Gingerbread (7 page)

Unfortunately, neither of us likes when our hair smells

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like smoke, so we are trying to work out a compromise.

Gingerbread is having native urges. She wants to see real-dad, Frank.

Sid-dad has been coming home from work early, trying to coax me outside to barbecue with him or throw the baseball around. He wants me to "participate" in the family. I told him I'm not hungry and I don't like playing sports anymore, but thanks anyway. One time he came into my room with a special cappuccino he had bought on the way home for me. I asked, Is it a dry capp? and he said, Huh? and I said, You know, with extra foam and he said, Huh? and I said, I'm not really into coffee anymore either, but thanks. Again.

Nancy came into my room and said, 'Are you going to grace us with your presence at dinner tonight, Miss I'm Too Good to Eat with My Family?"

"Sarcasm is as sarcasm does," I said back.
Forrest Gump
is Nancy's favorite movie. That tells you everything you need to know about my mother.

Nancy stood at the door to my room, not one hair out of place.

She sighed but didn't blow up. Prozac is really working for her, she really is trying. Calmly, she said, "Leila made your favorite, macaroni and cheese."

'Are you going to make Ashley eat grilled fish and rice, and not let her have dessert?" I asked.

"That's not your business," Nancy snapped back. 'Ashley has a weight problem that could affect her socially. You will never understand. Not everybody is as metabolically blessed as you and can eat anything they want."

I was tempted to make a very crude comment about

58 Rachel Cahn

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certain male species nonfood items which I have metabolized, but Gingerbread shushed me.

"She's six," I said. "She should not be on a diet. And she is such a bossy girl that you don't have to worry about her at school. The kids in her school are all too scared not to be her friend."

I think it is pretty sad that my little sister wakes up in the middle of the night to sneak food from the fridge when she thinks everyone is sleeping because she is hungry from the dinner Nancy didn't let her finish. When I hear Ash late at night, I let her come into Alcatraz and we drink pretend tea from Gingerbread's tea set and eat mini-Nestle Crunches. Then we jump on the bed and dance to mind-altering techno-pop to burn the cals even though we hate that kind of music.

Nancy said, "She's fifteen pounds overweight. That's extremely unhealthy for a six-year-old. You're not a parent, Miss Know-It-All. Don't tell me how to raise my child."

I'm not sure whether I hurt or help Ash's case by defending her to Nancy so I changed the subject. "I bet my real father would not imprison me like this," I said.

Nancy shook her head and I could tell she wanted to explode at me. Instead she said, "Be careful what you wish for," and walked away.

"Gingerbread and I will eat your LifeSavers for dinner!" I called after her.

I have to respect her for this. When Nancy rounded the corner and didn't think I could see her any longer, she flipped me the bird behind her back.

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Sixteen

Just when I
thought I was going to have to start a whole new sports game called Extreme Boredom, a miracle came into Alcatraz, thanks to my new best friend Delia.

Delia called my mom and said she was a part-time dance instructor at my high school, and she had noticed what a natural I was, and would Nancy consider enrolling me in her summer workshop at a little dance studio in Ocean Beach?

Well, Nancy said, she is grounded, but maybe this would be good for her. She's driving me nuts sulking all over the house. She was named for a famous dancer, you know.

The only problem was that Delia actually expected me to dance.

"Your name is Cyd Charisse!" she said when I arrived for my first lesson. "You have to learn how to dance!"

I was grateful that after dropping me off Fernando's Revenge had gone to the home so he could shoot dice with Sugar Pie and her pals. Having a gloomy Nicaraguan's glares melted by hysteria at watching me try to get jiggy on the studio dance floor would be too much to bear after my incarceration.

"Please don't tell me you want me to wear one of those leotards and wear leggings and act like some kind of dancer girl wannabe," I said to Delia.

"Someone has come to my little dance class with a bad attitude," Delia said. "Someone seems to have forgotten

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who sprung her from being grounded for the rest of the summer."

"Someone," I said, almost shouting, "HASN'T BEEN CAFFEINATED IN OVER A WEEK!"

Right on cue, Shrimp emerged from the dressing rooms carrying a hot double shot mocha with extra whipped cream, just the way I love. I didn't know whether to throw my arms around him or gulp first.

I chose the coffee. I have my priorities.

We all three sat on the giant wood floor, looking at our reflections in the giant mirrors. Delia was yammering on and on about tap versus modern for our first lesson, but I tuned her out to soak in Shrimp while I had the chance. I wanted to imprint into my memory every inch of his face and body to take back to the long days and nights in Alcatraz.

Shrimp sat by my side with the hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth. The platinum spike at the front of his head was a little longer and the roots darker than the last time I'd seen him, and his eyelashes, reflected in the afternoon sun peeking through the fog outside the dance studio windows, looked tinted with gold.

As the Java the Hut mocha with extra whip lushed its way through my bloodstream, I suddenly felt like I actually did want to dance. A zigzag combustible whoo-hoo freedom ride nas-tay kinda dance a la Shrimp 'n' Cyd aka porno Fred 'n' Ginger, and I wished Delia, cute as she was with her masses of orange frizzy hair piled on top of her head and her zebra-print tights, would ditch the joint.

Maybe I am just a sex maniac after all.

Shrimp had some whipped cream on his upper lip and

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I just couldn't help myself. I leaned over to lick it off, but Shrimp looked into my eyes and knew what was on my mind. He quickly darted his eyes toward Delia and then turned his head to the side, so I wound up giving him an innocent eskimo kiss on the cheek.

That gesture sort of pissed me off.

What did he think I was going to do, bust a move on him right in front of Delia? He just looked so tasty and smelled like mountains of coffee beans, who could not want to lick him? But I am a proper girl and it would have been a proper lick.

"We have missed you at the coffeehouse!" Delia said. She babbled into espresso-fueled overdrive. 'All the regulars are asking for you. We have a new girl working your hours named Autumn. Pretty girl but what a disaster! She can't figure out the espresso machine, breaks glasses all the time, always forgets customers' orders, but she's Shrimp's surfing friend and you know how Wallace likes to hire the kids from Ocean Beach."

I have not heard of this Autumn chick before from Shrimp. Cyd Charisse: not happy.

Suddenly I had a bad feeling about Shrimp being lick-free.

"You're not really going to make me dance around, are you?" I said. Maybe it was the sudden stimulation of being paroled from Alcatraz and drowned in coffee and Shrimpness after too bitter an absence, but I was getting a sudden caffeine headache. "Because I do not feel like dancing and all this coffee is making me want to pee."

Why I had to be mean and ornery when Delia and Shrimp were being so nice to me, I don't know.

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"Dude," Shrimp said, "don't harsh my mellow."

"Well, why don't you go find Miss Autumn and have her un-harsh it for you!" I said. I stomped away to the bathroom.

While I sat on the toilet with my skirt around my ankles, I rested my elbows on my thighs and put my head in hands. I wanted to cry but all the five-minute insta-gulp coffee was making my hands shake so I couldn't concentrate enough to cry.

Autumn. AUTUMN?

"FUCK AUTUMN!" I yelled from the bathroom.

Autumn was probably some scraggly hippie chick with stringy red-gold hair and hairy armpits who carried around a guitar to strum stupid folk songs when she wasn't trying to be Miss Ocean Beach cool with her surfboard in one hand and Java the Hut latte in the other--decaf probably because of course she would want to maintain a totally mellow vibe at all times, dude. Wouldn't want Little Miss Autumn to harsh anyone's mellow while Cyd Charisse's Pieces is locked away in Alcatraz, breathing onto windows for entertainment.

When I returned from the bathroom, Delia was gone. Shrimp was staring out the huge windows looking as brooding as a Fernando wannabe.

"Where's Delia?" I asked.

"She thought we could use some time alone," he mumbled.

"But I wanted to learn how to dance!" I said. There was so much caffeine and sugar and head-pounding screaming for release in my body, I was ready to be the Lord of the Dance.

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"Cyd," Shrimp said, so right away I knew we were not cool. He usually speaks my name silently, with longing in his eyes.

Some stupid reunion.

"We need to talk," Shrimp said.

Here's one superior feature of Justin's. He was not a sensitive Let's Talk About Our Feelings kind of guy. He was all sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. Sometimes that's a good thing.

"Talk about what?" I asked. I had to burn off the faux energy so I started to pace around the edges of the furnitureless dance studio.

"Us," Shrimp said.

"I can't believe you," I said. The coffee throttle was ready to be let loose from my mouth. "I finally get released from that hellhole called my mother's monster house and you want to 'talk.' Are you breaking up with me cuz if you are then (a) this is kind of a bad time to do it and (b) that is so totally lousy of you to bring me coffee first and be all sweet and fine-lookin' and then turn on me like that."

Math was my best subject at boarding school. The teacher said I excelled at deductive reasoning.

"
I'm
turning on
you
?" Shrimp said. "Hello! You're like a totally different person right now. You're like this dog Curl we adopted when I was a kid. Curl had been in a cage for months and was like this wild monster when he was first released. You're reminding me of Curl now. Your parents have really done a number on you while you've been grounded."

"At least my parents stick around!" I said back as I

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paced. I instantly regretted my comeback but that's the thing about unkind words: You can try to undo the damage, but (a) it's hard when you're all coffee-ed up, and (b) you can't take it back, ever.

Shrimp's shoulders went into a slouch and he stopped following my pace with his eyes. It was like a tide change so fast we could have evaporated into the Ocean Beach fog rolling in thick and thunderous outside the windows.

How had our reunion gone so wrong, so fast?

There was a silence that lasted too long, broken only by the hard taps of my pounds around the dance floor. When Shrimp finally spoke, he said, "Be still for a minute, would you? You're making me dizzy with all that pacing."

I stopped exactly in front of him. In my sudden stillness, I wanted to etch his face and smell into the memory which I knew was about to be all I would have left of Shrimp. I touched the platinum spike on his hair, then closed my eyes and pretended I was Helen Keller. Helen molded her hands into Shrimp's cheeks and eyes, his lips and nose, to forever retain the shape of him.

"So what now?" I asked, my eyes still closed. The silence had been so nice, but I couldn't play deaf forever.

Shrimp said, "This separation has gotten me thinking. We've been hanging out so much since we met that I've hardly had time to finish a canvas or see my surfing friends or anything. I wasn't sure until just now, but maybe us being apart for a while is a good thing. Maybe your parents aren't as dumb as you think."

"Do you love me?" I whispered.

When Shrimp didn't answer, I let my hands fall to my sides and opened Helen's eyes to the mean bitter world.

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It was like he didn't even hear my question. Shrimp said, "I didn't realize till you were gone how much we've been crowding each other. I need some time and space for my surfing and painting, you know?"

'And for Autumn?" I said. I looked straight into his beauty eyes so he would know he couldn't lie to me.

"There's nothing between me and Autumn," he said, not looking straight back at me.

"You just lied to Helen!" I said. The eyes gave him away.

"Huh?" Shrimp said.

"So this is it then?" I asked. Cuz for weeks in Alcatraz I had been hanging on to the time when I could see Shrimp again, touch him, laugh with him. Not fight with him. Certainly not break up with him.
Especially
not be tweaked by an Autumn.

"We'll see each other when the school year starts. We'll figure this out then."

Right.

As he stepped outside, he turned back once and mumbled, 'And maybe you need some time to figure out your crush on my brother."

Then he walked out of the studio and into the fog and I closed my eyes so Helen wouldn't have to witness this final horribleness.

"I thought you were forever," Helen said to his dark shadow.

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Seventeen

The new Helen
Keller commune is now in session in Alcatraz. It is the speak-no-evil-see-no-evil-hear-no-evil commune.

We allow new people in only by scent. People who smell like the perfume ladies at Neiman Marcus are out. So sadly Nancy will not be joining us. Martinis and Cuban cigars are always nice to smell, but Sid-dad has not submitted an application for membership. Nicaraguans who smell of empanadas and morning church services might be allowed in if they ask nice. Who doesn't love the smell of sweets? Sugar Pie and your chocolate collection, always glad to have you in the new Helen Keller commune.