Miracle on 49th Street (4 page)

I
am soooo sorry,” Kimmy said again. “If I had thought about this for, like, as long as it takes to dry my
hair
, I would have been able to figure out that if I didn't know you were going, then my
mom
couldn't possibly know you were going.”

“No biggie,” Molly said. “I knew I might get found out when I got up there.”

Kimmy had been waiting in Molly's room, in the middle of her bed, hugging one of Molly's pillows and looking as if she might cry.

“I'll clean your room for a week,” Kimmy said. “Two weeks. You name it.”

“It was an accident,” Molly said.

“I'll talk to my dad when he gets here,” Kimmy said. “Do my daddy's-little-girl number on him. Never fails. What do you say to that?”

What Molly Parker desperately wanted to say: If you leave my room right this minute, I'll call the whole thing even, no matter what kind of punishment I get from your father.

But there were no short visits from Kimmy. There were no short conversations. Kimmy could talk, Molly was thinking now, the way Josh Cameron could play basketball. She wasn't a clone of her mother. Kimmy actually looked more like her father and had his blue eyes and his long legs, but she had definitely inherited her mother's need for drama.

After all her years living in London, it sometimes made Molly think of the royal family.

She was living with the royal family of drama today. Queen Barbara and Princess Kimmy.

Molly said, “It's all right. Really.”

“I waited my whole life to have somebody I could feel was like a sister,” Kimmy said. “And now I pull something like this because of my big stupid mouth.”

“You didn't mean to, that's what I keep trying to tell you.”

Kimmy, she couldn't help but notice, was showing absolutely no signs of leaving the room.

“It doesn't matter. Nope. No way. You're not letting me off the hook that easy,” Kimmy said. “You've got to let me make it up to you somehow.”

Molly walked over and hit the On button on the PowerBook that Barbara had bought her at the start of the school year. Hoping that Kimmy would take the hint that maybe, just possibly, there might be something like homework about to break out here any second.

Not a chance.

“Well,” Kimmy said, continuing to hold up her end of a conversation only she was really having, “I owe you one.”

“Deal. We'll come up with something, I promise.”

Now, please just…
go.

Molly just wanted to talk to Sam.

“Soooooo,” Kimmy said, “now that that's out of the way, tell me
everything
about the insanely cute Josh Cameron.”

Molly sighed and turned down the sound on her computer, wishing there was a button like that for Kimberly Anne Evans sometimes.

Molly said it was pretty much the way she'd explained it to Barbara, that she just went up there to tell Josh Cameron face-to-face about Jen Parker dying.

“Nothing more to tell,” she said.

Kimmy wasn't buying it. “There has to be more to it than that.”

“Why?” Molly said.

“Are you sure you don't have some kind of, like, secret motive for wanting to meet him?”

Molly turned back around toward her computer, as if making sure she'd turned it off. Just so Kimmy couldn't see her face. Sometimes Kimmy talked so much, she made you forget that she didn't miss much around 1A Joyless Street.

Could she possibly know?

Molly casually opened the middle drawer of her desk. The blue metal box—with the lock on it—was still there. The box that contained the letters her mom had written Molly the last month of her life.

Now she turned back around. “A secret motive? What does that mean?”

“I mean, you could have sent him a letter. Or gotten some kind of e-mail address.”

“Right. I'm sure e-mails get through to him right away, no problem. He's probably checking his mail constantly.”

“Oh, come on. There are ways you could have gotten the message to him.”

Molly said, “Like I said, I wanted to talk to him in person. Really talk to him. My mom said it's the way people used to do it before all they had to do was push the Send button.”

“I guess that's the part I'm not getting,” Kimmy said.

Stuck on this now, probably forever.

“I mean, I know what you told my mom. But what made this such a life-and-death thing all of a sudden?”

It was a dumb enough thing to say that even Kimmy realized it as soon as it was out of her mouth, like something she had spilled all over the bed.

“Sorry,” she said.

“No problem.”

“All I'm saying is, Josh Cameron and your mom hadn't seen each other since college. That's what my mom said. They broke up, your mom went off to London, end of story. It was, what, twelve years ago?”

“Something like that,” Molly said.

“So how come you thought this news about your mom—as awful as it is—was suddenly, like, something he
had
to know?”

Molly had figured out in just a few months how important it was for Kimmy to know stuff. Even the silliest stuff about Molly, about school. About Sam, whom she didn't even like.

But there was no way she could know the truth about Josh Cameron. Sam had scared Molly about how easy it was for people to hack into your e-mail if they knew how. Just one of those things he knew that most kids their age didn't. The only time they ever talked about Josh was either in person or on their cells, and even then they never used his name. So there was no extension Kimmy could have been listening on. And Molly was always ridiculously careful to have her door closed when she and Sam were talking on the phone.

This had to be just a fishing expedition, in the constant fishing expedition about other people that was Kimmy's life. It seemed to make her crazy that Molly didn't share every single detail the way Kimmy did, every single day.

“Your mom must have told you that Josh and my mom really were like this great romance,” Molly said. “Like in a movie. First love for both of them and all like that. Come on. Adults say all the time you never forget your first love.”

“Even if you're Josh Cameron? The world's most eligible?”

“Well, I thought it was worth it,” Molly said. She'd had enough. “And now, Miss Kimberly, I've got to get some homework done before I get the old hammer dropped on me.”

“What was he like?”

Sigh. Getting rid of Kimmy was like telling the wind not to blow.

Maybe if Molly gave her what she wanted, she'd leave.

“What was who like?” she said. “Josh?”

Kimmy said, “No, the new substitute teacher in English. Yes, Josh, you goose.”

“He was cool,” Molly said.

“Cuter in person?”

“Yes,” Molly said. “I thought only contact lenses could make your eyes that blue.”

Do the girl thing.

“I can't believe you got to meet him before I did.”

“Not in any kind of way you'd ever want to, though,” Molly said.

“You know how much I love the Celtics,” Kimmy said.

“Not the Celtics, Kimmy. Just one particular Celtic. Him.”

Molly suspected that if you pinned Kimmy down, she couldn't tell you whether a basketball was blown up or stuffed. But it was true that she did have a huge crush on Josh Cameron. That was the weird coincidence here, something Molly had never considered. There were more pictures of Josh Cameron on Kimmy's walls than of Orlando Bloom. Or the guy from the last
Star Wars
movie, whose name Molly could never remember.

“If you tell me everything he said, I'll let you do your homework,” Kimmy said.

Molly made most of it up.

Made him the Josh Cameron she'd hoped to meet.

If only….

M
olly and Sam were having lunch in the cafeteria. Macaroni and cheese. Molly thought it was thicker than usual and an orange color she wasn't all that comfortable with, so her portion had been piled on top of Sam's even before he said what he said at pretty much any meal they shared.

“You gonna finish that?”

Instead he said, “There's something I want to show you.”

“Do
not
open your mouth and play ‘Hey, look!' when you are eating my macaroni and whatever that is,” Molly said.

“I would never do something like that,” Sam said.

“I'm warning you, Sam Bloom. This time I really will get up and leave this table.”

As usual, they had found a couple of seats at the end of one of the long tables near the window. Just the two of them. Like a secret society of two. More secret than ever, these days.

Sam reached into his pocket, then pressed his hand to his chest so she couldn't see what he'd brought out.

“Is this another card trick? I know all your card tricks.”

Molly wanted to add, And how you do them.

But she didn't. If there was one true foundation to their friendship, other than loyalty, it was this: Molly let Sam Bloom think he was smarter than she was.

“You don't know all of them,” he said. “Or how I do them, even if you think you do.”

Molly said, “Stop that.”

“What?”

“Reading my mind.”

“Can't,” he said. “It's like reading one of my all-time favorite books.”

He put his hand on the table between them, and when he took it away, it was a kind of magic trick.

Because there were two tickets to the Celtics opener. At the TD Banknorth Garden. Tonight.

Molly stared at the tickets, back at Sam, then back at the tickets. “
No…way
,” she said. “No bloody way.”

“Bloody?” Sam said. “I thought we had gotten rid of all the Buckingham Palace in you, milady.”

“You're the one who keeps telling me I'm a work in progress,” she said. She pointed to the tickets, almost like she was afraid to touch them, like she was afraid if she did they'd disappear. “How come you didn't tell me last night you had these tickets, you loser?”

“You're calling me a loo-zar when I have just presented you with two tickets to basketball heaven?”

“Good point,” Molly said. “Okay, how'd you get them?”

“My mom trains the assistant to the president of the team, I forget her name,” he said. “Robin somebody.”

“And she gave your mom these tickets, and she gave them to you, and…we're going?”

“No, Mols, I just wanted to show you the tickets. I'm actually going to
ask
Kimmy.”

Then he put up his hand and leaned across the table a little so Molly could give him a high-five.

“Anyway,” he said, “the fact that we're going is the bad news.”

“The bad news?”

He nodded. She knew he was playing with her now. It was understood that he just had to do that whenever he could and that she just had to go along. Just because it made him so happy.

“Okay, I'll bite,” she said. “What's the good news?”

“Well,” Sam said, “I suppose you could look at it as good news. Some people would look at it that way…the news, I mean…that we are also allowed to show up early tonight and go into the Celtics locker room and hang with the players for a few minutes after they're dressed.”

Now Sam was the one who looked amazed. Looking at her like she wasn't giving him the reaction he'd expected.

Maybe like the happy winner on one of his dopey game shows.

“Mols, work with me here. Locker room. Is there a problem?”

Molly said, “What am I going to say to him once we're in there? ‘Hey, Dad, me again. Where should I wait for you after the game?'”

“No,” Sam said, “I don't think that's the way I'd go. But we've got all day to figure out how we want to play it.”

“This is a bad idea.”

“Now who's the loo-zar? This is a
great
idea.”

“And I'm not going to get to go, anyway,” she said. “I happen to be grounded, remember?”

Sam looked at his watch. “We've only got a couple of minutes before we have to go to English,” he said. “So do you want to mope about what you're going to say to Mr. Wonderful once we get into the locker room, or that you don't think we can get you out of jail?”

“Jail,” she said. “My groundedness.”

Sam said, “Good, on account of that's the easy one. I'll have my mom call Barbara. Nobody ever says no to their trainer. They're afraid they'll be punished the next time in the gym.”

“Fine,” Molly said.

“Control yourself, girl.”

“Let's say I do get out of jail for the night. How does it help if I get to see somebody today who didn't want to see me yesterday?”

“He won't run away this time.”

“Why not?”

“He just won't.”

Across the room, Molly noticed Kimmy with some of her bubbleheaded friends, some of whom talked even more than she did. If such a thing was possible.

Kimmy waved.

Molly waved.

Sam said, “You didn't ask me who's taking us to the game.”

“Who
is
taking us to the game?”

“Uncle Adam.”

“Uncle Adam the sportswriter?”

“No,” Sam said, because he couldn't help himself. “Uncle Adam from the X-Men.”

“And that's going to help us?”

“Think about it, Mols,” Sam said.

Molly smiled. She imagined a cartoon lightbulb above her head. “Josh Cameron will see me walk into the locker room with a reporter.”

Sam nodded.

Molly said, “And he'll be afraid I might spill the beans?”

“Boston baked beans, girlfriend.”

“So I get his attention—then what?”

“You ask to talk to him alone. And you tell him again that you're telling the truth. And if he doesn't believe you then, well, we may have to go sniffle-sniffle on him and say that if he won't believe you, maybe Adam Burke from the Boston stinking
Globe
will.”

“That almost sounds like blackmail,” Molly said.

“Doesn't sound like,” Sam said. “Is.”

He put his hand across the table for a real handshake now. Molly obliged.

“It's on,” she said.

Barbara caved.

Said Molly could go to the game. Told how persuasive her dear friend Emma Bloom had been on the phone as she made the case that Molly just had to be allowed to go—how many chances does a person get to go to an opening night game
and
meet the players? Emma had even said that Barbara was the one who deserved to be grounded if she didn't let Molly go.

Sam's mom could apparently lay it on as thick as Sam did when he really wanted something from somebody.

“Anyway,” Barbara said. “Bill's on his way to Los Angeles today. When he gets there, I'll just explain my position.”

Barbara's position: While nothing had changed from the day before, and while this
certainly
did not mean Molly could even
consider
pulling a stunt like that
ever
again, Barbara could not in good conscience prevent Molly from getting a chance like this. The chance, she said, to see her mother's old friend Josh play in person. And on opening night.

When Molly added it up, it was a tremendous opportunity for Barbara, even if her heart was in the right place. Just because all adults loved to play the part of hero.

It was win-win for everybody, if you thought about it that way.

“Nothing wrong with a little happiness in your life,” Barbara said, and hugged Molly.

Molly hugged back for once.

It was Friday, but Molly said she was going upstairs anyway to do her weekend homework. Before she did, Barbara said, “Maybe next time Sam could find a way to include Kimmy?”

Molly said she'd mention that to Sam for sure.

When she got upstairs, Kimmy was in her room. It happened so often now that Molly was surprised when she walked into her room and Kimmy
wasn't
there. But since Molly never considered herself more than a houseguest, no matter how many times Barbara Evans told her she was family now, she never made an issue of it. Even though she wondered constantly what was wrong with Kimmy's own room. Or what was so fascinating about Molly's.

“I heard,” Kimmy said. “You are soooo lucky, girl.”

She was doing her best to act happy. Before Molly could say anything, Kimmy said, “Next time I should try to get grounded.”

“I'm still grounded,” Molly said. “Just not tonight.”

That's all Kimmy had today. One of her shortest room visits on record.

“Say hi to Josh,” she said, then added, “your new best friend.”

Molly knew a lot about the TD Banknorth Garden, which was the new name for the Fleet Center, which was the new Boston Garden really, since the old one had been torn down.

“That was the one known as the Gah-den,” Sam said, exaggerating a Boston accent.

Molly knew that the basketball court here, the one known as the “parquet floor” because of its design, with all the squares in it, looked exactly like the one at the old Gah-den.

Part of all the things she had learned since she had learned that Josh Cameron was her dad.

Or her un-dad.

That was probably more accurate, considering the way things had gone yesterday.

“The old Celtics won all their championships at the old Garden,” she said.

“Thanks,” he said. “I wasn't aware of that.”

“This isn't like a spelling bee,” she said. “It's not me against you for who knows more about the Celtics.”

“Spell
parquet,
” he said.

“Ha ha.”

“I used to go to the old Garden,” he said. “What a dump.”

“Oh, please,” Molly said. “You're too young to remember.”

“I've told you before,” Sam said. “I remember the
womb
.”

Which Molly had to admit was probably true.

Adam Burke, Sam's uncle, looked more like a college kid than some of the sportswriters Sam liked to watch yell at each other on television. Long hair that always seemed to look messy, jeans, blue blazer, white shirt. Penny loafers. He had told them on the ride over that because it was the first game of the season for the Celtics, he was working tonight, which meant he'd have to write after the game. But he'd arranged it with the Celtics public relations people that Molly and Sam could wait for him in the press lounge if they promised to behave.

“Okay,” Sam said. “We promise not to make fun of the other sportswriters.”

“No matter what,” Molly said.

“Even if they try to impress us when they're not trying to impress each other,” Sam said.

“No matter what,” Molly said.

“How lucky am I,” Adam Burke said, “to get to go to the opener with the two funniest twelve-year-olds in the greater Boston area?”

“At least you appreciate that,” Sam said.

Sam had to get the last word in, even with adults.

They had arrived at the TD Banknorth Garden early. All the gold-colored seats were still empty; some girl singer Molly didn't recognize was practicing the national anthem. Then Adam Burke took them to the Sports Museum that was inside the new Garden, and to the small television studio where some of the Celtics announcers did their pregame and postgame shows. When they came back to the arena, Adam Burke pointed out the championship banners hanging from the ceiling and all the retired numbers belonging to the great olden-days Celtics players.

“The next one to go up there, once he retires, will be Josh Cameron's number three,” he said. “But if he retires, that means he'll have gotten old, which nobody around here expects to happen.”

Then he said he was going to the locker room to interview some of the Celtics players for the column he had to write before they even played the game, just to hold the space in the early edition of the
Globe.

“Don't even try to understand,” Adam said. “It's never made any sense to me, either.”

He left them in their second-row seats while some of the Celtics showed up on the court in their warm-up clothes and began to shoot around.