Goodbye, Rebel Blue

by Shelley Coriell

  My blood chills.

  … and told her and the endangered sea turtles to go to their golden heaven.

  “So, Rebecca, was Kennedy distraught, or did she act in any way strange when you two were in detention?”

  I lose my ability to speak. Kennedy was upset, but was she upset enough to kill herself? Did my snarky comments and less-than-warm-and-fuzzy behavior send her over the edge?

  Of course they didn’t. We were strangers, two girls sharing two hours of despised detention. I don’t have a big enough ego to believe I have that much power over someone. Plus there’s the fact that Kennedy left detention chipper and cheery. She invited me to go out for smoothies.

  I’d rather drink a cup of kitty.

  The room grows colder, darker.

  Nate clears his throat. “Kennedy was fine at the 100 Club meeting, excited about getting the bird habitat we’ve been working on done. But she was late. That was strange because Kennedy is—was—always on time.”

  “She had detention,” I say. “We were both in detention for doing something”—the entire room brightens as if a giant lightbulb bursts to life—“‘dangerous, even deadly,’ Ms. Lungren said. Maybe Ms. Lungren caught her doing something to harm herself. I don’t know what she did to end up in detention. She never said.” And I never asked. Because I wanted her dead, but not dead dead.

  “Yes, I talked to Ms. Lungren already,” the officer says. “She explained that Kennedy was in detention because she’d driven recklessly into the school parking lot yesterday morning.”

  Nate nods. “She sped out of the parking lot after the club meeting really fast, too. Tires squealing.”

  I sink back in my seat. “She said it was a crazy-busy day, and she was probably driving crazy.”

  The officer types notes on his tablet. “Yes, sounds like Kennedy wasn’t the safest of drivers yesterday, but in the interest of leaving no stone unturned, did anything happen at the club meeting or detention to upset her?”

  Nate shakes his head.

  I try to shake off the image of me calling her a moron, which was said in a flash of irritation, not even anger. I was irritated that I had to write a stupid bucket list and worried about Aunt Evelyn’s reaction.

  After a moment or two of silence, the officer motions for us to stand. “Thank you, and I’m sorry about your friend.”

  We are not friends!

  Let’s not forget that nugget, either.

  Outside the office, the halls are empty and silent except for the echo of our footsteps. Second period must have already begun, which is good because I need quiet. I gnaw the inside of my cheek and think. At the beginning of detention, Kennedy had been emotionally and physically distraught—enough for even me to notice.

  Nate takes a step toward me, reaching out but not touching. “You okay?”

  I give him my back-away-from-the-bubble look.

  “Whatever.” He glances at his watch and hitches his backpack onto his shoulder. “We’d better get to class, or we’ll get detention.”

  Detention! Of course. I need to get to the detention room to find Kennedy’s bucket list. Her list will shed light on her emotional and mental state, and because Percy emptied the wastebasket before we left, the crumpled piece of paper still sits in it.

  I run to Unit Seven, but the detention room is locked. I run outside. The Del Rey School has long, one-story buildings with thick adobe walls and narrow windows designed to keep out heat. In late spring, most of the windows are cracked open. Pressing myself against the side of the building, I hurry to the third window. At five feet tall, I’m too short to reach. I jump, my fingertips clawing the ledge.

  “Breaking and entering is illegal.”

  My fingers slip, but I dig my nails into the adobe again. “You scared the crap out of me,” I say to Nate, keeping my voice low. I haul myself up to the ledge, where I anchor my elbows, reach inside, and tug on the window crank. It groans and creaks open. I crank faster. The handle snaps off. “Damn!”

  “Defacing school property is also illegal,” Nate says in a loud voice.

  I toss the crank to the ground, and it lands wonderfully close to his right tennis shoe. “If you’re going to narc, do it already, and shorten this special moment.”

  He crosses his arms. “Exactly what are you doing?”

  “Breaking and entering,” I say.

  “Why?”

  “I love detention.” I wrench open the window, pitch my body through the narrow space, and crash into a stack of chairs. The chairs scatter across the room, and I scramble to my knees and listen. A door opens somewhere at the end of the hall.

  Bolting to the wastebasket, I grope until I find two waddedup pieces of paper, one covered mostly in doodles, the other, twenty neat lines.

  “What’s that?”

  “Shit!”

  Nate stands six inches behind me, his fists on his hips, his biceps straining against the sleeves of his polo, like some preppy detention-room guardian. He crawled through the window without a sound, all strength and agility and grace. Definitely a sporto.

  He tilts his chin at Kennedy’s bucket list in my shaking hand. “What’s that?” he asks again.

  I jam the paper into the thigh pocket of my cargo pants. “Trash.”

  “Now you’re stealing.”

  “Someone threw it away. How can that be stealing?”

  “It’s not yours.”

  “It’s trash!”

  Footsteps clomp outside in the hallway. The door handle rattles. No time to argue about garbage. I stuff the other list into my pocket, rush to the window, grab a chair, and balance it on a desk. Climbing my makeshift ladder, I hurl my body through the window and don’t bother to worry about how Mr. Squeaky Clean is going to get out of this mess.

  THE LUNCH BELL RINGS, BUT I DON’T HEAD FOR MY normal spot near the bike racks, a lunchtime hangout haunted by the Del Rey School’s other detention regulars. Nor do I go to Miss Chang’s fifth-period art class, where I sometimes help her first-year students. I would never set foot in the cafeteria, a place for people wanting to see and be seen, like Cousin Penelope and the Cupcakes. Instead, I swim upstream through the crush of bodies to the locker courtyard in search of Death.

  At a locker bay near the drinking fountains, I spot a black hoodie. “I need to show you something,” I tell Macey.

  Macey throws her math book into her locker and pulls out two bulging plastic grocery bags. “What?”

  I slip my hand into my pants pocket, my knuckles brushing the piece of paper I’d stolen from the detention-room wastebasket. After checking into second-period AP English, a class I actually enjoy, I got a pass and spent most of the hour in the bathroom near the auto shop building reading Kennedy Green’s bucket list. “Not here. It’s something kind of personal.”

  Macey closes her locker. “I’m … uh … kind of busy.”

  I take one of Macey’s bags and tilt my head at the end of the locker bay. “Fine. We’ll talk while you do your ‘busy.’”

  For a moment, Macey looks startled, but she takes me along the breezeway to Unit Four and into one of the Family and Consumer Science classrooms.

  The FACS teacher waves at us. “Hi there, Macey. I’m so glad you decided to come after all. And you brought a friend! Wonderful. The kitchen’s ready. Let me know if you girls need any help.”

  Macey mumbles something that sounds like I’ll be fine or You have the eyes of a swine. She takes her bags to one of six tiny U-shaped kitchens and unloads a truckload of strawberries and bags of sugar and flour.

  I hoist myself onto the counter, the heels of my flip-flops tapping a cupboard door. “Did you hear about Kennedy Green?”

  Macey takes a large glass bowl and measuring cup from the cupboard. She opens a bag of flour and starts spooning flour into the measuring cup.

  “She’s the princess who was in detention with us yesterday. Blond ponytail.” Perky no longer. I hop off the counter.

  Macey puts the cup on a scale, squints,
and scoops another spoonful of flour.

  “She’s dead.”

  Macey’s spoon hovers above the measuring cup.

  “She was driving home from one of her do-gooder meetings last night and had a car accident. She drove off a cliff.” Images and sounds careen through my head. Rushing sky, tumbling rocks, a single scream. My breath quickens.

  “Uh, excuse me.”

  My eyes pop open.

  Macey points at the cupboard behind me. “I need salt.” She measures the salt and adds it to her bowl. “What does her death have to do with you?”

  “Kennedy’s death has nothing to do with me.” Blue and Green. We’re linked. Destined to share each other’s journeys. I start to pace around the tiny kitchen, my flip-flops slapping the bottoms of my feet.

  Macey takes a block of butter from a teeny-tiny fridge and slices and dices it into a million pieces.

  “Would you stop the Martha Stewart bit and read this?” I wave Kennedy’s bucket list in Macey’s face. “Is there anything on here that makes you think she was suicidal?”

  For the first time since we arrived in the FACS kitchen, Macey stills. She wipes her flour-dusted hands on the towel at her waist and takes the list, her pale, skeletal fingers careful, almost reverent. She studies the words. After a few minutes, she hands me the paper. “No.”

  A relieved breath whooshes from my chest. After reading the list, I didn’t sense any suicidal or even angsty vibe, but I’m no psychology expert. Macey’s second opinion reinforces my own that Kennedy’s death was not suicide, and therefore I can put the entire thing out of my mind. I waltz to the trash can at the end of the row of kitchens.

  “Stop!” An uncharacteristic pink flushes Macey’s normally ghost-y cheeks. “You’re not going to throw that away, are you?”

  “It’s a piece of paper.”

  Macey picks at a glob of buttery flour on the ragged cuff of her hoodie. “It seems weird to throw someone’s … uh … dreams and desires into the garbage.”

  “What am I supposed to do with it? Have some sacred sending-off ceremony? Frame it and give it to her next of kin? Kennedy is dead. Dead people don’t care about things left on Earth.” I hold my hand over the garbage, where inside something with a brown body, long antennas, and grotesquely jointed legs skitters.

  “Oh, no!” Macey cries.

  I spin toward Macey. She wrings her hands as she stands over her mixing bowl. “I added too much water.” She carries the bowl to the trash can, where she dumps the gray, gloppy mess onto the cockroach. A putrid odor, like sushi left in a locker over spring break, wafts from the garbage can. I turn away before I throw up, jamming the list into my pocket.

  Back in her kitchen, Macey pulls out a new bowl and the measuring cup. A non-Macey-like light flares in her eyes.

  “Exactly what are you doing?” I wonder how much stranger this day is going to get.

  “Making a strawberry pie.”

  I rub at my forehead, where I imagine a thousand tiny cockroach feet skittering and scampering. “Why, Macey, are you making a strawberry pie?”

  Her mouth turns down at the corners. “I couldn’t find any peaches.”

  I consider ditching my afternoon classes, but that would lead to another stint in detention, which would detonate Aunt Evelyn, so I wait until the final bell to head to the beach. On the half-mile walk to the Pacific Ocean, seagulls screech overhead, and cars full of hooting and screaming students rush by me, but not loud enough to drown out the voice in my head.

  I thought it would be kind of neat if we could be friends … Blue and Green … we’re linked … maybe we can go out for chai tea sometime and talk …

  Once at the beach, I kick off my flip-flops and dig my toes into the silky sand. Warmth creeps up my legs, across my chest, and along my neck, loosening the knots. I stroll along the water’s edge. Despite the craziness of the day, or perhaps because of it, I hunt for sea glass.

  Within minutes, I spy a clear wedge peeking from a crescent of gravelly sand. Clear glass is common, but I like the shape of this one. I slip the glass teardrop into my cargo pants pocket, the one that does not contain Kennedy Green’s dreams and desires.

  Unbuttoning the other pocket, I take out the paper. Time to ditch Kennedy’s bucket list, and not in a malodorous, cockroach-infested garbage can with Macey giving me the stink eye. I shall give Kennedy’s list wings. Literally.

  I fold the paper in half and make a few diagonal creases in an attempt to approximate one of Cousin Pen’s paper cranes. If I squint, I see a three-legged dog. Close enough.

  With my arm raised toward the heavens, I fling the mutant canine. The wind catches the paper and whisks it higher. The girl who believed in a golden heaven would love this.

  “Bye-bye, bucket list,” I say with a jaunty wave. Good. Mission Get-the-Do-Gooder-Dead-Girl-out-of-My-Head accomplished.

  My pocket and heart exponentially lighter, I jog three steps when something smacks me in the forehead and falls to the sand.

  The bucket-list-mutant-crane-dog.

  I jump back as if it might bite. Then I slap my palm on my forehead. Look who’s wearing the I’m-a-Moron T-shirt now. I snatch the piece of paper, squeeze, and hurl it into the churning waters of the Pacific.

  A kid wearing a beach towel like a Superman cape hops in front of me. “Hey, lady, that’s littering.” His face puckers in a scowl.

  “It’s paper. It’ll dissolve.”

  “You littered. That’s against the law. I’m going to tell my mom, and she’s going to tell the lifeguard, and you’re going to be in trouble.”

  I point to the sand toys a few yards up the beach. “Don’t you have a sand castle to build?”

  “You’ll get a five-hundred-dollar fine and spend a hundred years in jail.” He sticks out his tongue.

  “Or maybe you should go stick your head in the sand.”

  His chubby fingers dig into the sides of his Superman cape, and his bottom lip juts out. “You’re meeeeean.”

  I squat so we’re eye level. “And you’re eeeeevil.”

  His scowl morphs into a wicked grin. “And you’re still a litterbug. Mooooom! I found another one. Can I tell the lifeguard? You got to do it last time. Please, can I, pleeeeease?” He runs to a granola-type woman farther up the beach, who starts walking to the lifeguard tower.

  I wade into the water, scoop up the stupid paper, waggle it at Superbrat, and jam the sodden mess into my pocket.

  The next morning I walk into the kitchen and listen to grumbling at the far end of the street followed by melodious beeping. This is the happy sound of a Tierra del Rey garbage truck. When I got back from my run-in with Superbrat, I tossed Kennedy’s bucket list into the recycling bin.

  Reaching into the refrigerator, I pull out a piece of cheesecake with blueberry sauce left over from last night’s dinner and smile. A sweet start to a sweet day.

  Aunt Evelyn, who stands at the sink, makes a sputtering sound, as if she’s choking. “We don’t eat that for breakfast,” she says. “We’ve been over this countless times, Rebecca. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. You must follow the food pyramid and be properly fueled.”

  Until I moved in with Uncle Bob’s family, I’d never heard of the food pyramid and didn’t know about breakfast rules. Breakfast with Mom could be white rice and black beans in Costa Rica or juicy plums plucked from a tree growing in the wilds of Chile.

  Aunt Evelyn clucks her tongue and grabs the cheesecake from my hand. “Your breakfast is on the table.” She points to a staged breakfast on a rooster place mat: yogurt parfait, whole-grain toast with kumquat marmalade, and fresh-squeezed orange juice.

  Today is too good of a day to argue about the food pyramid. I grab the toast and slather on marmalade. The bucket list is gone, and my world has been set right.

  The grumbling grows louder as the recycling truck rolls in front of our house. I raise my fingers, ready to wiggle a fond farewell, but the beeping, the sound that indicates the truck is lifting
a recycling bin heavenward, never starts. I jump from the table and run to the front window in the living room in time to see the garbage truck lurch past the driveway. “It missed our bin.”

  Uncle Bob pokes his nose over the top of his newspaper. “Nope. I didn’t put it out this morning. The bin isn’t full. We’ll have it emptied next week.”

  “Nooooo!” I race out the back door and grab the recycling bin from the side of the house. I haul it to the curb and run after the garbage truck, jerking the bin behind me. “Come back! You missed one. Come baaaaack!”

  The truck lumbers around the corner and disappears.

  I stand in the middle of the street, my hands trembling as they curl around the bin’s handle. Maybe it’s gone anyway. Maybe Kennedy was right and there’s an unseen force that deliberately moves people and things around like pawns on the giant chessboard of life. And maybe that force knows I need this list out of my life.

  I hold my breath.

  I crack open the lid.

  Wrinkled, dirty, and damp, Kennedy Green’s dreams and desires are still here on Earth.

  “YOU’RE LATE, MS. BLUE.”

  I throw my biology book onto my lab table.

  “More than two minutes this time,” Mr. Phillips continues. “Perhaps you should invest in a quality timepiece.”

  I toss my messenger bag under the lab stool. “I don’t believe in quality timepieces.” Nor do I believe in destiny or kismet or juju winds. I’ve never owned a rabbit’s foot or good-luck Peruvian huayruro seeds. I don’t avoid black cats and ladders. I chart my own course, control my own destiny.

  So theoretically I should have no problems making the choice to get rid of Kennedy Green’s bucket list. It’s not something that requires the mastery of complex math functions. I need to toss the list into a garbage can, walk away, and forget about it.

  I sink onto my stool. My flip-flops fall to the floor, and I wrap my toes around the lab-stool rung. I keep hearing Kennedy’s annoying voice, keep reading her stupid list. Last night I dreamed Aunt Evelyn wallpapered a decorative border of Kennedy’s list below the crown molding in my bedroom. I woke up sweating and shaking.