Camille McPhee Fell Under the Bus ...

by Kristen Tracy

  “It was a movie,” she whimpered.

  “I actually was watching an educational program on the Science Channel,” I said.

  Officer Peacock stopped in his tracks. He spun around to face me. The sun reflected off his badge and into my eyes, blinding me. When I shaded my eyes with my hand I saw that he had his bolt cutters aimed right at me.

  “No excuses!” he huffed. “We got a child chained to a fuel tank and you’re the babysitter. No excuses!” He turned back around and stomped through the ankle-high snow into the Bratbergs’ backyard toward Dustin and the propane tank.

  Dustin was shivering and crying. As Officer Peacock inspected the handcuffs, Dustin pleaded with him to hurry.

  “We’ve got two choices,” Officer Peacock said. “First, how important is that hand to you?”

  “It’s very important to me,” he whined. “I write with it.”

  “I hope I don’t have to cut it off.”

  Dustin fell to his knees, but his arm stayed where it was. The way his arm stretched above him made it look as if he were raising his hand to ask a really important question. I was not happy about this officer’s attitude. He was acting like a jerk. I wanted to kick him in the shins and demand that he be nicer to us or I’d kick him again.

  But Officer Peacock wasn’t the kind of guy you kicked in the shins, even if you had a good reason. He was armed with a gun and a billy club and a terrible personality. He towered over me and Samantha and Dustin in his all-tan uniform. I decided it was best to apologize.

  “Normally, I’m the mother’s helper,” I said. “Being the babysitter is new to me. I’m really sorry about this.” I walked over to Dustin and patted him on the back.

  “I’m sorry too,” Samantha cried, running and throwing her arms around Dustin. “I was a bad sister.”

  “Back away. Let me use Jaws.” Officer Peacock squeezed the bolt cutters around the cuffs and snapped them off.

  Dustin hugged his leg.

  “I’ll never do this again,” he said. “And I’ll always look both ways before I cross the street. And I’ll never throw candy bar wrappers out the window again. And I won’t glue quarters to sidewalks. And I won’t toilet-paper supertall trees or stick plastic forks in old people’s yards. And when a light turns yellow and my dad asks if he should punch it, I’ll tell him no. And—”

  “You’re welcome,” Officer Peacock said, patting Dustin firmly on the back. “You need to stay out of trouble, or those handcuffs will have just been a practice session.”

  I thought that was an awful thing for Officer Peacock to say. As he drove out of sight, I hooked one arm around Samantha and the other around Dustin and led them back inside. On the Science Channel, two paleontologists were digging up dinosaur bones. I’ve always felt sorry for dinosaurs. It’s never seemed fair to me that such neat-looking animals went extinct.

  “This is gross,” Dustin said.

  Both he and his sister collapsed onto the giant beanbag and continued to watch the TV like zombies. The blue light bounced off their faces, making them look half dead. (Nobody looks attractive when they’re watching TV.)

  When Mrs. Bratberg came home, I told her what had happened. She apologized several times. Then she took a plastic spatula out of a kitchen drawer and started whipping up a batch of brownies. She told Samantha and Dustin they didn’t deserve any. But she said she’d call me when they were done and I could have one. Then I presented her with my sock filled with quarters.

  “I don’t have time for a math lesson right now,” she said.

  “Oh,” I said.

  “How much is in there?” she asked.

  “Forty-nine dollars and fifty cents,” I said. I would have felt better if it had been fifty dollars, but I had to be honest.

  “Let’s round up,” she said.

  I liked that idea.

  “Here is seventy dollars. Fifty for your sock. And twenty for your day.”

  “Thank you so much!” I said.

  “Don’t spend it all in one place,” she said.

  This made me frown. Because I only planned on buying one calling card. I slipped the money into the palm of my hand and slid it into my glove.

  “Would you like to stay for some pasta salad?” Mrs. Bratberg asked. She opened the refrigerator. “It has sausage and broccoli and eggplant in it.”

  “I can’t,” I said. “But I’ll save room for a brownie.”

  I was out of there. My mind zoomed as I walked home. How much would it cost to call Japan? On TV they had commercials for psychics and it cost about five dollars a minute to talk to one of those women and learn about your future. Sally wasn’t going to tell me about my future. We’d talk about the past and the present. My call had to be a lot cheaper. Probably a dollar each minute. I figured I’d need thirty more dollars, so we could talk for one hundred minutes, so we could remember each other one hundred percent.

  Chapter 12

  Load it Up

  During the last week of April, spring showed up out of nowhere. The snow melted early. Yellow and purple wildflowers along the road bloomed. The yard turned green again. And I didn’t have to wear a jacket anymore. Also, I had saved ten more dollars for my international calling card and had avoided making any friends. I was reminded of how important this was again when Emily Santa, a sixth grader, moved to Guam.

  Emily visited our class and gave a report on Guam before she left. At first, she made it sound like a fantastic island and I thought I’d like to visit it one day. But then she started talking about these brown tree snakes that had eaten every single bird on Guam. She made the snakes sound like dangerous criminals. She said that special police were hired to walk around the airport to make sure none of the snakes snuck on a plane and flew to some other island and ruined it. Apparently, Hawaii was really freaked out about this because they have a ton of birds and they aren’t that far away from Guam.

  But I didn’t have to worry about Guam or tree snakes or friends. I remember waking up and hearing birds chirping outside my window and thinking it was some sort of sign. From now on, my life was going to be one big, happy birdsong. Who knew that a trip to the Grand Teton Mall could sink me.

  Up to this point, my mother had been a pretty good tightwad. My father said we were finally out of the hole. To help us stay out, my mother carried around a little notebook and scribbled in it every time she made a purchase. She kept track of how much money she spent down to the penny. Personally, I didn’t enjoy thinking about the hole.

  But that day, my mom’s Chevy was almost out of gas, so we drove my dad’s pickup to town. I thought we were going grocery shopping. But instead, my mother drove us to the mall. She parked the pickup in the mall’s parking lot in front of Macy’s and slammed her door much harder than she needed to. Like she was mad at it. Then, walking toward the store, she pulled her little notebook out of her purse and stared at it like it was her enemy. She even growled at it. Then she tried to rip it in half, but it was too thick.

  “I hate this thing!” she yelled. She tossed the little book into a bush beside the store.

  “But we’re finally out of the hole,” I said.

  It didn’t matter. My mother had snapped. And once inside, I snapped too. Worrying about the hole isn’t as much fun as shopping.

  I’d hoped to go through life as a problem solver. But in this situation, I became a problem maker. I found a fabulous purchase!

  I spotted my future mattress in the corner of the Bare Maple Furniture and Mattress Store. It was on display, sheetless and without pillows. I imagined myself curled up on top of it, flipping from my right side to my left, breaking in the new springs, having delightful dreams. Without any squeaking. “This is perfect,” I told my mother, stroking it like it was a friendly dog. “It doesn’t squeak and it matches the new carpet.”

  My mother agreed.

  “And squeaking isn’t good,” she said.

  “I know. I’ve been having some pretty weird dreams lately,” I said.

&n
bsp; “Nothing is more important than a good night’s sleep,” she said. “Plus, it’s on sale. You don’t mind sleeping on the display model, do you?”

  I shook my head. I didn’t mind at all. A new mattress is a new mattress.

  When the salesman loaded it into the pickup, he tipped his ball cap at my mother and tugged at a corner of the plastic wrap, saying, “This here is a suffocation risk. Punch some holes in it before you throw it out.”

  He spat a brown loogie on the ground and shifted his toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other using his tongue.

  “My neighbor threw out a big plastic department-store bag and her little Pomeranian got all caught up in it,” he said. “It died.”

  He tossed the toothpick on the ground and spat another brown loogie. “You’d expect that with a cat, but it takes a lot to kill a dog.”

  I don’t know what this guy had against cats. He yanked on the twine to make sure it was tight and then walked to my mother’s window. He pulled his ball cap off by its bill and waved goodbye with it. “Drive safely,” he said, thumping on the pickup’s side rail as we pulled away. I realize now that driving away was a big mistake.

  On our way home, it became obvious to everyone—especially the minivan behind us—that we were about to lose our load. My mother was doing forty miles per hour, making the mattress pull against the orange twine, the wind lifting it up like a giant rectangular wing.

  “I can sit in the back and hold it down,” I offered.

  But my mother refused.

  “I’m not your father,” she said. “If anything happened, if you fell out, your head would pop open like a cherry tomato.”

  Rather than have us squish in and ride three across in his small pickup, my father would sometimes let me ride in the back, perched on the wheel well of my choice. He would take the back roads, softly turning the corners home.

  As the minivan passed, the driver pressed on her horn, releasing long, complaining honks. Even as she pulled ahead, she continued honking, as if she was trying to warn the rest of Yellowstone Highway about us. I hated it when people were showy like that.

  “I get it!” my mother yelled out of her window, her hair swirling around her face as she tapped on the brakes. She pulled over to the side of the road, and we both got out to take a look.

  No longer in motion, the mattress looked peaceful. The fabric was a light pink, and even in its giant protective plastic wrap, I could see white flowers blooming on it from head to foot. “I didn’t count on this wind,” my mother said, standing beside the pickup, tugging at the twine. “What do you think?”

  I took a minute to reflect on everything I’d learned in school up to this point. But we hadn’t really covered anything like this. I also thought about stuff I’d learned on the Science Channel. But that didn’t really help either.

  “How about we slow down?” I said loudly.

  We climbed back into the truck and drove, straddling the fog line in second gear, all the way home. My mother shook her fist at people who honked and made rude hand gestures. I was surprised that so many unkind people had drivers’ licenses. When we rolled up in the driveway, my father was out front, sweeping his weed whacker along the ditch bank. He cut the motor when he saw us and laid the machine down in the grass. He was wearing a badly scuffed pair of cowboy boots. Years of yard work had stained the toes a deep froggy green.

  Even from far away—just by the way he was standing—I could tell he was thinking about the hole. I could tell he was on the verge of blowing up.

  “How much did that thing cost?” he yelled across the lawn, gesturing to the mattress with his arm.

  My mother didn’t answer. She climbed into the truck bed and untied the twine. I stayed out of her way as she shoved the mattress onto the driveway. It tumbled out like a potato. She didn’t ask my father for help. His face looked red and unhappy.

  “Don’t mind him,” she said, dragging my mattress toward the house. As my father got closer, my mother kept her back to him, sliding my mattress down the front walk.

  I tried to calm my father down by using mental energy. Once on TV, I saw a man who could bend spoons with his mind. I used my mind to try to stamp out my father’s anger. I sent him the following message forty-seven times:

  You like Camille’s mattress. You like Camille’s mattress.

  But my father’s mind was very powerful. I think he actually bounced my message back to me and gave me a headache, which was very unfair because he was a lot bigger than me and had a much larger mind.

  “Did you get a box spring, too?” he asked my mother, rocking back on his heels, his hands in his pockets.

  “Camille needs a mattress,” my mother said, walking backward up the cement steps.

  “I thought Camille already had a mattress,” he said.

  “It squeaks,” I said.

  My mother reached behind her and opened the screen door. She held it open with her butt. I picked up the mattress’s other end and helped her steer it inside. Even though my head was throbbing, I sent my father some more messages.

  Camille’s mattress was an absolute bargain. Camille’s mattress was an absolute bargain.

  I thought it might be working, because his face looked pink, not red. My mother and I carried my mattress down the hallway and into my room. The house still smelled like carpet glue. But it also smelled like my mother’s spicy meatballs. Sadly, they weren’t really meatballs. She made them out of extra-firm tofu.

  “Do you have plans for the old one?” my father asked, standing in the doorway.

  “I’ll throw it out,” she said, resting the new mattress against a wall.

  Go back outside and whack the weeds. Go back outside and whack the weeds.

  “The trash service won’t pick that up,” he said. The doorframe squeaked as he leaned heavily against it.

  “They’ll take whatever I put out,” she said. She pulled my old mattress off my bed.

  I tried one last message. Forget about the hole! Forget about the hole! Forget about the hole! But it didn’t look like it was working. My father looked totally stuck on the hole. At this point, I threw my mental-energy plan out the window.

  “She’s right,” I said. Hearing my mom mention that reminded me of our new trash program. I thought it would help if I explained it to my dad. “It’s a brand-new program. On Take-It-Away Tuesday the trash people will take anything. It’s the fourth Tuesday of every month. That’s how the Hattens threw their dishwasher away, and that’s how Penny Winchester’s mom got rid of their broken freezer, and that’s how the Bratbergs threw that elk away that they accidentally hit with their station wagon.”

  My father looked surprised. “I thought those hooligans burned that elk,” he said. “I thought that’s what that smell was.”

  “No,” I said, throwing my arms up with excitement. “It was Take-It-Away Tuesday.” I walked toward him and grabbed his hand. “The smell was all of their rotten potatoes. For some reason, they buried over a hundred pounds of potatoes two years ago. And for some other reason, they decided to dig them all up and burn them.”

  My father let me hold his hand. “How do you know all this? You don’t play with their kids, do you?” he asked, looking down at me.

  “No,” I said, taking my hand back. “I absolutely avoid them. Except when I’m their mother’s helper.” After I said this, I wished I could have sucked the words back into my mouth. I had promised my mother many times that I would never tell my father.

  Forget I just said that. Forget I just said that. Also, keep forgetting about the hole.

  My father looked at my mother and back at me. My mother and I hung our heads.

  “She just gives Mrs. Bratberg an extra set of hands,” my mom said.

  “She’s not old enough to watch other people’s kids,” my father said. “What if somebody hit their head, or choked, or drank poison?”

  “I’d call 911,” I said, folding my arms across my chest. But I didn’t go into the actual time I h
ad called 911. I thought this was going bad enough already.

  My father glared at me and motioned with his arm for me to leave my room.

  “Maxine, at this rate Camille won’t live to be eleven. The Bratberg boys build pipe bombs. I’ve heard them explode. She can’t watch them. Even with Mrs. Bratberg there. I don’t trust that situation.” He made the sound of an explosion, and when my mother tried to interrupt him, he made the sound again. “No playing, no mother’s helper, and we’re building a fence.”

  “A fence costs money.”

  “A fence would be worth every dime!” my father said. “You don’t even know if this mattress is new,” he said. “It could be refurbished. There could be kid pee, bedbugs, and deadly bacteria in there.”

  “Shut up, shut up!” my mother said. “Bare Maple Furniture and Mattress Store doesn’t sell that kind of garbage.”

  I stood in the hallway and covered my ears. Whether or not we thought it was fair, my father had banned my mother and me from shopping at three places: Boing Boing Toys, because the owner’s uncle was a convicted felon; Chuck’s Grocery, because they’d been caught selling bad meat; and the Grand Teton Mall, because he thought the way big department stores treated small businesses was almost as bad as organized crime.

  “Do you respect anything I say?” he yelled, throwing my door open. My father’s face was red again, and when he saw me, I tried to act like I hadn’t been listening by inspecting my fingernails.

  “Go outside,” he said to me.

  I turned to go.

  “No. You could run into our pipe-bomb-building, elk-dumping, potato-burning neighbors,” he roared. “Go wait in the garage.” Inside my room, I could see my mother sitting on my new mattress, crying. She pulled at the protective plastic, tearing at it, making holes. I tried to send her some mental messages.

  Camille still likes you. Camille still likes you.

  I hadn’t been in the garage for very long when I heard my father drag something out of the house, load it in his pickup, and back out of the driveway. My mother opened the garage door that led to the kitchen and told me to come inside. I ran to my room. My mother had remade my bed. I pulled back the comforter and sheets and touched my brand-new pink mattress. I outlined some of the white blossoms with my pointer finger.