Page 9 of The Grump I Loathe
Alannah nodded. “Her crown fell out. Mom said if I don’t brush after all my meals, my teeth will fall out. You think that’s true? ’Cause sometimes I skip brushing them after lunch. I hate having to do it in the school bathroom.”
I hummed. “Well…there’s probably a margin of error there. Between you and me, I think you’re good to skip a few lunchtime brushes.”
Alannah plopped herself down on the passenger seat of the car. She prodded at the air freshener Cassie had hung from the rearview mirror. We shared the car, our awful little junker, because the only thing better than driving around in this shitbox on wheels was knowing I only had to cover half the expenses.
“So…” I said. “What’s on the agenda tonight? Homework? Gymnastics practice?” I pulled away from the school, glancing at Alannah briefly. “You know, Cassie still thinks it’s epic that you’re such a gymnastics prodigy.”
Her face clouded over. Should I change the subject? But no, she usually loved talking about gymnastics. If that wasn’t true anymore, I needed to get to the bottom of the reason why. Alannah had the habit of shoving her feelings down, out of sight, but I was usually good at getting her to open up. It meant a lot to me to be her safe space—the one she could tell anything.
“She said we’ll definitely be seeing you at the Olympics in eight years. You’ll have your own little fan section. We can get shirts with your face on them and everything.”
Apparently, that was where Alannah hit her limit. Her lip trembled, and then all at once, she curled her knees to her chest and burst into tears. My eyes darted between her and the road, trying to find a good place to pull over.
“Hey,” I said, reaching for her shoulder and giving it a squeeze. “What’s going on?”
“We’re supposed to have a showcase tonight at the gym!” Alannah cried. “To show our routines off to our parents. Mom and Dad were supposed to pick me up from school, take me to dinner, then all three of us were supposed to go to the gym. But if they didn’t even remember to grab me from school, then they definitely forgot about the showcase.” She trembled from the force of her sobs.
Goddamnit.A Simon Sheppard special, indeed. “We’ll make it okay,” I promised.
She cried harder.
“Seriously.” I swallowed hard, blinking away the sudden weight behind my eyes. I hated seeing her like this. Part of me wanted to say it was just a misunderstanding—that her parents hadn’t actually forgotten her or her showcase, but I’d decided a long time ago that I wasn’t going to lie to Alannah.
She was too smart for empty promises and platitudes. “Look, I’m guessing they got sidetracked with work and forgot your nanny was out sick. That doesn’t make it right,” I told her. “At least one of them should have been here for you. But we’ll text them to remind them about the showcase.”
“And what if they still can’t come?” she sniffled.
“Won’t matter because you’ll have a kickass cheering section either way.”
“You’ll be there?” she asked, rubbing tears from her cheeks.
“Of course. I’ll text Cassie, too, because she’ll definitely want to see what you’re working on.”
Alannah caught a sob in her throat, the sound choked. “Okay.”
“But before all that,” I said, just wanting to see her smile, “we have some errands to run.”
Alannah’s face shifted from despair to suspicion. “What kind of errands?”
“The totally cool and insanely fun kind,” I said as I changed lanes and hung a right toward Lombard Street.
I parked in a garage and led Alannah to the cable car stop at the bottom of Hyde Street.
“I’m supposed to be doing my homework,” she said as we boarded the cable car, the gears clunking as we headed up the steep California Street slope to Nob Hill.
The city stretched out around us, the skyscrapers of downtown reaching into cloudless blue, the Golden Gate Bridge winking in the distance, framed by hills and valleys. The higher we went, the more of the bay and the Marina District we could see. I figured I’d get used to these views at some point, but I’d grown up in Ohio, and the novelty had yet to wear off.
“Seriously,” Alannah continued. “Mom would say I should be doing my math.”
“And you will,” I said, sniffling away my con crud. Thankfully, the cold meds were starting to kick in. “What’s the square root of one hundred and forty-four?”
Alannah looked at me flatly. “I don’t even know what a square root is.”
“Which is why, after our totally cool and insanely fun errands, you can do your math in the car on the way to the gym. Sound good?”
The corner of her lips twitched.
I folded my hands together over my head, standing on one foot. Math could wait. “Listen to your older and wiser sister. Life is all about balance, Lana. Speaking of, bet I can balance on one foot for longer than you.”
