Little Divas Read online

  So now what? Was I supposed to wait three days, and then it would be a glass of lemonade and a Popsicle on the porch and Daddy saying, “Cassidy, I’ve got a major disaster to warn you about”?

  This couldn’t be happening! Clara Ellis? No!

  Rikki said, “Uncle Ray is probably scared to tell you, Cassidy. I bet he thinks you’re not gonna wanna go, that you’re gonna be mad at him. Just like they didn’t know how to tell you about the divorce.”

  “Uh, hello,” I shouted, not caring if Aunt Honey and Uncle Lance or anyone else in Forrest Hills heard. “Of course I don’t want to go to any stupid private school! Uniforms. All girls. Tosha! No way.”

  Rikki said, “Everybody acts like that school is so great. Like wearing stiff white shirts and plaid skirts every day is a good thing. Loafers. Those stupid ugly shoes. Yuck. And having to ride the cheese for five hours every morning? Humph.

  “I wish my mama would tell me that I have to go there. My mama knows better. I’d just hold my breath until I die, right there in front of her. That’s why she wouldn’t even try that with me.”

  Barely hearing her, I demanded, “Rikki! Are you absolutely sure that’s what you heard? Positively?”

  She mimicked her mother’s grown-up voice. “‘I just don’t know how Rikki’s gonna handle it, being away from Cassidy. Sometimes I wonder if those two can even breathe without each other.’” Rikki sighed. “Yup. That’s what I heard.”

  Well, I wasn’t going to Clara Ellis, that was for sure. I was going to King Junior High with Rikki, and I was going to wake up every morning, sit on a kitchen bar stool, and eat my Frosted Flakes while I watched MTV and waited for Daddy to get dressed. Then he was going to drop me off at King. There would be no yellow bus riding, no standing outside waiting on “the cheese” like everyone at school calls it. I wasn’t going to wear a uniform to school every day.

  Then I remembered what Rikki and Mary are always complaining about, how as long as you’re a kid, your parents get to decide everything for you. What if Daddy really did make me go to Clara Ellis? How could he do this to me?

  He had allowed me to wallpaper my new bedroom walls with all the posters I wanted, plus he lets me wear my hair down. I get to buy any lotions and smell-goods that I want from the mall, and all summer I haven’t had to have a bedtime. He buys me all the clothes I want, plus CDs, plus anything else. All that, but now he won’t let me go to a normal junior high school?

  Then again, maybe all I had to do was just tell him no. Daddy, I’m sorry, but I’m not going to that stupid school. I’m not wearing a uniform. Thank you very much, it was a thoughtful idea, but no.

  I could just make sure to let him know how much I appreciate the thought, that it was really quite nice of him to want to spend thousands of dollars on my education, but I would be just fine going to King. Then I would assure him that I would keep my grades up and stay on the honor role and everything. I just needed to stay calm and talk to Daddy rationally.

  After a few moments of both of us just sitting there thinking, Rikki broke the silence. “Please, Cassidy, just don’t forget that you’re not supposed to know. ’K?”

  What? Wait a minute. I was not allowed to talk about something this devastating, something that had the potential to ruin my life? How in the world not?

  But putting that question aside for a minute, I cleared my throat. “Daddy is absolutely cuckoo if he thinks that I’m going to that school, that’s all I have to say.”

  Rikki hummed her agreement.

  “Because I am not,” I insisted.

  “I know that’s right,” Rikki agreed. “I heard the girls there have to keep pictures of boys taped to their folders so they don’t forget what they look like.”

  “Oh well.” I shrugged. “Too bad for them.”

  “I heard that you have to go through a gate just to pull up in front of the school, just to get dropped off.”

  “And?” I snapped. “So what if you do?”

  “Plus, I heard that in gym class you have to ride horses through the woods.”

  “Let them ride for all I care.” I forced a yawn.

  “I heard all of the girls there are stuck-up. I heard they’re so rich that they arrive every day in private helicopters and fancy limousines. I heard they eat steak and lobster for lunch. And I bet the only music they listen to is classical. Boring.”

  Even though I knew Rikki was really, really exaggerating at this point, these images made my head pound with tension. “Rikki, did you hear me? It doesn’t matter! I am not going to that school.”

  I decided to just concentrate on what it would be like at King. Maybe Rikki and I would have the same lunch period, and I wouldn’t need any other friends. Maybe things would go back to being just us—Cassidy and Rikki—the way things used to always work so well.

  There were three weeks left until Labor Day weekend, and on the Tuesday after that Rikki and I would have our first day in junior high school together, at King. Yes.

  Maybe this year Rikki would even study harder and get switched into honors classes with me. Life would be perfect if she did.

  “Oh.” Rikki had another thought. “I also heard that they make you take a bunch of boring poetry classes. Now you know a school like that has got to be stupid.”

  Then again, who was I kidding? Rikki hates school. And that has nothing to do with whether it’s public or private. She thinks it’s stupid the way I go to the library in the summer when we don’t even have book reports to turn in.

  So no, things would never be quite perfect, but going to King together would be close enough. I’d settle for that.

  “Cassidy,” she said through clenched teeth, “do you promise not to tell Uncle Ray that I told you?”

  My parents are divorced, and my mother is in Africa. Thanks to a stupid girl named Lane Benson, everybody at school hates me. On top of that, my father is trying to ruin my life. Does Rikki honestly think that I would do anything to make my life even more miserable? I would never be stupid enough to betray my cousin. Nobody wants to lose her best friend, even if they haven’t been getting along so well. Best friends are supposed to be forever.

  “I won’t tell,” I pledged.

  “Promise?”

  “Promise,” I said.

  “Cool.” A look of relief covered her face.

  Rikki and I don’t cross our hearts and hope to die when we agree to keep something a secret. We don’t do any of that extra stuff, silly pinky swears and all that, like some girls do. It’s just not necessary for us. A promise is enough.

  three

  “Where are they? What could they be doing?” I wondered aloud. Mary still wasn’t back yet, and it was getting pretty late.

  Rikki yawned. “I bet Archie has his tongue in her mouth right now.”

  Yuuuuuck.

  Rikki continued, “All she talks about is how Archie is so different, how he orders his burgers with extra pickles and no cheese. Mary claims that it’s the sign of a good man, when he knows exactly what he wants.”

  Mary has been taking Archie Fuller’s order at the Dairy Queen ever since she’d started working there last year. She said that, next to learning Spanish, seeing Archie was the best thing about her job.

  “He drinks Orange Crush, no ice,” Rikki said, rolling her eyes. “Like that’s such a big deal.”

  I punched a couch pillow and tried to situate my neck into a comfortable position. “Why no ice?” I asked. But the truth was, I didn’t really care how Archie liked his drinks. How could Daddy consider such a horrible plan for my life without even consulting me? What did I ever do to deserve such a punishment?

  I never get in any real trouble. Rikki does. I never say curse words. Rikki does. I never get bad grades. Rikki does. I never get in fights. Rikki does. Plenty. But was anybody talking about sending her to Clara Ellis? No. It’s not like I do everything right all the time, not like I’m perfect or anything gross like that, but the point is that I’m pretty sure I’ve never done anythin
g bad enough for a punishment like this!

  “I don’t know. Probably because it’s already chilled when it comes out of the fountain.” Rikki was still talking about Archie and his iceless sodas. “Or he doesn’t want his teeth to hurt from the cold. You know they’re probably already sore from that thing they wear on their teeth. I guess. I don’t know. Stupid if you ask me.”

  “What thing on his teeth?” I asked.

  “You know, they shove it in their mouths right before they put on their helmets.”

  “Oh,” I said, pretending to know what she meant.

  Rikki put her finger on her cheek and imitated Mary’s voice. “Oh, Archie-pooh is so neat. He doesn’t leave a big bunch of mess for us to clean up. And all he takes is just one napkin to the table. Not like the rest of the team, those slobs.”

  Rikki tried to make her voice sound extra dramatic as she continued mimicking her sister. “And I don’t care about all those other girls because I’m going to be different. Archie is gonna have to work like Paul Bunyan to get even a whiff of the perfume behind my ears.” Rikki cracked up laughing.

  “What’s that mean?” I asked.

  She shrugged and rolled her eyes. “Mary said it, so who knows.”

  “Sounds kinda cool,” I said.

  “One day,” Rikki said, “I’m gonna have a car, Cassidy, watch! A convertible. And we’re gonna drive down to the Court. Just me and you. By ourselves.”

  I imagined Rikki being old enough to drive, and I couldn’t help but smile. I pictured us in a convertible, the sun burning highlights into our hair, demanding the red undertones of my skin to appear, the tawny in Rikki’s. I bet we’re going to be so fantastic when we’re sixteen.

  To me, imagining is like watching a movie right before my eyes, only it’s even better because I get to make up the way things look. I pictured me and Rikki laughing, pointing at the boys we thought were cute, and the ones we didn’t. Together, we added scenes to our fantasy.

  “We’ll have diamond tennis bracelets.”

  “Yeah. Both of us.”

  “And wear our hair down.”

  “Both of us.”

  “Our nails French manicured.”

  “Fly clothes.”

  “Superfly sunglasses.”

  “It’ll be just us.”

  “Just me and you.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Nobody else.”

  It felt like the good times, like how we used to sit up all night and talk about someday. We hadn’t done that in a while. It felt nice to do it again. Sometimes talking about doing something is more fun than actually doing it.

  Rikki and I used to have so much more fun. We used to do regular stuff, like riding our bikes all day but going nowhere, and really silly things like catching lightning bugs and peeking into our clasped fists to see if they would glow in the dark. Life used to be all about ponytails in the morning and who cares how it looks for the rest of the day. We used to play with Barbies. Now we both carry purses with tiny mirrors and tubes of lip gloss tucked inside. Sometimes I wonder if I’m the only one of us who has noticed these changes, though, because none of it seems to bother Rikki. All she cares about anymore is boys.

  Upstairs was completely still. Aunt Honey and Uncle Lance must have been good and asleep by then. I asked Rikki, “Don’t you think it’s taking Mary a long time?”

  “No,” she said.

  “You’re not nervous? Not even a little?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Please. Why should I be? She’s the one that Daddy’s gonna punish for the rest of her life if she gets caught, not me.”

  “I mean, don’t you just hope that she’s okay?” I said. “It’s getting late.”

  “Well, it’s my parents’ fault if she’s not. Won’t let nobody be a real teenager around here. Shoot. If she is dead, what’re they gonna say to the judge? Because I’m gonna tell him—‘It’s their fault, Your Honor. My parents are too strict!’”

  “You ever think about how Daddy and Uncle Lance are so different?”

  “You mean how Uncle Ray is normal, and my daddy’s not. Duh!”

  “Yeah, but at least Uncle Lance isn’t trying to send you to Clara Ellis,” I reminded her.

  “Well, that’s only because he knows that I’d just run away if he tried.” Rikki hopped off the couch and headed over to the washing machine. She started fumbling around behind it, and I sat up, knowing exactly what she was going over there to do. It was not to wash a load of clothes.

  Contraband.

  Rikki had written the word in graffiti letters, with a capital red C, across the top of one of Uncle Lance’s old boot boxes. Mary buys us peach Jolly Ranchers, watermelon Hubba Bubba, Wet ‘n’ Wild glitter fingernail polish (and remover to erase the evidence), Teen Vogue, Seventeen, and YM magazines, playing cards, and grape Lip Smackers to store inside our Contraband container. We keep the box hidden behind the washing machine. Rikki is smart. She and Mary do all the laundry, so how will Aunt Honey ever find it?

  Rikki and I sat facing each other with our legs folded, and she pulled out our sixth-grade class photo. Darwin Mack, Sam Woods, and Travis Jones were in the last row on the end, and all three of them had their arms folded across their chests, with their chins lifted in a what’s-up expression.

  Rikki touched Darwin’s face and said, “Me and Darwin are gonna get married someday. Watch.”

  I sighed. “Well, I hope Travis isn’t at the wedding. Because if he is—”

  “We won’t invite him,” Rikki easily agreed, tossing the picture back in the box and pulling out a deck of cards to begin a game of solitaire.

  A few months ago at the end-of-year sixth-grade carnival, I’d decided that I never again in life wanted to see or speak with Travis Jones. One of our classmates, Lane Benson, had been proclaiming all year that I was stuck-up. The day of the carnival, she said that if I wasn’t, I had to prove it, and according to her, the only way I could do that was to kiss a boy. She picked Travis Jones.

  A small crowd had gathered, including Travis, and I’d never felt so alone. Only students who hadn’t gotten into any trouble during fourth quarter, no detentions or anything, were allowed to come to the carnival, so Rikki wasn’t there. She isn’t afraid to tell anyone how she feels, and grown-ups are no exception, but you get detention for talking back to teachers, so Rikki almost always has to stay after school. If Rikki were at the carnival, she never would have let Lane Benson terrorize me like that.

  No matter if Rikki and me get along or not, we’re cousins first, and defending each other to outsiders is what being family is all about.

  I tried to imagine what curse words Rikki would have used, but usually, whenever I try them, they come out sounding corny. At least that’s what Rikki always says. So I didn’t dare try. The only thing worse than feeling stupid is actually sounding like you are.

  With every breath that I tried taking, my heart pounded harder. My palms were so moist that I was losing my grip on the plastic bag containing the goldfish I’d won. Already I’d named him Goldie.

  Shantal Henry, who had also won a goldfish and had been standing beside me, was inching away now, trying to blend into the blur of the crowd. I should’ve never bothered to go to that stupid carnival in the first place, at least not without Rikki, and definitely not with Shantal.

  I swallowed hard, real hard, and looked around. One, two, three… Altogether there were eight of my classmates watching, waiting to see if I was going to faint or take the challenge.

  Lane folded her arms across her chest, twisted her lips, and declared that I had to kiss Travis Jones, a short, ashy, brown-skinned boy with freckles. If I didn’t, she was going to call me stuck-up every time she saw me for the rest of our lives.

  There was no way, I mean no no no way, that I was going to waste my first kiss on Travis Jones. Lane Benson and the rest of her training bra crew could kiss all the boys in the entire school if they wanted, for all I cared. I had more important things to do.

>   At a school assembly a few months before, a skinny, stern-looking old woman from Tomorrow’s Achievers had spoken to us about goals and dreams. Most of it was boring stuff we’d already heard from our parents and teachers, so I didn’t perk up until I heard her say the words “in conclusion.”

  “As you continue on into your teenage years,” she said, “as you go off next school year to junior high school, please remember to start setting goals, and to keep your eyes glued on them.”

  Travis, who was sitting behind me, snickered, more than likely at the idea of eyes being glued.

  She continued, “The choices you make today will affect you for the rest of your lives. You can choose to play today and have to work hard in the future, or you can work hard today and play as much as you want when you become an adult.”

  I started daydreaming at that point, imagining myself grown up, cruising the lake on a sailboat with friends, laughing and drinking fancy champagne. Rikki would be there, too….

  But then Travis’s raspy voice snapped me out of it.

  “Shoot,” he said, “who wants to be old, still playing freeze tag?”

  There was no way that I was going to waste my first kiss on the silliest boy in school. No thank you.

  But there Travis stood at the carnival that day, waiting with his hands stuffed in the pockets of his baggy jeans, and with a goofy grin on his face that showed his crooked teeth. He nodded his head up. “So what’s up?” he said.

  Yuuuuuuck.

  I wanted to lean over and vomit.

  “Come on, Cassidy,” Travis said.

  I felt the plastic bag slip out of my hand and heard a quick pop, followed by the quiet shhhh of water pouring onto the grass. Looking down was out of the question. I did not want to watch as my new pet, totally defenseless, gasped for his final breaths. I knew just how he felt. No air. Unable to breathe. Terrified, with absolutely no one there to help.

  No matter how hard I tried, even though I desperately wanted to do so, I could not get my hand to form into a fist. Rikki always had a way of making that look easy too.