Calli Be Gold Read online

  “Calli,” she sighs. “I’m in the middle of a conversation. Can it wait?”

  “But, Mom,” I plead, “he’s lying on the floor and … what if something’s wrong?”

  She has already turned back to the other mom and I’m sure she didn’t hear me. “Barb,” she says, “the costumes were supposed to be sapphire with rhinestones, not some drab blue with a few splatters of glitter! This is a huge mistake and we don’t have time to reorder. The first competition is in less than eight weeks!”

  I wait another few seconds but Mom keeps talking. I walk back to the hockey game, and sure enough, the kid’s still there. I don’t know what to do, so I wander inside the rink and watch Becca’s team for a few minutes. They’re practicing their pass-through, a pretty cool move where two parallel lines of skaters head toward each other like they’re going to crash; then the lines weave through each other. Becca looks grumpy, and I can see big wet spots on the knees of her tights, which means she fell. Coach Ruthless looks aggravated and mad.

  In the last two years, Becca’s team never scored high enough in any competition to beat the Lady Reds, the regional champs, but Ruthless says this season is going to be different. I heard Becca tell Dad that the coach was “out for blood,” which sounded kind of scary to me. Dad’s response was “Well, you want to win, don’t you?”

  The team finishes the routine and Ruthless stops the music. “Again,” she demands, and the girls skate back to their starting positions. “Gold,” I hear Ruthless call out. “Over here.” She points to a spot on the ice next to where she’s standing. Becca skates over and stops, then rubs the backs of her arms like she’s cold. I can’t hear anything, but the coach is talking to Becca, and Becca’s not saying a word. The coach has her back to me, so I can’t see her face, but if I took a guess, I’d bet she isn’t complimenting Becca on her eye makeup.

  I go back to the arcade, and the kid still hasn’t moved an inch. I bend down again and gently shake his shoulder. “Listen, please tell me if you’re okay,” I say. “ ’Cause I’m getting a little concerned here.”

  After a few seconds, this tiny voice, muffled and quiet-sounding, says, “Go away.”

  I’m so startled that I jerk upward and bang my head on the edge of the game table. As I’m rubbing the spot that is sure to grow into a goose egg, the kid squirms and wriggles and drags a sleeve across his nose, then goes back to lying completely still.

  When he moved, his jacket opened a little, and I can read the tag that says THIS JACKET BELONGS TO. The name written below, in black marker, is Noah Zullo.

  “Is that your name?” I ask, still rubbing my head. “Noah Zullo?”

  He doesn’t respond.

  “Do you have a sister on the skating team?” I ask.

  Noah Zullo ignores me.

  “Fine. Okay. Lay here for the rest of your life if that’s what you want to do.”

  I stomp away and think about Wanda and Claire, my best friends since kindergarten, and how they’re probably all cozy and warm inside their calm, quiet houses, eating delicious home-cooked dinners. Probably with a pie or peppermint ice cream for dessert. Wanda has one brother and he’s away at college. Claire is an only child and her dad is always going on business trips, to somewhere like India or Ireland or Indonesia. I can’t remember—something with an “I.”

  Claire’s dad brings her a present every time he comes home. She has collections of snow globes, dolls from other countries, and miniature glass animals. They sit on her bookshelves and no one can shake them or play with them or touch them, not even Wanda or me. My guess is Claire doesn’t touch them either. She just stares at them with a sad face, especially during the long weeks when her dad is gone. I’ve never asked her about it, but I have a feeling she’d rather have her dad around instead of the collections.

  I sink into a chair at one of the empty tables in the concession area and find a newspaper that someone left behind. I flip to the comics and read my favorites, only three strips, but none of them are very funny today.

  Mom and the other black-satin-jacket mothers are still busy with their work, chattering and jotting notes and handing each other papers. Jeremy and Jordan have flooded the floor underneath the fountain, and one of the guys from the rink is mopping up the water. The black-haired, black-jeaned hoodie kid is now skulking around with a pair of black sunglasses on, circling the rink like a lion in a zoo.

  All of a sudden, I notice a dad I’ve never seen before, in the last booth by the wall. He’s typing on a laptop and seems to be talking to himself. Then I realize he has one of those phone-earpiece things clipped around his ear. He’s wearing a white shirt and a striped red tie and keeps repeating, “Not a problem,” and then, “Will do.”

  I wonder if he could be Noah Zullo’s dad. I lean out from the table to check if Noah’s still under the hockey game, and sure enough, he’s there. If this is his dad, I’m certain he doesn’t know where Noah is. Does anyone besides me know where Noah is?

  The way he looks, forlorn and alone under that table, reminds me for some reason of an old woman I saw once who was trying to get a cart in the grocery store. The woman had a cane and she was trying to pull out the one in the front from the big row of carts but it was stuck. Everyone was running into and out of the store and no one noticed her. I wanted to stop and help her get a cart, but Mom grabbed my arm and said, “Chop-chop!” By the time we left the store, she was gone. I know it was just a little thing and it’s silly to think about, but I always wondered if the woman ever got her cart, or if she just gave up and went home.

  Exactly when the girls on Becca’s team start parading from the doors of the rink, the skating moms collect their papers and folders, stand up, and throw away their empty cups. The girls sprawl on the floor and begin to pull off their skates and wipe the shiny blades with towels. A few of them are whispering to each other.

  Mom looks over in my direction. “Get your jacket on, Calli. We’ve got to run.”

  I sigh.

  Of course we do.

  What else would we do?

  ack in the van, as we head toward the high school to watch my brother’s basketball game, Becca insists that she has to be dropped off at home because her ankle is throbbing. “I need an ice pack,” she whines. “Plus,” she says, glancing back at me, “I am in seventh grade, and unlike someone in this car who is in fifth grade, I have tons of homework. My teachers are insane. Two tests tomorrow, a quiz the day after, a project due next week, and a paper to write by Friday.”

  She huffs importantly, but I don’t say anything, and neither does Mom, who is driving like a maniac, so Becca says snippily, “Is anybody listening to me? Does anybody care?” She loosens her ponytail and lets her hair fall around her shoulders, then fluffs it out with her fingers.

  Mom careens into the driveway and pushes the button to open the side door of the van for my sister. “Of course I’m listening,” Mom tells Becca as she tumbles out, pulling her skating bag along with her. “Go ahead and get started on your homework. I want to get to Alex’s game before the third quarter starts. But do me a favor. Turn the oven to the ‘warm’ setting at seven o’clock. I’ve got a lasagna cooking. We should be home around seven-thirty.”

  Before Becca is even inside the house, Mom is racing back out of the driveway, looking down at the blue Post-it attached to the steering wheel.

  Ten minutes is about all it takes to drive to the high school, because everything is pretty close in Southbrook. I’ve lived here my entire life and I’ve always wondered why our village was named Southbrook. There are some man-made ponds around here, but I’ve never seen a single brook, except if you count the trickle of water that runs behind the baseball field when it rains a lot.

  Maybe Southbrook was a name that sounded appealing. Would people have wanted to live here if the town was called Southtrickle? Probably not.

  The high school parking lot is crowded and we have to park far away from the entrance to the gym. Mom says those words again as I’m ste
pping out of the van: “C’mon, Calli, chop-chop.” Then she zips her jacket and grabs my hand. Together we jog to the gym door and open it to the sounds of the basketball game.

  Mom pants a little. Not because she’s out of shape, but because she’s often doing so many things at the same time. She doesn’t just multitask; she multi-lives. Our life, she says, is one big rush. Then she always adds cheerfully, “One big Gold rush!” She tells us she wouldn’t have it any other way.

  We see Dad in his suit and tie, pacing back and forth near one end of the bleachers. Mom marches up to him, her purse swinging from her hand like an enormous lantern. “Larry! I got here as quickly as I could. What’s going on?” she demands.

  “Tied at the half,” he answers. He looks all sweaty and red in the face, like he just finished running a marathon.

  “Hi, Dad,” I say softly. He glances down at me and rumples my hair, then turns back to Mom. The two of them discuss the game as if it’s life-or-death.

  “How’s he playing?” Mom asks, her voice low.

  “He’s on fire,” Dad tells her. “Unbelievable today!”

  “How many points?”

  “Fourteen.”

  She looks at the scoreboard. “We’re in foul trouble?”

  Dad throws his arms into the air. “Those refs,” he snorts. “They’re blind! Called him on four fouls. They’ve got it out for him, there’s no doubt about that. He’s the most aggressive player on the court, so they’re watching his every move.”

  Mom nods while he continues ranting. “I’m filing a complaint about these refs,” he says. “They’re the worst I’ve ever seen.”

  I spot Alex on the bench, guzzling from a bottle of red Gatorade. My brother is a freshman, and he is on the A team, which is supposed to have the best players. If you ask me, though, the A stands for “attitude,” which is something Alex seems to have a lot of these days. Two cheerleaders are looking at him, waving and giggling. They have the same flat, straight hair as Becca, tied in ponytails with green and gold ribbons, the school colors. Alex puts down the bottle and wipes a towel across his forehead. I wave to him, but I don’t think he sees me.

  One of our neighbors was a high school cheerleader when Alex and I were little. Alex used to pull me around the block in our wagon, and sometimes when we’d pass her house, she’d be out front in her cheerleader uniform, practicing her routines. I was only five, but I remember Alex telling me that cheerleaders were silly and dumb and I should have higher aspirations. I didn’t know what “aspirations” meant, but he said I was too smart to do all the cheering for boys and should cheer for things I could do myself.

  I remember thinking Alex was the best big brother in the world that day, but now I see that he’s smiling back at the two cheerleaders, and this makes my heart hurt and feel as heavy as Mom’s purse.

  A loud horn blows, and I jump. “The second half is starting,” Dad says nervously, rubbing at his forehead.

  “You staying down here?” Mom asks.

  “You know I can’t sit during his games, Karen.”

  Dad resumes his pacing and sweating while Mom climbs up the bleachers and takes a seat. She motions for me to follow. Alex’s team strolls onto the court and my brother throws a glance in our direction. Dad mouths something to him and Alex nods. Must be some sort of secret fatherly basketball advice.

  As the game starts up, I sit down next to Mom. “Take your jacket off, Calli,” she urges. “You’re going to get overheated. It’s warm in here.”

  “I’m fine,” I mutter, and sit there unmoving in my jacket.

  The gym is crowded and noisy and everyone seems to be yelling something at someone.

  Still, I can clearly hear Dad’s voice above the rest. “Drive!” he roars as my brother dribbles the ball down the court. “Take it to the hoop!” he shouts as Alex weaves around two players from the other team. Alex looks over at Dad although the coach is shouting something at him. “Shoot!” Dad screams.

  Dad’s face is so frantic and red he reminds me of a crazed cartoon character, like his eyes might pop out of their sockets or steam will shoot out of his ears.

  It’s fair to say that Dad becomes possessed when he’s watching Alex play basketball. Same thing when he watches Becca skate in a competition. He forgets about the rest of the world. If a fire was to start in the bleachers, he wouldn’t even notice.

  Alex takes a long shot, then throws his fists into the air as the ball sinks through the net. The crowd erupts. The cheerleaders do little cutesy jumps. Mom bolts up from her seat like a rocket and sends me off balance, toppling me backward from the bench. She doesn’t realize she knocked me over, because she’s applauding wildly and stamping her feet and yelling, “Woo, woo!”

  Here I am, stuck with my legs up on the bench and the rest of me below. All around me, people’s feet are tapping and stomping, shaking the bleachers like a mini earthquake.

  With the deafening commotion, people crammed into their seats, Dad shooting imaginary steam from his ears, and Mom woo-wooing, all under the glaring overhead lights of the high school gym, for some reason, the only thing I can think about is that little kid at the rink, Noah Zullo, lying quiet and still and alone in his zipped-up jacket under the broken hockey-foosball table.

  I wonder who he is and why he was at the rink. I wonder if he’s still there, under the table, or if someone found him and took him home. Then I wonder why I’m wondering so much about him.

  he other team ties up the game right at the ending buzzer. Ugh. Overtime. Everyone gets even crazier. Dad starts to climb toward us, then stops as a father from the other team shouts that Alex’s team is a bunch of punks. Dad yells a couple of swears in his direction. Then the other father asks Dad if he wants to “take it outside,” but a woman next to him, probably his wife, plunks a hand on his shoulder and pushes him down onto the bleacher seat. A different woman shouts to both fathers that they are setting a bad example and should shut up unless they want to get thrown out of the gym.

  I’m noticing all the things no one else notices, like how the dad who called Alex’s team punks has an unusual striped pattern of baldness and hair, and how the woman who told them to shut up has eyebrows that are colored in thickly with brown pencil.

  I’m curious about whether the man combs his hair to get it like that, or if it naturally grows that way, and if the woman puts on the eyebrow pencil every morning and how it stays untouched all day.

  At last, the game has only a few seconds left. After some more fouls and free throws and time-outs, when my stomach grumbles are sounding as loud as thunder, the game finally ends. Alex’s team wins by two points. Do I need to say who made the final shot?

  Finally, the four of us are walking through the dark parking lot to Mom’s van and Dad’s car. Dad is more leaping than walking, really, as he slaps Alex on the back and punches his fist upward in the night air. “Now that’s how it’s done!” he shouts ecstatically. “You dominated that entire game. Alex, my boy, that might have been the best of your career!”

  Then, right in the middle of the parking lot, Dad stops and grabs Alex’s shoulders. “I’ve never been more proud of you, Son,” he says. He chokes up a little and his eyes look misty. I wonder if he’s going to cry.

  Mom’s eyes are shining too as she beams at Alex and pulls a tissue from one of her purse compartments. “Remember this moment,” she tells him, dabbing at her eyes. “They don’t get any better than this.”

  “That shot, at the end …” Dad glows. “It was amazing. I thought it might hit the rim but it was right on target.” Dad starts talking about different shots and defensive moves that Alex made throughout the game. He always does this—relives every single second of Alex’s games, or Becca’s competitions—for days afterward sometimes, like everything else in life isn’t worth a sentence.

  Alex listens and nods and smiles; then Mom and Dad both lean toward him and give him about twenty-five hugs apiece. Finally, he shrugs them off and says, “I’m hungry. Let’s go.”


  I look up at my brother. “Good job, Alex,” I say, and he swats me softly on the back.

  “Hey, Cal,” he says. When he smiles at me, my heart feels a little lighter.

  We start walking again and I see how many red and yellow leaves have fallen around the parking lot, trampled on in the rush of everyone leaving the game. The air feels cooler and I make a secret wish for an early first snow this year so Wanda, Claire, and I can go sledding on our favorite hill across from the junior high.

  On the car ride home, Mom calls Grandma Gold to tell her about Alex’s victory. I can hear Grandma’s voice clearly from the speakerphone, because wouldn’t you know it, she’s pretty loud too.

  “Well, of course! I wouldn’t have expected anything less,” Grandma Gold shouts. She then says that Alex’s basketball talent definitely comes from the Gold side of the family. “My Joel could have played in college, you know.”

  Mom looks a little annoyed. “Larry played basketball too,” she says.

  “Not past freshman year in high school,” Grandma Gold reminds us. “Joel had the goods. But what can you do? Medicine was calling.”

  I met Uncle Joel only a few times, when I was little, and I don’t remember him. He lives in California. Dad says he’s very busy being a plastic surgeon to the stars.

  “E-mail me Alex’s schedule,” Grandma says. “I’ll see if I can get to a game one of these days when I’m not tied up with mah-jongg.”

  “Okay,” Mom replies. Then she ends the call and I hear her mutter, “Joel never really could have played in college. What is she saying?”

  “Mom?” I ask as we pull into the garage. “Don’t forget I need that spiral.”

  “I didn’t forget,” she says.

  When she turns off the car, she sniffs suspiciously like she’s some sort of police dog, then exclaims, “Something’s burning!” She runs into the house, drops her purse onto the counter, and races to the oven.