The Reinvention of Moxie Roosevelt (4 page)

I trolled the depths of my mind to come up with something simultaneously weird and edgy.

“A cockroach,” I blurted. “To . . . you know. Defy the limits of cultural acceptability.”

Spinky looked delighted.

“Excellent! Tell me when you decide to do it—I want to go with you!”

I nodded enthusiastically while praying Spinky suffered from short-term memory loss.

“So this is all kind of weird,” I said, redirecting the subject.

“The room?” Spinky asked.

“Boarding school,” I said.

Spinky slid one of her rings off and started to play with it.

“You didn’t want to come to Eaton?” she asked.

“Well,” I said, heaving a sigh, “I didn’t have much choice. It was boarding school or six months of community service.”

Spinky arched one eyebrow, which bummed me out. I was sort of hoping to corner the market on eyebrow raising.

“Community service? Did you get busted for something?”

I looked around the room like I was checking for eavesdroppers or microphones. Then I dropped my voice to a whisper.

“My lawyer said I’m not supposed to talk about it,” I murmured. Just then my stomach growled.

Spinky looked at me intently, then slid the ring back onto her finger. “Gotcha,” she said.

YES! There’s nothing to cement a potentially DUCKI personality than the hint of a criminal background. I felt my face flush with accomplishment. You know, I might actually be good at this potential personality thing. Maybe one day I could even do it, like, for a
living
.

“Well, I’m here to honor tradition,” Spinky told me. “Half the women in my family have gone here, going back a hundred years. Three generations of them are already in love with this place. But I’m the first one not to get a dorm room in Williams House—I guess it’s only upperclassmen now.”

“Guess you’ll have to settle for the Sage Institute for the Criminally Insane,” I mumbled.

Spinky burst out laughing. The grin transformed her face into something almost sweet, despite the green hair. She looked like a cheerful leprechaun.

“Sage Institute for the Criminally Insane,” Spinky repeated. “You crack me up, Moxie from Biloxi.”

I blushed with relief. I’d made her laugh—and I hadn’t even meant to. Score one for the DUCKI.

“I’m from Pine Point, actually,” I said. “Not Biloxi.”

That was a stupid thing to say. Who cared where I lived, anyway?

“I’m just rhyming,” Spinky said. “Old habit—I’m told people get used to it. Keeps me on my toes for writing poetry.”

Spinky Spanger wrote poetry? This didn’t mesh with her Rebel image. But then again there was poetry, and there was
poetry
. I suspected the poetry of Spinky Spanger, if published, would be banned in most states.

“Cool,” I said.

I looked around the room, trying to come up with something else Detached and Unique to talk about.

“You should pounce on the other single,” Spinky said, gesturing toward the door on the left. “The person who lives in the middle room will have to deal with people schlepping in and out all the time. No privacy. And I sing in my sleep,” she added cryptically.

“Okay,” I agreed. I walked over and peered inside. The room was small, simple, and cozy. There was a closet, a dresser, a desk, and a bed, with a beige blanket folded neatly at its foot. The famous sink gleamed white in the corner. A large window squared a view of the impossibly green lawn of inner campus.

“So Mox, what do you say we—”

“Hello, hello!”

Zounds. Spinky’s question was interrupted by the abominably timed return of Gil and Dallas Kipper.

I turned to see my mother framed in the doorway, holding a huge suitcase. My father was behind her. They were both staring at Spinky like they were fairly certain they’d just seen her photo on
America’s Most Wanted
. I saw my mother’s gaze fall on Spinky’s eyebrow ring with a little scowl. Then I saw her gaze drop to the tattoo. The scowl deepened. There was, what they call in the theatre, a pregnant pause.

“Mom, Dad, this is my roommate, Spinky. Spinky, meet Gil and Dallas,” I said. It came out more like a command than simple good manners.

I made eye contact with Spinky, furrowing my brow in an attempt to convey to her that I was not responsible for the many possible shortcomings of these two middle-aged humans.

“Yes, actually, I think you knocked my—”

I cut my mother off abruptly.

“My room’s in here—come see!”

My mother hesitated, still frowning at Spinky. If I knew Dallas Kipper, and believe me I did, she was thinking about taking Spinky to task for charging around like a linebacker, causing innocent people to experience injuries to the posterior region. Not to mention a lecture on the evils of piercing and permanent body art. I walked across the room as fast as I could without sprinting, grabbed my mother’s hand, and physically hauled her across the floor and into my little single.

“See, what’d I tell you, isn’t it adorable?” I said very loudly. I was concerned that I’d left Gil Kipper in the main room with Spinky. But I knew Gil Kipper too, and dollars to donuts he wasn’t going to say anything at all. He’d simply adjust his watch band and smooth his shirt into place and clear his throat multiple times. It’s just his way.

“I’m a little concerned,” my mother whispered, “about the situation. I’m not sure Spinky is the best roommate for you.”

Uh-oh. Whenever my mother said she was “concerned,” it was cause for serious alarm. After a mere running-in-a-walking-zone infraction and a few unconventional personal style choices, my mother had decided Spinky was a Bad Influence. I didn’t have the time or the patience to convince her that Spinky was the best roommate I could have dreamed of. Dallas would never buy it. And with her activism experience, it was quite possible she might march directly to the dean’s office and demand a room switch.

I had to get my parents out of here!

“So, thanks,” I said, looking at my shoes. “I can, you know. Take it from here.”

“Mox, I’m not comfortable—”

“Mom!” I whispered. “I. Am. Fine.”

She narrowed her eyes at me. Clearly she was not going gently into that good night.

“Plus, wow, is it almost three already? There’s that required thing I need to get to—I’ll just throw my bags in my room. Seriously, Mom. You guys should take off because I’ve got to get to this thing. We all do.”

“What thing?” she asked. I had her by the arm and was leading her out the door.

“It’s right there in the schedule—the important . . . It has to do with . . .” Oh, what was the word I needed? What was it?

“Orientation?” my mother asked.

“Exactly!” I cried.“Yes. Gotta get to Educational Enrichment orientation—cannot miss that. So important. And I’m already late.”

Now all four of us were standing in the center room. My father was checking his watch and adjusting his glasses. Spinky was watching me and my mother with a small smile on her face.

“I’ll call you tonight,” I said.

My father, never comfortable with situations that involved a) possibly emotional good-byes, or b) proximity to a green-haired teenage girl, spoke up.

“Well then, we better get going. Mox, take care of yourself.”

He gave me his signature hug-noogie hybrid, rubbing the top of my head with his knuckles.

“Bye Dad.”

I gave my mother a hug. When I felt tears in my eyes, I thought about my plantar wart again.

“Bye, Mom.”

Okay. I was making progress. Hugs and good-byes had been exchanged.

“Drive safely,” I added, because it looked like they needed a touch more help getting out of the room.

I was getting ready to put my hand on my mother’s back and physically usher her into the hallway when my dad suddenly took her hand and started leading her out.

“Okay then, Mox. Call if you need anything, anything at all,” he said.

“Bye, honey,” my mother said from the doorway.

I waved. I felt bad to have basically ejected them from my room, but I had clearly ended up with the coolest new kid in school as my roommate, and I couldn’t let my mother turn it into a federal case.

When they were safely out of sight, I made an explosive sound of irritation. Spinky looked thoughtful.

“They didn’t seem that bad. Well, your mom was a little tense, maybe. Hey, do the tuna need to be saved? I thought it was the dolphins.”

I sighed.

“It said Save the
Tundra
,” I told her wearily.

Spinky’s expression told me that explained a great deal.

“She didn’t like me. That’s for sure.”

I stared at Spinky in alarm, thinking fast.

“It’s actually because . . . you . . . look a lot like this other girl who was . . . you know. I’m not really supposed to talk about it—but this other girl who kind of . . . also had to choose between community service and boarding school.”

“Ah, the Bad Influence,” Spinky said, grinning.

“Yeah. Anyway, she chose community service. And my mother kind of has a . . . thing about her.”

“Righteous. Doesn’t bother me, Mox.” Spinky waved her hand like she was swatting away a fly. “I stopped worrying about that stuff a long time ago. But speaking of parents, I gotta go Graham Bell the Aged Ps.”

I hesitated. What? My stomach started rumbling again.

Spinky gave me a leprechaun grin.

“I gotta go call my parents. I actually flew out of Oregon last night, and I was supposed to check in with them first thing this morning. They get anxious.”

I nodded, a little relieved Spinky was leaving. It was a lot harder than I’d thought to maintain the DUCKI personality for more than a few minutes at a time. It wasn’t just coming up with stuff to say, but actually saying it out loud that was tricky. But so far, I felt like I’d done okay after a few false starts. I felt pretty confident that to Spinky, I appeared to be an edgy, cool, detached, and possibly criminal person—minus my current outfit of Dockers and a faded pink T-shirt that said “I Love Tofu.” Hopefully, she’d decided that I was a worthy roommate for her, that Moxie Roosevelt Kipper was Trouble.

Spinky walked out into the hallway, then stuck her head back in the door.

“I forgot to ask. How’s your butt?”

Zounds.

I hadn’t
invented the “required thing” I’d used to ward off my parents. There really was something on the schedule from 3:00 to 4:00—new students’ Educational Enrichment signup, conveniently located on the ground level in Sage Living Room.

During my admissions interview, I’d been told in great detail about the Educational Enrichment program, usually just called EE. Eaton was very proud of its unique EE, and offered choices ranging from yoga to public speaking, with a wide variety of strange options in between. I had thought that maybe with the special course of study I had planned with Mr. Tate for piano, that I’d be exempt. My admissions packet had indicated I was not to be so lucky. It was crucial that I make an EE choice that could work with any number of possible personalities. I didn’t want to end up deciding on Detached, Unique, Coolly Knowing Individual when I’d signed up for Square Dancing. Or going for Mysterious Earth Goddess, for example, when I’d signed up for Young Capitalists. You see my point.

I would have preferred to go to signup with Spinky along as my armor, but it was already 3:30. For all I knew, she had already been to signup. I left my room quickly, passing a waif of a girl with dark silky hair and spacey eyes who smelled like patchouli and who was also heading for the stairs.

I found the entrance to Sage Living Room between the twin staircases that faced the painting of the somber doily-faced lady I was beginning to think of as Auntie Sparkles. There was already a group of girls there, standing by long tables containing sheets of information and clipboards. I resisted the impulse to rush to the tables. I made myself saunter instead, and it seemed to take twenty minutes for my casual amble to transport me to the nearest EE information sheet and signup clipboard. I was momentarily paralyzed by choices.

The first one I saw was called The Tao of Dance. Definitely no. Dancing did not enter into any of my potential personalities; it only lingered in their collective nightmares. Next was Faith: the Individual Pursuit and World Religions. That actually sounded kind of interesting, but I couldn’t think how it would relate to me personally. That is, any of my personalities. I moved on. Green You: Living Harmoniously with the Planet. I made a note of its location—table two, clipboard farthest to the right. That one might work. There was enough latitude to fit DUCKI, MEG, and definitely Assertive Revolutionary Activist. I worried a lot about the state of the planet, especially the things living on it. I once planned to sneak into a fish shop and liberate all the lobsters they kept in the tank. Maybe I could resurrect that dream in Green You.

The next selection was Self-Confidence Through Comedy: Release Your Inner Stand-Up.Yikes.That sounded pathetic.

As I moved farther down the tables, none of the subjects seemed like good candidates. Cooking. Chess. History of music—definitely not. I was trying to escape the boring old Moxie, not reinforce my doofus-level knowledge of composers. Poetry. Poetry? Was it possible Spinky would take that one? Knowing what EE my roommate would want would be a huge help. But so far, I hadn’t caught a glimpse of her lawn-topped head.

I got a sudden whiff of patchouli, and turned to find the silky-haired girl I’d seen back on the hallway. Her eyes were very wide, and an unusually pale shade of blue.

“Hey,” she said. “Didn’t I see you back on Sage 3?”

I nodded. I felt like I might have run into her before that. Had she been behind me at the Mavix’s registration table?

“Room 303,” I said. “I’m Spinky’s roommate,” I added, then instantly regretted my gooberish self-important tone.