Get Happy (12 page)

“Soccer is great,” I said. “I always wanted to play on a team. But my mom thought participation in any sport would automatically lead to injury, disfigurement, or death.”

He laughed. “My wife is the coach!”

A sliding glass door led to the small fenced backyard where a half dozen little girls, all wearing huge soccer jerseys, were chasing after a ball. I guessed the Asian-looking kid with the long black ponytail was his. The blond mom was playing goalie. Luckily mermaids can’t play soccer; my gluts and quads would’ve screamed.

“Game just started. Kids against mom. I’m almost finished. Have a seat.” He handed me a strawberry to eat.

The kitchen smelled amazing. On the table was a large, white frosted cake. On it, the outline of a mermaid had been expertly drawn with chocolate icing, the
long ponytail filled in. Two sliced strawberries formed the mermaid’s bikini top. The dad was now laying more sliced strawberries in a fish-scale pattern to fill in her tail. With extra batter, he had made cupcakes and had drawn seashells and starfish on them with caramel-colored icing.

“That’s amazing,” I said. “Are you a professional cake baker?”

“No. A graphic designer, but I’ll take that as a compliment. I do most of the cooking around here. I love my wife, but she’s a bad cook.” He made a funny face.

A chorus of cheers and high-pitched laughter came from the girls in the backyard. The mom was on her knees laughing, the girls jumping and high-fiving.

“First goal. Hold on.” The dad stood up. “Stay inside so they don’t see you yet.” He slid open the door, ran out, and cheered. His daughter jumped on him and he spun her around.

“Hey, whose side are you on?” The mom laughed and threw the ball at him.

The dad chased after the ball and kicked it to his daughter. His daughter passed it back to him. He turned sharply and kicked it right past the mom’s head into the goal.

The girls went wild. The mom ran out, laughing, and tackled him to the ground. All the girls piled on top.

I looked down at my green-sequined, slippered feet.

Cheers outside. Another goal.

Somewhere, a clock was ticking. A homemade happy-birthday banner was strung on the wall above a trio of framed photographs. The center photo, a serious portrait of the little girl and her parents in front of the lake at sunset, had been altered for the occasion: Someone — the dad? — had taped funny black paper mustaches under their noses and added comic captions. It was silly and cute, and I started to laugh and then some tiny dam inside me broke, and a sudden wave of tears threatened to engulf me. Horrified, I stared at the cupcakes and the cake and tried to push my emotions down.

The mermaid’s face looked serene. The lines of chocolate had been applied with a zenlike calm. The strawberries making up her outfit, neatly arranged on that pure white icing, were impossibly red and beautiful and silent.

The dad walked in and must have seen the panic
in my face, because he poured me a glass of water and handed it to me. “Are you … okay?”

I stood up, pain from last night’s workout shooting through my thighs and abs, and wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. “I should really get this party started — ”

“Is there something wrong?”

Outside, the girls were shaking their booties in the cutest victory dance of all time. I wanted to run the other way, but I yanked the sliding door open and started marching out as fast as my fins would allow.

“We thought we’d do this part inside — ” he called.

“It’s fine,” I said, and the girls saw me. As I went through the motions right there on the grass, with my aching muscles and my ill-fitting mermaid suit, the mom and dad kept exchanging
What’s going on?
glances. Genuinely nice, the girls played the game even though they could tell I wasn’t into it, and I handed out the necklaces and said happy birthday and goodbye, the worst entertainer in the history of Get Happy, Incorporated. Their condo was the last unit in the building, and hoping to make my exit, I walked to the gate on the side of the house.

The dad followed me. “You sure you’re all right?”

“Fine. I’m supposed to wait out front until the van comes.” I struggled with the latch.

“That doesn’t open,” he said. “You have to come through the house.”

“Well, that’s ridiculous,” I snapped. “Who would have a gate that doesn’t work?”

Awkwardly, with all the girls watching, I followed him in, and he insisted on handing me a seashell cupcake to go, still trying to be courteous in the face of every rude thing I was throwing his way. Embarrassed, I found myself trying to think of one positive thing to say on my way out, and all I could think of was “You have nice window treatments.”

He must have thought I was insane.

Outside, I pulled off the stupid red wig and sat — with considerable difficulty — on the curb in front of their condo, hiking my mermaid skirt up and tucking the chiffon flounces of my tail between my legs to hide my crotch. I guess real mermaids don’t have to worry about hiding crotches. On top of the muscle ache, my feet were also killing me: The elastic straps of the green sequined ballet slippers were digging into my skin.

To keep from crying, I started digging into the cupcake. A tiny battalion of ants helped distract me by marching in and out of a hill of dirt assembled over a crack in the cement to the right of my feet. The girls had resumed playing outside in the back, their voices rising and falling, no doubt happy that I had left — the foul mermaid who had threatened to darken the day.

“Hey!”

I looked in the other direction to see Hayes walking toward me, a delicious-looking sub in one hand, his button-up Western shirt too short in the sleeves, his bag stuffed with the parts of his costume that he could actually take off: his vest, his gun belt, his hat.

“Is that a mythological sea creature sitting in front of my own two eyes?” he asked, the cheap cowboy boots scuffing in the street. “I didn’t know you could breathe out here,” he said. “And … son of a biscuit, are those feet? What kind of mermaid are you?”

“A washed-up one,” I said. “I’m dying. I can’t breathe. You finished already, too?”

He dropped his bag and sat down next to me. “The birthday boy hurled chunks.”

“You’re kidding?”

“Dead serious. They cut the whole party short and gave me a sub. Want a bite? It’s germ free. They were individually wrapped.”

I showed him my cupcake.

“Seriously, you don’t look so good,” he said. “Are you okay?”

Everybody was worried about Minerva Watson. I smiled, trying to tell my face not to betray me. His presence was so pure I had to bite my lip to keep from warning him to run as far from me as he could. “I’m peachy.”

“Bratty kid?”

I smiled and shrugged. “I’m just a birthday Grinch. I hate birthdays. I always have. My mom always wanted my birthday parties to go a certain way, and they never turned out right.”

He stretched out his legs into the street, the toes of his cowboy boots pointing up. “I had great parties.”

“Not me. I remember being really little and there was a pile of presents in front of me and every time I opened one, I got a little disappointed because it wasn’t what I wanted or it was cheap instead of cool like the ads promised, or something.”

He laughed.

I winced. “What I just said sounds really sick, like I’m some kind of selfish person.”

“No. You just saw the truth. You were a little truth detector.”

It was such a nice thing for him to say.

I pointed down at my friends. “I’m observing a tiny ant city. They are on the move, swarming over this piece of … I don’t know what it is.… Maybe a dead worm? It looks like they’re trying to eat it or bring pieces of it back to their lair.”

He took a bite of his sandwich and we watched the ants marching. Then he rested a twig near the anthill, and after one ant climbed onto the stick, he moved it over to where the others were swarming. “I’m providing free ant transportation,” he said.

“Antportation,” I suggested.

He glanced up at me and smiled and then pinched a large crumb from his bread and plopped it near the anthill. Within a few seconds, the ants began to swarm. “That’s all it takes for an ant to be happy,” he said. “Live it up, little guys.”

The scene was kind of disgusting and thrilling
at the same time. The crumb was soon completely covered.

Somebody drove by and slowed down to look at us, and Hayes waved.

“We must look extremely strange,” I said. “A cowboy and a mermaid sitting on the side of the road.”

“What we do is strange,” he said. “But it’s kind of fun.” He pulled a ten-dollar bill out of his front pocket.

“A tip?”

He grinned. “Cassie was right.”

“You flirted?”

“I just complimented the mom on all the party decorations.”

I gave the ants a crumb of my cupcake.

Another car drove by and slowed to look.

“It’s better than flipping burgers,” he said.

“Or Krabby Patties,” I said.

He smiled at that, and I couldn’t help smiling back. “You almost didn’t audition, am I right?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “Fin talked me into it.”

“He’s enthusiastic.”

I laughed. “If I recall, you missed some appointment to audition. Dimple doctor?”

He smiled, and his dimples did their cute little thing. “Good memory,” he said.

“I was surprised you said yes.”

“I wanted a job, but I had no idea I was going to get one that day,” he said.

“Yeah, I remember you said getting a job was on your list of things to do.”

He handed his sandwich to me and pulled an index card out of his wallet. It was worn, as if he had folded and unfolded it five hundred times. “My list,” he said.

“A real list? I thought it was a metaphorical one.” I laughed.

He looked a little embarrassed and put it back in his wallet. I felt terrible, because I wasn’t laughing at him at all. “I love that idea,” I said quickly. “What’s on it?”

He just smiled, put his wallet away, and took back his sandwich.

“I will give you the last bite of my cupcake if you tell me the first thing on it,” I begged.

His eyes widened and he shook his head. Mouth half full, he managed to say, “Way too embarrassing.”

“Okay. Then tell me number two.”

He looked up at the sky, considering. His hair, which was slightly curly, had a dent in it from wearing
the cowboy hat. He swallowed and wiped his mouth and said: “Number three: Get a job.”

“And you got one!”

“Yep.”

“What was number two?”

He shook his head, not telling.

I stole what was left of his sandwich and said he had to tell me at least one more thing.

“You’re holding my sub hostage?” he asked.

I took a bite out of it.

He laughed. “They’ll sound stupid if I say them out loud.”

“No, they won’t.” I took another bite.

“Okay. One more thing and that’s it.”

I tried to do a drumroll with my feet, but it hurt too much.

He laughed. “Number two: Record some songs.”

“That’s not stupid. That’s cool.” I gave him back his sandwich. “So it’s a to-do list of positive things, like resolutions?”

He nodded, finishing his sandwich. “I made it on New Year’s Eve and gave myself a deadline. I have to do everything on the list before my birthday.”

“Which is on …?”

He stretched out his legs and brushed off the crumbs. “May twelfth.”

“How many things are on your list?”

“Ten.”

“How many things have you done?”

“Three.” He laughed.

“Are they all things you can do or are they things like climb Mount Everest or swim across the ocean or star in a major motion picture?”

“They’re all things I can do. I just have to get up the nerve.”

The van pulled up with Cassie in the front seat. Joy unrolled the window, a foul look on her face. “Minerva, get up off that curb. Why the halo are you sitting in the dirt? And, Hayes, you should be wearing the rest of your costume. You should be in character!”

Why the halo.
Almost as good as
son of a biscuit.
Fin was going to love it.

Hayes pulled me to my feet, and we got in the van. Joy huffed and drove to the next house in silence.

Fin was waiting outside, standing on the curb in full pirate regalia with ketchup all over his frilly shirt.

“Well, I think we’ve all arrived at a very special
place,” he said with his Jack Sparrow voice, tumbling into the van. “Spiritually, musically, and — ”

“What happened?” Joy’s voice snapped.

“Just a wee food fight.”

Joy slammed her hands against the steering wheel. “I do not want to hear that! Why the halo can’t — ”

“We all be like Cassie?” I blurted out.

“Yes!” Joy said, obviously lacking the sarcasm gene. “She follows the script and she keeps her costume clean and gets consistent referrals from her parents.”

Cassie didn’t say a word, and Fin, Hayes, and I traded guilty smiles.

Joy held up a business card. “Another mom was at Cassie’s party and she wants to book her for next month. That’s what I need. Thank the Lord!” She turned to us and gave us a triumphant
harrumph.

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