Free The Things You Kiss Goodbye by Leslie Connor

three different directions and have absolute chaos at the dinner hour.
    Sometimes though, I just had to do it—stop and risk ahigh, steady arabesque right in front of the china cupboard. I’d watch for the reflection in the glass as I tried to point my toe inside my stiff boot. Bampas caught me in just such a pose the night after I’d seen Regina Colletti,
and
I had a basket of warmed bread balanced on the fingertips of one hand, no less.
    “Bettina, my dining room is not a dance studio,” he muttered.
    I drew down to a curtsy and set the bread basket gently on the table.
    “How did Mrs. Colletti seem?” Momma called from the kitchen doorway.
    “Oh, yes,” Bampas said, remembering. “You saw her today?”
    “Yes. Hmm . . . she seemed less than she once was,” I said. I told them about the radiation sickness, the way Tony was pitching in to care for her. “She liked visiting. She wants me to come again,” I said. “On Tuesdays.”
    “Tuesdays?” Bampas held the
s
on the end. “
All
Tuesdays?” He scowled. He stood beside the table and began to count my life off on his fingers. “So then you are cheerleading on all the Wednesdays. You are with Mrs. Colletti all the Tuesdays. You want to see the boyfriend on Friday night and Saturday night.” He was beginning to drone on. “Soon you are gone from home more days than not.”
    “Well, do you want me to tell Regina—I mean, Mrs. Colletti, no then? Because, actually, Bampas, there’s something else. The cheerleaders are adding a practice on Mondays. And sometimes Fridays, too.” (Okay, I was accelerating things. But it would be true at some point, and I needed to get him used to the idea.) Bampas shook his head and put on a frown.
    “No, no. You’ll come home.”
    “Bampas, remember, I told you when I made the squad, it would eventually be every day after school?”
    “Dinos, she did tell us this,” Mama said softly as she came in from the kitchen.
    “Yes, and if you remember, Loreena, she did not ask permission to join in the first place,” Bampas said.
    “Well, just the same . . .” Momma’s broad lips made a gentle smile.
    Why does she always sound like she is apologizing to him?
I wondered. She set a heavy, steaming dish of lamb and lentils down on a trivet and motioned at me. “Bettina, your bampas will need the serving spoon from the sideboard.” She touched my father’s sleeve and said, “I’ll call the boys.”
    My father turned to me. “Perhaps you should stay late once winter comes and the basketball begins,” he said, “but it is not even October yet.” He set to filling plates and handing them to me. I adjusted place settings as I put each one down.
    “Well, it’s not really my decision,” I said.
    “No. It is
mine
.”
    “You are going to tell the cheerleaders when to practice, Bampas?” I tried a coy smile but he missed it.
    “Don’t be fresh,” he said calmly. Neither of us had missed a beat with the supper, and I set the last plate at my own spot. The boys came rushing in and slid into their chairs.
    “Hey, never have to call you guys twice, huh?” I said.
    “Lamb!” Avel said, and he rubbed his palms together. “I knew it! I smelled it!”
    Momma handed me the water pitcher and I started around the table with it. “Bampas, I wasn’t being fresh. Just saying that practice is a school decision.” He did not respond. He looked at the table as if checking to see that everything was in order. I knew these moments. This was when I had little to lose. “Bampas?” I said, “what I really want to ask is if you will just allow me to stay after school every day?”
    I felt Momma watching this. Sometimes you just know when someone in a room is holding little bit of breath for you.
    “No!” Bampas scoffed. “There is no reason.”
    “But I will always have something to do,” I suggested. “If I am not cheering, I’ll be in the art room or the library, or over at the Collettis’ on