Emma Jean Lazarus Fell in Love Page 8
Chapter 22
It always amazed Colleen, how your world could break apart into a thousand pieces, like a plate you dropped while emptying the dishwasher. And then somehow everything was put together again, and you couldn’t even see the cracks or the glue. It hadn’t taken long to make things right with Kaitlin. There was no huge talk, just a look and some tears and about a hundred hugs and they were back to normal. And with the news about Laura and Carl Johannsen, nobody was thinking about Colleen and her secret admirer. The whole thing was forgotten. Which was fine with Colleen.
Colleen and Kaitlin called their moms and said they were walking into town to get ice cream.
“We need to celebrate,” Colleen had said.
“What are we celebrating?” Kaitlin asked.
Colleen wondered. She wasn’t going to the Spring Fling. She had no secret admirer.
Colleen shrugged. “Just everything!” she said, and of course Kaitlin understood exactly what she meant and gave her another big hug.
Kaitlin needed to use the girls’ room before their walk into town. Colleen was waiting for her when Will came jogging up to her.
“Hey Collcakes,” he said.
He was so sweet!
She wondered how he felt about Laura and Carl Johannsen. He didn’t look too upset. He looked pretty happy, actually. And then it hit Colleen . . . Will wasn’t going to the Spring Fling with Laura! And so now . . .
Without even thinking, Colleen grabbed Will’s hand and blurted out, “Will you go to the Spring Fling with Emma-Jean?”
Will stared at her, and then he started to laugh.
“That’s a good one,” he said.
“What’s so funny?” Colleen demanded.
Maybe Will wasn’t sweet! Maybe he was mean and awful!
“Emma-Jean is a great person,” Colleen said, crossing her arms.
Will stopped laughing. “I know that,” he said.
“So go with her to the dance!” Colleen said, bouncing up and down. This was so exciting! See? Anything was possible!
“Emma-Jean doesn’t want to go with me,” Will said.
“Yes she does,” Colleen said. “She totally does!”
Will shook his head. “No, I just talked to her.”
“You did?” Colleen said. That was strange. Was Will making this up?
“She uh, she said I should go with someone else.”
What was Will talking about? Did he think that Colleen was stupid? Did he think she didn’t know Emma-Jean at all?
“Really,” Colleen said, raising her chin and looking right at Will. “Who?”
Will smiled a little. “You.”
Colleen blinked.
“What?”
“She said we were . . . what did she say? Oh yeah . . . suitable.”
Oh gosh. Will couldn’t have thought of that on his own. Only Emma-Jean would use that word.
What had Emma-Jean done? Did she really think that Will Keeler would go to the Spring Fling with Colleen? Even Emma-Jean should know better than that! Was she trying to ruin Colleen’s life again?
She couldn’t look at Will. This was so embarrassing!
Didn’t Emma-Jean ever learn?
But then she felt Will’s hand on her shoulder, strong and soft at the same time.
And Colleen peeked up. Will was looking right into her eyes, looking at her in a way that nobody had ever looked at her before, not her mom or her friends or Piggy or even her boy. Colleen looked right back.
“Do you want to go with me, Colleen?” Will said in the most serious voice she’d ever heard. “Because I really want to go with you.”
Colleen just stood there with her mouth wide open in shock. The roof of the school seemed to open over their heads, so that the sun was shining down on both of them. And her bird flew over, with all of his friends. And they were all singing together. . .
La, la, la
La, la, la
La, la, la
la
la
la
la
la
la
LA!
Chapter 23
Over the next two weeks, Emma-Jean’s friends focused on their preparations for the Spring Fling. They pored over fashion magazines at lunch and debated the merits of different hairstyles and nail polish hues. Kaitlin went to the doctor and had her wart removed. The slumber party was rescheduled for the weekend after the dance.
“And I have the best idea ever,” Colleen said. “We’ll do it at your house, Emma-Jean! That way your bird won’t be lonely.”
Emma-Jean agreed that it was an inspired solution, and she and Vikram had started working on a dinner menu that would go well with chocolate fondue.
She was pondering this and other pleasant matters on a warm Thursday afternoon when Vikram appeared at her door carrying a large box festooned with Indian postage stamps.
“It’s from my mother,” he said. “There is something in here for you.”
Vikram placed the box on Emma-Jean’s desk and took out a flat rectangular package wrapped in tissue. There was a short note taped to the top, written in Mrs. Adwani’s distinctive dancing Hindi lettering.
It took Emma-Jean just a few minutes to decipher the words.
Emma-Jean unwrapped the package and discovered a seemingly endless bolt of bright orange silk edged with delicate crystal beads.
“It’s very striking,” Emma-Jean said, holding the fabric to her cheek. It was as soft as Henri. “Though I am not going to a dance.”
“One day you will,” Vikram said.
Emma-Jean nodded. She carefully folded the silk and held it to her chest.
“What else is in the box?” she asked.
“It’s my cricket collection,” Vikram said.
For an instant Emma-Jean imagined the dazzling spectacle of dozens of crickets hopping out of the box, filling her bedroom with their symphony of chirps. But of course she realized that Vikram was not referring to the cricket of the etymological world, but rather that of the sporting world, the baseball-like game that had captivated him since he was a small boy.
He opened the flaps and stared inside with reverence, like a pirate peering into a chest of long-buried gold. Emma-Jean looked over his shoulder, admiring the array of items—dozens of neatly bundled stacks of player cards, felt caps, team photographs and pennants.
Vikram reached into the box and brought out a long and bulky object wrapped in many layers of newspaper. He carefully stripped away the paper to reveal a cricket bat that was battered and grass-stained and emblazoned with an illegible signature scrawled in black marker.
“Donald Bradman’s bat,” he whispered.
“Who was he?” Emma-Jean said.
Vikram looked at her with surprise. “He is one of the most famous men in the world,” Vikram said. “He was a cricket player, a legend.”
“Why did he give you his bat?”
Vikram seemed amused by this comment.
“He did not. My grandfather did. He gave it to me just before he died. It is worth a small fortune now. My mother sent it because I have finally decided to sell it. I am planning to take a major step in my life.”
A feeling of dread came over Emma-Jean. The weeks had passed with no mention of the job at Stanford University; Emma-Jean had been hopeful that her letter to Dr. Markt had been effective. But now it seemed that in fact Dr. Markt had not received her letter, or he had received it and not heeded Emma-Jean’s warning about Vikram’s precarious state of mind.
“I have not told a soul about this,” Vikram continued. “Not even your mother.”
Emma-Jean took a deep breath.
“I am aware of your plan,” she said.
“Really?” Vikram said with surprise.
“Yes I am,” Emma-Jean said. “And I must tell you that I am utterly against it.”
Vikram blinked, as though startled by a clap of thunder.
“I’m surprised to hear you say this,” Vikram said. “I expected—”<
br />
“You are not thinking clearly,” Emma-Jean explained. “You are madly in love with my mother. Your judgment has become clouded.”
“Clouded?”
“The plan is misguided,” Emma-Jean said. “To move to California. To teach at Stanford. I heard you speaking on the phone to Dr. Markt. I have already written to him. I have explained the situation. I had hoped—”
“You wrote to Dr. Markt?” Vikram interrupted.
Emma-Jean nodded.
“Well, that explains a few things,” he said, shaking his head.
And then Vikram did something quite peculiar. He began to chuckle. And it occurred to Emma-Jean that perhaps Vikram’s mental state was even more unbalanced than she had feared.
“Did you by any chance tell him I liked to cook with curry?”
“Yes,” Emma-Jean said.
Vikram’s laughter grew stronger until it seemed to fill the room around them and spill out the open window to echo through the streets.
Emma-Jean watched in alarm, wondering if she should call her mother at work.
Finally Vikram stopped laughing. He patted his chest and cleared his throat.
“Emma-Jean,” he said. “I am not moving to California. I have been invited to lead a seminar, over the summer. Your mother and I thought you could both join me for a couple of weeks. We were waiting to tell you, until we had it all planned. It was to be a surprise.”
Emma-Jean opened her mouth to respond, but somehow all of her words had disappeared. Perhaps they had been carried out the window by the force of Vikram’s laughter.
“I had wondered why Dr. Markt was so curious about my cooking . . . and about you.”
“Me?”
Vikram nodded. “He will be in Connecticut next week, visiting his mother. He asked if he could come here, for dinner. He specifically asked if you would be here. And he said something very peculiar . . . He said to let you know that he would wash his hands very well before dinner. He hung up before I could ask him what he meant by that.”
Vikram looked searchingly at Emma-Jean, and his expression grew stern.
“You should have spoken to me,” Vikram said quietly. “It is not a good idea to be writing letters to people you don’t know. Dr. Markt obviously has a good sense of humor, but you could have . . .”
But then his eyes softened. He picked up Emma-Jean’s hand and held it to his chest.
“We can discuss that another time. What I wanted to tell you has nothing to do with California or Stanford,” Vikram said. “I’m selling the bat because I plan to buy your mother a ring.”
Vikram held her hand tighter.
“Emma-Jean,” Vikram said. “I want to ask your mother to marry me.”
Chapter 24
Colleen had always dreamed that one day she would go to a fancy ball in a pink dress with the nicest boy in the world. Dreams really do come true!
Well, maybe not exactly true. At her dream ball, Colleen’s mom hadn’t been a chaperone.
But when your dream came true, you shouldn’t be picky about the details. They needed chaperones at the Spring Fling, and her mom seemed excited to be coming along. She’d even bought a new blouse, with pink flowers on it, and put on lipstick. She looked pretty! Colleen was happy they were going out together, that neither one of them was home alone with the sock puppets.
She was nervous that her mom would hover around her all night, but as soon as they walked inside she gave Colleen a little kiss and went off to help set up the refreshments.
Colleen could see her friends on the dance floor. But she didn’t see Will. They never said where they would meet. What if he didn’t come? What if he ignored her? What if her breath smelled like egg salad?
She started to get her old panicky feeling. But then someone seemed to be right there with her telling her to calm down.
Her boy! He was here! Even though they’d said good-bye, he was here tonight, just in case Colleen needed him. And now he was telling her that of course Will was coming. He reminded her that she and Will had been talking about the dance every day for weeks. And her breath couldn’t smell like egg salad, because she purposely hadn’t eaten it for three days.
And then she felt someone’s hands over her eyes, for real, and a funny voice whispering in her ear.
“Collcakes.”
And Colleen grabbed Will’s wrists and turned around and they both laughed. And oh my gosh he looked so cute!
Oh no! What if her boy got jealous of Will?
But no, of course he wasn’t jealous. That’s not how it was with Colleen and her boy. The only thing he’d ever wanted was for Colleen to be happy. And now Colleen had the feeling that he would always be there for her, somewhere, in case she needed him.
“Let’s go dance!” she shouted to Will over the music.
“I hate dancing!” Will shouted back.
“No you don’t!” said Colleen.
“Okay, maybe I don’t,” Will laughed.
And they ran over to the dance floor, where all her friends were already dancing. They made room for Will and Colleen and they were all dancing together. And Colleen closed her eyes for a few seconds because she knew this was one of those precious moments that she’d want to remember for her whole life.
They had just finished dancing when she saw Emma-Jean.
How amazing that she was here! And she looked so gorgeous in orange. But, well, maybe for the next dance Colleen’s mom could show her how to sew that pretty piece of material into a real dress.
“Look!” Colleen said, pointing to Emma-Jean. “She’s here!”
“Who?” Will said.
“Emma-Jean!”
“I can’t believe it!” Kaitlin said.
“That’s amazing!” Valerie said.
Emma-Jean was standing there, looking around in that Emma-Jean-ish way, like she was studying them for a science project.
“Emma-Jean!” Colleen called, waving the hand that Will wasn’t holding.
“Emma-Jean!” Kaitlin called.
“Emma-Jean!” Valerie and Michele called together.
They all started to laugh.
“She’s in her own world,” Will said, but not in a mean way. It was like he understood how it was with Emma-Jean.
“Okay, on three,” Colleen said. “We’ll all yell together.”
They all huddled together, Valerie and Jeremy, Michele and Leo, Kaitlin and Neil, and Colleen and Will.
Colleen and Will?
This was way better than any dream.
“Okay,” said Colleen as loudly as she could. “One! Two! Three!”
And they all took deep breaths and shouted together across the cafeteria.
“Emma-Jean!”
Chapter 25
The decision to attend the Spring Fling had been made just that morning, when Ms. Wright had phoned Emma-Jean’s mother to say that the PTA still needed some chaperones.
Emma-Jean had listened as she ate her oatmeal, and when her mother hung up, Emma-Jean said, “Perhaps we should go.”
The words had come out unexpectedly.
“Really?” Emma-Jean’s mother said. “You want to go to the dance?”
“Yes,” Emma-Jean said, before she could consider the question too deeply.
“And you want Vikram and me to go too?”
“Vikram has never been to a dance,” Emma-Jean said. “It is one of his regrets.”
“I didn’t realize that.”
“It’s true,” Emma-Jean said. “And that is why we should go.”
It all seemed rational enough, Emma-Jean thought.
Apparently her mother agreed, because she smiled and grabbed Emma-Jean’s hand and said, “Let’s go tell Vikram!”
They arrived at the dance more than thirty minutes late, having been delayed by the challenge of arranging Emma-Jean’s sari. After an hour of fruitless folding and wrapping and tucking of the orange silk, Emma-Jean’s mother had placed a call to Mrs. Adwani, who had not been the least bit annoyed to be
awakened at 3:35 a.m. Mumbai time. Despite the early hour, Mrs. Adwani provided coherent instructions to Emma-Jean’s mother, who then adeptly wrapped the sari around Emma-Jean’s body and draped it over her shoulder. The results were quite fetching.
When they arrived at the school, they found Ms. Wright standing in the doorway of the gym.
“Here you are!”’ she said. “And look how stunning you are, Emma-Jean!”
“Thank you,” said Emma-Jean said, confirming that her sari was secure. “You look stunning as well.”
Indeed, Ms. Wright looked especially lovely in a blue dress, which swished gracefully around her knees. Emma-Jean made a mental note to suggest to Ms. Wright that she wear this dress on Wednesday night, to the dinner Vikram was preparing in honor of Dr. Markt. It had been Emma-Jean’s idea to include Ms. Wright in the dinner, and Vikram and her mother had readily concurred.
“She loves Vikram’s puran-poli,” her mother had said, referring to Vikram’s mother’s signature dish, a stuffed bread that Vikram would be making for the dinner.
But Emma-Jean had her secret reason for inviting Ms. Wright, a reason that had nothing at all to do with the puran-poli: She had come to see that the illustrious scientist and her esteemed teacher would make an excellent couple.
Over the past two weeks, Vikram had shared with Emma-Jean some compelling details about Dr. Markt—that he traveled to Connecticut frequently, that he played the mandolin, that he was unmarried. These facts, combined with Dr. Markt’s demonstrated intelligence and sense of humor, had led Emma-Jean to conclude that he had many of the qualities that Ms. Wright was looking for.
Emma-Jean had not revealed any of this to Ms. Wright, who might become nervous if she knew she could soon be meeting her future husband. Besides, Emma-Jean could do no more than arrange their meeting. She knew better than to think she could control the unpredictable forces of love. Still, her hopes were high.
Now Ms. Wright linked arms with Emma-Jean’s mother.
“I need to take these tardy chaperones to their post,” she said.
“Do you want to come with us?” her mother said.
Emma-Jean shook her head. “I will find my friends.”