Anna comes up behind me. Vonzelle, too.
“They’re babies,” Anna says. “You didn’t take them from their mother, did you?”
One of the Miller boys shrugs.
“That’s awful!” Anna says.
My biceps ache, so I lower the box and rest one edge of it on my hip. The ducks flap about, and I glance down. Both of the yellow ducklings have orange bills, I notice, while the black one has a black bill. All of them have teeny webbed feet and bright, inquisitive eyes. The black one looks up at me and quacks, though it’s more of a squeak-quack. A squack.
“We got them for Brad’s python, but we gave them to you instead,” Barry says.
“’Cause you’re hot chicks,” pipes up the youngest Miller boy, who’s about five. “Hot chicks for hot chicks.”
“They’re not—” I close my mouth. Why bother?
“Come on,” Vonzelle says, touching my elbow. “We can’t give them back to these jerks.”
She’s right, of course. My stomach is a tight ball as the three of us head for the house.
“I’ll call Brad if you want!” Barry yells to our backs. “I’m sure his python is still hungry!”
Inside, I set the box in the hall. I crouch beside it, and Vonzelle and Anna join me. We look at the ducks.
“So what do we do with them?” I ask.
Anna strokes one of the yellow ones. “Oh, you’re so soft,” she says. “Hi, baby. Don’t worry, we’re not going to let you be eaten by a python.”
“Can you take them back to the Duck Pond or wherever?” Vonzelle asks.
“I don’t know. What if they’re like baby birds? What if their mom rejects them now that they’ve been touched by humans?”
Anna jerks her hand away.
“I meant the Miller boys,” I tell her. “Obviously they touched them when they caught them.”
“Who would do something like that?” Vonzelle asks, though we already know the answer.
“Back to the more pressing concern,” I say. “What do we do with them?”
“We could send them to a poor family in China,” Anna says. When I look at her, she shrugs. “What?”
“We are not the Heifer Project,” I say, “and I highly doubt a flock of baby ducks would survive being shipped from Atlanta to China. If three even counts as a flock.” I push myself up. “I’m going to call Animal Control, and Anna, why don’t you get them some water. I don’t know what ducks eat, do you?”
“Algae?” she suggests.
“Bugs?” Vonzelle tries.
The three of us look at one another. The absurdity of the situation creeps in, and Vonzelle giggles. “Where’s your babysitter? Would she know what to do?”
This makes Anna and me giggle, and I say, “Yeah, right. She’s probably up in my parents’ room, going through my mom’s makeup.”
Vonzelle scoots closer to the box. “So we figure it out on our own. No big deal.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
LUCKY DUCK
Nina at Animal Control informs me that no, we can’t take the ducklings back to the Duck Pond and drop them off.
“Eventually they can be returned to the pond,” she says, “but based on your description, they’re too young to go back yet. It’ll be another couple of weeks before they can fend for themselves.”
“Well, can you come get them?”
“Sorry, but we don’t provide that service. I can direct you to a Web site on caring for ducklings, if you’d like.”
I wouldn’t like that at all. I’d like her to come get the ducks and care for them herself. “Are you sure you can’t take them? What about the Humane Society? Should I call them?”
“The Humane Society doesn’t handle waterfowl.” Her tone is devoid of concern, and I wonder just how often she has to tell people that “duck rescue” isn’t a service that anyone in the city provides.
I’m flummoxed. I’ve got people coming over tonight! I want to tell her. Cute people! Cole people!
Instead, I sigh and say, “Fine. Give me the address of the Web site.”
What I learn isn’t much. The first thing we do is move the ducks to my bathtub, where there’s less chance of them escaping and where it’s easier to clean up their poop, which is sticky and doesn’t play well with cardboard. Then we give them names. Bonding is important, the Web site says. Ducks need attention and affection.
The black duck we name “Beans,” because it seems to fit him. I say “him,” but my research teaches me that we won’t know if our ducklings are male or female until they’re older. I don’t know what that means. Will they suddenly sprout (or fail to sprout) little duck penises? But Beans is a multigender name, as is Dandelion, the larger of the two yellow ducklings. Vonzelle picked his/her name based on his/her sweet yellow chest fuzzies.
Voodoo Baby works either way, too, though we think she’s a girl. I wanted to name her Ducky-Wucky, but I was outvoted, and the look Anna shot me dissuaded me from pursuing it. So we named her Voodoo Baby, which was Anna’s choice. Voodoo Baby is the smallest of the three, and when she gets scared, which is often, she lifts her bitsy wing nubs, takes tiny steps backward, and tries to hiss. It’s like she’s trying to put a spell on us.
I tell Anna and Vonzelle not to fill the tub with water, even just an inch. The tub will have to serve as their cage until we build them a better one, and their cage needs to be dry. I find the plastic bucket Tracy uses when she mops and bring it upstairs for them to swim in. I fill it up, and we let each duck have a turn paddling about. Then we put the ducks back in the tub.
“Hey!” Vonzelle cries, jerking back her hand after Beans nips her.
“That means he likes you,” I say. “It’s how ducks kiss.”
“You are so full of it.”
“No, it’s true.”
“For real?” She hesitates, then pets Beans’s back. This time when he nips her, she says, “Well, what do you know? I am loved by ducks.”
“Actually, I lied. It means he thinks you’re a duck. Perhaps you smell swampy.”
She swats me.
“Kidding!” I say. “Kidding. But it’s time to stop playing with them, anyway. Tracy said she’d take us to Peachtree Battle Shopping Center to get the stuff we need.” I tick items off on my fingers. “Materials to build a hutch. Pea gravel for them to poop in. Purina Wild Bird Chow. A bowl for water.”
“I’ll stay here and get started on our brownies,” Anna says. She puts her hands on her thighs and pushes herself up.
“Excellent idea,” I say, my heart fluttering at the realization of, Yikes, she still thinks we’re chowing down on brownies while bonding with Rory and Lorelei. I need to tell her about the change in plans. I need to tell Vonzelle, too.
I work up a supercasual tone and say, “Oh, and, um, Cole and Roger might come by, ’kay?”
They stare at me.
“I mean, they might not.” I swallow. “But . . . they might.”
“Oh, Carly, yay!” Anna says, and I want to hug her for being such a good sister. “That’ll be so fun. I’ll put extra chocolate chips in the brownies.”
“When did you invite them?” Vonzelle asks. She is less thrilled than Anna. “And why didn’t you tell us?”
“I just did tell you,” I say. I head out of my room and call, “Tracy! We’re ready for you to drive us to Peachtree Battle!”
“Two minutes!” Tracy hollers from Mom and Dad’s master suite.
“Only I still think you should forget about Cole and go for Roger,” Anna says as we go downstairs. “Don’t you agree, Vonzelle? Don’t you think Roger should be Carly’s love boodle?”
“I do,” Vonzelle replies, as if I’m not right there with them. “Cole is all wrong for her.”
“Could we stop talking about it?” I suggest. But since I’m not part of the “we,” they ignore me.
“I keep telling her to wake up and smell the Dutch-grown coffee,” Vonzelle says.
“Ew,” I say. “I’m not smelling Roger’s coffee. Tha
t’s gross.”
Vonzelle leans against the kitchen table. “The happy ending is right there in front of her.”
“The happy beginning,” Anna clarifies. “And I know. I think so, too!”
Yay for Anna and Vonzelle bonding! Wh-hoo! But enough is enough. I elbow in and give a single, sharp clap of my hands.
“Okeydokey!” I say when they jump. “Moving on!”
“Here I am,” Tracy says, strutting into the kitchen. I have never been happier to see her.
“Tracy, this is Vonzelle,” I say. “Vonzelle, Tracy.”
“Nice to meet you,” Vonzelle says.
“Likewise,” Tracy says.
“Tracy’s cousin’s in jail,” Anna contributes, and my jaw drops. Tracy, however, is unfazed.
“Oh yeah,” she says. “He got the good jail, though. Everyone says he’s really lucky. On his first day, this big black guy pulled him over—scared the shit out of Jimmy—and was like, ‘Don’t worry. Everyone here’s a Christian. The screwups, they get sent to the state prison, but everyone here knows how to behave.’”
“Huh,” Vonzelle says.
Anna giggles.
“Now he’s going all preacher on me,” Tracy goes on. “Doesn’t drink, doesn’t swear, doesn’t party.”
“How could he do any of that in jail, anyway?” I ask.
“That’s what I said,” Tracy replies. “Says he’s studying ministry now. Whatever. He wants me to call him all the time because he’s only allowed one call a week, but I’m like, ‘Sorry, Jimmy. I don’t want no hundred-dollar phone bill.’”
“What did Jimmy say to that?” Vonzelle asks.
“He said, ‘It’s not my fault I’m in here.’ And I said, ‘Uh, yeah, Jimmy, actually it is.’” Tracy looks at me and raises her plucked eyebrows. “You think it’d be okay if we took the Jag?”
“The Jag?”
“To Peachtree Battle. It’d be so crowded in my Pinto.”
I am positive, without a single shred of doubt, that it would not be okay to take Dad’s Jaguar. And yet, as Tracy waits expectantly in her tight green shirt with the shamrock on it, I hear myself say, “Um . . . I guess.”
“Nice,” Tracy says. She knows right where the key is kept, and she strolls to the ceramic bowl by the phone and snares it, twirling the sterling ring it’s attached to on her index finger.
As we cruise through the neighborhood, Tracy treats us to a running commentary about what her cousin would think of Dad’s Jag.
“I mean, dang, this car’s nicer than Jimmy’s apartment. You could live in this thing.” She experiments with the dashboard controls. “Is there a seat warmer? Jimmy rode in a car with a seat warmer once. Said it was like his own personal butt spa.” She pulls onto West Wesley, zooms down the hill, and guns the engine to make it through a yellow light. She kisses her palm and smacks it on the roof of the car.
“Tracy?” I say. We’re rapidly approaching the shopping center. “There’s the . . . don’t miss the . . .”
She careens into the parking lot, and I’m thrown against the door. She laughs. “You think I don’t know how to get here? Carly, who do you think runs to the A&P and gets more Greased Lightning when the spray bottle runs out?”
Chuckling to herself, she pulls up in front of Ace Hardware. “How long y’all need? An hour? Two hours?”
“Um, an hour’ll be fine,” I say. Vonzelle climbs out of the back looking woozy.
“Let’s make it two,” Tracy says breezily. “I’m going to my girlfriend Pammy’s place to show off my wheels. Bye!”
She peels away.
“Oh,” I say. “Uh, okay.”
“Farewell, Jaguar,” Vonzelle says. “It was nice knowing you.”
“Oh my God,” I say. “Please let her come back with Dad’s Jaguar.”
“If not, he can always have her Pinto.”
“The Pinto. Right. Dad would love the Pinto.”
“So,” Vonzelle says. “Let’s go get pea gravel.”
We purchase everything in under an hour. I call Tracy’s cell so she can come get us, but she doesn’t answer. Great. I call two more times, and then we walk to Cloud Nine and get walk-in appointments for manicures.
“Might as well make use of the time,” I say.
“Might as well doll yourself up for Cole, you mean,” Vonzelle replies. “For the record, Roger likes girls who are real.”
“Cole likes girls who are real,” I argue.
“Maybe so, but he kisses girls who do their nails. Roger, on the other hand, would kiss you no matter what.”
“There’s nothing wrong with pretty nails,” I say, and it’s freaky, because I hear Mom coming through my vocal cords.
“I’m just saying,” Vonzelle says.
Kim-Hue calls me to her station while Vonzelle is set up with a nail technician named Sally.
“So? How are things?” Kim-Hue asks. She indicates that I should take off my rings and my watch and put them in the little bowl.
“They’re good.”
“Your parents?”
“Good.”
“And Anna? How is she?”
“She’s good, too.”
Kim-Hue guides my hands into the bowl of warm water with smooth pebbles at the bottom. She crosses her legs, and I catch a glimpse of her feet. She’s wearing sexy high-heeled sling backs, the sort of shoes Trista might wear.
“Nice shoes,” I say.
“You like them?”
“Well, yeah. For you, not for me.”
She pulls my left hand out and pats it dry. “Why not for you?”
“I’m horrible with high heels.” She rubs lotion up and down my forearm. I make an mmm sound, because I love this part. “I can’t walk in them to save my life, and they hurt my feet. Don’t they hurt your feet?”
“They do. It’s terrible,” Kim-Hue says. “By the end of the day, all I want to do is take them off.”
“So why do you wear them? You should wear comfortable shoes, like these.” I stretch my leg to show her my black sneaker.
“Oh, I could never wear shoes like that,” Kim-Hue says. “I’m too short.”
“Too short to wear sneakers?” I don’t get it. “I’m short. I wear them.”
“Because you are brave. You don’t care what anyone thinks—like with your hair.”
I blush. “Actually, I’m probably going to turn my hair back to its normal color. It’s got to be healthy enough by now to redye, don’t you think?”
She studies my hair. In addition to the goldish layer and the red layer, I’ve got at least two inches of brown roots.
“Maybe mix and match,” she says. “Maybe add some chunks of brown, but leave some blond and red, too. It suits you.”
“It does?”
Kim-Hue smiles. She slides a heated mitt onto my left hand and goes to work on my right. “You’ve put on weight since your wilderness adventure.”
“I have?”
“You look very pretty. Don’t get skinny again.”
“But . . .” I don’t finish my sentence. First she tells me I’m fat, then she tells me I’m pretty?
“You eat more, perhaps you will grow to be like Anna,” Kim-Hue says. She cups both hands in front of her chest, the universal symbol for big bazooms.
“I don’t want to be like Anna,” I say.
“No?” she says quizzically.
“No,” I insist.
“Anna wants to be like you,” Kim-Hue says, as if it’s fact.
“What are you talking about? No, she doesn’t.”
“All little sisters want to be like their big sisters,” she states. “My little sister, Linh . . . don’t you think she wants to be like me?”
“But Linh’s not a manicurist. She’s going to college.” I blush, realizing how that sounds. “Sorry.”
Kim-Hue isn’t offended. “Little sisters want to be better than their big sisters. Everything the big sister has, the little sister wants—and more.”
“That’s creepy and
disturbing.”
Kim-Hue laughs. “But think: Without the big sisters, where would the little sisters be? Nowhere.” She pats my right hand to tell me it’s time to put it in the hot mitt, and eases my left hand back into the world. The air on my skin is cool.
“Have you chosen your color?” she asks.
I was planning on purple. I was. Yet the word that comes out of my mouth is “pink.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
TRACY IS SO HILARIOUS
“Where is she?” Vonzelle asks, scanning the parking lot for Tracy. I scan, too. No black Jaguar. “Do you think she came and left?”
“She better not have,” I say. Careful of my pearly-pink nails, I put down the bag from Ace Hardware.
Vonzelle is dubious. “Call her.”
“Again?”
“Call Anna and see if she’s at the house.”
I look around. It’s full-on twilight, and the scattered cars cast spooky shadows. Where the heck is she? She wouldn’t truly have abandoned us, would she?
I pull out my cell, open it, and hit speed dial two. I get Mom’s overly formal message: You have reached the Lauderdale residence. Please leave your number, and we’ll be happy to call you back.
“Anna, call me,” I say curtly, then flip it shut.
“Voice mail?” Vonzelle asks.
“Voice mail.”
Vonzelle puts down the bag with the duck food in it. I’m annoyed with Anna for not answering the phone, I’m anxious that Roger and Cole might get to the house before we do, and I’m absolutely furious at Tracy for not showing up. I’m also worried that Vonzelle is irritated with me for getting us into this.
Irrationally, the possibility of Vonzelle being irritated with me makes me irritated at her. Plus there’s the fact that I haven’t yet told her about Peyton and Lydia. That’s adding to my stress level, too.
My cell rings, and I think, Anna, thank God. But when I flip it back open, the caller ID says Peyton.
Well, here we go, I think. I hit the talk button and say, “Peyton?”
Vonzelle’s eyebrows shoot up. I angle my body away from her.
“Where are you guys?” Peyton says. There’s music and voices behind her. “Are y’all still out shopping?”