The doorbell rang.
“Leave that mongrel out there,” Lynette said. “Doublewide threw up on my bedspread this morning.”
“Y’all home?” Lacey Jane called. I let her in. She was grinning with excitement. “Guess what? Daddy gave me thirty dollars to buy a pageant dress!”
“Well, I hope you find something real pretty,” I said with fake heartiness. Lacey Jane already had a zillion dresses. Like she needed another one.
She punched me on the arm. “Both of us! We split the money.”
“Your father’s buying Rebel a pageant dress?” Lynette asked.
“Yeah. Because he’s glad she’s here, he said.”
I looked down at the floor. Lacey Jane’s father probably meant he was glad I was Lacey Jane’s friend. He didn’t know I was her fake friend, just like Ainsley Carter was my fake friend. She dumped me in fourth grade, but I still pretended we were best friends so I wouldn’t seem so pathetic.
“Well, that’s real nice of him,” Lynette said. “Tell your daddy I said thanks. I’ll fix a meat loaf and send it over.”
As soon as me and Lacey Jane hit the hot pavement, I said, “Don’t let your daddy eat Lynette’s meat loaf. Not if you don’t want to hear him moaning and groaning all night. Where are we gonna buy dresses for fifteen bucks?”
“Where all the trendy people shop,” Lacey Jane answered. “Better-Off-Dead Pest Control and Bridal Consignment.”
“We can’t wear a wedding dress in a beauty pageant!”
“They have other dresses. For girls our age. Didn’t you notice? Mrs. Randolph will help us.”
She was right. The tiny old lady showed us the junior bridesmaid section.
“Most young girls wear simple tea-length dresses in summer weddings,” she said. “Perfect for the pageant. You girls are so sensible. These dresses have only been worn once, and they are very reasonable.”
We pawed through the racks. I was looking for something that said, “Desperate-Paleontologist-Must-Win-to-Get-to-Ice-Age-Dig.” I wasn’t sure what dress would look like that. Maybe brown trimmed with old bones?
Suddenly Lacey Jane gasped. She pulled out a poufy pink cupcake of a dress with puffed sleeves and a sash tied in a great big bow at the waist. Fake roses decorated the bottom of the full skirt.
It was the ugliest dress I’d ever seen in my life.
“Oh, Rebel, isn’t it beautiful? I’m going to try it on.” She ran to the fitting room.
There were no brown bone-trimmed dresses, but I found a turquoise dress with no sleeves and a square neck. When I held it up, the dress seemed to float.
“What do you think?” Lacey Jane swished out in the cupcake dress. The material was so stiff, the rustling skirt seemed to march ahead of her. The bell-like skirt made her stick legs look even skinnier. And that color clashed with her reddish hair.
She did a pivot turn in front of the full-length mirror. “I look so pretty!”
She looked like a lamp shade in a clown’s house. Even I could tell that the turquoise was a better color for her than that icky pink. And a simpler style wouldn’t make her seem so skinny.
But I wanted the turquoise dress for myself.
“It’s perfect,” I told her. I’d never get to the dig if I was truthful.
She twirled, making the skirt stand out, then checked the price tag. “Thirteen-fifty!” Really, a dress that ugly should be free.
I took my twelve dollar turquoise dress to the counter. Mrs. Randolph rang up our purchases and wrapped our dresses in long plastic bags. “You girls will look lovely!”
We started back down the road toward the trailer park. Lacey Jane clutched the plastic dress bag to her chest.
With her wearing that pink monstrosity, I had a better chance at the pageant. In my head, a firm voice said, “Win!
That’s what it’s all about!” while a smaller voice said, “Is it?” I ordered the small voice to hush up.
“Rebel,” Lacey Jane said. “This dress makes me feel like—well, like my mama is still here.” She glanced at me and away again. “I guess you know about my mother.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Miss Odenia told me. I’m sorry. But—I don’t get it about the dress.”
Lacey didn’t answer right away. Then she said, “I know Bambi and the girls at school make fun of me because I wear ankle socks and barrettes. When Mama got too sick to go out, she’d order me stuff. I think…” Deep breath. “I think she thought I was younger than I am because she bought me these babyish ankle socks and barrettes.”
Her voice grew quavery. I just waited and finally she spoke again.
“It was like Christmas every time Mr. Beechley came. Mama bought me ankle socks with ruffles and frogs and bunnies and stripes. And barrettes shaped like Scottie dogs and ladybugs and sparkle flowers. After a while, I didn’t have time to open the packages because Mama got worse and had to go to the hospital. She never came home.”
“Lacey Jane, you don’t have to—”
“Let me finish. After Mama died, I found the packages. I decided I’d wear the socks and barrettes every single day because—because it made me feel closer to her.” She stopped and I could see tears streaking her flushed cheeks.
I dug a used Kleenex out of my shorts pocket and gave it to her.
“I know I’m not pretty like Bambi or even you,” she said, wiping her eyes.
“Me? You think I’m pretty?” I’d take even a backhanded compliment. Lynette had always been the pretty one in our family.
“But every night before Mama kissed me good night, she told me I was her pretty little girl. And this dress makes me feel like I’m Mama’s pretty little girl again.”
No wonder Lacey Jane had hung on to every syllable when Miss Odenia told her dream. I bet Lacey Jane wanted to dream that her mother was back, too.
For once in my life, I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. We walked in silence down the heat-shimmered road, our plastic dress bags sticking to our sweaty bare legs.
From the Field Notebook of Rebel McKenzie
Once upon a time there was a poor paleontologist girl. She didn’t have any money to go on digs so she went to work for her evil older sister in the hottest trailer park kingdom in Virginia.
Every day Paleontella would fix special meals for picky Prince Rudy. She made beds and swept floors and washed dirty underpants and scrubbed pots and pans and fed the pet Andrewsarchus. She rearranged the gravel in the driveway and polished the whole trailer with toilet paper. And every day her evil older sister went out into the world to learn how to be beautiful. (Only it wasn’t working.)
One day Paleontella was so tired she sat down and cried. All of a sudden her Fairy Mastodon appeared!
“I will grant you one wish,” her Fairy Mastodon said.
“Oh! I’d love to go on a dig!” said Paleontella. “But my evil older sister gives me too much work.”
“Well, she’s not around, is she?” The Fairy Mastodon waved her magic tusk and said, “Go! But be back before sundown.”
“What will happen if I don’t?” Paleontella asked fearfully.
“Your evil older sister will come home from learning how to be beautiful and beat the crap out of you.”
“I’ll be back! Thank you, Fairy Mastodon! You’ve made me the happiest poor paleontologist girl in the whole trailer park kingdom!”
Lunch with God
“Rebel, take out the garbage,” Lynette said. “It smells to high heaven.”
“Rudy,” I said. “Take out the garbage.”
“I asked you,” Lynette said.
“Isn’t it time he had some responsibility?”
Lynette took her nose out of her textbook and looked at Rudy, who was racing his cars along the kitchen floor. “Baby, would you be a pumpkin pie and take out the garbage?”
“No,” Rudy said, skimming two cars over the coffee table. “There’s always flies around the trash cans. And I’m scared of flies.”
I hooted. “Nobody is scared
of flies!”
“I am. They look at me with mean red eyes. I’ll go if Rebel comes with me.”
I heaved out of my comfy chair and grabbed the paper bag. “All right. Or do you want to put on a suit of armor first?”
He stuffed cars in his pockets. “It’s not funny.”
We went outside and walked over to the big trash cans. Flies formed big black clots on mounds of steaming garbage. They flew up in a swarm as we approached.
I gave the bag to Rudy. “Here. Throw it in.”
He screeched and dropped the bag. “They’re looking at me with their red eyes!”
Now I had to pick up loose trash. When I was done, Rudy said, “Will you play cars with me? Pleeease?”
This was one of those evenings Rudy was going to worry me to pieces. I put up with him all day and needed a little quiet. “Your daddy’s supposed to call tonight.”
“He is?”
“Yeah, but it’ll be late because of the time difference. You need to get some sleep before he calls.” Well, Chuck could call tonight and ask to speak to Rudy.
Rudy beat me back to the trailer and was in bed before the flies had settled back on the garbage.
I woke with a jerk and listened to the fan whirring in the darkness. I had the creepy feeling not that somebody was in the room but that somebody wasn’t. Leaning over, I switched on the nightstand lamp.
Rudy’s bed was empty.
He never got up for a drink of water or to go to the bathroom. Once his head hit the pillow, that kid was dead to the world.
This could only mean one thing: Rudy was sleepwalking.
I went to the door, my heart thumping. I had to find him. But what if I did and he got all crazy or something? Lynette warned me not to wake him up.
I tiptoed into the kitchen. The clock over the fridge read one thirty-five. A dark lump on the back of the sofa stirred slightly. Doublewide. Where was Rudy? I crept through the living room and down the hall to Lynette’s room.
Lynette was sprawled on her back in the water bed, snoring like a band saw. No Rudy. I checked the bathroom, even behind the shower curtain. Not there either.
Where is that kid?
What if he’d slipped outside? Lynette would kill me if anything happened to her Rudy while I was sleeping in the same room. I’d feel pretty crummy myself.
I unlocked the front door and ran down the steps. Something squished under my bare foot. In the streetlamp, I saw thick black shapes on the front steps. Slugs.
I hopped back inside and wiped my slimy foot on the mat. Then I hurried into Lynette’s room and snapped on the light.
“Wha—?” She sat up, her face dotted with Noxzema.
“Rudy’s gone!” I said. “I’ve looked all over. I think he sleepwalked outside!”
She was up in a flash, shoving her feet into flip-flops. I found another pair of flip-flops and slipped them on. We flew out the door.
A damp haze—heat left over from the day—hung over the trailer park. We ran down the street. I spotted a small figure lit by an orange cone of light heading for the sewer pipe.
Lynette reached him first. “Rudy,” she said, gently taking his arm.
His cowlicky hair stood up like a rooster’s tail. “Did we give Mud Hog a bath?”
“What?” I said. Then I remembered Lynette saying sleepwalkers seem like they’re awake. They talk and everything.
“Yes,” Lynette told him. “Mud Hog is nice and clean. Let’s go home, okay?”
“We’ll win the next one.” His voice sounded thin and hopeful, but his eyes were vacant.
I took his other arm. “C’mon, Rude. Time to get ready for the next race.”
“Okay.” He let us lead him back to our trailer, quiet as a lamb. Lynette tucked him in, and he closed his eyes. We waited to make sure he was asleep for real.
Then we went out to the kitchen. Lynette fixed a pot of coffee. It tasted horrible, but I drank it anyway.
“Rudy hasn’t sleepwalked like this in a long time,” she told me. “Usually it’s because he’s upset over something.”
Like thinking his father is going to call and he doesn’t? I gulped the scalding coffee and choked.
She set her cup down with a clink. “What did you do to him, Rebel?”
I fessed up because Lynette would wring the truth out of me anyway. “I didn’t mean to make him sleepwalk. I just wanted him to give it a rest, you know, wanting to play and talk and all.”
“He’s a little boy,” she said angrily. “You don’t put him on a shelf till you’re ready to take him down again. You’ll find that out when you have kids of your own.”
“I’m not having kids,” I said. “I’m never getting married. I’m going to be a paleontologist, and that’s it.”
“Well, I hope you and your skeletons will be very happy. It’s a shame you don’t want to spend more time with your nephew. He thinks the sun rises and sets in you.” She picked up our cups and rinsed them in the sink. “Let’s go to bed, Rebel.”
I dropped into my canoe-bed and thought about what my sister said. Nobody had ever liked me that much before (not counting my parents). Certainly not Ainsley Carter, who never gave me the time of day at school.
The next thing I knew, Lynette was yelling at me to get up. I staggered into the kitchen.
“I’m in a big ol’ rush,” she said. “Be good to Rudy today, okay? And will you tidy up the bathroom?”
Tidy! Lynette left enough hair in the bathroom sink to knit a whole other sister. I griped while I flushed the yucky stuff down the drain. Then I hung up her wet towels—three of them! She only has one body. Why does she need three towels?
Because Lynette tore out in “a big ol’ rush,” I had to make her sloshy water bed (but not too neat) and wipe spilled makeup off her dresser (with her best skirt that was lying on the floor). Then I realized she was late because she hadn’t had much sleep. And whose fault was that?
Rudy was sitting on a sofa cushion in front of the TV watching cartoons when I finally finished. “Rebel, I’m hungry,” he said.
“Want a bowl of Lucky Charms?”
“No.”
“How about an RC float?”
“No.”
I folded my arms across my chest. “Well, what do you want?”
He clutched the cushion to his stomach and whined, “I don’t know.”
I felt annoyed until I remembered what he’d said last night. Did we give Mud Hog a bath? How sad was that?
“All right, I’ll fix you something special.” French toast was my favorite not-feeling-so-hot breakfast, but I didn’t know how to make it.
I put two slices of Wonder bread in the toaster. Next I melted a little margarine in a skillet and added a dollop of Karo syrup. I let the toast sizzle in the syrup mixture on both sides. Then I put the fried syrup-bread on a plate and cut the squares into triangles to make them fancy.
“Here you are. A breakfast invented just for you—Rudy Cakes. Delicioso!”
Rudy dug in. “Rebel, you’re a good cook!”
I fed Doublewide before he passed out from hunger, washed the sticky skillet and dishes, wiped down the counters and stove, and was making our beds when Rudy came in and asked, “What’re we gonna do today?”
“Haven’t thought about it.”
Lacey Jane had gone someplace with her father, and we didn’t have another pageant lesson until tomorrow. I could practice my talent, but I didn’t like any of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poems.
“Know what?” Rudy said, fiddling with the cap on my canteen.
“What?” I tugged the sheet over the hole in my bed.
“That’s what. Know what?”
“What?”
“That’s what.” He giggled. “Know—”
I grabbed his bony wrist. “You know what? You’re gonna be extinct if you don’t knock it off.”
“Let’s go fossil hunting today!” He took my geologist’s hammer from my backpack and tapped Tusky’s knee like a doctor testin
g reflexes. “Can we, Rebel? Huh, can we? Can we, huh?”
“Where can we look for fossils around here?” The ancient couple in the trailer at the end of the street didn’t count.
“Down by the sewer pipe! There’s a ton of rocks and stuff in the field!”
Normally, spending a hot day next to an open sewer line would not exactly thrill me. But I then realized something. When the construction guys put in the sewer, they had probably dug pretty deep. Dirt and rocks that hadn’t been disturbed for thousands of years were now on top of that vacant lot.
“Rudy, fill this canteen with Kool-Aid. We’re going fossil hunting.”
All the way down to the vacant lot, he scampered in front of me like a puppy, running backward to say, “I had a good idea, didn’t I, Rebel? The best idea of anyone. Right?”
And all the way down to the vacant lot, I had to agree he had a good idea. I was glad Rudy hadn’t invented electricity, or I would have to tell him how great he was every time I cut the light on.
The gassy smell from the sewer pipe nearly knocked me over.
“Pee-yew!” I set my backpack on the ground, wishing I had brought a clothespin for my nose. “How do you stand to play down here?”
“You get used to it. See that bunch of rocks over there?
That’s where the good fossils are.”
I pinched my nostrils shut. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Rudy,” I said, my voice all nasal. “Fossils don’t hang out like people at a cocktail party. You look for clues.”
“What kind of clues?”
“Look for rocks that are real smooth or have a pattern. Those could be ammonites—creatures that lived in the sea. A long, long time ago, this whole area was covered by the ocean.” I liked telling my nephew about fossils. Maybe he’d be a paleontologist like me.
“I found a tooth!” He held up a small object.
“Rudy, that’s from a plastic comb. Fossils aren’t made of plastic,” I said. “Anyway, my book says it’s hard to find a whole fossil or even a tooth. Most of the time you find pieces of them.”
“Hey, a turtle!” A turtle with yellow spots on its dark brown shell lumbered toward a puddle. The turtle lifted his beaky nose when Rudy ran over.
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