Kari

by Libba Bray

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said quickly. How would we get home? Change a pumpkin into a carriage? Connor could do anything, it seemed.

  When we were alone, I sat on my rock again, drawing in the dirt with a stick. Connor sat down next to me.

  “I don’t know how to tell you this, but I think Jared likes you.”

  I looked up quickly. Of course he liked me. We were best friends. “Get real.”

  “Calls ’em as I sees ’em.”

  Jared like me? No way. “First of all,” I said, “no. Second, no again. And third, Jared would have to be insane not to be into Dee. She’s much prettier than I am.”

  Connor turned the X-ray vision on me. “Why do you do that?”

  “Do what?” I poked at a big clump of dirt with my stick.

  “Put yourself down.”

  “I’m not putting myself down. I’m just…” Just what? I couldn’t finish that sentence.

  Connor leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. He kicked a little dirt at my stick. “Look, I’m a guy. I can tell when another guy likes a girl. And Jared definitely has it for you. I can’t blame him.”

  He couldn’t? Suddenly it didn’t matter if Connor was delusional about Jared. Connor liked me. He said so. Why didn’t I have my camera with me, recording this moment for posterity?

  Uncomfortable with the attention, I changed the subject. How retarded is that? “You know, this used to be the site of a makeshift graveyard during the Civil War. Some people say it’s haunted. Isn’t that interesting?”

  “Very.” Was it my imagination, or was he getting within kissing distance again? “Where’d you hear that?”

  “From my…” A lump rose unexpectedly in my throat. “Just a story I heard.”

  Connor tucked his finger under my chin and lifted it. His eyelashes were impossibly long. “You can say it, Kari. Your dad told you that story, didn’t he?”

  “Yes.” It was a whisper. “He told me a lot of stuff. I wish…I wish…” I couldn’t finish. Big, fat tears rolled down my face, and I let them.

  Connor didn’t say a word. He didn’t say he was sorry or try to make me feel better with that BS about my dad being in a better place now. I was vaguely aware of his jacket across my shoulders and his arms around mine.

  For a minute I forgot about trying to be perfectly in control, and I told him about my dad wanting to be a photographer, about how much I loved him and how I thought I heard his electric razor some mornings or smelled his aftershave in the street. I told him stuff I hadn’t said to anyone for four years. Not to Dee. Not even to Jared. Connor let it soak into him like needed rain.

  After my emotional binge and purge, we sat quietly by the tracks in the long grass. Another train whooshed by, making me feel sleepy with its clackety-clack sound. The whistle pierced the night and left a lonely feeling on the air. The sound seemed to linger and fade into singing. At least someone was singing, and not very well. I felt Connor’s jaw moving against the top of my head.

  “ ‘Gotta swing, Daddy-o, swing. Jump and jive. Gotta swing, Daddy-o, swing…’ ” It was a Robin’s Hoods’ tune. I turned around and could swear he blushed in the dark. “Yeah, I know. I suck. But I thought you could use a little comic relief.”

  A huge rush of hope fluttered around my rib cage. I didn’t think I could love him any more than I did at that moment. I was wrong. Connor took my hand and stood me up. To my surprise, he didn’t put the swerve on me. He took off his shoes.

  I swallowed hard and tried not to come off as nervous. I took off my shoes, too. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen. Next Connor put his left hand on my back by my waist and took my other hand in his. Then we started to sway. Left, right, left again as he hummed. He twirled me gently under his arm and said, “That’s it. Now go right.”

  We were dancing. It was as beautiful as any Hollywood movie. Connor let go for a second, and I stumbled a little on a small, sandy hill. Laughing, Connor grabbed my hand, twirled me out, then pulled me close, my face right up to his. We stood there for an eternity, barely moving.

  My mind kept asking the question, Is he going to kiss me? A tickly feeling started in my feet. Hey, some girls feel romance in their stomachs. I’m a foot girl. The tickle got more and more intense, almost a burning sensation.

  Wait a minute. It was a burning sensation. The sandy hill was swarming with fire ants, and so were our bare feet.

  “Yow!” Connor shouted, jumping about ten paces back. He hopped from foot to foot, trying to brush off the ants. I ran to the swimming hole and stuck my feet in. Connor followed. We looked like a couple of colorful waterbirds knee-deep in muddy water. So not the way I was picturing the end to my evening.

  “Kan,” Connor said after a minute.

  “Yeah?” I asked.

  “Strange things happen when you’re on the scene. Did you know that?”

  What did he expect? If you’re gonna date an Odd Dobbins, you’d better be ready to deal with the weirds.

  Chapter 10

  Let me just go on record as saying that on a scale of one to ten, the pain from fire ant bites rates about a twelve.

  Connor’s feet were so swollen and red, he could barely walk. He certainly wouldn’t be swinging for a while. I found a phone to call Mom at a closed gas station, and she had to cruise down in the Jesus mobile and cart us home.

  The whole way over to Connor’s house he held my hand, giving it a little squeeze every so often. I would have endured bites by poisonous snakes to get to experience that again.

  As I sat in the backseat with him, my hand in his, my feet swollen to twice their normal size, my heart danced in my chest. Connor had almost kissed me. He’d definitely meant to kiss me. And for the first time I felt sure that Nan was out of the picture and I was in. I couldn’t wait to step into my Sweet Sixteen arm in arm with Connor. With any luck, my feet would be back to normal by then.

  Mom and I helped Connor hobble up to his door. His mom must’ve seen us through the window because she flew to the door, looking freaked. “Honey, what happened?”

  “Long story, Mom. Have we gbt any calamine lotion handy?”

  “Sure,” she said. Not “I don’t know” or “Let’s use tincture of newt.” Just “sure,” like normal moms across the globe do. She had us sit in the living room while she went to get the icky pink stuff.

  If I thought the outside of Connor’s house was gorgeous, the inside was even better. The kind of house that has books neatly stacked on built-in shelves with room for the occasional vase or silver box. There was room to breathe. Connor’s mom returned with the calamine lotion and cotton balls.

  “Let me put down some paper before you do that.” Made sense. My mom would have dribbled it all over the carpet and left it there. I noticed that Mom’s hands were still painted with stars and moons, and I wanted to wish a pair of gloves on her.

  Connor dabbed the chalky goo on his feet and explained the whole fire ant story. He dabbed some on my feet, too, in a gesture that will go down in history as the most romantic use of calamine lotion. “…and then Mrs. Dobbins, here…”

  Connor’s mom looked at me strangely, then at Mom. “Marcia?”

  Mom smiled weakly, “Hi, Mary Beth. How are you?”

  Mom and Mrs. Reese knew each other? This was becoming what Dee would call “so Roswell.” Connor seemed surprised, too.

  “I’m sorry. I forgot to introduce y’all.”

  “I noticed,” Mrs. Reese said. “And this must be your daughter.”

  “Kari,” I said, offering my hand, which I hoped she realized wasn’t painted or otherwise adorned with weirdness.

  Mrs. Reese was smiling now. I could see where Connor got the killer pearlies. “Well, Marcia, I haven’t seen you since law school.”

  My mouth fell open. Okay, the revelation department was working overtime. My mom the gypsy moth had been in law school? I couldn’t wrap my mind around it.

  “When were you in law school?” I asked incredulously.

&n
bsp; Mom was adjusting and readjusting her many-layered skirt, a sure sign that she was tense. “Oh, in a former life.”

  “I’ll say,” Mrs. Reese continued. “I think I’ve got a picture of us at a freshman picnic for the public defender’s office. Hold on.” She pulled a leather-bound volume off the bookshelf and opened it to a five by seven. Three neat rows of law students smiled for the camera. A sign read Class of ’79. I did a quick scan and found my mom. She was sitting with her legs crossed at the ankles like a debutante. Her frizzy hair was pulled back into a neat ponytail. She was even wearing pearls.

  Connor said what I was thinking. “Wow. That’s you, Mrs. Dobbins?”

  My mom nodded. At that moment I was ashamed of her. And I felt awful about it. But why couldn’t she have stayed in law school with her pearls and her pressed jeans instead of turning into the crazy lady everyone felt sorry for? Including me.

  “Here’s to old times, huh?” Mrs. Reese put the photo album back where it belonged. On the shelf. Then she added, “I was sorry to hear about Henry. He was such a good man.”

  Connor cut in. “Mom, I’m inviting Kari to our barbecue next weekend.”

  “What a great idea. We’d love to have you, Kari. And Marcia. Why don’t you come? You could bring your mother. Is she still working with insects?”

  Mom stood up. “That’s awfully nice of you, Mary Beth. But you know, I’ve got this business now, and I never have a spare minute. Let me give you my card.”

  Please, God, let her be out of business cards. Let Mrs. Reese think she has a flower shop or a fruit stand. Anything but—

  “Marcia. Psychic, astrologer, and tarot adviser. No reading too small. No problem too big.” Mrs. Reese put the card in her pocket. It would end up in the trash later, I felt certain.

  We made our way to the front door. I kept my eyes on the floor, hot with embarrassment.

  Five blocks later my mom pulled the Jesus mobile into our familiar driveway and cut the engine. “Home again, home again, jiggety-jig. Oh, my, Theo forgot to put the trash out on the curb….” Mom was doing her patented avoid-the-subject routine.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were in law school?”

  “It didn’t seem important.”

  “Not important that you had a whole different life before?”

  Mom rolled down her car window and settled in for a talk. She leaned back against the door and let the wind whip her kooky hair back and forth. “Honey, I was a law student for exactly two years. That’s it. No big deal.” Ever notice that when people say, “No big deal,” it’s usually a really big deal?

  “Why’d you quit?”

  “Did you ever order a cheeseburger, bite into it, and suddenly realize you wanted fried chicken after all?” She was doing the Mom confusing thing again.

  “Mom. Don’t get all wu-wu Chinese fortune cookie on me, okay?”

  “What I’m trying to explain is that I discovered I didn’t want to be a lawyer. End of story. If I’d gone on to practice law, I would have been miserable. Some of us aren’t blessed by coming out of the womb knowing who we want to be, you know. We have to figure it out along the way.” A leaf floated through my window and onto my shirt. Mom brushed it off without thinking. “You have to march to your own kazoo.”

  “I think the phrase is ‘march to the sound of your own drummer.’ ”

  She laughed. “As long as you’re marching. Come on, let’s go inside.”

  I was still feeling mad at her. “Honestly, I don’t know how you and Daddy ever managed to stay together. Maybe if you’d been a lawyer, he wouldn’t have had to work so hard. He could have been a great photographer.” I wished I could have taken it back the minute it was out.

  Mom was wearing her hurt face. “Oh, Kari, honey.” She sighed. “Your dad…” She got quiet. A car passed by. She took my hands and stared at them, turning them over. Her hands glowed. The paint was neon. “Maybe you’re right. But maybe, just maybe, Daddy worked so hard at the office because he wasn’t brave enough to go after what he really wanted. Because maybe he’d find out he didn’t really have what it takes.”

  I pulled back my hands. “That’s not true. Daddy was supertalented.”

  Mom shrugged and fell back again. “He had a good eye for composition. He was certainly skilled. But to be a real artist, you need to capture people’s souls. I remember one time—”

  “I don’t want to hear any more about this, okay?” I hobbled out of the car on my swollen feet.

  Mom called after me, “Kari…please don’t be mad.” I knew she was sitting there, getting smaller and smaller behind me. But I felt like if I turned around, maybe I’d have to accept that she was telling me the truth.

  But it wasn’t true. I wouldn’t let it be. Starting right now, the Odd Dobbirises were about to have a change of fortune. And it would start with my party. My glorious, normal party. And my family was going to play their parts. So help me God.

  The next evening, once the dinner dishes were cleared away and piled in tipping towers by the sink, I sat everybody down at the kitchen table. An easel displayed the pie charts I’d spent most of the afternoon working on. There were two pie charts: one for party duty and one for dress code. I was leaving nothing to chance.

  “Okay, let’s recap. The party starts at eight. Food needs to be on the tables under the tent by seven-thirty, but not before.”

  “What if the dogs get to it?” Theo asked gleefully.

  “Thank you. That brings me to an important party night rule. No animals of any kind. No creepy crawlies. No Hefty. No George. They’ve all got to have a reptile/mammal slumber party somewhere else.”

  “I will not ship out my family!” Lila hissed. She was eating pistachios and letting the hulls fall to the floor. Lovely.

  “It’s just for the night, Lila. And it’s for their own safety. I don’t want anyone kidnapping George ’cause he’d make a cool pet.”

  Lila looked horrified. “So we’re agreed?” She nodded. “Mom, what time are Robin’s Hoods coming on?”

  Mom tapped her finger nervously against her upper lip; “Oh, I don’t know….”

  “Mom. You did hire them, didn’t you?”

  “I’ll do it first thing tomorrow. Last week Mercury was in retrograde and I couldn’t get a thing done. Tomorrow. I promise.”

  “Don’t get those swinging retards to play. Hire us,” Theo suggested. He looked around the room for support.

  “Yeah, right. Why don’t I wear a sign that reads I’m a Big Dork,” I snapped.

  “I thought you already wore one of those.”

  Mom intervened. “All right. Truce. Go on, honey.”

  “Since this is going to be on film, I’d like to spruce the place up a bit. I’ve got a chart here that details who cleans what and what gets stored in the basement for the time being,” I said, looking over at the stuffed deer head whose antlers were serving as a clothesline for Lila’s freshly washed girdles.

  Lila slammed her hand down on the table. “I will not have my home turned into a bourgeois training camp.”

  Mom cracked her knuckles nervously. “Mother…it’s just for the night,” she said in a little mouse voice.

  “Hmmmfph!” Lila sniffed. “I want everything back in place the next morning.”

  I carried on. “Let’s talk dress code. This is a dress-up party, and I’ve got some ideas for what to wear.” I pointed to my pie chart that listed clothing combos. “Theo: button-down shirt, nice pants or khakis. Mom: that peach dress you wore to the Nelsons’ wedding four years ago.” It was a little out of date but tasteful. A holdover from when Daddy was alive. “Isis. Whatever you wore for your class picture.”

  Isis raised an eyebrow. “I burned it.”

  “Well, then you’ll just have to wear something of mine. Lila…” Here came the hard part. Personally, I had never seen Lila in anything from this century. If I could just get her into something seminormal, it would do. “White shirt. Beige skirt. No wig.”

  Lila sto
od and threw her long, gecko-printed scarf over one shoulder. “I don’t do beige. Good night, Mussolini. I’m going to bed.”

  On Monday morning the sun rose on career day at Greenway High. Counselors from schools statewide set up tables in the cafeteria to tell us about careers in exciting worlds like data entry.

  Jared lived for career day. He went from table to table, signing up for info on everything from dental hygiene to selling insurance. While Dee was caught listening to a woman recruiting for flight attendants, Jared pulled me aside.

  “Long time, no call. Plays with Matches feels settler woman angry.”

  It was true that I hadn’t called him all day Sunday. I was still mad. “Nice stunt you pulled with the train.”

  Jared picked up a packet for design school. He leafed through it. “Mad about the train thing. Gee, I thought girls liked those wacky heroic gestures.”

  “Girls like heroic gestures, not moronic ones.”

  Jared looked kind of miserable.

  Dee walked up. “I think I could make a career out of going to career day. Sheesh. What’s that?” She pointed to the application for design school.

  “Nothing,” Jared said, then thought better of it. “Hey, Malloy, can you do me a favor? Can you keep this for me at your house? If my dad finds it in my room, he’ll ship me off to he-man school.”

  Dee cradled the form as if it were a newborn. “Sure. Your dad searches your room?”

  “The earring incident stimulated his military reflex. Now I get surprise searches to make sure I’m not hiding terrorists under the bed. Uh-oh, here comes trouble.”

  Jen Appleton and a gang of preppies were crossing the cafeteria. One of the kids had a boom box, which he plugged in.

  “Hit it!” Jen cried. A Britney Spears song strained the boom box’s tiny speakers. Jen and her friends had put their hair in pigtails like Ms. Spears herself. Now they were moving through some major dance steps and lip-synching. I realized they were doing the video. Thankfully, our principal, Mr. Jeter, pulled the plug on the act—literally.