Goodbye, Rebel Blue

by Shelley Coriell

  “I said, I’ll supervise.” Bronson tucks a throw pillow under his head.

  I drop my bird and step in front of the television. “And I said, clean up the mess.”

  “Why is it such a big deal to you?”

  “Because the paint is all over my spot at the table.”

  “So why don’t you clean it up?”

  “Because I didn’t spill it. I have no idea why we’re even having this asinine conversation. You make a mess, you clean it up. Ever hear of personal responsibility?”

  “Ever hear of Prozac?” Bronson asks. Giggles rise from all four sides of the table.

  I jam my hands into my two back pockets. I’m on edge because I don’t know how to deal with people like this, which is why I don’t join clubs like this.

  “Leave him be, Rebel,” says the girl from AP English. “Seriously, he can’t paint, so we don’t want him anywhere near the table.”

  “Then why is he here?” I ask with raised palms.

  “I need another thirteen hours before I hit a hundred,” Bronson says.

  “Wait. Let me make sure I understand this.” I point both hands at Bronson. “You’re earning service hours watching TV while we paint the birds.”

  “Sounds like a plan to me.”

  I spin toward Nate. “Isn’t this in violation of the one club rule?” Not that I care about rules. The blatant-dishonesty thing is what boggles my brain.

  Bronson crooks a finger at me, inviting me closer. “Here’s a little secret a wallflower like you may not know. Nate will handle everything. He aces every class, every assignment, and he likes things done his way.” He fluffs the pillow beneath his head. “He’d probably repaint my bird anyway. Isn’t that right, Nate-O? No worries?”

  We both turn to Nate, who is as still as the saintly statue in the corner. He stares at me as if I’m wearing underwear with dinosaurs. At last he walks across the room and switches off the TV. “Rebel’s right. If you want the hours, you need to paint. Now let’s get to work.”

  With Nate the Efficient at the helm, everyone in the room, including Bronson, starts painting. I pick up my paintbrush and study the jars of paint. Drama isn’t my thing, and stuff like these power plays exhausts me. Art, on the other hand, is something I know and love. This gray paint is too dark for the feathers and not natural looking. I drop a dab onto my forearm and then add white and black until I get a nice, variegated gray. For community-service hours, there could be worse things than painting. I’ll have to take a picture when I’m done and show it to Miss Chang, my art teacher. When I reach for my bird, I notice that everyone has stopped painting and is staring at me.

  “What?” I ask.

  The girl from English looks at me as if I have an orange beak sprouting from my forehead. “Most of us stopped painting ourselves in preschool.”

  “I’m mixing paint.”

  “Interesting … um … technique.”

  I dab my brush back into the paint on my arm. “Works for me.” Sometime later, I go to dip my brush into the orange paint to finish the beak when Bronson grabs the jar. “I’m not done with it,” I say.

  “You’ve had it for five minutes,” Bronson says.

  “Ten,” adds the girl from English. She taps her brush against her bird’s unpainted beak.

  “We can share. Bring your birds down here.”

  “They’re wet.”

  “Okay, let me finish one thing.” I aim my brush at the paint, and Bronson jerks it away. An arc of orange sails across the table and splats the face of the girl from English.

  She swipes the orange from her eyes and mouth and stares in horror at her hands, as if she’s dripping blood. “Look what you did!”

  “I didn’t do it. Bronson did.”

  “But it’s your fault,” she says.

  “Like hell it is!”

  Something tugs at my pocket. The littlest Bolivar, the one in the dinosaur underwear, frowns at me. “You shouldn’t swear. You’ll go to hell.”

  I’m already in hell.

  I SINK INTO THE CHAIR BEHIND MY DRAFTING TABLE and watch bits of confetti light tumble through the attic. After the ugliness at the 100 Club meeting, I’d love to grab my soldering iron and spend the late afternoon digging through sea glass and making something good and beautiful. Instead, I power up the laptop. After the fiasco at the decoy-painting meeting, it’s clear I don’t belong in Kennedy Green’s do-gooder world. So the sooner I finish her list, the better for all mankind.

  And turtles.

  I call up a website for endangered turtles and start bucket-list item number three: Adopt an endangered leatherback turtle in each of my grandparents’ names. This is clearly a twofer. In a single bucket-list item, Kennedy gets to memorialize her grandparents and help save an endangered species. Double the do-gooding, which I’m learning is so Kennedy.

  Below me, footsteps clatter on the ladder to the laundry room, and Pen’s head pops through the open space in the floor. “I need the laptop.”

  I browse the turtle adoption page and find leatherback turtles, which are not attractive. They have ridged, cowhidelike backs and old-man faces. I click the “Adopt Now” button.

  An irritated snort comes from Pen’s direction. “Now!”

  An order page replaces the ugly-turtle image. “Use the computer in the kitchen,” I tell Penelope’s head.

  “Mom’s updating her website with client testimonials. She’ll be on there for hours.”

  “Five more minutes, and I’ll be done.” I scroll down the screen, and the ugliness continues. Each leatherback turtle adoption costs one hundred dollars.

  “Reb, I need to e-mail information to the track team for the meet tomorrow. I need to get this done now. It’s important.”

  “This is important.” I go back to the main turtle page and click on other turtles. Adoption for loggerheads will set me back fifty dollars each, desert tortoises only twenty-five dollars. But Kennedy’s list specifically mentions leatherback turtles. I grind my knuckles against the sides of my head.

  Pen stomps up the ladder and leans her hip against my drafting table. “Sea turtles? Are you doing drugs?”

  I click back to the leatherback turtle page. “Yes, the really, really bad ones.”

  “Since when do you care about sea turtles?”

  “They’re endangered. Keeps me awake most nights.” For the first time, I look Pen in the eye. “If you shut up for five minutes, I can finish this, and you, me, and the poor little turtles can be free of each other.”

  Assuming Kennedy Green has four grandparents, I’ll need to dish out four hundred dollars. Maybe I’ll luck out, and a few of Kennedy’s grandparents are dead.

  Really?

  Late-afternoon light, heavy and golden, pours into the attic’s dormer windows. I bite back a growl. The truth is, Kennedy would want all four grandparents memorialized, even if they’re in a golden heaven. If I’m going to do this right, I need to do the list items in the spirit Kennedy intended.

  I need four stupid turtles. After buying new tires for the Vespa last month, I have one hundred and twenty-five dollars in my savings account. I select one adoptee named Ernesto.

  Pen leaves my table and walks to the back wall of my studio, her fingers trailing along a frame of blue and green glass.

  “Hands off,” I say. Ernesto has acne and a lazy right eye.

  Pen nudges the frame, and it shifts, dangling at a crooked angle. “You know, it’s bad enough that you’re decorating the walls with trash, but it’s creepy to have all these picture frames hanging with no pictures.”

  “I said, hands off.” Ernesto lives near Costa Rica. I hope he has three brothers I can adopt once I get my hands on more money.

  “But you don’t have any pictures to put in your junky little frames, do you? Not of friends, not of family. Not even a picture of your mom.” She jostles another frame. “Or your dad.”

  The blow catches me fast and hard, midchest.

  Pen, a track-team standout, loves
competing and winning, and she takes great delight in besting me in the I-have-more-than-you-do game. On her particularly vicious days she plays the father card. My dad was a French Canadian journalist my mother spent one night with in Buenos Aires. She knew only his first name and that he was in town doing a story on the city’s art museums. By the time she knew she was pregnant, he was long gone. “He was quite the nomad,” Mom had told me. “Always chasing the next story.” When I was younger I wondered if he had known about me if he would have stayed. And after Mom died I dreamed about him coming to free me from the bungalow.

  “You don’t need anyone to make it in this world,” Mom often told me. “The power to be extraordinary comes from within.”

  And she was right. Mom was the most extraordinary person I’d ever known. She won major photography awards, and her work appeared on greeting cards and in magazines and ads all over the world. But more than money and awards, she had a fire for everything she did. I remember one time when we were in the Sea of Cortez and she camped out on a spit of rock for three days where a large school of flying stingrays had been reported. I sat in the Jeep, watching her brave the blistering sun and heat and gritty wind, eventually capturing a series of shots of the giant fish soaring through the air like eagles. Even to my untrained, eight-year-old eyes, I recognized the photo series for the brilliant work of art it was. Mom never sold the rights to the photos, and I understood why. She wasn’t ready to give up that piece of her heart.

  And for as long as I could remember, Mom told me to follow my heart. “Don’t just march to the beat of your own drummer, Reb. March to the beat of your own 275-member band.” I don’t know why Pen’s mentioning my mom and dad now, other than she’s been extra pissy since Kennedy’s memorial service. I’m in no mood to get into it with her. I’d already fought with Mr. Phillips and every member of the 100 Club today. With another click, I save Ernesto the Expensive to my bookmarks and hand Pen the laptop. “Go.”

  My cousin takes the computer and skips down the ladder.

  I walk to the back wall and straighten the sea-glass frames.

  I bang the rubber mallet on the bag of almonds.

  “Um, Rebel?” Macey takes the mallet from my hand. “I need almond crumbs, not almond milk.”

  The bag of almonds is gushy, gluey. “Sorry.”

  “I can handle it from here.” Macey takes the bag and picks out the pieces I haven’t sent to a milky grave.

  “How much do you think we can make by selling pies?” During lunch period, I’d once again followed Macey to the FACS kitchen, where she made another pie, this one with a graham-cracker crust, almond filling, and blueberries.

  “You’re getting way too obsessed with this turtle thing.” Macey pounds the almonds in a steady, even manner. “I’m assuming the donation jar in the biology lab is your doing.”

  Heat rises to my face. Dorky, but my deed. I took one of my Mason jars, painted it blue, and made a sea-glass mosaic in the shape of a sea turtle. I attached a sign that read Save the Endangered Leatherback Turtles, and cut a slice in the plastic lid. In two days I’d raised twenty-two dollars and fifty-six cents and a wad of dried gum. “It’s on the list.”

  Macey sprinkles the crushed almonds over the blueberries.

  Money has never been overly important in my world, at least not amassing large sums of it. To Aunt Evelyn’s horror, I prefer army-surplus pants and T-shirts and dime-store flip-flops. I don’t need expensive electronic gadgets. I don’t covet trendy clothes or designer cell-phone covers.

  “After taking out the cost of ingredients, we could make about five dollars per pie.” Macey bites into a forkful of pie, her mouth and eyes pinched in concentration. With a sigh, she drops the fork into the sink. “But they’re not right. Something’s off.”

  Like my life. Ever since that day in detention, my world has been off-kilter. I’m doing good deeds, hanging out with Mr. Perfect, and worrying about money. As I help Macey clean up, I ponder selling blood, plasma, and hair.

  No, not hair. Most people don’t get the blue. I discovered the electric-blue dye three years ago at Bella’s Discount Beauty Supply, and it reminded me of the blue waters of Belize, a place of sun and warmth and my mom.

  The bell rings as Macey puts away the final dish, and I hang the dish towel on the oven door. Out in the hallway, bodies move out of our way. It’s one of the perks of wearing a bag with a row of fossilized shark teeth. We leave the crowded hallway and escape into the breezeway. In front of Unit Five Nate hangs out with the other sportos. A girl with big cow eyes bats her lashes at him, clearly one of his admirers from the herd. He doesn’t acknowledge me, nor I, him. I don’t speak moo.

  The tardy bell rings, and students hurry into their classrooms. I take my time. I have art with Miss Chang, and I have no tardies. Macey doesn’t seem in any hurry, either. We reach my locker, and I dig out my art folder.

  “Maybe I should try a shortbread crust.” Macey rolls her bottom lip between her thumb and forefinger. “Or a crust made with lard. All the fat leaves the crust extra flaky.”

  “Flaky is good,” I say, wondering about her pie obsession, but I don’t bother to ask. After the past three school years of being detention comrades and more-or-less friends-of-convenience, I’ve learned Macey doesn’t do personal. She prefers to lurk in the shadows and hide behind her hoodie.

  The door at the end of the hall swings open, and Nate rushes into the corridor. Ms. Cow Eyes must have distracted him too long. When he sees Macey and me, his feet skid to a stop. He shifts his backpack to his other shoulder and tilts his chin toward me. “What are you doing Friday afternoon?”

  I grab my sketchbook from my locker. I want to show Miss Chang some of my new sea-glass mosaic ideas. “I have an accordion lesson.”

  The right side of Nate’s mouth quirks. “On Friday I plan to set up the decoys at the nesting site on the mudflats. Meet me at five o’clock in the north beach parking lot.”

  Nate’s confidence borders on arrogance, and it irritates me. “And what if I don’t want to meet you at five?”

  Nate’s eyes flash. “You do.” He places a palm on the lockers on either side of me. He’s a foot taller, and I have to crane my neck to look him in the eye. His mouth curves, and I spot something that looks suspiciously like dimples on either side of his mouth. “And feel free to bring your accordion.” The smile deepens. Definitely dimples—more like craters.

  My sketchbook clatters to the ground, the sound echoing in the empty hallway.

  Tapping the lockers on either side of mine, Nate winks and shoves off.

  Macey stares with disbelieving eyes as Nate rushes down the hall and into the calculus room. “You’re going on a date with him?”

  “It’s a community-service project.” I slam my locker and snatch my sketchbook from the ground. “We’re sticking rubber birds on mudflats.”

  Macey makes an uh-huh sound.

  “It’s not a date,” I insist as we walk down the corridor.

  On silent feet, she ducks through the study-hall door.

  “It’s not a date!”

  TREES ARE EVIL. SO ARE THE PEOPLE WHO SELL them.

  I swallow my contempt for all things green and step up to the cash register at The Garden Spot. “I’d like to speak to the manager, please.”

  The clerk, who wears an apron covered with giant sunflowers, looks me up and down, from blue streaks to mud-caked flip-flops, which weren’t muddy until my trek through Mr. Green Thumb’s back lot.

  “We’re not hiring,” the clerk says.

  “I’m not here about a job. I need to talk to the manager about a school project. It’s about trees.”

  After school today I started roaming the streets of downtown Tierra del Rey in search of trees to complete the next item on Kennedy’s bucket list: Plant seedlings in Brazil to replenish our dwindling rain forests. I can’t travel to Brazil, but with a little creativity, I can complete this item in the spirit of what Kennedy wanted. Plant more trees. Save the plan
et.

  The problem, thanks to my turtle shopping spree, is I have no money to buy trees, which leads to the inevitable question: What would Kennedy do? I swear I should have WWKD tattooed on my right forearm. I imagine Kennedy would craft toe rings out of recycled newspaper to earn money or go door-to-door with a juice can. In other words, she’d get others to pony up the cash for the trees. So I’ve spent the past two hours trying to get plant people to part with a few twigs. The arbor world has not been kind.

  The Garden Spot clerk picks up the phone and fifteen seconds later gives me a too-bad-so-sad face. “The manager is busy. She asked me to help you.”

  Story time. “I’m collecting trees to plant in the parking lot at the Del Rey School near our gym. A few years ago the old trees caught a fungus and died. Percy Cole, who heads our school’s maintenance program, wants to plant new trees, but there’s no money in the budget. Trees make sense in a school parking lot, combating all that exhaust and keeping young lungs healthy.” I show more teeth. Kennedy would love this. “So I’m looking for a plant nursery to donate the trees. We can even include a plaque acknowledging The Garden Spot’s donation.” And they all lived happily ever after.

  “We love supporting our community, but we just gave a large donation to the senior center for their summer garden.”

  “I don’t need a ton of trees.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “One.” Kennedy mentioned nothing about quantity.

  “Not today.”

  “Please.” I’m begging. Do you see this, Kennedy? I’m begging for you.

  “Try us around the holidays.”

  Panic jolts my spine. The holidays are months from now. I can’t let this bucket-list thing drag on that long. I thank the unhelpful clerk and take out my phone. I’m hunting for another tree place when I hear, “Yoo-hoo, Rebecca. What in heaven’s name are you doing here?”

  My eyelids squeeze shut. I don’t need Aunt Evelyn. I need trees. Jamming my phone into my pocket, I open my eyes and wave. “Just leaving.”