by Karen Karbo
Although I didn’t recognize the car, I knew right away it must be my cousin Jordan, on account of the bumper sticker: BLOND IF YOU’RE HONK. Ha ha ha. Everyone knew Jordan got the best grades in the entire world. She got higher than straight A’s. (How is that even possible?) She had straight light brown hair—the kind that turns blond in the summertime—and played lacrosse, that sport where you wear a plaid skirt. She was perfect. She had been my favorite cousin since the day at Little Acorns Preschool when I learned what the word meant. Jordan never had a zit that I saw or got food stuck in her teeth. She was girly in a good way. She wore pink T-shirts sometimes, but she didn’t have a fit if a spider showed up in the kitchen. In the last year my feelings for her had gotten more complicated, like everything in my life. On the days I didn’t want to be her, I hated her for her perfection.
At the time I didn’t wonder where Jordan had gotten the red Jetta. Later, I would wonder about it a lot.
She tooted the horn, and I walked across the wet grass on the parking strip and opened the car door. Jupiter had fallen back asleep, making me look as if I had a big, middle-aged man stomach roll. I didn’t care. Well, actually, I did care, but not enough to wake Jupiter up and take him out.
Jordan was on her cell. She waved me inside the car. Her cheeks were blotchy red and she was madly fingering one of her big hoop earrings, the kind I’d love to wear but am too young for, like I am for all the good stuff.
As I slid into the Jetta, Jordan said, “Dude, what part of ‘not interested’ don’t you understand?” She snapped the phone closed and dropped it on the hump between the seats.
“Need a ride somewhere?” she asked.
“Sure. Just home.”
“Okey doke,” she said.
“I love your car!” I said. It was true, even though it sounded as if I was sucking up. “When did you get it?”
“Hmmm, don’t know, three months ago maybe? I’ve been saving, like, forever. Like since I was your age.”
“Wow,” I said. I didn’t know how much a car cost, but I figured out that meant she’d been saving a lot for a long time. I felt embarrassed being in Jordan’s cute, very clean car. I could still smell the sour grime from the arcade on me. The knees of my too big khakis were dirty from where I’d fallen.
I was quiet. She was quiet. Then suddenly, as if I’d just gotten in, Jordan turned to me and said, “Minerva Clark! How tall are you now?” She wore a fakey nice smile, where her mouth turned up but her eyes looked worried.
“I don’t know.” I hate it when people talk about how tall I am. Last year in sixth grade, at the end of the year, I won an award for Tallest Girl in the Class. Hannah won Friendliest Girl. Being friendly was something a person could actually do. Getting a prize for being tall was like getting a prize for having blood that circulated through your heart.
“And what grade are you in now? Sixth?” asked Jordan.
“Seventh.”
“Wow, seventh grade.”
Is this what happens to people who are about to graduate from high school? Suddenly they start acting like one of those moms who makes lame adultlike boring conversation just to have something to say? It was May, and I’d last seen Jordan at Easter, for the Annual Clark Family Million Dollar Easter Egg Hunt. (Quills hides dozens of plastic eggs around our yard with five-dollar bills inside; one egg has a twenty.) Obviously, I’d been in seventh grade then, too.
“Do you mind if we stop at Under the Covers before I drop you off? It’s on the way.”
“Sure. Whatever.” Like I had a choice. The worst day of my life wouldn’t be a true worst day unless it also involved some stupid, boring errand that seemed pointless and took about eight hundred years.
Under the Covers was a little bookstore on a wide street that had a lot of Asian restaurants, dry cleaners, nail salons, and a bead shop where my mom used to make bracelets before she and my dad got divorced a little over two years ago.
Jordan parked in front of the pizza-by-the-slice place next to the bookstore. The minute I opened the car door I got a big whiff of that hot cheese smell, my favorite food smell in all the world. I tipped my head up and sniffed.
“Smells good, don’t it?” said a deep, craggy voice.
My insides jumped, although I didn’t show it on the outside. A homeless guy was lazing against the low concrete wall that ran between the pizza-by-the-slice place and Under the Covers. He wore an orange bandana tied pirate-style around his head and had a white Boxer-type dog lying beside him on the sidewalk. The dog was missing one of her front legs. I tried not to stare, even though it was only a dog.
As I passed by I couldn’t help myself. I reached out and gave the dog a rub on the head with my knuckles. She closed her eyes, tipped her head up. I swear she smiled a little with her rubbery black lips.
The homeless guy had been leaning back on one hand. The other hand he held in his lap, the fingers closed and bent in a way that reminded me of a wilted lily. My grandpa had had a stroke, and he had a hand like that, useless. The homeless guy straightened up suddenly and reached out and across his body. I jumped. I thought maybe he was going to grab my ankle or something, but he was just repositioning himself so he could give his dog a good scratch behind the ears. “She’s a good old girl,” he said. “Can’t imagine life without her.”
Jordan grabbed me by the upper arm and whispered, “Don’t do that!”
I didn’t know whether she meant pet the dog or be nice to the homeless guy. I didn’t seem to ever know anything.
Inside the bookstore an old lady was standing at the counter. She had a long gray braid down her back and a tattoo of dancing fairies twirling around and up her arm. They shouldn’t even let a lady with a long gray braid into a tattoo parlor. It should be like the reverse of a bar, where, if you’re over twenty-one, they boot you out.
The guy behind the counter handed the lady a pen and watched while she wrote her check. When he looked up and saw Jordan and me standing there, he jumped in that way people do when someone comes up behind them and goes Boo!
“Jordan. How you doing?” Jordan is one of those girls no one is ever unhappy to see.
“Hey, Dwight,” said Jordan.
Dwight took the lady’s check, looked at it carefully, circled something on the front, and then slipped it beneath the cash drawer in the register.
“Thanks for coming in, Evelyn. I’ll let you know when your order arrives,” Dwight said to the lady. After she left, he straightened a stack of small books on the counter near the cash register, lining up the corners. The book was called Bad Hair. Dwight’s hair wasn’t so great itself, which made me like him. It was kind of spongy and brownish green, like something you might find growing in a forest. He wore little round glasses like Harry Potter.
“Go check out the Children’s section, Minerva, why don’t you?” said Jordan. “Where’s the Children’s section, Dwight?”
Under the Covers was so small, I could see the kids’ books from where I was standing. I sighed loudly. A feeling of pure annoyance rolled over me like the chill from a sudden fear. Jordan wasn’t my parent or even that day’s BIC, and here she was trying to get rid of me by sending me to the kids’ section.
I went over to the back wall and stared at a bunch of books I already owned. Why were Dwight and Jordan acting so nervous? Behind me I heard them whispering. For one long horrible second I thought maybe I had started my period and it was all over the back of my cargo pants. I swept my hand back there, nonchalantly, but there was nothing.
Maybe they were laughing at my Gigantor butt. I felt the campfire in my cheeks again. I was always embarrassed. Then I’d get embarrassed about being embarrassed. What was wrong with me?
I turned to look at the calender rack so my butt would face the shelves. I twirled the creaky wire rack, half full of old calendars, which mostly featured puppies. I glanced over to see Dwight hand Jordan something over the counter. She quickly tucked it into the front of her knapsack and zipped it closed.
&n
bsp; Dwight said, “Stay out of trouble, all right?” He was half smiling. It could have been a joke, or one of those jokes that’s only a joke if the other person laughs.
Jordan nodded her head once. She looked uncomfortable, like they were breaking up or something.
Suddenly, a high-pitched girl’s voice said, “Hey, Jordan.”
I put the basset hound calendar I was flipping through back into the wire rack and joined Jordan where she stood next to the counter. The girl with the high-pitched voice—it was almost like that of a cartoon character—was short, with kinky strawberry hair caught up in two pigtails. She wore saggy bell-bottoms that dragged on the ground, the hems crusty with mud. Where had she come from? I hadn’t seen anyone enter the store.
“Did you see the story in the school paper?” the girl was saying. “I tried to get in all your great lines about how, like, our opinions should be respected even though we’re still in high school. That just because we’re, like, seventeen, that doesn’t mean we don’t know anything. But Ms. Graham, you know the journalism teacher? She said I needed to stay on topic.”
Jordan smiled—this time a real one—and collected her hair at the top of her head with one hand, then let it fall back into place. “Pansy Burrows, what are you doing here?”
Pansy Burrows drew her pale eyebrows together. “Jordan, I see you here every afternoon.”
“Anyway,” said Jordan, smiling her popular girl smile.
“Anyway,” Pansy Burrows continued, “I said, Ms. Graham! Hel-lo! This is Jordan Parrish. She’s not just anyone. She’s a Rose Festival princess. I mean, ambassador. Ambassador’s, like, the new word, right? Even though you still do all that kind of princessy stuff?”
Jordan was semifamous. Portland puts on the Rose Festival every June. There’s the Grand Floral Parade for people who like eating blue cotton candy while watching high school marching bands play the theme song from Gladiator. There’s also a Fun Zone down at Waterfront Park, with all those excellent rides that go upside down and backward at about ninety miles an hour.
Every high school in the city elects a Rose Festival prin—ah, ambassador. That’s the new name. “Princess” sounds too lame and old-timey. It’s always a senior girl who is smart and plays something like lacrosse and is girly but not in an obnoxious way. She is also always pretty hot. Like my cousin Jordan.
Pansy Burrows was talking nonstop about some dress that Jordan wore to the assembly where they named her Montgomery High Ambassador. I noticed sweat had popped out on the bridge of her nose. Clearly Pansy was a cling-on, high school division. I thought they only had cling-ons in middle school.
Dwight drummed the top of the cash register. Then he rearranged a collection of glittery sea-blue eyeglass cases that sat on the counter in a clear plastic tub. Some of the eyeglass cases had lemon-yellow happy faces on them, some pink peace symbols. They shone deeply, like a collection of well-polished cars.
My heart was going to stop beating out of boredom if Pansy Burrows did not stop nattering. The glittery eyeglass cases gave me an idea. I reached inside the pocket of my hoodie and gave Jupiter a nudge.
You may not know this about ferrets, but they love anything that gleams and sparkles. Jupiter could have the best time with a balled-up piece of aluminum foil. The other thing about ferrets is that they’re either dead asleep or wide awake and in need of immediate entertainment.
Suddenly, his little white face poked out from the other side of my pocket and in a split second he jumped out, scooted across the counter, jumped over the stack of Bad Hair books, and dove straight for the plastic tub of glittery eyeglass cases.
“Ack!” shrieked Pansy Burrows. “It’s a rat!”
“You still got that thing?” asked Jordan, rolling her eyes.
Fast as could be Jupiter tugged the top eyeglass case out of the plastic tub and commenced to give it a good gnawing. For some reason, I noticed that this case was more purple than sea blue. Jupiter held the case between his two white paws and chewed like a little ferret maniac. But Dwight was quick. He scooped up Jupiter by his middle and looked him in the eye. “I used to have one of these guys!”
“Sorry about the case,” I said. I really hadn’t expected him to chew on it.
“That’s okay,” said Dwight. He stuck the case behind the counter. “My guy was named Toob Sock. Spelled T-O-O-B. He was black-footed, looked like a little raccoon. I miss ol’ Toobie.”
“I love the black-footed ones! They’re so cute. I wouldn’t even have a white one, except Jupiter’s a dark-eyed white. I would never have, like, an albino white. They creep me out a little.” I felt the campfire blaze in my cheeks. Yammer yammer yammer. I was as bad as this Pansy Burrows person.
But Dwight just nodded, as if he’d had the same thought. “Have you seen the panda ferrets? Those are cool. Half white, half black.”
“Cool,” I said, making an effort to just shut up.
“Did you know ferret is from the old Latin? ‘Fur’ is thief. ‘Furet’ is the diminutive. It means little thief. Toobie used to steal things all the time.”
He petted the top of Jupiter’s head for a minute or two. I took Jupiter back and threaded him inside my pocket again. Dwight was an okay guy in my book. I bet he would like my rebuses.
Jordan and I drove up Broadway in the rain. A boy dragged a skateboard across the street in front of us and Jordan slammed on the brakes, even though it was obvious that if she’d continued driving at the same speed he would have passed safely in front of us.
“Jeez! People are insane!” She turned on the CD player. Then she turned it off. Looking back, I realize that Jordan was jittery and upset, but at the time I thought she was just irritated from having run into Cling-On Pansy Burrows.
I don’t know much about driving except the basics, like stopping at a red light. You can also turn right at a red light, but only after you stop. You can’t just slow down and glide around the corner, which is exactly what Jordan did at the corner of 39th and Halsey.
“Like I freaking need this,” she said, looking in the rearview mirror. She drove old-lady slow around the corner, stopping at the curb next to a bowling alley.
Actually, she said the real F word.
I turned around to see a white police car behind us, the red and blue lights twirling on the roof. There was a long line of traffic backed up behind us. The cars slowed as they steered around us. The drivers stared at us. What if someone I knew drove by? Someone from school, or someone’s mom?
I thought about ducking, but there was really nowhere to duck.
The officer got out of the patrol car, adjusted his holster, and strolled up to Jordan’s window. He was so tall he needed to bend nearly in half to look in the window. He had white hair even though he didn’t look very old. His eyes were pale, like the color of water in a glass.
“Do you know why I stopped you?” he asked.
“For not stopping fully at the corner?” Jordan looked up at him nervously from under her long bangs.
“Well, there’s that. You also got yourself a smashed taillight. You back into a phone pole or something?”
Jordan wrinkled her nose, confused. “A smashed taillight? How?”
The officer asked for her license and registration. She rummaged around in her backpack for her wallet, then reached over my bowling-ball knees to the glove box to find the registration. After she handed them over, the policeman strolled back to his white patrol car.
We sat. Jordan sniffed a little. I think she may have been crying, but I didn’t dare look over.
“Quills gets pulled over a lot,” I said. “The speedometer doesn’t work and he never knows how fast he’s going. This doesn’t sound like any big deal.”
“Did you notice my taillight smashed out? I just washed this two days ago.”
“No,” I said.
“When I picked you up, you didn’t see the taillight out?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. There was a bad feeling cooking in my stomach. We sat the
re for what felt like forever. Jordan kept glancing in her side-view mirror. She then did a funny, major off-topic thing. She reached over and gave my hand a little squeeze. “Things okay at home?” she asked.
“Huh? Sure, I guess.”
“Good. I’m glad.” Jordan had been there the day my mom, Deedee, told her mom, my aunt Susie, that she was leaving us and moving to Santa Fe to become a yoga instructor.
Before I could say anything else, the cop returned and instead of giving Jordan back her papers, he opened her car door. “Would you please step out, miss?”
Jordan got out without looking over at me. The officer walked behind her, leading her back to his patrol car. All I could see was his wide back, his black belt with the gun in its holster on one hip and a billy club in its holder on the other. What was going on? Where was he taking her? With a sickening jolt I realized that the worst day of my life was also probably going to be the worst day of my cousin Jordan’s life.
Through the back window I watched my cousin put her hands on the roof of the car. She was wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt and low-rise jeans with a thick brown leather belt. He patted her sides, then actually pulled out a pair of real handcuffs. To tell you the truth, I thought they used these only on TV. I thought they saved them for murderers and businessmen.
Then, suddenly, there was a sharp knock at my window. For the second time in about a minute and a half I jumped.
It was another officer, the first one’s partner. This policewoman wore a French braid and braces. Maybe I would be a cop when I grew up. Especially if I could wear a French braid.
“Your friend needs to come with us. Do you have someone who could come and pick you up?” She seemed pretty friendly. It was hard to remember that it was Jordan in trouble and not me. Then I remembered, I wasn’t in trouble with the police, but Quills would kill me for leaving Tilt without telling anyone.
“She’s not my friend, she’s my cousin,” I said.