Shop in the Name of Love (3 page)

“I know you won’t, because I’m gonna hang you by your braids!” says The Mummy who is my mom.

I run to my room, grab the red princess phone by my bed and beep Bubbles, putting the 911 code after my phone number. Me and Bubbles have secret codes for everything. She will understand. I sure hope she gets the message, but I know she’s probably already on her way here for our dinner together.

I listen to my mom clanging pots and pans in the kitchen, and I let out a big sigh. See, me and Mom fight a lot, especially now that I am a Cheetah Girl. It seems like everything I want, she’s against. She does not want me to sing. She says I should get a real job—be a department store buyer or something—because if I keep chasing my dreams of being a singer, I will get my heart broken by living
la gran fantasía
—the grand fantasy. And most of all, she does not want me to see Princess Pamela.

I sit on the edge of the bed, waiting for Bubbles to call back, and I look into the sparkly eyes of my kissing-and-tongue-wagging Snuggly-Wiggly stuffed pooch. Abuela Florita gave him to me as a joke for Christmas, because I always wanted a real dog like Toto, who is Bubbles’s “big brother.” (Mom won’t let me have a dog because she says she is allergic to them.)

Snuggy-Wiggly Pooch is sitting on my night-stand with his tongue hanging out, next to the
Book of Spells
that Princess Pamela gave me (my mom doesn’t know about that either).

I sit on my frilly canopy bed and stare at all my dolls. I have twenty-seven collectible dolls. They are
muy preciosa
—very precious—and come from all over the world.

“Charo is from Venezuela and she never cries. Zingera is from Italy and she never lies. Coco is from France and she smells so sweet,
knit, huit, huit
,” I repeat to myself, like I used to do when I was little.
Huit
, which sounds like wheat, means eight in French. It’s a silly rhyme, but I like it. And right now, I just want to get my mind off my misery.

When I was little, I used to lock my bedroom door, use my hairbrush as a microphone, and sing into the mirror, thinking about all the people who would love me if they could only hear me sing. That’s all I ever dreamed about—me and Bubbles singing together, and Abuela Florita sitting in the first row clapping and crying joyfully into her handkerchief.

I have always felt closer to Abuela than to my mother, because she understands me. She would never try to get in the way of my dreams the way my mom does. I know Mom’s just trying to protect me from the heartbreak of failure, but why can’t she believe in me the way Abuela Florita does?

I can hear Abuela’s voice now, telling me what a great singer I am. She says,
“Querida Cristalle, tú eves las más bonita cantora en todo el mundo.”
I know it’s not true, because Chutney Dallas is the best singer in the whole world, but it makes me want to sing just for her. Why, oh why, can’t my mom see me the way Abuela does?

I let out a big yawn. Suddenly, even though Bubbles hasn’t called back, even though it’s not even dinnertime, I cannot keep my eyes open anymore.

Chanel is so sweet,
huit, huit, huit
…. I think, as I fall asleep, just like a real-life mummy….

The sound of the doorbell wakes me up out of my deep sleep. I’m still too scared to come out of my room. I can hear my mom talking with Aqua in the hallway. Aquanette Walker is one of the “Huggy Bear” twins (that’s my and Bubbles’s secret nickname for them) from Houston, Texas. We met them at the Kats and Kittys Klub barbecue last summer. They were singing, swatting mosquitoes, and eating hot dogs all at the same time. We
had
to have them in our group!

My little brother, Pucci, is running down the hall to the door. “Hi, Bubbles! I’m a Cuckoo Cougar! I’m a Cuckoo Cougar! You wanna see if you can outrun me?”

So Bubbles is here, too. I crack the door open and sneak out, to see if I can get her attention without my mom seeing me, and before Pokémon-
loco
Pucci drags Bubbles into his room to floss his Japanese “Pocket Monsters.”

“I know you can run faster than me, Pucci. You are ‘tha man,’” Bubbles says, hugging Pucci back.

“Are you singing, Bubbles?” Pucci whines, holding Bubbles by her waist. She is like his second big sister.

“We’re all singing, Pucci—we’re the Cheetah Girls—me and Dorinda and Aquanette and Anginette—and Chuchie, too,” Bubbles says, pointing to our crew, who have all assembled in the hallway

Pucci looks up at Bubbles with the longest face, and asks, “Why is it only for girls? Why can’t there be Cheetah Boys, too?” Leave it to Pucci to whine on a dime.

“I wanna be a Cheetah Boy!” Pucci says, yelling even louder, then hitting Bubbles in the stomach. Pucci is getting out of control. When I see my dad, I’m gonna tell him.

“That’s enough, Pucci!” Mom yells. I can tell she is still mad, by the tone of her voice. My crew can tell, too, and Bubbles looks at me like, “What’s going on,
girlita
?”

“Hey,
Mamacitas
,” I yell at them in the hallway. I pop my eyes open real big when my mother turns her head, so my crew knows there is something going on.
Ayúdame!
Help me, my eyes are screaming.

“Go on, sit down at the table and I’ll bring your dinner in.” Mom sighs with her back turned. “I’m not eating now because I’m expecting a call from Paree.”

She means Paris, of course. These days, Mom uses her new French accent “at the drop of a
croissant,”
as Bubbles says. I can tell Mom is still mad, but I also know she’s not going to yell at me in front of everybody. So for now, at least, I’m safe.

As we file into the dining room area, I squeeze next to Bubbles. “What’s going on?” she whispers in my ear.

“You got here just in time. I think my picture was about to end up on a milk carton!” I say, bumping into her.

We hightail it to the long dining room table, so we can eat dinner and practice the “soup-to-nuts situation.” That’s what we, the Cheetah Girls, call table manners.

My godfather—Galleria’s dad, Mr. Garibaldi— is from Bologna, Italy, and he can cook like a chef. He says Europeans have better table manners than we do, so Bubbles knows everything. I have good table manners, too, because Abuela taught me. Dorinda, on the other hand, has table manners like a mischievous chimpanzee. That’s why we are doing this dinner. She eats too fast and never looks up from her plate. One day, Aquanette, with her
boca grande
—her big mouth—blurted out to Dorinda, “Girl, the way you eat, you’d think you wuz digging for gold!”

Dorinda wasn’t even embarrassed! She just giggled and said, “You gotta get it when you can.” Do’ Re Mi, as we call her, looks the youngest of all of us, and we all kind of treat her like our little sister. But in a lot of ways, she’s lived through more than any of us.

Do’ Re Mi’s had kind of a hard life. She lives in a foster home uptown, with a lady named Mrs. Bosco and ten
other
foster kids. Dorinda says that sometimes they even steal food from each other’s plates if Mrs. Bosco isn’t looking.

So now that she is one of the Cheetah Girls, we’re teaching Do’ Re Mi how to “sip tea with a queen and eat pralines with a prince,” as Bubbles says.

“
Mamacita
, the braids are
kicking
,” Bubbles whispers to me, then touches my new headband and snaps it back into place.

“Ouch,” I whimper, then giggle, adjusting my headband again.

“They got any leopard ones? How much was it?” Bubbles asks as we sit down at the table, on our best behavior.

“Eight duckets,” I reply. “They came in green, and pink, and I think, black.” Bubbles
loves
animal prints. She’d be happy if she could buy a headband that growled.

“You’re gonna be broke and that ain’t no joke,” Do’ Re Mi says, cutting her eyes at me. “How much money do you have left from what we earned at the Kats and Kittys show?”

“Not enough to buy an outfit for the
lonchando
,” I say, cutting my eyes back. Compared to her, I’ve always had it easy—Mom and Dad always got me lots of things. Even now that they’re not together, I can usually get what I want, up to a point. But see, I guess Princess Pamela was right about me being “royalty,” because nothing ever seems to be enough for me. I never met a store I didn’t like,
esiá Men?
I never had a ducket that I didn’t spend first chance I got. And now, my first “duckets in a bucket” for doing what I always dreamed of doing—singing with Bubbles onstage—are drizzling away
fast
.

“I didn’t buy
anything,”
Do’ Re Mi grunts back at me. “I had to give all my money to Mrs. Bosco to help pay for her doctor bills.”

“But we gotta look nice for the big meeting, don’t we?” I moan. “We can’t have you showin’ up in old clothes from Goodwill!”

“Shoot, don’t worry about it,” Aqua huffs. “We ain’t gotta impress nobody yet. Let’s see what Mr. Jackal Johnson can do for
us
first.”

“What do managers do, anyway?” Do’ Re Mi asks.

“Nowadays, they just get you record deals and book you on tours,” Bubbles explains to us. “You know, back in the day of groups like the Supremes and The Jackson Five, managers taught you everything, just like in charm school. How to talk, dress, sing, do interviews. That’s what Mom says.”

“Word. Well, maybe Mr. Jackal Johnson is just a jackal who’ll make us cackle!” sighs Do’ Re Mi, making a joke from one of the lines of Bubbles’s song “Wanna-be Stars in the Jiggy Jungle.”

After we stop giggling, I add, “Yes, but they are still talking about our show at the Klub.”

“That’s right. We are all that, and Mr. Jackal Johnson knows it.” Aqua pulls out a nail file from her backpack to saw down her white frosted tips, which are covered with dollar-sign rhinestone decals. It’s her trademark. She’s “on the money”—get it?

“Aqua, you are not filing your nails at the table. That is so ticky-tacky!” screams Bubbles, then slaps her hand. “We’re supposed to be learning table manners here—this is a big meeting and greeting, Miss ‘press on.’”

“At least she ain’t whipping out a Big Mac from her backpack,” Do’ Re Mi quips, making a joke about the twins because they always carry food or hot sauce with them.

“No Big Macs in my backpack, just got room for my dreams,” Galleria says out loud, grooving to her own rhythm. Then she whips out her Kitty Kat notebook and starts writing furiously. “That’s a song!”

“Shhh, my mom is m-a-a-d!” I whisper to her, then turn to Do’ Re Mi. “To answer your question, I only have about thirty-seven duckets left!”

“That’s all!?” the four of them say, ganging up on me.

“I knew you went and bought those Flipper shoes! You didn’t fool me, Miss Fib-eroni!” says Bubbles, who is always supposed to be on my side but hasn’t been lately.

“I don’t care if you don’t like them, I think they’re
la dopa
!” I protest, talking about the sandals I bought the other day behind Bubbles’s back. See, we were hanging out at the Manhattan Mall on 34th Street, and I saw them at the Click Your Heels shoe store. They are made out of vinyl, and have a see-through heel with plastic goldfish inside.

“I don’t know why Auntie Juanita wants you to be a buyer, ’cuz you are a shopaholic waiting to happen,” Bubbles quips. She calls my mom “Auntie” even though we aren’t related. But we are just like sisters. Bubbles has a big mouth, but I’m used to that because she always used to back me up when my mouth wrote a check I couldn’t cash. “Now what are you gonna do for a dress for our big
lonchando
with Mr. Johnson?”

“I don’t know,” I say, feeling like I want to burst out crying. “I’ve got these great diamond earrings Princess Pamela gave me, and those great shoes … but no dress. Bubbles, you still got some duckets left?”

Bubbles whips out her cheetah wallet to show us that she still has the money we earned from performing at the Kats and Kittys show stuffed inside. “I got all the duckets in this bucket, baby,” she says, flossin’. “I’m not buying
nada
—and definitely no Prada!”

“Word, Galleria. Your wallet looks like it’s having triplets,” Do’ Re Mi quips. She
would
be impressed.

“Maybe you could lend me some till our next gig?” I start to say, but Galleria cuts me off.

“No way, Miss Cuchifrito!” she says, putting the wallet back in her bag. “Duckets just fly through your fingers,
girlita
. I’d never see mine again. Maybe you ought to just borrow a dress from somebody—or make one, even!”

Just then, my mom comes into the dining room, so we all shut up about money. My mom puts the piping hot
panecitas
and butter on the table. These little rolls are my favorite. Do’ Re Mi grabs one and starts spreading butter on the whole
panecita
, then does a chomp-aroni like Toto, and eats the whole thing!

“At least you’re using a knife,” I say, being
sarcástico
, then giggle. Everyone looks at me, because Do’ and I are very close now. We talk on the phone a lot, and I even help her with her Spanish homework. So I guess I’m the one who’s supposed to get this choo-choo train in motion.

“Do’ Re Mi, watch this,” I say, trying to be nice to her. “Break off a piece of the roll, then butter it and put the knife back across the plate like this.”

“Word. I got it.” Do’ Re Mi giggles, then makes fun and starts spreading butter on the bread—oh so delicately, like a real phony baloney.

“You’re on a roll,
churlita
!” I crack, then cover my mouth because I’m talking with food in it— and my mom has walked back in the dining room with the platter of
arroz con pollo.
She gives me a look that says, “I’m not finished with you yet.” Aqua and Angie are giggling up a storm, like they think it’s funny Do’ Re Mi has to learn how to eat butter on a roll.

“Don’t you two worry, we’re gonna steam
roll
over
your
choo-choo train, too,” Bubbles warns them.

See, me, Bubbles, and Do’ Re Mi have
tan coolio
style. We all go to Fashion Industries High School. The twins, who go to Performing Arts, dress, well, kinda corny, and act even cornier.