Claudia and the Disaster Date

  “That will be a challenge,” she said.

  “Tell me about it.” I dove into the bathroom and went to work on paint removal.

  Five minutes later, more or less paint-free, I was tossing clothes around the room as if they were Frisbees.

  “No, no, no, yes, maybe …” I paused to sniff something, unsure whether it had fallen off a hanger and was clean or had been dropped on the floor after being worn. “No,” I decided, and dropped it back on the closet floor.

  Not too dressy. That would look as if I were trying too hard. Or maybe as if I were worried. Not too casual. It was, after all, a date. Something special but basic. Smashing, but understated.

  Okay, understated for me.

  I settled in the end for beige linen shorts, an enormous red, blue, and purple tie-dyed T-shirt that I had made earlier in the summer, a pair of earrings I’d made from bottle caps and glitter, and purple high-tops with blue socks folded over the top.

  I didn’t have time to check out the overall effect, because I’d just finished rolling the socks over the high-tops when someone knocked on the door of my room. It was Mary Anne, Stacey, Dawn, and Kristy, on time to the minute.

  “We’re here,” Kristy announced unnecessarily. She looked at her watch, scowled, and said, “Alan’s late.”

  The doorbell rang.

  “No, he’s not,” I replied, sighing inwardly. Was it my imagination, or did Kristy look disappointed?

  We hurried downstairs and opened the door. My group faced Alan’s — he’d brought along Cary Retlin and Pete Black.

  “Cary,” said Kristy. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m glad to see you too,” said Cary. At the end of the walk, I could see Mr. Gray in his minivan.

  Everyone seemed to step back at the same time, and Alan and I looked at each other. “Let’s go,” I said, sounding a little like Ms. Feld at her most upbeat.

  Side by side, Alan and I walked to the van. Alan held the door for me to get in, and continued to hold it until everyone else was in too.

  Then he climbed into the front next to his father.

  Mr. Gray said, “We brought the minivan for miniature golf.” He guffawed.

  Alan gave his father a pained look, which surprised me. I would have expected him to laugh at a joke like that.

  “Nice weather for golf,” Alan said.

  “Have you ever played before, Kristy?” Cary asked.

  “Yes,” said Kristy, folding her arms. “Why?” Kristy doesn’t trust Cary, and with good reason. One never knows when Cary is going to do something outrageous just to “keep life interesting.” He’s a bit of a mystery man at school, a newcomer who has a number of interesting skills, such as the ability to open locks and to make things vanish, magicianlike, before your eyes. He got Kristy’s watch once, right off her wrist, and she never even noticed.

  “No reason,” said Cary, smiling the smile of the innocent. Involuntarily, I glanced down at my wrist, just to make sure my watch hadn’t vanished.

  Pete hadn’t said anything. Neither had Dawn, Stacey, or Mary Anne. I gave Stacey a Look. She took the hint and said, “What about you, Pete? Do you play golf?”

  Pete shrugged. “It’s not my sport, but I guess I can handle it.”

  “I’ve never played,” said Stacey. “At least not real golf. In New York City, they don’t have a lot of room for golf courses.”

  “Golf courses pollute the environment,” Dawn said out of the blue, “with all the pesticides and herbicides they use to keep them green.”

  Somehow, I realized, we were all looking at Alan, as if waiting for him to come out with one of his dumb jokes. At that point, I would have welcomed one, dumb or not.

  Alan looked as if he wanted to say something. Then he met my eyes, smiled, and shrugged.

  “I think this golf course is kept green by paint, mainly,” I said quickly.

  To my relief, before the conversation could bog down any further, we turned into the parking lot of the miniature golf course.

  So this is my confession: I totally love the Stoneybrook MiniPutt Kingdom. That’s what it’s called. Whoever designed it didn’t stick to any one theme. He or she just let the old imagination out of the cage. As a result, the course looks like a fairy tale crashed into a zoo that also happened to have a couple of dinosaurs and possibly a pirate in it.

  I couldn’t help smiling. My dad used to take Janine and me to the MiniPutt Kingdom when we were kids. I had a sudden memory of my grandmother Mimi with us, bending over to examine the mouth of the “fire”-breathing dragon as it opened and closed. Beside the dragon’s head, which was resting at the end of the putting alley, was a sign that said PLEASE DON’T FEED THE DRAGON! Of course, that was the whole idea — to put the golf ball into the dragon’s mouth when it was open. If you succeeded, puffs of smoke came out of its ears and nose.

  “How have I missed this?” Cary said, sliding out of the car.

  “Stoneybrook has many fine features,” Pete answered him solemnly.

  “I’m going to go hit a bucket of balls over there,” Mr. Gray said, pointing to the driving range that flanked the MiniPutt Kingdom.

  “Okay,” said Alan.

  Once again, I found myself standing next to him. I smiled encouragingly at him. “Let’s get started,” I said, and led the way to the admissions window.

  “Let’s play pairs,” Cary said.

  “Fine,” said Kristy. “Mary Anne, will you — ”

  But Cary cut in. “I can ask her myself. Mary Anne, will you do me the honor of being my partner?”

  “Sure,” said Mary Anne, smiling. She and Cary have had a little bond ever since he helped her with a problem involving a class bully.

  Kristy’s face reddened. She doesn’t like it when someone else takes charge, especially Cary.

  He ignored her. “And Pete and Stacey, that’s another pair, and Claudia and Dawn, and Kristy and Alan.”

  What? I gave Cary a Double Nasty Look. Kristy’s Look would have melted rock. What was Cary doing?

  “But, but, but …” Kristy sputtered.

  “What’s the matter?” Cary asked. “Is something wrong?”

  Mary Anne, seeing that Kristy was about to explode, possibly for real, said quickly, “That’s settled.”

  “What?” I said aloud.

  I think Dawn was trying not to laugh. “Don’t worry, Claudia,” she said in a loud voice. “We’ll show them that girls rule.”

  Cary and Mary Anne headed for the first hole, which featured a pirate ship, a plank (down which you putted), and a pirate swinging a cutlass and reciting in a tinny, tape-recorded voice, “Yo-ho-ho, mates! Walk the plank!”

  We ended up in groups of four. Somehow, I’m not sure how, Cary maneuvered Dawn and me into his group. Alan, Kristy, Pete, and Stacey followed us in the other.

  Since they were behind us, it was very hard to concentrate. I kept looking over my shoulder. Kristy seemed to be ignoring Alan. Pete, I noticed, was focusing most of his attention on Stacey. Alan was playing miniature golf as if his life depended on it.

  From time to time, I heard bits of conversation. Like this.

  Kristy: Alan, you call that a shot? You weren’t even close.

  Alan: You’re right. Too bad I can’t take it over.

  Kristy: The face on that dinosaur reminds me of someone…. Hmmm … Alan! It’s you!

  Alan: I’ve never been compared to a dinosaur before.

  * * *

  I heard Mary Anne break into laughter and looked up to discover that we had reached the dragon putt — and that Mary Anne had somehow wedged her golf ball in one of the dragon’s nostrils.

  “Way to go,” Dawn said.

  “Thank you, thank you,” Mary Anne replied, bowing slightly.

  “Your turn, Claudia. Top it if you can,” Cary said. I looked up to find him smiling at me. He said more softly, “I think everything is safe in the sand-box right now. Leave them alone and they’ll play nicely.”

  I knew he
was referring to Kristy and Alan. And he was right.

  I whacked the ball into the dragon’s mouth and took my own bow as smoke poured out of its ears — and one of its nostrils.

  We took a break and drank sodas at a picnic table overlooking the course. I watched a little girl wind herself up to hit a bright yellow ball. Unfortunately she kept on winding up until she fell over. It was a Jackie Rodowsky move, and I couldn’t help but laugh.

  The little girl laughed too, looking at her older sister. Standing up, she tried again — and missed again.

  “Good grief,” said Kristy.

  “She’ll get it,” said Cary. “She just might have to learn the hard way.”

  Kristy turned back to narrow her eyes at him. “What is that supposed to mean, exactly?”

  “She’s stubborn,” Alan said. “I admire that.”

  On her third try, the little girl had made contact with the ball. It dribbled a foot and stopped. This sent her into gales of laughter.

  Kristy spun around. “Who’s stubborn?” she asked. (Kristy is widely known — and described — as stubborn.)

  “The junior golf pro out there,” Alan said.

  “Oh,” said Kristy.

  The little girl got it at last. The ball rolled unsteadily through the castle door, and a princess popped out of the tower to wave. The little girl waved back before trotting happily after her sister.

  “Well, this is fun,” Cary said. “Isn’t it?”

  “This is one thing New York City definitely lacks — and needs more of,” Stacey said. “I can see it now: a MiniPutt Kingdom in Times Square, another one in Central Park …”

  “It’s not a bad idea for a park,” said Pete seriously.

  “It beats actual golf courses,” Dawn said. “And I might even like golf courses a little, if they had pirates and princesses on them.”

  Cary announced, “Claudia’s beating Dawn.”

  “Piece of cake,” I said, and Dawn gave me a friendly shoulder punch.

  “And I’m beating Mary Anne.”

  “Not by much,” said Mary Anne.

  “So what about you guys? Pete, Stacey?”

  “She may be a beginner, but she’s too good for me — so far,” said Pete, grinning at Stacey.

  Kristy’s lower lip stuck out. She looked amazingly like Claire Pike about to launch into a temper tantrum. I braced myself.

  “I’m winning,” she said.

  “Congratulations!” Cary said.

  “You are a very good player,” added Alan.

  “You’re pretty bad,” Kristy shot back. “Like you’re not even trying.”

  Alan flushed slightly. He shrugged and gave her an apologetic smile.

  Cary had watched it all, a little smile on his face.

  I finished my Coke with a noisy slurp. “Come on,” I said. “We still have to cross the bridge of the Three Billy Goats Gruff, not to mention getting through Alligator Alley.”

  Kristy didn’t say much the rest of the afternoon. When we returned to my house, I looked at Alan. “Thanks,” I said.

  “Sure,” he replied.

  I couldn’t say more, not with Pete and especially Cary watching. And although Dawn, Mary Anne, and Stacey had withdrawn to a discreet distance, I could feel Kristy’s scowl at my shoulder.

  The van had barely pulled away from the curb before Kristy burst out, “Thank goodness that’s over with! Who knew Alan could be such a wimp!”

  Wimp. A strong word from Kristy. In fact, one of her most derisive labels.

  And, I thought uneasily, not the label you’d usually apply to Alan. Alan was anything but a wimp. Furthermore, his behavior at the mini-golf course had definitely not been Alan-as-I-knew-him.

  I was thinking about this as Erica and I walked to her house after our day at the library on Thursday. As we’d passed the mutilated mural, I had averted my eyes. It was painful to look at. The topic of the mural had been absent from all my conversations with Ms. Feld that day, from which I had deduced that she had: a) not talked to my mother about it, or b) she had talked to her and was so upset that she didn’t want to discuss it with me.

  We had stopped by my mom’s office. She wasn’t there, nor was she at the front desk. Miss Ellway said she was in the staff lounge.

  “Would you tell her I’m going over to Erica’s house, please?” I’d said.

  “Sure,” said Miss Ellway.

  I was relieved I didn’t have to talk to my mother any more than necessary.

  “Continuing trouble with the maternal unit?” Erica asked after we’d put some distance between us and the library. I’d been keeping her up to speed, more or less, on my “artistic differences” with Mom.

  “Yes. She’s blaming me for the mural mess. She thinks I shouldn’t have made the suggestion in the first place, among other things.” I sighed.

  “She’ll get over it,” said Erica. “Especially when you get the real mural up.”

  “If I ever do. Part of me wants to confront her and part of me wants to lay low. So I’m sort of dithering. And feeling like a wimp.”

  Wimp. Kristy’s word again.

  Of course, I’d had something to say to her the night before. We all had. So what if Alan had let her win at miniature golf, as she insisted he had? So what if he had agreed with everything she said? He hadn’t made any stupid, gross jokes. He hadn’t acted like a clown. He hadn’t made Kristy into the butt of his sometimes-less-than-witty wit.

  “What more do you want, Kristy?” Stacey had asked. “The guy was on his best behavior. You can’t say that got on your nerves.”

  “It did. It was so … so … fake,” she replied.

  Stung, I said, “What do you mean, fake?”

  “Not normal.” Kristy stopped, searching for just the right word. “It just wasn’t … natural.”

  “He was very sweet,” Mary Anne put in.

  Dawn nodded. “He was clearly trying hard to be on his best behavior.”

  “Well, it was weird,” said Kristy. “I can’t explain it, but I don’t like it.”

  “I give up!” I said. “Just don’t give me any more grief about going out with Alan.”

  Kristy opened her mouth, then closed it resolutely. I was glad of that. Whatever she was going to say, I didn’t want to hear it.

  And part of the reason, I now realized, was that I sort of, kind of agreed with her. It wasn’t natural. It wasn’t Alan. This new, perfectly polite and incredibly self-effacing Alan wasn’t real. And wasn’t much fun.

  Could it be that I missed the old Alan?

  “Claudia?” Erica said. “You in there?”

  “Sorry.” I filled her in on what had been distracting me.

  Erica was sympathetic. “Maybe you should talk to Alan,” she suggested.

  “But what do I say?” I pressed the heel of my hand to my forehead. I felt like tearing out my hair. I’d half-hoped Alan would appear at the library that day. When he hadn’t, I hadn’t known whether to be disappointed or relieved. “I don’t want the old Alan back either.”

  “It’s a problem,” said Erica. She lowered her voice and intoned, “The Two Faces of Alan.”

  I sighed — and changed the subject. I was getting good at changing the subject these days. We talked about movies until we reached Erica’s house.

  She slammed the door behind her and shouted, “HEY! IT’S ME! ANYBODY HOME?”

  Nobody answered.

  The only sound was of clocks ticking.

  “Good,” said Erica, relief in her voice. “Come on.” She led the way to her bedroom, dumped her books on her bed, and turned to face me. “Remember when you said you’d help me find the names of my birth parents?”

  I nodded.

  “You meant it?”

  “Of course I meant it,” I said. “I don’t say things I don’t mean.”

  Erica smiled, but she looked tense. “Good,” she said. “This is the deal. After all that Web searching and research, I realized that I was wasting my time.”


  “You’re going to talk to your parents again?” I suggested hopefully.

  “No! I’m going to do some research right here at home. The day before yesterday I told my mom we should check my passport to see when it expires. She got it out of the little vault in the bedroom closet, and when she did, I saw some papers in there. One of them could be it, Claudia!”

  “It?” I was bewildered.

  “My birth certificate! With my birth parents’ names on it. Anyway, I know the combination for the safe.”

  I gave Erica a look of awe and respect. I would never have thought of doing something like that.

  My respect changed to uneasiness, however, when Erica went on to explain that she wanted me to help her open the safe and go through the contents. “You want me to be a … safecracker?” I asked.

  “We’re not breaking into it. I have the combination. No one will ever know,” Erica said.

  “Your parents will when you suddenly have the names of your birth parents,” I pointed out.

  “Maybe I won’t tell them. I mean, this is for me. I don’t have to tell my parents,” Erica argued. “And you said you’d help. I’ll open the safe. I just want you to be here, listen for someone coming home. That’s all. Please.”

  I had promised. What could I do? “Okay,” I said. “Come on, then. Let’s get this over with.”

  “Thanks, Claudia.” Erica wasted no time. A minute later we were crouched in her mother’s closet, looking at a small gray safe squatting in the back. Erica produced a flashlight from her parents’ bedside table, and I held it while she twirled the dial of the safe. I didn’t look at the combination — not that I would have remembered the numbers anyway.

  The door opened and we both bent forward. Erica lifted out a small box and opened it. Jewelry. She put it back inside, moved an envelope that said LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT and pulled another, larger box forward. Raising the lid, she peered inside.

  At that moment, I was sure I heard a car pulling into the driveway. I leaped up and raced to the window, forgetting the flashlight in my hand and leaving Erica in the closet in the dark.

  “Hey!” she protested.

  “I thought I heard something!” I whispered. But when I peered around the edge of the curtains, all I saw was an empty driveway.