The Steps (5 page)

Yasmin's voice wasn't exactly enthusiastic about inviting Lucy, but she had invited Lucy nonetheless. Lucy's rosy face was pleased . . . and relieved. Like maybe she could see the light at the end of the social dungeon tunnel.

I wondered if it was Angus's fault that Lucy hadn't fallen under the Leo spell. That boy was one big pain. All through the first half of the movie he kept trying to distract us. He kept standing in front of the TV, smooching his lips together and making fish gurgle sounds, then he would wave and sway his arms like he was an octopus. Angus must be some kind of fishetarian. He just loves fish. It's the one food he won't eat, and all he ever wants to do is look at books about fish. Whatever! But his fishy behavior was a bit much. Finally, after Lucy shouted at him to bugger off, Penny made him go upstairs with her, Jack, and Beatrice. I think Penny was just happy that Lucy was having friends over.

“Is your brother always like that?” I asked Lucy later, after Devon and Yasmin had left.

“Yeah, he's a huge, massive pain,” Lucy said. Then she added, “And he's your brother too, you know.”

That sounded too weird.

“He's my step,” I said. “You're my step. That's all we'll ever be. Steps.”

I remembered I had promised myself I could be mean to Lucy again once Devon and Yasmin were gone. Maybe she thought because I took up for her with Devon and Yasmin that we would be tight, but she was wrong. I was only temporarily helping out. And seeing Jack come downstairs after the girls were gone, carrying Beatrice, with Angus hanging on to his leg and Penny and Lucy gazing at him adoringly, I reminded myself that the Steps were not my friends.

Lucy looked like she was going to cry from what I had said. Instead she leaned over to whisper in my ear, so Jack and Penny would not hear her. “Sometimes I wish you weren't even my step. I wouldn't want you as my sister anymore. Your dad never warned us you'd be so stuck up.”

Good,
I thought. Now Lucy understood that I had no intention of being all cozy-cozy with her.

“Takes one to know one,” I whispered back.

Jack and Penny looked at us, and Lucy and I both flashed brilliant smiles back at them, like we were going to be the bestest friends in the world. Not.

Australia was the weirdest place. Rice Krispies were called Rice Bubbles, Popsicles were “icy pops,” people said “ta” instead of “thank you,” and everybody ended their sentences with “hey?” Like Angus would say, “I want an icy pop, hey? Ta.” That was their “English.” Another thing: Every time I went to the “milk bar” or the “veggie bar” (the vegetarian restaurant down the street), people imitated the way I talked. Like if I said, “I'll have an order of nachos,” the waitress would repeat after me, in this exaggerated American voice, “Nah-chos.” The first time I asked for guacamole, the waitress said, “What?” about five times and Lucy sat giggling at the table going “Guacamole, guacamole,” in this ridiculous American accent Apparently in Australia there is no word
guacamole.
They call it avocado sauce, and of course everybody laughed when I pronounced that, too. Lucy imitated me again, murmuring, “Ah-vah-cah-do,” after me.

One time we were at McDonald's, when I asked for ketchup with my fries. Lucy said, “It's tomato sauce, not ketchup,” but in her Australian pronunciation “ta-may-do” turned into “toe-mah-toe.” When I gave her a look back like,
Well, excuse me!
she told me all about her letter-writing campaign to the ketchup-making companies asking that they start labeling the bottles with the “proper” name: tomato sauce. I was about to tell her she could take her girl power letter-writing campaign and shove it up her—but then Jack congratulated Lucy for taking “initiative” to write to those companies, so I shut up before I
really
said something mean. Instead I told Lucy, “In America, which probably invented ketchup in the first place, tomato sauce is a totally separate thing that you use to, like, make spaghetti sauce, so in America ketchup will always be the right word.”

Angus was the worst. He kept laughing after I said I “brush” instead of “clean” my teeth, and he baited me all the time to recite the alphabet so he could laugh that I pronounced “zee” instead of “zed.”

Penny told the Steps to stop imitating me because it was rude. They still did it when she wasn't around. They never teased Jack about his American accent. They were used to him, I guess. But something about hearing me made the Steps turn all giggly and rude.

Penny said I shouldn't be offended that people imitated the way I talked. She said it was because there was so much American television on in Australia that when people heard me speak, it was like I was a girl from
Friends
standing right in front of them. Sometimes Penny tried too hard to be cool—like I would want to be a girl from
Friends,
as if I were Brittany Carlson.

It was hard to like the Steps or Penny those first few days in Sydney. They were always hogging Jack and Beatrice. If I wanted to go swimming with Jack, Angus had to come too, because that boy loves water. If I wanted to go play catch with Jack, Lucy begged to come too, because she wanted to learn how to play American baseball. If I wanted to hold Beatrice, Angus and Lucy would crowd us and make faces at the baby and try to make her smile and laugh. If I wanted to hang out with just Jack, then Penny wanted him to help her change nappies or make dinner.

Besides, there was no time to have Jack to myself. Penny had our schedule for Christmas vacation planned out like she was a military general. She was so into
activities.
To me, activities were window-shopping on Madison Avenue, rollerblading in Central Park, or watching movies and eating popcorn with Justine, Gloria, and Keisha. Activities to me were not doing crosswords, making costumes, baking gingerbread-man cookies, and putting together endless puzzles.

On the third straight day of activities I asked Penny why we always had to be doing activities. I thought if I had to glue glitter onto one more greeting card, I was going to scream.

Penny looked so confused. “Well, with four children in the house, activities keep us on schedule and keep everybody settled.”

Schedule? Settled? Lucy and I counted as
children?
Hello, we were practically
thirteen!

Jack was in another room changing Beatrice's nappy, so I did not hesitate to answer back fresh to Penny. “I am not a child, Penny. And I do not like activities and I will not do them any longer. Back in New York, before you knew Jack, we used to go places. We did not always stay cooped up in the house doing activities. I want to go somewhere.” Penny's face looked very hurt, so I did not add,
And I know we always have to do activities because you don't want me to have Jack all to myself and steal him back. You want to hold us all here as captives so no one will have the chance to see that this “family” totally does not work.

I could see Lucy's lips curl into a smile under the mask she was making. She and her mom had been fighting at night before bed, when they thought I couldn't hear them yelling at each other upstairs in Jack and Penny's room. From what I had overheard, Lucy was mad because every year after Christmas, Lucy and Angus spent a week at their grandmother's house in Melbourne—their grandmother who was the mom of their real dad. And this year, because I was here, Penny said they couldn't go. But I knew that Penny was using me as an excuse. I had heard Penny talking on the phone to Lucy's grandma, and her tone was very annoyed and angry. Penny and Lucy's grandma didn't get along. This I understood. Bubbe and Jack have never gotten along. Bubbe thinks it's Jack's fault that he and Angelina never got married. But I was there when Jack and Angelina were living together, and I know it was Angelina who didn't want to get married, not Jack. Can't tell that to Bubbe, though. Bubbe hears only what she wants to hear, as Angelina reminds me all the time.

“What would you like to do, then, Annabel?” Penny asked. She did not snap at me the way Angelina might have for being fresh. Her tone was phony-nice, like she was trying to prove she knew I knew I would never think of her as my mom, and she was trying too hard to be my cool stepmom.

Before going to Australia, I had been pouring over
Vogue
magazines and reading up on Sydney on the Internet. I knew just what I wanted to do. “I want to go to the market at Paddington and to the clothes shops on Oxford Street and to the Strand shopping arcade.”

Lucy's jaw dropped, I swear. This was probably, aside from the Devon-Yasmin incident, the most I had said around Penny and the Steps since I arrived.

I could tell Penny was trying really hard not to be mad at me. I figured this must have been hard for her, since she and Lucy had been fighting so much, so I appreciated her—a little—for trying. She said, extra patiently, “I was under the impression you weren't too impressed with Sydney and weren't too interested in going about much. I asked you when you first got here if there was anything special you wanted to do, and you didn't answer me. Why didn't you say something earlier?”

Lucy knew the answer. Lucy said, “Because you made meat for dinner!”

I took the high road. I didn't acknowledge that Lucy was right.

The next day I learned right away why Penny liked to stick to activities at home. Dragging around Angus and Beatrice was a major pain.

When we finally got sprung from the Steps' cottage in Balmain, we rode a ferry to the other side of Sydney Harbour, From the boat I could see the Sydney Opera House, which looked like this gorgeous whitewashed fan streaking the blue sky. It was incredible looking. The subway in Sydney was pretty cool too, I have to confess. It wasn't ultranoisy like the subway in Manhattan, and the train cars had three different levels, like they were their own underground moving building!

I couldn't complain about walking around in December in shorts and sandals, either. That sun was bliss and provided great fashion opportunities for short skirts and platform sandals, glittery tank tees . . . and hats! Everybody in Australia wears hats, Jack told me, because the hole in the ozone layer exposes people in Australia to skin cancer more than in any other place. Angus wore the cutest kind of hat that all the young schoolchildren wear in Australia, bright cotton with a brim in the front and flaps hanging over the ears. Penny and Lucy wore plain straw hats, but I didn't let on that I thought they looked nice, if boring. Jack wore his beloved New York Mets cap, which he also wears inside the house when he's not even trying to protect his face from skin cancer.

Seeing all those fabu hats made my first shopping mission clear.
Hats, here I come,
I thought as we wandered from the subway station to Paddington Market. If you think going hat shopping in an open-air market would be an easy task, think again. One word: Angus! He would not stop fidgeting around, and if he wasn't fidgeting, he was running through stalls and knocking things over. When Lucy scolded him, he told her he would behave only if she promised to give him some “chockie,” which is Australian for chocolate. Lucy told Angus to kiss off. Then every time Angus “settled” (as Penny called it), Beatrice started crying, needing to be fed, or throwing up.
Oy vey!
Being freed from Penny's activities was proving not fun at all.

Finally I said to Jack, “Can we go off on our own?” He looked to Penny, who nodded reluctantly. Penny told him she would take Angus and Beatrice to Baskin-Robbins, and we could meet them there in an hour. Which of course meant Lucy was stuck with us. Double ugh!

Jack mouthed the words
thank you
to Penny, like Penny was doing him some favor by letting him spend actual time with his actual daughter. Jack smiled really wide and took my and Lucy's hands on either side of him. “An hour with my best girls,” he said. Behind his back I stuck my tongue out at Lucy. She didn't see.

The clothes displayed in the stalls were supremely funky and outrageous: loads of narrow-cut sweaters, hip straight skirts with side slits, retro bell-bottoms, and wild-patterned leather boots. Jack explained that Paddington Market is where a lot of young and upcoming fashion designers get their start.
Sydney's not such a bad place at all,
I thought. In fact, I thought the city—if you took away Penny and the Steps—was pretty amazing. Especially when I saw the small designer shops on nearby Oxford Street, which sold the totally cutest, most unique dresses, sweaters, and skirts I ever saw (and that included Bloomingdale's, my most favorite store ever).

I thought it was too bad Jack was going to have to return to America with me, because I realized I could get used to this Sydney clothes scene, and I would not mind at all eventually making clothes that could be displayed in places like Paddington Market and Oxford Street.

I bought the most cool vintage brown cowboy hat, with beads hanging down from the rim on each side and a bowling-shirt-type letter
A
stenciled on the front. “That hat's the most dreadful thing I ever saw,” Lucy said. That comment, of course, sealed the sale.

Jack laughed when he saw me wearing the hat, which was a great match with my overall shorts and surf T-shirt. “That's my Annabel!” he said. “Oh, when your Bubbe sees you wearing that . . .” He laughed all the way to Baskin-Robbins as I piggybacked on his back and looked down at Lucy's boring ole straw hat and thought,
Hopeless.

I was falling in love with Sydney, Australia, so I almost thought it was a shame that I was going to have to inform Jack that he absolutely, positively needed to move back to America where he belonged, with me. I was loving Sydney so much, even the Steps didn't seem so bad. Over the next couple of days I actually started to like them okay. Not love-adore-let's-spend-every-minute-together them, but they got on my nerves less.