The History of Hilary Hambrushina Page 6

  Kallie’s dad told us he was going to set up his work and that the trolley man had given us permission to wander around the first floor, provided we didn’t touch anything. Kallie and I exchanged secret smiles and hurried off.

  One of the first rooms we looked at had paintings by Picasso. This was my first time seeing Picasso’s paintings. I kind of liked them because they reminded me of my collage, but I found them very strange. The people in the paintings had one eye three inches higher than the other and mouths twisted like the stripes on a candy cane.

  In another room, glass cases held hundreds of objects from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: miniature portraits, tiny pistols, combs, ornately carved cups made from coconut.

  “Look, Hil,” said Kallie, “a gold sundial.”

  “All this stuff must be so valuable,” I murmured, gazing at the sundial. “I wonder how much you’d get if you sold it.”

  “Who knows,” said Kallie, moving on to the next case.

  And that’s when it struck me. Kallie and I could make money selling the boxes we’d made.

  We’d already made six this week. If we sold them for twenty dollars apiece, that would be sixty dollars each right there. I did a quick calculation. If I made two boxes a day every day until the end of the summer, that would be over a hundred boxes. I could make two thousand dollars selling boxes! O.K., maybe that was a bit optimistic. I might not be able to sell all of them. But even if I only sold ninety, that would still be almost two thousand dollars! After all, I figured, I might as well get something out of making them.

  As we left the gallery and breathed in the fresh garbage smell of downtown Toronto in the summer, I told Kallie about my great idea.

  But she wasn’t eager. “I don’t know, Hil. I’m not sure I want to sell them.”

  “Why not? I mean, will you really use all of them? How many boxes do you need?”

  “I only made three.”

  “Yeah but you’re going to make more, right? So if you sell some of them, you can make room in your house for other kinds of art.”

  She twisted her mouth. “All right. If you really want to, we can try selling some of them.”

  The next day, I decided that Kallie and I would set up a stand at Harbourfront. People sold all kinds of things down there, from toe rings to Buddha figurines, so there had to be room for us and our boxes.

  When I came into the kitchen, I noticed my mom admiring one of my boxes.

  “Do you like it?” I asked.

  She ran her fingers along the small red Hambrushinas I’d painted on the box’s side. “It’s lovely.”

  “Do you want to have it?”

  She smiled. “Yes. Thank you, Hilary.”

  “Great. That’ll be twenty dollars, please.”

  She laughed an insulted little laugh.

  “Kallie and I are going to sell the boxes,” I said, “so I can make money for junior high. Because it’s not like I get a huge allowance.” We exchanged a look.

  “I see. And even mothers have to pay?”

  “I’m sorry, Mom, but if I’m going to be a businesswoman, I can’t make any exceptions. I won’t get rich by giving things away,” I lectured, as if I was an expert.

  “And where exactly do you plan to sell these boxes?”

  “At Harbourfront. We’re going to have a stand.”

  Mom just looked at me and said quietly, “You’d need a permit from the City.”

  I hadn’t thought about that. “Would I have to pay for it?”

  “Probably. Anyway, they wouldn’t give you one. You’re too young. You’d have to be at least eighteen.”

  That age thing again! But I wasn’t sure whether Mom was telling the truth or whether she just wanted to keep me under her financial control, so I huffed, “We’ll just see about that!”

  I decided to phone the City myself and find out. But the person there just told me the same thing my mom had said: You had to be at least eighteen to get a permit.

  It didn’t take me long to think of a new plan. We could still have a stand. It just couldn’t be at Harbourfront. We could put it at the end of the driveway. Our neighbourhood had lots of cyclists and walkers, so we were bound to get customers.

  Kallie and I made a stand out of cardboard boxes. She was quiet, so I guessed she wasn’t enthusiastic. Fine, I thought. Let her sulk if she wants. But she’ll have to eat terry cloth when our stand makes money and she becomes rich, thanks to me.

  We sat baking in the sun and continued painting boxes while we waited for customers. People zipped by on bikes or strolled past. But no one stopped until the afternoon, when an old lady who was walking so slowly the hare would’ve beaten her minced towards us. I recognized the woman as Mrs. Carruthers, who’d lived on my street forever. Mrs. Carruthers was like a piece of furniture; she was there, but you never thought about her.

  Kallie introduced herself and they began talking. Then Kallie showed her the boxes, describing each one in detail, and Mrs. Carruthers oohed and aahed. I grew impatient with her dithering and wished she would decide. Finally she chose one of Kallie’s boxes.

  As she paid, she kept talking, asking me what grade I was in, telling me how much I’d grown, the usual stuff. I tried to be polite, but I didn’t want to talk to her. Finally she wished us luck and tottered away on her cane.

  Flushed with the success of having sold one box, we set up the stand the next day. Several long hours later, a guy on a bike pulled up.

  He must’ve been in his mid-twenties, dressed in spandex biking gear and a multi-coloured shirt. And from the size of his muscles, he obviously worked out. I stood up, pushing my hair behind my ears. “Would you like to buy a box?”

  “Yeah, I think I’ll get one for my roommate. He likes this kind of stuff.” He picked up a box with a pattern of intricate turquoise flowers. One of Kallie’s. She smiled.

  “There’s also these.” I pointed to mine.

  He glanced at them. “No, I like this one better. How much is it?”

  “Twenty dollars,” I said.

  His laugh sounded like a mouse on helium. “You got to be kidding! For this?”

  I scoffed, “You are holding a Hilary Boles Original, and they’re not cheap.” Kallie opened her mouth, but I shot her a look.

  “Yeah, right, kid.” My face went crimson. He put the box on the counter and hopped back on his bike. We watched him until he’d rounded a curve.

  “You should’ve bargained with him,” Kallie said quietly.

  “And lower our standards? No way! If he’s not willing to pay up, who needs him, anyway?” But as I looked down the empty street, I wasn’t convinced.

  When we hadn’t had any more customers by the end of the day, Kallie said she didn’t want to set up the stand again.

  “Face it, Hil, we’re not going to make any money this way.”

  I had to admit she was right. “Well, don’t worry,” I said, even though I could see she wasn’t. “I’ll come up with something.”

  That night I had my last brainstorm. If this didn’t work, that was it. I’d short-circuited.

  I decided to contact All Teen TV and see if the people there could help me. After all, the station did give awards to young entrepreneurs. I visited the All Teen website to read about past winners. A guy in Alberta who started his own restaurant. Two girls in P.E.I. who operated a successful cat-sitting service. I can do this, I thought. I pictured a modest beginning in a stand at Harbourfront (the All Teen people would convince the City to put aside rules that discriminated against the young). Then customers discovering our product, liking it so much they came back, telling their friends and relatives to come, and finally a booming business, Kallie and I working frantically to keep up…

  And of course we’d be nominated for an All Teen Entrepreneur Award. The website said the nominees would be flown to the city where the awards were held. I pictured myself arriving at a huge theatre in New York or L.A. (The fact that All Teen was Canadian and that the awards would probabl
y be held in Toronto escaped me.) I’d be wearing a strapless magenta silk gown made by a top designer or by Kallie’s mom if I couldn’t afford the designer. That’s Hilary Boles, enunciated a well-known TV personality as I glided past, waving to my adoring fans. Ms. Boles is the youngest nominee here. And when I won, I’d step gracefully onto the stage to accept my cash reward and gold statuette… Visions of my dazzling success made me cocky. Restaurants, cat-sitting services, ha! I thought. These people were amateurs! Wait till they saw my boxes!

  If only I could get started. But since All Teen TV gave out awards for young entrepreneurs, I figured they would help me become one. Maybe they could talk to their friends at other TV stations and get me onto The Shopping Channel, too. So I e-mailed All Teen TV.

  The next morning, I went over to Kallie’s and told her about my plan.

  “That’s great, Hil,” she said, “but after you hear what I have to say, you might change your mind.”

  “You’re not going to tell me you don’t want to do this? Come on, Kallie, I can’t do it without you!”

  “No, it’s something different. Hilary, would you be interested in posing for my dad?”

  For the first time I could remember, I was speechless. My lips moved but no sound came out, like a goldfish’s.

  “My dad’s doing this collage,” Kallie explained, “and he’s planning to put some faces on it. He’d like to sketch your face. It would only take a few minutes.”

  “So … my face would be on his collage?”

  “Kind of. It would be rearranged, like the faces in Picasso’s paintings. It wouldn’t be an exact representation of your face, more like the inner essence of you as revealed in your face.”

  “The inner essence?”

  “Yeah. What’s inside you. Your personality, your spirit, your soul.”

  I shifted my weight to the other foot. “Why does he want me?”

  “He said you had an interesting face.”

  I swallowed.

  “He thought that because you’re interested in art, you might like to be part of his latest project. My mom and I pose for him all the time. It’s no big deal.”

  “Yeah, I know it’s not a big deal,” I said, not very convincingly.

  “He’d pay you,” added Kallie.

  That made it worse. I felt like someone was trying to rent me. “Pay me?”

  “Yeah. See, that’s what I was thinking, you could pose instead of trying to sell the boxes.”

  “But then you wouldn’t make money.”

  “I don’t care.”

  I couldn’t think of another objection. Everything Kallie had said made sense, but I was still uncomfortable. So I told her I’d have to think about it.

  “Sure. And if you’re not comfortable, don’t feel like you have to accept.”

  We spent the afternoon dressing up in old costumes. Kallie had a whole trunk full in the basement. We acted out a play where I was a princess desired by the richest men of some faraway land and Kallie was my servant. Normally I would’ve loved being the princess, but today I wasn’t in the mood. I was glad when it was time to leave.

  As I was opening Kallie’s front door, a voice called, “Hilary!”

  At first I couldn’t see who it was because the basement door cast a shadow. When the figure stepped out of the shadow, I recognized Kallie’s dad. I looked down and began to pick at my nails.

  “Good evening,” he said in his deep voice. “Did Kallie tell you about my proposal?”

  I nodded. He looked at me as if he was trying to figure me out. Then his expression softened so that he resembled a kind old man. He looked at his daughter.

  “If you like, Kallie will sit with you while you pose.” She nodded. “Your parents are also welcome to come and watch.” I was silent. “Well, you think about it. There’s no pressure. I would be honoured to sketch your face, but if you don’t feel comfortable, we’ll forget we mentioned it.”

  I managed to croak out a thank you.

  That night, I thought things over. Up until now, I’d liked being around Kallie’s dad. He did silly things like hum “Flight of the Bumblebee.” He was goofy and normal, like my dad.

  But then I imagined him behind a sketchbook, holding a pencil, me standing in his studio, my arms wrapped around myself, his gaze stripping away every object in the room but me as he slashed firm lines across the paper… I took a deep breath and reminded myself that Kallie’s dad just wanted to sketch my face, not my entire body. But how did I know his sketch wouldn’t make me look even worse? What if my inner essence translated into a cone head with a snout for a nose?

  Then, with a sinking feeling, I remembered All Teen TV and the boxes. What if I did get nominated for an All Teen award? Suddenly I saw an image of me in the magenta gown. What had I been thinking, wanting to draw attention to my body? What would people at school have said if they’d seen me like that? But it wasn’t only the dress that bothered me. It was the thought of me everywhere, my name stamped onto wooden boxes, my picture in the newspaper, my voice on the radio… All Hilary Boles, all the time. I couldn’t stand the thought of being exposed like that. I had to stop this box thing before it went too far.

  “Hilary,” said a voice. I jumped. Mom was standing in the doorway. “Don’t look so scared, I’m not here to ask you to do chores. I just wanted to tell you there’s an e-mail for you from All Teen TV.”

  The e-mail was from an intern.

  “Dear Hilary, We applaud your initiative in writing to us to request an interview for help with your business. Unfortunately All Teen TV does not have time to meet with each hopeful entrepreneur. Good luck with your venture. We hope to see you at the All Teen TV Entrepreneur Awards!”

  Fat chance, I thought. Normally I would’ve been furious at this brush-off, but right then I was so relieved I laughed like a hyena. I’d been saved from total humiliation. Now all I had to do was figure out how to clear things up with Kallie.

  The next morning, we were pretending to be two elves heading a resistance movement against an evil emperor (a stuffed bear with a lopsided bow tie). As we were sitting on Kallie’s patio, drinking a dexterity potion (fruit punch) and eating manna (a pizza we’d ordered with Mrs. Carruthers’s twenty dollars), I began, “Kallie? I’ve been thinking about the whole posing thing and well, I’m sorry but … I don’t really want to do it.”

  “That’s O.K. I thought you wouldn’t want to, after what you said yesterday.”

  “You mean you’re not upset?” Then I remembered Kallie’s dad and how his face had softened when he looked at me. “And your dad won’t be either?”

  “Of course not.”

  I exhaled. But I wasn’t free yet. I still hadn’t figured out how to tell Kallie about my decision to abandon the box scheme. Kallie was smart. She might deduce that there was a connection between me not wanting to pose and not wanting to sell the boxes.

  But before I had to say anything, Kallie announced, “Hil, I have something to tell you, too. Don’t be mad, but I don’t want to sell the boxes. I don’t even want to make them anymore.”

  “You don’t? Why not?”

  “Well, the neatest thing about art for me is that I can make whatever I want, whenever I want. If I have to keep making the same thing, it gets boring.”

  “Yeah. That makes sense.” I was kind of sick of painting Hambrushinas.

  “But don’t let me stop you. You can still go into business with those people from the TV station if you want.”

  “Oh, that’s O.K.,” I said quickly. “I was getting bored of it, too. Besides, it was supposed to be a partnership. I wouldn’t feel right doing it without you.”

  She smiled brightly. “Thanks, Hil. That’s really nice.”

  I bowed my head so she wouldn’t see the patch of red creeping over my face. But I wasn’t blushing for the reason you think. I was remembering how I’d pictured myself on stage, accepting the All Teen TV award alone, despite all I’d said about partnership.

  -7-

&
nbsp; Sandball

  When I think about it, I’m still not sure how it happened, but sometime during those hot days in late July, Kallie crossed that invisible line between acquaintance and friend. Maybe it was the uproar at the beach that first made me think of her as a friend.

  Sorry. I’m getting ahead of myself. But whether it happened before or after the beach, I stopped seeing Kallie as someone I was using to make my summer go by more quickly. I went to her house because I wanted to see her, not because I had nothing better to do. Kallie’s world was fascinating to me, and I was drawn to it the way I would be to a shimmering fabric from another land.

  Then one day, I got an e-mail from Lynn. By this time, I’d given up waiting for one, even though I’d e-mailed her many times. A dull anger was brooding somewhere small and deep inside me. Mostly this anger stayed buried because I was too busy with Kallie’s latest plans to think about it. But sometimes, the anger would surface, and I’d wonder how my “best friend” was doing. I figured she must be extremely busy, so busy she’d forgotten I existed.

  The e-mail arrived over a month after Lynn had left. My anger lessened as I opened it. Eagerly I read the message:

  “Hey Hil! L.A. is like so cool! The stores are amazing! You’d love it here! I love it here! I want to live here! I haven’t seen Damian Sámos yet, but I’ll keep looking! Friends, Lynn”

  I couldn’t believe it. I’d waited a month for this? A few pathetic lines that said almost nothing. No explanation of what she’d been doing or why she hadn’t written. No mention of how she missed me. No questions about how I was doing. It’s the most selfish thing I’ve ever heard of, I huffed to myself. I didn’t even bother to respond.

  That e-mail only made me more eager to hang around with Kallie. She would never write something like that, I thought. Only a few weeks earlier, I’d been criticizing Kallie for being too different from Lynn, but now I wished Lynn would be more like Kallie. Kallie has more important things to do than just shop, I thought, forgetting that this was my main hobby.

  My trip to the beach with Kallie started with an idea of hers. We’d been playing this elaborate show set in the year 2305 on several planets in a parallel universe. No, not the one where we were elves in a resistance movement. In this one, we each acted at least twenty different roles, from good sorceresses to evil empresses to cute furry things to wise old trees. I liked acting so many roles because I got to say and do things I couldn’t in real life, like tell off a snorthog and pretend it was my mom, or rescue a handsome wounded knight from a sticky green pool of quicksand poison that was about to suck him into a vortex of death. I also loved wearing so many costumes because I thought some of them made me look O.K., even kind of pretty. Of course these were the ones that covered up most of my body.