Get Happy (7 page)

I turned to see how the tail looked from the back. “Joy, can I be something different?” I asked through the curtain. “This costume doesn’t fit.”

“Absolutely not.”

“You
have
to be a mermaid, Minerva,” Fin said, and did the evil witch laugh from the
Little Mermaid
movie. “Remember how we decided that our utility closet was Ursula’s true lair and that her evil minions lived in the water heater?”

“We didn’t decide that,” I said. “You told me that, and you were completely convincing. I was terrified. I’ve been terrified of utility closets ever since.”

Hayes’s voice: “I look ridiculous.”

Fin: “I want those boots. You are so lucky. Trade.”

Hayes: “Dude, the wig is hilarious.”

Joy: “Come out!”

Cassie, Fin, and Hayes were all together, laughing. I peeked out. Cassie linked arms with Hayes and Fin and started singing the Get Happy song. She looked amazing. They looked funny, but really cute. Fin’s pants were too long and the dreadlock wig was crooked, but he was rocking the frilly white pirate shirt and the vest. Hayes, lean and taller, looked uncomfortably adorable, like a cowboy who woke up and found himself in somebody else’s dream, with boots a little too big and hat a little too small.

“Get out here, Minerva,” Fin cried.

I could have dissolved into a puddle of self-loathing or taken off the costume and quit on the spot, but the less embarrassing thing was to play the clown. I put on a fake smile and walked out singing “Under the Sea.”

Fin howled and hugged me, crushing my pink shell cups. “Ariel.”

I bowed and my tiara fell off, which gave me something to do while Joy took a million photos of Cassie.

When she took one of Fin, he said, “Arrrrrgh,” and
tried to pull his fake sword from his scabbard, but it got stuck and he swore.

“For heaven’s sake, don’t say that, Finnegan,” Joy said. “Say ‘fudderudder.’ ”

“Fudderudder!” Fin screamed, and the way he said it cheered me up for a moment and almost made me pee in my mermaid suit.

8

I
WAS IN A VIM
-and-vigory mood, getting ready for our first gigs, practicing my mermaid lines, and playing the Get Happy theme song on my fake cookie-tin uke in front of the mirror in my bedroom. I had the brilliant idea that, once I bought a real uke, I could play it for all the little kiddies at future birthday parties.

After school one day, I got up the nerve to return to Tenley’s Music Store to test-drive my new Get Happy material on the uke of my dreams.

If you love ukes, entering a music store and seeing a row of them hanging up is like swimming into a cave and discovering a hoard of treasures.

The guy behind the counter — the one with the disgusting chest-length beard — gave me this look when I walked in because I had been there so many times before. “Let me guess,” he said. “You’re in the market for an uke?”

That
an
was not a typo, by the way. He pronounces it
oo
-kulele, not
you
-kulele. He told me once in his usual condescending manner that it can be pronounced either way, but that true aficionados prefer
oo
-kulele. I appreciate vocabulary. I do not appreciate condescension.

“I have birthday money,” I told him. “I’ve narrowed it down to two models and I just need to play those to decide.”

He shot me a poisonous look and said: “You know which one you want.
I
know which one you want. This isn’t a practice studio. This is a store.”

“Please?” I stood for a moment, lurking in the doorway, drooling over the ukes. I’ll do anything, sir; I’ll trade my soul for one moment of happiness. Please?

He stepped from behind the counter, hoisting up his baggy jeans. “This is the last time.” He lifted the one I wanted off the hook and gave it to me with his hairy arms and then went back to his magazine.

Gratefully, I sat on an amp and played through the chord shapes that I had learned from the book Fin gave me. The uke just felt right in my arms. I’m little. It’s little. I pluck it, without really even knowing what I’m doing, and it sounds beautiful. Other instruments aren’t like that. Blow into a clarinet without knowing what you’re doing and it sounds like a dying seagull.

When another guy came in to actually buy something, I put the uke back and slipped out. For a while, I wandered around downtown Evanston, imagining a whole scenario in which I stroll into Tenley’s with my first paycheck and shock the mice right out of the guy’s beard by buying my uke. I would bring it to Get Happy parties and wow the children and parents by singing my own songs—clever and funny and impressive songs. Minerva the Mermaid would become the most popular children’s party entertainer in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, more popular, even than, say,
the princess, because I would have some original talent to share. I love daydreams.

As I wandered, I also looked at stuff in shop windows, but really I was looking at my reflection, imagining how much better I would look if I had a uke sticking out of my backpack. I wanted people to see me and think,
That girl is a songwriter.
Maybe that seems shallow, but to be good at something, you have to first look the part.

S
OMEWHERE IN
the bottom of my brain, I remembered Cassie Lott saying that she was writing a blog about diving. I should have left that alone, because, really, in the big picture of my life, Cassie Lott should have meant nothing to me, but the murky undertow inside me was hoping that if I looked at it, I would discover she had a flaw — perhaps her writing would reveal a decidedly inferior vocabulary, for example — and I could hold her flaw up to the light and feel better about myself. A more highly evolved person would not have such a thought, and I am embarrassed to admit it. But at least I am being honest.

When I had a moment alone at home, I did a little search.

The blog was about scuba diving, not swim-team diving. When she had said her hobby was diving, I had erroneously pictured her on a diving board. Photoshopped into the background of her blog was her official scuba-diving certification card. The portrait on the right showed her on a beach in a short-sleeved wet suit, with her long wet hair pulled back by the face mask on her head. Her arms were muscular yet feminine, her abdomen as flat and hard as a surfboard.

My face burned. Instead of finding a flaw in her, I now had scuba-diving prowess thrown in my face. How lovely.

Each blog entry was a photo of something she saw on this trip to Cozumel or that trip to Costa Rica — like a shell or a jellyfish or whale tails — with an explanation of why it was so beautiful.

As if anybody needs your little metaphor, Cassie. Let nature speak for itself.

9

F
IN AND
I
SPLIT
the cost of overnight bronze self-tanning lotion and slathered it on each other’s faces the night before the big day.

I enjoyed a restful slumber and then I woke up to a horrible smell. My first thought: A cancerous rodent had crawled under my bed and died. Panicky, I got up and looked around and then realized the aroma was coming from my own hand. My palm was streaked with a brownish-orange color and smelled like death.

I ran to the mirror. My face looked like a decomposing pumpkin. I called Fin.

“Are you mad at me?” he asked, his voice racked
with anguish. “I already tried washing it. Seven times. It’s not coming off.”

“Do you smell like a corpse?”

“Yes! What is up with that?” he screamed.

“We can’t go,” I said.

“Yes, we can. It’s not so bad,” he said. “Once we have our wigs and costumes on, we’ll look fine.”

And so … off we went to Get Happy headquarters with radically unnatural complexions. When Joy saw us walk through the door, she dropped the box she was holding. “Son of a biscuit, what happened to your faces?”

Fin and I looked at each other. Son of a biscuit. If the universe couldn’t give us nicely tanned skin, at least it gave us Joy’s fake profanity.

Cassie and Hayes were already there.

Cassie laughed and then said, “Sorry.”

I didn’t know how Hayes was reacting because I was too embarrassed to look at him.

“We look like oompa loompas, don’t we?” Fin laughed and started singing the oompa loompa song.

“This isn’t funny!” Joy cried, and glared at us.

We put on our costumes and hustled into the van just as it started to lightly snow.

Hayes’s party was first. When the van stopped and Hayes got out, Joy yelped, “Leave your coat in here! Your characters do not wear coats!”

As Hayes threw his coat back in the car, Cassie hopped out. She gave him a hug and straightened his bolo tie. “Break a leg, Hayes.”

“She is so sweet,” Joy said.

My house was next. When we pulled up, a mom waved from the doorway. “The girls are all so excited,” she called. Fat snowflakes were coming down. She opened an umbrella and came out to meet us. I jumped down from the van and she looked at my face. “Oh.”

That’s what she said.
Oh.

“Get under that umbrella, Minerva, so you don’t get your costume wet,” Joy said.

“I’m a mermaid fresh from the sea,” I said. “I absolutely adore precipitation.”

Joy shot me a look. She wasn’t sure if I was being facetious or getting into character.

The mom led me into one of those big family rooms that rich people have, facing the back of the house. A table was piled high with gifts. Ten girls were watching some tweeny-bopper, boy-band concert movie on the largest screen in the Western Hemisphere.

“Look who’s here!” The mom turned off the TV, and the room erupted in protests.

“Wait … the best part is coming,” one of the girls said.

“But it’s time for the big surprise.” The mom held out her hands toward me, still standing in the doorway. The girls turned and stared.

Silence.

The script I had spent all week memorizing was for four-year-olds. These girls looked like they wanted to cut me in pieces and throw me into piranha-infested waters.

Even though I knew it was ridiculous, the script was all I had, so I smiled and said my first few lines. “Hi. I’ve been swimming around all morning searching for a birthday girl to see. I know there’s one here.… Who could it be?”

Dead silence.

“Here she is,” the mom said. “It’s Samantha!” She tried to pull her daughter to her feet.

One girl said to another, “Why is her face orange?”

I wanted to turn and make a run for it.

“Hold on. I have to record this.” The dad walked
in, holding his cell phone up, video rolling. “Look, it’s Ursula!”

“Ariel,” the mom corrected him.

“Hi, Samantha,” I said. “Happy birthday.”