The List of Things That Will Not Change Read online

  The worst part about taking the root beer was that Ms. Adams was ashamed of me. I had taken Lizette’s root beer, and I had lied to Ms. Adams about needing my medicine. Lied right to my face, she said. And I loved Ms. Adams. So it was terrible.

  But Lizette and I were friends again by the end of that year.

  I ran down the block to catch up with her.

  “Hey, Bea.” She held up a small paper bag by her ear, like she was listening to it. “Where’s yours?”

  That’s when I remembered about the heavy cream. Today was Thursday, and we were making practice butter for our colonial breakfast. Mr. Home was bringing French bread, enough for the whole class, and everyone at table three was supposed to bring a container of heavy cream. The reminder was on the back of the door at Mom’s house. But that morning I was at Dad’s house, so I didn’t see it. Without the reminders, I forgot things. Once I had brought lunch money instead of lunch, thinking it was the day of the zoo trip. Then, on the actual zoo-trip day, I forgot again and brought my lunch instead of lunch money. I had to eat my peanut butter sandwich and yogurt raisins while everyone else bought pizza from the zoo cafeteria. Zoo pizza stinks anyway, Angus told me.

  I really needed two reminders, one for each house.

  “You forgot your cream?” Lizette said.

  Table three was the colonial-breakfast food committee. There was also a colonial-breakfast costume committee, a colonial-breakfast decoration committee, a colonial-breakfast invitation committee, a colonial-breakfast play committee, and a colonial-breakfast poster committee.

  I nodded, telling myself not to cry. Fifth grade, I reminded myself. Fifth grade.

  “Let’s buy some,” Lizette said. She pointed at a deli almost right in front of us, on Broadway.

  Lizette was a genius. I had three dollars with me, and she had another dollar in quarters. We were giggling as I counted them out to pay. Then Lizette and I were back on the sidewalk and, not expecting it, I felt…really happy.

  My happiness made me feel huge. I don’t know another way to say it. Sometimes my happiness surprises me. I remember the first time it happened. I was little. Mom, Dad, and I were in the car, driving to the lake cabin. When we passed the rusty red bridge that meant we were almost there, I got this giant happy feeling, kind of like I was a balloon, getting bigger and bigger, and so fast.

  That’s how I was feeling when Lizette and I left the store with my heavy cream. And my huge happiness was what made me do the stupid thing I did next. I saw a big jagged piece of a broken green bottle lying on the sidewalk, and I kicked it. I kicked it from happiness. When my happiness makes me feel huge, it’s almost like nothing can hurt me. But I was wearing sandals, and the glass cut my foot.

  “Omigosh,” Lizette said.

  There was blood all over my sandal, filling in the seams where the stitching was. You couldn’t even see the cut, there was so much blood. I waited for pain, but none showed up.

  “It doesn’t hurt,” I said. “Let’s keep going. The nurse will give me a bandage.”

  But the nurse also called my mom, who called my dad, who came to get me.

  Two hours later, I was sitting on a stool pulled up to one of the kitchen worktables at Dad’s restaurant. I had been to the doctor, and my foot was clean, bandaged, and wrapped in a plastic bag, just in case the health inspector came by.

  My dad’s a chef, and he has his own little restaurant, which he named after me. Not Bea, which is what people call me. Beatrice. Dad says for the prices he charges, Beatrice works better. My favorite dinner at Dad’s restaurant is French toast. It’s not on the menu, but he invented a way to make it extra crispy but still magically soft in the middle. I have to eat it in the kitchen. Kids aren’t supposed to be eating French toast and doing word-find puzzles in the dining room at Beatrice.

  Jesse was hunched over the big reservations book, making notes on a yellow pad. Every day, Jesse called all the people who had reservations to eat at Beatrice the following night. Most people didn’t answer their phones. I listened to him leave messages.

  Hi, this is Jesse, calling from Beatrice. I’m confirming your reservation for dinner tomorrow night at (whatever) o’clock. If your plans have changed, could you give us a call? Thanks, and we’re very much looking forward to seeing you!

  Over and over and over. Whenever he said the word Beatrice, Jesse made a funny face and pointed at me, which would have made me laugh except I wasn’t supposed to, because he had to sound professional.

  In between calls, I asked Jesse wedding questions.

  Was the wedding definitely going to be in May?

  Definitely May.

  Where?

  They were having it right there, at the restaurant, in the dining room and the back garden.

  What about the customers?

  The restaurant would be closed that night.

  Closed!

  Yes. Closed for a special occasion. There would be a sign for the front door.

  What was Jesse going to wear?

  A suit, probably.

  What about Dad?

  A suit, probably.

  Who was going to be invited?

  Everyone!

  Would there be a huge cake like on TV?

  Absolutely.

  Could Rocco come?

  Hmm. He had to get back to me on that one.

  * * *

  —

  When his calls were finished, Jesse started opening oysters for the lunch customers. A lot of people eat oysters at Beatrice because there’s a special oyster lunch. Jesse talked Dad into it, and now people come from all over the city to eat oysters there.

  While I helped Jesse scoop ice onto the round silver oyster trays, I started thinking about how everyone at table three was probably making practice butter right now, and soon they would be eating it on delicious French bread. I could see them in what Miriam calls my “mind’s eye.” And I could also see the little box of cream I’d bought with Lizette that morning, sitting next to a plastic plant in the nurse’s office at school, where I’d left it.

  Everyone who knows me agrees that I’m no good at hiding how I feel. Dad says I wear my heart on my sleeve, and that means when I’m sad or mad or happy, you can tell it just by looking at me. Sometimes the person looking at me knows how I feel even before I do. But then I catch up.

  When I pictured my carton of cream next to that fake plant in the nurse’s office at school, Jesse said, “Bea, what’s wrong? You look sad.”

  Five seconds later, I blurted out, “I’m sad!” And told him the whole story.

  “Let’s see that recipe,” Jesse said.

  I got out my colonial-breakfast folder and showed him my butter recipe:

  BUTTER

  You will need:

  Heavy cream

  Empty jar with tight-fitting lid

  Instructions:

  Put cream in jar.

  Shake jar.*

  Keep shaking.

  *Make sure lid is on tight before shaking!

  And because Jesse is Jesse, he went straight to the gigantic Beatrice fridge and found some heavy cream, and we made butter. We used an electric mixer, because Jesse didn’t have time to do it by hand, the way the colonists did.

  There are four different kinds of bread baked at Beatrice every morning, and I picked my favorite, which is pumpernickel. Jesse cut us each a slice, and we smeared our butter all over them.

  Right when I was about to take a bite, Jesse yelled, “Wait!” He reached for a bowl of salt (at Beatrice, they use a lot of salt), and he pinched out a little for each of us, sprinkling it on top.

  “Now. Ready? On three. One, two…”

  Imagine the most perfect bread and butter in the world.

  * * *

  —
/>   On Thursday afternoons, Mom taught the math teachers of the future until two o’clock, and then she picked me up at school and we went to Miriam’s office together.

  At 2:45, she walked into the restaurant, kissed my plastic-wrapped foot, and gave Jesse a hug. She told him congratulations about getting married, and said yes to a piece of pumpernickel butter-bread.

  “Dad told you?” I asked on the way to Miriam’s.

  She nodded. “It’s great, Bea. Right? I mean, Jesse is wonderful. Dad is happy. Are you happy?”

  “Yeah. And I guess now Sheila will be like—my aunt?”

  “Yes!” she said. “I hadn’t even thought of that.” I knew Mom liked Sheila. She always gave her a real hug. Mom’s face is like mine, though. Her smile was not a hundred percent.

  Telling a story is harder than I thought it would be. This is mostly about fifth grade, the Year of Dad and Jesse Getting Married, when I was ten.

  But certain things happened when I was eight, the Year of Dad Moving Out, which is why I have to keep going back to it. That was also the year I started worrying. It was the year of the three terrible third-grade parties. The year I met Miriam.

  If you haven’t noticed, I can tell you that I have an excellent memory for things that are not spelling. For instance, I still remember the first conversation I ever had with Miriam. I bet even Miriam doesn’t remember that, and she takes notes.

  We were on the matching couches near the window in her office, facing each other. I remember being glad that she didn’t try to share my couch with me. I wanted my parents to be on my couch, but they were in the waiting room.

  She said, “Bea, I’m really glad we’re sitting down together. I’ve been wanting to meet you.”

  I said, “Why?”

  She said, “Because I hear you’re a pretty great kid. I like talking to kids. It’s part of my work.”

  I said, “Why?”

  She said, “A lot of kids feel good after they talk to me. It helps them sort through some of their feelings.”

  I said, “Oh. Not me.”

  She said, “I heard you have a dog, Bea. Your dad told me you went to the animal shelter together to pick him out.”

  I shrugged. It was weird that she was talking about Rocco.

  “Is he a big dog, or the little kind?”

  I was pretty sure she knew the answer to that question because she seemed to know some things I hadn’t told her (I hadn’t told her anything), but I said, “Big.”

  She nodded. “Big dogs are wonderful. I used to have a big dog, too. She was so strong. It wasn’t always easy to hold on to her leash. Sometimes I felt kind of pulled around, you know?”

  I relaxed a little. “Yeah. Rocco yanks me all over the place when I walk him. And he’s still just a puppy. Dad says he might get twice as big.”

  More nodding. “Want to know something? Feelings are sometimes like big dogs, Bea. Sometimes they drag you around a little.”

  I didn’t say anything right away. Then I asked her what happened to her dog.

  “What do you mean?” she said.

  “You said you used to have a dog.”

  “Oh, yes. Well, she got very old. She was my dog when I was a little girl.”

  “So she died, right?”

  She looked me right in the eye. “Yes. She died.”

  Then I didn’t feel like talking anymore. We played six games of Connect Four instead.

  * * *

  —

  After that first visit, I told Mom and Dad that I was never going back to Miriam’s office. I took out my green notebook and, under Things That Will Not Change, I wrote: I am not going to Miriyems!

  I underlined not three times. It’s still there in my notebook. Number 14.

  Mom and Dad bribed me with sour gummy bears. Every time I went to Miriam’s office without complaining (Dad said lucky for me facial expressions didn’t count), I got a sticker on a chart on the back of the door at Mom’s (because I saw Miriam after school on Thursdays, and Thursday is a Mom day). When I had three stickers, I got a bag of sour gummy bears. Movie-theater size.

  At first, I thought Miriam didn’t know anything about the gummy bears, but then I found out the whole thing had actually been her idea. One Thursday, after I had started to like Miriam just a little bit, a jar filled with gummy bears showed up on her coffee table between the two couches.

  “I hear we both like gummy bears,” she said, taking the lid off and pushing the jar toward me.

  I said, “Are these even sour?”

  Miriam said, “Super sour.” And she gave me a little wink. After that, the sticker chart at Mom’s disappeared. But Miriam kept the jar of gummy bears on the coffee table. She always opened it when we had five minutes left.

  You might think that if you were walking down Broadway with a big plastic bag wrapped around your foot inside your (bloody) sandal, people would stare, but I watched all the way to Miriam’s and didn’t catch one person looking. Mom says that’s one of the things she loves about New York City.

  Miriam’s office is in a regular apartment building that people live in, only she has a special door that leads right from the sidewalk into her waiting room. When we got there, Mom sat on her favorite waiting chair, the one with a little table next to it, and took a folder out of her big bag. It was full of her students’ papers to grade, same as usual. I sat across from her and looked at the clock. At 3:30 on the dot, the office door opened and Miriam stuck her head out.

  “Bea!” She always said it like that, like she was surprised to see me there.

  “Dad and Jesse are getting married,” I said, sitting down on my couch. “We’re having a wedding.”

  “What happened to your foot?” She pointed.

  “Did you hear me?”

  “Oh, yes! How do you feel about it, Bea?”

  “You knew, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. I knew.” Miriam never lies, as far as I can tell. Even that first day, she didn’t lie about her dead dog.

  “So?” she said. “What do you think?”

  I told her I thought it was great, which was the truth. Everything about Dad marrying Jesse felt great. Except for one thing.

  “I wonder how my mom feels,” I said.

  Miriam leaned forward.

  “Probably bad,” I said. “She probably feels bad.”

  “Why?”

  “Because my mom and dad still love each other.” I had already told her how I knew that, from Things That Will Not Change. She’d seen the list.

  Mom and Dad love each other, but in a different way.

  “You may be right,” Miriam said. “She might feel a little sad. But do you think your mom wants your dad to be happy, Bea? She cares about him a lot.”

  “Yes, I just told you, she loves him. They love each other.” And right then I felt so sad, saying that. Really sad. I had never cried in Miriam’s office, though. I did a lot of talking in there, but my crying switch was off.

  “But not in the same way they did when they were married to each other, Bea. They love each other differently now, right? Like how friends love each other. Or maybe a brother and a sister.”

  I gave Miriam a look. She knew I had always wanted a sister more than anything, so I didn’t know why she would even bring that up.

  “Bea?” Her face was a big question mark.

  “I don’t want to talk about Mom anymore.”

  “Okay.”

  We sat there.

  “We could talk about what happened to your foot,” she said.

  So I told Miriam about fifth-grade colonial history, how there was a yearlong project with research papers and an authentic colonial-breakfast party next April. I told her about practice butter and heavy cream, and kicking the glass from happiness. When I got to that part, she opened the gummy
-bear jar and reminded me about thinking two steps ahead.

  “Poor foot,” she said.

  * * *

  —

  Miriam had taught me about thinking two steps ahead way back when I was eight, right after I told her about the worst terrible third-grade party, which was Carrie Greenhouse’s Halloween party.

  We played musical chairs at the party. I didn’t care about the prize, which was some stickers, but I also didn’t want to lose, because I hated the moment when the music stopped and everyone looked at the person who didn’t have a chair. I didn’t think I could live through that moment of everyone looking at me and waiting for me to go away. I knew I would get a red face.

  When the music stopped the first time, there was an empty chair right in front of me, and so everything was fine. But when the music stopped the second time, the closest chair already had someone sitting in it, someone who was squeezing the seat with both hands. I got really worried then, because even though I didn’t have time to look, I guessed all the other chairs were already taken, too. Which meant that, any second now, everyone was going to yell “You’re out!”

  At me.

  Unlike Ben Larson’s mom (oops, more about that party later), Carrie Greenhouse’s mom talked to my mom right in front of me.

  “—and she just—shoved him out of the chair. Onto the floor.”

  Mom looked sorry and turned to me. “Bea, did you apologize?”

  Carrie’s mom said, “I just think it’s so important that kids know how to be uncomfortable for a second, you know? She needs to learn— Oh, thank you! For coming!”