The Perfect Place (8 page)

“Wow, Yuck Mouth, you stood up for her right quick. Maybe you found yourself more than a friend. Maybe you got yourself a girlfriend,” Jaguar says. She looks like her name, all slinky and light-eyed and ready to pounce.

“She's not my—”

“Where'd you find your girlfriend, anyway?”

“She's staying with her great-aunt, Ms.—Ow!” Terrance glares at me, rubbing his ribs where I just elbowed him. These girls already know my name; I don't want them knowing any more than that.

“Looks like your girlfriend's slow
and
feisty,” Pamela says, shaking her head and laughing.

“She's not my girlfriend,” Terrance says through clamped teeth.

“That's a shame,” Jaguar says, “Because she's a weirdo, just like you like.”

And just like that, I've gone from invisible, to visible, to weirdo, and the words jump right out of my mouth before I can stop them: “Pretending to like the same things as a boy just to get his attention is completely asinine.”

“Ass-i-
what?
” Jaguar jumps up to join Pamela, and together the two of them walk toward me. I've watched enough Westerns with Dad to know that I need to stand my ground, so I do, until Jaguar and Pamela are standing so close I can see each speck of glitter in their eye shadow.

“You cussing at me?” Jaguar says.

“No.
Asinine
means stupid.”

“So you're calling her stupid?” Pamela says, leaning in real close.

I'm eye to eye with her clavicle. I step back a few more yards until I'm standing at the edge of the curb. One more step and I'll be out in the street.

“
No.
I'm calling what she
said
stupid.”

“Calling what I
said
stupid and calling
me
stupid are the same thing,” Jaguar says, and in an instant, she and Pamela close the distance between us.

“Come on, guys, cut it out,” Terrance says, coming to stand beside me again.

“Stay out of this, Yuck Mouth,” Jaguar snaps.

And it occurs to me now that I'm going to die.

I'm never going to see Mom or Dad or Tiffany again.

I close my eyes, waiting for the first shove. Punch. Kick to the shins. But it never comes, because a woman shouts, “Yoo-hoo, ladies, what's going on over there?”

I blink and there's a woman crossing the street, waving her giant purse in the air with one hand and holding her wig down with the other. I blink again and she's right beside us, still shouting like she's a block away.

“What's going on over here?” she asks again.

“Oh, nothing. Terrance was just introducing us to his girlfriend,” Jaguar says.

“Oh, my, my, my, Terrance. You've only just gotten here and already a girlfriend?”

Terrance opens his mouth to speak, thinks better of it, and just shakes his head instead.

“So will I be seeing all of you at Camp Jesus Saves next week?” the woman asks. She beams at us.

Jaguar matches the woman's perma-grin, watt for watt. “Of course, Ms. Eunetta.”

Pamela nods, smiling too.

“I'll be there,” Terrance mutters.

“Good, good.” The woman turns to me, still beaming. “Eunetta Baxter,” she says, holding out her hand for me to shake. “The sheriff's wife.”

Eunetta Baxter, loud as a construction site and lumpy as two pillows stuffed in one case. She doesn't know it, but she just saved my life. I shake her hand as she says, “And what about you?” She squints at me. “I don't reckon I've seen you around before. Just move here?”

“Jeanie's visiting,” Terrance puts in. “She's staying with Ms.—Ow! Would you quit it already?”

Eunetta's smile falters. “Secretive, aren't you? Well, it's nice to meet you, Jeanie. Let me give you a flier.”

Eunetta doesn't see Jaguar roll her eyes—she's too busy digging around in her monster of a purse. She pulls out a bunch of papers and hands one to me. It's a flier just like Dot's, only there's a picture of some pearls in the center and “$300 reward” printed underneath.

“Y'all call me if you hear even a peep, okay?”

We nod. Eunetta looks over at me again. “So, will I see you at camp next week, Jeanie?” She reaches up to adjust her wig.

I chance a look at Jaguar and Pamela, who are still trying to take me apart with their eyes. “Yeah, will we?” Jaguar asks sweetly.

“No,” I say. “I have to, um . . . No. You won't.”

“Pity,” Eunetta says, shaking her head. “I guess I'll be off, then. You kids behave, you hear?”

“Yes, Ms. Baxter,” Pamela and Jaguar say in unison, and as Eunetta makes her getaway, so do I, though not fast enough. I can still hear Jaguar when she calls out, “You'd better watch yourself, weirdo!”

I hear Pamela yell out something else, another threat, and when the sound of their laughter fades, I hear Terrance's footsteps behind me. If it weren't for him, those girls never would've noticed me in the first place. I speed up until I'm walking as fast as I can, leaving Terrance in the dust. He doesn't try to catch up.

W
HEN
I get back to Grace's Goodies, Great-Aunt Grace is sitting behind the counter, which is covered in Hershey's Kisses wrappers. A man sits next to her, a man so tall his torso stretches a good few feet above the countertop. He clears his throat when I come in and Great-Aunt Grace looks up from the newspaper in front of her with narrowed black eyes.

“Don't even think about askin' for one,” she says with a pointed look at the Kisses.

“I already told you, I don't like candy.”

“I'll bet.” She notices the piece of paper in my hand. “What's that?”

“Flier from Eunetta Baxter.”

“Give it here.”

I hand it to her over the counter. Great-Aunt Grace scans it, as the man reads it over her shoulder.

“Broke into the sheriff's house and robbed his wife? Dang shame when folks don't respect the law. Look at all that money she's offerin' to get those pearls back.”

Great-Aunt Grace takes Dot's crumpled flier from her shirt pocket, smoothes it out, and places it on top of Eunetta's. “I'll give a hoot when she goes up to five hundred,” she replies. To me she says, “Where'd Terrance wind up?”

“I don't know,” I say, and it's true. On the walk back I kept speeding up, Terrance slowed down, and when I turned around at a stoplight, he was nowhere to be seen.

“You didn't run him off, did you?”

“No, Jaguar and Pamela did.”

“Jaguar Burroughs?” Great-Aunt Grace makes a sound in the back of her throat, kind of like a growl.

“Be easy, baby,” says the man.

Baby?
Let me find out Great-Aunt Grace has a boyfriend. I stare at them, open-mouthed, until Great-Aunt Grace says, “Well, what you standin' there gapin' for, girl? Can't you see I'm tryin' to partake in this here periodical?”

She's eyeing me like she wants to squash me beneath her shoe.

“Where's my sister?”

“Skinny thing, talk you under the table?” the man says. “She's in the back, taking a nap.”

I watch as he lights a cigarette. Just what the world needs. Another smoker. He sees me staring at him and winks.

“Name is Moon. I reckon this little lady don't deem me important enough for an introduction.” Now he winks at Great-Aunt Grace. She rolls her eyes.

“Is Moon your real name? Because it's kind of ridiculous.”

“Says the girl named Treasure,” Great-Aunt Grace puts in.

“Real name's Roger,” says Moon. “But I was a real fat kid growin' up. Had a face like a moon pie.” He fills his cheeks up with air and puffs his face out. Tiffany would think he's a riot. I don't crack a smile.

“What you want, girl?” Great-Aunt Grace asks again.

I grab a pack of Sour Patch Kids off the shelf. “These.”

“Thought you said you don't like candy.”

“They're for Tiffany.”

Great-Aunt Grace smirks. I ignore her as I take the five-dollar bill from my pocket and plunk it down on the counter in front of her. She makes a big show of holding it up to the light to make sure it's not counterfeit.

“Can't trust you folks from up north,” she says as she makes her way to the register. She takes her time ringing me up, too. “I'm low on singles, so . . .” Her voice trails off as she counts out my change. In coins. I dump the quarters, nickels, dimes, and more than a few pennies in my left pocket and feel my shorts start to slip down on that side.

Great-Aunt Grace waits for me to say something. I don't. I go behind the counter and into the stockroom, where Tiffany is stretched out on a blanket on the floor, Mr. Teddy Daniels hugged to her chest. I sit down next to her and rip open the pack of Sour Patch Kids. I concentrate on sitting absolutely still so the cool stockroom air can dry my sweaty back. Man, I can't believe Great-Aunt Grace has a boyfriend. I wonder if Terrance knows that, and then I wonder why I'm wondering about Terrance in the first place.

Great-Aunt Grace and Moon keep up a steady flow of conversation out front, their cigarette smoke snaking its way back here, and I realize that Mom never told Great-Aunt Grace about my asthma. Or she told her, and Great-Aunt Grace just doesn't care. I hold my breath and fan the air in front of me. Moon bounces from topic to topic, from the price of gas to the scarcity of his favorite brand of cigarettes to the broken air conditioner in his car.

“Took it over to H&H Auto Service two weeks ago, but the boss man was out. Left Byron's useless behind in charge. Posted up out front, talkin' to some girl. Took him ten minutes just to notice I was waitin'!”

“Should've taken it to Terhune's over in Bracie, then.”

“And burn up all that gas gettin' there? No, ma'am. H&H fixed it just fine, but the boss man ought to send Byron's behind packin'.” Moon pauses. “You know, I heard the sheriff's all riled up on account of his wife's pearls. He's plannin' on interviewin' suspects and everything.”

“Suspects? What suspects he got? That fool couldn't find his own behind with both hands in his back pockets.”

Moon clears his throat. “What you gonna do if he comes round tryin' to question you?”

“Me? What reason he got for questionin' me?”

“On account of what you did to Dot's boy all those years ago.”

“Please. I did this town a favor. Let me tell you somethin', if the sheriff come knockin' on my door, I'm gonna make him wish he woulda thought twice.”

“Aw, come on, baby. You always gotta be extra. If he comes to your house, just talk to him so he'll leave you alone. Let him in to look around if that's what it takes.”

“I ain't lettin' him in nowhere.”

“There you go again, makin' things harder than—”

“Hello again, Terrance,” Great-Aunt Grace says loudly.

“Hi, Ms. Washington. Hi, Moon,” says Terrance. “Hey, listen, Ms. Washington, is Jeanie here? I need to talk to her.”

“She's in the back.”

At the sound of Terrance's footsteps, I lie down on the blanket and shut my eyes. He says my name softly, and I let out a loud snore in reply. He stands over me for a minute before I hear his feet beat a path back the way he came.

“Say what you had to say?” Great-Aunt Grace asks him.

“Nah.”

“You can tell her the next time you see her, then.”

“About that, um. I forgot to tell you, but I'm not sure how much I'll be able to volunteer while Jeanie's here. I start camp on Monday.”

“What camp?”

“Jesus Saves.”

“The Mount Holy Baptist camp? Loudmouth Eunetta Baxter still runnin' it?”

Terrance hesitates. “Yes.”

“See if she got room for two more. Wait. Never mind. I'll check it out myself.”

Terrance leaves as quietly as he came in.

Just when I thought Black Lake couldn't get any worse, Great-Aunt Grace is talking about sending me to church camp with Pamela and Jaguar. I squeeze my eyes shut until they ache. Even the air feels heavy. Tiffany squirms.

“Mommy?” she calls out.

My eyes snap open. I lie still, waiting to see if she will fall back asleep on her own. But she doesn't. She wakes all the way up, rubs her eyes, and looks around.

“Where's Mommy?”

“She's not here, Tiff-Tiff. We're in Virginia, with Great-Aunt Grace. And the cash register,” I add quickly, hoping Tiffany will lie back down.

But it doesn't work. First her lip starts to quiver. Then the tears come.

I sit up, grab Mr. Teddy D., and run through his skit as fast as I can before she gets to howling. The skit doesn't work either. Tiffany keeps crying, and now there's noise. Gulping, hiccupping, calling out for Mom. I reach over to put my arm around her, and my pocket jingles.

“I have something for you.”

I pull out the change Great-Aunt Grace gave me.

“You can put it in your Disney Fund when we get back to the house.”

Tiffany sniffles and holds out cupped hands. I dump the change in them and she pours it out on the blanket in front of us. We count it together, and for now, it is enough.

O
VER
the next two days, rumors about a possible suspect have been making their way around Black Lake, and the local paper,
Black Lake Daily,
has a story about it.

“Nonsense.” Great-Aunt Grace tosses the paper on the kitchen counter and slams a plate each of burnt waffles and bacon in front of Tiffany and me. She barks, “Tiffany, feed Mr. Shuffle,” and leaves the room.

Tiffany groans and gets to her feet. When I hear Great-Aunt Grace's footsteps on the stairs, I get up from my breakfast and pick up the newspaper. Dot's on the front page, cheesing mighty hard for someone who has lost a treasure.