Call Me Sunflower Read online

  Hmm … Mom was always in a rush and didn’t seem to spend much time worrying about her appearance at all. Maybe we were on to something here.

  I continued to read, paying special attention to the beauty advice: “Be bold when you apply your makeup, and touch up when you need to,” “Try a new style for an extra confidence boost,” and my favorite piece of advice, “Wear red.”

  According to the article, it seemed my mom was a perfect candidate for a makeover. It would make Mom feel better about herself, and that would make Scott notice her again, even if she didn’t realize he was supposed to be her “crush.” The only problem? Mom seemed perfectly happy the way she was.

  The article didn’t say anything about an unwilling subject. But as I read it over again, I knew it was worth a try. After Mom’s makeover, I’d send her new and improved photo to Scott. He’d take one look at the picture, and it would knock him right over. He’d walk around all day in a starry-eyed haze (according to the article). Those lost feelings would come rushing back, and he’d remember how he and Mom were once deeply in love.

  Scott would start acting more romantic, sending flowers and cute cards and giving Mom lots of compliments, the way boyfriends were supposed to. Mom would remember how great things used to be, and she’d give up dinners with her new “friends.”

  Once they both realized they belonged together, Mom would find a school in New Jersey, and we’d move back home and live happily ever after.

  End of story. Now all I had to do was convince Mom it was time for a makeover.

  SUNNY’S SUPER-STUPENDOUS PLAN TO GET MOM AND DAD BACK TOGETHER

  13. Convince Mom she needs a makeover. Buy her a red shirt because “studies show that a person looks more attractive to someone else when he/she wears red.” Snap her photo afterward, and send it to Scott in a sparkly frame with hearts around the border.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I won’t be home for dinner tonight,” Mom said Monday morning. “Grandma Grace is making her special macaroni and cheese.”

  “Really?” Autumn jumped up and down in her seat so that her pigtails bounced. “Mac and cheese is my favorite!”

  “Sunny’s, too,” Mom said, smiling at me.

  Macaroni and cheese was beside the point. And just because Grandma Grace was making my favorite meal, it didn’t mean I had to like her any better. “Where are you going?”

  “I’m meeting with my critique partner. Our short stories are due on Friday and I still have a lot of work to do.”

  “What’s her name?” I asked.

  “Actually, his name is Jeb—”

  “Jeb? What kind of a name is that?” I asked. Autumn giggled.

  “A perfectly good name,” Mom said, ruffling my hair. “Look, Sunny, meeting with other students is a requirement. And Grandma Grace offered to make your favorite dinner so I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

  I shrugged away from her. “Did you tell Scott you’re going to dinner with Jeb?”

  “Scott doesn’t have anything to do with this. But if I told him, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.”

  “Hmph.” I gobbled down my toast and excused myself to send a quick email to Scott. As soon as I hit SEND, I got this awful feeling inside. What if Mom was right, and Scott didn’t care?

  ***

  When I got to school, Mrs. Rodriguez, the librarian, stopped me in the hall. “The list is posted,” she half-said, half-sang.

  I gave her a funny look. “What list?”

  “The list for the OM teams. It’s on the media center front window. Make sure you check it.”

  “Okay,” I said with a shrug. Who wanted to look at a list that didn’t have your name on it? I was sure I’d messed up with the last prompt. When I saw the wedding cake, I was so busy thinking about Mom and Scott that I had to scribble something down at the last minute. Something really stupid.

  “And by the way, Sunny?”

  I turned around. I didn’t even know Mrs. Rodriguez knew my name.

  “That last prompt, for the wedding cake?” She winked at me. “Very clever response.”

  “Thanks.” My heart sped up. I thought about what I’d written. You’d never suspect the bride and groom are really undercover FBI agents who are about to search the cake for the hidden code inside. It seemed like a dumb response at the time, especially when everyone else was probably saying stuff like “Love is Sweet” because they were cutting a wedding cake.

  Maybe this was what Coach Baker meant by “thinking outside the box”?

  I hurried to the media center, waiting until a small group of kids moved away from the entrance. Then I took my finger and ran it down the list. “Lydia Applebaum, Sunny Beringer …”

  I didn’t realize I’d squealed until I’d spun around and ran smack into Lydia, who was standing behind me. “You made it!” I told her. “We both made the team.”

  Lydia didn’t shout or jump up and down. She rocked back and forth on her toes a minute, and a smile curved up the corners of her mouth. Then she straightened it. “Congratulations,” she said, then walked past me to look at the list herself.

  ***

  When I got home that afternoon, I knew it was time to put all that creative energy to work. I headed to the backyard gazebo with my notebook. Sitting down on the bench, I looked back over Sunny’s Super-Stupendous Plan. First, I had to buy some makeup and a special red shirt for Mom’s makeover. Next, I had to save up some money to buy a gift certificate to a restaurant, the kind with candlelight and violins. That would have to wait until Scott came to visit, which wouldn’t be until … Christmas.

  I chewed on my pen. Christmas was over two months away. It was a long time to wait, especially now that Mom was going on dinner dates with Jeb, and Scott was going out with “friends.”

  A thought popped into my head, and not for the first time either. Maybe it was already too late.

  Maybe things had changed between Mom and Scott for good. Maybe they’d decided they didn’t want us to live together as a family anymore.

  And if Mom’s and Scott’s feelings had changed, what could I really do about it? A fancy new makeover, a romantic restaurant … could that influence what they felt deep down in their hearts?

  I looked up from my notebook, staring out at the big stretch of green yard bordered with large trees. It was beautiful here in Bennetsville, but it wasn’t my home. Home was with Mom and Scott, with all of us together. Somehow, I had to believe there was still hope. Because without hope, I didn’t have a place where I belonged.

  I looked back down at my notebook, doodling along the edges of the paper to fire up some new creative thoughts. And as I sketched, the image of the bride and groom gazing at each other over the wedding cake began to take shape. The photo had stuck in my mind ever since I saw it at OM tryouts, making me wonder about the relationship between my parents. Maybe if I made a photo album for Mom’s birthday it would bring back some old memories.

  It could remind Mom of what she was missing. All our photos were loaded on the computer so if I printed them out and put them together in a book, it would tell the story of our lives.

  It would be super easy.

  Mom had been too busy chasing crazy goals of MFAs. But she’d slow down and pay attention when I handed her the photo album. She had to! She’d remember how she missed Scott’s smile, his laughter, and his kindness. She’d realize that she couldn’t live without him, and that we couldn’t live without him either.

  I stood up from the bench, eager to get started on the album. I was almost at the back door when I heard it. A rustling coming from the bushes near the hammock. I glanced at the corner of the yard, catching a glimpse of caramel-colored fur beneath the leaves.

  A cat! My heart sped up right away as I thought of Stellaluna. I turned and tiptoed closer. Kneeling down in the grass, I held out my hand and waited. The cat kept her distance, staring out at me with unblinking yellow eyes.

  “Who are you?” I whispered, noticing that she wasn’t wearing a collar. “Do
you belong to anyone?”

  Her tail swished back and forth, but she didn’t come any closer.

  The door slammed, and the cat took off under the bushes. “Sunny!” Autumn called. “What are you looking at?”

  “Nothing.” I got to my feet quickly and headed back to the house. I wasn’t willing to tell Autumn about the cat. The last thing I needed was for her to blab about it to Grandma Grace, who would probably call the pound. Someone who sold the fur coats off animals’ backs would never allow me to feed a stray cat in her yard.

  I followed my sister back inside the house, pretending to be interested while she told me all about how Danny Peters got in trouble for letting the class salamander out of its cage. I couldn’t do anything for Stellaluna right now, but I could keep this new cat safe.

  After I talked to Autumn, I headed straight to the computer. Scrolling through files, I noticed they were all marked with dates, so I went back to the earliest ones: millions of photos of me when I was a baby. Swinging, laughing, crying, in the bathtub, even sitting in my high chair with smushed peas all over my face. Why Mom thought that was something she needed to take a picture of, I’ll never understand. I guess it was the same reason she had pictures of me crawling around on the floor totally naked.

  Autumn came up behind me and laughed when she saw a picture of my naked bottom.

  “Don’t worry,” I told her. “I’m sure she has plenty of you without any clothes on, too.”

  Autumn snorted. “Why are you looking at baby pictures? School project?”

  I shook my head. “Just doing a little research.” I didn’t want to tell her about the photo album I was making for Mom. Autumn couldn’t keep a secret for a minute. “I mean, yeah, it’s something for school.”

  “Oh.” Autumn stood by my shoulder and watched as I scrolled through more pictures. I was glad when she got bored and walked away a few minutes later.

  This was going to take a while. Each file had tons of baby pictures, and most of them looked nearly the same. I looked for the ones that had both Mom and Scott in them, but I couldn’t find any. In most of the pictures I was by myself. A photo album of me doing baby tricks wasn’t exactly going to accomplish my goal. I went back a few more months to December.

  Bingo! Mom and Scott in the hospital right after I was born. I sure was an ugly little thing. My face was all red and squinched up and my eyes were closed. My face looked like a newborn guinea pig’s before the fur grows in.

  But Mom and Scott were gazing down at me like I was the most beautiful thing they’d ever seen. Anyone could see the connection running between the two of them as Mom held me and Scott leaned over with his arm around her. This photo spelled out “family.”

  “Hey.” Mom touched my shoulder and I jumped about a hundred feet. She laughed. “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you. What’re you up to?”

  I settled back down on the seat. “Oh, just looking at some old photos. Can you believe how different Scott looks here?”

  Mom sucked in her breath as she leaned in to take a closer look. Her hair was longer in the photo and didn’t have gray streaks like it did now. Besides that, she looked exactly the same. Scott’s hair was longer, too, falling over his forehead and all the way to his shoulders. It curled at the bottom, even though now it was perfectly straight. Plus, he wasn’t wearing glasses even though he always said he was blind as a bat without them.

  The picture seemed to take Mom by surprise. She hadn’t said a word. “Mom?” I finally asked.

  She exhaled, long and slow.

  “Mom?” I said again. When she didn’t answer I turned to look at her.

  Her eyes had filled with tears.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Um, yeah.” She swallowed and shook her head. “Honey, about the photo …”

  “I love it. But how come there aren’t any other pictures of the three of us right after I was born?”

  Mom took another deep breath. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

  I looked over at her. “What? Is it about my birth mom?”

  Another long pause.

  “What, Mom? What do you need to tell me?”

  The look on Mom’s face flickered and disappeared. It was like watching a slide show, and we’d moved to a slide that showed something totally different. Mom cleared her throat and spoke slowly, choosing her words very carefully. “Oh, um, nothing. Just that your birth mother invited us into the delivery room, so we could watch you being born.”

  “Eww,” I said. “Gross!”

  “It wasn’t gross.” Mom put an arm around me. “It was amazing. The miracle of life.”

  “I would have told her to call me after the baby showed up,” I said.

  Mom laughed. But it was a hollow sound. “Okay. Let me know when you finish your trip down memory lane,” she said, sounding like herself again. In control. “I have some files I need to transfer to my laptop.”

  “All right.” I marked the photo number in my notebook. Mom was trying to cover, but I knew something was up. I hadn’t imagined her reaction. And if there was a picture with Mom, Scott, and me in our files, there had to be more. Mom might be able to walk away from one photo, but a whole album? That wouldn’t be so easy to ignore.

  SUNNY’S SUPER-STUPENDOUS PLAN TO GET MOM AND DAD BACK TOGETHER

  14. Make a photo album with lots of pictures of Mom and Scott when they were young and in love. Include a few pictures of Autumn and me to show how we glued them together as one big happy family. Give it to Mom on her birthday.

  CHAPTER TEN

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Good News!

  I can’t believe it! I made the OM team! It’s really a big deal here. There are two teams and last year they both went to Worlds. I’m glad I made it, but I’d much rather be on the team with you at Alexander!

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Re: Good News!

  Congrats on making the OM team! We’re having our first meeting next week. Emma Galindo said she’s coming with me to see what it’s all about!

  ***

  “Before we get started,” Coach Baker said at our first official OM meeting, “we’re going to do a little activity to get to know one another better. A few of you know one another from last year, but some of you may feel like you’ve landed in a group of complete strangers. Don’t worry, in a few weeks, all of you will feel like a team. You have the Baker-Nelson guarantee.”

  A few kids laughed. Not me. I glanced up and down the table. I was glad to see that Dragon Boy, whose name was actually Avi Sterling, had made the team, too. Not that he said a word to me. And Lydia was definitely not turning cartwheels about getting to work with me either.

  “What I’d like for you to do is write a short rhyming poem that includes your name and shares something important about yourself. Everybody got it?”

  “Sure thing!”

  “Got it!”

  A few people nodded, and then a girl who’d been on the team last year asked, “How much time do we have?”

  “Four minutes,” Coach Baker said. “And … go!”

  Everyone scrambled for notebooks and pencils. I love to write, but not under pressure. And I certainly didn’t want to read my poem aloud. To strangers. Even Baker had said that’s who they were. But I racked my brain and this is what I came up with:

  My name’s Sunny

  And I like to drink tea,

  But mostly I love to draw things that I see

  That’s because drawing makes me feel free.

  So if I had to put it to the test

  Art’s the thing that I like best.

  As soon as Coach Baker read my poem aloud I realized I should have left out the part about tea. Plus, it sounded like something a second grader would write. But I didn’t feel as embarrassed when I heard some of the others. Even Lydia, with all her creative writing classes, hadn’t written any
thing much better than mine:

  My name’s Lydia A.

  I love animals today

  And tomorrow, too.

  And so should you!

  I never eat meat.

  It’s not a treat

  If you’re the one dead

  Instead of the one being fed.

  “I know it’s not that great,” Lydia said with a shrug after he read her poem, “but, Coach Baker, what did you expect? You only gave us four minutes!”

  “Exactly.” Baker grinned. “When we get into the Spontaneous round of the competition, you’ll have to learn to think on your feet. Odyssey of the Mind is all about making choices, and putting those choices into action.”

  The words echoed in my head. Choices. Action.

  “All right,” Coach Baker said when everyone had finished sharing their poems. “Good job, guys. Now it’s time to choose a long-term team problem. Read over all five choices and study them carefully. Then we’ll have a respectful discussion.” He paused and looked at all of us. “Note that I said respectful discussion, not argument.”

  The room went quiet as Coach Baker passed out name tags and sheets of paper with the different problems and descriptions. I looked down at my paper. The five categories were familiar to me: we had to choose between building a vehicle, putting on a skit that had a lot of technical details involving scientific samples, putting on a musical theater production based on the classics, building something out of balsa wood, or performing a humorous skit.

  I knew nothing about building a vehicle, so I immediately crossed out Problem 1: “Ooh-motional Vehicle.” I wasn’t big on technical stuff like special effects, so I crossed out Problem 2: “Weird Science” and Problem 4: “You Make the Call,” the balsa wood problem. That left Problems 3 and 5.

  I read the first line of the description for Problem 3: “Teams will put a musical theater spin on one of William Shakespeare’s famous lines, ‘To be or not to be.’”