Elaine Orr - Jolie Gentil 00.5 - Jolie and Scoobie High School Misadventures (10 page)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

IT WAS A COUPLE of days after he came back before Scoobie started acting like himself. I guessed he was ashamed, but I wasn’t going to ask him to talk about it. I was pretty sure that Candy was giving me smug looks that said that now I knew the real Scoobie.

The rest of February was more typical of winter at the
Jersey shore. About half the days got up to forty degrees, but it was below freezing most nights, so anything wet froze again. We had freezing rain a couple of times, but no snow.

I actually got a B on a geometry quiz, but I wasn’t able to do it again
. Aunt Madge also gave me another cooking lesson, this time teaching me how to bake a chicken. I thought I’d use the cookie lesson again, but couldn’t see me cooking a chicken anytime soon. My mother would hang over my shoulder. Maybe when I got to college.

By
the day before St. Patrick’s Day, Scoobie was in full scheme mode. He wouldn’t say what he was planning to do, but he and Sean O’Malley ate lunch together the day before. Since Scoobie rarely sat in the cafeteria, this attracted a couple of looks.

“What are they up to?” Margo asked
. We were alone for a few moments at the lunch table, since Sandra and Candy had stopped to talk to a couple of guys at another table.

“I have no idea,” I said.

“Does that mean you know and won’t tell me?” She asked.

“
It means I really don’t know. All he said was make sure to wear green tomorrow.”

“Hmmm
. Last year someone put a lot of green dye in the small fountain on the counter in the principal’s office. I doubt they’ll turn that on this year,” Margo said.

“Was it Scoobie?” I asked.

“I’m pretty sure he was out that day.”

“You remember that?” I asked.

“Yep. The day before he said he was going to find a way to turn some beer green. Beer on tap at the Sandpiper. And he must’ve figured out how to do it, because there was a small article in the paper the next day saying it was green, but most of the customers didn’t notice.”

I laughed
. “Everybody says it’s a dive. Hey, how did he get in there?”

Margo didn’t answer, because Candy and Sandra walked up then, so we steered the conversation away from Scoobie.

THERE WERE GREEN streamers in the front hall the next morning, and a lot of kids were wearing green shirts or hats
. A few guys had on green ties with shamrocks or leprechauns, which looked pretty funny with the bathing suits they were wearing. Apparently there was a very relaxed dress code at Ocean Alley High for St. Patrick’s Day.

I had waited near the front door for Scoobie, because it was drizzling outside
. No Scoobie, so I walked down to homeroom. There were two green apples on the teacher’s desk and someone had drawn a shamrock on the board with green chalk. I thought again that St. Patrick’s Day was a much bigger deal in Ocean Alley than in Lakewood.

The teacher was halfway through taking attendance when Sean walked to her desk and said something in a low voice
. Since he looked serious and so did the teacher I thought he might be sick. When he gave me a furtive wink as he walked out, I figured Sean was up to something. I recognized the look.

When homeroom ended ten minutes later I walked into the hall with all my senses on alert
. As I got close to the main hallway I could hear a lot of squeals and guffaws. I moved to the edge of the hall so I could stand and look rather than continue walking. In a few seconds I could see what people were squealing about.

There was a mannequin about three feet tall, and it was dressed in what appeared to be a leprechaun outfit. It actually looked more like one of the seven dwarfs, but with green clothes and a rainbow on a piece of poster board behind it. A small basket had a few of those foil-wrapped chocolate coins.

The reactions were most likely because of what looked like a large pile of leprechaun droppings, so to speak, in front of the rainbow. I walked closer and saw a sign that was sitting in a plastic eight by ten photo frame, so it would be standing up rather than lying down.

Watch what you gather on St. Patrick’s Day.

Cause if you’re looking for some leprechaun loot,

You may find out that what comes your way

Is really a bunch of leprechaun poop.

I wondered if Scoobie would get in trouble
. Of course, it might not be Scoobie and Sean. I looked more closely and the piles of so-called poop looked like they could be tootsie rolls that had been melted and then reshaped.
Yuck.

“Oh, that’s so gross
.” It was two of the girls from the snob lunch table.

“Can you
please move?” It was the guy I’d seen taking pictures for the school paper a couple of times. I thought he was a senior, and he seemed to think he was very important. “I’m on deadline.”

Puh-leeze.

“Okay, okay.” It was Mr. Rosen, and he was making a kind of shooing gesture. “Fun’s over folks. Almost time for first period.”

People started moving quickly
. I took a quick look at Mr. Rosen and he was almost smiling. That would be a first.

SCOOBIE JOINED MY table for lunch. He had on a green tee shirt and was wearing a button that said, “Kiss Me, I’m Irish.” Margo blew him a kiss and I kissed him on the cheek. Sandra and Candy had no reaction, but at least they didn’t say anything condescending.

“So, did you do the leprechaun?” I asked.

He took the banana and a couple of French fries from my plate. “What leprechaun?”

“He did it,” Margo said.

Scoobie grinned. “If you want me to incriminate myself for some dastardly act, it ain’t gonna happen.”

I WALKED TO THE Cozy Corner by myself after school. I still didn’t want to be in Ocean Alley, but this had been a good day.

“Jolie
?” Aunt Madge was in the kitchen.

“Yep, it’s me
. Did you make green bread?” I opened the swinging door to the kitchen and Petey ran to the hook on the wall where his leash hangs. “In a few minutes,” I said, and he walked slowly back toward me.

“Not the bread,” she said, and nodded to the bowl of butter, which was green.

“Did you buy it that way?”

“No, just food coloring
. You have a letter on the table.” She nodded toward it.

I picked it up assuming it would be from Renée and was surprised to see the return address was from one of the girls I rode to school with in
Lakewood. “It’s from my friend Kathleen,” I said. It was an invitation to an after-prom party in early April.

I’d forgotten about junior prom
. I didn’t even know if there was one at Ocean Alley. In Lakewood it was a big deal. My eyes started to tear up, mostly because I was glad she had thought of me. The after prom parties were for anyone, even if they hadn’t gone to the prom. There were always a few of the parties, always at people’s homes. Unlike Halloween, you didn’t go from house to house. It was too late to drive around town.

Kathleen was letting me know that even if I didn’t have a date for the
Lakewood prom I could go to her party.
Do I want to do that
?  I was back to my conundrum. Would I feel worse when I came back to Ocean Alley afterwards?  I’d have to think about it.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“YOU WANT TO WHAT?”

Scoobie stood in front of me, grinning
. “I saw that the paper they’re using for the ballots is bright orange. They sell it in single pages at the office supply store. I want you to buy me a few sheets at lunch time.”

“Lunch is only twenty-five minutes,” I said
. “It’ll take maybe seven minutes to walk there, each way.”

“Yeah,” he said, grinning
. “But it’ll be worth it.”

“How are you going to stuff the ballot box, anyway?  Won’t that get you expelled?”

“I’m not going to put a real person’s name in there.”

“Whose, then?” I asked.

“I’ll tell you after.”

“I wish you’d asked yesterday,” I said.

His tone had the level of patience I used when I was babysitting. “You don’t know the ballot color until the day of the class elections. Otherwise there would be lots of creative voting.”

I rolled my eyes
. “Okay, I’ll go. But I don’t want to help stuff.”

“Good
. I don’t suppose you’d bring the paper to the boys’ bathroom on the second floor?”

VOTING WAS IN THE CAFETERIA and the library, and teachers provided the ballots and collected them. You could vote before and after school and at lunch time. I had no real opinions about senior class officers, especially since I assumed I wouldn’t be at OAHS then. However, there were a couple of people I didn’t want to win, so I was voting.

I waited in line outside the library when school let out at two-thirty
. People were talking about anything but who they were voting for. There was no sign of Scoobie. I had not been about to take the orange paper to the boys’ bathroom, so he had met me at the front door. I barely had time to get a lunch tray, and I took the fruit and sandwich from it and ate on my way to class. I was hungry now.

I couldn’t see any way that Scoobie could add ballots to the box, but he must have thought of something he thought would work
. Mr. Porter was distributing ballots, and I took mine and sat at a library table. Michael Riordan was running for senior class president. I wrote in Margo’s name.

One of the girls from the snob table was running for treasurer, and I started to write in Scoobie’s name
. He might not want the attention, if he was already fiddling with ballots, so I wrote in Sean O’Malley. For the others I voted for the people who had passed out the most candy over the past week. Apparently it was okay to buy votes in Ocean Alley High School elections.

Scoobie caught up with me as I was leaving the building
. “I only got about ten extra votes in myself,” he said.

“How?” I asked.

“I made the extra ballots before and pulled them out of my pocket after they gave me mine. I voted in the cafeteria because the detention monitor was proctoring, and she can’t see more than two feet in front of her.”

“Who was your candidate?”

“Mickey Mouse. I thought about Minnie, but since both the other candidates were guys I thought mine should be, too,” he said, grinning.

I’M NOT SURE HOW Mr. Rosen figured out it was Scoobie, but he got two days of after-school detention for making the ballots and a third day because he wouldn’t say who else he had given ballots to. I suspected Sean and a couple of other guys Sean hangs out with, but didn’t know. Mickey Mouse got a total of seventeen votes.

“So, you know the back of the cafeteria is a berm, right?” Scoobie asked.

“Is that what you call it when the dirt’s piled up around the walls?” I asked.

“You should read more,” he said
. “Yes, that’s what it’s called. It means you can walk onto the cafeteria roof.”

“And I would do that why?”

He pulled two small toys from his pocket. One was Minnie Mouse and one was Goofy. “If you put these on the end of a string we could angle them in through a window.”

“We?” I asked.

“Okay, you.”

“What’s the point?” I asked.

“I bet Sean ten dollars that Minnie and Goofy would be in detention with me,” he said.

“You don’t usually have ten extra dollars,” I said, eyeing him critically.

“I will if you do this,” he said, with his cocky grin.

“It would be easier if I just gave you ten dollars.”

“It’s the principle of the thing,” he said, in a formal voice.

“And then what, I swear to Sean that I did this?” I asked.

“He’s in detention, too.”

“What did he do?” I asked.

“Threw spitballs in geography class so he’d get detention at the same time,” Scoobie said.

“You guys know this isn’t elementary school, right?” I asked.

“You gotta lighten up,” Scoobie said.

ON THE SECOND day of Scoobie’s detention I walked to the back of the cafeteria at about three o’clock. It was sunny and warm, so no one had hung around after school. I sat on a bench at the edge of the parking lot and studied the berm, with its access to the cafeteria roof.
The things I do for Scoobie.

I had the two Disney characters in the front pocket of my camouflage pants, attached to two very long strings
. Scoobie had provided them. After about five minutes and a number of looks over my shoulder, I walked onto the roof. I had only gone a couple of steps when I realized that the roof had a lot of loose gravel. I would have to walk very quietly.

The detention students sat toward the back of the cafeteria, supposedly away from any activity
. That meant that any of the last few windows would work. Scoobie had made sure they were open pretty wide, which they probably would have been anyway, since it was sixty-five degrees.

The windows were typical of most schools
. They didn’t raise up and down. Instead, there was a lever that you pulled and the glass was pushed out, leaving a wide opening. The detention monitor’s voice drifted up. “Mr. O’Malley, you can sit quietly or you can study. You may not doodle.”

From her voice, I gathered she was about five windows away from where I got on the roof, so I decided to angle Minnie and Goofy in through one of the very back windows
. I knelt on the roof and pulled out Goofy and unwound the string that was wrapped around him. Slowly I lowered him toward the wide-open window.

Someone was asking the monitor a question
. That was good, she probably wouldn’t be looking at the window. Goofy made it in, and I dropped the string.

Because Goofy had had such a smooth ride into the cafeteria I had not expected the loud screams when Minnie made her entrance
. I stood up and wanted to run, but I was almost frozen in place for a few seconds. Should I stand there, making no noise, or run off the roof?

Running won out, and I got to the edge of the roof and walked down the berm
. I was going to walk quickly across the parking lot to the street behind the school, but I heard a door on the side of the cafeteria bang open. I quickly sat on the bench.

One of the custodians came charging around the corner
. “What’s wrong?” I called to him.

“You see anybody on the roof?” he asked.

“Up there you mean?” I pointed.

“Yeah, up there
.” He walked a few feet away from the school so he had a better view of the roof.

“I’ve been sitting here, I didn’t see anyone.”

“Idiots,” he muttered, and walked back into the building.

“SHE THOUGHT IT WAS a spider,” Scoobie said. “Because Minnie was black, I guess.”

We were sitti
ng at the counter at Newhart’s Diner. Scoobie had been so sure he would win the bet that he said he’d meet me there after detention and buy me ice cream or something. “How come the custodian got out there so fast?” I asked.

“He was cleaning the floor in front of the serving area,” Scoobie said.

“Just my luck,” I grumbled. “I’d have been in detention for the rest of the year if I’d been caught.”

“But you weren’t,” Scoobie said, “and I doubt they’ll check for fingerprints.”

“Very funny.” I began eating the chocolate ice cream. “What are you going to do with your big winnings?”

“Buy a pizza on junior prom night,” he said promptly
. “Or half of one. You can buy the other half.”

I stared at him
. Surely he wasn’t asking me to the prom. It cost a lot more than a pizza.

“You a
ren’t going, are you?” he asked, with a look of uncertainty.

“No
. A guy in math class asked me, but I hardly know him, so I said no.”

Scoobie looked relieved
. “Good. I figure Pizza Hut will be half-empty, because most of the others will try for fancy restaurants in Ocean Alley, or maybe in Asbury Park or Ocean Grove, or somewhere.”

I had also decided not to go to
Lakewood for Kathleen’s after-prom party. I’d probably cry all the way back to Ocean Alley. If anyone had told me a year ago that my big social activity for junior year would be pizza on prom night, I would have thought they were smoking something.