Minerva Clark Goes to the Dogs

by Karen Karbo

  As I walked past him, I stopped and examined the image paused on the television screen, some blue and silver robotic-looking guy with an enormous weapon that looked like a cross between a dolphin and a chain saw. “You playing Halo 2? I love Halo 2.”

  “It’s all right,” he said. He set the black pug on the blue couch, then thrust his hands deep in the pockets of his cargo pants. I pegged him as one of those impossibly cute boys who was also impossibly shy and therefore, plain old impossible.

  Chelsea dutifully scooted around the corner and into the bathroom, where she made a bunch of searching-for-her-contact-behind-her-eyelid ahhhs, ummms, and ughhhhs. She talked a little too much about why she’d decided to get contacts and give up wearing glasses.

  I stood in front of the set, chatting about Halo 2, which I didn’t love, which I thought was pretty lame, like a lot of first-person shooter video games, but which my brothers liked to play.

  It was a tiny apartment without much in it. I guessed they had either just moved in, or else they didn’t have much money to spend on decorating. You could see most of the apartment from the living room; the blue couch took up one side of the wall, the big TV took up most of the other.

  There was nothing on the walls except a poster of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico—a tiny town of red roofs and pink flowers tumbling into the blue ocean—and a calendar tacked over the television. I stepped closer. It was from the Portland Humane Society. The picture for June showed three gray kitties peering out from inside a wicker basket. For the last half of the month there was the same note every day: “Tonio—Shooting” and then a time, usually 7:00 or 8:00 A.M.

  Shooting what? Shooting practice? Tonio was probably the boy, but what was shooting? Maybe he was in a summer basketball league?

  A bookshelf of phony wood stood against the far wall. A single row of fat paperbacks, and in front of them, a collection of glass unicorns. The other shelves held stacks of folded clothes, T-shirts, jeans, and camo pants—obviously the bookcase did double duty as the boy’s dresser drawers.

  A few steps from the bookshelf, beneath a window that looked out into the alley, there was a wooden table. I guessed it was where they ate. It was bare, except for a bunch of yellow daisies stuck in a jelly jar running low on water, and a pile of unopened mail. Sitting beside the jelly jar was something small and silver. The ring?

  “Oh cool,” I said. “I love daisies. They’re my favorite flowers!”

  I walked to the table, picked up the jelly jar, and pretended to smell the small yellow flowers. Of course, they don’t smell like anything, and I looked like sort of an idiot, but I could see out of the corner of my eye that the ring on the table was Chelsea’s. I put the flowers back on the table. “These need some water,” I said, just for something to say.

  Moments earlier Chelsea had finished her fake contact lens adjustment in front of the bathroom mirror and joined us in the living room, where she’d starting asking the boy about Puerto Vallarta. Had he ever been there? Oh, he was from there? How cool!

  She must have glimpsed the ring on the table only seconds after I did, for she was at my shoulder in a flash. The black pug jumped off the couch and barked at her twice. He hopped up and down, as if playtime was about to begin.

  For all her tiresome girly-girly business, Chelsea was quick. She played point guard for our basketball team and ran track. She snatched up the ring, took one hard look at it, set it back on the table, and walked back out of the apartment, her face blank as a zombie. I looked down. The center stone was missing.

  “Thanks,” I said to him, hurrying after Chelsea. “I love your dog.”

  He stared at me for a second, but was mostly occupied with trying to keep the pug from running out after us. The expression on his face was clear: What’s going on here? But I could tell he was having a hard time putting it together.

  Outside, I caught up with Chelsea. She marched down the sidewalk back toward the bus stop, sobbing. The dull clouds had gotten bored and started spitting on us, typical early summer drizzle. “Oh my God I am so dead. I am so dead. I am so dead!” She stopped. “I’m going to throw up.”

  And then poor Chelsea did throw up, right there in the shrubbery outside Starbucks. I held her hair back. I felt terrible for her, but kept getting sidetracked: Now, this was a real mystery. The girl named Sylvia Soto had the now-worthless ring, but who had the red diamond?

  4

  Here’s a question: Why is it that the trip back always seems shorter than the trip there? It took no time at all to get back to Chelsea’s. It started raining for real, small pestering drops. I didn’t ask her any more questions about the ring, and she didn’t complain about the germs of public transportation.

  My thoughts were a swarm of bees caught in a jar. I wondered about so many things. First, was it a complete coincidence that Sylvia Soto bought the ring off Chelsea, just like that? It was impossible, right? And why would someone like Mr. de Guzman transport a ring into the country that way? I had to admit, when Chelsea had told me he’d switched the red cut-glass stone out for a real gem, I thought she might have been making it up. Chelsea was, after all, a drama queen known to lie on occasion. Was this something jewelers did all the time and people just didn’t know about it? And what system was Mr. de Guzman trying to beat, anyway?

  We walked part of the way from the MAX station together in the rain. Neither of us said a thing, then Chelsea said, “I really hate throwing up.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said.

  When we reached the corner where I had to turn up to go home, I told her I’d call her if I thought of anything, and she said she’d let me know what her dad had found out. Since he thought she’d lost the ring, he probably already had airport security and the FBI and Spider-Man turning the city upside down looking for it.

  I let myself in the back door with my key. At Casa Clark there are two back doors, one that goes from the backyard to the kitchen and one that goes from the driveway into the back hallway. This is the one everyone uses, unless they are taking out the garbage. The computer room is just off the back hallway. As I hurried past I could hear the sounds of cartoon monsters yelping in pain. I leaned into the room and spied the back of Mark Clark. He sat on the edge of his chair in his business-casual khaki pants and a blue polo shirt playing EverQuest, his all-time favorite video game. He was battling a gang of killer mermaids. Morgan was probably in his room reading. From the basement came the sound of the same three notes on a bass guitar—Quills practicing. This was just how I liked it: all the brothers home, but too busy to ask me all those boring adult questions that make you want to pull out your eyebrows like, “How was your day?”

  “Hi, I’m home!” I called out to anyone who might have been listening. I took the stairs two at a time. If I hung around downstairs Mark Clark would soon finish fighting his mermaids and feel the need to debrief about my cleaning the fridge, which I didn’t think I could stand. I had so much to think about.

  I needed an IP with my best friend Reggie, but I doubted I was going to get one. An IP was Reggie/Minerva code for an In Person, talking face-to-face. Reggie was the smartest boy I knew. He had at his fingertips many facts about black holes, hieroglyphics, and those people who spend all their free time re-creating the Civil War. I have known him since our moms took a water aerobics class together when they were pregnant with us, then pushed us in our strollers together in the park. Reggie got straight A’s, except in Citizenship, because he was always blurting out the answers without raising his hand or putting fake severed fingers in people’s desks. Last year our seventh-grade teacher, Mrs. Dayton-Bunnsted, called Reggie a True Test from God. We go to a Catholic school, even though we aren’t Catholic, because Catholics offer a superior education, which as far as I can see means they care about spelling.

  I used to be able to get IPs with Reggie any time I wanted, even after dark on a school night. We would drop everything for each other. But that was before he fell in drooling stupid love with Amanda Crossley, aka Aman
da the Panda.

  Amanda the Panda was Reggie’s girlfriend. And I don’t mean girl-space-friend, I mean girlfriend, one word, as in they hold hands when no one’s around and kiss and other things I can’t bear to think about.

  This isn’t because I have a thing for Reggie. As you know, I have a thing for Kevin, who was coming home from fly-fishing in Montana in 164 hours, give or take. I would love to have an IP with Kevin, but I’m not sure I can talk to him about the same kind of things I talk to Reggie about. I am a little afraid to find out that maybe Kevin, who is my almost-boyfriend, is not as smart as Reggie, who is my best friend-even-though-he-is-a-boy. If it is true, that Kevin isn’t smart like Reggie, what does it mean? That I should be with Reggie? Or is it okay to be with a boy who is not the smartest boy you know? It is so confusing sometimes.

  I do not have a thing for Reggie. At all, at all, at all. It’s just Amanda the Panda—Amanda Crossley, who’s one year younger than us, and wears too much black mascara that runs when she cries, and she is always crying, because she is a ballet dancer and a Sensitive Soul—is totally annoying. Amanda the Panda has been a ballet dancer since she was three years old. Every year for the talent show, between some third grader messing up a magic trick and a trio of fifth graders lip-syncing “Grease,” there’s Amanda the Panda in her ballet costume, with pink tights and a pink tutu, performing some ultra-arty, ultra-embarrassing dance to some excruciating musique classique, her thin no-color hair pulled back in a bun so tight it looks as if one sudden move is going to squeeze her eyeballs out of her head and into the row of kindergarteners sitting cross-legged in the front.

  And now Reggie, who is so smart in every other way you can think of, is crushing madly on her, and spends every waking moment either at Amanda the Panda’s house, or on the phone talking to her, or on his computer IMing her. Quills is writing a song for Humongous Bag of Cashews called “The Mystery of Love and Attraction,” and I think it’s about just this type of human weirdness. At least crushing on Kevin makes sense. He is totally hot and nice and is into origami the same way I’m into rebuses and is taking Japanese next year in high school.

  As I sat down in front of my computer to instant message Reg I had a strange thought: What if people wondered why Kevin was crushing on me? What if to all Kevin’s friends, I was like his Amanda the Panda? What if they had a nickname for me?

  I ran my hands down my face, shoved that thought straight out of my head. No wonder there were all those songs about how love made you insane.

  I could see that Reggie was logged on; his screen name, BorntobeBored, was the first one on my Buddy List, under the Group “Annoying Freak.” LOL. He was the only one in that group.

  Ferretluver: Knock knock

  While I waited, I flipped through my rebus notebook. I used to write rebuses all the time to occupy myself, but I hadn’t done one in a long time. I flipped back to the beginning of the notebook and read my early rebuses, all written with sparkling gel pens. My first one was: HIGH HIGH. Too high. I remember having written that in the fifth grade and thinking I would someday get my notebook published. I felt sad and embarrassed all at once, thinking back on those earnest hopes. I didn’t allow the thought to go any further: that one day I would be looking back at these days and feeling the same.

  Reggie didn’t respond, so I started harassing him.

  Ferretluver: Who’s there?

  Ferretluver: Justin

  Ferretluver: Justin who?

  Ferretluver: Justin the neighborhood and thought I’d say hello! REGGIE! ARE U THERE?

  BorntobeBored: Knock knock

  Ferretluver: Where were you?

  BorntobeBored: You’re supposed to say “who’s there?”

  Ferretluver: LOL

  BorntobeBored: Why r you laffing? I haven’t even gotten to the punch line.

  Ferretluver: What do you know about red diamonds, and transporting them into the United States from London?

  BorntobeBored: “Ring”

  At that second my cell phone rang. I popped my Bluetooth onto my ear and pressed the little button.

  “So what do you know about diamonds?” I asked.

  “Besides that most of them are over three billion years old, or two-thirds the age of the planet?”

  “What else? What about red diamonds?”

  “Red diamonds? Very rare …” His voice trailed off. I could hear the telltale sound of computer keys tapping: He was IMing someone, probably The Panda.

  “Reg?”

  “Diamonds are the hardest objects on earth. Made of pure carbon. The only thing that can cut a diamond is another diamond. The word diamond comes from the Greek adamas. Means invincible.” He rattled this off as he typed.

  “We were talking about red diamonds.”

  “Right …” Tap tap tap tap tap tap tap.

  “Are you IMing Amanda the Panda?”

  “Do you have to call her that? She has nothing but nice things to say about you.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Why do you need to know about …” Tap tap tap tap tap.”… red diamonds?”

  “Call me when you can actually talk, would you?”

  “Mandy says hey,” he said.

  “Gackarffaguga,” I said. I am the queen of choking noises. They sound so authentic I better not start choking for real because no one who knows me would ever save me. “Listen to yourself, Reg.”

  “Listen, dude, she’s really nice,” he said lamely.

  “Whatever.” I hung up. The truth is, I was totally jealous, even though I don’t like Reggie and am madly in crush with Kevin. Put that in your song, Quills.

  I guess it was just me and Google. I typed in “red diamonds” and learned that diamonds come in every color of the rainbow, but the colored ones are freaks of nature. Colored diamonds are called fancy diamonds and usually only special fancy diamond collectors are interested in them. The most common fancy diamonds are yellow, pink, blue, and a sparkling brown known as champagne diamonds. The coloration is caused by other elements mixed with the carbon. Boron causes blue diamonds. Nitrogen causes yellow diamonds. Red diamonds are rare and expensive. They come from a mine called the Argyle Mine in Australia.

  Diamonds are measured in carats, which I always thought were carrots. When Mark Clark was engaged briefly to Lulu he bought her a one-carat ring. It was no bigger than a pea. Still, it cost a lot of money.

  It seemed as if the biggest, most famous diamonds were cursed. The Black Orlov diamond is as big as a walnut, and was stolen from the forehead of an idol in India by a monk. Everyone who owned it after that committed suicide, including two Russian princesses. The Hope diamond is a famous violet-blue diamond that was also stolen from the forehead of an idol in India. It was cursed, too. The Frenchman who stole it was torn apart by wild dogs. Now I was really getting the creeps. Then Louis XVI somehow got a hold of it and gave it to his queen, Marie Antoinette, and they were both beheaded. The Hope diamond was sold again and again, and everyone who owned it suffered terrible luck because of it.

  I wondered if Mr. de Guzman’s diamond was cursed. It was much smaller than the Black Orlov diamond and the Hope diamond, so probably it was just a face-in-the-crowd diamond, no big deal other than its strange rare color.

  It was nearly dark outside, but there were no stars. The only light in my room was the blue glare from my computer monitor. I really hoped Mr. de Guzman hadn’t stolen his red diamond from the head of an Indian idol, or from anyone else, for that matter. I suddenly didn’t like being all alone in my room on the third floor, and was relieved when Mark Clark called me down to dinner.

  My brothers were already seated at the big dining room table. Since our mom left and our dad is always away on business, Mark Clark has come to believe it’s his duty to have a sit-down dinner a few times a week, and no one complains, even though we always ate too late.

  I sat down at my place and dug into my chicken enchiladas without saying a word. My mind was going round and round. No one said any
thing, other than Morgan, who asked someone to pass the salad.

  “This summer isn’t going to be this way,” said Mark Clark, out of the blue.

  I looked up. What was he talking about? “What way?” I asked.

  “If you don’t find something to do, I will find something for you to do. You’re not going to spend the entire three months on the computer.”

  What was he talking about? I’d been running around like a mad person all day. I’d already taken MAX to the airport and I’d seen the inside of Chelsea de Guzman’s fancy house, and met Winkin’, Blinkin’, and Ned, her champion show dog corgis—well, except for the adorable Ned, who was worth ten of the other two dogs, in my humble opinion. I’d been busy. Of course, Mark Clark didn’t know that, and I wasn’t about to tell him. “I cleaned the refrigerator,” I said.

  “And then what? You went over and hung out at a friend’s house, then came home and spent the last few hours IMing.”

  “Sor-ry,” I said. “I thought it was called summer vacation for a reason.”

  “Lose the tone. Now.”

  “Sorry.” I dropped my fork on my plate and folded my hands in my lap. I wore a pair of baggy blue jean shorts. If I had any scabs on my knees, I’d have been fiddling with them, but mostly we modern children do not have many scabs. We are the Knee and Elbow Pad Generation.

  “I’m serious, Minerva. You cannot lie around all summer IMing your friends.”

  “I am not lying around IMing my friends. That’s actually impossible anyway. I have to sit at my desk to IM my friends.”

  Quills snorted. “She got you there,” he said. Quills drank his entire glass of milk straight down. He loves to make trouble, just because.

  I didn’t know where this conversation was going, but my Spidey sense was telling me it wasn’t good. My enchiladas were getting cold. Plus, the fact was, once Kevin got home, I was planning on IMing him every possible minute I could.