Four-Letter Word

by Christa Desir

  I nodded. Nan’s crappy “errands” car that was about a hundred years old and involved windows you had to manually roll down. But Nan let me drive it to school some days and it was more than most kids had, so I wasn’t above using that in my favor. “Yeah, it’s in the parking lot.”

  “Great. Let’s go.”

  She hooked her arm in mine like we were real friends, and I didn’t know if I should be uncomfortable with how fast she glommed on to me or excited that this new girl in black clothes with rings on six of her fingers wanted to hang out with me. I thought about my textless phone in my jean skirt’s back pocket and Holly’s and Eve’s BEST FRIENDS bracelets, and allowed myself a small grin at what Eve would think if she saw me.

  * * *

  The Walmart in Grinnell was noteworthy only because it was the sole superstore within a five-mile radius of Grinnell College. It was one of the bigger stores that also sold groceries, though my nan said buying Walmart groceries was like shooting all the local farmers’ puppies, so we only shopped there for the things we’d otherwise have to go to Marshalltown for. The entire store smelled like beef and starch. But it was usually busy—Grinnell College kids seemingly had no end to reasons why they needed to make a Walmart run.

  “What are we looking for?” I asked Chloe Donnelly as she pushed a cart with one squeaking wheel down the aisle. Her dark clothes looked less fancy and more garage sale-ish under the Walmart fluorescents. I kicked the annoying wheel three times and it stopped squeaking. Chloe Donnelly grinned, and I tried not to look super pleased with myself. She seemed so easy and confident. I got the feeling she could make friends with anyone, and if I was being completely honest, I couldn’t figure out why she’d choose me.

  “I’m mostly just looking for stuff to decorate my room.”

  “When did you move in?”

  “A few days ago. My mom got a position at the University of Iowa, and my dad’s law firm agreed to transfer him to the Des Moines office. Grinnell is sort of right in the middle; plus, my parents liked the college being here. Liberal politics are like meth to them, and the opportunity to relocate and make a real difference in a state that maybe could swing left again was too hard to pass up.”

  Whoa. This girl knew stuff. A million questions zipped through my brain, but I tucked them all away. If there was one thing I’d learned from Mateo, asking too-personal questions was the quickest way to shut down a conversation. So instead, I said, “My parents are on their second year in the Spirit Corps, which is like a volunteer service nonprofit for families. They were assigned to Burkina Faso. In Africa. They’re pretty political too. I live with my grandparents right now.”

  “Burkina Faso, huh? That’s cool. How come you didn’t go with them?”

  I scratched my cheek with my stubby nails, thinking about how much I was willing to tell this girl, whether it would make me look more real or more needy. “I did, at first. But it was different from what I thought it’d be. My parents were really busy and I was lonely and . . . I don’t know. It wasn’t a great fit for me.”

  I hated admitting that. It made me feel like I couldn’t handle hard things. But the truth was, I couldn’t. Ten weeks in Burkina Faso nearly killed me. I was alone and scared and it felt like I’d been dropped into another world. The first night we were there, the villagers killed three chickens in celebration of our arrival. My parents said it was a huge deal since the people were so poor and any meat was a rare commodity. But I couldn’t eat it, because the celebration feast was about twenty feet from where they’d slaughtered the chickens. The blood and the flies and the smell, it was all too much. Plus, at the end of the meal, they gave my dad the talons and beak to eat, which I guess was supposed to be a huge honor. He ate it without grimacing, but I threw up, and since there was nowhere to do it in secret, the whole village saw me. My parents were furious with how rude I was about it all. It only went downhill from there. Every day of those ten weeks, people stared at me constantly. Even now, when I went to spend my school breaks with my parents, the villagers looked at me as if I didn’t have any business being there.

  Chloe Donnelly nodded as if she’d react the same way I had, and my stomach bubbled a little at the idea that she might actually understand not wanting to give up my whole life for Burkina Faso. Eve had never really asked about my experience, though she was completely thrilled sophomore year when I told her I’d be returning to GHS after all. She’d gone on and on about how hard it had been without her “bestie.” Of course, that had all been before Holly.

  “Do you miss them? Your parents?” Chloe Donnelly asked, her voice soft and sounding interested.

  I missed them terribly, but I knew enough not to admit that. Especially not to someone like Chloe Donnelly, who seemed a bit above needing parents. “Well, my grandparents are pretty low-key so it’s nice not having anyone hover. I webcam with my parents every week. And I spend holidays and the summers with them. They’ll be home for good this summer.”

  Chloe Donnelly nodded and grabbed a set of polka-dotted bedsheets for a twin-size bed before steering us toward the women’s accessories section of the store.

  I let my hair fall and studied the way she dragged her ring-filled left hand over the scarves and purses, her nonbitten nails rubbing the fake-leather handbags. She held scarves up and wrapped them around her neck as if they were already hers. Her pale skin and dark hair made her have that winter-sickly coloring that all of us usually got by January, but her eyes were bright enough to make her almost pretty.

  “You should get this one,” she said, thrusting a blue-green silky scarf my way. “It goes with your eyes, and it’ll help keep your hair off your face.”

  I refolded it carefully and said, “It’s not really in my budget. My grandparents are on Social Security and the Spirit Corps only pays a stipend. I mean, we’re fine. My parents planned and saved for it and everything. My mom used to run an organic coffee shop in town and my dad worked for the Iowa Environmental Council, but still, we’re not rich. I just feel bad spending my allowance on stuff I don’t totally need when my parents are . . .” I waved vaguely.

  What in the hell was I doing telling her all this stuff? She didn’t care about my mom’s coffee shop or my grandparents’ Social Security checks. A bubble of shame filled my stomach. I was such an embarrassment when I got nervous.

  “I get it,” she said with a nod. She glanced around quickly and stuffed the scarf into her messenger bag, then pushed the cart toward the home goods section all casual like.

  “What are you doing?” I whispered. “You’re going to get caught.”

  She looked at me and shook her head. “I’m not. Don’t worry. I’ve done this before. And before you start stressing over the ethics of shoplifting, I would point out that this is Walmart. Walmart, which notoriously underpays its employees and which is currently the largest seller of firearms in the nation.”

  “Is that true?” I asked.

  Chloe Donnelly didn’t even blink. “Yes. Definitely.” She sounded so certain, like this was something everyone should know. “Trust me. Stealing that scarf is an act of subversiveness,” she said.

  An act of subversiveness, I repeated in my head. I fisted my hands to keep from biting my nails, and then, taking a deep breath, I lifted my chin the tiniest bit and let myself be proud. I was being subversive. My parents would probably high-five me. Maybe.

  Once she realized I was on board with shoplifting, she continued down the aisles. The farther into home goods we got, the less it smelled like beef and the more it smelled like starch and Styrofoam. “The Walmarts in Chicago are so crappy. All picked-through stuff with no one bothering to put it back in place so you can barely find anything.”

  “When I was little, I used to think that inanimate objects moved when no one was around, and so if I’d see one out of place, I figured it was trying to make its escape and I’d move it a little closer to the exit,” I said, then I looked down because maybe that was stupid. I mean, I didn’t do it anymore—mu
ch—but it probably sounded ridiculous.

  Chloe Donnelly just laughed and swatted my arm. “That is the best. What a smart little kid.” Then she plucked up a picture frame and moved it down the aisle, closer to the exit. “I’m so glad you came with me today. It sucks being new.”

  “You think? I mean, you seem to be doing fine.”

  She twisted the ring on her right hand, and I wished my nails weren’t so wrecked so I could wear rings too. “I guess. But this late in the year, everyone’s friendships are already set. How am I going to get in on that? I fought so hard with my parents when they said we were moving. I begged them to let me finish the school year in Chicago.”

  I understood. I’d done the same with my parents in Burkina Faso, even knowing that it killed my mom a little to say good-bye to me. Chloe Donnelly’s voice sounded so sad that I wanted to squeeze her shoulder or hug her or something, but I didn’t. “It’s better you came with them, though. It would’ve been hard living in Chicago on your own without anyone. Even if there’s more fun stuff to do there.”

  She blinked and gave me a funny look. “Well, I wouldn’t have lived on my own. I begged for them to stay in Chicago too. For all of us to stay. But their jobs and their goals were more important.”

  I swallowed the large baseball of saliva in the back of my throat, shushing the tiny voice that always wondered why my parents couldn’t have stayed in Grinnell and waited a few years before joining the Spirit Corps, and nodded. “Oh, right. Of course.”

  Then, as if Chloe Donnelly could hear the tiny voice, she asked, “How come your parents decided to go into the Spirit Corps while you were still in high school? Couldn’t they have joined after your senior year?”

  The answer was on the tip of my tongue, an avalanche of an explanation about Mom’s miscarriage and subsequent depression, and how none of us thought she was going to ever care about anything again until she’d heard a podcast about Burkina Faso and finally found a reason to get out of bed. But I stopped myself. Things were too new with Chloe Donnelly, and I wasn’t sure if she could understand it. So instead, I said, “Well, someone offered to buy my mom’s coffee shop and my dad’s position at work was being phased out because of funding issues, and they really wanted to do volunteering as a family, so the timing worked out for us to go.” Which was true, but not exactly right.

  “Except you didn’t end up volunteering as a family.”

  I swallowed. “Yeah. Because I didn’t want to stay in Africa.”

  “Hmm,” Chloe Donnelly said, but didn’t ask anything else. Instead, she rolled the cart, whose wheel had started squeaking again, toward the front of the store.

  We got in line for the cashier and I remembered the scarf shoved in Chloe’s bag. I tried to stay cool, but act of subversiveness didn’t sound as great now. The cashier rolled her eyes in disgust at the white dude with dreadlocks in front of us, and I couldn’t stop my grin at her annoyance. Somehow white guys with dreads always smelled like they bathed in dumpsters. None of the black guys with dreads from the college smelled like that. Were the white guys too embarrassed to ask for tips on hygiene? It was bad enough they were hijacking a traditionally black hairstyle, but they couldn’t even do it right. I could almost hear my mom’s lecture about the difference between honoring a culture and shaming it with your own stupidity.

  I glanced at Chloe Donnelly and stopped myself from blurting any of that out loud. She may have been the arty type with left-wing parents, but that didn’t necessarily mean she’d understand my parents’ strange fascination with other cultures, particularly considering their choice to live in Grinnell after college.

  The cashier looked relieved by the time we got to the register. She rang up Chloe Donnelly’s bedsheets and didn’t look at us with any kind of suspicion. The whole transaction was almost underwhelming for my first criminal act.

  We pushed the squeaky-wheel cart toward the cart corral with the others and left the store. Then Chloe Donnelly pulled the scarf out of her bag—while we were still in the parking lot!—and wrapped it around my head, pushing my hair out of my face. She was too touchy and fussy, really, particularly for a girl I’d just met. But it reminded me a little of how my mom used to be when she braided my hair, so I didn’t say anything, just let her do her thing. When she was done adjusting the scarf, she said, “Let’s see what Holly and Eve are up to.”

  I nodded and tried not to care that it took less than an hour for Chloe Donnelly to already be bored with me. “I think Holly has dance team, but I’ll see what Eve is doing. She might be busy.”

  Too busy to have wanted to hang out with me.

  I’m with Chloe Donnelly, I texted. What are you up to? Wanna hang out with us?

  Less than a minute later, Eve texted back. Definitely. Can you guys come to my house? Mom is all over me to catch up on homework but I’ll tell her we’re doing a group project.

  “We’ve got to go to Eve’s if we want to hang out,” I told Chloe Donnelly. “Her mom’s a bit . . . involved.”

  She grinned at me, as if we were in on some secret. “Sucks to be her.” I grinned back. “But tell her fine, we’ll be there soon.”

  I texted Eve back, then we climbed into Nan’s car, and I took the long way to the Jacobsons’, letting Chloe Donnelly talk the whole time about her old friends, and hoping the slight insecurity in her voice meant that she was trying really hard to be friends now with me.

  Eve’s house was cookie-cutter cute from the outside. Not massive or fancy, but adorable and well-kept. Her mom gardened and put up holiday decorations for every single holiday—including St. Patrick’s Day—and generally really bought into the whole small-town vibe of Grinnell. As I pulled into her driveway, I noticed all the Easter decorations had been taken down and replaced with more WELCOME SPRING plaques.

  Chloe Donnelly laughed when she saw it. “You didn’t even need to tell me her mom was involved. Those wooden flower placards speak for themselves.”

  I laughed too. “Yeah. My grandparents can barely pull off getting a Christmas tree up and there are two of them who aren’t working. Eve’s mom is sort of a force.”

  Almost to prove my point, her mom had opened the front door, wearing a dress and high heels like she did every time I saw her, and was shoving a plate of something in our faces before we even rang the doorbell.

  “Chloe,” she said in a sort of pinched singsong voice, “it’s been too long.”

  “Hi, Mrs. Jacobson. It’s good to see you. Did you make a new recipe?” I asked, plucking one of the chocolate-drizzled Rice Krispies Treats from the plate.

  “Yes. Eve refuses to try even one because she saw the amount of butter I put in, but you girls are growing and need the calcium.”

  And that was Eve’s mom, convinced that butter was a good source of calcium. I once overheard my mom say she was a few IQ points short of a bag of hair but meant well, which was particularly cruel for my mom, who always emphasized people’s strengths. I chewed a bite of Rice Krispies Treat and then nodded to Chloe Donnelly. “This is Chloe Donnelly. She’s new to Grinnell.”

  Mrs. Jacobson’s face split in half with her smile. “Oh, a new GHS student? We’ve had a few this year, which is unusual for us, but very welcome. Does your mom know about Grinnell Boosters? We can always use extra help.”

  Chloe Donnelly made her face mirror Mrs. Jacobson’s. It was kind of amazing how she could go all teacher’s pet like that. “That’s so nice of you to think of her. She’s starting her new job, so I think she’s going to wait until next year to get involved. But I’ll mention it in case.”

  “She works?” Mrs. Jacobson asked, a tiny frown of disapproval on her face. I wanted to roll my eyes at how dumb she was about working moms, and maybe even say something about how my mom always worked, but I never had that much courage with grown-ups, so I shoved in another mouthful of Rice Krispies Treat.

  Chloe Donnelly paused for a second, then said, “Yes, she works. Though I wish she were home more. She used to be and it wa
s so much better. She was a room parent in my elementary school and volunteered at the book fair and stuff. It’s hard not having her around as much.”

  Mrs. Jacobson lifted her chin and smiled big, a tiny bit of lipstick caked on her front tooth. “Well, not everyone can be as present for their children as they’d like to be. You’re welcome here anytime.” She held the plate out to her.

  Chloe Donnelly did not take a Rice Krispies Treat, and it made me want to put my half-eaten one back, but I didn’t, because it was delicious and for all I might put up with from my friends, skipping out on food wasn’t one of them.

  “I’ll pull together some Booster pamphlets and send them home with you,” Mrs. Jacobson told Chloe Donnelly. “And I could stop by this weekend to talk to her about it, to answer any questions she may have. She might be able to help with behind-the-scenes stuff like some of the other working parents.”

  Chloe Donnelly’s eyes went wide for a second—not that I could blame her since Mrs. Jacobson dropping by always meant endless conversation about how great the GHS parents were—but then she said, “We’re still getting settled with unpacking. But I’ll let her know to reach out to you.”

  Eve came downstairs and huffed at her mom. “Leave them alone, Mom. God. We have a group project due.”

  Mrs. Jacobson looked embarrassed for a second, but then shook it off and said, “All right, you three should get to work. Remember what your dad said about getting your grades up, Eve. You can’t go to volleyball camp this summer if you’re in summer school.”

  Mr. Jacobson was the hard-ass of the family. The grouchy bad cop to Mrs. Jacobson’s parental cheerleader. Even seeing Mrs. Jacobson try to be serious about Eve’s schoolwork was a little hilarious, because more than once I’d watched Eve talk her mom into writing notes explaining why she needed an extension on some assignment. She did the same thing for Eve’s younger brother, Jamie.

  Eve curled her lip and said, “Yeah. Dad already told me this morning. By-e.” Then she dismissed her mom with a swat of her hand.