Get Happy (2 page)

I took off my mittens and pulled out my songwriting journal.

I was trying to think of a rhyme for wax when I heard footsteps crunching in the snow. I opened the door and was hit by a blast of dangerously cold, freeze-your-nose-off air, just as a FedEx guy was about to knock.

He handed me a small padded envelope and asked for a signature, his breath making puffs in the air. I was about to call for my mom, when I saw that it was addressed to Pat and Minerva Watson.

The return address was printed on the envelope — Shedd Aquarium — and, above that, K.C. had been written in black pen. K.C. were the initials of someone my mom and I never talked about, someone I hadn’t seen since I was two years old: Kenneth Chip. My dad.

I signed, my heart pounding so loud I was sure it was going to burst right through my winter coat and sucker punch the FedEex guy off my front doorstep.

“Thank you.” I tried sounding casual.

“Have a good one,” the guy said, and left.

I closed the door.

“Did you just say something?” my mom called from the kitchen.

“No.” Quickly, I stuffed the envelope into my backpack.

“Apple or clementine?” she called.

“Apple,” I called back.

She walked in and handed me a lunch sack. “Ready to go, birthday girl?”

I nodded and shot off a natural-looking smile. “Ready.”

2

I
SAW
F
INNEGAN
getting dropped off at school. He’s on the short side for a guy, with a good build and lots of Irishy freckles; and in the winter, whenever he wears his green peacoat and goofy purple hat, he looks leprechauny. Even though he was the only person I could talk to, I confess I tried to beat him inside the building. He would want me to open the envelope, and I wasn’t ready.

“Minerva, wait up!” he yelled. “Are yours working? I think my skin is glowing. Am I glowing?”

The detox foot patches had come four to a box and we had split the cost.

“They gave me hives.” I hobbled in through the school doors. “We shouldn’t have wasted our money.”

“My feet itch, too,” he said. “But I think it means they’re working.”

I headed down the hall. “I’m not doing the audition.”

Fin followed. “Minerva, you promised. I’m not letting you chicken out. They’ll stop itching. Why are you so grumpy? Oh! I almost forgot. Happy birthday!” He started punching my arm, our old ritual. “One, two, three, four — ”

“Knock it off, Fin. I’m sick. I’m going to barf.”

“Five, six, seven … you are fine. l have a present for you, and I’m going to give it to you as soon as you’ve received all sixteen punches … eight, nine — ”

I slapped his arm away. “Fin, I got a FedEx envelope from somebody with the initials K.C.”

“K.C.” He stopped. “Your dad? Why didn’t you tell me right away? What was in it?”

I headed for the bathroom.

“Minerva, what was in it?” Fin followed.

“I don’t know. I don’t even know if it’s from him.” I stopped, took off my mittens, and pulled the envelope out of my backpack. “I didn’t tell my mom.”

“Open it!” he practically screamed.

“Not here. Not now. If it’s from him, I’ll have to walk around enraged all day and I won’t be able to do anything about it.”

“Yes, here. Yes, now,” he said. “If you don’t open it, it’ll be worse.”

We stood still as the crowd surged through the hallway in both directions, Fin’s eyes soft and locked on mine, his goofy purple hat sticking up. He was right. I pushed open the girls’ bathroom door. “Wait for me in case I faint. If you hear a clunk, come in.”

“Totally not fair,” Fin called out. “Open it out here.”

The girls’ bathroom was hot and smelled like a porta-potty. Even though the room was empty, I squeezed into a stall with my winter gear still on, and locked the door. I stared at the printed return address: the Shedd Aquarium, the big aquarium in Chicago that I went to on a field trip in the second grade and loved, the place I used to beg my mom to take me back to see again.

The initials K.C. were printed carefully, neatly, on the FedEx line for sender name. This K.C. obviously
worked for the aquarium, so I figured the envelope couldn’t be from my dad. I had always assumed he lived in some trailer park in Kansas or Idaho or Nevada or some faraway place. In my mind, he was a hedonistic loser, a druggie, an alcoholic, and a convict all rolled into one, and that’s why my mom never talked about him and why I had never heard from him. I knew only three things about him: He and my mom met when he had a temporary job in Chicago, he had “Pacific island” genes, and he left us, never paying any child support. My blue-eyed, once-blond mother offered up only those tidbits years ago when I got the nerve to ask how I ended up with the blackest hair and darkest eyes of any white girl in Evanston, Illinois. End of conversation.

I opened the envelope and pulled out a cream-colored note card. The paper was expensive, elegant, with the initials K.C. embossed on the front, and nothing else.

The bathroom walls began to blur. I slipped the card into my backpack and then I pulled a small box out of the FedEx envelope. Another card, which was under the box, fluttered out — heading for the toilet too fast to grab. My heart almost stopped. Miraculously, it landed on the toilet seat. One small breeze and it would be floating in somebody else’s pee. In slow motion, I leaned down, keeping my head back and my chin up so my scarf wouldn’t knock it in. Gingerly, I lifted it from the seat.

Finnegan’s voice from the hallway: “Minerva! Come out!”

The temperature in that bathroom must have been a hundred and twenty degrees. Little beads of sweat prickled my forehead.

I broke out in a full sweat. Inside the box, nestled on a little cotton bed, was a large sterling silver pendant, a seahorse, suspended from a black silk cord. A seahorse. It was beautiful, the spine studded with small black pearls, the tail reaching up to curl around the cord. Classy and hip. A seriously legitimate work of art.

Fin’s voice: “Minerva? Is anybody else in there? If anybody’s in there, this is your warning. I’m coming in.”

Sweat was dripping down my neck, under my hat, and under my arms. My lungs felt like heavy sponges. I pushed open the stall door just as Fin was coming in.

“So?” he asked.

I put the box and cards in my backpack, threw the FedEx envelope into the trash, and walked out.

He followed. “Let it out, Minerva. Talk to me.”

I kept walking, yanking off my scarf and hat.

“Minerva …” He grabbed my arm.

“It’s him,” I said, pulling my arm out of my coat.

“What did he say? What was in there? Minerva! That is a truly hideous sweater. You got it from Pat, didn’t you? She made you wear it?” His face fell. “Aw, you didn’t get the ukulele, did you?”

I stopped. “He gave me a necklace.” I pulled out the box and opened it.

“It’s gorgeous. It’s a seahorse! You love seahorses. Remember, I gave you that seahorse jewelry box for your birthday? We were, like, seven. This looks so expensive!” His voice was gleeful.

He was about to take it out, but I put the lid on and gave him a withering look. “I have hated his guts as far back as I can remember. He left when I was two. Am I
supposed to forgive him because he suddenly gives me some jewelry? This just makes me hate him even more.”

“Look at it this way. He owes you big-time, and this is a start.”

“I don’t want it.”

“Sell it and buy your uke with it.”

“I’m not buying my uke with his money. It’ll have bad juju. I don’t want anything to do with him.”

Fin tugged my arm. “Please tell me you’re going to benefit financially from this.”

I bolted toward my locker.

“Sorry, Minerva. Was there a letter?” He followed, picking up my coat, which was dragging on the floor.

I stopped, and he tried to give me a hug, but I pulled away and went to my locker. He followed, trying to get me to talk. I stuffed in all my outerwear — including the sweater — and then took off to class.

He called after me. “Wait!”

I turned.

He pulled a notebook-size gift out of his backpack and handed it to me. “We can talk about it after school. Come to the audition. It’ll take your mind off all this.”

The gift was wrapped in a hilarious old poster of
SpongeBob, and he gave it with a smile so sweet I had to look away. I turned, ran into my first-period classroom, sat down, and unwrapped the present. A book.
Ukulele Love: How to Play Big Songs on a Tiny Instrument.

I choked back a sob, and a gurgle came out.

“What’s her problem?” Rick Rogan, the idiot who sat next to me, asked.

“She’s sad because the Ugly Club elected someone else as president,” his idiot friend said.

Yep. People are mean.

3

I
DON’T KNOW
if you’ve ever experienced a psychological trauma, but one of the strangest things about it is that your body continues to operate. When you get emotionally overwhelmed, it would be nice if your body went into a temporary coma so you could have time to process everything. Instead, you get earth-shattering news and you have to walk to class, sit in a chair, take a pop quiz, breathe, swallow.

I went through the day with the necklace sitting in the bottom of my backpack like a small beautifully crafted silver bomb. Finally, school ended and Finnegan grabbed me and marched me out the door into the cold January air.

“I know you’re upset, Minerva, but we’re going to this audition. You promised.”

I stopped. “It’s my birthday, Fin, and I’ve been traumatized. I want to go to your house and watch
SpongeBob.
Maybe get some sushi — ”

He gave me a look. “You’re not thinking clearly. All this Kenneth Chip stuff has hijacked your brain. This is our one and only chance to audition for the Get Happy job, which would be a good thing for both of us to get.”

“I’m not an auditioner, Fin. You are.”

“You are an amazing singer, Minerva.”

“With you. Or in chorus or in the shower, not at an audition.”

He pulled me along. “Okay. You can buy a ukulele with your first paycheck. Just think of that. And after the audition, you can come over and we’ll do some research on Kenneth Chip, and if we discover that he’s rich, then you’re going to deal with your rage by milking him for millions of dollars. If he were my dad, I’d get him to pay for new shoes, clothes, a new phone. You should demand a weekly allowance.”

“I can’t audition. I can’t focus on anything. I haven’t
even figured out how I’m going to tell my mom about this.”

“See? That’s why you should come. At least walk with me and then you can decide once you get there.” He pulled a can out of his backpack. “Ginger and ginseng energy drink,” he said. “This will give you vigor and vim.”

My first laugh of the day. “Is
vim
a word?”