Rebel McKenzie (4 page)

And—I kid you not—she wore a
tiara
. On a Monday morning!

The woman unlocked the front door of their trailer. “C'mon and rest now, sweetie.”

“I want to practice my song again,” the girl said. “I was a little off today.”

“Don't stay in the sun long,” her mother said. “You have to be careful of your fair complexion.”

“I know. A young lady can never start taking care of her skin too soon.” When her mother closed the door, the girl took a little bitty guitar from the front seat. Not a toy guitar—just small.

Then she planted her yellow strap shoes wide apart and began strumming the little guitar.

“Yessir, that's my baby. Nossir, don't mean maybe—”
As she played and sang, she wiggled her hips in time.

Suddenly the girl arched backward like she was having a fit and swung the little guitar over her head. With her arms bent at a weird angle, she strummed the guitar
behind her head
and kept singing.

“That's my baby nooooooow!”

My jaw dropped in astonishment. “What
is
that?” I asked.

“That,” Lacey Jane replied dryly, “is Bambi Lovering. Just one of the ordinary, boring people in Grandview Estates.”

When people think about Ice Age animals—and they don't think about them nearly enough—they always mention the sabertoothed lion.


Its real name is Smilodon. You say it SMILEodon. These cats weighed almost 900 pounds and had powerful muscles in their shoulders so they could knock down their prey. Their paws were as big as turkey platters. And they had long curved canine teeth called sabers. The sabers were eight inches long!


Scientists used to think that Smilodon jumped on its prey and ripped its throat open. Blood would gush everywhere, and the animal would bleed to death, if it didn't die of shock first at seeing those great big long front teeth.


But paleontologists, who are way smarter than regular scientists, studied the fossil teeth of Smilodon. The saber teeth never had any marks on them like from nicking neck bones. They figured out that the big cats tore into the soft underbellies of their prey instead.


Sneaky, huh?


B
ambi's nose practically touched the ground as she ended her performance with a deep curtsy. I'd never seen anyone curtsy except in the movies, and never that low. I wondered how she kept from toppling over.

Rudy clapped enthusiastically. I nudged his arm. “Quit it.”

But Bambi spotted us and trotted across the street, yellow skirts billowing. She waved like she was riding on a parade float.

“Hi!” she chirped. “Y'all just move in?”

“My sister did,” I said. “I'm just staying for the summer to take care of Rudy here while she goes to beauty school. I'm Rebel.”

“Hi, Rebel! Hi, Rudy!”

Rudy gaped at Bambi like a catfish till I elbowed him again. He closed his mouth but didn't take his eyes off her.

“I guess you already know Lacey Jane,” I said, since Lacey Jane just stood there with her lips pressed tight.

“Mmm.” Bambi tipped her head back as if she smelled something unpleasant. Then she flashed a practiced smile. “What'd you think of my song? The judges gave me first place in talent.”

“But last place in modesty,” Lacey Jane finally spoke.

“Were you in a contest or something?” I asked.

“The John Deere Culpeper dealership beauty pageant. Young Miss category,” Bambi replied expansively. “I placed first in talent and overall appearance, naturally. But only second in personality because a bumblebee flew up my skirt while I was telling the judges my life's ambition.”

“Poor bee probably died from the stink.”

I giggled at Lacey Jane's remark.

“Did you get stung?” Rudy asked Bambi, all concerned.

She pursed her lips in a pout. “No, but I got distracted, which is even worse. You shouldn't let anything bother you during the judges' interview. They took off points and I came in second.”

“So you lost,” Lacey Jane said gleefully.

“I can tell you two are best friends,” I said, looking from one to the other. Lacey Jane clearly couldn't stand Bambi; but then, Lacey Jane didn't much like anybody from what I'd seen.

“Hardly.” Lacey Jane gave a wicked grin. “Poor little beauty queen didn't win the crown.”

“I'll have you know, second place was a tiara, a check for five hundred dollars, and an official John Deere T-shirt and ball cap,” Bambi said smugly. “I gave Daddy the John Deere stuff. Mama will probably put the check in the bank. I have my own savings account with all the money I've earned from beauty pageants.”

I slapped my forehead, staggering. “Five hundred
dol
lars
? And all you did was play that little guitar and sing that weird song?”

“It's a ukulele. A Hawaiian guitar.” She held up the four-string guitar by the neck. “The other girls jump around the stage in satin shorts and do stuff like the splits. Me, I come out and sing and pluck my ukulele. The judges think I'm charming.”

“You played it behind your
head
,” I said.

Bambi grinned. “Neat, huh? I made that part up myself. Mama says it adds sparkle to my act.”

Lacey Jane strummed an imaginary guitar and sang mockingly, “That's my baby nooooooooow!”

Bambi's brows drew together. Suddenly she wasn't so pretty. “You're just jealous, Lacey Jane Whistle, because I'm going to make something of myself!”

That snagged my attention. Bambi didn't seem like the type who had goals in life. “What do you want to do?” I asked.

“First, I'll win the Miss Virginia pageant. Then I'll be crowned Miss America—”

Lacey Jane pretended to throw up. “Yeah, right!”

Bambi ignored her. “Miss America gets a big scholarship. I'm going to business college, and when I get out I'm going to be a beauty expert and have my own beauty empire—products, an advice column, maybe even a TV show.”

Well, if that didn't beat all. I guess with a name like Bambi Lovering, I shouldn't expect her to aim to cure cancer.

“I've already started on my life's plan,” she rattled on. “I have my own column in our school newspaper. It's called ‘Bambi Lovering's Expert Beauty Tips.' My teacher said sales of
Red Onion Peels
doubled once my column started in it.”

“I'm surprised you haven't been sued yet,” said Lacey Jane. “You name names in that stupid column!”

“How was I to know Kady Blackwell would shave the hair off her arms with her daddy's razor?” Bambi said loftily. “I just
mentioned
that if she didn't want to set her arm hair on rollers, she might try a bleach cream, is all.”

Rudy gawked at Bambi like she was made out of cake. “Will you come over and play with me sometime?”

She glanced at him. “I'm awful busy with singing lessons and the beauty advice book I'm writing.” Then she fastened her round doll's eyes on me. “You could do with a little work, Rebel. You don't make the most of what you have.”

“And what would that be?” I asked, even though I didn't give a fig about my looks.

She walked all around me like I was a car in a showroom, tapping her index finger on her chin. “Hmmm. Your eyelashes are on the puny side, but your hair is nice and thick. You should curl it instead of letting it hang there like a raggy curtain.”

“My hair is fine the way it is.”

Bambi let out a tragic sigh. “Too bad. You don't have
one
single natural sign of beauty.”

Lacey Jane rolled her eyes skyward. “Here we go. Another episode of why Bambi Lovering is the star of the universe and everybody else is ugly as a mud fence.”

“I possess three natural signs of beauty,” Bambi began, like she was telling a fairy tale. She pulled her bangs back. “See that vee? That's a widow's peak. Most people have plain old hairlines, like yours. I also have large front teeth—”

“Beaver teeth,” Lacey Jane remarked. I snickered. When Lacey Jane wasn't being a bully, she was a real cutup.

Bambi glared at her. “I do
not
have beaver teeth! Mama says my teeth are pretty as wedding china and I could be a toothpaste model. My final sign of beauty is this mole under my left eye.” She pointed to a tiny dark spot I thought was an ink mark. “Back in the days of George Washington, ladies used to paste fake moles on their face. Sometimes the moles were shaped like hearts or moons or stars. Mama told me all this because on the day I was born—”

“The worst day in the history of the world,” Lacey Jane said.

“—the nurse laid me in my mama's arms and said, ‘Mrs. Lovering, that child is a natural beauty.' Since then Mama's been studying up on natural beauties like Marilyn Monroe and Scarlett O'Hara and Elizabeth Taylor. I wish I had violet eyes like Elizabeth Taylor, but I do have a ring around my iris. See it?”

A yawn pushed out of my mouth that I didn't bother to hide. “Do you
ever
talk about anything but yourself?” I talked about
my
self, but at least I was interesting.

She peered at me. “Is that a ring around your iris? No. Well, you
almost
had a natural sign of beauty.”

“Bambi,” said Lacey Jane. “Shut up.”

“You shut up. You're still mad about the last day of school.” Bambi explained to me, “Leonard Smoot pushed her down when we got off the bus and later he took me to the movies. Lacey Jane had a big crush on him all year.”

Lacey Jane balled her fists. “I did not! You think every boy alive is madly in love with you!”

“I love you,” said Rudy in a small voice. Naked infatuation lit his pale face.

Oh, brother. I wondered if Rudy would sleepwalk over to Bambi's trailer and serenade her with “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.”

Bambi patted his cheek. “Bless your pea-picking little heart!” All business again, she announced, “This summer I'm doing a special back-to-school package. Head-to-toe makeover for only five dollars. Plus two typed pages of beauty hints, and that
includes
your colors! What do you say?”

“I say, buzz off.” Where did that girl get her nerve?

“You're missing a fabulous opportunity.”

Across the street, the front door of her trailer opened, and her mother called out, “C'mon in, sugar. I drew a nice cool oatmeal bath for you.” The door closed again.

“Think it over,” Bambi said, heading home. “Especially you, Lacey Jane. With looks like yours, you don't have a minute to lose—”

Before I could blink, Lacey Jane flew at Bambi, clawing the tiara off her head.

“Oww!” Bambi cried. The tiara was tangled in her curls, but Lacey Jane kept yanking.

I grabbed her arm. “Let's get out of here before her mother comes after us!”

“Go soak your stupid head in your stupid oatmeal bath!” Lacey Jane yelled over her shoulder as I dragged her away.

“Redheads should never wear pink!” Bambi fired back. “You look pukeish!”

I tugged Lacey Jane down the street toward the firehouse. Rudy reluctantly tripped along behind us, already pining for his True Love.

“Did you and Bambi have words before you fell out?” I asked Lacey Jane.

The skin under her eyes grew tight. “I don't want to talk about it, okay?”

“Okay, okay.” Lacey Jane was like a live bomb. You never knew what would set off her (very short) fuse.

At the station, two firemen hosed a big red truck parked on the cement driveway. Rudy ran up to one of them and blurted, “Hey, did you just come from a fire? Did the house burn down? Did anybody die?”

I expected him to whip out his fashion magazines and offer to pick out the victim's funeral outfits.

“Rudy Parsley,” I bellowed. “Get over here.”

Inside the firehouse the break room was cool and dim. Cracked plastic chairs faced a battered TV set. A bank of vending machines lined one wall.

“What do you want?” Lacey Jane asked, standing in front of the soda machine.

“I don't have any money.” I still had my ten bucks, but I owed Skeeter twenty, and I didn't know when he'd be sprung from prison.

“Daddy leaves me a few dollars before he goes to work.” Lacey Jane fed a bill into the machine. “Dr Pepper okay?” She punched the button, and the bottle rolled down.

I popped the cap while she debated over the snack selections. “We need salt to get rid of the sugar taste from all those Neccos we ate.”

“You mean all that sickening sweetness from Bambi.” Lacey Jane pulled the knob for a bag of barbecue potato chips.

“Me first!” Rudy said, reaching for the Dr Pepper.

“You last.” As I sipped from the bottle, I noticed a poster bristling with exclamation points by the candy machine. “Hey, look at this.”

Lacey Jane read the poster out loud. “‘Announcing the Second Annual Frog Level Volunteer Firemen's Carnival. Games, Prizes, Rides Galore! Beauty Pageant! Four Age Categories! Two Hundred Fifty Dollars Top Prize!'”

“A beauty pageant,” I breathed. And
prize
money. A pot of gold to finance my trip to the August Kids' Dig. “Let's enter!”

Lacey Jane stared at me. “Us? Enter a beauty pageant? Are you crazy?”

“Why not? We're not homely.” Actually, Lacey Jane was, a little. Okay, more than a little. But her face wouldn't make a train jump the tracks or anything. “I think it'll be fun. Let's do it.”

“Did you read the fine print?” Her finger stabbed a line at the bottom of the poster.

$25 application fee. register at better-off-dead pest control and bridal consignment.

“Dang.” My pot-of-gold bubble burst. “I'm broker than four o'clock.”

“My dad will lend you the money if you need it,” Lacey Jane offered.

“I couldn't take your father's money.” But if I won, I could pay him back. And Skeeter.
And
have enough left over to go to Saltville. I could almost taste the Bison Bacon. But would her father be so keen to lend me money if Lacey Jane wasn't in the contest, too? “I'm not entering unless you do,” I said.

“What about Bambi? She's a twit, but she's still pretty stiff competition.”

“Did she enter last year?”

The skin tightened under Lacey Jane's eyes again. “I don't know. We didn't go to the firemen's carnival last summer.”

“I bet she won't even bother with this piddly little contest,” I said. “Anyway, we look just as good as her.”

Lacey Jane twisted a piece of her lank hair. “I don't have curly hair like Bambi.”

“So? My sister will fix your hair. She's practically a licensed beautician.”

She kept throwing boulders in the road. “We don't have any talent.”

“Who says we don't?” I protested. “You're loaded with talent. I bet you can't walk across the floor without twirling two hula hoops and yodeling.”

“Well…maybe.” She cracked a smile. “How about you? What's your talent?”

“Yeah,” Rudy said. “What's your talent, Rebel?”