“Granny, I’ve got a problem.”
“What kind of a problem?”
“A Bernice kind of a problem, Granny.”
“You mean that lady friend of your dad’s? He mentioned her in his last phone call. Hoped you’d like her.”
“Yes. I think…” I can hardly say the words. There’s silence on the other end of the phone.
Then, “Oh, dollin’.”
“He wants me to like her so much, and her three daughters, who I can’t stand. Well, one might be okay. But oh, Granny—” My voice cracks. More silence. I can hear Miss Mallow, the chicken, breathing. “Granny, please don’t say I’ll get used to her or I’ll adjust.”
“Why would I say ‘you’ll adjust’? You’re not a car that needs a tune-up. Does your dad say he’s in love with her?”
“No. He says he’s in like with her. He needs companionship.”
“Really?” she murmurs. She takes a deep breath—Granny, not the chicken. “Look, Ryder, there is something he might dare not say or maybe he doesn’t even realize it. But the truth is that it might be too painful for him to fall in love or even in like with someone too much like your mom. It is almost as if he’s let himself be drawn to someone just the opposite, for your mother was beyond compare. And maybe he thinks it would be an insult to her memory to turn to a woman who is just a dim imitation of Andrea Ryder, one of the most creative, loving women to ever grace our planet.”
“Yeah, maybe. But it’s so hard, Granny.”
“I know, chicken, I know.”
I believe she does know. But there isn’t much else to say. I’m not going to adjust. I’m not going to get used to anything. I guess I need to hope. What I really need is magic. I need a major Rory-shazam moment!
I’ve been thinking about what Granny said for days. But the Three Happys barely say a word to me when they are here. Connie hardly speaks to her mom or her sisters. So I guess I shouldn’t be offended. The silence is actually rather peaceful. Peaceful, but lonely.
By the time the party rolls around, I feel like a ghost in my own house. I’m being erased bit by bit.
—
“Oh, sorry! So sorry!” I say to a waiter who nearly knocked me down with a platter of glasses.
“Yikes, sorry!” I say to a man carrying a flower arrangement. He couldn’t see me through the roses.
“Whoops, my fault.” I step out of the way of another waiter. I’m an epic apologizer. In less than five minutes I have apologized eight times to people I don’t even know. I’ve become a speed bump in my own house.
As I go through the kitchen, I peek into the home theater, which has been commandeered by Bernice. She has installed two makeup artists who are applying industrial-strength false eyelashes to the Three Happys. One of the makeup people sees me.
“Is she going to be made up for the party?”
The Three Happys turn and look at me. “No!” they all say. Then Joy narrows her eyes.
“Hey, you! Did you use my brush?”
“No,” I say. “Why would I do that?”
“Well, somebody did who has your hair color.”
Bliss turns to the makeup artist. “Can you put another layer of lashes on me?”
She! Hey, you. I am now officially a pronoun. Would it have killed them to say my name? I already checked the dinner tables. No place card for me. Zip. Zilch. I always thought being invisible would be cool, but not this way.
As I leave the makeup room, I take two cocktail weenies from a waitress’s tray and pop them in my mouth. The waitress doesn’t even notice. She turns and yells, “Hey, where’s the tofu platter?” Tofu must have been Bernice’s idea. Dad’s more of a cocktail weenie type. He and I can plow through two or three dozen easily. Another woman walks by, carrying a platter of mini quiches and mini hamburgers. Who’s coming to this party? Munchkins?
I skip out on the party early. Cassie Simon, the art director at Starlight Studios, watches me sneak out and looks sadder than she did at my birthday party. Sheldon Weckstein, Dad’s lawyer and my friend Eli’s father, looks queasy. Eli looks confused.
Before I head upstairs to my room, I stock up on all the party goodies still left in the kitchen, dodging the obstacle course of health food: tofu kabobs, kale chips, and kale dip? Double yuck.
“What, no kale?” someone pipes up behind me. Connie’s looking at my plate.
“Oh, hi. My mom called kale ‘food with an attitude.’ ”
Connie smiles. A true smile. “Stuck-up food,” she says. “My mom loves kale. She says it’s good for your spirit points.” She pauses. “Whateverrrr!” We laugh, and her amazing black eyes twinkle at me.
Is Connie actually making fun of her mom? Whoa! “You…you took off the false eyelashes.”
“Yeah…they just aren’t me. I kind of feel stupid in them. They were my mom’s idea.”
“Oh,” I say. Poor Connie. My mom never tried to control how I looked. Connie still looks so uncomfortable—the dress, the shoes, the hairstyle. None of it is Connie. It’s almost as if she wants to escape her own skin. Molt like a bird.
—
Back in my bedroom, I take off my Doc Martens, plop on my bed, and turn on my new huge flat-screen 3-D TV that comes down from the ceiling at the touch of a finger. Dad just bought me this TV. It’s a bribe so I’ll like Bernice and her kids. I put on my 3-D glasses. What do you know is playing? Super-Rory-Us.
It’s the same episode I saw with Granny in Deadwood, the one with Rory rescuing the kids from the pirates. I lean forward. There is definitely something strange going on with Rory. Suddenly the screen gets squiggly and—“Shazam!” The word explodes in the room.
Who said that? The music in the program has faded. Rory is sitting on the bottom edge of the screen with her legs dangling a few feet above the carpet. My carpet! Not the deck of a ship! I jump up in shock. This wasn’t in the script!
“Finally! I thought you’d never notice! Ryder, I need help,” she says. I blink. Take off my 3-D glasses, spit on them, rub them with the corner of my comforter, and put them back on.
I blink again. She’s still there and she’s not a cartoon. She is exactly my size. I see the freckle on her thumb. Her nose is different, yes, but she’s…kind of me? Where do I leave off and she begins? She does not look like a cartoon now. If I touched her hand, I would feel skin. If I squeezed it, I would feel bone. But I’m sort of afraid to do this.
Rory leans in my face. “It’s me, Ryder. Yes, I am real. Take off those stupid glasses. You don’t need them.”
I’m shaking, but do as I’m told. She’s carrying a sword and has a crossbow slung across her back. And she can do a lot of damage with her slingshot tucked into her back pocket. “This cannot be happening,” I whisper to myself.
“I’m real, Ryder, and I’m in trouble.”
“How is this happening?” I feel a surge of happiness. Suddenly I know that I’m not alone but…connected.
“Make Magic Happen, Ryder. Does that ring a bell? The motto of Starlight Studios, on everything except maybe the toilet paper.”
The phone rings. Who would call right in the middle of Dad and Bernice’s party? I look at caller ID. Granny Ryder, of course!
“Hello,” I say.
“Ryder, dollin’.”
“Oh, Granny, I’m kind of busy.” I study Rory. Her skin, her clothes, aren’t those cartoony colors at all. More real like mine. Mine are real—duh, I’m human. And so is she. Shazam!!!
“Oh, my stars and garters, I plumb forgot, it’s that party!” Granny exclaims.
“It’s not that. I’m just in my bedroom and…” Rory is now out of the television completely and jumps on the bed. It creaks. She has weight! She might weigh as much as I do. Cartoons don’t have weight. Cartoons aren’t in real life! She’s examining the Rory comforter and the pillows that show her shooting arrows into a starry night.
“Chicken, this will only take a minute, but I’m concerned.”
“About what, Granny?”
/> “Rory.” At that moment I feel a poke in my ribs. A real poke from a real finger into my very real ribs.
“See, what did I tell you?” Rory hisses.
“Hush.” She can’t be real. I grope around for the 3-D glasses.
“It’s not going to help,” Rory says.
“Ryder, dollin’, is someone else there? You sound distracted.”
“No, no one here. Just me—ugh!” I gasp as I feel a kick in my shin. A cartoon kicked me. And it hurt!
“How dare you say no one is here!” Rory is a furious shade of red. The same color I turn when I’m upset. Vermilion, Mom called it.
“I’ll make this quick,” Granny says. “I saw this rather disgusting commercial for a new Rory doll. She looks too grown-up, and they’ve done something funny with her eyes—like false eyelashes—and she’s gotten too skinny in some places and has matured in other places. Maybe you could ask your dad…” There’s silence. “Are you still there?”
“Uh…I guess so….Uh…Sure, Granny, I’ll—I’ll look into it.” That’s what my dad often says on a business call.
“Okay, you do that. Love ya! Bye-bye, dollin’.”
“Bye, Granny.” I set the phone down.
I turn slowly toward the girl sitting next to me on the bed. Behind her, the television has frozen and there’s a Rory-sized blank in mid–sword fight with the pirates.
“It’s stuck,” I say.
“No, Ryder, you’re stuck,” Rory fires back. “The television will go back when I climb back in.”
“It’s a flat-screen.” Dumb! I’m not sure why I said this.
“Doesn’t matter,” Rory says, and sets her mouth in a firm little line. It’s our NE—nonnegotiable expression. “Ryder, I told you, I’m real and I’m in trouble. Until you understand that I’m real, I am not going back into that TV, and I’ll haunt you—flat-screen, Blu-ray, DVD, IMAX theater. The new film, Glo-Rory-Us, will be at that new Starlight Studios IMAX on Hollywood Boulevard.” I can see tears in her eyes. She looks down at the pillow. “They used too much bleach in the wash. Look at this pillowcase. I look all faded and yucky.”
“You know about laundry and bleach?” I ask.
“I know about a lot of things, Ryder. I exist!”
I wanted a major shazam moment, and wow, did I get one.
“Yes!” I say. And throw my arms around Rory and hug her tight. Penny may be in London. And Mom may be gone, but I have a little twinkle of her magic back with Rory here. Let the fun begin!
“Wait! Run that by me one more time. What did you say these things are again?” Rory asks, picking up a midget hamburger.
“Sliders.”
“Why do they call them sliders?”
“I have no idea. But what were you saying—something about a coronation?”
She sighs. Her shoulders slump just the way mine do when I’m sad or about to give up on something.
“The coronation is our situation.”
Our situation? I think.
“The ticking bomb,” she adds. There’s something scary about the way she says this. “Your granny was right. They’re changing me just in time for the coronation at the movie’s premiere,” she adds miserably.
“You can’t be coronated or whatever. You’re not royal. You’re not a princess. Just the thought is enough to make me barf.”
“Barf?” Rory asks.
Hmmm…Some words she doesn’t know.
“Throw up. Puke. Vomit. Mom did not want you to be a princess, or for you to wear tiaras or any of that. This stinks!”
“I knew you’d understand, Ryder. I just knew it.” Rory grabs my hands. Our hands are so much alike. The freckle on our left thumb is how I learned right from left when I was little.
“But why is this happening?” I moan.
“It’s all because of the movie. It’s a whole different script from the TV shows. I get captured and put in the Witch of Wenham’s tower. She’s holding me for ransom.”
“But you fight your way out, right?”
“Not this time.”
“You mean you…die?”
“No, the prince rescues me.”
“Prince Thunderdolt Lowenbrow? That dope? You’re always rescuing him. You gotta be kidding.”
“It gets worse.”
“How much worse can this get?”
“I marry him.”
“You can’t be forced to marry him.”
Rory shakes her head slowly. “Ryder, it’s written in the script. We’re animated characters. Made up. We have no control over our lives.”
“But this is crazy. Marry the prince? Are they nuts? For crying out loud, you’re eleven years old.”
“They’ve kind of sped up my age. In the movie I’m a teenager. They want to appeal to older kids.”
“But I just caught up with you. We’re eleven! And a teenager is still too young to get married.” I remember Dad grumbling over the phone once to someone at Starlight: “Rory is a middle-grade kid. Why do you want her to be older? It doesn’t make sense,” he said.
“And you know what else? No more weapons. I have to carry a wand. My slingshot is a thing of the past.”
“A wand? What the heck are you going to do with a wand? Is it magic?” Rory shakes her head no. “How can you kick butt with a wand that isn’t even magic? And here I wanted Dad to upgrade you to an ax. An ax in combo with your slingshot would make you indestructible. Hey, you could wear a dress or a tiara or anything with an ax—I don’t care what you wear—but you’re not going to be kicking any butt with a wand. But a slingshot plus an ax—elegance, skill, brains, and brawn. A wand! Gimme a break!”
“And wait, the shoes.”
“What? I said a dress is okay but boots are a must.”
“The boots have rhinestones and spike heels.”
“Rory, I know you’re good, but you’re not doing that sword fight balancing on the pirate ship’s rails with spike heels. No way. And if you had an ax, you could have cut the rigging. I mean, without your weapons, how will you ever fight all those thugs in Ecalpon?”
“You’re preaching to the choir here, girl! Everything you say is right.”
My eyes fly open. “Preaching to the choir” was one of Mom’s favorite expressions. It means you’re arguing with someone who already agrees with you. Mom. Tears stream down my face.
“I miss her, Rory. I miss her so much.”
I don’t want to say what I’m thinking, but I sort of wish it had been Mom who stepped out of the television instead of Rory. Maybe heaven has different rules than whatever this is that allows Rory to get out of the television. But I don’t need another me. I need Mom.
Rory puts her arm around my shoulder.
“I know, Ryder. I miss her too.”
We both sit there for a long time listening to the music from the salsa band outside.
“Are you like my sister, Rory?” I finally ask.
“Sort of.”
I know what she means. It’s more like we’re different versions of each other.
“Do you have any pictures of Mom?” she asks. “I mean Andy.”
“You can call her Mom. I mean, she’s like your mom, she made you up.” She nods. I tell her, “I have this scrapbook where I write things down and draw and have photos of her. Wanna see it?”
“Yes,” she says softly.
I get the scrapbook from the shelf above my desk. The first picture is a photograph of Mom in her fifth-grade class at Deadwood Elementary School.
“That’s Mom on the far left.” I have never shown this to anyone else.
I turn the page to one of my drawings: a truck with this goofy creature that’s sort of half dog, half cat.
“Wow, you can really draw just like your mom. That’s cool.”
I look at her. People don’t say “cool” in Ecalpon. Rory is picking up stuff fast.
“Well, you’re better with a slingshot. I did this drawing when I was four. That’s all I drew for about a year—this creature.
I called it a drat, since it was half dog and half cat. I liked having him drive things.” I skip forward a few pages.
“That’s a beautiful portrait of your mom. Did you draw that too?
“Yep. Two weeks before she died. B-but…but,” I start stammering. I always do now when I think about drawing.
“But what?”
“I haven’t really been able to draw since Mom died. My hand sort of freezes up.”
“That’s too bad. What’s that writing under it?”
“A limerick. My dad and I like to write them. We have contests. So this was his about Mom.”
Rory bends over and begins to read it out loud.
“There is a lady named Andy
Who is ever so clever and handy.
She has brains galore
And makes a mean s’more.
As a wife and a mom she’s a dandy.”
I reach for a pencil and begin to cross some of the words out and put in others.
“What are you doing?” Rory asks.
“Wrong tense.”
There once was a lady named Andy
Who was ever so clever and dandy.
She had brains galore
And made a mean s’more.
As a wife and a mom she was dandy.
“Has he written one about Bernice yet?”
“No, but I have.” I turn a few pages. She reads it out loud. We’re giggling after the second line.
“There is a lady named Bernice
Whose face never shows a crease.
She can’t even smile
And is full of guile.
How I wish she would go and decease.”
Someone knocks on the door.
“Ryder, dear?” It’s Bernice! “Want to open the door?”
I hear a little crackle from the television and turn toward Rory, but she’s gone. The frozen frame on the TV has unfrozen. There she is back in Ecalpon, prancing on the rail of the ship and about to do in the pirate. “Say your prayers, Scummy Sam! The sword or the deep?”
What about me? What about my prayers? Rory, come back! I look to the screen. Help! Help me! I cry out silently. Please Shazam?
The door opens. And there is no magic.