“Jenny’s right,” Lydia said. “We don’t want to kill her. Just torture her psychologically. Scar her for life, like she has us.” She handed me a Kleenex.
Eventually I got myself under control and said, “We need to figure out the ultimate humiliation.” I blew my nose. “We should be able to do that. We’ve all been there.”
“Right.” Lydia curled up in her corner of the couch. “Something totally degrading.”
“Th-that she’ll never forget.”
Lydia said, “What’s the most horrifying experience you can ever imagine happening to you? Besides being in the same room with Ashley Krupps.”
We snorted. Prairie piped up, “Dyeing your hair red and having it c-come out g-green.”
We all turned.
“My c-cousin dyed her hair once, and it turned g-green. And she’s not even a p-punker.”
“Eeoooh.” Lydia made a face. “I’d give a month’s allowance to see Ashley Krupps with green hair.”
Max shot to her feet. “Wait here.” She clomped out the door.
“Is she going to get the firebomb kit?” I asked.
Lydia elbowed me, smiling. Sobering fast, she said, “She scares me. Does she scare you?”
“Nah,” I lied.
We all stared out the door after Max. Lydia broke the trance. “Got anything to eat, Jenny?” she said.
I proffered my stash. A bag of Keebler fudge stripe cookies I was saving for just such an occasion.
Crunching into one, Prairie said, “Y-your pants don’t look t-too bad, Lydia.”
Lydia blotted her thigh with her thumb. “They’re still sticky. I should make Ashley Krupps wash them. That’s it. Let’s stuff her desk with dirty laundry.”
“I’ll b-bring my brothers’ boxer shorts,” Prairie volunteered.
We all went, “Eeoooh” just as Max climbed back on board. She cradled a tattered dictionary in her arm. As she clomped past, she stopped suddenly, opened the flap of the book, and removed a pistol. She aimed at Lydia and began shooting.
Lydia screamed.
Max smirked. “It’s only water.” She replaced the water gun in the carved-out dictionary and resumed her place on the beanbag chair.
Lydia swiped at her forehead. She looked at her hand. “It’s green.”
Max shrugged. “You wanted green hair.”
“Hey, Max, that’s not a bad idea,” I said, scootching to the edge of the couch. “We load up water pistols with colored water. Shoot-out at the O.K. Corral. And we can get all the Nikes, so Ashley won’t know she’s the real target.” I added with a smirk, “We’ll give them a reason to call themselves neon.”
The Snob Squad hyena-howled.
Max reached into the pocket of her camouflage jacket. She removed three more pistols and tossed them to us. “I’ve been collecting these,” she said. “I figured someday they’d come in handy.”
Prairie examined hers. “I’m going to 1-load mine with g-green Kool-Aid,” she said. “N-nice and sticky.”
“Hey… ” A slow smile crept across my lips. “Vinegar. Nice and stinky.”
That got our brains storming. Catsup, mustard, OJ, sour milk, KC Masterpiece barbecue sauce. I could eat that stuff with a spoon, and I have. By the time we left the Peacemobile, we had a new plan of attack. Sure, it was juvenile. It was lame. But no one would get hurt, and we wouldn’t get arrested.
At the door Prairie stopped and said, “Now, h-have we thought the plan through?”
We all stopped, looked at each other, and shrugged. What could go wrong?
Chapter 8
I rummaged through my mom’s boxed-up library in the basement. My quest: to find the thickest book in her throwaways. “Hey, Mom, can I have this?” I asked her while she loaded the dishwasher.
She arched an eyebrow at me. “You want to read War and Peace?”
“It’s for extra credit,” I lied. “To get my grades up.” To get my appointment canceled.
She poured Cascade into the soap slot and beamed at me. “Leo Tolstoy was my first love, you know.” She sighed. “Go ahead.”
I wondered if Dad knew about Leo. On my way out I asked, “Do you think you’ll ever want to read it again?”
She pushed the dishwasher’s start button. “I doubt it.” Over the roar of rushing water, she added, “If you like that one, there’s a whole collection of Russian novels in the basement somewhere.” She smiled at me with new reverence.
“Okay. Thanks.” Like I’d ever get through chapter one. “Could you hand me a steak knife?”
Mom frowned. “You’re not hoarding food in your room again, are you?”
I clucked. “Who me?”
While I sawed out the middle section of the book, I dreamed. I dreamed of catsup curls and gummy braids. Icky sticky lemon locks. Mustard oozing down Ashley’s neck. I thought I’d gotten over what she’d done to me. That I’d forgotten and forgiven. Now I knew I’d done neither. I hated her more than ever, and she was finally going to pay.
Operation Green Hair worked perfectly—in the beginning. Every couple of minutes one of us Snobs would open fire on a Nike. Prairie was out of lime Kool-Aid at home, so she had loaded her gun with Welch’s grape juice. It made really cool purple streaks all the way around Melanie’s blond sausage curls.
Max filled her gun with beer, I think. None of us had the guts to ask. But when it hit Fayola’s head, it foamed. Lydia selected Grey Poupon. What else? Her pistol was stashed inside this trashy romance novel called Love in a Limo, which seemed appropriate—don’t ask me why.
I kept my concoction simple. Sugar water. It was colorless and odorless, and as it dried in Ashley’s ponytail, it hardened like cement.
What I didn’t think about was how sugar water might cake up on the pistol after a while. How it might plug up the hole as the sugar crystallized. How it might shoot off target when I tried to shake it loose, and how it might squirt Mr. Krupps when he walked through the door.
“What the—” His eyes focused on the stream of liquid dribbling down the front of his pants.
“Nice shot, Solano,” Max whispered behind me.
“See?” Ashley said. She appeared from behind her father. “Mrs. Jonas didn’t believe me. But someone’s got a squirt gun in this room. And they’re shooting at me. Just feel my hair, Daddy. And smell it.”
He sniffed. Everyone did. No doubt about it. Grey Poupon.
Immediately I slammed the cover closed on War and Peace. Mr. Krupps scanned the room with beady eyes. They screeched to a halt on me. Not on me. Behind me. “McFarland, to the office.” He thrust a thumb over his shoulder. “Mrs. Jonas, I’ll see you during your planning period.”
She blinked once. “Yes, Mr. Krupps,” she said. Her eyes slipped down his wet pants. You could tell she was stifling a guffaw. As Mr. Krupps slammed out the door, though, Mrs. Jonas’s amused expression changed to a scowl. And it was directed at Ashley Krupps, as if to say, “You little snitch.”
Hey, what did she care? She was the principal’s daughter. Ashley sashayed to her desk, nose in the air.
We learned at lunch that Max had been suspended. Prairie said, “There’s only one C-christian thing to do—turn ourselves in.”
So we all trundled off to the office.
Mr. Krupps didn’t believe us at first. “She set you up, didn’t she?” he said. “What’d Max do? Threaten you unless you confessed for her?”
“No,” I replied. “We all have squirt guns. See?” We yanked them out in unison.
“Don’t shoot!” He held up his hands. He must’ve realized what a nincompoop he looked like because he lowered them right away. Then his head began to shake from side to side. “Girls, girls, girls,” he chided each of us. “I’m afraid I have no choice but to suspend you for bringing weapons to school.”
Beside me, Lydia gulped the big one. I knew why. Her mother would have a cow. Not a Black Cow, either. She’d put Lydia on a lifelong behavior modification program.
I was kind of excited. No
school. I could catch up on the soaps.
“We’ll make it an in-school suspension for all of you,” Mr. Krupps added.
Lydia exhaled a gale of relief. Prairie and I groaned.
Although in-school suspension always looked like fun—you know, permission to veg out for a day—it was actually quite humiliating. Delinquency is highly overrated. Mr. Krupps lined us up in adjacent desks along the wall outside his office. We weren’t allowed to talk or whisper or even make eye contact. We weren’t allowed to eat or drink. It was cruel and unusual punishment. Even if I’d had my stash with me, I couldn’t have indulged because every couple of minutes Mr. Krupps sent his skinhead secretary, Mr. Terlitz, out to patrol the hall.
Once, just as I was about to faint, either from Terlitz’s B.O. or the sudden plunge in my blood sugar level, a hand shot out and dropped something in my lap. A wedge of white paper. I unfolded it. One side was the multiplication work sheet we were supposed to be completing. On the other side was a note scribbled in pink ink. “My mom’s going to kill me when she finds out,” it said. “But I don’t care. Poupon Ashley.” A smiley face with green hair punctuated the pun.
I laughed. Terlitz whirled around.
“Sorry,” I muttered. “Lost my mind. Have you seen it anywhere?”
Max snorted.
Krupps came out. “Mr. Terlitz.” He halted him mid-lunge for my throat. “Do you have a copy of the school board agenda for tonight’s meeting? I can’t find mine.” To us he snarled, “If I hear one more word out here… ”
“Yeah, yeah,” Max muttered.
Lydia whispered under her breath, “That’s two.”
Prairie giggled. I choked back a chuckle. Before we all dissolved into Looney Tunes, I snuffed out the sniggers with a stiff hand. “Sorry, Mr. Krupps. We’ll get to work.” If we weren’t careful, we’d get expelled. Then, in addition to the shrink, my parents might send me to bed without dinner. Talk about a void.
Chapter 9
“I know where she lives,” Max said as we thrashed through the junkyard toward the Peacemobile.
“Where who lives?” Lydia asked. We settled into our designated places.
“Mustard head,” Max said.
It took Lydia a minute. “You know where Ashley Krupps lives? She never told me where she lives.”
I knew where she lived. I never wanted to go back there again.
Max shrugged. “My brother sold her brother a rebuilt engine for his ’87 Olds, and I went with him to help put it in.” She thumbed behind her. “It’s down a couple of streets from here on Quigley. That big brown and white house.”
“Yeah, the giant Oreo,” I said. “My bus drives by it every day.” I used to love that house. It always got me hyped for my after-school snack. That was before. Now I get queasy when we pass.
“Are you ready to firebomb it now?” Max asked.
We all stared at her, considering. Even if Max knew how to make a firebomb… I shook the thought loose. “Why don’t we just TP it?”
For a long moment all you could hear were the springs groaning under my weight. Then Max’s eyes gleamed. So did Prairie’s. Lydia said in a sigh, “I don’t think my mom would let me go out after dark to TP a house.”
“Would she let you out to firebomb it?” I asked.
Lydia sneered.
Max said, “Don’t tell her what you’re planning to do—” I know she wanted to add something like “wart head.”
“I mean, I don’t think she’ll let me out at night, period.”
That was a problem. Even if I had a Big Mac attack an hour after dinner, I couldn’t go out alone at night either.
“Can’t you sneak out?” Max said.
Lydia didn’t answer. Neither did I. Confirming we were wimps.
Prairie said, “W-why d-don’t we have a sleep-over or s-something? That’d be a g-good excuse.”
“A sleep-over,” I repeated. “Here at Max’s. Brilliant, Prairie. As usual. Have a Tootsie Roll Pop.” She selected grape from the open plastic package that I’d pulled from my backpack. Maybe in a group, maybe with a purpose, I could stand going near Ashley’s house again.
“Sleep here?” Max’s voice cracked. “At my house?”
“Sure,” I replied. “We can all bring sleeping bags and spread out in your living room.”
“No!” Max’s face took on a shade reminiscent of Grey Poupon. “It’s Friday night. We can’t do it here. Not in my house. No way.”
We all looked at Max. She just kept shaking her head and saying, “No way. Not tonight. It’s Friday night.” I wondered what went on in her house on Friday nights. Apparently it was something bad. Something she didn’t want us to see. Maybe Friday was the night Scuzz-Gut Baggied up body parts.
Prairie piped up, “W-what about sleeping out here? In the van?”
We arched hopeful eyebrows at Max.
Her eyes darted around. “Yeah, I guess that’d be okay. As long as you didn’t go in the house to go to the bathroom or anything.”
We looked at each other. “No problem. We’ll hold it. Right?” I was kidding, sort of.
Max said, “What do you do at a sleep-over anyway?”
Lydia scoffed. “You don’t know?” She turned to me. “Tell her, Jenny.”
My face seared fireball red. “How should I know? I’ve never been to a sleep-over.”
Prairie piped up, “M-me neither.”
I couldn’t believe it. I thought I was the only one in the world who’d never been to a sleep-over. “Any-way,” I said, “it’s not a real sleep-over. It’s a TP party. You eat and drink. Tell ghost stories. That kind of stuff.”
“No ghost stories,” Max said in that voice that made us cower.
“Okay,” I said. “Then we’ll just eat and drink. But we won’t drink much, so we won’t have to go to the bathroom.” That seemed to relieve Max. I added with a smile, “And we’ll plot revenge on Ashley Krupps.”
“Yeahhhhh,” Lydia breathed.
“Have another sucker,” I offered.
We all got permission from our parents to sleep over at Max’s, believe it or not. Even Lydia, although her mom had to call Max’s mom to confirm and tell her that Lydia had asthma and if she had an attack not to worry, that Lydia would bring her inhaler. And that Lydia had to be in bed by nine because she had an early piano lesson the next day. “Blah, blah, blah,” Lydia mocked her mother. “Sometimes she drives me crazy.”
Which made me laugh. Then Lydia got the joke and laughed, too.
When I told my mom about the sleep-over, she started to cry. “Oh, Jenny.” She hugged me. “How great.” Like I’d never been to a sleep-over.
“So you’ll cancel my appointment with the shrink?”
She blew her nose. “No.”
Geesh, what did it take?
The plan was to bring as much toilet paper as we could stuff into our backpacks and sleeping bags. The TP supplies at home were running low, so on the way back to Max’s I made a pit stop at Wal-Mart to pick up a twelve-pack. Angel Soft, my TP of choice.
Max told us to wear black, which made us look like terrorists in training. Which we were. My black sweat suit was a bit snugger than I remembered, but it was the only black clothing I owned. Lydia wore a black leotard with tights, plus a black ski cap with all her hair tucked up inside. It looked like she had a brain tumor. Which could explain her personality, or lack thereof. Prairie showed up in an old Halloween Dracula costume that she’d dug out of her brother’s closet. Max wore authentic black and brown guerrilla warfare camouflage fatigues.
Just as we were rearranging furniture and rolling out our sleeping bags, there was a knock on the side panel. Beside me, Max tensed. “Who is it?” she said.
“Your mother,” a husky voice replied.
Max got up and slid the door open. A woman, about half Max’s height, stepped up into the van. She was dressed all in black, too. A black silk blouse over a full-length skirt. With a turban wrapped around her head. There was something strang
e about her. Strange and mesmerizing at the same time. Her eyes drew me in. They were bright, bright blue. “Are you going to introduce me to your friends, Maxine?” She smiled.
Max mumbled our names. Her mother shook each of our hands. She had very long fingernails, painted pale blue. “Are you coming to the gathering tonight?” she asked.
Max answered, “No, Ma. We’ve got stuff to do.”
“Oh.” She seemed disappointed.
My curiosity was piqued. “What gathering?”
Max shot me full of eye bullets. I didn’t care.
“The spiritual gathering,” she said. “My Friday night séance.”
Séance? Whoa.
Max looked like she wanted to crawl into the carburetor and combust. I don’t know why. I thought it was cool.
“Maxine did invite you, didn’t she?”
Silence.
“Maxine.” Her mother glared at her.
“Like I said, Ma, we’ve got stuff to do.”
“Well, at least let me read your friends’ cards. Come along, girls.” She waggled a luminescent fingernail at us. “Let Madame Sibylique be your spiritual adviser. Allow her to answer your most burning questions.”
Boy, did I have a few of those!
Lydia whispered, “I didn’t bring any cards. Nobody told me you had to bring cards to a sleep-over.”
I gave her a withering look. “We’re not playing Old Maid.”
“Madame Sibylique, your spiritual adviser,” Max said sarcastically, “is going to read your tarot cards.” You know she wanted to add, “tumor head.”
Cool, I thought. Way cool. I love psychic stuff.
Reluctantly Max followed us out. From the end of the procession, loud enough for the heavens to hear, she hollered, “We are not staying for the séance, Ma.”
Her mother twisted her head and smiled all-knowingly. “Yes, dear.”
Chapter 10
Max elbowed her way through the kitchen to block the doorway to the back. A gauzy gray curtain covered the entrance. “We can do it here,” Max said. For some reason she didn’t want us going into the living room. It sure made me want to go into the living room.