“My deepest apologies, Barnabas.” Turning away from him, I crawl to the decades-old game system that used to be my “biological” dad’s. I eject the cartridge, blow into it, and stick the game back inside. A gray screen appears before me. I pull the game out and blow inside it again with a little too much force, and spittle flies out all over it. I wipe it down with the edge of my t-shirt and push the game back in, only to get a gray screen again. “Ugh, come on!”
“Worry about it later. We have more important things to talk about,” Barnabas instructs.
I let out a loud sigh and give up, but I will definitely work on the game later. Sometimes my precious just needs to sleep for a little while.
When my eyes slide to Barnabas, I now notice his ugly black pants. I hold up a hand in front of my face and squeeze my eyes shut to make the hideousness go away. “Don’t tell me you went to freaking Hot Topic and bought those stupid, cliché, baggy, black pants with the crap that hangs off them for no reason.”
He gives me a huge smile and wiggles his eyebrows. “I did. They were on sale for seventy bucks.” Barnabas has your standard gothic look circa 2002, and it normally works for him, but I just can’t do those pants!
“Seventy dollars? I’ll give you eighty dollars to not wear those ever again.”
“Do you have eighty dollars?”
“No, but I’m sure one of my dads does and will give you the money.”
“Dominic said I looked goth chic, catalog material.” Dominic is my un-biological dad, and that does sound like something he would say. Alexander is my biological dad, and he would have probably told Barnabas the opposite.
“Anyway, so what do you want to talk about?” I ask, curiously tilting my eyes to the side and my head up at him.
His heavy, black-lined eyes meet mine. “I want you to help me bake a pie for the Piggy Palooza Festival.”
My eyes widen to the size of half-dollars, if that’s even possible. “Shut the front door! I wouldn’t step one foot at the Piggy Palooza Festival, even if you paid me five hundred dollars.”
Barnabas cocks his head to the side at me. “You would do it for a hundred dollars, don’t lie.” Damn. He’s right, but that’s not the point.
“I’ve told myself I would not go there again after what happened when we were younger, so I’m telling you right now, I will not go. But! I might help you make that pie.”
The Piggy Palooza Festival is a lame attempt to draw people in and celebrate all things pigs, while throwing in other activities and contests.
When I was nine, I participated in only one event at Piggy Palooza, and it was the butter carving station. Screw that butter … it had to have been rigged. I had the block in one hand and was ready to rock and roll with a knife in the other. All that butter did was skid and slide around, though, and the outcome was two pieces cut in half—one looked like a deformed whale with no tail, and the other had knife stab marks all over it from me getting angry. An artist’s dream I never want to revisit.
“You’re thinking about the butter days now, aren’t you?” he asks, reading my mind as if he’s psychic, which sometimes I think he is.
“You only won because the game was a scam.”
Barnabas slams his hand against his cheek and laughs loudly. “Eight years later, and you’re still complaining about that butter. You’ll still be saying it’s rigged when we’re seventy.”
If I live that long I will still complain about it. Barnabas knows me so well.
“Anyway,” he continues, “I need to bake the pie on Saturday. You want to head to the store with me to get the ingredients?” His face is practically begging me, even though I know he can make an awesome pie all by himself. Who would have thought a guy like this would love baking? Not to mention baking while listening to old school Madonna and Michael Jackson and performing a couple of their dance moves.
“Okay, let me get ready.” Getting ready involves me grabbing my favorite hat with a stitched-on picture of a Nintendo game controller on the front, and flipping it backward. It was so hard to find a hat that didn’t have a flat bill—I can’t stand those. Even those trucker hats that were in style way back are amazing compared to that crap, and that’s saying a lot.
I slip on my Converse sneakers, head out the door, and follow Barnabas down the stairs. The air is more humid now than when we got out of school earlier today, even with the wind blowing around my auburn hair. I try to push it away, but the ends keep on flying in my face.
“I’m already sweating,” Barnabas groans when he reaches the bottom of the stairs. The Texas heat is so ridiculous. If I could choose to bathe in snow for an entire year as an option to get away from the heat, I absolutely would.
The Wal-Mart is right down the street from the apartment, and despite the heat, we choose to walk instead of drive. It’s a habit we can’t seem to get past because we have been walking there since we were nine—right after I discovered the champion of the butter carving station lived in the same apartment complex as me. And, well, old habits are hard to break.
When we reach the Wal-Mart, we walk into the store like we own the place, because even if it may not be true, I feel like Barnabas and I are the two coolest people in our town—at our school—and at our local Wal-Mart. It may seem cocky, but we’re just that awesome, even if some people think we’re antisocial losers. We’re not that, though. We just like to keep away from the crowds and drama.
I bring my hands together in anticipation, since apparently shopping is going to be the highlight of the rest of our day. “Okay, where to first?”
He points both index fingers—nails painted black—ahead with his eyes on the prize. “Baking aisle first.”
I nod my head as we stride toward the baking aisle, walking past some already-made cookies with icing and sprinkles on them. I’m practically slobbering at the mouth when Barnabas lightly slaps my hands, because they were drifting on their own accord toward the desserts. “If you want iced cookies, all you have to do is ask. Ignore those despicable things, I can make better.”
My desire for the cookies simply vanishes because he’s absolutely right, his cookies are a thousand times better than what’s in front of me. “Today?” I ask, rubbing my hands together.
“Only if we can go to the Daddies for some fish,” he says as he waggles his eyebrows.
My nose crinkles at the thought of fish, but I say, “Fine.” Because I would die for those cookies.
We move away from the cookies, and I’m about to turn down the baking aisle, but suddenly halt and slowly back up, landing against Barnabas’s chest. When Barnabas tries to walk around me, I extend my arm out like a tollbooth arm to block him from continuing on.
“What’s the hold up?” He leans his head forward to peer around me and down the aisle. “Oh, I see what the holdup is. Does my Lia have a crush on Mr. Pretty?” Barnabas teases.
I would rather get lost in a black hole than be anywhere near that jackass. Kiev Jimenez. “Just look at him standing over there in his t-shirt and expensive jeans. I hate that pretentious jerkwad.”
“You do know my pants probably cost more than his did.” Barnabas taps the side of his pants in case I didn’t hear him.
“I don’t care. Pick another aisle, and then we’ll come back later.”
Barnabas does a weird hop forward, and I scurry past the aisle without looking down it again. I already have to see Kiev’s face in Government every single day during the week, and that’s more than enough. He always has a dumb answer for something—the know-it-all.
We grab the rest of the supplies Barnabas needs. When we get back to the baking aisle, Kiev is already gone. I forget about him after that.
“You know, next time we should use a shopping cart,” Barnabas says as we walk toward the checkout with our arms full of goods.
“Nah, we’re too cool for shopping carts.” I grin.
The checkout lanes are packed, and the two cashiers who are open are Slow or Slower. Slow is this young guy with ora
ngish hair pulled back in a ponytail who stares at each item like he’s thinking about buying each one—he probably is. And then there is Slower, who is a middle-aged lady that just hates life, or her job, or maybe both.
“Self-checkout it is,” I say mostly to myself, and head toward the empty stations.
After paying and exiting the store, we find that lugging the bags home isn’t too bad. It feels maybe a degree cooler than when we went into the store.
We quickly zigzag through the apartment complex, and I knock on the door to my dads’ apartment. We all live in The Woodwork apartment complex, which seems crazy to me with the price of rent being what it is—my mom complains about it all the time. What would make sense to me would be if my dads and my mom just bought houses next to each other somewhere else. As it is, my mom’s place is located in the front of the complex, while my dads’ apartment is in the back, and Barnabas’s home is somewhere in between.
My dad left my mom before I was a year old and told her he just needed something different, which was Dom. Needless to say from the story she has told me, she was pissed. She knew he was bisexual to begin with, so it shouldn’t have been a stretch for him to end up turning gay. He didn’t have an affair with Dom first, so maybe that’s why she gets along with Dad now.
Dad swings the door open, still in dress slacks and a button-up shirt from work, auburn hair slicked back. “Back already, peanut?” He looks at Barnabas, brown eyes amused. “Let me guess, you dragged her back because you wanted the fish.”
Barnabas pushes me gently through the door. “Mr. Abbie, you know me almost as well as your daughter.”
As soon as I walk through the door, I get a big whiff of the fishy odor, and it’s rough. I can handle the disgusting smell, but there’s no way I’m going to be touching the actual fish. No. Way.
“Grab a plate and help yourself,” Dad says to Barnabas.
I look around the room toward the TV to where Wheel of Fortune is just now starting. “Where’s Dom?”
“I’m right here.” Dom shoots out of the bedroom, slicked in sweat, and wearing a white muscle shirt and jogging pants, his bald head shining under the living room light.
“I was about to say … there’s no way you would miss Wheel of Fortune.” I take a seat on the brown leather couch, which makes a squishing sound.
“I had to start my workout routine a little later this evening, since I had to cook dinner,” Dom says. He’s been using the full weight set Dad had bought for himself—though Dad never touched it one single time. Somehow, it became Dom’s. And over the past year, he has gone from couch potato to man of steel.
He reaches over and gives me a sweaty hug.
“Gross.” I snort but don’t scoot away.
Looking over my shoulder, I see Barnabas putting Dom’s cow apron on while having a full-blown conversation with Dad.
“Eat first, Barnabas,” I call. “Don’t worry about the cookies.”
“You know I can multi-task. Fish and cookies,” he says as he lifts his fork with a piece of fish on it. I shake my head and turn back toward Pat and Vanna on Wheel of Fortune.
“Do you want me to make you something else to eat?” Dom asks me while turning his attention to the spinning wheel on the TV.
“No thanks. I made myself a sandwich when I got to Mom’s place.” A sandwich is a gift from heaven compared to fish from the darker place, and my sandwich was indeed heavenly.
“Okay, but just say the word, and I’ll head in the kitchen.” I know he would, too. Dom and Barnabas should start a business. Dom does the regular cooking, Barnabas does the baking, and I’ll be there to eat—unless it’s fish.
“Don’t worry, Barnabas has us covered with the cookies.”
Dom and I watch the rest of the show, and even though we’re both terrible at it, we love it.
“So, Barnabas says you’re thinking about going with him to Piggy Palooza?” Dad asks as he sits down on the other side of me.
Barnabas just grins at me widely, and I could kill him.
Chapter Three
Kiev + Horatio
Horatio. The character’s already taken. Tragedy. Run for your life! No, no, no, and hell, no. I’m panicking. Relax, Kiev, relax. Deep breaths.
Cole narrows his blue eyes at me, focusing. “You okay?”
I force an all-teeth smile. “No biggie.”
“That doesn't look like a ‘no-biggie.’” He points at my mouth. “Your grin is that of a person who just heard news of the horrible kind, Mr. Kiev Jimenez.”
I nod, holding my I-just-received-horrible-news grin.
He motions to my face. “Drop the smile—you’re scaring me.”
I do as he says. “Better?”
Cole folds his arms across his chest. “Aren’t you gonna ask why Horatio’s part is taken?”
“I’m good,” I lie—I’m disintegrating inside.
He rolls his eyes. “Mr. Butrow sent an email yesterday.”
“Who told you?” I ask.
“I heard it on the cornfield of gossip,” he says, looking at his fingernails.
“You’re shitting me.” I need to confirm it because Cole’s made this email joke numerous times. The sad truth is—I check my school email once a week at best.
To my horror, Cole moves his head up and down, expression as serious as it can be.
“I don’t get it,” I say. “Why would the teacher audition Horatio’s part before today’s audition?”
Cole shrugs. “My source said the information you’re seeking is in the electronic mail.”
I produce my phone and log in to my school email. Right there at the top, there’s an urgent message. It says that too many people signed up for Horatio’s part, so Mr. Butrow, the theater teacher, decided to audition the “interested parties” yesterday evening. I suspect he did it to discard people who ignore their school email, like me. I pocket my phone and stare at Cole, unable to utter a word.
After an excruciating minute, he grabs my upper arms and shakes me. “Say something—you’re scaring me.”
“Shit!” I shake my head. “Shit, shit, shit!”
“Excrement it is, Mr. Capital of Ukraine with a Mexican last name.”
“I studied Horatio’s lines.” I rub the back of my head. “What am I gonna do?”
He fishes his phone out of his backpack and checks it. “You still have five long minutes.”
“Help me think, dude.” It sounds like begging.
“Sure. So—” His eyes open wide.
“So, what?” I ask after a moment.
He points his chin at the entrance’s glass doors, and I look in that direction. The hot Latina from before strolls our way and even in this panicking state, her presence mandates a minute of silence.
She stops in front of us, books clutched against her chest. “Hi.” She gives us a two-finger wave.
The minute of silence continues.
She bobs her head, waist-length, jet-black hair falling to the side. “Cole…” She wrinkles her perfect nose. “I forgot your last name, sorry.” She frees one hand and offers it to me. “I’m Monica Serrano.”
I shake her hand like a businessman. “Nice meeting you, Monica. But I’m not—I mean, I’m Kiev Jimenez.”
“¿Hablas Español, Kiev?” she asks.
I consider saying no, but that would be denying my Mexican roots. “Nada más en la casa.” I say only at home.
“¡Yo también!” She giggles. “Me too.”
“Cool.” I jerk a thumb at Cole. “This is your guy—Cole Novotny.”
She squints at him.
He freezes for a minute until I elbow him.
“Yeah?” he says in a breathy voice.
She smiles at him. “Mr. Butrow wants to see you.” Her words take me by surprise, until I remember that Cole volunteered to help with the auditions. She extends a hand to him. “Come with me.”
He takes her hand and stands.
“Gusto en conocerte, Kiev,” she says before leaving.
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“Nice meeting you, too,” I reply.
And there they go, walking toward the school entrance. Cole opens the door for her, being all gentleman-like. But I know he’s checking out her legs and butt. As she goes through, he turns to me and fist pumps.
“Get her, Tiger,” I mouth.
He rubs his hands together before entering.
Good for him. Bad for me because I need to figure out a plan B. I should’ve memorized another character’s lines or something. I check the time again—one minute.
I am royally doomed.
Standing on wobbly legs, I drag my feet to the auditorium, where I wait several long minutes for all the candidates to sign up. Now that I’m the last to audition, I produce my phone and bring up Hamlet’s script.
“Excuse me,” says a guy behind me.
I step aside, and he rushes past me and signs his name. I glance around for more last-minute auditioners. None. I go through the script and try to figure out whose character’s lines I can memorize in whatever-time-it-takes for the others to audition. But only two crappy characters come to mind—Bernardo and Marcellus, the guards. I think hard and make an educated decision: I flip a coin.
Marcellus wins.
Each character has a signup sheet, so I find Marcellus’s and scribble my name. I’m number three in the auditioning order for his character. I enter the semi-dark auditorium. Potential candidates sit on the middle seating rows with their scripts or phones under their noses. A lanky blonde in a black dress stands on stage, reciting Ophelia’s lines.
For a strange reason, a girl with auburn hair pops in my head. No, not strange. That scowling girl shares this character’s name—Ophelia. Cole’s words come to mind, a hot girl hides under her baggy clothes.
Nah.
I shake that thought off and search for him and Monica. I can’t find them. Maybe they hit it off or something. I march down the aisle to a free seat.
Bacon Pie Page 2
