Talia Talk Read online

  I glanced quizzically around the kitchen. “Which are the appetizers?”

  Bridget walked over to the stove, stirring the cornflakes she’d mixed with peanut butter and marshmallow cream.

  “Get a serving tray,” she instructed.

  I grabbed one from the china cabinet, brought it to the stove, and helped Bridget pluck pinches of the mixture from the pot onto the tray.

  “They look…goopy,” I said.

  “We’ll bring them napkins.”

  We filled the tray, grabbed napkins and carried our “appetizers” into the “drawing room.” Mom and Jake were peering curiously into their apple juice goblets as we walked in.

  “Sir? Madam?” Bridget said, presenting the tray to them as I handed them napkins.

  “Mmmmmm,” Jake said. “What might these be?”

  “Buttercream Crunch Balls,” Bridget responded in her high-society accent.

  Jake took a small bite and winced. “Nice and sweet,” he said, then let his sticky fingers linger in the air.

  “Girls,” Mom said, holding her appetizer right outside her lips, “as adorable as this all is, in its own highly disturbing, juvenile-delinquent kind of way, what were you thinking when—”

  “When we let you wear those bunny slippers?” Bridget said. “I don’t know. We were clearly insane. Might I take this opportunity to replace them with more appropriate footwear, madam? Some bejeweled high heels, perhaps?”

  Mom snickered. “I’ll stick with the slippers.”

  Bridget bowed with a flourish. “In that case, madam, we shall retreat to the food-service quarters, where we will commence serving your meal.”

  “You know, I’m getting awfully full on these appetizers and this…sediment-speckled juice,” Jake said. “I’m not sure how much more fine dining I can take.”

  Mom wrinkled her nose. “What exactly might the main course be?” she asked.

  “Jake requested manicotti, and we didn’t know how to make that,” Bridget answered.

  “We weren’t even sure what it was,” I added.

  “So we made canimotti instead,” Bridget said.

  Mom raised an eyebrow. “What’s canimotti?”

  “Our own creation,” I explained proudly. “Lots of cans mixed together.”

  “Cans of what?” Mom asked.

  I bit my bottom lip. “Um, just stuff we could find. There was some chicken noodle soup, some green beans—”

  “Some water chestnuts,” Bridget added.

  Jake popped the rest of his Buttercream Crunch Ball into his mouth and stood up. “Tragically, I’m allergic to canimotti,” he said. “Makes my throat muscles snap shut like a crocodile snout. It’s a rare yet deadly allergy, and it would seem unbearably rude to drop dead in your drawing room, or your dining quarters or wherever, so…”

  “So what do you suggest?” Mom said, grinning at him.

  “We can’t take you anywhere in your bunny slippers,” he said, giving Mom a once-over and making her giggle, “so I suggest…ordering in pizza?”

  “Pizza!” I cheered, jumping up and down. “That was my idea in the first place!”

  “Can you guys at least eat our dessert?” Bridget said with a pout.

  “If you guys mixed any two ingredients together, not a chance,” Jake said.

  “We have ice cream,” Mom volunteered, raising her hand.

  “Pizza and ice cream!” I cheered, and this time, Bridget joined me jumping up and down.

  “Pizza and ice cream it is,” Mom said.

  “And Buttercream Crunch Balls,” Bridget added. “You can’t forget our Buttercream Crunch Balls.”

  Jake inhaled slowly with a smile. “This,” he said appreciatively, “is shaping up to be one killer evening.”

  I held my ear against my bedroom door. “They’re laughing,” I reported to Bridget.

  We’d polished off our pizza, played a few rounds of charades, dumped the canimotti down the garbage disposal and washed the dishes before heading off to my room for the night, leaving Mom and Jake alone in the living room. They were supposedly watching a movie, but they were doing more talking than anything, Mom’s voice sounding like crystal tinkling and Jake’s sounding like a friendly bear.

  “Jake’s awesome,” Bridget said, plumping the pillows on my bed and flipping channels with the remote control.

  “Yeah, he’s pretty cool. I think he really likes my mom.”

  “Uh, duh. Like he’d be playing charades with two kids on a Saturday night unless he was totally in love.”

  “I didn’t say anything about love,” I said with a grin, plopping on the bed beside her and propping up on my elbows.

  “It’s love. Better get used to it,” Bridget said.

  “What do you know about love?” I asked playfully.

  “I know Jake is in it. And so is your mom.”

  Tap, tap, tap.

  Mom cracked open my door and peeked inside. “You girls doing okay?” she asked.

  “We’re fine, Mom. Get back to Jake.”

  “Yeah, speaking of Jake,” she said, walking in, “if you two ever spring a surprise date on me again, I’ll shave your heads in the middle of the night.”

  “Are you having fun?” Bridget asked with sparkling eyes.

  “That’s beside the point. The point is…Oh, okay, fine: yes, I’m having fun.”

  “You’re blushing, Mom!”

  “Am not,” she insisted, sitting between us on the bed.

  “Are too. Jake always makes you blush.”

  “No more dumping him,” Bridget scolded her playfully. “I don’t know how many more gourmet meals I can manage. Although, if I say so myself, I thought the Buttercream Crunch Balls were delicious.”

  “They were exquisite,” Mom said, putting an arm around each of us and squeezing us tightly. “You girls are really something. But a little warning next time so I can—oh, I don’t know—maybe smudge on a little makeup before a date?”

  “You look prettier without it,” I said, and she really did. Her cheeks were glowing.

  I had to hand it to Jake: he could really make Mom’s cheeks glow.

  30

  “You’ll never believe what happened Saturday,” Mom said to Chad during her Monday-morning Up and At ’Em. Our fingers dangled together as we watched the tape that evening.

  “I give up,” Chad said.

  “Talia cooked me dinner.”

  “And the house is still standing?”

  Mom grinned. “Actually, the dinner she cooked never made it onto the table. She and her best friend kind of bit off more than they could chew.”

  The audience groaned good-naturedly.

  “But it’s the thought that counts, right?” Mom continued. “Another first…first tooth, first step, first word, first sleepover, first day of school…now her first dinner.”

  “The dinner that you didn’t actually eat,” Chad said.

  “You don’t always appreciate the significance of milestones as they’re happening,” Mom said with an amused look in her eyes. “For instance, I didn’t appreciate the significance of the first time Talia changed the radio station in the car. Little did I know that from that point forward her musical preferences would rule whenever we were in the car. And the first time she spent her allowance on a CD? She never pulled her Barbies out from under her bed again after that. It’s only in looking back that you realize these are milestones, you know? So I tried not to miss the significance of her first dinner.”

  “The dinner no one actually ate,” Chad repeated, making the audience laugh.

  “I don’t know how to describe it, but something about realizing she could operate major appliances without my supervision made my heart melt.”

  “Are you ready to turn over the range to her for good?” Chad asked.

  Mom wrinkled her nose. “Nah. But there’s that subtle transition as you’re raising kids when you realize you’re not always going to be the one taking care of them. At a certain point, they start r
eturning the favor.”

  Her eyes misted.

  “You’re getting weepy about the dinner that no one actually ate,” Chad wisecracked.

  “Yeah,” Mom said. “I guess I am.”

  31

  “Reporting live from Crossroads Middle School, this is Talia Farrow with Talia Talk.

  “My mom’s already broken the news on her show, but just to make sure everyone hears my side…First, let’s get the embarrassing part out of the way right up front: I cooked my first meal Saturday, and it ended up in the garbage disposal. It was Saturday night, and my BFF and I decided to cook dinner for my mom and her friend. Long story. We thought, How hard could it be? Our moms whip up our dinners every day, and we barely even notice what they’re doing. Must be a breeze, right?

  “Not really. I learned Saturday night that cooking isn’t nearly as easy as it looks. Lots of things are involved: getting the right ingredients, having the right tools, knowing how to use them, knowing how to mix the ingredients together, knowing how long to cook them. It’s a long list, and my BFF and I got nearly every step wrong.

  “So if cooking is so much tougher than it looks, it makes me wonder what else my mom does that is harder than it seems. For instance, she goes to work every day, even when she doesn’t feel like it. She buys me stuff, even if it means she has to go without. She pays all the bills. She spends her free time taking care of me and running me around.

  “And she does it all herself. My dad died when I was little, so Mom doesn’t get much of a break. My grandparents are great, and we have lots of awesome friends, but I’m sure my mom has it tough sometimes. Yet she never makes it seem tough, which is why I thought cooking would be easier than it turned out to be. She makes hard things look easy. So even though she totally embarrasses me on her show, I hope she’ll start putting herself first every once in a while instead of always worrying about me.

  “That doesn’t mean she gets a pass for all the embarrassing things she’s said about me on her show over the years.

  “But it might mean she doesn’t have to be the only cook in the kitchen.

  “We’ll have to stick with simple recipes—maybe hot dogs and canned beans until I get the hang of things—but I’m thinking we’ll make a pretty good team.

  “Signing off for now, this is Talia Farrow for the Crossroads Oddcast.”

  32

  One Year Later…

  “Oooh, end piece, end piece!”

  The lady cutting the cake looked annoyed but gave Bridget an end piece anyhow.

  “Have you tried the shrimp? They’re delicious,” we overheard one guest tell another as they circled the buffet. “And I don’t know what these crunchy little things are, but they’re very good.”

  “They’re Buttercream Crunch Balls,” Mom called from a few feet over, winking at Bridget and me.

  Bridget smiled at her, then adjusted the spaghetti strap of her teal junior bridesmaid’s dress. “Shouldn’t we get royalties for our recipe?” she asked me.

  “You get royalties for songs, not recipes.”

  The disc jockey started playing “Brown-Eyed Girl.” “Speaking of songs,” I told Bridget, swaying to the beat, “I love this one.”

  “In that case,” a voice behind me said, “may I have this dance?”

  I turned around and smiled at Jake. “I still can’t get used to you in a monkey suit,” I told him.

  “You won’t have to. You’ll never see me in one again after today, I promise.” He took my hand, spread our arms wide and gave me a gentle tug closer to the dance floor.

  “I’m a terrible dancer,” I confessed as he guided my moves with the hand he held behind my back.

  “I know, but I think it’s a rule that the groom has to dance with the maid of honor,” he said. “Try to look presentable, will ya?”

  I stuck out my tongue and crossed my eyes. He opened our embrace with a little jerk and twirled me around, making me squeal.

  “I hear your Buttercream Crunch Balls are a big hit,” he said as he folded me back in.

  “Duh,” I said. “Bridget says we should charge for letting people use the recipe.”

  “Fair enough,” Jake said. “But you’re the one who gets sued if anyone goes into insulin shock.”

  “Are we saving a piece of wedding cake for E-bay?” I asked.

  “If you say so. But you get to clean up after him in the morning.”

  “You think he’ll miss you and Mom while you’re on your honeymoon?”

  “Nah. You and your grandparents will take good care of him. Just show him my picture a couple of times a day.”

  Mom and Grandpa glided past us on the dance floor; then Grandpa dipped her under my nose, making us both laugh.

  “Can your grandpa cut a rug or what?” Grandpa said.

  “He sure can,” Jake told me. “I should be dancing with him.”

  “Oh, that can be arranged,” I teased. Mom and I opened our arms and joined hands, and soon all four of us were dancing in a circle.

  “Hey, what about me?” Grandma called, shimmying over to the dance floor.

  “And me!” Bridget called, rushing to my side and flapping her arms like wings. The deejay noticed her and changed the music to the “Chicken Dance.”

  “Oh, honey, it’s our song!” Mom told Jake, and we all started flapping around, dissolving into giggles.

  “Smile!” Ben and Shelley called from a few feet over, and we waved into the camcorder.

  I couldn’t help but notice how elegant Mom looked, even doing the Chicken Dance. But what I noticed most of all was the glow in her cheeks.

  I had to hand it to Jake: he really could make Mom’s cheeks glow.

  CHRISTINE HURLEY DERISO, author of Do-Over and The Right-Under Club, lives in South Carolina with her husband, Graham, and their children, Greg and Julianne. Visit her at www.christinehurleyderiso.com.

  ALSO BY CHRISTINE HURLEY DERISO

  The Right-Under Club

  Do-Over

  Published by Delacorte Press

  an imprint of Random House Children’s Books

  a division of Random House, Inc.

  New York

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2008 by Christine Hurley Deriso

  All rights reserved.

  Delacorte Press and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Visit us on the Web!

  www.randomhouse.com/kids

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at

  www.randomhouse.com/teachers

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Deriso, Christine Hurley.

  Talia Talk / Christine Hurley Deriso.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Trying to fit in despite having a loud, embarrassing best friend, eleven-year-old Talia becomes a commentator on her middle school’s closed-circuit television program and turns the tables on her mother, a talk show host who has been revealing Talia’s most humiliating experiences for years.

  [1. Best friends—Fiction. 2. Friendship—Fiction. 3. Television talk shows—Fiction. 4. Celebrities—Fiction. 5. Middle schools—Fiction. 6. Schools—Fiction. 7. Mothers and daughters—Fiction. 8. Single-parent families—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.D4427Tal 2009

  [Fic]—dc22

  2007050556

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  eISBN: 978-0-375-89123-6

  v3.0

 

 

 
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