Dawn on the Coast

  “That’s three,” said Kristy. “Dawn?”

  “Do they have broccoli pizza?” I asked.

  “Ew!” Kristy made a gagging face.

  “It is Dawn’s party,” said Mary Anne. “I think we should do what she wants.”

  Claudia crinkled up her nose.

  “If they do have broccoli, maybe they could put it on only part of the pizza,” she said.

  Claudia was more polite about it, but I think the idea of broccoli pizza was as weird-sounding to Claudia as it was to Kristy. I’m the only member of the club who really likes health food. Everybody else is happier with hamburgers and french fries. Especially Claudia. Claudia takes junk food to the extreme. She keeps her bedroom stocked with Ring Dings and Twinkies. In fact, right then she reached into the knapsack she had brought and pulled out … a handful of Tootsie Roll Pops.

  “Tootsie Pops all around,” she said, passing them out, “and a fruit roll for Dawn.”

  We all sucked on our treats while Kristy finished the pizza order. Half a pie with broccoli (if they had it), half plain, and one whole pie with the works — sausage, mushrooms, onions, peppers, and pepperoni.

  “No anchovies!” everyone voted. For once we were all in agreement.

  The rest of the party was just as crazy as the start. When the pizza was delivered, Sam brought it up to Kristy’s room. He knocked on the door. “Pizza man,” he called in. Kristy let him in and tore open the boxes.

  “What’d they give us? What’d they give us?” she said excitedly. “EW!!!!” Kristy jumped away from the boxes in disgust. We all crowded around to see. There, all over the tops of both pizzas, were worms! … Rubber worms. Sam’s shoulders were shaking with laughter.

  “SA-AM!” Kristy said hotly. We should’ve known Sam would pull something like that. Sam is one of the world’s champion practical jokers. (By the way, underneath all the worms, the pizza place had sent my broccoli.)

  After pizza we wheeled out the television and set up a movie on Kristy’s VCR.

  Kristy had picked out the spookiest movie she could find at the store, Fright Night at Spook Lake. It was all about a ghost who haunts an old lakeside resort house. When Karen heard the VCR on, she knocked on the door and asked if she could join us.

  “Only if you don’t get scared,” said Kristy.

  “Okay,” Karen agreed. She climbed into Kristy’s lap.

  But when the ghost first came on the screen, Karen shrieked. “That’s Ben!” she cried. “That’s exactly what Ben Brewer looks like!”

  “Karen!” Kristy said firmly. “There is nothing to be afraid of. Look at me. Am I afraid? Of course not. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  Just then, in the movie, the resort house got strangely quiet. An eerie light filled the inn’s reception room and a breeze rustled the curtains. A phone rang loudly — Riiiiing! — and at that moment, the real phone right outside Kristy’s room rang, too! We all screamed and jumped a mile. Kristy gulped and looked at us. You could tell her heart was racing, and I think she didn’t know whether to answer the phone or not, but she did.

  “Oh,” she said. “Hi, Nannie.” She heaved a big sigh. “It’s only my grandmother,” she whispered to us. “Phew.”

  When the movie was finished, Kristy’s mom came in to collect Karen and take her off to bed. We stayed up a long time after that. We pushed Kristy’s bed out of the way and put our sleeping bags and bedding in a circle, so that all our heads met in the center. We just talked and laughed about school and about boys. Claudia got some pieces of paper from Kristy’s desk and drew little caricatures of us all. When Jessi posed for hers, she sat on the floor, her legs stretched out on either side of her and her torso folded all the way over so her stomach was flat on the ground.

  “Wow!” said Mary Anne.

  I think by then we were all getting tired, but nobody wanted to admit it. We talked on, but one by one we started to drift off. Only Mary Anne lay wide awake beside me.

  “In two days you’ll be in California,” she whispered to me.

  “Yeah,” I said. I didn’t sound as excited as I thought I would. All of a sudden I was a little nervous about going. I looked around the room. Here I was, with all my best friends — especially Mary Anne.

  It all felt so cozy and homey. It felt like … like a family.

  “You’ll be gone so long,” Mary Anne whispered. “And you’ll have so much fun you won’t even think of us.”

  “Of course I will,” I said. “You’re my friends. Anyway, I’ll be home before you know it.”

  “Well, call whenever you want,” Mary Anne said. “And send me a postcard?” She took my hand and squeezed it.

  “I’ll send you a zillion.” I squeezed her hand back.

  My thoughts were all jumbled as we lay there in the dark. But the thoughts tumbled into dreams, and soon I was fast asleep.

  Long flight was right. Long morning, too. That morning I woke up really early, a half an hour before my alarm. My brain was racing with all the things I needed for my trip: toothbrush, toothpaste, swimsuit, airplane ticket. I even wondered if maybe I had gotten the ticket wrong. Maybe I was supposed to fly out tomorrow, not today. It surprised me that I was so jittery. I’ve flown plenty of times before. But that morning, when my alarm went off, believe me, I was wide awake.

  I could hear Mom in the shower, so I went down to fix myself a quick breakfast. There was granola in the cupboard, but no milk in the refrigerator. I poured myself a bowl and wondered if maybe I could substitute orange juice for milk. I decided to eat it plain.

  Getting Mom to an airport in time is no small task. She thinks you don’t have to get there until five minutes before flight time.

  “They’re always late,” she says. “We’ll just have to sit there.”

  Me, I like to count on an extra forty-five minutes to an hour. What if there’s a traffic jam? And airlines overbook all the time. I could hear Mom singing away in the shower. I decided to knock on the door.

  “In a minute, honey,” she said.

  It seemed like forever to me, but finally we were both showered, dressed, and out of the house. Mom had had her coffee and we had found her keys and I double-checked the things I had stuck in my carry-on bag: a favorite collection of ghost stories (Spirits, Spooks, and Ghostly Tales), some magazines, and some cards to write my friends. Since this wasn’t a night flight, and since I would be on the plane for practically six whole hours, I figured I’d better come aboard with a few things to do.

  On the ride to the airport, Mom let me listen to my radio station and didn’t even ask me to turn it down. She didn’t say an awful lot during the drive. Every once in awhile, she’d pop in with, “You remembered your underwear?” or, “Now don’t forget your manners. ‘Please, thank you.’ … What am I saying? You know how to behave.”

  I think Mom was just nervous. I noticed that as she drove, her fingers kept kneading the steering wheel.

  When we got to the airport, Mom found a spot in short-term parking. Then we went in, checked my suitcase, got me a seat (No Smoking/Window), and went to wait at the gate. I started to feel as choked up as Mom looked. I glanced at her, and she gave a half smile, and then her eyes welled up and over.

  “Are you going to be okay, Mom?” I asked. Now I was beginning to cry.

  “Oh, Dawn,” she said. “I’m all right. I’m fine. You’d think I was sending you to Egypt or something.”

  When it came time for me to board, Mom walked me to the door and gave me a big hug.

  “See you soon,” I said.

  She kissed my cheek. “Right,” she said, awfully quickly.

  I got on the plane and distracted myself with settling in. I wanted to make sure to get myself a pillow and a blanket. I wanted to check out the magazines that were on board — Forbes, Business Week … nothing for me. I guess I was starting to feel a little better because when the Kewpie doll stewardess gave her safety demonstration, I even found myself giggling. But when the plane started to taxi down
the runway, I suddenly thought of Mom. I pictured her back in the parking lot trying to remember where she had parked the car.

  “Row C,” I thought, trying to send her the message. “Row C.”

  The plane took off and tears spilled down my cheeks. I was going to California. And Mom was going to be all alone.

  Well, if it weren’t for that stewardess, I might’ve cried the whole way out. I certainly wouldn’t have had half as much to think about. See, this stewardess was a real strange one. First of all, she looked strange. Something about her hair … or her makeup. Her cheeks had a cakey look, and when she had put on her lipstick, she had drawn it above the natural line of her lips. Also, she painted on her eyelashes. You know, dark little lines painted on her eyelids. The whole effect was pretty weird. Even when you get a makeover at the Washington Mall, you don’t come out looking that strange.

  But worst of all, she was a total spacehead. Now most of the stewardesses I’ve met have been pretty down-to-earth. If you want a Coke, they give you a Coke. But this one I had to practically flag down anytime I wanted anything. The main trouble was, sitting next to me, in the aisle seat, was a very attractive guy. He was sandy-haired, good-looking, and had on a crisp white oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Well, this stewardess practically drooled every time she walked by him.

  “Can I get you anything, sir?” she asked.

  When they came around with the beverage cart, he got an orange juice, and then she wheeled the cart right on! What about me?

  “Excuse me,” I said. “Excuse me.”

  “Excuse me,” the man said. “This young girl didn’t get a beverage.”

  “Oh, she didn’t?” said the stewardess. She would’ve been blinking her eyelashes, only she couldn’t. They were painted on.

  “Tomato juice, please,” I said. That was that.

  Then she came around selling headsets for the music channels and the movie. Once again, the stewardess sold one to Mr. Handsome and ignored me. Once again, Mr. Handsome came to my rescue. When I finally got my headset, he winked at me.

  “Now you know why I always get an aisle seat,” he said.

  Mr. Handsome’s name was actually Tom and he turned out to be not a bad seatmate at all. He was a theater director, he said, and he was flying out to California to audition some actors. Wow! I thought. A theater director! I couldn’t wait to tell Stacey. He and I had a little conversation about Paris Magic (which I hadn’t even seen, just heard about from Stacey), and he wrote down the names of some other shows he thought I might enjoy.

  “Gee, thanks,” I said.

  I tucked the slip of paper into the pocket of my cotton traveling jacket.

  Well, Mr. Handsome (I mean Tom) had some scripts with him that he had to read, so I listened to the music on the headphones and paged through my book and magazines. But I was getting much too excited to do any real reading.

  When it was time for lunch, Tom turned to me and said, “Do you think we’ll have to go to battle for you again?” But lunch, I figured, would be no problem. I had ordered a vegetarian lunch ahead of time. You can do that on airlines if you don’t want to eat the regular food they give you. I’m not a strict vegetarian, but the vegetarian meals on the planes are always much better.

  Anyway, our stewardess had about half the plane to serve before she got to our row.

  “Here you go,” she smiled at Tom.

  “And for the young lady?” he said.

  “I get a vegetarian meal,” I said.

  “No you don’t,” she said flatly.

  “Yes,” I said. “I ordered it when I got my ticket.”

  “Name?” she asked briskly.

  “Dawn Schafer.”

  The stewardess disappeared to the back of the plane and came back with a computer printout. She ran her finger down a list.

  “Schafer, Schafer, Schafer … ,” she said. “Oh. Here you are. Oh, dear.”

  “Is there a problem?” asked Tom.

  “Well,” said the stewardess. “I did have a meal for you, but I gave it away. To that gentleman three rows up. He asked for one and I thought it was his.”

  She handed me a tray with a regular meal. No apology. No question about whether or not I was a strict vegetarian. What if I couldn’t eat meat?

  “Oh, well,” she said. “There’s certainly no way we can get another meal in flight.”

  Tom was looking faintly amused. I peeled back the tinfoil of my airplane lunch. Ew! It looked like the Friday lunch at Stoneybrook Middle School. There was some kind of meat with some kind of sauce on it. Mystery meat, I thought, and there was some soppy cole slaw and this disgusting rubbery Jell-O with globby things inside. There was also a salad (okay, I could eat that). And there was a piece of cornbread that did look more edible than the rest. What a lunch — cornbread and salad. I turned the meat over with my fork and thought about how Kristy would react if this were really a cafeteria lunch.

  “Ew,” she’d probably say. “Fried monkey brains.” (Or something even grosser.)

  Tom offered me his cornbread to help fill me up.

  The rest of the flight was, well … long. Think of it — how often do you have to sit in a cramped seat for six hours straight? The movie was a shoot-’em-up, which filled the time, but not much else.

  The stewardess, though, had one last opportunity to bungle things. After lunch, when she came around with coffee and tea, I asked if I could have a little real milk to put in my tea. (All she had on the tray was packets of that white chemical stuff.)

  “Sure thing,” she smiled, with that too-red smile of hers.

  Minutes passed, many minutes, and again I had to flag her down.

  “My milk, please?” I said.

  “Oh, right.”

  She disappeared, came back, and tossed two of the chemical packets on my tray.

  “There you go,” she said, and she was gone.

  “Do you get the feeling we’re characters in some play?” Tom smiled. “A comedy?”

  But, really, what did I care about “coffee whitener” or mystery meat or even irritating stewardesses? When the flight was over, I’d never see her again. When the flight was over, I’d be landing in my favorite place in the whole world … California!

  The pilot’s voice came over the intercom.

  “We’re preparing to land at the John Wayne/Orange County Airport,” he said. (That’s really what the airport’s called. Honest.)

  The wheels of the plane hit the runway, I felt the power of the plane pulling back, and there I was!

  When I walked off the plane and into the waiting room, my heart was pounding. There were Dad and Jeff on the other side of the guide rope, waiting and waving, both of them with big, gigundo smiles. Behind Jeff another face squeezed through. Sunny! When I got through the crowd, Jeff took my carry-on, and Dad grabbed me up and swung me around.

  “Sunshine!” he said.

  “Oh, Daddy,” I blushed. (I would have to tell him not to call me Sunshine when Sunny was around. It wasn’t just embarrassing, it’d be confusing.)

  While we waited for my suitcase, everyone chattered at once. I told them all about the stewardess. Jeff told me about all the fun they had planned. Dad kept beaming and ruffling my hair. He even started snapping his fingers and singing that old song, “California Girls.” He sure was acting goony.

  “That’s what fathers are for,” he laughed.

  It hit me how much I’d missed him.

  Before we left, we picked up some postcards of the big John Wayne statue that towers over the airport. (I was now in California, all right.) In the car on the way home, Sunny grinned at me and hinted that she had something to tell me.

  “It’s sort of a surprise,” she said, but she wouldn’t tell me any more than that. “Just come over to my house tomorrow night,” she said. “Five o’clock.”

  Sunny always did love surprises. It sounded pretty mysterious to me. I wondered what she had up her sleeve.

  When I woke up that Monday, my fir
st morning back in California, at first I wasn’t sure where I was. The sun was streaming in through the flowered curtains — the same curtains I had had when I lived here before. Maybe I had never left? From down the hall I heard silverware clinking and I also smelled something wonderful. Breakfast! I threw on my bathrobe and padded down the long, cool, tiled hall to the kitchen. There was Mrs. Bruen, the housekeeper Dad had hired. I’d never met her before, but we introduced ourselves.

  Mrs. Bruen was busy organizing breakfast, so I sat at the table and took in the room. Everything seemed so spacious to me, compared to our little house in Connecticut. The rooms were so big, and the windows … Everything was wide open.

  Our California house really is cool. It’s all on one floor, but that one floor is long and wide and snakes around on two sides. The house is really shaped like a square, with only the top side missing. The floors are all tiled with terra cotta and there are slanted skylights in almost all the rooms. Now that Mrs. Bruen was taking care of it, the place was bright and sparkling.

  Pretty soon Dad and Jeff stumbled into the kitchen. I’d forgotten that I’d be up earlier than they would, with the time change and all. Since it was Monday, usually Dad would be going to work, but he’d arranged to take off the first week of my visit, and that day he was taking Jeff and me … to Disneyland!

  “All riiight!” said Jeff.

  Jeff and I have been to Disneyland lots of times before, since it’s right in Anaheim and that’s near where our house is, but believe me, Disneyland is always a treat.

  Mrs. Bruen brought our breakfast over to the table. She’d made fresh melon slices, cheese-and-egg puffs, fresh-squeezed orange juice, and wheat crisps. Yum!

  “Beats a bowl of dry granola,” I said, thinking of my last meal in Connecticut. My mouth was full.

  “What?” asked Dad.

  “Not important,” I smiled.

  “So what do you kids want to see today at Disneyland?” Dad asked. “It’d be nice to have some idea before we hit those lines and crowds.”

  That’s Dad. Mr. Organization.