Rebel McKenzie (5 page)

“I'll show you.”

Holding my breath, I gulped three big swigs of Dr Pepper. Gas rumbled in my stomach. I opened my mouth to release a giant belch. But instead of just letting it rip, I formed my lips into words.

“ConnecticutMassachusettsVirginiaSouthCarolinaNorth CarolinaGeorgiaNewHampshireNewJerseyNewYorkMaryland DelawarePennsylvaniaaaaaaaaaa…”

As always, I petered out on “Pennsylvania.”

Lacey Jane and Rudy stared at me, goggle-eyed. “You just burped the thirteen colonies,” said Lacey Jane, astonished.

“Except for Rhode Island. I can't ever get the thirteenth colony out.”

Lacey Jane cracked up. She slid down the wall and plunked spraddle-legged on the floor, snorting Dr Pepper out of her nose. Rudy started giggling, and I did too as I collapsed beside Lacey Jane.

Our laughter echoed all over the firehouse. Rudy and me, our laughs sounded regular, like everybody else's. But Lacey Jane's laugh sounded like music rippling from an old piano that hadn't been played for a long time.

W
hat do you do if you have “piano legs” like Lacey Jane Whistle? Don't wear short shorts! People can see your legs are the same size all the way down!


If you don't want to be mistaken for a stool or something, wear Bermuda shorts. They hit at the knee and people will think you just have shapeless calves. Never
ever
wear babyish ankle socks, especially with sandals! This is a fashion “faux pas” you see all over the magazines.


Also, if you're a redhead like Lacey Jane Whistle, you can't get a tan. All you do is burn and peel, even if you slap on a gallon of Caribbean Pete Banana Coconut Oil. Don't show your snow-white piano legs in short shorts. Not unless you give the rest of us sunglasses so we don't go blind.


Finally, never wear
pink
short shorts if you are a redhead with piano legs. That breaks so many fashion rules I can't count them all.


Until next time…smile pretty!


A
t six fifteen, Lynette stumbled in the door. The front of her pink smock was streaked with dye, her makeup was smudged, and her hair stuck out everywhere. She looked like she'd sailed around the world in a teacup.

She tossed her textbook on the kitchen floor and burst into tears. “What?” I hurried over to her. “Did you wreck The Clunker?”

“I'm a dumb bunny in school! And the old biddies at the beauty parlor h-h-hate meeee!” she wailed, falling into a heap on her Spanish modern sofa.

Rudy hopped up from the puzzle he was putting together on the rug and laid his small palm on her back. “You're not a dumb bunny, Mama.”

“Yes, I am! I can't even say circalutory—circa—cir—”

“Circulatory?” I provided.

“Yes! I couldn't say that word and Miss Dot's lips got all thin. I bet she fails me! And on my first day at Hair Magic, one lady complained to Virina—she's the owner—that I scratched her scalp when I shampooed her color out. She wanted her money back!” She broke into a fresh wave of sobs.

“What do you care about circulatory stuff?” I asked. “You're not going to air-conditioning school.”

Lynette sat up. “Oh, Rebel, you have no idea. We have to learn all about skin diseases like acne and eczema and scabies. We have to learn
chemistry
and
hygiene
and
anatomy
and the
digestive
system, and circalu—that word!”

“Circulatory system. You have to know about blood and guts to fix hair?”

Lynette blew her nose on her smock. “If I make it—
if
—I'll be a hairdresser
and
a doctor.”

“Really?” Rudy's eyes grew wide.

“No. But I might as well, all the stuff they make us study.” She grabbed my hand like a drowning person grasping a rope. “You'll help me, won't you, Rebel?”

“I said I would yesterday.” I pulled her up. “Go wash your face. Supper's almost ready.”

After Lynette scuffed into the bathroom, I wrapped a tea towel around my hand and took three TV dinners out of the oven. A nice, hot meal would make my sister feel better. Rudy had already set the table—paper towels folded in triangles for napkins, knives and forks precisely lined up beside the plates. And everyone got a different monster truck cup.

Lynette trudged into the kitchen, her face scrubbed and her hair skinned back in a ponytail. She sat down, tying the belt of her pink chenille robe. “What's this?”

“Macaroni and cheese with peas and Apple Delight,” I replied brightly. “Delicioso.”

Rudy covered his plate with his napkin. “I don't like cheese on macaroni.”

“
Every
body likes macaroni and cheese,” I said, the chipperness in my tone slipping a notch.

“Rebel, I bought the TV dinners for me and you,” Lynette said. “I told you Rudy only eats hot dog spaghetti for lunch and dinner. Didn't you hear me?”

I flung my fork down. “You also told me to get him to eat other stuff!”

“I don't want any supper,” Rudy declared.

Dropping her face in her hands, Lynette began crying again. “My little baby is starving! I can't be here to cook for him because I have to go to school and be the dumbest one in class!”

“Rudy is
not
starving,” I said sternly. “He had an RC float for breakfast like always. Then he had a bunch of Necco Wafers, part of a Dr Pepper, and some barbecue potato chips. And that revolting spaghetti crap for lunch.”

I didn't tell Lynette I'd scorched the hot dogs and the noodles were undercooked, but Rudy dutifully took his plate out on the steps. I couldn't see anybody, but I could hear Rudy talking, so I guess God showed up for his usual lunch date.

Rudy's lips were tucked in like a buttonhole. I snatched his plate and marched over to the sink. Scraping the macaroni and cheese in a strainer, I held it under the running faucet. When every smidge of cheese had been rinsed off, I dumped worm-white macaroni on Rudy's plate and stomped back over to the table.

“Here, Your Highness,” I said. “Macaroni with
no
cheese. Shall I peel your peas and vacuum the apples out of the crust?”

His chin quivered.

“Don't you start bawling too,” I said, then added, “Eat your supper and I'll teach you to burp-talk.”

“Oh, boy!” He wolfed the cold macaroni like it was pheasant under glass.

Lynette stood up. “I'm not really hungry, Rebel. I need to read two chapters in my book tonight.”

“I slave over hot TV dinners and this is the thanks I get?” I waved her away. “It's okay. I don't mind clean- ing up.”

I washed the dishes while Lynette mumbled over her textbook and Rudy worked on his puzzle. Worn to a nubbin from my own tough day, I turned the TV on to a science program about carpenter ants. Perfect. I flopped in one of the ugly black chairs.

Doublewide jumped up on top of the TV, hunkered down so his paws draped over the screen, and stared at me.

“You have food in your dish,” I told the cat. “Now, move so I can see.”

“It's time for his favorite show,” Rudy said, trying to cram a corner piece in the center of the border.

“The
cat
has a favorite TV show?”

“Reruns of
Wagon Train
.” Lynette thumbed through her book. “He thinks the horse teams are mice. Put it on channel thirty-three.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “I am
not
changing channels for a cat. Scram!”

Doublewide crossed his eyes and didn't budge.

“Oh, no,” Lynette moaned. “Miss Dot assigned
eighty-five
pages in this horrible book. I can't do this.” She broke down boohooing again.

Rudy ripped up half of his puzzle, and pieces flew across the room. “I hate this ol' puzzle!”

I was surrounded by a bunch of crankypants. But I was worried about my sister. Always the strong one, she was unraveling like the scarf I'd knitted the five minutes I'd been a Girl Scout. Instead of substituting one mother for another this summer, it seemed
I'd
become the mother.

Then I remembered what Daddy had done once when I got frustrated because the mastodon I'd copied from my
How and Why Wonder Book of Prehistoric Mammals
looked more like King Kong.

I fetched a couple of vanilla pudding cups from the refrigerator and two spoons from the silverware drawer.

“C'mon,” I said, herding Lynette toward her room. “You too, Rudy.”

I settled them both in the sloshy water bed, gave Lynette her textbook, Rudy a Spider-Man comic, and each a pudding cup and spoon.

“You'll feel better in a little bit,” I said, easing the door shut.

“Give one to Doublewide,” Rudy called after me. “He loves pudding.”

In the kitchen I took the last pudding cup for myself, then tumbled in my chair again. Alone at last.

Almost.

Doublewide still claimed the top of the TV. His blue eyes lasered into mine.

“All right, you win.” I got up and switched the channel. On the screen, Ward Bond bellowed, “Wa-gons
ho
!”

Doublewide sprang off the TV and leaped up into my seat before I made it back.

“Oh, no, you don't.” I tried to nudge the cat aside, but it was like shoving an anvil. We finally came to an agreement—he sprawled over most of the chair while I was scrunched in the corner.

I dipped my spoon into the creamy, smooth pudding. “Mmmm.”

The cat's head whirled around so fast, I was surprised he didn't get whiplash.

“Uh-uh.”

He bunched himself up, pretending to be a pitiful little kitten instead of a twenty-one-pound lard bucket.

With a sigh, I propped the cup in front of him. He lapped the pudding happily, his whiskers daintily pinned back.

I had to bust out of this loony bin. Winning the Frog Level Volunteer Fire Department's beauty pageant was my only ticket. I couldn't ask Lynette for the registration fee—she was already a basket case. Somehow I'd find the money.

That decided, I made myself comfortable in the two inches of space allotted me and watched
Wagon Train
with Doublewide.

As soon as The Clunker rolled out of the driveway the next morning, I hauled Rudy across the strip of crabgrass to Lacey Jane's trailer.

“I'm not going in there!” he yelled, clinging to the clothes pole. “That awful girl lives there!”

“We're friends now, remember?” I told him, prying his fingers off one by one.

“You can't make me!”

I prodded him up the steps of the Whistle trailer and knocked. When Lacey Jane answered, Rudy crumpled on the doorsill like a sack of potatoes.

“Rebel!” she cried. “What's wrong with the kid?”

“Nothing.” Stooping, I clasped Rudy around his middle and dragged him inside. He lay on the floor limp as a ten-cent dishrag, but his eyeballs rolled under his eyelids. “Get up, you faker, or you'll eat boiled turnips for lunch.”

“Are you sure he's okay?” Lacey Jane said.

“Yeah. He's a just a big mama's baby.”

Rudy sat up. “I am not a baby!” Then he glanced at Lacey Jane. “I was kinda scared to come in here, but Rebel made me.”

“We don't always get our way in this world,” I said. Wasn't I living proof? I should have been dusting the molar of a fossilized musk-ox right about now.

Guilt flickered in Lacey Jane's eyes. Was she sorry for picking on Rudy? She thrust a pink paper under my nose. “Look what was stuck in our mailbox.”

I skimmed the paper. “I can't believe Bambi sent you this!”

“I can. Where does that twerp get off giving me beauty tips!” Lacey Jane flipped a scraggly pigtail over her shoulder. “I do
not
have piano legs!”

Suddenly my job became a lot easier. “We have to get back at her. We'll enter the beauty pageant, us against Bambi Lovering.”

“Why would she even enter? Yesterday you said she probably thinks our pageant is piddly.”

“She'll enter, all right,” I said. “She can't pass up another tiara. But you'll win instead, and Bambi will go into a decline. She'll never get over it. She'll be a hermit and nobody will ever—”

Lacey Jane stopped listening and said, “What makes you think I'll win?”

“Because…” I had to step careful here. “Because you're not a phony like Bambi. The judges will see that you, Lacey Jane, are the real thing.”

I needed Lacey Jane to enter with me because a) her father would lend me the registration money, and b) even though I didn't have a widow's peak or a beauty mark, Lacey Jane's plainness would make me look like Cleopatra by comparison. I had enough competition with Bambi and her ukulele.

“What about you?” she said, as if reading my mind. “What if the judges think
you're
the real thing instead of me?”

“They won't,” I said quickly. “I'm just entering to make you stand out even more.” I relaxed my face so it would sag like an old hammock. I looked unattractive and also not too bright.

Lacey Jane studied me for a second. “Okay. Let me get my shoes on.” She disappeared down the hall.

For the first time, I checked out her trailer. The living room was slab by the kitchen, like Lynette's. An orange afghan lay balled up at one end of the blue plaid sofa.

“That's a pretty afghan,” I said when Lacey Jane returned wearing blue ankle socks with her sandals. “Did your mother crochet it?”

She nodded but said nothing as she locked the front door behind us.

We walked up Grandview Lane, the main road of the trailer park. It was so hot, my flip-flops stuck to the soft asphalt.

Lacey Jane noticed my bandaged heels. “What happened to your feet?”

“Rebel runned away,” Rudy piped up. “But she had on the wrong shoes.”

“The next time I leave home, I'll be sure to wear special running-away shoes.”

“You really ran away?” Lacey Jane glanced at me with new respect.

I told her the whole sordid story. When I was finished, Lacey Jane didn't seem that impressed. “I thought you ran off because your parents are mean,” she said.

“I'm grounded till I'm fifty. If that isn't mean, I don't know what is.”

Grandview Lane ended at Greycliff Road. The shopping center sat at the intersection. It consisted of the 7-Eleven, Sudz 'N Dudz Laundromat, Hair Magic (the beauty parlor where Lynette worked in the afternoons), and Better-Off-Dead Pest Control and Bridal Consignment.

A sign in the window of the last store declared that Better-Off-Dead Pest Control and Bridal Consignment was the official sponsor of the Miss Frog Level Volunteer Fire Department Pageant.

I pushed the door open. A blast of air-conditioning almost smacked us flat. The shop was really two stores in one. Filmy white curtains hung over a doorway marked
BRIDAL CONSIGNMENT
.