Part of Me

by Kimberly Willis Holt

  Kyle started next door. He sure hoped Mr. Mickey had forgiven him for accidentally running over his cat when he sneaked his sister’s Volkswagen out of the driveway. How was he to know that a deaf cat was sleeping with its tail under the left rear wheel? Besides, the cat had survived and looked cool with a bobbed tail.

  Potted pink geraniums hung over Mr. Mickey’s front porch. Kyle rang the doorbell. Mr. Mickey came to the door, newspaper tucked under his arm. He peered at Kyle over eyeglasses worn low on his nose.

  “Hi, Mr. Mickey. I’m Kyle Koami, your next-door—”

  “I know who you are. You’re that kid who ran over Peaches.”

  “Well—yes, sir, that’s me. I was just wondering if you had anyone lined up to mow your lawn.”

  “Nope, I don’t. But if I do, it sure as hell won’t be you.” Mr. Mickey closed the door so quickly that Kyle stood there for a moment, stung. Some people just didn’t know how to forgive and forget.

  Next house. Next victim. “Hi. I’m Kyle Koami, from two doors down. I was wondering if you had anyone lined up to mow your lawn this summer. I could offer you a good deal.”

  The woman with a messy-faced baby on her hip stared at Kyle a long moment. Kyle started to wonder if she didn’t understand English. Just as he was about to tell her the baby was cute, the woman spoke. “Aren’t you that boy who ran over Mr. Mickey’s cat?”

  Kyle decided to skip over to Vallette, the next street. But when he started to approach the corner house, he saw smooth-smiling Mike Turner strolling his way with the lawn mower. He did look more like a Michael B. Turner. Every short blond hair on his head glistened and he had the bronze skin of a lifeguard. Probably a fake bake, thought Kyle. I’ll bet he doesn’t even sweat when he mows.

  Before Michael reached the yard, Kyle pivoted and crossed the street. The next homeowner opened the door, greeting Kyle with a smile. Fishing lures decorated the man’s canvas hat. A man with a weekend hobby was a good prospect. Maybe Kyle’s luck was about to change.

  “Hi,” the man said, “I wasn’t expecting you so soon. Your mom said you had a few houses to get to before mine.”

  Kyle looked confused and the man seemed to notice. He picked up the flyer sitting on a table in his foyer and showed Kyle. It was the same one his dad had shown him earlier. “This isn’t yours, is it?”

  “’Fraid not.”

  “Sorry, but I’ve already arranged to have my lawn mowed by Michael.”

  “No problem,” Kyle said. “Thanks anyway.” He turned around to leave.

  The man called after him. “But if something doesn’t work out, I’ll let you know.”

  Walking down Vallette, he came to the blown glass studio where a Help Wanted sign was in the window. Kyle thought back to the time his kindergarten class took a tour there. He didn’t mean to break that vase. Glass was just fragile. Kyle kept walking.

  The sun, already high in the sky, beat down on him. His T-shirt stuck to his back and chest like a second skin. Maybe he should walk to the levee and get a sno-ball. Then he could kill two birds with one stone and get a job. If he worked there, he could probably have all the sno-balls he wanted.

  Kyle headed toward the river. Some moms were swinging their kids at Confetti Park. He peered through the multicolored iron fence. When he was younger, he’d had a lot of good times in that park. He thought of sitting on the bench and watching the kids for a while, but when he heard the church bell chime eleven times, he kept walking. He passed Westbank Java, then stopped and turned around. An old guy sat at an iron rod table, drinking from a white cup outside the coffee shop. Inside, the shop smelled like strong espresso with a hint of cinnamon. Kyle went inside and over to the counter.

  “What can I get you?” the girl with a nose ring asked.

  “Who, me? I don’t drink coffee. I tried it once, though. It tasted like burnt rubber. I was just wondering if you had any job openings.”

  Without a comment, the girl pulled two sheets from a binder on the counter. One was an application. The other was a sheet that said: PLEASE READ BEFORE FILLING OUT APPLICATION. 1. No felons need apply. 2. Applicant must be at least 17 years old. There was no reason for Kyle to read further.

  “Thanks anyway,” he said, then left.

  A few minutes later, Kyle saw the Mr. Carmine’s N’AWLINS SNO-BALLS sign. Beyond the stand, the ferry was midway in its journey across the Mississippi River. Every day his dad took the ferry to work on the east bank. Maybe there was a job waiting for him across the river, too.

  At the stand, Kyle decided to take a slow approach, first coming from a customer’s angle. He ordered a large blackberry sno-ball.

  “Delicious,” Kyle said after his first big slurp. Mr. Carmine’s sno-balls were famous for their generous amount of sweet syrup.

  Mr. Carmine grinned. “You ever try any other flavor? You’ve been ordering blackberry since you were eight years old. Once you almost ordered orange, but you changed your mind at the last minute.”

  Mr. Carmine sure had a great memory. That must have happened years ago.

  “I just know that blackberry is always good. I’m afraid I’ll miss it. But I know how I might start ordering other flavors.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Hire me for the summer. I’m sure I’ll get tempted by other customers’ orders.”

  “That’s kind of an expensive way for me to get you to order something new.”

  “Well, actually, Mr. Carmine, I’m looking for a job.”

  “Sorry, kid. Why do you think I’m here? I’d have had someone else working for me long ago if I could afford it. You gotta sell a lot of sno-balls to make a living.”

  Next door was The Dry Dock Café and Bar, his favorite place for his favorite meal—an oyster po’-boy with a side of sweet potato fries. But he wasn’t old enough to work there.

  After a good-luck send-off from Mr. Carmine, Kyle decided he’d done enough job prospecting for the morning. He was getting hungry for something more substantial than a sno-ball. Walking home, he smacked a mosquito off his arm and wiped the sweat off his face. There must be a better way to make a summer living. He knew his dad would find Kyle work if he didn’t have something by the end of the day. And that job probably wouldn’t include air-conditioning.

  At home, Kyle finished off three hot dogs, a bag of corn chips, and a Coke. He was getting sleepy. Then an idea came to him. What about working at the coolest place on earth? The Record Shop. He loved those old albums. Some were corny like Sinatra, Bing Crosby, and Tom Jones. But Bill also had the greatest stock of 70s hard rock. Kyle dialed the number he knew by heart. “Hey, Bill. It’s Kyle Koami.”

  “Hey, dude. What’s up? Need some Hendrix? Oh, today I got a Doors in you might like.”

  “Cool.” For a second, Kyle forgot why he’d called. “Listen, my dad is on my case about getting a job this summer.”

  “Bummer.”

  “Yeah, anyway how’d you like me to work for you?”

  “Sorry, dude, no can do. I don’t have the bread to hire you.”

  “I’m only thirteen. You wouldn’t have to pay me minimum wage.” Kyle would have paid Bill to work at The Record Shop if he’d had the money.

  “Dude, that would be so cool, but I can barely pay my rent. If it weren’t for the reefer, I’d be on the street. Hey, you didn’t hear me say that. You know most people aren’t like you and me. We know albums are the only way to listen to music. Most people these days want CDs. You ever thought about mowing lawns? When I was your age there was this dude that lived down the street who made a killing one summer. He put out these flyers with his name and number on it and everything. I thought about doing that, too, but it was already too late.”

  Kyle saw his future flash in front of him. He was standing behind the counter of The Record Shop, selling reefer to potheads. Maybe his dad was right, maybe he should cut his hair. Naah, his hair didn’t have anything to do with it. He stretched out on his bed and stared at his Led Zep poster on the wall. In no ti
me at all, he was asleep.

  * * *

  “Kyle, Kyle, Crocodile, wake up.”

  Had he slept through the entire day and evening? Opening his eyes, he realized it wasn’t his mother’s voice he’d heard, but his sister’s. Emma stood before him. She’d inherited the best of his parents’ physical traits. Kyle had to admit that with her long black hair and green eyes she was pretty enough to be a cheerleader, but Emma hated the idea of doing anything that didn’t require intelligence.

  “What do you want, Barf-face?” Kyle asked her. No need for her to know he thought she was pretty.

  “Just for that, I don’t think I’m going to tell you why I came home for lunch.”

  Curiosity could kill Kyle. “Okay. I take it back. Why did you come home for lunch?”

  “A potential job.”

  “For me?”

  “That’s right. Mr. Patrick said he could use someone to help him with the summer skits.”

  “You mean I’d have to wear costumes and silly wigs?” He remembered when he was little and Mr. Patrick wore a long wig with antlers for a Christmas skit based on the book Imogene’s Antlers. It was a scary sight.

  “Yep, exactly. But it should be fun.”

  “No way.”

  “Fine.” Emma left his room.

  He’d expected a bigger fight than that. He needed a bigger fight than that. What was with Barf-face anyway? She never gave up that easily. Still, he had to admit he was amazed that she would tell him about a job that would mean she’d have to work with him. A little brother who called her Barf-face.

  He went downstairs, where she was making a ham sandwich.

  “I guess all these skits will be based on books, right?”

  Emma made a snapping noise with her tongue. “Well, it is a library.”

  “Hmm. Figures.” Kyle hated to read. He was the only one in the family who did. It had perplexed him how his mom would forget to make dinner because she was engrossed in Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister. Or how his dad could find fascination in yet one more WWII book. How much could someone read about WWII anyway? And Emma was famous for reading. She always had a book in her hands. The only stories he’d enjoyed were the ones Gamma Rose made up and read to him. He loved the adventures of Alligator Man on the bayou. When she’d read those to him, she used a Cajun accent. “My momma used to talk that way,” she’d say. She also usually fed him a bowl of gumbo when she was finished. Maybe it was the gumbo he’d liked, not the stories. The idea of being surrounded by books every day at the library caused Kyle to shudder. Still, it was a job, a job with air-conditioning.

  He waited for Emma to say something, but she just ate in silence, skimming an article in Psychology Today. Then she went upstairs for a minute before taking off. From the living room window, Kyle watched the VW drive down the street and disappear around the corner.

  Upstairs, he checked the Pink Floyd chat room to see if JJ had logged on. JJ usually didn’t show up until the evening and nobody was saying anything new. He put on a Led Zeppelin album and turned up the volume loud enough to make his dad yell if he’d been home, but not loud enough to cause Mr. Mickey to call the cops. The posters on his wall vibrated. For a moment it satisfied him. Then he lowered the volume.

  A lawn mower roared somewhere in the distance, probably Michael B. Turner raking in more cash. Peeking between his blinds, he noticed Peaches curled up on top of the empty birdbath in Mr. Mickey’s backyard. That sure was a lazy cat. Getting run over was probably the most exciting thing that ever happened in her life. Kyle thought about last summer. He dragged the phonebook from under his bed and searched for the Algiers Public Library’s number. With “Stairway to Heaven” softly playing in the background, he heard himself say, “Mr. Patrick, this is Kyle Koami. Emma said you might have a job for me.”

  Missing Harry

  (2004)

  IT WAS FRIDAY, the last day for Turnip Soup. Kyle had performed in skits at the Algiers Public Library all summer. Each weekday became a routine. He hated getting up early, but after that the day wasn’t so bad. He had liked some of the skits, even if they were based on books.

  Kyle’s first day on the job, Mr. Patrick had asked him, “Have you read Squash Pie?”

  “Nope,” Kyle answered.

  “How about The Wolf’s Chicken Stew?”

  “’Fraid not.”

  “What kind of books do you like to read?”

  “Ummm … do you have any books on the Stones?”

  “You mean like rocks?” Mr. Patrick asked.

  “No. The Rolling Stones. Or maybe one on Hendrix or Pink Floyd.”

  Mr. Patrick looked a bit taken aback. Kyle thought he was probably wondering how he could be related to his sister, Emma. But after a short pause, Mr. Patrick told him where to find the biographies downstairs in nonfiction. Six weeks later, Kyle still hadn’t bothered to look for the books. He could find anything he wanted to know online.

  Since they did a morning skit and an early afternoon show, he had to hang out at the library until his sister got off work. At least he was earning cold cash.

  He couldn’t wait for tomorrow. Every Saturday he talked his mom into driving him to The Record Shop across the river. Since the store was near Magazine Street she didn’t mind. She would browse the antique shops while Kyle looked for an album to add to his collection.

  Now he and Emma rode to the library in silence. Neither one of them was a morning person like their mom. Kyle leaned over and turned on the radio, tuning to his favorite station. He’d barely recognized the song when Emma switched to NPR.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey, my car.”

  Kyle didn’t feel like arguing. He just leaned his head against the window while Morning Edition droned on. No wonder his sister was so smart, if she liked listening to this crap.

  They drove until they reached the library parking lot, then got out and walked past the homeless people lingering outside, waiting for the library to open. Emma always looked at the ground when she passed them, as if they were invisible, but Kyle looked them straight in the eyes and said, “Hey. How’s it going?” Usually he got a nod, sometimes a “Good morning.”

  Kyle wondered what had happened to make them homeless. Did they get fired? Did they lose their entire family in some tragedy? He tried to memorize their faces like a camera taking photos. The woman with the plaid jacket and long denim skirt reminded him of his fifth-grade teacher. At first he thought it was her, but then she grinned and he noticed she didn’t have any teeth. Mrs. O’Brien had long donkey-sized ones. Kyle thought the bald man with Elvis sideburns had kind eyes. Another man was almost as small as a child. He always wore a tweed jacket and a knit cap with earflaps, even though it was in the middle of the summer.

  Upstairs in the youth section, Kyle helped Ms. Carol find Web sites for kids until the morning skit started. To his disappointment, none of them asked to see any hard-rock sites. They never did. They all seemed interested in subjects like gemstones and dinosaurs.

  That morning, Mr. Patrick walked in with a book. Kyle averted his eyes, staring back at the monitor where he was helping a little girl find sites on butterflies. He hoped Mr. Patrick wasn’t going to do what he did almost every day. Mr. Patrick would say, “Let me give you a short book talk on this great story.” Then he proceeded to give Kyle a synopsis of a young-adult novel with such excitement that Kyle clapped at the ending. But he never checked out the book. The only books Kyle had read that summer were the picture books that inspired the skits, and that was only because he had to understand how to act out his role.

  Glancing up from the monitor, Kyle was relieved when Mr. Patrick placed the book on Ms. Carol’s desk. He noticed the book was a Harry Potter one.

  Mr. Patrick sighed. “The replacement arrived, but there’s another one missing from the stacks.”

  “Again?” Ms. Carol asked.

  “Yep.”

  Kyle kept listening while he clicked on a Web site about butterflies in Africa.
/>   “At least they’re consistent,” Mr. Patrick said. “Another Harry Potter.”

  “A Harry Potter book is missing?” Kyle asked. Most of his friends had claimed to have read all of them. He’d just brushed it off as a fad.

  Kyle was standing now. “Do you think somebody stole it?”

  “Well, maybe,” Mr. Patrick said.

  “Probably,” Ms. Carol said, shaking her head. “That’s the second one.”

  Kyle found this robbery talk fascinating. Imagine, a mystery right here in Algiers Public Library. “That means the thief is probably the same kid.”

  Emma, who was shelving picture books, looked their way. “That’s right, Detective Koami.”

  Kyle gave her a you-better-not glare, but Emma just winked. When Kyle was seven, his teacher read Encyclopedia Brown to the class. He was so inspired that he started his own detective agency. He even posted a sign. MYSTERIES SOLVED—25 CENTS. CALL KYLE KOAMI, BOY DETECTIVE. His mother gave him twenty-five cents for finding any of her shoes she was always misplacing, but Kyle had yearned for a real mystery to solve. For days, he spied on their neighbor Mr. Mickey with binoculars. The weirdest thing he did, though, was shake pepper on his roses.

  “Almost show time,” Mr. Patrick announced, shelving Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets with the other Harry Potter books. Mr. Patrick got so caught up when it was time for a skit. He’d already forgotten his plan to keep the new Harry Potter books on Ms. Carol’s desk.

  Ms. Carol had forgotten, too. Her heels clicked against the floor as she rushed to the bathroom to change into her costume.

  Kyle didn’t mention the oversight because he decided the book would make great bait. He watched the P–T section where the Harry Potter books were shelved while the kids poured into the Story Time room. Right away, a girl went over to search the shelf and began bouncing on her toes when she saw Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets among the three first Harry Potters.