The Perfect Place (7 page)

“This is Terrance. Terrance, this is Treasure. She wants to be called Jeanie, but you can ignore that nonsense. Terrance is new to town, just like you, but he don't talk back. You could learn a few things from him.” Great-Aunt Grace runs her index finger over one of the shelves I've just cleaned. “He's gonna have to teach you a thing or two about cleaning my shelves, too.”

“It's nice to meet you,” Terrance says, holding out his hand. I stare at it like it has eight legs.

“Try to teach her some manners while you're at it,” Great-Aunt Grace tells him.

The minute she leaves us to the shelves, that boy says, “So you're not into shaking hands? Don't worry. I'm not offended. Are you a germaphobe or something, though? My aunt is. She buys hand sanitizer by the bulk. Want some Pop Rocks?”

He reaches into his pocket and holds the box out to me. Pop Rocks aren't my favorite candy, but I can deal with them, especially the blue ones, which he has. But taking candy from Terrance might make him think we're friends, and I don't make friends. It's the first and most important of my Moving Rules:
Don't make friends.
Avoid extended eye contact and turn down all invitations for play dates. Try not to smile. Don't waste words, which means no small talk. Try not to speak unless your life—or grades—depends on it.

I shake my head, and Terrance shrugs. “More for me,” he says, and I have to spend the next ten minutes listening to the Pop Rocks crackle in his mouth and not in mine.

Great-Aunt Grace's booming voice spills into the back as she talks with the customers who come in. One is a woman with a voice that could cut glass.

“Can you believe it? Scoundrel broke into the sheriff's house and stole Eunetta's pearls,” the woman says. “Ain't that a cryin' shame?”

“Reckon it is,” Great-Aunt Grace replies.

“I hear the sheriff and Eunetta are offering a reward to the man who finds the heathens responsible.”

“Or woman.”

“Right,” the woman says slowly. “You got any more Juicy Fruit?”

“Last rack, top shelf,” Great-Aunt Grace says, and then the two of them start talking about the new pastor at the church—“He's full of nothin' but hot air,” says Great-Aunt Grace—and I turn my attention back to the shelves.

“My mama is real bothered by the break-ins,” Terrance says. “Is there a lot of crime where you're from?”

What kind of question is that? I don't answer.

“I guess not. We moved here because my father got a job as the head of the zoology department at the University of Richmond. We're staying with my grandma until we find a house that meets my mama's standards.”

Head of the zoology department? Terrance's family must have a gang of money. So what's he doing here, cleaning shelves with me? The question almost breaks free, but I clamp my lips shut and hold it in. Terrance keeps right on talking, moving on from the break-ins to his terrarium, the time machine he's planning on building, and his quest to find out what the special sauce on a Big Mac is made of. It's not Thousand Island dressing like everyone thinks, Terrance says. The ingredients are way more sinister than that.

For the next hour, conversation comes pouring out of him fast and unstoppable, like a waterfall. He doesn't stop even to swallow. Isn't his mouth getting dry? Or the back of his throat starting to itch?

“So, long story short, I mentioned the theory of evolution one too many times. Now my grandma is concerned with the state of my soul. That's why I decided to start doing volunteer work, to earn some Jesus points, you know? She told me to steer clear of Ms. Washington because she's different in a bad way.”

Great-Aunt Grace is just bad. Period.

“But I like a challenge, you know? Besides, Ms. Washington gives me free candy for helping out.”

“Are you
serious
?
”

Terrance jumps at the sound of my voice. “Um, serious about what?”

“The free candy.”

“Yup.” Terrance holds out the Pop Rocks as proof. “Don't you get free candy too? I mean, you're related and all. Anyway, do you want to hear a joke my dad's friend told me? He's an oncologist. All right, here goes. Knock, knock.”

Silence.

“You're supposed to say, ‘Who's there?' Okay, whatever. I'll say it. Who's there? Interrupting doctor.” Terrance pauses. “Now
you
say, ‘Interrupting doctor who?'”

He's staring at me expectantly, and I don't think he intends to stop until I play along. I spit out the words: “Interrupting doctor—”

“You have cancer.”

Now it's my turn to stare at Terrance. He looks at his shoes, then up at me. “It's the cancer part, right? Society is just not ready to laugh about it. Maybe I should change it to ‘You have tyrotoxism.' Poisoning by cheese. That's funny, right?”

“Let's just clean the shelves, okay?” I say.

“Okay, but first—what about this one? A guy walks into a bar with a zebra. Wait, no. It's a giraffe. Let me start over. So this guy walks into a bar with a giraffe . . .”

I close my eyes and grit my teeth.

T
ERRANCE
tells me all about how his father is off in Venezuela, studying huge tarantulas called Goliath bird eaters. He tells me what he'll name his cockatoo once his mother gives in and confronts her fear of birds—Clancy. By the time he starts talking about his allergy to pit fruits, I check out of the conversation and start flipping through the dictionary in my head, beginning with the
A
's.

Ameliorate: to make or become better; to make more bearable, as in, the only way to ameliorate my time with Terrance would be to glue his mouth shut.

I make it to
cacophony
—a harsh clash of sounds—when Terrance asks, “So is it just you and your sister visiting Ms. Washington? Where're your parents?”

My dad has been gone for two and a half months and my mom is driving around searching for him, using a credit-card bill as her guide. As if Terrance would understand, with his zoologist father and his mother with her high living standards. I bet they have dinner together as a family every night and the only time his father has ever left was for a business trip and even then he made sure to call every night.

The grits and bacon churn in my stomach. I close my eyes and press my forehead against the cool metal of the shelves.

“Are you okay?” Terrance asks.

“I'm fine.”

“Are you—”

“I said I'm fine.”

The clock above the stockroom door reads 12:10 when Great-Aunt Grace returns, carrying two aluminum-foiled bundles and two bottles of red juice. The bundle turns out to be a sandwich, turkey with mayo on white bread. She hands one to Terrance and the other to me. I wait for him to sit down near the door to the storage room. Then I pick a section of cold floor all the way on the other side of the room, far enough away from Terrance to discourage any further conversation, and open my sandwich. I've barely taken a bite when Tiffany waltzes in, carrying what's left of her own lunch. Her smile could span the equator.

“I rung up a customer,” she yells, throwing herself down on the floor next to me. “It was a boy, and he bought seven loose Tootsie Rolls. I don't like Tootsie Rolls 'cause they make my teeth hurt. Anywho, it came to thirty-five cents and he paid with two quarters. Guess how much his change was?”

“Hmmm, I don't know. Twelve cents?”

“No!”

“Fourteen, then.” I wipe mayo from the corner of her mouth.

“Noooo.” Tiffany giggles. “Fifteen, silly. But I didn't even have to know because the cash register told me.”

Tiffany will ask for a cash register for Christmas.

Great-Aunt Grace returns. She goes over to Terrance. What is she doing? Checking up on me? They come over to where I'm sitting, and Great-Aunt Grace says, “Seems to me you've worked hard enough today.” She looks from Terrance to me, and there's something about the determined look in her eyes that I don't like one bit. “So I was thinkin' maybe the two of you could scoot off for a little, and Terrance here could show you around.”

I'd rather clean every shelf with my tongue than be shown around by Terrance. I never knew a boy who could talk so much. I will suffocate under the weight of his endless conversation.

Terrance, on the other hand, is ready to go. He nods and smiles at me, his eyebrows finally doing what they've been threatening to ever since we were introduced: kiss his hairline.

“Maybe some other time,” I say. “I don't like to leave a job unfinished.”

“Girl, please,” Great-Aunt Grace says. “Three hours and you've barely cleaned five shelves. Rate you goin', you be my age before you finish. Now, go on, git.”

She says this in a way that makes me snap my mouth shut and get to my feet.

“What about Tiffany?” I ask weakly. She talks as much as Terrance, and with the two of them yakking, I won't have to talk to anyone.

But Tiffany shakes her head hard enough to make her braided ponytail smack her on each cheek. “The cash register needs me.”

And that's that. Great-Aunt Grace all but shoves us out the door.

Now it's my turn to talk. “There's no need to show me around. I won't be here long.”

“When you leaving?”

“Two weeks.”

“Where you going?”

“Don't know.”

“O-kaaaay.”

I stop on the cracked sidewalk and face Terrance. “So you can stop trying to be my friend. I won't be around long enough for all that.”

“Two weeks isn't that short of a time. Mayflies only live a day and they get a whole lot done. Mayflies are an insect belonging to the order Ephemeroptera, which literally means ‘lasting a day.' In case you were wondering.”

“I wasn't.”

“Whatever. Now for the tour.”

“I said no tour.”

“Look, it's not a
tour
tour, just me pointing stuff out to you. I'm saying, it's either this or the shelves.”

He's got a point, so I fall silent, and for the next twenty minutes Terrance points stuff out to me. A place that sells frozen yogurt and T-shirts (“I buy all my shirts from there”), a nail salon (“If you're into that sort of thing”), and the library (“Their science fiction collection is the worst”). I could fit this whole town in my back pocket.

We pass a storefront with newspaper clippings taped to the window.

“
Black Lake Daily,
” Terrance says. “Pretty small operation.”

It sure is. There are only two desks inside, one of which is occupied by a woman with bright red dreadlocks.

“That's the editor-in-chief. It's just her and a photographer, but she manages to crawl up in everyone's business anyway.”

As we come upon two men sitting outside a small restaurant playing checkers, one of them says, “Hey there, Mr. T. Hot enough out here for you?”

“I'm telling you, it's global warming,” Terrance replies. The men laugh and wave him off like a haze of gnats. “That's Dexter and Raymond,” Terrance tells me as we walk on. “They play checkers every day, no matter the weather. Ray—the one who said hey—his wife, Jane, owns the diner they were sitting in front of. She makes the best meat loaf in the world, and on Wednesdays she does psychic readings.”

“Huh?” I say.

“You know, she tells you what the future holds.”

“I
know
what a psychic reading is. I just didn't know you could get one with meat loaf.”

My mind starts going as fast as Terrance's mouth. Faster. If the lady who owns the diner can tell the future, maybe she can tell me exactly where to find Dad, so I can tell Mom. Then the two of them can come get Tiffany and me and we can leave Black Lake in our rearview.

I'm so busy imagining driving out of Black Lake without so much as a glance back that when Terrance stops and says, “Aw, man, there's trouble ahead. Quick—let's cross the street!” I keep right on walking.

“Hey, Yuck Mouth.”

Two girls are sitting on the back of a bus stop bench just ahead, lined up like crows on a fence.

Terrance waves and starts to cross the street, but they're not going for it. “Come over!” they shout. “We want to talk to you.”

We walk over to them slowly. They're chomping on gum, their mouths glistening with tinted lip-gloss.

“Gosh, Yuck Mouth, why you wanna act like you don't know folks today?” one of them says.

“Hey,” Terrance says dully.

I stand a good yard away from him, doing my best to adhere to Moving Rule Number Two:
Be invisible. Don't do anything to draw attention to yourself.

“So, Yuck Mouth,” says the same girl who called to him the first time. “Pamela and I were just talking about the best way to way to get a boy to like you. And, well, you're a boy, right?”

“Yeah,” Terrance mutters.

“Yeah, right,” Pamela says, and snickers.

“Be easy, Pam,” the girl says, “Yuck Mouth is a boy. Sort of. And, well, my cousin from Florida says the best way to get a boy to like you is to pretend to have all the same interests as him. Is that true?”

“I don't know,” Terrance says.

“Maybe I should ask your friend, then.” The girl's eyes find me. She looks me over from head to toe. I pat down my frizzy hair, try to smooth the front of my shorts and
KNOWLEDGE IS POWER
T-shirt, both stained with pine-scented cleaner. Meanwhile, these girls are done up like they rode a parade float to get here. “What's your name?”

I don't answer. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the girl named Pamela stand up. She's almost as tall as Great-Aunt Grace and nearly as scary.

“Jaguar asked you your name. You slow or something?”

“She's
not,
” Terrance says. “Cut it out, Pamela. Her name is Treasure, but she goes by Jeanie.” Terrance moves closer to where I'm standing.