Seeing Cinderella (9 page)

Riiiight.

As the days passed, I played detective. When I saw Ellen and Stacy wearing the same shade of nail polish on Monday, I figured that meant they hung out over the weekend. And when my super-sleuth skills spied Ellen not paying
attention in math class (a first for Ellen) because she was scribbling a note—a note she never gave to me—I spied on her thoughts and realized she was passing notes with Stacy.

Ellen and Stacy joined the same clubs, even though I knew from spying on Stacy’s thoughts she didn’t care about any of them.

Another thing I found out from spying on Stacy’s thoughts: She was always thinking about the girl with the dull blond hair and green rubber-band braces—Green Braces Girl, I called her. Once when Ellen, Stacy, and I were walking down the hall, we saw a bunch of girls laughing at another girl with a bad case of acne. I’d just been glad they weren’t laughing at
me
. But when I looked over at Stacy, I saw, in the screen hovering next to her, an image of a group of kids laughing at Green Braces Girl in what looked like a school cafeteria. For the millionth time, I’d wondered who Green Braces Girl was, and why Stacy thought about her all the time.

“What’s this?” I held a folded up piece of paper Ana gave me. We were standing in my kitchen. Class had dismissed early for a minimum day, and Ana agreed to help me with an extra-credit project Señora Geck assigned. After cooking an authentic Mexican dish, I needed to write a one-page report (in English, thankfully) about what I learned.

I opened the paper and scanned the page. It was a recipe. “What’s mole sauce?” I said, picturing a furry little creature swimming in red sauce.

Ana laughed. “It’s not ‘mole’ sauce. It’s ‘moe-
lay
’ sauce. It’s a traditional Mexican dish. We can make it for your project.”

“You’re kidding me. Can’t we just buy it in a can or jar or something?” I didn’t want to sound ungrateful, but there were, like, fifteen ingredients on the list. Truthfully, when I agreed to cook something for extra credit, I’d envisioned myself browning ground beef, tossing in some shredded cheese, dumping canned salsa over the whole thing, and wrapping it all up in a tortilla.
Voila!
Tacos a la Callie!

But—call me a genius—I guessed that wasn’t how Ana’s family did it in Mexico.

“This is my
abuelita
’s famous recipe. She even won a contest once,” Ana said.

“Okay.” I looked around the kitchen. No way did we have half the ingredients on the list. I didn’t even know what some of them were. I’d never heard of a guajillo chile before. And really, mixing a chile and a stick of cinnamon together sounded kind of nasty.

“I don’t think I have enough money for all
this.” Mom had given me some money so we could walk to the grocery store, but I was pretty sure I’d need more.

Ana looked at the list again. “We have most of the spices at home.” She headed for the door. “I’ll get them and be right back.”

After Ana left I ransacked my kitchen, but the only ingredients I found were limp-looking sticks of celery and snack packs of raisins.

Ana returned with a brown paper bag full of spices, cans of chicken broth, onions, and what I thought at first was a small onion but turned out to be a head of garlic.

I grabbed a tote bag, dropped my glasses and money inside and headed for the door, but Ana stopped me.

“We will wait for Ellen, yes?”

I’d never made plans to hang out with someone other than Ellen before. I’d felt a little strange. Guilty, almost. So I invited Ellen over too. Ellen said she had a few club meetings after school, but she’d come over as soon as she could.

“Ellen’s coming later,” I said, and opened the door.

Ana passed the grocery store Mom and I usually shopped at and headed toward the Mexican market next door. I’d seen the market a million times before, but had never been
inside. So I felt weird following behind Ana, like I was an imposter or something.

Ana passed the meat counter and hanging packages of dried peppers and went straight for the produce section. She picked through a bin of fresh peppers: plucking, weighing, and squeezing until she found just the right ones. While Ana shopped, I glanced around and saw a whole section of yummy-looking pastries. Some of them were even decorated with a thick stripe of green, white, and red frosting to look like the Mexican flag.

Once we selected our items, Ana handed me the basket and pointed to the cashier. “I want you to say, ‘I want to buy these, please’ in Spanish.”

“No way. I can barely say my own name in Spanish.”

“It is easy. You only say,
‘Quiero comprar estos, por favor.’
”

“Only.” I rolled my eyes. “Right.”

Ana repeated the phrase a few times and then I went up to the counter. I probably butchered every word, but the cashier nodded and smiled as she rang up the items.

Outside, Ana stopped at a newspaper dispenser. She wanted to buy a paper she said Mr. Garcia liked to read. While she dug around in her pockets for quarters, I waited. The doors to the grocery store slid open, spitting out Raven and one of her Goth friends. Both held candy
bars and canned sodas. I thought I heard her friend mutter “conformists,” in a disgusted tone of voice when she saw Ana and me.

Which I thought was really funny. Raven and her friend were dressed so alike (down to their matching dog collars) they could have been twins.

Raven and her friend whispered and pointed at us while Ana, oblivious, fed her change into the newspaper dispenser. If Raven could spy on me, I figured I could spy on her. So I took my glasses from my tote bag and slipped them on.

The air shimmered and the blue screen appeared by Raven, and her thoughts scrolled across:
Is that how they dress in Mexico? She thinks she’s so hot she can dress any way she wants and get away with it?

Raven raised her voice. “Can her clothes be any tackier?”

“Can your attitude be any snottier?” I shot back.

I took my glasses off and bit back a smile. After weeks of seeing people’s thoughts, and having to keep quiet, it felt
really
good to finally say something back.

“Sensitive, much?” Raven said. “I was just joking. You don’t have to take everything so personally. Besides, I wasn’t talking about
you,
Four Eyes.”

Raven and her Goth friend sauntered away, sipping sodas and laughing as they left.

Ana finished tucking the newspaper into a grocery bag and stood up. “What did she say? I didn’t hear.”

“We were just talking about . . . how neither of us likes drama.”

That answer seemed to satisfy Ana, and I was glad. How could I explain Raven was making fun of the way Ana dressed? Personally, I didn’t think Raven should talk, since she couldn’t be bothered to wear something non-black. But Raven’s clothes fit her, and most of Ana’s didn’t. Ana seemed to have only a handful of outfits: jeans that were too short, colorful stretch pants, a few T-shirts, skirts that were way too long, and the pair of too-short overalls she wore today.

I figured Ana’s family in Mexico was probably poor, especially since her dad was sick.

So what was I supposed to do? Tell Ana to tell her uncle she needed trendier clothes?

On the walk back home, Ana asked me why I didn’t like drama.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Sometimes I feel like there’s this all-seeing eye just waiting for me to screw up.”

“You mean God?”

“No. I mean the entire student body of Pacificview. They’re not as nice as God.”

“Maybe,” Ana said. “But I think you are too scared sometimes. Like with the paint crew last week.”

Last week, the paint crew started working on set pieces, beginning with the pumpkin patch near Cinderella’s cottage. Most students dove right in with the orange paint. Their pumpkins looked like ginormous tangerines. I hung back, mixing the orange and white and brown paints until I had a perfect pumpkin shade. Ana watched me, and after a few minutes she whispered, “Show the others.” But I kept quiet, until Gretchen Baxter glanced over and said, “Hey everyone, look at Callie.” Since then, the crew regularly asked me how to mix colors, fix splatters, and paint shadows—all the things I learned from my dad.

“Maybe you’re right,” I said finally.

Back home, I took orders from Ana. I chopped onions until my eyes stung, and diced garlic until my hands reeked. Ana was amazing. She fried sesame seeds, toasted almonds, crushed tomatoes with her bare hands, and melted chocolate. After a while we had a large pot of red bubbly sauce that smelled sharp and sweet at the same time. Maybe I’d been wrong about peppers and cinnamon sticks
not belonging together. Maybe in the right environment, they were just what the other one needed.

Ana told me her uncle really appreciated Mexican home cooking. I asked if she ever cooked like this for the Garcias.

Ana shrugged. “Tío says the more I cook and save money on food, the more money he can send to my parents.”

That sounded weird to me. Mom was always complaining about money lately. But that didn’t mean I got stuck cooking every night.

But when I said that to Ana, she replied, “I think maybe my family is different from yours. My list is a little longer.” Then she pointed to the Post-it note of chores my mother had left for me by the phone.

“Oh, okay.” I guessed Ana was right—her family
was
different from mine. There was a lot about her, and her culture, that I didn’t understand. So I decided to change the subject.

“I wonder where Ellen is?” I asked, looking at the clock above the kitchen table. Her club meetings had to have ended by now.

Ana glanced up at the clock too, and her eyes widened. “Four fifty?” Quickly, she wiped her hands off on a towel. “I have to go.”

“Go? You’re not eating with us? You’ve done most of the work.”

“I was supposed to make dinner for everyone tonight.”

Ana headed for the door and I called, “Wait. What if we split the
mole
sauce? It’s almost done anyway, and there’s a ton. You take half and I’ll take half.”

Ana paused, and I could see relief in her eyes. “Okay.
Gracias
, thank you.”

As soon as I put a lid on Ana’s half of the sauce she scooped up the plastic container, calling
“Gracias”
again over her shoulder and streaking out the kitchen door.

After Ana left I decided to call Ellen and find out why she’d never shown up. A giggling voice picked up on the other line.

“Hello?” It was Ellen.

“Hey, it’s me. When are you coming over?”

“Um . . .” There were hushed whispers on the other line, and a bubbling laugh I was sure belonged to Stacy.

“For dinner, remember? My extra-credit project?”

“Oh, Callie, I’m so totally sorry.” Ellen’s voice sounded sugary sweet. “When I got home, Tara was here. She flew home a few days early for the weekend. She said we could go with her to the mall. We thought it would be fun.”

“Who is we?” I asked, but I was pretty sure I knew.

“Me and Tara,” Ellen said quickly. “We.”

Deciding to perform an experiment, I reached for my tote bag and slipped on my glasses. I held the phone out in front of me and asked in a loud, clear voice, “So you can’t come over tonight because you and Tara are hanging out? Just the two of you?”

I stared at the receiver as Ellen hesitated. But no screen appeared when she said, “Yeah, that’s right. Just Tara and me.”

We hung up then, and I took my glasses off. I figured you had to actually be looking at a person to read their thoughts.

Or catch them in a lie.

Chapter 9

Super Freaky Glasses Rule #
₈

When it comes to best friends, all’s fair in love and middle school.

E
LLEN HAD LIED TO ME ON THE PHONE
, I
WAS SURE OF IT
. So I decided to spy on her thoughts the next morning, and find out for certain. But Ellen was late to first period. And trying to read her thoughts during class proved useless, because she was actually paying attention to Mrs. Faber.

“Are we boring you, Miss Anderson?” Mrs. Faber asked when she caught me staring at Ellen.

“No,” I lied. “Not at all.”

“Good.” Mrs. Faber pointed to an equation on the whiteboard. “Then maybe you could tell me the answer
to the problem the rest of us have been working on for the last five minutes?”

“Sure,” I said, staring at the number inside the screen hovering by Mrs. Faber’s head. “The answer is five and three-fourths.”

“Correct.” Mrs. Faber frowned, and the image inside the screen changed:
How did she know that? I know she wasn’t paying attention.

The bell rang then, and Ellen shot out of her seat, calling over her shoulder that she had another club meeting during lunch.

“Ellen, wait!” I yelled, as she hurried out the door, but she didn’t hear me. By the time I caught up, Ellen was rummaging through her locker.

“Hey, how’s it going?” I said.

“Not great.” Ellen stuffed a textbook into her backpack. “I’ve got a history test next period I didn’t study for.” The screen appeared by Ellen. Inside was an image of Ellen and Stacy in Ellen’s room. Stacy watched while Ellen strummed a guitar. Which confused me—I didn’t think Ellen owned a guitar.