The Perfect Place (12 page)

“You could get arrested for this,” Terrance says.

“Go on and call the sheriff, Yuck Mouth,” Jaguar says. “I'll tell him you three did it, and he'd believe me, too. Him and my daddy been tight for years.”

Jaguar glances at Terrance, daring him to call the sheriff. Terrance doesn't move.

“That's what I thought,” Jaguar says, and turns to Pamela and her Hershey bar. “That's all you're gonna take?”

Pamela mutters something about having just eaten. Jaguar rolls her eyes. “Whatever,” she says. “Watch this.”

With a swipe of her arm, Jaguar knocks the contents of one shelf to the floor, then another. Packs of Skittles and M&M's plummet down, followed by Kit Kats and Twix bars.

“You can't do that!” Tiffany shouts, but Jaguar is on a roll. By the time she decides to stop, the floor around her is covered in Great-Aunt Grace's merchandise. After kicking the mess around and stomping it a few times, Jaguar calmly plucks a pack of unscathed sour watermelons off the floor and brings them over to the counter along with her pack of gum.

“I'll take these,” she says. “You getting that, Pam?” She points at the Hershey bar Pamela's been holding.

Pamela hardly seems capable of speech. She shakes her head.

“Whatever,” Jaguar says, shrugging. She takes out a crumpled dollar bill and tosses it on the counter.

“You're bugging, Jaguar,” Terrance says.

“Shut up, Yuck Mouth,” Jaguar snaps. “Let's go, Pam.”

Before they leave, Pamela puts the chocolate bar back on the shelf where it belongs.

“Be seeing y'all,” Jaguar calls sweetly over her shoulder. The door swings shut behind them.

“They won't be seeing
me,
” I say.

“Or me,” Tiffany puts in.

“They will if Ms. Washington sends you to Camp Jesus Saves tomorrow,” says Terrance.

“Wait. Camp?” Tiffany says slowly.

“Yes. Camp. With those two lunatics. I can't believe Jaguar did this,” I say.

I go around the counter to inspect the damage. There are packs of candy everywhere. “We'll never get all this back on the shelves before Great-Aunt Grace gets back. She's going to kill us.”

“She is,” Terrance agrees.

Tiffany says, “I love camp. Remember Camp Dream Lake, Jeanie?”

I remember poison ivy and an asthma attack from a forced hike up the side of a mountain. I bet Jaguar and Pamela will leave me with even worse memories.

“We're not going to camp,” I tell Tiffany. “Now, help me clean this place up.”

Terrance hurries around the counter to help. While Tiffany stays put on her stool, Terrance and I pick up candy by the handful and all but throw it on the shelves, trying to get it all fixed before Great-Aunt Grace and Moon come back.

No such luck. They push through the door of Grace's Goodies moments later, and the store still looks like someone shook it up and set it back down again.

“What in the sweet name of Jesus happened here?” Moon cries.

Great-Aunt Grace's eyes sweep over the floor and her messed-up shelves. She doesn't say a word.

“Jaguar did this,” I say. “She and Pamela forced their way in.”

Great-Aunt Grace makes a growling sound in the back of her throat. Moon reaches over and touches her gently on the arm.

“You should call the cops and have Jaguar thrown in jail!” I say.

Great-Aunt Grace's nostrils flare.

“Be easy, baby,” Moon says. “Jaguar's just a kid.”

Moon must be six and a half feet tall. Great-Aunt Grace looks at him like he's four foot two.

“Jaguar's going to pay for this,” she says, and I can tell she means business.

“When?” Tiffany asks eagerly.

“In good time.”

“In good time?” I shriek.

Great-Aunt Grace raises her eyebrows at my raised voice.

I clear my throat. “Okay, like you said: in good time. Speaking of time . . .” I figure now is as good as any, so I just blurt it out: “This is why you can't send us to that camp with Jaguar. Bad influences all around. So we're not going.”

“Oh, yes, you are.”

“We are
not.
If what Jaguar did here isn't proof that Camp Jesus Saves is falling short of its name, I don't know what is.”

“You don't worry yourself none about Jaguar. She's gonna get what's coming to her, best be sure of that,” Great-Aunt Grace says calmly. “But you goin' to camp, girl, you and your sister. Now you and Terrance get back to them shelves.”

“But I'm not—” Terrance says.

“Git,” Great-Aunt Grace snaps.

“—staying,” Terrance finishes weakly.

We head back into the stockroom, Jane's words tumbling through my mind again.
Don't give up hope.
I won't, only now I'm hoping for some new stuff. I hope Great-Aunt Grace comes down with amnesia between now and tomorrow morning and forgets all about sending us to Camp Jesus Saves.

W
E'VE
been in Black Lake for six days, and if I should've learned anything by now, it's that all the hope in the world isn't going to help when it comes to Great-Aunt Grace. I wake up to find her standing over my bed, a glass of orange juice in her hand.

“I'm not going to camp,” I tell her.

“Oh, yes, you are. Y'all ain't gonna be nippin' at my ankles all the Lord's day long. Besides, a little Jesus ain't never hurt a soul.”

But I bet Jaguar and Pamela could cause someone some real damage.

“I want y'all downstairs in thirty minutes or less. Understood?”

“I guess.”

I wait for Great-Aunt Grace to leave. She doesn't. Instead she stops just by the door and points at the clean laundry sitting on top of the dresser. She made Tiffany and me finish it last night. “That's what y'all call foldin'?”

I nod. Great-Aunt Grace disappears into the hallway, muttering about how the Lord never made two more useless kids. I get up to shake Tiffany awake. She swats at me like a cat. I say just one word—“Camp”—and she flies out of bed. She doesn't complain when I scrape her hair into a ponytail or when I get in her ears with a washcloth, or even when she has to feed grumpy old Mr. Shuffle, who goes after her ankles again when she takes too long opening his can of 9 Lives. When Great-Aunt Grace serves us up oatmeal with the consistency of cement, Tiffany doesn't so much as make a face.

Not me. I can barely choke down my breakfast, not even when Great-Aunt Grace comes and stands over me the way she does.

“You gonna be hungry in no time, and you'll have no one to blame but yourself,” she says.

For Camp Jesus Saves, I have no one to blame but Great-Aunt Grace.

I take my time washing the breakfast dishes, soaping and rinsing each dish more than once. When she catches me soaping up the sponge to rewash the cups for the fourth time, Great-Aunt Grace says, “You gonna wash the clean right off them dishes, girl. Now, come on and let's go.”

To camp. We lock up the house and start walking in the Black Lake heat, and even though I try to walk slower than a tortoise with a bum leg, we're at camp in no time. It's a scientific fact that the more you don't want to go somewhere, the faster you'll get there. We stop in front of Fannie Lou Hamer Middle School. A banner strung across the school's brick front shouts in all caps:
WELCOME TO CAMP JESUS SAVES, WHERE DELIVERANCE IS FREE
.

We follow Great-Aunt Grace up the walkway and through the front door. Fannie Lou Hamer Middle School smells like fried food and permanent markers. Our shoes squeak on the linoleum floor. Two girls come running down the hallway, holding hands. When they see Great-Aunt Grace, they slow to a walk and move all the way to the right, hugging the wall. “Uh, hi, Ms. Washington,” one of them says. Great-Aunt Grace nods in response and keeps right on going. She leads us straight down a hallway still lined with posters and projects from the past school year, not stopping until we're through another door and back outside, where there are picnic tables set up with kids around them.

“Now, where's that loudmouth Eunetta?” Great-Aunt Grace mutters, looking around.

In the end, Eunetta finds us before we find her. She's running toward us, holding down her wig with one hand. She's got a clipboard in the other. She stops a few feet shy of the three of us, and it takes her more than a moment to get her breath back. Then she manages to choke out, “Camp is full.”

“Thought the Lord always makes room for one more,” Great-Aunt Grace says.

Eunetta's eyes go wide as her own words fly back at her and hit her right in the face.

“He does, of course, but we're just more full up than we thought.” Eunetta taps her clipboard for emphasis. “So sorry.” She doesn't sound sorry at all.

Great-Aunt Grace points at a spot of shade beneath a tree. “You two, go over there. I need to have a word with Ms. Baxter in private.”

For Great-Aunt Grace, private means right where the two of them are standing. Tiffany and I watch from our spot in the shade as Great-Aunt Grace and Eunetta go at it. Eunetta starts waving her clipboard around.

“Why doesn't that lady want us here?” Tiffany asks.

“Because we're related to Great-Aunt Grace.” I think of the smile Eunetta fixed me with the first time she met me, when she didn't know that. Now her face is puckered up tight as a fist.

Great-Aunt Grace takes a step closer to Eunetta.

“Oh, my God, she's going to smack her up,” I say.

Tiffany and I watch, rapt, waiting for Great-Aunt Grace to lay hands on loudmouth, clipboard-brandishing Eunetta Baxter. The moment never comes. Great-Aunt Grace's hands stay in her pockets as she leans in real close to Eunetta and says something I can't hear. Eunetta throws up her hands and says, “All right! I'll make room for them, but they better not step a toe out of line.”

The two of them come over to Tiffany and me. Eunetta stops to write something down on her clipboard.

“You hear that, girls?” she says. “Not. A. Toe. Out. Of. Line.”

“You got kids here right now worse than these two, trust me,” Great-Aunt Grace says. It's probably the nicest thing she'll ever say about us.

Eunetta purses her lips and flips to a page in her clipboard. Just then, Terrance comes flying out of the building, holding on to his sketchpad. “Ms. Eunetta, we're out of—” He stops dead in his tracks when he sees me. “Oh. Hi.”

I give him a halfhearted wave.

“What is it that you need, Terrance?” Eunetta asks impatiently.

“They're out of drawing paper.” Terrance is talking to Eunetta, but his eyes are on me. I look off into the distance at a bunch of little kids running around a tree.

“Check with Miss Donna. She said she was going to pick some more up yesterday.”

“Okay,” Terrance says, and turns to leave.

“Wait,” Eunetta says, holding out her free hand. She looks from him to me, remembering. “You two are friends, right?”

I shake my head. Eunetta rolls her eyes.

“Be that as it may, you already know each other and you're in the same group. Terrance, show Treasure to Group Twelve.”

“Jeanie,” I tell her. “I go by my middle name.”

Eunetta crosses something off on her clipboard and frowns. “Tiffany will be in Group Seven. Your name
is
Tiffany, right? They're down there doing arts and crafts. Terrance can walk you—”

There's no need. Tiffany takes off running. I watch as she goes right up to the counselor and introduces herself. She's sitting down at the table in no time, reaching for a paintbrush. That sure enough won't be my MO. After what happened with Jaguar and Pamela, I have to draw as little attention to myself as possible, which means strict adherence to Moving Rules One and Two:
Don't make friends
and
Be invisible
.

“So they're all settled, then?” Great-Aunt Grace says, checking her watch. “I need to get to the store.”

“They're as settled as they're gonna be,” Eunetta says through clenched teeth.

“Good. Y'all behave yourselves. Some folks are just waitin' for the two of you to slip up.” She gives Eunetta a hard look, then shifts her eyes to me. “Come over to Goodies when you're done. Terrance can show you the way.” Great-Aunt Grace exits stage left, leaving me with Terrance, Eunetta, and Eunetta's stank attitude.

“Our group is finishing up in arts and crafts,” Terrance says. “We do drawings and murals, not baby stuff.” He holds up his sketchpad with a drawing of a very complicated machine with a seat and lots of buttons. “Then we're going to the lake.”

He indicates that I should follow him inside, and I do. So does Eunetta. I keep my distance from both of them, but especially Terrance. He stops in front of room 107 and holds the door open for me.

“You go on inside, Terrance. I want to have a word with Jeanie,” Eunetta says, smiling.

The door closes behind Terrance, and Eunetta's smile melts right off of her face. “Look, your great-aunt is trouble, and from what I know, trouble tends to run in the blood, so listen to me and listen good: I've got my eyes on you.”

Eunetta's eyes are too close to a nose shaped like a greater-than symbol. “Okay,” I tell her. “That's cool.”

She glares at me. The door swings open and Group Twelve files out, first the counselor—brown-skinned with box braids, probably in high school and definitely too perky—followed by the campers.

“We're off to the lake, Ms. Eunetta, to see one of God's many miraculous works.”

Terrance, still holding on to his sketchpad, is in the front of the line. Jaguar and Pamela are last. I fall into step after them because I have to, lagging as much as I can without getting left behind, but that doesn't stop them from whispering and turning around to stare at me the whole way to the lake. Eunetta is not the only one with her eyes on me. May as well change this place's name to Camp Kill Me Now.