Puddin'(73)

“I’m off the dance team for good.” I let out a deep sigh that blows the loose fallen hairs from my ponytail off my face. “I guess I could get a job and start saving for a car.”

Dad nods. “I like that idea.”

Abuela tsks. “A short-term goal,” she says. “What do you want to do?” Her voice overemphasizes every word, and I am easily reminded that she was used to talking to directionless young people every day from her time as a professor.

“I don’t know,” I finally tell her. “I’m working off my debt at this gym, and . . . and it’s like the thing that everyone knew me for is gone.”

“That’s not entirely true,” says Dad. “Your attitude is pretty notorious.”

Abuela points her knife at him jokingly.

I think back to the last two months and all that’s happened. I feel like a giant onion, and every day I’m peeling back a new layer of myself. Dance team and Bryce defined the old Callie. Bryce is definitely out of the picture, but what about dance? Am I done? For good?

“I don’t know,” I finally admit as I fill each square of my waffle with butter and syrup. “It’s kind of like waking up and not remembering what foods you like. So maybe I just have to try a little bit of everything?”

She pushes a loose strand of hair behind my ear. “Find the things you love and do them every day, even if it means failing. That’s all there is to it.”

I shrug. “I was good at being on the dance team. What if I’m not good like that at anything else?”

“If you only love what comes easy for you, you’ll find you don’t have much to love. Work for it, girl.”

My dad rolls his eyes. (Maybe that’s who I get it from?) “You make it sound so easy, Ma. Life isn’t as neat as your little nuggets of wisdom.”

She crosses her arms. “Your dad is going to miss my nuggets of wisdom when I’m not here to give them.”

“All right, all right,” he says. “Enough with the death guilt. Last week she told me her one dying wish was to see me married again.”

“But she’s not dying,” I tell him.

“We’re all dying,” says Abuela. “It’s just a slow process.”

I laugh, and the three of us finish our dinner. We pile the dishes in the sink and leave them until morning, because we’re too stuffed to move.

We all crowd together on the couch to FaceTime Claudia.

“My Claudia!” Abuela shouts, as if she can’t hear her.

“I can’t believe we caught you so late,” my dad says.

Claudia’s face is lit by the glow of the phone. She yawns without bothering to cover her mouth. “I was just finishing up here, resetting the stage before tomorrow’s matinee. Is that Callie?”

I wave. “The one and only.”

“Mom give you your phone back yet?” she asks.

“Finally.”

“And you didn’t call me?” she demands.

“I don’t see you rushing into my missed calls either.”

She nods. “Fair enough.”

“Give us a tour of the opera house,” Abuela says.

“I gotta make it quick. I’m one of the last people here, and this place is definitely haunted. I promised Rachel I’d call her before I went to bed.”

“When do we get to meet this Rachel?” my dad asks.

“Yeah,” I say. “I gotta scope out my sister’s first real girlfriend.”

Claudia laughs. “Uh, not with that attitude you don’t.”

She gives us a brief tour of the Semperoper and tells us a little bit of the architectural history, which is a snooze fest, but Dad is eating it up. I’ll admit, though, with the ornate gold-gilded interior, elaborate paintings, and velvet seats, she’s probably not wrong about this place being haunted.

After we hang up with Claudia, my dad falls asleep almost as soon as he pulls the lever on the recliner. I spread out on the couch with my head in Abuela’s lap as we watch a rerun of one of her favorite telenovelas, Corazón Salvaje. I can pick up on enough of the dialogue to sort of follow along, but soon enough the three of us are all dozing, and it’s a few hours before any of us even bother heading to bed.

I spend the morning and afternoon helping my dad paint the barn he and Abuela use for storage. Abuela tested every shade of turquoise before settling on mint green. When I asked why she wanted to paint her barn mint green, she said because she’d never seen a barn that color before.

While I sit on the ground with her, mixing paint, she says, “It’s nice to see you have girlfriends over.”

I shrug. “They’re okay.”

She taps the wooden stick against the side of the canister and sets it down before pouring it into a paint tray. “What’s that supposed to mean? I don’t speak teenager.”

“I don’t know. I guess the more I think about it, the more I’ve realized that I’m not very good at having friends who are girls.”

She tsks. “Don’t fall into that trap.”

“They’re nice. I just . . . I’m not.”

“Girls don’t have to be nice,” she says simply. “But they should stick together.” She shakes her head. “The wider world wants you to think other women are drama . . . or catty. But that’s just because when we work together, we’re unstoppable.”