A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty (26 page)

“The
Times
, are you kidding me?” I said. The
Register
was almost like an actual paper, but the
Immita Citizen Times
was a four-page flyer that came out every other week. Its front page had stories about church jumble sales and high-school footbal , and no one would ever even pick it up if it didn’t sometimes have coupons for a dol ar off Blizzards at DQ.

There was a pause, and then he said, “I want to read up on Melissa Richardson, read al the stories about when she baked her baby sister and blew town.”

“Drowned,” I said, irked al over again. “And who cares where she went, after?”

“You know your mom’s old friends are our best shot at finding out where Liza got you. Maybe the papers wil have some guesses about where Melissa went.”

I snorted. “You mean where the Richardsons stashed her.”

He ignored that, and his voice got al wheedly. “If you want me to have time for Real Pitting, you could get in on this stalktastic action. Cut my workload.”

“No way,” I said. Al week, when he’d bothered to answer my texts at al , he’d been after me to cozy up to Coach Creepy McCreeperson. I’d rather be drowned or baked myself.

“It’s not even out of your way,” Roger protested. “Just hang back after class, like you need to ask him something about Life Skil s.”

“No one has questions about Life Skil s,” I said. That class was mostly driver’s ed; we watched 1970s films about reckless-driver teenagers who died wearing the most embarrassing pants:
Blood on the Highway
,
Anytime Is Train Time
. Right at the start, we’d had a two-week section on

“Personal Health,” which…ew, I was sure not asking Coach anything about that. He spent the whole vile unit pacing back and forth like he was on the sidelines, hol ering about abstinence and teen pregnancy, which was when everyone turned and looked at me for a second. Meanwhile he was staring at Briony Hutchins’s miracle rack like he wanted to teach
her
about teen pregnancy up close and naked-style personal. He real y got off showing al the slides of the vile diseases every one of us would absolutely get if we did it, even once. Then on the last day, he showed us how to put a condom on a banana. Just in case.

“So ask about track. It wil be easy to get him to talk to you,” Roger coaxed, and then he added, al awkward, “You’re cute.”

I flat lost my temper. “You stood me up at The Real Pit, and now you want me to get into some kind of lure-the-pedo boob competition with Briony Hutchins, who wil completely win, by the way. How humiliating wil that be, considering I hate her forever? Worse, you want me making snuggy bunnies with a gross old guy so you can hunt his attics for letters my mom never sent to his baby-drowning, psycho daughter. The one who ditched Liza just as hard as Briony ditched me. Seriously, Roger? Fricken seriously?”

He got kind of self-righteous and said, “I’m doing this for you, Mosey.”

“Wel , who asked you?” I said, and hung up. He didn’t even cal me back. I sat by myself in our usual booth, my thighs sticking to the vinyl, and after a minute I felt the buzz of a text landing in my phone.

I am, tho, it said, which was hardly an apology. I shut my phone off.

It didn’t help that I was starving and so flat broke that I had to dig change out of my backpack to pay for the Coke I’d already ordered. I’d missed the school bus, thinking Roger would drive me. I had to walk, and I got home al sweaty, and it was a half a mil ion degrees inside, because Big shut the A/C off in September whether it was cold or hot or both, back and forth, running the fans and keeping the windows open to save money.

I had my own stalk-related problems at home; Big was making dinner for Liza, wanting me to sit at the table and tel her al about my day while she cooked. Al week she’d been after me, tracking me room to room, trying to make me have talks. She’d turned into this smothering Biggety blanket monster that wanted to wrap around me every second, and it was al fake. That’s the part I couldn’t stand. She had no idea I wasn’t hers.

The only reason I hadn’t gone flat crazy was Bogo, which was what Liza and me were cal ing the dog now. I thought I should change his name, since I had kidnapped him and put him in Dog Witness Protection. Bogo was close enough to his old name for him to know we meant him, and it had the B from Bunnies, so Liza liked it, too. When Big heard it, though, she made a skeptical face and muttered that no sane person would buy that dog in the hopes of getting another one free. I told her I would, and then I took Liza and Bogo out into the backyard with one of her old dog-training books. I did what the book said, pushing his butt down while Liza made approving clicky noises at him. I wasn’t sure how teaching him to sit was supposed to get him to stop crapping in the house and hiding al the time and eating up Big’s shoes, but it was a start. Anyway, Liza was cal ing him Bogo now, clear as anything, and saying more things real clear, like “Bogo, stay” and “Bogo, sit.”

I had plenty of stalkers at school, too. Most kids stil hadn’t given up on getting the grisly scoop out of Boneyard Girl. Worse, every time I turned around, Patti Duckins was peeking out at me from behind a bank of lockers or around a corner with her eyes al slitted up and glarey. I figured she knew I’d stolen the dog and was plotting some awful Duckinsy revenge involving a switchblade and my face.

By lunchtime Friday I was flat paranoid. I went skulking into the cafeteria, sticking close to the wal like a sewer rat. Janie Pestre and her friend Deb tried to flag me over to their table, but I didn’t feel like being mysterious for them that second. I saw Briony watching me, too, but I looked away before she could so much as wave. I sat down at an empty, square table.

I was brown-bagging, like I did every day now. Big pretended it had to do with nutrition, but I wasn’t stupid; she’d gone al Food Revolution because home-packed lunches were cheaper. Big did her main grocery shopping on Saturdays, and these days when we ran out of something, we stayed out until the next week. Today she’d packed me a dregs lunch: bologna sandwich with no cheese, a yogurt, and a bag of tired-looking baby carrots. She’d put in my old Ninja Turtles thermos from grade school, too, probably ful of whatever was left of the orange juice.

As I stared down, distracted by the pure awfulness of my Friday lunch, Patti Duckins slid into the chair right across from me. I jumped, and this humiliating, squeaky noise came out of me. Patti snickered, then peered at me from under her shaggy Duckins bangs.

I said, “Bogo is ours, now,” and my voice came out al high and pathetic.

Patti looked puzzled for a second, but then she shrugged, as if she didn’t know who Bogo was or didn’t care, one. She didn’t talk, just kept staring at me with this weird look on her face, part crafty and part suspicious. Like I’d come over and flopped down at her table instead of the other way around. Final y I gave her a WTH glare, and she said, “I thought sure you’d be sitting with your friends.” She jerked her thumb over to where Briony Hutchins and Barbie Macloud were watching us, whispering behind their hands.

I snorted. “Briony Hutchins is so not my friend.”

“Wel , them ones, then,” Patti said, nodding toward Janie Pestre’s table. “Whatever ones. I watched you al week, sure you’d be pointing your fingers at me, laughing with some bunch of crappy assholes about how my house was and my old grampa.”

“I told you, we weren’t there to spy on you,” I said.

“Maybe that’s so,” she said. She sat there. If she didn’t care I’d taken Bogo, then what was she doing?

“Twelve minutes to the bel . You should go get your lunch,” I said.

Duckins kids got free-lunch cards, so she could be lording it up with a corn dog if she wanted, but she shook her head, flushing. Maybe she’d left her card at home and was too embarrassed to say. Maybe she’d sold it. I wanted to eat, but it seemed rude since she didn’t have anything, so I pushed half my sandwich toward her. It was cut on the corners the way Big always did. “Want half? It’s super gross.”

She scowled at the sandwich and then at me, her mouth scrunching up like she was trying to figure if I was looking down on her or trying to poison her. She left the sandwich half where it was, not picking it up but not pushing it away either. “I cal ed my cousin. Noveen. The one who’s married to that Chinese fel ow. I asked her about you.” I must have looked surprised, because her frowny mouth turned down even more fiercely, and she added, “What? I go see Noveen a lot. You think because my old grampa’s prejudice, I must be just as ass-backward?”

“Oh, my God, you are so freakin’ touchy,” I said. “Did you specifical y sit down here to be al weird and yel at me for stuff you make up and say I’m thinking?” I could feel half the cafeteria staring at us now, like we were zoo animals and they were hoping to see a fight, or at least some poo getting flung. Patti didn’t even notice them—she was focused so hard on me. Or maybe she was used to people staring.

“I’m not ignorant,” she said. “Or a racist.”

“Okay already,” I said.

“I’m not,” she said, like I’d argued with her. She tilted her chin up so she could look down her nose at me and added, real sly, “I gave a black guy a BJ once. His dick tasted just like a white boy’s.” Then she busted out laughing at the expression on my face. “You never did that, huh? For your boyfriend?”

I had no idea what she meant for a second, and then I said, “Roger? He’s not my boyfriend.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’s
Roger
,” I said. She was looking al speculative, like trying to decide if Roger was available, which was plain vile. She didn’t even know him a bit, but the boy had al his teeth, so that must make him a catch by Duckins standards. I said, “He’s not gonna be your boyfriend either,”

so fierce it surprised me. She shrugged like it was no skin off her nose and changed the subject.

“Noveen, she says your mom was the coolest person she ever knew,” Patti said. “She said Liza Slocumb’s kid wouldn’t have come out to my place just to make fun.”

I felt my cheeks flush, but not embarrassed. It was a hot rush of pink pride fil ing me. “I
am
Liza Slocumb’s kid,” I said.

“Your mom, she stil cool?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer that.

“You know my mom is sick, now,” I said. “She got hurt. She…my mom’s real sick.”

Patti said, “Naw, I didn’t know. I’m real sorry. Noveen, she told me some wild-ass stories about Liza. You anything like her?”

“Some ways I’m like.” Patti’s weird country way of talking was rubbing off on me.

“Not so wild,” Patti said, “I know because of you jumped when I said I sucked off a black boy. Which I was kidding, but look, you jumped again.”

I wasn’t sure if she was kidding or not, but I said, real stubborn, “I’m a lot like Liza, though.”

After a second she nodded and picked up her half of my sandwich and started eating it in quick, smal nips that told me plain she was hungry.

She talked right through the food. “So what do you do with that guy who ain’t your boyfriend?” I felt myself straightening up, and she grinned with her mouth ful . “Or mine neither.”

“I’m his best friend.” I said, thinking,
Or I used to be
. This week it was more like I was his science-fair project.

She nodded, very serious, and said, “He don’t go
here
, though.” She said it like she was making me an offer. It took me a second to get it. Final y here was someone at my school trying to make friends with me, and it was a Duckins. So surreal. But then Liza had been friends with a Duckins, so it must be doable. The fact that Patti was trying at al made me sorry that I’d stolen her book instead of being straight with her.

“Yeah. I don’t have a friend here,” I said.

She looked at me, not saying the obvious, but I heard her al the same. I pushed the bag of baby carrots to the center of the table, so we could both reach. We each grabbed a handful and crunched at them, not talking.

Final y I said, “You want to maybe go see a movie Saturday?” I was supposed to go with Roger, but it might do him some good to see how it felt to get stood up. She didn’t answer, though, and I felt a blush rising. Because seriously? Rejected by a Duckins? Roger would bust something laughing. I sounded huffy when I said, “Or not. Maybe that sounds dul , since I don’t go around, like, doing multicultural wiener taste tests.”

She grinned, getting the joke, which kinda surprised me, and not taking it mean, which surprised me more. “Noveen said she and your mom used to hang out in her tree house, listen to music, look at trashy magazines.”

“Yeah,” I said, and it occurred to me maybe she’d hesitated because she didn’t have money for a movie. That kinda put my dregs lunch into focus. With my mom’s medical bil s and the paying for the pool we didn’t even have yet, I thought things were tight at home. But it was nothing like what tight meant at hers. I said, “That’d be cool. You could come over after lunch on Saturday if you want.”

She nodded and gave me a quick smile, a little shy, and then said, “PE,” just as the bel rang. She got up and slouched off, leaving me sitting there wondering what Big would think. Maybe she’d be happy to see me hanging with a person who didn’t have the right equipment to impregnate me. More likely she’d crap herself, because Liza had made friends with a Duckins and they’d both had babies that same year. It was out of my hands, though, and al I could do was hope to God that when she came over, Patti would wear clothes that had been dropped at Goodwil by some long-skirt Pentecostal instead of a charity-minded hooker.

When school let out, I saw Roger waiting in his Volvo across the street. I stopped dead at the curb, thinking I should zig out of sight behind the bus, but he’d already spotted me. He waved, and I glared back, half tempted to breeze right onto the bus anyway. Before I could decide, he held up a greasy paper sack and waggled it in the window. He’d already gone by The Real Pit, and my lunch had sucked. I decided that forgiveness was the better part of valor, especial y if he was going to ask for it with pul ed-pork sandwiches.

I grudgingly crossed, using Patti Duckins’s resentful-style slouch so he knew plain he wasn’t completely back in my green graces, and got into the car.