7 Clues to Winning You (16 page)

He was joking, but it still stopped me cold because what he said was true. What I said next was also true. And cold. “I don’t care. I want to win.” To top it off, I added, “The less like my dad I am, the better. So roll that up in your pot pipe and smoke it.”

Cy scoffed dramatically and chuckled like I was a precious moron. “It’s called a bowl, not a pipe. The thing you roll is …” He hesitated. “Ah, forget it. You know what, Blythe? It’s not information you’re ever going to need.” He poked his head outside and checked all around. “Coast is clear,” he said.

I thanked them both again and sprinted for the car. And by sprinted, I really mean waddled in my mud-caked jeans like I was wearing a loaded diaper, while my sopping-wet sneakers went
shlurp-shlurp-shlurp-shlurp
. So sexy.

I yanked open the car door and searched around for something to sit on to protect my seat upholstery. I didn’t care about the dingy velour fabric; I just didn’t want another mess to have to clean up. I had too many messes on my hands already.

I spotted the corner of my history textbook on the floor in the back, peeking out from under the seat. It must have slid under there at some point. I hadn’t noticed it was missing. Normally, I didn’t lose track of things like textbooks or other items that don’t belong to me.

There was zero time to delve into that right now, though. I grabbed the book, opened it near the middle, and splayed it facedown on the driver’s seat. I sat down and got the wedgie of a lifetime, but the book kept the seat clean, and that was all that mattered. I didn’t need perfection; I just needed a temporary solution.

A strange sensation of hot pride flared up inside me. I wasn’t accustomed to finding quick fixes. Usually I did things the proper way or not at all. Now, all of a sudden, my eyes were open to the benefit and thrill of just squeaking by.

I drove off as the stubborn sun burst through and sparkled the raindrops left everywhere. When I finally turned down my street, I could see that Marjorie’s and the buyers’ cars were still in the driveway. I pulled over to the curb and parked where I could see my house but nobody would
notice me. The rain started misting again, so I switched on my wipers. I wanted to get a good look at the people who might be living in my house. I was suddenly very curious about them.
They’d better not be jerks,
I thought. I didn’t want jerks walking around my house, cooking in my kitchen, climbing my stairs, sleeping in my room.

My room.

Someone was going to take my room. Steal it away from me like a bully snatches a toy. My room wouldn’t be mine anymore. It would belong to someone else. All the dreams I’d imagined and the plans I’d made and the secrets I’d whispered into my pillow at night would be gone too.

I’d never see my pale pink walls that I helped paint. Never see my fuzzy beige carpet that I loved to dig my toes into after I’d slept late on weekends. Never hang my spring wardrobe in perfect order on the closet rod. Never open or close my linen curtains. Never watch out the window for a boy I liked to walk up the street. Never read inside my closet so Zach wouldn’t bug me. Never see the inner edge of its door where I scribbled
I
Kevin Bailey
in third grade. Never hide secret notes from Tara under the loose corner of the carpet. Never see the crack in the ceiling light from when I tossed up the baton I got for my tenth birthday. Never lock my door and cry.

Never feel my room keeping me safe.

All of that would be gone.

I wondered if Dad had thought about that. If he’d counted all those things when he tallied up the list of sacrifices he would ask his family to make for him. No, not even for
him—for his job. Not the whole of him, just one part. Except that lately he seemed more and more “Principal McKenna” and less and less “Dad.” He spoke to Zach and me like we were students. He treated Mom like a staff member. I couldn’t even remember the last time he wore sweatpants.

The front door to my house opened and the thieving demon-buyers stepped outside, followed by Marjorie. The buyers were a man and woman who looked like overpaid, underbred yuppies. Mom called them “nouveau riche.” Newly rich people. People with more money than class who flaunted their wealth every chance they got. They hadn’t been rich long enough to learn that wealth was a private matter.

For example, these two were dressed in designer labels on a Saturday afternoon. Wearing wool and cashmere in the rain. They didn’t even have enough experience with those fabrics to know what wetness does to them. I hoped his wool sweater smelled like dirty gym socks and her too-tight cashmere top itched like chicken pox. Then again, there was a good chance their clothes were synthetic knockoffs. Those two probably couldn’t tell the difference.

They sauntered down the front walk, talking and gesturing to the roof or the chimney. The man accidentally stepped in a puddle on the concrete and immediately yanked his foot up. He hopped around on the other one while he checked the condition of his fine leather dress shoe. Unfortunately, he accidentally bumped the woman while she was contemplating her manicure and knocked her off balance. She stepped off the walk, and the entire five-inch spike heel of her knee-high suede boot sank deep into the spongy, rain-soaked
earth. She let out a little cry, twisted her boot out of the mud, and started hopping around on one foot, just like he was. They’d just managed to clasp each other’s shoulder when her clean boot landed in his puddle and splashed them both again. It was comedy. I had to laugh. Especially since it’s so hard to get water marks out of suede.

When they finally got into their hybrid SUV crossover and followed Marjorie down the street, I pulled into the driveway and ran inside. I peeled off my filthy clothes and threw them in the washer. I set the machine to Extra-Heavy Wash and switched it on. At the last second I remembered that my phone was in my jeans. I fished it out of the load of clothes, slammed down the washer lid, and sped upstairs. I scrubbed my hands and face in the bathroom. Still completely naked, I dashed to my desk, cleared the properties from the headstone picture, and uploaded it onto the Revolting Phoenix website. One minute later, I had my second clue.

Congratulations! You have successfully uploaded a valid picture of item #1.

How cute that the seniors wanted us to recycle! For some reason, it seemed like Luke’s idea. I bet it had been. Okay, soda cans. I needed how many? I recited Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, “Four score and seven years ago …” All right, I remember my American History teacher in Meriton last year said a score was twenty. So four score is eighty, plus seven is eighty-seven. Eighty-seven soda cans. Where the heck was I going to find eighty-seven empty cans?

Recycling day wasn’t until next Thursday, so trash-picking wasn’t an option; I couldn’t wait that long. It dawned on me that I could just buy eighty-seven cans of soda. I pulled up my desktop calculator and divided eighty-seven by six.
That would be 14.5 six-packs, so I’d have to buy fifteen to get the half pack. Those were about three bucks each, so I needed … $45?

Um, no.

That was a mani-pedi plus tip at my salon.

Forget it.

I had to think of a source. What kind of place would use a ton of soda but only in cans? Restaurants all used fountains. Vending machine sodas were mostly in plastic bottles. Even if one had cans, it wasn’t like people stood there, chugged the soda, and then tossed the can in the nearest trash. An airplane would work. Flight attendants opened soda cans all day long. Unfortunately I was nowhere near an airport, and even if I was, I highly doubted I’d be allowed anywhere near the trash.

No, I needed someplace more local. Someplace with a lot of people who liked to drink out of cans. Or drank weird stuff that only came in cans. Or the place used cans like the airline because they didn’t have a fountain, but they needed small servings of a wide variety of beverages to accommodate a lot of picky drinkers.

Wait a second … picky drinkers … Aha! I had it! I couldn’t believe how obvious it was.

Shady Acres. There were over three hundred picky, opinionated diners and drinkers in that place. I remembered volunteering in the dining room my first year there. I had gone into the kitchen for something and noticed shelf upon shelf of beverages, most of them in cans. I later found out that certain residents would only drink certain brands of certain
sodas or juices or sparkling water, but not every day. So the staff ordered a few pallets of each to keep on hand.

I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it sooner! I checked the time. There were still a couple of hours before my family would get home. Long enough to run over to Shady Acres and see what I could find. It would almost make my lie about going there for an afternoon tea a truth. Shady Acres … afternoon … beverages …

Almost a truth.

I threw on some dry clothes. I didn’t bother with hair or makeup, which wasn’t like me. Normally, I wouldn’t leave the house without at least a five-minute face and a perky ponytail.

But I was in a race. A race against the clock, a race against the other players, and a race against my family. There was no time for vanity. Vanity was for losers! Plus, Tara always said I was naturally cute enough.

When I got to Shady Acres, instead of parking in the visitors’ parking lot like I usually did, I pulled around back to the loading dock. To the right of that, I spotted two enormous Dumpsters, one black and one blue with a recycling symbol. The only problem was, they were locked behind a six-foot-high slatted wood fence. There was a gate where the garbage truck could gain access, but it was padlocked. I got out of the car and peered through the slats. The sides of the fence met the wall of the building on either side of a steel door labeled Trash Repository Room. I couldn’t get to the recycling from the outside, but maybe I could from the inside.

I left my car in the back and walked around to the front door. I waved to the front desk attendant, who knew me by sight. I vaguely remembered that the trash room was off the kitchen, so instead of turning left toward the resident rooms, I veered right toward the dining hall. Inside, staff members were milling around setting up for the dinner service (which started at three thirty!). People would pass in and out of the swinging kitchen doors so many times that nothing seemed odd when I went through the doors too.

That was as far as I got.

The place was a zoo. People in white uniforms ran everywhere yelling at each other or chopping or stirring or mixing or frying. Food and utensils were scattered and piled on every inch of countertop. Discarded peels and stems littered the floor. Steam and smoke billowed up from the stoves.

I guess dinner for three hundred took a lot of work.

The heat was stifling. The overwhelming smell of so many foods cooking at once was nauseating. Far across on the other side of the kitchen, I spotted the door to the trash room in a little vestibule off to the side. I was almost glad that there was no possible way I could reach it unnoticed, because I had to get out of there before I passed out.

Back in the dining room, I leaned over one of the tables to catch my breath. The cheap polyester tablecloth seemed to slicken beneath my sweaty palms. How was I going to do this? I couldn’t wait until after dinner. It ended at five thirty and my parents would be home long before that.

I needed an accomplice. I needed a diversion. I knew where to find both.

I couldn’t help but stop to listen outside their door for a second.

“I happen to
like
the smell of my Jean Naté After Bath Splash,” Ms. Eulalie cried.

“It smells like a whorehouse in here!” Ms. Franny bleated.

“Well, you would know.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just what you think it means, Jezebel.”

I knocked on the door and pretended I hadn’t heard a thing. “Anyone home?”

“Blythe!” Ms. Franny exclaimed. She picked up a magazine and fanned her face. “Go open that window, will you? Get some fresh air.”

“Oh, no, you don’t!” Ms. Eulalie said, holding her hand up to me. “Don’t you do any such thing. It’s already colder than an icebox in here.”

Ms. Franny smacked the magazine down on her side table. “Nonsense. It’s plenty warm.”

“On your side! You got the heater! I got the leaky, drafty window! And you’re so stingy with that heat, too. Like you’re gonna use it all up or something. Got to
save
it so we don’t run out.”

Ms. Franny stuck her tongue out at Ms. Eulalie, then turned and stared at me for a moment. A shadow of confusion fell over her face. “Wait a minute. What day is it? Why are you here? Is it Monday? I thought it was Saturday. When did it get to be Monday? I’m losing my marbles.”

Ms. Eulalie pointed to the floor. “There goes one.”