“Poor bee probably died from the stink.”
I giggled at Lacey Jane’s remark.
“Did you get stung?” Rudy asked Bambi, all concerned.
She pursed her lips in a pout. “No, but I got distracted, which is even worse. You shouldn’t let anything bother you during the judges’ interview. They took off points and I came in second.”
“So you lost,” Lacey Jane said gleefully.
“I can tell you two are best friends,” I said, looking from one to the other. Lacey Jane clearly couldn’t stand Bambi; but then, Lacey Jane didn’t much like anybody from what I’d seen.
“Hardly.” Lacey Jane gave a wicked grin. “Poor little beauty queen didn’t win the crown.”
“I’ll have you know, second place was a tiara, a check for five hundred dollars, and an official John Deere T-shirt and ball cap,” Bambi said smugly. “I gave Daddy the John Deere stuff. Mama will probably put the check in the bank. I have my own savings account with all the money I’ve earned from beauty pageants.”
I slapped my forehead, staggering. “Five hundred dollars? And all you did was play that little guitar and sing that weird song?”
“It’s a ukulele. A Hawaiian guitar.” She held up the four-string guitar by the neck. “The other girls jump around the stage in satin shorts and do stuff like the splits. Me, I come out and sing and pluck my ukulele. The judges think I’m charming.”
“You played it behind your head,” I said.
Bambi grinned. “Neat, huh? I made that part up myself. Mama says it adds sparkle to my act.”
Lacey Jane strummed an imaginary guitar and sang mockingly, “That’s my baby nooooooooow!”
Bambi’s brows drew together. Suddenly she wasn’t so pretty. “You’re just jealous, Lacey Jane Whistle, because I’m going to make something of myself!”
That snagged my attention. Bambi didn’t seem like the type who had goals in life. “What do you want to do?” I asked.
“First, I’ll win the Miss Virginia pageant. Then I’ll be crowned Miss America—”
Lacey Jane pretended to throw up. “Yeah, right!”
Bambi ignored her. “Miss America gets a big scholarship. I’m going to business college, and when I get out I’m going to be a beauty expert and have my own beauty empire—products, an advice column, maybe even a TV show.”
Well, if that didn’t beat all. I guess with a name like Bambi Lovering, I shouldn’t expect her to aim to cure cancer.
“I’ve already started on my life’s plan,” she rattled on. “I have my own column in our school newspaper. It’s called ‘Bambi Lovering’s Expert Beauty Tips.’ My teacher said sales of Red Onion Peels doubled once my column started in it.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t been sued yet,” said Lacey Jane. “You name names in that stupid column!”
“How was I to know Kady Blackwell would shave the hair off her arms with her daddy’s razor?” Bambi said loftily. “I just mentioned that if she didn’t want to set her arm hair on rollers, she might try a bleach cream, is all.”
Rudy gawked at Bambi like she was made out of cake. “Will you come over and play with me sometime?”
She glanced at him. “I’m awful busy with singing lessons and the beauty advice book I’m writing.” Then she fastened her round doll’s eyes on me. “You could do with a little work, Rebel. You don’t make the most of what you have.”
“And what would that be?” I asked, even though I didn’t give a fig about my looks.
She walked all around me like I was a car in a showroom, tapping her index finger on her chin. “Hmmm. Your eyelashes are on the puny side, but your hair is nice and thick. You should curl it instead of letting it hang there like a raggy curtain.”
“My hair is fine the way it is.”
Bambi let out a tragic sigh. “Too bad. You don’t have one single natural sign of beauty.”
Lacey Jane rolled her eyes skyward. “Here we go. Another episode of why Bambi Lovering is the star of the universe and everybody else is ugly as a mud fence.”
“I possess three natural signs of beauty,” Bambi began, like she was telling a fairy tale. She pulled her bangs back. “See that vee? That’s a widow’s peak. Most people have plain old hairlines, like yours. I also have large front teeth—”
“Beaver teeth,” Lacey Jane remarked. I snickered. When Lacey Jane wasn’t being a bully, she was a real cutup.
Bambi glared at her. “I do not have beaver teeth! Mama says my teeth are pretty as wedding china and I could be a toothpaste model. My final sign of beauty is this mole under my left eye.” She pointed to a tiny dark spot I thought was an ink mark. “Back in the days of George Washington, ladies used to paste fake moles on their face. Sometimes the moles were shaped like hearts or moons or stars. Mama told me all this because on the day I was born—”
“The worst day in the history of the world,” Lacey Jane said.
“—the nurse laid me in my mama’s arms and said, ‘Mrs. Lovering, that child is a natural beauty.’ Since then Mama’s been studying up on natural beauties like Marilyn Monroe and Scarlett O’Hara and Elizabeth Taylor. I wish I had violet eyes like Elizabeth Taylor, but I do have a ring around my iris. See it?”
A yawn pushed out of my mouth that I didn’t bother to hide. “Do you ever talk about anything but yourself?” I talked about myself, but at least I was interesting.
She peered at me. “Is that a ring around your iris? No. Well, you almost had a natural sign of beauty.”
“Bambi,” said Lacey Jane. “Shut up.”
“You shut up. You’re still mad about the last day of school.” Bambi explained to me, “Leonard Smoot pushed her down when we got off the bus and later he took me to the movies. Lacey Jane had a big crush on him all year.”
Lacey Jane balled her fists. “I did not! You think every boy alive is madly in love with you!”
“I love you,” said Rudy in a small voice. Naked infatuation lit his pale face.
Oh, brother. I wondered if Rudy would sleepwalk over to Bambi’s trailer and serenade her with “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.”
Bambi patted his cheek. “Bless your pea-picking little heart!” All business again, she announced, “This summer I’m doing a special back-to-school package. Head-to-toe makeover for only five dollars. Plus two typed pages of beauty hints, and that includes your colors! What do you say?”
“I say, buzz off.” Where did that girl get her nerve?
“You’re missing a fabulous opportunity.”
Across the street, the front door of her trailer opened, and her mother called out, “C’mon in, sugar. I drew a nice cool oatmeal bath for you.” The door closed again.
“Think it over,” Bambi said, heading home. “Especially you, Lacey Jane. With looks like yours, you don’t have a minute to lose—”
Before I could blink, Lacey Jane flew at Bambi, clawing the tiara off her head.
“Oww!” Bambi cried. The tiara was tangled in her curls, but Lacey Jane kept yanking.
I grabbed her arm. “Let’s get out of here before her mother comes after us!”
“Go soak your stupid head in your stupid oatmeal bath!” Lacey Jane yelled over her shoulder as I dragged her away.
“Redheads should never wear pink!” Bambi fired back. “You look pukeish!”
I tugged Lacey Jane down the street toward the firehouse. Rudy reluctantly tripped along behind us, already pining for his True Love.
“Did you and Bambi have words before you fell out?” I asked Lacey Jane.
The skin under her eyes grew tight. “I don’t want to talk about it, okay?”
“Okay, okay.” Lacey Jane was like a live bomb. You never knew what would set off her (very short) fuse.
At the station, two firemen hosed a big red truck parked on the cement driveway. Rudy ran up to one of them and blurted, “Hey, did you just come from a fire? Did the house burn down? Did anybody die?”
I expected him to whip out his fashion ma
gazines and offer to pick out the victim’s funeral outfits.
“Rudy Parsley,” I bellowed. “Get over here.”
Inside the firehouse the break room was cool and dim. Cracked plastic chairs faced a battered TV set. A bank of vending machines lined one wall.
“What do you want?” Lacey Jane asked, standing in front of the soda machine.
“I don’t have any money.” I still had my ten bucks, but I owed Skeeter twenty, and I didn’t know when he’d be sprung from prison.
“Daddy leaves me a few dollars before he goes to work.” Lacey Jane fed a bill into the machine. “Dr Pepper okay?” She punched the button, and the bottle rolled down.
I popped the cap while she debated over the snack selections. “We need salt to get rid of the sugar taste from all those Neccos we ate.”
“You mean all that sickening sweetness from Bambi.” Lacey Jane pulled the knob for a bag of barbecue potato chips.
“Me first!” Rudy said, reaching for the Dr Pepper.
“You last.” As I sipped from the bottle, I noticed a poster bristling with exclamation points by the candy machine. “Hey, look at this.”
Lacey Jane read the poster out loud. “‘Announcing the Second Annual Frog Level Volunteer Firemen’s Carnival. Games, Prizes, Rides Galore! Beauty Pageant! Four Age Categories! Two Hundred Fifty Dollars Top Prize!’”
“A beauty pageant,” I breathed. And prize money. A pot of gold to finance my trip to the August Kids’ Dig. “Let’s enter!”
Lacey Jane stared at me. “Us? Enter a beauty pageant? Are you crazy?”
“Why not? We’re not homely.” Actually, Lacey Jane was, a little. Okay, more than a little. But her face wouldn’t make a train jump the tracks or anything. “I think it’ll be fun. Let’s do it.”
“Did you read the fine print?” Her finger stabbed a line at the bottom of the poster.
$25 application fee. register at better-off-dead pest control and bridal consignment.
“Dang.” My pot-of-gold bubble burst. “I’m broker than four o’clock.”
“My dad will lend you the money if you need it,” Lacey Jane offered.
“I couldn’t take your father’s money.” But if I won, I could pay him back. And Skeeter. And have enough left over to go to Saltville. I could almost taste the Bison Bacon. But would her father be so keen to lend me money if Lacey Jane wasn’t in the contest, too? “I’m not entering unless you do,” I said.
“What about Bambi? She’s a twit, but she’s still pretty stiff competition.”
“Did she enter last year?”
The skin tightened under Lacey Jane’s eyes again. “I don’t know. We didn’t go to the firemen’s carnival last summer.”
“I bet she won’t even bother with this piddly little contest,” I said. “Anyway, we look just as good as her.”
Lacey Jane twisted a piece of her lank hair. “I don’t have curly hair like Bambi.”
“So? My sister will fix your hair. She’s practically a licensed beautician.”
She kept throwing boulders in the road. “We don’t have any talent.”
“Who says we don’t?” I protested. “You’re loaded with talent. I bet you can’t walk across the floor without twirling two hula hoops and yodeling.”
“Well…maybe.” She cracked a smile. “How about you? What’s your talent?”
“Yeah,” Rudy said. “What’s your talent, Rebel?”
“I’ll show you.”
Holding my breath, I gulped three big swigs of Dr Pepper. Gas rumbled in my stomach. I opened my mouth to release a giant belch. But instead of just letting it rip, I formed my lips into words.
“ConnecticutMassachusettsVirginiaSouthCarolinaNorth CarolinaGeorgiaNewHampshireNewJerseyNewYorkMaryland DelawarePennsylvaniaaaaaaaaaa…”
As always, I petered out on “Pennsylvania.”
Lacey Jane and Rudy stared at me, goggle-eyed. “You just burped the thirteen colonies,” said Lacey Jane, astonished.
“Except for Rhode Island. I can’t ever get the thirteenth colony out.”
Lacey Jane cracked up. She slid down the wall and plunked spraddle-legged on the floor, snorting Dr Pepper out of her nose. Rudy started giggling, and I did too as I collapsed beside Lacey Jane.
Our laughter echoed all over the firehouse. Rudy and me, our laughs sounded regular, like everybody else’s. But Lacey Jane’s laugh sounded like music rippling from an old piano that hadn’t been played for a long time.
What do you do if you have “piano legs” like Lacey Jane Whistle? Don’t wear short shorts! People can see your legs are the same size all the way down!
If you don’t want to be mistaken for a stool or something, wear Bermuda shorts. They hit at the knee and people will think you just have shapeless calves. Never ever wear babyish ankle socks, especially with sandals! This is a fashion “faux pas” you see all over the magazines.
Also, if you’re a redhead like Lacey Jane Whistle, you can’t get a tan. All you do is burn and peel, even if you slap on a gallon of Caribbean Pete Banana Coconut Oil. Don’t show your snow-white piano legs in short shorts. Not unless you give the rest of us sunglasses so we don’t go blind.
Finally, never wear pink short shorts if you are a redhead with piano legs. That breaks so many fashion rules I can’t count them all.
Until next time…smile pretty!
Better-Off-Dead Pest Control and Bridal Consignment
At six fifteen, Lynette stumbled in the door. The front of her pink smock was streaked with dye, her makeup was smudged, and her hair stuck out everywhere. She looked like she’d sailed around the world in a teacup.
She tossed her textbook on the kitchen floor and burst into tears. “What?” I hurried over to her. “Did you wreck The Clunker?”
“I’m a dumb bunny in school! And the old biddies at the beauty parlor h-h-hate meeee!” she wailed, falling into a heap on her Spanish modern sofa.
Rudy hopped up from the puzzle he was putting together on the rug and laid his small palm on her back. “You’re not a dumb bunny, Mama.”
“Yes, I am! I can’t even say circalutory—circa—cir—”
“Circulatory?” I provided.
“Yes! I couldn’t say that word and Miss Dot’s lips got all thin. I bet she fails me! And on my first day at Hair Magic, one lady complained to Virina—she’s the owner—that I scratched her scalp when I shampooed her color out. She wanted her money back!” She broke into a fresh wave of sobs.
“What do you care about circulatory stuff?” I asked. “You’re not going to air-conditioning school.”
Lynette sat up. “Oh, Rebel, you have no idea. We have to learn all about skin diseases like acne and eczema and scabies. We have to learn chemistry and hygiene and anatomy and the digestive system, and circalu—that word!”
“Circulatory system. You have to know about blood and guts to fix hair?”
Lynette blew her nose on her smock. “If I make it—if—I’ll be a hairdresser and a doctor.”
“Really?” Rudy’s eyes grew wide.
“No. But I might as well, all the stuff they make us study.” She grabbed my hand like a drowning person grasping a rope. “You’ll help me, won’t you, Rebel?”
“I said I would yesterday.” I pulled her up. “Go wash your face. Supper’s almost ready.”
After Lynette scuffed into the bathroom, I wrapped a tea towel around my hand and took three TV dinners out of the oven. A nice, hot meal would make my sister feel better. Rudy had already set the table—paper towels folded in triangles for napkins, knives and forks precisely lined up beside the plates. And everyone got a different monster truck cup.
Lynette trudged into the kitchen, her face scrubbed and her hair skinned back in a ponytail. She sat down, tying the belt of her pink chenille robe. “What’s this?”
“Macaroni and cheese with peas and Apple Delight,” I replied brightly. “Delicioso.”
Rudy covered his plate with his napkin. “I don’t like cheese on mac
aroni.”
“Everybody likes macaroni and cheese,” I said, the chipperness in my tone slipping a notch.
“Rebel, I bought the TV dinners for me and you,” Lynette said. “I told you Rudy only eats hot dog spaghetti for lunch and dinner. Didn’t you hear me?”
I flung my fork down. “You also told me to get him to eat other stuff!”
“I don’t want any supper,” Rudy declared.
Dropping her face in her hands, Lynette began crying again. “My little baby is starving! I can’t be here to cook for him because I have to go to school and be the dumbest one in class!”
“Rudy is not starving,” I said sternly. “He had an RC float for breakfast like always. Then he had a bunch of Necco Wafers, part of a Dr Pepper, and some barbecue potato chips. And that revolting spaghetti crap for lunch.”
I didn’t tell Lynette I’d scorched the hot dogs and the noodles were undercooked, but Rudy dutifully took his plate out on the steps. I couldn’t see anybody, but I could hear Rudy talking, so I guess God showed up for his usual lunch date.
Rudy’s lips were tucked in like a buttonhole. I snatched his plate and marched over to the sink. Scraping the macaroni and cheese in a strainer, I held it under the running faucet. When every smidge of cheese had been rinsed off, I dumped worm-white macaroni on Rudy’s plate and stomped back over to the table.
“Here, Your Highness,” I said. “Macaroni with no cheese. Shall I peel your peas and vacuum the apples out of the crust?”
His chin quivered.
“Don’t you start bawling too,” I said, then added, “Eat your supper and I’ll teach you to burp-talk.”
“Oh, boy!” He wolfed the cold macaroni like it was pheasant under glass.
Lynette stood up. “I’m not really hungry, Rebel. I need to read two chapters in my book tonight.”
“I slave over hot TV dinners and this is the thanks I get?” I waved her away. “It’s okay. I don’t mind clean- ing up.”
Rebel McKenzie Page 4