Goldfish (13 page)

Who gives their kid their own name and doesn't think that might get confusing when yelled around the house? You only give your child the same name as you if you're royalty or you don't plan on living with them.

Like I can talk. My parents are divorced, and you know the saying: People in glass houses … go to slightly smaller glass houses every other weekend to see their dad.

I sit back gingerly. The seat is sticky, but it's probably for the best, as there are no seat belts. Gabe and I make Big Eyes at each other, half “This is fun!” and half “Maybe today we'll die!”

Pete's dad slams on the brakes and we all lurch forward. Then he accelerates for about three fast inches and slams on the brakes again before going into reverse. We do this maybe ten times, and it gets nauseating pretty quickly.

My family has congregated at the front door, and I wave at them with a big smile on my face. I might as well. If this is the last time they ever see me, let's give them a happy memory. Gabe peeks around me and joins in. Mom makes a face like a ventriloquist's dummy and says something out of the corner of her mouth to Lav.

“He's nice-looking.”

Lav makes the same face. “Short, though.”

Dad weighs in with “growth spurt” mouthed nice and clearly.
Thanks, family!
I was just thinking, Heeey, it's almost six a.m. and my ears haven't burnt with shame once today.

Roman leans forward to give a friendly nod to my family. Then Pete's dad reverses into our neighbor's front yard and takes that pesky birdbath off their hands. Roman leans back out of sight.

Pete murmurs something in his ear.

“Oh, go on,” I say. They turn to look at me.

“What?”

I sigh. “I know exactly what you're thinking. Just say it.”

Roman says, “Your sister is gorgeous” at the exact same moment as Gabe says, “Your dad
does
have great legs for his age.… Oh wait, no, not that?” We all laugh, even Pete.

I feel a little bit bad laughing with my new friends
at
my family, but it's not mean and I secretly feel very happy.

Not friends. Did I say
friends
? I meant sports colleagues.

“Sooo…” I say, to fill the silence as we jerk backward and forward on our forty-one-point turn and I can see Dad wrestling with a breeze up his robe that threatens to shame us all.

“What's your surname, Pete?”

“Who's asking?” grunts his dad, fixing me with a stare. He couldn't be sketchier if he had a bag marked
Swag
over one shoulder. I can't believe he works at the aquarium. I wouldn't trust him with a fish finger.

“So, the tank, is it…?” I wait for someone to leap in and finish my question, since I really don't know anything about fish tanks. But Roman and Gabe give me tiny shrugs—obviously they have no idea either—so I plow on alone. “Is it, like, ready to assemble, or…?”

Pete's dad stares at me as if I've said something stupid, but I'm cool with not knowing anything about fish tanks. He chews his soggy cigarette over to the corner of his mouth and says, “I dismantled it to get it out the window. Gotta assemble it at the other end.”

Get it out the window?
I concentrate on breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth and try not to get stressed. While I'm doing that, Pete's dad picks up a screwdriver and hands it to me.

It's a sort of friendly gesture, like, “You and me, pal, can build this huge criminal tank.”

Gabriel leans over and we scrutinize it together with exaggerated care, as if it's a dug-up dinosaur bone. I'm about to get the giggles so we stop. Pete's dad seems a bit unpredictable. Let's not poke the beast.

Driving in the megatruck is
so
exciting! We're kings of the road! (Kings in the old-fashioned sense where you slaughter people left, right, and center.) Roman, Pete, Gabe, and I spend most of the journey ducking down to look in the sideview mirrors, praying that each cyclist we drove past is still upright and moving. Thankfully, they all are. I don't think I've ever seen so many rude gestures before in my life.

I'm wishing someone from school could see me with the guys, but—just my luck—we're too high up to be seen. Maybe I could take an “accidental” selfie …

 

chapter 19

Weezy, I'm so busy here, it's manic, I feel like I barely have time to think. I just swim swim swim and I'm always nervous! Mom's being crazy and I haven't so much as SEEN a carb in days. I miss them, and you. Do you miss me?

Miss you.
Hxxxxxxxx

I'm trying to text Han back, but the truck's bouncy suspension makes me feel sick. I'll tell her the good news when we get through the tryouts. Eventually the megatruck pulls up outside a massive modern building. It's got huge walls made of windows. Must be a nightmare to clean, I tut to myself, sounding like Dad.

There's a line of hundreds of people sheltering under umbrellas, and here we are, pulling up in the megatruck like total bosses. I have never felt cooler. I'm nearest to the window, so I roll it down and lean out supercasually, like I own the truck. Mmm hmm, yes, I look young for my age.

I've never seen the appeal in smoking, but right now I'd love to fling a cigarette out the window with a world-weary gesture like, “Hey, it's just another TV gig
.
”

Pete Senior opens his window, flicks his soggy cigarette out with a world-weary gesture, and follows it with a gob of spit.

Less TV Star, more Loitering Outside Pawn Shop.

I eye the posters for upcoming gigs. I've never been to a gig here (or anywhere, if I'm honest), but Lav's been to a couple with her friends.

“Oh, I've been here,” says Roman. “I came for a soccer sticker swap meet years ago. They made us line up outside in the rain for three hours.”

“That's ridiculous!” I say.

“Nah, we only stayed forty minutes, did all our swaps in the line, and by the time they opened the doors, we'd gone.”

“All right,” wheezes Pete's dad, “let's park.” He puts the handbrake on and swings himself out of the cab. Really? Here?

We clamber down and join Pete's dad next to his “parking space.” It looks as if we just parked in the middle of a square—you know, the sort of place where people eat sandwiches, drink a coffee with friends, and
don't
park trucks?

“You bunch go get in the line,” says Pete's dad, wrestling with the doors at the back. “I'll unload.”

“Should we help?” Roman asks Pete.

“Heavy work, lads,” Pete Senior sniffs.

“Don't bother offering,” Pete tells him, walking away. “When my dad looks at me, he just sees a seven-year-old in a tutu.”

Pete did
ballet
as a kid? Roman sniggers. I don't think I was meant to hear that. I hang back so he doesn't realize I did.

“Shut up, Ro. You never heard of
Billy Elliot
?”

I want to join in, but I still don't feel like one of them, so I don't risk it.

At the front of the line is a massive opening into a huge warehouse-looking area. You could park a plane in there and then lose it when you came back from your shopping.

We peer in. It's full of cameras and men with walkie-talkies and young women with clipboards, and big black floor-to-ceiling curtains partitioning off different sections. I'm nervous at the thought of being in the middle of that madness. But that won't be for a while, because first we have to get in line.

The line is about five deep; the people at the front are sprawled on the floor as if part of a disastrous sleepover. They're giving off a nasty whiff—sports sock full of egg—and look crazy around the eyes.

We walk along the line, looking—hoping—for the end of it. We walk and we walk, and the line just keeps on …
being
. After we follow it around the building for over five minutes, it no longer looks like a queue; more like a medium-sized country with a whimsical sense of humor said, “Hey, guys, let's stand in a sausage shape today!”

There are a lot of dogs in dresses. This is going to be a day I'll never forget. (Which can be a good thing and a bad thing. I'll never forget the day I had chicken pox and got a scab up my nose.)

A ferret wearing a tiny cowboy hat darts at Gabe's ankle, teeth bared.

“Anastasia, no!”

Her owner, a skinny teenager with gauges in each ear, scolds her and scoops her up.

By now we're at the end of the line. I think Gabe would rather be farther away from the ferret.

“Who names a ferret Anastasia?” wonders Roman.

“The sort of person who dresses it up in a cowboy hat,” Gabe says.

Pete looks worried. “I hope there are some normal people here, that we're not just auditioning for a freak show.”

Now
he worries about that?

“Underwater synchronized dancing probably fits right in,” mutters Roman, who seems to be losing his nerve. I have to do something.

I give a little peep on my whistle and they all look at me.

“Let's sit and wait and stay focused,” I tell them with a confidence I do not feel. Thankfully, no one argues back.

I pull on another sweater and wriggle into my sleeping bag. After a few minutes of squirming, I finally slide into a comfy position. I look up to find all the boys watching me.

“Have you never lined up for a gig?”

We sit there
forever
. OK, forty minutes, but that's a really long time to sit on the ground. The line keeps moving forward tiny bit by tiny bit, which is such a pain in the butt—literally—'cause I'm shuffling along on my bum every thirty seconds to keep up. Eventually the boys take pity on me and drag me behind them like a bag of garbage.

I will really need to wash my hair, I think as I feel it scrape along the tarmac.

More and more people join the line behind us, so at least we feel like we're ahead of
someone.
Just then I see a very unwelcome sight: an upside-down view of Debs, Cammie, Melia, Nicole, and Amanda walking past us. Cammie stops when she sees Pete. I sit up and knock a candy wrapper out of my hair.

Debs notices her team has stopped and comes back to see what's happening. “Oh, hello,” she says, vaguely drifting her eyes over everyone as if she doesn't really remember us. Cheers, ex-favorite teacher. She recognizes the boys and I see her putting two and two together. So that's what we were doing at the pool.

“Are you going to line up?” I ask.

“No,” she says. The girls smile a little, like, “Oh, how LOL, but I can't laugh or I'd crack my makeup.”

“We got through weeks ago,” says Debs smoothly. “We're here to do interviews, dress rehearsal with our bespoke swimming pool … you know.”

I nod, but I don't know, especially the word
bespoke
.

I hope it means “full of snakes.”

“Uh-huh,” says Gabe. (Love Gabe, he's never rude to anyone. I'm so glad he's picked up on the tone here. The other two are just dribbling over the girls. Please focus, team.) “Yah, we've got a freestanding swimming pool too. Ours is industrial, though, higher build quality—well, you know…” he says, having an elaborate stretch and yawn to show how very unbothered he is.

I'm quietly Googling
bespoke
on my phone, inside my sleeping bag so Debs can't see. Oh, it just means someone made it for them. Well, someone's making our pool for us,
actually
, so …

“Hey!” comes a yell from behind. Great timing, Pete Senior.

“Heyy!!!” he says again, clearly feeling that the whole line should be listening. “I've got yer fish tank set up!”

 

chapter 20

At the words
fish tank
, I can see everyone in the line starting to giggle and look around. To be clear about this, these are people who put hats on their ferrets and dresses on their dogs, and they are laughing at
us
.

“Thanks, Dad!” yells Pete, leaping to his feet. Then he sees the tank and his face droops. I haul myself up using Gabe as a crutch, stumble over a few magazines, and shuffle to stand next to Pete. And we stare together.

Well. If one were to scrabble around for a nice thing to say (and let's be nice, why not?), it looks a bit like modern art. It lurches and bulges wonkily at the sides. I can't imagine it holding a small mouse, let alone gallons of water. And it's really small—the swimming routine is going to involve a lot more cuddling than I'd choreographed.

Also,
how
are we going to move it into the studio? Already a traffic cop is eyeing it and reaching for his notebook.

“I won't keep you,” I say crisply to Debs and her team. They drift off with a couple of pitying backward glances and snickers.

“Stay here,” says Pete wearily to me. “Hold our place.” Happy to! His dad was tetchy when I asked him his surname; imagine how moody he'll get when questioned about his crazy fishbowl. I watch the three boys slope away from me and toward the wobbly upside-down greenhouse in the middle of the pedestrianized zone.

My stomach is churning with cheese, worry, and pickle. I fiddle with my whistle, which usually bolsters my confidence, but right now I feel out of my depth. I look at my phone and think about calling home, but I've got no bars.

Pete, Roman, and Gabe finish talking with Pete Senior and walk back to me with faces of men who have seen their own doom and know there is nothing left to do but face it with dignity.

“Good news?” I say brightly.

Gabe looks at Pete, who says nothing, so he fills me in. “We have no idea how we can move it from out here to in there. And that tank is so small, if we attempt the triple dive, someone's going to end up pregnant. And it can't be me, because I need to focus on my education.”