Vintage Veronica (8 page)

Zoe laughs. “Come on, Spy Girls,” she says.

Together, the three of us walk back across The Real Deal, kind of struggling to keep from laughing about the Feedback Box! and our secret pact. Which feels really, really unfamiliar, like something you’d only see in a movie. It makes me think of this time I saw these two girls hanging out at the Mooks. With no warning, one of them shot her straw wrapper right in the other one’s face. And then they both just laughed. It totally blew me away. Because when I see a straw wrapper fly through the air at me, it’s like a declaration of war or something. I knew right then I’d never have a friend like that, a friend you can pull wacky shit on and not get hated for it.

And I never have.

Until, maybe, now.

Life is so weird that way. When I woke up today, I never could have predicted any of this. Zoe and Ginger making a scene at the Mooks. The Nail falling into the chute, then stealing my pajamas. But I
really
never would have thought that today would end up with me getting to be friends with Zoe and Ginger. Hanging out and dishing, making a secret pact, laughing together, any of that stuff.

It’s so funny. They’ve always seemed so, I dunno, tough or something. The way Zoe says whatever the hell she wants, the way they made that scene in the Mooks. But then, out of nowhere, they give me this glimpse of their other side. Looking out for me, getting mad at The Nail on my behalf, and helping me get back at him for stealing my stuff. Inviting me into their club and making me feel like I’m part of something,
for once. It feels kind of like it does when I snag a great find at the fleas, something rare and entirely unexpected.
Zoe and Ginger: diamonds in the rough
.

Like my dad always used to say,
Who’d a thunk?

Who’d a thunk? Definitely not me.

o keep up my end of our Secret Spy Girl Pact, I start walking by The Nail’s house each day on my way home from work. It always looks the same—flowers dead, window shades down—and I never see The Nail, or anyone else for that matter, going in or coming out of it. I almost begin to wonder if I imagined that this was the house.

It doesn’t seem possible that it can be, since I never see anyone who seems to have anything to do with the house. Occasionally, I linger across the street for ten, fifteen minutes. Nothing. There’s always a pile of mail and several newspapers on the porch, but I can’t be sure if they are the same ones. I mean, I guess I could go up on the porch myself, but what if someone did show up?

It makes me think: Who is The Nail, anyway? Does he live alone? He seems a little young for that, but maybe. Or maybe he lives with someone who’s old and can’t get out much, like a grandparent or somebody. But then wouldn’t I see him with groceries or something? At my house, my mom is constantly going to the grocery store to stock up on her key staple items: diet soda, diet bread, diet yogurt, frozen diet entrees, fruit, and these awful Scandinavian crackers that taste like cardboard. Oh, yeah, and fake butter.

Maybe this isn’t his house after all.

At first Zoe and Ginger jump on me whenever I come in, pestering me for stakeout details. But after a few days of no news, they lose interest. I actually begin to worry that if I don’t turn up something juicy soon, Zoe’s going to write me off entirely. Ginger still waves at me when she sees me crossing through The Real Deal, but often Zoe just gives me a bored smirk.
Come on
, I can tell she’s thinking.
Let me know when you dig up some good dirt. Otherwise, don’t waste my time
.

But then one afternoon, after more than a week of stalking The Nail, I see him. He’s standing on the front porch, but he’s mostly in shadow, and at first I’m so eager to make sure it’s him that I completely blow it and don’t hang back. And as soon as I’m sure that it’s him, I kind of freeze like a deer in the headlights. I have this fleeting wish that somehow he won’t notice me standing right square in front of his house, wearing, of all things, a bright pink ruffled polka skirt with about a thousand layers. I’m only too aware that it makes me look like a giant strawberry-frosted cupcake or something. Or a sports team mascot, maybe.

Or a very, very inept Spy Girl standing in front of a house she’s supposed to be staking out.

“Veronica?” The sound of my name turns my head to the voice, which is, of course, The Nail’s. He is holding the door open and clutching several envelopes in one hand. His backpack is still on his shoulder. “Hi. What’s up?”

“Nothing,” I say by default.

“Do you live near here?”

Do I live near here? Noooo. Then why are you here? Ummm … Actually, I do live near here. Oh, really? Where? Uhhhh …

I panic. He must be onto me. He knows I have been stalking him. Shit, shit, shit. This is not how I planned it at all. Or rather, I have not planned this at all. All I really know is, I really want to be the one surprising him. So instead of answering his question, I decide to ask my own. In this way, I can refuse to let go of my moment.

“I think you know what I’m doing here, don’t you?” I say. I use my most suspicious, haughty voice, very Joan Crawford or some old movie person like that.

The Nail looks confused.

“Do you want to come in?” he says.

I pause, but I don’t really have a choice. I drained an extralarge iced mocha smoothie on my way out of work and I am about to wet my pants.

“All right,” I say. We go inside and I follow as he carefully climbs the stairs. An eternity later, we arrive on the second floor. He opens his apartment door, puts his keys, backpack, and mail down, and turns on the entryway light.

“Bathroom?” I say.

“Down the hall, on your left.”

I stagger there and barely make it.
Ahhhhhh
.

When I come out, I tiptoe around to try to explore before The Nail realizes I have emerged. The apartment has that powder-scent-air-freshener grandma’s-house smell and a lot of heavy, dark wood curio cabinets with ugly figurines in them. I don’t see any piles of vintage clothes, and the one closet I peek into has a vacuum cleaner, two hockey sticks, and an old set of golf clubs.

Down the hall, I find a bedroom that I’m guessing is The Nail’s. It has a twin bed, a bookcase, and very little else. He does, however, have the same vintage sci-fi film festival poster from two summers ago that I keep on my bedroom wall.

What I don’t have, however, is what I find in the living room. There are two matching couches, covered in plastic, and almost nothing else except fish tanks. The fish tanks are on every available surface in the room, including the couches, plus two big ones on the floor. I look around and do a rough count. There are maybe fifteen of them.

The curtains in the living room are drawn and the lighting is very poor, except for some fluorescent bulbs in the tanks. He must raise some kind of weird nocturnal fish. Except most of the tanks have mesh tops held on by what looks like duct tape. Weird nocturnal jumping fish? I crouch down next to a mesh-covered tank and peer inside. There is no water, and I come face to face with this big black and orange striped thing …

There is a moment when it feels like everything happens
at once. The thing raises its head and looks at me and I try to stay cool and not scream, but instead I end up making this gurgling noise as I run into the next room, which turns out to be the kitchen. Len, who has his head in the fridge when I burst into the room, fumbles and drops a glass bottle. Then there’s glass on the floor and a puddle of lemonade running down the sloping linoleum and collecting under the stove.

“Shit! Oh my God, I’m sorry! Are you okay?” I say.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” he says. But there’s a small spot of blood on his pants leg.

“No, you’re not. You’re bleeding.”

“I am?” He looks down. “Oh. It’s okay,” he says. He sits down and rolls up his pants leg. Very distinctly, I see that vertical maroon line again, which I now realize is a really intense-looking scar running the length of his calf like a racing stripe. He carefully picks out a glass shard protruding from the front of his shin, then presses a dish towel against the bright red spot where it was lodged.

I’m about to ask about the scar when he says, “I’m guessing you saw my pets, huh?”

“Uh, yeah!” I say. “What the hell?”

“Sorry, I should have said something,” says The Nail. “But they’re all harmless. The snakes and all but one of the lizards have had the venom removed. And they can’t get out unless I take them out. So there’s really nothing to worry about.”

“Oh, okay. I feel much better,” I say in my most ironic voice.

“Good,” says The Nail. Irony seems wasted on him.
“Listen, why don’t you sit down so I can clean this up?” I don’t really want to, but my heart is pounding and there’s a chair right there, so I sit. His kitchen table is yellow, and it has the same boomerang pattern as my grandma’s. I trace the pattern with my finger, something I do when I’m feeling anxious.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “About freaking out and the lemonade and all …”

“It’s okay,” he tells me again. “It’s my fault, really.” He notices what I’m doing. “Do you like that table? It’s my grandma’s.”

“My grandma has one just like it.”

“Really? Wow, that’s some coincidence. I’ve never seen one like it before.”

I look at him suspiciously. “Ha-ha,” I say.

“What?”

“This is only the most popular fifties Formica pattern ever made. There’s like a zillion of these in the world.”

“Huh, how ’bout that?” he says as he goes and gets some tweezers. He carefully picks up the pieces of glass and puts them in a paper grocery bag. His precise, methodical manner is well suited to this kind of task. While he works, he is completely silent. I hear the refrigerator hum, and I can even hear some of the fish tanks bubbling in the next room.

I can’t help it. I ask him about the tanks.

“My grandma gave me a turtle when I was a little kid,” The Nail tells me. He tilts his head to one side, squinting at the floor. Then he finds and extracts another tiny shard. “I was in this really bad car accident.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. I was in and out of the hospital a lot. I even had to learn to walk again. I guess she thought it would be good for me to have a pet that was slower than me.” The Nail smiles shyly. “Anyway, the turtle died at some point, but by then I also had a tokay gecko and a couple of corn snakes. And then I started collecting rarer breeds, like water monitors, stuff like that. My grandma was okay with it, so I began using the living room. But I really need to find homes for some of them. I’m running out of space here.”

“Are you, um … okay now?”

He shrugs. “I mean, as okay as I’m ever going to be. I wouldn’t suggest choosing me for a relay race team, but other than that … Okay, I think that’s the last of it.”

The Nail stands up carefully, steps on the garbage can pedal, and tosses in the bag of glass.

“You like stuff, don’t you?” he asks.

“What?”

“You’re a collector, right? You collect vintage clothing and stuff.”

“Maybe,” I say warily. “What’s your point?”

“Is that how you started working at the store?”

“Maybe,” I say again. I don’t want to say anything that might be used against me later.

“You go to the fleas, too,” he says softly.

“Okay, are you stalking me?”

“What? No,” he says, leaning back against the kitchen sink. “I’ve just seen you there before. At school, too.”

“You go to the fleas?”

“Sometimes,” he says. “There’s a guy there who sells reptile and amphibian supplies. You know, in the far corner.”

“Oh,” I say. The far corner is where they sell new stuff, like hand lotion, pet food, soda, and multi-packs of socks. “You go to HHS, too? How come I haven’t seen you?”

“I dunno. Probably because most of my classes were in J-Vo,” he says. “I’m done, though. As of June.”

“Oh,” I say, calculating in my head that this means he’s seventeen, maybe eighteen. Building J, otherwise known as J-Vo, is where they have all the vocational and technical classes, like Auto Shop. It’s out back, behind the terrace where they make the teachers who smoke go. My interest is piqued. I’ve never seen anyone my age at the fleas. And I’ve never known anyone who’s set foot in J-Vo.