Calli Be Gold (14 page)

Noah pulls up his knees and buries his face between them. “You should work with someone else.”

I think about how he said I was a pink heart. “I don’t want to work with someone else.”

“Why not?” His voice is very small, like him.

“I don’t know … I just want to work with you.”

“But why?”

I can’t help laughing. “Why do you ask so many questions?”

Now Noah’s voice is soft and scared-sounding. “Because no one ever answers them,” he says.

I look at him, all tucked into his body. I gently touch his arm. “You don’t have to hide from me.”

He jerks his head up and looks like he might cry. “People don’t tell you stuff when you’re a kid. They keep all kinds of grown-up secrets.”

“Like what?”

“Like about what’s wrong with you.”

I wait as Noah twists his hands. “One doctor says one thing and another doctor says another thing, and I don’t know what any of them are talking about. Mom says between me and my sister and her job, she’s going to have a nervous breakdown.”

“Your mom works a lot?” I ask.

“Yeah,” he says, then frowns. “They keep telling the doctors they just want me to be normal. Like everybody else.”

“Your mom and dad?”

“Yeah.”

I nod. “Parents are like that,” I say, thinking of Dad, and how he wants me to be a Gold like the rest of my family.

“They said I might have some kind of syndrome. But they don’t know yet. They give me tests and ask a lot of questions.” He glances at me. “What’s a syndrome?”

“I don’t know. Like a disease?”

“I guess.” He shrugs. “The doctors all said one thing. That it’s hard to diag—What’s that word again?”

“Diagnose?”

“Yeah. That.” Noah looks at me. “Don’t tell anyone,” he adds nervously. “It’s a secret.”

“I won’t.”

Noah and I sit quietly under the desk for a few more minutes; then he adds, “You promise?”

“I do. I promise. It’s our secret.” Then I stare wide-eyed at Noah.

“What?” he asks.

“That’s it,” I say. “Noah! Friends keep each other’s secrets. That can be our theme for the Friendship Fair!”

He gives me a confused look. “I don’t get it.”

“Well, the best kind of friends tell their secrets to each other but they keep them, right? A good friend would never tell, like how I just now promised you that I would keep your secret.”

He nods slowly.

“So can we make a project or something about that?” I ask.

Noah’s face looks crumpled and worried.

“I know. You told me. You can’t make stuff.” I bob my head. “But we’ll come up with something that doesn’t require doing a lot of art. Whaddya think?”

He doesn’t answer, then says very softly, “Are you my friend?”

My heart is flying. “Yes,” I say without taking a breath. “I am.”

He pushes his glasses up on his nose. “Really?”

“Yes.”

He gives me that little half smile. “I think we have an idea.”

“We do,” I say, and I can’t help it; I reach a hand out and smooth down his messy hair. It perks right back up again, and I laugh.

On the way out, I hear Wanda and Claire enthusiastically describing their booths to each other. Wanda needs Play-Doh and Claire is worrying about how she and her peer will have enough time to create their complicated exhibit. Tanya says her booth is going to “blow everyone else’s away.”

I don’t care. Not one bit.

Noah and I have an idea.

he next time I’m going to the rink, I cross my fingers and hope that Noah will be there so we can talk about our idea. Most of the groups are way ahead of us. Becca spends the entire van ride telling Mom about a girl on her team who takes every opportunity she can to toss a mean comment at her. I wonder if it was the girl who Becca almost tripped at the exhibition.

“Can’t you do something?” Becca twirls a piece of hair with a finger.

“I think you’re going to have to work this one out yourself,” Mom says. Becca huffs but I want to applaud.

I’m thrilled to find Noah inside the rink, even if he is under the hockey-foosball table. I see the hoodie kid heading my way—he probably wants to bond over the improv experience—but I kneel down by Noah and say, “Hey.”

Noah motions for me to get under the table, and when I do, he says, “I think I know what we can do.”

A feeling of excitement spreads through me. “You do?”

“Yep.”

“Let’s hear it.”

He squares his shoulders and draws himself up so he seems a little taller. “It’s called the Secret Friendship Booth. We put a sheet or a blanket over a table, okay? Then two friends can go under and tell each other a secret. We charge everybody a quarter for one secret-telling and then we give the money to the school so they can buy some good stuff, like library books.”

I tilt my head and stare at Noah. “Did your dad give you that idea?”

“No.”

“Your mom?”

“No.”

“You thought of that all by yourself?”

He nods solemnly.

“Wow … this definitely has possibilities … but don’t you think we should have something on top of the table, like pictures of friends, maybe?”

“Maybe.”

“Or little sayings about friendship?”

“We could print them from the computer,” Noah suggests.

I wonder what the other kids are planning. “Well, maybe our booth won’t be the most amazing one, but at
least we’ll have something.” I give Noah a soft punch on his arm. “Hey, I thought you weren’t good at coming up with ideas.”

Noah shrugs. “It wasn’t so hard, I guess.” He glances toward the man with the laptop and the phone earpiece.

“Is that your dad?”

He nods.

“He works a lot too?”

Noah nods again.

“Your sister’s on the skating team?”

“Yeah.”

What if Noah’s sister is the girl who is being mean to Becca? “Which one is she?” I ask.

“She’s new. So they made her the alternate.”

“Oh.” Not the mean girl, then.

Noah squints at me. “Why do you ask so many questions?”

I remember when I asked Noah the same thing. “Are you making a joke?”

He bobs his head and lets out that croaky laugh.

I squint back at him and laugh too.

The next PHP time can’t come fast enough; I’m so excited for Noah and me to get started on our booth. When the day finally arrives, I help Wanda carry twelve small jars of Play-Doh in neon and regular colors to the classroom but she won’t tell me why. “You’ll just have to see for yourself the night of the fair,” she says mysteriously.
Claire is hauling a stack of library books and she won’t say anything about her booth either. There are certainly a lot of secrets going around.

Tanya asks Mrs. Lamont, “Can Ash and I go out in the hallway to work in private?” She’s holding a video camera.

Mrs. Lamont puts a hand on Tanya’s shoulder. “Only if you won’t disturb other classes.”

“We totally won’t.” Tanya plucks Ashley by the arm as soon as we step into Mrs. Bezner’s room. Today the two of them are wearing crocheted caps pulled down low over their long hair. “This is so fun!” Tanya exclaims. They let out their identical high-pitched giggles as they move toward the doorway.

I spot Noah. He isn’t quite under his desk, but he’s sitting on the floor in front of it. “Are you ready to get to work?” I ask cheerfully.

He doesn’t answer, and he points to Mrs. Lamont, who is walking around the classroom in her bumblebee socks. He clamps his nose shut with his thumb and finger.

I smile. He starts to scoot backward under the desk.

“Noah.” I take hold of his arm gently. “How are we going to print stuff off the computer if we’re under your desk?”

His shoulders sink.

“I mean, it’s nice under here and all, but …”

“There’s no computer.”

“Right.”

He sighs.

“I bet it’s not as hard as you think,” I say.

He scrunches his mouth and looks at me. “How do you know?”

“You said you couldn’t come up with ideas, and you did, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So why not try something else you think you can’t do?”

“This is different,” Noah mumbles, wringing his hands. “Kids can tease you and stuff. And make you feel bad. And my idea, it’s dumb. I thought about it some more. Everyone else’s is better.”

I narrow my eyes. “You’re wrong about that. It is a good idea. And no one’s going to tease you when you’re with me.” I stand up and reach for Noah’s hand. “C’mon.” After a minute, he takes my hand and lets me pull him up.

“Look”—I point—“there’s a free computer in the corner. Let’s get to work.”

Noah and I spend the entire time searching for and printing sayings about friendship. We decide that we’re going to glue them on a big display board and decorate it, and put it on top of the Secret Friendship Booth.

I don’t even notice what the other kids are doing, because Noah and I are so busy. And I’m pretty sure that Noah isn’t worrying about anyone else either.

“Calli,” Noah says as I’m stacking up our papers. I realize it’s the first time he’s said my name. “I want to show you something.”

Noah wraps his small hand around mine and tugs me back to his desk. This time, he sits down in his chair. I pull up a chair next to him. As he reaches into the pencil tray on the top shelf, I see a jumble of erasers and pencils and pens, all of them without caps, and along with those, several small light brown stones, all about the size of big grapes.

Noah takes one of the stones and holds it out to me. I feel like he’s showing me a treasure.

“You can hold it,” he says, and drops it into my open palm. The stone is smooth and has faint ripples of white across one end. I turn it over, then rub it between my fingers. I can’t explain it, but somehow, holding it makes me feel calm all over.

“I like stones,” he says. “That’s what I do at recess. Look for stones.”

Who is this kid? He likes to crawl under things, he can do a pretty good card trick, and he collects stones. Okay, so he can’t make stuff and is awkward and weird. Does that mean something is wrong with him?

“Thanks for showing me.” I give him the stone. He drops it back into his pencil tray, then turns to me. “We should put our own sayings in.”

“What do you mean?”

Noah takes out a piece of notebook paper and pushes it toward me. “Write this down,” he says, and hands me a pencil. “Friendship happens when you’re not looking.”

As I’m writing it down, I realize that I’m blinking to
hold back tears. I don’t need to ask Noah if he’s talking about me. I know he is.

I slide the paper toward him after I’ve finished, and he makes a hyphen, then slowly writes his name in shaky but strong letters. He adds the paper to our pile. “Now you.” He hands me another piece of paper.

I stare at the blank white sheet.

“It’s not as hard as you think,” Noah Zullo says to me.

I look at him, with that spiky, messy hair and those crooked glasses and that little red mouth, and I write:
A real friend makes you feel special, no matter what.
Then I write my name.

“I like it,” Noah says. “I like you.”

I’m blinking again. “I like you too, Noah.”

fter school, Mom tells me, “We’re dropping Becca at the rink, and then I’m driving you to the last improv class.”