Worse Than Weird

by Jody J. Little

  Time to get rolling.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  The Tenth Clue

  Our plans are set. As soon as the carts open, Willa and Brie are heading to Le Rythme de Paris to figure out what to order, and I’m meeting Joey at the carts on Foster Road.

  I don’t tell Joey I’ve solved the clue. I want to see his face when I first let him know.

  He’s not at the pod when I get off the bus, but it’s okay because it gives me time to study the menu at the chicken place, the exact cart we nearly ordered from the evening before. The Rhode Island Red sandwich is the third item listed. That just leaves me the question of what drink to order. Probably a fruit drink since the clue says “one meat, one fruit.”

  “I figured we’d go to a different pod today.” Joey Marino appears right next to me, and I flinch. His black hair’s in his eyes like always, his bottomless backpack on his shoulders. I’ll never stop being amazed at his ghostlike moves.

  “No. I wanted to meet here because you found the right cart last night.” I grin.

  Joey deserves the credit.

  I hand him the clue and explain what we should order. I even tell him how I figured it out and show him this morning’s stab wound from Poppy.

  “I guess the new nesting box helped.” Joey laughs.

  And I like hearing that because Joey Marino doesn’t laugh a whole lot, and laughter is healing. That’s what Hank used to say when he was a laughter therapist.

  “We just have one gamble,” I say. “Do we order the lemonade, the limeade, or the raspberry-ade?” I reach for the twenty-dollar bill from Willa.

  Joey whips off his backpack and sets it at his feet. “We’re running out of time, so we order them all.”

  He crouches down and reaches deep into a side pocket. “I have Willa’s money, and extra change in case we’re wrong and have to buy more food somewhere else.”

  He’s right. We do have to be sure. We must have this clue, and I’m filled with hope and a sudden belief that this will be a new clue, and not a repeat. This day feels lucky. The Poppy episode was merely the start.

  I stride up to the counter of the trailer. “I’d like the Rhode Island Red sandwich, one lemonade, one limeade, and one raspberry-ade, please.”

  The man laughs. He takes my twenty and Joey’s four quarters and tells us he’ll shout at us when it’s ready.

  “Where’d you get all that change?” I sit down at the picnic table across from Joey.

  “Ma dumps all her diner tips in this jar in our kitchen. It’s my lunch money during the school year,” he explains. “But some days, I don’t use it.”

  “Do you save it?”

  “Kind of,” he says. But then he lowers his head and doesn’t say anything else, and I wonder if he’s hiding some of his broken pieces from me.

  “But then how do you pay for your lunch?”

  Joey shrugs. “There’s always fruit or other stuff on the free table at school.”

  The free food table. One of Joey’s projects. It’s where you put food you’re not eating that someone else might want. I didn’t think kids really ate that food. The free table is where I put most of the stuff Coral packs for me, and then I eat some of Willa’s food because her mom packs enough for the whole class.

  I wonder if Joey’s eaten Coral’s food. Her carrot salad? Her dry bran muffins? Her kale chips?

  I’ll probably never know for sure. I’m learning that he does things I’ve never imagined doing, because I’ve never needed to, or wanted to, or cared to.

  Joey Marino’s like an X-ray I haven’t asked for, but that maybe I’ve really needed. And when I study the images from his X-ray, I see my insides, which show a person who thinks so much about all the weirdness in her own world she can’t notice the people around her, living in their own worse-than-weird worlds.

  “Your lunch is ready!” the guy from the chicken cart shouts.

  Joey gets our food and brings it back to the table, sitting himself right next to me. The sandwich is wrapped in foil and underneath the sandwich is the receipt. On the receipt are two printed lines, and those lines are brand-new to me and Joey.

  Pull on your boot, be adventurous too.

  Try an animal combo of Classic and new.

  It’s the tenth and final clue.

  Before I have time to process the words, Joey flings his arms around my neck and hugs me. Instinctively, my spine tenses, but somehow, I lift my arm, and rest it on Joey’s back, hugging him too.

  Joey releases himself from the hug first. “Mac! We have all ten clues. Now we just need to figure out where to take them. I’ll go talk to the guy in the chicken cart. He might know.”

  Joey runs off, and I text Willa and Brie with the news: We found the tenth clue!

  Joey walks back toward me shaking his head. The guy was no help. Joey sits back down, across from me this time. “I should . . . probably tell you something.” His face still looks happy, but there’s something serious in his tone. “I’ve known about this food cart hunt since it started. Hannah found out about it, and she told me about the prize money. I had four clues before you even started.”

  This should surprise me, but it doesn’t.

  “I wanted your help, Mac.”

  “My help? Why me?”

  Joey folds and twists the foil from the chicken sandwich. “Because you’re smart. Really smart.”

  Wait.

  Joey really thinks that?

  I always thought Mrs. Naberhaus was the only one who noticed my brain, and maybe Coho . . . but Joey does too?

  “And also,” he continues, “I thought you might want some extra money because—”

  “Why didn’t you just ask me to help?”

  “What would you have said?”

  “I would have said . . .” I swallow away the truth. I would have thought Joey was weird. I would have said he was making it up. I might have even laughed.

  “I was trying to figure out a way to talk to you and tell you about the hunt, and then I got kind of lucky,” he continues. “On the last day of school, when I saw you, Brie, and Willa at the Hawthorne carts, huddled over that tissue paper, reading something, I knew it was a clue.”

  “You stole that clue from me.”

  “You left it on the table.” Joey flicks his straw at me.

  We smile at each other.

  “And then it was just a matter of following you and seeing which carts you went to.” He takes a slurp of his drink.

  “I thought you were stalking me,” I admit. “Every time I turned around, you were there, like when I had feathers in my hair, when we were on the same bus heading downtown—”

  “When we both saw the naked bikers.” Joey bursts out laughing, spitting out some lemonade. He wipes it off his chin.

  “Stop laughing!”

  But he doesn’t stop. He reaches for a napkin and cleans off the table where his lemonade spewed.

  “It was funny, Mac. I thought that’s why you and Willa and Brie were there too.”

  I turn away from Joey. “My parents are never funny to me.”

  Last night, I felt like we made such a good team. We were in sync and on the same page, both needing to win this prize money. Now I just feel like he’s laughing at me like everyone else at school. It seems like he was just using me.

  Joey stands up. He’s not laughing anymore. He scrunches the foil around the chicken sandwich and shoves it into his backpack. I look up at him. He’s fading again, returning to phantom boy, the one I never saw, and through all the grayness of him I realize what I just said. My parents are never funny to me.

  Joey’s parents are probably not funny to him either.

  I should apologize, but my jaw trembles, and then Joey speaks. “I need this money, Mac. And now you’ll get it too. You’ll be able to go to that computer camp and become the world’s best supercoder.” He swings his backpack onto his shoulder. “I’m sorry I laughed about your mom. I can be a jerk sometimes.”

  My eyes lock on his
face and the colorlessness of his skin, and I wonder if winning this money will make that change. If it will bring him some pale pigment of hope.

  Joey Marino’s not a jerk, and I admit for the first time, “I’m the one who’s a jerk.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  The Next Step

  After I saw the naked bikers for the first time six years ago, Coral sat me down with her on the living room futon. I did not want to talk to her about what I had seen, but she insisted. She tried to explain what she was doing, how she was expressing herself, but I didn’t understand. Her words tied knots inside my body. The more Coral talked, the tighter all the knots became. They pinched and pulled, and I squirmed and wiggled next to her. Finally, I just got up and ran to the garage to hang out with our chickens. Escaping seemed like the best way to loosen the gnarls. It seemed like the only way to end Coral’s talk.

  Maybe that’s what Joey and I needed right then. Maybe we both had to get up and escape the awkward conversation tying knots inside us both.

  Maybe he and I are in sync . . . in a weird way.

  The next thing we had to figure out is what to do with the ten clues. We need to turn them in somewhere to win the prize. We decide to go to the Belmont Library and use their computers. Two bus rides later, at 1:10 in the afternoon, we arrive at the library. The computers are all in use, so I put my name on the waiting list, and text Willa and Brie to tell them where we are, and to meet us if they can. When thirty minutes pass, a man stands up and leaves.

  I sit in front of the open computer and Joey finds a chair and squeezes in between me and the woman sitting at the next computer. She huffs at us, but neither Joey nor I move.

  “What exactly are we looking for?” Joey’s side is pressed against my arm.

  “Hints.” I navigate to the Food Cart Association website. “I remember Lorenzo told me to look here.”

  It takes a couple of seconds for it to load, and when it does, I look at all the tabs along the top banner.

  Joey points to the News tab. “Open that.”

  I click on it. “I’ve read this a few times and haven’t found anything. Guess we can look again.”

  I scroll down, and Joey and I both read, silently.

  Burger Barn now serves side salads.

  Tandoori moves to Killingsworth Station.

  Grandma Jenny’s sets July menu.

  Podster Leo rates the Piedmont Carts.

  “These don’t seem like hints,” Joey whispers. “They’re more like little news bullet points.”

  I agree, but I keep scrolling down the page.

  Eugene catches food cart experience.

  Left Bank is now called the “The Big Corner.”

  Peppers goes to Cathedral Park.

  I pause for a moment.

  Cathedral Park. Why does that seem familiar?

  I feel Joey’s arm tense, just slightly.

  I shake my head and keep scrolling, moving the mouse with my fingers slowly as we read line after line of food cart news.

  Captain’s Chinese closes.

  Fire! is new on the East Side.

  Tamales are their trademark.

  “This list goes on forever.” I look at the time on the bottom of the monitor. It’s 2:15.

  Cart tours available.

  PF’s Pod opens in Beaverton.

  The sun will depart, and the ride will start.

  “Stop.” Joey whispers right into my ear and touches the screen. “That’s odd. What does that line have to do with the food carts?”

  But I don’t answer because something else seems strange to me. I scroll back up the news feed, returning to another line we’d already read. Then I go down. Then up again, then down again.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Checking something.” I scroll up and down once more and then let go of the mouse. “Joey, there’re different fonts.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  I show him three lines: the one about Cathedral Park, the one about tamales, and finally the one about the sun departing. “These lines are typed in a different font.”

  “No, they’re not.”

  “Yes, they are. These three lines are Calibri, and the other lines are all Arial.”

  Joey squints at the computer monitor. “They look so similar.”

  “It’s the size. The lines in Arial are in size twelve, and the lines in Calibri are in thirteen. That way they look similar unless you’re really paying attention.”

  Joey leans back in his chair. “You’re a total computer nerd, Mac, and you’re brilliant.”

  I remember thinking the exact same thing about him yesterday on Mississippi Avenue, playing his ukulele for our food.

  Joey Marino and I make a pretty good team, after all.

  I grab a piece of scrap paper and a tiny pencil and scribble down the three Calibri lines from the news feed. “Hey, look at the first two lines,” I whisper. “‘Peppers goes to Cathedral Park. Tamales are their trademark.’”

  Joey stares at the paper.

  “They rhyme! This is the final clue! Don’t you see? The cart Peppers is where we turn in all our clues. We have to order tamales. I wasn’t expecting that, but it makes sense. And this line here”—I point to the note—“tells us when to turn them in. When the sun goes down!”

  I’m about to burst, but Joey’s not. He stares at the note with the three lines I wrote down.

  What’s wrong with him? We’re going to win two thousand dollars!

  He finally speaks. “Cathedral Park is right under the St. Johns Bridge.”

  “I know. It’s a long way from here. We’ll have to check the bus schedule.”

  But Joey is stone-like still, as though he’s suddenly a long way from here. “What’s wrong?” I ask him. “We figured it out.”

  “It’s just that . . . remember how Hannah told me she heard Isabel shouting about the light people and how they would be at the St. Johns Bridge?”

  I don’t like the look on Joey’s face, the look he gets when he thinks of his mom. It takes him somewhere else, away from this hunt and the prize money.

  “It was two days ago when she said that,” he adds.

  “Joey, stop. The light people aren’t real. You said so yourself. This has nothing to do with your mom.” I feel certain about that. “Don’t go crazy on me.”

  He looks away. I see him swallow, hard.

  “I . . . didn’t mean that. It was a terrible thing to say. I’m sorry.”

  And I really, really am.

  “Joey,” I continue, “there are no light people. It’s not rational. That’s what you said the other day.”

  He remains silent and still.

  I nudge his arm. “Come on. We’re just hours away from the prize. You’re doing this for Isabel, remember?”

  He shifts in the chair. “You’re right. It’s a complete coincidence. I don’t know what I’m thinking.”

  He stands up, but I grab his hand and squeeze it tight. “I do not think you’re crazy.”

  “I don’t know. Sometimes I think I might be.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Cathedral Park

  As Joey and I leave the library, I text Willa and Brie. I want us all to go to Cathedral Park immediately, but Willa’s mom refuses to let us ride the city bus that far. She tells us she’ll take us in the evening, drop us off, and then return no later than ten to bring us home. Joey says no to the ride, that he’ll get there himself, but I make him promise to be there by eight, and I text him four times on the drive over to be sure he hasn’t veered off track.

  Willa’s mom drops us off at a roundabout near the river. I notice all the people lingering on the grass and the narrow dock, and I get a bad feeling. How many are here to turn in clues for the hunt?

  I’ve never been to this park before. There’s tons of leafy green trees and wide walking paths, and I understand right away why it’s named “Cathedral.” The St. Johns Bridge supports are towering, pointed arches like in a Gothic
Cathedral. Willa, Brie, and I walk toward a little amphitheater to wait for Joey. I stare at the bridge, mesmerized by its beauty, the lights along the deck, the elegant towers connected by the swooping cables. A thought of Joey’s mom pops into my head. Gazing at this bridge makes her visions of strange light people seem almost real.

  But that’s too weird of a thought.

  Everything will be okay.

  I’m sure of it.

  The only thing here tonight of any importance is Peppers, where we’ll order tamales and turn in all our clues.

  “So, you guys, I have something to tell you.” Brie says. “My parents agreed. They officially told me I could stop swimming.”

  “Really?” I reach out and squeeze her hand.

  Brie smiles, but it’s hard to tell what’s underneath that smile, whether it’s happiness or some sadness.

  I’m about to ask when I hear the beeps and dings of bells. We all look toward the sound, but we only see Joey walking toward us. He looks different. His gray T-shirt looks clean. And he’s combed his hair.

  “Guess who’s here,” Joey says.

  “Isabel?” I ask, slightly worried.

  “Who’s Isabel?” Willa says.

  “Nope.” He’s laughing. “The naked bikers.”

  “Oh. No.”

  This. Could. Not. Be.

  But it is. This is Coral’s big bike ride, the one she’s been talking about.

  It’s the yearly World Naked Bike Ride in the city of Portland.

  How did I not put this all together?

  Why do my weird parents continue to ruin every good moment of my life?

  The bell sounds get louder. I have a flashback of all the riders at the Joan of Arc statue, posing for pictures. Coral and Coho covered only in kale. Coral on my bike.

  And now they’re here.

  A naked peloton.

  Coral’s in the middle, riding my bike once again. Her dreadlocks are loose and draped in front of her chest, covering her top body parts. Around her waist is one of those rhododendron leis, cleverly wrapped to conceal other parts. Coho rides right alongside her.

  I have no idea why I’m watching this. I put my hand up to block the view, but it doesn’t work, because I see someone else.