“Wire the money.”
“What money?”
“Duh!” I pointed across the street. “The money you make over there.”
Dave Mizra shook his head. “I make nothing,” he said.
“No way.” I almost laughed in his face. “Famous people come to your shop. Veronica Heller, even.”
Dave looked out the window for a while, not saying anything. “It was a lie,” he whispered.
“What?”
“The Wild Blue Bounce. I don’t even know them. The music sounds like whining to me. No spirit. But I know this is what’s popular nowadays, so … ” He shrugged like he was weighing a grapefruit in the produce section. “So I chose her.”
“What do you mean, you ‘chose’ her?”
“I made up that story. She never came to my shop. You really think someone like that would come to this neighborhood? Why do you think there were no pictures? Don’t you think I would have taken pictures? I told the man at the Chronicler she was ‘a private person’ and he believed me. Ha! Journalists.”
“You mean she never came?”
“Does it matter? No one reads this newspaper, the Chronicler.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“Perhaps I’ll have to sell the shop. I think I should become a lawyer. They make all the money. A doctor, perhaps.” He laughed when he said that, but it was all wrong again. It was the kind of laughter that made you think of being alone.
34
How to Kiss a Homeless Girl
Calen was giving me the you’ve-morphed-into-a-manatee look. “I can’t believe you kissed a homeless girl.”
“Just a peck on the cheek. Not like it was a big deal.”
“Except she’s homeless.”
“She’s not homeless.”
Calen and I were sitting in the café around the corner from the Metro Valley Cineplex, waiting for Alana to show up. We were going to see Sudden Conquest.
Most kids from Rosemount, kids like Topher with rich parents, talked about how they were going to grow up and make kick-ass investments or start the next Facebook. That’s what I liked about Calen. He didn’t care about any of that stuff. It suited me fine, because I was too poor to have an opinion. Calen was different. He genuinely liked cars, girls, and baseball. He had always liked cars, girls, and baseball. He was the sort of person old people from the fifties meant when they said “straight shooter.”
Which is also why he thought it was strange for someone to play music on the street.
“I’m telling you, she’s not homeless. Her dad teaches philosophy at Falconer.”
“Have you actually seen her home?”
“No.”
“So she might be homeless.”
“She’s not.”
For a moment, Calen gave this some serious thought. “Maybe. I guess. She was kind of too hot to be homeless.”
I smiled. “Exactly.”
“If she’s not homeless, you should call her and have her meet us,” Calen advised, suddenly changing his tune. “It’ll be cool, like a double date.”
“You think? I just saw her last night. What happened to not being needy?”
Calen shook his head at me like I was an infant with a spilled bowl of mushy peaches. “That only applies at the beginning. You guys’ve already kissed, so that stage is over. Now you’ll screw it up if you don’t call.”
I took out the piece of the paper where Zoey had written her number. As I unfolded it, I was surprised to see a familiar symbol. A daisy with the initials BC. It was a flyer from Beauhaven, complete with its familiar slogan: Get Wellness!
“That’s weird.”
“What?” Calen craned his neck to look at the paper.
“My mom goes here.”
“So?”
“It’s, like, way out of town.”
“So?”
“I don’t know.”
“Whatever. Just go call her.”
I went outside and dialed the number.
“Hello?”
“Hi, is this Zoey?”
I heard music in the background, the carnival-at-the-end-of-the-world melody of “Colt’s-Tooth Blues.” It was rapidly becoming our theme song.
The music stopped. “Who is this?”
Before I could tell her again, a man with a deep voice grunted something I couldn’t hear.
“I’m on the phone!” Zoey yelled back at him. “What is it?!”
“I said,” the man hollered, “don’t switch it off! Listen to it again!”
That must have been Zoey’s father. His voice was gruff and aggressive. He was slurring his words. He sounded drunk.
“And I said, I am on the phone !”
The music came on again, but at a lower volume.
“Sorry,” Zoey whispered. “Who do you want to talk to?”
“You. It’s me, Kaz. I took you for pho, remember?”
“Kaz! What’s going on?”
“I wanted to see what you were doing.”
She lowered her voice again. “Not much.”
I told her where we were, that we were headed for a movie. She said she wouldn’t mind getting out of the house for a while.
“Who’re you talking to?” the man demanded.
“A friend of mine,” Zoey answered.
He laughed, but not in a nice way.
“Shut up,” Zoey told him.
I wondered what Mom would do if I ever told her to shut up.
“You’re not going anywhere,” her father told her. “You’ve got work to do.”
“If this isn’t a good time,” I said, “we could always—”
“No. It’s fine.”
Zoey’s father said something else in the background, but I couldn’t understand it.
“I know it already!” Zoey shouted at him.
There was a clatter of noise that might have been plates cracking or maybe a crescendo of percussion in the Shain Cope song. Then more crashes and bangs—definitely not any kind of music. Suddenly, Zoey’s voice was right inside my head, a ragged whisper.
“Save me a seat. I’ll be there soon.”
35
Zoey Buys a Coffee
When Zoey walked in, she was like a completely different person. Gone were the cut-off jeans, the torn tights, the killer boots, the off-the-shoulder T-shirt. She was now in a patterned, dark-green skirt; simple black tights; brown suede boots, low-heeled and low-cut; and a white button-up top that hugged her chest in a way you couldn’t ignore (at least I couldn’t). Her dreadlocks, instead of exploding out in all directions, were fastened back in a prim ponytail.
Her makeup was different, too. No more bruise-black eyeshadow and matching lipstick. Now her face was blushing the colors of peaches and plums. If you had never seen her before, you’d take her for a preppy.
“Is that the same girl?” Alana whispered to me.
I nodded.
“I take it all back,” Calen said. “Definitely not homeless.”
Zoey waved at me and came straight over. She stood at the table and bent to kiss me on the cheek—as if it were something she did all the time.
Calen jumped out of his seat and pointed at her. “You’re Zoey, right?”
“Yep.” Zoey nodded and gave him a blank look. “You’re Kaz’s friend?”
“Uh … we met at Toph’s, remember?” He sounded disappointed she didn’t remember him.
Zoey smiled politely. “There were a ton of people there. What’s your name again?”
“Calen.”
Alana cleared her throat. “And I’m Alana,” she said, followed by a dramatic pause. “His girlfriend.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“So, uh, what school do you go to?”
“Actually, I’m home-schoo
led. My dad knows a ton of stuff. He teaches at—”
“Falconer,” Alana finished. “Kaz told us.”
Zoey scanned the big chalkboard mounted behind the counter. “You guys mind if I grab a coffee? I’ve been working all day.”
Working? I thought. I couldn’t tell if she meant it ironically. Did standing on a corner strumming and thumping a weird instrument count as work?
“Sure,” Alana said, looking at her watch. “Calen and I’ll go get seats. We’ll meet you there.”
“We will?” Calen asked. He was obviously curious about Zoey.
“Yes,” Alana said sternly. “We will.” She dragged him away, but not before giving me a wink, one that meant, we’ll leave you two alone ...
Zoey had wandered over to the counter, where she ordered a small regular coffee, the cheapest drink on the menu. She paid, turned to leave, but then stopped.
“Excuse me,” she said to the guy behind the counter, a pimply kid no older than me.
“Yes?” He raised his eyebrows hopefully, grateful for Zoey’s attention.
“Can you break a twenty?”
“Sure!”
Zoey handed him a twenty dollar bill. “How ’bout a ten, a five, and five ones. Okay?”
She took the change but she didn’t put it away. Instead, she counted the bills out on the countertop, laying them down one by one. Then she stared at the money, thinking.
“Oh my god!” she said. “I’m so stupid!”
It wasn’t only her clothes that had changed; her voice had shifted, as well. It was faster and higher pitched. She sounded like she was doing an impression of Christina Muñoz.
“I forgot, my dad dumped all these ones on me when I left the house. I totally need to get rid of them. They’re so annoying, don’t you think?”
“Totally.”
I sort of felt sorry for the kid behind the counter. Maybe he didn’t get much attention from girls, what with his skin being a bit messed up. I also wondered what Zoey was doing. If I didn’t know better, I might have thought she was flirting—which made me wonder about her taste in men. If she flirted with guys like him, what did it say about me?
“Oh, wait! I know!” Zoey picked the stack of bills off the counter. “I can put all my ones together, then you can give me a ten, yeah?” She laid a stack of ones on the counter.
The kid gave her a ten from the register.
“Great, thanks! You really helped me out.” She turned to leave, but the kid stopped her.
“Wait,” he said. “You’re short one dollar. There’s only nine here.”
“Really? Lemme see.” She reached out and I noticed her nails were painted to match her face, the orangish-pink of early autumn.
She took the bills from the cashier guy and counted them onto the counter.
“Oh my god! You’re right!” Her voice went even higher and she giggled like a baby. “I am sooo sorry. No wonder they have you working the register. You’re smart.”
“Hey, thanks.”
“Okay, here. I have a few more ones left from my dad. Why don’t I give you a ten and a one—that makes eleven—and with the nine ones I gave you, it makes twenty. I’ll put it all together and then I can get my original twenty back, okay?” She giggled again. “God, I’m so indecisive !”
The kid smiled at her. “I’m sorry to say it, but you kind of are.”
He should have done that more often. You didn’t notice his skin so much when he smiled. The register was still open, so he handed back her original twenty and took the pile of change from her.
Zoey shook her head. “All that for nothing! I’m such a ditz sometimes.”
“We better go,” I said to her. “The movie’ll be starting.”
As soon as we were outside, Zoey’s voice went back to normal. Weird. Had she really been flirting with that guy? We passed a trash can on the way and Zoey tossed in the cup of coffee she had just bought.
“Hey! You didn’t even drink that.”
She shrugged. “I changed my mind. I wasn’t kidding about being indecisive. One moment I want something, the next I don’t.” She looked toward the cinema. “Anyway, they probably have a rule about outside drinks.”
It made sense, but only kind of. Why would she take all that time to buy a coffee she wasn’t going to drink? It bugged me all through the movie.
Which was shit, by the way. I have no idea why we picked it. It was basically a submarine war movie. In space. The good guys drove a space-sub called The Conquest (hence the title). That was about all the information you needed before the explosions started. Most of the time, I like explosions in a movie theater, but not just explosions. That’s what this felt like.
When we hit explosion gazillion-and-two, my brain turned to fermented bean curd. Or rather, it wandered. I kept thinking back to what Zoey did with that clerk in the coffee shop. In the middle of the big, spine-cracking meta-explosion of a climax, I figured it out.
36
What Zoey Did
Usually, when you ask for change, it’s a two-sided process: One side (in this case, Zoey) hands in a bill and the other side (the cash register, basically) spits back the same amount in smaller denominations. Simple. Which is why Zoey complicated it—by adding a third side to the equation: the counter-top in between. She used the counter in order to confuse the guy and make him introduce an extra ten bucks into the mix (which she inevitably ended up with).
It went like this:
He Said /
She Said
Zoe’s Cash
Countertop’s Cash
Cashier’s Cash
All is Revealed
Zoey: Can you break a twenty?
Cashier: Sure!
Zoey: How ’bout
a ten, a five, and five ones?
$1
$1
$1
$1
$1
$20
$25
Nothing (except maybe old coffee stains)
$1
$1
$1
$1
$1
$5
$10
$10
$30
She starts with $25, but keeps the one dollar bills in her bag, so there’s a total of $55 in play. Now keep an eye on those ten $1 bills ...
Zoey: Oh my god! I’m so stupid! My dad dumped all these ones on me.
$1
$1
$1
$1
$1
$5
$10
$5
$1
$1
$1
$1
$1
$20
$10
$20
$30
Instead of putting the change in her bag, she lays it out on the counter. She picks up only the $10 and the $5, leaving the $1s in the middle—and then she introduces five new 1$ bills.
Zoey: I know! I can put all my ones together, then you can give me a ten.
$1
$1
$1
$1
$1
$5
$10
$20
$1
$1
$1
$1
$1
$5
$10
$20
$30
She now has $20 in her hand, but on the counter there’s $5 in ones, which at this point belong to her.
Cashier: Wait, you’re short one dollar.
$1
$5
$10
$10
$26
$1
$1
$1
$1
$1
$1
$1
$1
$1
$9
$20
$20
She only adds four $1s to the five on the counter, so when she gets $10 in return, she’s up by $1 to $26. At this point, she owes him just $1. If she hands it over, they’re even. But that’s not what she does ...
He Said /
She Said
Zoe’s Cash
Countertop’s Cash
Cashier’s Cash
All is Revealed
Zoey: Oh my god! You’re right! Okay, here. Why don’t I give you a ten and a one—that makes eleven—and with the nine ones I gave you, it makes twenty. I’ll put it all together and then I can get my original twenty back. God, I’m so indecisive!!
$5
$10
$15
$1
$1
$1
$1
$1
$1
$1
$1
$1
$1
$10
$20
$20
$20
Except she’s definitely not indecisive, and here’s where the trick happens. Those ten $1 bills in the middle? They now belong to the cashier, not to Zoey. Because they’re on the counter, he can’t see that. So when Zoey adds $11 to bring it up to $20, she’s only giving him $10, but receiving $20 in return.
Zoey: All that for nothing! I’m such a ditz sometimes.
$5
Blues for Zoey Page 9