The True Meaning of Smekday (7 page)

“Sort of,” I said.

“Did you to see the one where Lucy try to make the Ricky put her into the big show?”

He laughed again, like a trombone under water.

“Ah,” he said finally. “Wicked funny.”

There was that word again.

“Did you guys learn English from watching our television?”

“No,” said J.Lo. “We had tutors. But you could to understand some of the shows, even without the humanswords.”

“Oh.”

“Do you know what is interesting?” the Boov asked. “Before we to came to Smekland, I thought it would to be funnier. And more exciting, also. All I knew was fromto the television signals, so I thought it was always tripping on footstools and car chasing. It is not quite liketo the television, is Smekland?”

“No…” I said, “life isn’t like TV. On TV, everything gets wrapped up quickly. On TV there are heroes who save the world from people like you.”

I squeezed the wheel, stared at the long ribbon of yellow ahead of us. I’d sucked all the air out of the car. My stomach tightened a little as J.Lo glanced at me, then looked quickly away.

By the time we stopped for the night, Billy Milsap was as big as an ocean liner.

I chose a rest stop for our campsite. It was a little bit of human normalness that I could cling to. We could have stopped to sleep in a town, maybe even managed to get into a deserted motel. But then there would have been all of the gray empty streets and buildings surrounding me, and I didn’t like the way they already looked like ruins, like monuments to some briefly rich but now-dead civilization. At a rest stop we could almost have been any two motorists pulling over after a long day on the road.

So we parked at the James K. Polk Rest Area.

“What did that sign to say?” asked J.Lo. It was first thing he’d said in hours.

“‘James K. Polk Rest Area,’” I said. “We’re going to rest here.”

J.Lo’s eyes darted about as we hovered up to a squat little building. “Can we to
do
that? We are not James Kaypolk.”

“I’m sure he won’t mind.”

It turned out to be a really good place to stop. Apparently, no one had thought to loot a rest area, and the vending machines were fully stocked with candy, gum, toaster pastries, Blue Razzberry Nums, orange crackers filled with cheese so yellow it was almost a light source, peanuts, L’il Tasties, Extreme Ranch Chips, Extreme BBQ Pork Rinds, Noda (the Soda Substitute), and mints. J.Lo was only interested in the mints, so I would have the rest to myself.

“How does the food to come into the out?”

I winced. “Well, normally you have to put some money into it. But I don’t really have much.”

“And I am broken.”

“Broke.”

“Broke.”

J.Lo fetched his toolbox, which I was now convinced had
everything
in it, and produced something like a spray can, if spray cans were shaped like kidneys.

“Stand away,” he said.

The kidney can exhaled a fine blue mist that smelled like coffee. J.Lo coated the Plexiglas front of the vending machine, and stepped back to admire his work.

“What now?” I asked.

“We to wait,” said J.Lo as the Plexiglas began to steam.

I said that was fine. I had to use the restroom anyway.

“Yes,” said J.Lo, following me to the ladies’ room door. “I have also to do this thing.”

“Whoa,” I said, blocking the doorway. “You can’t come in here. This is the girls’ room.”

Even as it came out of my mouth, I knew it sounded dumb. Dumb, I thought, and maybe even
wrong.

“You…you are a boy, aren’t you?” I asked. “I mean, don’t take that the wrong way or anything—”

“J.Lo is a boy, yes.”

I let that go. “So…you Boov have boys and girls…just like us?”

“Of course,” said J.Lo. “Do not to be ridicumulous.”

I smiled a wan little smile. “Sorry.”

“The Boov are having
seven
magnificent genders. There is boy, girl, boygirl, girlboy, boyboy, boyboygirl, and boyboyboyboy.”

I had absolutely no response to this.

“I’m going to go to the restroom now,” I said finally. “You use that one, over there.”

J.Lo pattered off to the boys’ room. He paused at the door, looking at the little man painted on it. A second later he produced some kind of pen from his toolbox, drew six more legs on the man, and went inside. I pulled the girls’ room door shut behind me.

The bathroom was pitch black, except for a small slit of a window framing the pink moon outside. The air was stale and thick. It wrapped itself around me, and I wore it like a mummy. It was nice to be alone for a moment. But I didn’t dwell on it; I was all business. I didn’t stare for too long at my reflection in the mirror. I didn’t cry or anything. I was okay. I was excited about getting to Florida. Beaches. Fun in the sun. Happy Mouse Kingdom was there. Mom had always loved Happy Mouse Kingdom.

After a while I washed my hands and splashed my face, then rejoined J.Lo outside.

He was standing in front of the vending machine, eating mints. The front had almost completely evaporated.

“I don’t suppose you want any of the other stuff,” I said, waving my hand at the junk feast awaiting me.

J.Lo answered through loud crunches. “No. Mints.”

“You…can’t just have mints. Not that it makes any difference to me—”

He swallowed. “I did also find delicious, fragrant cakes in the Boovs’ room.”

It would be months before I understood he’d eaten deodorizers out of the urinals.

I would have liked to sleep outside and look up at the sky. The sky looked really great when nearly the entire country was blacked out. Of course, now it looked dangerous, too. I wondered if it would ever be just the night sky again, and not a black sea, full of sharks.

Anyway, there were too many bugs to sleep outside. I got an anklet of red bites around each ankle, and the mosquitos just swarmed around J.Lo. We spent the night in Slushious: me in the backseat, J.Lo and Pig in the front. I may be one of the few people alive who have heard the sound of a Boov snoring. It will haunt me to my grave.

The next morning we did our business quickly and got back on the road. Do you know how you can be around a smell for a long time, but you have to leave it and come back to even notice it’s there? When we were gliding back onto the interstate I noticed the smell.

Now, I have to admit that, at this point, I hadn’t bathed in four days. There hadn’t really been time. So I sniffed under my arms, but I was still very ladylike, thank you. I looked over at J.Lo. Pig was purring loudly at his feet, rubbing at his knees.

“Do you smell something?” I asked.

“I am smelling pine freshness,” he replied, looking up at the cardboard tree hanging from the mirror.

“You don’t smell something…kind of…fishy?”

J.Lo swung his legs in little circles. “I am not knowing this ‘fishy.’ How smells this—B-A-AAOOW!”

He nearly scared me right off the road.

“What? What is it?”

J.Lo frowned down at Pig. “The cat did to bite me!” he said.

“She bit you? Pig never bites.”

Pig was still purring, still trying to rub against J.Lo’s feet, which were now pulled up safely against his stumpy body.

“Well, she is to biting now! Now she is excellent biter!”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have been swinging your legs around, then. What do you expect when you scare her like that.”

But I knew that wasn’t it. Suddenly everything made sense. I leaned to the right and drew a long breath through my nose. Fish.

“It’s you!” I shouted happily. “You smell like fish!”

J.Lo was stunned.

“Noooo,” he said finally. “I am not to smelling—”

“You do!” I insisted. “You smell just like fish. Stinky fish. No
wonder
cats like you guys so much! You’re like a big piece of sushi.”

J.Lo stared down at Pig. “Perhaps I am to needing a bath, then.”

“You’re forgiven, Pig,” I said, laughing. “You couldn’t help yourself.”

“Please not to laugh,” said J.Lo. “She bit wicked hard.”

I stopped laughing. We drove in silence for a few minutes.

“Okay,” I said. “What is it with that word? Wicked. Nobody says that anymore.”

“Nobody?” asked J.Lo.

“Hardly anybody.”

The Boov shrugged his frog arms, never taking his eyes off Pig.

“I do not to know. It was teached to me by the tutor. It is not a word?”

“It’s a word,” I said. How to explain? “It’s just that…you’re using it in a way that…isn’t really common anymore. If it’s all the same to you, I’d really like it if you didn’t say it again.”

J.Lo nodded. “It is all the same to me. I am not meaning to upset you, Turtlebear.”

I must have slammed on the brakes, because the car squealed to a halt. I could feel my heartbeat in my toes.

“Get out!”
I yelled.

“Wh—get into the out? Here? Wh—oh…okay.”

Something about the look on my face sent J.Lo scrambling out the door, onto the edge of a grassy hill. Pig followed.

“Should I…Should I to—”

I slammed the door in his face.

I don’t know how long I sat there, grinding the steering wheel with my hands, my insides like hot soup. I’m guessing thirty minutes. Or four hours. Somewhere between thirty minutes and four hours. J.Lo was still there, though, motionless beside the car.

I got out, slammed my door good and hard, and came around to face him.

“Where did you learn that word?”

The Boov twittered his fingers together.

“I…I was already to telling you I did learn it from the tu—”

“Not ‘wicked,’” I shouted. “
Turtlebear
!”

“Is…is a perfectly good word.”

“WHERE DID YOU LEARN IT?”

“Fromto th-the tutor. Is a term of affection.”

I fell back against the car, all my breath squeezed right out of me.

“No…” I said. “It’s
not
, okay? It isn’t a word at all, except to me…and my mom.”

I didn’t like even mentioning Mom again. I didn’t want the Boov to know his people had hurt me. But then he said something that turned me on my head.

“Oh! That is explaining! Gratuity’s mom was probably J.Lo’s tutor!”

After that, I was just a screaming tornado of fists. I battered the Boov with everything I had.

“What? Stop! No! Whyfor?” he shrieked.

I went back to the car, grabbed the Boov’s toolbox, and began throwing its contents at him as he ran downhill.

“Oh, please,” he said. “No…do not, we willto be needing that—”

I found one of those aspirin things and whipped it at his head. Suddenly he was a big, lumbering snowman trailing fat chunks of foam.

“Aaah! Help! Help now!”

I tackled him. The foam exploded all around us. I drew back to punch the Boov in the face. He uttered something in Boovish and my knuckles cracked against his fishbowl helmet, which had just snapped into place.

“Ow! Stupid…Put that helmet back down!”

“No. Whyfor—”

“You stole my mom!” I said, rubbing my hand.

“Mimom?”

“My mom!”

We sat inches apart. I teetered on the edge of attacking him again.

“Oh, yes! Yes! Gratuity mom must have to been one of the tutors! We invite many humans to help teach the Boov!”

I was hyperventilating. “The…the mole…” I said. “On her neck.”

“Yes! A storage device! It holds up every word she say or think for long time. Then the Boov did call her back to remove this mole. Its information was to planted in all the Boov that was to live in Gratuity’s area! Gratuitymom is very helpful!”

My eyes stung. I pawed at them with the heels of my hands.

“‘Is’?” I said. “‘
Is
very helpful’? Is she…She’s still alive?” It hurt to ask. I just then realized that I’d thought she was dead.

“Of course she is alive!” said J.Lo. “What a question! She is alive and certainly to be waiting in Florida for her Gratuity!”

I couldn’t decide between hugging him and kicking him in the head, so I just sat there. Purple spots swirled before my eyes, and I couldn’t catch my breath. I felt like I was going to pass out. Then a few seconds later I went ahead and did it.

After the fight, it was more difficult to carry on as we had. I was just permanently steamed, a little at J.Lo, and a little at myself for feeling too exhausted or beaten down to even hate him properly. Given what I’d learned, I thought I was entitled to ditch the Boov somewhere and keep going on my own. But there he was, curled up in the passenger seat, tense, guarding against the human and the cat who would certainly start hitting or biting him at any moment.

I eventually gave in and veered off the highway at a King Value Motor Lodge so we could break into a room and take showers. The motel grounds were empty, apart from a raccoon. Someone had taken out some sort of grudge against the ice machine. There were abandoned cars in the parking lot and a moped floating in the swimming pool. One of the vending machines was completely cleaned out. The second was tied with a chain to the back of a pickup truck, which, as far as I could tell, had dragged it for forty feet before running into a telephone pole. Then the machine had been smashed like a piñata and looted.

Way off in the distance, a cluster of bubbles loomed in the sky. The smallest of them must have been bigger than a minivan, and they formed a shape like an octopus, or a galaxy, trailing tendrils of singular bubbles in a disk around it. I felt like it was watching us as we approached the building.