The Encyclopedia of Me

by Karen Rivers

  Pip the Lips appeared not to hear the question. Or maybe he was just choosing not to answer. Which meant the answer was, “No! The black eye will not be edited out!”

  “Dread,” I said. “Dreaded, most dreadful, dreadest.”

  And I wasn’t just talking about the shoot, I was also talking about FB. And Kai. FB and Kai TOGETHER. Where did they go? What were they doing?

  I went inside. Something was making me dizzy. The sun or the breath holding or the pretending. Or maybe it was just something else. Something to do with a certain BFF whose initials were FBA.

  Probably not, though.

  See also Autism; BFF; Everybody Magazine; Haywire; Karma.

  Lurk

  A skateboarding word that means “looking around for really awesome places to skate that are not really meant to be skateboarding parks,” which I learned yesterday when Ruth called and said, “Hey, Tink, want to go lurk?”

  And I said, “Sure!”

  Except I had no idea what she meant, and so when I met her at the corner, I didn’t have my board. I looked like an idio, which was fine, because I’m used to looking like an idio. Ruth just laughed because she thought I’d forgotten and then went on to tell five different stories about how she has also forgotten really obvious things, such as to put on her shoes before school. Then she came back home with me so that I could get my board. I think she never once stopped talking, except when she did three cartwheels in a row on the sidewalk and finished with a round-off. She is a very flippy person.

  It actually used to be that I couldn’t decide if she was hilarious or just weird, but now that I know her better, I’m going to say “totally and completely hilair.”83 And I don’t care what FB says.

  We ended up at an empty swimming pool next to the old community center. It had a deep curve that was perfect for the swoop, in a dizzying-drop kind of way. We rolled back and forth for ages until finally an elderly woman, who I’m pretty sure was Mrs. O’Malley’s evil twin, came along and shouted, “I’m gonna call the cops on you rabble-rousers! You have no respect for community property!” As if the swimming pool, which was cracked and featured graffiti and ragweed, was going to be further damaged by our mad skillz.

  Another word for “lurk” is “going on a skafari,” which is really more awesome but didn’t fit alphabetically. I am nothing but devoted to the art of encyclopedia writing, so I had to fit it in here. You’re welcome.

  See also Boarding, Skate.

  Magazines

  A soon-to-be-antiquated glossy book produced monthly or weekly, consisting nearly wholly of ads and pictures of celebrities in their bathing suits kissing their boyfriends/girlfriends du jour while enjoying relaxing beach vacations that they are sharing with the 103 paparazzi who are photographing them for the magazines. Magazines will go the way of the dodo soon because everyone has the Internet and it is much quicker to get instant, up-to-the-minute celeb facts from the Web than it is to wait for someone to bother to print up something that you only have to recycle later.

  Now that I’ve been a part of the world’s worst, ugliest photo, I want nothing more to do with magazines. In fact, if I find out tomorrow that magazines are gone forever, I will celebrate with a small party where I invite all my friends and we drink Kool-Aid and eat white cupcakes with strawberries perched daintily on the top.

  And now I have one more reason to hate magazines, Everybody in particular, but I am sure they are all Purveyors of Evil, so I’m willing to lump them all in together in one giant, sweeping generalization of lameosity.

  One word: Interview.

  Here’s what happened:

  I was in the kitchen, blending up frozen hunks of organic strawberries, mangoes, and bananas for a smoothie,84 when Dad came into the room looking pretty pleased with himself. “Hi, Tink,” he said.

  “Hi,” I said. “What are you being all happy about? Tell me right now.”

  “I just finished the interview with the Everybody writer for the piece that’s going to go with the pictures,” he said. “It went really well. I think you’re going to love it. The reporter was so nice. I really felt like a celebrity. Isn’t that funny? Who would have thought. I’m right chuffed, actually.”

  “I highly doubt that I’ll like it,” I said.

  He went on like I’d said nothing. “Your mom did such a good job too. Oh, and the boys were stars! Really brilliant. You never know what they are going to say. Unpredictable sorts, as you know. But, man, I’m just . . .”

  “I guess they didn’t want to talk to me,” I said. I was pretending not to be hurt, but I was hurt. I WAS HURT! I am part of this family too! I said it out loud, “I AM PART OF THIS FAMILY TOO!” But he continued blithely on.

  “There wasn’t even a single outburst,” he said. “Seb was just right on about everything. Yes! Can’t believe it, Tink. So great.”

  Maybe I’d been struck mute in the night, I thought. But that couldn’t be, because I could definitely hear my own voice. “Horse,” I said. “Cow. Pig. Donkey.” Yep, I definitely heard myself, yet Dad was still oblivious. I contemplated this while noisily blending my drink to an absolutely perfect, iceless smoothosity.

  “We’ll have the picture proofs tomorrow,” he said.

  “Whatever,” I said. I poured him a glass of smoothie.

  “Thanks!” he said. I smiled at him as sweetly as possible and we drank our smoothies in companionable silence that I didn’t bother to fill, because there was clearly no point.

  “I can’t believe we’re going to be in Everybody,” he said wistfully. “Who would have thought it?”

  “Mmf,” I said.

  And now YOU are welcome to hate Everybody magazine — and all magazines — as much as I do.

  See also Celebrity; Everybody Magazine; Fame.

  Malg

  The opposite of glam. Also, glam backward. This word, “malg,” is not catching on as quickly as “glam,” although I predict that it is only a matter of time before it sweeps the nation.85

  See also Glam.

  Martin, Jenna (Mom)

  Dr. Jenna Martin is my mom. She is a doctor in real life, as you know, although she looks like someone who would play a doctor on TV, and not like an actual doctor, which really is grossly unfair, if you think about it. You should either BE a doctor or PLAY a doctor on TV, but it is a terrible gene-pool discrepancy if you get to do both. Mom is a massive success at everything she does, from arranging her hair on her head, to her career, to her mystifying ability to win every board game she ever plays. Mom has never NOT succeeded, and she cannot even begin to understand how someone could just be straight-up terrible at something, such as life or ballet.

  Most times, when I introduce people to my mom, they say to me, “Oh, are you adopted?” I wish this was a lie for dramatic effect, but it’s true. It has happened on at least seven different occasions. Luckily, I have a Patented Tink Aaron-Martin Stare down for just this occasion, which involves making half my face look unbelievably sad and the other half angry and scornful. When I say “half,” I mean a top/bottom split, obviously, as it would be impossible to split your face vertically and have two different facial expressions on it.

  Most of the time, I’m glad that Mom is my mom and not, say, FB’s mom, who is flaky and often forgets to cook supper and/or offer supportive, loving advice to FB about how to be a good BFF. Mom could stand to be a little less quick on the “YOU’RE GROUNDED” button, but mostly she’s OK. She is really, really, really amazing with Seb. Sometimes. I know Dad means well and tries his best, but Mom is really magical with him when he’s haywire. Seb is crazy about Mom. He’d do anything for her. He says she’s the only one who really gets him, and he’s probably right.

  I remember once I asked Mom if I was going to be autistic when I grew up, like Seb.

  She said, “No, Tink. Absolutely not.”

  That “No” made me feel fixed. Like she’d cured me with her “No”! I’d been worried, to tell you the truth. But she has a way of saying things that
made them seem like very obvious and true facts. So while she didn’t literally cure anything, because I didn’t need “curing,” she did, sort of, cure me anyway.

  Mom makes really good caramel popcorn and terrible lasagna. We don’t have lasagna very often, though, so it’s really no big deal. And we don’t have caramel popcorn as often as we should, if you ask me.

  See also Ballet; Grounded.

  Mega Mall

  Like a regular mall, only much, much, much bigger, sometimes containing more than one of the exact same store, and up to six separate Starbucks. Embarrassing bastions to consumerism and pretty pointless places to hang out, but everyone does anyway, because where else can you go and just BE without having to do some kind of activity that requires more energy than sitting down to a big Diet Coke and a plate of fries?

  I was in the Tree of Unknown Species, thinking about ­Freddie Blue Anderson and NOT thinking about Kai at all, even though I happened to be looking at his house at the time, when his mom pulled into the driveway, got out of her van, and proceeded to unload half the mall out of the back of it and into the front door.

  Back-to-school stuff, I thought, and my heart dropped all the way to the bottom of the tree and boinged back up again, nearly knocking me to the ground from the impact. And at that exact second, I came up with the most brilliant, if awful, plan in the world to patch up my poor, damaged friendship with Freddie Blue and get back-to-school clothes at the same time.

  The Mega Mall.

  It would be an ADVENTURE. And an ADVENTURE is all we would need to get back to being just regular Tink and FB, like we always had been, BFFs 4eva, etc. We would not let a boy come between us! Even if he was the only boy I might ever really, really like! Even if he did hang out with FB during my moment of fame! And even if FB still hadn’t told me what happened! It would all be perfect again!

  Instead of what we had now, which was just an awkward love triangle where two of the points didn’t even know they were part of the shape.

  I climbed down the tree and marched into the house, tripping over Hortense and knocking over those stupid encyclopedias, which always seemed to be in the way. I found the phone stuffed between the cushions of the Itchy Couch and I called Freddie Blue.

  “Hey,” she said. “What up, sister?”

  “Don’t talk like that,” I said. “It’s sort of racist. You are the wrong color to call me ‘sister.’”

  “Oh, don’t be so sensitive,” she said. “It’s boring. You are not the only nonwhite person in the world, you know.”

  “OK, OK,” I said. There was a silence.

  “I know, I know,” she said. “You are dying to ask me about Kai and what we did. Well, guess what? It’s a secret! My lips are sealed like an envelope.”

  “I don’t care what you did,” I lied.

  “Oh,” she said. “Are you sure?”

  “FB,” I said. “I’m sure.”

  “Well, sigh,” she said.

  “Look,” I said. “I have an idea! It’s for an adventure. We need an adventure, FB. We just do.”

  “I guess,” she said. “I’ve been bored, I have to tell you. Bored, bored, bored.”

  “Um,” I said. “OK. The idea is that we go to the mall and . . .”

  And I told her.

  My Big Idea.

  My Really Big and (in retrospect) Incredibly Stupid Idea.

  “Tink,” she said. “You are totally an awesome geni.”86

  I hung up and right away began to get ready to sneak out into the night. Except it wasn’t night, it was day. But “sneak out into the day” just doesn’t sound as good. And it wouldn’t even be sneaking. But again, “sneaking” sounds more exciting, no?

  It felt like sneaking, so it’s really the same thing. My heart was already pounding like crazy and I was dripping with flop-sweat, which is the sweat you have when you are about to do something that is quite likely to fail dramatically. But I didn’t care. It was awesome to be embarking on something with Freddie Blue. Like she and I were a team again! Like no boy was confusing everything! Like the old days.

  It was the perf plan. MY plan: We were going to — on ­purpose — get locked in the department store at the Mega Mall overnight. We’d be able to try on all the clothes and shoes and even sleep in the beds that are all made up in the furniture department, while watching the big-screen TVs. They sell food on one floor, so we wouldn’t go hungry. It was foolproof! We couldn’t possibly get caught.87

  We went to the mall at noon, for lunch. And to do our research, which mostly meant that we ate too much junk food and giggled. Even though I was desperate to ask her what happened with Kai, I didn’t. Because I didn’t really want to know, in case it wrecked this. I was seriously happy to be giggling with Freddie Blue. It felt right.

  It felt normal.

  Especially when she started to laugh when I tried to start a flash mob in the food court, and her Diet Coke came spraying out her nose, which hurt, so she started to cry, which was good — she said — because it stopped her from peeing in her pants.

  “Flash mob!” she whispered, and we started laughing again. She probably would have peed that time if I hadn’t suddenly heard a really familiar voice shouting, “ISADORA! WAIT UP!”

  Freddie Blue didn’t even turn around, because why would she? I think she’s forgotten it’s my name. But I turned around. My hands were insta-shaking. And there was Kai, waving like mad. He came over and he was all, “What are you girls doing?”

  I couldn’t look right at him. All I could think about was the ice cream shop and how one minute he was just standing there and the next minute, he was kissing me. KISSING ME. And then, next thing I knew, he was hanging out with Freddie Blue. All of a sudden, I wished I’d pressed her for details. Why didn’t I? I was desperate to know! Why didn’t she just TELL me? She knew I wanted to know! What kind of BFF was she?

  And now was he looking at her funny? Was he looking at her at ALL?

  He was mostly looking at me.

  I could feel myself starting to blush from my feet up. My tongue felt like it had been stung by a bee. “Oh,” I said. “You glbkr, we were just gjlkjw.”

  “Huh?” he said. “Are you OK, Is?”

  Is! No one had ever called me a nickname based on my actual name before. I felt swoony. I glanced at Freddie Blue, thinking I’d give her the OMG HE IS SO CUTE look, when I realized that she was blushing. And smiling in a way I haven’t seen her smile before. She bit her lip and flicked her hair back dramatically.

  “Hey,” I said, “what are you —”

  She interrupted, “We were looking for little clothes for Tink. Because she’s so . . . little. It’s hard to find cool stuff in kids’ sizes!”

  “Freddie Blue,” I started to say. But it didn’t come out. Instead, I think my mouth just hung open in a way that suggested I might be dying, accompanied by a wheezing sound. I coughed to cover it up.

  “Huh,” Kai said. “I just grabbed some new jeans. I had to take back a bunch of stuff my mom bought this morning that was so hid. Like, hideous. You know? Unless I wanted to go to school looking like a junior stockbroker. My mom has NO idea. What can you do?”

  He waved the bag in our faces and we were both so flustered that at the same time, we both said, “They’re nice!” even though obviously we couldn’t see them through the bag. I shot Freddie Blue my newly Patented Tink Aaron-Martin Stare of He Kissed Me First So I Have Dibs Even If You Tried To Steal Him When My Back Was Turned, which she didn’t interpret right.

  “You look weird,” she said. “Are you getting a headache, Tink? We should get you home. But then we can’t do our thing. That we’re going to do.” She looked at Kai and winked in a super-theatrical way.

  “What are you going to do?” he said.

  And before I could stop her, either with a look or by reaching up and clamping my hand over her big mouth, Freddie Blue had invited him to join us on our adventure, our TOP SECRET adventure, MY adventure.

  While she talked (and talke
d and talked), I couldn’t help but notice that she was taller than him. They just didn’t look right together. I didn’t think it made sense that he was her number one crush AT ALL.

  “I think that . . .” I started to say, but then I stopped. I didn’t know what I thought.

  “Is it OK if I come too?” Kai asked. “It has to be OK with Isadora,” he said firmly to Freddie Blue. “What do you say, Is?” He looked into my eyes and the cold bits of fear that were all around my heart melted instantly, like butter in the microwave.

  “Yeah.” I shrugged. “Sure. It will be . . . fun!” I was feeling something. Something I couldn’t really describe, mostly because I didn’t know what it was. Whatever the halfway point is between terrified and excited and confused and happy and upset and mad and giddy. I thought about how FB and I had each told our parents that we were sleeping over at each other’s house. The oldest trick in the book! And how my mom had said, “Good! Have fun, you deserve it. I know things have been hard for you.”

  She was being so nice. I felt bad about the lie. I really did. But it’s not like I could have told her the truth, even though I wished I could have.

  “We’re going to hide in the bathrooms,” said Freddie Blue. “Just before closing.”

  “I think they check the bathrooms, though,” said Kai. “I have a better idea.”

  Which is how we came to be hiding in the center of the round racks of sale clothes in the clearance section when the lights went off. We waited for what felt like seven hours, breathing in the horrible plastic smell of the awful material they use to make blouses88 for elderly women. It was SO quiet in there, the quiet was like a blanket blocking out all the air, making me feel like I couldn’t quite breathe. And I couldn’t move.

  Finally, I heard Freddie Blue pushing the clothes aside and tumbling onto the floor. “TINK!” she yelled. “KAI! COME OUT COME OUT WHEREVER YOU ARE! Hey, this is so great, we can play hide-and-seek and stuff.” She giggled.