Rebel McKenzie

by Candice Ransom

  “How perfectly disgusting,” Bambi said, sounding like she was forty-five.

  Rudy gazed at her, his eyes wide with puppy love. “You and me are together, ain’t we?”

  “Don’t say ‘ain’t,’ and we happen to be on the same sidewalk, that’s all,” Bambi said.

  The lot beside the fire station looked like somebody had been playing with giant Tinkertoys. Half-built rides rose from the trampled grass. Burly guys attached cars to the Tornado and Octopus. Merry-go-round horses waited to be fastened to the platform. Men yelled as a crane hoisted metal cages on a long silver tube.

  “That’s the Zipper,” I said. “I’m gonna ride it first tomorrow. See, that middle piece goes around like a Ferris wheel and the cage things flip over and over. If you stand up—which you’re not supposed to do—you can make the cage flip even when it’s not moving.”

  “We won’t have time for rides tomorrow,” Bambi pointed out. “Unless you’re dropping out of the pageant?” She arched one eyebrow at me.

  “In your dreams. The pageant doesn’t last all day. After you lose, me and Lacey Jane are gonna hit the rides.”

  “In your dreams if you think I’ll lose.” Bambi looked down at Rudy. “You want me to win, don’t you?”

  Rudy didn’t say a word. It was obvious his loyalty to me and Lacey Jane clashed with his love for Bambi.

  Between the rides, colorful tents and stands advertised funnel cakes, pizza, kettle corn, and snow cones. My mouth watered. Junk-food heaven!

  Then I spotted a red-and-yellow wagon with a sign that screamed, fried oreos! fried twinkies! ask about the fried surprise!

  “Hey, kid!” The guy behind the counter saw me staring. “Wanna try my latest creation?”

  I sidled up to the serving window. “I don’t have any money.” (This was becoming my summer anthem. I should have it set to music and sing it everywhere I went: “I don’t have any mo-ney!” )

  “Since I’m cranking up the fat anyway, it’ll be on the house,” he said. Snake tattoos seemed to crawl up his thick forearms.

  “What’s the Fried Surprise?” Lacey Jane asked.

  Snake Arms leaned forward. “My own invention. Even better than the Oreos and Twinkies. Fried MoonPies!”

  “Ewww,” said Bambi.

  I thought it sounded good, but if I played my cards right, I’d get more than one free sample.

  “Well,” I drawled, “I’ve never had a fried Oreo or a fried Twinkie. I should try them first. You know, for comparison.”

  “Gotcha.”

  We hung over the edge of the counter, feet dangling, as we watched him open a pack of Oreos and roll six dark cookies in a sticky batter. He unwrapped a package of Twinkies and dipped one of the cakes in the same batter. Then he dropped the coated cookies and Twinkie in a vat of bubbling oil the size of a hog trough.

  “Gross!” Bambi remarked. “All that grease is bad for your skin. It’s bad for everything!”

  “Bambi, don’t be such a wet blanket,” I said.

  After a few minutes, Snake Arms fished the cookies and Twinkie out of the vat. He drained them quicker than a blink on paper towels, then tossed them in a bowl of powdered sugar.

  Dumping the fried goodies in a red-and-white-checked paper basket, he handed it through the window to me. “Bone appetite. Let ’em cool a tad.”

  The soft, pillowy Oreos called to me. I picked one up, scorching my fingers, and bit down with a yelp. Boiling hot chocolate oozed from the doughy center.

  “He told you to let them cool,” Bambi said.

  I stuffed the rest of the Oreo in my mouth just to show her I was no sissy. Lacey Jane and Rudy each took a bite. I polished off the other five cookies, then tackled the fried Twinkie. It didn’t taste as great as it sounded.

  Snake Arms pushed another checked paper basket across the counter. “Try my Fried MoonPie. It’ll put hair on your chest!”

  Rudy giggled. “Girls don’t have hairy chests!”

  “How would you know?” I said, giving him the eyeball. Truthfully, I was stuffed to the gills and more than a little sick. But the Fried MoonPie might be the most delicioso thing I’d ever eaten in my life.

  It wasn’t. I’d had better deep-fried potholders.

  “Well?” Snake Arms wanted to know.

  “It’s good,” I fibbed, choking on the steaming marshmallow filling. “They should sell like hotcakes.”

  “You have powdered sugar all over your face,” Lacey Jane said, handing me a napkin.

  We walked away, me a little unsteady from so much sugar and grease.

  “The Ferris wheel!” Rudy said, clutching Bambi’s hand. “Will you ride on it with me? I’ll make it stop at the very top and kiss you.”

  Lacey Jane and I gawked at him. The chocolate from his one bite of fried Oreo must have shot straight to his brain.

  Bambi shrugged off Rudy’s grasp. “You’re way too young to be thinking about girls, though I can understand why you’re love-struck on me. It happens all the time. But I don’t kiss little boys.”

  Rudy slumped like somebody stuck a pin in him.

  “I don’t see any big boys breaking the door down to kiss you,” I told Bambi. “Nobody would go near you with a ten-foot pole.” Pulling Rudy aside, I whispered, “Trust me, she’s not worth it.”

  “I thought she liked me,” he said in a painfully small voice.

  “Bambi only likes herself,” Lacey Jane said.

  Miss Priss had wandered down the midway. She stood in front of a bright green weight machine and fixed her hair in its purple-framed mirror. A sign with purple flashing lights read, fool the guesser! age! weight! birth month! win prizes! only $3! Cheap Frisbees, gaudy straw hats, and plush neon monkeys were piled in baskets.

  A bald man with a brushy mustache and a potato nose boomed through his clip-on microphone, “C’mon over, folks. If I can’t guess your age within two years, your birth month within one month, or your weight within three pounds, you win the prize of your choice!”

  “Cool!” Lacey Jane said. “A fortune-teller!”

  Rudy ran up to the man. “Hey, betcha you can’t guess my name!”

  I collared Rudy. “He can’t guess your name. And he’s not a fortune-teller. Those are women who wear turbans and gold coin earrings. And they have a crystal ball.”

  “The little lady is kee-rect. I can’t predict the future or guess your name but I can tell you those three things about yourself because I’m a people studier.” His big face broke into a crinkly smile. “I even went to college to study people! Now I’m an expert in age, weight, and birth months.”

  “All right,” Bambi said like she was doing him a favor. “Guess my age.”

  “No, dummy.” I elbowed her. “He can see we’re kids.” I sized the guy up. “You do it sort of like math, don’t you?”

  “You mean statistics? No, I’m just a real good people-studier. How about I guess your weight, then?” he asked me.

  “I don’t have any money.” I really should make up music for that song.

  “The carnival isn’t officially open—and you aren’t supposed to officially be here,” he said, “but this’ll be on the house.”

  The Guessing Man gazed at the ground, deep in thought. He did look like he was figuring out a tough math problem. Then he looked up and took a stubby pencil and a tiny notepad from his pocket. He wrote on the notepad, tore off the top sheet, then slapped it on the back of his hand.

  “How much do you weigh?” he said to me. “If I’m three pounds over or under, you get to pick a prize.”

  “Ninety-eight pounds.”

  He handed me the slip of paper.

  “One hundred and thirteen! Woo-hoo! You lose!” I was heading for a yellow monkey when Bambi said, “How do we know what you weigh, Rebel?”

  “Because that’s what I weighed at the doctor’s! You want me to prove it? All right!” I stepped on the scale. The needle below the mirror swung past the one hundred mark and rested on one fifteen and a quarter.
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  “You’re almost as much fat as Doublewide!” Rudy said.

  “These scales are rigged!” I waddled off the weight machine.

  Lacey Jane giggled. “Rebel, the fried MoonPie did you in!”

  All that grease started roiling around in my stomach, which was sticking out like a bowling ball.

  “Me next!” Lacey Jane said. “Tell me what month I was born in.”

  The Guessing Man went through the same drill, staring at the ground, then writing on the notepad. “What month were you born?” he asked her.

  “March.”

  He showed Lacey Jane the paper. March was scrawled on it.

  After that, we all wanted our birth months guessed. The Guessing Man said Bambi was born in August, which she was, and Rudy was born in February, which he was. Then it was my turn.

  While the Guessing Man studied his shoes, I sent him wrong-month thoughts to mess with his mind. July! September! November! December! January! May!

  He handed me the paper. It said May.

  “I was born in April!” I crowed. My wrong-month thoughts worked!

  “That’s within a month,” the Guessing Man said. “What day in April?”

  “The eighteenth.”

  “Ah! You’re an Aries on the cusp of Taurus.” He reached behind him for a box on a stool and handed us each a colored card. Lacey Jane’s and Rudy’s were both red.

  “These are about your zodiac sign,” the Guessing Man explained. “If your birthday is around the time when the sign changes, it’s called being on the cusp.”

  Bambi, who nobody had paid attention to for at least three seconds, tapped the Guessing Man’s arm. “We’re in the beauty pageant tomorrow. Will you come watch?”

  “Yeah,” Lacey Jane said. “Can you tell us who’s gonna win?”

  “He’s not a fortune-teller,” I said. “He deals in facts.”

  Bambi gave him a big wink. “We all know who deserves to win.”

  “It sure isn’t you!” I wished I had a fried MoonPie to smush in her face.

  The Guessing Man made a time-out signal. “I’ll watch if I can get away. But I can see you are all winners.”

  “Even me?” Rudy asked.

  Lacey Jane snorted. “You aren’t even in the pageant.”

  Rudy wouldn’t let it go. “But if I was, do you think I’m a winner?”

  The Guessing Man cuffed him lightly on the shoulder. “Especially you, tiger.”

  We stopped in the fire station break room to get out of the sun and read our zodiac cards.

  “I don’t believe in this junk,” I said. “Hey! Mine says I am confident and have internal resources to deal with new ideas and situations. Maybe there is something to this astrology stuff.”

  Lacey Jane leaned over. “It also says you are competitive, opinionated, and territorial about your possessions. In other words, you’re stingy. And you have a cusp birthday with Hitler!”

  “Hitler!” Bambi cackled. “My famous zodiac person is Jackie Kennedy Onassis.”

  Rudy breathed down my sweaty neck. “Read mine, Rebel.”

  “Ours are the same,” Lacey Jane said. “We’re perceptive, imaginative, and sensitive to the feelings of others. We lead a rich fantasy life and we form deep bonds with animals.”

  “What does that mean?” he asked.

  “We like animals and they like us.” She frowned. “I am not an easy target for bullies.”

  Rudy nodded. “Doublewide and me get along real good.”

  I never realized how much Rudy and Lacey Jane had in common. Rudy was an easy target for her bullying. And Little Miss Goldilocks picked on Lacey Jane.

  Bambi read from her card. “‘You are ambitious, independent, loyal, and generous.’ So true.”

  “Oh, please,” I said. “You’re only loyal to Bambi Lovering.”

  She went on. “‘Young Leos have confidence beyond their years. You enjoy being in the spotlight and shine like the sun with an audience.’ Right again.”

  I grabbed her card. “It also says you’re arrogant, bossy, and a control freak.”

  We fell silent then, sitting in the cool dimness of the break room. Outside, carnival workers barked orders and hammers rang on metal. The firemen waxed the ladder truck.

  I riffled the edges of my astrology card. I used to think I was the most special person in Grandview Estates, but now I wasn’t so sure. It seemed like everybody here was special in their own way, even Rudy.

  Bambi was a royal pain, but she had talent and was going after her life goals, dumb as they were. Lacey Jane believed in dreams and Miss Odenia’s Marriage Turtle. Rudy loved people who didn’t love him back, like Bambi and his own father. It took nerve to do that.

  Tomorrow was the beauty pageant. Only one of us would win in our category.

  The most special, talented person of all.

  From

  The Standard Book of Cosmetology

  (Milady Publishing Co., Pink Palace Beauty Academy, Frog Level, Virginia)

  Eye Makeup

  Eye makeup is applied for the purpose of improving the appearance by emphasizing the good points and making defects less conspicuous.

  Eye shadow, when applied to the upper lids, complements the eyes by making them look brighter and more expressive. The daytime shade of eye shadow should be more subtle, whereas the nighttime shade can be a bit more daring.

  Small eyes. Small eyes can be made to appear larger by extending the shadow slightly above, beyond, and below the eyes.

  Close-set eyes. For eyes that are set too close together, apply shadow lightly up from the outer edge of the eyes.

  Eyes set too far apart. For wide-set eyes, use the shadow on the upper inner side of the eyelid.

  Mascara is applied to the eyelashes to make them look fuller and longer. Use black mascara only on black lashes; otherwise, use brown mascara.

  Swish the mascara wand horizontally across the lashes, wiggling the brush in an upward motion to

  Bambi the Second

  “Don’t move,” Lynette told me for the fiftieth time. She wiped my forehead roughly with a paper towel.

  “I can’t help it,” I said. “You’re jabbing that thing right in my eye!”

  “I’m not jabbing it in your eye!”

  “Well, it feels like it. You wear that goop all the time. I’m not used to it.”

  Blowing out a puff of air, my sister waved the mascara wand in front of my face. “Did you hear Lacey Jane whine when I put mascara on her? Did she blink and jerk away?”

  “No, indeed,” Lacey Jane said, already made up and calm as a button as she leafed through Lynette’s cosmetology textbook.

  Rudy rummaged in Lynette’s plastic tackle box of jars and bottles. “I think Rebel would look good in this stuff. Put some of this on her, Mama.”

  “Honeybun, Rebel can’t wear Black Pearl eye shadow. It’s way too old for her.”

  I wrinkled my nose at the tiny pot Rudy had opened. “Looks like coal dust. Over my dead body will you stick that on me.”

  “I ought to, if you keep carrying on.” She clicked open a tiny case and swept a soft little brush over my eyelids. “This is Max Factor’s Peaches ’N Cream. Perfect for brown eyes. Plus you won’t look like a tramp.”

  “It says here,” Lacey Jane said, “to make close-set eyes look bigger, you smear eye shadow from the outer edge of the eyes.”

  “Are you insinuating I have beady eyes?” I said.

  “No, just reading.” Lacey Jane gazed at her reflection in Lynette’s round makeup mirror. “I think I’ll wear eye shadow all the time. What’s this color called again?”

  “Satin Nightie,” Lynette replied, swiping her pinkie finger at the corner of my eyes. “Pink brings out the green in your eyes. Green shadow would look too harsh.”

  “You’re so smart about all this,” Lacey Jane said wistfully. “How will I ever learn this stuff?”

  “You have plenty of time.” Lynette touched her shoulder. “C’mon over anytime you want an
d we’ll talk makeup and hair.”

  We’d all been up since the break of day. The pageant started at eleven thirty, but Lynette had to work at Hair Magic till noon.

  When Lacey Jane had arrived at six thirty, a dark cloud had followed her into our kitchen. She flung herself dramatically in a chair and said, “Daddy can’t come watch me in the pageant. Some guy called off at work, and Daddy has to go in.”

  “Aw, sugar,” Lynette had said. “I’ll cheer enough for him and me, okay? Now, let’s get started.”

  She had fixed my hair first, curling it under in a “classic bob.” Not big at all. I actually liked it.

  But when she picked up a wisp of Lacey Jane’s limp red hair, Lynette frowned. “How’d you feel about me cutting it short?” she’d asked.

  Tears welled in Lacey Jane’s eyes. “My mother wanted me to have long hair.”

  “Then let me trim those split ends.”

  About a hundred years later, Lynette handed Lacey Jane the round mirror. Her hair fell from a side part with half tucked behind one ear. The other half curved around Lacey Jane’s thin face. The haircut made her look older and not so homely.

  Now Lynette said, “All right, Rebel, last chance.” She made another pass with the mascara brush. I widened my eyes but at the last second pulled away. “Rebel! You’re gonna make me late for work!”

  “I’ll do it myself,” I said, taking the mascara tube from her.

  “Don’t put it on too thick,” she warned, gathering up her purse and keys. “And none on your bottom lashes. You don’t want to look overdone. Miz Matthews is coming by at ten to help y’all get dressed.”

  “What am I supposed to do with Rudy while me and Lacey Jane are in the pageant?” I asked.

  “I’ll come straight from work,” Lynette said. “If I’m a few minutes late, Miz Matthews will watch him. Don’t mess up your hair, either of y’all!” Then she was out the door.

  “I’m hungry,” Rudy said, stacking the eye shadows and blushes from Lynette’s makeup box into a tower.

  I’d fixed us toast when we first got up, but that was ages ago. I set milk and Golden Crisp on the table, along with three bowls and spoons.