Dorinda's Secret (3 page)

“It's not clear what will happen to Paulo Rivera, who is now under the care of the Administration for Children's Services. ACS officials could not be reached for comment,” the reporter says, finishing the news report.

Suddenly, I feel sorry for Paulo. All that trouble he went through, just to end up in foster care. It doesn't seem fair.

“That's cold he got caught,” says Khalil, who is glued to the television screen. He has only lived at Mrs. Bosco's for a few months and has been in a lot of foster homes. He kinda keeps to himself, even though he's cool. “If that had been me, I would have been Audi 5000—they would have never found me, yo.”

“How come?” I ask—because I'm really curious how an eleven-year-old kid thinks he could disappear and live by himself.

“'Cuz when I ran away from my last foster home, they didn't find me. I came back by myself,” Khalil says, like
he's
bragging or something.

“How many foster homes wuz you in?” Nestor asks.

“Four,” Khalil says, like he's talking about trophies.

“I was in three,” Nestor says, like
he's
bragging.

“I almost got adopted,” Chantelle blurts out.

Hmmm. I've never heard this one before. Maybe Chantelle is fibbing, just to get attention.

“No you didn't,” Nestor says nastily.

“Yes I did, but I didn't want to stay,” Chantelle says.

Twinkie nuzzles up to me and puts her head on my shoulder, her fuzzy hair flouncing all the over the place. “I bet you that boy
wuz
looking for
somebody.
”

Twinkie is so smart. “Yeah. I bet you he was,” I reply, then hold her tight while we watch the show.

“I wanna find my father,” Khalil announces. It's the first time he's ever said anything like that. I notice that Nestor is pretending he's not listening.

“How do you know you've got a father?” Chantelle asks, with an attitude.

“'Cuz I do. My mother told me,” Khalil says matter-of-factly.

“You have a mother?” I ask, surprised.

“Of course I have a mother, stupid,” Khalil says, getting annoyed now.

“Well,
I
don't,” I say, just to show him I'm not stupid.

“Yes you do,” Khalil says. “Everybody has a mother.”

“Well, I never
saw
her!” I exclaim, embarrassed.

“Don't you ever want to find your mother?” Nestor asks, ganging up on me too.

“I don't know,” I say, determined not to let them win. I'm not going to tell them about my sister at Mrs. Parkay's—she was my first foster mother, the one who gave me away. I try not to think about her anymore, because Mrs. Parkay probably doesn't want to see me anymore—and I sure don't want to see her.

“I'll bet you
my
mother has long hair like an angel,” Twinkie says, smiling. “I know she's gonna come and get me one day.”

I can't believe Twinkie said that! When I was younger, I used to think the same thing. Of course, I don't anymore. I don't know where my mom is, or whether she's alive or dead—I'd like to at least find out someday, but I guess I never will.

Now Arba climbs up onto my lap. Poor Arba. Her mother came to America from Albania looking for a better life, but died of pneumonia. At least one day she will know where
her
mother is. When she's older, I'll make
sure
she knows.

“I know what Khalil's daddy looks like,” Nestor says, hitting Khalil on the head.

“Yeah—how do you know?” Khalil riffs back.

“He's got a big coconut head—like you!”

“Yeah—well, we know your father probably has a big mouth, Nestlé's Quik,” I tell Nestor.

Corky and Twinkie start giggling. Arba has fallen asleep on my lap, so I take her into her bedroom and put her in bed. I kiss her on the cheeks, and she whispers, “Good night, Do-reedy.”

Chapter 2

A
s I lie on my pillow, I can't stop thinking about that runaway boy, Paulo Rivera. Why did he tell all those lies? I wonder if he was just trying to pull an okeydokey and get money out of people by making them feel sorry for him. Who wouldn't feel sorry for a kid hiking, biking, and sailing 2,000 miles just to find his father, right?

When they found him, the reporter said, he had $150 in his pockets. Tossing in my bed, I decide I would
never
go looking for my family, you know what I'm saying? I don't care where my mother and father are. They obviously don't love me, or I wouldn't be here.

I can feel myself starting to cry, but I get mad instead. I'm tired of crying about stupid people who don't care about me. All of a sudden, I start crying anyway—but I think it's because I'm crying for Paulo. They shouldn't put him in a foster home—he must feel so scared right now. Why don't they just let him go back home to his aunt?

She doesn't want him anymore—that's probably why. That thought makes me angry, and I peek out from behind the pillow to see if Monie sees me crying.

She's just gotten home from her boyfriend Hector's house. Now she's sitting at the dresser, writing something—probably a stupid love letter to Hector, because I know she
never
does her homework. She's already been left back once, and she hates me because I got skipped twice. (I'm only twelve, but my crew doesn't know I'm so young—they think I'm fourteen like them, and I'm too afraid to tell them the truth. They'd probably never want to speak with me again, let alone chill with me!)

I cover my face with the pillow again, because the light from the lamp is bothering me. Then, all of a sudden, I find myself blurting out, “Do you ever think about your mother?”

Monie looks at me like I've lost my mind. “No,” she says, getting an attitude, “and I don't know why you're lying there thinking about something so
stupid
.”

Chantelle doesn't say anything; she just keeps popping her gum. What was I thinking about, talking to Monie? Her brain is on permanent vacation, you know? She doesn't understand anything. Neither does Chantelle. And my other foster sisters are too young. I wish I had a
real
sister like the twins. They have each other.

Well, actually, I do have a real sister. We were together in my first foster home. But she got to stay there, and I didn't, and that's the last I ever saw or heard from her.

Thank goodness for the Cheetah Girls. Having my crew—especially Chanel—is as close to having sisters as I'll ever get. Even so, it's not the same as having a real one… .

I'm in an apartment, and this pretty brown lady is showing me all her beautiful clothes. “You can come live with me and pick out all the clothes you want to wear,” she says.

It's a really big apartment, and there are lots and lots of beautiful clothes everywhere. I start trying on some of the clothes, but they're all too big for me.

“Don't worry, when you grow up, you can wear these clothes, because I'll give them all to you,” the pretty lady says. I ask her why. She tells me, “I'm your mother, that's why”

I start crying, and I hug her. She is so tall, and her skin is smooth chocolate. When she smiles, she looks like a movie star with really white teeth.

I don't even feel mad at her anymore… .

The noise from a car alarm wakes me up from my dream. I look at the clock and see that it's seven in the morning—time for me to get up and go to my Saturday morning vocal and dance lessons at Drinka Champagne Conservatory.

I walk to the bathroom, but somebody is in it. “Hurry up!” I yell, tapping my knuckles on the door.

I wonder who the lady in the dream was. She didn't look like anybody I know.

Maybe it
was
my mother. Maybe I'm psychic or something, like Chanel, and her father's girlfriend, Princess Pamela, who has a fortune-telling parlor.

Leaning against the bathroom door in a trance, I daydream about what my mother looks like. I guess I
would
like to know. She's probably pretty, and brown-skinned—and too busy to take care of me.

Suddenly I realize that I forgot to do my biology homework! I never space out like that. What was I supposed to be reading? That's right—the chapter on DNA—the stuff to do with genetics.

I'm in such a trance that when Twinkie opens up the bathroom door, I fall inside the doorway. She giggles and covers her head to keep me from falling on her. “Big cheetah bobo, you going to dance class now?” she asks, peering up at me.

“Yeah.”

“I wish I could go. I wanna be a Cheetah Girl too,” Twinkie says, pleadingly.

She always makes me feel so guilty about being in the Cheetah Girls. It's true I spend less time with her these days. And now she wants to be a part of what I'm doing.

“You know how you like to draw all those beautiful butterflies?” I say as I wash my face and hands.

“Yeah,” Twinkie says.

“Well, dancing is what
I
like to do—and now, I'm singing too.” I know she doesn't get it.

“Yeah, but I wanna dance and sing, too—if you'll let me!”

“You can dance and sing, Twinkie—if you want to do something badly enough, there's nobody in the world can stop you, least of all me. I'll tell you what—we're gonna find out if you can do something at school—”

“I wanna do it with
you!
” Twinkie insists, giggling and whining at the same time, like she always does.

“You can't.”

“Okay, you big Cheetah bunny—I'm gonna flush you down the toilet!”

I tickle Twinkie, then run out of there and back into the bedroom to get dressed. I love going to Drinka Champagne Conservatory for vocal and dance classes—it's the bomb, and we always have a lotta fun, too. We are the Cheetah Girls, of course, and that means all five of us meet there—unlike during the week, when we go to separate schools. Aqua and Angie just got transferred to the Performing Arts League, which is an annex of LaGuardia Performing Arts School—they're right next door to each other near Lincoln Center, and both of them are dope performing arts schools. As for me, Galleria, and Chanel, we all go to Fashion Industries East together.

As I'm running out the door, I feel around my neck, and realize I forgot to put on my Cheetah Girls choker, so I run back inside my room to get it. We made the Cheetah Girl chokers ourselves. We bought cheetah-printed strips of suede, then glued metal letters on them to spell the words
GROWL POWER
. The chokers are really dope looking, and they hold together fine—
now
.

At first, when we were trying to sell them, a lot of the lettering fell off. It was totally embarrassing, and I don't even want to talk about it. It's over, thank goodness. Now I actually
enjoy
wearing my choker. It tells the world who and what I am—“Do' Re Mi” Rogers, a Cheetah Girl with Ferocious Flava!

“Can we make a butterfly dress later?” Twinkie asks me, following me into the room.

“Yeah, later.”

See, for Thanksgiving, the kids in Twinkie's school are making costumes, and Twinkie wants to be a butterfly instead of a turkey—even though her teacher says she has to stay with the theme of Thanksgiving.

That's Twinkie for you. I told her to tell him that she's one of the butterflies who came with the first settlers to Plymouth Rock or something. She liked that idea.

“Twinkie, I need you to do something for me.”

“Okay.”

“Mrs. Tattle, our caseworker, is coming over at two o'clock—so I won't be back here in time to get everybody ready. I want you to wear your pink sweater with the pom-poms. Would you do that for me?”

“Okay. Bye, pom-pom poot-butt!”

“I'm gonna get you later for that, Twinkie,” I chuckle as I put the Cheetah Girl choker around my neck. Twinkie is still standing next to me, staring.

“Twink—do you think these chokers are big enough?”

“Yeah—you look like a big Cheetah Gorilla!”

“No, seriously—is the band wide enough?”

She shakes her head, then blurts out, “How come I can't have one?”

That makes me feel really bad. How come I was only thinking about myself?

I touch the metal letters on the choker again. I can feel the letters spelling
GROWL POWER
. We must have it, all right, or Def Duck Records wouldn't be interested in putting us in the studio with big cheese producer Mouse Almighty to cut some tracks. I wonder when it's gonna happen. Every day we hope to hear something, but so far,
nada
.

I yell good-bye to Mrs. Bosco, who is sitting at the kitchen table with Corky, then give Arba a big hug. Twinkie is right at my heels.

“I'm counting on you, Cheetah Rita Butterfly,” I whisper to her. Rita is Twinkie's real name, but I think it's her nickname—not Twinkie, but the one I gave her, Butterfly—that really makes her spread her wings.

Chapter 3

M
iss Winnie, the receptionist at Drinka Champagne's Conservatory, gives me a big smile when she sees me. “Dorinda, how you doin'?” she asks, like she really wants to know.

I can't believe how nice everybody is to me here at the Conservatory—and I haven't even paid one ducket for anything! That's because Drinka (who founded this conservatory for divettes-in-training like the Cheetah Girls) gave me a full one-year scholarship. Miss Winnie even put me in Vocal 201, instead of 101, so I could be with my crew.

See, Galleria and Chanel have been coming to Drinka's for two years now, and Angie and Aqua could sing like (almost) divas even before we met them. I'm a good dancer, but I'm still learning to sing. More important, next to the rest of the Cheetah Girls, I still feel like a wanna-be star in the jiggy jungle, just like the words in the song Bubbles wrote.

“I'm just fine, Miss Winnie. Are the rest of the Cheetah Girls here yet?”