Switched at Birthday

  “Mom, I don’t have time to change my makeup now,” I said. “I’ll be late. Besides, green is the cool color.”

  “All the Plastic People are wearing it,” Ben said.

  Mom pressed the taupe shadow into my hand. “You can fix it in the bathroom when you get to school. Ben, you can keep your opinions to yourself. The last thing my daughter needs is to follow your fashion advice.” She looked disapprovingly at his jeans, which he’d worn for something like thirty days in a row.

  “Whatever you say, Boss Lady.” Ben saluted her and clicked his heels.

  “Steve, what did I tell you about the way he talks to me?” Mom said.

  “Ben, cool it,” Steve said.

  “I’m a rebel,” Ben said. “You can’t keep us rebels down.”

  A rebel. Please. “What are you rebelling against?” I asked.

  He smiled. “Anything you throw my way.”

  It was a big house, but somehow when we were all in the same place it felt tiny.

  I felt better once I got to school. I loved school. I knew how to work it. School was my world.

  I turned down the eighth-grade hall. Zoe and Kelsey were whispering to each other. When she saw me, Zoe stopped talking and flashed me a big smile. They’d been doing a lot of whispering lately. Probably planning a big birthday surprise for me.

  Zoe ran up to me and shouted, “Happy Birthday! Happy Birthday! You’re finally one of us!” She gave me a big hug and we jumped up and down and screamed, “Teenagers! Teenagers!”

  A small crowd waited for me at my locker. The whole posse, and even a few boys, like Ian Colburn, who Zoe liked, and Charlie Scott.

  I kind of had a crush on Charlie. Zoe said he was beneath me. NOK: Not Our Kind. But I really REALLY liked him. What got me was the way he hid behind his hair. He was shy. But if you said the right thing to him, he came out and gave you this big smile. It didn’t happen that often, but it happened. It was like the sun coming out from behind a cloud.

  Charlie gave me a bunch of flowers. Bright blue carnations. I sniffed them. They had no smell. But they were the most beautiful flowers I’d ever seen.

  “Carnations,” Zoe whispered to me. “So cheap. They sell them at the gas station!”

  I didn’t care. Charlie had remembered my birthday.

  “What’s everybody doing this afternoon?” Zoe asked. “Want to come over to my house and hang out for a while?” She aimed this right at Ian.

  “Can’t,” Ian said. “Soccer practice.”

  I had soccer practice too. “What about after practice,” I said. “What are you doing, Charlie?”

  “I’m trying out for the musical,” Charlie replied. “There’s a big meeting about the auditions after school today.”

  The musical. Charlie was so talented he was sure to get a part. If Charlie played the boy lead and I played the girl lead, I’d get to kiss him in rehearsal every day for weeks. Just about the only thing I knew about musicals was that people were always kissing in them.

  I decided then and there. “I’m going to try out too,” I said.

  “Scarlet, to be in a musical you have to sing,” Kelsey said.

  “I know that,” I said.

  “I’m just trying to be helpful.” Kelsey pushed a present into my hand. “Here, open mine.”

  I got so many presents I was swimming in wrapping paper. Zoe saved hers for last. She’d filled my iPod with songs I didn’t know and got me a new alligator case.

  “Thanks, Zo,” I said. My taste in music was kind of grandma — Zoe always teased me about it, so she liked to give me new songs.

  I heard a snort and glanced across the hall. Lavender Schmitz and her friend Maybelle and this guy John Obrycki were watching us.

  Lavender and I had the same birthday. It kind of challenged my belief in astrology. No two people could’ve been more different than me and Lavender.

  “Looks like Lavender hasn’t been to the dog groomer for a while,” Zoe whispered. “Wonder when her next appointment is? She could really use a trim.”

  “Maybe she can get the groomer to put one of those little puff balls on top of her head,” Kelsey added. “Like poodles have?”

  “You guys …” I said. The dog groomer joke was getting old.

  I watched Lavender and her friends for a second while I listened to my iPod. John Obrycki made a star out of paper and gave it to Lavender. The star was so pretty. It must be like magic, I thought, to be able to make something out of nothing that way.

  A tiny voice in my head said, Lavender is lucky.

  What a strange thing to think. I was sure I didn’t mean it. I was lucky. Lavender wasn’t lucky at all. She was just about the unluckiest person I knew.

  Before soccer practice I went to the auditorium for the musical meeting. I wasn’t sure what drew me there, really. It wasn’t only the chance to kiss Charlie, or even all the attention I’d get if I scored a lead role. It was something else, something stronger, but mysterious.

  Mr. Brummel talked about the magic of the theater. He taught us this rhyme to say when you wanted a part with all your heart — like a spell you could cast. He said that when you’re onstage you get to be someone else. Like a vacation from yourself.

  Maybe that was what attracted me to the play. I liked being myself, but sometimes I was curious to see what it would be like to have a different life. A princess, or a movie star, or … anyone.

  Little did I know, I was about to find out.

  “Happy birthday, Lavender Blue,” my mother sang at the Special Birthday Dinner in the kitchen that night. She kissed me on the cheek.

  She named me Lavender and my sister Rosemary after an old song based on a nursery rhyme, “Lavender Blue and Rosemary Green.” I wished she’d made my middle name Blue instead of Myrtle.

  “Thirteen years old,” Dad said. “Yeesh. Do you wear a bra yet?”

  Rosemary laughed.

  For the record, I had a bra but I didn’t really need one. I only wore it on special occasions. So far, an occasion special enough hadn’t come up.

  “Frank, you don’t ask a young lady questions like that,” Mom said.

  “Even if she’s your daughter?” Dad said. “Even if you changed her diapers hundreds of times?”

  “I’m sorry you had to change my diapers, Dad, okay?” I said. “Can you let it go? Am I going to have to hear about diapers for the rest of my life?”

  “When you have kids of your own you can tease them as much as you want,” Dad said. “Take out your frustration with me on them. That’s how it works.”

  “Frank,” Mom scolded. “Don’t listen to him, Lavender.” She picked up a strand of my hair, then let it drop and wiped her hand on her jeans, as if she’d just touched toxic slime. “Oh, Lav, aren’t you going to wash your hair today? It’s your birthday.”

  “I know it’s my birthday,” I said. “That means I get to do what I want. And I don’t want to wash my hair.”

  “But it’s so dirty.” Mom wouldn’t let it go. “You have to pay attention to these things now that you’re growing up.”

  I liked being clean as much as anybody. I just didn’t always feel like washing my hair. I had better things to do. Like sing along with my records. Or stare into space. And what difference did it make, anyway? Nobody noticed me, except to be mean to me. If I had clean hair, would everybody suddenly start throwing rose petals in my path?

  I didn’t think so.

  “Anyway,” I said, “it’s just us here in the kitchen. What do you care if my hair is clean or not?”

  “I care,” Rosemary said. “I lose my appetite looking at your icky hair.”

  “Oh dear, we wouldn’t want that, would we?” Rosemary was ten and in no danger of starving to death.

  “Rosemary will lose her baby fat when she gets her growth spurt,” Mom said. That’s what she always said. I was still waiting for my famous growth spurt.

  Rosemary was like a littler, blonder version of me. Her glasses made her watery blue eyes look h
uge. She was always sniffling, a habit even I had been spared.

  “Time for presents!” Dad said, changing the subject. He was a big fan of subject-changing.

  First came Rosemary’s present. She always gave me something she’d made at school. I opened it.

  An ashtray.

  Why did Rosemary’s art teacher keep teaching kids how to make ashtrays? I didn’t smoke. Nobody in my family smoked. But Rosemary brought home enough ashtrays to furnish a tobacco shop.

  “It’s a ukulele pick holder,” Rosemary explained.

  “Thank you, Rosemary,” I said. I appreciated her explanation — it was the most creative part of the gift.

  “Now open ours.” Dad set a square box in front of me, nicely wrapped. It could’ve been anything — anything except what I’d asked for, which was the complete boxed set of the late, great Hawaiian music master Don Ho’s classic LP records. This box was too small for records, and too light.

  I opened the present. Inside was a brown leather purse with a long shoulder strap and lots of buckles.

  I looked at Mom and Dad. They were staring at me with wide eyes. Expecting me to love it.

  Mom’s eyes narrowed a bit. “Do you like it? It’s from that store Maroc, on Thirty-Sixth Street. I asked around and found out all the girls shop there.”

  This was news to me. I wasn’t much of a shopper.

  “We picked it out together,” Dad said.

  “It’s — it’s —” I said.

  Dad gave up and reached for another hamburger. “She hates it. Why do we even bother? She doesn’t appreciate anything we do for her.”

  “That’s not true,” I said. “I just don’t understand why you would buy this for me. I told you what I wanted. The complete boxed set of Don Ho. They have it at Lionel’s Vinyl, and it probably costs a lot less than this purse.” Lionel’s Vinyl was a record shop in my neighborhood. I’d found an old record player in the attic — it used to belong to my dad — and went into Lionel’s to buy records to play on it. I liked their scratchy sound.

  “The price isn’t the point,” Mom said. “We wanted to get you something to show that we realize you’re growing up. A young lady’s present.”

  “But I’m not a young lady,” I protested. “And I don’t want to be.”

  Dad dropped his hamburger. “You’re going to be whether you like it or not,” he said. “You think I want to be a fat middle-aged man? No. But did anyone ask me? No. It’s not up to me.”

  “Fine,” I said. “But why do I have to be a young lady who carries a purse? Why can’t I be a young lady who listens to Don Ho?”

  “I didn’t want to get you more records,” Mom said. “You have too many already. And you spend too much time alone in your room. You need to get out more. Go to parties. See your friends. And when you go out, you’ll need a purse.”

  This was great. My mother wanted me to get out of my room and go to parties.

  “If you wanted me to be so social, why did you name me Lavender Schmitz?” I said. “Do you think ‘Lav’ is a girl who goes to parties carrying a purse?”

  “I don’t see what that has to do with anything,” Mom said.

  “How can you not see?” I cried. “I’m not asking for much. I’m not asking for a cute popular-girl name like Summer or Isabella. What’s wrong with Jane? Or Kate? Or Sarah? Anything but Lavender!”

  Mom looked like she was about to cry. I felt bad. Really bad. But I couldn’t stop myself. It was as if my mouth had a personality of its own, completely independent from the rest of me, which, deep down, didn’t want to hurt anyone.

  “Maybe if you were nicer to people, you’d have more friends,” Rosemary said.

  “How would you know?” I snapped at her.

  Dad slapped the table. “Can we get some cake here or what?”

  The cake was a store-bought devil’s food with pink frosting and an orange wax candle shaped like the number thirteen. I loved devil’s food but the candle was really ugly.

  Dad got up and lit the candle. “I tried to get a lavender candle,” Mom said quietly. “Or even blue. But orange was all they had. Because Halloween’s coming up, I guess.”

  They sang “Happy Birthday” and set the glowing cake in front of me. I felt like dropping my whole head on top of the cake and smashing it. But that only would have made things worse.

  “Make a wish,” Mom said.

  I wish I were a totally different person, I thought. I remembered what Mr. Brummel had said that day, about how an actor could transform herself like magic. And for some reason Scarlet Martinez popped into my mind.

  Scarlet backward was Telracs.

  Telracs Telracs Telracs.

  Scarlet Scarlet Scarlet.

  The words came to me by themselves, swirling around the image of Scarlet…. Scarlet laughing, surrounded by friends and presents, so graceful and so happy …

  “Hurry up and wish, Lav,” Rosemary said. “The candle is melting all over the cake.”

  I wish I were a totally different person. With a totally different life.

  And I blew out the candle.

  When I got home from school, the house was dark and empty. I started turning on the lights. Where was everybody? Maybe they were planning a surprise party for me. The doorbell would ring and all my friends would pour in, or I’d walk into the den and everybody would jump out and yell “Surprise!”

  When I turned six, and Mom was still married to Dad, my real dad, they surprised me with a tea party for all my favorite dolls and stuffed animals. Zoe was there too. Mom and Dad sat down with me and Zoe and our dolls and we ate cake and drank ginger ale out of the tea set they gave me.

  I was remembering that long-ago birthday while I walked from room to room, turning on the lights. I knew that when Steve got home he’d complain that I was wasting electricity, but I didn’t care. It was my birthday and I didn’t want to be all alone in a dark house.

  I took a vase off the coffee table and filled it with water for Charlie’s flowers. I heard the car pull into the driveway. Mom and Steve were home from their tennis match.

  “It’s the birthday girl!” Mom kissed me, smearing red lipstick all over my cheek.

  “Who turned on all the lights?” Steve asked. He didn’t wait for an answer, just went from room to room flicking them off, except for the kitchen, where Mom and I were sitting on stools.

  “I’m hungry,” I said. “What are we having for dinner? Fettuccine Alfredo?” I loved fettuccine Alfredo, but Mom said it was so fattening we could only have it once a year, on my birthday.

  “You can have anything you want,” Mom said. “We’re going out to dinner for your birthday.”

  “We are? Where?”

  “The Charter House,” Steve said. “One of my clients has just invested in it.” Steve did some kind of work that involved clients and money. “It’s a special occasion place — and this is a special occasion.”

  “You like the Charter House, don’t you, Scarlet?” Mom asked.

  I liked it okay. It was super fancy and super … stiff. The last time we’d gone there was after Steve’s uncle’s funeral.

  “I don’t mind,” I said.

  It wasn’t like I had a choice.

  I didn’t need to worry about anyone singing “Happy Birthday” to me at the Charter House. It wasn’t a singing kind of place. It was very hushed and fancy. Everything gleamed: the candles and the silver, the buttons on the jackets of the waiters and the wine stewards. They didn’t have fettuccine Alfredo on the menu, so I ordered lobster. Lobster was good too.

  “Look at these prices,” Steve said. “This place is practically a license to print money.”

  “Money, money, money …” Ben muttered.

  Mom held the menu close to her face, then far away, staring at it. She’d been having trouble reading in dim light, I’d noticed.

  “I’ll read it to you if you want, Mom,” I offered. I had perfect eyesight. Actually, better than perfect. Mom always said we were lucky we didn
’t need glasses.

  Steve put his arm over Mom’s shoulders. “Don’t you think it’s time to get some reading glasses?”

  Mom sat back in her chair and stretched herself tall. “Are you saying I’m old?”

  “No! I didn’t say anything about anyone being old,” Steve said. “I’m just trying to be practical. Besides, I bet you’ll look great in glasses.”

  Mom glared at the menu. “I can read just fine without them.” Then she stood up. “Excuse me. I’ll be right back.” She went to the ladies’ room. She was big on going to the ladies’ room.

  Steve shook his head. “Your mother’s too sensitive. Did I say she was old? Did I?”

  Ben turned to me. “What about you, Princess P.? Going to get all touchy now that you’re the big One-Three?”

  “I’m not touchy.” He annoyed me, but that didn’t mean I was touchy.

  “Go easy on her, Ben,” Steve said. “Girls her age start to go a little nutsy.”

  When Mom came back from the bathroom, she had more lipstick on and her hair was poofed up higher. The waiter brought our entrées. He cracked open my lobster for me so I wouldn’t get all messy.

  “What’s your week look like, Ben?” Steve asked.

  “Skullmuncher 7 comes out Friday,” Ben said. “Vartek and I are going straight from school to stand in line for it at GameMaster.”

  Vartek was the loser Ben had somehow convinced to be his friend. “What’s Skullmuncher 7?” I asked.

  “It’s only the greatest game in human history,” Ben said.

  “Those game companies make a fortune,” Steve said.

  “I don’t care about that, Dad,” Ben said. “I like Skullmuncher because it’s sick.”

  “It certainly sounds sick.” Mom frowned in disapproval.

  “Sick means good,” Ben explained.

  “I knew that,” Mom said. She totally did not.

  “Ben, don’t look down your nose at money,” Steve said. “If I didn’t work hard to earn money, you wouldn’t be able to afford to buy your games.”