“Thanks.”
“Don’t forget, listeners,” Victoria said after Diego had ended the call. “We have a bonus show this week. We’ll be recording live at the Fall Festival, Friday night after the football game. So even if you have to go solo to the carnival, come for us. You can ask your question live or leave an anonymous question in the box you’ll see in the cafeteria this week. We can’t wait!”
When the show ended, Victoria shook out her hands and took off the headphones. I’d never seen her do that before.
“You okay?” I asked. “You did good today.”
“We have to be in a dunk tank tomorrow.”
I sighed. “You readily agreed to that dunk tank. And said it would be fun. Twice.”
“You’re right. I’ll be great.” She stood up and moved toward the door.
“Victoria, you don’t have to be in the dunk tank tomorrow if you don’t want to be.”
“Of course I do. I’m changing the world, right?” She forced out a laugh.
Hmm. For all her bravado, Victoria wasn’t as fearless as I once thought. Did everyone put up a front at all times? Was confidence a front for fear? Did true friendship mean being able to see through that? Or being willing to drop the front?
“If anyone can, it’s you,” I said.
She flashed me her podcast smile and left.
I unplugged both of our headphones and returned them to the sound room. Then I sent a text to Alana. Unwittingly, she’d turned Diego down for the Fall Festival. We needed to analyze every conversation they’d had recently. And we needed a new plan.
“I cannot think of any way, coded or not, that Diego asked me to the Fall Festival,” Alana said at her house that afternoon.
Alana had the best house ever. It was quiet and big and always full of food. We sat at her kitchen island, stuffing our faces with cookies her dad had made. They had coconut and chocolate and some sort of delicious crunchy rice in them. I had already eaten three.
“Are you sure that’s what he said on the podcast?” she asked me.
“I’m positive,” I said through my mouthful. “Did he spell out the invite in the food the other day or something?”
She smiled. “That would’ve been funny and awesome, but I don’t think so. I guess I just assumed he wasn’t asking because he wasn’t into football.”
“I know. Okay. It’s time to pull out the big guns.”
“What guns are those?”
“You have to ask him yourself,” I said.
“Done,” she said.
I ignored the tight feeling of jealousy in my chest. I wasn’t allowed to be jealous. “That wasn’t hard to talk you into.”
“Did you think it would be?” She raised her eyebrows.
“No.” I looked at the tray of cookies on the island. “If I have another one, will I get the world’s worst stomachache or just the second worst?”
“Have another one.”
“Okay.” I plucked a cookie from the tray. “Now, how are you going to ask him?”
“I have an idea.”
It was bad enough to sit on the metal seat in the dunk tank, behind the glass, in my swimsuit, like I was on display. But it got even worse when Diego and Frank appeared at the front of the line with Alana. I had no doubt Alana had texted them about an opportunity they couldn’t pass up.
Diego picked up two baseballs. “I wonder if this will be as easy as driving a golf ball through the goalpost,” I heard him say.
“Ha ha!” I shouted.
He winked at me and my stomach flipped. My best friend’s crush or not, Diego was pretty flirty himself. He needed to stop that. He wasn’t allowed to flirt with everybody when he was asking advice about Alana on air. I saw him smile over at Alana and felt a burst of annoyance.
So far I had managed to avoid getting dunked. Victoria hadn’t been so lucky. The baseball team had shown up for her stint, and she was plunged six times. Now she sat at a nearby table, wrapped in a towel, talking to one of the team members. The water had turned her hair into tousled beach waves. And she was smiling. She’d conquered something today, and I was proud of her. I wondered if life was about facing fears. Sometimes we overcame them and sometimes they overcame us. On the days we won, we had every right to celebrate.
Victoria held up a white box and shook it. “Don’t forget to submit anonymous questions for our carnival live podcast!” she yelled to the people waiting in the line.
“Are you ready?” Diego called out, bringing my attention back to him.
“If ready involves sitting here, then yes, so ready!” I called back.
He twisted the baseball once in his hand then threw. I cringed. The ball whizzed by the glass, right above the target. Whew. The line behind him stretched twenty deep so I knew he really would get only the two chances. He tried again and the baseball bounced off the glass.
“Nice try!” I taunted. Diego frowned.
Alana stepped up. I was most worried about her. Alana was good at everything she tried. But both of her attempts missed their mark. I let out a relieved breath.
And then it was Frank’s turn. He tossed and caught the ball in one hand several times as he stood there.
“Hello, Kitty Kat,” he said with a sly smirk.
It occurred to me that I still hadn’t apologized to him. I sensed karma was about to bite me for that. Alana was saying something to him that I couldn’t hear. Then Alana shouted to me, “You’re going down!”
I almost believed that she knew something about Frank’s history with a baseball that I didn’t. But when he missed on his first try, I relaxed on my cold seat. I thought he’d toss the next ball a couple times in the air like he had the last, but the moment he had it in his right hand, he threw.
There was a second of delay between the ball hitting its target and it triggering the release mechanism on my seat. When I realized what had happened, I let out a scream and then down I went.
The water was cold. Colder than the lake. My chest tightened with the change in temperature and at first my feet couldn’t find the bottom to launch myself back up. Finally I found the floor and pushed off. And then my head whacked into the bottom of the seat so hard that I saw stars.
A collective intake of breath sounded from the line of people still waiting. Then I went back under the water. I hadn’t meant to. But I’d had plenty of hard falls in water before so I knew not to panic. I relaxed for a moment, letting my head clear. Then I stood.
I coughed several times before I realized someone was above me, leaning on the seat and reaching a hand out to help me.
“I’m sorry,” Frank said.
“For what?” I coughed out. “Playing the game, right?”
“I didn’t mean for you to get hurt.”
“I know.”
I moved toward the metal stairs to let myself out. That was when I heard someone pushing the release button for the seat. And then Frank, clothes and all, fell into the tank. I tried my hardest not to laugh. I knew it was Alana’s doing even before I heard her laughing.
Frank came up sputtering. “I had my phone in my pocket, Alana!” He’d obviously heard her laughter, too.
“Oops,” she said.
The waiting line thought this was the funniest thing they’d seen. There was an excited buzz of talking and laughter.
Frank splashed water out the open door and all over Alana. He seemed mad at first but when I sent a splash his way, his face melted into a smile. He returned his own splash. Then he climbed out of the tank fast and chased Alana down. When he finally caught her, he smashed her into a big, wet hug, while Alana shrieked.