Camille McPhee Fell Under the Bus (17 page)

I found the ski trails for Sun Valley. I found the seating map for Idaho State University’s Holt Arena. I found a coupon for the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery
Center. (I cut that out.) Then I found the page that listed all the area codes. Even for countries.

It was confusing. I entered 011, which I thought was the code for the U.S. And then, even though the phone book didn’t say to do this, I entered 411, because that’s the number for Information. And then I entered 8115 for Japan. And then I entered 411 again. I was so excited that my finger was very shaky. Then, the best thing started happening. I heard the phone ringing. Yay!

But then, call waiting beeped. At first I thought I would ignore it. Then I worried that it might be Nina calling about the volcano. I went ahead and hung up on Japan and answered the call coming in.

“Camille!” my father cheered. “How are you?”

“I’m okay,” I said.

“I miss you,” he said.

“I’ve heard that before,” I said.

“It’s the truth,” he said. “I think about you all the time.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s what happens when you leave people.”

“Don’t be that way, Camille. Everything is going to be okay. I’ll be home soon.”

Hearing him say that everything was going to be okay made me feel a little bit better.

“How soon is soon?” I asked, twisting the phone cord around my wrist.

“Two weeks,” he said.

“I can’t live with that,” I said. Even though he didn’t understand the full meaning of this, I pushed the 9 button on the phone. I decided that when people on the phone said things that I disagreed with, I’d push 9 for no.

“Don’t do that, Camille. It’s annoying.”

“Really?” I asked, pressing the 9 button three more times.

“Camille, let’s have a conversation,” he said.

“I conversed all day at school already,” I said. Plus, I had to save a lot of conversing for Sally.

“How was school?” he asked. “Are you still learning about the decimal point?”

I pushed the 9 button again. We were mostly dividing numbers now in math.

“Camille, stop that,” he said, sounding extremely irritated. “I’m calling to see how you are. I want to make sure you’re okay.”

“I’m okay,” I said, picking up a penny and balancing it on my nose.

“I love you,” he said. “This wasn’t my idea. But we’ll work it out. Okay? And don’t push any buttons!”

I put my finger on the 9 button, but I didn’t push it.

“Okay,” I said, taking the penny off of my nose. “I love you too.”

When I hung the phone up, I felt halfway sad and halfway hopeful. It wasn’t really anything that my dad said, it was because I realized what a great phone we had. It was brick red and had big, black buttons that lit up in the dark, and unlike some phones I’d used, it didn’t have any annoying static. It also had caller ID.

Then my hopeful feeling went away, because the phone rang again, and when I answered it, I learned some horrible news.

“You have four minutes left on your calling card,” said a woman with a robot voice. I quickly pressed 9 for no. Then I listened for more information. “Your call to Slovakia will end in three minutes.”

I pushed the disconnect button over and over. What was happening? I hadn’t called Slovakia. I didn’t even have that calling card. Then I started reading the other country codes. I looked up Slovakia. It was 421. Had I pressed 421 instead of 411? Should I not have pressed 411? Then I started reading the instructions for my international calling card.

Turns out it was good for more countries than just Japan. Turns out that when I clicked over to take my dad’s call, my calling card had called Slovakia without my permission. Turns out I only had three minutes left
and there was no way to get my minutes back. Then I heard the dial tone, which meant that things were over with my calling card. I thought about all the quarters I’d saved and tried to not cry. I thought about what Mrs. Bratberg had told me when she’d given me my bills: “Don’t spend it all in one place.”

But I had spent it all in one place. I sat down on the floor and rocked a little bit. And hugged myself. I wanted to forget I’d ever heard that robot voice. I wanted to forget a lot of things.

Chapter 25
And the Loser is …

O
n Friday, when I went out to catch the bus, Polly was sitting on my front steps, waiting to walk up my driveway with me.

“Where’s your science project?” she asked.

“Nina Hosack is bringing it,” I said. I didn’t even look at Polly. She should not have been on my steps. I hadn’t invited her, so she was trespassing. And that was something that was against the law.

“Hannah’s mom is going to drive ours to school. It
involves delicate Styrofoam balls,” she said, bunching up her face and looking concerned.

I didn’t want to talk about our science projects. Thinking about losing five thousand dollars made my whole body hurt, even my toes, which never hurt. Even when people accidentally stepped on them.

“Hey, is your dad on a trip?” Polly asked. “I haven’t seen his pickup in a long time.”

When Polly asked me this, I felt a pain sink into me. I didn’t want to admit to anybody that my parents were separated. I wanted to pretend that everything was okay. And then I wanted everything to start being okay again.

“He’s traveling,” I said. “It’s how he makes a living.”

And I don’t remember what Polly said after this. Because I was so supersad that I went to a place deep inside of my own head. I just kept thinking. And I thought so much that I lost track of time. One minute I was standing in my driveway listening to Polly. The next minute, my legs were walking my disconnected self through the school’s front door.

Nina flagged down my head and my body right away. When I say “flagged down,” I mean that she literally had an American flag that she was waving above her head as she called out my name. Watching my science partner act like a total idiot in a crowded area made my head and body reconnect themselves in a hurry.

“What’s the deal?” I asked.

“I need to let you know that I didn’t just build a regular volcano.” As she talked, Nina looked over each of her shoulders to make sure that nobody was listening.

“What did you build?” I asked, looking over each of my shoulders too.

“A volcanic monument to our country,” Nina said, placing her hand on her heart.

“I don’t know what that is,” I said. “But if it doesn’t require batteries, then I want my five bucks back.” Because I really missed having an emergency five dollars in my underwear drawer.

“It still uses a battery,” she said. “It’s like a volcano, except better. Instead of red lava, I made ours blue. And instead of a regular old brown earthlike-looking volcano, I made ours red and molded it in the shape of America. The volcano’s cone is located over Missouri. And I filled the magma reservoir with the blue lava and white plastic stars. So when it erupts, it will be a tribute to our country. I brought a flag for each of us. During the eruption, I think we should sing ‘God Bless America.’”

I wasn’t sure how to react, so I raised my eyebrows and pressed my lips together. I raised my eyebrows to communicate to Nina that I was surprised by her level of creativity. I pressed my lips together to let her know
that I wasn’t sure if her idea was a good one or a bad one. Nina said the idea came to her when she was walking home from my house and every car that passed her had either an American flag flying from a window or a USA bumper sticker pasted to its back end.

“Why Missouri?” I asked, keeping my eyebrows lifted and lips tightened. “Do they have volcanoes there?”

“Not that I’m aware of,” she said. “But it doesn’t matter. It’s symbolic. Missouri is in America’s heartland. Got it?”

I got it. But I also got tired of communicating with Nina through my eyebrows, so I relaxed them. But I kept my lips tightened, because I’d just discovered that this helped me think. Staring at Nina, I noticed that she looked a little crazed. Her eyes were unfocused and she kept darting her gaze from the ceiling to the floor. Little drops of sweat beaded her upper lip.

“Are you running a temperature?” I asked.

“I’m just fired up,” she said, grabbing on to one of my shoulders. “It’s cool to be patriotic. We’ll win the prize money for sure.”

I hoped she was right. Then I took a step back. I had never seen Nina act crazy like this before. I was used to seeing her wimpy side.

“This is the first time I’ve ever seen you fired up,” I said.

Nina smiled. “Do you know what I think it is?” she asked.

“What?” I asked. Because I was very curious about this.

“Fighting off that dog at your house boosted my self-esteem,” she said.

That is not the way I remembered things happening when we dug up Muffin and Pinky showed up. But I didn’t have the energy to disagree.

Nina moved toward me and grabbed my shoulder again. A wide grin broke across her face as she gently shook me.

“This is going to be so great,” she said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not sure whether I know all of the words to ‘God Bless America.’”

Nina let go of me and twirled one of her blond pigtails around her pointer finger. She was thinking about something. Sweat beads formed on her forehead and around her hairline. Then her face flashed with happiness and she let out a squeal.

“I’ve got it,” she said. “You just hum and I’ll sing.” And then Nina handed me my very own flag and saluted me. “God bless America,” she said as she flipped around the other way and ran down the hall.

When I got to class, everybody’s projects were set up in plain view on their desks. Except for ours. Nina had draped a red sheet over our project so that nobody
could see it. I sighed when I saw that five other groups had built volcanoes. Polly and Hannah had built the solar system using Styrofoam balls and wire. I thought their Mars looked just as big as their Jupiter, but because I’m not a rude person, I didn’t say anything.

I couldn’t tell what Tony Maboney and Boone Berry had made. All I could see on Tony’s desk was a dead fish in a clear plastic box. The fish was smaller than my thumbnail. And it wasn’t any color at all. It almost looked invisible, except for a thin, neon green line that ran through the center of its body.

When it came time to present the projects, Nina shot her hand up and asked if we could go last. Tony Maboney shot his hand up and said that he wanted to go last too. I didn’t know what was so great about going last, but I decided to support my partner. Mr. Hawk said that because we’d asked first, we could go last.

Nina reacted by screaming, “Woot, woot!”

By the time we got to Tony Maboney’s dead fish, I was bored out of my skull. Four out of the five volcanoes were duds. No eruption. Not even a little. Watching a volcano not erupt is about as exciting as watching a faucet not drip. Nina didn’t seem to feel this way.

Every time a volcano was a dud, she had a hard time containing her happiness. She drummed her feet on the floor and shot me wicked-looking smiles. I started to wonder if Nina had somehow sabotaged the
other projects. But when the fifth volcano did erupt, I just chalked up all the other duds as coincidences.

Tony and Boone stood in front of their desks and announced that they were going to perform a resurrection. When they said this, some of the churchgoing kids gasped. Mr. Hawk jumped up from behind his desk.

“We have frozen this fish,” Tony said, “and now we’re going to thaw it and bring it back to life.”

Mr. Hawk sat back down. Tony and Boone didn’t look very confident. Tony shoved both of his hands deep down into his front pockets. Both he and Boone were biting their lower lips. And when Boone opened up the plastic container, his hand trembled so badly that he almost dropped the lid.

“Freezing the fish is not easy,” Boone explained as he scooped the fish up with a plastic spoon and moved it onto a paper plate. “You can’t just pop it in the freezer. We have used a colorless, odorless chlorofluorocarbon to freeze this fish.”

“Where did you get that?” Penny asked. “That sounds illegal!”

“No interrupting,” Mr. Hawk said.

“My Uncle Rick got it for me,” Boone said. “He’s a high school chemistry teacher in Utah.”

Penny frowned. She didn’t look happy. But it didn’t matter. Several of us in the class let out a series of “oohs.” Even I did. If Tony and Boone had figured out
how to bring a fish back to life, nobody else stood a chance of winning. I looked at Nina. She crossed her fingers on both hands and glared at the fish like it was pure evil.

When Tony plugged a navy blue hair dryer into an outlet, everybody sat on the edge of their seats.

“Thawing the fish is very difficult too,” Boone said, flipping the hair dryer on to its lowest setting. “If the fish doesn’t freeze fast enough, the fluid in its tissue will crystallize. If ice crystals form, they will act like daggers and knives, puncturing the fish’s cells. This same thing could happen when it thaws.”

A chorus of “oohs” floated through the room again. It was like we were watching a real scientist. Boone was using words that were so big, nobody would have been able to spell them. Gracie screamed when the fish’s body twitched. Boone quickly shut the hair dryer off and lifted the paper plate over a bowl filled with water. He gently shook the plate until the fish slipped off and plopped into the water. Their fish still acted a little dead, like it had been only partially resurrected. But in a couple of seconds it zigged and zagged around the bowl. Boone dropped some food flakes into the water and his resurrected fish darted straight to the surface and gobbled them up.

Everybody clapped and stomped their feet. Tony and Boone took several bows in front of the class. They
slapped each other a high five as they cleaned up their project.

“Nina and Camille,” Mr. Hawk said, “are you ready?”

“Yes, sir!” Nina said.

Nina stood beside her desk and took hold of two of the red sheet’s corners.

“Feast your eyes on this!” she said, trying to rip the sheet off the volcano in one, dramatic pull. But it didn’t quite work out the way she wanted. The sheet caught on something.