Worse Than Weird Read online

  Willa Moore and Brie Vo.

  If it weren’t for the two of them, I’d be permanently positioned as a middle school bottom-feeder, clinging to the lowest rung on my classmates’ hierarchy ladder, a forever stinkbug. But Willa had looped her elbow with mine not long after the first-grade sharing episode. She’d leaned toward me and said, “Brie and I like dancing and drums. We’d come to the Earth Festival.” They are the only two people at school who don’t call me names, laugh at my clothes, or tease me about my parents.

  I turn back around to finish thanking Joey, but he’s gone. “Did you guys see where he went?”

  “Who?” Willa says.

  “Joey Marino.”

  “The new kid?” Willa asks.

  Brie spins around. “I don’t see him. Why?”

  I turn in every direction, looking for the gray T-shirt, dark jeans, and scuffed black combat boots he wears every day. I might be the only person who notices that. Maybe it’s because my secondhand wardrobe is similarly limited.

  Garage-Sale Girl. Mac and Trash.

  “He’s kind of a phantom, don’t you think?” Willa asks.

  She’s right. Joey Marino has a way of appearing out of the blue, like a magician waved his wand and pulled him out of a hat. Ta-da!

  And he disappears just as quickly. Poof!

  “What are the feathers for, Mac?” Brie asks.

  “New chicken.” I toss them in the hallway garbage bin just as the bell rings.

  Willa grabs my arm. “Come on, Mac. Let’s dance to class. There’s only two days of school left.”

  Brie strides forward, leading the way. Willa chassés with pointed toes, holding one of my hands, and I touch my head, smoothing my braid, checking for more stray feathers.

  I barely listen to Mr. Miller talk about the summer reading list. I watch the second hand of the clock tick, tick. I borrow Willa’s plastic sharpener and place my pencil in the hole, twisting it slowly, studying how the shaved-off piece forms a perfect spiral. I doodle spirals on the margins of a paper, and my brain automatically figures out the nested loops I would use to code them. I have to talk to . . . Coho about this coding camp. I need his help convincing Hank and Coral.

  When I write a computer code, I can block out the weirdness of their world. No one tells me to consider the size of my carbon footprint. When I code, no one tells me my pants are muddy, Skunk Stripe, or that I have chicken feed on my shirt, Little Red Hen. No one sneers at the kale and kohlrabi chips in my lunch, Kalebrains. When I code no one . . .

  “Mac. Mac!” Willa leans down. Her nose is practically touching mine.

  “What?”

  “It’s time for tech class. Why are you drawing snails?”

  I just shake my head and quickly put my supplies away.

  Tech class breezes by as always, and with ten minutes left in the period, Mrs. Naberhaus tells us to line up and turn in our laptops for the summer. I go to the end of the line. I want to hold this computer for as long as I possibly can.

  When I get to her desk, she smiles. “Mac, did you talk to your parents about the camp?”

  I nod, but I’m lying. I don’t mention that I’m still working through my plan.

  “I have something for you,” she says. “Set your laptop on that pile.”

  She pulls down the poster that hung behind her desk all year. Girls Are Supercoders. She hands it to me. “You should have this. Coding is your superpower.”

  Every neuron in my body flickers with life. I wish she would tell Hank and Coral this. “Thank you.”

  “I still don’t have your application form. Do you need another one?”

  I lie again and nod my head yes. The form is in my binder. Blank. Waiting for approval.

  Mrs. Naberhaus shuffles through the papers on her desk. “I checked this morning and there are only two slots in the camp left. Get it back to me quickly with that five-hundred-dollar payment too.” She hands me another application.

  All those livened neurons go dead.

  There are so many obstacles.

  Two slots left.

  Five hundred dollars.

  Parents who believe technology is destroying the earth.

  But I still have hope. There’s still Coho. He may have changed his name and grown a beard, but he’s still the same inside.

  Isn’t he?

  I roll up the poster and tuck it under my arm.

  Girls Are Supercoders.

  Chapter Three

  The Sighting at the Joan of Arc Statue

  After school, Willa, Brie, and I take a long walk, killing some time before Brie has swim practice.

  We’re walking side by side on Glisan Street when Willa hoists herself onto the brick wall around a neighborhood church. She raises her arms and shrieks, “One more day of school!”

  “Willa! Get down. You’re so loud,” Brie says.

  “You guys, it’s almost summer. Come up here with me.” Willa wiggles her skinny hips, hollering, “No more sixth grade!”

  “Don’t fall,” Brie says, but she’s laughing, and she effortlessly lifts her body onto the wall and stands by Willa.

  “My soul needs to dance,” Willa says. “You should both try it.”

  “My parents seem to think my soul needs to swim.” Brie waves her arms in a breaststroke motion. “That’s my whole summer, training for the state meet in August.”

  “Chlorination time,” Willa sings, mimicking Brie’s arm motions.

  “It never ends.”

  “Mac, get up here. You’re missing all the fun.” Willa pumps her palms in the air.

  I walk back to the lowest part of the brick wall and step up, inching my way toward my friends.

  Willa grabs my hand when I get to her and lifts it in the air. “What are your parents doing for their Earth Festival this year? Making drums? Making dream pillows?”

  “I don’t even want to know.” I remember Coral’s mention of some big plans this morning.

  “You know, Willa, there’s always dancing at Mac’s Earth Festival. You should go,” Brie suggests.

  “It’s not my festival.” I feel dizzy from the height of the wall, so I sit down, dangling my feet over the bricks. “Besides, I’m not doing anything with their festival because I’m still planning to go to that computer camp.”

  “You mean your parents said yes?” Willa asks.

  “Well, not—”

  “You haven’t asked them, have you?” Brie sits down next to me and bumps my shoulder.

  In my head, I can hear Hank’s response: Mac, we feel there could be a negative impact on your internal spiritual growth if you sit in front of a screen all day.

  And Coral’s follow-up: MacKenna, we believe your young eyes need to absorb and then reflect the beauty of the earth we live on.

  And then they would stare at me with distant, dreamy smiles, looking right through me, their daughter made of glass, seeing something on the other side of me that only they want to see.

  Willa drops down on my other side, swinging her legs against the brick wall. “What about your cousin James? He’s going to help you convince them, right?”

  I’m halted from answering, because at that moment, there’s a burst of ting-ting-tings and a sudden convergence of people and bicycles around the golden Joan of Arc statue in the middle of the Glisan Street roundabout.

  And the people are . . .

  “Oh my God!” I freeze.

  Brie screams.

  The people all line up in a row in front of Joan of Arc.

  Willa bounces to her feet and roars in laughter. “The Portland Naked Bikers!”

  Willa’s right. Every person by the statue straddles their bikes in various forms of nudity. Some attempt to conceal their . . . parts . . . with body paint and glitter. Some wear thick leis around their necks and grass skirts around their waists.

  And there, standing in the middle of the row of near nakedness, is Coral.

  Her dreadlocks drape over her pale-skinned shoulders.

 
; She wears some sort of leafy green bikini—her organic garden kale, perhaps.

  Next to Coral stands Coho, our cousin, the CIO of Technobotical Software. He also wears something leafy below his navel.

  Willa continues to laugh. “How long has your mom been a naked biker?” She slaps me on the shoulder with the back of her hand.

  For a long, long time. It’s something I’ve never told my friends. Some family secrets should remain deep, deep underground. I grip the brick wall with my fingers. Even sitting down, I feel like I might topple over.

  Willa’s still standing, gaping at the bikers. Brie has the decency to turn her back, but she’s laughing too, the shock of the initial sighting now worn off.

  Somehow, I manage to unfreeze myself, but I’m not laughing. I squeeze my eyes shut to hide the sight at the statue. I hope there are no cops. This isn’t a planned, sanctioned naked biking event, is it? Isn’t this indecent exposure in broad daylight? I’m certain there are city laws against this.

  “Mac!” Willa slaps my shoulder again. “Is that your bike?”

  My eyes pop open and squint at the mortifying sight before me.

  Coral sits on my bicycle. My eighteen-speed mountain bike that I told her this morning she could borrow.

  Coral is riding my bike naked!

  Willa keeps laughing. She’s close to tears. “I gotta get a photo!”

  “No, you don’t,” I holler. “Stop looking at them!”

  “Mac, this is hilarious.”

  “Willa, don’t.” Brie grabs Willa’s phone.

  I lean over, my hands on my knees, wheezing.

  “You can’t tell anyone.” I seek my friends’ faces, urging them to remain silent, imagining the horrifying names I might be called for this. Bikebutt. Nudist Mama.

  Brie glares at Willa. “We aren’t going to say anything, right, Willa?”

  “Well, I won’t say a word, but I don’t know about him.” She points across Glisan Street.

  I follow Willa’s finger, which aims directly at a boy on the corner across the street.

  Joey Marino.

  He raises his hand and waves at all three of us.

  I hunch over and close my eyes again. I silently wish for a crevasse to appear in the sidewalk so the wall I’m sitting on will collapse and I’ll instantly fall inside the gap.

  No. Backspace. Delete that.

  I want a crevasse to appear around Coral, so she will fall inside . . . and Coho can go with her.

  Just then, a new stab of panic hits my chest. What if Joey Marino says something? Does he know Coral is my mom? I should go talk to him. Make sure he . . .

  But when I look up, he’s not there.

  He’s vanished.

  Again.

  Chapter Four

  Money

  I arrive home to find Hank in the garage drumming for Poppy. Coral is home too. I see her through the kitchen window, standing at the sink. Fortunately, she now has a shirt on.

  I avoid my parents and walk around the house to the front door. Inside, Coho sits crisscross on the futon couch, strumming a guitar and wailing a song about mountain air.

  “Hey, Mac.” He stops playing when I close the door. “Great to see you again.”

  I look at our cousin’s scruffy beard, and the same soccer shorts he wore this morning, and the guitar on his lap. An enormous lump of air forms in my throat. He gazes at me. Maybe he can see the lump growing. Maybe he can read all the questions swirling in my brain.

  “Sit, Mac.” He scoots to the edge of the futon.

  “Why did you change your name?” It seems like a good question to start with.

  “It felt right. A new path needs a clean slate, a clearing away of old energies and titles.”

  “Are you on vacation?” I ask. “How long are you staying? Where’s your car?”

  “I quit my job, Mac.”

  “You what?”

  “I was getting signals. Physical signals. I was feeling an internal resistance to my external daily life. Tingles. Rashes. Itching. Stomach pains. It was excruciating.” Coho’s face pales as he speaks.

  “Are you sick?” I’m struggling to swallow the lump in my throat, but I keep trying.

  “Not anymore. I took two weeks off. I escaped the city and unplugged. No electronics. Nothing. Just me, my thoughts, and the earth surrounding me.”

  These don’t sound like the words James normally speaks. They sound like things Hank and Coral would say. I want him to pull out his three laptops and show me the programs he’s written to increase the efficiency of the company’s business reports.

  I want to pull the forms for my coding camp out of my bag and show him the opportunity that awaits me. I want to unroll my poster, Girls Are Supercoders, and watch his face light up like it did two years ago when I showed him the school projects I made with the microcomputer, the weather station, the arcade stick.

  But Coho just keeps speaking his new language. “Those two weeks made me evolve into a new human, Mac. The physical pain is gone. I feel I’ve reached an enlightened moment. The world of technology imprisoned me on a single path.”

  My hand moves to my throat. The lump has burst. Little bits and pieces of it flow through me. Some bits form twinges and tingles on my arms. Some pieces rush to my face, forming tears. I stand up and turn my back to Coho.

  “I have surprises coming your way, Mac, but I’ll give you some space now. We’ll talk later.” He touches my shoulder and heads to the kitchen.

  Coho has surprised me enough already. I don’t think I want to talk to him anymore. I don’t need another Hank and Coral person in my life. I need someone on my side. Someone to help me.

  I flop down on my futon island and stare at the blank wall. I can hear voices in the kitchen. I smell sandalwood from Coral’s incense burner.

  Sitting up, I pull the poster Mrs. Naberhaus gave me from my bag and I unroll it.

  Girls Are Supercoders.

  How will I go to this camp now? My entire plan is falling apart. None of the original steps are working. I’ll have to refactor it all.

  Obstacle number one: I need a good story for Hank and Coral, explaining what I’m doing for the eight weeks of camp. It must be a perfectly sound, environmentally conscious reason to be away from home all day. Maybe I can tell them I’m pulling invasive ivy from the wetlands near the river. They’ll love that.

  Obstacle number two: I need to get the form signed with a parent signature.

  Hmmm . . . my eyes scan the living room and pause at the bookshelf. There’s a basket where Coral tosses papers, some to keep and some to recycle. Rising from my futon island, I sift through the papers and find what I’m looking for . . . Hank’s scribble of a signature. I grab a pencil and attempt to copy it. My fifth attempt is pretty close.

  This is forgery, and it’s illegal.

  But it’s worth it to go to this camp.

  Obstacle number three is my biggest: the five-hundred-dollar price tag. Without Coho’s help, where will I get the money?

  Inside a wooden box is my life savings, consisting of bills and coins I’ve found and collected. I don’t even have to count it. I know how much I have: $29.33. That leaves me a balance of $470.67.

  There must be a way to get money. And I’ll figure it out, just like I figure out the right commands for all my programming challenges.

  I take out some paper and begin a flowchart. I title it How to Get $500. In a box at the top I write in $29.33, and then I add new boxes. One for walking our neighbor’s dog once school ends. He’ll pay me two dollars each morning walk. My brain quickly calculates the earnings . . . ten weeks of summer, seven days each week gives me $140. I fill that in the box. But I won’t have $140 in time to pay for the camp. I scratch it out and write in $20.

  I make a box for Money Found.

  I make a box titled Borrow from Willa?

  Another for Borrow from Brie?

  I sketch in several more blank boxes for other income ideas.

  If I received a
llowance, I could write that in, but Hank and Coral have always refused. “MacKenna, the family unit is a community,” they say. “Everyone pitches in. Everyone is rewarded.”

  But I never feel rewarded. Willa gets twenty dollars a week to spend as she pleases. I’m not sure if she does any chores. Maybe laundry, but her parents have a washing machine. They don’t hand-wash clothes in the sink with homemade organic soaps.

  If I still had my school laptop, I could do a search right now: Best way for a 12-year-old to earn money.

  Maybe I could sell something. I write Sell Stuff in one of the boxes on my flowchart. Maybe the chicken eggs. But four eggs a day wouldn’t earn much, and Hank would notice.

  What about Coral’s scented candles? But who would buy them? And how many could I really sell?

  Coral pops her head in the living room doorway and smiles. “MacKenna? Dinner’s ready.”

  She’s made kale salad. I stare at the chopped leaves of power greens, wondering if these leaves are fresh from the garden, or whether they were picked earlier in the morning and then worn. . . .

  I put my fork down.

  Hank touches my hand. “Mac, it looks like you’re absorbing something intense right now.”

  “I am,” I say truthfully. “I’m thinking about how to earn some money.”

  Coral laughs and says to Coho, “Our MacKenna’s very attached to her financial future.”

  Coho nods. “And so was I, but, Mac”—he speaks softly—“money does not bring you the true serenity you need.”

  Coral nods back at him.

  Coho continues: “The thing about money, Mac—”

  “I’m sorry.” I push my chair back. “May I be excused? I have a few things to do before the last day of school.”

  “Definitely,” Hank says. “Go sort out your thoughts, Mac. I’ll drum for you later.”

  I raise my palm. “No, I’m good. Really.”

  It’s a lie, but drumming isn’t going to help.

  Not one bit.

  The only thing that will help is figuring out how to get that money.

  Chapter Five