Any Red-Blooded Girl

  Chapter 7

  LIKE a freshly launched cannonball, I flew back to Tupelo-9. But as I approached the shabby pee shack, I realized I’d made a rookie mistake. I was preparing to tell a series of lies that involved me spending a ton of time in the shower and the bathroom, but it was obvious I hadn’t even changed my outfit, let alone actually cleaned myself up.

  Please, God, let my stuff be here, I begged, as I rifled through the bushes in search of my clothes, which luckily were still where I’d tossed them earlier.

  Only…

  I couldn’t afford to waste any more time. So instead of showering, I ducked into a bathroom stall and did a quick change. Then, in about three seconds, I threw my hair back in a rough ponytail. Good enough.

  And when I got back to camp, I carefully unzipped my sleep pod and slipped my belongings inside under the radar.

  “Can I play?” I asked nobody in particular, as I snuck up to the horseshoe pit sideways. I could only hope my parents would figure I’d been hovering in the wings for a while, and they just hadn’t noticed. I mean, I definitely hadn’t been missing for hours with my sexy new boyfriend.

  “After this game,” my mother said, with a distinct I-smell-a-rat tone in her voice. “Your Pepto is in the cooler, by the way—if you’re looking for it.”

  “Thanks. I think I’ll get some right now.”

  I strutted over to the cooler, flipped the lid, and retrieved the bottle of pink goop. And at first I thought about faking it, pretending to drink the stuff but really pouring it out somewhere instead. But the Pepto seemed pretty harmless, so once I got the childproof packaging off, I went in for the kill.

  “Thanks again, Mom,” I said, thrusting the bottle out in front of me like some kind of trophy. Gulp… Gulp… Gulp. “I think this is really gonna help.” With a dramatic sweep of my hand, I cleared the excess pink spew off my face. “I can feel it working already.”

  I guess my last comment must have been a little over the top, because Will shot me a who-do-you-think-you’re-fooling glance, which convinced me to tone down the suck-upishness.

  Then, to my great surprise, my family and I played two relatively pleasant games of horseshoes, for which I turned in an intentionally dismal performance.

  And at the end of game two, my father got the dinner ball rolling. “Okay peepsles, who’s hungry?” he asked, all chipper and eager-beaver like.

  “I’d love something, Dad,” I said, trying to reel him in with my innocent puppy-dog eyes.

  “All right, Flowbee. You can help your dear ol’ daddy-o cook then.”

  So while my mom and Will put the horseshoes away, my dad stoked the grill, and I rooted through the cooler in search of dinner ingredients. Hamburgers? No. Hot dogs? No. Steak? No. Pork chops? No. Holy cow, I’m as carnivorous as the next person, but just looking at all that meat was starting to give me a legit stomachache. But hey, at least I already had the Pepto in my system.

  On the hunt for something lighter, I dug all the way to the bottom of the cooler. But the only thing left was chicken. “Chicken it is,” I announced, passing the sticky, wet package to my dad, who immediately started whipping out utensils and spices and other culinary junk like he was a contender in the Iron Chef competition.

  And even though I’d agreed to help him cook, once my dad got going, I just got out of his way. With yet another plate of macaroni salad and an icy bottle of Coke, I flopped into a lawn chair and awaited the rest of my dinner. And that’s when, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Mick striding toward me with a dazzling, clueless smile.

  Shit. I should have warned him about my parents. I should have told him that they’re way overprotective. That they don’t think anybody’s good enough for me. That they think I’m too impressionable. All at once, a million things I should have said raced through my mind, causing a thought meltdown of epic proportions.

  The second Mick stepped off the dirt road onto Tupelo-9, everything around me went fuzzy. It was sort of like a car accident we were in when I was eleven. My mother was driving me and Jessie home from the fifth grade ice cream social, when the pavement got really slick. And as the road curved in front of us, the cars up ahead slid into the ditch. But for some strange reason, I thought we would avoid the growing heap of metal on the side of the road. When we hit the turn, though, I felt our tires lose contact with the ground. Then everything spun out of control, and all I could do was stare in frozen horror. That’s how I felt watching Mick strut toward me: utterly helpless. It was too late for all the things I should have said.

  But at the very last moment, a shred of an idea occurred to me. If only I could get to Mick before my parents did, maybe I could whisper a quick warning in his ear. On a kamikaze mission, I tossed my half-eaten plate of pasta into the trash and bolted toward the road.

  And maybe if I hadn’t been in such a god-awful hurry, I might have actually noticed the stupid air pump my father had left on the ground in front of the Maroon Monstrosity. But unfortunately I didn’t notice it until its hard, fat cord caught between my toes and hurled me to the ground. Of course, before anyone else could respond, my sweet, sweet Mick dashed to my rescue.

  I had a limited window to act. “I don’t like you,” I blurted over his shoulder, as he hoisted me to my feet.

  Shit. That hadn’t come out exactly right. What I’d meant to say was that I was pretending not to like him. But with my mother advancing on us at breakneck speed, there was no time to explain. Play along, I tried to mouth. But I could tell by the hurt look in Mick’s eyes that he hadn’t understood.

  “Are you all right?!” my mother shrieked, rocketing to my side. She tugged me by the arm to the picnic table. “Sit down, so I can get a good look at you.”

  Here we go again. Just because my mother works in a dental office, she’s under the delusion she’s also qualified to be a nurse. Honest to God, whenever anyone gets hurt, she springs into action like she just can’t wait to try out her hidden talents on the poor sucker.

  “I’m fine, Mom. Really,” I assured her. “There’s nothing wrong with me.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that.”

  The Mental Hygienist had fixated on a sizable scrape on my left calf, which she was running her fingers over in some sort of voodoo maneuver.

  And, of course, that’s when my father decided to butt into the middle of a situation that already had one parent too many. “Ooh, Flowbee. That looks painful,” he said with a wince. “Better let Moo-Ma clean that up for you.”

  Mr. Tightwad winked at the Mental Hygienist, which made me wonder if they were conspiring against me. But, more importantly, had Mick just heard my father refer to me by that ridiculous nickname? I cranked my head around to check his reaction, only to discover—to my absolute anguish—that he was gone.

  Now, I swear, I’m not usually the crybaby type, but seeing that wounded look in Mick’s eyes—and knowing he’d been upset enough to disappear—got the best of me. Luckily, though, the waterworks kicked in just as my mother sloshed an alcohol pad over my scraped leg, so at least the blubbering made sense anyway.

  “It’ll be okay,” my mother said, briefly patting me on the head before she reached back into her handy-dandy medical kit for some Neosporin. “It’s not as bad as it looks, sweetheart. I promise.” She slathered a huge gob of the gooey ointment over my injury, then stuck a gauze pad on top of the whole mess with some medical tape. “There we go. All better,” she declared.

  I’m not sure what came over me then, but I temporarily lost my mind. “Thanks a lot, Mom,” I spat. “And just so you know, that boy who was just here—he’s my boyfriend. His name is Mick, and he’s very nice. And I’m pretty sure I hurt his feelings by pretending not to like him. But I do like him. I like him a lot. And you have no right to judge him, because he’s never done anything to you. And he’s only sixteen, by the way. And he’s not a gypsy, like you said he was. His family just travels around and makes things. They’re like…entrepreneurs. And just beca
use people are different, that doesn’t make them bad. Mick knows lots of things about butterflies and milkweed and Mexico and cars. He’s a mechanic, you know. He fixes things. So, I swear to God, the one and only thing I want for my birthday is for you and Dad to butt out of my life and leave me alone. That’s what would really make me happy.”

  I must say, on the lifetime scale of Flora meltdowns, this one was quite ugly. And normally I’m pretty cool; not much fazes me. But this time an emotional ripcord had been pulled in my brain—only the parachute never opened, and I ended up spiraling headlong into a dramatic crash.

  While I tried to stop hyperventilating, I noticed that my family had frozen shoulder-to-shoulder in complete silence, and a bunch of annoying kids and a couple of nosy old ladies had gathered in the road to watch me freak out. How fantastic.

  “All right, everyone,” I announced, as soon as I could speak clearly again. “I’m okay. You can all relax. There’s nothing else to see here.”

  The old biddies left first, then the kids trickled off. But my family remained stuck in their wax-statue poses. If I gave Will a push, would they all topple over like dominos? I wondered.

  “Come on. I’m fine,” I repeated. “You can all breathe now. I’m not gonna go postal. Really. I was just upset.”

  My mother was first to break the line. And as she approached, I tried to imagine what she might say, how she might react to my meltdown. Anger? Of course. I expected that. Punishment? Probably that too. Disappointment? Well, that was a given. But the one thing I never expected, the thing I was least prepared for, was cruelty. Then, with a few simple sentences, my loving mother—the woman who’d given birth to me—squashed me like a bug.

  “I just have a few questions about this new boyfriend of yours, Flora,” she started in a biting tone. “You’ve known him how long? One day? And you know so much about him already, do you?” A peep of sarcastic laughter escaped her lips. “Clearly, you know a lot less about him than you think.”

  “No,” I interrupted. “That’s not true. He’s very honest,” I said, assuming she was still stuck on the whole gypsy thing.

  “I’m not suggesting he’s a liar. I’m just saying you’re too naive to make a clear judgment in the matter. This boy has bewitched you. You’re not thinking straight. A girl like you needs to rely on her family to point her in the right direction.”

  “I do not!” I yelled.

  “Well, Flora, we don’t have to look very far for evidence of some really bad choices you’ve made, do we?” she continued, as if I was going to join her in assassinating my character. “For example, you lost out on Europe because you snuck beer into the house. Certainly that wasn’t the smartest thing you’ve ever done, was it?”

  “That was Jimmy Bickford!” I cried. “I didn’t even know about it!”

  The Mental Hygienist shook her head and smirked. “Blaming others is a sign of immaturity, Flora. You need to take responsibility for things. That’s how you earn trust,” she spewed, like she’d memorized it from an episode of Dr. Phil. “It’s pretty obvious that your behavior has slipped into a destructive pattern,” she went on. “You need guidance. And your father and I are certainly not going to let you get involved with some character who we know nothing about, some boy who travels around with a bunch of weirdoes doing God only knows what. It doesn’t look good.”

  “A bunch of weirdoes?!” I screeched. “My God, you’re so superficial!”

  I guess I should have left out the direct slam, because it really seemed to have pressed the Mental Hygienist’s buttons. “I’m superficial? Ha! That’s funny,” she said. But she wasn’t actually laughing. Instead, she was glaring daggers at me. “Obviously, Flora, you know nothing about this boy,” she continued. “Yet you’re willing to stand here and insult me? Well, I just have one question for you, smarty pants. This boy—your new boyfriend—what is his name?”

  “His name’s Mick,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Sheesh.” And I was supposed to be the dumb one here.

  “I mean his full name,” she demanded. “Unless you know so little about him that you don’t even know that. Because if you’re standing here arguing with me over a boy whose name you don’t even know—well, that proves my point exactly. You’re definitely not thinking straight, so…”

  I hate to admit it, but the name thing totally blindsided me. I glanced back at Mr. Tightwad and Golden Boy, hoping for a last-minute reprieve from my mother’s irrationality. But of course they were no help.

  So I took a single step toward my mother. And when she didn’t move, I shoved her aside with my forearm, which made her stumble a little before she caught her balance.

  And the crazy thing was, nobody stopped me. In case my dad and Will just had delayed reflexes, though, I darted around our tent and broke into an anxious jog down the dirt road—and away from Tupelo-9.