Berlin Calling by Moore Lilo

Author:Moore, Lilo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: LM Books
Published: 2023-01-19T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

I was exhausted after the day in the warm Berlin sun, but I lingered in the lobby for the Wi-Fi when the others left to rest before dinner and the dress rehearsal. I was still on a high from dancing to my song with my friends, so it was a good time to call my parents. I’d catch them before work, with the time difference.

‘Hi, honey! It’s lovely to see your face. Thanks for calling, even though you’re living it up in Berlin!’

My mom had this weird thing about calling, as though I was doing her a favour remembering my little ol’ mom, rather than phoning her to assuage the desperate loneliness I couldn’t admit.

‘How’s it going?’ Dad asked when Mom swung the phone to an image of him bending over a bowl of breakfast cereal. ‘You look a little pink.’

‘We had a look around Berlin today and took some footage for the show. We did this spontaneous song-and-dance by the Brandenburg Gate and it was like I’m living in a musical.’

‘What about rehearsal?’ Mom asked. ‘Are you ready to go?’

This was the bit that Mom would understand: hard work. ‘It’s going well. They just decided they want us all to do a dance number to last year’s winning song and—’ I cut myself off. I was afraid of what Mom would say if told her I’d be dancing at the front with Emil.

‘That’s short notice!’ Mom protested.

‘It’ll be a simple dance routine. We completely fudged it today and it was fun.’

And then Mom said it. She always said something that triggered all the stuff I shoved into the empty half of my glass that I pretended didn’t exist. ‘You don’t want to look foolish on TV!’

‘Oh, don’t worry, Mom. I’m right at the back. I’m always at the back.’ The lie came too easily.

‘Aw, sweetheart,’ my dad chimed in. ‘They don’t know what they’re missing out on.’ I was feeling oddly queasy.

‘We’re proud of you, you know that, honey? We’re proud of you in the back row.’

It was weird. Moms were supposed to shove their children forward and insist that little Jenny was the best one to be star of the show. But my mom had always steered me away, even in the sixth grade, when I’d won the main role in the school play. There’d been a romance storyline and, at the end, me and Andrew Kim were supposed to drape our arms around each other for the musical number. I’d had a crush on dreamy Jesus Cabrera and was dying at the thought of him seeing Andrew and me pretending. Instead of calmly talking me through the juvenile drama, Mom had suggested I swap parts, leaving me with a total of two lines in the entire play. Then she’d recorded a video and gushed over me as though I’d been the star.

Our ideas about what was embarrassing were wildly different.

‘I know, Mom,’ I said. I was looking absently around the lobby trying to think of a way to end the call, when my gaze fell on a familiar figure.

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