Girls in Pants - Ann Brashares [27]
Valia would shoot straight up in her chair and bellow, “Zat is not my show!” and Carmen, in pitiful defeat, would turn back to Valia’s show. And then the cycle would start again.
So Carmen was shamefully grateful to Valia’s misfiring kidneys as she and Valia shut themselves into Carmen’s car. She was deaf to Valia’s ten-minute harangue about how Carmen didn’t hold the steering wheel right.
They were absurdly early for the appointment, thanks to Carmen’s eagerness, so Carmen was the picture of flexibility when Valia insisted they stop at the ice cream shop around the corner from the hospital. Who was Carmen to turn down ice cream?
Valia wanted pistachio. No, she didn’t, she wanted butter pecan. No, that would not be good.
“Vhy do they have the cookies in the ice cream?” she demanded to know.
“Vhat do they mean by this…jimmies?”
“Who vould eat that purple thing?”
Carmen saw the look on the face of the girl behind the counter, and it was familiar. It was a look that she imagined she herself had worn for roughly thirty hours the week before.
Finally, after an excruciating number of questions and unsolicited criticisms, Valia settled on peppermint ice cream, of all things. It was a garish red, and slimy-looking.
Valia took one bite and shoved it toward Carmen. “I hate it. You eat it.”
“I don’t want it.”
“I hate it.” Valia kept pushing it at her.
Carmen was fuming. She hated Valia’s nasty peppermint ice cream too. And furthermore, she hated Valia. Valia was a big, fat baby. Carmen hated babies. She hated old people. She hated everyone in between. She hated everyone.
Except him.
He was a guy—maybe her age or a little older—who walked into the store just as Carmen was dodging the slimy red ice cream.
She didn’t hate him, though at her rate, perhaps she could learn to. He wasn’t Ryan Hennessy or anything, but some quality about him struck her nonetheless. His straight hair was yellowish brown and a little bit unkempt. His eyebrows were almost blond and his freckles made him look kind of jaunty, like he didn’t care about anything too much. His eyes, on the other hand, made him look like he did.
She looked at his face for a moment too long. When she turned her head back, she saw the scoop of ice cream bobbling on Valia’s cone, and it was too late to fix it. Sure enough, the scoop plunged to the ground and skidded a foot or so. Valia, incensed, shouted something at Carmen in Greek and then made a show of striding away. But the peppermint ice cream didn’t just look slimy. Valia’s heel hit the trail of ice cream, and Carmen watched in horror as the old lady went down hard. Carmen’s shout and Valia’s scream mingled and merged in the air.
Almost instantly Carmen had Valia in her arms. Valia was lighter and drier than she would have imagined. Her eyes were squeezed shut and her face was twisted in pain. Carmen could tell that her right leg had crumpled in the wrong direction. When Valia opened her eyes, Carmen saw the blurry tears in them, and she felt awful. Her own eyes filled with tears.
“Oh, Valia,” Carmen murmured, trying to get a strong hold of her under her arms. “I am so sorry.” She heard a little sob escape her own mouth.
At once Carmen saw another pair of arms in the mix. It was the guy she did not yet hate. He was helping her lift Valia from the sticky linoleum.
Now the few other patrons gathered around and the counter girl appeared, bouncing nervously from foot to foot.
Valia moaned. “My leg is hurt,” she said. “Don’t move it. Please.”
“Okay,” Carmen said soothingly.