Minerva Clark Gets a Clue (2 page)

“You are such a wuss,” he said.

I could feel my cheeks heat up, like there was a little campfire burning inside each one. “I am not.”

“We can put it on light difficulty.”

I didn't say anything.

“You're turning into one of those girly girls who doesn't want to get her hair messed up.”

“That is so not true!” I said. Of course it was true. I didn't want to get my hair messed up. I'd spent twenty minutes in front of the bathroom mirror that morning patting on something I'd bought at Rite Aid
with my babysitting money, a green serum with the consistency of snot, which was supposed to get rid of my frizzies.

The wispy mustache guys finished their game and left. Reggie hopped on the dance pad and started feeding quarters into the machine. This was so easy for him. He was short and quick. He did not have feet so big people made jokes about how somewhere a circus clown was missing his shoes.

I stepped onto the pad, positioned my feet on the arrows, and knew I'd made a big mistake. I'd forgotten I'd worn the biggest boats I owned. My purple Chuck Taylors were lost somewhere in my room, so I'd grabbed a pair of gigantic white Nikes.

There was one other thing. Quills had told me to leave my ferret, Jupiter, at home. But there was no way. Ferrets are creatures who like companionship. I take Jupiter everywhere I go, except to school. Most of the time, he just sleeps in the pocket of my hoodie. He was asleep now, but he wouldn't be for long.

The music started. It beeped and bleated and Reggie stepped and stomped. I tried to follow the arrows on the screen telling me where to put my feet, but every time I moved I stepped on my own toe.

Then Jupiter woke up with a start. I had to squeeze both sides of my pouch shut so he wouldn't escape.
He didn't like that. He leaped around inside my pocket.

I started sweating. I could smell my BO. I had been so busy with the green anti-frizz serum that I'd forgotten to put on deodorant. How stupid could I be?

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a flash of red and blue, people entering the arcade. They stopped behind me and Reggie to watch. I could hear them talking, laughing. I knew if I turned to look I would get farther behind in my steps. I tried to concentrate on the flashing arrows and bounce along with the music. I couldn't help it. I turned right around and there were Julia and the two Chelseas.

When Hannah and I were in a fight, she sometimes hung out with Julia at lunchtime, but that was only if one of the Chelseas was absent. Chelsea Evans was lactose intolerant and was always in the nurse's office with a stomachache, and Chelsea de Guzman's parents took her out of school a lot to go on fancy vacations to places like Prague and Aspen. They were the ones who started calling me Gigantor. The Chelseas that is, not Chelsea de Guzman's parents.

They'd stopped at DDR to watch the show. I heard giggling as I clomped around. Why didn't I just stop? I knew I should have told Reggie no. I knew I should have told Quills no. I hated how I always said yes when I didn't want to.

Then I heard one of them say the word “spaz.”

I felt both pitted-out sweaty and like I was going to cry. The pink and blue arrows got blurry. The music pounded in my head. I lost my balance and crashed into Reggie. He didn't miss a beat. The giggles behind me turned to snorting laughter, the kind that makes you laugh even harder.

That's when I missed a step and the edge of my foot landed on the edge of the dance pad, my ankle twisted, and I fell off. Jupiter was thrashing around my pocket. I worried about squishing him, so I turned as I fell and landed on my back, right onto the dirty, fried-food smelling carpet. My head went
clunk!
I'd knocked the wind out of myself.

I looked up into the faces of Julia and the Chelseas. Their straight swingy hair hung like show dog ears on either side of their skinny heads. I would never have that hair. Julia and Chelsea Evans had their hands clamped to their mouths, but I could still see their smiles. Chelsea de Guzman was madly text messaging someone.

Julia squeaked, “Oh my God, are you all right?”

They all burst out laughing. Reggie kept on stomping around on the dance pad.

I caught my breath, rolled over onto my knees, and got on all fours. I was face-to-face with the egg-smooth
knees of Chelsea de Guzman, who was wearing a stone-washed jean miniskirt. Her knees wobbled around as she shrieked with laughter. It was the hysteria that kicks in when you start laughing so hard because you are laughing so hard. I got to my knees, brushed the ancient food crumbs and gunk from the bottom of a thousand shoes off my palms. Reggie was deep into his madman dance, his thick brown bangs bouncing off his shiny-with-sweat forehead. He would not help me. Quills and Toc would not help me.

I lurched to my feet and ran out of Tilt, past the movie theater, past Sbarro's and Chicken Connection and McDonald's Express, and down the long corridor that led to the bathrooms. No one was there. I locked myself in one of the stalls but didn't even pretend to go to the bathroom. For some reason I remembered last year's talent show. Quills had convinced me to sing “I Wanna Be Sedated” by the Ramones, and an eighth-grade boy yelled out, “
We
want you to be sedated,” and everyone laughed so hard it made me forget the words, and I just stood up there with the campfires blazing in my cheeks.

I sat on the toilet in my stall for what seemed like eight hundred years, sobbing like some stupid baby. Ladies came in and out, but no one noticed me at all. I tried to pull out a piece of toilet paper to blow my nose, but it
was a fat roll crammed into its holder and all I could rip off were scraps.

Was this what my entire life was going to be like? Or was this simply what happened on the worst day of your life?

If this sort of thing happened to Julia, the two Chelseas, Hannah, or Reggie, I never saw it. They had small bodies that were easy to control. They had normal-sized feet. Even Reggie's head of springy brown hair wasn't like mine—a thick snarl that was curly in front, wavy on the sides, and straight in back. My hair could be the monster in a sci-fi movie.

I reached inside the pouch of my hoodie to pet Jupiter. Once on Animal Planet I saw a show about ferrets and how they can sense a person's feelings. Jupiter probably would have rather been dashing around playing, but he stretched out flat along the bottom of my pouch so I could run my hand over his soft white fur, trying to calm myself down.

Then I walked around the mall for a while, half waiting for Reggie to realize that I wasn't coming back to Tilt. I thought as my secret best friend he would come in search of me. Quills would kill me for leaving Tilt without telling him, but I didn't even care. I found a dollar on the ground and bought myself an Orange
Julius, stuck my snarly hair inside my hood, and started walking home.

While I was walking, I thought up a new rebus.

DKI

Mixed-up kid. I thought it wasn't bad.

I HAD WALKED ABOUT SIX
blocks when I heard a car zoom past. It was one of those wild spring Portland days where it rains really hard for about three minutes, then the sun comes out. The car stopped at the corner and waited. It was a red Jetta, and it was jacked up just a little in the back, kind of perky. On a normal day, a day that was not the worst day of your life, getting a ride in the rain would be a most excellent thing. Today, though, it was another of the strange, upsetting things that would happen.

Although I didn't recognize the car, I knew right away it must be my cousin Jordan, on account of the bumper sticker: BLOND IF YOU'RE HONK. Ha ha ha. Everyone knew Jordan got the best grades in the entire world. She
got higher than straight A's. (How is that even possible?) She had straight light brown hair—the kind that turns blond in the summertime—and played lacrosse, that sport where you wear a plaid skirt. She was perfect. She had been my favorite cousin since the day at Little Acorns Preschool when I learned what the word meant. Jordan never had a zit that I saw or got food stuck in her teeth. She was girly in a good way. She wore pink T-shirts sometimes, but she didn't have a fit if a spider showed up in the kitchen. In the last year my feelings for her had gotten more complicated, like everything in my life. On the days I didn't want to be her, I hated her for her perfection.

At the time I didn't wonder where Jordan had gotten the red Jetta. Later, I would wonder about it a lot.

She tooted the horn, and I walked across the wet grass on the parking strip and opened the car door. Jupiter had fallen back asleep, making me look as if I had a big, middle-aged man stomach roll. I didn't care. Well, actually, I did care, but not enough to wake Jupiter up and take him out.

Jordan was on her cell. She waved me inside the car. Her cheeks were blotchy red and she was madly fingering one of her big hoop earrings, the kind I'd love to wear but am too young for, like I am for all the good stuff.

As I slid into the Jetta, Jordan said, “Dude, what part
of ‘not interested' don't you understand?” She snapped the phone closed and dropped it on the hump between the seats.

“Need a ride somewhere?” she asked.

“Sure. Just home.”

“Okey doke,” she said.

“I love your car!” I said. It was true, even though it sounded as if I was sucking up. “When did you get it?”

“Hmmm, don't know, three months ago maybe? I've been saving, like, forever. Like since I was your age.”

“Wow,” I said. I didn't know how much a car cost, but I figured out that meant she'd been saving a lot for a long time. I felt embarrassed being in Jordan's cute, very clean car. I could still smell the sour grime from the arcade on me. The knees of my too big khakis were dirty from where I'd fallen.

I was quiet. She was quiet. Then suddenly, as if I'd just gotten in, Jordan turned to me and said, “Minerva Clark! How tall are you now?” She wore a fakey nice smile, where her mouth turned up but her eyes looked worried.

“I don't know.” I hate it when people talk about how tall I am. Last year in sixth grade, at the end of the year, I won an award for Tallest Girl in the Class. Hannah won Friendliest Girl. Being friendly was something a person could actually
do
. Getting a prize for being tall was like
getting a prize for having blood that circulated through your heart.

“And what grade are you in now? Sixth?” asked Jordan.

“Seventh.”

“Wow, seventh grade.”

Is this what happens to people who are about to graduate from high school? Suddenly they start acting like one of those moms who makes lame adultlike boring conversation just to have something to say? It was May, and I'd last seen Jordan at Easter, for the Annual Clark Family Million Dollar Easter Egg Hunt. (Quills hides dozens of plastic eggs around our yard with five-dollar bills inside; one egg has a twenty.) Obviously, I'd been in seventh grade then, too.

“Do you mind if we stop at Under the Covers before I drop you off? It's on the way.”

“Sure. Whatever.” Like I had a choice. The worst day of my life wouldn't be a true worst day unless it also involved some stupid, boring errand that seemed pointless and took about eight hundred years.

Under the Covers was a little bookstore on a wide street that had a lot of Asian restaurants, dry cleaners, nail salons, and a bead shop where my mom used to make bracelets before she and my dad got divorced a little over two years ago.

Jordan parked in front of the pizza-by-the-slice place next to the bookstore. The minute I opened the car door I got a big whiff of that hot cheese smell, my favorite food smell in all the world. I tipped my head up and sniffed.

“Smells good, don't it?” said a deep, craggy voice.

My insides jumped, although I didn't show it on the outside. A homeless guy was lazing against the low concrete wall that ran between the pizza-by-the-slice place and Under the Covers. He wore an orange bandana tied pirate-style around his head and had a white Boxer-type dog lying beside him on the sidewalk. The dog was missing one of her front legs. I tried not to stare, even though it was only a dog.

As I passed by I couldn't help myself. I reached out and gave the dog a rub on the head with my knuckles. She closed her eyes, tipped her head up. I swear she smiled a little with her rubbery black lips.

The homeless guy had been leaning back on one hand. The other hand he held in his lap, the fingers closed and bent in a way that reminded me of a wilted lily. My grandpa had had a stroke, and he had a hand like that, useless. The homeless guy straightened up suddenly and reached out and across his body. I jumped. I thought maybe he was going to grab my ankle or something, but he was just repositioning himself so he could give his dog a good scratch behind the ears. “She's
a good old girl,” he said. “Can't imagine life without her.”

Jordan grabbed me by the upper arm and whispered, “Don't do that!”

I didn't know whether she meant pet the dog or be nice to the homeless guy. I didn't seem to ever know anything.

Inside the bookstore an old lady was standing at the counter. She had a long gray braid down her back and a tattoo of dancing fairies twirling around and up her arm. They shouldn't even let a lady with a long gray braid into a tattoo parlor. It should be like the reverse of a bar, where, if you're over twenty-one, they boot you out.

The guy behind the counter handed the lady a pen and watched while she wrote her check. When he looked up and saw Jordan and me standing there, he jumped in that way people do when someone comes up behind them and goes
Boo!

“Jordan. How you doing?” Jordan is one of those girls no one is ever unhappy to see.

“Hey, Dwight,” said Jordan.

Dwight took the lady's check, looked at it carefully, circled something on the front, and then slipped it beneath the cash drawer in the register.