Goodbye, Rebel Blue Hardcover (23 page)

Uncle Bob stares at the epoxy glue gun. Aunt Evelyn gasps. I can’t move. With a choky sob, Pen runs from the room.

Aunt Evelyn runs after Penelope, and Uncle Bob drops the glue gun.

The clock ticks. Outside, Tiberius barks. But the loudest sound is my heart pounding against the wall of my hollow chest as I look at the spilled contents of the time capsule.

Rebecca, pick that up!

If I still smoked, tonight would be a full-pack night. I’d puff on one cigarette after another, creating a never-ending chain of ashy worms. But I threw away all my cigarettes a week ago, and now the idea of smoke clogging my throat and swirling about my lungs makes me want to puke. So tonight I slip into my pink tennis shoes, tie back my hair, stretch, and run.

Tonight Pen almost blew a vein, much like the day in the parking lot at Kennedy Green’s Celebration of Life. But after Macey’s pie therapy, I see what’s below her anger: fear. Pen’s afraid her parents will divorce and her family will fall apart because of me.

As for me, I don’t hate Cousin Pen and Aunt Evelyn and Uncle Bob. I’m not angry. I …

I run faster, pretending a teammate runs in front of me, holding out her hand, waiting for the baton, which I pass off with perfect execution. I leap across imaginary hurdles. I run harder, pushing with my chest, as if I’m crossing a finish line. But the words in my head beat me.

I’m not angry at Aunt Evelyn and Pen. I envy them.

My pink tennis shoes screech to a halt. I bend over the knifelike pain in my stomach. I envy what they have. A family. Because I lost mine. On a cloudy day in March six years ago when my mother’s Jeep plunged off a cliff while she’d been shooting photos in the mountains of Bolivia. The stitch jolts my entire body. I wrap my arms around my chest to stop the shaking, but I can’t stop. I don’t want to make a time capsule with Pen’s family; I want to make one with my family, the mother who died and the father I never knew.

When I wake the next morning, the bungalow is unusually silent. Aunt Evelyn doesn’t order me to sit down at a rooster place mat and eat a vegetable omelet. Pen doesn’t complain about my leaving wet towels on my side of the room. And Uncle Bob doesn’t grunt me a good morning from behind his newspaper. We shuffle past one another as if shell-shocked. We are the walking wounded. But all is not quiet. Kennedy yammers.

We all need friends.

This time, I don’t argue. As I grab my bag and rush out the door, I have one thought on my mind: I need Macey. For the past three years Macey and I have been detention comrades and friends-of-convenience. But she cared enough about me to learn to ride a tandem, and I care about pies. I look for her before school but can’t find her. During lunch period, I hurry to the FACS room and bite back a cry of relief when I spot her crouched in front of a cupboard, pulling out large bags of flour and sugar.

I hoist myself onto the counter and watch as she takes butter and a carton of blueberries from the refrigerator.

She places the pie ingredients in a bag and glides to the garbage can.

“Stop!” I say. “You’re not going to throw that away, are you?”

“Uh, yes.”

“Why?”

The veins on her wrist strain as she lifts the bag to the garbage can. “I’m not doing the bake-off.”

“What? Why?” I run to the garbage can, blocking her way. “Was there a problem at the meeting yesterday? Did you get disqualified or something?”

“No. I just don’t want to do it anymore.”

Macey walks past me but doesn’t meet my gaze.

“Liar.”

“Excuse me?”

“You can’t lie to me, Macey. You worked hard this past month. You care about those pies.”

She raises her arm, and the bag hovers over the trash can. “But I’m done.”

I grab her arm. “If you throw away those bags, you’re throwing away someone’s dreams and desires. Yours.”

“Reb—”

“And I’m not going to let you do that.”

A bright wash of red fires Macey’s face. “Who the hell are you to order me around?”

“I’m your friend, Macey, your best friend. Maybe you can’t admit it yet, but you’re mine. I get that you have a … a …”

… guarded heart.

I glare at the ceiling and clear my throat. “… a guarded heart. You try to keep people away, but not me. I’ve been at your side since that first detention our freshman year.” My fingers claw around the bag. “The reality is, right now my life’s pretty screwed up. I need something good, and you and peaches and pies are good. I’ve been here for you, and frankly, it’s time for you to be here for me.”

Macey eyes me warily, but she doesn’t move away. “You need pie?”

I hug the bag to my chest. “You have no idea how much I need pie.”

For the longest time, Macey tugs at the cuffs of her hoodie while I clutch the grocery bag to my heart. At last she walks back to her kitchen, where she pulls something out of her backpack. “Then I need your help.” She holds up a T-shirt. “I went to the bake-off meeting, and the event organizers handed out these. They want us to wear them on the day of the bake-off, and …”

I take the shirt from her, my fingers wrapping around the short sleeves. “… and your scars will show.”

“… and that’s the only thing people will see.”

“So wear a long-sleeve shirt underneath.”

“They won’t let me.” Macy’s chalky face turns gray. “They’re taping the whole thing, and parts of it will be used during the televised national bake-off. They want us all to match.”

I don’t bother turning to Kennedy for answers, because we don’t need the ghost of a dead girl for this. “Like I said, Macey, everyone has scars, and some of us are just better than others at covering them up. After school today we’ll go buy makeup.”

Macey’s entire face contorts in a frown. “Are
you
suggesting I cover the scars? That I hide them?

What happened to being true to you?”

“You’re not lying to yourself. You’re not pretending the scars don’t exist. You’re just being selective about who you show your true self to.”

Macey continues to roll the hoodie fabric around her hands. “Don’t you have a track meet today?”

“Yes, but it doesn’t start until four. We’ll have plenty of time for a makeup lesson at Bella’s.”

IF I BELIEVED IN A HIGHER BEING OR SOME GREATER force that determined my fate, I’d be pelting him or her with sharp objects.

Nova won’t go.

I sit on my scooter in the parking lot at Bella’s Discount Beauty Supply and crank the ignition switch again. Nothing. Dead battery? Dead carburetor? Dead something. I check my phone. The track meet begins in fifteen minutes. After getting makeup to hide her scars, Macey left Bella’s and went to the farmers’ market, and I’m supposed to be on my way to school. A city bus pulls up to the intersection a few doors down. Jamming my scooter key into my pocket, I dash to the corner. As I reach for the door, the bus belches and lurches forward.

“Come baaaaack.” I wave, but the driver chugs off in a plume of smoke. No time to swear. I take off my flip-flops and run.

I arrive at school sweaty and winded, a stitch cramping my right side. As I jog through the parking lot near the gym and sports fields, I notice all the cars. Today’s track meet is the qualifier before regionals.

After I change into my orange and yellow sporto outfit, I jog to the field and spot Coach Evil standing near the scoring table. “Sorry I’m late. I’m sorry, really, really sorry. My scooter died.”

“Later, Rebel.” Her hand swishes the air near my nose. “I’m reworking some numbers.”

“Where should I go?” I ask.

She shows me the palm of her hand, so I jog to where Pen’s standing with a group of Cupcakes.

“Where do you want me? What should I do?”

Captain Pen’s bottom lip quivers, but she says nothing. One of the Cupcakes settles her hand on Pen’s shoulder. Another angles her body, as if protecting Pen from me.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

A Cupcake waves a hand at the judging table. “You got DQ’d.”

“DQ’d?”

“Disqualified.”

“You failed to show for your 3,200-meter race.” Pen’s voice is like cracked ice. “There’s no way we can get top seed going into regionals without those bracket points.”

Swear words fail me. “I’m so sorry.” Forget the Rebel nickname. Call me Sorry. “What can I do to make it up? Do you want me to run another event? I’ll even try the discus.”

“Leave, Rebel. We don’t need you.”

On the walk home from the track, I pass Bella’s Discount Beauty Supply. When I’d been there earlier in the day helping Macey find makeup to cover her scars, I hadn’t noticed the giant pink posters announcing 50-percent-off deals in the windows. I’m not a shopper, not the sort of girl who needs a little retail therapy when slammed with wrecking balls, but since I don’t smoke anymore, I need more hair dye. Nate needed prom. The track team needed promptness. And I failed to deliver. I screwed up because I don’t understand the rules in this world; I don’t fit in. From the moment I landed in Tierra del Rey, I had troubles fitting in, at school, in Uncle Bob’s family, on soccer teams. I told myself it was fine, because being me was “fine” and the wrong would come when I stopped being me.

I figured if they didn’t like me, then I didn’t need them. I’d spent the past six years pushing people away. Now Nate had pushed me away, my mom’s family pushed me away, and the track team pushed me away. The other end of push-back hurts.

I buy three boxes of dye at Bella’s, Electric Blue #1111, a splash of color that screams I’m okay with different. I’m okay with being a trapezoid in a round hole. I am not Kennedy Green. I am Rebel Blue.

This is me. This is good. And why not spread the goodness? I almost laugh out loud.
Kennedy,
Kennedy, Kennedy. You’re still hanging on.
I failed to help the track team today, but I can do something nice for a fashion diva who desperately wants blue hair and who is going to get it when school’s out next month because Nate promised to smooth the way with his parents. Nate the Great doesn’t fail.

Still in my tennis shoes and track outfit, I jog from the strip mall to Nate’s house. Nate’s oldest sister, the one who plays the violin, answers the door. “Nate’s gone.” She starts to close the door.

I wedge my shoulder into the doorway. “I’m here to see Gabby. Is she around?”

Nate’s sister raises her violin, as if warding off danger.

I show her the bag from Bella’s. “I have some hair stuff she wanted. That’s all.”

She taps her violin against her thigh and finally steps out of the doorway. “Gab, someone’s at the door for you.”

I wait in the entryway, the toe of my tennis shoe tracing the mosaic of colored tile. “Gabby,” I call out.

Something thuds at the back of the house. I follow the twisting maze of brightly colored rooms.

Tia Mina’s at the kitchen table talking on the phone. Saint Boy sits at a desk playing a computer game featuring a talking tomato. I find Gabby in a back bathroom. She sits on the toilet, her head wrapped in a towel.

“Go away,” she says, tears sliding down her cheeks.

“What happened?” I lunge across the bathroom and squat before her, grasping her hands. “Are you okay?”

She yanks her hands from mine. “Go away.”

On the counter sits a gallon of bleach, the kind Aunt Evelyn stores in the laundry room, the kind used to get diapers snowy white. “You used
this
on your hair?”

A sob tumbles from her mouth.

“Hey, it’s okay. I’ve been doing this dye stuff for years. We can fix it.” I reach for the towel on her head. “Let’s—”

She twists from my grasp. The sudden motion loosens the towel, which falls to a puddle on the floor. Shock steals every word racing up my throat. Locks of frizzy orange hair hang down either side of her face. A chunk of hair is missing from the back of her skull. The top of her right ear is red and blistered. “Oh, Gabby, let me—”