Minerva Clark Gives Up the Ghost (14 page)

“I don't have an iPod,” I said.

“Oh, for God's sake, Minerva, do you have to be contrary at every turn?”

“And I don't think it's easy for him to say.”

“What?” she shrieked.

We glared at each other. I had that feeling you get on a roller coaster, when the car slowly powers uphill to that first huge drop, and it clanks along slowly, and you're feeling pent up and nervous because you know what's coming, and then there's that long moment when the car pauses at the top, and then the car tips forward and roars down the track and there's not one thing you can do but throw your hands into the hair and scream your head off.

“He's the one who's
here
,” I snapped. “It's got to be much harder to put up with what a horrible monster I am when you're on the premises all the time.”

“Are you saying I'm not here?” said Mrs. Dagnitz, her eyes so wide with disbelief I could see more white than blue.

Mrs. Dagnitz looked from Weird Rolando, who was grating some Parmesan cheese into a bowl, to Quills, who was at the sink filling a pitcher with water, to Morgan, who had just materialized from upstairs.

“Hey, the fish odor has dissipated,” said Morgan.

No one said anything. We could hear Mark Clark behind the bathroom door, down the hall, coughing and moaning.

“But you're not here,” I said. Was it really up to me, the almost fourteen-year-old, to point out the obvious?

“I'm here in spirit!” she wept, shoveling squares of
lasagna onto a plate. The steam rose from the glass casserole dish, making her cheeks even pinker. “Ask Rollie. All I think about is my family. You all mean everything to me, everything. You have no idea. I've had to make some very difficult decisions, which none of you can come close to appreciating. And then when I make the effort to come back to Portland to throw a party so that all of you can be included in my new life, you snub me.”

As you know, I live in a house of boys. I live in a house of boys, and Reggie, my best friend, is a boy. If I had three sisters and a best friend who was a girl, I might have burst into tears myself, or thrown my arms around Mrs. Dagnitz and told her not to feel bad. Instead, the Louis Armstrong song that Quills and Mark Clark and Morgan always croon to one another when one of us is holding a personal pity party bubbled up from deep inside me. It's best if sung extra slowly, with your hand on your heart and your eyes rolled heavenward.

I sang, “Nobody knows the trouble I've seen …”

At that exact moment Mrs. Dagnitz had her spatula tucked under a square of lasagna. But instead of transferring it to a plate, she did the most amazing thing. If I had been able to stream it on the Internet, it would have made my mother famous. She cocked her arm back and hurled that piece of lasagna, with its steaming spinach and scalding tomato sauce and hot bubbly cheese,
straight at my head. I am not the girl athlete my mother was—I recalled her telling me that when she was my age she played first base on an all-star softball team—but I'm quick. I ducked and threw my hands up. The blob of scalding lasagna grazed my forearm as it flew past, landing somewhere behind me, somewhere I was not about to clean up.

No one said anything. Then Quills said, “That wasn't very Zen of you, Mom.”

That was the last thing I heard. I stomped outside, grabbed Morgan's bike, and sped off down the street.

The big question would become: Why did I go to Holy Family that night?

No one believed me that I always found myself there when life became a full-on stress-fest. Holy Family was K–8. This meant that instead of lush acres of green athletic fields where we middle schoolers could play soccer and flag football and have an idyllic puberty, there was a playground with holes for tetherball poles, a sandbox where stray dogs pooped during off-hours, and a huge teal-and-beige plastic play structure with a big plastic slide. Every eighth grader complained, but I secretly didn't mind the play structure. I liked to sit on the top of the slide and have deep thoughts.

I'd cried as I'd pedaled Morgan's bike from our house to the school, but by the time I dropped the bike in the bark dust, my mood had changed to plain
old mean-mad-mean. Mrs. Dagnitz liked to think she was all honest and in touch and “authentic”—I hate that word!—but when you dared speak God's own truth around her, she threw a slab of scalding hot lasagna at your head. I examined my arm to see if perhaps some of the scalding cheese had given me a serious burn. Kevin knew a guy who'd had to go to the emergency room for burns to the roof of his mouth from digging into a piece of cheese pizza straight from the oven. I found a pale pink splotch near my elbow. It didn't look as if it was going to turn into the angry, oozing blisters I'd wanted to parade around at my mother's wedding reception. I imagined myself in my beautiful brown halter dress with the pink polka dots, sipping my 7Up from a crystal glass with my arm raised, my pinky stuck out all proper, and when people asked what happened to my arm, I could say, “The bride assaulted me with a square of scalding lasagna, thank you for asking.”

I climbed up to the top of the slide and eased myself down, my legs thrust out straight in front of me. The sun had dipped behind a row of trees in the west, and the plastic was cool against my legs. The slide had a tall lip of plastic on either edge. I fit snuggly up there, like a toddler's puzzle piece pressed into the correct space. From my perch, I could see people entering and leaving the playground. A pair of giant teenage boys and their basketball, come to shoot some hoops. A tiny girl with
an even tinier fluffy black-and-white puppy on a metallic red leash.

I waved to them all, and they all waved back.

I called Reggie to see if he would meet me for an IP, an in-person meeting. Years ago we'd agreed that IMing was for talking when you had nothing to say. When it was important, it had to be an IP. When Reggie didn't answer his cell, I tried his house. His dad said he was at his Reading Hieroglyphics class that night, and wouldn't be home until after ten.

Kevin's number was number two on my speed dial, after Reggie's. I suspected this meant something, but I didn't want to know what. I was finding out quickly that if you wanted to keep a boyfriend, you had to stop yourself from thinking about certain things. Sometimes I wonder if that's what happened with my mom and dad—one of them started thinking too much, and that led to divorce.

Kevin picked up after the first ring. “Yo!” I could hear a video game in the background, then a voice say, “I am so going to pwn you, dude!”

“I'm down at the school,” I said, forgetting he didn't know about my habit of slide-sitting at Holy Family.

“Summer school?” he said. From years of watching my brothers play these stupid games I could tell that MiniVanDamme was now engaged in battle.

“My mother went insane today. She threw a piece of hot lasagna at me.”

Long silence. I could hear another boy's voice murmuring in the background.

When Kevin didn't answer, I said, “I'm in the emergency room right now.”

“Cool drop,” he said to the other boy, but straight into his phone. “Is it better to have the extra agility or the extra armor?”

“They have to amputate my arm. Both arms, actually.”

“That sucks,” he said.

I pressed the End button, curious whether he'd call me back. I was beginning to doubt that we'd ever buy a ranch in Maui and raise Appaloosas.

At that moment, on the street that ran along the far end of the playground, I spied Daniel Vecchio and his posse of loathsome fifth graders, cruising the school on their bikes.

Oooo-oooo-oooo-ahhnn!
Thumpa-thumpa-thumpa.
Oooo-oooo-oooo-ahhnn!

I flipped open my phone. “Sometimes you can be a total jerk,” I said, thinking it was Kevin calling back to apologize.

“I know, I know. That's why I've been trying to call you.” It was Angus Paine, sounding genuinely wrecked.

I couldn't imagine why he thought I thought he was a jerk, but he said he felt crappy about when I came to his house, and how he practically called me a quitter, and doubted my conclusions about Paisley O'Toole and
Wade Leeds, and then hit on me when he knew I had a boyfriend, which was completely wrong, since he had total respect for me, and would never want to mess up my life.

I didn't think he'd been so rotten, and I told him so. I said I knew rude behavior, and he hadn't been rude at all. He kept insisting. “You've got to let me make it up to you,” he said.

“But Angus, really, there's nothing to make up. You were totally cool.”

We didn't talk any more about what he thought he'd done, but we did talk about everything else under the sun. I had never had a boy apologize to me for doing nothing before. We talked for 102 minutes, straight through Purpley Time and into the night.

I told him about stopping at the grocery on the way home from his house that day and having the bejesus scared out of me by the dancing toaster levers.

“That Louise,” he said, as if she were a crazy aunt.

“Do you think … I know this sounds ridiculous … really ridiculous … but do you think maybe she set the fire? I mean, Kikimoras don't like it when their homes are disturbed, and maybe, with your parents rearranging the store so that Paisley could have her kiosk or whatever there, Louise felt threatened. I mean, if there really is a Louise. I don't really believe in ghosts or any of that woo-woo stuff, but … well … you know.”

Angus Paine was silent for a long minute. I was used to this now, the way he clammed up for so long you thought the call had been dropped. “I'd totally believe it.”

The streetlights came on. The only people left in the playground were the huge teenage boys shooting baskets. When the ball hit the rim, it made a low
clong
sound. After a while, the conversation spun down into random thoughts about our favorite YouTube videos, whether Green Day (my favorite band!) had sold out or not, and how lame our parents were. Unlike Kevin, Angus was interested to hear about how awful Mrs. Dagnitz's wedding reception was going to be. He asked when it was, and where it was, and whether I was expected to do anything totally embarrassing, like give a speech.

“Give a speech?” I croaked. I hadn't even thought of that.

“I have a friend whose dad did that, married someone else, and at the reception everyone had to say something about the couple. Something nice.” He laughed.

We talked until my ear got hot from my cell phone. I did not want to go home, where I expected that another dramathon awaited me. Quills would be worried to death about where I'd been. You'd think it would be Mark Clark, who was usually the BIC, brother-in-charge, but he understood me better than the other brothers, and never lost his head. Morgan would have disappeared
into his room, or maybe he'd met one of his friends for a game of cribbage, all the rage among philosophy students these days. I imagined Mrs. Dagnitz would be pacing around the living room, sobbing and twisting a shredded-up Kleenex in her strong hands, feeling so terrible that she'd assaulted her only daughter with her wholesome vegetarian cuisine.

But no.

When I finally got home, the kitchen was spotless, the fish smell long gone. Mrs. Dagnitz and Weird Rolando had returned to their hotel. Quills and Mark Clark were upstairs lounging on either ends of Cat Pee Couch watching a rerun of
The Simpsons
.

Quills patted the couch and I plopped down between them. Mark Clark put his arm around the back of the couch and patted my arm.

“You hanging out down at the school?” he asked.

I must have looked shocked that he knew my secret. “How'd you know?”

“Morgan saw ya when he was out walking the dog,” said Mark Clark. “Plus, we all used to hide out down there. Must run in the family.”

“Like the urge to throw burning Italian food at people?” I asked, all fake innocent.

Quills and Mark Clark glanced at each other and tried to look stern and older brotherly, but then Quills said in a fake judge voice, “Mrs. Rolando Dagnitz, the jury has found you guilty of assault with a deadly entrée,” and
we cracked up, and soon we were all wiping our eyes from laughing so hard. It was terrible. We should have had a somber and meaningful discussion, but we didn't. We couldn't.

I've been in deep trouble once or twice in my life, but I have never been in Maximum Trouble. Mount Everest is to the world's peaks what Maximum Trouble is to teenage bad behavior. Maximum Trouble involves punishment more serious than getting GOT. When you are in Maximum Trouble, people who were once on your side and thought you were cool change their way of thinking about you. Your parents and teachers are “disappointed” in you. Sometimes the law is involved. Also a special therapist for children.

After watching the rerun of
The Simpsons
—which I am usually not allowed to watch because Mark Clark thinks it's too raunchy—I washed my hair, checked Jupiter's food and water, and went to bed.

My biggest beauty secret is to go to bed with my hair soaking wet. Towel dry, finger-comb with whatever
antifrizz product I find in the bathroom cabinet, then wad it up into a ball under my head. When I wake up in the morning? Perfect imperfect curly waves. In the summer it's almost as soothing as having an Otter Pop wrapped around my throat.

But on this night it was far from soothing. On this night I tossed and turned. My dreams were long and complicated and seemed to have a lot of sirens in them. Once, I awoke in the dark—had I been asleep for five minutes or five hours?—and the sirens sounded close enough to be in my room. It was also possible I was having a dream in which I woke up confused, thinking there were sirens in my room.

In the morning, my hair had dried to an impeccable mess, and there was drool on my pillow. I'd slept hard. I could tell by the light in my room that it was late. I poked my head out the windows over my desk. It was still warm, but the sky was a strange yellow gray. It smelled smoky, like people had been using their fireplaces. That was impossible, since fall was still months away.