Goodbye, Rebel Blue Hardcover (5 page)

“Oh, no!” Macey cries.

I spin toward Macey. She wrings her hands as she stands over her mixing bowl. “I added too much water.” She carries the bowl to the trash can, where she dumps the gray, gloppy mess onto the cockroach. A putrid odor, like sushi left in a locker over spring break, wafts from the garbage can. I turn away before I throw up, jamming the list into my pocket.

Back in her kitchen, Macey pulls out a new bowl and the measuring cup. A non-Macey-like light flares in her eyes.

“Exactly what are you doing?” I wonder how much stranger this day is going to get.

“Making a strawberry pie.”

I rub at my forehead, where I imagine a thousand tiny cockroach feet skittering and scampering.

“Why, Macey, are you making a strawberry pie?”

Her mouth turns down at the corners. “I couldn’t find any peaches.”

I consider ditching my afternoon classes, but that would lead to another stint in detention, which would detonate Aunt Evelyn, so I wait until the final bell to head to the beach. On the half-mile walk to the Pacific Ocean, seagulls screech overhead, and cars full of hooting and screaming students rush by me, but not loud enough to drown out the voice in my head.

I thought it would be kind of neat if we could be friends … Blue and Green … we’re linked …

maybe we can go out for chai tea sometime and talk …

Once at the beach, I kick off my flip-flops and dig my toes into the silky sand. Warmth creeps up my legs, across my chest, and along my neck, loosening the knots. I stroll along the water’s edge.

Despite the craziness of the day, or perhaps because of it, I hunt for sea glass.

Within minutes, I spy a clear wedge peeking from a crescent of gravelly sand. Clear glass is common, but I like the shape of this one. I slip the glass teardrop into my cargo pants pocket, the one that does not contain Kennedy Green’s dreams and desires.

Unbuttoning the other pocket, I take out the paper. Time to ditch Kennedy’s bucket list, and not in a malodorous, cockroach-infested garbage can with Macey giving me the stink eye. I shall give Kennedy’s list wings. Literally.

I fold the paper in half and make a few diagonal creases in an attempt to approximate one of Cousin Pen’s paper cranes. If I squint, I see a three-legged dog. Close enough.

With my arm raised toward the heavens, I fling the mutant canine. The wind catches the paper and whisks it higher. The girl who believed in a golden heaven would love this.

“Bye-bye, bucket list,” I say with a jaunty wave. Good. Mission Get-the-Do-Gooder-Dead-Girl-out-of-My-Head accomplished.

My pocket and heart exponentially lighter, I jog three steps when something smacks me in the forehead and falls to the sand.

The bucket-list-mutant-crane-dog.

I jump back as if it might bite. Then I slap my palm on my forehead. Look who’s wearing the I’m-a-Moron T-shirt now. I snatch the piece of paper, squeeze, and hurl it into the churning waters of the Pacific.

A kid wearing a beach towel like a Superman cape hops in front of me. “Hey, lady, that’s littering.” His face puckers in a scowl.

“It’s paper. It’ll dissolve.”

“You littered. That’s against the law. I’m going to tell my mom, and she’s going to tell the lifeguard, and you’re going to be in trouble.”

I point to the sand toys a few yards up the beach. “Don’t you have a sand castle to build?”

“You’ll get a five-hundred-dollar fine and spend a hundred years in jail.” He sticks out his tongue.

“Or maybe you should go stick your head in the sand.”

His chubby fingers dig into the sides of his Superman cape, and his bottom lip juts out. “You’re meeeeean.”

I squat so we’re eye level. “And you’re eeeeevil.”

His scowl morphs into a wicked grin. “And you’re still a litterbug. Mooooom! I found another one. Can I tell the lifeguard? You got to do it last time. Please, can I, pleeeeease?” He runs to a granola-type woman farther up the beach, who starts walking to the lifeguard tower.

I wade into the water, scoop up the stupid paper, waggle it at Superbrat, and jam the sodden mess into my pocket.

The next morning I walk into the kitchen and listen to grumbling at the far end of the street followed by melodious beeping. This is the happy sound of a Tierra del Rey garbage truck. When I got back from my run-in with Superbrat, I tossed Kennedy’s bucket list into the recycling bin.

Reaching into the refrigerator, I pull out a piece of cheesecake with blueberry sauce left over from last night’s dinner and smile. A sweet start to a sweet day.

Aunt Evelyn, who stands at the sink, makes a sputtering sound, as if she’s choking. “We don’t eat
that
for breakfast,” she says. “We’ve been over this countless times, Rebecca. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. You must follow the food pyramid and be properly fueled.”

Until I moved in with Uncle Bob’s family, I’d never heard of the food pyramid and didn’t know about breakfast
rules
. Breakfast with Mom could be white rice and black beans in Costa Rica or juicy plums plucked from a tree growing in the wilds of Chile.

Aunt Evelyn clucks her tongue and grabs the cheesecake from my hand. “Your breakfast is on the table.” She points to a staged breakfast on a rooster place mat: yogurt parfait, whole-grain toast with kumquat marmalade, and fresh-squeezed orange juice.

Today is too good of a day to argue about the food pyramid. I grab the toast and slather on marmalade. The bucket list is gone, and my world has been set right.

The grumbling grows louder as the recycling truck rolls in front of our house. I raise my fingers, ready to wiggle a fond farewell, but the beeping, the sound that indicates the truck is lifting a recycling bin heavenward, never starts. I jump from the table and run to the front window in the living room in time to see the garbage truck lurch past the driveway. “It missed our bin.”

Uncle Bob pokes his nose over the top of his newspaper. “Nope. I didn’t put it out this morning.

The bin isn’t full. We’ll have it emptied next week.”

“Nooooo!” I race out the back door and grab the recycling bin from the side of the house. I haul it to the curb and run after the garbage truck, jerking the bin behind me. “Come back! You missed one.

Come baaaaack!”

The truck lumbers around the corner and disappears.

I stand in the middle of the street, my hands trembling as they curl around the bin’s handle.

Maybe it’s gone anyway. Maybe Kennedy was right and there’s an unseen force that deliberately moves people and things around like pawns on the giant chessboard of life. And maybe that force knows I need this list out of my life.

I hold my breath.

I crack open the lid.

Wrinkled, dirty, and damp, Kennedy Green’s dreams and desires are still here on Earth.

“YOU’RE LATE, MS. BLUE.”

I throw my biology book onto my lab table.

“More than two minutes this time,” Mr. Phillips continues. “Perhaps you should invest in a quality timepiece.”

I toss my messenger bag under the lab stool. “I don’t believe in quality timepieces.” Nor do I believe in destiny or kismet or juju winds. I’ve never owned a rabbit’s foot or good-luck Peruvian
huayruro
seeds. I don’t avoid black cats and ladders. I chart my own course, control my own destiny.

So theoretically I should have no problems making the choice to get rid of Kennedy Green’s bucket list. It’s not something that requires the mastery of complex math functions. I need to toss the list into a garbage can, walk away, and forget about it.

I sink onto my stool. My flip-flops fall to the floor, and I wrap my toes around the lab-stool rung.

I keep hearing Kennedy’s annoying voice, keep reading her stupid list. Last night I dreamed Aunt Evelyn wallpapered a decorative border of Kennedy’s list below the crown molding in my bedroom. I woke up sweating and shaking.

At the front of the room, Mr. Phillips taps his pointer on the podium. “Today we will continue our study on animal behaviors, and our topic this morning is pretty sexy.”

Snickers roll through the classroom, and No-Neck Jock at the lab table next to me makes a crude comment about going animal with the girl behind him.

“Neanderthal,” I say under my breath.

“Mutant,” he mutters back.

The other jock, Nate of Great Hair, takes out a pencil and opens his notebook. I haven’t seen him since he witnessed me heading off into the sunset with a dead girl’s bucket list. I wonder if he got busted. I wonder if he’s angry. I can’t tell because he’s ignoring me.

This morning Mr. Squeaky Clean is Mr. Squeaky Clean in a dark suit, white shirt, and blue striped tie. He looks good dressed up, but Nate Bolivar would look good dressed in a fig leaf. My gaze darts to the fetal pig on Mr. Phillips’s desk. Not that Nate’s my type. He follows rules and shines his shoes.

For the next half hour Mr. Phillips talks about the mating rituals of Adélie penguins. The big sexy: Instead of gifting their beloveds with diamonds, smitten male penguins drop rocks at their future mates’ webbed toes. If the female penguins are feeling the love, they bop bellies and join in a mating song. If my mind wasn’t so preoccupied with Kennedy Green’s bucket list, I’m sure I could come up with a snarky comment that involves similar rituals at Del Rey School dances.

I tap my bare foot against the rung. Getting rid of the list shouldn’t be this difficult. It means nothing to me. Kennedy means nothing to me, and I don’t mean that in an unkind or spiteful way.

Until detention, we had never spoken to each other. We had no common friends, no connections. So why can’t I get rid of the list?

Only the fates know.

Shut up, Kennedy.
I scrub my knuckles against my temples.

Nate lifts his head and glances at me out of the corner of his eye. He gives me a curious but slightly disgusted look, like most people give the fetal pig on Mr. Phillips’s desk.

Don’t mind me, Nate. I’m having a mental conversation with a dead girl.
I pick up my pencil stub and jab it so hard against my notebook, the lead breaks.

Mr. Phillips gives us the last twenty minutes of the period to work on the lab packet for this month’s animal behavior unit, something about ants. I dig a new pencil stub out of my bag. Next to me Nate whizzes through the first two pages and then closes the lab packet and centers it on his lab table.

“Nate, if you’re done, why don’t you give Rebel a hand?” Mr. Phillips shakes his head, and his glasses shift to the end of his nose. “She seems unable to get past question number one today.”

My lab packet sits on my desk, the margins full of drawings of hundreds of ants, each carrying tiny bits of paper in its mouth.

Nate’s jaw hardens as he scoots his lab stool next to mine. I brace my hands on my thighs. Now he’ll tear into me for leaving him to take the blame for breaking into the detention room. I dig my index finger into a tiny hole in my cargo pants at a pocket seam. When I bolted, I had no intention of getting him into trouble. Self-preservation was the only thing on my mind. Plus, he chose to crawl through the window. I didn’t drag him with me. I’m responsible for my own actions and he for his.

Staring at the clock on the wall, Nate is motionless except for one shiny dress shoe, which jiggles and squeaks on the rung of his lab stool. I can’t tell if the shoe’s too tight or if he’s ready to explode. I pick up my pencil and spin it around my thumb. He tugs at the collar of his shirt.

“Well?” The word bursts out of my mouth against my will.

Nate blinks. “Excuse me?”

“Did you get busted for being in the detention room?”