Like Mandarin (16 page)

I sat back down.

“Did someone just call your name?” Momma asked.

I shook my head, willing Davey to stay in the pool.

Momma opened a Ziploc bag of oatmeal cookies and handed me one. I concentrated on plucking out the raisins, collecting them in a little pile on my stomach.

“So how’s school?”

I glanced up at Momma, startled. It was as if she’d spoken Japanese. “What do you mean?” I asked warily.

“What do you mean, what do I mean? It’s a simple question.”

“I don’t know.… It’s fine, I guess.”

“Anything new at all? With you and your friend?”

Like I’d ever tell you
. “Not really.”

“Well, I’ve got some news for you.”

I braced myself for pageant gossip.

“So Polly Bunker was talking to Della Bader’s niece, Sheryl—you know, the one who dropped out of school in the eighth grade—and you’ll never guess who she ran into at the Fremont County flea market.”

“I have no idea.”

“You’ll
never
guess. She was looking in the old clocks section, searching for one of those vintage ones, the hickory-dickory-dock ones. Anyway … She found one she liked, and she went up to the lady running the booth. You’ll never guess who it was.”

“I give up, Momma. Who was it already?”

She paused for emphasis. “Mandarin Ramey’s mother!”

I sat upright, spilling my raisins. “That’s impossible.”

“It was her, all right. Sheryl went to school with her down in Cheyenne before she came to Washokey. Kim Ramey. Or actually, I don’t know if she ever married Mandarin’s dad. I heard Kim was short for another name, maybe an Indian name. She’s fifty percent Shoshone, did you know?”

I began to have cramps for real. “She’s dead, Momma.”

“Dead? No, of course she’s not, Grace. Sheryl even spoke to her—”

“She’s dead!” I exclaimed. “She killed herself, and Mandarin told me how. All right? It must have been some other woman. Someone who looked like her. But Mandarin’s mother’s dead. That’s what Mandarin said, and she wouldn’t lie to me.”

Even as I said it, I didn’t believe it. I wasn’t sure what my expression looked like, but Momma must have assumed it was still directed at her. She dropped her gaze and began to rifle through her beach bag.

“It must have been a mistake,” she said. She pulled a crumpled dollar out of her bag. “How ’bout you run along and locate that Mexican who sells ice cream?”

I snatched the bill and stumbled away. Just outside the gate, the ice cream man stood behind a freezer cart with sponge paintings of triple cones on the side. Numbly, I picked out a mixed-berry Popsicle.

When I turned, I was face to face with Alexis & Co.

Alexis was flanked by Samantha and Paige. They all wore bikinis. Alexis’s breasts poured over a too-small top. She didn’t have to cross her arms to boost them. Paige’s lima bean tummy stuck out over her bathing suit bottoms. Samantha held a can of diet soda pop. All four of us recoiled, startled speechless.

Alexis was the first to recover. “Slut,” she hissed.

The three of them veered around me in a flood of giggles, leaving me like a drowned ground squirrel in their wake.

The edge of the desk bit into my shins. The light of the computer monitor burned my eyes in the dark room. But even though I’d memorized it by now, even though I’d known already and refused to believe, I couldn’t stop squinting at the map proving Riverton was in Fremont County.

Riverton, WY 82501
.

Proving Mandarin’s mother was alive.

She worked at the Riverton flea market. She’d married somebody named Paisley. Or maybe she’d been a Paisley all along. She was sending Mandarin arrowheads. All the gruesome details of her suicide—the dishrags, the pills, the duct tape … Mandarin had made them up.

And she didn’t want me to know.

Finally, I switched off my computer and crawled into bed, pulling the sheet over my ear. I felt more baffled than anything. Because
why lie? Why?
I couldn’t begin to fathom Mandarin’s reasons. But I knew better than to ask. I wasn’t willing to risk another fight. Our friendship had barely survived the last.

Although, I couldn’t help wondering: if Mandarin had lied about something so momentous, what else might she lie to me about?

• ••

In the days that passed, I didn’t tell Mandarin what Alexis had called me. I didn’t know how to feel about it. It made me wonder whether everybody thought of me as Mandarin’s protégé—her fuckup-in-training; a project, like the community service she kept putting off along with any conversation about our so-called escape—or whether they believed I was actually like Mandarin.

I kept hoping some of her had rubbed off on me, literally. Maybe some cells from her fingertips when they grazed my arm, or from the neckline of the sweaters she let me borrow on windy evenings. Or after she borrowed my hairbrush, maybe her stray hairs interlaced with mine. I wanted to ask her to be my blood sister, like back in elementary school, and sense the exact moment when her blood began to flow into my veins.

I knew she’d think I was crazy if I asked. Though some days I almost convinced myself that it was happening on its own—Mandarin’s spirit draping over me, like fairy glamour.

But all too soon, I remembered that appearances were one thing. I might walk the walk, but when it came down to what I believed made Mandarin
Mandarin
, I hadn’t even begun to catch up.

Mercifully, she never called me out. We never talked about sex at all. It was as if Mandarin believed it irrelevant to our friendship.

And maybe it was. But as long as it was one of the factors that defined her, I knew I had to have it.

I just had no idea where to begin. When I thought back, I realized I’d never had much of a crush on anybody. Objectively, sometimes I saw what the other girls squealed about. Tag Leeland had nice arms, but his neck seemed too big, like a boa constrictor swallowing his head. I liked Mitchell Warren’s melty brown eyes, but his skin disgusted me—at sixteen, he had the sun-worn, freckled hide of a fifty-year-old rancher. Not to mention the way he acted in the cafeteria, flinging Cool Ranch Doritos at people like ninja stars.

Even if I’d found somebody to fall for, it wouldn’t have mattered. None of the guys paid any attention to me. Except for Davey Miller, and he didn’t really count. As far as I could tell, I possessed none of Mandarin’s power—whatever it was that drew guys to her, made their eyes unpeel, their mouths hang open in that particular way.

Until one day at lunch, when I did.

I stood in the cafeteria line, waiting for the girl in front of me to select a cube of sponge cake. I’d informed Momma that I wanted to buy my lunch from now on. She was so harried with pageant prep, I thought she’d be relieved, but instead she seemed offended. I didn’t get it. It wasn’t like I’d directly insulted the lunches she packed.

By the time I got to the fruit basket, there were no bananas left, just green and red apples. As I reached out to grab one, my shirt crept up. It was shorter than usual; maybe it had shrunk in the wash. I instantly became aware of the two senior boys beside me, their attention angled in my direction like a sunbeam through a magnifying glass.

I almost jerked my arm back. But that wasn’t what Mandarin would have done. It was about being conscious without being self-conscious. So I let my hem slide up just a little farther before I grabbed the apple and thumped it onto my tray.

One of the boys cleared his throat. I allowed myself a quick glance over. He closed the gap between us and stuck out his hand.

“I’m Joshua,” he said.

Of course I recognized him: Joshua Mickelson, the lifeguard. He was compact, with curly blond hair and a nose that looked broken in sixteen places. Beside him stood Tyler Worley, the brown-haired lifeguard beloved by Brandi Shelmerdine and her friends. He leaned across Joshua and jutted his own hand in front of Joshua’s.

“And I’m Tyler.”

I tucked my bangs behind my ears and smiled slightly, then slid my tray down the line without shaking either hand.

“Yeah, it’s nice to meet you, too,” Joshua said.

“Are you new?” Tyler asked. “From another town, maybe?”

“A far-off place? A better planet?”

“I’ve been around,” I said.

I paid the cashier and turned to face the cafeteria crowd. The boys kept close behind me. Their attention seemed competitive, almost aggressive. Or maybe I’d just never been hit on.

“I find that hard to believe,” Tyler said.

“Yeah, we’ve been living in this stinkhole all our lives,” Joshua added. “We’d know if a girl like you popped up. You must be lying.”

“You must be new.”

“Or,” I said smugly, spotting Mandarin a few yards away, “you must not be looking in the right places.”

Then I sauntered off, leaving the boys to witness our reunion. I still felt the heat of their stares, all that searing male attention focused on me and Mandarin as she put her arm around my waist and led me from the cafeteria.

The constant surveillance still excited me, but it seemed to exhaust Mandarin. To combat it, we located places all over town to hide from prying eyes.

We scaled the pipes behind Solomon’s and reigned over Washokey’s streets and alleyways from the rooftop. We climbed chain-link fences and the cottonwood trees that dropped over the canal. We found a sheep farm a quarter mile out of town, and we snuck into the stables when no one was around and cuddled the spring lambs. We even peed together at the side of the road with cars going by, laughing so hard we both got hiccups.

We never went to our houses. I didn’t want to deal with Momma, and ever since the fight Mandarin and I’d had at her house, we didn’t go there, either.

But it didn’t matter. We had our best conversations strolling through town, exchanging questions we both had to answer.

What would you be if you could be anything at all?

I wanted to be an explorer in the name of science, like Charles Darwin, while she wanted to be an actress in a Broadway show, even though she couldn’t sing.

What’s the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to you?

I told her about my lopsided graduation dress, while she swore she’d never been embarrassed in her entire life.

Now and then when we played our games, I suspected that Mandarin was testing me.

“If you could go anywhere in the world, where would it be?” she asked one evening as we lay on our backs on the school lawn. The sprinklers arched over us perfectly, so we stayed dry.

I thought about it. “That’s tough.”

“Not California?”

“Oh, definitely!” I said. “I was thinking of islands and, like, ultra-exotic places—Antarctica, Brazil. But in reality, it’d have to be California.”

“I hope so.”

“Besides, the Amazon rain forest is in Brazil, and it’s got spiders as big as dinner plates. And I read Antarctica is colder than anywhere on earth—the lowest temperature ever recorded there was negative one twenty-nine.”

“I call bullshit,” Mandarin said. “Coldest temperature ever’s got to be Washokey Januarys.”

Another time, as we sat side by side on plastic chairs outside the Sundrop Quik Stop, Mandarin asked, “So where do you want to go to college, Gracey?”

That time, my answer seemed to please her: “Out west. Doesn’t matter where.”

We both had cups of strawberry ice cream from the deli, and as I watched her eat, I wondered. If we left Washokey, what did she expect me to do—sign up for eleventh grade in some unfamiliar city? Had she even considered it? I didn’t want to ask her, though. Like everything else, it could be put off until later.

But time was running out. That was what Mr. Beck had said when he’d called our house to remind me to send in my conference paperwork. Thank goodness I caught the phone before Momma answered. I still hadn’t told her about my win.

With Mandarin, our question games worked because I knew when to keep quiet. I didn’t bring up her father, or her schoolwork, or her men—though I was
dying
to find out more.

I also knew what not to tell her.

I never told her about Sheryl Bader’s alleged sighting of her mother at the Fremont County flea market, or the envelope I’d found with the telling blue letters of its return address, the angular object inside. I didn’t know how she’d react. So I kept my secrets bundled up like stones in my pocket, ones I still needed to decipher.

The day before my fifteenth birthday, Momma caught me as I was leaving for the Tombs. Mandarin was working that afternoon, and I feared being forced into child care while Momma shopped for pageant provisions at the junk shop. Unexpectedly, she wanted to bring me with her.

“I’d like your opinion,” she said.

I must have looked baffled. Momma rarely admitted I had something she wanted, particularly an opinion. I suspected it had to do with my birthday. Most years she offered me swatches to flip through, corresponding to Femme Fatale makeup colors.

“I need to pick out some fabric for a new dress for Taffeta,” she explained.

“What’s the matter with the one you just made?”

“Nothing’s the matter. I’d like to have a spare on hand, is all. Just in case. White’s a popular shade. Plus, you never know if one of the other girls’ll show up in a similar style.”

“Why don’t you go with Polly Bunker? She always has an opinion.”

Momma was silent a moment.

“Polly Bunker talks too much,” she said.

I stared at her. What did she mean? Did Polly Bunker talk to her about Mandarin and me? Was Momma
defending
me? I wanted to ask. But then I imagined the direction that conversation might head—especially if I was wrong—so I kept my mouth shut.

We dropped Taffeta off at the Millers’, a two-story yellow house with a wraparound balcony that overlooked nothing inspiring. Miriam Miller was one of the few little kids in town who didn’t participate in the Little Miss Washokey pageants. Sometimes I wondered if that was why Taffeta liked her so much.

The junk shop wasn’t really called the Junk Shop. Its official name was Nelly’s Bargain Boutique, even though Nelly Drummely had been dead ten years. It was now managed by Nelly’s daughter Tracy, the person responsible for the store’s current state of disarray. Tracy’s sole marketing effort was her rotation of unique items in the windows: a Lite-Brite set, a bearded African mask, a wedding dress with a nine-foot lace train. The interior of the store was a hoarder’s paradise. Momma was an expert at navigating the chaos. She had engineered most of Taffeta’s pageant dresses from junk shop fabric, chopping and stitching together scarves and 1980s prom dresses with embellishments ordered online.

While Momma pondered the racks of clothing, I headed for the plastic bins. They overflowed with rubbish. Old stuffed animals—the plush kind, fortunately. Western novels with laminated covers. Superfluous kitchen gadgets, like bagel slicers and lime squeezers and plastic molds to squish butter into the shapes of pigs and turkeys. I never reached too deep, in fear of discovering a dead cockroach—or worse, a live one.

I found the rock tumbler in bin number two. The front of the box featured a pair of grinning children cupping handfuls of artificially glossy examples.

I had mixed feelings about rock tumblers. They smoothed out all the character of rocks, all the history, the genuine erosion. Still, I liked the idea of uncovering the potential of the stones in my collection—all their inner beauty revealed.

It didn’t matter, because I had no money other than the hundred-dollar savings bond from my essay contest win. Another thing shoved into the bottom of my tote bag.

“Grace, could you come here?” Momma called.

I set down the box and followed her voice around the corner. Momma held up a lilac prom dress so narrow it resembled a single leg of tights. It had puffy sleeves like baby tutus, and a hem so short I couldn’t imagine anyone wearing it without all her improper places exposed.

“What do you think of this?”

I hesitated. I didn’t see how she could be serious; yet Momma seldom joked with me. “It’s …” I paused. “I dare you to try it on.”

Momma blinked at me for a second. Then, slowly, she began to smile.

“Not on your life, missus.” She held it out at arm’s length. “But don’t you have a dance coming up? There’s always a dance in the spring, isn’t there? Maybe you want to try it on.”

I giggled. “No way.”

The jingle bell on the front door rang. We both turned to look.

Mandarin stood in the doorway, wearing a men’s white undershirt and a cocktail apron over her lowest-slung jeans. “Well, hey there,” she said. “I noticed the two of you in the window.”

Momma raised her eyebrows at me. I glanced from face to face, knowing I had to make the introduction I’d dreaded.