more thing—I expect you to know step-by-step how to deal with VSPs. One mishandle of a VSP, and you’re gone.”

“VSP?”

Clementine’s gaze stayed on me so long my feet started to squirm. “Very Stupid Person,” she said. “They can kill a show, literally get us kicked off the air. Now get your music prepped. You need to record dry track today so Taysom can mix your teasers and sweepers.”

“Huh?”

Clementine leaned against the wall, her arms crossed. “Your format music, the standard theme music we’ll play as openers and closers and with your promos.”

Taysom must have seen the huge question mark over my head. “You haven’t selected theme music?” he asked.

“Uh, no. Do I need theme music?”

Taysom looked as if I’d asked him if I needed a left ventricle. “Music belongs everywhere. It’s essential to all radio programming, even news and talk shows. Music is an expression of your radio personality, something that announces your unique presence.”

Unique. I liked that. Unique things stood out, they made a statement, like vintage shoes. I considered my show title,
Chloe, Queen of the Universe
. I’d kicked around a dozen names, including
Chloe Nation
and
Life According to Chloe
. At one point I reached for the phone to call Mercedes to get her analytical input, but fortunately, my synapses fired before I opened that can of stupid. Turning to BFs for issues big and small was simply a habit. In the end, Grams weighed in.

“Chloe, Queen of the Universe
is a little over the top and totally fun,” Grams had said. “It’s catchy, but more importantly, it’s
you.
”

Thanks to Grams, I had a name, but no music. “I guess we could go with queenly music, kind of royal sounding.”

“Oh my gawwwwwd,” Clementine said. “She’ll sound like the Plumber King.” The Plumber King was a local contractor with cheesy commercials featuring a plumber wearing a gold crown and sitting on a royal toilet throne.

From the corner, Haley made a flushing noise.

I looked at my show title scrawled across the whiteboard desk.
“We could also play on the universe theme and use something celestial. Harps and lutes, kind of angelic.”

Clementine made a gagging noise, and I envisioned a volume knob on her forehead and me turning it down. No, I wasn’t exactly an angel, but I was trying to help
her
station stay on the air.

“A successful
Chloe, Queen of the Universe
show means more listeners,” I said. “More listeners mean we have a better chance of luring underwriting funds, and those funds mean we could keep KDRS from crashing and burning. You realize we’re on the same team, don’t you?”

Clementine smacked her forehead. “Oops, I forgot my Go-Chloe-Go T-shirt and freakin’ pompoms.” She stormed into one of the little glass rooms at the back of the portable.

I rubbed my temples. Why did Clementine dislike me so much? Surely it couldn’t be Brie’s attempt to turn me into a pariah. Clementine, like the rest of the radio staff, was an outsider. She didn’t seem like the type to give a rat’s heinie about the Brie Sonderbys of this world.

“How do you envision interacting with your audience?” Tay-som asked.

My show. My JISP. It was a ball and chain around my ankle. I flattened my hands on the two-ton binder. No, it was an anchor, keeping me steady. After getting kicked out of my clan, I floated alone with nothing to hang on to. I needed KDRS.

“I don’t want to come across as arrogant,” I told Taysom. “I want to be more like the queen next door, everyone’s friend.”

Because on the night of the Mistletoe Ball, I hadn’t been a friend to Brie when she needed me
. Ever since my talk with Merce on the day Grams cut her hand, the thought had been sneaking up on me and echoing through my head.

“That’s a start,” Taysom continued. “Now, what type of stuff are you going to talk about? Newsy current events? Softer human-interest topics? This type of stuff drives your format music.”

With zero social obligations I had plenty of time to brainstorm content, and when I was thinking about talk show topics, I turned to the Question Bag.

Grams made the Question Bag for my seventh-grade birthday party. She’d taken a small brown-paper lunch sack and drew question marks all over it. Fat ones. Skinny ones. Curly ones. Blockish ones. Inside she put more than one hundred slips of paper with questions. We used the Question Bag at my party, a huge blowout with every seventh-grade girl at school in attendance. Throughout the party, we’d draw questions and people would shout out answers. It was a good way to get to know one another. To connect.

Grams, being Grams, hadn’t included expected questions like,
What’s your favorite TV show?
or
Who’s your favorite singer?
Grams’s bag of questions forced us into deeper waters.

You won a million dollars, but you can’t spend it on yourself. What would you do with it?

You have a chance to have dinner with one famous person, living or dead. Who?

I proclaimed to my birthday guests I’d have dinner with Charlie Chaplin. Merce announced she’d dine with Copernicus. Brie
had surprised me. She was new to the school and model gorgeous, so I expected her to say something completely superficial, like some Hollywood hunk or supermodel.

“I’d have dinner with God,” Brie said. When I gave her a curious look, she shrugged. “I have big questions.”

The next week we made tamales de dulce and officially became a trio. Since then Brie, Merce, and I would haul out the Question Bag during sleepovers, on lazy summer afternoons at the beach, even during finals when our brains were about to burst. Over the years we added our own questions, from the silly to the serious.

Would you go without bathing for one year if you got paid $50,000?

If your best friend planned on getting an abortion and needed money to pay for it, would you loan it to her?

I turned to the KDRS staff. Grams always said I poured my heart into everything I did, and my radio show would be no different. “I want to talk about stuff people care about, stuff that makes them think . . . and feel. We’ll talk about what pushes our buttons, what soothes our souls. We’ll talk about our dreams and fears. We’ll go deep, to heart-level stuff.”

A hush fell over the newsroom. Everyone focused on me. A nice fluttery feeling expanded my chest, but my smile faded when I saw Clementine staring at me from one of the glass rooms, her glare like Brie’s: so icy, it burned.

As I pulled into my driveway that night, my house stared at me with dark, lifeless eyes. I fiddled with my keys but didn’t turn off the ignition. I’d forgotten Dad was at the university teaching a
late class, Mom had a full day of surgery, and Grams had some kind of appointment. On nights like this I usually called Brie and Mercedes, and we went to Dos Hermanas for dinner.