The Queen of Cool (11 page)

Tiny runs up to us before the first bell. She’s out of breath and obviously excited.

“Hi, Libby!” she says.

“Look, about New Year’s,” I say. “I’m sorry . . .”

“No worries.”

Tiny acts as if New Year’s Eve was a lifetime ago instead of only just a few days prior. She doesn’t look stressed out about it at all. She just lets it roll off her.

I’m dumbfounded. But I guess it’s actually
me
that’s fucked up about it. She seems fine.

“I’m over it,” she says. “Moving on, I signed up to help focus the lights for
Peter Pan
at the Pantages.”

She grins.

I smile back.

Tiny’s enthusiasm is contagious. I suddenly feel excited and I don’t even know what she’s talking about.

“Lighting designers need people to walk the boards sometimes. You know, stand on the stage in certain places so that they can focus the lights properly,” Tiny explains. “Then you get a free ticket. So, you want to walk the boards with me?”

“Um, it’s not my thing,” I say, seeing Perla, Mike Dutko, Kenji, and Sid approaching. Although I’m still smiling, I want her to disappear before they get here.

“Your loss,” she says, following my eyes and getting the hint. “See you later.”

Tiny runs over to a group of her friends. I can tell by the way her arms fly about that she’s telling them about walking the boards. In contrast to my friends, who are now leaning against their lockers like they are on heroin, acting too tired and too cool to stand on their own two feet, her friends are full of energy. They are just as excited as she is, and then they all start jumping for joy.

“Who jumps for joy?” Perla says, snapping her gum. “So. Lame.”

Perla, Mike Dutko, and Kenji walk away from the scene playing out in front of us. Sid and I stand there a moment longer, watching Tiny and her friends and the fun they are having, until the bell rings.

As we start walking, Sid looks at me mischievously.

“What?” I ask.

“You know what,” he says. “Let’s do it.”

Suddenly our pace slows at the same time as we let our friends disappear into the crowd in the hall in front of us.

And then Sid and I do it. In the hall, on the way to class.

We jump for joy.

When I get home, I hear blaring rock music, coupled with strange yells and electronic beeps.

I follow the noise to the den, where my dad is surrounded by open boxes, old composition notebooks, and binders. He’s sitting on the floor, dusty and dirty, playing a primitive video game and listening to vinyl records on his old turntable. His laptop, surrounded by three to-go coffee cups, is open on the table.

He doesn’t notice me come in.

“I don’t think this is what Mom had in mind by cleaning out the garage.”

Dad waves me over.

“See, the trick is to get that key,” he says, motioning to the TV screen.

The song on the record ends. The needle lifts off the grooves and returns to its start position.

“Can you flip the record?” he says. “Careful not to scratch the vinyl. It’s a rare one.”

I flip the seven-inch record and place the needle on the turntable. It’s Mudhoney, that old band that Sid likes. The music crackles, loud and live through the speakers.

I dance like crazy in the center of the room for a while, then I plop myself down and watch Dad and his quest for the key.

“Go do your homework or something,” he says, moving the joystick up and down.

“Clean up this mess,” I say.

He laughs. But he stops playing by letting his guy on the screen die.

“You’re right,” Dad says. “I was just taking a break.”

He pulls out one of his old notebooks and begins to read.

“‘November 4th, 1988. I think people who wear sweatpants all day have just given up on life. They walk their dogs, pick up laundry, go food shopping, see movies, even vote, in their soft, safe clothes, as if they can’t tell the difference between sleep and life. They are only dreaming that they are comfortable.”

“Ha. Better not tell that to Perla. She wears Juicy Couture sweats all the time.”

He laughs.

Then he gets up, but instead of cleaning up, he sits in front of his laptop and starts writing. He doesn’t stop. He’s in the zone. I open my mouth, about to say something.

But it’s his mess.

It’s his life.

So I leave him alone and go up to my room. I look for something to do. I make a move to turn on my TV when I notice the zoo volunteer handbook lying on my desk.

I pick it up, lie down on my bed, and start reading.

We’re headed for the World of Bats, to clean the cave exhibit.

“How was focusing the boards?” I ask.

“It’s
walking
the boards to focus the
lights,
” Tiny says. “It was awesome. I got to stand in for all the Darling kids, so it was like I was the star of the show. I can’t even tell you how great it was to stand on that stage and look out at the audience.”

“But the seats were empty,” I say. “So it’s not the same thing.”

“I have a good imagination,” Tiny says, pulling out her squirt bottle of cleaner. I stop at the mouth of the cave.

“I have a good imagination too,” I suddenly say. “I’m a cave dweller.”

Then I start to jump around the interactive exhibit of stalactites and stalagmites.

“Sheldon, I think many unevolved alien life forms may be cave dwellers,” Tiny says.

That makes Sheldon laugh. I like that he is laughing. I want to make people laugh again too. So I lift my arms up and wiggle like a cave dweller, like an unevolved alien life form.

He laughs louder, and then Tiny starts laughing too. She takes her spray bottle and crawls into the discovery tunnel.

“Commander Carpentieri goes in search of Evil Dust Bunnies,” she reports from inside the tunnel. She makes her voice sound as though she’s in a space suit.

Sheldon starts to pretend that he is walking on the moon. He looks goofy, his arms slowly pumping through the air.

“Aha! I’ve killed them!” Tiny says. She emerges and hands us the dirty paper towels.

“Good work, Commander,” I say. I salute her. “You’ve obliterated their nest.”

I pitch the paper towels into the garbage can that Sheldon is wheeling around. He looks in the can and shakes his head.

“What a shame,” he whispers. “I would have liked to study those dust bunnies. You guys have no respect for the science.”

“Science schmience!” Tiny says, squirting him. “We were being attacked, man!”

And then she disappears into the cave. I follow her, almost running. And even though we are acting like two-year-olds, jumping, crawling, and giggling, we are actually working. It goes by quickly, and we won’t get in trouble anytime soon because we are doing our job.

And our job is actually fun.

“Here you go,” Tiny says, handing me the Blue Team field book on the way down to the parking lot.

“Oh, I totally forgot. I didn’t even look in the cases and take notes,” I say. “I should go back. I still have half an hour before the zoo closes.”

“No sweat. Sheldon did it while we were running around,” Tiny says.

“You did?”

“You were on a serious mission,” Sheldon says, shrugging.

Tiny elbows my hip. “You’re supposed to say
Thank you, Sheldon.
”

“Oh yeah. Thank you, Sheldon.”

It bothers me a little that he took the notes. Even though we’re supposed to all take turns entering our observations, I’ve been the one doing the work in the Blue Team book since the beginning of the internship. It’s been my job.

And I think I actually like it.

“You keep it,” he says. “You’re like the Mistress of the Field Book.”

When I get home, I examine the book. Sheldon’s observations are keen but unorganized. He crosses out a lot, and his writing is extremely small and unreadable.

I open the book to a blank page, and I take out my ruler. I make lines and headings and redo his work.

At lunchtime, my spoon of raspberry low-fat yogurt only makes it halfway to my mouth when Perla starts speaking.

“So after I have my own reality show, I’ll totally do like what other celebutantes do. Get parts in movies and, like, have my own fashion line.”

“Who’s going to design the clothes?” I ask.

“What do you mean?” Perla says. “I’m going to have my own reality show. I’ll be famous. I’ll be PERLA!”

She takes her hands and sweeps the air in front of her, like her name is already up in lights.

“I mean, you don’t have any skill in design. I mean, what are
you
going to actually be
doing
? Will you be overseeing the line? Or will you be designing stuff yourself?”

“What is this? The Inquisition?” she says.

“No, Perla, I’m just wondering,” I say. “I mean, what if your reality star plan doesn’t pan out?”

“
Pan out
isn’t in my vocabulary,” Perla says. “I’m going to make it.”

I think about Tiny, who actually went to a theater and walked on the stage and then raved about it all afternoon. She didn’t sit around waiting for someone to hand her a career in entertainment on a silver platter. Of course, then again, it wasn’t real. Those theater seats were empty. But she
did
something. She was
proactive.

And Sheldon, going on and on about the newest images from Saturn or Mars or Jupiter or Uranus. He lugs out his telescope at night and actually looks at the stars. He subscribes to the astrobiology feeds and e-mails boring articles to Tiny and me. He gives us the night sky report every day. He observes the animals, figures them out, and tries to move like they would so he can understand them. So he can try and make sense out of LIFE.

Tiny and Sheldon are
doers.

“You know what we are? We’re slackers,” I say. “We don’t do shit. We have nothing going on.”

“Please, girl. Speak for yourself,” Perla says. “I’m like . . . a
bohemian.
”

“You don’t even know what that word means,” I say.

“Neither do you,” Perla says. “And besides, I don’t have to
know
what something means in order to
be
it.”

Perla glares at me.

“Look,” she says. “I don’t need your negative energy all bringing me down and stuff.”

And then she walks away from me.

Like I’m poison.

How did this happen? All this time I’ve thought I was an IT girl. Really, I am the Without-IT girl.