Minerva Clark Goes to the Dogs (6 page)

“Reg?”

“Diamonds are the hardest objects on earth. Made of pure carbon. The only thing that can cut a diamond is another diamond. The word diamond comes from the Greek
adamas.
Means invincible.” He rattled this off as he typed.

“We were talking about red diamonds.”

“Right …”
Tap tap tap tap tap tap tap.

“Are you IMing Amanda the Panda?”

“Do you have to call her that? She has nothing but nice things to say about you.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Why do you need to know about …”
Tap tap tap tap tap.
”… red diamonds?”

“Call me when you can actually talk, would you?”

“Mandy says hey,” he said.

“Gackarffaguga,” I said. I am the
queen
of choking noises. They sound so authentic I better not start choking for real because no one who knows me would ever save me. “
Listen
to yourself, Reg.”

“Listen, dude, she's really nice,” he said lamely.

“Whatever.” I hung up. The truth is, I was totally jealous, even though I don't like Reggie and am madly in crush with Kevin. Put that in your song, Quills.

I guess it was just me and Google. I typed in “red diamonds” and learned that diamonds come in every color of the rainbow, but the colored ones are freaks of nature. Colored diamonds are called fancy diamonds and usually only special fancy diamond collectors are interested in them. The most common fancy diamonds are yellow, pink, blue, and a sparkling brown known as champagne diamonds. The coloration is caused by other elements mixed with the carbon. Boron causes blue diamonds. Nitrogen causes yellow diamonds. Red diamonds are
rare and expensive. They come from a mine called the Argyle Mine in Australia.

Diamonds are measured in carats, which I always thought were carrots. When Mark Clark was engaged briefly to Lulu he bought her a one-carat ring. It was no bigger than a pea. Still, it cost a lot of money.

It seemed as if the biggest, most famous diamonds were cursed. The Black Orlov diamond is as big as a walnut, and was stolen from the forehead of an idol in India by a monk. Everyone who owned it after that committed suicide, including two Russian princesses. The Hope diamond is a famous violet-blue diamond that was also stolen from the forehead of an idol in India. It was cursed, too. The Frenchman who stole it was torn apart by wild dogs. Now I was really getting the creeps. Then Louis XVI somehow got a hold of it and gave it to his queen, Marie Antoinette, and they were both beheaded. The Hope diamond was sold again and again, and everyone who owned it suffered terrible luck because of it.

I wondered if Mr. de Guzman's diamond was cursed. It was much smaller than the Black Orlov diamond and the Hope diamond, so probably it was just a face-in-the-crowd diamond, no big deal other than its strange rare color.

It was nearly dark outside, but there were no stars. The only light in my room was the blue glare from my
computer monitor. I really hoped Mr. de Guzman hadn't stolen his red diamond from the head of an Indian idol, or from anyone else, for that matter. I suddenly didn't like being all alone in my room on the third floor, and was relieved when Mark Clark called me down to dinner.

My brothers were already seated at the big dining room table. Since our mom left and our dad is always away on business, Mark Clark has come to believe it's his duty to have a sit-down dinner a few times a week, and no one complains, even though we always ate too late.

I sat down at my place and dug into my chicken enchiladas without saying a word. My mind was going round and round. No one said anything, other than Morgan, who asked someone to pass the salad.

“This summer isn't going to be this way,” said Mark Clark, out of the blue.

I looked up. What was he talking about? “What way?” I asked.

“If you don't find something to do, I will find something for you to do. You're not going to spend the entire three months on the computer.”

What
was
he talking about? I'd been running around like a mad person all day. I'd already taken MAX to the airport and I'd seen the inside of Chelsea de Guzman's fancy house, and met Winkin', Blinkin', and Ned, her
champion show dog corgis—well, except for the adorable Ned, who was worth ten of the other two dogs, in my humble opinion. I'd been busy. Of course, Mark Clark didn't know that, and I wasn't about to tell him. “I cleaned the refrigerator,” I said.

“And then what? You went over and hung out at a friend's house, then came home and spent the last few hours IMing.”

“Sor-ry,” I said. “I thought it was called summer
vacation
for a reason.”

“Lose the tone. Now.”

“Sorry.” I dropped my fork on my plate and folded my hands in my lap. I wore a pair of baggy blue jean shorts. If I had any scabs on my knees, I'd have been fiddling with them, but mostly we modern children do not have many scabs. We are the Knee and Elbow Pad Generation.

“I'm serious, Minerva. You cannot lie around all summer IMing your friends.”

“I am not lying around IMing my friends. That's actually impossible anyway. I have to sit at my desk to IM my friends.”

Quills snorted. “She got you there,” he said. Quills drank his entire glass of milk straight down. He loves to make trouble, just because.

I didn't know where this conversation was going, but my Spidey sense was telling me it wasn't good. My
enchiladas were getting cold. Plus, the fact was, once Kevin got home, I was planning on IMing him every possible minute I could.

“I've gone ahead and signed you up for a class at Kid-academy,” said Mark Clark.

“What kind of a class?” I asked. I couldn't believe these words were coming out of the mouth of my most cool brother. He signed me up for a
class.
In
summer.
Mark Clark didn't play bass guitar in a rock band like Quills, nor was he a junk food vegetarian college student and philosopher like Morgan, but nestled deep inside Mark Clark, next to the nerd and ultra-responsible almost-dad, was the person who truly remembered what it was like to be my age.

“What class!” I squawked.

“You might enjoy it,” said Morgan, who had been quiet during the entire meal. He was wearing his orange and black ear flap hat and eating the radishes out of his salad. He was always in favor of taking some dweeby class.

“How do you know?”

“I said you might,” said Morgan. “There's no law that says that your brain has to shut down for the summer.”

“I've signed you up for basic electronics,” said Mark Clark. “Have an open mind.”

“Basic electronics!
Basic electronics!”
Having an open mind was exactly what I was not going to do. I intended
keeping it shut as tight as an unopened pickle jar. I was mad. My scalp was getting all hot underneath my hair.

I wasn't sure what you might learn in a basic electronics class, but it sounded too geeky, even for me. And I am a geek. I have a ferret named Jupiter. I collect rebuses. I don't care too much about clothes or makeup. (Although I don't mind a little dark blue eyeliner now and again. I also have been known to paint my toenails.)

I put my hands together and begged Mark Clark. I whined like I'm not supposed to. I could smell the spicy bad body odor of the boys in the class already, see their smeary glasses and mossy teeth.

“Please,” I said. “I am not going to lie around all summer IMing. I promise. Most of my friends won't be around to IM anyway. They're going to summer school and stuff. I'll sign up for the library read-a-thon program. I'll … I'll eat broccoli for every meal. I'll take out the garbage without being asked. Please.” The more I begged, the more frantic I got.

Mark Clark carefully cut his enchilada with the side of his fork. He shoveled up a bite and placed it in his mouth. He chewed slowly. I could tell there was no way I was going to get out of this. “It won't kill you. And I think you might—”

“Dude, do
not
say ‘get a charge out of it,'” said Quills.

Mark Clark shrugged and kept eating without looking up.

“All right. When is it?” I asked, pushing away my plate. I'd hardly eaten anything.

“Saturday mornings. It won't kill you.” Mark Clark didn't tell me to eat my enchiladas, which prevented me from totally despising him.

“Tomorrow's Saturday,” I said.

“It's from nine to noon,” he said. “Downtown.”

I sighed long and loud and slumped in my chair. It wasn't as if I had any big ideas about how to find Chelsea's missing red diamond, but now I would have to waste my morning learning about switches and circuits and whatever.

“There's something else,” said Mark Clark.

“What?” I said. What could it be? Some new and awful chore?

“It's no big deal,” he said. “Mom's coming home.”

“Just for MC's birthday,” Quills added quickly. Even though we were all technically MCs in our house—Quills's real name was Michael—MC was what we called Mark Clark.

I must have had a weird look on my face, because Mark Clark added, “Not for good. She's not moving back or anything. Just visiting for a few days.”

I didn't know what to think. I took a sip of milk just for something to do. It was nonfat. Yuck yuck
yuck.
There were other kids in our class whose parents were divorced, but I was the only kid who didn't live with her
mom. We all said we wanted Mom to be happy, but we said it too much. We said it all the time. Once, I overheard Morgan and Quills talking about how sucky it was that she'd left while I was still such a kid. It was better to hate them for saying that than to hate her for leaving. I didn't like being called a kid, is what I told myself.

“May I be excused to start the dishes?” When I added this part about the dishes the brothers never said I had to sit and wait until everyone was finished eating. I needed to get away and think.

I took my time unloading the clean dishes from the dishwasher. I made extra sure to put them away with care. Every dinner plate had a chip on the edge from when I hurried, which was most of the time. I had a stomachache, but not from the chicken enchiladas. It was as if someone was inside of me sitting on my guts.

Normally I loved it when Mom came home. We went shopping, first for underwear and socks and necessary things, then funny T-shirts (last time I got one that said THERE BETTER BE SOME CHEESE AT THE END OF THIS MAZE), CDs, and silly jewelry. That's how I knew about the cheap rings at Claire's. My mom loved to go there. She said it made her feel festive. I could just see her trying on a charm bracelet and calling across the store to me, “Minnow, come check these out. Aren't they cute?” She was the only one who got away with calling me
Minnow. But I realized I didn't want her to call me Minnow anymore. Since I'd last seen her I'd suffered an electric shock and solved a mystery and had my first kiss and I was nobody's Minnow anymore.

I looked into the window over the sink. Since the time I was tall enough to do the dinner dishes, I loved to look at my reflection. I thought it was magic, that the window turned into a mirror at night. I stared at myself. Maybe that was the reason I needed to help Chelsea solve the mystery of the missing red diamond. Why I
had
to help her. If I solved another good mystery, I would know for sure that the new Minerva was still around, that my confidence hadn't worn off. I felt sure of this. But if Mom came home, I wouldn't be able to slip out and sleuth around. She would want to Do Things Together. All my time would be taken up with bonding.

Plus, there was also the chance that Mom would like the old insecure Minnow better.

I went to my room. I tried to IM Reggie, but he had logged off. I tried to call Reggie, but he wasn't answering. I took out my rebus notebook and wrote ECNALG, backward glance, and felt my spirits lift for the first time since I'd been home.

I went to bed. It was hot in my room. My stomach had a fist in it from not enough dinner and too much worry. Then I did what I always did to make myself go to sleep these days. I remembered the last dance of the
year, and dancing with Kevin to “Every Rose Has Its Thorn,” which is so lame and sappy, but I didn't care. Even though everyone was sweaty from dancing, he still smelled like soap and chlorine, like all swimmers do. Then I thought about how he kissed me outside in the parking lot before Mark Clark showed up to pick up Hannah and me. It was cold outside, and the wind was coming in off the river. What I tried hard not to think about was that Kevin had been late to the dance, so late that I thought he wasn't going to make it. He apologized as soon as he arrived, said he'd just broken up with his girlfriend and she hadn't taken it very well. I didn't like thinking he'd just had a girlfriend three hours before he was kissing me. He didn't tell me the girlfriend's name, and I didn't ask.

Then, suddenly, it was 8:00 A.M. and the sun was blasting through my curtainless windows. Mark Clark was standing in the doorway telling me it was time to get up. It was already warm in my room. Summer was here, and it seemed, suddenly, as if mine was going to be as cursed as the Hope diamond.

Basic electronics was held downtown in a building near Portland State University, in the middle of a grove of tall glass office buildings and more importantly, half a block from MAX. Mark Clark said he would drop me off, but that I could take MAX home. The day was dark-glasses bright, so different from yesterday it was as if the days of late June weren't even in the same season. I wore a pair of Bermudas, a T-shirt with tiny yellow and pink flowers, and my turquoise Chuck Taylors.

The classroom for basic electronics didn't have any windows. A white board ran along the front, and a name was written on it in big blue letters: Mr. Lawndale. This was obviously the teacher, who was standing at the front of the room behind a long, tall table with a bunch of electronic equipment on it, colorful wires, meters, gauges,
and I don't know what all. It looked as if a toaster had exploded up there.