The Encyclopedia of Me

by Karen Rivers

  “Don’t pee,” I murmured. But for some reason, I still couldn’t move. I stood there in the dark with all the toxic-smelling clothes pressing around me like a horrible predator’s hug, and it occurred to me that I wouldn’t be able to leave the store now, no matter what. What if something were to happen? The doors were all locked and probably had an alarm on them. We were trapped!

  I started wigging out, trying to remember to breathe out through my mouth and in through my nose, when Kai stuck his head through the cushion of clothes.

  “BOO!” he shouted.

  “Ha-ha,” I said flatly. I was still trying to figure out the whole breathing thing. In, out. Out, in. Too much, not enough.

  I pushed the blouses aside and squeezed out, breathing deeply of air not polluted by plastic. I knocked some stuff onto the floor because I was hurrying. But picking things up gave me something to do, so I didn’t mind. All of a sudden I felt really self-conscious and shy and like my arms weren’t attached properly. I could feel Kai staring at me, and I sort of liked it and I also sort of didn’t.

  When I was done, we all stood there for a minute looking at each other like, “Wow, we did it!” After our eyes adjusted to the dark, it was really not so bad. The racks of clothes looked somehow smaller when there was no one else in the store. The exit sign glowed red. Everything was echoey and cave-like.

  “Wow,” said Kai. “This is . . . I wish I’d brought my board.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  “Oh, Tink,” Freddie Blue laughed. “You don’t have a board.”

  “I do, sort of,” I said. “I mean, I have Seb’s.”

  “You do?” She stared at me. In the low lights, her eyes looked sad, but I’m sure it was just an illusion. “I didn’t know that.” She shrugged and kind of shook like Hortense does when she gets out of the bath. Then she screamed, “Whooo! Yahoo!” and started jumping around.

  “Freddie Blue!” I said, like I could call her back to her normal self. She totally ignored me, and pulled a mannequin down and pretended to dance with it, all wild arms and legs.89 I wanted to tell her to shhh, but I couldn’t. I mean, she wouldn’t have listened.

  I looked at Kai. He looked . . . puzzled, I guess. He raised his eyebrows. I shrugged. “Woohoo!” I said halfheartedly, so it didn’t seem like Freddie Blue was as crazy as she was acting.

  “I don’t think . . .” he said. Then he shrugged.

  “What?” I said.

  “Nothing,” he said. He was standing so close to me, I could feel how warm his breath was. I shivered. He smelled like toothpaste and a bit like dryer lint, warm and dusty.

  I started to walk, just to be doing something. Freddie Blue danced exuberantly over to the shoe department, singing. She seemed to know exactly what she was doing. She went right through the swingy, employee-only doors and vanished into the back part where all the sizes are stacked.

  I couldn’t believe she did that. Kai and I silently sat down on chairs and waited. It was awkward but it also wasn’t. Somehow the silence fit, or maybe Freddie Blue was just being noisy enough for all of us. Finally, Kai blurted, “I saw you and Ruth at the old pool.”

  “You did?” I said. “Why didn’t you come and, um, lurk? That would have been OK.”

  “I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Look,” he said. “I’m kind of . . . feeling . . . bad about the whole ice cream thing? Because I . . . you seemed really mad or something? And so I just want to, like, say sorry right now, and I’m really sorry, Is. I am. I don’t want it to be, like, awkward.”

  It doesn’t sound sweet when I’m telling it now, but when he said it, it was all I could do to not run through the swingy door and report it all word for word to FB. Of course, she wouldn’t be happy for me now, would she? She might do something weird, or loud, or make it something dumb instead of something great. I sighed.

  “You’re still mad,” he said. “Great.”

  “No!” I said. “No, not mad. It’s OK. Really. Don’t even . . . it’s fine. I wasn’t mad. I mean, I was. But now I’m not.” I smiled, really smiled. “I’m not mad, Kai,” I said. “Awkward is the worst. Let’s not be awkward.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Cool, because I was going to ask you —”

  But I don’t know what he was going to ask because just then, Freddie Blue came leaping back through the swinging door, which flapped open and shut behind her like one giant hand, clapping. She had so many boxes in her arms, they were spilling out and falling on the floor.

  “Grab some!” she yelled. “Tink, help me!”

  I picked up a box of sparkly green sandals.

  “Oooh, aren’t those just to die?” she shrieked. “They look like mermaid shoes. So awesome.”

  “Mermaids don’t have feet,” I pointed out.

  She glared at me. “Give them back,” she said. “You’re just jealous that you didn’t find them first. I think they are glam to the max!”

  “Sorry,” I said. Even though I wasn’t.

  “They could, like, wear them on their hands maybe?” said Kai.

  “Not funny,” said Freddie Blue, shoving them onto her feet. She teetered around on them up and down an aisle. They looked completely ridic.

  “Glam,” I lied.

  “I love these sooooo much,” she said. “If they were a boy, I would totally make out with them. They make my ankles look so super skinny.”

  Kai bit his lip. I could tell he was trying not to laugh. I looked away. I knew if I looked at him, then it would be him and me having a joke at FB’s expense, and I couldn’t do that. She was my BFF, after all. Even if she was acting completely insane and annoying me to the max.

  The even dumber thing was that Freddie Blue was lying. Everything she was doing was a big, fat lie. She was not really having fun, I could tell. She was just pretending to have fun, like she was auditioning for a role in a movie as the zany, fun girl, only she was a terrible actress and the audience was getting uncomfortable and wanted to leave the theater. It was fake fun!

  I was not having fun either. I felt like I was trying to act normal, and by trying to be normal and be myself, I was acting like someone else entirely. I breathed in through my nose and out through my mouth, then reversed that because I’d forgotten which way around it was supposed to be to be calming. Either way, it wasn’t working at all. I was just getting more anxious.

  “I’m hungry,” said Kai. “Can we find some food or something?” He pretended to eat a shoe. I smiled, but Freddie fell on the ground laughing.

  I wondered if maybe she’d inhaled too many blouse fumes. Maybe she needed medical attention! She definitely needed some kind of attention. And a lot more than her share.

  Kai walked toward the food department. The store sadly lacked a café, but it did sell candy and whatnot. I waited until he was a bit ahead of us and I grabbed her arm. “Hey,” I whispered. “Calm down, OK? You seem a bit . . . crazy.”

  “CRAZY?” she repeated. “You think I seem crazy? I’m just having fun, Tink. You could try to have some too. This was your idea, remember? It isn’t an adventure if you just stare and look annoyed, you know. It’s just . . . dumb. And BORING.”

  “I . . .” I said. “Sorry.”

  “Boring is worse than anything,” Freddie Blue declared. “Boring is worse than dead.”

  Kai yelled, “Are you guys coming? I’m starving.”

  “OK, OK, keep your shirt on,” said FB, grabbing my hand. “Come on, Tink.”

  We climbed up a nonmoving escalator. It felt odd to use an escalator when it wasn’t working, like somehow time had stopped.

  “Hey, Isadora,” said Kai. “What’s your fave candy here?” He waved at the wall of candies. I stared at them. In the dark, they all looked the same.

  “Licorice,” I said finally, and he handed me a little bag of licorice jelly beans that he’d weighed on the scale.

  “Hey, Kai,” said Freddie Blue. “Did you know my real name is Frederique?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I figured, Freddie,”
he said. “Do you want me to grab you some stuff?”

  “Skittles, please,” said FB. She smiled. “You’re so cool, Kai, to grab those for me.”

  “Whatever.” He shrugged. “They’re right here.”

  He weighed them and then wrote down the weight on a little piece of paper and put it in his pocket, like he was doing something secret. The way he did it seemed like he didn’t want me to ask, so I didn’t, but I bet he was thinking exactly what I was thinking: If we wrote down how much we ate, we could pay for it tomorrow.

  Somehow. I wasn’t exactly sure how. But I smiled at him for real.

  I chewed on those jelly beans until I started to feel sick, which was almost right away. There was nothing to drink and I was parched. This adventure was turning out to be pretty icky.

  “Let’s go watch a movie or something,” Kai suggested. He was holding his stomach, so I guessed that he felt totally sick too. (He ate a bag of licorice allsorts, so I’m not surprised he felt sick. Those are the most disgusting candies in the universe.) Freddie Blue, on the other hand, seemed totally unaffected.

  “Aw,” she said. “That’s boring. I want to explore! Come on, it’s an adventure! We can watch movies at home.” She yawned with exaggerated boredom. “Borsk,” she said. “That’s my new word for boring,” she added. “Totes borsk.”

  “Oh,” said Kai. “But we aren’t at home.”

  “Exactly!” she said. “So we should explore. Right, Tink?”

  I shrugged. Personally, I was dying to watch a movie with Kai. And explore what? We were locked in the department store, sure, but we’d pretty much seen it all when it was open. There wasn’t much left to see.

  “I kind of want to watch a movie,” I ventured.

  “Ugh.” She rolled her eyes so hard they nearly stuck at the top of her sockets. “You two are lame.” She turned on her heel and flounced off. “Catch you lame lamers LAMER,” she shouted. “I mean, LATER.”

  I giggled. I knew she was mad. I should have cared, I guess. But it all seemed fake! Super extra fake with a side of fake! And I just wanted to sit next to Kai and see what happened next. We looked at each other and raised our eyebrows in a look that said, “Well?” and then I started to laugh for real, only it was sort of a mix of a laugh and a cry, but I don’t think he could tell. I’m pretty sure he thought I was just howling with laughter. I wiped my eyes.

  “Yeah,” he said, and scratched his head. “I don’t know.”

  We tiptoed over to electronics. It was so shadowy in there that “quiet” just seemed much more right than “loud and screaming.” Unfortunately, they hadn’t thoughtfully set up a couch or something in front of the TVs. I guess they didn’t want people resting there instead of shopping. We had to sit on the floor. Kai was pretty quick to figure out how to get the DVD player working, but the only movie we could find without breaking open a new one, which seemed a bit too much like stealing, if you ask me, was Finding Nemo.

  “I hate fish,” I whispered.

  “Why?” he whispered back.

  “Um,” I said. “Well. I don’t know. Because of their little mouths?”

  “Their little mouths?” he said. He frowned. “That makes no sense! The little ones don’t even have teeth! What are they going to do, like, nibble you to death?”

  I laughed. “I know!” I said. “It’s dumb. But sort of, yes! Nibble me to DEATH!”

  Then he laughed too. “Their little mouths!” he said again.

  “No!” I said. “Seriously, in Malaysia they have these foot bathtub things where you can pay to stick your feet in and the fish . . .” I could hardly finish the sentence. “The fish EAT the dead skin of your feet! Ack!”

  “The dead skin?” he repeated, wiggling his eyebrows at me.

  Then we were both laughing so hard that we flopped over, and somehow he was leaning on me. I could feel his heart beating against my shoulder. I froze for a second, then I sat up and put the movie in.

  In and out, I breathed. Out and in. Mouth, nose. Nose, mouth.

  As soon as the movie started, the funny feeling I’d been having all night crashed over me like a freak wave, the kind that sweeps innocent beachgoers out to sea, never to be seen again. Was he going to try to hold my hand? What if he did? What if he didn’t? What if Freddie Blue saw? What if she didn’t see? What if she still had a crush on Kai? I wanted to fast-forward to the moment just to see what was going to happen, and then rewind it back and do it again slowly and in a not-so-entirely-freaked-out-way.

  Not that anything was going to happen.

  He wasn’t going to kiss me or anything.

  Right?

  We watched quietly for a while. I was super-extra-not-comfortable, but I didn’t want to move. It was like moving would have drawn too much attention to me or something. I sat frozen in place while he moved around. He lay first on his front, then his back, then his side, then he sat up, then he lay down again. Both my legs went to sleep and started to tingle. I worried where Freddie Blue was.

  “I wonder if Freddie Blue . . .” I said. “I think we should maybe go and —”

  “Huh?” said Kai. “Hang on, I love this part.”

  I looked at the screen. The Dad fish was yelling at the Nemo fish, not because he was really mad, but because he was so happy he had found him. Kai sniffed.

  “Are you crying?” I said. “Seriously?”

  “No!” he said. “I just . . . no. I mean, I think it’s . . . he found his kid, that’s all. And he’s all, like, so happy to see him. You can tell how much he loves his kid, right? It’s just . . . what? Don’t look at me like that! I’m not crying!”

  “I’m sorry,” I started. But I didn’t know how to finish it. I felt kind of like an alien who had just landed here on Earth, and even though I spoke the language, I didn’t know how to put sentences together. I wanted to say something perfect, to make him feel better. “I like Ellen,” I said. “She’s funny.”

  “Yeah,” he said. He reached over, like he was going to hold my hand.

  But then.

  He suddenly sat bolt upright. I thought he must have heard something. “What?” I said.

  And he leaned right into my face. And he kissed me.

  “!” I said. Not that “!” is a word, but if it was, that’s what I would have said.

  Instead I said, “What’s with you and the kissing?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. He looked embarrassed. “I’m sorry.”

  “No!” I said. “Don’t be sorry! I like it! I mean, I like you! I mean —”

  But I didn’t have time to say anything else because at that exact moment we heard voices. Loud voices. Not just Freddie Blue, but someone else. And Freddie Blue sounded scared.

  My first thought was Gadzooks, it’s an ax murderer! But if it was an ax murderer, Freddie Blue wouldn’t be talking, and she was talking a lot. Kai and I looked at each other and I could tell that I was blushing all the way past the roots of my hair. I hoped he couldn’t see it. If I blushed any harder, I’d likely spontaneously combust. And that would be harder to hide.

  We didn’t move. I didn’t move because I couldn’t, due to the fact that my legs were asleep. And he didn’t move because he was scared. I could tell he was. I didn’t blame him, with parents like his. I’d be grounded, but it would be worse for him. His whole body curled inward and cringed.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  He shrugged. His face got a little tough and the voices got closer and closer. And the next thing we knew, a really bright flashlight was shining at us and a voice was saying, “You kids are in so much trouble.”

  “Uh-oh,” I said.

  Kai grabbed my hand, hard. I somehow got to my feet and so did he. I could see that Freddie Blue was crying like mad, but when I caught her eye, she winked at me so I knew it was all part of her act.90

  Why we hadn’t thought about security patrols, I had no idea. We aren’t dumb people! We are gifted! We go to Cortez! With the combined “gifted” thoughts of al
l three of us, you’d think we would have come up with “security guard patrols.” But apparently not.

  And then it was too late.

  As you’ve probably guessed, my mom and dad were not very happy to be woken up at midnight with the news that their daughter was at the police station, which is where they took us because they apparently had had a lot of trouble with kids sleeping in the store lately and they were going to make “an example” of us. I was super scared. Kai and I were both crying. Freddie Blue took a different approach91 and was saying things like, “My dad is a judge, he’ll get me off the charges!”

  I can only guess that no other major crimes were occurring and the police were borsk92 and needed something to do. After they brought us sodas, I felt less scared. Clearly they weren’t going to throw us into cells with hardened criminals and drunk college students. All they were going to do was call our parents.

  Oh, and also the store manager to see if the store wanted to press charges.

  Which, luckily for us, they didn’t.

  Dad got there first, before Kai’s parents and Freddie Blue’s. I waved to them as I left. I couldn’t do anything else. “Bye,” I whispered. Kai didn’t even answer. He was staring at his shoes.

  I felt terrible.

  Dad was furious. I knew that because he kept saying, “I am furious!” If I was going to pick better words for what he was, I’d choose “incandescent with rage.” Dad doesn’t usually get that mad, but his hands were shaking.

  “You are grounded, kid,” he said. “I can’t believe you would think that was a good idea. What a stupid, stupid thing to do.”

  “I’m sorry,” I muttered. Because I was sorry. I really was.

  “I can’t believe you’d be so irresponsible,” he continued. “And lie to us. And even think of doing something so silly to begin with. You are the Peacemaker in our family! Not the Troublemaker! There is a world of difference between the word ‘peace’ and the word ‘trouble,’ Tink! And who is that boy?”

  “Er, he lives next door,” I said. “He’s Kai. Kai is . . . just some kid.” Even saying that, I felt disloyal. He’s not just some kid! He might maybe be my boyfriend! I wished Mom had come to get me because I could have told her about Kai. She would have understood.