What had just happened?
DELUXE LASAGNA. PEAS. SWEDISH MEATBALLS.
The hot-lunch special didn’t sound too bad.
But it looked disgusting.
It was the salad bar for me.
I scanned the room for familiar faces but quickly realized that finding a seat in the lunchroom today would be difficult.
It used to be so easy. The BSC members always sat together at the same table. We’d gab, eat, and gossip.
Those were the days. Now it seemed like our problems with school or teachers or other kids didn’t even compare to our own problems. It wasn’t us against them anymore. It was us against us.
I peeked at the salad fixings. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw where Stacey and Jeremy had taken their seats. She was talking and he was listening. Or at least he was pretending to listen. He didn’t look very interested from where I was watching. Or maybe I just wished that were true. After all, he wouldn’t have been sitting there if he didn’t like her.
I moved over to the dessert table and scanned the selections. A few seconds later, just as I glanced over to see how things were going with Stacey and Jeremy, Rachel Griffin sat down at their table.
Rachel Griffin? Now, that was interesting. What were they talking about over there? Rachel used to be a major pain in the neck, very clingy but always acting superior. She moved to London with her parents a few years ago and most of us lost touch with her. But recently the Griffins returned to Stoneybrook, and Rachel came back to SMS.
Whatever.
I wasn’t planning on hanging out with her anytime soon.
I looked off in the direction of the BSC table. Kristy and Mary Anne were there with Abby (who I hadn’t seen in awhile). But they didn’t notice me, so I didn’t call out to them.
For the first time in a long time, I didn’t know where I fit in.
I was about to sit down at a table by myself (which is a last resort, believe me), when I saw a familiar face on the other side of the room. Erica was waving to me. I hurried to sit with my new friend.
“Another great outfit, Claudia,” she said as I slipped into my seat.
I took an enormous bite of a cookie.
“Nutrition will get you everywhere,” she teased.
“I pick chocolate chips over lettuce any day of the week,” I said. I grinned.
Somehow, I suddenly felt that everything was okay in the world … sitting here with Erica instead of with my BSC friends or Jeremy. I felt it in my bones.
Erica and I traded stories about the day so far. Her class had begun dissecting frogs in science lab, and she said that some boy had puked on the lab table.
“That guy over there,” she said, pointing to Wellner Wallace. “What a geek. I think it was the formaldehyde smell that got to him, actually.”
I turned to look at Wellner but caught another glimpse of Stacey and Jeremy instead. And Stacey wasn’t talking. She was staring. At Erica and me.
Hmmm. Maybe she was jealous for a change. Stacey wasn’t the only one with a new friend.
We chatted and ate, then suddenly I had a brilliant idea.
“Hey, Erica, want to go shopping this weekend?”
“Shopping? Well, I’m not really much of a shopper.”
“But it’s almost the holidays. A weekend trip to the mall is essential.”
“Well, okay, I guess so. But I’ll only go shopping under one condition.”
“What? Anything!”
“No expectations. I’m not the easiest shopper in the galaxy. So I’m apologizing in advance, okay?”
“Don’t apologize. It’ll be great! We can go to Artist’s Exchange. I need some materials for a centerpiece I’m making. I’m building a scene of the first Thanksgiving table.”
“Sounds historical.”
Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrang!
The first lunch bell rang, so we walked to the kitchen to turn in our trays and plates.
“I’ll call you tonight, Claudia, okay?”
Erica went off to study hall and I headed toward my locker.
If someone had taken a Polaroid photo of me then, he or she would have captured a look of happiness. I was going to the Washington Mall with my new friend. Things were looking up. No more bad omens. The Kishi curse had been lifted.
Brrrrrrrriiiiiiiing!
The second lunch bell rang — and I was running late.
I shoved the next period’s books into my back-pack, slammed my locker, and whirled around. There was Stacey. She ignored me.
Weird.
And there was Jeremy … where else? Behind her.
He raised his eyebrows.
“What can I say?” he said. “Hello again.”
As I watched them walk away, Jeremy turned back to glance at me.
Stacey didn’t see him do that.
“What are you wearing?” Janine sniffled and coughed. “It looks like you did your hair in the dark.”
Janine always knows just the right thing to say.
She was commenting on my new hairdo (little ponytails all over my head — I saw it in a magazine) and my oversized angora sweater, which I’d purchased with Mom at a tag sale in the neighborhood. It was blue and furry and I loved it. Mom said it was from the fifties.
Sometimes I let Janine’s comments bother me, but today she wasn’t going to make me feel bad.
I, Claudia Kishi, was on my way to an excellent mall excursion. And I was, of course, wearing an excellent mall outfit. I wondered what Erica was planning to wear.
I haven’t always loved shopping this much. Not until I met Stacey. She and I used to go to the mall together all the time. But now that Stacey and I weren’t going anywhere together, it felt great to have another friend to do things with.
I told Erica to meet me at the fountain in the center of the mall. It’s the perfect meeting spot. And there’s this incredible pink water (I think it’s a lighting trick) that shoots up into the air.
I arrived a little late, but Erica was perched on a bench, waiting.
She grinned when she saw me and my sweater and my hairdo.
“Claudia Lynn Kishi, the fashion queen!”
“Hello!” I said, laughing, and pulled her off the bench. We had things to do, people to see, places to go.
First stop: Flashbox. Official home of punk clothes and trendy things. It sounds a little “out there,” but it isn’t at all. Besides, Stacey shops there all the time. This summer they added a whole section devoted to affordable (and cool) jewelry. I just had to check it out with Erica. A promising fashion queen needed just the right jewelry, I announced.
“But I really don’t wear jewelry, Claudia,” Erica moaned as I led her to a wall of earrings.
Flashbox has everything wild you could ever want to wear. Stacey once bought sparkly lens-less glasses. They sell mood rings, wire bracelets, giant hair clips, daisy barrettes, little mesh bags, fake leopard purses, and removable tattoos.
Erica wandered around one of the spinning carousels with anklets and chokers hanging on it. I pulled off a necklace for her. It was made from colored beads that spelled out PEACE. Stacey would have loved a necklace like this.
“I don’t really like this kind of jewelry, Claudia,” Erica told me. “I definitely don’t want to wear a word around my neck.”
What about making a statement? Obviously, no one had ever shown Erica the simple joys of shopping for accessories. That’s where I came in. I had a responsibility.
“How about these?” I asked, holding up a pair of plain silver hoops.
She shook her head no.
“Moonstones?” I asked, holding up another, simpler beaded necklace.
She shook her head again.
“Then what, Erica? Hair combs?”
“I have short hair, Claudia.”
I crossed to a shelf on one side of the store and reached for a diary/datebook that was marked down. It was covered with blue furry material.
“How about this?” I asked. “You don’t have to wear it,
but it’s fun.”
Erica laughed. “Ha! Claudia, it matches your sweater!”
She was right. Hmmm. I had to keep searching for something that would be right for Erica and only for Erica.
“Claud, let’s go somewhere else,” Erica said softly, and headed for the exit.
I bounded after her. “Okay! How about Macy’s?”
“Too many people. Department stores make me nauseous.”
“Nauseous? Okay, then let’s go to Artist’s Exchange. It’ll be nice and quiet.”
An elevator at the Washington Mall is like an amusement park ride. It’s glass enclosed so you can see everything on the way up and down. We got on with a mother and her little boy, who kept pressing his nose to the glass and squealing.
“This place is like magic,” Erica said, pressing her own nose to the glass as well. “They have Christmas decorations up everywhere! And look at all the people. And the stores. Everything is sparkling like they just sprayed a gallon of Windex on the mirrors.”
The doors opened and we moved quickly toward the art supply shop. I pulled out my shopping list and asked the clerk to point me in the direction of crepe paper.
While I debated for a long five minutes about which shade of orange crepe paper I wanted to purchase, Erica collected a bunch of items she thought I might like for the centerpiece.
First she handed me a tube of gold glitter glue and a package of different-colored feathers. “Claudia, you can make a disco turkey with these. It can dance to rock and roll music. How about some Plymouth rock and roll?”
“Ha-ha-ha.” I pretended to be disgusted with her goofy joke, but I was laughing.
She passed me a pack of colored foil papers and an origami kit.
“Hey, since your family is Japanese, why not make origami turkeys?”
What a cool idea, I thought, reading the directions on the origami package. It sounded a little challenging, but I’d give it a try. I could fold small birds for everyone’s place setting.
Wow. When we were in Flashbox, Erica seemed so uninterested in anything I had to say or wanted to show her. But now, in the art supply shop, she was darting around, grabbing objects and putting them together in combinations that really worked — artistically speaking, that is. I’d had no idea that Erica was so creative.
Erica Blumberg was my new creative friend.
“Are you hungry?” I asked as we paid for the paper and glitter and walked out into the mall again. “Want to hit the food court?”
“Mmmmmmn. D’oh-nuts!” she said, grunting in her finest Homer Simpson imitation.
I jumped in with my impression. “Mmmmmn. Tah-cos. D’oh!”
We agreed that Mexican food sounded the yummiest, so we headed for Tortilla Queen.
Erica ordered a taco and a large Diet Coke. I ordered a taco too, with extra, extra cheese, and a grape soda.
“Oh, before I forget to tell you!” I said when we were seated. “Mrs. Pike called to ask if we would baby-sit again this Monday. It seems that Jordan has developed a little bit of a crush on —”
Erica interrupted with, “Little ol’ me?”
I chuckled and bit into my taco. “So can you do it?”
“Totally. I loved baby-sitting this week.”
“Baby-sitting is soooo much better when you have a partner. That’s what Stacey and I’ve always said.”
Erica wiped salsa from the corners of her mouth. “You and Stacey always baby-sat together?”
“A lot. But right now that’s just about the last thing in the world I would want to do.”
“What’s happening with Jeremy and Stacey?”
“Now, that’s weird too. I keep running into him at school. Like our paths are meant to cross. I feel funny about it. Isn’t that stupid?”
“Why not? Maybe he likes you, Claudia. Maybe Stacey is old news.”
“What?”
“Claudia, Jeremy wouldn’t talk to you if he wasn’t interested in you.”
“Yeah, but we’re just talking like friends. I mean, he and Stacey are still a couple.”
Erica considered this. Then she said, “Well, you and Stacey will make up, I know you will. It’ll just take some time.”
I leaned on one elbow and sighed. “I actually used to feel that Stacey was more like a sister than a friend. She’s more like a sister than my own sister is, anyway. I mean, Janine’s not so bad. It’s just that Stacey and I had a lot more in common.”
I felt that I could tell Erica anything at that moment. There we were, in the middle of the hustle and bustle of Washington Mall, and I was spilling my secrets to someone I had really only just started to know.
But I trusted her.
I asked her if she had any secrets to share too. It was like we were playing truth or dare, without the dare.
She thought for a moment, then nodded. “But it isn’t really a secret…. I was adopted.”
“Really?”
Erica was taken aback by my reaction. “You say that like I have some kind of disease or something.”
“Oh, noooooooo!” I recovered quickly. “What I mean is … Well, if you knew me better … See, I had this adoption thing a little while ago. I thought that maybe I was adopted … and I thought about it all the time. I didn’t mean anything bad by what I said.”
“Were you adopted?”
“No. But I imagined it. For two weeks. It’s just that I don’t look like my sister or anyone else in the family.”
“Well, I don’t look like anyone in my family either. And I’m grateful, because my brother is a little troll!”
We laughed.
“Erica, when did you find out?”
“I’ve always known. For as long as I can remember. My parents adopted me right after I was born. I was three weeks old, actually.”
“So your parents told you everything about it?”
“They told me a lot. They arranged my adoption through an agency. It was when my parents thought they couldn’t have kids.”
I nodded.
“But then later my mom got pregnant. My brother is my parents’ biological child.”
“Do you know who your biological parents are?”
Erica shifted in her seat. “That’s where things get sticky.”
“Sticky?”
“Lately I’ve been talking with my mom and dad about searching for my birth parents. Because I do want to find out who they are. But Mom and Dad aren’t comfortable with that idea.”
“How come?”
Erica paused thoughtfully. “Claudia, my parents let me do whatever I want. They trust me. But right now I think they’re trying to protect me. My mom doesn’t want me to get hurt or be disappointed by what I find … if I find anything. Like, what if my birth mother isn’t alive? Or what if she doesn’t want to see me? It’s very complicated.”
I suddenly admired Erica’s strength, curiosity, and determination. I wanted some of that for myself.
“And what does your brother think about all this?” I asked.
“Like I said,” Erica responded, “Mike is a troll. But he’s only five. He doesn’t know the difference between biological or adopted or anything else.”
“Why do you want to find your birth parents?” I asked.
“I’m not really sure. It’s just something I feel I need to do. I’m curious.”
We finished our tacos and sodas. I looked at my watch. It was already two o’clock. If we still wanted to hit a few more stores we had to get a move on.
We began to circle the mall again. Erica stopped short in front of Critters, a pet store. A pair of chocolate Labrador puppies wriggled around in the window. One of them was covered with sawdust.
“Puppies!” Erica said, grinning from ear to ear. “Look at how cuuuuuute they are!”
“Do you like animals?” I asked her.
She nodded. “Definitely.”
“Stacey likes animals too. Especially pigs.”
“Stacey likes pigs? Well, they are kind of cute, I guess. But p
uppies are much cuter!”
We walked past the Gap, a coffee bar, a jeweler, and Soundscapes (where I get a lot of my favorite CDs). Then Erica exclaimed, “Look, the Cheese Outlet! Is that all they sell? I bet we’d have a gouda time there!”
I giggled. “Be serious! We’re here to do serious shopping, aren’t we?”
“Claudia, I am brie-ing serious!”
She was out of control. I loved it.
We ducked into a shoe store, a camping store, and then Old Navy before we finally decided we’d better call Mrs. Blumberg to pick us up.
Walking toward the exit, I noticed a new addition to the video game arcade. They’d installed a photo booth.
“Let’s go!” I grabbed Erica’s wrist and pulled her into the arcade.
She started to giggle and then I started to giggle and neither of us could stop.
We put eight quarters into the machine and squished into the tiny booth.
“Say cheese!” Erica cried.
“Cheese?”
We burst into hysterics. The light flashed.
“Grouchy face!” Erica said, pursing her lips.
Flash!
“Kissy face!”
Flash!
“Friends forever!” Erica said, her arm around my shoulders.
The last light flashed and we were still laughing. Friends forever.
The pictures came out great. In one of them, we were laughing so hard we actually look like we’re screaming.
These would definitely be going up in my locker.
On Sunday morning the sun was shining brightly for the first time all week.
It was a good omen (I hoped).
Erica was a great new friend. We’d had a blast at the mall. She made me laugh harder than I’d laughed in a long time. In fact, I’d laughed so much that I’d forgotten about Stacey and Jeremy.
Well, almost. (You can’t expect miracles.)
Erica called me on Sunday morning after breakfast to find out when we were going shopping again.
“You mean you’d actually set foot in Flashbox another time?”
“Well, if you twisted my arm. Who am I to resist fashion counseling from the queen?”
“You’ll be wearing blue furry sweaters before you know it.”
Erica snorted. “That’s what YOU think!”