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3

  When I get home, I am so grateful that Mamí isn’t there yet. Sneaking past the giganto life-size poster of Mamí from her modeling days, I hightail it to my bedroom, then change into my pink cheetah pajamas and slip on my fluffy pink rabbit slippers with the floppy ears. (I wanted them in cheetah, but they didn’t have any.) Kneeling down, I start to pray, “Por favor, Dios, please God, help me become a better person and think of other people instead of thinking about myself all the time. Please don’t let Mamí come home and yell at me. Please let me forgive Bubbles for acting like a babosa today. Please let Princess Pamela help Romania. Okay, I’m sorry, I’m doing it again. God, do whatever you want. I’m sorry for giving you so many instructions. Amen.”

  When I hear the elevator door open, I realize that I flew home just in the nick of time. Mamí walks into our loft apartment and yells, “Anybody home?” By the sound of her voice, I can tell she is in a good mood. Gracias gooseness. Maybe Robert DeNiro was at Nobu’s tonight and told Mamí that she is still the prettiest girl in the room. Since DeNiro’s the owner, Mamí is always hoping he is there when she goes. I know Mamí has a crush—un coco—on him since she was a model and met him at Studio 54. Back in the day, Studio 54 was the most famous disco in the world. She says he told her that she was the best dancer in the club, but I’m sure she is exaggerating.

  “I’m here!” I shout out in the dark.

  I quickly pull a book from my bookshelf, then plop down on my bed and pretend that I’m reading it. Daddy gave me the book for my birthday and I feel guilty that I haven’t had time to read it yet. I know it’s probably better than the boring book he got Pucci for his birthday (Harry Henpecker’s Guide to Geography), because the cover is decorated with sparkles and the girls are wearing tan coolio outfits.

  I was right about Mamí’s sneaky ways. As she stands in the archway of my bedroom, pulling her hair up in a ponytail, I notice she is wearing my leopard top with the sash in the back and the “hippie” flared sleeves.

  “Sorry I borrowed one of your tops again, but I wanted to look ‘tight.’ We went to Nobu,” Mamí says, but I know she isn’t really apologizing.

  “Está bien. It’s okay, Mamí,” I respond, but I don’t mean it either. (This is a little game we play with each other all the time.)

  “Can you clean the bathroom tomorrow before you go to the store?” Mamí asks. “Okay,” I say, mumbling like Barbie from Bozoland. You know the kind of doll that doesn’t talk back. She doesn’t sweat either. She doesn’t eat too much. She’s perfecto! But as hard as I try, I can’t stop acting disappointed. “Um, did you talk to Madrina about the puppies?”

  Mamí takes a deep sigh—the kind she takes when she gets really annoyed—tan molesta—with me. “I don’t want to talk about it right now, Chanel. Está bien?”

  “You don’t have to talk about it—just tell me. Can I have a puppy, please?” I say whining.

  “NO.”

  “What do you mean no? I never—”

  “I mean the opposite of yes! How many times do I have to tell you the same answer! Hah? Dígame,” Mamí says, prodding me. “You should be happy that I let you go to the studio to record the demo with the Cheetah Girls. But it’s never enough with you. I give you a little—un poco—but you abuse everything. Just like you did with my credit card!”

  I try really hard to be Barbie from Bozoland again, but I can’t help it. “Ever since you met Mr. Tycoon, nothing else matters. I don’t matter! We never spend time together anymore. That’s why I need a puppy—so there is somebody waiting for ME when I get home!!!!”

  Mamí stands there staring at me like she’s going to perform brujería on me any second and stick pins into me to make me disappear. Uh-oh. I think I went too far.

  “Finally I meet someone who likes me for me—not because I’m a model or I’m pretty. And you can’t be happy for me?” Mamí says, and she is starting to tremble. “And, for your information, Mr. Tycoon has asked me to move to Paris. I told him I would let him know by the end of the week. I don’t want to hear anymore about the stupid puppy. Sí. Es bueno. Paris will be good for us!”

  Mamí storms off, then screams down the hallway, “And you’d better clean the bathroom in the morning!”

  Yo no lo creo. I can’t believe it. How could she even think about moving to Paris? She really doesn’t care about my dreams. I work so hard—going to school, rehearsing after school, and working in Madrina’s store. Lying on the bed like a frozen Popsicle, I keep obsessing about all the things Mamí said. How could she say that about Daddy only liking her because she was pretty and a model?

  I jump out of bed to log into the Phat Planet chat room so the Cheetah Girls can talk, but then I decide I don’t want to. Bubbles, Dorinda, Aqua, and Angie are probably too busy playing with their puppies to talk to me anyway! I hold my Snuggles-and-Kisses stuffed dog real hard, and fight back the tears.

  Cleaning the bathroom would not be that hard except I have to wipe all the oodles and oodles of Mamí’s gooky hair stuff—there’s hair spray, mousse, gel, spritzing lotion, coloring pomade, shining potion—it never ends! I’m surprised that Mamí’s hair doesn’t get confused by all the stuff she puts in it. (Okay, I use a little too, but not like she does.) Wiping the aerosol can of Suddenly Blond hair shine booster (yes, sometimes, Mamí, is suddenly blond), I realize, I can’t be mean to Mamí today, because she won’t give me money to get my hair straightened! I get so nervous that I drop the can and it suddenly starts spritzing on my leg. Ay, Dios! I hear the music blasting from the kitchen. Ever since Mamí started dating Mr. Tycoon she has been playing French music—the singer has a really low voice and sounds like she has a stuffed nose or something. La Vie en Rose. La Vie en Rose.

  At least one thing hasn’t changed—Mamí still drinks her cup of Spanish café con leche in the morning. She likes Café Bustelo, which is so strong, I can smell it all the way in the bathroom. Gracias gooseness, I finally finish cleaning the bathroom. I rub Mango Potion lotion on my hands (yes, it’s Mamí’s) then drag myself into the kitchen.

  “What are you listening to?” I ask Mamí, to show her that I don’t want to fight anymore.

  “Edith Piaf,” she says, sipping her coffee and ignoring me.

  I don’t know who Edith Piaf is, but she is probably someone famous in Paris, so I just blurt out the truth, “Mamí, I need to go to the hairdresser.”

  “If I give you money to go, will you shut up about this puppy already?” Mamí retorts.

  “Sí,” I say, but I know the truth inside. I would rather walk around looking like the Cookie Monster than give up the chance to get a puppy.

  “Don’t even think about going to that bruja to get your hair done, esta bien?” Mami says, handing me the money. I know she is talking about Princess Pamela, so I keep my lips closed like they are shut with Krazy Glue.

  Walking to Madrina’s boutique from my house, I stop to buy a big bag of raw carrots at Little Kim’s Deli (not that Li’l Kim) on Grand Street. I pretend I don’t notice the big fat sausage hanging over the counter, which looks like it’s going to attack me. Paying for the carrots, I decide that tonight when I get home I’m going to start exercising even though Dr. Reuben said I should stay off my feet until my ankle heals. Well, my ankle feels fine and I want to make sure I’m as skinny as Zimora by the time we meet the record executives at Def Duck. I wish I could wave my magic wand and make myself tall like Zimora, but I can’t. Qué lástima. I’m just a shrimpy like Bubbles and Dorinda. (Aqua and Angie are just a little taller than us but they are still short too.)

  As soon as I get to the store, Madrina asks me to go get her a Caribbean Sunrise smoothie and offers to get me one. “I’m not hungry,” I lie. All the way to the store, Once Upon a Tart, my mouth waters thinking about the coconut, strawberries, banana, yogurt, and pineapple juice concoction that Madrina and I usually drink together at the store. When I return with her smoothie, Madrina is steaming some cheetah bustiers and putting them on hangers.

 
; “You look nice,” I tell her, admiring her big leopard skirt with red leopard flowers trimming the hem. It’s one of her original designs, but I wonder how she found leopard pumps that match with big red leopard flowers in the front, because Madrina doesn’t design shoes. But that’s Madrina—everything always matches. Now I feel embarrassed for eating the carrots because Madrina makes diva-size clothes and she thinks big is better.

  “How is that construction going on by your house?” Madrina asks me.

  “Noisy,” I say, shrugging my shoulder.

  “I found out the developers have already sold the lot to Banana Republic,” Madrina says, annoyed. “You’d think they’d run out of bananas by now!”

  I understand what Madrina is trying to say. Her boutique is adobo down and SoHo is supposed to be all about—sabor—and those big stores like Banana Republic don’t have any original flavor. Kinda like the Cheetah Girls. We’re one hundred percent adobo down—original flavor.

  “I could help you with the steaming!” I say, volunteering because I know Madrina has a million things to do.

  “You sure?” she asks hesitantly. “Good—I can get to invoicing. By the way, Chanel, you know I did my best trying to talk Juanita into Operation: Puppy Patrol, but she’s so stubborn. Getting an English bulldog to budge from a tea party would have been easier.”

  “Sí, Madrina, I know. Yo se. But at least she said I can go to Pepto’s on Tuesday”

  Pepto B. is Madrina’s and Kahlua Alexander’s hairdresser. He owns a trendy hair salon called Churl, It’s You! He even arranged for us to meet Kahlua and she hooked us up with the Def Duck Record peeps.

  “Oh, are you going to be another Diva with a Weava?” Madrina asks jokingly.

  I know she is only playing with me. She knows Mamí would never let me get extensions. It’s too expensive. Madrina let Bubbles get a weave when we performed for the Kats and Kittys Halloween Bash. I was a little jealous. Un poco. “No. I’m gonna get my hair straightened.”

  “Why?” she asks, surprised. You have such beautiful wild and wooly hair—it goes with your Cheetah Girls image!”

  “I know, but it’s gonna look nice, you’ll see, “I say, wincing because I’m too embarrassed to tell Madrina the real reason why I’m getting my hair straightened—Zimora.

  “I think you girls should have gone with the pink wig routine myself, but oh, well, whatever makes you swell, Miss Chanel,” Madrina says, dragging out a stack of papers from behind the accessories bureau.

  “We liked the wig idea, but Aqua and Angie didn’t want to wear them,” I say quickly. I don’t want Madrina to think we don’t listen to her ideas. Bubbles found some wigs in Ricky’s Urban Groove, but Aqua and Angie looked like they had a bottle of Pepto-Bismol stuck on their heads! (Mine looked really cute and so did Dorinda’s.)

  “Galleria will probably want to get her hair done, too,” Madrina says, sipping her Caribbean Sunrise smoothie. “Ayyy, disgusting! Honey, you go and tell Pedro that the sun has set on this concoction and he’d better use fresh strawberries instead of rotten ones.”

  I run back to Once Upon a Tart, then run back to the store and start steaming the bustiers.

  By one o’clock, the steam had caused my frizzies to stick to my face.

  “How are you doing back there, Miss Chanel?” Madrina yells from the front of the store.

  “Okay,” I say, not wanting to let her down. She probably would have finished everything by now, but as slow as I am, I’ll be here all day sweating like Cinderella!

  Chen Chen, the seamstress who does the in-store alterations for customers (the clothes are made in a factory in Brooklyn that Uncle Franco operates), comes from the back. “You okay?” she asks me. I nod my head, yes. Even Toto hops off his cheetah bed in the store window and comes over to rub his chubby furry body against my leg.

  “Hi, Toto!” I kneel down to pet him for a second. I bet Bubbles is sitting home playing goo-goo ga-ga with her new puppy, Ragu.

  The door chimes and another customer comes in. I jump up and get back to work. One of the customers comes toward the back and is peering in the accessories section. She smiles at me and I get a real creepy feeling. I mean, she kinda looks like a cross between Marceau the mime and Mystique the slithery mutant from the X-Men comic books. I wonder how she got her eyebrows so high and her skin to look so pasty white. Maybe she dusted her face with flour instead of pressed powder. “I’m looking for a leopard turban—a cloth one,” the mutant mime lady says to me in a snobby voice.

  “I don’t think we have one,” I say, trying to help.

  “Well, why not? You have leopard everything else,” she says, getting huffy puffy, then shooing me away like I don’t know what I’m talking about.

  “Can I help you, darling?” Madrina asks, coming to my rescue.

  “Yes, I want a leopard turban—in a nice soft cotton Lycra.”

  “What on earth for?” Madrina asks. “That look went out with Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. Why don’t you try wrapping your hair with a nice leopard silk sash?”

  I think Madrina is trying to tell the lady that wearing a turban is old school, but she always has a funny way of saying things. “Oh,” the lady says, giving it some thought.

  Toto runs up to Madrina and gets on his hind legs for her to pet him. He always does that in front of customers.

  “Oh, look at him running to his master,” the mutant lady says, smiling like a phony baloney.

  “Darling, he’s not a runaway slave,” Madrina says, chuckling. Then she hands the lady a leopard silk sash. “Trust me, you’ll get a lot more mileage out of this little number than the Arabian Nights contraption you had in mind.”

  “Well, if you say so,” the mutant lady says, following Madrina to the front of the store. As she’s leaving, Madrina says to her, “Darling, while you’re down here in SoHo, go over and see Miss Tanika at the MAC makeup store on Spring Street. Tell her Dorothea sent you. Miss Tanika is a magician with brow pencils and pressed powder.”

  “Oh, thank you, I will,” the lady says.

  Madrina watches the lady go down the block, then snorts, “She certainly was aghast from the past, wasn’t she? The Grim Reaper has a warmer smile.”

  All of a sudden, the phone rings and the door buzzer blings at the same time. Madrina picks up the phone and presses the door buzzer. Bubbles flings the door open. What is she doing here? I wonder.

  “Well, well, Miss Chanel, the shopaholic in action,” she says, smirking at me. She has Ragu wrapped in her arms in a cheetah doggie blankie.

  I throw her a startled look. I want to blurt out, “Well, well, Miss Galleria, you’re named after a shopping mall in Houston and that’s why you’re a cheetaholic!”

  “Look, Chuchie, I’m sorry I behaved like a vending machine yesterday. You know, out of order. And I’m sorry that Auntie Juanita won’t let you have a puppy,” Bubbles says, hoisting Ragu to her chest. “What’s going on with your hair, mamacita?”

  “I’m working so I don’t have time to worry about my hair,” I blurt out, then walk to the back of the store, to finish steaming the new clothes. If Bubbles came here to show off Ragu again, she can put him in a puppy parade for all I care!

  Of course Bubbles follows me to the back. “And Princess Pamela says I’m going to get a puppy!” I blurt out, dragging the steamer farther to the back.

  “Hmm. Princess Pamela and her predictions. I hope she didn’t charge you for that one,” Bubbles says, pooh-poohing what my dad’s girlfriend told me.

  I throw Bubbles another nasty look.

  “Come on, Chanel, let’s just squash this thing like disco. Let it go. It’s over,” Bubbles says. “I came here to tell you the latest chat from the Phat.”

  “What happened?”

  “I just found out a way we can get back our street cred with the peeps uptown,” Bubbles says, dangling the carrot.

  I just keep steaming the bustier and act like I’m not interested. I’m tired of Bubbles and her ideas—especial
ly when they don’t involve me getting a puppy!

  “I found out on Phat Planet last night that the Harlem School of the Arts is having a Can We Get a Groove? competition for its 35th-year-anniversary fund-raiser.” Bubbles continues, ignoring me. “I mean, while we’re waiting for Mouse Almighty to get us into the studio again, we could be out there living la vida loca.”

  I still don’t answer Bubbles and keep pressing the bustier like I’m looking for gold.

  “Where were you yesterday, by the way?” Bubbles asks, annoyed.

  “What happened?” I ask, puzzled.

  “Why weren’t you in the chat room last night? You know we were supposed to have a Cheetah Girls council meeting, right?”

  “I was fighting with Mamí, so I didn’t have time to go online,” I say, exasperated. “She says we’re moving to Paris!”

  “Hold the phone. She said what?”

  “Well, she said she doesn’t want me to be in the Cheetah Girls—and she wants to move to Paris.”

  “She must have been drinking some supa crispy Chardonnay at Nobu’s and it went straight to her head,” Bubbles says.

  “Mamí wouldn’t leave Abuela behind, would she?” I ask, puzzled. My abuela Florita lives in Washington Heights, where Mamí grew up.

  “Right,” Bubbles says. “Listen up, buttercup. If we win the first prize in this competition, then finish the demo for the album, Juanita will have to squash the noise about Paris, right?”

  I don’t say anything because I am tired right now of getting my hopes up about everything.

  “I did mention there is a prize just waiting for us to get our paws on, didn’t I?” Bubbles says, smirking.

  “Really?” I ask, breaking out into a smile, then wiping the sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand.

  “Would I pull a señorita’s slinky chain?” Bubbles says, taking out a cheetah tissue from her cheetah backpack. “And use this, please. You look like a ragamuffin on the run.”

  “So what are the prizes?” I say, grabbing the tissue because I’m anxious to hear.