The Brilliant Fall of Gianna Z. (2 page)

“Gianna’s not going to fail science,” Ellen says to Bianca’s reflection, just as Coach steps into the locker room behind us.

“Well, good.” Bianca whirls around so fast I have to jump to avoid getting swatted with her ponytail. She glances at Coach and grins. “I’m sure you have everything under control, Gianna. You probably have that leaf collection half done by now,
right
?”

My running shirt feels like it’s tightening around my chest, and as Bianca bounces off to meet Mary Beth, I sink down on the bench next to Ellen. “She knows. How does she know? How could she know I’m behind on that project?”

Ellen doesn’t say anything.

I look up at her. “Because I’m late with everything?”

She smiles, but not in a mean way. “Bianca and Mary Beth are like bloodhounds. They sniff out your weaknesses.”

That makes me laugh a little.

Ellen tilts her head. “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing, really. It’s just that Zig and I play this game where we figure out what dogs people would be if they were dogs. We always had Bianca and Mary Beth pegged as pit bulls.”

Ellen smiles, too. “Maybe they’re mutts—like a pit bull–bloodhound mix.”

“Always ready to go in for the kill.”

Ellen sighs. “ ’Fraid so, Gianna. Bianca’s dying to go to sectionals. She’ll do anything to make sure there’s a reason they need her as an alternate.”

“Terrific.” I take a deep breath. “You need a ride home?”

Ellen nods. “If it’s okay.”

“Fine with me—if you don’t mind riding in the hearse.”

“Empty, right?”

“It’s always empty when Dad picks me up. He says it’s disrespectful to expect the dead to go along schlepping kids all over the place. They’ve done their time.”

“Yeah, I’d love a ride. And Bianca’s probably gone by now so we won’t have to listen to the corpse-car jokes.” She picks up Bianca’s water bottle from the locker room floor and tosses it into the recycling bin with a sigh. “Did you know Americans throw away thirty million of these things every day?”

“Wow.” That’s a lot of water bottles. There must be something someone could make out of those.

I grab my duffel bag in one hand and my backpack in the other. “Coach
can’t
replace me at sectionals. She can’t. Bianca has glitter letters on her shirt. That’s just not right.”

Ellen and I step outside, and Dad’s there waiting in the long black car with Zales Funeral Home printed in big silver letters on the side. All the windows are down, and he’s playing the Beach Boys full blast. Thank God everyone else is gone.

By the time we drop Ellen off at her house and swing by to pick up the spinach Mom wants from the farm market, it’s after five.

Zig’s waiting for me on the porch steps next to our Halloween pumpkins, attaching a motorized propeller to the back of some LEGO thing.

I slam the hearse door and walk over. “Hey!”

Zig holds up one finger but doesn’t look up. He can’t talk and think at the same time, so I plop down next to him to wait. The bricks are warm from the late afternoon sun, even though the air’s cooling down by the minute. I run my hand over the biggest of the five pumpkins we picked from the field at the Parkinson farm last weekend. We won’t carve them until the night before Halloween, but we always put them out early to brighten up the porch. My little brother Ian’s pumpkin is the huge one; he’s only six, so Dad had to carry it for him. Dad’s is short and sort of squatty, like him. Mom’s is perfectly round, without a single scratch or mark on it. Nonna’s is tall and skinny and a little bit crooked. And mine is medium-sized with a big knobby bump toward the bottom that looks like a witch’s chin.

I’m figuring out where the eyes will go when Zig finally looks up. “Hey.”

“What’s that?” I nod at his twirly LEGO thing.

“A battery-operated, multi-environment hovercraft.”

“Which is . . . ?”

“A motorized, air-propelled vehicle that can operate on land, water, or, most importantly, ice. The Coast Guard uses them on the lake when ice fishermen get stuck out there.”

“Does the Coast Guard make theirs out of LEGOs, too?”

He puts down his LEGO-mobile and gives me a shove. “Too bad you’re being such a dork. I came over to see if you wanted help with your leaf project.”

“In that case, please accept my humble apologies. I’m sure your hover-ma-callit will kick the Coast Guard’s butt.”

He grins, brushes a flop of black hair from his eyes, and reaches for his school stuff. “I collected a few extra leaves you can have.” He presses a keypad to disarm the buzzer alarm he rigged up on his backpack zipper to keep Kevin Richards from stealing his math homework. “Here you go.”

He hands me a clear plastic bag with leaves inside. It’s labeled with blue marker; one leaf is a linden, and one’s a tulip maple.

“Thanks.”

“How many do you have so far?” he asks.

I pick up a couple of long pine needles from the step and poke them against one another. “Hey! This is kind of like sword fighting, huh?” I get a long one in each hand so they can do battle.

“Gee . . . have you even started?”

My right hand picks up a little leaf to use as a shield and is about to win the whole fight, but Zig snatches it away.

“I have a few,” I say.

“How many?” He stares me down.

“Okay, fine. Two.” I hold up his linden and tulip maple leaves.

Not many people can get to me like Zig. His real name is Kirby Zigonski Junior, but he’s always been Zig to me. We’ve been friends since third grade, when he sat behind me in Mrs. Light’s class, right next to Lawrence, our classroom iguana. With names like Zigonski and Zales, we’ve been homeroom and locker neighbors ever since.

“Want me to help you find more tomorrow?”

I nod as Mom sticks her head out the door. “Dinner!”

“Hey, Mom! Okay if I go out collecting leaves with Zig in the morning?”

She shakes her head. “Not tomorrow. You know it’s market day.”

“Shoot.” I turn to Zig. “Sunday then? Definitely Sunday.”

“Definitely definitely? Or definitely maybe?”

“Definitely,” I say. He starts down the steps and I head to the kitchen for lasagna. The smell of Nonna’s sauce is pulling me in.

“Gee?” Zig stops on the sidewalk.

“Yeah?”

He points to the bag of leaves he gave me. It’s blowing away, flopping down the steps.

“Oh, right!” I trip on Mom’s planter and stumble down to grab it. “Thanks!”

I wave and take my leaves inside.

Two down. Twenty-three to go.

CHAPTER 2

G
ee! Hey! Hey, Gee! I got a new joke!”

Ian storms down the stairs in his Superman pajamas and almost crashes into me in the kitchen.

“Too early for jokes.” I squint into the fridge light looking for last night’s leftover lasagna. I bet Dad ate it after Mom went to bed.

“Come on, Gee! Wanna hear a riddle?”

“No.” I move a package of tofu, wondering what it’s like to live in a house with Pop-Tarts in the cupboard.

“Okay, ready? What do you say when a girl named Gianna wakes up and goes to the bathroom?” He reaches past me and snatches a yogurt.

I try to swat him but miss.

“Give up?” He ducks under my arm and pulls a spoon from the silverware drawer. “You say, ‘Gee WHIZ!’ Get it, Gee? Gee, WHIZ!”

“Ugh.” I pull open the refrigerator drawer where we keep the fruit and almost scream. Balanced on top of the apples is a set of false teeth. They look like they’re about to take a big bite.

“Nonna!” I call.

My grandmother hustles into the kitchen and plops her pocketbook on the table. I point into the fridge.

“Oh good. There they are!” She rinses her teeth off under the kitchen faucet and pops them into her mouth.

“Now you . . .” She points a plump finger at Ian. “Let your sister have her breakfast in peace. And you . . .” She raises an eyebrow at my green flannel pajama pants. “You’re not even dressed yet.
Sbrigati, sbrigati!
” She claps three times, fast. “Hurry up.”

“Ugh.” It’s 6:30 a.m., and I’m being rushed in old-world Italian.

“Go on.” Nonna waves her papery hands in the pink morning sunlight, shooing me upstairs. “It’s almost time to leave for the market.”

The market became a family ritual when Nonna moved in with us after she broke her hip two years ago. The first Saturday of the month, we pile into the car and cross the border into Canada to shop at the big Italian market in Montreal. Most people think of it as a French city, and it is, but there are all these little pockets of other languages and cultures there, too. There’s an English part of the city, a Chinatown, and an Italian section that Nonna says makes her feel like she’s home again. It makes her happy. So we go.

By the time I’ve thrown on my jeans and Picasso T-shirt, everyone else is putting on shoes and jackets. Except Nonna, who’s still standing in the kitchen.

“Where did I put my . . . uh . . . my . . .” Nonna taps a finger against her lips. I saw her smile just a minute ago, so I know it’s not her teeth again.

Nonna’s had trouble remembering the names of things lately—even plain old ordinary things like brooms and spatulas. The other day when she was baking Italian wedding cookies to take to a funeral in the mortuary downstairs, she couldn’t remember what her oven mitt was called. She asked us to help find her “hot hand.”

I’m starting to worry about her.

“She’s just getting older,” Mom said when I brought it up last week. “Lord knows you forget things, too . . . like that leaf-collection project you’re supposed to be working on.” And she sent me to my room to work on it. I made a great collage with Nonna’s old
National Geographic
magazines instead.

“Come on, Mother! Come on, Gianna! The traffic’s going to be worse if we don’t hurry!” Mom yells into the kitchen. Nonna’s still frowning.

“What did you lose, Nonna?” I ask her.

“My carrying things.” She opens the oven door and bends to look inside.

“Your pocketbook?” I pick it up from the kitchen table where she left it ten minutes ago.

“That’s it! You’re a good girl.”

“Smile, Nonna!” Ian leaps into the room with Mom’s cell phone camera and snaps her picture.

“Ian?” Mom holds out her hand for the phone. Ian was banned from using it two weeks ago when he jumped out of the shrubs like a member of the paparazzi and ambushed our mailman, who’s about eighty years old, with no sense of humor. He snatched the cell phone, marched Ian to the house, and gave Mom a fifteen-minute lecture on parenting. She was embarrassed enough to put Ian on cell phone restriction for life.

Ian drops the phone into Mom’s hands and sulks his way out to the other Zalesmobile, the dark green minivan we drive when Dad isn’t trying to embarrass me to death.

“Oh, hang on a minute!” I run back to the house for my camera. The market is my favorite place to take pictures; everything there looks so juicy and bright. I pull the door closed and climb into the middle seat next to Nonna. “Okay, ready!”

Dad drives, but Mom’s so worried about traffic that she keeps stepping on an imaginary brake on the floor in front of her.

“You know,” Dad says after we cross the border into Canada, “I think maybe it’s time for a family chat.” He does this when we’re all held captive in the car.

“How’s that leaf collection coming along, Gianna?” Dad tries to catch my eye in the rearview mirror and almost weaves into a Corvette with Quebec plates. Mom swats at him, and he swerves back to his own lane.

“Fine,” I say.

“I was talking with Coach the other day when I was waiting to pick you up . . .”

“I know, Dad. No sectionals unless I’m passing science. I know, okay?”

Mom jumps in. “When’s the deadline for that leaf project?” Deadlines are her specialty. She does all the bookkeeping and paperwork for the funeral home and is secretary of her women’s volunteer group in the community.

“End of next week. We’re supposed to have ten leaves by Monday for a start.”

“And?” Mom asks.

“And what?” I know I’m being mouthy, but I don’t care.

“Mom’s trying to help, Gee. We both are. You’d probably like us to
leaf
you alone right now.” He winks at me in the rearview mirror. “And we know you’re
pining
for the days when you didn’t have big projects like this. But you need to get this one finished and
spruced
up by Friday.
Oak
-ay?”

I roll my eyes. “Quit it.”

“Sorry.” He mirror-winks again. “I was just
needling
you.”

I try not to smile. It’s hard to stay snotty at Dad. “Well, I think your jokes are way too
sappy.
But I’ll get it done. Zig offered to hike with me tomorrow.”

“A date?” Nonna perks up. “That Kirby Zigonski is such a nice boy. He’s a keeper, Gianna!”

“Nonna!” She wiggles her silver eyebrows at me and I have to laugh. “We’re
friends
. He said he’d help me out. But we’re
just
friends.”

Nonna smirks, like she knows something I don’t. The truth is, things have been a little weird with Zig. The other day he was looking at me, and I kept thinking I had spaghetti stuck in my hair or something, but when I asked him what the deal was, he turned reddish and got all busy with his backpack alarm. We’ve been best friends so long it’s just weird to think of him any other way.