Confessions of a So-called Middle Child (14 page)

Pen, the Buzz-Killer

By dinnertime I'd all but forgotten about the huge mess I was in with Marta and Trixie. I felt calm and full of hope. I couldn't wait to get back into those tunnels and find what I knew was down there and then sell it all on eBay for a million bucks.

I looked up from my notes. “What if there's a secret chamber?”

Felix shook his head, clueless as usual. Pen had the same look.

“It's full of underground hot springs here.” The more I thought about it, the more excited I was. “What if there's a chamber even farther down where he practiced his escapes and kept his journals—huh—journals that could be worth a fortune?”

Mom was at the stove, cooking what she'd called “mac and cheese,” but the longer it took, the more I suspected she was trying to hide vegetables in the mac and cheese. “You know, you might be right,” she said. “The water flows from under this property across the street and all the way to the old Flynn property.”

Felix got up and tried to take a look. “Are you hiding stuff in the mac and cheese, Mom?”

“Go away!” She swatted him, and we all sank a little lower, saddened and more than a little angry. We'd told her so many times that we could tell when she shoved some nasty vegetable into perfectly good pasta. We even threw away the cookbook teaching her which vegetables were the easiest to hide, but still she did it.

Pen tossed her napkin on the floor. “I hate when she does this.”

“Tell me about it.” Dad rolled his eyes.

“Yum, yum, yum!” Mom brought over the steaming pot of nastiness. I could smell the sweet potatoes before the pot even got to the table. I was devastated. Why ruin a wonderful dish? Why? She served us huge portions of it, but no one picked up their fork.

“So, baby,” Mom said, eating it like it was gnocchi with
real
cheese, “what's happened with Trixie?”

I didn't really want to talk about it, because it just kept getting worse. “She says she's going to practice and win.” I gagged.

“Don't believe it.” Mom kept eating.

Dad raised his glass. “Let the best girl win.” Then he took a bite of the fake mac and cheese and ran like he was covered in bugs.

Pen put her food in the compost can Pen had set up under the sink. It stank like you have no idea. “They'll find anything they can to disqualify her. That's just the way those kinds of people are.”

Pen stood up, starting to pace the way she always did when she tried to solve an injustice. “This is what you have to do: Get her cleaned up; a new leotard would help.” She went to her very own wallet, counted out forty big ones from the money she'd made tutoring kids at our old school, and handed them to me. Pen was rich, and worse, she was a hoarder. “I hate to condone this, but the only way for Marta to get a fair chance is to play their game, no matter how shocking it may be, so here.”

I pocketed the cash. “You know it's easier to brush a lion's mane, Pen,” I said tiredly, because you know what? I was tired. I just wanted to focus on Halloween, that's all. Instead I had to figure out how to get back to Reseda and risk being bitten, infected, and insulted one last time. Not to mention help her pick out leotards. But now it wasn't just for Marta; it was for me too. Sadly, our fates were linked.

The Pressure Is On, Big-Time

Before class started, Trix and Babs helped me hand out the invites to my Halloween party to my entire class. Yes, that's right, my
entire
class. Something I've never done before. Even Marta, God help me. I handed one to her, but at first she wouldn't take it.

“What's this?” She stared at it like it had been dipped in Black Death.

I slapped her hand with it. “An invitation to my Halloween party. Here.”

Marta read it, stared at it, and turned it upside down like she'd never seen anything like it in her life. I caught her stuffing it in her shirt like a thief.

Trix came up behind me. I could feel her hot breath all over me, and it was seriously getting on my nerves. “
When
are you going over there?”

I reached over and handed an invitation to Bobby, and the way he checked out my faux leather motorcycle jacket I had picked up at this tight thrift shop on Melrose called Wasteland made the whole groveling to get the party worth it.

Trix never left my side. “We're running out of time.”

“Her mom's gonna be there, Trixie,” I said tightly. “She's not dead. Come on, be serious.”

But she wasn't listening to me. “Around dinnertime or even later when her mom
has
to be home. Don't make me put the screws on.”

I was like, What's that supposed to mean? But then Mr. Lawson came in. “Happy Tuesday morning to you, class.” He opened his briefcase and took out a stack of papers. “Your essays.” He walked the aisles dropping them on our desks. “The winner of the essay competition is”—he did a lame drumroll sound—“hands down, Marta Urloff!” He stopped at her desk. “Wow!” He grabbed his heart. “It was beautiful; you captured the death and sadness of the animal shelters like I've never seen it done before. It”—he looked all teary—“broke my heart, you know.”

The rest of the class plugged their noses. That's what they always did whenever the teacher called her name. The jerks. Wait until she was standing up there with a giant hunk of gold around her neck, and they were all fat and watching it on their dumb TVs.

Later that afternoon, the time when most kids were out playing ball on their grassy lawns with their dads and their moms were cooking up a storm of cheesy delight for family dinner, I was standing on top of Marta's crunchy brown grass, looking at her brown house. And yet Marta was anything but brown. She may not have been the nicest person in the world, but she had a life force that was fierce.

 

 

I knocked on her door. Said a little chant I'd picked up on a self-realization website.
Let her mother answer, please, please, om, om, om . . .
The door swung open. Marta answered it in her standard dirty flappin' leotard and a scowl. “What do you want?” She stood, the late afternoon sun hitting her in the eye.

And so I began. “Last year I did something really stupid.” I took a deep breath and kicked the grass; I didn't want to look at Marta. “I got kicked out for it. I lost all my friends; we had to move; they forced me to see a shrink. It was bad.”

“So?” She shrugged, not interested at all.

“So we moved here for a clean start.”

“Great, good for you.” She was about to close the door when I stopped her.

“Trouble is, Marta,” I said heavily, “there are no clean starts. I'm pretty sure Trixie knows the whole story.” I waited for some kind of recognition, some kind of realization of what I'd gotten myself into. But she said nothing. “And she's blackmailing me with it.” Marta snorted. I took that as sympathy. “Yep, she's gonna tell everyone at school what I did unless I help her get you kicked out. That's all she wants, you out.”

Marta nodded like a robot, like she was used to this kind of thing. “And now she and her parents are looking into my permit?”

“Yeah,” but I could not say that they also believed her mother was dead, because somewhere deep inside me, I thought it could be true.

She leaned against the door like an old housewife. “All I want is to get out of here and never, ever look back. That's all.” She turned, leaving the door open.

I followed after her. “I can help you.”

“Why?” She snorted. “Why do you care? All you want is to be popular, to be
liked.
That's all.”

“Why?” I shrugged. “Because I'm a half full kinda gal, Marta. That's why.” I opened my bag, producing my framed diploma. “But I happen to hold my very own beauty-school certificate from an online salon based in the ultrafashionable city of Mumbai. I have my very own beauty dummy I have practiced on for a total of two hundred and fifty hours.” And that's not counting what I do to Felix when he's crashed out.

Marta cocked her head. “What are you going on about?”

“Look, if you want on that team, you'd better stop training and start plucking, brushing, bleaching, and styling, because no matter how good you are, you're gonna scare the crap out of the audience.” She didn't say anything. “I can help you win. I want you to win, not Trixie—”

But before I could even finish my sentence, she was gone. Then she was back again with long haircutting shears and a brush. She handed them to me. No one had ever given me scissors and begged me to cut their hair before. “All right, sit.”

I studied her in the mirror. I felt a little woozy. I was seriously overwhelmed. Her hair was matted high above her head; her teeth were the color of sunny-side-up eggs (and we're not talking the whites); her skin was pale and freckly around her nose (good) but red and peeling all around her nostrils (not good). She had a mustache. And a unibrow. Again, not so good.

I took the brush and tried to get through her mop the way you would normally brush hair, but this was no normal hair. “Um, Marta.” I yanked and pulled, but it wouldn't go through. “How long has it been since you brushed your hair?”

“I don't.”

“Why?”

“Never thought about it until it started itching,” she said, “and then it hurt too much.” She shrugged.

I ripped and pulled knots out of her head, and Marta did not cry. Chunks fell to the ground. “I hope your mom has a vacuum cleaner.”

“We do,” she said tightly.

I pulled more. “So when does she get home?”

“Late.” Even tighter.

I doused her with detangler spray from my bag. “She works until closing,” she added.

I pulled and I combed and I fished. “Where?”

“Bagel shop.”

Bagel shop? An Olympic gymnast?
What?
“Why does she work at a bagel shop?”

“Why not?” She looked up at me all of a sudden, real mean. “You got something against bagels?”

I pushed her head down. “Are you kidding me! I love bagels!” I held her head down with one hand and ripped the heck out of her hair with the other. She was the toughest person I'd ever seen; didn't flinch, didn't give a single cry. “Did you know your hair's actually blond?”

“No, it's not—just give me a mirror, all right?”

“In a minute. Head down.” I picked up the scissors and cut her hair straight across the neck. “Head up.” I walked around in front of her. “Close your eyes.” I took the huge chunk of mess that hung down, doused it with detangler, got the comb through it, and then I cut it off right below Marta's gangster unibrow.

She kept her eyes closed.

“Wait.” I evened out the sides, went to the back, and made sure it was even too. I took some of my favorite pomade from my bag, and I ran it through, making her hair shiny and flat, unrecognizable. Beautiful. I handed her the mirror.

Her eyes lit up; she opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out. She just stared at herself, repeating, “It's not me.”

“May I present a perfect bob with bangs.” Even I couldn't believe how good it looked.

Marta smiled at herself like she was a stranger, like she couldn't take her eyes off the mirror.

I looked at the clock; it was already five fifteen. “When your mom gets home, maybe we can borrow her tweezers and stuff, 'cause you got one nasty brow problem.”

“Let's just do it now.” She led me to the bathroom. “She won't mind.”

She opened the cupboards, and they were full of beauty products, organized in straight rows. “She always had to be perfect for competitions.” Marta touched her mom's stuff with delicate but shaky hands. “You can use it—just be careful with it, okay?”

I found the tweezers and positioned myself in front of her. “Close your eyes.”

“Why?”

“'Cause this is gonna hurt like you-know-what.” I grabbed a chunkful of brow hair, and I ripped out a row.

“Ouch!” Marta grabbed my wrist so hard, I felt her nails cutting my skin. “Stop it now! This is torture.”

Her skin was bright red where I'd ripped out the patch. I went for another hunk. “You want on the girls' team or the boys'?”

“Fine.” She dropped my wrist. “Do it.” I plucked and I ripped until the spot between her eyes was no longer a hedge. Then I got to work on her eyebrows and her chin. I told her to lie down.

She looked scared. “Why?”

I pointed to the carpeted spot between the toilet and the shower. “Just drop your head all the way back now.”

She clenched her teeth. I had always fantasized about doing this to Pen while she slept. I stuck those tweezers in Marta's nose, and I ripped those hairs right out. Marta screamed, water sprang to her eyes, she cried, but God love her, she didn't move. “No wonder you have so many boogers; it's like a Venus flytrap in there with all that hair.”

“It's the way Mother Nature intended.”

“If Mother Nature had a mirror, believe me, she would have ripped this nose forest out with her bare hands.”

Marta got up, her nose bright red, her eyes red with tears. She was about to leave when I threw up my leg. “Nope, now the teeth.” Her shoulders sagged. “Did you know they're supposed to be white, not yellow?”

“American propaganda.”

In her mom's stuff, there was like a year's supply of Crest Whitestrips. “Well, your mom sure knows it.” Which bugged me, because if her mom knew it, why did her daughter's teeth look like corn? It just didn't jibe, right?

“Have to be white for competitions. Open up.” I blanketed her fangs with bleaching strips. “Now these”—I turned to face her—“you have to wear these twice a day for as long as you can stand. Even if your gums start to melt, don't touch 'em, sleep with them.”

Marta pulled her lip over the strips and got up. “Now I want to show you something.” She walked across the living room and opened the sliding glass door. I followed her out into the walled square. All I wanted was for the dang door to fly open and her mom to walk through. That's it. Get permit fixed. Marta wins. Game over.

 

 

The grass was covered with mats; in addition to the bars, there were rings, a beam, parallel bars, a vault, and a pommel bar. She walked around, touching all the pieces like they were art. “They were my mom's.”

“I bet she practices here all the time,” I said, hoping.

She took the rings in her hands and, within seconds, she was upside down, her body like a blade. I don't think I've ever seen anyone so good at something in my life. Then suddenly she was spinning round and round so fast, her new bob whipping around until she flew into a dismount, her back arched, her face pointed up to her patch of sky.

“Wow!” I clapped. She beamed. That's when I noticed the skin rash we still had to deal with.

I pushed her back into the bathroom. “Come on, time for some serious exfoliation.” When I got the scrub from the shower, I saw all kinds of nasty rose shampoos, a sure sign of an old lady. “Sit.” I opened the apricot scrub and removed at least a few layers of skin. I went for more; I went for pink.

She opened her eyes, and I noticed for the first time that they were a greenish brown. She closed them and got serious. “I'm the best gymnast in the school, but they don't want me on the team because they think I'm gross, that I'm ugly, even though I'd make them win.” She was getting a little wound up; I could see the whitening strip move. Not good.

“Whatever you do, don't cry. We gotta take years of yellow off those teeth.” I started to wipe off the mud mask I'd applied, and she closed her eyes and looked pretty peaceful. So I decided to ask what I'd been wanting to ask her all day, the question that would pretty much tell me everything I needed to know. “Marta, did your mom get your permit renewed?”

She started to cry. “Am I done?”

 

 

“Yep.” I rinsed, moisturized, applied some of her mom's light foundation, mascara, and lipstick, and brushed her silky hair. “I think you're done.”

Marta got up and looked at herself in the mirror. Slowly her chest began to heave, her eyes spilled tears like they'd been storing them
forever
, her mascara ran, and her whitening strips filled with spit. “I'm sorry, I need a second.” She pushed me out of the bathroom.

I knew it in my heart, but now it was time to see it with my own eyes. I tiptoed down the hall and opened the first door. The walls were covered with posters of majestic gymnasts flying through the air. The bed was unmade; horrible clothes were everywhere; on the floor were stacks of newspapers, scissors, food coupons. I quickly opened the next room, her mother's room, as still as death. Nothing out of place. Curtains drawn, mirrored closets closed, slippers by the untouched bed, and on the plump pillow, her medals. When I touched them, a film of dust came away on my fingers. The door squeaked. Marta was standing there. The jig was up.