Jersey Tomatoes are the Best (12 page)

Yoly joins us as we watch the guy’s retreating back.

“He’s not very big,” she says. Maney shrugs. She steps toward the cooler.

“News flash, girls,” she says. “Size
doesn’t
matter.”

I watch him with a bit more interest now. That’s a pro stride, I think. Sweaty, pro hair curling at the base of his neck. I have to agree with Yoly: I wouldn’t have picked him out of a crowd. David Ross is a wiry, average-sized guy who looks like he plays an average game. On appearances alone, Jonathan Dundas looks a lot more athletic. Still, he’s cute. Okay, hot, in that not-jacked-but-fit way. I wonder why he was staring.

Wonder how much of my drill session he’d seen.

Chapter Twelve

S
omeone taps on my door. I think. Hard to tell, because I’ve got the covers pulled over my head, and through the walls of my insulating bed-cocoon, sounds seem muffled and distant.

“Eva? Honey, are you asleep already?”

It’s Rhonda. The door swings into the bedroom with a familiar, faraway groan, and a pie-shaped wedge of light falls on the floor. My room is dark, the hallway bright. I’ve pulled the shades against the setting summer sun, and wrapped myself in flannel pajamas to ward off the air-conditioning. My parents live like Eskimos. It’s late June in Jersey, but you’d think this house was an Inuit igloo in January.

I try faking sleep, but Rhonda’s on a mission. I hear her place something on my desk, hear the clink of glasses. The slide of a tray. My bedside table lamp clicks on and illuminates the inside of my cocoon to daylight bright. The mattress yields to Rhonda’s weight as she sits beside me; the covers rustle as she pulls them down. I blink in the lamplight.

“Hey, sleepyhead! How’re you doing?” She smiles, but it’s a real question.

“Great,” I say, pretending to yawn. “What time is it?”

“Only seven. You slept right through dinner.”

“Wow. I must’ve been pretty tired.” I sit up. A smell fills my room. Grilled chicken. She’s carried grilled chicken in here, on the tray.

I used to love grilled chicken. I imagine tasting it, and my stomach roars in response.

Are you kidding me?? Are you f-ing kidding me?!

She presses the back of her hand against my forehead, the way she used to when I was a little girl and she thought I had a fever.

“They must be working you pretty hard,” she comments softly. “This is the third night in a row you’ve slept through dinner.”

“Yeah,” I say. “But it’s okay.” Rhonda sighs.

“It’s not okay to miss dinner, Eva. You can’t be your best if your body is depleted.” I flash her my most reassuring smile.

“Mom. Give me
some
credit for not being a total idiot.”
Tell her to go. And take that crap out of here
.

She gets up and carries the tray to my bed. An entire chicken breast, with its crosshatched grill lines across the flesh, rests on a nest of salad greens, which are flecked with white cheese. Goat. Rhonda puts goat cheese in practically everything. There’s a tall glass of milk, and a bud vase with a single flower from her garden. Nice touch.

“Would Your Highness like to eat sitting up in bed, or at the desk? Or, better yet, we could carry it downstairs so you could actually visit with your father.”

I’ve barely seen Dad these past couple of days. Maybe we could sit outside on the deck where it’s warm. I could eat the chicken; that’d be all right.…

Get rid of that dead animal. Take that decaying bird out of here
.

“I always spill stuff when I eat in bed. Just put it on the desk.” Rhonda replaces the tray but remains standing. She folds her arms tightly across her chest.

“Eva, is everything okay?”

“Why wouldn’t everything be okay?” I answer quickly.

“Well, frankly, honey, your father and I are concerned. You seem so wiped out at the end of the day, and when you get home you just disappear into your room.”

“Mom, it’s the first week! I mean, what’s there to say? They spend the beginning reviewing and relearning the basics. Imagine me practicing
pliés
for hours on end. Dull, huh?”

Rhonda shifts her feet and frowns.

“Does Madame DuPres give you any feedback at all?”

“Mom, do you know what the other girls call her? The Sphinx. After that Egyptian thing. That’s because no one knows what she’s thinking. The other girls say she doesn’t even know their names! And they’ve been there for years.”

“See, now that’s another thing. The other girls. Who are they? You’ve told us nothing about the other students.”

The smell of the chicken is making me crazy. Stirring
long-buried hungers. I not only imagine chewing; I imagine talking to my mother. About something real.

Like this afternoon. I had fifteen minutes to kill before
pointe
class, and I dialed Henry. I was standing outside the school, watching as clusters of dancers quick-stepped along the sidewalk and up the stairs, returning from their lunch breaks. Sisters-in-arms, laughing together. Missing Henry in that moment felt like physical pain, even worse than the worsening sore toe I’ve been trying to ignore.

Someone picked up her cell phone. The Yolanda person.

“Oh, hi, Eva!” she exclaimed when I told her who I was. Oh-hi, like she knew me. “Henry is working out and left her phone here in the room. How’s it going? She told me all about your ballet school. It sounds so amazing!”

“Uh, yeah. It’s amazing,” I replied. For some reason the fact that she knew all about me but I didn’t know a thing about her made me want to cry. I got her off the phone, asked her to ask Henry to call me.

“Did I tell you I spoke to Henry yesterday?” Rhonda’s eyes widen slightly, indicating boredom. If we’re not talking ballet, my mother finds it hard to pay attention to what I’m saying.

“How is she doing?” Rhonda asks politely.

“I miss her,” I say instead. “These other girls … I don’t know. It’s competitive.”

Her eyes brighten.

“Are they competitive with you? Have you been singled out in some way?”

“No, I’m just one in a faceless mob,” I tell her. “It’s more
like everyone is competitive with everyone else. Doesn’t exactly encourage warm and fuzzy friendships, you know?”

Rhonda frowns.

“You know, honey, some of these other girls? You might end up in the same company with a few of them. Keep in mind that these are good contacts for you.”

Henry called me back that night. It sounded like she was talking from inside a tin can.

“Where
are
you? A submarine?” I asked. She laughed.

“It’s this totally cool place called the Overlook. It’s a lounge, up some stairs, and looks out over the indoor courts on one side and the outdoor courts on the other. Totally sweet for watching matches or checking out other players.”

“Ooh, like full-of-himself-blondie-with-the-good-teeth?” I asked.

“Actually, there is way better scoping to be had,” she said meaningfully. “But give me your news first.”

“Nothing to say unless you want a detailed description of how it feels to twist your limbs until the connective tissue squeaks, then leap, turning, across an enormous room over and over until sweat flies off you like a sprinkler.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“Sorry to make you jealous,” I said. She laughed.

“I miss you,” she said.

“No, you don’t,” I countered. “You’ve already made a new best friend. Your roommate, Linda. She answered your cell phone and knew who I was. Confess: you’ve told her all our secrets.”

“Oh, yeah, right,” Henry said easily. “And by the way, it’s not Linda. It’s Yolanda. Yoly for short. She’s Cuban. And I’ve told her all about
you
, my best friend, who is going to be a world-famous dancer someday.”

“If someone doesn’t put strychnine in my Dasani bottle first,” I muttered.

“What?” Henry asked.

“Oh … nothing. It’s just this place isn’t conducive to making friends. I swear, Henry, some of these girls would slit my Achilles tendons if they thought it would give them a leg up on me. They are intense, focused, killer ballerinas.”

“Like, ax-wielding killers?” she asked.

“Murderous zombies in tutus,” I said. She snorted.

“But enough of my uplifting news. What’s your latest? Who’d you massacre today?”

“Actually, I had a close match. This girl from North Carolina. She actually broke me once.” I know what that means.

“So you beat her 6–1, 6–0.”

“Yeah. Moved me up the ladder a bit. I’m two away from the top. By Friday I’ll be there.” I get this, too. A ladder is just that: all the players challenge each other until the best ends up at number one. Henry was moving into the top spot at the academy.

“Sounds like you’re doing great, Hen,” I said.

“So far so good,” she said, but I wasn’t fooled. She could brag to me, but she never does.

I want to tell my mother that if I have to imagine being surrounded by ax-wielding killer ballerina contacts for my
entire grown-up life, I’ll pass on growing up, thank you. But I don’t get the chance. She stands, ready to leave.

“Well, I should see to the dinner dishes. Bring your tray down when you’re finished, okay?” She exits. She leaves the bedroom door open, heads down the stairs … eight, nine, ten … and when she reaches the first floor I whisk the covers back, leap out of bed and cross the room. I shut the door. The latch engages with a whisper of a click.

The chicken breast has been basted with teriyaki marinade. You can smell the ginger and the soy sauce, see the caramelized glisten of something sugary at the slightly singed ends.

I want it so badly I could cry. It’s all I can do not to grab it in my hands and take huge, wolfish bites. I can taste the sweetness of it.…

A whole breast. It looks like it weighs half a pound. Nobody eats eight ounces of chicken in one sitting. At least, nobody should. Only a total pig would
.

I go to my closet, and push aside the big, plastic tub on the floor where I’ve stored my old American Girl doll stuff. Samantha. I had chosen Samantha Parkington, the rich Victorian-era girl with the dark, glossy hair and the amazing clothes. Well,
all
those dolls had amazing clothes, even Josefina, who supposedly cooked bread in an outdoor mud oven and took care of goats. Henry chose the Depression-era doll: Kit. Sassy. Strong. The girl who could tough out the hard times. We spent hours with Kit and Samantha and all their expensive gear.

As I move the tub, I see her. Samantha’s face is pressed
against the bottom corner. She stares at me through the opaque plastic.

Behind the tub I find what I was looking for. It’s a big Ziploc bag, the gallon size. I hold my breath as I pull it out, but luckily the seam has held and nothing leaks. I can’t stop myself from gaping at the contents: three nights’ worth of decomposing dinners.

I prop the bag on my desk and carefully pull the plastic tab across the top. I breathe through my mouth so I won’t smell anything (a babysitting trick I learned that helped me get through changing poopy diapers), but something thick wafts from the bag. I feel it just under my nose: the hunk of salmon, the baked potato, the slice of quiche. A tofu “hot dog.” Trying not to gag, I spear the chicken breast and deposit it with the rest. I shovel a few forkfuls of salad greens in as well, then zip the whole mess shut.

I replace the bag on the floor of my closet and slide Samantha’s box in front of it. Then I take a swig of milk. Allow myself two forks of salad greens before getting back into bed, shivering. Stupid air-conditioning.

I pull the covers over my head, curl into a tight ball and wait to feel warm. My stomach rumbles, spurred on by the smell of food, but it’s quiet in my head. I rest one hand on my hip. Hard, the bone just beneath the surface. I close my eyes, my heart slows and my last waking thought is not a thought at all, but a picture. A perfect picture of me and Samantha, safe inside our quiet little boxes.

Chapter Thirteen

W
hen I press “end,” the Overlook seems strangely silent without the sound of Eva’s voice in my ear. Stark change from this afternoon, when just about every student and instructor crowded up here to watch David Ross play the guy from Greenlake Academy.