Minerva Clark Gets a Clue Page 7

  I said, “But it happened in the morning. In broad daylight!” What did Morgan know? He wasn’t there. I was there. I was there, and so was Detective Peech and all those other detectives, and I was pretty sure they had arrested the wrong guy.

  “It’s an expression,” said Morgan. “Whatever gets you through the night.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  He reached over and patted my head. I hated when he did that. I took my plate into the kitchen and let it clatter in the sink. It was a pink-and-blue plastic plate with Jasmine from Aladdin on it in her stupid harem pants and big cow-eyed look. Why did my brothers still think this was my plate? It was a stupid baby plate. I took it outside and threw it in the garbage can.

  On Saturday mornings I was supposed to clean my room. I shoved everything that would fit under the bed and took all the clothes on the floor and stuffed them into the laundry chute at the end of the hall.

  I tried to stop thinking about Clyde Bishop and his wilted flower hand cradled in his lap. I sat on the edge of my desk chair and flipped open my rebus notebook.

  I made this one:

  ban ana

  Banana split. It wasn’t one of my better ones.

  Weirdly, I was excited about going to the water park. I didn’t care that I had to wear the extra long red Speedo with the yellow flowers. It was just a swimsuit, and it didn’t have Baby Elmo or Simba on it or anything. It did have that horrible shelf-bra thing, but, what do you know, now my boobs filled it out pretty well, and I didn’t think I looked dorky at all. And it was still too long! I had to keep pulling at the waist so the leg holes wouldn’t droop around the top of my thighs. I wanted to tell my mom, “Ha! See, I didn’t grow!” But of course my mom was in Santa Fe, teaching yoga. I tried not to feel too sad about that. Instead, I thought about the next bathing suit I would get, which would be a two-piece with board shorts.

  When Quills dropped me at the water park on his way to work, Hannah and Julia were already there, hanging on the snack counter, waiting for Devon-or-Evan to show up. The park smelled strongly of chlorine and steamed hot dogs. It was crowded with kids holding big presents, all arriving for birthday parties. We were too old to have birthday parties here now.

  “Minerva,” shrieked Julia. “Hannah said you weren’t coming!” Julia had bigger brown cow eyes than the Jasmine on my plastic plate.

  “Really?” I thought I’d told Hannah I was coming, that I’d only said “no way” in my head. Anyway, here I was. I just couldn’t pass up that steep red slide that shot into the deep end.

  “Hey, Minerva,” said Hannah. “How ya doing?” She came over and slung her arm over my shoulder. She wore a blue flowered bikini top and matching board shorts. “Should I get a cookie? They have awesome chocolate chip cookies here. Or will it go straight to my ass?”

  I stood back and looked at Hannah. I did not think the chocolate chip cookie would go straight to her ass, because that just wasn’t possible, but I did notice her shorts looked tight. “I don’t know. But if your stomach’s full it will make your shorts feel even tighter.”

  Hannah made a show of shoving me away. “Like you’re one to talk!”

  “I’m not the one asking about eating a cookie,” I said.

  Hannah tucked her black hair behind her ears carefully. Hannah was beautiful. Her mom was from Thailand. Her hair hung down the middle of her back like a satiny cloak. I used to spend a lot of time thinking about what it would be like to have that hair, but now I liked my hair. You could stick a pencil in it and it would stay in.

  Julia giggled. “Minerva, you’re supposed to say, ‘But, Hannah, your ass is so perfect, you don’t need to worry about cookies!’”

  “Yeah yeah yeah. Whatever,” I said.

  We stood at the snack counter for about three weeks, but no one showed up. We made jokes about how we could just reach around the side of the Plexiglas box on the counter and take as many cookies as we wanted. Probably, if Quills were there, he would do that, just to see what happened. Hannah insisted that Devon-or-Evan worked on Saturdays. She’d even called and checked.

  But the person who finally came out of the back room was a girl with a name tag on that said Sam. She wore her hair slicked back in a high ponytail and an irritated expression. Her expression was so irritated it put Hannah off from asking if Devon-or-Evan was even working.

  Julia and I ordered a slice of cheese pizza and a Pepsi. Hannah wanted a hot dog and was stuck waiting while Ponytail Girl steamed one up for her. Julia and I went to nab a table before they were all taken.

  The huge wave pool had been turned off, like they always do between open swim sessions, so the lifeguards can check to see whether there were any dead bodies drifting around the bottom, or to see if any little kids may have pooped.

  “So who do you think will get elected Rose Festival Queen?” asked Julia, taking a sip of her drink. I’d forgotten that Julia’s sister, Alison, was also on the Rose Festival Court.

  “No clue,” I said.

  “Probably not your poor cousin. I feel so sorry for her!”

  “It turned out to be no big deal,” I said. They had the worst cheese pizza here, greasy roof-of-the-mouth burning cheese on cardboard.

  “You mean they’re going to give Jordan the High-tower Scholarship after all? Alison said the committee or whoever decided to give it to Zoe McBride. Do you know Zoe? Her little sister is in my tae kwon do class.”

  “What are you talking about?” I tried to take a bite, but dropped the cardboard wedge back on the plate.

  “You didn’t hear?” said Julia. “Alison said the people who give out the Hightower did a background check on Jordan or something and found out she’d been picked up by the cops. So they took it away and gave it to the second girl in line. Zoe.”

  The Hightower Scholarship was a big famous scholarship awarded every year to one senior girl in the state to go to the college of her choice. She could go anywhere in the country, and she got a full ride. The girl was always a fine young woman who got straight A’s and excelled in a sport. It was a huge deal. I know about it because Morgan’s girlfriend got it a couple years ago, decided to go to Brown over on the other side of the country, and kicked Morgan to the curb before she even got moved into the dorm. Or that’s Morgan’s heartbroken version anyway. I knew Jordan was going to go to Stanford. Or wasn’t going, if what Julia said was true. Jordan’s dad had departed the scene when Jordan was little, and her mom, my aunt Susie, had two jobs. I doubted Jordan would be able to go to college without the Hightower.

  “But that’s so unfair. Jordan didn’t even do anything. The arrest was a mistake.” I wasn’t going to tell Julia that the thought had crossed my mind that my favorite cousin might be a teen murderer.

  “They probably don’t even like that it looks as if she’s done something wrong. There are tons of other girls who applied for the scholarship who didn’t get arrested, by mistake or not by mistake. Know what I mean?” said Julia.

  “I was there. The cop took her in, but it was someone else who’d been arrested and gave them Jordan’s name.” I explained how identity theft worked, but I could tell Julia wasn’t listening. I saw how it was with people. In sixth grade we learned that in a court of law you’re innocent until proven guilty. But in the minds of everyday people, just having had the bad luck to be mistakenly arrested made you guilty of something. It was so unfair.

  “So what’s with you today?” asked Julia out of the blue.

  “With me? I don’t know. This pizza sucks.” I’d taken off my hoodie and jeans and piled them on an empty chair. This stupid Speedo wasn’t too bad. I still had my purple high tops on, since walking around barefoot at this place was a sure recipe for athlete’s foot.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “You seem different.”

  “I was electrocuted at Mark Clark’s art opening on Thursday night,” I said.

  “I thought people, like, died from being electrocuted,” she said.

  “Yeah, I say electrocuted, bu
t I mean electric shock. I was shocked, that’s all.”

  “Well, yeah, it would be shocking,” said Julia, then laughed at her own joke.

  Then Hannah showed up with her hot dog, took my clothes off the empty chair, and dropped them on the floor.

  “That’s really kind of a hideous bathing suit,” she said to me. “As your friend, I’m just trying to be honest.”

  “Yeah? As your friend I’m telling you that’s pretty crappy, talking to a friend like that. Just being honest.” I pushed the leg of Hannah’s chair with my foot. “When did you get so mean?” I asked her, point-blank.

  Hannah giggled, as if I’d said something funny. Then she shrugged, ripped off a piece of the spongy hot dog bun, and stuck it in her mouth. “If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?”

  The Change Game was an old game we’ve played since forever. You say what physical feature you’d change and why. So, for example, I’d say, “I’d change my nose because it looks like a turnip.” Then you’d say what famous person’s nose you’d rather have instead. The game keeps going until you can’t find one thing left to change. It’s like Monopoly, though, because like Monopoly, the Change Game can go on and on. In all the years Hannah and I have played it, we’ve never run out of things we’d change about ourselves.

  Hannah started and said she’d change that little dip between her nose and her upper lip.

  “It’s called a philtrum,” I said.

  “Well, whatever,” said Hannah. What was her problem? Maybe she was irritated because Devon-or-Evan wasn’t around. “Maybe we should start with you, Minerva. Since you probably have bigger things you’d like to change than your philtrum.”

  Julia giggled. “I’ll go,” she said. “I’d change how my eyes are uneven. Have you noticed how one is higher than the other? I’m like, who’s that painter guy, Picasso. I’m like one of his paintings. Instead, I’d like eyes like Michelle Branch.”

  “She’s so over,” said Hannah.

  “But she still has gorgeous eyes,” argued Julia.

  Had this game always been so lame? And boring? Julia knew she had gorgeous eyes. Even Sister Patrice, the crabby nun with the huge ears who ran the computer lab at school and who thought we were all Satan’s spawn, remarked upon Julia’s beautiful eyes.

  I sighed. I saw the lifeguards retake their seats and put their whistles in their mouths, which meant they were about to turn the wave machine back on. I stood up. I wanted to check out an inner tube before they were all gone. There was already a long line in front of the equipment booth. Which to tell the truth I did not mind standing in. Suddenly, there was so much to think about. Was Jordan really going to lose the Hightower Scholarship because of this mix-up, or was Julia just “embellishing”—the word Mark Clark said meant dressing up the truth to the point where it was a lie? And what about poor Dwight? And now, poor Clyde Bishop, with his wilted lily hand, sitting in jail for Dwight’s murder? And wasn’t it all somehow related? I couldn’t help thinking it was. But how?

  I knew one thing for sure: If Jordan lost the Hightower she was sunk. She’d be stuck here in Portland doing I don’t know what. All college was expensive these days. Even I knew that.

  “What about you, Minerva?” said Julia.

  “What about me, what?” I said.

  “What’s the first thing you’d change about yourself?”

  “Uh …” My mind went blank. “I don’t know.”

  “If I was Minerva, I’d say my legs. How can they be both fat and skinny at the same time?” Hannah laughed.

  “Or my arms. They’re kind of gorillalike. My knuckles practically drag on the ground, have you noticed?” said Julia.

  “I think I’d change my hair. It’s really … thick … but kind of in a witchy way,” said Hannah, pulling her beautiful satiny hair up and out to the sides of her head.

  “What about those little blackheads on the end of her nose?” said Julia.

  “And what about the nose itself?” said Hannah. “What about the nostrils?”

  Now they were just picking anything. I could see that. It had become a game on top of the original game: Pick on Minerva Clark. Normally, I would have just sucked it up. But I could tell that what used to be considered normal in my life had changed.

  “What does this do for you, saying stuff like that? Make you feel more hot and gorgeous? It’s pathetic. All it does is shout out loud and clear how insecure you are.”

  Once again, Hannah giggled for no reason. Julia, who was about three degrees less cruel than Hannah, busied herself with taking the plastic lid off her Pepsi and poking at the ice with her straw.

  I stood up and bent over to search my jeans pocket for money for the inner tube. It must have been then that Hannah and Julia figured out that my red Speedo didn’t really fit me, that it was too long. I heard them whispering behind me, but I just ignored it. What could I do?

  I went to stand in the line in front of the equipment room. The line was long, snaking all the way past the lap pool. My face felt hot. I hated it when Hannah and Julia made fun of me, and they’d been doing it in their sneaky awful way since we were in first grade and I was about eight feet taller than everyone else. But underneath my hurt feelings was that weird calm feeling.

  If Mark Clark were there, he would try to tell me that Hannah and Julia were just jealous, but they weren’t. They were both hot and they knew it. But maybe they were jealous of something else: that I didn’t care about their game anymore.

  I finally reached the head of the line and laid my dollar on the counter outside the equipment room.

  “Sorry, we’re all out,” said the inner tube giver-outer. He turned sideways a little so I could see there was nothing left in the equipment room but a pile of broken lane markers and a few deflated tubes. At first I thought he was at least Morgan’s age, because he was at least as tall as Morgan, but I could tell he didn’t shave. He had that crunchy green-brown hair that swimmers get from too much chlorine and eyes as blue as a mountain lake. His name tag said Kevin.

  “Oh no!” I said. No inner tubes? I wanted so badly to float around in the wave pool, to have an excuse not to talk to Hannah and Julia.

  He looked down at me, his thick eyebrows pressed together. “Maybe there’s one back here that’s not so flat that I can pump up.”

  “I don’t mean to sound like some freak,” I said. “I was just counting on an inner tube. Floating around helps me think and stuff, you know?”

  “You have stuff to think about, do you?” Kevin had picked up one of the deflated black tubes and was feeling around the edge to see how bad the damage was.

  “Yeah, actually. I do.”

  Kevin dropped the inner tube and looked at me. I looked straight into those mountain-lake blue eyes. He smiled right at me. My brothers smile right at me all the time, but it wasn’t like this. Kevin didn’t have braces, but he had a retainer.

  As if from far away, a cell phone rang. Kevin reached into the pocket of his shorts and pulled out his phone. I noticed there were red flames on the faceplate. This could have been my cue to wander off, but I stood there like a meathead.

  “Yep … got it … yep … you got it …” He looked at me and rolled his eyes. “You’ll be here at six o’clock. All right. Good luck in your fight against evil, Toxic Avenger.” He snapped his phone shut. “It was my mom,” he said, although he didn’t have to.

  “Your mom fights evil?” I asked, laughing.

  “She thinks she does. She works at U.S. Bank in the fraud division.”

  I must have looked blank.

  “You know,” he continued, “catching people stealing debit cards and stuff.”

  “Like identity theft and stuff?”

  “Yeah, exactly like that.” Kevin grinned, surprised I knew what he was talking about. We looked at each other until I felt the old campfire start to burn in my cheeks. I guess that was one thing that hadn’t changed: the ability to get embarrassed when a hot boy looked me straight in
the eye.

  “It’s okay about the inner tube,” I said.

  “If someone turns one in early, I’ll set it aside for ya.”

  “Okay. Cool.”

  Suddenly, Hannah and Julia were standing on either side of me. It was so fun talking to Kevin I hadn’t been paying attention. I was surprised when Hannah cocked her head to one side and purred, “Hey, Kevin.”

  “We thought your name was Devon!” said Julia.

  “I did not,” said Hannah.

  “She wants to know why you haven’t called her,” said Julia.

  “Whatever,” said Hannah. I could tell she was embarrassed. Hannah made a face at Julia, and I thought it was because she wanted Julia to shut up.

  I looked at Kevin and he shrugged. It dawned on me then—d’oh!—that Kevin, my Kevin, was Hannah’s Devon-or-Evan. He’d obviously been moved from the snack counter to the equipment room.

  “Come on, Min, we want to apologize for making you feel bad,” said Hannah, her hand on my arm, guiding me away from Kevin and the equipment booth, and back past the pool deck to our table. I turned back to look at Kevin, but he was already talking to the kid who’d been in line behind me.

  “We really are sorry,” said Julia.

  About halfway back to the table Julia suddenly dropped her arm around my shoulder and Hannah slipped her arm around my waist, just above my hip. They shoved me between them a little, almost like they wanted to play London Bridge and they were doing the “take the key and lock her up” part.

  It happened in a heartbeat: Julia tugged me back against Hannah’s arm, and I felt them both grab the too loose sides of my too long Speedo, then yank up as hard as they could.

  I’d been ambushed and wedgied. And this was not just any wedgie, but the biggest wedgie in the history of the water park. No little kid shooting off the slide and hitting the water butt first had ever experienced a wedgie as big as this one. It was my extra long, too loose Speedo, all that extra fabric that allowed for maximum wedgification. I have brothers. I grew up giving and getting wedgies. This one was massive, a 10.0 on the wedgie scale.