Miss You, Mina Page 4

  “I just don’t want to look like the clueless new girl,” I sighed. “I get enough of that at camp to last two lifetimes.” At least I’d learned a few things recently, like the location of Pearl Paint—the “Pearl” Gabriella had referred to the day I met her on the subway. Pearl Paint was an amazing art supply store in downtown Manhattan on Canal Street, where Gabriella and I had gone after class to buy new paintbrushes.

  “What are you talking about?” Gabriella asked. “I mean, Ms. Roberts really seems to like your art!”

  “Whatev,” I shot back. “She practically ripped my Picasso to shreds. Anyway, Ms. Roberts isn’t the one I meant.”

  “Mina,” Gabriella said, giving me a long look. “Please do not let Paulette get to you. She’s not worth it.”

  I plopped down onto the daybed and stared out the window at the leaves on a huge, gnarled oak twisting in the summer breeze. Yesterday, I’d spent what seemed like hours staring at that tree as I tried to figure out what I needed to do to fit in at camp. Well, specifically, to get Paulette to stop terrorizing me the way she had for the last two weeks. Ever since our unfortunate run-in at the Met, I’d felt pretty low. I hadn’t even been able to enjoy the gorgeous, ancient Temple of Dendur or the beautiful Monets and Renoirs we’d looked at in the Impressionist wing. I couldn’t stand the fact that someone like Paulette was basically threatening to ruin my summer.

  “Thing is, I don’t even know what I did to her to make her hate me,” I told Gabriella. “What’s her deal?”

  “She doesn’t hate you,” Gabriella insisted. “She’s just jealous of you because somebody else in the class is finally getting some shine. She can be so first grade.”

  “No kidding,” I groaned.

  “It’s nothing new, trust me,” Gabriella went on. “She did the same thing to me last year when Ms. Roberts was encouraging me to get bolder with my colors. Honest to goodness, the more bold my paintings got, the meaner Paulette was to me.”

  “Really?” I asked. I felt bad for Gabriella, but it also made me feel a bit better to know I wasn’t alone.

  “You know,” Gabriella went on thoughtfully, “sometimes I wonder if the only reason Paulette is so evil is because of her home life. Last year, her parents got a divorce, and her dad came to the final art show with a new girlfriend, and then he and Paulette’s mom got into a shouting match in front of the whole camp. Paulette was so embarrassed! I would have been, too. My guess is that she’s got some serious stuff going on at home, and the only place where she has some control is at our camp. So really, it’s all her issue, not yours.”

  “Wow,” I said, taking all this information in. Paulette acted like everything in her life was perfect, but that seemed far from the truth.

  “Just be yourself, and ignore Paulette,” Gabriella assured me.

  I wished it were that easy. I didn’t know how to deal with Paulette and be myself all at the same time. I mean, I’d never had a problem being me before, and most everybody back home in Greenwood liked plain ol’ Mina. All this extra mess was wearing me out.

  Still, I gave Gabriella a grateful look. Just past her shoulder, I caught sight of my chalkboard wall. Earlier, Auntie Jill used a hot-pink pastel to scribble How I Feel in a semicircle on the board. Right after camp today, I scribbled argh! in the shape of a slithery snake all the way across the wall, because that was how I felt—frustrated. But after my little Gabriella pep talk, I was feeling a bit more hopeful. I walked over to the chalkboard, erased the snake, then picked up a bubblegum-pink pastel, and turned Auntie Jill’s words into a smiley face with crossed eyes and a tongue hanging out.

  Gabriella giggled. “See? You’ve been holding out—you’re kinda nutty. I like that!”

  “Thanks, I guess,” I said. “So how do I look?” I asked again, pushing Paulette and art camp from my thoughts.

  “Like a rock star,” she said.

  Just as I slipped the second Converse high-top on, Auntie Jill called up to us: “Okay, ladies, if we keep this pace, we’re going to get to The Spot just in time to wash up the dishes and close it down. If we get there and the red velvet cupcakes are gone? Oh, it’s going to be a situation!”

  “Coming, Auntie!” I yelled down as Gabriella and I bolted for the door. We skipped down the stairs and practically into my aunt’s arms. “What’s the big deal about these red velvet cupcakes, anyway?” I asked, stopping short, causing Gabriella to bump into my back. We giggled.

  Auntie Jill shook her head and sighed. “Seriously? You two have issues. And I’ll have you know that those delicious, creamy little red delicacies are quite a big deal, Ms. Missy!” she said. “My goodness, I can taste the cream cheese just standing here. You’ll see—if we ever get out of the house!”

  Let’s just say the words delicious and delicacies hardly began to describe those cupcakes. Incredible? Unbelievable? Amazing? Yes, amazing was the word. I’d had red velvet cake before; my grandmother, when she was alive, would make them for special occasions like Thanksgiving and Easter when we celebrated the holidays with them down in Savannah, Georgia. But I was little then, and not too many six-year-olds could appreciate cream cheese frosting. Anyway, I was sure not even my grandmother’s red velvet cake could come even close to tasting like the cupcakes in The Spot.

  “I have to have another one of these,” I said, washing down the last bite of my cupcake with a swig of my mango-banana-strawberry smoothie as I surveyed the room from our table. The café was brightly colored and immediately welcoming, with Day-Glo green walls and orange-and-yellow polka-dot chairs.

  “Hey, Mina, maybe you should try eating the red velvets with human bites—you can taste them better that way,” Gabriella joked.

  “You know, your friend has a point,” Auntie Jill laughed.

  I exaggerated a frown. “Sheesh, Auntie, I’m family! You’re not supposed to cosign with her!”

  “I’m just saying…” Auntie Jill said, raising her hands in mock surrender. She reached into her purse and pulled out a crisp five-dollar bill. “Um, and while you’re over there getting another one for yourself, bring back enough for the table, ’kay?”

  “See?” I said, pushing back from the table. “Making me out to be greedy. You two aren’t any better!”

  As I made my way to the coffee counter, I couldn’t help but take in the scene. The Spot was, by far, the coolest hangout I’d ever seen. There were all kinds of funky stuff happening. Up on a small stage at the back, a DJ cut and scratched a popular song while a few kids danced to the tunes; over at the table by the front window, a bunch of kids were playing flutes and clarinets. Nearby, three girls were running through a dance routine that Auntie Jill told me they were planning for the upcoming West Indian Labor Day Parade. At the old-fashioned-looking counter, two guys pounded out a beat on the blue Formica while their friends took turns freestyling a rap about Nikes and Brooklyn and some girl named Tameka.

  All around the room, kids were laughing and sipping on fruit smoothies and iced coffees and talking animatedly about everything—the latest movies, tennis lessons at Fort Greene Park, who had the best pizza in Clinton Hill, what was going on for the weekend. I’d never seen anything like it. Everybody looked cool and easy—had their own style and swagger about them. It was infectious, and I was so happy to be a part of it. Seriously: Who knew places like this really existed? The Spot was definitely my new happy place. I couldn’t wait to tell Liza and Sam all about it.

  “You guys, I got there just in time—these were the last three,” I said as I walked up to our table, balancing my newly acquired cupcakes. “But I’m warning you, you better hurry up and eat yours because they’re looking mighty tasty, and I may not be able to control…”

  I stopped mid-sentence when I looked up and saw a boy sitting in my chair.

  Gabriella looked at me, and then at the boy, and then back at me again, and smiled. “Hey, Mina, meet my friend Marley. Marley, this is Mina. She and I go to art camp together.”

  “Hey, what’s up?” Ma
rley said, tossing his chin in my direction.

  “Hey,” I said because I couldn’t think of a single, solitary word other than hey.

  Marley was too cute for words—cuter, dare I say, than even Corbin Bleu. Well, maybe that was going a little far—nobody on the planet is as cute as Corbin. But this boy? Oh. My.

  “Oh, hey—I’m in your seat, aren’t I,” he said, pushing back from the table.

  Still no words.

  “So, um, your aunt tells me you’re visiting from New Jersey?”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, taking my seat and handing out the cupcakes to my aunt and Gabriella. I said a prayer way on the inside that he didn’t notice my hands shaking.

  “How are you liking Brooklyn so far?” he continued, taking his shoulder-length locs into his hands and tying them into a low knot, near the nape of his neck.

  “It’s, um, cool,” I said, fiddling with the paper on my cupcake.

  “I fear now that she’s had the red velvet cupcakes, we’re never going to get rid of her,” my aunt said. “Good thing we actually like her.”

  Still, I said nothing.

  “So,” Gabriella said, trying to break the awkward silence, “are you ciphering today?”

  As badly as I wanted to know what ciphering was, I sure wasn’t about to ask that stupid question right there, right then. I guessed I’d figure it out eventually.

  “You know it,” Marley said with a grin. “I’m going to try some new material out. And dig it: My boy Cutz is going to paint onstage while I’m performing. It’s going to be kinda hot.”

  “Sounds like it,” my aunt said. “You know, Mina and Gabriella are both artists, too. Maybe one of these days they could accompany you onstage.”

  “That would be cool,” Marley said, smiling right at me. Just as he did so, I grabbed for my smoothie and…missed. A small bit of the pink liquid oozed on the table; as I hurriedly reached out, my elbow swiped the top of my red velvet cupcake, and cream cheese icing made a track all the way across my arm. Embarrassing!

  “Whoa, let me get you some napkins,” Marley said.

  Before he could get a few steps toward the counter, the DJ got on his mike and cleared his throat. “Okay, party people. It’s Poetry Slam Wednesday and I’d like to invite up to the stage a crowd favorite, my dude Marley. And making his performance-painting debut today is my man Cutz, who’s going to do an original piece while Marley kicks a verse. Let’s give them both a round of applause.”

  “Oh, gotta get to the stage,” Marley said, grabbing a few napkins off an empty table next to ours. “Mina, it was nice meeting you. Next time, save some cupcakes for the rest of us. See you around.”

  “Yeah, um, see you around,” I said, trying to make myself look too busy cleaning up the mess I’d made to actually look him in the eye.

  “I’ll text you later,” Gabriella said to Marley. “Maybe we can meet up here next week and talk about the performance.”

  “Yeah—sounds good,” Marley said.

  Now, I was trying not to crush on the boy, seeing as my aunt was sitting at the table. I didn’t need her rushing back to tell my mom about my liking someone, especially since my mom and dad said I couldn’t even think about boys until I was sixteen, much less date them. Gabriella knew not to say anything either, but I could tell from the slick grin on her face that we would definitely be discussing Marley when my aunt was out of earshot. For now, though, we both had to be content with watching him up on the stage, busting a rhyme.

  He was incredible, too. While the DJ scratched out a crazy beat, Marley leaned into his microphone and spun out an incredible, rhythmic poem about unity. And while he rhymed, Cutz splashed his paint on an oversize canvas that, by the time Marley finished his cipher, revealed itself to be two hands—one black and one white—fingers intertwined, layered atop a rainbow of colors. It was amazing.

  When the beats finally stopped and Marley and Cutz took their bows, I was clapping like I was at a Jonas Brothers concert. Don’t worry—I wasn’t the only one. It seemed Marley and Cutz had that effect on a lot of people—especially all the other girls in the room.

  I was still envisioning Marley and Cutz—well, more Marley—when I pulled out my sketchbook back at my aunt’s house and tackled my homework assignment from camp. Ms. Roberts’s instructions had been really vague: Sketch something that inspires you, she had said. Now, in my head, that something could have been anything; rainbows are inspiring. So are mothers. My little sister gets really inspired if you wave a glazed doughnut in her face. But I didn’t think Ms. Roberts wanted to see a rainbow or a doughnut in my sketchbook the next day, and I wasn’t good enough at drawing faces to whip up a sketch of my mom. But after Marley’s performance that evening, I had inspiration to spare.

  I flipped to a clean piece of paper and then sat back on the daybed and closed my eyes. I pictured Marley leaning into the microphone, and the way he waved his hands in the air while he pushed out his words; I saw Cutz’s paintbrush flying against the canvas, and the DJ’s fingers on the record he was spinning. I saw the spilled smoothie slinking across the table, and the red velvet cupcake with the icing missing. Recalling the evening made my heart race a little.

  The front doorbell snapped me out of my daze; I could hear my aunt opening the heavy door and having a quick but friendly conversation with whoever rang. “Mina!” she called out after she said her good-byes and closed the door behind her guest. “Could you come downstairs, please?”

  “Coming, Auntie,” I yelled out as I made my way down the stairs.

  “You got a package. It was sent priority mail, and since we were out, the postman left it with the neighbor. Here you go,” Auntie Jill said, handing me a blue-and-white square box. “It’s from someone named Samantha.”

  A grin spread across my face from one ear to the other.

  “Who’s Samantha?” Auntie Jill asked. “Is that one of your girlfriends?”

  “Yes!” I said excitedly, shaking the package and examining Samantha’s handwriting.

  “Well, don’t shake it too hard,” Auntie said. “There might be something fragile in it.”

  “Oh, you’re right,” I said. “Do you have something I can use to open it?”

  “Sure, come on into the kitchen. We can open it in there.”

  Auntie pulled out a couple of kitchen drawers until she found a small X-acto knife; she eased it across the tape on the top of the box, and then used her fingers to pry the flaps open. “There you go,” she said, pushing the box across the counter toward me.

  I ripped through the purple tissue paper and little foam things and dug down into the box until my hands hit something soft. I pulled it out; it was a rolled-up T-shirt. As I unrolled it, a pair of purple sunglasses and a white shell necklace splashed onto the table. “Oooh! Cute!” I squealed. I put the sunglasses on and held the necklace up to my neck.

  “Very pretty,” Auntie said, giving it a nod of approval, and then I held up the T-shirt. I cracked up at what it said on the back: It read: I’D RATHER BE SURFING IN SALT ISLE.

  “Well, looks like Miss Samantha is quite the shopper and knows your taste, huh?” Auntie said.

  “Definitely,” I said. “I’m going to go put them away.”

  My gifts tucked close to my chest, I ran back upstairs and rushed into my room. I looked at Samantha’s gifts a few more times, feeling close to my bestie even though she was so far away. I sent her a silent thank-you across the miles for sending me a small piece of the beach. It was on beaches that I always felt powerful, like my connection to the water and the sand and the blue skies gave me superstrength. Just thinking about what mattered most to me—my friends who love me, and the beach, which I love, made me feel so much better about the Paulette situation.

  I picked up the picture of me and my best friends. Man, I wished Sam and Liza were here to see all the cool things I was experiencing here in Brooklyn, and even in art camp. They’d think it was pretty incredible, I was sure of it.

  I pulled off m
y sunglasses and put them on the nightstand, along with the necklace, my T-shirt, and the picture, too, and looked at them one more time before I picked up my sketch pad again, wishing that Samantha could have been here to enjoy this. She’d get a kick out of my inspiration painting, for sure.

  Chapter Five

  “Okay, how’d you do that?” Toby asked, leaning into my inspiration painting; he was close enough for his nose to practically touch the paper. “Is that a bottle cap?”

  “Yup,” I answered enthusiastically. I stepped back to let him, Gabriella, and a few other people I’d made friends with at camp get a better look. It had taken me three weeknights of nonstop work and an entire Sunday afternoon to complete my picture, and I was pretty pleased with how it turned out. “I thought it would be cool to play with the colors and add in some texture on the knot in the hair,” I said. “There’s some yarn in it, and some printed paper on it, too. I think it came out kinda cool.”

  Truth was, I couldn’t wait for Ms. Roberts and the other camp instructors to evaluate it in our first art critique. I checked out the other students’ easels. Julia, whose work was two easels down from mine, had painted a white basket with bananas in it. And Toya did a sketch of her toy poodle, Willie. I really hoped his eyes weren’t crossed like they were in her picture. And Levi had done a pastel drawing of his Nintendo DS. I thought it was pretty funny that a silver handheld video game was his inspiration, but why not?

  I felt suddenly nervous. I thought my piece was good, but what if Ms. Roberts preferred everyone else’s?

  As if on cue, Paulette strolled up, stopped dead center in front of my painting, and stared. Well, more like glared.

  “What, exactly, is that a picture of?” she asked, tilting her head to the side.

  “It’s, uh, a friend of mine I met at The Spot in Fort Greene. It’s the back of his head,” I said, nowhere near as confidently as I was feeling.