“Lying to me.”
He sighed and put down his knife. “All right. Out with it.” When I asked him out with what, he said, “Whatever it is you’re talking around. Just say it.”
I told him I knew that he skipped the test because I had gone to the classroom on his schedule on the fridge. He had forgotten his calculator and would fail the test without it. That was when I met Jenny and Karl and learned that he was on academic probation, which was very bad news and meant he would get kicked out of college if he didn’t smarten up.
“And Karl is out of hash,” I added.
As I talked he started putting the mayonnaise on two slices of bread that jumped out of the toaster. There wasn’t much mayonnaise in the jar and the knife bonked around.
“We are also out of something,” he said, holding up the mayo jar. “Have you been drinking this stuff or what?”
“I am not in the mood for making jokes,” I said. “You haven’t been going to class.”
He put the jar down. “Okay. You want the truth?”
I said that I did. “We are truth-tellers and part of the same tribe.”
“I’ve dropped Macro. The class. That’s all. I have no idea why they think I am on academic whatever.”
“Probation,” I said. “Which means you are in trouble and if you screw up more you get kicked out of school.” I had Googled what it meant and put it next to incongruity on my list of Words of Today.
“Yeah, I know what it means.”
I asked him why he was pretending to study for the test when there was no test. He said that he knew I was serious about him being in school and he didn’t want me to get mad. “I didn’t want you to worry or anything,” he said.
I became a bit less angry.
“So you haven’t been kicked out of school and will need to start working at the gas station again?”
“No. I won’t be doing any of that.”
He came over, holding a plate with a bologna sandwich cut in half, in triangles. I took one of the sandwiches and it tasted very good. We ate our sandwiches for a few bites and then he remembered something and put his sandwich back on the plate.
“I almost forgot.” He reached into his backpack and took out an envelope. “You’ve got mail.”
He handed it to me. My name was on the front and the stamp was of a Viking helmet.
“I don’t get mail,” I said. “Except from boring things like the government.”
Gert bit into his sandwich. “Go on. Open it.”
I tore the envelope open and inside was a card from Marxy.
It said:
DEAR ZELDA,
YOU AND GERT ARE CORDIALLY INVITED TO HAVE DINNER AT MY HOUSE ON FRIDAY AT 5 P.M. PLEASE RSVP IF YOU CAN COME.
MARXY, esq.
I asked what RSVP means. “It means get back as soon as possible to let a person know if you can come,” Gert said. “Why?”
I could not help smiling. “We have been invited to dinner.”
“Is that right?”
“With Marxy and his mother.”
“Sounds awful. Can we say no?”
“NO,” I shouted.
“I know. I was just teasing you.” He finished eating one of his sandwich halves and licked his fingers. “When is this fancy dinner?”
“Friday.”
“Friday. I think I have plans.”
I gave him THE LOOK.
“Joking. Okay, we’ll go. All right?”
“And you have to behave yourself and be the perfect gentleman and wear nice clothes. You must represent our tribe well.”
“So many demands. Anything else, Captain?” He smiled at me. “I can’t believe you went all the way to the college yourself. That’s pretty impressive. I’m proud of you.”
I picked up my sandwich and took a big bite and suddenly the graphing calculator and academic probation or anything else didn’t matter anymore.
chapter nine
All week I had been thinking of the dinner with Marxy. We had texted back and forth about it a million times. He didn’t come to the Community Center because his father and Pearl were fighting over him and couldn’t decide where he should stay.
His father wanted him to go to a special school during the day where experts like Dr. Laird could show him extra attention.
I hate it, he texted me. I miss you and Yoda and Hamsa and Sarah-Beth and Big Todd and Annie.
I texted back and told him we missed him too.
On Thursday, AK47 helped me decide what to wear. There was a dress Uncle Richard had bought me for Gert’s high school graduation, which I never got to wear. It was white and blue and had flowers on it. There were no sleeves and you could kind of see my boobs squished in my bra underneath it.
I also had a pair of shoes that were nice and hurt my feet. AK47 said that was how you knew something was fancy. It ended up feeling crappy to wear.
On Friday, at exactly 4:30 p.m., I was wearing the dress and shoes, waiting for Gert to pick me up in front of our apartment building. When it became 4:31 p.m., I texted him that he was late.
He texted back: Two minutes.
Marxy texted me saying: I am excited to see you!
Gert pulled up in his car. It was sparkling from the car wash and he was wearing his nice clothes.
“You look good,” I said, and did AK47’s frying pan finger sizzle, which she used to do when she thought Gert looked sexy.
He wiggled his shoulders and adjusted the seat belt. “It’s itchy as hell.” He pulled on the knot of the tie. “Are you nervous?”
“A little.”
“Don’t be. This’ll be fine.” He put his arm around me and gave me a squeeze.
We drove a little bit. On the other side of the window was the city, with all of its tall buildings sticking up. I could not tell which one of them was our apartment. They were far away, not just in distance. They also felt far away because the air felt different. They were like gray teeth in a giant blue mouth.
“I wish that we could do this all the time,” I said.
“Do what?”
“Wear nice clothes and go to dinner.”
Gert was quiet for a while. “You know, you look a lot like Mom wearing that dress. She used to wear dresses like that.”
“Really?”
He nodded. “Not all the time. But we used to go to Church. You were still in the stroller.”
I asked him to tell me more. He scratched the part of the neck that stuck out near his tie’s knot. He said that he hated going to Church because he didn’t like sitting still, but he liked going with Mom. “She was so beautiful,” he said. “Man. Everyone stopped to talk to us.”
He told a story about how someone once tried to steal me, while I was in a stroller.
“Really?” I asked.
Gert laughed. “Yeah, we turned around for two seconds and someone was pushing your stroller away. An old woman. I guess she thought she was still young and you were her baby.”
“Holy crap,” I said.
“Yeah. I’m glad you didn’t get stolen, though. Even if you are a knucklehead sometimes.” He smiled at me and I said I was glad I didn’t get stolen too.
* * *
Marxy’s house was in the suburbs, and when we came to the door, Gert had a bottle of wine that I didn’t know he’d bought. He got it out of the trunk, wrapped in a brown paper bag.