The Sugar Mountain Snow Ball (4 page)

“Charlie! Quit touching every cookie chunk with your nasty little hands. And Henry, move your melon head so I can see the television, mister.”

My little brothers and I were sprawled on the couch, watching
The Price Is Right.
The reruns of the original version are shown every day from three to five p.m. on channel 6. The old ones hosted by Bob Barker are, in my opinion, far better than the newer versions
.
And the prices don't make sense anyway, whether the show was filmed thirty years ago or yesterday. I don't know where the contestants do their shopping, but Mim says everything is wacky out in California, where they play the game, which is probably why the prices are nothing like ours.

The three of us were hanging out as usual, gobbling down yesterday's leftover Monster Chunk cookies from the Slope Side Café, since it was almost dinnertime and we were practically starving to death. Mrs. Petite had been taking a nap when I picked up the twins, because her tooth ached from whatever the dentist had done. And Mr. Petite was busy painting his duck decoys on the dining-room table, so the boys hadn't eaten a thing since lunch other than butter cream mints from the candy bowl. And, of course, Eleanor and I never had gotten to The Avalanche for that mocha ripple milkshake.

“Two seventy-five is wrong! Three ninety-eight is the correct answer!” yelled Bob Barker as the
too bad
music played on the TV. “Oh,
too bad
, Louise—but thanks for playing.”

“Three ninety-eight?” I complained out loud. “Where do they buy their pretzels? At the jewelry store?”

That made the twins crack up and repeat my words. They were always copying everything I said.

“I don't want any more cookies,” announced Charlie, who was stretched out in Pop's recliner, having won the honor five minutes
earlier by beating Henry at stuffing the most Monster Chunks in his mouth. “I want egg rolls!”

“We're not having Chinese take-out for dinner tonight,” I said, and sat up, which startled our old cat, Marilyn Monroe. She jumped to the ground and wandered off to the other end of the house in search of quiet. “Mim said she'd pick up fried chicken for a change.”

Charlie whined, “I don't like chicken,” just as my stepmom burst through the front door, toting about thirteen bags. She can carry more plastic grocery sacks than any other human on earth. No matter how many are in the car, she never makes more than one trip lugging them into the house.

“Too late, sweetie,” said Mim as she dumped everything, including two greasy cardboard buckets, onto our kitchen table. “I have enough chicken here to feed the whole neighborhood.”

Henry leaned forward and scratched himself all over, the deep-fried smell waking him like an alarm clock.

My stepmom smiled like always, but I could tell she was tired.

“I'll get the soda,” I offered, as Mim lowered herself into a kitchen chair and sighed.

“Thanks, Rosebud—and turn the channel to
Hollywood Crime Watch
, would you please?”

She didn't even put the groceries away, just shoved them aside, and then pulled out the take-out paper plates, plastic forks and knives, and a pile of napkins. Both boys dug into supper like they hadn't eaten in days.

“So what did you kids do this afternoon?” asked Mim, frosting a biscuit with butter before sliding it into her mouth.

Right then, I worried the boys would blurt out something about their visit to the dentist with Mrs. Petite, but they were so busy chomping, they didn't hear a thing.

“Nothing much—the usual,” I replied, even though I was
dying
to tell her all about the mysterious Madame M and our psychic readings.

But my stepmother would have wondered why I was off running around town and not home watching the boys, which would have involved confessing my frequent tardiness, where it all began. Also, I wasn't so sure she would agree with the way I saw my reading, which had me so excited that I couldn't wait to see Eleanor tomorrow in gym class and get her take on it.

I peeled the crunchy skin off a wing, the best part, and ate it first.

“I want more soda with my chicken,” said Charlie.

“
May
I have more soda,
please
,” corrected Mim. “And I thought you just said you didn't like chicken.”

“Is Pop coming home this weekend?” I asked.

“I don't think so,” sighed Mim. “He picked up another delivery that pays such good money he couldn't turn it down. But someone needs to get up on this roof and shovel it before it caves into the attic. I've never seen so much snow this early.”

The Green Gobster
came on the TV, one of the boys' favorite shows. They jumped off their seats and back onto the couch, hollering, “Louder than THUNDER, who, do you WONDER? Green Gobster!”

Mim yawned, then gulped her entire glass of root beer in one big chug.

“Oh my, I missed the end of
Hollywood Crime Watch
again,” she said. “I'm so exhausted, I'm gonna hit the hay, Ruby. Can you make sure the boys change into their pj's during a commercial, in case they fall asleep on the couch?”

All at once, something about that didn't feel right to me. It seemed like Mim should be going to bed after us, not before. And that Pop should be home by now. But instead of saying anything, I hugged my stepmom good night and opened the dessert cabinet over the sink.

“Okay, boys. Who wants whoopie pies and who wants kettle corn?”

5

The only class that Eleanor and I shared, gym class, met second period, three times a week. On a good day, which was rare, we got to play whatever we wanted, and we always chose Ping-Pong. But today was the horrible continuation of the President's Challenge.

“For your age group,” announced Ms. Duncan, “I need to see twenty-seven solid body curls, nose to knees, without stopping.” She always hollered like she was giving lifesaving directions for an emergency. “Pair up and count off for each other!”

“Pair up?” I repeated, smiling at Eleanor. “My two favorite words, right after
Sit down
and
Time's up
.”

I collapsed onto the hard floor with a thud. Eleanor folded down onto the exercise mat as easily as a piece of tissue and crossed her long brown legs.

“We have to talk about yesterday,” I whispered. “I don't know about you, but I could barely sleep, thinking about Madame M's dream advice.”

Eleanor began curling first, or at least pretending to curl.

“I mean, mine was so obvious,” I said, “about
reaching far beyond my comfort zone and going outside my own world.
Somehow she knew I dream more than anything of being an Outer! Being perfectly happy and pretty and smart and having incredible clothes and going to the Snow Ball, hopefully with JB Knox. So, Eleanor, I've been thinking about it all night, and I know exactly what I have to do!”

“You do?” asked Eleanor, breathing heavily, like she was actually doing the curls.

“It's so obvious. I have to start skiing! Or maybe snowboarding. No, I think skiing makes more sense.”

Eleanor's back dropped and her head hit the floor.

“Wait! Are you really trying to do these sit-ups?” I asked. “I haven't been counting, you know.”

“
Ski
, Ruby? You don't know how to ski. But, more importantly, how can you be an Outer if the most fundamental principle of being an Outer is living
out
of town?”

“I even thought of that. I could be the very first Outer who lived
in
town, and maybe even start a branch of Outers called the Inners, or something like that. Maybe you could join too.”

Eleanor stared at me, then shook her head in that way she does when she can't seem to figure out how the real world works.

“I know skiing is super expensive and I don't have any of the equipment and I would probably need a lesson or two, but Eleanor, it makes so much sense. Madame M practically said so.”

“SIX minutes left, people!” Ms. Duncan roared. “Change partners if you haven't already. When I blow my whistle you must
stop
immediately, get in line, and report your results to me.”

It was my turn even though I knew I could barely do one sit-up. I didn't have the build for it.

“Skiing may not be as impossible as my dream,” Eleanor mumbled as she held my feet. “To tell you the truth, I can't stop thinking about her astonishing predictions either.”

“
And?
”

I had actually managed to do three curls, but then I could feel my wheezing flare up.

“Did she read right through you, too, or what?”

“Yes. She did.”

“So spill it,” I gasped, and sat up to listen since the gym was so noisy. “What did she mean by saying all that stuff about your creative side?”

“Well, you know what I love doing more than anything else in the world, Ruby.”

It was pretty obvious what Eleanor loved, since she constantly doodled and sketched pictures in her binders.

“Drawing?”

“Partly, but what am I always drawing?”

I began twisting back and forth a little to catch my breath.

“Umm, let me think. I don't know, mostly pictures of people in gorgeous clothes, I guess.”

“Exactly—
haute couture!
I'm passionate about
every
aspect of designing clothes—sketching, cutting, sewing, fabric—and especially the thought of people wearing my original creations.”

As I twisted to the right, I noticed a group of older boys studying a poster on the other side of the gym.

“Do you mean you wanna work for one of those high-end, expensive stores at the mall?”

“More than that, Ruby—I want to create my own fashion line!”

But I had stopped listening to Eleanor, because standing directly across the gym from us was the cutest boy in all of Paris.

“
Ohmygosh!
Tell me that's JB Knox.”

Eleanor frowned, then turned and squinted. I knew I had interrupted her dream reading, but this was way too important—a JB sighting!

“Yep,” she mumbled, “it's him.”

JB and I didn't cross paths that often, since he was a whole year ahead of us, so seeing him during one of my classes was like a freak occurrence.

“I don't know why you like JB, Ruby. He's arrogant, strident, domineering, and, worst of all, callous.”

“
What are you talking about?
He's hot!”

Eleanor shook her head.

“A boy like that uses everyone else as a mirror, seeing only his own reflection.”

I felt kinda sorry for Eleanor, because, frankly, she had little social experience and didn't understand the way relationships worked. But right now, I had no time to explain any of it to her.

“Can you tell if JB is looking this way?”

“I don't know, Ruby. Look for yourself.”

“I can't
look
. I don't want him to see me looking at him if he's looking at me.”

Eleanor groaned.

“He's looking at some poster.”

I twisted back and peered over.

“I wonder what they're doing here?”

“Maybe the seventh grade has gym next.”

“But that would mean they're early.”

“Are you done faking curls, or what?” asked Eleanor. “Our time is almost up.”

“Even from way over here, JB's cuter than cute, don't you think?” I sighed. “He's like an Outer, except technically he can't be one either.”

Eleanor grabbed my shoulders and stared into my eyes.

“Ruby! Snap out of it! He's a whole year older than you. He plays starting center on the middle school basketball team . . . and he has a fan club of
cheerleaders
.”

The whistle blew and everyone ran over to line up in front of Ms. Duncan. I stuck my hand in the air for Eleanor to help me stand.

“You know what your problem is?” I asked as we walked over to join the others. “And I mean this in the nicest possible way, Eleanor: You're too glass half-empty.”

“Whatever,” she said, and scrunched up her face. “By the way, you did three sit-ups and I did nine.”

“So let's say I did twenty-seven and you did thirty-three. See? Glass half-f!”

“That isn't optimism,” replied Eleanor, “that's lying. But at least my mother doesn't care about gym class.”

We stood in line to report our little fibs to the president. Ms. Duncan gripped her clipboard as if recording the number of people missing during a snowslide.

“Final count, girls?”

“Well,” I began, the way I always do in gym, “since I started to wheeze a bit, I completed only the minimum of twenty-seven, but Eleanor beat me and did thirty-three, and probably could have kept on going.”

Ms. Duncan switched her gaze over to Eleanor and raised one eyebrow.

“Maybe you can demonstrate your curling expertise for the class, Ms. Bandaranaike?”

“Oh, she should probably wait a week or two,” I suggested. “Give her stomach muscles time to recover.”

Eleanor nudged me, which meant she wanted me to stop talking, but it didn't matter because right then the five-minute warning bell rang and Ms. Duncan told everyone to go change.

“JB and those boys are gone now,” I whispered. “Let's see what that poster says.”

“
Ruby
, I need to hurry. I wore tights today.”

“It'll only take a second.”

I dragged Eleanor over to the far wall, where we found a big sign-up sheet. The second I read it, I gasped.

“
Ski club!
And JB signed his name. Don't you know what this means?”

“It means a public school in a ski resort town where it snows seven months of the year is finally sponsoring a club for its own citizens who can't afford to ski,” she sighed, and leaned her back against the wall.

“No, Eleanor, that's glass half-empty again.”