Goodbye, Rebel Blue Hardcover (9 page)

BOOK: Goodbye, Rebel Blue Hardcover
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“I didn’t do it. Bronson did.”

“But it’s your fault,” she says.

“Like hell it is!”

Something tugs at my pocket. The littlest Bolivar, the one in the dinosaur underwear, frowns at me. “You shouldn’t swear. You’ll go to hell.”

I’m already in hell.

I SINK INTO THE CHAIR BEHIND MY DRAFTING TABLE and watch bits of confetti light tumble through the attic. After the ugliness at the 100 Club meeting, I’d love to grab my soldering iron and spend the late afternoon digging through sea glass and making something good and beautiful. Instead, I power up the laptop. After the fiasco at the decoy-painting meeting, it’s clear I don’t belong in Kennedy Green’s do-gooder world. So the sooner I finish her list, the better for all mankind.

And turtles.

I call up a website for endangered turtles and start bucket-list item number three:
Adopt an
endangered leatherback turtle in each of my grandparents’ names.
This is clearly a twofer. In a single bucket-list item, Kennedy gets to memorialize her grandparents
and
help save an endangered species.

Double the do-gooding, which I’m learning is so Kennedy.

Below me, footsteps clatter on the ladder to the laundry room, and Pen’s head pops through the open space in the floor. “I need the laptop.”

I browse the turtle adoption page and find leatherback turtles, which are not attractive. They have ridged, cowhidelike backs and old-man faces. I click the “Adopt Now” button.

An irritated snort comes from Pen’s direction. “Now!”

An order page replaces the ugly-turtle image. “Use the computer in the kitchen,” I tell Penelope’s head.

“Mom’s updating her website with client testimonials. She’ll be on there for hours.”

“Five more minutes, and I’ll be done.” I scroll down the screen, and the ugliness continues. Each leatherback turtle adoption costs one hundred dollars.

“Reb, I need to e-mail information to the track team for the meet tomorrow. I need to get this done now. It’s important.”


This
is important.” I go back to the main turtle page and click on other turtles. Adoption for loggerheads will set me back fifty dollars each, desert tortoises only twenty-five dollars. But Kennedy’s list specifically mentions leatherback turtles. I grind my knuckles against the sides of my head.

Pen stomps up the ladder and leans her hip against my drafting table. “Sea turtles? Are you doing drugs?”

I click back to the leatherback turtle page. “Yes, the really, really bad ones.”

“Since when do you care about sea turtles?”

“They’re endangered. Keeps me awake most nights.” For the first time, I look Pen in the eye. “If you shut up for five minutes, I can finish this, and you, me, and the poor little turtles can be free of each other.”

Assuming Kennedy Green has four grandparents, I’ll need to dish out four hundred dollars.

Maybe I’ll luck out, and a few of Kennedy’s grandparents are dead.

Really?

Late-afternoon light, heavy and golden, pours into the attic’s dormer windows. I bite back a growl. The truth is, Kennedy would want all four grandparents memorialized, even if they’re in a golden heaven. If I’m going to do this right, I need to do the list items in the
spirit
Kennedy intended.

I need four stupid turtles. After buying new tires for the Vespa last month, I have one hundred and twenty-five dollars in my savings account. I select one adoptee named Ernesto.

Pen leaves my table and walks to the back wall of my studio, her fingers trailing along a frame of blue and green glass.

“Hands off,” I say. Ernesto has acne and a lazy right eye.

Pen nudges the frame, and it shifts, dangling at a crooked angle. “You know, it’s bad enough that you’re decorating the walls with trash, but it’s creepy to have all these picture frames hanging with no pictures.”

“I said, hands off.” Ernesto lives near Costa Rica. I hope he has three brothers I can adopt once I get my hands on more money.

“But you don’t have any pictures to put in your junky little frames, do you? Not of friends, not of family. Not even a picture of your mom.” She jostles another frame. “Or your dad.”

The blow catches me fast and hard, midchest.

Pen, a track-team standout, loves competing and winning, and she takes great delight in besting me in the I-have-more-than-you-do game. On her particularly vicious days she plays the father card.

My dad was a French Canadian journalist my mother spent one night with in Buenos Aires. She knew only his first name and that he was in town doing a story on the city’s art museums. By the time she knew she was pregnant, he was long gone. “He was quite the nomad,” Mom had told me. “Always chasing the next story.” When I was younger I wondered if he had known about me if he would have stayed. And after Mom died I dreamed about him coming to free me from the bungalow.

“You don’t need anyone to make it in this world,” Mom often told me. “The power to be extraordinary comes from within.”

And she was right. Mom was the most extraordinary person I’d ever known. She won major photography awards, and her work appeared on greeting cards and in magazines and ads all over the world. But more than money and awards, she had a fire for everything she did. I remember one time when we were in the Sea of Cortez and she camped out on a spit of rock for three days where a large school of flying stingrays had been reported. I sat in the Jeep, watching her brave the blistering sun and heat and gritty wind, eventually capturing a series of shots of the giant fish soaring through the air like eagles. Even to my untrained, eight-year-old eyes, I recognized the photo series for the brilliant work of art it was. Mom never sold the rights to the photos, and I understood why. She wasn’t ready to give up that piece of her heart.

And for as long as I could remember, Mom told me to follow my heart. “Don’t just march to the beat of your own drummer, Reb. March to the beat of your own 275-member band.” I don’t know why Pen’s mentioning my mom and dad now, other than she’s been extra pissy since Kennedy’s memorial service. I’m in no mood to get into it with her. I’d already fought with Mr. Phillips and every member of the 100 Club today. With another click, I save Ernesto the Expensive to my bookmarks and hand Pen the laptop. “Go.”

My cousin takes the computer and skips down the ladder.

I walk to the back wall and straighten the sea-glass frames.

I bang the rubber mallet on the bag of almonds.

“Um, Rebel?” Macey takes the mallet from my hand. “I need almond crumbs, not almond milk.”

The bag of almonds is gushy, gluey. “Sorry.”

“I can handle it from here.” Macey takes the bag and picks out the pieces I haven’t sent to a milky grave.

“How much do you think we can make by selling pies?” During lunch period, I’d once again followed Macey to the FACS kitchen, where she made another pie, this one with a graham-cracker crust, almond filling, and blueberries.

“You’re getting way too obsessed with this turtle thing.” Macey pounds the almonds in a steady, even manner. “I’m assuming the donation jar in the biology lab is your doing.”

Heat rises to my face. Dorky, but my deed. I took one of my Mason jars, painted it blue, and made a sea-glass mosaic in the shape of a sea turtle. I attached a sign that read
Save the Endangered
Leatherback Turtles
, and cut a slice in the plastic lid. In two days I’d raised twenty-two dollars and fifty-six cents and a wad of dried gum. “It’s on the list.”

Macey sprinkles the crushed almonds over the blueberries.

Money has never been overly important in my world, at least not amassing large sums of it. To Aunt Evelyn’s horror, I prefer army-surplus pants and T-shirts and dime-store flip-flops. I don’t need expensive electronic gadgets. I don’t covet trendy clothes or designer cell-phone covers.

“After taking out the cost of ingredients, we could make about five dollars per pie.” Macey bites into a forkful of pie, her mouth and eyes pinched in concentration. With a sigh, she drops the fork into the sink. “But they’re not right. Something’s off.”

Like my life. Ever since that day in detention, my world has been off-kilter. I’m doing good deeds, hanging out with Mr. Perfect, and worrying about money. As I help Macey clean up, I ponder selling blood, plasma, and hair.

No, not hair. Most people don’t get the blue. I discovered the electric-blue dye three years ago at Bella’s Discount Beauty Supply, and it reminded me of the blue waters of Belize, a place of sun and warmth and my mom.

The bell rings as Macey puts away the final dish, and I hang the dish towel on the oven door. Out in the hallway, bodies move out of our way. It’s one of the perks of wearing a bag with a row of fossilized shark teeth. We leave the crowded hallway and escape into the breezeway. In front of Unit Five Nate hangs out with the other sportos. A girl with big cow eyes bats her lashes at him, clearly one of his admirers from the herd. He doesn’t acknowledge me, nor I, him. I don’t speak moo.

The tardy bell rings, and students hurry into their classrooms. I take my time. I have art with Miss Chang, and I have no tardies. Macey doesn’t seem in any hurry, either. We reach my locker, and I dig out my art folder.

“Maybe I should try a shortbread crust.” Macey rolls her bottom lip between her thumb and forefinger. “Or a crust made with lard. All the fat leaves the crust extra flaky.”

“Flaky is good,” I say, wondering about her pie obsession, but I don’t bother to ask. After the past three school years of being detention comrades and more-or-less friends-of-convenience, I’ve learned Macey doesn’t do personal. She prefers to lurk in the shadows and hide behind her hoodie.

The door at the end of the hall swings open, and Nate rushes into the corridor. Ms. Cow Eyes must have distracted him too long. When he sees Macey and me, his feet skid to a stop. He shifts his backpack to his other shoulder and tilts his chin toward me. “What are you doing Friday afternoon?”

I grab my sketchbook from my locker. I want to show Miss Chang some of my new sea-glass mosaic ideas. “I have an accordion lesson.”

The right side of Nate’s mouth quirks. “On Friday I plan to set up the decoys at the nesting site on the mudflats. Meet me at five o’clock in the north beach parking lot.”

Nate’s confidence borders on arrogance, and it irritates me. “And what if I don’t want to meet you at five?”

Nate’s eyes flash. “You do.” He places a palm on the lockers on either side of me. He’s a foot taller, and I have to crane my neck to look him in the eye. His mouth curves, and I spot something that looks suspiciously like dimples on either side of his mouth. “And feel free to bring your accordion.”

The smile deepens. Definitely dimples—more like craters.

My sketchbook clatters to the ground, the sound echoing in the empty hallway.

Tapping the lockers on either side of mine, Nate winks and shoves off.

Macey stares with disbelieving eyes as Nate rushes down the hall and into the calculus room.

“You’re going on a date with
him
?”

“It’s a community-service project.” I slam my locker and snatch my sketchbook from the ground.

“We’re sticking rubber birds on mudflats.”

Macey makes an
uh-huh
sound.

“It’s not a date,” I insist as we walk down the corridor.

On silent feet, she ducks through the study-hall door.

“It’s not a date!”

BOOK: Goodbye, Rebel Blue Hardcover
6.01Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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