Wish Upon a Sleepover Page 3

  She sighs. “It was just a suggestion.”

  We don’t talk much after that. Mom has to eat quickly so she won’t be late for her shift. “Thanks for watching Leilani,” she says to Tutu. Then she grabs her purse, kisses my cheek, and whispers in my ear, “And thank you for watching Tutu.”

  Mom and I have an understanding. Although Tutu thinks she’s taking care of me, I’m actually taking care of her. She walks to the market every day, but she doesn’t do much else on her own. If she falls asleep on the couch, I cover her with a blanket and turn down the volume on the TV. When she gets ready for bed, I remind her to take her medication. I’m the one who checks to make sure the stove is off and the heat is turned down and the door is locked before going to sleep. But Mom always thanks Tutu for watching me. I think she wants to make Tutu feel useful.

  Another one of my chores at night is kitchen cleanup, so while Tutu watches Wheel of Fortune in the living room, I fill the dishwasher and turn it on. Then I water the fern that Mom keeps on our windowsill. That’s when I see William. We have one tiny window in our kitchen, and it looks down into the alley that runs between our building and a dry cleaner’s. It’s not much of a view, so I never look out there. But William’s red plaid coat catches my eye. I open the window and stick out my head. He’s standing in the alley, holding a pair of scissors.

  I can’t help it. I have to know. “What are you doing?” I call.

  He glances up.

  “It’s me, from the elevator,” I tell him.

  He pulls his fur hat over his eyes, then darts out of view.

  THAT’S IT!

  I’ve been super nice to him, and he’s been the absolute rudest! My blood is boiling, like lava in Kilauea. “I swear…” I clench my fists. “I swear I will never talk to the boy on the third floor again.” And since I want to make it official, I look up at the ceiling. “Do you hear me, God? Never! Again!”

  “When you’re done talking to God, I’d like a cup of tea!” Tutu hollers.

  I set the kettle on the stove. Then I grab a pencil and a piece of paper from the junk drawer and start an extremely important list. The most important list I’ve ever made.

  DO NOT invite to my sleepover.

  1.  William, the rude boy from the third floor!

  2.  Todd Burl, no matter what Mom says!

  7

  Manga Girl

  Manga Girl almost always sits alone at school. I don’t know if that’s because she doesn’t have friends or because she wants to sit alone. I’m so glad I’ve got Autumn to sit with. And Autumn is never sick, so I never have to eat alone.

  Mom says there’s nothing wrong with eating alone. Or going to the movies alone. She says that we have to be happy spending time with ourselves because the most important person in the world who should like you is yourself.

  I like myself, but I still don’t like eating alone.

  I secretly call her Manga Girl because she wears these hats with ears, like cat ears or fox ears. Sometimes there’s a cape attached to the hat. When she runs, she puts her arms behind her and says, “Whoosh.” I’m not making that up. Whoosh. Like she’s in a cartoon. I asked her once, “How come you say ‘whoosh’ when you run?” You know what she said? She said that if I had to ask that question, then I didn’t know anything about manga. I know a little about manga, but I’m not a fan. It feels weird to read a book backward. I have enough trouble reading them forward.

  I’ve never asked her why she wears the hats because, well, I think the answer might be kind of creepy. Jeremy Bishop told me that she’s hiding a deformed ear. And someone else started a rumor that she has horns. No one really knows what’s wrong with her head, but it must be bad because she never takes off the hats. After she’d been at our school for a few weeks, I started to feel sorry for her, so I invited her to sit with me and Autumn at lunch. She said she wanted to draw instead.

  Manga Girl always sits in the corner. And she draws all the time. Our teacher, Mr. Pine, tells her to put away her sketchbook, but as soon as we have free time or reading time, she starts drawing again. She draws during lunch. And at break. But she never lets anyone see what she’s drawing. I’ve tried, lots of times, but she always covers the page. I think that’s why she chooses corners, because no one can sneak up and see.

  Her real name is Tanisha Washington. Tanisha isn’t in my name book, so I looked it up online and found a bunch of different definitions. But a few places agreed that Tanisha is an African name that means “one who is born on Monday.” A lot of people don’t like Mondays because it means the weekend is over. But the day I don’t like is Thursday because that’s the day I have to leave class at eleven thirty to go to Reading Lab. According to my test results, I’m reading below grade level. The first day I had to go, Mr. Pine stopped right in the middle of his lesson on Washington state history, looked at the clock, and said, “Leilani and Stuart, it’s time for you to go to Reading Lab.”

  “I know,” I said, gritting my teeth. Why did he have to announce it?

  To make matters worse, Hayley Ranson and Heyley MacDonald are also in Mr. Pine’s class. They sit side by side in the front row. Other than Autumn, they get the best grades in class. I know this because whenever we get homework back, I have a perfect view, from the fourth row, of the red A’s on their papers. I don’t want to give them any reason to think I’m not smart enough to be in their group, so I make sure to watch the clock and jump out of my chair a minute before I’m supposed to leave for Reading Lab so that Mr. Pine won’t make another announcement. Then I hurry toward the door, avoiding the front row so Hayley and Heyley won’t notice me leaving.

  But today I get distracted because I’m trying to figure out what my sleepover invitations will look like. Should they be shaped like the state of Hawaii? Or like a hula girl? Or maybe a pineapple?

  “Leilani?” Mr. Pine calls from his desk. “It’s time to—”

  I drop my pen. No no no no no no no. Don’t say it!

  “—go to Reading Lab.”

  “Ugh,” I grunt. Stuart’s already left. Autumn smiles at me and waves good-bye. As I grab my folder, Manga Girl looks up from her drawing. Why is she staring at me? Hayley and Heyley turn and watch me leave. This is not how I want to be noticed.

  When I get back from Reading Lab, everyone is heading for the cafeteria. “How’d it go?” Autumn asks as she pulls her Tupperware box out of her backpack.

  “The usual,” I say with a shrug. The usual is sitting with Stuart, working on vocab cards.

  I glance over at Manga Girl. She’s still sitting at her corner desk, huddled over her drawing. She looks at me, her eyes squinty beneath the brim of her cat hat. She draws. Then she looks at me again. Then draws some more. Then looks at me.

  Wait a minute! Is she drawing me?

  I need to see that drawing. But I have to be sneaky. If I startle her, she’ll bolt. If she catches me looking, she’ll crumple the paper. She’d rather eat her drawing than let me see it. So I pretend I need to wash my hands at the sink, and then I lunge sideways.

  And I see it.

  She’s drawn a cartoon of a girl who has long black hair like mine. The girl is being attacked by gigantic letters, A, B, and C.

  “That’s mean,” I say.

  “It’s not mean.”

  “It is. You’re making fun of me.”

  “It’s not done,” she grumbles. Then she shoves the paper into her backpack and whooshes out of the room.

  “What was that about?” Autumn asks. I tell her what I saw. “I’m sure it wasn’t you.”

  “Of course it was me. She was totally making fun of me going to Reading Lab.”

  “But why would she do that?” Autumn asks as we start down the hall. “Reading is all about wiring, not intelligence. A lot of famous people had trouble reading when they were young. Thomas Edison and Walt Disney both had dyslexia. And Einstein didn’t get good grades. And George Washington couldn’t spell at all.”

  Autumn could have told
me that all those people had also gone to Reading Lab, but it wouldn’t have made me feel any better. That cartoon really stung.

  When I get home, I add another name to the list.

  DO NOT invite to my sleepover.

  1.William, the rude boy from the third floor!

  2.  Todd Burl, no matter what Mom says!

  3.  Tanisha Washington, the Manga Girl!

  8

  The Story of Soup

  After dinner, I make another list. I check the names in the school directory because the spelling is so confusing.

  DO invite to my sleepover.

  1.  Hailey Chun

  2.  Haighley Brown

  3.  Hayley Ranson

  4.  Heyley MacDonald

  5.  Heeyley Kerrigan

  6.  Heighleigh Garfinkel

  7.  Autumn Maxwell

  Then I grab some glue sticks, construction paper, markers, and a pair of scissors and dump them onto the coffee table. No way am I going to send free e-mail invites. This calls for the real thing.

  “Why are you making such a mess?” Tutu complains. She’s settled on her end of the couch, watching a game show called Name That Tune. It’s an old show from when my mom was little. The way it works is that the band plays a few notes, and the contestants try to guess the song.

  “I’m making the invitations for my Hawaiian luau sleepover,” I tell her. “They’re going to be pineapples.”

  Tutu grunts. “Pineapples aren’t native to Hawaii. They were brought to the islands by the Spanish. Most everything was brought to Hawaii. Pigs, mongooses, rats—they all came by ship.”

  “What, like on a cruise ship?” I imagine a pig, a mongoose, and a rat sitting in deck chairs, which makes me laugh.

  Tutu looks at me over the rims of her cat-eye glasses. “Listen up and you will learn. The only native mammal was the ‘ōpe’ape’a, the hoary bat. And the only native food was kalo, the wild sweet potato.”

  I’m never sure if Tutu’s stories are real or not. But this time it doesn’t matter, because I have no idea how to draw a hoary bat or a wild sweet potato. “Thanks, but I think I’ll stick with a pineapple.”

  So I cut the yellow shapes, glue them onto the paper, then cut out the green leaves and glue those on.

  While I’m creating my masterpieces, Tutu shouts at the TV. “‘Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree’!” “‘Blue Moon’!” “‘Jailhouse Rock’!” I don’t know any of those songs. When Name That Tune is over, she points at the coffee table. “What’s that?”

  “My invitation list,” I explain. “Those are the girls I’m inviting.”

  She wiggles her fingers. I hand her the list. She holds the paper real close and squints. “And who, exactly, are these girls?”

  “Just some girls from school. And Autumn.”

  “I don’t know these girls from school. What makes them so important that they get to be at your party?”

  “Well…” I set the scissors back in their plastic case. “I want them to be my new friends. When Autumn visits her dad, I don’t have anything to do. I get bored.”

  “Bored?” She snorts. “When I was a girl, there was no time to be bored. I had to pull weeds in my mom’s garden, then pick the watercress and take it down to the market. I had to feed and water the chickens, and rake their pen, and I babysat my little brothers and helped my mom cook dinner. We had to wash our clothes by hand, so every week I washed my brothers’ best shirts for Sunday church.”

  Sometimes Tutu’s childhood sounds magical, but most of the time it sounds really hard. “I’m sorry you had to do all that,” I say, “but my situation is totally different.” Doesn’t Tutu realize that I only have one true friend at school? And that having more would be great? “The Haileys have a lot of fun together. They have parties every weekend. The best parties. Everyone wants to go, but they only invite each other. If they come to my sleepover, and see that I’m just as fun as they are, then they’ll like me, and I’ll get invited to their parties.”

  “What about Autumn?”

  “I’d only go on the weekends when Autumn has to stay at her dad’s. Besides, Autumn wouldn’t want to go to a Hailey party. She doesn’t like parties. But she’ll eat lunch with us.”

  “Maybe she will and maybe she won’t. Autumn is a wise girl.” Autumn and Tutu are close because Autumn comes over all the time. Since Autumn’s grandparents live in California and she rarely gets to see them, Tutu is like a grandmother to her. “One day, Autumn will bloom like an ohia flower.”

  “She’ll eat lunch with me and the Haileys,” I say with absolute confidence. Autumn and I are inseparable—except for every other weekend.

  Tutu hands the list back to me. Then she grabs her clicker and mutes the TV. She doesn’t do that very often, and it means she’s going to tell me one of her stories.

  “If you want to impress these girls, then you should make sleepover soup,” she says.

  Soup? Who eats soup at a party? I imagine the disappointed looks on their faces. “That’s an interesting idea.” I smile politely. “But I’m going to stick with my luau theme.”

  “That’s too bad,” she says with a shake of her head, “because sleepover soup is blessed by the Hawaiian gods. By Kāne, Lono, Kū, and Kanaloa. And if your guests eat the soup, their wishes will come true.”

  “Huh?” I’m intrigued. I sit on the couch. “What do you mean? How can gods bless soup?”

  Tutu gets that dreamy look, as if she’s standing back on her island, her toes in the sand, smelling the salt water. “It’s a special recipe, handed down from generation to generation, from mother to daughter since sleepovers began.”

  I’m pretty sure I know all of Tutu’s recipes. I’ve read through her cards, and Mom and I have cooked most of the dishes. But this one is new to me.

  She sets the clicker aside and folds her hands. “You start with a pot of simmering chicken broth. This was easy to make back home because most everyone had a spare rooster running around or an old chicken that didn’t lay eggs anymore. You cut off the chicken’s head and—”

  “Gross,” I say.

  “It’s not gross, Leilani. How do you think chicken broth is made?”

  “Mom always buys it in a can.”

  She sighs. “Yes, but fresh is better.”

  “You want me to kill a chicken? I’m not doing that. No way.”

  “Perhaps that is asking too much.” She reaches out and pats my hand. “Clearly, you are too busy to cook soup that makes dreams come true.” Then she takes one of the butterscotch candies from the candy bowl, unwraps it, and begins to eat it. She reaches for the clicker.

  “Wait, Tutu. How does it make wishes come true?”

  She raises her eyebrows. They were drawn on with a black eyeliner pencil. “Well, after you have a pot of chicken broth, you want to make sure it’s on a gentle, welcoming simmer. You don’t want hot broth splattering your guests.” She rolls the candy around in her mouth. “Then each guest collects one ingredient for the soup. It must be a special ingredient, something that is meaningful to each person and comes from a special place. I always brought taro root.”

  “Why?”

  “Because my grandfather owned a small taro farm. Did you know that taro was important to all Hawaiian people? It was so important that the word for family, ‘ohana, comes from ‘oha, which are the shoots of the taro plant. You see? Just as the shoots come from the taro, we come from our families. And taro is important because all plant life in Hawaii is considered sacred. Taro is alive with mana.”

  While I’ve heard about mana, which is a kind of energy that Hawaiians believe you can find in just about everything, I’ve never heard anything about sleepover soup. That butterscotch candy smells really good. I grab one. “What about the gods?” I ask. “Where do they come in?”

  Tutu closes her eyes, and I guess she’s imagining her sleepover, way back when she was a little girl. Did they have sleeping bags? Did they play Truth or Dare?r />
  “One by one, the guests add their special ingredients to the broth,” she continues. “After everything has been added, you take the pot outside and stir it in the moonlight. A full moon is best, but any moonlight will do. Then you ask Hina-i-ka-malama to bless the soup.”

  That name sounds familiar, but I can’t remember why. “Who’s Hina-i…?”

  Tutu’s eyes slowly open. She turns and scowls at me. “Hina-i-ka-malama. Do you never listen? Hina-i-ka-malama means ‘Hina in the moon.’ She grew tired of the islands, so she took the rainbow path to the sun. Finding the sun too warm, she climbed instead to the moon. If you look carefully, you can see her watching over travelers on Earth.”

  I nod as the story comes back to me. “So what happens then, with the soup?”

  “Then you each take a sip. That is the important part. Only in the sharing will the magic be unleashed.”

  She turns away and unmutes the TV. Jeopardy! is on.

  The soup sounds kind of cool. Blessed by a goddess who lives in the moon. I imagine moonbeams touching the soup, filling it with magic. Of course, it’s one of Tutu’s crazy stories and there’s no way eating soup would make my wish, which is to become a member of the Haileys, come true. Besides, the Haileys are used to amazing sleepovers, and dumping a bunch of things into a pot of chicken broth is not amazing.

  I stack the invitations next to the “DO invite” list. But I can’t find any envelopes. “Tutu, when you go to the market tomorrow, can you get me some envelopes?” I ask. “So I can mail these?”

  “Envelopes,” she says with a nod. “Okay.”

  “Thanks, Tutu.” I kiss her cheek. Her skin smells like coconut. “Aloha po.” That means “good night.”

  “Aloha po.”

  Before I go to bed, I turn off the light, then look out the window. The man with the white beard is watching TV. The Croatian ladies have gone to bed. Hailey Chun’s apartment is also dark, the drapes closed. She’ll be so surprised when the invitation comes.