Evolution, Me & Other Freaks of Nature (12 page)

“Do people order a lot?”

“One weekend he had over two hundred. He and K were at his house inking screens all night.”

“I can't believe he does all that designing and stuff himself.”

“Yeah,” Casey said. “There are companies out there who'll do it for you, but Josh likes to be able to turn out new shirts overnight. Plus, this way he gets to keep all the profits.”

Casey scrolled through some of the designs. “He takes a lot of quotes off the news. As soon as someone says something stupid, Josh can have a shirt on the website within an hour. Like this one from Senator Bartlett last month—about how military pride doesn't equal gay pride.”

If my parents ever saw me wearing a shirt with a graphic like that, with the stick figures doing—well, never mind—they'd ground me until forty years after I was dead.

Casey clicked through the archives. “He still sells a lot of his old standards. Like that one. That used to be one of K's favorites.”

It sounded like Kayla:
Waiter, There Must Be Some Mistake—I Ordered a Brain to Go with My President.

“I can't believe he does all this,” I said again.

“He'll personalize it, too. Once when K was a sophomore, the school wouldn't let her print one of her articles— too scandalous. So the next day Josh and about fifty other people showed up wearing shirts that said
New Advantage Supports Freedom of the Press
on the front and
Unless You're Telling the Truth
on the back.”

“Did it work?”

“No, but it did make her feel better. And Josh finally convinced her to go out with him, which I think was the real point. He'd only been trying for a year.”

Casey's eyes flitted to me for just a second, then went back to the screen. He busied himself clicking through the website.

But I felt it for just that moment—like maybe Casey wasn't just talking about Josh and Kayla. Like maybe he was talking about me—and us.

But I'm sure I just imagined it. I really wish Kayla hadn't ever said anything to me about Casey maybe liking me. Now I'm all paranoid.

Not that I would mind him liking me. I think.

Twenty-three

In yoga today, Missy announced that from now on, Wednesdays will be “imaging” days. We'll only do a few warm-up postures, then spend the rest of the time lying on our backs imagining one part of our lives the way we wish it was instead of how it is. She seems to think this will help us somehow.

I have so many things to choose from, it's hard to settle on just one. Should I picture a better relationship with my parents? A world in which Denny Pierce did not set foot in my junior high, thereby ruining his life and mine? Should I imagine myself at a different high school, with completely different people, and picture how peaceful and easy that would be?

I guess those things will have to wait, because today I spent my time on something else. Someone else.

It didn't help.

Because what's the point of wishing for something— even if you wish it “vividly, tangibly, involving all your senses,” the way Missy wants? Wishing does nothing. No,
I take it back—wishing makes it a hundred times worse. Because then, instead of just vaguely thinking,
Gee, wouldn't it be nice to be with this person, yeah, that might be nice,
you're thinking,
And then I gazed into his deep blue eyes, and I smelled the toothpaste on his breath, and then he leaned forward, and …

I think I might have to drop yoga. Or maybe ditch on Wednesdays. This is not good for my mental health.

Twenty-four

Ms. Shepherd was sort of subdued at the start of class today, like she was just waiting for a reason to get angry. But the Back Turners simply flipped their chairs around and kept their mouths shut, there were no special guests, and Ms. Shepherd actually got to teach today.

I know Teresa and the rest are just waiting for further orders from Pastor Wells. I've seen how this goes before.

Today we covered the whole notion of sexual selection—”He who makes the most babies wins.” Kind of an uncomfortable concept, but I get it. Darwin figured out that it's only the best-adapted animals—the strongest, the fastest, the best at whatever their particular thing is—who get to survive and pass on their genes.

Ms. Shepherd said, “It's like rock stars mating with actresses.”

And that got us going. I'm sure Teresa or Adam or any of the Back Turners would have loved to join in, since it was such a fun debate. We started going over all the celebrity matches and mismatches we could think of, trying to
figure out why nature would allow, say, an ugly old billionaire to snag a beautiful young wife. Or why a gorgeous specimen of an actor would leave one perfect leading lady for another.

Science really does apply to life.

I would never say this in class, but the whole thing reminded me of this story in the Old Testament where Jacob makes a deal with his father-in-law that as payment for Jacob tending all the sheep, he'll get to start his own flock with just the spotted and speckled ones. So Jacob, crafty guy that he is, starts steering all the speckled and spotted sheep toward the pure white ones to make sure they all mate. Then next thing you know, all the white ewes are giving birth to speckled and spotted lambs, and guess whose flock is suddenly huge?

So I'd say ancient man figured out the whole selection thing a lot sooner than Darwin did.

At lunch Casey logged on to Ms. Shepherd's website so we could see if she'd updated her blog.

There was a picture of Ms. Shepherd's white cat, Coco, crouched at the top of some stairs. Ms. Shepherd explained how she'd forgotten to clean the litter box for a few days, and Coco decided to show her displeasure by rolling her turds down the stairs.

Sure enough, if you look at the picture close enough, you can see a little something trapped between Coco's paws.

Ms. Shepherd can be so weird sometimes. Like she said, a true freak of nature.

How could you not love her for that?

Twenty-five

“I was checking out some of the creationist websites last night,” Kayla told me when Casey and I were taking a break. “Get this. They say the Book of Job—”

She pronounced it “job”—as in flipping burgers. I told her it was a long
o.

“Whatever. Anyway, there's some reference in there to beasts called ‘leviathan’ and ‘behemoth.’ The Christian militants are saying those things are really dinosaurs— trying to prove they were around with humans.”

Kayla shook her head in disgust.
“Completely
disregarding everything in the fossil record that
proves
man didn't come along until millions of years after the dinosaurs were already extinct. But I guess facts don't matter if you repeat the same lie often enough.”

I hated to start talking politics, because Kayla knows so much more than I do. Instead I stuck with what I know. “I always heard the leviathan was a crocodile. That's what the footnotes in my Bible say.”

Kayla's left eyebrow rose. “You actually read the footnotes in your Bible?”

“Only if it's something interesting. I know that section. You think they're describing a dragon or something, but then it's just a crocodile.”

Kayla squinted at me and nodded. “Interesting. You think you can get me some more stuff like that?”

“Like what?”

“You know, sort of a ‘Bible Girl fact check.’ “ Kayla smiled. “In fact, that's it. I'm gonna add you to my website.”

“Oh no, you're not.”

“Make you Bible Girl. Or maybe Grrrl. Sort of a superhero for truth.”

Now that part sounded appealing, but come on—me? No way was I sticking my neck out.

“I'm not an expert.”

“More expert than I am,” Kayla said. “All I know from the Bible is ‘do unto others.’ Isn't that one of the ten commandments or something?”

“Uh, no, it's something Jesus said.”

“See? Bible Grrrl—you're hot. You'd be totally anonymous.” Kayla clasped her hands and batted her eyelashes. “Please, baby, please, don't say no. Tell me you'll do it.”

“No.”

“Do what?” Casey came into Kayla's room holding a squirming Bear. He handed him over to me. “Your subjects await.”

“Mena's gonna write for the site.”

“No, I'm not.”

“What d'ya think? ‘Bible Grrrl, defender of truth in biblical citations.’ It'll be a bull-free Bible zone.”

“I don't know enough,” I continued to protest.

“More than anyone else here does,” Kayla said.

I was losing ground. “Can't you find someone else—”

“You should do it,” Casey told me. “As long as it won't interfere with our work.”

Kayla waved him off. “Of course it won't. Don't worry, you'll still get your precious A.”

“A double plus,” Casey corrected.

“You got it, super-geek. Mena, please. Just give me one thing—one big juicy thing that you know they're getting wrong. I know you know this stuff.”

“Well …”

Kayla grinned. “Grrrlll …”

So while the three of us tried to keep Bear from tearing into Kayla's papers, I quickly laid out the whole Jacob-and-the-speckled-sheep thing—about how even back in an cient Hebrew days, they knew about sexual selection and selective breeding for certain traits. Not huge, I admit, but still, it was something Kayla hadn't heard before.

Kayla picked up her phone and dialed the intercom. “Webmaster, please report to your beloved's room.” A few minutes later Josh came in carrying a printout of his latest creation:
Gravity Is Just a Theory—Why Won't They Tell Us the Truth?

“What's up?” he asked.

Kayla pointed to me. “Bible Grrrl here needs her own section on the website.”

Josh didn't ask any questions. He just sat at Kayla's computer and started coding.

Casey and I went back to the yard to work.

The puppies are getting so big. It makes me kind of sad. Mrs. Connor says the owners will all be coming for them a week from Saturday. It seems like every day another puppy gets bought and named. Now bully-girl Pink is Maggie, Blue and Red are Shadow and Pluto, and little Christmas is Elsa. I don't know why they're changing her name. She'll always be Christmas to me.

Today we were trying a few of my experiments. While Casey played with the puppies in the yard, I hid behind one of the chairs and pretended to cry. We wanted to see which of the dogs would come check if I was all right.

Bear cared—or at least he cared enough to come over and clamp his little teeth down on my wrist to make sure I was still alive. Lily cared (in a soft, licky sort of way), and so did Christmas, Shadow, and White. The rest just went on playing.

Then while I distracted the puppies, Casey went off into the corner and put on an old Halloween mask—a big rubbery thing that made him look like a hideous freak— and he rushed out growling and scooped up two of the puppies and ran off with them into the house.

Pink/Maggie went right on chewing Duke's ear, Green and Bear kept fighting over a stick, four other puppies minded their own business, but Lily and Christmas ran right to the door to see if their services were needed.

How sweet. Make that two dogs with a serious hero complex.

But Casey explained why that was bad news. “See,
in sociobiological terms, what we're really looking for is behaviors that help perpetuate the species. So if Abbey were out here and she was the one running after the stolen puppies, that would be good. It means she's trying to preserve her offspring so they can make puppies of their own someday.

“But if Lily and Christmas try to help their siblings, that's bad. Because really all they should care about is the fact that there are two fewer mouths to compete with for their mother's milk.”

“So what does that mean?” I asked. “Why is that bad? They were being nice.”

“Yeah, but it's not a good survival strategy. They need to be selfish.”

Which was a depressing thought. I'd rather have a sweet dog like Christmas than a selfish one like Pink.

But it did make me think about the whole Denny Pierce thing. Maybe Casey's right. Maybe trying to be nice to Denny was stupid. I interfered with my whole survival.

After a while Kayla summoned us back to her room. Josh pounded out a few more keystrokes, then rolled his chair out of the way so we could see.

Oh my gosh. My very own box, down at the bottom right of Kayla's page. It was only a little smaller than the one for Joshuwear. Across the top, in yellow, it read,
Bible Grrrl Sez:
and then there was space for some text.

It was so weird. I never thought I'd have a Bible column someday—let alone on the internet, where anyone could read it. If someone had predicted this last week, I would have thought they were on drugs.

“Can you say what you told me,” Kayla asked, “only make it shorter and jazzier?”

“I'm not sure. Let me think. You don't have a Bible around here, do you?”

Kayla snapped her fingers at Casey and said in a British accent, “Boy, bring us the old man's book, won't you?” Now I know where he got that accent thing.

It took a few minutes, but Casey finally returned, carrying a King James Version.

“Nice,” Kayla said, taking it from Casey and examining the chewed-up black leather cover. “Tell your puppies to show some respect.” She swatted Casey on the butt with the Bible.

“No!” I instinctively snatched the Bible from her hands.

Kayla gave me a funny look. “Sorry.”

I was kind of embarrassed, but also kind of right— you don't treat the Bible that way. “It's just that … um, you really shouldn't do that. It's … bad.”

Kayla held up her palms in surrender. “You're my Bible Girl Wonder. Whatever you say goes.”

Everyone was watching as I opened it and started flipping through Genesis. “Um, this will probably take a while.”

“Right,” Kayla said, heading for the door. “Need anything?”

“No. Thanks.”

“Okay, then, call me when you're ready.” She and Josh left the room. Casey stayed behind.

“You're really going to do this?” he asked.

“Why? You think it's a bad idea?”

“No, might be fun.” He settled onto his sister's bed and showed no intention of leaving. “Just be careful, you know?”