Wishing on a Star Read Free

she does.”
    “Uh-huh,” I say.
    “You ready for school tomorrow? Just don’t roll up the waistband of your skirt!” she says.
    “Okay,” I say, and fake a yawn. “G’night, Mom.”
    “Good night, baby. Don’t be scared, now—stay fierce. Show ’em who you are, and they’ll love you just like I do.” She kisses me on the forehead and goes out, shutting the door behind her.
    Mom is so cool. When I am rich and famous, I am going to buy her the one thing she wants more than anything else: Dorothy’s ruby slippers from
The Wizard of Oz
. Mom is a
serious
collector. She wants whatever nobody else has, or almost nobody There are only five pairs of ruby slippers in the whole world, and the last pair was auctioned off at Christie’s for 165,000 duckets. I will find the anonymous mystery person who has bought the ruby slippers and buy them for Mom as a surprise.
    Mom has seen
The Wizard of Oz
more times than I care to remember. She boo-hoos like a baby every time, too. I don’t know why it makes her cry. It makes me laugh.
    There is something Mom isn’t telling me about her family, but I’m not supposed to know that. She never talks about them, and I don’t have any relatives on her side.
    In the living room, there is a very old, gray-looking picture of
her
mom, a brown-skinned lady who looks sad. She says her mother died a long time ago, before I was born. Chanel says my mom is a drama queen. I think she is just larger than life. Diva size.
    I have a lot of ruby slipper stickers, which I have put on my school notebooks and dresser drawers and my closet doors in my bedroom—the “spotted kingdom.” I also have ruby slipper cards. I keep them in the leopard hat boxes by the bed.
    Inside the ruby slipper card, it says MAY ALL YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE. I keep one pinned on my busybody board and open it sometimes because it gives me hope that my dreams will come true, too. I don’t want to let my mother down and live in this bedroom forever.
    My Miss Wiggy alarm clock reads 11:00, and suddenly, my beeper is vibrating on the night-stand. Got to be Chanel. I roll over, hop out of bed, and log on to the Internet on my swell Ladybug PC.
    Toto is hunched on his front paws and staring at me with his little black beady eyes. My poor little brother can’t accept the fact that he is simply a fluffy pooch. Toto is fifteen, (which is 105 in human years), and he sleeps in my room, in his very own canopy bed, with a leopard duvet. “Oh, Toto, you always make me smile,” I tell him as I type my greeting to Chuchie.
    “Chanel, Chanel, you’re so swell. What are you wearing tomorrow,
mamacita
, pleez, pleez, tell?”
    No answer. Hmmmm … she beeped me, but she isn’t in the chat room. That’s strange. There is plenty of cyber action, judging by the number of on-screen entries. Everybody must need a ’Net break since it’s back-to-school “D day” for anybody under eighteen with a brain.
    “Oh, if I only had a brain, I wouldn’t feel so lame, and I’d jump on the A train when it rained, because there’d be no shame in my game …” I hum aloud while plotting my next move.
    “My name is Dorinda,” flashes on my computer screen. “I’m pressing my khaki boot-cut pants right now and shining my Madd Monster shoes. I’m wearing a black sweater, right. Do you think it will be too ‘that’ to wear a tube top underneath it?”
    Oh, this girl is mad funny, I think, cracking up as I type a response. “Hi, my name is Galleria. September is the time for the belly button to go on vacation and the brain to come back in full effect. Unless you want Serial Mom to corner you in the girls’ room and cut off your top with a rusty pair of scissors, you’d better leave the ‘boob tube’ at home! Where are you going to school, anyway?”
    “Galleria, the Joker, thanks. Tomorrow’s my first day at Fashion Industries on Twenty-fourth Street. I’m going to major in fashion design! Guess I can’t ‘cut’ class. Ha.