where to go, or shout ‘Warm!’ or ‘Cold!’ Kyle went straight into the kitchen and started looking through all the drawers for a chopstick, but Stella found it in the pantry, in a picnic basket. The Frank Sinatra recording was not by the stereo in the living room, but upstairs, in Barbie and Alexis’s room, right next to the Rolling Stones. It was the toy car that stumped us, and when the other kids ran in at two minutes to eight, we still hadn’t found one.
It was completely dark when they got there, and as they came in, we could hear a couple of coyotes out in the valley howling and yipping. Everyone’s hair was all wild and our clothes were messed up, but we were laughing like crazy. Barbie and Alexis poured out our finds on the coffee table, and Kyle set the Kleenex with the Cheerio in it on top of our things.
The other team did have a toy car and they also had a red rose, a fake – but nothing on the list said it had to be real. They did not have a lug nut. Other than those things, both teams had found everything on the list – Alexis, too, had stopped at the Barkins’ house, and Mrs Barkin had given her a nappy. It looked like there was going to be a tie, until it came to the pat of butter. Ours was wrapped in waxed paper; theirs had melted into the old newspaper. You could see a big oily circle, but no pat. Mrs Goldman agreed that we had won. Our reward was that we got to eat first, and we were hungry. There were hamburgers and hot dogs, potato chips and drop doughnuts. The closest they came to something strange was Apple Brown Betty, which was crunchy breadcrumbs over cooked apples, like a pie but sweeter.
By the time I was finished eating, all the other girls had gone into the bathroom to comb their hair, put on more lipstick, and straighten their outfits. Stella had completely redone her French twist and I thought she looked really good. I couldn’t figure out why Gloria kept looking at me and opening her eyes really wide and then closing them again, but then I looked more carefully at Stella and saw that she was wearing false eyelashes. I didn’t know how I’d missed them – they went halfway up to her eyebrows. But she looked good anyway. Gloria didn’t need to go into the bathroom. She could redo her lipstick and fix her hair by feel. She practised it because it was ‘an essential skill’, according to her. One wall of her room was a big bulletin board, and on it she tacked a Polaroid picture of herself that she took every morning before she went to school. Her mother just laughed and said it was an ‘art installation’.
We danced. I didn’t dance every time, or even most of the time, but the music just kept going, and pretty soon everyone who wanted to dance was dancing, girls with girls, girls with boys, boys with boys. Barbie and Alexis got me up out of a chair once and made me twirl around and around, both directions, until I was crying with laughter. Then we jumped up and down until we fell onto the couch. Everyone who did not want to dance sat around looking at the ones who did and yawning. It was an active party. There wasn’t a single moment where you wondered, ‘What next?’ except in a bigger way – once the Goldmans were gone, what was the next thing we were going to do for fun? I had no idea. When Mom came to pick me up at a quarter to eleven, Alexis hugged me at the door, and Barbie walked me to the car. She put something in my hand. It was a box of sugar cubes – brown ones – for Blue, the horse she liked to ride. She gave me two kisses on the cheek and said, ‘One of those is for him, okay?’
She stood and waved as we drove away.
Mom knew better than to ask me how I felt.
I spent Monday preparing for the clinic and trying not to think, Well, they must be heading to the airport now, well, they must be on the plane now. I cleaned and oiled my tack, ironed my shirt, and put some spot remover on a little stain on my canary breeches. I polished my boots. I found an
It was completely dark when they got there, and as they came in, we could hear a couple of coyotes out in the valley howling and yipping. Everyone’s hair was all wild and our clothes were messed up, but we were laughing like crazy. Barbie and Alexis poured out our finds on the coffee table, and Kyle set the Kleenex with the Cheerio in it on top of our things.
The other team did have a toy car and they also had a red rose, a fake – but nothing on the list said it had to be real. They did not have a lug nut. Other than those things, both teams had found everything on the list – Alexis, too, had stopped at the Barkins’ house, and Mrs Barkin had given her a nappy. It looked like there was going to be a tie, until it came to the pat of butter. Ours was wrapped in waxed paper; theirs had melted into the old newspaper. You could see a big oily circle, but no pat. Mrs Goldman agreed that we had won. Our reward was that we got to eat first, and we were hungry. There were hamburgers and hot dogs, potato chips and drop doughnuts. The closest they came to something strange was Apple Brown Betty, which was crunchy breadcrumbs over cooked apples, like a pie but sweeter.
By the time I was finished eating, all the other girls had gone into the bathroom to comb their hair, put on more lipstick, and straighten their outfits. Stella had completely redone her French twist and I thought she looked really good. I couldn’t figure out why Gloria kept looking at me and opening her eyes really wide and then closing them again, but then I looked more carefully at Stella and saw that she was wearing false eyelashes. I didn’t know how I’d missed them – they went halfway up to her eyebrows. But she looked good anyway. Gloria didn’t need to go into the bathroom. She could redo her lipstick and fix her hair by feel. She practised it because it was ‘an essential skill’, according to her. One wall of her room was a big bulletin board, and on it she tacked a Polaroid picture of herself that she took every morning before she went to school. Her mother just laughed and said it was an ‘art installation’.
We danced. I didn’t dance every time, or even most of the time, but the music just kept going, and pretty soon everyone who wanted to dance was dancing, girls with girls, girls with boys, boys with boys. Barbie and Alexis got me up out of a chair once and made me twirl around and around, both directions, until I was crying with laughter. Then we jumped up and down until we fell onto the couch. Everyone who did not want to dance sat around looking at the ones who did and yawning. It was an active party. There wasn’t a single moment where you wondered, ‘What next?’ except in a bigger way – once the Goldmans were gone, what was the next thing we were going to do for fun? I had no idea. When Mom came to pick me up at a quarter to eleven, Alexis hugged me at the door, and Barbie walked me to the car. She put something in my hand. It was a box of sugar cubes – brown ones – for Blue, the horse she liked to ride. She gave me two kisses on the cheek and said, ‘One of those is for him, okay?’
She stood and waved as we drove away.
Mom knew better than to ask me how I felt.
I spent Monday preparing for the clinic and trying not to think, Well, they must be heading to the airport now, well, they must be on the plane now. I cleaned and oiled my tack, ironed my shirt, and put some spot remover on a little stain on my canary breeches. I polished my boots. I found an
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