Death by Eggplant (4 page)

Suddenly I knew there was something even worse than Nick Dekker finding out about my mother. That
something had been inches from his hand in the inside zipper pocket of my knapsack, the secret birthday present I had bought myself at the mall a couple of months ago and kept stuffed there for safety's sake, in case my mother was hit with a cleaning spell.

It was the badge of my passion, all my hopes made visible, and absolute proof that it certainly
was
possible for me to get wussier: a genuine toque or, to be less precise, a big, white, floppy chef's hat.

“How was school?” my mother asked, as she pulled into the supermarket parking lot. Friday afternoons she picked me up after class and drove me to do the grocery shopping.

“School was okay.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing much.”

She nodded at my answer. Grown-ups were way too easily satisfied. Didn't they know that “nothing much” usually meant your life was falling apart?

“And how was Cleo's day?” she asked.

“Boring.”

“Boring?”

“Mom, I think that happens a lot when you're a flour sack.”

“Bertie, that kind of attitude will not produce a passing grade. Now, how was the baby's day? Did she behave herself?”

“No, she did not,” I said. I remembered Indra's words. Maybe both she and my mother were right. If I had to get into this, I might as well get into it big. “Cleo watched me fail a spelling test and wouldn't give me a single hint.”

“Bertie,” Mom sighed. She pulled into a parking spot, turned off the car, and faced me. “You don't learn by cheating. Besides, you shouldn't be teaching your little sister such things.”

“I'm joking,” I said, rolling my eyes. “And I don't have a little sister. I have a sack of flour.”

“Visualize, Bertie,
visualize
! Not a flour sack, but a baby! And jealousy between siblings is a natural part of growing up. It's very healthy for you to express it,” she said with a face so straight it worried me. “It was only when I admitted to Dr. Garth my own jealousy about your Aunts Minerva and Debbie Lu that I made any progress at all.”

Dr. Garth had been last year's therapist, in between some flake I used to call Sufi Master Alakazam and the current Dr. Zimmerman.

Still in the parking lot, I strapped Cleo into the shopping cart's baby seat, just in case we ran into Mrs. Menendez. My father wasn't home yet, and if I didn't have Cleo with me, Mrs. Menendez would probably want a notarized receipt from a babysitter.

Once inside the store, I explained the situation to the manager. I didn't want him thinking I was shoplifting when we tried to leave. He took one look at how my mother kept
patting the top of the bag and cooing, then waved us on. “Class project—
sure
,” he said.

First stop was fruits and vegetables. I often didn't decide ahead of time what I was going to cook. I had to see first what was fresh, what was ripe, what called to me softly as I passed by. Bread was a good example of the opposite of this. Bread was always waiting and ready to be made, like a faithful dog who waited for your return home each night. As long as you nurtured your yeast, bread would always be there. The thought couldn't help but tug at my heartstrings a bit, and I looked at Cleo.

But fruits and vegetables weren't like bread. They were fickle. I didn't like to arbitrarily decide on a Tuesday that on Friday I would make pears flambé. I liked to see the pears first. Were their pale green skins smooth and unblemished, free from bruises that would darken the fruit? When held and hefted, were they solid and firm, yet did they yield slightly to gentle pressure? Were they almost ripe enough to perfume the air? Only then might I decide to make pears flambé. So it was with most fruits and vegetables.

Today I wouldn't look at the eggplants, no matter how plump and purplish black they were. Nope, I wouldn't even listen to them.

And if I didn't think about eggplants, then I also wouldn't think about
that
, I told myself, steering the shopping cart out of the vegetable aisle. Nor was I going to ask
my mother if any mail had come for me. After all, a watched pot never boils. I was firmly and absolutely putting all thoughts out of my mind . . . about
that
.

I headed for the baking aisle next. I needed turmeric and fenugreek seed to restock my spice rack. Exotic, yes, but I was out, and never knew when I might need them.

“How about cornbread?” my mother asked, picking up a box of ready mix with dancing corn muffins on the label. “You know how much your father loves it.” She smiled to herself, as if cornbread was a secret joke between them. It probably was.

“Okay,” I said. I took the box of mix out of her hands, put it back on the shelf, and instead gave her a bag of yellow cornmeal. Cornbread from scratch was so simple, they should shoot whoever decided it needed instant mix. Quickly I planned the full menu. Cornbread went well with roast chicken, another of Dad's favorites. I would fix buttermilk skillet cornbread to go with the chicken, a simple classic, always good.

Mom dropped the bag of cornmeal into the cart. I was just about to make a joke about its being Cleo's long-lost cousin, when the sound of Nick Dekker's voice assaulted me from the next aisle.

“No, I don't wanna buy that for you while you get fruit,” I heard Dekker say loudly. “Why can't you buy both? Better yet, why can't I just wait in the car?”

I panicked. Dekker had left me alone all day, which
could only mean that he was busy calculating his next move. But he would never pass up a chance to get me here without Mrs. M. around.

When he stopped talking, I couldn't tell which way he had headed, and so which way I should run. What if Dekker caught me here? Where had my mother suddenly gone? And what in the world could I do with Cleo? I couldn't let Dekker find me with a flour sack strapped into a shopping cart full of baking ingredients.

Silence, then the squeak of shopping cart wheels, which spooked me to action. I grabbed the sack and shoved it onto the shelf of flour with all the other bags. Then I left the cart where it was, ran down the aisle—

—And slammed smack into Dekker. He was carrying several cans and some five-dollar bills, which I knocked right out of his hands.

The smart thing would have been to run before he saw who had bumped him. But I have never been known for doing the smart thing. Instead Nice-Guy Bertie automatically stooped to help pick up the money and cans. I read the words on one of them:
“Diet DeLite! Complete Meal Appeal!”
He grabbed the can from me.

“Watch where you're going, Bertha!” His face suddenly turned shades of red, like a Christmas quilt that forgot the green.

“Sorry.” I began to back away. My mother appeared behind Dekker and began to study the encyclopedia that
came a book a week with your groceries.
No, no, no, don't come over to show me
, I silently begged.
Stop visualizing! Cleo can't even read yet!

My eyes must have bugged because Dekker started to turn to see what I was looking at. I had to get his attention
now
.

“So, Nick,” I said, poking him. “Shopping, huh?”

He looked at me as if I couldn't be more stupid. “No, I'm bowling, wuss,” he said. “Thought I'd use your head for the ball.”

I had his attention. That was as far as my brilliant plan went.

“You know, there's a special on soft-shell crabs,” I babbled. “It's a little late in the season for my taste, but, you know, a good rémoulade sauce can hide a thousand flaws. It's not nearly as hard as the name sounds, it's just that it's French and—”

Rémoulade sauce? What was I thinking?

Muttering that I better not be contagious, Dekker once more started to turn. Desperate, I grabbed his shirt collar.

“Tough stain,” I said. “Laundry detergent's in aisle five.”

He knocked my hand away as if I had cooties.

“Yeah? I think you left your brain there,” he said.

My mother finally disappeared down the natural foods aisle. Relieved, I stepped away. But I had already pushed Dekker too far.

“Not so fast,” he said. “What are
you
doing here?”

“Nothing. Bowling, like you said.”

His expression turned suspicious. “You alone?”

I stuck my hands in my pockets. “Sure. Why wouldn't I be? How about you?”

“Yeah, I'm alone,” he said.

I had maybe the first flash of self-preservation in my entire life and didn't contradict him. But I couldn't help looking down at the cans of diet drinks he was holding. He tossed them onto a shelf of canned vegetables as if they were red hot. His scowl dared me to say a word.

“Well, I guess I'd better be going,” I said.

Before he could beat me up, I ran outside. The automatic doors couldn't open fast enough, and I almost made a new exit. I ducked round the corner and waited. People streamed in and out. Finally Dekker appeared, carrying a bag. As he headed toward the parking lot, I sneaked back inside.

I found my mother in front of the lobster tank, tapping on the glass to get their attention. She never even knew that I had left.

“C'mon, let's finish up,” I said.

I led her back to the baking aisle. Mom let out a shriek.

“She's
gone
!”

“Who?”

“Your sister! How could you have left her?”

“It's okay. She just wanted to take a closer look at
the flour bags,” I joked. “Family reunion, you know?”

“Well, get her back,” Mom said, hands on her hips, obviously not amused. “You know she shouldn't be talking to strangers.”

I moved the shopping cart aside and reached for Cleo on the shelf. The space was empty. My flour sack wasn't there.

I stepped closer, looked harder. Maybe someone had pushed the sack aside to get to the cake flour or something. Or maybe someone had been looking for another brand.

Or maybe someone had bought Cleo.

I thought of all those people who had left the store while I was hiding from Dekker. Any one of them could have been a flour-sack-babynapper.

“Don't worry, I'll be right back!” I told my mother, with more belief than I felt, then raced to the checkout lines.

Let her be here
, I prayed. I did
not
want to fail math. I did
not
want to go to summer school. I did
not
want to have to put flour-sack-baby pictures on milk cartons.

I began at the express line, hopping around to see what each person carried, then worked my way backward. I tried asking.

“Did you see . . . ? Did you happen to pick up . . . ? Were you looking for flour?”

Suddenly I spotted her—being held upside down as a clerk repeatedly tried to scan her bottom.

I pushed my way to the front of the line.

“I'm sorry, but that's mine,” I said, reaching.

A huge hairy hand clamped shut on my wrist.

I looked up and saw a six-and-a-half-foot wall of black leather, from steel-tipped boots, to studded pants and motorcycle jacket, to the cap on a shaggy bearded head. The guy was a giant, like a super-villain from the comics, Berserker Biker Bob. Probably a hundred cows had died just to dress him.

“It's mine,” he rumbled.

“No, please.” I pulled out of his grip. “She's my school project. I put her down for just a minute.”

“Her?”
the clerk said. I felt my cheeks burn. Somewhere in my panicked dash throughout the store, I had changed Cleo from an
it
to a
her
.

The clerk snickered. He had black spiky hair, two diamond studs in one nostril, and a row of silver hoops through each lip and each ear. He made me think of that cool guy Pinhead from the horror videos. Then I saw his rock band T-shirt under his store smock—
Dead Babies
. Not a good sign. Besides, he was pointing to the face I had drawn for Cleo. His snickers escalated to snorts. “Art project, huh? Like,
yeah
. Time for extra credit, I think.”

“She
is
the extra credit. Look, you can't even scan her. She's not in the system.”

“Everything's in the system. Even you.” He flashed the scanner and blinded me with the red light. “Big Brother is watching.”

“Sure, but she won't scan. Let me have her back.”

“That's mine,” Berserker Biker Bob repeated. “I'm making dumplings for the old folks' home.”

Dumplings? A fellow cook? No, he was probably making dumplings as a side dish to serve
with
old folks, not dumplings
for
old folks.

“Please?” I repeated.

Pinhead shrugged. He had given up scanning and was trying to enter the code manually. “It still won't come up. You need a different bag anyway,” he told Berserker Biker Bob.

“But this is stone-ground,” the other rumbled. “From
Dutch's Old Time Oregon Mill
.”