A Jumping Bean

I wanted to be a champion.
At gymnastics competitions, floor was my favorite event--a chance to dance and tumble to music. This time my parents and my brother, Chris, were in the stands, and my grandparents were watching too. They had planned their visit from West Virginia to Baton Rouge around my meet. I wanted to make them proud, especially Grandma. When I was seven and she first saw me somersaulting on Chris's trampoline, she'd said, "Sign Kate up for gymnastics. She reminds me of Mary Lou Retton--a regular jumping bean." Mary Lou had competed a long time ago, but since she grew up in West Virginia, she's a hometown hero.
I saluted the judges, blocking out the girls who were competing at the same time on vault, bars, and beam.
When the music started, a burst of adrenaline shot through me. I dropped to my knees, then sprang up and danced across the floor. I took off running and vaulted into a roundoff, back handspring, back layout.
Hamming it up, I snapped my fingers to the theme fromThe Addams Family. My confidence soared as people in the crowd snapped their fingers too.
I strutted and posed, completed an aerial and another tumbling pass. Spinning around, I danced across the floor for my grand finale. I picked up speed, jumped into a front tuck, and stepped out into a front handspring. A big smile spread across my face as I chasséd into my final pose.
The music stopped and I raised my arms to salute the judges. My teammates cheered, but Grandpa was louder. "Way to go, Bean! Mary Lou's got nothing on you!"
The gymnast who performed after me stepped out of bounds--an automatic deduction. Three more girls competed after her. I imagined my picture hanging beside the one of Mary Lou in Frank's Place, a restaurant near my grandparents' house.
"They're posting final results," Coach whispered.
My teeth and fists clenched.
I . . . I couldn't believe it!
Coach B. pounced on me like a cat. "You did it! Congratulations, Kate. You took the gold!"
"I . . . I really did?" I'd been in this position before and never won.
"Don't look so surprised! I always knew you'd be a champion."
I gazed into the stands. Grandma and Grandpa hugged. Mom, Dad, and Chris cheered. They were proud of me. I pumped my fist in the air.
It would have been a perfect moment, except with every pump of my fist, my shoulder throbbed.










Crawfish Boil

I wanted the last day of my grandparents' visit to be perfect. Grandma and I sat at the kitchen table with our Really Relaxing Colouring Books.I had Gorgeous Geometrics, and she had Botanicals in Bloom.
"I miss you already," Grandma said, "but it's not long until Christmas."
Memories of West Virginia gave me a wistful feeling: snowy mountain peaks, sledding, mugs of hot chocolate. "Christmas is still three months away. I wish we lived closer."
"West Virginia is home, but there are lots of good things about living in Baton Rouge too," Grandma said.
I colored a rectangle and thought of hot beignets topped with powdered sugar, LSU football games, Mardi Gras parades, and courtyards filled with flowers. But the best thing about Baton Rouge was that my two best friends lived close by.
"You're frowning," Grandma said. "What are you thinking about?"
I didn't tell her my left shoulder felt tight. Aches and pains were just part of being a gymnast. "Claire and Mindy."
"Such nice girls," Grandma said. "And I loved meeting their families."
Claire's and Mindy's families couldn't have been more different. Claire's dad was a lawyer. Her mom did a lot of volunteer work and ran our Girl Scout troop. Mindy's dad left when she was a baby, which meant her mom had to work two jobs and didn't have much time for volunteering.
Grandma held up the picture she'd colored of red roses and yellow daylilies. "While you finish, I'm going to see about helping your mom with dinner."
"Oh, I think she's napping. Dad's cooking tonight."
"Mmmm," Grandma said. "Something sure smells good."
"Babka. Dad's making my favorite dessert!"
***
To give Grandma and Grandpa a real Louisiana sendoff, we had a crawfish boil. Dad filled a large pot with five gallons of water and added his secret spice blend. He set the kitchen timer for forty minutes, waiting on the spices to work their magic. "Bean," he said, "how about keeping an eye on the water? After golfing in the hot sun, I could use a shower."
"Sure," I said. I played around on my phone, trying to ignore my shoulder, while I waited for the water to boil. Dad returned just in time to add the potatoes, corn, garlic, and andouille sausage. He covered the pot. "Won't be long now," he said. "Almost time for the crawfish."
A crawfish boil was one of my favorite things about living in Baton Rouge. We always ate them outside on a table covered with newspapers.
At the end of dinner, Grandpa held his water glass in the air. "It's been a perfect visit. A toast to Kate and her gold medal!"
"And a toast to Chris and his solo in show choir," Grandma added. "I'm so proud of both of you!"
Chris blushed. He was an introvert who loved to playvideo games, but he had this amazing voice. It was almost like he became a different person when he sang.
I looked around the table, lingering on each member of my family. Mom was an only child. My grandparents loved her so much she couldn't help but pass it on to Chris and me. I wasn't just Bean, butLucky Bean when it came to families, and Grandpa said they'd had a perfect visit.
Mission accomplished.






Hello, Earthlings


I wanted to have a friend over, but first I had to help Mom clean the guest room. I took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of Grandpa's Mennen aftershave lotion. The minty smell always lingered and made me miss him even more.
"Cheer up," Mom said, stretching a fitted sheet across the bed. "Before you know it, Grandma will be sending us fudge and Chex Mix for Christmas."
My eyes filled with tears. It wasn't just my grandparents. My shoulder ached a lot.
"Hey, what's wrong?" Mom said. She dropped the pillow on the bed and walked over to give me a hug.
"Grandma and Grandpa . . . and . . . and Chloe," I sobbed. My dog, Chloe, had died last spring. I didn'twant to tell Mom about my shoulder, and so I pretended I was crying about Chloe.
"Ah, Bean. Maybe it's time for another dog."
"No! Another dog could never replace Chloe."
"Of course not, but your heart has room for another pet. Just think about it."
Mom was crazy about dogs. Animals of all kinds, really. It's why she worked in a vet's office. "Could . . . could I invite Mindy or Claire for a sleepover?"
She rubbed my back in slow circles. "Your muscles are tight. You must have been practicing too hard. Why don't you invite them both?"
"Because last time wasn't much fun. All Claire wanted to do was show off her tumbling skills, and Mindy's not into gymnastics."
"Hmmm. If I were only going to invite one of them, I'd pick the one I have the most fun with."
This was my mom's superpower: She hardly ever told me what to do, but she usually nudged me in the right direction.
Dad grilled hamburgers for dinner and then set up his telescope for Mindy and me. We had first become friends at space camp in Huntsville, Alabama. If I had a sister, I'd want her to be just like Mindy. We sort of looked alike--same long brown hair and hazel eyes, but Mindy had freckles across the bridge of her nose and wore glasses.
Mindy was the kind of friend who cheered the loudest when I won a gymnastics medal. She had read Simone Biles's autobiography because I did, even though she wasn't interested in gymnastics. Gazing at the stars was Mindy's favorite thing to do at my house because she wanted to be an astronaut.
Mindy and I spread a blanket on the ground. I tried lying on my back, but the pressure made my shoulder blade throb.
"Look at those stars and planets," Mindy said reverently. She pointed with her index finger. "There's Venus."
Mindy had a cute face, but when she studied the night sky, instead of cute, her excitement made her beautiful. It didn't seem fair thatwe had a telescope and somebody who loved space as much as Mindy didn't. "Go ahead. You can use it first."
Once I had cluelessly told Mindy she should buy a telescope of her own. She had gotten very still and quiet. "Kate, I went to space camp on a scholarship. We don't have the extra money for a telescope."
After that I started paying more attention. Mindy's mom was a secretary, and then worked in a fabric store on the weekends. Their house was smaller than ours, the paint was peeling, and their furniture was really old. Mindy and I went to different schools, and just like her neighborhood wasn't as nice as ours, neither was her school. Our parent-teacher organization paid for extra stuff, like new gym equipment.
Mindy adjusted the telescope's lens while I played the music from Hamilton on my phone. Broadway musicals were a favorite of mine.
I slapped at a mosquito on my ankle. "Hurry up. The mosquitoes are eating me alive."
"Five more minutes," Mindy begged.
I took a turn looking at Venus through the telescope, but my mind was on dessert. "Want to make a sheet cake?"
"Yes," Mindy said, "after I have one more look through the telescope."

Chris came home from his friend Izaak's house and stuck his head in the kitchen. "Hello, earthlings."
He and Mindy had called each other earthlings ever since space camp. "What are you baking?" he asked. "Can I have some?"
Mindy explained how most people use frosting out of a can, but not us. We were scientists in the middle of an experiment--our task was to make rainbow chip icing by using melted white chocolate and food coloring.
Chris watched, and soon we had four small bowls of melted chocolate: one colored blue, one yellow, one pink, and one green.
"What's next?" he asked.
"We have to spread the colors on parchment paper and refrigerate them," I said. "After they harden, we'll dice them into chips."
Mindy had food coloring on her hands and turned on the faucet to wash it off. "And while the chips are cooling, we'll make vanilla frosting," she added.
Chris studied the recipe we'd printed from the Sally's Baking Addiction website. "You girls are lucky I'm here," he announced. "I'll read you the instructions while you work."
I rolled my eyes at him. "You just want to help eat the cake."
"That too," he admitted.
Sometimes I gave Chris a hard time, but he always had my back. Once when we were little, a mean kid had put soap in his water gun and squirted me in the face. I cried because the soap stung my eyes. Chris pounced on that kid like a professional wrestler. Yep, Chris was all right as far as brothers went, and though neither earthling would ever admit it, I was pretty sure he and Mindy had a crush on each other.

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Excerpted from Dancing in the Storm by Amie Darnell Specht, Shannon Hitchcock
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.