Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus

by Dusti Bowling

  “I’d have to get approval before doing anything,” Dad said.

  “You mean from the dead owner?”

  Dad laughed. “Aven! The owner is not dead. And, yes, I’d have to get approval from the very-much-alive owner.”

  “But I thought you said he gave you total free rein over the park.”

  “There are also permits and a whole bunch of other stuff to take care of,” Dad said.

  “Then get on it, Daddy-o. Time’s-a-wastin<?__anchored_object__ "ro_u4b3cins2a850"?><?__anchored_object__ "ro_u4b3cins2a851"?>.”

  He looked at me with pride in his eyes. “My daughter. The ultimate problem-solver.”

  “You have trained me well, Jedi Master,” I said.

  “Very good, Jedi . . . learner . . . person.”

  I rolled my eyes at him. “Not quite, Dad.” Zion’s parents would have had a way better comeback.

  “So, speaking of dead owners,” Mom said, “what’s going on with your top-secret investigation? Find any more clues about the Cavanaughs?”

  “Not really. The guitar was the last thing we found.” The boys had brought it up to the apartment for me, and I’d shown it to my parents. They thought it was pretty cool, but it didn’t really tell us anything about the Cavanaughs. And just because the last initial was C didn’t mean it had belonged to a Cavanaugh. “But you know how I told you Henry always talks to me like he thinks I’m someone else?”

  They nodded.

  “Well, he called me Aven Cavanaugh on Christmas Eve. Don’t you think that’s kind of weird?”

  Mom and Dad looked at each other. “That is . . . mildly intriguing,” said Dad.

  “Strange,” said Mom. “But he did call me Elizabeth Taylor the other day.” She ran a hand through her long, dark hair. “Easy to see how he could make the mistake, of course.”

  I had no idea who Elizabeth Taylor was, but Dad said, “Absolutely,” as he carried his empty plate to the sink. “I have to go check out the old building with the broken-down bull. One of the workers told me they peeked in the window and saw a bunch of mice running around.” He groaned. “The keys in the office are all such a mess. I hope I can figure out which one even opens it.”

  “What keys?” I asked him.

  “Keys to the park,” he said. “The most important ones are all labeled, but there are about fifty that I have no idea what they’re for. I have a feeling I’m going to be there all night trying out keys.”

  “I didn’t know you had all those keys,” I said.

  “Of course I have keys, Sheebs. I can’t run this place without keys.”

  “Well, it just so happens I’m looking for a key.”

  It was a rare icy cold winter day as Connor, Zion, and I sat outside the office on the sidewalk eating our lunches.

  “Fruit snack, please,” I said, and Connor shoved one in my mouth. Mom had insisted I wear my old warm boots today, and though I was glad my toes weren’t freezing, it was highly inconvenient.

  I looked at my friends, both shivering as they took bites of their lunches. “This is ridiculous,” I said. “We should be eating in the cafeteria today.” They looked up at me in alarm. I had to admit I didn’t feel ready to head there myself despite the freezing wind. “We can stay here.”

  They both let out sighs of relief.

  “So Dad told me he’s going to try to get the keys in the office as organized as possible, and then he’ll let us try out the ones he can’t figure out. I bet one of them goes to the desk.”

  “I wonder what’s going to be in there,” said Zion.

  I chewed on a fruit snack and gulped. “Maybe a murder weapon.”

  Zion shivered. “I hope not.”

  “I hope so!” I declared. “Then we can turn it into the police and then they’ll get the fingerprints off it and then they’ll bust the murderer and then we’ll all be in the newspaper. And the murderer will be like, ‘I could have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn’t been for you nosy kids!’”

  Zion and Connor both frowned at me. “I don’t want to be in the newspaper,” said Zion.

  “Me neither,” said Connor. “And I think you’ve watched too much Scooby-Doo.”

  I scowled—sometimes those guys were a total buzzkill. And I had watched too much Scooby-Doo. I decided to change the subject. “So, we’ve had hundreds of artists call about the festival. So many that we’ve had to turn some away that don’t fit with the Stagecoach Pass theme. Seriously, like who wants to buy something called a diaper cake? Uh, no, thank you. I’ll stick with chocolate.”

  Zion nodded. “Yeah, that’s gross.”

  “Disgusting,” Connor agreed.

  “We need to find a band now,” I said. “Any ideas?”

  “Shouldn’t be too hard to find one,” Connor said. “Just look online.” Then he raised an eyebrow at me. “Maybe you should perform, Aven.”

  I looked at him in disbelief. “Is that supposed to be a joke?” My ear muffs slipped down a little and Connor pushed them back up on my head.

  “No,” he said. “I think it would be cool.”

  Zion looked at me. “What do you play, Aven?”

  “The guitar,” Connor answered for me. “But she won’t play for anyone. I think she might be lying about being able to play.”

  I shoved Connor with my foot. “Shut up.”

  He laughed. “Then play a song at the festival. It would be so cool.”

  “What do you care?” I said. “You’re not even coming.”

  Zion’s head jerked to Connor. “You’re not going?”

  Connor shrugged. “I don’t know. Aven thinks there’s going to be, like, thousands of people there.”

  Zion stared at him. “So?”

  Connor gaped at Zion. “So? So, that’s thousands of people to stand around staring and laughing at me.”

  “They’ll be staring at me, too,” I said. “But I’m still going.”

  “Fine,” Connor said. “I tell you what—if you play your guitar, I’ll come and watch you.”

  My throat suddenly felt dry. “Juice box, please,” I whispered, and Connor obliged. I took a swig and cleared my throat. “I’m not performing at the festival. I would never perform in public for anything.”

  “Then I’m not coming,” Connor said stubbornly.

  Darn it. He knew I wouldn’t perform and that was his way out.

  “Why won’t you play for anyone, Aven?” Zion said.

  I shrugged. “I don’t want people watching me up there.” Watching the freak, is what I wanted to say.

  “Why not?” Zion asked. “You acted in a play on stage in front of people.”

  “That was different. I was in a silly cactus costume. If you didn’t know me, you wouldn’t have even known I didn’t have arms. Doing stuff with my feet in front of a crowd, performing with my feet . . . that’s just different. I’d feel like I was in a circus or something.”

  “That’s silly,” Zion said. “No one would think of you like that.”

  But I knew he was wrong.

  In most places, spring comes around March or April or even May. Arizona’s whole winter is pretty much like springtime with a few winter days scattered throughout. I can’t say I was sorry not to have to trudge through snow everywhere I went.

  Things were really coming together for the festival. Dad found a website that had like a hundred country western bands for hire listed on it. We had our pick, and they weren’t even very expensive. Mom and I spent an entire day cleaning up the old stage in the closed down rodeo arena. That was also where the food trucks would park, since we weren’t having a rodeo.

  Connor and I had gone to two more support group meetings, and I got the feeling he was actually starting to enjoy them, even though he often gave Dexter the stink eye.

  I still hadn’t found a tarantula despite going out almost every night with Dad. One day I was visiting Spaghetti, and I asked Denise what she knew about tarantulas. “Do they bother the animals?”

  “There aren’t any
tarantulas around here,” she told me as she raked the dirt ground.

  “There aren’t? But I thought they were all over the desert. I’ve read all about them, and every book I’ve read distinctly states that they live in the Sonoran Desert.”

  “They should be here, but I guess with the city moving in on us like this, they’ve gone away.”

  I rubbed at Spaghetti’s sides with my feet. “Yeah, but there’s still a good chunk of desert right behind us. I’m always looking for one when I walk out there, but I’ve never seen one.”

  Denise stopped raking and wiped her brow. “I guess there used to be a bunch around here, but they disappeared a while back. Henry says it was around 2004.”

  I stared at her. “They disappeared in 2004? But Henry can’t remember anything.”

  “Nothing recent,” Denise agreed. “But sometimes he can remember things from the past.”

  “In 2004,” I repeated to myself.

  “Yeah,” he said ‘The last time anyone saw a live tarantula around here was in 2004.’” Denise went back to raking the ground. “Who knows? Probably just made it up.”

  I decided to go visit Henry. He was sitting in front of the soda shop in one of the rocking chairs. I stood in front of him and asked, “When did the tarantulas disappear?”

  “In 2004,” he said quickly and matter of factly.

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Because,” he said, and for the first time ever, his eyes looked clear and knowing to me. “They left with her.”

  I shivered, and not from the cool breeze. “With who?”

  He looked up at me, his eyes once more clouding with confusion. “Who what?”

  “Who did the tarantulas leave with?”

  He continued giving me his confused look. “You want an ice cream, sweetheart?”

  I sighed. “No, thank you.”

  I even visited Madame Myrtle to try to figure things out, but she was clueless about the tarantulas. She said maybe an exterminator came and took care of them in 2004. Ridiculous.

  Connor, Zion, and I spent as much time in the storage building as we could, looking through old pictures and junk. So far, Dad had given us about fifteen unlabeled keys to try out on the desk, but none of them had worked.

  “This one’s a dud,” Connor called, pulling a key out of the drawer and tossing it back into a paper bag.

  I frowned as I kicked a box in one corner of the shed. It was so old and brittle from the heat that it burst wide open, sending a wave of papers onto the floor. It wasn’t necessarily the most orderly way of doing things, but it was a lot easier than Zion’s methods. I sheepishly glanced over at him as he carefully removed old tape from a box and pulled the top back like the Mona Lisa might be inside.

  Zion shook his head at me. “Aven,” he scolded, “do you have to make this place look like a tornado ripped through here?”

  “She’s from Kansas,” Connor said as he tried another key. “Tornadoes are in her blood.” Connor grunted and then barked. “Dud.” He pulled the key out.

  I sifted through the papers on the ground with my toes, trying to make out the faded writing. There were a lot of numbers and words like deduction and revenue and net. I had no idea what any of it meant, but I decided it was all far too boring to be important.

  “Whoa,” Zion said, causing Connor and me to stop what we were doing and look at him. He had a book in his hands and was pulling something out from between the pages. “Whoa,” he said again in a whisper.

  Connor and I walked through the junk to see what Zion was whoaing about. He held up an old black-and-white photograph for us to see.

  A photograph of me.

  With arms.

  Wearing the turquoise necklace.

  Taken in 1973.

  I showed Mom the picture that evening. She stared at it a long time before whispering, “It could just be a coincidence.” She didn’t look like she believed her own words.

  She sat down at our little kitchen table without taking her eyes off the picture. “She has your face, but it’s in black and white. Maybe her hair is a different color.”

  “Don’t you think it’s strange, though?” I said.

  She nodded. Then she set the picture down. “It must be a coincidence. I saw this show once about doppelgangers—”

  “What’s that?” I asked. Sounded dangerous and exciting.

  “Just people who look alike.”

  Oh, not that exciting.

  “Anyway,” she went on, “there are people who look alike all over the world. Like, literally identical. But when they were DNA-tested, they found out they weren’t related at all. Just totally random.”

  “That’s weird,” I said. “I guess I found my goppledinger.”

  She smiled. “Doppelganger.”

  I thought for a moment. “I wonder if Henry knew this girl and that’s why he keeps thinking I’m someone else.”

  She looked from me to the picture and was about to say something when Dad walked in. “Mean Bob has officially left the building,” he announced. “And good riddance.”

  “What a relief,” Mom said. She got up and handed Dad the picture. “Aven found this in that storage room.”

  Dad stared at the picture a long time before looking at me. “Odd,” he said. “You found this in that desk?”

  “No, none of those keys worked. We found it stuck in a book in a box.”

  He didn’t say anything more, but I did notice the way he and Mom looked at each other. And their faces weren’t very happy.

  Zion’s mom dropped him off at Stagecoach Pass early Saturday morning, and then Mom took us to pick Connor up at his apartment. He was already outside his door when I walked up the concrete path.

  “Hi,” I said, meeting him in front of the apartment as he turned to lock the door.

  He struggled with the old lock. “Hey.” He followed me out to the car and peeked his head in the front window. “Hi, Mrs. Green,” he said before getting into the backseat with Zion.

  “Hi, Connor,” Mom said and pulled away from the curb. “Are you excited for our little adventure? I know I am—anything to get away from Stagecoach Pass right now and all the craziness of this festival planning. I seriously need a break from that place.”

  Connor gave me a hesitant glance. “Aven and Zion won’t tell me where we’re going.”

  “Well, then,” Mom said, “I don’t want to ruin the surprise.”

  Connor seemed relaxed as we drove through Scotts-dale. We spent most of the drive talking about Arizona and how we liked it here.

  “I’d never seen a saguaro cactus until I moved here,” I told them, thinking of the great saguaro at the top of my hill. “Well, one that wasn’t me anyway.”

  That got us talking about Down and Dirty in Kansas City and the total lameness of Desert Moon Over the Desert again.

  It took us a long time to get to the movie theater. As we pulled up in front of it, Connor no longer looked relaxed. I knew he was angry. “Aven, I told you I don’t ever want to go to the movies,” he said, his eyes blinking rapidly, shoulders shrugging.

  “Connor, just wait—” I said.

  “I’m not going in!” he nearly shouted at me.

  Zion slumped down in his seat and stared at his lap.

  “Calm down, Connor,” Mom said gently. “We have a special surprise for you. You don’t have to worry about upsetting any other movie watchers.”

  Connor huffed. “Of course I do. I can’t go to the movies.”

  “Yes, you can,” Mom said. “Don’t you trust us?”

  Connor glowered at me, his ticcing increasing by the moment. “Yes, but—”

  “But nothing,” Mom said. “Let’s go in. We’re seeing that new sci-fi movie you guys want to see so badly.”

  Connor threw his head back against the seat rest and ticced and huffed some more while Mom parked the car. We got out and walked up to the ticket booth, where Mom quietly spoke with the cashier for a minute before buying four tickets to t
he movie. Connor barked a lot as we walked through the lobby. It was early, though, so only a few bystanders were around to gawk at him. People didn’t seem to notice me at all when Connor was around. I felt bad for Connor, but I also enjoyed the feeling of being invisible.

  As we entered the theater, Mom said, “It appears you have your pick of seats.” The theater was completely empty.

  Connor looked at me and Zion. I smiled at him. “Mom had to call a lot of theaters until she found one that was willing to let us have the whole theater to ourselves.”

  “Are you serious?” said Connor.

  “Well,” said Mom, “we couldn’t afford to rent out the whole theater, so it was a lot to ask. But the manager here has a son with Tourette’s and was really understanding. Plus, he said the morning show was usually fairly empty, so we were able to work it out.”

  I could see the darkness lift off Connor like a blanket as his eyes lit up. And that alone made everything so worth it. “For real?” he said. “We have the whole theater to ourselves?”

  “For real, Connor,” said Mom.

  Connor put an arm around Mom’s shoulders. “Mrs. Green, you’re the coolest!”

  “I know,” she said casually. “Now you three go and find a seat. I’m going to sit way in the back where I like it.”

  “Can we go get some popcorn?” Connor asked, and I knew he must have been incredibly happy to ask for food.

  “Heck, yeah,” I said. “I want some popcorn. And some gummy bears.”

  “Gross,” said Zion. “You like those?”

  “Heck, yeah,” I said again as we walked out of the theater. “I love squishy gummy candies. I love Hot Tamales, too. My dad says I like them because they’re red like my hair and hot like my temper.” I laughed.

  Connor grinned. “That’s great to know. We’ll try to stay on your good side.”

  “Who says you’re on it?” I narrowed my eyes at the two of them.

  “I was just hoping we were.” Connor shrugged his shoulders and blinked, but it made me happy to see that, despite being out in public, his tics weren’t completely out of control. I hoped that meant he was starting to feel a little more comfortable.