Lemonade Mouth (28 page)

“Wh-what?” I didn’t understand right away. My head was still reeling from what happened at Bruno’s.

“You know exactly what I mean, Monu. He seems a little too comfortable around you.”

Now, this was maybe the third or fourth time my dad had brought up Charlie so by now I understood what he wanted. All he was really looking for was a little reassurance. He seemed to need that every now and then. Normally I would have said something like, “Baba, you really don’t need to worry. There’s nothing going on between Charlie and me. We’re only
friends.
I promise. Okay?” And I’m sure if I’d said that then everything would have been all right.

But last night I was in no mood to go through the same old script again. It had already been a tough evening, I wasn’t feeling well and I could barely think straight. Plus, over the past few weeks I’ve been mulling over what Selina Sinha said in temple about her dad, and I’ve been getting frustrated about having to constantly assure my own father what a good girl I am. It’s ridiculous. Am I really so wild?

Besides, deep down I knew that my dad’s concerns were well founded. For weeks I’ve been careful to avoid being alone with Charlie. I’m almost always the last to arrive at our practices, and the first to leave. I never linger at the Freak Table. I avoid walking with him to class. But I never stop thinking about him.

That’s the frustrating truth.

Of course, last night I didn’t tell my dad any of that. Instead I kind of lost my temper. “Leave me alone, Baba! I’m not a little kid!”

He was obviously surprised. I don’t normally talk back to my father. Briefly I saw that panic again, that tightrope look. But then almost immediately the shadows on his face darkened. “You’re too young to know what’s right for you! Certainly too young to have ideas about this boy!”

I didn’t answer. I could feel my pulse booming in my temples.

“Oh, you think I’m blind?” he continued. “You don’t think I see the way he looks at you? Or how you look at him?”

I glared at him. This felt like the last straw at the end of a long day full of last straws. “Well, what if I
do
like him!” I snapped. “Is that really so wrong? Don’t you know me well enough to trust me to make my own decisions? I’m fourteen, you know, and perfectly capable of making good choices, but you just want me to keep being your little girl, don’t you? Well, I’m not a little girl anymore, Baba, and this isn’t Calcutta!”

His eyes went wide. He wasn’t used to me talking this way to him, and to be honest, neither was I. When he spoke next, his voice was quiet and his teeth were clenched.

“While you are living under this roof, child, you will respect your family’s wishes.”

His words were certain but his eyes still looked frightened. And then it hit me what my dad’s been scared of all this time. He’s scared of
me.
He’s afraid of what might happen if he loses control.

And what’s more, I realized that I’ve been just as frightened of that as he’s been.

All at once I felt like a jerk for putting him through this. My dad doesn’t always come off that way, but he’s actually a real softy and he’s only doing what he thinks is best for me. I was so confused I didn’t know what to say.

“What’s the matter here?” asked my mother from the stairs.

Finally, still locking eyes with him, I said, “I guess I don’t really have much choice, do I?” Then I marched upstairs, brushing past my mother in a frustrated huff. I didn’t even end up telling them about what happened at Bruno’s.

Anyway, last night left me a little rattled.

Now, in front of the clinic, I fight back a shiver and trudge up the walkway to the building, ignoring the dizziness in my head and the ache in my bones. I don’t have the flu. I have a big Pre-calc exam to study for this weekend and even though the class is killing me, I had to get special permission to get into it as a freshman so I’m determined not to blow it. Plus I have a Social Studies paper due on Tuesday, and a debate tournament on Thursday. Not to mention Catch A RI-Zing Star in just a few hours.

I can’t be sick. I refuse.

The world spins slightly as I lumber through the front entrance. I guess I’m not paying enough attention to where I’m going, because in that little decompression area between the two sets of automatic doors I walk right into a raggedy blue dough-boy jacket.

“Oops, I’m so sorry,” I say. I look up. It’s a heavyset guy in one of those fuzzy caps with earflaps. It’s a couple of seconds before I recognize him.

“Charlie . . . ? What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you.”

This is strange. I feel my heart quicken. Waiting for me? Why? And why this morning, of all mornings?

“I’m a little late,” I say. “I have to sign in.”

“Just a second.” He pulls off his cap. “I . . . I have something I need to say to you. It won’t take any time, I promise.”

I feel the blood rush into my face. But I wait.

“Mo, I . . .” He blinks and then looks away, first at the ceiling and then his feet. “I’m sorry. This isn’t easy for me.”

The automatic doors slide open and a blast of arctic air catches my back. We stay quiet. An old lady with a cane ambles past us and through the second set of doors. Even when we’re alone again Charlie keeps gazing at the floor. Which feels weird. What’s he doing?

“For a long time I’ve wanted to tell you something,” he says finally. “But, well, you were with Scott and then after that it just didn’t happen. Besides, I wasn’t sure how you felt about me and I didn’t want to wreck anything. Plus there’s Lemonade Mouth and all that. And so I thought maybe it’d be better if I just kept quiet. But the truth is I don’t think I can keep my mouth shut anymore.”

I fidget. He isn’t making sense.

He takes a deep breath. “Thing is . . . I like you, Mo. And more than just as a friend, I mean. I always have. There. I’ve said it.”

Now I’m having a weird flashback to last night’s conversation with my dad, because Charlie’s words sound confident but his eyes look scared. He waits for me to say something, but I feel a sudden, rising panic, along with a tsunami of other emotions. Part of me wants to jump for joy. Another part is terrified. I’ve been trying so hard to stay in charge of all the different pieces of my life, but now it feels like everything is spinning out of control. I need to keep my eyes on the big picture. Sweating and shivering in the cold, I suddenly need to get away. I want to run. Clear my head somehow.

Which is probably why, before I even know what I’m doing, I find myself biting Charlie’s head off.

“Didn’t we already talk about this?” I snap. “Didn’t we already agree that you and I are going to be friends and nothing more? Oh, Charlie . . . you know about my grand plan. You know about my family. You know I can’t. What are you trying to do? Ruin what we already have?”

I see the hurt look on his face, but the words are already out.

That’s when I duck my head and storm past him, feeling like the frontrunner in the contest for Heartless Dragonlady of the Year. And now my head is throbbing worse than ever and even my knees feel weak. But I remind myself that I have no choice. Right now I’m focusing on school and nothing else. Later I’ll study medicine. Eventually, I’ll marry another doctor or a lawyer or something like that—somebody as ambitious as me. I have my plans. And Charlie isn’t part of them.

And I’m not about to start tiptoeing around my parents again. No way.

As I stagger over to the volunteer desk, my whole body is shaking. Behind the desk sits a tubby, bleached-blond lady reading a magazine. She must be new because I don’t recognize her.

“I’m Mo Banerjee,” I say, trying to stop my teeth from chattering. “Do you have the sign-in sheet? I’m scheduled to volunteer this morning.”

But she doesn’t reach for the binder. Instead, she looks me over, one eyebrow raised.

“I don’t think so,” she drawls after a moment. “I think you better take a seat in the waiting area. Don’t take this the wrong way, honey, but you look like death warmed over.”

STELLA:
Last of the Fallen Heroes

There sat your Sista Stella, alone at the kitchen table only vaguely aware of the sounds of the step-monkeys watching their Saturday morning cartoons at the other end of the house. Staring listlessly at her dreary breakfast of a bran muffin and kiwi juice, she fought off a sudden desire to yank open the fridge, fry up the entire package of Canadian bacon she knew was in there, and then shove every juicy, meaty morsel of it into her mouth.

But fortunately, I got hold of myself.

It was just a brief moment of weakness. Still, who could blame me for feeling defeated? What
was
it with me? Why did everything I ever do go somehow awry?

But then I remembered the letter from the guidance counselor. It lay open on the nearby counter. After a long string of dismal grades, the school wanted to evaluate me to find out if I had a learning disability. But I didn’t care to take any more stupidity tests. There was no point. I already knew what the problem was.

Eighty-four.

And that brought me back to the grim memory of the previous evening.
It’s over,
I thought.
The final day of the revolution.

“Don’t take it so hard, Stella. It’s only a band, not the end of the universe.”

I looked up. I hadn’t even noticed my mother coming into the kitchen but now suddenly there she was setting her newspaper and coffee cup on the table and pulling up a chair. Like me, she liked to sleep in on the weekends. Had I spoken my thoughts aloud? From the way she was wrinkling her forehead at me, I decided I must have.

“Really, I’m worried about you,” she continued, her eyebrows pulling together. “Don’t you think you’ve been taking this Lemonade Mouth thing a little too seriously? I’m concerned. You’re obsessing about it. Maybe it’s not such a bad thing if you and your friends set it aside for a while.”

I glared at her. Of all people, how did my
mother
get off accusing
me
of obsessing?

The bathrobed scientist sat back and eyed me for a few moments. “Listen, I have an idea. Leonard wants to take everybody ice fishing this morning on Otis Cove. Doesn’t that sound like fun? You should come with us.”

“Ice fishing? You’re kidding, right?” I had a hard time picturing my mother, the former sun queen of the southwest, spending hours in the freezing cold over a hole in the ice. My mom: Nanook of the North.

“Sure, why not?” she said, ignoring my look. “Clea’s coming too. Why don’t you join us? Try something new?”

“I can’t, Mom. I have other plans today. In case you forgot.” Not that I had any delusions about Catch A RI-Zing Star. I knew we’d be competing with the best of the best and that we’d probably get dropped in the early rounds. Still, my mother didn’t have to act like it didn’t matter.

I made sure to give her a hurt look but the woman hardly seemed to notice. “But didn’t you tell me you don’t have to be at the Civic Center until two o’clock? We can head out this morning and still be back in plenty of time.”

And that was when she moved her arm to pick up her coffee, which is how the newspaper finally caught my eye. It was the
Opequonsett Gazette,
the weekly town rag that came out every Saturday. From where I sat it was upside down, but even so I noticed a small headline toward the bottom of the page. It said:
NEW VENDING MACHINES SET FOR MIDDLE SCHOOL
.

I pounced across the table. “No! I can’t believe it!”

“What’s the matter?” my mom asked, pulling her coffee back in surprise.

I spun the paper around and scanned the story. It was short, only a couple of paragraphs. “Those
creeps
! How can they do this again? How can they just
ignore
us?”

“Ignore who? What is it?”

I kept reading until I’d finished the last sentence. “The twentieth?” I looked up. “That’s
today
!”

“What is? Tell me what’s going on.”

I flipped the paper around again and slid it back across the table, jabbing my finger at the bottom of the page. “Take a look! They’re pulling the same scam at the middle school now. Without any involvement from the students, somebody made a deal with the soda company just so they can put a stupid fountain in the school courtyard. Now they’re going ahead and swapping out the lemonade machine. And they’re doing it
this very morning
!”