Rebel McKenzie

by Candice Ransom

  I washed the dishes while Lynette mumbled over her textbook and Rudy worked on his puzzle. Worn to a nubbin from my own tough day, I turned the TV on to a science program about carpenter ants. Perfect. I flopped in one of the ugly black chairs.

  Doublewide jumped up on top of the TV, hunkered down so his paws draped over the screen, and stared at me.

  “You have food in your dish,” I told the cat. “Now, move so I can see.”

  “It’s time for his favorite show,” Rudy said, trying to cram a corner piece in the center of the border.

  “The cat has a favorite TV show?”

  “Reruns of Wagon Train.” Lynette thumbed through her book. “He thinks the horse teams are mice. Put it on channel thirty-three.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “I am not changing channels for a cat. Scram!”

  Doublewide crossed his eyes and didn’t budge.

  “Oh, no,” Lynette moaned. “Miss Dot assigned eighty-five pages in this horrible book. I can’t do this.” She broke down boohooing again.

  Rudy ripped up half of his puzzle, and pieces flew across the room. “I hate this ol’ puzzle!”

  I was surrounded by a bunch of crankypants. But I was worried about my sister. Always the strong one, she was unraveling like the scarf I’d knitted the five minutes I’d been a Girl Scout. Instead of substituting one mother for another this summer, it seemed I’d become the mother.

  Then I remembered what Daddy had done once when I got frustrated because the mastodon I’d copied from my How and Why Wonder Book of Prehistoric Mammals looked more like King Kong.

  I fetched a couple of vanilla pudding cups from the refrigerator and two spoons from the silverware drawer.

  “C’mon,” I said, herding Lynette toward her room. “You too, Rudy.”

  I settled them both in the sloshy water bed, gave Lynette her textbook, Rudy a Spider-Man comic, and each a pudding cup and spoon.

  “You’ll feel better in a little bit,” I said, easing the door shut.

  “Give one to Doublewide,” Rudy called after me. “He loves pudding.”

  In the kitchen I took the last pudding cup for myself, then tumbled in my chair again. Alone at last.

  Almost.

  Doublewide still claimed the top of the TV. His blue eyes lasered into mine.

  “All right, you win.” I got up and switched the channel. On the screen, Ward Bond bellowed, “Wa-gons ho!”

  Doublewide sprang off the TV and leaped up into my seat before I made it back.

  “Oh, no, you don’t.” I tried to nudge the cat aside, but it was like shoving an anvil. We finally came to an agreement—he sprawled over most of the chair while I was scrunched in the corner.

  I dipped my spoon into the creamy, smooth pudding. “Mmmm.”

  The cat’s head whirled around so fast, I was surprised he didn’t get whiplash.

  “Uh-uh.”

  He bunched himself up, pretending to be a pitiful little kitten instead of a twenty-one-pound lard bucket.

  With a sigh, I propped the cup in front of him. He lapped the pudding happily, his whiskers daintily pinned back.

  I had to bust out of this loony bin. Winning the Frog Level Volunteer Fire Department’s beauty pageant was my only ticket. I couldn’t ask Lynette for the registration fee—she was already a basket case. Somehow I’d find the money.

  That decided, I made myself comfortable in the two inches of space allotted me and watched Wagon Train with Doublewide.

  As soon as The Clunker rolled out of the driveway the next morning, I hauled Rudy across the strip of crabgrass to Lacey Jane’s trailer.

  “I’m not going in there!” he yelled, clinging to the clothes pole. “That awful girl lives there!”

  “We’re friends now, remember?” I told him, prying his fingers off one by one.

  “You can’t make me!”

  I prodded him up the steps of the Whistle trailer and knocked. When Lacey Jane answered, Rudy crumpled on the doorsill like a sack of potatoes.

  “Rebel!” she cried. “What’s wrong with the kid?”

  “Nothing.” Stooping, I clasped Rudy around his middle and dragged him inside. He lay on the floor limp as a ten-cent dishrag, but his eyeballs rolled under his eyelids. “Get up, you faker, or you’ll eat boiled turnips for lunch.”

  “Are you sure he’s okay?” Lacey Jane said.

  “Yeah. He’s a just a big mama’s baby.”

  Rudy sat up. “I am not a baby!” Then he glanced at Lacey Jane. “I was kinda scared to come in here, but Rebel made me.”

  “We don’t always get our way in this world,” I said. Wasn’t I living proof? I should have been dusting the molar of a fossilized musk-ox right about now.

  Guilt flickered in Lacey Jane’s eyes. Was she sorry for picking on Rudy? She thrust a pink paper under my nose. “Look what was stuck in our mailbox.”

  I skimmed the paper. “I can’t believe Bambi sent you this!”

  “I can. Where does that twerp get off giving me beauty tips!” Lacey Jane flipped a scraggly pigtail over her shoulder. “I do not have piano legs!”

  Suddenly my job became a lot easier. “We have to get back at her. We’ll enter the beauty pageant, us against Bambi Lovering.”

  “Why would she even enter? Yesterday you said she probably thinks our pageant is piddly.”

  “She’ll enter, all right,” I said. “She can’t pass up another tiara. But you’ll win instead, and Bambi will go into a decline. She’ll never get over it. She’ll be a hermit and nobody will ever—”

  Lacey Jane stopped listening and said, “What makes you think I’ll win?”

  “Because…” I had to step careful here. “Because you’re not a phony like Bambi. The judges will see that you, Lacey Jane, are the real thing.”

  I needed Lacey Jane to enter with me because a) her father would lend me the registration money, and b) even though I didn’t have a widow’s peak or a beauty mark, Lacey Jane’s plainness would make me look like Cleopatra by comparison. I had enough competition with Bambi and her ukulele.

  “What about you?” she said, as if reading my mind. “What if the judges think you’re the real thing instead of me?”

  “They won’t,” I said quickly. “I’m just entering to make you stand out even more.” I relaxed my face so it would sag like an old hammock. I looked unattractive and also not too bright.

  Lacey Jane studied me for a second. “Okay. Let me get my shoes on.” She disappeared down the hall.

  For the first time, I checked out her trailer. The living room was slab by the kitchen, like Lynette’s. An orange afghan lay balled up at one end of the blue plaid sofa.

  “That’s a pretty afghan,” I said when Lacey Jane returned wearing blue ankle socks with her sandals. “Did your mother crochet it?”

  She nodded but said nothing as she locked the front door behind us.

  We walked up Grandview Lane, the main road of the trailer park. It was so hot, my flip-flops stuck to the soft asphalt.

  Lacey Jane noticed my bandaged heels. “What happened to your feet?”

  “Rebel runned away,” Rudy piped up. “But she had on the wrong shoes.”

  “The next time I leave home, I’ll be sure to wear special running-away shoes.”

  “You really ran away?” Lacey Jane glanced at me with new respect.

  I told her the whole sordid story. When I was finished, Lacey Jane didn’t seem that impressed. “I thought you ran off because your parents are mean,” she said.

  “I’m grounded till I’m fifty. If that isn’t mean, I don’t know what is.”

  Grandview Lane ended at Greycliff Road. The shopping center sat at the intersection. It consisted of the 7-Eleven, Sudz ’N Dudz Laundromat, Hair Magic (the beauty parlor where Lynette worked in the afternoons), and Better-Off-Dead Pest Control and Bridal Consignment.

  A sign in the window of the last store declared that Better-Off-Dead Pest Control and Bridal Consignment was the official sponsor of
the Miss Frog Level Volunteer Fire Department Pageant.

  I pushed the door open. A blast of air-conditioning almost smacked us flat. The shop was really two stores in one. Filmy white curtains hung over a doorway marked BRIDAL CONSIGNMENT.

  An army of plastic termites marched across the counter of the pest control part. An old man with a floppy stomach like a shopping bag swiveled his desk chair around.

  “Hey there, kids. What can I do you for?”

  “We’re here to sign up for the beauty pageant,” said Lacey Jane.

  He pointed to the curtained doorway. “In there. Mama will help you.” That old man had a mother? She must be a hundred and two.

  We walked into the bridal consignment part. Racks of fancy dresses lined the walls. A mannequin wearing a rhinestone-spangled wedding gown stood in the center. Clamped over the model’s crooked wig was a rhinestone headband with a short veil.

  Up close, I could see the dress was grubby around the hem and the veil was dusty. A tattoo of an anchor adorned the mannequin’s left forearm. Someone had tried unsuccessfully to scrub it off.

  All this frilly stuff made me feel choky and I began to cough. A woman not much bigger than Rudy emerged from the back. I thought she was a kid, but then I noticed her little hanging stomach. Pest Control Man’s mama. She was ancient.

  “Hello,” she said, smiling through a sea of wrinkles. “I’m Mrs. Randolph. How can I help you?”

  “We want to be in the beauty pageant,” I said.

  On the tiniest feet I’d ever seen on a grown-up, she tottered over to a desk, pulled a drawer open, and took out a clipboard and pencil.

  “Names?” As Lacey Jane and I spelled our names, she wrote them down.

  Reading upside-down-and-backward—another special talent of mine—I spotted Bambi Lovering’s name at the top of the list. So Bambi had entered the pageant!

  The woman handed us each an application form. “Fill this out, have a parent or guardian sign it, and bring it back to me with your entry fee.”

  Outside again, the heat slapped us like a scalding washcloth. Lacey Jane said, “I have two dollars. Let’s get Slurpees.”

  “You’re my friend for life!” I gushed, stepping into the cool oasis of my favorite store.

  Lacey Jane gave me a funny look, but said nothing.

  The 7-Eleven was empty except for the clerk and an older woman piling groceries on the counter. While she counted change from her wallet, we ordered three blueberry Slurpees. The clerk dispensed the slushy drinks into tall plastic cups.

  Lacey Jane paid, then we went outside and sat on a bench. I pulled on the straw so hard, ice-pick pain jabbed my skull. Delicioso. Rudy fumbled with his straw until I stabbed it into the X cut in the lid.

  Lacey Jane scanned her paper. “‘Age divisions. Sweet Pea, three to five. Daisy, six to eight. Violet, nine to twelve. Rose, thirteen to fifteen.’ We’re Violets.”

  The older woman came out of the 7-Eleven with two large bags. She adjusted her grip and squinted up at the blazing sun.

  “Gaggy names,” I said, checking out my own form. “‘Three Words That Describe You.’ How about brilliant, beautiful, and—bombastic!”

  Lacey Jane giggled. “For hobbies, put down burping!”

  “That’s great! Got a pencil?”

  The woman set her bags on the concrete and mopped her shiny face with a handkerchief. She wore cotton gloves, which seemed weird. I was too hot to wear a part in my hair, much less gloves.

  “I saw Bambi Lovering’s name on the contest list,” I said.

  Lacey Jane grinned with blue-stained lips. “She doesn’t stand a chance against our gorgeous selves.”

  “She might as well drop out!” I pretended to clink my cup against hers.

  “Yeah!” Rudy echoed. He slammed his cup into ours. Blueberry slush spilled over our fingers.

  “Rudy!” I swiped my sticky hand on his knee.

  Lacey Jane striped Slurpee across my cheek. I flicked my straw at her, spattering her shirt with blue specks.

  “The pageant judges won’t look twice at Bambi,” I said, giggling. “You’re a cinch to win. And I’ll get second place, easy.”

  The woman frowned at me, gloved hands on her hips. “Not till groundhogs boogie.”

  Sponsored By

  Better-Off-Dead Pest Control and Bridal Consignment

  “When you have bugs or an unused wedding dress, think of us!”

  Age Division (check one): Sweet Pea (3–5):____ Daisy (6–8):____ Violet (9–12): X Rose (13–15):____

  Name: Rebel McKenzie

  Address: 8705B Grandview Lane, Frog Level, Virginia

  Phone: 5558770

  Parent/Guardian: Lynette Parsley (older sister, and that’s her real signature—she can’t help it she writes like a kid)

  Eyes: Brown Hair: Brown Grade: going into 7th (though I should be in college)

  Three Words That Describe You: Kind, Thoughtful, (very) Nice

  Hobbies: Digging fossils up, reading my favorite book, The How and Why Wonder Book of Prehistoric Mammals

  Ambition: to be a paleontologist (the Ice Age kind, not the dinosaur kind)

  Three People You Most Admire:

  Dr. Paul E. Blackwood, the author of The How and Why Wonder Book of Prehistoric Mammals, even though he is probably dead

  My parents (okay, that’s two)

  Mr. Brawley, principal of Frog Level Elementary School

  Type of Talent: too many to list!

  PAGEANT RULES:

  If you are performing a musical talent, bring your own music

  Off-the-rack dresses for Appearance, sportswear for athletic Talent

  No pageant attire!

  Judges’ decisions are final

  Stealing the Deal

  “What do you mean?” I asked, looking up at the woman. I didn’t really want an answer, but since she was butting in, she owed us an explanation.

  “Beauty pageants aren’t so easy to ace,” she replied. “Don’t roll your eyes at me, missy. I know what I’m talking about.”

  “You were in a beauty contest?” I said in disbelief.

  “I used to model. Same difference.”

  If my jaw hadn’t been hinged to my skull, it would have dropped in my lap. Even I knew that models were pretty and skinny. This frizzy-haired old woman was built like a fire hydrant. Her pudding-plain face was studded with little raisin eyes and a blobby nose. Maybe she once modeled Halloween masks.

  The woman started to heft her bags again. “Law, I do it every time. Come up here to pick up one or two things and wind up with more than I can tote.”

  “We’ll help.” Lacey Jane leaped to her feet, tossing her Slurpee cup in the trash. “Rebel, you take this one.” She gave me a bulging sack apparently filled with plutonium bricks. The other bag had a loaf of Wonder bread peeking out the top.

  I was brimming with questions, but followed the woman down Greycliff Road. Who was she? And why was she wearing gloves? Was she a cat burglar? I could see her knocking over candy stores easier than I could picture her modeling dresses.

  “Miz Matthews,” Lacey Jane said. She sounded respectful. Not at all like her usual prickly self. “You shouldn’t be walking in this heat. How come you don’t drive a car?”

  “I can’t see like I did.” She chuckled. “Viola Sandbanks would carry me to the store any time I want. But she runs on about Palmer and the mailman so, I forget what I’m going after.”

  “Who’s Viola Sandbanks?” I asked. “Who’s Palmer? And who are you?”

  “Lands, this heat’s made me overlook my manners. I’m Miss Odenia Matthews. You’re the little sister of the lady who rents Mr. Shifflett’s mobile home.”

  “Younger sister,” I corrected. “Rebel McKenzie. What about this Palmer and the mailman?”

  “You’ll meet them tomorrow afternoon,” said Miss Odenia. “Well, not Mr. Beechley because he has his route and wouldn’t come on a bet. He’s so terrified of Palmer Sandbanks, he just throws the mail
in our boxes all mixed up, and I have to stand there and sort it out. I don’t want anyone to think I receive those racy lingerie catalogs.”

  “Tomorrow afternoon?” I felt mixed up myself. Tar blisters rose like soup bubbles, and haze shimmered over the road like a mirage.

  I don’t know why Lacey Jane was so worried about the old woman walking in the heat. Miss Odenia strode ahead like Grant taking Richmond. Her white blouse was freshfrom-the-dryer crisp. Pit stains soaked my T-shirt clear to my kneecaps.

  Even Rudy noticed. “You need some be-odorant. Get it? B.O.?”

  “When the feeling comes back in my hands, I’m going to swat you one.”

  Miss Odenia frowned at me. “That’s the very thing I’m talking about. If you girls are serious about this beauty pageant, you must speak politely. And you can’t gallop onstage and carry on like hoydens.”

  Hoydens! What a funny word! I giggled.

  Miss Odenia froze me with a Look scarier than the Squint-eye my mother used. Mama could take Look lessons from this old lady.

  “You won’t be judged just on appearance, but also personality,” she went on. “You need to be confident, not brash.”

  “I am confident,” I protested. “I’m practically a paleontologist.”

  “Maybe,” she said doubtfully, “but you sadly lack grace and poise.”

  “Grace? What does that thing we say on Thanksgiving got to do with the price of tea in China?” I asked.

  “You know very well what I mean. Mocking is a bad habit. Along with slouching and lumping along like a camel.”

  She must have been talking about Lacey Jane. She lurched down the road, leaning forward like she was pushing against a hurricane.

  “Miz Odenia, can you help us?” Lacey Jane said as we entered the trailer park.

  She nodded. “I’d be glad to give you pageant tips.”

  I didn’t believe she was doing this out of the puredee goodness of her heart. She had to have a reason. “How come?” I asked point-blank. “What’s in it for you?”

  “Rebel!” Lacey Jane said, shocked. “When somebody says they’re going to help you, you don’t ask them why!”

  “Rebel has a right to be cautious,” said Miss Odenia. “She doesn’t know me from Noah’s house cat. As it happens, I do want a favor in return.”