Kari

by Libba Bray

  Jen Appleton intruded on my moment. As usual, she was three steps behind the conversation. “You know what I want to be when I grow up? An anchorwoman. Just like Kathie Lee Gifford. I could have my own talk show.” She was really mugging for the camera. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that getting close to the lens was so not Battering. Plus she had chocolate crumbs on her mouth. Every time I’d seen her, she’d been scarfing down another one of Isis’s cookies.

  “You know that ‘talk show’ means the guests talk and you listen, right?” John was grinning. He had a nice smile, I realized. Not as devastatingly wow as Connor’s, but sweet and sincere.

  Jen gave John a fiery glance. “Whatever.” She sat down next to me and whispered in my ear, “Kari, I thought you said there would be a casting director here.”

  She caught me off guard. In the corner Mr. Garland was taking notes. He gave me a small wave, which gave me a desperate idea. “Don’t look now,” I whispered back. “But check out the guy in the corner.” Well, it wasn’t technically lying. Of course, Jen looked right away.

  “Excuse me,” she said, straightening her hair and making a beeline for Mr. Garland. I hoped she would be her typical self and talk a lot so she wouldn’t find out who he really was.

  Relieved, I caught Connor’s eye and noticed Nan Tatum hovering in the hallway. She stalked off toward the backyard, but not before I registered how fantastic she looked. Sleek and sexy and ultracool. Not all geeky like me in my 1940s dress. I suddenly hated what I was wearing down to my pristine white socks. I was America’s dorkiest sweetheart. Nan was a screen goddess. I wondered if Connor had seen her, too.

  Before I could agonize too much longer, Scott the zoot suiter rushed me. Cheryl and Charlotte, his silent backup singers, were right behind him. He practically threw a yellow flyer at me.

  “I thought you were on the level.”

  “I am.” And while we’re at it, I added silently, what’s with the old movie dialogue? Annoying much?

  “Read the flyer.”

  Big, block letters announced a gig by Robin’s Hoods at Café Vortex on Saturday, May 12. As in tonight. My mind reeled. How could they possibly play a gig at Café Vortex and my party on the same night unless…I ran through the house, looking for my mom, and finally found her in the kitchen, doing a tarot reading for Dee, who was noticeably without Jared. I showed Mom the flyer.

  “Mom, please tell me this is a mistake. Please. I’m begging you.” Mom drummed the table with her fingers. That was all the confirmation I needed. “Oh my God. I’m dead. I’m, like, put a tag on my toe and roll me to the morgue, so dead.”

  “Honey, calm down,” Mom said in that let-me-kiss-your-boo-boo-and-make-it-better way. “They were already booked; I’m so sorry. But I hired another band that I hear is even better!”

  “Who?” I wailed. Loud feedback screeched through the sound system. A familiar voice boomed out.

  “Hellooooo, Greenway! Are you ready to rock? Give it up for Ina Goddah Nagilah!”

  The first screeching sounds of Ina Goddah Nagilah’s own anthem, “Fish Sticks Make Good Eatin’ ,” came blasting over the sound system. No wonder Theo had set it up. Mom had hired his band!

  This couldn’t be happening. My brain would not process such tragedy. Ever have one of those nightmares where you try to scream and nothing comes out? That’s how I felt standing on the back porch, watching seven scrawny seventh graders playing a hard-rock polka to a totally stunned sophomore class. The face of every sixteen-year-old wore the same dazed, disaster-movie expression. Clarinet in hand, Theo took the mike and began to sing in his achy-breaky voice.

  “Fish sticks make good eatin’ / That’s what the hair net ladies say / Wednesdays, you get mystery meat / Fridays, you get fish sticks on your tray….”

  Theo strutted and pranced like a cross between a rock star and a chicken. It wasn’t pretty. He came in on his clarinet solo while the drummer was still doing his solo. In fact, everyone in the band seemed to be trying to grab his fifteen minutes of fame at the same time. The result wasn’t so much a song but a train wreck with a beat.

  A few of the bandies in the crowd started cheering and yelling, “Sing it, brother!” A lot of kids were laughing and pointing. Some started drifting out to their cars, disappointed that Robin’s Hoods weren’t there.

  Dave Kimball sulked past me on his way out. “I thought this was a movie party.”

  “It is,” I practically screamed. “Forget about the band. Come on. I’ll interview you on camera.”

  “Ask me a bunch of boring, canned questions? Forget it. I’d rather watch Baywatch.”

  “They’re not boring questions!” I yelled desperately. Scanning the crowd, I searched anxiously for some way to stop the leakage of party goers and caught sight of Nan, looking smug and self-satisfied over my plight. It was the second time I’d been disgraced in front of her.

  Suddenly Jen Appleton doubled over and ran for the bathroom. “I’m gonna be sick!”

  “It’s not my fault!” Isis blurted out instantly, which meant that it was.

  “What did you do, Rachel?” I demanded, grabbing her arm. “You’ve got to tell me.”

  “It was fast a joke.” She put the snarl back in Her voice, but her eyes were scared.

  I yanked her into the kitchen. “What did you do?”

  She broke away. “Why do you have to be such a control freak all the time?” She was starting to cry.

  “I’m not a control freak….”

  “You are too! You’re all, Rachel, wear your hair this way. Rachel, why can’t you be like you used to be? And then you embarrassed me in front of my friends and sent them home that night.” She was morphing into the little girl she really still was.

  “Are you going to tell me what you did? Or should I get Mom?”

  She practically spat at me. “I baked a box of Ex-Lax into the cookies.”

  “You what?” I screamed.

  “Well, how was I supposed to know it could make you really sick? I thought it would just, you know, make you go a lot.”

  “Oh my God.” I put a hand over my eyes. “Come on,” I said, grabbing her by the arm again. When we got to the bathroom, Jen was lying on the bathroom floor, moaning and holding her stomach.

  “Man, it stinks in here,” Isis commented. I shushed her.

  “I think I’m dying,” wailed.

  I handed her some Pepto-Bismol. “You’re not dying. I promise.”

  “You and your freakazoid family tried to poison me. And that wasn’t a casting director—he was Vanessa Garland’s dad. He writes that cheesy Lifestyles column. You’re so full of it, Kari Dobbins. Ohhhh!”

  “Maybe if you hadn’t eaten half a dozen cookies by yourself, you wouldn’t be so sick. Did you ever think of that?” Isis chimed in.

  “I only had one!”

  Isis found her surly button again. For once I was glad. “You ate six while I was watching you. Do they kick you off drill team for that?”

  “Don’t you talk to me that way, you…you…vampire girl!” Jen’s face went a little pale. She put a hand on her stomach. “Oh no. Not again.” Isis and I took that as our exit cue. Isis burst into tears.

  “I didn’t mean to ruin your party, Kari. Honest. Please don’t hate me.” Tears rained down her face. Her wet cheeks still had some of their baby fat, I noticed. Without all that cakey makeup, she was small and round and clean as a Sears catalog doll.

  I was so mad, I wanted to give her the silent treatment till we were fifty. But I had to admit that I’d been pretty high-handed about her fiends; The whole night was so wild and mixed up that yelling at Isis wasn’t going to solve anything.

  I put my arm around her, and she let it stay. “It’s all right, Rach. It was a stupid prank. You have to tell Mom, though, so she can help out Jen, okay?” I sent her off to get Mom and wondered what I could do for damage control. What did directors do when a set went crazy? They shut down production. Not an option. I had to get Theo off the stage an
d get some real music on fast.

  The famous disappearing Mr. Jared Jameson poked his head in the screen door. “Uh, Karnage? Are you having die same bad dream I am?”

  “Yeah, and I can’t wake up.”

  Jared took pity on me. “Don’t worry. I think the worst is over.”

  Theo’s voice cracked and warbled through his microphone. “Ladies and germs, would you please join me for the Sweet Sixteen pledge of allegiance?”

  Sweet Sixteen pledge of allegiance? I didn’t know what it was, but it didn’t sound promising. A drumroll announced something big. I pushed through the screen door in time to see Theo and his band mates ripping off their shirts with rebel flair. KARI 16 was scrawled across their scrawny, hairless chests in Magic Marker, immortalizing my name and my disaster in one pure moment. Theo had Vowed revenge, and he was getting it. In living color.

  One of the guys from the wrestling team started catcalling. “Hey, girls, time to hit the weights!”

  That’s about the time I wished I’d lose consciousness. Ina Goddah Nagilah responded with a death wish. Theo pumped his arms and squatted like a sumo. “Hey, look! I’m on the wrestling team.” He laughed.

  Wrestler Boy wasn’t amused. “You better watch yourself if you know what’s good for you.”

  I knew I needed to do something. But I was paralyzed. Rooted to my patch of grass while my own brother set anarchy in motion.

  “Oooooh, Mommy, I’m scared of the big, bad, wrestling girlie man,” Theo whined. Then he launched into a full repertoire of gross grunting and pig noises. The whole band followed suit. Oinks and belches and high-pitched reet-reet-reets screeched over the PA.

  “Quick!” I shouted to Jared. “Turn off the mike and put the house music back on.” Good thought. About two seconds too late.

  Wrestler Boy let loose with a holler that, actually, sounded a lot like Theo’s imitation. “I’m gonna teach you some respect, boy.” He ran screaming up onstage, tackling Theo, who was just wiry enough to slip out of his meaty grasp.

  “Missed me, girl wonder!” Theo was overjoyed with himself till the rest of the wrestling team got in on it. With a collective war cry four enormous wrestlers jumped the stage. A look of total fear lit the faces of Theo and his band mates. They took off fast, knocking over the microphone and the drum set along the way. Everyone stood watching, slack jawed.

  “Come on,” I said to Jared. “Help me turn on the music.” We ran for the jumble of equipment at the back of the stage. A bloodcurdling scream erupted from somewhere in the yard. I looked up to see Theo’s drummer jumping out of what he had thought was a tool-shed. He’d tried to hide in Lila’s bat house.

  “Aaaaahhhhhhhhh!” He whooshed past like a bullet. I could hear a horrible screeching, and then they came.

  Mental note on recipe for disaster: Start with one out-of-control party. Add dozens of black, winged creatures rumored to be bloodsuckers. Mix well.

  The sky was thick with shrieking, flapping bats, swooping through the crowd. Kids started running pell-mell out of the backyard, bouncing off each other like some live-action pinball game.

  “Get them off me! Get them off me!” A girl was freaking near the amplifiers even though nothing was chasing her.

  “You’re okay. They’re not carnivorous!” I shouted through the din. She responded by falling on the ground and rolling over and over as if she were putting out a fire.

  I had to stop things from totally going nuts. I grabbed the mike. “It’s okay, everybody. Really. They’re more freaked out than you are, I promise.” I didn’t think that could possibly be true, but I had to act fast. Kids were climbing over each other to get inside.

  I think that’s when the dogs got out of the house. Our huge, lumbering mutts, who had the combined brainpower of an acorn squash, thought this was the best game they’d ever played. They chased everything that moved and barked up a storm. Of course, nobody else knew they were just sweet morons. Usually big dogs charging full speed ahead equals panic. Like we needed any more panic.

  I grabbed for Fric and fell to the ground. “Get over here, you mangy mutt. Fric! Fric, come! Now!”

  One of the swing girls, I think it was Charlotte, was headed straight for the lever that triggered Lila’s underground sprinkler system.

  Please. No. “Watch out!” I screamed, just as she tripped over it. The sprinkler came on full force. I had never seen so much water in my life. Everything was getting drenched, and with all those people running around the ground was turning into a muddy mess. Fric and Frac ran toward me with their filthy paws.

  “No! No! Down! Down!” I yelled, backing away from them, right into the food table. I watched helplessly as my beautiful three-layer cake toppled over and landed decoration side down. Frac lapped at the icing roses till there was muddy cake all over his nose.

  Tears filled my eyes as I bent down and picked up a section of cake like I could save it. HDAY RI, it read. Theo zoomed past, wearing a huge grin. The little jerk was enjoying my misery. Wrestler Boy was hot on his tail. Theo slipped in the mud and took a spectacular slide into what was left of the tent. Still cradling the cake lump in my hand, I waved a mental bye-bye to my deposit as the tent collapsed onto mud and food and dogs. Wrestler Boy made a dive for Theo and ended up taking out a couple of football players like they were bowling pins. The football players didn’t take kindly to being covered in mud.

  That’s how the food fight began. A raver grabbed the hunk of cake from my hand and bent his arm back catapult style. “Nooooo!” I shouted, making a dive for his arm. He lunged forward, throwing it, and I nearly fell face first into the mud. That was all it took. Hors d’oeuvres, corn on the cob, even chunks of watermelon zipped through the air, landing with splats and poofs on taffeta dresses ant brand-new khakis. A BBQ short rib smacked Dee in the face. After a stunned minute she grabbed a handful of slobbery cake and hurled it at Jen Appleton, who’d hobbled outside. Jen burst into angry sobs and threatened to kill Dee, which was kind of like threatening bodily harm to a Disney animal.

  It was too much. My mind couldn’t take it. It was floating numbly, about ten feet above my body and the total bedlam surrounding me.

  “Stay away from my bats, you bourgeois hooligans!” Lila was running through the muck in her nightgown, wielding our kitchen broom like a machete. Somehow it wasn’t the time to point out that bourgeois and hooligans were a contradiction in terms. Honestly, if I lived to be 112 years old, I’d never get over the sight of Lila storming the crowd in her purple polyester shortie. A few kids stopped throwing food to laugh and point.

  I wanted to die.

  A siren pierced the chaos. Make that sirens, plural. Someone had called the cops. Ten of Greenway’s finest were taking in the scene and scratching their heads, trying to figure out whom to arrest first. They settled on Lila. I was torn between wanting to be a good granddaughter and come to Lila’s aid and pretending I’d never seen her before in my life.

  Good won out. “Excuse me,” I said to a blond officer “She didn’t do anything. She’s just a little wacky, that’s all.”

  Lila started cursing a blue streak, which further humiliated me. The blond cop kept writing something on a clipboard. “You can make a statement if you like, miss. But she’s disturbing the peace. We have to take her in.”

  There wasn’t any peace to disturb. There never had been any at our house. “You don’t understand. It’s my fault. I wanted to have a party and…”

  Another cop yelled, “Bob—give me a hand, will ya?” Bob went to join his friend, who was trying to restrain Lila. It took two of them to carry her to a Waiting cruiser. The police were pulling kids apart and hauling the really rowdy ones off to a paddy wagon parked in the driveway. Theo marched past in custody. He was caked in mud and bits of food. I ran after him.

  “Theo! Where do you think you’re going?” Okay. It was a pretty stupid question, but my brain wasn’t functioning at all anymore.

  Theo was having the time of his life. “Whoo-hoo!” h
e shouted to no one in particular. “I’m gonna do some time!”

  “Only till we find your mom, son,” said one of the officers in a tired voice.

  A policeman paraded Jen down the driveway. “But Officer,” she wailed, “I’m, like, a total victim here.”

  “We’ll sort it all out at the station when you’ve had a chance to calm down, miss,” he answered. I didn’t think I could handle another face-to-face with Jen Appleton that evening. I tried to sneak away and hide behind a parked car, but I wasn’t fast enough. Jen pointed at me and screamed in hysteria.

  “You! Kari Dobbins! You’re a big, fat liar and a loser. You are so through at this school, it’s not even funny!” I wasn’t laughing. The cop pulled her gently along. Jen let out a final whimper. “These were my very favorite shoes!”

  A flash went off arid made me jump. When my eyes re-focused, I saw the Gazette photographer snapping away. Oh my God. Air. Garland was trying to get quotes from the police officers. I ran to stop him and fell over Fric and Frac right into a big, muddy grass puddle.

  I looked down. The dress I had imagined dancing in all night long was now a vintage mess. “Air. Garland,” I called from my spot in the mud, “what are you doing?” Stupid questions were flying out of my mouth at an astonishing speed.

  “I’m filing the best story to hit Greenway in ten years,” he answered. He was nearly out of breath.

  “Please, Mr. Garland,” I begged, running after him and pulling bits of grass out of my wrecked hairdo. “You can’t publish this story. Please don’t.”

  “Sorry, Kari. I report the truth. You’re a documentary filmmaker. You should know all about that. Excuse me, Officer…”

  Okay. Technically he was right. But what was the: good of making movies if you couldn’t turn the lens on life and make it seem better than it was? If you couldn’t make yourself into the girl everybody wanted to know instead of Odd Kari Dobbins, big-nosed geek?