Fairest (17 page)

Nan complained, “Hey, I’m not done with that.” She tried to snatch another chip from Mina’s tray.

“No, we are definitely done,” Mina shot out hurriedly. She tried to pick up the tray and turn Nan toward the door and away from lab cabinet that was now slightly shaking from the frenzied movement coming from within.

But Mina wasn’t able to carry the trays and both crutches and she began to lose the tray and all of the food on it. Nan caught the trays and dumped them into the nearest trash can. “If you really wanted to get out of here, you could have just told me,” she answered somewhat annoyed.

Mina was proud of her recovery. “I just remembered. I overheard a senior saying that they were dissecting various brains on these tables today.” It was an obvious lie, but one that seemed to get Nan moving in the direction of the door.

“Oh, that is disgusting! I should have never even brought our lunch in here. I’m surprised we could eat with all of those Frankenstein animals in the cabinet anyway.” Nan began to turn her head and point to the aforementioned cabinet, when Mina heard a distinct clicking sound. Without looking, she knew it was the chicken tapping his beak on the jar, desperately trying to break free.

She pushed Nan bodily through the door as the clicking sound grew louder.

“Did you hear something?” Nan turned and tried to crane her neck back into the classroom.

“Nope,” Mina answered quickly, too quickly.

“I thought I heard tapping?” Nan looked at Mina.

“Uh, you did.” Mina began to tap her fingers impatiently against the metal support of her crutch.

Nan’s head tilted to the side. “No, I could have sworn it sounded like glass.” Nan couldn’t press the argument further because the first warning bell rang.

Mina closed the lab door firmly behind her and started a frenzied hopping toward her next class, hoping Nan would follow her lead. She didn’t. Mina stopped when she realized Nan wasn’t behind her. She turned and looked over her shoulder at her blonde best friend who hadn’t moved from her spot outside the Biology lab door.

Nan’s face was furrowed in confusion as if she was listening intently for something, but it was obvious she couldn’t hear anything over the sound of rushing feet and slamming lockers. She made a move toward the door as if to open it.

Mina was helpless and stared at her friend in horror. What could she do? Thinking fast, she pretended to fall again, but this time with fanfare. She was so desperate to gain attention she even threw her crutch into the path of an oncoming student and screamed loudly as she flopped hard on her butt on the cold hard floor, right in the middle of the hallway.

Her cheeks burned with embarrassment as Frank, the unlucky student tripped by her wayward crutch, fell on top of her.

“Ouch!” Mina cried out.

“Sorry! Oof, sorry again,” Frank mumbled as he tried to extract himself from the mess of his tangled backpack, Mina’s crutch, and the hands that came out of nowhere to help them up. But the spectacle did its job as Nan released the biology door handle and raced to rescue her.

After the incident and the gawkers cleared the hallway, Nan smiled brightly and pulled out her camera phone.

“Six!” she laughed while pointing it at both of them and clicked the phone.

A knock sounded at the door. Mina and Charlie were spread out on the floor playing a card game and both looked at each other expectantly.

“You get it,” Mina stated.

Charlie smirked at his sister, crossed his arms, and shook his head no.

“Charlie, I’m on crutches. It’s not like I’m going cheat and look at your cards when you turn your back,” Mina lied.

His hands flew in the air so fast Mina had problems understanding him. “Yeah, but that was only the one time.” He continued signing. “Okay,
and
I cheated at Uno.” When he didn’t stop, Mina had to interrupt. “All right, I cheat at
all
card games. But if
you
don’t catch me, is it really cheating?” She laughed.

The knocking at the door continued; Charlie glared at Mina, picked up every single one of his cards, and carried them with him to the door. He made a wide berth around Mina, keeping the cards to his chest as he passed by. Mina swung playfully at his cards trying to knock them out of his hands.

Whoever was at the door was becoming impatient, and Mina heard a key being inserted into the lock. Mina’s hand clutched the crutch on the floor next to her to use as a weapon. The door swung open and a very small Chinese woman entered with her hands full. It was Mrs. Wong, their landlord.

“Meehna, you keep me waiting. You won’t get your get betteh dumplins if you don’t geht over here.” Mrs. Wong shuffled into their small kitchen carrying a large pot and a small cloth grocery bag. Charlie forgot about the card game and jumped into the kitchen chair waiting with anticipation of the food Mrs. Wong began to pull out and place on the table.

Mrs. Wong and her husband owned the entire building and the Chinese restaurant underneath the Grimes’ home. At first Mina hated it, because if someone forgot to close their windows at night their clothes would usually smell like Chinese food. But now Mina couldn’t imagine living anywhere else, for the Wong’s were almost like surrogate grandparents for Mina and her brother and spoiled them with presents come every holiday and all-they-can-eat dumplings the rest of the year, which for a cash strapped family was a very welcome blessing.

“Ahh, Meehna, why you not reesting? You should be lying down, getting stronger so you can go get a cute boy, eh?” Mrs. Wong never missed a beat in her chatter about Mina’s nonexistent love life as she made her way comfortably around their kitchen pulling out dishes and silverware while setting the table. Mina hobbled over to the kitchen table to join her brother and continued to receive plenty of unwanted dating advice. She opened up the container of dumplings and put one whole in her mouth and listened halfheartedly to Mrs. Wong’s rants.

She berated Mina for not finding a guy as handsome as her husband, Mr. Wong. “You get nice guy like my Riu see and you won’t ever be left alone in woods again. Dat Jared boy, he be bad news.”

Mina started to choke on her dumpling in shock. Mrs. Wong never lost a beat as she began to hit her very hard on the back until the piece of food became dislodged from Mina’s windpipe. Mina and her mom had never told anyone about Jared abandoning her because he was Fae and they didn’t want any more trouble on their hands than they already had. So it was never mentioned in the papers or on the news,--nothing.  Maybe it was because Mrs. Wong lived in the same building and no one could have secrets with her around. Or maybe she had seen Mina and Jared on the roof last week. Mina wanted to ask more questions, but the door opened again as Sara came in with groceries.

Sara was extremely excited about the meal. “Oh, Mei, what a wonderful surprise! Thank you so much.” Sara walked over and gave the four foot ten inch Chinese woman a hug.

Mrs. Wong spoke quickly in Chinese and then translated. “I heard about Meehna.  She needs good food to help geet well, quick now.”

When Sara was preoccupied with putting her own groceries away, Mrs. Wong hobbled over quietly to Mina. She reached into her apron and pulled out a small white envelope with a Chinese character written in gold ink, inscribed across the front. “Here, drink this tonight. It will make you strong like me.” She patted her chest encouragingly. “It secret family recipe, heal bettah than doctor medicine. Good good.” She brought one finger slowly up to her lips and winked at Mina.

Confused, Mina opened her mouth to speak, but Mrs. Wong whisked across the room taking her bags with her.  In a flutter of broken English and Chinese, she pointedly ignored all of Mina’s efforts to gain her attention again.

Sara tried to help set the table with food, but Mrs. Wong wouldn’t have it. She kept swatting Sara’s hands away and made numerous annoyed comments in Chinese under her breath. When she was happy that the table was set to her extremely high standards and everything in order, she said her quick goodbyes and left the apartment, giving Mina a wide berth.

Stunned, Mina fingered the small packet under the table and kept running her fingers over the gold character. She wanted to ask Mei Wong about it, or even her mother, but that wasn’t what the Chinese woman probably had in mind, when she purposely gave it to her without her mother’s knowledge. For all she knew it could be poison, but then again, the Wong’s have never shown anything but good will toward the Grime family.

When Mina was sure that Mrs. Wong wasn’t going to change her mind and walk in on them again, she decided it was time to tell her mother about her incident at school.

“Mom, it’s starting again.” Mina tried to sound very nonchalant as she stirred her hot bowl of soup.

“What is, dear?” Sara asked. She opened up a container of Lo Mein noodles and scooped out a portion to an eagerly awaiting Charlie.

Mina stabbed up a piece of orange chicken with her fork and blew on it. “Oh, you know, stuff, with a capital ‘S’.” She took a bite of her rice.

Sara’s hand froze mid-air. Her inner turmoil was evident on her face and her shaking hands, but both of the Grime women were experts at hiding their emotions from Charlie. Sara swallowed nervously, but continued to portion the rest of the food.

“Ah, I see.”

“Yeah, my um, biology class was interesting. And let’s just say that not everyone agreed with the stuff in the specimen jars. Let’s just say they were very…animated.” Mina let the words hang in the air.

She watched Charlie sit in his chair wearing his normal plethora of super hero costume pieces, which included a Hulk shirt, with a Batman utility belt, and cape. His small feet wearing his favorite rain boots kicked back and forth happily. He made overly loud slurping noises while sucking up the noodles, and when he was finished, he grinned at Mina.

In no way was Charlie dumb, but there were certain things Sara never wanted to discuss with Charlie in the room, for fear of worrying him. Mina had convinced her mother that they couldn’t run anymore, that she needed to take her place as a Grimm and do her part to break the curse on her family by completing the quests. Reluctantly, Sara agreed, but she had conditions. One of those conditions was never to alarm Charlie if possible.

Sara patted Charlie’s head affectionately. “Anything I should be overly concerned with?” Her brown eyes began to fill with tears, but she hid them well by getting up to get a gallon of milk out of the fridge. Mina could see her mother furiously wipe at them with her apron before approaching the table. When she sat down, Sara was solemn with only a hint of red rimmed eyes.

“Nope. It was just a small problem. Nothing bigger has presented itself.” Mina tried to hide her words. One time she had entered a pet store and all of the animals began to behave erratically: trying to get out of cages, birds speaking terrible warnings to her. Other times, she would be followed by geese as if she was the original storybook goose girl.

“I was hoping for more time between…and then since we never found the Grimoire...” Sara trailed off. She sat at the table silently for the next few minutes watching her children eat before picking up her uneaten bowl of egg drop soup and putting it in the sink.

Mina knew better than to say anything else, so she waited and watched as her mother furiously cleaned up her own dishes, put the leftovers away, and then retired to her room, complaining of a headache.

Charlie immediately jumped up from the table and ran over to the small living room, flipped on the TV, and engrossed himself with the Justice League of America cartoons.

Left sitting alone, Mina looked into her bowl of soup and found herself unable to eat anything else. Leaving her bowl on the table, she awkwardly got up and hopped to her small bedroom.

Even though Sara cleaned houses for a living, she never dared to enter Mina’s domain and clean her teenage daughter’s disaster zone. There were piles of clean laundry, dirty laundry, and magazines all over the floor. Mina tried to navigate the maze of mess that was her bedroom with a crutch, and she secretly wished she had cleaned her room.

She wheeled out her chair and sat at her garage sale desk, which was badly in need of a new coat of stain, but she never got around to painting it.  She opened the vellum envelope and was surprised when it contained nothing more than a single tea bag. Mina pulled out the tea bag and studied it carefully, trying to identify the components of the leaves, but nothing struck her as out of the ordinary. Since everything looked the same, she flipped the switch on her hotpot and waited for the water to boil.