The Princess of Las Pulgas

by C. Lee McKenzie

  I lift Quicken and close the window, leaning my forehead against the pane, wondering where we’ll wind up and what the next bad event will be that we have to face.

  The shelf over my desk holds a paperweight I won in the eighth grade poetry contest. Two Channing Yearbooks lie stacked next to it and on top of those sits my broken Jack-in-the-Box. When I crank the handle of the metal toy, it swings around freely, not catching the tiny gears. The puppet’s trapped inside.

  Cradling Jack’s small prison, I lie curled around it on my bed. I hate you for dying, Dad. I can’t bury my face any deeper in the pillow. I hate everybody in this stupid world.

  “Carlie love, this is tough, but you’ll be fine. I know it.”

  No! This will not be just fine.

  Chapter 7

  The house sells less than three weeks after it goes on the market. Prime location, top- notch school district. The buyers need to move in ASAP and are willing to pay moving expenses if Mom agrees to be out before the end of February. The day they came I kept my fingers in my ears and tried to block that realtor’s voice. She stiletto-heeled her way through the rooms with a clipboard in hand, calling Mom Sarah as if they’ve known each other a long time.

  She sweeps in Sunday morning after the sale and before even my early bird Mom dresses or any of us eats breakfast. The woman waves the papers that, once signed, will turn our house over to a couple from Arizona with a teenage daughter.

  I can’t watch while Mom signs away our family home. I grab Quicken and take the stairs two at a time. In my room I put her on her cushion and throw myself face-down across my bed. I can’t cry, but my heart feels bloated and heavy. It’s holding all the tears my eyes can no longer shed.

  Who’s getting my room? That snotty redheaded sophomore with the tight jeans and too much mascara, that’s who.

  “Missy will be a sophomore at Channing. I’m so happy that she’ll already have someone she knows there.” That’s what the girl’s mom said the day they came to see the house.

  I wanted to scream, “Get out” as Prissy Missy swaggered her way through the rooms, fingering my bedspread, peering into my closet.

  Rolling over I cover my eyes with one arm.

  So she arrives in Channing and, what, takes my place? My house that’s right on the beach? The house everyone wants to come to for the end-of-school-year party?

  Why did you have to leave us in this mess, Dad?

  I’d hurl myself out the window, but I’m smart enough to know I’ll probably only break a leg. Instead, I hurl a pillow at the door. Quicken does a cat stretch, then curls up again. I dive under the covers.

  The next day at school I write a short essay in French class, but after I hand it in I can’t remember what it's about. I stumble through chemistry and one of Mr. Mancy’s pop quizzes in English. Listening to my teachers’ voices, studying faces of friends, capturing the sounds and images of the school, takes on a kind of frenzy. Each desk I sit at becomes important. Each conversation about homework or Mancy’s quizzes becomes precious, something to be tucked into a scrapbook. On the English bulletin board the deadline for the Scribe’s yearly nonfiction contest is posted as April 20th—a lifetime away and a contest that might happen without me.

  A phantom hand clenches my stomach at the thought that I might not be at Channing much longer. Mom kept saying she’d try to keep us in the district, but she couldn’t promise anything. And then yesterday, when I brought up the subject, she had somewhere else to go.

  As I pile my books into my backpack Lena catches my arm. “You haven’t answered my emails. How come?”

  “I’ve been sort of busy. You know—”

  She squeezes my hand. “Busy” has become my code for “crying in my bedroom.”

  As we make our way to the hall, Lena says, “What I wrote was Nicolas is definitely asking you to the Spring Fling.” I must not look as happy as she expects. “What? You don’t want a date with Nicolas Benz?”

  “No. I mean, yes.”

  She shakes her head. “Well, there’s more. You’ve got to check out Sean Wright, the new French tutor.”

  “I don’t need a tutor.” I learn French almost the same way I learned to walk. It’s the one class I can ace with little effort.

  “You need one now.” She flutters her eyelashes, performing her coy act, then she grabs my arm. “It’s him. Don’t look.” She tightens her grip. “Okay. Now.”

  He’s closing his locker when I glance back, then he walks past us, our eyes locked onto his dark hair that’s swept behind each ear, his deep set blue eyes. Where did he get that tan in January? He must need glasses because he doesn't’ notice either of us gaping.

  “I’m signing up for French and dropping study hall.”

  I roll my eyes. “You hate French.”

  “I’ve changed my mind.” She looks over my shoulder. “Eric’s coming,” she says, then whispers in my ear. “Need a tutor now?”

  “No.” I thread my arms through the straps of my backpack.

  “So are we meeting for lunch?”

  “Sure. See you after chemistry.”

  Eric steps around me and hangs his arm over her shoulders, and they nuzzle their way off to their next class. At the end of the hall Lena glances back, mouthing, au revoir.

  Before I tackle lunch with Lena, I need to figure out how to tell my best friend I’m moving and may not finish my junior year here, so I cut chemistry. It’s one class I shouldn’t cut, but it’s also one class I wouldn’t miss at Channing.

  The wide sweep of lawn leading to the grove of eucalyptus at the edge of the campus offers a quiet hideout. I slide my back down the peeling bark and draw my knees under my chin. If I could I’d stay here until the end of the day.

  “Carlie love, hiding doesn’t make what’s scary go away.”

  You don’t understand, Dad. Once I tell Lena what’s happening it becomes all the more true.

  “You’re brave enough to handle the truth.”

  I hope he hears my sigh. It’s full of messages about how brave I feel.

  Heading into the cafeteria, I spot Nicolas in the Bistro section. I haven’t hung around school or gone to Sam’s Shack in months, so even if he did want to ask me to the dance he hasn’t had the chance. I haven’t given anybody a chance to ask me anything. I’ve avoided talking to friends by making excuses about needing to study, needing to help Mom, needing to clean my room. Dad’s right. Hiding won’t change what’s about to happen, but he’s wrong about my being brave.

  Before I can duck out the door, Nicolas spots me, waves and comes straight toward me in that slow stroll that makes every female stop what she’s doing and gape. He leaves a wake of huddled chatter and longing down the center of the room. No wonder he has an ego the size of Planet Earth.

  “Hey, Carlie. How’s it going? Haven’t seen you at the Shack.” He sweeps the drape of golden hair from his forehead.

  “I’ve been busy at home. With things.”

  “Yeah. Sorry.” He comes close and, in what Lena calls his velvet voice, says, “I know it’s been rough. I mean about your dad.” He clears his throat. “Is it okay to call you now? Thought I’d ask. You know, in case—”

  “That’s . . . fine. Yes.”

  He brushes my arm with his hand, then makes his way back to the bistro ruffling the sea of lust again. A few girls cast envious glances my direction. At least one thing is still the way it should be. I’m still Carlie Edmund, the girl who has Nicolas Benz’s attention. For one moment I’m excited about the Spring Fling, then that moment’s gone. How am going to buy a dress?

  I should have kept that babysitting job New Year’s Eve with the Franklins. If I could wheedle Mrs. Franklin into hiring me again and her social life picks up I might be able to make two hundred dollars in time for the dance.

  Lena waves at me across the noisy room, her bouncy ponytail held high by a pale blue ribbon.

  I weave through the crowded tables and sit across from her.

  “I waited ou
tside chemistry for you and you, like, vanished.” She sounds pouty.

  “I took a break.” I remove the top slice of bread from my sandwich and fold the bottom slice over the lettuce and cheese.

  “Are you still on a diet?”

  Lena knows way too much about me. “I’m not hungry.”

  “I saw you with Nicolas. So did he . . .?”

  “Not yet.”

  She places her bowl of soup on the table and pushes the tray aside. “Were you, like, sick Sunday? You didn’t answer your cell, and when I called your home phone your mom said you were in bed.”

  “I was tired.” I bite into my half sandwich.

  She dips her spoon into the soup and stirs up rice and peas from the bottom. “So what's up with you? I mean you seemed to be getting . . . well, better a few weeks ago, and now . . . Do I have to mine for what’s going on or are you going to volunteer something, sometime, before the world ends maybe? Aren’t we still BFFs?” Lena spoons soup into her mouth and fixes her eyes on me.

  “Of course we are. It’s just that . . . We’re moving.” Those two words have been festering inside my head for over a month and burst out from between my lips.

  Lena’s hand halts half way to her mouth, soup dripping from her spoon back into the bowl. “You can’t move. Where will we have the end-of-the-year beach party?”

  I crush the sandwich bag and hope the moisture in my eyes will evaporate.

  “I’m sorry, Carlie. Really. That didn’t come out right. I was so . . . Will you have to leave Channing?”

  “To be determined. I have to go.” I grab my backpack and walk out the cafeteria door as quickly as I can without running. My life’s unraveling and I want the threads to come apart in private, not in front of the entire Channing student body.

  By the next week it’s determined. Keith and I will have to change schools.

  At dinner, Mom sits at the end of the dining room table where Dad used to sit. I hadn't noticed until this moment how she'd moved from her end of the table to his, how Keith had slid the extra chair on his side to the wall, and how I'd started sitting across from him. The three of us are clustered together—the incredible shrinking family.

  “The only place I can find on such sort notice is in Las Pulgas.” Mom's face says what she doesn’t. I’m sorry we have to move. I’m sorry it’s Las Pulgas. I’m sorry.

  “Las Pulgas is the worst place in the world. Flea Town’s a joke. Why would any place be named after disgusting bugs?”

  “Carlie.” Mom frowns. “The rent’s affordable, lets me pay off bills and still have something to tuck away until I can get my realtor’s license and start making a salary.” Behind her, boxes are stacked three high against the dining room wall. She’s already removed the family pictures and packed them. “Besides, they’ll allow one cat.”

  I push my salad around with my fork. “When?”

  “I put down the cleaning deposit and the first and last months’ rent today.” Mom’s eyes glisten, but she stabs a last bite of chicken on her plate and says a little too loudly, “We can move in by the fifteenth.”

  My fork clatters onto my plate.

  Keith reaches for another roll and slathers it with butter. “How come we can’t finish the year here?”

  “For one, you’re not going to be in the Channing district anymore.” Mom shoves her chair back, stands quickly and carries her plate into the kitchen. “For another, we’ll be down to one car, so commuting is out of the question.”

  Keith and I exchange looks. “One car?” We sound like a mini-chorus.

  “Now’s the time to come up with one of your bright ideas, Carlie. Save our cars.”

  “I’ve spoken to your counselors,” Mom talks over the sound of running water. “They’ll help with the transfer and setting up your classes at Las Pulgas.”

  “Las Pulgas’s track team sucks.” Keith says.

  “I hate that word, Keith,” Mom calls from the kitchen.

  “Yeah? Well, I hate Las Pulgas’s track team.” Keith shoves his chair away from the table and disappears into the TV room.

  Mom returns to sit across from me. “So what do you hate?”

  I want to say you but I can’t, not when Mom looks at me like that. I can't say out loud I hate Dad for getting sick and dying. How about the universe and all the rotten, stinking stuff it offers up? What do I hate? “My life.”

  Mom cradles her head between both hands. “Tell me about it.”

  I close my eyes, letting a shadow pass between us, then, even though I know it’s my imagination, fingers soft as down brush my cheek.

  Chapter 8

  At breakfast that next Saturday morning Mom springs her surprise for how I’m to spend the day, ruining any plan I might have. Not that I had a plan, but I would have made one if I’d known what she had in mind.

  “Carlie, I don’t want to argue with you. You and Keith are going with me to see the apartment.” Mom stacks the dishes in the dishwasher and returns to the table. “It’s the only way you’re going to be able to decide what to take and what to . . . get rid of.”

  I mash my back against my chair and cross my arms. “Do I even get a closet?”

  “Of course. It’s just smaller. We’re all going to be living in a smaller space, but you each have your own room.”

  Keith grunts and stares at his empty plate.

  “Be ready in half an hour, and, Keith, take that Christmas tree from the front of the house.” She doesn’t give either of us time to say anything else; she’s out of the kitchen and up the stairs to her room.

  An hour later we’re inside the Las Pulgas apartment, but I’m seeing, catacombs. The dark rooms with a narrow connecting hall remind me of pictures in a National Geographic article about the early Christian burials under Rome. When I open the door to my room I expect to find bones stacked inside crevices.

  From my window I look out onto others the same as mine. We’re in a complex that forms a rectangular courtyard with two stories of identical doors facing across a cement area. Catacombs inside. San Quentin on the outside.

  Our apartment is on the second floor so we have the view. Below and to the right is a kidney-shaped pool the size of the hot tub at Dad’s club. One soon-to-be-dead palm droops in the corner where I guess it used to shade some plastic lounge chairs. Dead palm next to collapsed chairs.

  I walk off the distance from the window wall to the closet, then I do the same between the other two walls. Things to get rid of: bed, dresser, chair, desk.

  When I look up Keith’s leaning against my door jamb. “Mine’s smaller.”

  “Impossible.”

  “Want to hear the really good news?”

  Keith wouldn’t be talking to me like a normal human being if he didn’t have something evil planned. He wants to see my reaction to his “good” news. I brace myself.

  “Maybe you should see for yourself.” He points down the hall and walks that direction.

  Whatever you do, Carlie, do not give him the satisfaction of showing how you feel . . . no matter how terrible . . . no matter how—

  He’s stopped a few feet down from my bedroom, waiting, a smug look on his face.

  “Okay, what is it?”

  “Our bathroom.”

  I peer inside at a shower stall, a single sink with one cabinet underneath and a medicine cabinet above. I have to look behind the door to find the toilet. Along one side, linoleum peels back at the edge of the floor, and there’s no window. I flip the switch and a fan churns, making a loud click every few turns. Then it hits me.

  “Did you say, ‘our?’” It’s too late. I’ve reacted exactly the way Keith knew I would.

  He does his evil laugh, the one that microwaves my blood to an instant boil, then shuffles back toward the living room.

  “Mom!” I hurry into the kitchen where she’s counting shelves. “I can’t share a bathroom with Keith.”

  She writes in her notebook, then she fixes me with her patient expression which means she’l
l try to reason with me before she tells me to get over it.

  “Never mind. I’ve seen enough. I’ll meet you at the car.” I pound my way back to where we parked and slouch in the passenger seat. I’m deep into thoughts of running off to live with a tribe of isolated Indians when my cell chimes Beethoven's DaDaDaDA, Mrs. Franklin’s special ring tone.

  “Carlie, I desperately need a sitter for tonight. Are you free?”

  “Gee, let me check my calendar.” I put the phone to my chest. Think Spring Fling dress.

  I put the phone back to my ear. “I’ll make some changes so I can help you out, you know, I kind of let you down New Year’s Eve.”

  As I flick my phone shut and put it back into my pocket, Mom and Keith come down the street. Keith’s one length ahead, his hands stuffed in his jeans, his head down. Mom’s behind, letting the space between them grow with every step.

  Chapter 9

  That night, helped with a small bribe of yogurt and chocolate sprinkles smuggled in under Mrs. Franklin’s vegan nose, I tuck the Franklin kids into bed by eight and settle into Mr. Franklin’s office. I finish my French assignment in less than half an hour and I’d love to get online, but no matter how clever I try to be I can’t unlock Mr. Franklin’s super secret passwords. There’s no TV. That was banished when their son, Kip, turned six. I have three hours to stare at walls.

  I haven’t looked at my journal since New Year’s Eve, so I pull it from my backpack and let it fall open to my last entry.

  “Sometimes bad things happen . . . even in Channing.”

  Something else should be on this page, something about life turning around or how you have to hit bottom before you bounce up. One happy cliché.