Rebel McKenzie (9 page)

“Is not.”

Palmer checked the dictionary. “Rebel's right. There's no such word as ‘que.' At least not spelled that way.”

“Rebel is not in the game,” said Bambi's mother. “Bambi still has nineteen words. She wins.”

I guess Palmer and Viola figured Mimsie Lovering was good for a big sale and I wasn't. Palmer handed Bambi a silver charm in the shape of a dog.

“Oooh! It's perfect!” Bambi squealed.

“I wonder what a
liar
charm would look like?” I whispered loudly to Lacey Jane.

Viola snapped her fingers. “Bring the refreshments now.”

We took in the snack plates first. Then we hauled in the sloshing punch bowl.

“Ewww,” Bambi remarked. “That looks like blood!”

Viola took us aside. “How much cranberry juice did you put in?”

“Six quarts. Like the recipe said,” I replied.

“It's supposed to be three!” Veins pulsed in her temples.

I shrugged. “Can I help it the card was smudgy? Say it's lava punch to go with the cracker volcano.”

Lacey Jane passed the chips and dip to Bambi's mother. “Your hair looks pretty tonight,” she said shyly.

Mrs. Lovering fluffed the ruffle on Bambi's dress and didn't answer. The corners of Lacey Jane's mouth turned down. Suddenly I realized why Lacey Jane hated Bambi so much, aside from the obvious fact that Bambi was a horrible human being. Bambi's mother fussed over her constantly. Lacey Jane's father worked all the time. Nobody made over Lacey Jane anymore.

“Punch?” I offered a brimming cup to Bambi.

As she reached for it, I put my right foot in front of my left, lifted my heels, and twirled in a perfect pivot turn. Then I pivoted again so I was facing her, accidentally-on-purpose tipping the punch down the neck of her sundress.

“Oh my! How
clumsy
of me.”

Miss Odenia, who had seen the whole thing, gasped. “Rebel!”

Bambi sprang up. “Mama! Look what she did! I'm soaking wet!” She began to cry huge crocodile tears.

Mrs. Lovering glowered at me. “I don't want to see you at another party!” She swept Bambi into the bathroom. When they came out ten minutes later, Bambi's dress was still stained. “I'll send you my dry-cleaning bill,” she told Viola Sandbanks.

“Wait, Mama,” Bambi said, still sniveling. “Can I have that blue stone bracelet?”

“Of course, baby. How about one for Kissy so you'll be twins?”

Bambi smiled, showing all of her teeth and forty-eleven dimples.

After the party, Lacey Jane and me poured about hundred gallons of punch down the sink. Nobody drank it, for some reason. When we were ready to go, I asked Viola about our payment.

“Here,” she said. Two plain fake-gold pins clattered on the counter, the cheapest of all the Madame Queen jewelry.

“Um,” I said. “I was hoping for cash.” Like, at least five dollars.

“After the shenanigans you pulled? Take the pins or nothing.”

We took and left. Our paid serving career was over.

When we reached our street, I walked over to the Loverings' house.

“What are you doing?” Lacey Jane asked.

“Something.” I dug in my pocket for my Madame Queen list and the pencil I'd swiped. One word on my list hadn't been on Palmer's or Bambi's.

I circled the word
mean
and slipped the paper under the door.

The Gobi Desert is brutal in July. All you see is sand, sand, and more sand. The sky is white, the sand is white, and the sun is round and red like a jawbreaker.


I am working on a grinding tooth of a woolly mammoth. Mammoths were—well, mammoth—big, and needed to eat a lot of grass and leaves and stuff. Their teeth had ridges that helped them chew plants.


This tooth was attached to a boulder way down deep. I chipped at the rock with my hammer and chisel. My kneepads were scorching.


My chisel hit something. I stopped to look at it through my magnifying glass. Smoke poured between my fingers. It was so hot, my magnifying glass had set the rock on fire!


A shadow fell over my dig site. A vulture, waiting until I keeled over. It wouldn't be long now.…


“F
olks, it's gonna be hotter'n a two-dollar pistol today. All you sugar boogers out there, stay cool. Put a tub of ice in front of your fan and lap up the breeze, but don't twitch your dial from WKCW—”

“Lynette, cut that stupid radio off. The guy's making me sweat just listening to him.” My voice echoed off the bathroom tile.

I lolled on the bathroom floor, the coolest place in the trailer, my head propped on
The How and Why Wonder Book of Prehistoric Mammals
. I had on a halter top and short-shorts. Baby powder coated me from my forehead to my toenails. I lay motionless as an amoeba in a coma, but heat still radiated from me. You could deep-fry okra on my stomach.

Lynette's bare feet slapped into the bathroom. “You look like you've been dipped in Shake 'N Bake.” She sat down on the closed toilet seat and opened her cosmetology book. Then she slammed it shut. “I don't want to study scabies and impetigo today.”

“Who would? Why do you need to learn that gross stuff for anyway?”

“Some skin diseases are contagious. If somebody wants their hair done and they have scabies, I tell them they should go to a doctor. And that I'm not allowed to work on them. I might catch it.”

“See, this is why I like paleontology. The animals are already dead and I can't catch anything.”

Rudy scooted into the bathroom, shirtless and barefoot. A wicked heat rash blotched his chest.

“Look,” he said, holding up an outdoor thermometer. “The red thing is all the way at the top!”

I sat up. Baby powder sifted from my arms. “Where did you have that thing?”

“On the front steps. What's it say, Rebel?”

“A hundred and forty degrees.” My eyes popped out. “Lynette, it's a
hundred
and forty
degrees
and we don't have a
speck
of air-conditioning.”

“Rebel, he set the thermometer in the sun.” She tugged the rubber band from her ponytail, gathered up her hair, and pulled it into a higher ponytail. “I don't have the money to get the A/C fixed, you know that. The man said I need a whole new compressor or whatever, and I can't afford it.”

“Can you afford a paper fan?” I knew money was tight, but it was just too hot to live.

“Quit it, Rebel. Just quit it.” Then she said to Rudy, “Snooty-kins, you aren't supposed to be out in the sun. It'll make your rash worse. Let me put some more powder on you.” She frowned at my flour-white legs. “If Rebel hasn't used it all.”

“Here.” I tossed the mostly-empty can of baby powder to her. Rudy stood still while she sprinkled his chest. I opened my book and tried to read, but the words squiggled in front of my eyes like tadpoles.

“You're always dragging that book around,” Lynette said. “It looks boring.”

“Not as boring as your ol' cosmetology book. I help you study all those yucky diseases and body parts, but you don't know a thing about the Ice Age.”

“I wished I lived in it,” she said. “The Ice Age would feel good right about now. Rebel, is that my halter top?”

“I don't know. Is it?”

“You know it is. No wonder I couldn't find it.” She fanned herself with her cosmetology book, scattering baby powder. Rudy sneezed.

“Are we going to spend all day in this teeny little bathroom?” I asked in disgust. “I can't wait for the first day of school. My essay will be called ‘How I Spent My Summer Vacation Holed Up in a Bathroom of a Trailer.'”

“Don't call my house a trailer,” Lynette said.

“Excuuuse me! The
mobile home
you rent.”

“Don't fight,” Rudy said. “It makes my liver hurt.” Whenever I helped Lynette study anatomy, he hung on every organ. He pointed at the cover of my book. “What's that animal?”

“Baluchitherium.” I sounded out the word slowly. “
Ba-luck-uh-THEE-re-um.
It was twenty-three feet tall! A Baluchitherium could eat the tops of trees.”

“Bad-luck-a-theem,” Rudy repeated softly, slaughtering the pronunciation.

Lynette twisted her mouth. “Ba-luck-a-duck, my foot. You're making that up.”

“I am not, you Neanderthal,” I said under my breath.

“I heard that. You think you're so smart. I'll find you in
my
book.” Furiously, she flipped the pages of her cosmetology book.

“Go ahead. Whatever you find, I'll pick out a better one that's you.”

“Acne pustulosa.” She held up the book so I could see the picture of an oozing sore. “‘The variety of acne in which pustular lesions are present.' That's you.”

“Ewww! Gross!” Rudy sounded delighted.

“Is that so?” I didn't even need to look through my book. “Page thirty-one.”

Lynette found the page. “A—barylamda.” She glared at me. “I do
not
have a thick, heavy reptilian tail!”

“Yes, you do. Plus a short, blunt face so you can grub for roots,” I said, cackling.

“It's a long walk back home to Mama's—”

“You called me pus head!”

Lynette set our books on the edge of the sink. “You know what? I got seventeen dollars in tips last week. I was gonna put it on the light bill, but I think we need to buy a couple of fans.”

“Yay!” I jumped up in a shower of powder.

I thought we'd head to Sears or True Value Hardware, but Lynette drove The Clunker in the opposite direction. We pulled into the parking lot of Bargain Bin, part flea market, part “junktiques.”

“You can't get fans here. You have to go to a hardware store,” I said, ungluing myself from the hot duct-taped seat and leaving behind most of my skin.

“You can get anything here.”

“Look, Mama!” Rudy exclaimed. “There's a little girl for sale! She's only four dollars. Let's buy her!”

“Rude, that kid is not for sale,” I told him. “She's holding a sign for that extremely ugly lamp.”

Lynette was right. You
could
get anything at Bargain Bin, including a lamp made out of a globe sawed in half, fringed with glass beads, and stuck on a large brass dolphin.

The inside of Bargain Bin was dim and smelled like potatoes stored too long. The place was jammed floor to ceiling with boxes and cartons and bags of stuff. Musty paperbacks spilled from milk crate bookcases. Kitchen utensils were tangled in mildewed doilies. Now I knew where the Hula-Hoop went to die.

“How can we find anything in this mess?” I said to Lynette.

“Split up. We'll cover more ground that way. Rudy, you want to come with me or Rebel?”

He thought a few seconds, as if choosing between a solid-gold wristwatch and a Shetland pony. “Rebel,” he said at last.

“Rebel, look for box fans—they sit on the floor. Seven dollars, tops.” She disappeared down a junk-filled aisle.

“Okay, Rudy. Let's go this way.” As we stepped carefully around rusted old tools, I couldn't decide which we needed more, tetanus shots or a compass.

But at the end of the aisle sat a twenty-six-inch box fan, still in its original carton. The price on the neon sticker—six-fifty. Score!

The fan wasn't heavy, but the box was bulky. Me and Rudy carried it to the front, where a man in a greasy ponytail munched Doritos and squinted at a gecko race on one of those teeny little TV sets. No, those were horses, not geckos.

“Can we leave this here?” I asked him. “We're still shopping.”

“Yeah, sure.” He didn't pull his eyes from the TV screen.

We met Lynette in a section of mismatched dishes. She had a floor fan tucked under one arm.

“Five bucks,” she said. I told her about my bargain.

“Good deal, Reb! We have a little money left over. What do you think of this?” She tugged a child's plastic wading pool from under a shelf. It was filled with spiders, some dead, others crawling up the sloping sides.

“Starting a spider farm?” I asked.

“Very funny. We'll put it in the yard and take turns sitting in it. It even comes with an inner tube.”

“Lynette, even Rudy doesn't fit in that pool. We'll look like idiots.”

“Who cares? At least we'll be cool.”

Was this my sister? The one who wouldn't fetch the mail unless she had on mascara and an ankle bracelet?

“Oh, boy!” Rudy cried. “We can go swimming!”

If you call sitting in a teacup of water
swimming
.

“The pool is only two dollars,” Lynette said. “That's—um—thirteen-fifty. We still have a few bucks left. Why don't y'all pick something out for yourself?”

“There really isn't anything I want in this place.”
But you can give me the cash for my Kids' Dig trip
, I nearly added.

“Go with Rudy, then. I'll meet you at the checkout.”

“Yay! I know just what I want!” Rudy dashed off. I found him on his knees rummaging through an old suitcase overflowing with worn leashes and dog collars.

“Rude, we don't have a dog.”

“Ta-da!” He pulled out a red rhinestone-studded collar that looked brand new. “Bambi's dog has a fancy collar, and Doublewide should too.”

I examined the collar. “It's for a medium-sized dog, so it should go around that cat's lardy neck. And it's only fifty cents.”

“Okay, I got my thing. What're you gonna get, Rebel?”

“They don't have a meat freezer with a built-in bed. That's all I want—” Then my gaze lit on a brown furry ball. “Look, Rudy, a head made out of a coconut! It even has real teeth! Shoot, it costs eight bucks.”

But under the coconut head was something I liked even better. And it only cost seventy-five cents. We took our prizes to the front, where Lynette paid for everything.

At home, Lynette set both fans in the living room and switched them on “high.” “At night we'll each have a fan in our bedroom.”

Rudy jerked Doublewide from a sound sleep on the back of the sofa and clasped the fake ruby collar around his neck.

Doublewide blinked twice. Then he arched his back and bucked like a steer. He rolled and romped and stood on his head. He shook his head until his eyes were a blue blur and scratched behind his ears so hard he fell over.

“Rudy, for heaven's sake, the cat hates that collar,” Lynette said. “Take it off.”

“He'll get used to it.”

Doublewide pushed himself along the carpet with his hind feet, trying to get rid of the collar. He was
not
getting used to it. Finally he sat on the floor, flicking the end of his tail, his ears flat like airplane wings.

“Put your bathing suits on, everybody!” Lynette said. “The pool is about to open!”

While she and Rudy were out back, I took my package from the wrinkled grocery bag Ponytail Man had put it in.

When I went outside, Lynette oozed half in and half out of the wading pool like a fish too big for the skillet, her head resting on the inner tube. She dribbled water over her shoulders.

“Ahhh. This is the life.” She lifted an invisible glass. “Waiter, I'll have another mint julep.”

Rudy danced in the puddle left by the dripping hose. “Rebel, are you gonna show Mama what you bought?”

“I'm putting them up now.” I opened the package and took out a long string of tiny white Christmas tree lights.

Standing on an upturned bucket, I draped the string of lights around the window. The cord just reached the outlet. I plugged the lights in, and the window glowed firefly-shiny.

“Oooh,” Rudy said. “It looks just like Christmas.”

I put my hands on my hips and smiled at the twinkling lights. “That's the idea. Christmas is the coolest thing I can think of.”

“Good gravy,” Lynette said. “Christmas lights! Could we be any tackier?”

“It makes our house pretty,” Rudy declared.

“Mobile home,” I corrected.

Doublewide came out to see what the fuss was about. He walked a little sideways, still not used to the dog collar. He glanced up at the lights, yawned, then sniffed the box, hoping it contained a few grains of cat chow.

“Do you know an old-timey animal name for Doublewide?” Rudy asked. “Like you and Mama called each other.”

“You mean prehistoric?” I thought a minute. “How about
Megalonyx doublewidus
? It weighed thirty-five hundred pounds.”

“That's our cat!” Rudy said proudly.

Lynette splashed her feet. “I guess we have arrived. A kid's wading pool to cool off in and Christmas lights in July. We are truly members of the trailer-park set.”

“You said it, Barylambda. Feels good to get your reptile tail wet, doesn't it?”

I didn't duck quick enough.

Good habits and practices will lay the foundation for a successful career in cosmetology. A successful cosmetologist should: