The Steps (10 page)

“I suppose there's always room for more grandparents, Mrs. Crosswell,” I said.

“Please call me Granny Nell,” she said.

One thing Granny Nell had all over Bubbe was she could do some serious cooking. Angelina and I cook sometimes, but mostly Bubbe likes dinner to come from “our friend the deliveryman,” as Bubbe says. Then Bubbe adds, “That's why we live in Manhattan, darling. We can have food from anywhere delivered anytime!” If only Bubbe had tasted Granny Nell's vegetarian lasagna and chocolate cake. Yum city!

When we finished eating, Granny Nell let me do the dishes. In fact, as part of her punishment to us (she promised more later from our parents), we had to spend the whole next day cleaning out her shed.
Oy.

As Lucy and I dried the dishes Granny Nell said, “I'm so glad to have you two girls here with me.” Then her tone changed. “But if you two EVER pull a STUNT like that AGAIN, I will haul you into the police station myself. You have no IDEA what could have happened to you. The WORRY you caused your family. Rascals!”

That sweet lady meant it too. Lucy and I both looked down at the floor, ashamed.

I tried to drag Lucy out of bed at six thirty the next morning. You know why, too. So we could hurry up and clean out the shed and then go visit Ben!

“Get up, Luce! Let's start cleaning!” I pulled the sheet off her.

She threw her arms over her eyes to block out the sunlight coming in from the windows. I'd thoughtfully opened the curtains and raised the blinds.

“GO BACK TO BED!” Lucy moaned. “I am.”

Lucy grabbed the sheet back and rolled over onto her stomach with the sheet thrown over her head.

I ran into the kitchen. Granny Nell was making coffee.

“Can I get started on the shed now, Granny Nell?” I asked.

“What's your rush, lass?” she grumbled. She opened her newspaper.

Lucy and her grandmother were obviously not morning people. I had so much energy and excitement, I wanted to burst.

“Is it okay if I go for a run at the oval, Granny Nell?”

Granny Nell looked up from her paper. “You'll ask permission to go for a run two blocks away but not to run off unchaperoned on an overnight train from Sydney to Melbourne?” She shook her head and shooed me away with her hand. “Go, child. Be home in an hour. I'll be in better spirits to make you some brekkie once my coffee's had time to take effect.”

I dressed in crinkly running pants and a matching jogging top and sprinted over to the oval. The sun had just risen, and the weather was balmy and warm, beautiful. Flowers were blooming along the sidelines of the oval. I sat down in the grass and smelled the sweet summer air.
Ben-Ben-Ben-Ben-Ben-Ben-Ben,
my mind hummed. He had probably been sitting on this grass less than twenty-four hours ago. Sweet grass!

I bent over my extended leg to do the stretching exercises Angelina and I do before we go running around the Central Park reservoir. As I was stretching my torso over my leg, I saw a shadow standing over me. I could not believe my luck.

“Hey, American girl,”
THAT
voice said. “Where's your cool hat?” I had forsaken the “dreadful hat” for a New York Mets baseball cap.

I looked up and there he was standing.
Ben-Ben-Ben-Ben-Ben-Ben-Ben.

“You made me miss my mark yesterday,” he accused.

“What?” I asked.

“Yesterday. I had almost caught the ball, and then you and Lucy got up to leave and I lost track of the game for a second. We lost the game because of you.”

How big was my grin? I couldn't tell you, because I didn't have a mirror, but it felt plastered across my face, and I desperately tried to squash it down so Ben would not see how pleased and flattered I was.

“What are you doing here so early?” I asked him, trying to think of safe conversation so I would not make a total idiot of myself. I stood up but lost my balance, instinctively grabbing for his arm as I started to fall down. He caught me and helped me up. My skin tingled from his touch. “I'm kinda klutzy,” I blurted out.

“Klutzy?” Ben laughed. “What's that?”

“I stumble into things, fall down, trip, things like that. Klutzy. It's my grandma's word.”
Shut up, Annabel,
I thought.
SHUT UP!

“Well, klutzy,” Ben said. “I come here every morning before school for a run. I come on holidays, too, because now it's become a habit. If I'm going to be a professional footy player one day, I have to train every chance I get.”

I tested him. “Wouldn't you rather be playing on your PlayStation instead of getting up so early in the morning to work out?”

Ben stared at me very seriously. “I'd much rather be playing footy or working out than be locked up inside playing on some dumb machine.”

I had to turn around so he would not see me catch my breath. He joined me as I walked toward the oval.

“Do you work out?” he asked.

“I go running with my mom sometimes in Central Park,” I said. “And I love to swim and rollerblade.”

“Cool,” Ben said. Without either of us inviting the other, we started jogging side by side along the pavement ringing the oval. “I've always wanted to visit New York. Seems like a fantastic city when you see it in movies or on the telly. Dad says maybe we'll go there for my sixteenth birthday. He's been saving for years for us to take an adventure somewhere.”

“You should go!” I said. I turned around to run backward so I could face him. “It's the coolest city. You'd have to go to the Empire State Building because every tourist does that, but after you should go see the Chrysler Building, which is way cooler. It has this arch tower with art deco windows, and I think it's probably the most enchanted building in all of Manhattan. And you could go running around the reservoir in Central Park like Madonna does and go ice-skating at Rockefeller Center and of course you'd have to go to the Village to play pickup basketball, and then there's always lots of football or baseball games you could get in on in Riverside Park, maybe you could even teach the guys there how to play Australian footy.”

I was talking a mile a minute, like I was Angelina. As I talked I gestured wildly with my hands I was so excited, and of course, running backward and flailing my arms about, not to mention my shoelace, which had come untied, I tripped and fell on the grass.

“Owww!” I cried out.
Could I just die right now?

Ben stopped his jog and sat down on the grass next to me. He leaned in to touch my ankle, to see if it was okay, but then got really shy just before his hand reached my shoe. He pulled his hand back suddenly.

“You ok, klutzy?” he said instead. His smile and deep green eyes made me forget all about the sharp pain.

“Want to know a secret I haven't even told Lucy?” I said.

“Yeah!” he said quickly.

“My friends at home call me Whoops.”

“Whoops?” Ben said.

“On account of I'm always falling and . . .” I hesitated, not sure whether I could trust him with this information. Then I decided I could, and I finished, “Because my full name is Annabel Whoopi Schubert. My middle name is Whoopi.”

Here's how I knew I loved him. He didn't laugh.

“Cool,” he said. I think that was his favorite word. From the way he pronounced the word, I bet he listened to a lot of hip-hop music.

I stood up and tried to start running again, but the pain in my ankle was too intense. “I think I'd better go home and put some ice on this foot,” I said.

“I'll walk you,” Ben said. I dare you to find one boy at the Progress School that chivalrous. I dare you further to find one with an Australian accent as sweet sounding. My ankle was hurting less already, but I hung on to his arm as I limped back to Granny Nell's anyway. Hanging on to arms is what Brittany Carlson does to Brad Dufus the Third, and even though she is the last of my idols, in the boyfriend department at least, I figured I could learn from her.

Ben's arm muscles were Australian Grade A
buff!

“You'll be okay?” he asked me as we reached the gate to Granny Nell's. I nodded. I thought,
I'll be okay so long as I get to see you again!
I closed my eyes halfway in case he wanted to kiss me. He didn't.

“See ya, Whoops.”

I opened my eyes back all the way to see Ben sprinting back toward the oval.

Lucy came back into the shed we were cleaning with a pitcher of lemonade.

“Guess who's coming to dinner?” Lucy asked.

“Jenny?” I assumed.

“No, Jenny's coming to lunch. Patrick and Ben are coming to dinner. Patrick called and invited us over, but then Granny Nell asked them over instead. She loves to cook for people.”

Ben was coming to dinner? I looked at my watch. That gave me only about seven hours to figure out what to wear.

“I thought your grandmother didn't get along with Ben's father,” I said.

“Not so,” Lucy said. “She just didn't like Mum marrying him barely a year after our dad died. She likes Patrick just fine. They live right down the street.” I understood. Bubbe liked Jack just fine as my dad, but not as Angelina's “partner.”

“Guess what else?” Lucy said. The shed was pretty dark, but I could tell she was smirking.

“What?”

“Well, Whoops, seems that our Ben has got a thing for . . . you!”

“He told you that?” That Ben had told Lucy my secret nickname didn't matter at all if he was crushing on me.

“Not exactly. He asked to talk to me after Patrick finished on the phone with Granny Nell. He said, ‘Tell Whoops I said hi.' ” Lucy paused. “Oh, don't look so surprised. Jack told us about your middle name when we watched
Sister Act.
You should feel lucky. Whoopi is a much cooler middle name than mine. Adelaide. Lucy Adelaide Crosswell. Dumb! Guess what else?” Lucy was having way too much fun with this.

“What?”

“Ben said you're the prettiest American girl he's ever seen besides Julia Roberts! He luuuvs your American accent.”

“Ben's seen Julia Roberts?”

“No, silly!” Lucy said. “He lives in Melbourne! But if he had . . . then you'd be like, next prettiest.”

Whoa! I thought my heart might jump out of my chest. I was twelve years old and facing massive punishment the next day, and still my life was this good.

It was hard to gloat about this new piece of information. Lucy was trying hard not to be sad. The shed we were cleaning was filled with old possessions of her dad's: old surfboards, woodworking equipment, microscopes, and tools. Lucy told me Penny had stored the stuff at Granny Nell's because she couldn't bear to look at her husband's things after he had died so suddenly, so young.

“Are you okay?” I asked. I poured her a lemonade.

“This whole week has been so intense,” she said. “I want to cry seeing all his stuff. But it's like I'm out of tears. Remember how you said you were mad because Angus and I call Jack ‘Dad'?” I nodded. Lucy continued, “Well, sometimes I wonder if my real dad is mad about it too.”

“He's not,” I told Lucy.

“How do you know?”

“Because if I can learn to deal with it, so could your real dad. Your dad would be glad that you and Jack found each other, like I am.” If anybody had told me a week earlier that I would have admitted that, I would have wanted to spit in their face.

“Angus will probably end up being a marine biologist just like our real dad was,” Lucy said. “Let's polish this equipment, and then we'll wrap the stuff and store it so we can keep it in good shape for when Angus grows up and wants it.”

The last of Lucy's tears dried as she proceeded to work.

Ben and his dad were really close. I thought that was really cool. Most of the boys I knew at school were embarrassed when their dad was around. But Ben, you could tell, really liked his dad. They were buds. They laughed the same laugh, smiled the same smile, talked the same topics.

“This casserole is graayate, Mrs. Crosswell!” Patrick said.

“Graayate!” Ben seconded. I am convinced “graayate” is the Australian national word, after any word cut off and ending in
ie.

“They're all each other has,” Granny Nell confided to me in the kitchen. Granny Nell didn't treat me like a guest. She let me help with the chopping, cooking, and serving. “Those two look after the other since Ben's mum passed and Patrick and Penny split up. That's the way it should be with fathers and sons!” Then Granny Nell looked at me as I helped her pull a chocolate soufflé out of the oven. “Is that glitter on your eyelids?”

I grinned.

Granny Nell said, “Well, aren't you tarted up but lovely.” I had borrowed back my panoramic New York picture dress and black platform sandals from Lucy. After Lucy and I had finished cleaning the shed, I had taken a shower and then put my hair in braids. I took the braids out right before Ben and his dad arrived, so that my hair fell down my back in blond waves. I added silver sparkle to my eyelids and a touch of pink lipstick to my lips. And Lucy, Jenny, and I had painted one another's toenails a funky purple color earlier that afternoon.

Patrick's and Ben's eyes widened very happily when we brought out the chocolate soufflé. It really was a special evening. Granny Nell had set up candles in the dining room, a lovely summer breeze was coming in through the lace curtains, and Duke Ellington jazz, which I knew because it was also one of Bubbe's favorites, was playing on the stereo.

Lucy and I knew it was our last night together before we had to return to Sydney and “be held accountable for our crimes,” as Granny Nell said, and there was a mellow happiness between us. Like we knew our adventure was ending, but how glad we were to have had it. Ben's being there on our last evening of our adventure made the night more than perfect—it was bliss.