On the Back Burner (3 page)

Matthew’s jaw dropped. “Aw, no way!” he yelled.
“Mom!”

“Don’t worry, Matthew,” Natasha said, smiling. “I’m the birthday girl, and I say you get some pizza. Cool?”

“Cool!” he said, giving her a high-five, his freckled face breaking into a huge grin. Natasha smiled back at him. For the first time in a while, she felt truly, really, completely happy. She remembered how absolutely
unhappy
she’d felt not very long ago. Just two weeks ago, in fact, she’d revealed to her friends that she was adopted. It was something she herself had only learned about a year ago. When her parents had told her, it brought up so many confusing questions. She became filled with envy for other girls who lived with their birth families, whose lives weren’t full of secrets and unanswerable questions, and the envy made her feel sick inside.

Finally, Natasha decided to tell her friends the truth. Once the secret was out, it was as if a terrible weight had been lifted off her shoulders. Though she was starting to understand that her
real
parents were the ones who had adopted her, who’d loved and cared for her since she was a baby, Natasha still had questions. But it all seemed less important now that it wasn’t a deep, dark secret she was carrying around inside her.

“Thanks, Natasha, that’s very sweet,” Mrs. Moore said. “But we’re going to have dinner with the Baders. Otherwise, Matthew would probably eat all of this pizza himself!”

“You’d better save me some cake!” Matthew said.

“We’ll save you one piece of cake,” Amanda promised.

After dinner the girls put together a plate of cookies and brownies, a big bowl of chips, and some sodas, and went upstairs to the large room the twins shared. One at a time, each girl went to the bathroom to change into her nightshirt or pajamas. Shawn, Peichi, and Natasha laid out their sleeping bags.

Amanda took out her flowered case filled with nail polishes of all different shades. “Help yourselves,” she told her friends. “Here’s the clear polish for you, Molly.” She giggled. “Since your nails are all chewed up, that would probably be the best.”

“I don’t want nail polish,” Molly protested.

“Use it,” insisted Amanda. “It’ll help you stop biting your nails, since polish tastes
terrible.
Here, Molls, I’ll paint your nails for you.”

For the next hour, the girls painted one another’s fingers and toes. They giggled and talked about people they knew from school. Shawn told them a scary story about a girl who always wore a scarf around her neck—until her head fell off one day when some kids yanked off her scarf!

“Ew!
That’s disgusting!” Peichi cried with a laugh.

“And it makes no sense,” added Natasha. “There’s no way that a scarf could hold somebody’s head onto their body. Plus, they would be dead if their head wasn’t attached!”

“It’s not supposed to make
sense
,” said Shawn, laughing. “It’s just supposed to be scary!”

“
Oooh
, I know a good story,” Peichi began.

“No, no more horror stories,” pleaded Amanda. “I’ll have nightmares. Let’s talk about something else.”

“I’ll read from my new astrology book,” suggested Natasha. “Let’s see...it says here that a Capricorn—that’s me—gets along best with Scorpio, Leo, Aquarius, and Cancer.” She looked at all of them, trying to remember their signs. “None of you are those signs,” she realized. “Oh, well, I like you all anyway.”

“Let me see that book,” Peichi requested, taking the book very carefully so she wouldn’t smear any of her sparkly blue polish. “I’m Sagittarius, which means I get along with Aries and Leo. So I should get along best with Shawn.”

“And we
do
get along,” Shawn said.

“True, but I don’t get along better with you than with the rest of the group,” Peichi pointed out.

“Maybe this stuff just isn’t real,” Natasha said, feeling her sensible side resurfacing. “I mean, it’s fun, but we shouldn’t be taking it all that seriously.”

“I know what you mean,” said Molly. “I don’t believe in those predictions, either. I’d never break Amanda’s heart.”

“You’d better not,” Amanda teased. “How could you possibly break my heart? We share
everything.
And we definitely tell each other everything.” Still, Amanda couldn’t stop thinking about how Sonia seemed to know
exactly
how she was feeling about Shawn.

“What I want to know,” Shawn said, “is how Sonia knew that I’m involved with cooking. And she seemed to know that it’s just me and my dad.”

“This kind of horoscope isn’t the only horoscope there is, you know,” Peichi said. “The Chinese have a different set of signs based on what year you were born instead of what month.”

“That’s neat,” Natasha said. “We all have the same sign!”

“Well, not exactly,” Peichi corrected her. “Amanda, Molly, Shawn, and I have the same sign. But your birthday is January thirteenth—that’s before the Chinese New Year happens, Natasha, so your sign is for the year before.”

“Oh,
that
figures.” Natasha said, rolling her eyes.
Just when I think I’m
finally
the same as everyone else, I find out I’m
still
different!
she thought to herself.

“But Peichi, according to the Chinese horoscopes, almost everybody born in the same year would be sort of similar to one another,” Molly said. “But Amanda and I were born just minutes apart and we’re not that much alike, except for our looks.”

Peichi shrugged. “Don’t ask me. I’m just telling you what they say. Listen, you guys, Chinese New Year is coming up. It’s only two weeks away! I’m so excited! At the end of the holiday, it’s a tradition that friends and relatives come over for a big dinner. My parents said that this year I could invite some of
my
friends over! Do you all want to come?” Peichi took a deep breath after talking so fast, and all the girls giggled.

“Absolutely,” Amanda said, blowing on her bright red toes to dry them.

“That sounds great,” Molly agreed. “But why isn’t Chinese New Year celebrated on January first?”

“The traditional Chinese calendar is different from the western calendar. We don’t do all that A.D. and B.C. stuff, which means we count the years differently,” Peichi explained.

“I get it,” Molly said. “It sounds really cool, Peichi. It’s so awesome that last month we went to Natasha’s for Hanukkah, and next month we’ll be at your house for the Chinese New Year”

“I
love
Chinese food,” said Shawn. “Who will be doing the New Year’s cooking at your house, Peichi?”

“My whole family! Everyone contributes to the meal. And here’s the big thing,” Peichi said eagerly. “My parents said that you guys could cook with us, if you want.”

“Cool!” Amanda said. “Would we cook at your place or at your grandparents’ in Chinatown?”

“I’d love to go to Chinatown,” said Natasha. “I’ve only been there a few times with my parents. Manhattan is so big! Sometimes I get a little nervous there.”

“I like it better here in Brooklyn, too,” Molly agreed.

“Not me,” stated Amanda. “I love Manhattan. That’s where all the excitement is—the theaters, the TV studios. And all the celebrities! The minute I’m finished with college, I’m getting an apartment in the city.”

“Hey, I thought we planned to live together after school,” Molly reminded her. “I don’t want to live in Manhattan.”

“You have to,” Amanda said slowly as a sly look came over her face. “If you don’t you’ll break my heart.”

“Oh, great!” Molly cried, throwing her arms wide. “Now she’s going to hold that over my head for the rest of my life so she can get me to do whatever she wants.”

Everybody laughed. “No, I won’t,” insisted Amanda. “We’ll flip a coin. Or maybe I’ll find some amazing apartment in Manhattan that will convince you to live there!”

“Wouldn’t that be so cool?” Shawn asked.

“You can live with us,” Amanda said.
As long as you don’t bring Angie with you,
she thought.

“I want to live with you guys, too,” Peichi said. “And so does Natasha. We could cook gourmet meals and deliver them all over New York City! Amanda could go on auditions in the theater district. Natasha would be at the TV studios in the West Fifties every day since she’s going to be a TV star. And Molly, Shawn, and I would go to Yankee Stadium and watch ball games whenever we weren’t cooking or delivering food!”

“It sounds great,” Molly said. “Maybe we could even have our own restaurant. That would be awesome. I wonder if it will ever really happen.”

“We should get Sonia back here to ask her,” suggested Shawn.

“I wonder if she believes the things she says or just makes them up,” Amanda said. She still couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling she had from Sonia’s predictions.

“I think it was real.” Shawn said. “She seemed to really be concentrating, and she never changed her story or backed down. It was like she saw what she saw, and that was it. If she were only making it up, wouldn’t she have given everyone a good fortune that they wanted to hear?”

“I got the only really positive fortune, and I don’t even want to be a TV star,” Natasha said.

“You don’t?” Amanda asked. “I do. I’ll take your fortune, then. It beats losing your best friend.”

“She only said you’d feel like you were losing your best friend,” Shawn reminded her. “She didn’t say you’d actually
lose
your best friend.”

Amanda wondered if Shawn knew that she was the best friend who would be lost. Shawn didn’t seem to be worried about it, though. But the more Amanda thought about it, the more certain she became that Shawn was the one Sonia had been referring to.

“Anyway,” Peichi said, changing the subject back to Chinese New Year. “Ah-mah said she’d give us a cooking lesson next weekend, if you guys want.” Ah-mah was Peichi’s grandmother.

Awesome—another guest chef, just like Grandma Ruthie,” Shawn said. A few months ago, Shawn’s dad had taken a long business trip to Australia. Shawn’s Grandma Ruthie had stayed with her in New York, and she had taught the girls how to cook Southern food, her specialty. The clients loved it!

“
Ohhh!
I almost forgot!” squealed Amanda, reaching for her backpack. She pulled out lots of little tubes and jars. “I bought this glimmery lotion at the drugstore. And I got some free samples of these cool masks and moisturizers. We can each try a different one!”

“Awesome!” Shawn exclaimed. She, Peichi, and Natasha grabbed the brightly colored tubes and rushed off to the twins’ bathroom to try them out. As Shawn left the room, Amanda sighed heavily. She couldn’t stop thinking about Sonia’s prediction—about losing Shawn.

“Don’t worry, Manda,” Molly said, putting her hand on Amanda’s arm. “You’re right, it’s all make-believe. And no matter what, you’ll never lose
me.”

O
n Sunday afternoon, Peichi walked home from the sleepover. She yawned. The girls had been up
really
late, talking until four o’clock in the morning, and even though they’d slept in past noon, she still felt tired. As she hiked up the sloping city block, she thought about how much she was looking forward to Chinese New Year. The fact that her parents were treating her like a grown-up—involving her in their plans, letting her invite her friends—made it seem even more special. She couldn’t wait to have her friends experience all the fun of Chinese New Year, too. And she couldn’t wait to receive
ly-cee—
red envelopes stuffed with money for good luck!

“I’m home!” she called as she walked in the front door of her house.

“So am I,” called her slim, stylish mother, coming up the front hall to her. Smiling warmly, she hugged Peichi. “How was the sleepover?”

“It was great! Natasha was completely surprised. And I told everybody about Chinese New Year. They’re all really excited about it. They’re going to help cook and everything.”

“I’m glad,” Mrs. Cheng said, putting her arm around Peichi’s shoulders. “I think the holiday will be extra fun this year. Homework?”