Elaine Orr - Jolie Gentil 00.5 - Jolie and Scoobie High School Misadventures (8 page)

CHAPTER TEN

IT WAS PROBABLY five seconds before I realized that my mouth was hanging open. For a few seconds I felt bad, and then I was really mad.
Who does he think he is?
“See if he gets my bananas.”

I went more slowly down the steps and then walked toward the Cozy Corner
. If it had been summer the narrow sidewalks on the side streets would have been so crowded I’d have had to step into the street sometimes. Today there was no one.

It was late afternoon
. We’d walked to the boardwalk directly from school. I should have known Scoobie’s mood was really bad when he didn’t want to go to the B&B first, to get Petey. He loves to walk Petey.

I was passing a one-story house on
G Street when a girl’s voice called to me. “Jolie. Come up here.”

Margo was standing on the stoop, arms folded
against the cold, wearing blue jeans and a long-sleeved pullover sweater. I wanted to mutter my way back to the Cozy Corner, but no one from school had invited me into their house before, so I figured why not?

“Hey Margo
.” I started toward her, taking in the neatly landscaped small front yard and red shutters. The blue bungalow looked as if it should have a sign in front of it, “Comfy beach cottage to rent—full season or by the week.”

“I hardly ever see you without Scoobie,” she said and gestured that I should walk in in front of her.

It was a small living room with a hallway to the left that looked as if it went to a couple of bedrooms. There was a wider, open doorway on the right that led to a kitchen with a dining table to the right of the kitchen. “I didn’t know this was your house. It looks friendly.”
Lame.

“And small, but it’s just my parents and me.
”

A couple of schoolbooks were on the kitchen table and a notebook next to them showed she was working on some kind of homework
. “You want some juice or something?” She walked toward the kitchen and I followed her. She gestured to a chair next to the one she was using.

“I don’t think so, but thanks
.” It was an older-style kitchen, with nothing like the expensive stove my dad had bought my mother for Mother’s Day last year. I sat down.

“I’m trying to finish homework in time to watch that new show,
Quantum Leap
.”

“Time travel,” I said
. “That would suit me a lot of days.”

“Scoobie told me your parents came home for awhile over Christmas. That was good, right?”

Scoobie was one of the only people in town who knew what was really going on with my parents but I’d told the lie about travel in Europe to so many people I couldn’t keep track. I wondered why Scoobie had discussed Christmas dinner with Margo. “Yep. They’re gone again, though.”

“Gee, your parents must be into some heavy coin
.” She glanced at my camouflage pants as she said this. I made a mental note to get a second pair, maybe the darker color.

“I think my dad invests a lot in the stock market
.” My heart was pounding. “I guess I should…”

“Jolie, I um…”

I had half stood up to leave, but sat back down. Margo looked uncomfortable. “What?  Are you okay?”

“I’m fine
.” She said this very quickly. “I thought you should maybe know something about Scoobie, something he’s kind of worried about.”

This surprised me
. “Okay…”

“It’s just, he and his parents, they didn’t really go to
Vermont.”

Double surprise
. “How do you know that?”

“My mom, she kind of knows Scoobie’s mom.”

I wasn’t sure why Margo was telling me this. I also wasn’t sure I believed her, but she’d never been mean, that I could see, anyway. “Does your mom work nights, too?” I asked.

This seemed to confuse Margo, so I added, “Where Scoobie’s mom works
.” I realized I was not sure where this was.

“Oh, no,” she said
. “They’ve both lived in Ocean Alley most of their lives. They, uh, run into each other in the grocery store sometimes.” She fidgeted with the pencil that sat on her notebook.

“I wonder why he would lie
?” I said this almost to myself.

“It probably wasn’t intentional,” she said, quickly.

That unfogged my brain a little. It sounded as if she was saying Scoobie’s trip had been canceled. I couldn’t imagine why he wouldn’t tell me that. “Oh, okay. Well, thanks for telling me.” This time I did stand up, and she did the same and followed me to the door.

When I put my hand on the knob I half turned to face her
. “Thanks for asking me in.”

“Sure,” she said.

When I looked back at her door once I reached the sidewalk, she had shut it.
That was one weird conversation.

SCOOBIE CAUGHT UP with me when I was on my way to homeroom the next day. “Are you still ticked at me?”

“You were the one who was ticked about something,” I said
. “Are you going to tell me what it was?”

“Just something somebody said
. I’ll catch you after lunch.” He turned and walked in the opposite direction.

I couldn’t figure out what was going on with him
. It looked as if he found me this morning to be sure I was talking to him.

Usually when we say the Pledge of Allegiance I think about whether I did all the homework I was supposed to
. Something about being actually in the building seems to improve my memory. Today I tried to interpret what Margo had said about Scoobie’s family trip and wondered why he had lied about coming home early rather than not going at all. Nothing made sense, so I decided to go for the ignore-it-and-it-will-go-away option. It was up to Scoobie to talk to me if he wanted to.

“MS. GENTIL. THE ANSWER to how many countries were formed from the former Soviet Republics is not ‘who cares’”?

There were a couple of muffled laughs near me
. No one did a lot of extra talking in Mr. Porter’s world history class.

“Maybe Jennifer knows,” I said, doodling on my notepad
. I was rewarded with a sideways glance from Jennifer Stenner, who was sitting across from me, probably wishing she wasn’t.

“Enough!” Mr. Porter said this so loudly that I jumped
. “Report for in-class detention in the cafeteria study hall.”

It took me a second or two before I stood
. I’d never been sent to any kind of punishment. One of my elementary teachers had described me as “exuberant but focused.”

“Okay,” I said
. I closed my notebook and stood to reach under my seat to get all of my books. As I got to the door Mr. Porter said, “You need this.”

I turned to see him holding out a hall pass
. I took it and left. After I got to where another hallway intersected the one I was in I turned and then leaned against the wall, fighting back tears.
In-class detention! He lets other kids get by being a smart aleck sometimes
.

I looked at the hall pass in my hand
. It didn’t have anything written in the notes section. All he’d done was check the box that said where I was supposed to go, and why. Cafeteria for Detention. “It’s not the end of the world,” I said to myself.
My parents will never know.

I was on the second floor and the cafeteria was on the other side of the building, on the main floor
. By the time I arrived there were only about fifteen minutes left in the period. I handed the hall pass to the teacher sitting at a table by the door and she pointed to a sign-in sheet without speaking. I signed in and started to walk toward a table near the entrance when a hand popped up and went down very quickly a few tables back.

Scoobie!  He didn’t look at me, but I figured that was so the teacher wouldn’t get that we were sitting near each other on purpose
. I pulled out a chair and sat, putting my books in front of me. Scoobie turned his notebook toward me, still not looking at me. It said, in one-inch letters, “Why are you here?!”

I opened my binder to a clean page and wrote, “I mouthed off to Mr. Porter.”

He went back to the book he was reading,
The Scarlet Letter
.

It was so quiet that I figured the rules of the room were well established
. I looked around. There were about fifteen kids, mostly boys. Everybody had a book open, and it looked as if half of them were trying to sleep with their eyes open.

I opened my world history book
. If I knew Mr. Porter, he would ask me the same question tomorrow, so I better get it right. I started to make a list. Georgia, the Ukraine, Latvia, Turkmenistan. I never heard of Turkmenistan. There were fifteen in total. Mr. Porter could ask for the names of all of the countries. I kept writing until the bell rang a short time later.

No one spoke as they left, so Scoobie waited until we were walking into the hall to talk
. “Did you cuss him out?”

“Nope
. He asked me how many countries formed when the Soviet Union ended, and I asked him who cares?”

Scoobie whooped
. It looked as if things were back to normal with us.

“Meet me at the bottom of the steps, after last period,” he said, and took off for what I knew what his Algebra I class
. I had never asked him why he was a year behind in math.

“HOW OFTEN DO YOU HAVE TO go there?” I asked. It seemed as if he would have told me if he went to detention a lot. I took a wide step to avoid a puddle of slush. It would just freeze over tonight and be slush again tomorrow.

“My first time this year,” Scoobie said
. “I didn’t do any homework in history for a few days.”

“Why not?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I was just ticked off.”

“I noticed.”

“Yeah, well, sorry.” He didn’t say it grudgingly, but it also seemed that Scoobie wasn’t going to elaborate. I started to ask him about what Margo had said, but decided not to risk ticking him off again. I preferred the Fun Scoobie, not the Moody Scoobie.

“I’m getting tired of this bad weather,” I said
. “I get water on the hem of my pants almost every day.”

Scoobie glanced down
. “They are kinda long when you don’t roll them up,” he said.

“I know
. My mother hates it when I wear them too long.” I grinned at him and looked away.

“I think this is one of those times your aunt would say something like you’re biting off your nose to spite your face.”

We were walking in the direction of the library, where Scoobie preferred to do his homework. He said that he had to be too quiet in his house, since his mother was sleeping.

“Everybody’s talking about who’s going to run for senior class president,” I said
. “None of the names mean anything to me.”

“One of ‘em is your buddy, Michael Riordan,” Scoobie said.

“Great. I dare him to ask for my vote.” Since he was almost a foot taller than I was, he could pass me in the hall without looking down. Literally, anyway. Clearly he looked down on me in general.

“Do you know any of the other people well enough to vote for them?” I asked.

“I don’t vote,” he said, flatly.

“I wasn’t planning on it, but if Riordan’s running I want to vote against him.”

“There’s a plan,” Scoobie said.

“Elections aren’t until April,” I said
. “I don’t get why it’s a big deal in January.”

“Because the people who really want to win have parties, like for Valentine’s Day or Saint Patrick’s Day.”

“Like buying votes, sort of?” I asked.

“You want to go to the parties?” Scoobie asked, sounding dubious.

“Not hardly,” I said. “I just wondered. It’s big conversation in the girls’ bathrooms.”

I went into the library with Scoobie, but I didn’t plan on staying long
. Aunt Madge always lets me eat some of the warm bread she makes to serve to her guests at four o’clock. There hadn’t been guests in early January, but there were a couple of them today, so there’d be bread.

The librarian said hello to Scoobie, as she always did, and I followed him to a table along the far wall, behind the huge wooden card catalogs
. No one could see him there, unless they actually walked all the way to that part of the large room. Scoobie liked that.

As I opened my geometry book I thought about my day
. It was stupid to mouth off to Mr. Porter. I knew what I was irritated about, and it was that Scoobie was being annoying. He was my best friend at Ocean Alley High. But, because he was, a lot of other people shied away from me. I still didn’t understand much about why, but I knew I didn’t want to feel so lonely.

I leaned toward Scoobie, and spoke in a low voice
. “Why were you so ticked at me?”

He looked up, seemingly surprised that I’d asked
. “I wasn’t ticked at you.”