“Oh, good,” he said, “’cause Jen’s really looking forward to it. She’s crazy about you, you know.”
“Oh.”
I didn’t want to ask him why they were moving home. I couldn’t. He was supposed to tell me. He wasn’t supposed to be keeping this giant secret from me. He was supposed to just tell me.
I remembered the day that Z moved out, only three years ago. Dad and Z had been fighting a lot, mostly because Z decided not to finish university — he’d dropped out in his third year to work full-time at the record store. Dad thought it was a pretty stupid idea. I think Mom thought so, too, but she was a lot quieter about thinking it. Dad and Z had been fighting about how he wasn’t taking his life seriously, and how the record store wasn’t a proper job. Z said that he loved working there — he’d been a part-timer since his last year of high school and they’d finally offered him a full-time spot. He said that it would be nuts to pass on an offer like that. But Dad didn’t exactly agree.
Mom cried a little bit the day Swirly/K-M-M drove up to the house in his old beat-up van to help Z move his stuff to their new apartment. She cried, but I don’t think she thought I could see her do it. And, I mean, it wasn’t waterworks or anything. Just a little bit. A couple of tears.
But I knew that Z moving back in to the house, especially with J, was a bad, bad sign.
“Is everything okay?” Z asked, noticing whatever confused and sad look I had on my face.
He really wasn’t going to tell me why they were moving. He was going to let Mom and Dad do the dirty work.
“Yup.” I cleared my throat. “Fine.”
“All right, cool. Uh, do you mind cleaning your stuff out of my old bedroom? Jen and I are gonna need it.”
“Sure. Yeah. Right. I mean, okay. I’ll clean it tomorrow.”
“Thanks, bud. I owe you one.” Z extended his hand for a high-five, and I slapped at it lamely.
“Night,” I said.
“G’night.”
I closed the door and listened to Z’s footsteps as he walked back down the stairs, put on his shoes, zipped up his coat, and left.
Either Mom or Dad went down a few minutes later and put the deadbolt on the door.
I lay awake in bed for what felt like hours.
For the fact that the house was going to be bursting with people very, very soon, I’d never felt so totally alone before in my life.
Seven
Ginger (disambiguation)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ginger is a delicacy, medicine or cooking spice made from the stem of the plant Zingiber officinale. It may also refer to:
Ginger Baker (1939), rock drummer with Cream and Blind Faith
Ginger, the main character in the film Chicken Run
A word of British origin referring to people with red hair sometimes used in a derogatory sense.
A word someone scrawled with a giant red Sharpie on Chloe’s locker before school this morning. A word that makes Chloe so mad she insists that we have to track down the culprit and make them pay for humiliating her. How exactly she expects three weakling girl geeks (well, two geeks and one model-in-disguise) to help her take down a permanent marker–wielding criminal is most definitely beyond me. But she says we need to back her up, that we’re a gang, so we’re going to meet at her house after school today to make a plan. Anything that lets me avoid going home is fine by me.
I faked sick all day Sunday so I could escape from talking about the whole Z/J situation with my parents. I guess they figure that Z’s already told me. Still, it is kind of weird that they haven’t made me talk about how I’m feeling. Faking a stomach ache never worked this well when I was little. Maybe Mom and Dad don’t want to talk about it either. Still, if it’s really happening, it’s not like they have that much of a choice.
I couldn’t stop thinking about it all day. I didn’t even notice that anything was wrong with Chloe until we got let out for lunch. I guess I was kind of distracted. And that made Chloe mad, too, me being so spacey. She thought I wasn’t taking it seriously. I was though, mostly. Maybe not that seriously. It just really didn’t seem like that big a deal compared to everything else that’s going on right now. Yeah, it’s embarrassing, but it’s just a word, right?
But it’s important to Chloe, to the gang, so I’m going to focus:
Who would write Ginger on Chloe’s locker?
And why is that word such an insult?
Chloe’s house is sort of strange. For one thing, her parents don’t buy any juice or pop, so Chloe always has to sneak some home after school. She drinks more sugar than anyone I know, but she keeps it totally secret from her parents. It’s kind of weird.
Chloe sat us all down in the living room and made a big deal about how we all had to take off our shoes and be sure not to spill anything on the couches. I’m usually pretty careful, but Chloe’s warning made me kind of paranoid. She didn’t offer us any snacks anyway, so it’s not like we had any food to spill. She had a big bottle of Coke that she bought at the plaza near our school after the final bell, but the rest of us didn’t have anything.
“Okay,” said Chloe, exhaling dramatically the way people never do in real life, “we need to figure out who did this.”
Then Stacey started talking about who in our school she thought could have written it. I tried to pay attention to what she was saying, but everything sounded fuzzy. And, on top of everything else, my throat started feeling tight and itchy. Like maybe I was allergic to drama.
“Uh, can I have a glass of water?” I asked.
Chloe made a face. “The glasses are in the cupboard by the fridge.”
“Thanks,” I said, although I mostly just coughed.
To say that Chloe’s kitchen is different from ours would be a bit of an understatement. I mean, sure, her living room looked like we’d stepped right into a catalogue, but I figured that at least the kitchen would look lived-in. Whenever my parents have people over they always wind up hanging out by the sink and the stove, even though there’s never enough room for everybody. Dad calls it the heart of our house, our kitchen, and I sort of thought that’s how it was for everybody.
But, like the living room and the rest of the house, as far as I could see, the kitchen was clean and cold and alien. There were no pictures stuck to the fridge with funny magnets, no overflowing bowls of fruit or even a single spoon or fork out of place. It made my throat even itchier. I opened the cupboard by the fridge to get a glass, but saw that they’d lined them up on a shelf just out of my reach — I guess Chloe gets her height from her parents. I almost went back to the living room to ask Stacey to help, but as soon as the idea occurred to me, I was embarrassed for thinking about it. It wasn’t a big deal, I’d find a way to get it myself. No problem.
I went up on my tip-toes and reached for a glass. I was pretty sure I could grab one if I just hopped a tiny bit to nab it. So I bent my knees a little, fixed my eyes on my target and jumped, reaching my hand out for the glass sitting front-row centre. My hand connected, and I felt its cool slipperiness as I landed, but the second my feet touched the floor again I watched in slow-motion as it slipped out of my grasp, landed next to me on the stone-looking tiled floor and broke into a hundred tiny, glittery pieces.
“What are you doing?” Chloe yelled, coming up behind me only seconds later. She startled me and I took a big step backwards, landing, of course, on a big shard of broken glass. I yelped and grabbed my foot to get a look at it. The piece I’d stepped on was still stuck inside, and as soon as I saw it the pain became unbearable.
Stacey and Trisha raced in the kitchen after that, and Stacey helped Chloe clean up the debris, while Trisha took my hand and made me sit on the floor away from the mess.
“How bad does it hurt?” she asked.
“Bad,” I said.
“I’m gonna take it out, okay?”
“Okay,” I said, squeezing my eyes shut.
“Ready? One, two —” And she yanked it out.
“Ow. What happened to three?”
“That’s how my mom always does it,” she said. “Three’s too late.” She surveyed my foot. “Oh, gross, you’re getting blood all over your sock. Chloe, do you have any Band-Aids?”
“Bathroom,” Chloe said, venom in her voice, “under the sink.”
“Don’t bleed to death while I’m gone,” said Trisha.
“Yeah, right, thanks,” I said, pulling my sock off and pressing a mangled tissue I fished out of my pocket against my wound.
Chloe and Stacey finished sweeping up the last bits of glass into the garbage.
“I think that’s it,” Stacey said, “I can’t see any more.”
“My mom’s going to be so pissed,” Chloe said.
“I’m sorry. It was an accident. I —”
“What, you couldn’t reach?” snapped Chloe.
“Well … yeah.”
“So stand on a chair.” You idiot. She didn’t actually say it, but her tone filled in the rest.
My face burned red. I looked at Stacey, silently begging for her to stand up for me. But she didn’t say anything.
“Seriously, my mom is going to freak,” Chloe said, rubbing her temples. Again, the way people never do in real life. “Those glasses cost like twenty bucks each. She loves them. She’s going to be so pissed.”
“I’m sorry,” I said again. “I really am.”
“Whatever, it’s too late now.”
“I could pay you back.”
“They came in a set of four. What, do you have eighty dollars in your backpack?”
“No, but, like, I could —”
“Just forget it.”
Then Trisha came back downstairs with the box of Band-Aids. And Chloe and Stacey went back to the living room without another word.
Trisha put the biggest Band-Aid in the box over the cut. I looked down at the bloodied sock I still held, bunched up in my fist. She was right, I had ruined it. There was a big splotch of blood where the glass had been stuck, plus it had torn a hole in the fabric.
“I think I better go home,” I said. “Chloe’s really mad.”
“She’ll be madder if you don’t help with whatever revenge she’s got planned.”
“I don’t know, you should have heard her just now.”
“So buy her another glass.”
“I don’t think that’ll work.”
“Whatever, her mom probably won’t even notice. You think anyone actually eats in this kitchen?”
“Yeah. I guess you’re right.”
“Come on,” she said, slapping my arm, “you’ll live.”
I picked my sock off the floor and stuffed it in the pocket of my jeans. It bulged out — a big, embarrassing lump. I limped back to where my friends were gathered in the living room.
Chloe and Stacey were already well into making a list of everyone in our class who they thought might have written on Chloe’s locker. We talked about the names they’d come up with for a little while, but none of them seemed very likely. So then, at Chloe’s insistence, we made a list of everyone in our grade who could have done it. After twenty minutes of brainstorming and flipping through our old yearbook — which Chloe brought down from her bedroom — we still weren’t any closer to sniffing out the red Sharpie vandal.
Nobody at school really likes our group (minus Stacey, of course), but nobody hates us, either. Or at least that’s what I would have told you yesterday. Today I’m less sure.
It’s hard to know what to say about Chloe’s locker, because mostly I just don’t care. It sucks, and she’s right, it is completely humiliating to have the janitors called in to paint over your locker during lunch. But what are we going to do if we find the person who did it? They were probably just being stupid and trying to look cool to their friends.
Picking on a grade seven girl. Real cool, right?
But Chloe’s taking it really personally, and she’s making it such a big deal that it’s kind of annoying. There are so many more fun things we could be doing, but instead we’re acting all serious about some random jerk with a marker.
There are bigger problems. Much bigger.
After we finally exhausted ourselves with list-making, we had seventeen possible suspects: five in our class, eight in our grade, and four wild-card grade eights. None of them seemed any more likely than the others, though. We were stuck. Chloe kept saying that it had to be one of them, that we absolutely had to figure it out, but we had zero information to go on. What were we supposed to do?
A little while later, Chloe checked her phone and told us we had to get out because her parents would be home soon. Her house wasn’t too far from mine and Trisha’s so we figured we’d walk home. Stacey had to call her mom for a ride, though, and as Trisha and I put on our coats to leave, I wondered if that wasn’t exactly the way Chloe wanted it, anyway. Me and Trisha. And Chloe and Stacey.
I tried to apologize for the glass one more time, but Chloe acted like she could barely hear me, running upstairs with Stacey before Trisha and I were barely out the door.
Me and Trisha.
And Chloe and Stacey.
My foot still hurt.
I wandered home in a sort of daze, I guess. I was surprised when I found myself at my front door without any real memory of having walked there, or of having parted ways with Trish.
And, as it turns out, I’d wandered right into a trap.
Eight
Ambush
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
An ambush is a long-established military tactic, in which the aggressors (the ambushing force) take advantage of concealment and the element of surprise to attack an unsuspecting enemy from concealed positions, such as among dense underbrush or behind hilltops or right in the front hallway of your house — like they were just standing there, waiting for you to come in — when you’re hobbling home with only one sock on.
Mom, Dad, Z, and J were all waiting for me when I got home.
“Sit down, kiddo,” my dad said, “we’ve got a few things to talk about.”
“Right now?” I asked. All I wanted to do was go upstairs to my room and listen to some music, or at least put on some clean socks.
J smiled at me. She waved. “Hey, Jo. How’s it going?”
“Uh, fine.” I was totally staring at her stomach — it was still pretty flat, you really couldn’t tell — and had to force my eyes to move up to her face. J had shaved the back of her head completely, but had left bangs at the front. The hair she had left was a slightly faded pink. It was turning sort of grey, to be honest. “I like your hair,” I added.
“Thanks,” she said, rubbing her fuzzy head with her left hand and smiling like she really meant it.
“Sweetie,” Mom said, “we, uh, well —”
“We’ve waited long enough to bring you up to speed,” said my dad. “We were under the impression that your brother” — his eyes cut right to Z, squinting, and almost kind of mean-looking — “had explained what was going on to you.”
“Sure,” I said, “he did.”
“Zim told you that he and Jen were going to be moving in, but he didn’t mention why, did he?”
“No. But neither did you.”
I was just telling the truth, but both Dad and Mom looked upset when I said it. Maybe because they knew that it was the truth, too. Maybe they were feeling kind of embarrassed that they’d left the job up to their son. I hoped they were. It all seemed pretty unreal that they thought they didn’t have to tell me. They hadn’t been acting like adults at all — they’d been acting like scared little kids.
“Look, Jo, I just know —” Z started. I could barely look at him; it was too, too weird.
“Who cares?” I said, my eyes fixed to the ground, “It’s gross, I don’t want to talk about it.”
That was the truth, too. I took a tiny glance at J to see if she looked mad, or hurt, but her face was totally calm.
“I think maybe we should all sit down,” J said.
&n
bsp; “Good idea,” said Mom, a little too quickly and a little too loudly, and she led us all into the living room.
Unlike Chloe’s, our living room is tiny, like the rest of the house. We have a couch that fits two people and a big comfy chair next to it, but otherwise there’s nowhere to sit, so we stood around for a minute, trying to figure out who would sit where. Mom wanted J to take the chair, but J thought Mom deserved it.
“Jen, really, you take the chair,” said Mom finally.
“Okay,” she said, “if you insist.”
So J nestled into the chair, sitting with her feet up and bent underneath her, while Mom and Dad sat down on the couch, and Z and I picked spots on the floor. It was only when I crossed my legs that Mom noticed I only had one sock on.
“What happened to your foot, Jo?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I said. “Just some broken glass, I stepped on some, I mean.”
“Oh, you poor thing. Let me go get you a clean pair of socks.”
And Mom was up and out of the room faster than I’d ever seen her move before.
“Does it hurt?” J asked, pointing to my foot.
“Oh, no. It’s not a big deal,” I said, staring at my foot to distract myself from J. “I was just being stupid.”
“We’ve got to get you some steel-toed boots,” she said. “They’ve got tons of them at the Army Surplus store downtown.”
“Yeah?” I said, thinking about how cool I would look in a pair of combat boots. Tough and cool, like J.
“Yeah, we’ll have to go sometime. I’ve been meaning to pick up another pair, anyway. The soles are coming off on mine, so it kinda looks like they’re talking to you when I walk.” She held her hands up like puppets, flapping her fingers up and down to demonstrate. I couldn’t help it, I started giggling.
Mom reappeared and handed me a pair of fuzzy pink socks, the ones I never wear.
“Here you go, babe. What’s so funny?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“Just a little invisible boot puppetry,” J said, making her hands take a little bow.
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