Saving Montgomery Sole

by Mariko Tamaki

“I know,” I said, crawling back into my couch-cushion nest.

  “You know,” Momma Jo added, grabbing another chip, “your Mama Kate is pretty much constantly worrying about how you are, so I feel I should also ask how you are doing.”

  “Everything’s fine,” I said, reaching over and grabbing a chip and a scoop of guacamole. “She should stop worrying. Tell her to stop worrying.”

  Momma Jo threw up her hands. “Well, that’s your Mama Kate. She does that worrying thing.”

  “Everything’s okay.” I grabbed a chip and dunked it to my fingertips in guacamole. “Promise.”

  Momma Jo paused. Looked at me for what felt like two minutes. Like time-out long. “Okay. Let me know if it’s too loud down there. I think your sister and her friends want to watch America’s Next Top Model if you want to join us.”

  I shoved the whole chip into my mouth. “Pass,” I said through the chip.

  “Fair enough,” Momma Jo said. “I’ll shut the door behind me.”

  I gobbled down the rest of my treats. Then I pulled the stone off my neck. And looked at it.

  I flipped it over in my palm.

  The Eye of Know.

  What did I know? Did I see the future or the past? With my third eye?

  No.

  No, I saw what I always saw, girls being mean for no reason.

  But this time. Maybe this time, instead of just watching it happen, I made something happen. I made her stop. I made it go away.

  Didn’t I?

  “Maybe I did, maybe it was something else,” I said. My voice sounded weird in my quiet room.

  “It could have been an earthquake,” I said to my blank computer screen.

  Either way.

  No more selfies.

  The stone swung back and forth on its string. What would I tell Thomas and Naoki?

  Thomas wouldn’t believe me, although this did feel more like a movie plot than anything else I had ever found.

  A stone that could make things happen.

  Monty’s Stone.

  Why not? Just because someone doesn’t think something is possible, whether that’s bending time or seeing the future, doesn’t mean it’s not.

  What’s impossible? Impossible sounds like a Madison Marlow word, I thought.

  I could see her clicking her nails on the desk. Tick, tick, tick. Rolling her eyes at me. “That’s impossible, Monty.” Like “Everyone knows, duh.”

  Well, I wanted to crow, guess what?

  The Eye of Know was possible. Inexplicable but REAL. An unexplained phenomenon I could actually hold in my hand. I had seen that girl practically disappear in front of my eyes.

  Hadn’t I?

  The world was bigger than Aunty, California. There were more possibilities out there than anyone at Jefferson, especially Madison and her crew, could guess.

  It made me feel light just thinking about it.

  I needed to talk to Naoki, I thought.

  Naoki would get it.

  I grabbed my phone from my bag.

  No texts.

  It was late, so she’d probably be on her computer.

  Me: Hey you there?

  Me: Hello?

  Minutes ticked by.

  I put the Eye on my bedside table.

  Below me, the party raged.

  A well-deserved victory party, maybe for all of us.

  7

   Mystics

   Table-tipping (See also: Séance)

   Why people put statues of angels on their lawn

  Over the weekend, Tesla had soccer games back-to-back, so I had the house to myself. I spent my freedom watching online documentaries about American mystics and people who can talk to the dead.

  One mystic used little plastic dolls to communicate with the spirits. Like the kind of dolls I would imagine grandmas collecting. With little painted faces and frozen china hands.

  The dead are very forgiving and are never sad about being dead. Apparently that’s something built into the system so that no one feels ripped off in the afterlife.

  A couple of the mystics talked about Jesus a lot. About how Jesus was at work in the world of the living and the dead, shepherding people into heaven. Like Jesus was some kind of maître d’ for heaven. If he’s so important, I wondered, why is he working the door?

  These people have no logic.

  There was this part in one documentary where all the mystics put their hands on the table and it danced around. It’s called table-tipping.

  Interesting, I thought.

  At one point, on my way to grab a slice at Tony’s Pizza Pie around the block, I took the stone out to a crosswalk to see if I could affect when the lights changed, which is something this guy I found online said he could do with just his brain (which is part alien). Hard to say if it was working; people kept pressing the buttons, so it could have been them.

  Naoki spent the weekend at a weaving seminar, sending me pictures every so often of layers of pink and blue and yellow threads. Thomas spent the weekend binge watching eighties romantic comedies, which apparently he can only do alone.

  By Monday, I was kind of sick of just being by myself.

  That morning, I came downstairs, and Tesla was sitting at the breakfast table in a sparkly pink leotard and tutu, next to a bowl of what looked like black spiderwebs.

  I thumped down on my seat and pushed the bowl with my finger. “What’s that?”

  “Don’t,” Tesla huffed. “It’s my hair stuff. Mama’s putting my hair up in a fairy bun.”

  I had a flash of High Bun, her phone held out.

  CLICK.

  “Why a bun?”

  “Because it’s Halloween? Duh? And I’m a fairy.”

  Halloween? I poured myself a giant bowl of cereal and scanned the table for sugar. How did Halloween sneak up on me? Weird.

  I looked over at Tesla, suddenly noticing that her hair was already sprayed and pinned into place. “Fairies have buns?”

  Also weird:

   Kids’ obsession with fairies

  To be clear, every year, for Halloween, Tesla dresses up as a fairy, which, every year, involves some specific fairy thing that I’ve never heard of. When she was eight, it meant she had to have ballet slippers. Last year, when she was ten, she asked to be a “sexy fairy,” and my parents asked her to explain what a sexy fairy would look like.

  She drew a picture.

  Sexy fairy had a bra over her outfit.

  “No sexy fairy,” Momma Jo said. “You’re a ten-year-old fairy. A ten-year-old fairy doesn’t need a bra.”

  Neither does an eleven-year-old fairy, apparently.

  Every year since this fairy stuff started I take the opportunity to explain to her what fairies were really like, and it bugs the crap out of her.

  I leaned over my bowl and pointed at Tesla with my spoon. “Did I ever tell you that fairies actually looked ugly and mean?”

  Tesla crossed her arms over her fairy chest. “No, they weren’t.”

  “Some people thought they were an omen of death!”

  “Shut up, Monty.”

  Unperturbed, I munched on my cereal. “Are you an omen of death, Tesla?”

  It’s true they were. Not always, but sometimes. Fairies, in the original stories about fairies, weren’t these wishy-washy, wistful wish granters in tutus, like they are in kids’ books today. They were mean, vengeful. Sometimes because they were cast out of their villages, sent to the woods without supper. In the first stories about fairies, they used their magic to disguise themselves. To do bad things. They were mess-you-uppers, enchanters.

   Omens

   Enchantments

  And by enchant, we’re not talking about a sprinkle of fairy dust so you can fly. We’re talking you will obey me–type stuff. Give me your wife–type stuff.

  There is actually a support group in Daytona for people who have been attacked by fairies. It has a very grim website. It also has a 1-800 number, which I have often considered calling.

  It’s
funny, though, right, that a word like enchanting sounds so nice, like a really nice afternoon, like something special, but really, it’s also a spell.

  A trick.

  None of which Tesla wanted to hear as Mama Kate continued to pin her hair into the toughest bun in California, but I made a mental note to mention it to Naoki because it sounded like a Naoki sort of thing. Enchanted.

  In the car on the way to school I got a text from Naoki.

  Naoki: Old Man Tree lunch OK?

  Me: Working on Outsiders deco with T. After school?

  Naoki: Just need a minute. OM at 12:30?

  Thomas came to school in drag, which he takes the Halloween option to do sometimes. Over the years, Thomas has shown a preference for queens: Queen Elizabeth II, the Queen of Hearts. This Halloween he was the evil queen from Snow White, in a purple dress and cape, a black wig, a crown I think he actually welded himself, and a big, real red apple, which he would hold up when people wanted to take pictures.

  Queen or not, from the moment the lunch bell rang, Thomas was full-tilt working on sets, his skirts hitched up, an old-timey-looking apron tied around his waist, and a paintbrush in each hand as he slaved to make a realistic movable set of trees and classic cars for the upcoming production of The Outsiders. Mr. Gyle, true to his word, had hired a “choreographer” to help students with the fight scenes. Of which there were many. The choreographer showed up in a Raiders sweatshirt, hat, and jogging pants. He wore bright green sneakers. He looked like a football coach. And talked like a football coach.

  I’m pretty sure he was a football coach.

  Thomas said he overheard him saying stuff like “Hut hut hut” instead of, say, “Action.”

  I was a few minutes into my volunteered lunch hour spent sitting in a plastic chair with a metal brush and sewing scissors, distressing jeans for the “actors,” before Thomas told me who I was distressing for.

  The actor taking the lead role in Hinton’s formidable tale of adolescent struggle? MATT TRUIT.

  “What?!” “When did they post it?”

  “Friday,” Thomas said, stirring a can of classic-car crimson. “He was really the best of the bunch.”

  “Are you serious?!”

  Matt Truit? Really? How much injustice should one person have to endure?

  How is it possible that someone who makes a sport of making fun of something then gets to benefit from its existence?

  I’d heard a rumor in the girls’ bathroom that Kenneth White had auditioned, too, but Thomas said it wasn’t true. He said Kenneth showed up and sat in the back of the theater, but then, when they tried to talk to him, he just left.

  “What’s worse?” I sighed, tossing my newly—Matt’s newly—distressed jeans on the floor.

  “It’s not so bad,” Thomas said, bending over to pick them up.

  “Pfft is all I have to say to that.”

  “While you’re pffting you can put these on a hanger and onto the costume rack, please,” Thomas said, holding out the pants.

  “Fine. I bet Kenneth didn’t audition because it’s such a disgusting, sinful play,” I chortled. “Poor Kenneth with all this sin everywhere.”

  I hung up Matt’s pants and grabbed the undistressed pair next in line. It was harder to do now that I knew I was distressing jeans for jerkoffs.

  Thomas turned back to his can of crimson. “He looks a little like the older-brother character to me.”

  How was it Thomas could stay so relaxed around people being crazy homophobes all the time? He dipped his brush into the new bucket of paint and brushed a stroke onto the door of a massive wooden car.

  I tore into my new set of pants with the iron brush. “Did I tell you he corrected me in chemistry today?”

  Thomas didn’t look up. “Matt?”

  “Kenneth.”

  Basically, I was in chemistry and I’d said something about hydrogen in class, and Kenneth had chuckled.

  Chuckled. Actually jiggled in his seat. Like, he went from nothing to chuckle. It wasn’t even that funny.

  He didn’t turn around. He’d just said, “I’m pretty sure you mean oxygen.”

  “Okay, well, in other news, the play is cast—hurrah,” Thomas said, moving from the car to the stack of trees in the corner of the room. “You know, now that I’ve had a closer look, Matt’s not a bad-looking guy. I can see what you saw in him.”

  I looked down at the jeans. I’d been scrubbing them so hard I’d almost torn them in half. “Whatever. I’ve got to go. I told Naoki I’d meet her by the Old Man.”

  “Don’t forget your cat ears,” Thomas called, pointing at my fuzzy ears with his free hand as he dragged a stack of trees onto the stage.

  As I wandered outside to the courtyard in front of the school I noted that I was one of about twenty cats, a cat being the go-to minimalist costume choice. Only about half the kids at school had bothered to dress up. By the time you get to high school, no one’s really trick-or-treating, so it’s mostly a matter of who actually likes to dress up for their own interest. Mostly it’s nerds, who will take on any excuse to dress up like their favorite action heroes or creatures.

  There were a lot of Gandalfs wandering around.

   Boys’ obsession with wizards

  There are four trees in the quad next to Jefferson High. One looks like a spaceship hovering on top of a pencil, which is where the teachers sit when they have lunch. One looks like an Afro, which is where people usually go to make out because it’s the most tucked to the side. There’s the super big pointy-at-the-top tree that popular people eat lunch under because it’s supposedly the nicest. And there’s Old Man tree, all bent over and crooked and knobbly, where the nerds eat because it’s closest to the school and the Wi-Fi signal they hack into is better there, even though the ground is a little rockier.

  Naoki was waiting for me under the tree, dressed in blue and gray and green, with little bits of things pinned to her. Leaves. Twigs. Moss.

  “I’m a river,” she explained.

  “Cool.” Of course, because I had like a zillion things I wanted to tell Naoki, about the Eye, the incantation, about Tesla’s soccer game, I was suddenly struck completely dumb. Wasn’t there a word I was going to ask her about? “Cool,” I said again for no reason.

  Naoki smiled. “Okay, good,” she said, as though I’d just said something that could be described as “good.” “So, I have a question to ask you,” she continued, “about Mystery Club. And our membership. I want to suggest a new member.”

  “Who?”

  “He’s new. And I haven’t asked him, but I think we should,” Naoki added.

  “Okaaay.”

  There was a shriek on the other side of the school. The sun poured down between the branches and set a warm spot on the top of my head.

  Naoki grabbed a lock of hair, twisted it artfully into a loop.

  “Okay, so first I’m going to say it, then I’m going to explain. Okay. I think we should ask Kenneth White to join Mystery Club.”

  “What?!”

  The crowd of nerds, gathered several feet away for a few impromptu rounds of Magic, cringed.

  Naoki put her hands out, palms up, like an offering. “Right, so I’ll explain. Remember last week, with the crosses? Of course you remember. Okay, on that day, I started thinking about the word cross. About being ‘cross’ as in ‘angry,’ about the shape of a cross, and crossing paths. I thought about it all night. Cross. Cross. Cross. And the next day, I started crossing paths with Kenneth. Over and over. Our paths would literally cross, you know? Me coming from the north and him from the west.”

  “Yeah.”

  Like the Wicked Witch.

  “Sooooo,” I said slowly, “what are you saying, then?”

  Naoki sped up. “Okay. So I thought, Why is this happening? What is it about the word cross? Or about Kenneth? I thought of the time I found you and Thomas.” Naoki started tracing out a path in the air with her index finger. “I was in the library. Waiting for a book to find me. And
you were in your study hall, talking about mysteries. And I’d been thinking about being lost. And the mystery of lost. How lost is a mystery. And I just thought, you know, that maybe there is no book with what I’m looking for. The word book felt so far away. And I was walking down the hall and I heard you say ‘mystery,’ and I thought how life can be a perfect mystery. And then I found you.”

  Her index finger pointed at me. Naoki smiled.

  “Okaaaaay.” I could feel the little stones on the ground digging into my feet.

  “I think what all this cross and crossing paths means is that Kenneth is supposed to be in our cross paths.” Naoki took a deep breath. “That’s it.”

  “I don’t get it.” I could feel myself coiling inward. “Uh,” I stammered, “just so we’re clear, this is the guy who glued a cross to my locker.”

  Which I still had in my bag, incidentally.

  The gravelly rhythm of sneakers grinding against dirt roused in the distance. Naoki’s face stayed still, soft but frozen like a snowman’s. “Are you sure it was him?”

  “Uh. No, if by ‘sure’ you mean I saw him do it.”

  Naoki tapped her finger on her lip. Her nails were painted green and blue. “Hmmmm. I don’t think it was him.”

  “Puh!” I scoffed. “Why not?”

  “I just, I don’t see it. I can’t explain it. I just feel this overwhelming thing, like we are supposed to cross paths.”

  “Well, maybe you’re supposed to cross paths with him separately.” I could feel my words speeding up, running hotter and hotter.

  Naoki paused. Tapped her lip again. “I mean we, like, all of us.”

  “Well, I don’t want to have to hang out with a homophobe.”

  “Maybe he isn’t.”

  “Maybe it’s less of a big deal for you if he is,” I spat.

  Naoki shifted and crossed one foot over the other. Waiting. Maybe for me to say something else. I don’t know what.

  “Hmmmmm,” she said finally. “Could we say we’re going to think about it?”

  It was pointless to say no. I mean, technically, it was my and Thomas’s club more than it was Naoki’s. And technically Naoki had no business even really thinking about who should be a member. But it seemed mean to point that out.

  In the ground I noticed a sharp rock sticking up out of the dirt. I kicked it lightly with the toe of my boot. There is an art to dislodging rocks like this. You have to wiggle them very gently until they come loose like a tooth.