Get Real (7 page)

She gives me a quick hug, then takes me by the hand. “Follow me.”

Expertly, she guides me through four groups of people and into the dining room. Grown-ups are standing around talking about what they found on sale at the last minute, who's coming to their Christmas Day dinners, and why they really shouldn't eat any more little tarts filled with crabmeat, while they scarf down two more anyway.

Mrs. Lewis takes the Santa cup out of my hand and reaches for one of the crystal cups beside the adult eggnog bowl.

She's going to give me alcohol? No way!

I'm speechless.

Then she takes my Santa cup and pours its kiddy contents into the beautiful cut-crystal cup. “Performing artists should not have to drink out of plastic,” she says.

The cup is heavy in my hand. It feels extravagant and solid. I don't mind that she didn't put whiskey in it. To tell you the truth, I'm relieved. That would mean that she was a crummy parent, and then what would I say to convince Jil?

“These cups were my great-grandmother's,” she says. “She brought them with her all the way from Italy, wrapped in a patchwork quilt.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Lewis.” I take a sip of my eggnog. “It tastes better!”

I have just graduated from feeling like a princess to queen status. I'm also thankful to know that Jil does have Christmas things with stories.

I wander into the living room and eye the piano. It's even shinier than normal. I bet I could pluck my eyebrows in the reflection—if I plucked my eyebrows. The whole room is elegant. White-blooming poinsettia plants and twinkling lights everywhere.

Being careful not to make eye contact, I slip through two groups of people so I can work my way into the corner with the Christmas tree and not have to answer a dozen neighbors, who will all ask, “How's school?” I scan all the awesome ornaments, looking for my favorite. The glass piano. It's so tiny, maybe it's tucked behind—

“Attention!” Mr. Lewis shouts into the crowd. “May I have everyone's attention, please?” He raps a spoon against his crystal eggnog cup to quiet the roomful of party people.

My mind screams,
Don't! You'll break the great-grandmother's cup!

Eventually, the room quiets, and Mr. Lewis clears his throat. “Thank you all for coming. It just wouldn't be Christmas without each and every one of you.” Then he bows his head and begins a prayer: “Bless this house on this very special night. May we all keep this spirit in our hearts.…”

I bow my head with the rest of the people in the room, but I don't hear the whole prayer. My brain gets stuck on the
it wouldn't be Christmas without each and every one of you
part.

If Jil were here, I would hit her.

Stupid—if Jil were here, I wouldn't need to hit her.

“Amen.”

“And now,” says Mrs. Lewis, clapping her hands together. “Who wants to sing?”

Everyone makes a move to circle the piano.

“But first”—she beams across the room at me—“we have a promising new pianist in our midst, who, after only two weeks of lessons, is going to play ‘Jingle Bells.'”

My gut seizes up like a fist.

“Ladies and gentlemen”—she gracefully unfolds her arms in my direction—“I give you Destiny Carter!”

Chapter Nine

I sit at the piano and stare at my hands.

Don't look up, I warn myself. Don't look at the ocean of expectant faces. Just play. Plunk out the notes. You can do it.

So I plunk some notes.
Dashing through the snow: plink-plink, plink-plink-plink.
I sound like a toy piano. Suddenly, I wish I knew chords.

But then I get the single notes to flow better. And, miraculously, I am on a one-horse open sleigh, o'er the fields I go, laughing all the way.

The next thing I know, there's applause, and Denver is shouting, “That's my sister,” and some man is yelling, “Once more time from the top!”

So I start over and everyone sings along, which is way harder because of the timing, but somehow I do it, only hitting one wrong note. Amazingly, no one seems to notice.

Mrs. Lewis slides in next to me and adds chords to my notes. Wow. Now I sound really good, but the timing is impossible—staying in sync with her chords
and
with fifty booming voices! I want out of here! Now!

Mrs. Lewis, mind reader, leans over and whispers, “Dez. You were wonderful. Ready to take a break?”

Gratefully, I slip off the piano bench and leave it to Mrs. Lewis, who somehow segues from “Jingle Bells” straight into “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.” The entire room belts out the words with mega-decibels and joy.

You wouldn't believe how many people in our neighborhood actually know the second verse to “Away in a Manger.” And all
four
verses of “Silent Night.” Half of them pat me on the back and whisper things like, “Good job, Dez,” “You're a natural,” or “Imagine—you learned that in only two weeks!”

Apparently, the Carter family is multiskilled—Dad is the only one in the room who can sing “O Come, All Ye Faithful” in Latin. Every single verse. Right now I feel as if that's a pretty cool talent, but I'll need to be ready to take some serious junk about it when school starts again in January.

I sing.

Between “Away in a Manger” and “The First Noel,” I sip more eggnog from my beautiful crystal cup. I feel like I just won
American Idol.

I'm still floating on air after Mr. Lewis has retrieved my coat, and both he and Mrs. Lewis have waved good-bye to me and my family with choruses of “Merry Christmas! So happy you came! Thank you for playing, Dez! Great Latin solo, Scott! Brilliant purple candy-cane picture, Denver!”

At the last minute, Mrs. Lewis sneaks a small box wrapped in white paper and tied with red satin ribbon into my hands.

“But I'm too old,” I protest.

“You're just old enough,” she whispers, gives me a nudge toward the door, then turns to say good-bye to the Paulo family.

At home, we all gather in the den. Dad unsnaps his bow tie and slides it off through his shirt collar. I pick a handful of Denver's fairy-tale puzzle pieces off the sofa and put them in their correct slots. Then I flop down. “The Lewises are so much fun,” I say.

“Especially their eggnog,” says Dad, shooting me a meaningful look that has no meaning to me at all.

“What? You don't drink alcohol,” I say, puzzled.

“And from this day forward, neither do you, young lady.”

“Huh?” When Dad calls me
young lady,
it's bad.

“Dez,” says Mom. “Come on. We saw you drinking from the nice cups. I certainly didn't want to make a scene there, but—”

“Wait! No! No way. That was the kiddy stuff. Honest.”

After I explain what Mrs. Lewis had done, they both react with such relief you'd think they'd just learned that I wasn't an ax murderer after all.

“Thank God,” says Mom. Her words shoot out in one giant super-sigh of relief.

Dad says, “I was afraid you'd be too drunk to play the piano.”

“You thought I was drunk?”
I shriek.

“Dez drunk,” says Denver. “Drunk. Drunk. Drunk.” His hands beat the coffee table like a drum in time to his chant. Then he looks up and says, “What's drunk?”

“Young man,” grumbles Dad, “it's time for you to go to bed.”

Yay. Denver is
young man
now, which takes the heat off me being
young lady.
Then it hits me. They actually thought I was guzzling alcohol at a neighborhood Christmas party! Can you believe that? Okay. I admit, I did taste the spiked eggnog a couple of years ago, but just a taste. And it was terrible.
And,
I
sneaked
it. I'm not stupid!

“I'm not going,” Denver announces, standing up and jamming his hands on his hips.

“Oh, but thou art,” says Dad. “It's way past your bedtime.”

“Not 'til Dez plays ‘Jingle Bells' again,” Denver pleads. “Pleeeeeze.”

I'd be a fool to say what I'm thinking now, which is, “I'd love to play ‘Jingle Bells' again, but we don't have a piano.” Followed by, “Bless you, Denver.”

“She was good wasn't she?” says Dad, clearing a space so he can sit down on his brown leather recliner.

“You were
very
good,” Mom says to me as she stoops down to carry Denver bodily from the room.

“Does that mean we can buy a piano?”

“No,” she says on her way out of the room. I can barely hear her over Denver's sobbing, but I do hear.

No,
even when a child is screaming over it, doesn't sound anything like yes.

“Why not?” I complain.

“A piano costs a lot of money,” says Dad.

I guess I should be grateful that he didn't answer me in Greek.

“How much money?”

“A lot.”

“More than your fifty million boxes of smelly old books?”

Dad leans back in his chair and raises his eyebrows. Which is my signal to shut up, but I don't.

“We could rent a piano. Or buy a used one. I'll get a job. I'll—”

“Dez,” says Dad. “Your mother and I aren't convinced that this new passion of yours will last. Remember the vio—”

“But it will, Dad, I know it will. What do I have to do to convince you?”

Dad pops his recliner into lie-back position and reaches for his
Journal of Dead Poets,
or whatever boring magazine he's got handy.

“You'll have to stick with it.
‘'Tis known by the name of perseverance in a good cause—and of obstinacy in a bad one.'
”

Good grief.

When Mom finally rejoins us, wearing her gray sweats, she shoves a bunch of newspapers onto the floor and lies down on the sofa. As she props her sock feet up onto a pillow, she switches to the Weather Channel.

“About the piano,” I say.

“Not now, honey. Besides, you need to show some interest for a lot longer than two weeks. You know, keep your nose to the grindstone, stick to your guns—”

I can tell she's searching for another cliché, but
Storm Stories
flickers onto the TV screen, and I know I've lost her for the night.

*   *   *

In my room, I open my closet door and hang up my coat. Then I sit down at my desk, open the top drawer, and arrange all the pens and pencils in it according to color. That looks dumb, so I move them around according to size. Better.

Tonight, I had practically a standing-ovation piano debut, and my parents want more proof. They want me to show interest longer.

How much longer? Ten years, like the Trojan War? More, like the amount of time dinosaurs roamed the earth?

What I could use right now is a friend. Or chocolate. I wonder what Jil is doing at this very minute. I picture her laughing. Hugging. Getting presents from family number two. Then I remember Mrs. Lewis's gift, and reach for this year's box of Hershey's Kisses. Or maybe she gave M&M's this time. Or Sour Patch Kids. Except it feels too light for any of those things. Whatever, I know it'll taste good. Sugary. Comforting.

I untie the red ribbon. Then I roll it into small, smooth loops, which I secure with a paper clip, and place it neatly into my desk drawer. Carefully, I slide my finger under the tape to remove the wrapping paper without tearing it.

I open the box, and reaching into the tissue paper, I immediately feel something soft. It's cotton—a big cushiony layer of cotton like the stuff clerks put in jewelry boxes. Confused, I lift it up and discover the Lewises' tiny black glass piano. The hand-blown ornament they got on their trip to Switzerland. My favorite.

I hold it in my hands, almost afraid to breathe. I can't believe it's mine. But I know in a second that this ornament will never hang on our tree. Not on the tree that gets banged around and stuffed into the attic to get covered in dust every year.

I touch each delicate piano leg, marveling at the detail and the fragileness. I bet it was made by a master Swiss craftsman.

Maybe I'll decorate my own tree. A real one. Miniature, like the one in the Lewises' basement. For my room only.

An ache rises up in the back of my throat and I feel a tear spill over and slip slowly down my cheek.

But I'm
happy.
Aren't I? So … why am I crying?

Holding the piano as if it were a snowflake, I lie down on my bed, faceup, and wish with all my heart that the Lewises were my parents.

Chapter Ten

January 4—my first day back at school, and so far, nobody's remembered to make fun of my father's Latin solo.

Yay.

I remember too vividly some of the nicknames they've tagged my parents with in the past. Papa Poet. Swamp Mama.

I look everywhere for Jil, whom I barely saw over the entire Christmas vacation.

“Graham!” I shout, spotting him standing in front of his locker. “Hey!”

Graham is one of the few eighth-grade boys who is actually taller than I am. Too bad he's not my type. Way too messy. But he's really cute—if you don't mind all the holes in his clothes.

I do mind. Which is a good thing, because, after all, he is Jil's boyfriend, not mine.

“Hey, Dez,” he says, trying to slam his locker door shut with his shoulder but without success because way too many papers are hanging out. “What's up?”

I wonder if I should offer to clean out his locker sometime.

Of course not, Dez, I answer my own question. Years ago, I learned to keep the fact that I am a neat-oholic to myself. Messy is cool if you're a kid. Messy is not cool if you're a parent. I'm caught in a reverse generation warp. Who makes up these stupid rules, anyway?

“Have you seen Jil?” I ask.

“Nope.”

“How'd you like the wallet?”