Addie Bell's Shortcut to Growing Up

  Buttercup finds a tattered tennis ball in the grass (which was probably yellow at some point but now looks like the color of a swamp) and scoops it into her mouth before dropping it at my feet.

  “You’re right,” I say, “I need the distraction.” I pick up the ball, cringing at how slobbery and slimy it feels. I throw it as hard as I can across the lawn. She darts away and is back in an instant, dropping it in front of me again. I throw it and she’s off, but this time she doesn’t come back right away, and when I follow after to figure out what’s taking so long, I spot her standing upright with her paws on the windowsill of the Hideaway, whimpering. That’s when I notice that the window of the playhouse is open. The ball must have landed inside.

  Well, there’s no way I’m going in there after it.

  I walk up to Buttercup and grab her by the collar, pulling her down from the windowsill. “C’mon,” I urge. “Let’s go back inside.”

  She immediately wrenches free from my grasp and jumps back up onto the window, letting out a pathetic little cry.

  “I’m not going in there,” I tell her.

  She turns her head to me and pants, begging with her dark eyes.

  “Just forget it. Let it go! It’s gone, Buttercup. It’s…” My voice shatters and I start sobbing all over again. “It’s gone,” I whisper through my tears.

  I step up to the window and pull her back down again. As I do, I can just make out a sliver of the Hideaway’s interior through the open window. There’s a Summer Crush poster on the wall. It’s dusty and slanted. One of the pushpins probably fell out. It makes me cry even harder.

  Buttercup must sense my distress, because she finally gives up on the ball and jumps down, trotting eagerly to the house.

  “I know what we need,” I say as I follow her. “A Summer Crush marathon. That will definitely make us feel better.”

  I grab my phone and trudge up the stairs to my room. Buttercup jumps on the bed and lies down next to me, ready for the party to begin. I search my phone’s music library, disappointed when I find there’s nothing in here that I recognize. And not a single Summer Crush song.

  “No wonder I’m such a miserable person at age sixteen,” I tell Buttercup. “I don’t have any good songs to cheer me up!”

  I navigate to the music store app and search “Summer Crush.” To my confusion, the only albums that show up are the four I already own.

  Huh. That’s weird.

  Why hasn’t Summer Crush released a single new album in the past four years?

  I click open the Web browser and type their name into a Google search.

  That’s when the final jagged pieces of my already-shattered world come crumbling down around me. That’s when it feels like my life really is over.

  Summer Crush broke up two years ago.

  I lie in my bed and cry for what feels like hours. I watch the YouTube video of me attempting to dodge the marching feet of a hundred musicians over and over and over. It’s up to seven hundred views now. Although to be fair, a bunch of those are mine.

  I suppose I could email YouTube and ask them to take it down. But I find the video strangely fitting. There I am, trying to survive in a jungle that I don’t fit into. Trying to avoid being crushed to death by a world that I don’t understand.

  Grace wants nothing to do with me. Clementine betrayed me. The whole school is ignoring me. My life has fallen apart. And according to the article I read online, after Summer Crush broke up, Berrin released a solo album that everyone hated, Maddox started a line of designer cologne, and Donovan and Cole both ended up on bad reality shows.

  Life can’t get much worse than that.

  The house is so quiet. My parents aren’t home from work yet.

  It’s just me and Buttercup. She lies on my bed like the loyal friend she is. My only friend now.

  When my tears are all dried up, I peer around my bedroom. My new, fancy, sixteen-year-old bedroom with its black-and-white motifs and hot pink accents and framed photographs on the wall. I wonder when I decided to redecorate. I wonder if Clementine helped me pick things out. I wonder how different this room would have been if Grace and I had decorated it together.

  At first glance, it seems like the bedroom of my dreams. With a closet full of amazing clothes and a drawer full of makeup and a reflection in the mirror that embodies everything I’ve always wanted.

  And yet the room feels so terribly empty. It was decorated by a stranger. And now I feel like a foreigner living in it. A trespasser.

  I get up and open my closet door, sighing when I see all the beautiful clothes inside. Cute tops and short skirts and dresses that don’t have glittery marine life on them. And suddenly, all I want is to step into my old closet. To put on my old clothes. All I want is that stupid blue-and-white striped starfish dress.

  I’m about to shut the door again when something sparkly on the top shelf catches my eye. I glance up and my hopes instantly rise.

  La Boîte aux Rêves Cachés.

  I’d almost forgotten all about it! Why didn’t I think of this before? The answer is so easy!

  If locking the wish inside is how I got into this mess, then unlocking the wish should get me out of it.

  Carefully, I pull the box down and carry it over to my bed. With a deep breath, I lift the lid. But it won’t budge. I yank harder. Nothing.

  Then I remember the last thing Mrs. Toodles said to me before I left that night.

  “Be sure to hide the key in the safest place you can think of. If you lose it, your wish will be locked inside the box forever.”

  The key! I need to find that key! I try desperately to recollect the last time I saw it. I distinctly remember leaving it in the lock the night of my twelfth birthday and vowing to find a safe place to hide it the next morning.

  But the next morning I woke up here. In this body. With this life. And a huge gap in my memory.

  Which means, sometime in the past four years, I hid that key.

  But just like with everything else that’s happened in those four years, I have no hope of remembering it.

  With determination, I march into my closet and start tearing everything from the shelves. I search every pocket of every pair of pants and every sweatshirt. I search boxes and bags and old backpacks. I empty every drawer in my nightstand and desk and dresser. I even check all my eye shadow palettes, thinking I might have hidden the key inside one of them.

  By six o’clock, my room looks like it’s been ransacked by the bad guys in a spy movie. And I still don’t have the key. I sit on my bed (which I’ve torn all the sheets and covers from and even flipped the mattress of ) and try to catch my breath. Buttercup left a long time ago, obviously not wanting to get involved. Smart dog.

  I stare at the piles of clothes littering my carpet and consider checking all the pockets again. Then, suddenly, I realize something and slap myself in the forehead.

  Of course the key wouldn’t be in those clothes. I didn’t have those clothes when I was twelve!

  I jump to my feet, grab the jewelry box, and run down the stairs to the basement, where Mom keeps our old stuff. After scouring all the boxes, I finally find one labeled “Addie’s Clothes” and pull it down. It’s heavy, and I nearly fall over from the weight of it. Once I wrestle it to the ground, I rip it open and start pulling out all my old clothes. Jeans that I thought were too childish because they had pink stitching on the back pocket, a sweater I never wore because it had a frilly lace trim, and…

  Oh my gosh!

  I nearly start bawling all over again when I shake out the blue-and-white starfish dress. I hug it to my chest and bury my face in it. It smells old and musty but I don’t care. It’s suddenly the most special thing in the world.

  I check every item of clothing that has a pocket but there’s still no key. And now I’ve just made another mess.

  Where would I have put it?

  “Be sure to hide the key in the safest place you can think of. If you lose it, your wish will be locked inside t
he box forever.”

  I rack my brain, trying to come up with the safest place I would have thought of at age twelve. Which shouldn’t be that hard. I’m technically still twelve now.

  What’s the safest place I can think of?

  A bank? A vault? A secret government compound?

  Gah!

  This is hopeless!

  I leap to my feet and pick up the jewelry box again, staring it down like I’m staring down an enemy in a duel. I try one last time to pry the lid open but it’s like it’s superglued shut. This is so stupid. The thing is hundreds of years old. It shouldn’t be this hard to break open.

  Break open…

  The thought nearly knocks me onto my butt.

  I can’t do that. This is an antique. Mrs. Toodles’s family heirloom. Not to mention, a box with magic powers! I can’t just destroy it.

  But honestly, what choice do I have? I’m running out of options. I have no idea where else I would have hidden that key, just like I have no idea how to pronounce Trigostronomy. Or speak French. Or write text messages in top-secret emoji code. All that knowledge is lost in the giant black hole in my brain.

  For all I know, I could have thrown the key away years ago!

  No. This is my only option.

  With a deep breath, I cradle the jewelry box close to my chest and walk over to my dad’s workbench. I gently set the box down and grab a hammer from the rack on the wall.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Toodles,” I say softly. “I’m sorry, Starlit Lady.”

  Then I close my eyes, raise the hammer back, and send it flying.

  I keep my eyes shut tight, afraid of the carnage that lies before me. When I finally get the courage to open them, I hold my breath.

  The box is still in one piece.

  Actually, it doesn’t appear to have even a single dent in it.

  Did I miss?

  I glance around for something else that might have been smashed with my bad aim, but everything looks exactly as it was.

  That’s weird.

  I inhale a huge breath and try again. This time, I keep my eyes open. I pull the hammer way over my head, gripping it sturdily with both hands. Then I bring it crashing down toward the bench. It’s a direct hit. I actually see it smash straight into the top of the jewelry box.

  And yet, I might as well have brushed it with a feather. La Boîte aux Rêves Cachés doesn’t even have a scratch. Frustration boils inside me. I grab the box and angrily hurl it toward the cement wall. It bounces off like a Ping-Pong ball and lands on the ground, completely unharmed.

  But I do notice a small scuff mark on the wall.

  How is this even possible? Does the box have an ancient spell on it? Is it made from some eighteenth-century indestructible material that I’ve never heard of? Antique jewelry boxes shouldn’t be this durable. There’s got to be a way to bust it open.

  I grab the Box of Hidden Dreams and the starfish dress for good luck and run back upstairs to my room. I plop down in front of my laptop and search:

  “Box of Hidden Dreams Starlit Lady”

  No results.

  I try it in French, checking my spelling in an online French dictionary as I go.

  “La boîte aux rêves cachés dame étoilée”

  Nothing.

  Which, I suppose, makes sense. Mrs. Toodles said it was a secret that’s been passed down for generations. She said no one knew about the jewelry box or its magical powers. But wouldn’t there at least be something about the Starlit Lady? If she was arrested and executed, wouldn’t there be a historical record of that?

  Someone has to know more about this!

  I let out a sudden gasp, close my laptop, and sprint down the stairs, crashing right into my mom, who’s coming in from the garage looking tired and cranky.

  “Whoa!” she says, steadying me by the shoulders. “Where’s the fire?” She studies my face. “Have you been crying?”

  I hastily wipe at my cheeks. “I’m going to see Mrs. Toodles. I have to talk to her.”

  Mom stares at me for a long moment. Her expression changes from confusion to concern.

  “Adeline,” she says, and I don’t miss the way her grip on my shoulders tightens. “Are you okay? Do you have a temperature?” She holds her hand against my forehead.

  I brush it away. “I’m fine. I’m just going to run over there really quickly. I’ll be right back.”

  Mom releases my shoulders and presses her fingertips into her eyelids. When she finally looks at me again, her face is pale and ashen. Like she’s just seen a ghost.

  “I’m worried about you, sweetie,” Mom says. “You’ve been acting so strange lately. Are you getting enough sleep? Are your classes too stressful this semester? Maybe we should—”

  “Mom,” I interrupt impatiently, trying to step past her. “I said, I’m fine.”

  But I don’t get very far. My mom’s hand whips out like a ninja’s and grabs me by the elbow. “Clearly you’re not fine!” she snaps, and I startle at her tone. She sounds stressed and agitated.

  “Adeline,” Mom says, regaining her composure. She gently guides me into the kitchen. For a long time, she just stares at me with that same anxious look in her eyes, and I worry that she’s not going to say anything else.

  That I’ll be waiting the rest of my life for her to finish that sentence.

  Then she says, “Mrs. Toodles died last year.”

  I lie in my bed on Friday morning, unable to get up. I can’t feel my legs. I’m so cold. My whole body is so cold.

  I never got to say goodbye.

  I’ll never see her again.

  That’s why no one answered the door. That’s why there were blinds in the window instead of curtains.

  I never got to say goodbye.

  Well, maybe sixteen-year-old me said goodbye. Maybe sixteen-year-old me went to visit Mrs. Toodles every week just like I used to. But that doesn’t make me feel any better. And somehow I find it hard to believe that’s true.

  Sixteen-year-old me was probably too busy being cool and popular and filming makeup tutorials with her shallow best friend to bother visiting a senile old lady with dementia.

  Mrs. Toodles was probably just another “unimportant” thing to fall off her list.

  “You don’t have to go,” Mom says to me for the third time that morning. She’s sitting on my bed, pushing hair back from my face to check my temperature again. Her frown tells me I still don’t have one and that confuses her. She thinks I’m sick. Like really sick. She thinks that’s why I’ve been acting so weird.

  And who knows? Maybe she’s right. Maybe I am really, really sick.

  Maybe this whole thing has been nothing more than a feverish delusion while I lie in a hospital bed, dying from malaria or smallpox or the plague.

  Maybe none of it is actually happening.

  Wouldn’t that be nice?

  “I’m sure your teachers would understand,” Mom says. “I’ll call the front office. I’ll even call in sick too so I can stay with you.”

  “No,” I tell her, finally finding the strength to push the covers from my body. It’s even colder out there than it is in here. “I have to go. I have to give a presentation in English.”

  Today is the big day, when Grace and I present our nostalgia project to the class, and I won’t abandon her again.

  I roll out of bed and drag myself to the bathroom.

  “Are you sure?” Mom calls after me.

  “I’m one hundred percent positive,” I call back. Then I shut the door.

  I stare into the mirror. That strange, unfamiliar sixteen-year-old reflection stares back at me. Funnily enough, I’m starting to get used to seeing her. She’s starting to feel a bit more normal.

  I don’t know if she’ll ever fully feel like me. But for now, we’re in this together. We have to make it work.

  “You can do this,” I tell myself and the girl in the mirror. “We can do this. You may not look like me and I may not feel like you but we’re all we’ve got now.
So let’s just try to make the most of it, okay?”

  She gives me a weak smile in return. I figure that’s the most I’m going to get right now, but I’ll take it.

  With a reluctant sigh, I turn away from my reflection and start the shower.

  I admit that the idea of facing Clementine again and seeing Jacob Tucker and all those people makes my knees almost give out, but I’m doing this. I’m doing what I should have done four years ago.

  For Grace.

  I pick out something simple to wear: a pair of jeans and a baby-pink T-shirt. I’m sure Clementine would highly disapprove. I’m sure it’s not nearly up to snuff by her standards, but I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. Clementine and I aren’t friends anymore. She doesn’t get to comment on my clothes.

  I brush out my wet hair, tie it into a simple braid over my left shoulder, and skip the makeup drawer, mostly because I’m just too lazy to bother with it. But also because I’m still not sure what I’m doing with all that stuff.

  When I walk into the kitchen, Mom is blending her power smoothie. She’s dressed in one of her smart suits again, obviously having decided to go to work now that I’ve decided to go to school.

  She shuts off the noisy blender when she sees me. “Hi, sweetie. How are you feeling?”

  I shrug. “Fine.”

  It’s a lie. I don’t feel fine. I feel empty and cold and sad. I feel like someone pulled a giant rug right out from under me. Except instead of it being a rug, it was my whole life.

  I collapse into one of the chairs at the kitchen table. “Actually, that’s not true,” I admit, tears threatening to flow again. “I feel horrible.”

  Mom pours her green goo into a glass and comes over to the table. She pulls out the chair next to mine and sits. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  I lift my head and glance out the window into the backyard. From here, I’m just able to see the roof of the Hideaway. It used to be my favorite place in the world. Now it just stands there, abandoned. Left behind to gather dust and memories.