The Princess of Las Pulgas (3 page)

“Hey, Carlie. How’s it
going? Haven’t seen you at the Shack.” He sweeps the drape of
golden hair from his forehead.

“I’ve been
busy
at home. With
things.”

“Yeah. Sorry.” He comes
close and, in what Lena calls his velvet voice, says, “I know it’s
been rough. I mean about your dad.” He clears his throat. “Is it
okay to call you now? Thought I’d ask. You know, in
case—”

“That’s . . . fine.
Yes.”

He brushes my arm with his
hand, then makes his way back to the bistro ruffling the sea of
lust again. A few girls cast envious glances my direction. At least
one thing is still the way it should be. I’m still Carlie Edmund,
the girl who has Nicolas Benz’s attention. For one moment I’m
excited about the Spring Fling, then that moment’s gone.
How am going to buy a dress?

I should have kept that babysitting job New
Year’s Eve with the Franklins. If I could wheedle Mrs. Franklin
into hiring me again and her social life picks up I might be able
to make two hundred dollars in time for the dance.

Lena waves at me across the
noisy room, her bouncy ponytail held high by a pale blue
ribbon.

I weave through the crowded
tables and sit across from her.

“I waited outside chemistry
for you and you, like, vanished.” She sounds pouty.

“I took a break.” I remove
the top slice of bread from my sandwich and fold the bottom slice
over the lettuce and cheese.

“Are you still on a
diet?”

Lena knows way too much
about me. “I’m not hungry.”

“I saw you with Nicolas. So
did he . . .?”

“Not yet.”

She places her bowl of soup
on the table and pushes the tray aside. “Were you, like, sick
Sunday? You didn’t answer your cell, and when I called your home
phone your mom said you were in bed.”

“I was tired.” I bite into
my half sandwich.

She dips her spoon into the
soup and stirs up rice and peas from the bottom. “So what's up with
you? I mean you seemed to be getting . . . well, better a few weeks
ago, and now . . . Do I have to mine for what’s going on or are you
going to volunteer something, sometime, before the world ends
maybe? Aren’t we still BFFs?” Lena spoons soup into her mouth and
fixes her eyes on me.

“Of course we are. It’s
just that . . . We’re moving.” Those two words have been festering
inside my head for over a month and burst out from between my
lips.

Lena’s hand halts half way
to her mouth, soup dripping from her spoon back into the bowl. “You
can’t move. Where will we have the end-of-the-year beach
party?”

I crush the sandwich bag
and hope the moisture in my eyes will evaporate.

“I’m sorry, Carlie. Really.
That didn’t come out right. I was so . . . Will you have to leave
Channing?”

“To be determined. I have
to go.” I grab my backpack and walk out the cafeteria door as
quickly as I can without running. My life’s unraveling and I want
the threads to come apart in private, not in front of the entire
Channing student body.

By the next week it’s
determined. Keith and I will have to change schools.

At dinner, Mom sits at the
end of the dining room table where Dad used to sit. I hadn't
noticed until this moment how she'd moved from her end of the table
to his, how Keith had slid the extra chair on his side to the wall,
and how I'd started sitting across from him. The three of us are
clustered together—the incredible shrinking family.

“The only place I can find
on such sort notice is in Las Pulgas.” Mom's face says what she
doesn’t. I’m sorry we have to move. I’m sorry it’s Las Pulgas. I’m
sorry.

“Las Pulgas is the worst
place in the world. Flea Town’s a joke. Why would any place be
named after disgusting bugs?”

“Carlie.” Mom frowns. “The
rent’s affordable, lets me pay off bills and still have something
to tuck away until I can get my realtor’s license and start making
a salary.” Behind her, boxes are stacked three high against the
dining room wall. She’s already removed the family pictures and
packed them. “Besides, they’ll allow one cat.”

I push my salad around with
my fork. “When?”

“I put down the cleaning
deposit and the first and last months’ rent today.” Mom’s eyes
glisten, but she stabs a last bite of chicken on her plate and says
a little too loudly, “We can move in by the fifteenth.”

My fork clatters onto my
plate.

Keith reaches for another
roll and slathers it with butter. “How come we can’t finish the
year here?”

“For one, you’re not going
to be in the Channing district anymore.” Mom shoves her chair back,
stands quickly and carries her plate into the kitchen. “For
another, we’ll be down to one car, so commuting is out of the
question.”

Keith and I exchange looks.
“One car?” We sound like a mini-chorus.

“Now’s the time to come up
with one of your bright ideas, Carlie. Save our cars.”

“I’ve spoken to your
counselors,” Mom talks over the sound of running water. “They’ll
help with the transfer and setting up your classes at Las
Pulgas.”

“Las Pulgas’s track team
sucks.” Keith says.

“I hate that word, Keith,”
Mom calls from the kitchen.

“Yeah? Well, I hate Las
Pulgas’s track team.” Keith shoves his chair away from the table
and disappears into the TV room.

Mom returns to sit across
from me. “So what do
you
hate?”

I want to say you but I
can’t, not when Mom looks at me like that. I can't say out loud I
hate Dad for getting sick and dying.
How
about the universe and all the rotten, stinking stuff it offers up?
What do I hate?
“My life.”

Mom cradles her head
between both hands. “Tell me about it.”

I close my eyes, letting a
shadow pass between us, then, even though I know it’s my
imagination, fingers soft as down brush my cheek.

Chapter 8

At breakfast that next
Saturday morning Mom springs her surprise for how I’m to spend the
day, ruining any plan I might have. Not that I had a plan, but I
would have made one if I’d known what she had in mind.

“Carlie, I don’t want to
argue with you. You and Keith are going with me to see the
apartment.” Mom stacks the dishes in the dishwasher and returns to
the table. “It’s the only way you’re going to be able to decide
what to take and what to . . . get rid of.”

I mash my back against my
chair and cross my arms. “Do I even get a closet?”

“Of course. It’s just
smaller. We’re all going to be living in a smaller space, but you
each have your own room.”

Keith grunts and stares at
his empty plate.

“Be ready in half an hour,
and, Keith, take that Christmas tree from the front of the house.”
She doesn’t give either of us time to say anything else; she’s out
of the kitchen and up the stairs to her room.

An hour later we’re inside
the Las Pulgas apartment, but I’m seeing, catacombs. The dark rooms
with a narrow connecting hall remind me of pictures in a
National Geographic
article about the early Christian burials under Rome. When I
open the door to my room I expect to find bones stacked inside
crevices.

From my window I look out
onto others the same as mine. We’re in a complex that forms a
rectangular courtyard with two stories of identical doors facing
across a cement area.
Catacombs inside.
San Quentin on the outside
.

Our apartment is on the
second floor so we have
the
view
. Below and to the right is a
kidney-shaped pool the size of the hot tub at Dad’s club. One
soon-to-be-dead palm droops in the corner where I guess it used to
shade some plastic lounge chairs. Dead palm next to collapsed
chairs.

I walk off the distance
from the window wall to the closet, then I do the same between the
other two walls.
Things to get rid of:
bed, dresser, chair, desk.

When I look up Keith’s
leaning against my door jamb. “Mine’s smaller.”

“Impossible.”

“Want to hear the really
good news?”

Keith wouldn’t be talking
to me like a normal human being if he didn’t have something evil
planned. He wants to see my reaction to his “good” news. I brace
myself.

“Maybe you should see for
yourself.” He points down the hall and walks that
direction.

Whatever you do, Carlie, do not give him the
satisfaction of showing how you feel . . . no matter how terrible .
. . no matter how—

He’s stopped a few feet
down from my bedroom, waiting, a smug look on his face.

“Okay, what is
it?”

“Our bathroom.”

I peer inside at a shower
stall, a single sink with one cabinet underneath and a medicine
cabinet above. I have to look behind the door to find the toilet.
Along one side, linoleum peels back at the edge of the floor, and
there’s no window. I flip the switch and a fan churns, making a
loud click every few turns. Then it hits me.

“Did you say,
‘our?
’” It’s too late.
I’ve reacted exactly the way Keith knew I would.

He does his evil laugh, the
one that microwaves my blood to an instant boil, then shuffles back
toward the living room.

“Mom!” I hurry into the
kitchen where she’s counting shelves. “I can’t share a bathroom
with Keith.”

She writes in her notebook,
then she fixes me with her patient expression which means she’ll
try to reason with me before she tells me to get over
it.

“Never mind. I’ve seen
enough. I’ll meet you at the car.” I pound my way back to where we
parked and slouch in the passenger seat. I’m deep into thoughts of
running off to live with a tribe of isolated Indians when my cell
chimes Beethoven's DaDaDaDA, Mrs. Franklin’s special ring
tone.

“Carlie, I desperately need
a sitter for tonight. Are you free?”

“Gee, let me check my
calendar.” I put the phone to my chest.
Think Spring Fling dress
.

I put the phone back to my
ear. “I’ll make some changes so I can help you out, you know, I
kind of let you down New Year’s Eve.”

As I flick my phone shut
and put it back into my pocket, Mom and Keith come down the street.
Keith’s one length ahead, his hands stuffed in his jeans, his head
down. Mom’s behind, letting the space between them grow with every
step.

Chapter 9

That night, helped with a
small bribe of yogurt and chocolate sprinkles smuggled in under
Mrs. Franklin’s vegan nose, I tuck the Franklin kids
into bed by eight and settle into Mr. Franklin’s
office. I finish my French assignment in less than half an hour and
I’d love to get online, but no matter how clever I try to be I
can’t unlock Mr. Franklin’s super secret passwords. There’s no TV.
That was banished when their son, Kip, turned six. I have three
hours to stare at walls.

I haven’t looked at my
journal since New Year’s Eve, so I pull it from my backpack and let
it fall open to my last entry.

“Sometimes bad things
happen . . . even in Channing.”

Something else should be on
this page, something about life turning around or how you have to
hit bottom before you bounce up. One happy cliché.

I snatch up my pen and draw
a line through what I wrote that last night of the year. I slip my
journal back into my backpack and I’m about to stretch out on the
couch when a scraping sound comes from outside the
house.

The Pacific low tide
tumbles onto the sand, washes out and returns. Nothing
unusual.
Still, there was something. A
creaking board?
Pushing up from the office
chair, I go to the window and peer around the curtain.

Outside on the deck, the
spa lights glow under circulating blue water; steam rises into the
air. In the background the surface of the ocean shimmers in the
moonlight. A gust of wind snaps the flag mounted on the
railing.

“Just the flag.” I roll my
neck to loosen my shoulders.

I’m about to return to the
desk when a male figure darts across the deck.

“OMIGOD!” The words are
smothered at the back of my throat and I press against the wall,
shaking.

Risk another peek. Be sure
you’re not making something sinister out of ordinary nighttime
shadows
.
As I
ease the curtain back, the man ducks behind the topiaries that edge
the steps,. Then he creeps toward the back door.

Every part of me stands on
end, like fur on a cornered cat.
Is the
kitchen door locked?
I didn’t check like I
usually do when I baby-sit for the Franklins. I’d been too bent on
getting the kids to bed so I could get my homework done.
Where’s my cell?
I feel
in my pocket, search under my notes on the desk.