Why did I lie? Manda and Sara’s school-dance drama had worn me out. I didn’t have the energy to share and compare notes on TTSPJHCQ anymore, not the way I had when I’d set out on my bike this morning. I figured it would be best to tackle this business another day when I was feeling more up to the task.
The point is I hadn’t planned on staying at Hope’s too long after Manda and Sara’s exit. Ten minutes later, I was waving good-bye and getting back on my bike to pedal home.
“Later!” she said.
“See ya!” I said.
And that’s when I heard the barking (and coughing) that should have served as a warning that I was about to get caught in the middle of another battle. But I wasn’t paying close enough attention to why Dalí was barking (and coughing) or—more accurately—at what.
It all happened so quickly.
Dog.
Skunk.
DOG. SKUNK.
DOG!!! SKUNK!!!
A bark (cough) and a lift of a black-and-white tail was all it took for this innocent bystander to become a casualty of war.
“AAAAAAAACCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKK!”
Hope screamed almost louder than I did.
Unlike Dalí, I was in motion, so it wasn’t a direct hit. But it was still bad, like accidentally walking through a wall of perfume spritzed in the air by those aggressively annoying makeup ladies at the mall with the free samples. It was like that. Except it wasn’t perfume imported from Paris; it was POISON EXPORTED FROM A SKUNK’S BUTT.
(NOTE: Remember when I made that random observation about my signature smell? Well, har dee har har on me.)
My mouth must’ve been open (“SeeyaaaaaAAAACK!”) because at first, I tasted the smell more than I actually smelled it. Unsurprisingly, it tasted like something that CAME OUT OF A SKUNK’S BUTT. The smell quickly attacked my nostrils and assaulted my eyes, and a millisecond later I lost control of my bike and wiped out at the bottom of Hope’s driveway.
I was blind for what came next. Dalí barking and coughing and Hope yelling “HELLLLLLP!” and Heath yelling “DUUUUUDE!” and a third voice that sounded familiar yelling “I’VE GOT THIS!” but I was too poisoned to think about it much more than that. Someone—I didn’t know who—put a plastic jug into my hands, and I poured its entire contents over my face without hesitation. Thankfully, it was water. But it could have been a gallon of milk or gasoline for all I cared. I paid special attention to my eyes and mouth, as if already knowing my nose was probably a lost cause. That smell was stuck. I’d be smelling it for a long, loooooooong time.
After a few minutes, the stinging subsided, and I hesitantly blinked open my eyes.
I saw Hope. I saw Heath, still wearing his helmet.
And I saw Aleck from Woodshop, also wearing a helmet, holding the empty jug of water at his side. YES. THE SAME ALECK FROM WOODSHOP WHOSE NAME I’D WRITTEN DOWN AS THE ANSWER TO DUMB TRICK QUESTION #5 ON THE TOP SECRET PINEVILLE JUNIOR HIGH CRUSHABILITY QUIZ HIDDEN IN MY BACK POCKET.
Go ahead. Take a moment to absorb that information.
Chapter Seven
Okay. Moving on.
“You need to get out of those clothes,” Hope said. “Immediately.”
Even the mere suggestion of getting undressed in front of two boys got me all flustered because I’m IMMATURE LIKE THAT.
“Um… WHAT?” I stammered.
“She’s right. Your clothes are contaminated,” Aleck said, “and so are you.”
Despite the obvious truth to what he was saying—I was at nuclear wasteland levels of toxicity—I was kind of offended.
“Excuuuuuuuse me?”
“You’re wasting time. The longer that stuff has to set in, the harder it will be to get out.” He turned to Hope. “Any chance your mom got a good deal on tomato juice lately?”
“To the stockpile!” Hope said as she dashed into the house.
“The helmet protected most of your hair,” Aleck said, appraising me at a safe distance. “That’s good. It’s hardest to get that stink out of your hair. Especially when you’ve got a mop like mine.”
“So this has happened to you before?” I asked.
“Oh yeah,” Heath said. “He’s an expert on the subject.”
Aleck puffed out his chest.
“I’ve been sprayed four times,” he said.
“FOUR TIMES?” I asked. “What are you, an amateur skunk hunter in your spare time?”
“Yes. When I’m not skateboarding or constructing hot-air balloons out of balsa wood or practicing the ancient Japanese art of origami”—huh, I didn’t know he knew origami—“I’m out skunk hunting. But please, give me some credit; I’m a professional.”
Hope came running back out with a large can of V8 in one hand and an industrial-strength trash bag in the other. She’d thrown a faded beach towel over her shoulder and clamped a wooden clothespin to her nose.
“We’re in luck! There are at least fifty more cans in the stockpile!”
The clothespin made her voice sound all pinched and nasal. Without making a big deal of it, she quietly handed clothespins to Heath and Aleck. They immediately clipped them to their own noses.
“Stockpile?” I asked. “Tomato juice? And why don’t I get a clothespin?”
“Our mom is into extreme couponing,” Hope explained. “I’ll show you the stockpile another time. Right now, we’ve got to get you out of your clothes and into a tomato-juice tub.”
As if the situation hadn’t already achieved MAXIMUM LEVELS OF MORTIFICATION, the second mention of getting undressed in front of the boys made me burn even hotter with embarrassment.
“The acidity in the tomato juice neutralizes the skunkiness,” Aleck explained. “And you don’t get a clothespin because then you’re just trapping the odor in your nose.”
“Why tomato juice specifically?” I asked. “Why not a more scientific mix of, like, hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, and soap?”
“We always use tomato juice,” the three answered. Heath punctuated his sentence with dude.
Apparently skunkification was a common occurrence in this neighborhood. That made them the experts, so I deferred to their wisdom. At that point, the stink had totally overtaken my brain, and I couldn’t think for myself anyway.
“I’ll take you inside the house,” Hope said, walking in that direction. “And the boys can hose down Dalí out back.”
She stopped me in the garage to hand over the trash bag and the beach towel.
“I’ll bring up the cans of tomato juice from the basement. Meanwhile, get undressed, put your clothes in the bag, and seal it tight. Do not bring it inside! Understand?”
Hope spoke with the same authoritative tone she’d used earlier with Heath when arguing about the helmet.
“Okay, Mooooooooom.”
I could joke about Hope’s momming kind of bossiness, unlike Manda’s Spirit Squad business.
“I’ll meet you in the bathroom off the kitchen,” she said with a smile.
Before doing what Hope asked, I doubled-checked to make sure Aleck and Heath weren’t anywhere near the garage. It was easy to keep tabs on them because they were causing a major ruckus. Heath struggled to keep a hold on Dalí.
“Dude, now you’re wide-awake?” Heath complained to the dog.
Dalí wriggled out of his arms and hit the ground running. Like, actually running.
“I’ve never seen him go so fast!” Aleck marveled as the two boys took off after him.
I waited until Heath and Aleck were safely out of the yard before stripping down, wrapping the towel around myself, and shoving the noxious clothes into the bag. Upon entering the house, I took extra care not to touch or contaminate anything. When I found the bathroom, I saw Hope had already emptied a few cans of thick orange-red juice into the tub. It looked like a bloodbath straight out of a horror movie.
Hope came into the room juggling a can of juice under one arm, a large candle under the other, and an old-school boom box in her hand. She set the boom box on the floor, the c
an on the toilet, and the candle on a small shelf above the tub.
“Voilà!” she said, lighting the candle. “Think of it as a high-end spa treatment. I bet Hollywood actresses would pay big money for service like this.”
I tried—and failed—to smile at her joke.
“Oh! I almost forgot.”
She pressed PLAY, and the bathroom filled with the plink-plunk-plinky string plucks my mom calls “relaxation music.” Hope waved her hands through the air as if she were conducting the New Agey symphony.
“Well, I guarantee you this,” Hope began as she opened another can and poured it into the tub, “you’ll never forget the first—and last—time you came to my house.”
I couldn’t help but laugh as the juice glug-glug-glugged into the tub.
Taking a tomato-juice bath is as gross as you’d imagine. Hope said I needed to sit in the stuff for at least a half hour, after which I’d rinse it all off and take a regular soapy shower. She sat outside the closed bathroom door to give me privacy. While I marinated, she entertained me with stories of her mom’s extreme couponing.
“Fifty cans of tomato juice is nothing,” she said. “When I was in second grade, I made the mistake of telling her that I liked the Veggie Bears at Sara’s house. Remember those? They were gummy bears made out of healthy stuff like spinach and carrots and beets? I was kind of a picky eater, so that was all the incentive my mom needed to use her coupon skills to buy a million billion cases of Veggie Bears for, like, a nickel. We still have a few hundred packages in the stockpile. They’re so pumped with preservatives that they never go bad. Ugh. I can’t even look at a Veggie Bear without wanting to puke. And when I got my period? Forget it. My mom hoarded enough pads with wings and without wings, for daytime and nighttime, scented and unscented, organic and biodegradable and whatever else to provide feminine hygiene supplies for every girl at Pineville Junior High for the rest of their lives.…”
“Present company excluded, of course,” I replied from the tub.
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“Well, when you’re the only girl who shows no signs of growing up…”
And just like that, I remembered.
“My pants!” I yelped. “I need my pants!”
I was so set on deskunkification that I’d forgotten all about the Top Secret Pineville Junior High Crushability Quiz with Aleck’s name written down as the answer to dumb trick question #5! It was still in the back pocket of the pants I’d hastily stashed in the trash bag! If he found it, I’d never, ever hear the end of it! Teasing me in Woodshop is the highlight of Aleck’s goofy, doofy day. And the rest of the Woodshop boys, Cheddar and Squiggy and—oh no!—Mouth, would follow Aleck’s lead and get in on the joke, too! Then there’d be no stopping Mouth from busting me in front of his girlfriend, Manda, and she’d—of course!—taunt me in front of Sara and then—KABOOM! THE ENTIRE SCHOOL WOULD THINK I HAD A CRUSH ON MY DEMENTED WOODSHOP PARTNER.
This could not happen.
I hopped up from the tub and searched the room for something to change into or cover up with. There was nothing. Hope had even taken away the beach towel for decontamination.
“You can’t put those pants back on,” Hope said. “I’ve got fresh clothes for you out here, but you need to rinse off first.…”
“I need my pants,” I insisted. “Where are my pants?”
“Hmmmm. These pants sound awfully important to you,” Hope said. “Like these pants have a deeper significance. It’s almost as if these pants are hiding a secret.…”
I’d lied to her about not having anything in my back pocket, and Hope knew it. Did she figure it out just then? Or did she know it the entire time and simply choose not to make a big dramatic deal out of it? Either way, confessing the truth at that moment would’ve been the smart thing to do.
“They’re my favorite pants,” I lied.
That’s right. I picked the not-so-smart option. BLAME MY SKUNKY BRAIN.
“Marcus took the bag,” Hope said with a sigh. “He knows how to handle these situations. You can trust him.”
And that’s how it came to pass that the Top Secret Pineville Junior High Crushability Quiz became the property of the very last person on the planet I wanted to have it.
“So, Aleck, I mean, Marcus,” I corrected myself, “will just, like, destroy the pants, right? For the good of humankind?”
“Probably,” Hope said.
I clung to that probably as if it were a rope dangled over a pit of snapping crocodiles wearing pink Spirit Squad T-shirts. Destruction of TTSPJHCQ was the only life-saving option here.
“After all,” Hope continued, “he has a history of setting things on fire.”
I could only hope he’d give my pants the Hot Pocket–in-the-microwave treatment.
When my thirty minutes were finally up, I rinsed off, then lathered up with something called Tropical Getaway shower gel that reminded me of another red juice: Hawaiian Punch. After my shower, I changed into a pair of Hope’s sweatpants and a T-shirt—both comically too long for me. I took a good whiff of myself, and I honestly couldn’t detect the skunk smell anymore. Had the tomato juice successfully removed it? Or had I merely replaced one strong smell with equally strong, if different, smells? Did I now reek like a skunky tomato punch bowl?
I emerged from the bathroom to find Hope at the ready. “The moment of truth,” she said. She unclamped the clothespin, leaned in, and sniffed.
She gave me a double thumbs-up.
“You want me to get Heath in here to verify my results?”
I politely declined. As much as I would’ve loved the opportunity to make Manda jealous (“Heath got close enough to sniff you? WHY DIDN’T HE OFFER TO SNIFF ME?”), just one opinion mattered.
Chapter Eight
Only my extra-sensitive mother could truly determine whether I’d passed the deskunkification test. I rode home quickly, hoping the wind generated at top speeds would aid the airing-out process. When I got there, I headed straight for the home office, otherwise known as the Techno Dojo. I knew my mother would be poring over property listings and buy/sell spreadsheets like she always does after a busy weekend of showing houses. I’d barely stepped into the room before she looked up with an alarmed expression.
“What happened to you?”
She shot up from her chair and headed right to me for inspection.
“What do you mean, what happened to me?” I replied coolly.
“Those aren’t your clothes,” she said, intimidating me with her eyes. “Why aren’t you wearing your own clothes?”
I’d given so much thought to how I smelled that I hadn’t considered how I looked.
“Um” was all I said.
“I’m going to ask this only one more time,” Mom said sternly. “Why aren’t you wearing your own clothes?”
“Um” was all I said again.
When my mom stresses out, she strains all the muscles and tendons in her neck. They looked stretched to the limit, like they could give way at any second, launching her head straight across the room. I knew I’d better come up with a satisfactory answer—and fast.
“Whose. Clothes. Are. They.”
“Hope’s!” I replied. “They’re Hope’s.”
She held my gaze and wouldn’t let go. Sara has nothing on my mother. Mom has a way of looking at me so intensely that I feel like I’m lying even when I’m telling the truth.
“Why are you wearing Hope’s clothes?”
“I’m wearing Hope’s clothes because…”
I looked down at the shirt in question. It was a souvenir from the Museum of Modern Art gift shop. Inspiration struck. And by inspiration, I mean a lie. Because if I told my mom the truth about the skunk, she’d force me to go through another round of decontamination. There’s not enough tomato juice in the world to meet my mom’s hygienic standards. I just wasn’t up to getting hosed down with Lysol, bathed in bleach, and rolled in potpourri.
“We were working on an art project
together. Hope’s really creative and crafty, and, well, you know I’m not really any of those things, so I thought it might be fun to give painting a try.…”
About halfway through this bogus answer, my mom started to relax. Unlike my sister, who is a frequent truth stretcher, I don’t have a history of fabrications undermining my credibility. Mom believed me because I wasn’t a liar. Which made me feel pretty terrible about lying to begin with.
“You got paint on the new clothes I just bought you,” my mom said knowingly. “And you were afraid to tell me the truth because you thought I’d get upset.”
I nodded. It was so much easier when she supplied the lies for me.
She sighed and smiled.
“I think it’s wonderful that you’re exploring your artistic side,” my mother said. “Next time you want to get creative, wear one of those grungy concert T-shirts you found in Bethany’s closet.”
Much to my mother’s dismay, those “grungy” T-shirts were my new favorite articles of clothing. But I wasn’t about to press my luck by balking at her suggestion.
“That’s a great idea,” I said.
Mom lifted her face, and I lowered mine so she could affectionately nuzzle the top of my head. I’d hate it if she ever did it in front of any of my friends, but it’s nice when it’s just the two of us. It always makes me feel like a kid again, but in a good way. You know. Safe. Taken care of. But my moment of peace came to an end when Mom took a subtle but unmistakable sniff of my hair.
“Something wrong?” I asked.
“Hmm,” she murmured vaguely.
“What is it?”
“Make sure you wash up extra well in the shower,” she said. “You smell like…”
A SKUNKY TOMATO PUNCH BOWL?
She wrinkled her nose and closed her eyes as if trying to place it.
“Something chemical?” she asked.
“Something chemical,” I repeated.
“Paint thinner?” she asked.
I don’t know how SKUNK + TOMATO JUICE + TROPICAL GETAWAY SHOWER GEL = PAINT THINNER, but I’d take that crazy equation over the simple truth. And I decided right then that’s what I’d tell anyone who asked.