Minerva Clark Gives Up the Ghost

by Karen Karbo

  I sang, “Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen …”

  At that exact moment Mrs. Dagnitz had her spatula tucked under a square of lasagna. But instead of transferring it to a plate, she did the most amazing thing. If I had been able to stream it on the Internet, it would have made my mother famous. She cocked her arm back and hurled that piece of lasagna, with its steaming spinach and scalding tomato sauce and hot bubbly cheese, straight at my head. I am not the girl athlete my mother was—I recalled her telling me that when she was my age she played first base on an all-star softball team—but I’m quick. I ducked and threw my hands up. The blob of scalding lasagna grazed my forearm as it flew past, landing somewhere behind me, somewhere I was not about to clean up.

  No one said anything. Then Quills said, “That wasn’t very Zen of you, Mom.”

  That was the last thing I heard. I stomped outside, grabbed Morgan’s bike, and sped off down the street.

  The big question would become: Why did I go to Holy Family that night?

  No one believed me that I always found myself there when life became a full-on stress-fest. Holy Family was K–8. This meant that instead of lush acres of green athletic fields where we middle schoolers could play soccer and flag football and have an idyllic puberty, there was a playground with holes for tetherball poles, a sandbox where stray dogs pooped during off-hours, and a huge teal-and-beige plastic play structure with a big plastic slide. Every eighth grader complained, but I secretly didn’t mind the play structure. I liked to sit on the top of the slide and have deep thoughts.

  I’d cried as I’d pedaled Morgan’s bike from our house to the school, but by the time I dropped the bike in the bark dust, my mood had changed to plain old mean-mad-mean. Mrs. Dagnitz liked to think she was all honest and in touch and “authentic”—I hate that word!—but when you dared speak God’s own truth around her, she threw a slab of scalding hot lasagna at your head. I examined my arm to see if perhaps some of the scalding cheese had given me a serious burn. Kevin knew a guy who’d had to go to the emergency room for burns to the roof of his mouth from digging into a piece of cheese pizza straight from the oven. I found a pale pink splotch near my elbow. It didn’t look as if it was going to turn into the angry, oozing blisters I’d wanted to parade around at my mother’s wedding reception. I imagined myself in my beautiful brown halter dress with the pink polka dots, sipping my 7Up from a crystal glass with my arm raised, my pinky stuck out all proper, and when people asked what happened to my arm, I could say, “The bride assaulted me with a square of scalding lasagna, thank you for asking.”

  I climbed up to the top of the slide and eased myself down, my legs thrust out straight in front of me. The sun had dipped behind a row of trees in the west, and the plastic was cool against my legs. The slide had a tall lip of plastic on either edge. I fit snuggly up there, like a toddler’s puzzle piece pressed into the correct space. From my perch, I could see people entering and leaving the playground. A pair of giant teenage boys and their basketball, come to shoot some hoops. A tiny girl with an even tinier fluffy black-and-white puppy on a metallic red leash.

  I waved to them all, and they all waved back.

  I called Reggie to see if he would meet me for an IP, an in-person meeting. Years ago we’d agreed that IMing was for talking when you had nothing to say. When it was important, it had to be an IP. When Reggie didn’t answer his cell, I tried his house. His dad said he was at his Reading Hieroglyphics class that night, and wouldn’t be home until after ten.

  Kevin’s number was number two on my speed dial, after Reggie’s. I suspected this meant something, but I didn’t want to know what. I was finding out quickly that if you wanted to keep a boyfriend, you had to stop yourself from thinking about certain things. Sometimes I wonder if that’s what happened with my mom and dad—one of them started thinking too much, and that led to divorce.

  Kevin picked up after the first ring. “Yo!” I could hear a video game in the background, then a voice say, “I am so going to pwn you, dude!”

  “I’m down at the school,” I said, forgetting he didn’t know about my habit of slide-sitting at Holy Family.

  “Summer school?” he said. From years of watching my brothers play these stupid games I could tell that MiniVanDamme was now engaged in battle.

  “My mother went insane today. She threw a piece of hot lasagna at me.”

  Long silence. I could hear another boy’s voice murmuring in the background.

  When Kevin didn’t answer, I said, “I’m in the emergency room right now.”

  “Cool drop,” he said to the other boy, but straight into his phone. “Is it better to have the extra agility or the extra armor?”

  “They have to amputate my arm. Both arms, actually.”

  “That sucks,” he said.

  I pressed the End button, curious whether he’d call me back. I was beginning to doubt that we’d ever buy a ranch in Maui and raise Appaloosas.

  At that moment, on the street that ran along the far end of the playground, I spied Daniel Vecchio and his posse of loathsome fifth graders, cruising the school on their bikes.

  Oooo-oooo-oooo-ahhnn! Thumpa-thumpa-thumpa. Oooo-oooo-oooo-ahhnn!

  I flipped open my phone. “Sometimes you can be a total jerk,” I said, thinking it was Kevin calling back to apologize.

  “I know, I know. That’s why I’ve been trying to call you.” It was Angus Paine, sounding genuinely wrecked.

  I couldn’t imagine why he thought I thought he was a jerk, but he said he felt crappy about when I came to his house, and how he practically called me a quitter, and doubted my conclusions about Paisley O’Toole and Wade Leeds, and then hit on me when he knew I had a boyfriend, which was completely wrong, since he had total respect for me, and would never want to mess up my life.

  I didn’t think he’d been so rotten, and I told him so. I said I knew rude behavior, and he hadn’t been rude at all. He kept insisting. “You’ve got to let me make it up to you,” he said.

  “But Angus, really, there’s nothing to make up. You were totally cool.”

  We didn’t talk any more about what he thought he’d done, but we did talk about everything else under the sun. I had never had a boy apologize to me for doing nothing before. We talked for 102 minutes, straight through Purpley Time and into the night.

  I told him about stopping at the grocery on the way home from his house that day and having the bejesus scared out of me by the dancing toaster levers.

  “That Louise,” he said, as if she were a crazy aunt.

  “Do you think … I know this sounds ridiculous … really ridiculous … but do you think maybe she set the fire? I mean, Kikimoras don’t like it when their homes are disturbed, and maybe, with your parents rearranging the store so that Paisley could have her kiosk or whatever there, Louise felt threatened. I mean, if there really is a Louise. I don’t really believe in ghosts or any of that woo-woo stuff, but … well … you know.”

  Angus Paine was silent for a long minute. I was used to this now, the way he clammed up for so long you thought the call had been dropped. “I’d totally believe it.”

  The streetlights came on. The only people left in the playground were the huge teenage boys shooting baskets. When the ball hit the rim, it made a low clong sound. After a while, the conversation spun down into random thoughts about our favorite YouTube videos, whether Green Day (my favorite band!) had sold out or not, and how lame our parents were. Unlike Kevin, Angus was interested to hear about how awful Mrs. Dagnitz’s wedding reception was going to be. He asked when it was, and where it was, and whether I was expected to do anything totally embarrassing, like give a speech.

  “Give a speech?” I croaked. I hadn’t even thought of that.

  “I have a friend whose dad did that, married someone else, and at the reception everyone had to say something about the couple. Something nice.” He laughed.

  We talked until my ear got hot from my cell phone. I did not want to go home, where I expected
that another dramathon awaited me. Quills would be worried to death about where I’d been. You’d think it would be Mark Clark, who was usually the BIC, brother-in-charge, but he understood me better than the other brothers, and never lost his head. Morgan would have disappeared into his room, or maybe he’d met one of his friends for a game of cribbage, all the rage among philosophy students these days. I imagined Mrs. Dagnitz would be pacing around the living room, sobbing and twisting a shredded-up Kleenex in her strong hands, feeling so terrible that she’d assaulted her only daughter with her wholesome vegetarian cuisine.

  But no.

  When I finally got home, the kitchen was spotless, the fish smell long gone. Mrs. Dagnitz and Weird Rolando had returned to their hotel. Quills and Mark Clark were upstairs lounging on either ends of Cat Pee Couch watching a rerun of The Simpsons.

  Quills patted the couch and I plopped down between them. Mark Clark put his arm around the back of the couch and patted my arm.

  “You hanging out down at the school?” he asked.

  I must have looked shocked that he knew my secret. “How’d you know?”

  “Morgan saw ya when he was out walking the dog,” said Mark Clark. “Plus, we all used to hide out down there. Must run in the family.”

  “Like the urge to throw burning Italian food at people?” I asked, all fake innocent.

  Quills and Mark Clark glanced at each other and tried to look stern and older brotherly, but then Quills said in a fake judge voice, “Mrs. Rolando Dagnitz, the jury has found you guilty of assault with a deadly entrée,” and we cracked up, and soon we were all wiping our eyes from laughing so hard. It was terrible. We should have had a somber and meaningful discussion, but we didn’t. We couldn’t.

  10

  I’ve been in deep trouble once or twice in my life, but I have never been in Maximum Trouble. Mount Everest is to the world’s peaks what Maximum Trouble is to teenage bad behavior. Maximum Trouble involves punishment more serious than getting GOT. When you are in Maximum Trouble, people who were once on your side and thought you were cool change their way of thinking about you. Your parents and teachers are “disappointed” in you. Sometimes the law is involved. Also a special therapist for children.

  After watching the rerun of The Simpsons—which I am usually not allowed to watch because Mark Clark thinks it’s too raunchy—I washed my hair, checked Jupiter’s food and water, and went to bed.

  My biggest beauty secret is to go to bed with my hair soaking wet. Towel dry, finger-comb with whatever antifrizz product I find in the bathroom cabinet, then wad it up into a ball under my head. When I wake up in the morning? Perfect imperfect curly waves. In the summer it’s almost as soothing as having an Otter Pop wrapped around my throat.

  But on this night it was far from soothing. On this night I tossed and turned. My dreams were long and complicated and seemed to have a lot of sirens in them. Once, I awoke in the dark—had I been asleep for five minutes or five hours?—and the sirens sounded close enough to be in my room. It was also possible I was having a dream in which I woke up confused, thinking there were sirens in my room.

  In the morning, my hair had dried to an impeccable mess, and there was drool on my pillow. I’d slept hard. I could tell by the light in my room that it was late. I poked my head out the windows over my desk. It was still warm, but the sky was a strange yellow gray. It smelled smoky, like people had been using their fireplaces. That was impossible, since fall was still months away.

  I turned to see Quills standing in my bedroom door, tugging on a hunk of his crayon-yellow hair, his mouth a grim line. “Dude, you better get down there.”

  “Is Mrs. Dagnitz here, ready to throw an omelet at me or something?”

  Quills just looked at me. It was as if we’d never made ourselves hysterical with our assault-with-a-deadly-entrée jokes the night before. Quills was two years younger than Mark Clark, but sometimes he seemed much younger. Morgan was more like Mark Clark—made tough by their serious view of the world—and Quills was more like me, the little sister with the wayward hair. He reminded me of a boy in my class who was six-three and had already spent most of his life being mistaken for a basketball player when really, he was a musical prodigy, a violinist. Quills seemed all rock-and-roll cool, but he was a sweetie pie.

  “She’s here, but so is some detective dude. Last night someone set your school on fire.”

  There must be many regular detective dudes in our city, but not many detective dudes who specialize in investigating suspected arson cases, because who do you think was standing in our living room, sipping a mug of chai tea, freshly brewed by Mrs. Dagnitz?

  Yes. Robotective Huntington, he of the flat voice and glass Eye of Doom, wearing the same suit he was wearing the day I met him at Corbett Street Grocery. Was it the same suit? Or did he have a wardrobe of suits that were all the same?

  He raised his robobrows just a smidge.

  I could tell he was as surprised to see me as I was to see him.

  Mrs. Dagnitz perched on the edge of the sofa, also sipping tea. My mother wore a pair of baby-blue linen pants, strappy gold sandals, and a long-sleeved aqua T-shirt. She looked like she was going somewhere, and then I remembered she was going somewhere. Shopping at the mall. With me. For shoes or undergarments or something. That was my second surprise of the morning—that she would imagine that after last night I would actually go anywhere with her, especially a place where there was a food court.

  “Here’s Minerva,” said Mrs. Dagnitz. Ned, that traitor, had been sitting on her foot. When he saw me, he trotted over and sat down on my foot. I reached down and scratched the top of his head.

  “Aren’t you Angus Paine’s friend?” said Robotective.

  There was no point in saying I was or I wasn’t, I could tell by the look on his face that he knew I was. “The one who’s intrigued by fires?” he continued.

  I remembered the day I’d met Detective Huntington, poking around the debris in the grocery with Angus. It was the day Angus had told me about Louise, and about how Detective Huntington was on the verge of declaring the fire an accident. “I’m not intrigued by fires,” I said, trying hard to keep the tone out of my voice.

  “Wasn’t that you I saw sitting on the curb day before yesterday?”

  I didn’t say anything. This looked bad.

  “I’m sure you heard there was a fire last night at Holy Family, where, I believe, you’re going to be in eighth grade?” He looked at a small yellow pad of lined paper where he’d scribbled some notes.

  “Quills just told me. What happened?”

  “We’re not going to go into that right now,” said Robotective.

  I knew from watching detective shows that he wasn’t going to give any details in case I said something to trip myself up. It was an old detective trick. The detective says, “Sarah was murdered!” and the killer says, “Oh no! Who stabbed her?” And the detective says, “I didn’t say how she was murdered! How did you know she was stabbed?”

  “Is my school still there?” I asked, suddenly panic stricken. Where would I finish middle school? Would they make me go to public middle school? I’d wanted to go to public middle school since I’d found out the difference between private and public school. Now the thought of Holy Family burned to the ground made me dizzy.

  “Yes, honey, yes, it’s still there. It was just slightly damaged. It looks as if the fire started in the art room. By the time school starts in the fall, I’m sure it’ll be—”

  “Please, ma’am,” said Detective Huntington.

  “There’s no need to frighten her,” said Mrs. Dagnitz. I heard that familiar edge creep into her voice. You go, Mrs. Dagnitz. “Allowing her to think the worst.”

  “I’ll tell you why I’m here, Minerva,” said the detective. “Someone called in a tip saying you were at the school fairly late last night.”

  “Yes,” I said. I tried to look as blank as possible. Kids who have gardeners for parents learn how to grow roses and kids who have art
ists for parents learn how to draw a box and kids who have lawyers for parents learn when to shut up, and when you’re talking to law enforcement, that is exactly always.

  This would have been my big chance to out my mother as the hot-food hurler that she was. I could have said, Yes! I had nowhere else to go! My mother drove me out of the house with her bad temper and bubbly mozzarella! But there was no way I was going to give him any more information than I had to. I twirled a piece of hair around my index finger, shifted my weight from one foot to the other, and waited.

  He didn’t say anything.

  I didn’t say anything.

  I looked over his shoulder out the big living room window. It looked like the people across the street were getting a new front porch.

  “Do you mind telling me what you were doing there?” asked Robotective.

  “Sitting on the slide, talking to my boyfriend,” I said. I was shocked to realize that I sort of meant Angus, instead of Kevin. Technically, I had talked to Kevin, though he hadn’t talked to me.

  “For how long?” he asked.

  “A few hours.”

  “And you just sat on the slide? Did you see anyone around the building?”

  “I saw a lot of people on the playground. Some boys playing basketball and a little girl with a dog.” Suddenly, I remembered Daniel Vecchio and his loathsome posse of fifth graders riding their bikes down the street. “Was the person who called in the tip a kid? Because a lot of times with arson, the one who smelt it, dealt it.”

  “Yes, I think I’ve heard that before,” said Robotective. Was he being sarcastic?

  I told him about Daniel Vecchio, my fifth-grade nemesis, and how I had caught him stealing toilet paper out of the supply cabinet at school and reported him to Mrs. Grumble, the strictest teacher at Holy Family. I said that when Daniel Vecchio discovered it was me who’d ratted him out, he’d said he was going to get me. I told how only a few days earlier he’d egged our house and TPed it, too. “There’s still paper in some of the branches,” I said.