Minerva Clark Gets a Clue (6 page)

Then Mark Clark said that he had tracked down our parents, or tried to. Charlie was tied up with some big
lawyery business deal in New York City, but would call the next day to see how I was, and if he needed to cancel the conference or the summit or whatever it was, he would cancel it and come straight home. Deedee was in some mountains somewhere on a yoga retreat and couldn't be reached at all.

Dr. Wong came through the curtains, with Morgan right behind him. He had very warm hands and short spiky black hair. He looked more like a snowboarder than a doctor. He asked whether any part of me was numb or tingling. He looked inside my mouth and asked me to say, “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.”

“Was I electrocuted?” I asked.

Quills laughed a little and Mark Clark gave him a look. “If you were electrocuted you wouldn't be here, Minnie Mouse.” I hated when Quills called me that.

“Where would I be?” I asked.

“Pushing up the daisies! Singing with the choir invisible,” said Quills. I knew that meant dead.

“It was an electric shock,” said Dr. Wong. “You're going to be all right. Not to worry.”

Then Mark Clark and Dr. Wong started doing that adult thing where they talk over your head, as if you're not there. They talked about what medical tests I should take to make sure I was okay.

Dr. Wong asked me some more questions about how I
felt. Mostly, I felt peaceful and weirdly empty of the normal thoughts that filled up my head all the time. When the lightning hit the building, I had jerked up out of my chair and slammed onto the floor, as if I were getting knocked around by an angry ghost. I must have looked like I was spazzing big-time, way worse than when I fell off DDR at Tilt.

Then Morgan got that funny frown that I knew meant his cell phone was vibrating in his pocket. He flipped it open. “This is Morgan … I'm not sure tonight is good … It's already, what, nine thirty … I think one of us will be around tomorrow …” He covered the speaker part of the phone with his thumb.

“Jordan just got sprung. She wants to come and get her car.”

“I guess she isn't the hardened criminal we all thought,” said Quills.

“What did she
do
?” I asked. I'd forgotten all about poor Jordan getting hauled off to jail. Had that really happened today?

“Tell her she can come tomorrow morning,” said Mark Clark.

I guess I'd have to wait to find out.

The next day I didn't have to go to school, in case I suddenly keeled over from having been electrocuted and
all. Plus, Mark Clark was going to be the BIC and take me to some special doctor. Plus Charlie was probably going to show up and act all concerned.

When I woke up I went right to my desk and took out my rebus journal. I wrote:

Freaky.

It was kind of lame, but I didn't care. I liked making up rebuses, and that was all that counted. I still had that strange peaceful feeling, which got a little stranger.

I looked over and caught a glimpse of myself in the long mirror hanging on the back of my door. The edges of the mirror were covered with glittery stars and snowflakes and happy faces stuck there so I wouldn't have to look at myself.

The girl I saw today was tall. She wore a pair of blue flannel pj bottoms with cowboy boots and hats on them and a black Humongous Bag of Cashews T-shirt with a giant cashew on the front that unfortunately looked more like a banana. Her face was square and she had a nice straight nose. She had curly/wavy/straight hair that was an unusual reddish brown.

I stood up and went straight to the mirror. I looked at my long arms and long feet. I always thought I was a fat
Gigantor freak show freak, but I wasn't. I wasn't fat at all. I wasn't skinny, but I wasn't fat. I was okay.

I checked around inside my head to see if I could find my usual feelings when I looked at myself, the feeling like I wanted to hide under my bed forever. But there was nothing wrong with me, nothing that I could see. My mind felt swept clean of all my usual feelings of self-hatred. Without them, I had nothing to think about. What was with that?

Downstairs, I heard people talking, Mark Clark and someone else.

I snuck downstairs. At the bottom of the stairs I looked across the hallway to the computer room, where Mark Clark has two computers set up against the big windows. Outside, fat pink rhododendrons pressed against the glass.

Mark Clark stood by his desk, his hand on the back of the chair. Behind him I saw a video game on his computer screen. Probably EverQuest. Playing EQ was what Mark Clark did instead of go out on dates. He had that interrupted look he always gets when anyone tries to talk to him when he's on EQ.

Jordan and her best friend, Tiffani Hollingsworth, stood in the middle of the room with their backs to the door. Jordan and Tiffani had been best friends since kindergarten. Tiffani was just as pretty as Jordan, but
where Jordan was tall and fair, Tiffani was short and dark. Her real hair color was semisweet chocolate brown like Liv Tyler from
The Lord of the Rings
, but she dyed it light brown like Jordan's, and ironed it straight like hers, too.

They both wore low-rise cords with thick black belts. Tiffani's trademark accessories were platform sandals, the kind with the heavy wooden soles that weighed about ten tons. The kind that, when they slide off your feet, you sometimes come down on the edge of the platform with the bare underside of your foot and it feels as if you're going to be crippled for life.

I know because I used to wear them around when Tiffani would babysit me two years ago, when everyone still thought I needed a babysitter. Reggie stopped having a babysitter when he was, like, in third grade.

“… and then, after they got me down to the police station and took my fingerprints, they realized it wasn't even me!” said Jordan. “The person they originally arrested back on Valentine's Day had given the cops my information, but our fingerprints didn't match. So they let me go, and I called Tiffani to come and get me!” Jordan was talking faster than I'd ever heard her talk before, plucking up her hair and letting it fall over her shoulders again and again. I noticed that she was wearing a necklace I'd never seen before, a small gold J filled with
tiny diamonds. Those couldn't be real diamonds, could they? My aunt Susie was a single mom with about ten jobs, and Jordan had had to save up for her car.

“Someone got arrested for something else and gave them Jordan's name,” added Tiffani. “Then, when she didn't show up in court for her hearing, a warrant was put out for the real Jordan's arrest. Or something. I think that's how it works.” She giggled even though it wasn't funny.

“That's how it works,” said Mark Clark. “It's called identity theft.”

“Is that a new shirt, Mark? The color's really good on you. It brings out the blue in your eyes,” said Tiffani.

Was Tiffani hitting on my brother? Eeeeow.

“But didn't they take a mug shot of the original person when they arrested him, er, her?” I asked. It just leaped out of my mouth.

Both Jordan and Tiffani spun around, surprised. They looked me up and down. I was still wearing my pj's, and my hair was snarling up pretty good on one side.

“How you doing?” Mark Clark asked, all concerned. I could tell he still felt pretty guilty about my getting electrocuted.

“Like … like … gack …” I stuck my tongue out and put my hands around my throat, like I was choking myself.

“Hey, people die from electric shocks every day,” he said.

“Not in an art gallery getting a fractal made from their brain waves in front of a bunch of strangers,” I said. I was surprised at my tone—normally I'm not allowed to give tone—but I felt entitled, somehow.

Jordan wanted to know what happened and I filled her in, even though I really didn't want to talk about it.

“Well, cousin, just don't let anyone ever say you don't look beautiful in the morning,” said Jordan, punching my shoulder.

“I won't,” I said, punching her right back.

I could tell she was only half teasing, but for some reason I didn't really care. Weird, huh? Before I got electrocuted I might have
said
, “I won't,” but it would be just to look like I didn't care, but inside I
would
care. Inside, I would worry about what Jordan really meant and how Gigantor ugly she thought I really looked. But I knew that besides my messy hair I just looked like my normal Minerva self.

Jordan and Tiffani traded one of those “what's up with her?” glances.

I was more interested in Jordan's identity theft. I knew from TV they always took mug shots.

“That's the totally sucky part,” said Tiffani, adjusting her rubber bracelets. “They had a mug shot of the
original person, but it was around the same time the police department switched to digital cameras—”

“I read about that in the paper,” said Mark Clark. “They lost about ten days' worth of photos because they forgot to upload pictures onto the hard drive.”

“So they lost the picture of the person who said she was me,” said Jordan. “It's lucky our fingerprints weren't close. They're even wondering whether maybe a guy didn't do it since Jordan is both a boy's name and a girl's name …” Jordan shrugged. You could tell she was just glad it was over.

“I still just can't believe they didn't think to upload the mug shots. It's so nice to know the safety of the entire city rests in the hands of people who forgot they actually need to save the pictures they were taking
onto
something. Everyone! Off my planet!” Mark Clark made a gesture as if to banish the world's meatheads.

Jordan and Tiffani giggled down into their hands so that their hair swung forward on either side of their heads, perfect shiny curtains of perfect straight hair. For some strange reason, I didn't envy their hair anymore. In place of my thoughts about how my life would be one hundred percent better if I had perfect shiny swinging hair was something else, something more interesting.

“So what do you do about the identity theft?” I asked.

“I don't think it's any big deal now that the cops have
it all straightened out,” said Jordan. “I doubt it'll happen again.”

“But it happened
this
time. Don't you
care
that someone went to all that trouble to give them your name? I mean, why your name? Why didn't they just give them some random fake name?”

“Could I get my keys now?” Jordan asked Mark Clark, turning away from me. It seemed as if she was ignoring me, but I couldn't be sure.

“I really like your necklace,” I said to her back. “Are those real diamonds?”

“Thanks,” she said, but she wouldn't look at me.

CHARLIE CA LLED TO CHECK UP
on me, and when it was clear that I wasn't going to be a vegetable for the rest of my life, he went about his lawyery business, promising to be home very soon. In Charlie's world “very soon” meant whenever you see the whites of my eyes. Mark Clark took me to the doctor, just like he always took me everywhere. Quills came along for moral support, whatever that was. The doctor was a special kids' brain doctor, recommended by Dr. Wong. We drove in Mark Clark's car, an old BMW that used to belong to Charlie. It was gray and Dadlike, just like Mark Clark.

The brain doctor's office was near the Rose Garden, where our basketball team, the Portland Trail Blazers,
play all their home games, and where famous bands have their concerts.

“Hey, Metallica's coming to town,” said Quills from the backseat. “They rule.”

I shrugged. “Aren't they, like, eight hundred years old?”

“Dude, it's like going to the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa or one of those really old paintings,” said Quills. “For the true musician it's research.”

“Then why are
you
going? Ha ha ha.”

Quills reached over the backseat and pulled my hood.

“Hey there,” said Mark Clark.

“Yeah, I've got fried brains, didn't you hear? I'm a delicate flower.”

“You're a smart-aleck, is what you are. I would have never been able to get away with the back talk you do,” said Quills.

“Maybe that's because my back talk's better than yours was, more
entertaining
.”

Quills snorted. Mark Clark just laughed. I was a little shocked at what was coming out of my mouth myself. I put my feet up on the dashboard and retied my purple Chuck Taylors.

One of the lanes was closed for construction. Then one of those giant yellow hole diggers that boys always think are so awesome backed into our lane, blocking it
completely. The light turned green, but we weren't going anywhere.

It turned out we were stuck near Under the Covers, the same bookstore I'd gone to with Jordan the day before. Was it really yesterday? I felt like a different person somehow.