I write down the number. That would be perfect—except that I’m in school. I write it down anyway.
“You thinking about getting a job here?” says Erik. His voice makes me jump.
I turn around. “Maybe.”
“Don’t get mad. Just asking.”
“I’m not mad.” I know my face is flushed. “There aren’t a lot of jobs around town.”
“I’m sorry this has been so hard on you,” he says.
“What’s been hard on me?”
“Come on. I can see you’re upset.”
“I’m fine,” I say.
Of course he can see I’m upset, because the world stops without him, right?
“So you really want to go to the Galápagos Islands?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
He smiles that perfectly straightened and bleached smile of his. “It just doesn’t seem like your thing.”
“Why wouldn’t it be
my thing
?”
He tips his head. “You always get so defensive. I just mean that I don’t think you would like to travel that far.”
“People can surprise you,” I say.
“I hope you get the job then,” says Erik, his voice lifting and then sticking straight in my chest. With a single stroke, whether I get the job or not, I’m a loser.
Pete walks out of the room with the twins in front of him. Pete locks the door behind him.
“You all right?” he says to me.
“Sure,” I say, steadying my voice.
“Good. Well, hey, do you really like gulls?”
The two guys with Pete scan me with their superconductor brains and then give me the “nice try” look.
“Yeah,” I say. “I mean, I haven’t studied them in books, but I like watching them.”
“Great. We’re all going to go out next week to do a little observation. You have a topic yet?”
“Actually I have a question about that.”
Pete nods to team Ho. “See you next week, guys.”
They walk away from us, still giving me disgusted looks.
“Fire away.”
“Well, what if I don’t have the money by May first?”
“It’s a lot of money, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I say. “If I had an extra month ...”
“No can do. The donor said he wouldn’t fudge on the amount or the deadline. Has this thing about being self-sufficient, building character, and all that horse hockey.”
“Guess I better build some character fast then.”
“That shouldn’t be too hard for you.” He smiles and I feel funny. Not ha-ha funny. But wow-you-have-nice-eyes-for-a-teacher funny.
He’s my teacher,
I think
. Get a grip!
He says, “See you next week, Myra.”
He’s not actually my teacher. He’s just helping us do our proposals. No. Bad. Bad Myra.
He walks to the parking lot and gets into a prehistoric Volkswagen van, the kind you see in old movies where everyone is a tragic hippie. It doesn’t look like it should be allowed on the highway. For starters, it doesn’t have a back passenger window. After Pete fiddles around in his van he drives back over to me. He’s wearing fingerless gloves, a beanie, and a puffy coat. “Here’s a book on flightless cormorants. I had it in the back of my van. You might like them for a topic.”
I look down at the book and see a brown bird with exotic turquoise eyes. I read the title,
Galápagos Cormorants: The Jewels of Isabela
.
“Thanks,” I say.
“I think these birds might suit you.”
“Okay.” I wonder how he knows what will suit me.
“And there’s a glossary of terms in there to teach you the lingo. You’ll be thinking like an ornithologist in no time.” He waves his fingerless-gloved hand at me and rattles away into the gray air.
There ought to be a rule about people being so cool you can’t stand it. But I don’t think rules are Pete’s thing.
12
Echolocation:
Finding your way in the dark.
When I walk through the door to my house, the phone is ringing. No one is answering. I rush to the phone. Involuntary Erik expectations.
“Is this Myra?” says a loud, raunchy voice. Not only is it not Erik, it’s Howard, my delightful ex-boss.
“Yes,” I say, with about as much interest as I have in eating dirt.
“Do you want to work here or not?”
“Hi, Howard.”
Mom, who is standing nearby, perks up.
“Are you thinking you’re going to get a raise out of this?”
“No,” I say. “I wasn’t thinking that.”
“Well, how about fifty more cents an hour? That’ll buy you some nail polish.”
I can do a lot of things, like clean a toilet, go without lunch, and sleep in a disgusting basement. But I cannot go back to the Lucky Penny. “Thanks, Howard. But I don’t think that’s a good idea.” I know I’m saying no to a job and a raise. But if I go back I’m lost.
Howard’s voice is loud. “Hell, I’ll fire him if it makes you feel better. He’s a pain in the butt anyway.”
If he fires Erik for me, no one will wonder who messed up on that order. And Erik will have to look for a job. But I’d still be working for a guy who makes “those Morgan girls” jokes.
I say, “No. It’s probably for the best.”
“Better think about this, honey. Jobs aren’t growing on trees around here. I could make you a day manager as soon as school gets out.”
“No, thanks,” I say.
His voice jabs through the phone. “Suit yourself. But don’t count on me for a reference!” He slams down the phone.
He
won’t give ME a reference. I could write a reference for him, but they wouldn’t put an ad for that job in the paper. Before I even hang up Mom is marching, still in her pajamas, off into the front yard. I follow her. Dad is pulling out of the driveway. She gets up to his window and says, “Howard called to give her the job back and she turned him down.”
Dad looks at me. I know he doesn’t care if I keep working at that hole, but he has to side with Mom. Those are the rules of peace in my house. He says, “You can’t be too picky, Myra.”
“Is there anything I can do at the plant?” I say.
“Let’s talk when you aren’t in school.”
“But I need to make money now.” The whine in my voice surprises me.
“Why?” says Mom, looking curious.
“I need to get some money saved away for school and stuff. It’s coming up quick.”
Dad says, “You’ll figure it out. Life’s a do-it-yourself project.” Then he pulls away.
“If you want to be a hardhead you have to expect a few hard knocks,” says Mom.
Is there a manual somewhere that teaches parents these expressions? I walk my hard head past her into the house. I need something to clean. I head for the dungeon.
The thing about the basement is that it’s uncleanable. That’s why Mom would rather pour patio cement than try to fix it up. Down here, you can shove things to the side or sweep a square foot here and there, but there isn’t anywhere to put things away. And no adult in this house seems capable of throwing out the old furniture, boxes of papers and books, old clothes, old toys, stale food storage, and plain old junk.
I stand at the bottom of the stairs, armed with a lamp I have rescued from the furniture discard pile. I plug it in and start imagining the basement divided into tidy, organized sections. After a minute or two my brain cramps. Sometimes you just have to admit defeat before you start.
I sit on my sleeping bag and go through my backpack for things I’ve gathered up. More than a clean living space I need a job. Fast.
“Can I camp with you?” says Carson from the top of the stairs. His voice startles me.
“It’s not camping unless you’re outside,” I say.
He plods down the steps. “Why are you sleeping in the basement then?”
“I’m in exile,” I say.
“I’ll exile with you. It’s cool.”
“Freezing is more like it,” I say. “Now I have to do some work.”
Carson runs back up the stairs, but then parks himself on the top step.
I say, “I’ll help you with your dinosaur trees tonight if you stop watching me.”
“Danny stepped on my lagoon.”
“And I’ll fix the lagoon.”
“Deal,” he says, and disappears.
I sharpen a few pencils. I make a list:
My Job Experience:
Ice Cream Server. No References.
My Job Requirements:
Must be part-time
Must require no experience
Must pay enough to raise money for the contest
Must not be totally disgusting and humiliating
First I call the marina and get an answering machine, which doesn’t surprise me. It’s not like people are sailing a lot in February. Then again, the sign I saw was a recent posting, and the machine says I can leave a message, so I do.
Next, I scratch out the last part of my requirements with one of my extrasharp pencils. I can live with humiliating, maybe even disgusting, if it will get me the money I need to apply. The biology guy said the secret to survival is adaptation. I go through the local want ads, crossing out the jobs that require me to work during school, operate heavy machinery, or commute to Egypt and back. I’m left with five jobs.
I take a break and skim the book that Pete gave me. There are forty kinds of cormorants, or shags, and they are pretty common. We have double-crested cormorants on the Great Salt Lake. But the kind in the Galápagos is flightless and totally bizarre. They have little tiny wings that only work as rudders underwater. Scientists think that they didn’t have any use for flying because it was too far to go back to the mainland, so they just gave up and became swimmers.
Then suddenly it drives me wild that Pete thinks this bird is a good topic for me. What does he mean when he says these birds “might suit me”? Am I flightless? Forever grounded? Marooned in Landon?
I put Pete’s dumb book away and pull out my list of job possibilities. Flightless. I’ll show him flightless.
At the top of my list is a job in a clothing store. I make a phone call. “Hi, I’m calling about the stock girl—”
“Filled it.”
Click
.
I call the next two numbers and get the same basic response, although the other people let me finish my sentence. I have to give myself a Galápagos cheer to get the nerve to make the next call.
You might as well step back. Go Galápagos!
I’m not sure I can handle it if I get this job.
“Chicken Little.”
I say, “I’m calling about the ad you have for a personal advertiser.”
“You have to dress up in chicken suit.” My worst germ fears are realized.
“Has the job been taken?”
“If you want an interview you better come meet me.”
“I’ll be right in.”
“Suit yourself,” says the crusty voice on the other end of the line.
I announce to my cheerless mother that I have an interview. She’s out back pounding a frame board for the patio and I make her miss. “For what?” she says, shaking her hand.
“Public relations,” I say, and whip back into the house before I have to explain.
Stella Handy, the owner of Chicken Little, has creases in her face older than I am. She is wearing an aqua-colored T-shirt that has LAS VEGAS written on it in cursive with sequins. We sit in folding chairs in her closet-size office at the back of the restaurant. The room smells of grease and rose perfume. I think she’s giving me the evil eye, but I’m not sure. Maybe she always squints. She says, “Are you a drug user?”
“No.”
“Illegal alien?”
I’m 5 foot 7, have light brown hair, pasty white skin, pale blue eyes, and freckles. I look about as foreign as a supersize cheeseburger. “Um, I was born here, if that’s what you mean.”
“Do you faint easy?”
This is not a question I want to be asked in a job interview. “Not really. Why?”
“Some people find the suit a little stuffy.” Her lips turn down slightly. “What’s your greatest asset?”
I consider this a moment. “I like things clean.”
One penciled-on eyebrow rises. “You know you’re applying to be a giant chicken, right?”
I smile as brightly as I can. “A chicken should be clean, don’t you think?”