Cuba 15 by Nancy Osa Page A

“Mrs. Kelly” to “Ms. Pennpierson” after the divorce, but easier than trying to talk to Janell about any of it. That happened in seventh grade, and Janell is just now beginning to mention her dad and stuff. Other than that, she always seems more together, more sophisticated and focused, than always-at-loose-ends Violet Paz. I guess that’s why we get along so well.
    The other tough switch came after I met Leda, whose appeal, I admit, has to grow on some people. Luckily, Janell let it grow, not like a well-tended rosebush, granted— Janell at first merely tolerated Leda—but more like a moss. Gradually, though, the two arose from the swamp of their indifference. And now we were three.
    “Aau-he-hem.”
Leda cleared her throat and thrashed on the beanbag chair for a new position. “Kelly. Paz. Will you listen to this?”
    Janell and I looked up from our reading and mentally high-fived each other from across the room. Leda is usually the one to break the silence.
    “Guys, I have got to go to Paris immediately!” She stabbed a finger at her open book.
    “I thought you planned to go with Willie after graduation,” I said.
    “I broke up with that idiot. He showed up at the last PETA meeting in a leather jacket. No, no, I’m going to Paris on my own, as soon as possible. Did you know you can take dogs into bistros there?”
    “But you don’t have a dog,” Janell pointed out.
    Leda’s eyes burned blue intensity. “I know, but it’s the
idea
of it—dogs in a restaurant? That just goes to show how cool the French are.”
    I thought of Chucho being left to graze happily on the floor at White Castle. “And,” I said, laughing, “you’d appreciate your food a whole lot more.”
    “Or at least be more protective of it,” said Janell, smiling.
    Leda, still serious, went on. “Then there’s the whole eat-or-be-eaten aspect. You know, little Fifi looking on as
le
maestro
gloms down a rack of lamb.”
    “There but for the grace of God go I.” Janell nodded.
    “HA!”
I borrowed Mom’s laugh. “By the way, Leed, you’re mixing your French and Spanish again.”
    The reading mood was broken.
    “Let’s go get something to eat,” Janell said.

    Janell’s virginal refrigerator in the chaste white kitchen always holds a huge bowl of fruit salad and little more, unless her mom is cooking one of her fabulous fried-chicken dinners. We made waffle cones of frozen yogurt with the fruit on top.
    Leda took a bite first and pursed her lips. “Fruit tastes weird with—what flavor is this?”
    Janell picked up the frozen yogurt container. “It says vanilla, but . . .” Hesitantly, she peeled back the lid. “Uh-oh.”
    We looked at her.
    “You’d better not eat any more of that,” she told Leda.
    I examined my softening cone. The yogurt had black specks in it, but sometimes real vanilla looks like that.
    Leda froze her jaw, trying not to swallow. “Well, what is it?” she demanded through the food.
    Janell twisted a foot behind her. “Um, it’s bacon grease,” she mumbled. “Mom uses it for frying—keeps it in the freezer . . .”
    Leda’s eyes said it all.
    She bolted from the white dinette to the sink, bent, and let it fly. A lot more than the bite of ice cream was recycled.
    Janell and I just stood there, cones melting. Then we simultaneously got grossed out and threw them in the white enameled sink. Janell turned on the garbage disposal. Ever the tactful one, I started to belly laugh. Normally-in-check Janell watched Leda hanging over the sink and busted out too.
    Upon which Leda gasped a breath and shouted, “Get me a glass of water!”
    Janell, laughing now in mime and resembling my mother in one of her aftershocks, found a glass in one of the white windowed cabinets and got Leda some water from the tap. Leda gulped and spit, gulped and spit, till the water was gone. Then she just kept spitting into the sink.
    “I . . . can’t . . . believe . . . you!” she said in bursts between