Little Miss Strange

by Joanna Rose

  “Walk where?” I said.

  “Home,” Lady Jane said. “I’ll walk you home.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Can I get some more soup?”

  “And crackers,” JFK said. “She needs some more crackers.”

  MOUNTAIN VIEW Junior High School was down Ogden Street away from Colfax Street past Saint Therese Carmelite to Sixth Avenue. After Saint Therese Carmelite, Ogden Street wasn’t houses anymore. It was little apartment buildings with little sidewalks and names, like Mark Twain. The Mark Twain had a curvy sidewalk going to the front door and a black metal gate across the front door and perfectly round bushes on both sides. It said MARK TWAIN over the front door in thin silver letters, and it was the last place on Ogden Street before I had to turn onto Sixth Avenue.

  Sixth Avenue was no houses, and no apartment buildings, just all stores and bars and stuff. Poretti’s Pizza, Kwik Shop, Carl’s Cash and Loan, the Texaco station, and cars parked all along the side of the street, except at the bus stops, up Sixth Avenue, away from the mountains, away from downtown, toward Cheeseman Park, to Mountain View Junior High, which sat in its own parking lot, behind a fence.

  I waited for Elle at the gate of the fence. The first bell rang, and then the second bell rang, so I went in, across the parking lot, through the big doors, into all the crowds of kids, to my locker.

  Marcia Henson said, “Your boyfriend was here looking for you.”

  I said, “What boyfriend?”

  She said, “How many do you have?”

  “None,” I said. “I don’t have a boyfriend. Was it a Mexican kid?”

  Marcia Henson flipped her perfect straight hair back and looked at me, looked at my outfit like she didn’t like it much, looked at my hair like it was a mess.

  She said, “You go out with Mexicans?”

  “Well,” she said. “He wasn’t Mexican. He was a hippie, with blond hair. Long blond hair.”

  The third bell rang, which meant hurry up and get to first hour or else go to Miss Purcell’s office and explain why not and get a late excuse. Marcia Henson clicked away down the hall in her little shoes that were red suede shoes today, and red knee socks. The reds didn’t match very well.

  I went to first hour, Spanish. Señora Caswell spoke only in Spanish after the last bell, and we were only allowed to speak Spanish too. Señora Caswell wasn’t Mexican. She was kind of fat and had light brown hair and light blue eyes. She pronounced the words as beautiful as when Constanzia and Erico talked together, but slower. The Mexican kids weren’t allowed to take Spanish. They had to take French or German.

  Señora Caswell stood up in the front of the room and spoke in Spanish, and we had to answer in Spanish when she called on us. When Señora Caswell stood up there speaking in Spanish, her mouth fluttering the Rs, it was like listening to music that didn’t have words. When Señora Caswell called on me, it was like I hadn’t been listening at all.

  If I didn’t have Spanish first hour, I would skip more often, but I never wanted to miss Spanish class.

  At lunch I went to my locker and waited there for Elle. I saw her, finally. I saw her way down the hall, tugging down at her blue suede miniskirt, looking around at all the kids.

  “I waited for you this morning. You were late,” I said. “God. What is that? Is that a hickey?”

  Elle put her hand there, touching her neck. She smoothed the wide collar of her lacy white shirt with the big sleeves. Smoothed the wide collar open.

  “That’s gross,” I said. “Did Buddy do that?”

  She said, “He’s really far out. He’s a junior. He goes to Silver State High.”

  “A junior?” I said. “That’s like sixteen or seventeen.”

  “Seventeen,” Elle said.

  “You’re only twelve,” I said.

  “Almost thirteen,” she said.

  I kept looking away from the hickey, looking at it and looking away.

  She said, “Let’s go find Pete.”

  “No,” I said, “He hangs out with the ninth-grade boys by the gym.”

  “Come on,” she said.

  “No,” I said.

  “Why not?” she said. “I thought you liked him.”

  “Not like that,” I said. “Why don’t you button your collar or something?”

  John Fitzgerald Kennedy Karpinski came up to us then, sliding on his black hightops so that they squeaked, slid up to me and Elle and he said,

  “Hi. Hi, Lalena.”

  He looked at her neck.

  “Elle,” she said. “My name is Elle.”

  She pulled her wide lace collar up.

  “Oh, right, Elle,” he said. “Hi, Elle.”

  Elle said, “I’m going to go find Pete. I got to ask him something.”

  “Ask him what?” I said.

  Elle turned away and walked down the hall. Her lacy shirt was see-through, her bra straps showing through the lace. And her blue suede miniskirt, and her black tights, and her cowboy boots. Elle walking, down the hall by herself, lacy shirt, bra straps, and I didn’t want to be in school anymore today.

  I said, “Want to skip this afternoon?”

  “Who, me?” said John Fitzgerald Kennedy Karpinski.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, you. JFK.”

  “And do what?” he said.

  He looked around, at the kids around us, kids at their lockers, walking by.

  He said, “Want to go get high?”

  “I don’t have anything to get high on,” I said.

  JFK leaned close to me and whispered.

  He said, “I do. I pinched some from Lulu Bell’s stash.”

  I watched Elle all the way down the hallway. She never turned around, kept walking, around the corner toward the stairs down to the gym.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s go. We have to go out the door by the science lab, where the back driveway is.”

  “I’ll meet you there,” JFK said. “I just have to go by my locker.”

  We walked back to Seventh Avenue, and then up toward Cheeseman Park. Bright sun, cold wind, black crusty snow along the edges of the street. My fingers ached. My face ached. My insides ached.

  JFK said, “So, how do you get an absence excuse?”

  “Just write one,” I said. “And sign your mom’s name.”

  “Can’t they tell?” he said.

  “You have to disguise your handwriting,” I said. “And then, if you ever really do get sick, and she writes you a note, just redo the note yourself so the handwriting matches. That’s all.”

  “Far out,” he said. “So, can you roll a joint?”

  “No,” I said. “I never tried.”

  “I’ve tried,” he said, “Can’t. We need a pipe.”

  “Let’s go over to Colfax,” I said. “Mystic Trends Smoke Shop and Incense Emporium.”

  “Oh, yeah?” he said. “You mean buy one?”

  “How do you usually do it?” I said.

  “Toilet paper roll,” he said. “You know, the cardboard? And tin foil.”

  Well,” I said. “It would be a lot easier to go buy a pipe than to go buy toilet paper and unroll it all.”

  We turned back toward Colfax.

  JFK said, “Do you skip a lot?”

  “No,” I said. “Not too much.”

  “What do you usually do?” he said.

  “Nothing,” I said. “I usually just do nothing.”

  “Just walk around?” he said, bouncing along next to me.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Just walk around. And not talk.”

  “Oh,” he said.

  Bells jingled on the door of Mystic Trends Smoke Shop and Incense Emporium, rows of brass bells on a curly wire hanger. JFK pushed the door shut behind us and stood there, looking at the gold bells, running his hand over them, jingling them.

  “India temple bells,” the guy behind the counter said.

  He had long blond hair and a long blond mustache and a blond beard. He looked like the picture of Nathaniel Hawthorne.

  “Wha
t’s happening?” he said.

  “A pipe,” JFK said.

  “For a present,” I said. “For my father. It’s his birthday.”

  “In the glass case here,” the guy said, looking down at the counter he was leaning on.

  The glass case was three shelves of all pipes sitting on red velvet cloth. The pipes were lined up by size, and by what kind of pipe, and the light in the case made the pipes glitter.

  “Bongs and water pipes back here,” the guy said. The shelf behind the counter was all the tall pipes.

  JFK whispered to me.

  He said, “How much money do you have?”

  “Four dollars,” I said. “And about eighty cents.”

  “I have a ten-dollar bill,” he said.

  The cheapest pipes were little metal pipes, made of pipe parts from under the sink. Pipe pipes. Two dollars ninety-five cents. Then there were little wooden pipes, smooth and polished, small enough to go in a pocket. One of the wooden pipes had a tiny lid that went over the hole. Four dollars fifty cents. The pipes on the second shelf were fancier, wooden, carved with flowers and leaves. One had a face, and a big open mouth where the marijuana went in. One was a laughing elephant. Eight dollars for the elephant. The bottom shelf had the most beautiful pipes. They were white like china, with India designs painted on in thin lines of color. Twelve dollars.

  “The little one with the lid,” I said.

  The guy took the little wooden pipe with the lid out of the case and handed it to me. It was smooth red wood, and a tiny gold screw held the lid in place. I pushed the lid aside with my finger, pushed it back over the little hole.

  “I think he’d like this one,” I said, loud to JFK, nodding my head. I set the pipe on the counter.

  “Yes,” JFK said in a loud fakey voice, worst liar I ever heard. “I think your dad would like this one.”

  “And a screen?” the guy said.

  “A screen?” I said.

  “Yes, please,” JFK said.

  The guy put a tiny round gold screen on the counter next to the pipe.

  “One free screen with each purchase,” the guy said.

  JFK said, “Why, thank you, sir.”

  Outside, JFK said, “Where should we go?”

  “Cheeseman Park?” I said.

  “Where?” he said. “Where in Cheeseman Park?”

  “The pavilion?” I said. “We can get down out of the wind.”

  I put the little bag with the pipe and the screen into my inside jacket pocket and we walked up Colfax to the first corner.

  “Let’s get off Colfax,” JFK said. “What if my mom goes by? What if your dad goes by? Busted.”

  We walked toward Cheeseman Park, walking on Fourteenth Avenue, Thirteenth Avenue, over to Twelfth. The houses by Cheeseman Park were mansions, and I walked slow, looking through the trees and bushes, looking in to tall windows with big curtains and gates inside gates and long driveways. There were no cars parked along the street and no people walking on the sidewalk.

  We crossed the park, walking on frozen brown grass, to the white pavilion on the far side. There was no one near the pavilion, no one playing Frisbee on the grass, no dogs running around. Not one cloud in the blue sky, and the wind made all my skin hurt. JFK’s long hair blew around, and he took a stocking cap out of his coat pocket and pulled it down over his ears. The stocking cap was blue and red stripes. It looked dumb. It looked warm.

  The pavilion was a big slab of concrete with square pillars at the corners. In the summer there was music there sometimes, and people sat around on the grass. Now, it was just a big cold slab of concrete with peely white paint. We went to the far corner and sat down out of the wind. I took the bag out of my pocket and took out the pipe and the little gold screen.

  “What’s the screen for?” I said.

  “So the marijuana doesn’t get in your mouth,” he said. “Look.”

  He worked the gold screen down into the hole of the pipe. Then he took a piece of toilet paper out of his coat pocket, and unwrapped a tiny clump of marijuana.

  “A bud,” he said. “Acapulco gold.”

  “Acapulco gold?” I said.

  “Finest marijuana in Mexico,” he said.

  He slid the little lid across the hole.

  “Great pipe,” he said.

  He shook the pipe upside down with the lid closed.

  There was enough of the bud for each of us to get hits three times, then it was gone. JFK shook the black clump of ash out and closed the pipe’s little lid. He put the pipe in his coat pocket.

  The warm buzz settled in my chest, and I leaned back against the cold cement side of the pavilion. The cold sun turned warm on my face, and I closed my eyes for a long, long time.

  “Hey,” JFK’s voice came from far away.

  “Hey,” he said again.

  I opened my eyes, and he was right next to me.

  “What do you like to say?” he said. “Pot? Or grass? Or reefer? My mom says reefer.”

  “Marijuana,” I said. “Marijuana.”

  “That’s Spanish,” he said. “Mary Jane. It means Mary Jane. Some people even say that, Mary Jane.”

  “Maria,” I said. “Mary is Maria.”

  JFK said, “Maria Juana.”

  He said, “Does Lalena get high?”

  “Just shut up about Lalena,” I said.

  JFK said, “Sorry.”

  “Elle,” I said. “You’re supposed to say Elle.”

  I closed my eyes again. A dog barked far away. Elle was probably in fourth hour now. Elle had English class fourth hour. Mr. Massey. That other kid was in her English class, that other kid who was with Pete and Buddy. Yesterday. My mouth was so dry I couldn’t swallow.

  “Let’s go somewhere,” I said, getting up.

  JFK said, “Where?”

  “I don’t care,” I said. “Anywhere. But when we get there, you have to take off that hat.”

  “You don’t like my hat?” he said, looking up at me.

  JFK was skinny and pale skinned, and there were freckles on his nose, and his nose was runny. His eyes were light blue, and he squinted up at me.

  “Just kidding,” I said.

  He said, “My grandma made this hat for me. I got it for my birthday last year.”

  We walked back across the crunching frozen grass. The mountains were gray and white, flat against the sky, past the downtown buildings poking up, past the gold dome of the capitol building.

  “I like watching my grandma knit,” JFK said. “I like her hands. They’re like crepe paper. Crinkly, like crepe paper.”

  I said, “Do you know Constanzia? At Someone’s Beloved Threads?”

  “That old Mexican lady?” he said.

  I said, “Why is my mouth so dry?”

  “Cotton mouth,” he said. “It means you got high.”

  “Cotton mouth?” I said. “Cotton mouth is a snake.”

  JFK said, “Don’t say snake.”

  “Why not?” I said. “You said snake first. Cotton mouth.”

  “No no no,” he said, running ahead of me on the grass. “Don’t talk about snakes please please please.”

  “Okay,” I yelled. “I won’t. Wait up.”

  I ran to catch up to him, and he kept running, and we both ran all the way back across Cheeseman Park, the cold wind behind us, pushing behind us. We stopped running when we got back to the sidewalk, back to the mansions.

  “What you want to do now?” JFK said. “Where do you live?”

  “Ogden Street, by the Safeway store,” I said. “Where do you live?”

  “Clarkson Street,” he said. “I wish I lived here.”

  “This house?” I said, looking at the big white house, a big white house with black shutters, and a wide yard, and trees.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Or that house. Any of these houses. I wish we were rich.”

  I said, “What would you do if you were rich?”

  “Go to college,” he said. “I want to go to college to be a scientis
t.”

  “You said you wanted to be an astronaut,” I said. “You can still go to college if you’re not rich. You can get a scholarship if you’re smart.”

  “I’m smart,” he said.

  We got to Corona Street.

  “That’s where Elle used to live,” I said, pointing.

  JFK said, “You said shut up about Elle.”

  “Well, yeah,” I said. “Shut up about Elle.”

  “Why?” he said.

  “’Cause she’s my best friend,” I said. “What kind of a scientist?”

  “Huh?” he said.

  “What kind of a scientist?’ I said.

  “Biology, I guess,” he said. “Did you guys have a fight?”

  “Do you have Mr. Mitchell for biology?” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Fourth hour. Probably right now.”

  “Me too,” I said. “Second hour. We’re going to dissect worms, you know.”

  I said, “Worms are like snakes you know.”

  JFK took off running down the sidewalk.

  “No no no,” he yelled.

  “Snakes,” I yelled. “How can you be a biologist and not like snakes?”

  We got to the Safeway store, and JFK quit running. I caught up with him, breathing hard, big puffs of white breath.

  “Which house?” he said.

  I said, “The red one.”

  Blackbird was parked out front.

  “Jimmy Henry’s home,” I said.

  “How come you say Jimmy Henry” he said. “How come you don’t just say Dad? Or just Jimmy?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “He’s just Jimmy Henry. Do you always call your mom Mom?”

  “No,” he said. “Sometimes I say Lulu Bell. It cracks her up.”

  I sat down on the curb at the edge of the parking lot and looked at our house. Bluejays in the holly bushes. I looked down the street as far as Saint Therese Carmelite. My stomach felt empty.

  I said, “Remember when you used to pick your nose?”

  JFK said, “I never picked my nose.”

  “At Free School,” I said. “So no one would hold your hand.”

  “No, I didn’t,” he said.

  “Yes, you did,” I said.

  “No, I didn’t,” he said again. His voice was smaller.

  He said, “I don’t remember that.”

  He took his hat off and stuffed it into his pocket.

  He said, “Do you think it’s after two o’clock? My mom goes to work at two. We could go over my house.”