Minerva Clark Gets a Clue (14 page)

Borntobebored:
I'd rather pin my hand to a burning log with a dull fork!

I linked to MontgomeryHighChat, and sure enough, someone had flamed Jordan:

QT_PIE865:
I for one am relieved that it's payback time for hootchie suck-up queen Jordan Parrish. Those of us who pay attention know what a poseur she is. And now she lost her big scholarship. Boo-hoo. It's about time people got wise to that biatch.

I logged off. My head hurt. My brain was exhausted big-time from all this thinking. I thought everyone liked Jordan, and I mean really liked her. Not like with Chelsea de Guzman, where people said they liked her, just so she wouldn't start some mean vicious totally untrue rumor about you. Jordan was nice to people like cling-on Pansy Burrows.

I took my rebus notebook out of my desk drawer and flopped down on my bed. I didn't feel much like puzzling out rebuses these days. I looked through all the ones I'd made so far. I tossed my notebook across the room.

Why had Jordan yelled at me like that? What had I done to make her so mad?

An odd feeling stirred inside my chest. I sort of missed the old Minerva Clark, who worried endlessly about being a Gigantor or having hair that was too thick and not silky enough, not straight enough or curly enough, who thought endlessly about how she looked like a dorkazoid with her braces, that her boobs were too flat and her butt was too big. If I was that girl again, I would be too worried about how I looked all the time to get caught up in a mystery that was getting messier by the day. It was like how I sometimes secretly missed playing with my stuffed animals. Life felt safer then, predictable.

I opened my closet door and scrounged around the pile of ugly clothes that always seemed to wind up off the
hanger and on the floor. Maybe if I found something really horrible, it would stir the spirit of the old Minerva.

I found a pleated pink (pink!) skirt Nana Clark had bought at the Goodwill. Nana Clark loved the Goodwill. The skirt had little pockets on the hip with kittens (kittens!) embroidered on it. I found the matching white top with pink sleeves and a pink chest pocket with yet another kitten embroidered on it. I pulled the shirt over my head and struggled into the skirt. It had a side zipper that zipped only halfway. I hadn't even checked myself out yet, but I could tell I wouldn't feel any self-hatred. All I thought was,
What a stupid, cheap skirt
.

I looked at myself in the mirror for a long time.

Hey, pretty in pink, just like the movie title said.

I spent the next hour going through all the ugly clothes I could find: puff-sleeved blouses and T-shirt dresses, long skirts with matching belts, a plaid hat like Scottish people wear. I finally dragged out the most awful dress ever made: a bright yellow dress with a scoop neck and an A-line skirt that I wore to another cousin's wedding last June, where I was forced to be the flower girl. I remember putting on the hideous dress and refusing to leave my room. I cried until my eyes swelled shut. Until that moment, I had never understood why some people wished they'd never been born. I felt like a school bus rambling down the aisle with my stupid
basket of rose petals, and more than one person at the reception afterwards had made egg yolk jokes. I put that dress on and stared hard at myself. I turned on the overhead light and stared harder.
If I wore dresses, this one wouldn't be so bad
. Except the color, of course, made me look as if I had a tropical disease.

I crawled back into my RAMONES FOR PRESIDENT T-shirt and khakis and lay on my bed, looking up at the glow-in-the-dark stars that Mark Clark had stuck up there when I was little. No wonder I didn't want to play the Change Game with Hannah and Julia. It wasn't that the game was lame or boring—although it was that, too—it was that I couldn't think of anything I'd change. The voice that told me I was ugly was dead, electrocuted that night at Mark Clark's art opening.

Now I really was a freak. I didn't know one girl at school who thought she was okay just the way she was.

There was a soft knock on the door. Morgan stuck his head in before I could say, “Come in,” which I
hate
. His hair was wet from the shower, and his hazel eyes were soft with concern. Morgan was always the peacemaker. Maybe because he was closest to me in age or because he was a Buddhist.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” I said.

“Whatcha doing?” he asked as he sat on the very edge
of my bed. He cradled something wrapped in a paper towel in his hand.

“Nothing.” I wished I had Jupiter there so we could drag him around on a towel or something and not have to have a Moment. I looked outside the window over my bed. The sky was pink with sunset.

“The bros filled me in.”

“I bet they did.” And people say girls tell each other everything.

“So why'd you sneak out?” he asked.

I sighed. I had a blue-and-yellow
Powerpuff Girls
comforter on my bed, a Christmas present from last year. I traced the outside of Buttercup's big green eye. I was too old for the comforter but not old enough to demand a new one.

“I had information for Jordan that I thought was important. About who'd stolen her identity and made her lose her scholarship.”

“She lost her scholarship?” asked Morgan.

“You're not allowed to have an arrest on your record. Even one that's a mistake. Or that's what they say. I guess they haven't decided for sure. I don't know.” I crooked my arm over my eyes. I thought about mentioning Dwight's murder, but suddenly I was just too tired.

Morgan considered this. One thing that was good about Morgan, he listened to you as if you were someone
he'd hang with. He was never fakey nice, the way some grown-ups were, pretending to find everything you said
entertaining
.

I heard the door open again. I took my arm away from my eyes and saw Quills standing there. He, too, had something wrapped in a piece of paper towel.

“Oh,” he said, but then he just stood there.

“What kind of information did you have for Jordan?” asked Morgan.

“I think Toc did it, stole Jordan's identity. I think he wants to mess with her because she broke up with him or something.” I looked straight at Quills. I sat up and pulled my knees to my chest. “I know he's your friend and everything, but I think he's got really bad vibes.”

“Toc's not a bad guy,” said Quills.

I snorted.

“I know he comes off as kind of a jerk sometimes, but it's all an act. There must be kids like that at your school.”

I thought of Reggie's friend James, who always wore a tweed newsboy cap at a jaunty angle and wanted everyone to call him JET, his initials. He quoted movie lines and pretended they were his own, even though they were from movies everyone had seen a million times.

“Well, anyway, Jordan says Toc was with her on Valentine's Day—that was the day the person was arrested who said she was her.”

Quills laughed. “In his dreams.”

“That's what Mark Clark says,” I said.

“It's pretty much common knowledge,” said Morgan.

“What do you mean?”

“Toc's been hot for Jordan since high school,” said Quills. “Remember that New Year's Eve party Mom and Charlie had that one year? He met her then. He was a senior and she was a freshman. But she's so not into him, it's pathetic. We've told him for years to get over it, but the poor guy continues to pine.”

“But Jordan said they spent Valentine's Day together.”

“I don't think—wait …” Quills interrupted himself, then gazed up at the ceiling, thinking. Then he started laughing, his arms crossed over his skinny middle. “Nope, Toc wasn't in town on Valentine's Day. The Cashews had a gig that weekend, I remember. Toc was out of town all week. His mom made the whole family go to the National Square Dancing Convention—in Nebraska or somewhere—Toc comes from a long line of champion square dancers. It's his deepest secret.”

A few square dancing jokes came to mind, but I let
them pass. Why had Jordan lied to me? She wasn't into Toc, so why had she said they were together? She was trying to protect him, but she didn't even need to. He wasn't even in town. I tried to remember what her face had looked like when she told me. She was furious, too furious for what was going on, I thought. She'd told me then to mind my own business.

“Anyway, don't worry about Toc. He's a lovesick puppy. That's his main problem. There's no need to stress about it,” said Quills.

“I'm not stressing.” I
was
stressing. Something was definitely going on.

“So no more sneaking out or snooping around, all right?” said Quills. “Just let this thing go.”

“Don't you have some big report due anyway?” said Morgan.

“Boston Tea Party,” I said, sighing. “I picked the topic because it had ‘party' in the title. I didn't know it was about
taxes
.”

“Oh, and this is from Mark Clark.” Morgan unwrapped the paper towel. It was a Rice Krispies square.

Quills laughed. He unwrapped
his
paper towel. Another Rice Krispies square.

“Two great minds—” said Quills.

“One great thought,” said Morgan.

“Thanks,” I said. “I take it there are dishes?”

“Well, d'oh,” said Morgan. They laughed and high-fived. There are definitely worse brothers out there.

I didn't say anything else. I wanted them to leave.

After I heard their steps on the stairs I logged back on to MontgomeryHighChat. I reread QT_PIE865's flame more carefully for clues. The Rice Krispies squares sat on their paper towels on the corner of my desk, untouched. Instead, I braided and unbraided big sections of my hair.

Who would call Jordan a hootchie suck-up queen and a biatch? A guy probably. But not Toc. It was clear that Toc had nothing to do with this. He was at the National Square Dancing Convention over Valentine's Day—wait until I told Reggie!—and had had it bad for Jordan since forever.

But what about his knowledge of Dwight's check-cashing scam? Maybe it was just as he said. He knew because his older brother told him. It was so hard to know what was true. Julia had embellished about Jordan losing the Hightower,
if
you believed Jordan. But Jordan had lied about being with Toc, so maybe she was lying about other things, too. Maybe Jordan really wasn't a one-hundred-percent-good person. Maybe she was only an eighty percent good person.

Anyway, someone probably from Montgomery High thought she wasn't even that. They thought she was a
biatch. And about eight million people went to Montgomery High.

I put my head down on my desk. As I drifted off I thought of another rebus:

2 ↑ set

Too upset.

I UNLOADED THE DISHWASHER AND RELOADED
it with coffee cups, teacups, glasses sticky with Mountain Dew, and a lot of cups and glasses sitting on the counter that didn't even look dirty. Pots and pans I had to do by hand. I squirted some lemon Joy on a sponge and wiped out the square glass dish from the Rice Krispies squares. I looked out the kitchen window over the sink, but it was dark outside and threw back my own reflection. The bass line of some song thumbed through the ceiling; Quills's room was over the kitchen.

One thing about dish duty, it gave you lots of time to think.

I had to find out who had posted that flame about
Jordan. I had a sneaking suspicion that whatever he had against Jordan might have something to do with why Jordan lied to me about Toc's being with her on Valentine's Day and with why she had gotten so mad at me. Now that I knew Toc was innocent and that he'd been hooked on her for a while, I could see why she might find me totally annoying for pestering her about him or think I was a stupid middle schooler, or whatever, but she'd been massively pissed off that day. I'd struck a nerve and maybe her flamer knew why.

Maybe, I thought, they had some
busines.

Some unfinished business … get it?

I smoothed a red-and-white checked dish towel out on the counter, rinsed out the Top Ramen pot, and laid it on the towel. The obvious way to find out the identity of the flamer was to post to
MontgomeryHighChat.com
and see if maybe he or she would come out and say who they were, although it was unlikely. And even if they did, I knew only about five people who went to Montgomery High, mostly the older brothers and sisters of my own friends, like Julia's older sister, Alison.

I was in the middle of wiping down the counter when I figured it out.

Mark Clark was sitting at his computer, like usual, but
he wasn't playing EQ. It looked as if he was working on his fractals, or maybe it was businessy stuff.

I sat in the wooden chair next to his desk and sighed loudly.

“What's up?” he said, without looking away from the screen.

“Computer science homework. I kind of forgot about it.”

“When's it due?” he said.

“It's extra credit. We're supposed to find out how message boards work. From a computer standpoint, I mean.”

“Well, a message board is nothing more than a big database. It's sort of like a chart that holds information in different boxes.”

“Uh-huh.” I really didn't want Mark Clark to click into lecture mode. “But I mean, take a message board like MontgomeryHighChat. How does the message get from someone's computer onto the board?”

“Everyone's computer has an Internet address called an IP address, which is how your computer talks to anything on the Internet.”

“Is the address like a home address? Like, you can look it up somewhere and see whose computer it is?”

“Sure, if you knew how, you could.”

“Huh. I bet you know how.”

“Well,
yeah
.”

We sat. He typed a little. I wagged my foot.