Asking for Trouble: 1 (London Confidential) (13 page)

That night I actually paid for a phone call to Jen.

“Savvy!” Jen screamed into the phone before I could even say anything. “I can’t believe you’re
calling
. We just got home from church. Mom, it’s Savvy.” I could hear her turning her head from the phone. “I’m going upstairs.” I heard the
thud
,
thud
,
thud
as she ran to her room, and then a slam as the door shut behind her. “What’s going on? It’s so good to hear your voice.”

“Well, I got the column . . . for now!”

She screamed again. “I knew it. I just knew you would. They’d be crazy to pass you by.”

“Yeah, well, there must be a lot of crazy people here then,” I said. “I’m not exactly overfilling my social calendar. But at least this is a place to start. And . . . if the column is a success,
then
maybe I’ll start filling up those weekends.”

I pictured it now. I’d have to keep a whiteboard in my bedroom with the month on it and a dry-erase pen so I could mark down what I’d be doing on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights. And erase them if something better came up. Which it just might!

“Savvy! Are you zoning out again?” Jen’s voice popped my imaginary bubble and snapped me back to earth.

“Oh, yeah, right, I’m here,” I said. “Anyway, do you think I’ll do okay?”

“Okay? I think you’ll do great. They’ll love you.”

“One minor detail: they won’t know it’s me.” I filled her in on the rest of Jack’s plan.

“Well, they’ll find out eventually. You’re always good at keeping other people’s secrets—you can help out without making people feel stupid. And your writing is great. I think you’ll do fine. Oh, hey, Savvy, Samantha is beeping in. We’re all hanging out at the church today and then we’re going bowling and to pizza. So I gotta go, okay? I’ll be praying. Good luck, Savvy.”

“Okay, bye then.” But she didn’t hear me because she’d already hung up.
Yes,
my heart said.
This time it really, truly is good-bye.

I lived in London now—I’d accepted that. But would London accept me?

“Has anyone seen my blue silk blouse?” Mom called out on Thursday morning.

Uh-oh. The one ruined in the Great Laundry Disaster.
“Wear that salmon-colored one,” I told her. “It’s a better color on you.”

“Really?”

“Really,” I confirmed. Disaster avoided, for the moment. We were skipping school today because it was Thanksgiving—at home. Not that they celebrated it here, but Dad had taken the day off and so did we, and Mom had scared up a turkey from Wexburg Village Butcher’s Shoppe.

I wondered if the paper was being properly delivered. I’d given the staff plenty of warning that I’d miss today, but Jack had forgotten already when I’d reminded him of it at last Tuesday’s staff meeting.

“Hazelle, you can do it. With Rob.” Jack had nodded toward one of the printers. They’d both groaned.

“I’m . . . not really prepared to do that,” Hazelle had said, pushing her coarse brown hair back from her face. What she meant was,
That’s beneath me.
I’d stood there, silent, and looked at the ground.

“Well, then, you’d best get prepared to. Or be prepared to forget about your article on falling A-level scores at the Academy,” Jack had said.

She’d sighed dramatically and pushed her hands deep into the dark brown wool jacket she wore over her uniform. The color really didn’t do much for her. If she’d have accepted my overtures of friendship, I could have suggested something more flattering.

She’d nodded her agreement and then headed toward her desk in the newspaper office. She had to pass by me to get there. She walked around, avoiding me the way you’d maneuver around a sticky spill on the floor. Melissa must have noticed, because she came up and put her arm around me.

“I think it’s fab that you’re taking an American holiday,” she’d said. “And when you get back, would you like to read the outline for my Father Christmas article?”

“Sure!” I’d said. I had the idea that she hadn’t been planning on having me read anything at all before this. I hoped Father Christmas brought her good things in her stocking this year. If he delivered presents to stockings here, that is.

So now it was Thursday afternoon, and the paper presumably had been delivered.

Mom hollered from the kitchen. “I could use a little help down here.”

My dad flipped through the telly channels, trying in vain to find sports. “No football,” he grumbled as I rounded the stairs. “Not even the European kind.”

Louanne was sneaking bits of turkey skin to Giggle. “Hey, that dog’s going to get sick,” I said. “Turkey skin is too rich for him.”

“I’m the dog person around here,” Louanne insisted. “I know what’s best for my dog.”

Giggle/Growl looked at me and curled his lip. How could he possibly know I was putting an end to his treats? But he did. He bared his teeth a little, and I bared mine right back.

That shut him down.

A few minutes later I carried the mashed potatoes to the table and Dad carved the turkey, such that it was. Apparently American turkeys took steroids or British turkeys were underfed, but this looked more like a greedy chicken than a turkey to me. Even so, our turkey had barely fit in our tiny fridge. I thought it was going to pop the door open just like that red stick popped out of a roasted turkey. Seriously, this fridge was about the size of my cousin Kevin’s dorm room fridge.

“Dear, you’ve outdone yourself,” Dad complimented Mom, and she blushed prettily. I looked at Louanne, and she looked back at me and rolled her eyes. While I was glad they were no longer fighting, I wanted to keep the cheese in the meal and not at the table.

We held hands, and Dad prayed.

“Lord Jesus, thank You for this day and for our home and for our family.” I heard Louanne lightly kick his leg under the table.

“And for the dog, too, Lord,” Dad quickly added. “Please help us to find a church family and also some friends, because it’s kind of lonely for us here. But in the loneliness, may we depend more on You. Amen.”

After that, Dad started handing out meat. Louanne, the animal-loving vegetarian who couldn’t bring herself to even kill a spider, sliced a big piece of vegetarian tofurkey and popped it into her mouth.

Wow. I hadn’t thought that Dad might be lonely too. But he didn’t really have friends here yet either.

“Anything new at school, Savvy?” Dad asked.

I chewed slowly to give myself time to think. I didn’t want to tell them about the advice column just yet. No more excited—and then embarrassed—calls to Grandma and Auntie Tricia.

“Not much,” I said. “But Melissa asked me to read her Father Christmas article. I guess he comes to the village every December to hear gift requests.”

Louanne looked at me and then at my parents. I don’t think they noticed.

After dinner I went and lay down on the couch and started reading
Romeo and Juliet
. I thought about Shakespeare. I thought about writers. I thought about my writing. I hoped that next year I’d be giving thanks for a successful column and a solid reputation as a brilliant friend and advice giver.

It was almost in the bag, right?

Louanne knocked on my door. “Can I come in, Savvy?”

“Sure, I said, tossing my book,
The Six Wives of Henry VIII
, on the floor. “What’s up?”

She came in and sat on my bed. “Will you get to meet Father Christmas?”

I smiled. “Do you believe in Father Christmas . . . and Santa Claus?”

“I believe in kind people who keep their identity secret but like to give good things to kids who ask nicely at Christmas,” she said with a grin.

I looked at her hands, each finger glittering with a shiny plastic-crystal ring that she got as a ten-pack at Boots, the chemist.

I leaned over and tweaked her ponytail. “I just might get to meet him. Want a French braid tomorrow? It’ll look good with your rings.”

“Okay!” she said. “I’ll look . . . smart!”

Smart
: the British word for fancy, dressed up. I thought it was cute that she was already adapting British words into her vocabulary.

“Can I come in?” Mom appeared at my door. “I think Dad could use your help in the kitchen, Louanne.”

Louanne got the hint and hopped off the bed to head downstairs.

Mom closed the door behind her. “So how are things really going?” she asked. “At school and all.”

“Well, I’m not having the time of my life,” I admitted. “But . . . I’m hopeful.”

“I’m hopeful too,” she said. “I’ve been praying about it, and I think that with a new church and this cookie exchange, things are really going to turn around for me.”

All of a sudden, I could picture the bleak future: Mom standing in the kitchen, with the entire house cleaned from top to bottom. She had on a new apron, and warm gingerbread cookies were waiting . . . and waiting . . . and waiting. For people who never came.

“Savvy!” Mom’s voice snapped me back to reality. “Did you hear what I said?”

“Oh yeah, totally,” I said. I wasn’t going to tell her that I’d seen a few of her invitations in and around the neighborhood dustbins a few weeks back on a particularly windy garbage collection day. Could she be wrong about this—even though she felt like she got her answer in prayer? “Have you heard back from anyone yet?”

“No . . . not yet. But I put the RSVP for a week before the event, so it’s okay. I’ll hear later, I’m sure.”

“I’m sure it will be great,” I said, not at all sure. Far from sure. Maybe as far from sure as east is from west. My spirit prickled me. Oh yeah. “Uh, Mom?”

She looked at me expectantly.

“I ruined your blue silk shirt last week. I’m sorry.”

She pulled me into her arms and gave me a Mom hug. Sometimes that’s exactly what I need.

Late that night I went to do my manicure-pedicure. I got out my tools and some bright pink polish that looked very posh to me. And the remover.

I looked at the bottle. It said, “polish remover,” so I knew it was still the one I’d brought from home. The Brits called it nail varnish, not nail polish. I smiled, remembering a story that my grandmother, who was from Poland, told me. She said that when she came to America and saw that, she thought it was “PO-lish remover.”

Maybe they don’t like people from Poland,
she’d thought at the time.
Maybe they want me to go back, to be removed. Well, I’m not going to do that. I’m here to stay.
I don’t think she ever wore nail polish again. At least, I’d never seen her with any on.

But I had something to learn from that. Before I’d moved to Britain, I’d had everything pretty easy. My family was happy; I had a lot of friends. We weren’t rich, but we weren’t poor, either.

Now things were different. Everything that used to be easy was a challenge, and I couldn’t see my way out. It had been easy enough to give my friends advice back home when I had everything going for me. But now—well, now I’d better walk the talk. Maybe I needed to better understand people in tough times before I could really give advice.

I’d do what the London girls called “pulling up my boots.” It meant get it in gear, show them what I’m made of.

I wondered if it’d be okay if those boots were black patent leather. Zip-up.