Masterminds Page 4

  They get in the car. He hasn’t even said good-bye. The car pulls away from the curb.

  Suddenly, he rolls his window down. “I’ll write.”

  I point to the paper in his fist. “Don’t lose my email address.”

  “I’ll write,” he repeats as if it’s the most urgent thing in the world, and I was too stupid to understand the first time. “Think of it as our newest challenge.”

  Like a few messages back and forth can replace nearly fourteen years of friendship.

  As the car makes the turn onto Old County Six, I wave. I couldn’t have said anything if I wanted to.

  Now that Randy’s gone, it’s like the counter on my whole life has been reset. Everything is measured by the moment the Hardaways’ car disappeared. There’s the first night without Randy; the first weekend without Randy. I can’t remember the last time I walked to school alone. It’s less than a quarter mile, but it feels longer without the company, the shared yawns and jokes about Purple People Eaters driving by in their pickups. The rapid-fire plop of a fistful of cottonwood seeds splashing into somebody’s pool isn’t nearly as satisfying when there’s no one to hear it with you.

  When you spend thirteen years with the same two-and-a-half-dozen kids, losing somebody is like cutting off a finger. Especially when it’s your best friend.

  At lunch, Amber and Tori are eating together, and Malik, Hector, and Stanley are at one of the picnic tables. Just beyond them are Melanie Brandt and the Fowler twins.

  It’s probably been like this for years, but I never noticed because I was always paired up myself.

  After school comes the first water polo practice without Randy. The pool feels empty somehow, which makes no sense because the same number of us are in the water at any given time.

  I’m not the only one missing Randy. He was Team Community’s best player.

  Mrs. Delaney makes me his replacement, which means I have to go up against Malik, who plays the game like a great white shark with elbows. If you want to be on the winning side on Serenity Day this year, root for Solidarity.

  Everyone’s already in the locker rooms. I linger poolside, dripping on the towel in my lap. I can’t seem to work up the enthusiasm to wrap it around me. Randy and I always used to race a couple of lengths after practice. I’m not about to do it alone, but old habits die hard.

  I’m aware of a shifting of weight on the bench and I see that Mrs. Delaney has sat down beside me. “This must be hard for you,” she says sympathetically.

  I nod. “Malik’s really good. Strong.”

  “And when he can’t score on you, he just aims the ball at your face.” I guess I look surprised, because she grins. “You think I miss that? I played in college, you know. Division One.”

  Two things about Mrs. Delaney: she’s a lot younger than most of the parents in town, so she remembers what it’s like to be a kid. And she’s new, so the way things are done in Serenity isn’t the whole world to her.

  “But that’s not what I meant,” she goes on. “You must be missing Randy.”

  “Does it show?”

  “Not really,” she says. It’s a lie, but she’s doing it to be nice. “You know, in most places, people pick up and move constantly. It’s the normal thing to do. I lost friends that way half a dozen times—either their families moved or mine did. You get used to it.”

  “Not here you don’t.”

  “True,” she admits. “Of course, Serenity’s not so easy to get used to either. I’m from Philadelphia, so I never dreamed I’d live in such an isolated place. But then I married Bryan, so I found a way.”

  Bryan. It amazes me every time I hear it. There’s a Purple People Eater named Bryan. Just like they’re human or something. For the millionth time I think of Randy.

  It’s hard enough to imagine your teacher having a life outside of school. Throw one of the Surety into the mix, and it’s really through the looking glass. Mrs. Delaney once told the class that she met her husband on vacation in Cancún. I’ll never shake the picture of this beautiful beach with people swimming and sunbathing, and in the middle of everything there’s this Purple People Eater in full-dress uniform, complete with boots and beret. Maybe he double-parked his helicopter by the tiki bar.

  I have to ask. “What are the Surety guys like when they’re not on duty?”

  She gives me a mischievous grin, which makes her appear even younger. “That’s classified, mister.”

  “Classified?”

  “You know,” she explains, “like government secrets.” She stares at me, puzzled that I don’t understand.

  “It’s not honest to keep secrets,” I say.

  “Sometimes things have to be kept from us for our own good. Like national security. If the president told everybody his plan for that, he’d also be telling the enemy.”

  I’m even more confused. “Who’s the enemy?”

  She looks flustered. “Well, there isn’t one now. I’m just explaining why certain information has to be classified.” She manages to regain her composure a little. “Like your teacher’s private life, for example. Your need for honesty stops at my front door.”

  I can feel my face burning red. “Sorry.” But I’m more confused than embarrassed. Dad says the need for honesty never stops. I stand up. “I should go change.” I start for the locker room.

  “I can tell you one thing about the Surety,” she calls after me.

  I turn around.

  “They know you kids call them Purple People Eaters. I think they kind of like it.”

  5

  HECTOR AMANI

  I know what everybody says: Malik’s not really my friend. He’s using me so I’ll help him with his homework.

  I don’t care. They don’t know the real Malik. They don’t see how he treats me when nobody’s looking. Like the time I skateboarded into the truck from the Plastics Works. I said I was fine, but Malik dragged me to the doctor’s office so his dad could check out my nose. Malik cares about me, and that’s more than I can say about a lot of the people who warn me against him.

  Or when I got in trouble for losing my dad’s favorite toilet snake, and I couldn’t watch TV for three months, Malik let me come over to his house to watch I Love Lucy, even though he hates I Love Lucy. He only punched me twice, and even those times were because I laughed too loud at the funny parts.

  We seem really different, but the truth is, Malik and I have a ton in common. Neither of us has brothers or sisters, and our dads don’t work in the plastics factory, which is pretty rare for around here. We’re not ordinary size—Malik’s the biggest kid in town, and I’m small for my age. We both love hot dogs, although he can eat three to my one.

  The main similarity between Malik and me is we don’t love Serenity that much, and everybody else thinks it’s the best place on earth. Malik doesn’t hide the fact that, as soon as he’s old enough, he’s leaving. We all have to leave if we want to go to college—there’s no university in Serenity. But I assume what he means is that once he’s gone, he’s never coming back. Strange that a guy who relies on 24/7 room service from his mom is so anxious to get away. Maybe he expects Mrs. Bruder to come to NYC with him to cook his food and look after his laundry. She might even do it—she’s that kind of mother. He complains that she smothers him, but he also complains when the chip bowl gets low. That’s how their relationship works. She’s constantly nagging; he’s constantly yelling, yet they’re closer than close. There’s this word I heard once: codependent. I’m not sure if it comes under honesty, harmony, contentment, or a little of all three.

  I don’t say anything, but when moving day comes, I’m going to beg Malik to take me with him—to college and beyond. I don’t want to stay in this town forever, even though the outside world scares me. It’s just too different and unknown.

  Until that day, though, we’re stuck here, and we’re best friends, whether anyone believes it or not. He’s my partner for the Serenity Day project. We’re making amazing progress, and it’s probabl
y going to go even faster once Malik starts helping. It was his idea to build a scale model of Serenity Park using Legos and the crate that the Bruders’ new pool table came in. I’ve been spending all my spare time in the park, mapping and measuring, to make sure we get it exactly right. Malik doesn’t get good grades, so most people don’t realize what a perfectionist he is. He understands all the schoolwork he gets out of doing. If he tried, he’d probably be the third-best student in town, after Amber and me.

  Then again, if Malik was a good student, what would he need me for?

  Yesterday, I’m in the park, measuring the display case for the Serenity Cup and hoping it matches the dimensions of the clear plastic Tic Tac container we’re using for our project when I spy Stanley Cole and his family. They’re picnicking on the lawn by Serenity Square—Stanley, his parents, his kid brother, and their dog, Ortiz. I watch from a distance, but they don’t notice me. They’re too wrapped up in each other. It kind of makes me uncomfortable. They laugh a lot, like everything’s hilarious to them. The dad drops a sandwich and the dog eats it. Hilarious! Stanley wipes out on an exposed tree root. Hilarious! The little kid buries his trucks in the sand, and then cries because he can’t find them. Hilarious! Even cleaning up after the dog is a fun family activity. What’s the matter with these people? I can’t understand why they seem to think that everything in the world has been put there for their amusement.

  I can just picture my father throwing a Frisbee, or giving me a piggyback ride. Or my mother picking up dog poop—and liking it! It would never happen. Not in this life. When I was eight, I asked my parents for a puppy. They said no, the dog food would be too expensive. I even offered to eat less to save money. No dice. I’m too skinny as it is; it’ll stunt my growth. Looking back on it, we live in just as nice a house as anybody in town; we have the same cars and pools and grand pianos. If the Coles can afford dog food, why can’t we?

  My mom is an executive at the plastics factory, and my dad is the only handyman for eighty miles. If something breaks, it’s him or nobody. I know how people look at my parents when we go out. You can feel the respect. They would never waste time having a picnic in the park, or laughing like hyenas about nothing. You won’t catch them with their arms around each other. And I can assure you that I’ve never had a piggyback ride in my life.

  Honestly, I don’t know how Stanley lives with the humiliation. I see his face, laughing, smiling, grinning, and I know for certain that I never looked like that.

  I wonder what it feels like.

  “Losers,” is Malik’s opinion when he finally arrives. “And the biggest loser is you for spying on these idiots when you should be working.”

  “Poor Stanley,” I say. “His parents treat him like he’s two years old.”

  “You don’t pick your parents,” he tells me. “You get what you get.”

  I’m surprised. “Your folks are the best!”

  He makes a face. “If you like bad jokes and chicken soup.”

  “I love your mom’s chicken soup! And your dad’s jokes—” How can I describe it? Dr. Bruder’s humor may be corny, but it’s comfortable, like an old shirt you don’t want to throw out. “Well, I love your mom’s chicken soup. Seriously, I wish I had your parents.” I’m surprised I said that out loud.

  Malik takes it in stride. “You got a roof over your head, same as everybody else. Not that your mother feeds you very much.”

  “She feeds me plenty. I just don’t grow. It isn’t anybody’s fault.”

  “Relax,” he advises me. “I’m pulling your chain. Your folks are fine. How good can parents be, anyway? It’s not like cars, where you can be a Kia or a Bugatti. They’re parents.”

  What he’s trying not to say is what everybody else in town thinks—that Mom and Dad are bad parents, or at least that they love me less than all the other parents love their kids.

  But that’s just wrong.

  Maybe my folks don’t show it, like Malik’s mom, or the Pritels, or even Mr. Frieden, who’s super-strict because Eli is his whole life. But my parents care about me, and I can prove it.

  It’s one of my earliest memories—I must have been three or four. I was playing in the sandbox in our backyard. When you’re little, you get a swing set and a sandbox before you graduate to the usual tree house and basketball half-court.

  I’m making roads with a toy shovel. Serenity is one of the few places where a little kid can re-create the entire street grid in a sandbox.

  When I hear the rattling sound, I don’t know what it is. I’ve never heard it before. I turn and come face-to-face with a coiled snake—a diamondback, its tail in the air, poised and ready to strike.

  I remember my father flying across the yard. His feet must touch the grass, but to me, he’ll always be flying. He reaches out for me but pulls up suddenly as the rattler strikes. The triangular head slices toward me, and then pauses in midair partway between Dad and me. Almost like the snake can’t figure out which of us to bite.

  It’s probably just a second but it feels like forever that the three of us are frozen in time—my father, the rattler, and me. We’re silent—even the diamondback has stopped rattling—although Mom is screaming loud enough for all of us.

  The snake has had enough. It dashes off, and Dad scoops me up in his arms. It’s over that fast. By the time my younger self begins to cry, everything is back to normal, and there’s nothing to cry about. I might have forgotten the whole thing except for the conversation I overhear when I’m in bed that night:

  “Why did you hesitate?” my mother demands. “He weighs forty pounds, Peter! A snakebite would have killed him for sure!”

  “It was a diamondback, Tina,” is my father’s response. “A little one, too—you know the venom is more concentrated in the very young! What was I supposed to do—get bitten myself?”

  “If necessary,” Mom replies readily. “You know how valuable he is.”

  I hear Dad sigh. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  Valuable. When they yell at me, or roll their eyes at me; when they ground me for some minor thing that isn’t even my fault, I remember that word and hang on to it. When I see another family having fun in a way we never do, I picture how Mom’s lips must have moved to form those precious syllables.

  I’m valuable.

  If that’s not love, what is it?

  6

  TORI PRITEL

  The Purple People Eaters aren’t really purple. Their uniforms are more like a deep blue-violet. Look closely and you’ll see it too.

  I notice things other people miss. I think it’s because I’m an artist, so I have an eye for detail. You know the smokestacks at the Plastics Works? You never see any smoke coming out of them. My parents say it’s because the factory is a green industry that doesn’t pollute. Steve (aka Dad) says they switched over in 1978. We’re ahead of our time in Serenity.

  It’s important because Amber and I are doing a mural for our Serenity Day project. If there’s anything coming out of the chimneys, it would be wrong. We want this to be as authentic as possible. I hope it goes better than the book we were writing together. She says my pictures don’t match her story, when it’s obvious her story doesn’t match my pictures. We got into a pretty big argument about that for about fifteen or twenty minutes, until this song we both like came on the radio. Amber and I fight a lot, but twenty minutes is kind of our maximum. She claims I’m immature because, at thirteen, she’s technically a teenager and I’m still twelve. She’s really only seven months older than me, but she never fails to make a big deal out of it. She says I’m too sensitive, but I’m obviously not. (She also says I use the word obvious too much. She might be right about that one.)

  I have an artist’s studio in our attic. Dad set it up for me. There’s a window with a great view of the whole town and Carson National Forest in the background. At dusk, the light on the distant mountain faces reminds me of glowing amethyst.

  Come to think of it, the Purples’ uniforms have some of that
too. Dark amethyst. Is that a real color? (Is there such a thing as light amethyst? I’ll have to check.)

  In the foreground we’ve decided to draw a cross section of our citizens. Obviously, we can’t pose everybody, so we’re collecting photographs to use as models. It’s pretty interesting to look at still pictures of people you see on a daily basis. Mr. Amani, who’s more than a foot taller than his wife; Dr. Bruder with his goofy bow ties; Kurt Osterwald’s bright red hair, which is a perfect match for his dad’s. Then there’s Eli, who’s as dark as his father is fair. I’ll bet his mom’s hair was jet-black. Not that I’m anyone to talk. I look nothing like either of my parents. My dad insists that he found me on eBay. He’s joking, obviously. He calls me Torific and I call him Steve.

  “I think it would be more appropriate for my twelve-year-old daughter to address me as Dad,” he tells me.

  “Sure, Steve, I’ll get right on that.”

  He isn’t mad. I’m the princess of his heart. Maybe I’m a little old to be called that, but as long as Malik doesn’t find out, I figure there’s no harm.

  Mom and Steve met in the bleachers at a water polo match at the University of Alabama. It was love at first sight. They moved to Serenity because they never wanted to be apart, and the Plastics Works had jobs for both of them. That was important, because they both had student loans to pay back. I always ask them to tell me the story again because it’s so romantic. I like to picture them walking hand in hand through the entrance to the plant on their first day of work—not just husband and wife, but coworkers too. (This takes some imagination since the factory grounds are off-limits to nonemployees.)

  “Best decision we ever made,” Dad says, “because it brought you into our lives.”

  “You would have had me no matter where you guys lived,” I always point out.

  He shakes his head. “Wouldn’t have been the same. There’s something special about this place. You wouldn’t have been your Torific self anywhere else.”