Elaine Orr - Jolie Gentil 00.5 - Jolie and Scoobie High School Misadventures (5 page)

“I’m not sure they did
.” I smiled when I said it and we started walking again. I had phys ed, my least favorite subject because I hated to get sweaty at school, and he had earth science.

“Well, I didn’t miss them, either
. If it gets too cold on the boardwalk, we can go to the diner sometimes. But we have to buy at least one drink.”

Obviously I noted his change of subject, but I chose to go with it
. “Won’t they wonder why we’re out so late?” I asked. I often thought about this. No one ever approached us.

“At
eleven o’clock on a school night, maybe, not at nine.”

NEWHART’S DINER COULD be called run-down, but never grimy. The food was good and Aunt Madge had made a good dinner—salt water bass and broccoli, which I like—but I still looked at the menu hungrily. Maybe a dish of chocolate ice cream.

“Are you here for the Scoobie special?” Arnie Newhart asked.

I had not heard him walk up. Scoobie looked a little uncomfortable, so I asked, “What’s the Scoobie special?”

Arnie had seen me with Aunt Madge a couple of times in the last
month or so, but he didn’t usually wait the tables. “Grilled cheese on wheat and potato chips.” He looked as Scoobie. “You still have a credit.”

Scoobie relaxed
. “Thanks. I’m good for another round.”

“And you, little lady?” Arnie asked.

Little lady?
  “You have Doctor Pepper, right?”

“Yep
. Small or large?”

I ordered a small and Arnie went back toward the kitchen
. “Somehow I doubt round means golf.”

Scoobie grinned
. “When he’s short on help he calls and asks me to help with dishes. Happens more at the end of the summer.”

“Wow. That’s nice of you.”

He shrugged. “He’s a nice guy. I tell him I’ll take it out in trade.”

Since I knew Scoobie didn’t always have money in his pockets, this did not surprise me
. I said, “The food is good. Especially the chocolate ice cream.”

The door opened and one of the older women I’d seen at First Prez came in
. She stared at me as she walked to a table and joined another woman about her age. I looked at Scoobie. “Were they staring at you or me?  I hope they don’t tell Aunt Madge they saw me here.”

Scoobie shrugged
. “It’s early in the week. They’ll forget by Sunday.” He grinned almost mischievously and pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. “Did you ever read any of my poetry?”

“You know you didn’t give it to me
. What kind is it?”

“My kind,” he said, and began to read.

a kitchen kind of phone call

on a rotary phone

you learned to use in kindergarten

in case of emergency

like now

and then

and you remember

all the different times you heard

half the truth

wondering about the missing piece

or attempted to conceal

half

from your mom

most

from your dad

and everything

from yourself

It was a far more serious poem than I had expected. “Um…are you talking about keeping stuff from your parents, stuff like us being out here at night?”

Scoobie looked a little disappointed at my question
. “My poems aren’t always literal.”

I knew nothing about poetry and was not especially interested in learning
, but if it was important to Scoobie I didn’t mind listening to his. “The only poems I remember are nursery rhymes.”

His look seemed almost disdainful, but just for a second
. “That’s more rhyme than I usually go for. My poems can be metaphors for life.”

I stared at
him. I guess I didn’t know Scoobie at all.

CHAPTER FIVE

“DO YOU LIKE sitting at the Finch’s?” Aunt Madge asked.

I thought for a moment
. “The kids are spoiled, but they always pay me a couple of dollars extra, and they asked what kind of ice cream I like and they always have it.”

She nodded
. “I have not seen them around much. They only moved here last year.” She was washing dishes and placing them in her wooden drying rack, and I was drying.

Our house in
Lakewood had a dishwasher, plus a garbage disposal and trash compactor. I never thought of cleaning up after dinner as a lot of work. My dad and I usually alternated, unless Renée was home, then she did it some. Not as much, since she’s not home much and she often eats with friends. “So you don’t know them well, huh?”

She ignored my teasing tone
. “Contrary to your opinion, I don’t know everyone in town.”

Aunt Madge has always refused to gossip, which would occasionally bother my mother if she read something about someone she knew in the
Ocean Alley Press
and wanted to know more. I thought Aunt Madge was trying to fish for information on the Finches without sounding like a gossip. I didn’t really know anything about them.

I looked at the clock on the kitchen wall
. Though it was late October, it wasn’t that cold. I would walk to the Finch’s since it was light out, and Mr. Finch would bring me home. “I never heard them say why they moved here. They sure have a lot of nice stuff.”

Aunt Madge didn’t ask, so I continued
. “All their furniture looks brand new. Maybe they had a house fire or something.”

“That would be awful,” Aunt Madge said
. Petey came up behind us and nudged us both in the calf. “Petey, go to your rug.”

I looked down and pretended to send him a kiss
. Petey was better behaved before I came and sometimes snuck him up to my room to sleep.

“COME ON JOLIE, ten more minutes.”

“You say ten and you try for twenty
. No way.” I had my hands on my hips as I looked at Thomas Edward. He had a part of a plywood board on the floor and was working a jigsaw puzzle on top of it.

“You know you like me.”

“I do.”
In spite of how you act sometimes
. “But your parents say nine o’clock, so I do nine o’clock. Talk to them about it.”

He gave me a look that held a lot of resentment.

Thomas Edward helps me get Hannah to bed on time. He expects some payback. “You can leave the light on and read for a few minutes.”

I was rewarded with a huge grin, and he even put some of the unused puzzle pieces back in the box.

After I walked Thomas Edward upstairs I took my geometry book from my bag. Renée had given me a lot of grief about flunking the first quarter. I guess Aunt Madge told her.

Her point was that I wasn’t keeping our parents out of a good college, just me
. I didn’t want to go away to college, I wanted to be home. But I wanted not to have to listen to anything about my grades, so I decided to get at least a C from now on.

HALLOWEEN HAS ALWAYS been a lot of fun, even more since high school. Every year a bunch of my friends had what they called “stop by” parties. One at nine, one at ten, one at eleven and last year one at midnight. We went from party to party like a troop of lemmings. At every house the parents had mounds of food and took twenty pictures.

My friend Beth sent me an actual invitation to her house, and I knew I could go to any of them, but I didn’t want to answer a lot of questions
.
And who would I stay with?

“You should go,” Scoobie said
. “You miss your friends.”

We were at the
Screw the Bunny machine. The arcade owner closes after Halloween, so it was one of our last times. “Yeah, but I think I’ll miss them even more if I go and come back.”

From a look at his profile, Scoobie looked pleased
. “Then I have a plan.”

“What do you go as?” I asked.

“Go…?  Oh, you mean costumes. We probably should get masks.”

“AREN’T YOU A LITTLE old for trick-or-treating?” Aunt Madge asked.

“We’re just going to walk on the boardwalk
.” I used the mirror in the hallway to look at the Marilyn Monroe mask. “You, uh, probably won’t be up when I get back. But I won’t stay late. Maybe ten-thirty.” The boardwalk curfew for high-schoolers was extended on Halloween.

“You’ll be with Adam?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

“I
’ll set my alarm for ten-thirty to be sure you’re back.” She gave me a kiss on my now mask-less cheek. “When you call me ma’am I know you’re up to something.”

“You’d be happier if you weren’t so suspicious.”

“WHERE DID YOU get these
?” I asked. Scoobie had two really big water pistols.

“At that novelty store at the end of the boardwalk, by the merry-go-round
. They were only ninety-nine cents, ‘cause he gets rid of a lot of a stuff before he closes for the winter.” Scoobie mimed shooting me with his, which was yellow.

It was
eight o’clock, and people in costumes were just starting to walk on the boardwalk. Even the stand that had cotton candy and candy apples, which had been closed since early October, was open tonight. Several other merchants had their doors open and had large bowls of candy sitting on their counters. We helped ourselves.

After about twenty minutes, we walked off the boardwalk onto the sand
. “It’s almost dark enough, I guess,” I said.

“Yep
. Walk down more toward the lifeguard stand. That way no one will think of us when they get wet walking by the steps.”

“We are wearing masks, you know,” I said
. I was a bit doubtful about his plan, which involved sitting under the boardwalk, in a place not near any street lights, and shooting water up through the cracks. However, since no one had invited me to any other Halloween events, not even Margo, I was game.

We walked about ten yards, water pistols at our sides
. We had filled them at the large water fountain near the salt water taffy stand. “If we need more water and go back to the fountain, someone will get suspicious,” I said.

“You don’t see any other water around here?” Scoobie asked.

“There aren’t any fountains down…oh, the ocean.”

“Good to see your brain is in full gear,” he said, but not sarcastically
. He looked toward the boardwalk. “No one’s looking.”

We ducked under the boardwalk
. I could almost stand up straight, but Scoobie is about five-nine or ten and had to bend over a lot. We kind of crab-walked about twenty feet, so we were closer to an area where a lot of people walked.

I glanced up as we sat down with the second
boardwalk post behind us. That way we were well away from both edges of the boardwalk. “Some of the cracks are larger than others,” I observed.

“Yep,” he said
. “I think we may have to stand to aim.”

“I’m going to try a couple of shots from down here,” I said, settling in against the pillar.

Scoobie stood up and moved a few feet away and raised his squirt gun. It was dark so I couldn’t see him spray it, but after a couple of seconds there was a squeal from above.

“Something wet hit my ankle!” a woman’s voice said.

“That’s odd, I don’t see any puddles,” a man’s voice said.

They kept walking
. I had to put my fist in my mouth to keep from laughing, then I had to spit out some sand.

I crept to where Scoobie stood
. He’d probably found the best spot for shooting up, so to speak. “Did you know her?” I whispered.

“Nah
. Who wears flip flops in almost November?”

“Let me try,” I said, and he moved away a bit.

It took me about half a minute to get used to looking up through the boardwalk cracks and guessing about the timing of my shot. After another few seconds a knot of adult trick or treaters approached. I knew they were out for fun because there aren’t usually people in clown suits on the boardwalk. I shot upward without aiming, and pulled the squirt gun back toward me when a man swore loudly.

“Keep your damn spray bottle to yourself,” he said, in an angry tone.

“That wasn’t me. But this is.” A few drops of water fell between the cracks and a woman giggled and the guy swore again.

“I forgot circus clowns sometimes have a spray thing,” Scoobie said
, but quietly. “We can try that next year.”

“The guy who go
t mad should stay home,” I said, thinking I would not be in Ocean Alley next year. I didn’t remind Scoobie of this.

We kept up our antics until about nine-thirty, and then we both got really chilled at about the same time
. I gestured to the boardwalk above us. “Come on, they’re selling cider at that hamburger stand. I’ll buy us some.”

We squat-
walked out from under the boardwalk and were dusting off our pants when a voice came from above. “I didn’t figure it was raining up.” The cop named Tortino was staring down at us.

We both looked up
. “It was Jolie’s idea,” Scoobie said.

“Hey…!”  I stopped when I could tell Scoobie was kidding
. From his expression, I could tell the cop knew this.

“Disarm yourselves and you can come back up here,” he said, and walked away.

Scoobie emptied his water pistol into the sand by spelling the word boo, laughing as he did it.

I unplugged the fill-up hole on mine and drained it, but I was worried.
“Do you think he knows Aunt Madge?  Will he tell your dad?” I asked.

Scoobie stopped laughing and considered this as he stuffed the squirt gun into the largest pocket of his Army surplus pants
. “Everyone knows your aunt, but he won’t tell her. And he knows my dad won’t care.”

We walked toward the steps leading up to the boardwalk from the beach
. “How come he knows he won’t care?  Will your mom?”

Scoobie gave me a look that
I could not interpret. “My dad will just say boys will be boys and…my mom is working tonight.”

“She works a lot
.” We were on the boardwalk and I still had my squirt gun in my right hand. There was a giggle from my left.

Jennifer Stenner was wearing a Snow White costume, complete with pleated collar and black-haired wig
. “I thought it might be Scoobie, but I never guessed you, Jolie.” She caught up with two other girls who had moved a few feet ahead of her. I couldn’t tell if they were anyone I knew because they had on Alice in Wonderland masks.

There were other people on the boardwalk so I pulled my mask over my face to hide how flushed I was
. Okay, we were being a little juvenile, but it was fun.

“Come on,” Scoobie said
. “Let’s get cider.”

We didn’t talk as I ordered us each a cup and we sat on a bench
. I had been wearing my Marilyn Monroe mask on the back of my head so I could drink the cider, and pulled it off. “I wish we hadn’t run into them,” I said.

“Yo
u don’t care what those stuffed-up girls think,” Scoobie said.

“No, but they’ll tell everybody
.”

H
e shrugged and blew on the steam from the hot cider. “You don’t need to worry, you hardly know anybody.”