“. . . and then Krissie hit the ball in the air like a baseball and it bounced off Krissy’s head, and Krissy hit Chrissy because—”
“You’re doing it again,” said Scarlett, her head stuck in her school locker.
“Wha—oh, right.” Tananda backtracked. “Okay, so, Krissie with an ‘i-e’ hit the ball in the air like a baseball, and it bounced off Krissy with a ‘y’s head and so she turned and hit Chrissy with a ‘c-h’ and a ‘y’ because she thought she’d done it, but Chrissee with a ‘c-h’ and an ‘e-e’ got mad and hit Krissie with an ‘i-e’ because it was her fault, and everybody started hitting each other and that was great until Miz Morris came charging out on the field waving her clipboard and screaming, ‘God bleeping damn it, this isn’t bleeping rollerball, this is bleeping girls’ field hockey, and if you bleeping bitches can’t keep out of the bleeping emergency room and send the other team to the bleeping emergency room instead, then I’ll send you back to bleeping Economics class and you can draw bleeping diagrams on the bleeping chalkboard with Mrs. Bennett until you get bleeping menopause,’ and that sort of got us calmed down.” Tananda shook her head with admiration. “Miz Morris is a hard ass, but she’s got a great command voice.”
Tananda paused as Scarlett shut and locked her school locker, then struggled to lift her overstuffed gray backpack. Tan pushed her chewing gum to one side of her mouth and pointed. “Need a hand with that?”
“No,” gasped Scarlett, heaving the backpack straps over her shoulders and hopping to get the weight properly seated on her back. “I’m—oof!—fine!”
“You should get on the team,” said Tananda, chewing her gum again. “Then you won’t have to carry so many books.”
Scarlett eyed her friend. Tananda was a tall, willowy teen with pale blonde hair and a fondness for conservative, one-piece pastel dresses that gave the fatal illusion that she was on the meek side. Her blonde, shoulder-length bangs had a greenish sheen from an attempt to dye her hair several months ago. Today she had her blue-and-gold field hockey bag slung over one shoulder—and no books in sight.
“I like books,” said Scarlett.
Tananda shrugged. “Whatever. You get tired of it, come join the Leopards and you’ll get a by on some of your tests. Plus, you get to fight a lot. It’s cool.”
“That doesn’t seem—” Scarlett gave up. “Never mind. I’m ready. Thanks for going with me.”
“No prob. Practice isn’t until five, so I got time.” Tananda snapped her gum as they walked toward the exit doors. “Why the Chinese place?”
“Just curious about something.”
“Were you expecting trouble?” The eagerness in Tananda’s voice could not be missed.
“I don’t know,” said Scarlett. “I just . . . wanted to be careful.”
“Careful. Got it.” Tananda grinned, revealing chipped teeth. She tugged the hockey stick bag farther up on her shoulder. “Hey, how’s that mouse doing? The one you got the other day from Bitch? I mean, Barch?”
Scarlett looked around hastily, half expecting the science teacher to be right behind them. “He—uh—it’s fine, just fine.”
“Looked like it was sick either or in withdrawal. That Daria give it heroin or something?”
“No, it, uh, had a bad cold. It’s better now. Um, don’t tell Brittany anything about it, please. Her little brother’s trying to get the mouse from me, and I don’t want him to have it.”
“Boobzilla has a brother?” Tananda hit the exit doors and held one open for Scarlett. “Does he got mental problems like his big sis?”
“He’s a mean kid,” said Scarlett glumly. “He likes to torture animals.”
Tananda looked down at Scarlett with narrow eyes. “Torture animals? How?”
Scarlett felt her stomach churn. She hated talking about stuff like this. “He just likes to hurt them any way he can.”
“That’s just sick, hurting little animals,” said Tananda. Her voice was hard and cold. “Freaking little bastard. I’ll kick his freaking little bastard ass next time I see him.”
“Don’t start a fight!”
“Oh,” said Tananda, her voice becoming eager again. “I won’t. Promise. I won’t start a fight.”
Scarlett rolled her eyes. She had no idea why a sports fiend like Tananda had picked her to be a friend, but she knew better than to question her luck. “Are you playing in a game Saturday?”
“Yeah.” Tananda became even more animated. “We meet the Oakwood Ho’s at nine in the morning on Field B behind the school. You ought to come see it. First game of the season. Can’t wait.”
“You’re playing the Oakwood Knotholes?”
“That’s what I said.”
Scarlett made a dubious face as they walked toward downtown Lawndale. “Don’t you think that high school girls’ field hockey is getting sort of . . . uh . . . out of, uh, control?”
“Out of control?” Tananda sounded genuinely puzzled. “How?”
“Well . . . I can hear your team screaming, ‘Kill! Kill! Kill!’ on the practice field all the way out to my aunt’s apartment, five blocks away.”
Tananda nodded, still puzzled. “So?”
Scarlett sighed. “Good luck on Saturday. I’ll try to make it. I’ve never been to any athletic game before.”
“You ought to go. Beats the living crap out of that wussy-ass football that Chairman Li likes.”
“You shouldn’t call her that.”
“Why?” Tananda gave a half smile and looked around. “You see her following us?”
“Well, one day she might, and she might get mad and give you detention.”
Tananda came to a stop and clapped a hand to her forehead, uttering a string of swear words that Scarlett had never even considered saying aloud. “I forgot I had detention today,” Tananda said when she finished. She shrugged and continued walking. “Screw it. I’ll stay after school tomorrow. Morris runs detention and she knows me. I’ll tell her I had stuff to do. She won’t care.”
“I don’t mean to be rude,” said Scarlett carefully, “and I’m sorry if this sounds like that, but how come you get into trouble so often?”
Tananda shrugged again. “It’s a gift.”
“Aren’t you afraid they’ll send you to the school psychologist, Dr. Manson?”
“Heh. Manson.” A knowing grin came over Tananda’s face. “She’s the reason I got detention. She asked me last week how I got such a bad attitude, and I said it was both nature and nurture. Then I asked her how Squeaky Fromme was doing. I think it pissed her off. Fascist know-it-all.”
“Were you the one who wrote ‘Eat the rich!’ on Manson’s door in green spray paint, sometime Monday?”
“Huh.” Tananda tried to suppress her smile. “Don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”
Scarlett exhaled. It was impossible not to like Tananda, even if you dreaded that you might one day get on her bad side. They chatted about homework and classes for a few minutes as they crossed streets and passed businesses. Traffic began to pick up as the early part of rush hour began.
“There it is,” Scarlett said, pointing. “The Good Time Chinese Restaurant.”
Tananda surveyed it and snapped her gum. “Still haven’t told me why you had to come here.”
“To be honest,” said Scarlett slowly, “I’m not sure myself. I have to look around for something.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know. It sounds stupid, I know, but . . . I just have to look around.”
“Sure. Whatever.” Tananda scanned their surroundings. “And I’ll just . . . be careful, like you asked.”
“Don’t kill anyone.”
Tananda smiled and popped her gum again, still scanning the street ahead.
Scarlett came to a stop beside the restaurant, huffing and sweating under the load from her backpack. Her shoulders and lower back ached. After a moment to adjust the backpack’s straps, she led the way down a side alley to the back of the restaurant, where a small parking lot was. The only way out of the artificial box canyon, excluding the door into the restaurant, was an alleyway across the parking lot. An overflowing gray dumpster with “GOOD TIME” written in red Chinese-like letters on its side was the only large object present, other than three small, unoccupied delivery trucks and a stack of mashed cardboard boxes. Scarlett swallowed, fearing that something worse than a mouse might lurk in the immediate area. She wondered if she could take her backpack off and use it as a club if muggers appeared, then decided she couldn’t. The backpack would have to come off in order for her to run away, however, which sounded like a good plan if it came to that.
Something in the air was not quite right. “It’s quiet back here,” Scarlett murmured, trying to steady her nerves.
Tananda said nothing. Looking to the left and right, she reached up and unzipped the side of her long shoulder bag. She pulled out her field hockey stick, which was chipped and scarred in numerous places along its length, and began to take casual swipes at bits of trash on the ground with it, her face expressionless but alert.
Scarlett recalled that Roger the mouse had regained consciousness after his accident—well, non-accident—at this spot. She shivered and studied the ground. It was filthy with dirt, oil spills, wads of gum, and everything else imaginable—and some things that were not imaginable. The asphalt near the dumpster was grooved from the wheels rolling back and forth, probably when the trash truck came by. Scarlett frowned. It occurred to her that the alleyway was just broad enough for a car to pass through, but a big truck would have a hard time getting back here. How did they get rid of all their garbage, then?
Taking a deep breath, she walked forward and stood on tiptoes to peer into the dumpster, which had both lids open from an excess of trash. She didn’t dare touch the corroded rim of the dumpster. Everything looked like the sort of stuff you’d find in a dumpster—used Chinese food cartons, broken glasses, soiled napkins, a newspaper, wadded paper towels, the works. At least it didn’t smell bad.
She frowned, then sniffed deeply.
It didn’t smell at all. The dumpster was clearly full of rotting food, but it didn’t stink.
Scarlett stepped back, then looked around again. A gleam of light from the ground caught her eye. She bent down and picked up a silvery dime, standing up only with an effort under the weight on her back. As she did, pocketing the coin, she noticed Tananda had straightened and now held her hockey stick at the ready with both hands. Scarlett turned to see what Tananda was staring at.
“Hey, lookie here,” said a deep feminine voice. Six teenage girls in jeans, shorts, and slacks now blocked the alleyway, all wearing red T-shirts—and the words “OAKWOOD HIGH KNOTHOLES FIELD HOCKEY” printed across the front in bold gold letters. They stood only twenty-five feet away, grinning at the two girls. Tananda stepped between Scarlett and the newcomers.
“Looks like a couple of local hookers,” said another girl in the group. “Pretty skanky pair if you ask me.”
“You want to see skanky hookers,” said Tananda in a calm, clear voice, “you can go home and look in your mommas’ bedrooms.”
The grins on the Oakwood girls’ faces froze. Scarlett felt the blood run out of her face. It was just about time to run away.
“You’ve got a big mouth for a skinny ho,” said the girl who first spoke, a tall beefy blonde with a pixie cut. Her huge forearms were the sort one only gets from prolonged weightlifting.
“And you’ve got a big ho to go with your big mouth, bitch,” Tananda replied. “Must come from using your hockey stick as a boyfriend.”
The Oakwood girls’ smiles vanished.
“Tan,” whispered Scarlett, now really frightened.
“Nice stick you have,” said the beefy blonde, her face a wall of granite. “How would you like to have it for dinner about now?”
“I’ll feed it to you for dessert,” said Tananda. “You look like you’ve already eaten.” She paused one second, then added in an undertone, “Each other.”
The eyes of the six girls facing them opened very wide.
Fighting panic, Scarlett tried to slip the overweight backpack off her shoulders, but one of the straps snagged a button on her black sweater and she couldn’t undo it. Cold panic shot through her veins right up to her brain.
“Bye-bye, baby,” whispered the blonde, her big hands balled into fists. Tananda raised her hockey stick, knees bent and turning her left side to the newcomers. The blonde took a step forward, the other five following and spreading out to the sides to flank and surround the two Lawndale girls.
Someone behind the Oakwood girls coughed. A girl in the rear turned around and gasped, “Oh, Jesus!” At that point, all the girls turned around, even the blonde.
“Kindergarten must be out,” said a girl’s voice, somewhere from the middle of the alley. Scarlett could not see the speaker. “Aren’t you kids a little far from home?”
“Butt out of this!” snapped the tall blonde—who then grunted with a loud “UNH!” as the curved head of Tananda’s hockey stick slammed into her lower back. The tall blonde sank to her knees, her eyes squeezed shut against the intense pain, and she cursed unintelligibly through her teeth.
“Freeze or eat this,” said Tananda evenly as the other five girls made moves to run. The girls obediently froze in place, looking from Tan to the other girl who kept them hemmed in. Tananda studied her opponents, then called out, “Hi, Angel,” without taking her eyes from them.
“Hey,” said the other girl. “Pickup game with your little friends back here?”
“Yeah, until you showed up and ruined everything.”
“That’s the story of my life,” said the unseen girl. “I’m never where I’m wanted.”
“Where’re you heading?”
“Nowhere. I saw these sweet young things following you and wanted to see if I could party, too.”
“Party’s over,” said Tananda. “Their mommas are calling.” She swung her hockey stick to one side, in the direction of the only alleyway out, on the other side of the little parking lot. “Run,” she said, “and take the boss ho with you.”
“Go to hell,” hissed the Oakwood blonde at Tananda as the other girls helped her to her feet. “You go straight to hell.”
Tananda smiled broadly. “You,” she said, jabbing her hockey stick in the direction of the blonde. “I’m going to pick my teeth with you on Saturday.”
The blonde glared and growled, but the other five girls hustled her away toward the distant alley and escape. When they were gone, Scarlett swallowed, overcome with a giddy wave of relief. Her knees were about to collapse, and she felt like she had to pee in the next thirty seconds or else explode. Her backpack strap was still snagged on her sweater, but she didn’t care anymore.
A tall teen girl with short golden hair brushed back in a retro-‘70s style walked out from the alley that Scarlett and Tananda had taken earlier. Wearing tight baby-blue jeans and a sleeveless white blouse and gray vest, she looked like any other teenager with “PLAY OR DIE” tattooed on her bare left shoulder and a gold winged skull with rubies for eyes on her necklace. A blue-and-gold Leopards hockey-stick bag was slung over her right shoulder. “Practice doesn’t start until five,” she told Tananda. “Don’t wear yourself out early.”
“I wouldn’t have,” grumbled Tananda. “It would’ve been fun.”
“Hmmm.” Angel eyed Scarlett, who was crossing her legs next to the dumpster. “Hey,” she called. “You’re that ankh girl, right?”
“Yeah!” Scarlett squeaked. “Do you mind if I go into the restaurant for a moment? I need to use the bathroom. I’m kind of in a hurry.”
Angel and Tananda exchanged looks. “Sure,” said Angel. “We can’t eat before practice, but maybe you can fill me in on what just happened when we head back to the field.”
“I didn’t start it this time!” Tananda began, looking irritated. “I swear, they came up—”
“I saw it, I saw it, don’t get your thong in a knot. What were you doing back here, anyway?”
Tananda pointed at Scarlett, who was hurrying ahead with fast, small steps to get into the restaurant. Scarlett heard them talk just before she hit the door going in. “She wanted me to go with her,” Tananda said. “Dunno why. Looking for something, I think.”
“She lose something around here?”
“I dunno, ask her.”
“Didn’t you ask her?”
“Hey, I can’t do everything!”
A frigid blast of air conditioning washed over Scarlett as she entered the Good Time restaurant. The smell of spicy Chinese dishes and loud dance music berated her senses next. No one was at the cashier’s station; the walls were hung with watercolors of various mundane landscapes and city scenes, giving the restaurant a very un-Chinese look. Under considerable pressure to find a bathroom, Scarlett scurried toward the back where she thought her goal might lie.
“Can I help you, hon?” called a woman behind her.
Scarlett flinched and turned around. Coming through a black-painted doorway was a tall, semi-attractive blonde dressed in a red tank top and matching miniskirt. With her elaborate tattoos and vacant smile, the overall effect was as trashy as anything The Jerry Springer Show could cough up.
“I need to use the restroom!” Scarlett hissed.
“Well, sure!” said the blonde, pointing. “It’s down that hall on the right! Can’t miss it!”
Scarlett finished her business in a more relaxed frame of mind. Her relaxed state vanished when she opened the restroom door and discovered a full-grown German shepherd sitting immediately outside the bathroom in the hall, growling at her. She froze in the doorway, too frightened to scream or shut the door.
“Hermione!” cried the blonde. She walked over and shook a finger at the wolflike dog. “Shame on you! She’s a customer!” The blonde rubbed the dog’s head with a careless hand, smiling at the now-silent beast. “Don’t be scared of her, hon. Hermione’s just a big ol’ sweetie-pie. Aren’t you a sweetie-pie, you big silly dog?”
Hermione accepted the petting with half-closed eyes that never looked away from Scarlett. The dog’s lips parted to reveal huge pointed teeth.
“I have to go!” Scarlett said in a high voice. “Can I get past her?”
“Oh, sure.” The blonde turned her head in Scarlett’s direction, their faces close together. “Were you looking for anything, hon?”
“Was I what?” asked Scarlett, eyeing the dog that was still eyeing her.
“Behind the restaurant. Were you looking for anything back there?”
Scarlett’s head snapped up. The blonde was smiling at her, but the smile wasn’t real. Though she appeared young, perhaps in her early thirties, something in the blonde’s face made her look much older and distinctly unfriendly.
She was watching us! She must have seen us on a security camera! “N-n-no!” Scarlett gasped. “We were just messing around! We didn’t do anything!”
“No problem. Just wanted to make sure you were going to spray-paint stuff on our walls or get into gang fights.”
“We weren’t, I promise! Those other girls started it!”
“Well, okay.” The blonde grinned and looked back at her dog, who was enjoying a scratch behind the ears. “Hermione and I like a quiet neighborhood with no trouble. Don’t we, girl? Yes, we do.” She stopped scratching the dog and straightened up. “You’d better be running along. We’re going to open for dinner soon.”
Scarlett nodded quick agreement and hurried outside. Tananda and Angel were waiting for her. “Heading back to school?” asked Angel.
“I have to,” said Scarlett, nervously glancing back at the restaurant. “I live on the other side of it.”
“We’ll walk together then,” said Angel, “in case we meet some strays.”
“That would be cool,” said Tananda. “Wish Taryn had been here with Kevo.”
“Kevo?” asked Scarlett, who already knew Taryn was the goaltender for the Leopards.
“Her stick,” said Tananda.
“‘Cause it’s made out of Kevlar,” said Angel.
“It’s a nickname,” said Tananda.
“It’s got a smiley face on the head,” said Angel.
“She knocked out Louise Johnson’s two front teeth with it in ninth grade,” said Tananda. She sighed at the memory. “Damn, that was a great game.”
“Good times,” agreed Angel. “Hey, you wanna watch us practice?”
“I have to go home and feed my mouse,” said Scarlett, who felt she had almost recovered from her experience. “No, seriously, I do. But I’d like to see your game Saturday.”
“That’s cool,” said Tananda. “Say hi to your rat for me.”
“This that mouse that Brittany’s been looking for ‘cause her brother’s supposed to pay her twenty bucks for it or something?” asked Angel.
“Yeah,” said Scarlett, and filled her in on the rest of the story, except for the parts about Roger actually talking.
“Brian Taylor,” said Angel. She gave a long slow sigh and shook her head. “I know that kid.”
“We should have Heidi Ross drop by his place and show him her arm lock,” said Tananda. “She can pop a soda can by squeezing it on the inside of her elbow. She could try it on Brian.”
“She would do it,” said Angel. “She would love to do it.”
The talk drifted to the special abilities of the other Lawndale Leopard girls’ field hockey team, which included belching, towel-snapping, larceny, forgery, auto theft, and certain other talents that caused Scarlett to think she should wash out her ears when she got home. There was no possible way she would ever join the Leopards, even in her wildest dreams. Being friends with them was another matter entirely. It never hurt to have partner-defenders like these.
“See you tomorrow!” the girls called to Scarlett when she left them at the hockey field. She waved goodbye, pleased that she had their promise to look out for her if any Oakwood girls came by again. However, the possibility that the Oakwood field hockey team might come looking for her later, blaming her in part for their humiliation behind the Chinese restaurant, made her stomach turn over. If the Oakwood Knotholes were anything like the Lawndale Leopards, she was a goner.
It wasn’t until she got within sight of the apartment complex she called home that Scarlett remembered the dime she’d picked up behind the Chinese restaurant. She pulled it from her pocket and looked at it closely in the fading light from sunset. It looked like a typical dime of an old type. The date on it was 1949. One side had the head of an ancient god on it, Roman or Greek she assumed, with wings coming from its ears. “LIBERTY” was written around the edge. The backside had “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA” around the edge, with a large V behind what looked like the planet Earth in the center. She wondered if the coin was worth anything, then dropped it back in her pocket.
It wasn’t much, but the dime was her only souvenir of her failed expedition to find anything unusual at the Good Time Chinese restaurant, other than the fact that the owner let her dog run around inside the place, probably against health department regulations. If nothing else, she had a good story to tell Roger that evening when she did her homework with him.
Last updated 12/23/06