Dear Opl (11 page)

Ollie, in his Xena,Warrior Princess breastplate, licked his platter clean, as he often does, and announced, “I would like to have this every day for every meal from now on.”

G-pa sat back and put his hands on his stomach, nodding. “I used to have ham and eggs for breakfast every day in the service. Kept us going all day long. They used to say, ‘Ham and eggs. A day's work for a chicken. A lifetime commitment for a pig.'”

Ollie laughed so hard I thought he'd spray milk nose jets all over the table.

“I'll tell you what,” G-pa said to us as Mom collected the plates. “I'll pay you each a dollar for every breakfast you have this week that doesn't come from a friggin' box.”

Ollie's eyes lit up. I sagged a little thinking about no Pop-Tarts or Cocoa Puffs. Yes, technically Mom got rid of all our cereals after Dr. Friedman axed my regular breakfast beauties, and technically threw them away, replacing them with all foods beige and boring. But technically, I know which shelf Pop Diggerman stores them on for kids just like me. They go down just as well without milk in the morning when I eat them in my closet before coming down for “breakfast.”

My problem is lying to G-pa. I can't do it. I've never been able to do it. He'd know in half a heartbeat if I tried.

I slumped a little further. How would I survive in school without my morning merriment? But a dollar a day would end up with a nice chunk of change to blow at Diggerman's. Except the whole sugar thing was like a weight on my shoulders and saddled around my middle.

• • •

The first morning was easy, as I just fixed the egg mess from the night before. We had leftover bits of everything—except the spores, which we
accidentally
threw away. Ollie was thrilled and went to school dressed as Astarte, the Greek goddess of fertility, in honor of breakfast. I wasn't so sure Mom would take to the idea of him using one of our best bedsheets and wearing her gold flip-flops to school, but since she'd already left for work, who was I to stop him?

The next couple of days weren't so bad because I still had the recipe and ingredients to make the super smoothies from the Grunch's cookbook. I even found leftover oatmeal—enough to make everyone breakfast. Thankfully, G-pa didn't catch Ollie and me making the gray goop taste a lot better with a monumental slathering of maple surple—that was “Dad speak” for syrup. More than halfway through the week, I pulled our jar of Smucker's Goober PB & J down from the pantry shelf and realized someone had put it back empty. I went up to G-pa with the container. “Houston? We've got a problem.”

He eyed the jar with the same look you would give to a pile of dog poo you just stepped into on your front lawn.

“This was supposed to be breakfast this morning. See?” I held up the jar. “Not from a box.”

He shook his head and shrugged.

“G-pa, the problem is there's no peanut butter in here.” I wiggled the jar again.

G-pa snorted like a hog who heard a good joke. “There never was to begin with, girlie.”

“I don't get it.”

He slid his feet off of Mr. Muttonchops, who could spot the peanut butter jar from fifty paces and was eager to double check my findings. “Look at the back of the label. It's full of crap you can't pronounce and isn't food in the first place. It's a science project. Just chemicals and pond scum.”

I twisted the jar around to see the ingredients. G-pa made his way into the kitchen. “Read it,” he growled while opening the fridge.

“Peanuts and grape juice,” I shouted into the kitchen.

“Keep going.”

“High fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, dextrose, vegetable mono-something-er-other—it says from palm so maybe it came from Hawaii.”

“Anything else?” he asked, head still in the fridge.

“Yeah, there's pectin and salt and some sort of acid, plus two more things from our periodic table of elements that I think Mr. Inkster keeps behind the locked glass cabinets in our science room.”

I walked into the kitchen with the jar just as G-pa came out of the fridge and plunked down a container of something I hadn't seen before, placing it beside my empty Goobers.

“Read this.”

I picked it up, turning to look at the label. “Roasted, salted peanuts,” I read aloud.

G-pa looked at me with those heavy eyes he can make when he really wants me to learn something. “All they do is smush 'em. This,” he said, tapping on the cap, “is the real McCoy. Taste it.”

I unscrewed the cap and dipped a finger in. I put the brown glob to my nose. It smelled like the time Dad took us all to the state fair, and I saw the big roasting peanut vendors lining the sides of the fairway. Through the white wisps of smoke and steam, a silver scoop would shoot out in front of you, a carnie ready to pour the warm peanuts into your hand to taste.

I put the goop in my mouth and closed my eyes. I traveled back in time. Back to when everything was perfect. I had one hand holding Dad's and one hand holding cotton candy. In front of me stood the Ferris wheel, whirling slowly around. Children whooped and squealed in the fun house as we walked by. Ollie slumped in a backpack over Mom's shoulders, slack jawed and sleepy from the sticky Virginia heat. It was perfect. Perfect. Perfect.

“Opal?” G-pa's hand paused on my head. “You're leaking.”

I opened my eyes. Tears made everything blurry. I hadn't realized I had started to cry.

“Does it taste bad?” His voice grew so soft.

I shook my head. “It just remembers good.”

All throughout my class, I kept looking around at the people—Mr. Stretchy, Hannah Hammertoes, the Fishbowl. I wondered why they came to class every week. Maybe to get better. I wanted to get better. I didn't want to end up sad like Rudy, wishing I'd done things differently. At the end of the class, Aura had us all practice a silent meditation exercise for ten minutes. She said we should try to focus on our “inner-eye truth.” I wasn't so sure I knew what this meant, but everyone else got down to business, so I pretended. G-pa says if you don't know what you're doing and you can't ask for help, act like someone who knows what they're doing and there's a chance you'll get lucky.

Shrugging, I figured at least I could concentrate on the truth part. I decided to list ten things I knew to be true.

1. I loved Mom, Ollie, and G-pa.

2. I missed my dad.

3. Music from the '70s was a big mistake no one will admit to.

4. I was starting to change my mind about the Grunch. Yes, he was VP for the dark side, but the dark side now served cookies. And not the kind that came in a box.

5. Cooking made me a little bit happy.

6. My blog was turning from a nightmare newsletter into more of a recipe report and chow chat. And I was super careful not to criticize in case Summer still read it.

7. The Fishbowl had baked beans for lunch.

8. I was yawning less in school, peeing less in the bathroom, and buying less at Diggerman's.

9. If you yell for eight years, seven months, and six days, you will produce enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee. If you fart consistently for six years and nine months, you'll make enough gas to create the energy of an atomic bomb. That one I learned from Ollie.

10. Rudy needs a job.

It was kind of funny when you stopped to think about it. Rudy had a sign that said, “Will work for food” and the Grunch had been lecturing me on how “Food should work for you.” It was also funny that Rudy couldn't find anyone to work for and Mom couldn't find anyone to work for her. Since Mom couldn't afford to pay anyone money for the work she needed doing, and Rudy would do just about anything for a meal, I could solve both their problems by just making a little bit extra at dinnertime and bringing it to Rudy the next day as payment for working in Mom's shop. On top of it all, I was making the Grunch's food work extra hard for me by helping to get Summer back. I think I suddenly realized what Dr. Friedman meant in her office. So much of my life revolved around hunger. I whooped with the discovery. And then realized we were all still meditating.

• • •

Polkadotsanddoodles:
Dear Opl, My brother has become the most uncaring and unfeeling human being I have ever come across. Whenever my cat makes an appearance, the one I've just gotten for my birthday, he makes a point of chasing after her to scare her or kicking her if he's close enough. Then he claims it's either all in fun or an accident. I'm ready to give him a taste of his own medicine because I love her more than anything and she doesn't deserve this.

Dear Doodles,

It sounds to me like your brother feels “kicked” out of his spot. Am I right in guessing he was a decent dude prior to the pussycat? If yes, I have a solution for you. Tell him kicking kittens is a big-time crime. Smashing chickens on the other hand, is a win-win game. Not only will he lose his frustrations by whacking the heck out of these guys, but the bonus is…DINNER!

I'm not talking about taking two live chickens and making them join forces at ramming speed. I'm talking about getting deceased chickens. The kind you find in your grocery store. But don't buy all of a chicken. Just their breasts. The butcher will have kindly put them into a package of maybe two to four. At home, wash and pat dry the skinless, boneless beauties, lay them—one a piece—on top of some of plastic wrap. Now throw a little salt and pepper over each. Maybe a dash or two of herbs like marjoram or basil. Toss a fistful of shredded Parmesan cheese on top, and then lay a piece of prosciutto over it like a snug, pink blanket. Finish off by laying one more piece of plastic wrap over the whole mess.

Next, pick out the heaviest but smallest flat-bottomed pan in your cupboards, raise it above your head, and proceed with the chicken smash dance. This super-satisfying routine rocks and must have background music. Try Carl Orff's “O Fortuna.” Listen to it on YouTube. You'll know why I chose it. It is the perfect cooking soundtrack.

Lastly, get yourself a frying pan and put a few glugs of olive oil in it. Heat it to medium. Plop your walloped white meat into it and watch it sizzle for about three minutes. Flip it like a burger and drool for another three minutes. Turn off heat. Slide onto plate and serve with a smile. Many will flash back at you no matter what troubles you have caused them. Everyone is friends. You can send me thank-you notes afterward. Or bank notes. Your choice.

Namaste,

Opl

I closed the lid to my laptop and chewed on my lip, remembering how good it felt to whack the bejeebies out of the chicken when G-pa and I made it a couple of days ago. In fact, it felt so good, I didn't want to stop, but we'd run out of chicken. I watched G-pa go into the pantry and rootle around for a minute. He'd come back with a five-pound sack of flour. We turned the music up higher and went to town.

I sure hope it'll work for Doodles. I feel better just thinking about it.

I couldn't sleep, wrestling with the decision I needed to make. But by the time my Nooby alarm clock buzzed—the kind that looks like an alien and has to be throttled by its neck to shut off—I'd made up my mind. I'd figured out how to handle this new employer/employee relationship. My plan was taking shape. Maybe.

I caught Mom at the front door before she left for work and told a tiny fib.

“Our teachers have assigned us to do some community service during the next month, so I thought I'd help clean up the bookshop after school a little bit each day. Okay?”

Mom blinked with surprise. “Well…I leave each day at four to work my shift at the library. That's a really nice thought, but I can't be there to supervise.”

I knew she'd say this, which is why it was the only way my plan would work. “Just leave me a note with what you want done and give me the spare key. I'll be fine.”

I could see mom wrestle with the idea. I bet she'd say no. I bet she wouldn't even see that I was making this huge effort to help her. I just wanted the old mom back. But I could see her fighting it. It was probably easier staying grumpy and mean. Just as I rolled my eyes and made a giant sigh, she said, “Okay.”

Now I was the surprised one. “Okay?” My eyebrows popped up.

Mom nodded, searched her purse for the spare key, and then gave me a hug. “Thanks, Opal. I mean it. Thanks.” She gave the top of my head a kiss and left for work.

Part one: Mom. Mission accomplished. Next up on deck: Rodeo Rudy.

• • •

At lunchtime, I thought my bad night's sleep had finally caught up with me. I swore my eyes played tricks when I saw Summer head my way toward our leafless beech tree. She slid onto the bench and gave me a shy smile. I held my breath, wondering what to say. Her lips were pressed together, almost like she'd sealed them from working. After a second, she said, “I've been reading your blog.”

I couldn't hold back the massive grin that spread across my face. I'm fairly sure it was the largest one I'd had so far this year. “I think I'm on my nineteenth amendment.”

“Your what?”

I nodded, searching the sky while counting. “Yep. Nineteenth. That would have been last night.”

Summer's eyes narrowed. “Sorry, you've lost me there. The nineteenth amendment is about women's suffrage. What are you on about?”

I made a small snort. “That was so true in the beginning,” I said, showing her the tip of my thumb, “but things are definitely changing. I'm talking about my blog and my cooking. I chose to make amends to you by cooking my way through the Grun—I mean Alfie Adam's recipe book.”

Summer's face went red, and she squished her lips together again. “I'm sorry.”

“For what?”

“I guess I was a little harsh. Well…actually, Ethan told me I was unforgivably harsh.”

I loved listening to Summer speak. Her words were like caramels, all chewy and sweet. Hearing her say Ethan's name, though, that made me goose-bumpy.

She went on. “He said it was all well and good to stand up for one's countryman, but more important to sit down with a friend. I wasn't there when you really needed me…so…I apologize. Can we be friends again?”

My face felt like it split in two. Ethan will definitely be my favorite husband. “You don't need to taste anything I've been cooking? Just to make sure I sprinkled in enough sorrow with my salt and pepper?”

Summer shook her head and laughed at me. And with that, it was as if we'd never argued. We went right into talking like always.

• • •

On my way home from school later, I handed Rudy a Tupperware of Smashed Chicken Parmesan and a key to the bookshop.

“You start work tonight, but nobody can know about it. It's a surprise. Let's get going.”

Rudy's face smoothed out from its usual rumpled, bedcover wrinkles. His eyes went wide, the size of two old, brown pennies. “You got me some work? What will I be doing?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “Not hauling hay bales. More likely hauling heavy books.”

“Books?” Rudy's face went back to extra wrinkly.

“Come on, I'll show you.” I waved him on, and we walked quickly, crisscrossing the roads until we arrived on Main Street, right in front of the shabby, old store. I pointed at Mom's “Coming Soon” sign. “My mom owns this bookshop, Bound to Please. Remember you cleaned these windows? The shop is supposed to open before Christmas, but there's so much work to do, she'll never make it on her own. She needs extra help but can't afford to pay.” I pointed at his sign
Will
work
for
food
. “So, I'll pay you and you help her, except she can't find out you're working here. You have to come in after she goes home.”

I told him to try the key to the front door and we walked inside. I flipped a switch, turning on the bare-bulbed lights that revealed cardboard boxes, two dented, aluminum folding chairs, and a fat mouse, blinking his tiny marble eyes at us from his perch on a bare, dusty bookshelf.

I turned to face Rudy. “I hope you like dust, cuz you and dirt are going to be best friends for a while.”

He raised one of his caterpillar eyebrows. The message was,
Look
at
me
.

“Sorry,” I said. “Just don't forget that my mom can't know about all this. Deal?”

He nodded, but then I saw his eyebrows draw together with worry. “Why can't you tell her 'bout me working?”

Because
she'll take one look at you and decide dirt plus ponytail plus limp equals not-gonna-happen.
I made it look like I was late for something as I slung my book bag over my shoulder and then glanced at my watch. “I told you, it's my surprise for her. You simply start cleaning up. She won't notice for a while. I'll figure out when we let her know. See you tomorrow!”

Part two: Rudy. Bull's-eye.

• • •

The next day, I told Summer about my plan for Rudy and Mom. She did not find it nearly as clever as I did. That's the bummer about having a true friend. They are not afraid to tell you things you'd rather they kept to themselves. Like your joke wasn't funny or your breath stinks; here's some gum.

Summer looked at me like I had sent Lord Voldemort into Mom's bookshop with an ax and a chain saw. “How could you do that? Think of what could happen.” This was Summer's
the
queen
is
freaking
out
voice.

“You mean like the store could get cleaned, boxes could get moved, shelves could get stocked, and all at the incredible price of
free
?”

“I think it's a bad idea. You don't really know him. He could be dangerous. He's a grown-up and they're tricky. Let it be noted.”

I slumped, a sack of disappointment hovering over a lunch tray with the special of the day wafting smelly fumes up my nose.

The special today was something called
kimchi
. Chef Scary Jerry, who over the past month had altered the entire cafeteria to resemble the inside of a giant human body, had taken things too far.

To get to the lunchroom, you walked through a door that has a massive set of teeth and lips painted all around it. Then you slid along a dimly lit hallway painted to resemble the inside of an esophagus. The squiggly pink and flesh-toned paint was enough to curb your hunger and have you turn back to math class. But some were the daring type and arrived into the J-shaped sack. This is the stomach/cafeteria, made stretchy looking with colossal swatches of peach and pink fabric on the ceiling.

If you're thirsty, you went to the “gastric juice” coolers. You'd find water with a blue label, water with a silver label, and milk with no label. All of the milks snowy white. No shades of strawberry pink unless you held it next to the ceiling swatches.

The pasta station, a swirly serpentine trough, mimicked your intestines. I tried to visit it often because it didn't see a lot of action. I liked it better than the salad station, which displayed Chef Patricia's stenciled quote on the wall above it: “Eat your dark, leafy greens. They contain chlorophyll—the blood of the plant.” That brought us running. Yum, blood.

We had a cheese trolley, which wasn't so much a cheese trolley but a cow on wheels that mooed when rolled from one side of the room to the other. You could flip open the cow's back to reveal a marble slab in its belly and three cheeses of the day to choose from. Every day at least one of them had gone spotty with blue or green flecks by the time it rolled over to my side of the room. Summer said they're supposed to look like that. I ate the ones that were fleckless.

And I don't know how many times Mr. and Mrs. “Eat your veggies” would make us try their weekly “meatless meat.” Tofurky, Better-than-Beef, Wham and soy cheese sandwiches, and Quorn are all science lab trials having run amok.

The sweets counter held nothing but fresh fruit and anything you could make with carob. It should be a crime under penalty of death to utter the words “Chocolate-less Chocolate.” Our “Chef-less Chefs” painted another flourishing art display above the sweets counter. A quote by William Shakespeare: “Things sweet to taste prove in digestion sour.” Now, not only do the chefs see glaring, angry children bellying up to the dessert bar, but they have hate mail coming from the English department because there has been a mass student ban on all things related to English playwrights.

Regardless, today's “Try Something New” campaign was failing big-time. Once one person Googled
kimchi
, everyone received the copied text as fast as their wireless network could move. Kimchi is a Korean dish made of fermented vegetables. Fermented. As in gone past the sell-by date.
Merriam-Webster
says
ferment
means: a disturbed or uneasy state.

Chef Nonfatty Patty walked around with a big tray in her plastic-gloved hands trying to hand out samples. It might have gone better if she wasn't advertising her wares with the selling point, “Let's put some good bacteria in your intestines today.”

The problem began after seeing the growing number of
I've just been tricked into putting my nose into a baby's diaper
faces. The problem continued with confirmation. Yes, kimchi smelled like stinky feet. In fact, most of us had no doubt it was stinky feet. But feet would be considered meat, right? So it's possible we were wrong. But still, vegetables with that odor usually got buried at the bottom of the kitchen garbage basket. Ugh.

Sadly, I forfeited my “I tried something new” sticker and passed on the stinky feet in a paper cup sample. Summer, on the other hand, asked if the tray could be left at our table since no one else wanted it, except Ethan, whose shirt was plastered with stickers. He still wrote encouraging comments on my blog. I sighed looking at him across the cafeteria, under another organ mural that said, “A balanced diet of proteins and carbohydrates will help to produce the healthy mucus your stomach needs!”

Glancing back at Summer, I saw a glow on her face that looked just like Ollie's on Christmas morning. “Opal, you have no idea what you're missing. This is brill.”

“Summer, you've convinced me to change my mind about a lot during the last couple of months, but you're on your own with this gunk.”

She took a giant mouthful of what looked like a cesspool of rotting cabbage, chewed, closed her eyes in blissful happiness, swallowed, and then said, “Changed your mind? About what?”

“My blog. I wanted to stop, but you convinced me to keep going. You were right. I'm enjoying it.”

She grinned. “It's been a huge hit at school. Have you heard what everyone is saying?”

“What they're saying? You mean they've figured out it's me?”

Summer shook her head. “Nope. No one knows who it is, but I hear kids quoting you all the time. You're a secret success.” She winked at me.

“You mean, even though my name shows up as the writer, no one suspects it's me?”

Summer rolled her eyes. “Heavens, no. There are plenty of other Opals out there in the world. And loads of people don't even
use
their real name. You could be one of a gazillion people writing that blog. Just enjoy your invisibility. Now tell me, what else have I changed your mind about?”

Enjoy
my
invisibility?
I was surprised to hear I finally had it. But I never expected to hear I was a success either. “I guess maybe the whole Alfie Adam bit.”

She stopped mid-forkful. “You changed your mind about the
Grunch
?” She made my nickname for him sound sinister, like even if you mixed the worst parts of Voldemort and Darth Vader, you'd still not make a dent on the scale of evil.

“Kind of. Like I said yesterday, it was part of my amending plan to you. To make up for the brutal blog.” Of course, I'd sooner die than tell her I'd become an addict to his cheerful, stutter-infused YouTube videos. I hadn't tattooed his name around my upper arm or anything. But I noticed certain things were changing. I wasn't hungry all of the time. Or maybe I wasn't thinking about food all of the time. But that's not necessarily true either. I thought about food. I thought about
recipes
. And how happy that food made Ollie and G-pa, and even Mom. Maybe we weren't the perfect family, but we sat together to eat now. G-pa said we had to sit for at least half an hour at the table.