Scouts honor, p.11
Scout's Honor, page 11
“Great. I’ll see you then, babe. Have fun with your scout aerobics.” He turns and smiles. “Hey, Beast! See you tomorrow?”
Sasha climbs the porch steps, offering Kyle a fist bump as they pass each other. “Fuck yeah, dude. My pinkies were born ready.”
I chew on the inside of my cheek as I watch Kyle get into the minivan. As his mom drives away, he thrusts his hand out the window and waves at me. When I reach up to wave back, my charm bracelet rings, reminding me of yet another lie I had to tell him.
The door closes behind the Beast, who is wearing a ribbed undershirt, three sports bras, and blue South Hills High gym shorts with someone else’s name on them.
Kelsey nervously slurps the spit from her braces as she gestures to their matching wide-leg jersey shorts. “Great minds think alike, right?”
The Beast gives an ambivalent shrug, true feelings cloaked by her sunglasses. “Poverty is a great equalizer.”
“Why don’t you both grab a water bottle?” I say, motioning down to the pallet on the floor. “Avi’s already in the backyard. Her mom is here to help with our first homespun meeting.”
“Chancho’s mom?” Sasha grumbles, bending to tear open the plastic on the case of water. She glowers up at me. “I thought she was too busy to do Dame stuff with the little one.”
“It’s just for today,” I say, distracted, tucking the tag into the back of one of her sports bras, then checking everyone’s shoes for strong double knots. “And, at the end of the meeting, instead of tea, we’ll have a carb-up cooldown lunch. I have pizza bagels and bagel dogs and pizza bagel dogs—”
“Um, Dame Prudence?” Kelsey asks, holding still while I smooth down the frizz in her ponytail. The honorific hangs lopsided in front of my name. “You’re kind of freaking me out. Should we be scared?”
“No! It’ll be fine—” I stuff my fidgeting hands into the pockets on my sweater. If we dawdle for too long, Lo will just come get us. “I mean fun. It’ll be fun! Let’s go.”
On the other side of the French doors, in the hard-to-look-at sunshine, there’s an even harder-to-look-at obstacle course. Every piece is Ladybird pink and white. The agility ladder definitely used to be my sister’s. The hurdles might be Dame Debby’s. The jump ropes being swung on the pavement are manned by very tall Chancho and very short Jaxon.
Knees high, like they’re dancing a frantic jig, Tía Lo and Avi jump double Dutch together.
Behind me, Sasha and Kelsey take everything in, awed.
“What in the American Ninja fuck?” the Beast gasps.
“It’s sort of a replica of the National Conference course,” I say, gesturing at the A-frame climbing wall near the pergola. “It’s just missing over-under-through hedges and Headshot Alley—I mean the ax toss.”
Sasha glances at me over the top of her sunglasses, a rarity she only uses to punctuate a truly serious point. Just like every time I’ve seen them, her eyes are long lashed and deeply annoyed. “You’ve known how to throw an ax this whole time and you never showed me how?”
“It’s in chapter seven of the Handbook. We’ll get there.” I sigh as Tía Lo spots us.
Jumping effortlessly out of the double Dutch, my aunt prances toward me, Kelsey, and the Beast.
“Hello, sisters! Welcome to the Ladybird agility course!” Tía Lo calls, her eyes crescent moons due to the force of her smile. A Ladybird billboard in a National Conference T-shirt and robin-crested socks, she waves with both hands. Her stacks of charm bracelets make a tambourine jangle.
The jump ropes fall silent behind her as Avi comes to join us.
“Sasha, Kelsey,” I say, remembering my manners and gesturing among everyone. “That’s Jaxon. You know Chancho. And this is Avianna’s mom, Dame Lorena Silva-Marquez.”
“Oh, but my friends call me Lo-Lo!” Tía Lo coos, and takes a moment to hold Kelsey’s and Sasha’s hands in turn as a way of sizing them up.
In a lifetime of service to the scouts, I’m sure Tía Lo has seen horrors that would never let me sleep and felt tragedies that would tear my heart in half. There must be a reason why she asks Kelsey to hop, why she peeks at Sasha’s teeth. You would think that would be the sort of information she would like to share with her niece, but no. I wonder if she doesn’t trust me to stick with the scouts long enough to need tricks of the trade. It could be that Tía Lo just never thinks of doing anything that doesn’t benefit her directly.
I’d still rather have her here than Mom. Mom would already be sparring and giving out letter grades. Everyone would cry by lunch break, just like when she guest-lectured for my first circle.
Uncomfortable with being inspected, Sasha looks beyond Tía Lo and scans the obstacle course from beneath knit brows. “What does jump rope have to do with me stabbing grubs? I thought this was weapons training.”
My heart plummets.
Like everyone else with Abuela Ramona’s genes, Tía Lo is short and fine boned. Despite being at least half a foot shorter than the Beast, by dropping Sasha’s hands and taking a single step back, Tía Lo stands like an absolute giant. With a dip of her head she takes in Sasha the Beast from the dirty toes of her high-tops to the straps of her layered sports bras.
“Sasha. The criminal inside of the Criminal Element. You’re friends with my Chancho,” Tía Lo observes.
Behind her, Chancho’s shoulders come up to his ears.
“Now, Sasha,” Tía Lo continues, “a Ladybird is light on her feet, quick thinking, and able to defend against any attacker. You could run on a treadmill and pray to gain the dexterity of mind and endurance of spirit that interval training provides, but you would fail. A feeling I hear you are accustomed to.” She titters and boops Sasha on the nose like a good dog.
The Beast’s mouth turns into an O of surprise.
“No scout is fit to hold a weapon until she learns not to speak until spoken to,” Tía Lo says. “We’re a sisterhood, not friends or petty thugs.”
The Beast stumbles backward, dazedly blinking. Kelsey and Avi edge away from her as though the admonishment could spread to them.
“This obstacle course is a Ladybird standard,” Tía Lo explains as she twirls effortlessly between the double Dutch ropes to the other side. “You enter and exit the double Dutch, take the balance beam down to the quintuple walls, then take the stutter-step tires, climb the wall, jump the low hurdles, and finish with the agility ladder.”
I check the ground for signs of practice weapons. Dame Debby used to keep them in mason jars, separated by weight. When we were in trouble, we had to carry tiny-gauge knitting needles. Much harder to wield and way more likely to be dropped on the course, sending us back to the start.
“Tía Lo, should I get a knitting needle to use as a baton?” I ask. “Or should the scouts just tag out of the relay?”
“Relay?” Tía Lo throws her head back and laughs at the sun. “Oh, no no no. Each one of you girls is going to run the whole course until you can master it. Any slipup sends you right back to double Dutch.”
The slap of the jump rope now sounds menacingly fast. The anticipation hanging in the air starts to sour.
“The whole thing?” Kelsey squeaks. “I’ve never jumped hurdles before. I could pull a muscle!”
Tía Lo raises an indifferent shoulder. “Then you should start stretching. A Ladybird should always be warmed up.”
“Tía Lo-o-o…” Diplomacy draws out her name so that it’s half warning, half plea. “This is just day one—”
“Of the rest of your lives!” she interrupts. Smoothly, she slips between the double Dutch ropes again, her feet pounding in an easy pogo as she continues. “You don’t tiptoe into scouting, ladies! You throw yourself into the deep end and learn not to drown! If you want to be good enough, start now. Dame Prudence will lead by example.”
I goggle at her. “Do the whole course?”
“Of course!” she says. “You wouldn’t ask your scouts to do something you couldn’t do yourself, would you?”
I grit my teeth. “Of course not.”
Reluctantly, I slip off my hoodie and fold it neatly on the ground. In a T-shirt, I’m still fairly covered up, but feeling the sun on the length of my arm scar turns my stomach. The thin puckered skin travels over the bend of my elbow and down to the lump on my wrist. I can feel eyes on the jagged line of it, tracing the doll-like seam. Without looking back, I can’t tell if they’re the eyes of people who know the story behind it or not.
I stare down the double Dutch ropes, listening to the one-two slap of beads on the ground. When I leap in, one of the ropes hits me across the face. I spin out, sucking in a curse.
“It’s okay, Prudence,” Jaxon says, still spinning the rope. Built like Tío Tino except too small to be barrel-chested, Jaxon is like a seven-year-old bucket with legs. He wears his hair in the same cool-guy swoosh as Chancho. “Do you want me to show you how to do it right? Avi taught me.”
“No, thanks, bud,” I say with a wince. Maybe I should have let my mother come in for the day. She might have trained my scouts too hard, but she wouldn’t set me up to fail. She would have warned me to put on a sports bra and long sleeves.
“We’ll call that one a practice. You’ll get it perfect this time,” Tía Lo says cheerily from the sidelines. She must sense me seething, because she clasps my shoulder hard and jostles me. “Aww, don’t pout, sweetie. You asked me to be here on my one day off! But, ladies”—she turns to the others—“this is an important Ladybird lesson! A good scout asks for help when she’s in over her head. It’ll keep you alive in a pinch, as Dame Prue could tell you.”
As she gives my shoulder another squeeze, her thumb digs into the top of my scar, where there is a hard knob of mottled skin. I’m sure she thinks of it as soothing, but the pressure makes me want to pull my arm off. As my brain screams, I count my breath in and hold it. I imagine a wave crashing as I let the breath slip through my teeth. My heartbeat slows. Dad would be so proud.
“You’ll do better under more realistic circumstances, I think,” Tía Lo says, and I already know that I’m going to hate whatever comes next. Over her shoulder she calls to Avi. “Avianna, will you please give us a monster to fight? It’s hardly a Ladybird training without a grub to chase.”
Avi hurries over to the supplies under the pergola. Next to Tía Lo’s emergency sword is a grub trap. Manufactured and sold exclusively by Ladybird Headquarters, grub traps look exactly like pink plastic reptile terrariums, except that the opening on the top is only as big around as a jelly jar. Or about the distance of from mouth to chin.
With a press of the spring latch, the lid pops open. Avi squishes her lips and cheeks to the trap opening. Practiced, she knows to wiggle her chin to get a tight seal and inhale a lungful of air through her nostrils. Her eyes screw up tight as she exhales a bloodcurdling, whistle-pitch scream. The interior trap lid pops closed, and a moment later a giant white centipede writhes into being.
I hold my breath and don’t exhale until I see its black eyes blinking.
A Frightworm.
Kelsey, Sasha, and Chancho all jump backward. Jaxon—who was born without the Sight—picks his nose.
“Does that always work?” Sasha asks my aunt.
“Trapping a scream?” Lo asks. “Have you not read the healthy-living chapter of the Handbook?”
“It’s only been two days since they were initiated, Tía,” I say. “All we’ve covered so far is the Ladybird chronicle and grub identification.”
“I didn’t realize you were on such a leisurely timetable. I thought you were bringing a circle up to snuff as quickly and efficiently as possible to help protect our town. A silly something about life or death. But you’d know better than I do.” She turns away from me, going to collect the trap from Avi. “There are a few ways of pulling mulligrubs into our reality for the purposes of training or study. A trapped scream is easiest, but it’s a dice roll. You could get literally anything small enough to fit in the cage. You can set up emotional lures with human bait, too. I told a sister scout that I didn’t like her idea for our holiday giveaway one year and pulled through a Carnivorous Scranch that ripped apart all the ugly caps she’d knitted—”
“But that’s a lesson for another day,” I interrupt. I can smell a Ladybird hero story coming from ten miles away, and it’s way too soon to teach the new scouts about juicing grubs. “Let me have my second try at the course so that everyone else can go.”
Chancho and Jaxon start turning the jump ropes again. I jump into the double Dutch and manage to get out, rip a leaf of Pippy-Mint from the nearest pot, and race down to the balance beams before Lo reaches into the trap and pulls the Frightworm out by the tail. Its hundred sticklike green legs wriggle in the air, its thick white body curving upward to hide its gaping mouth.
“Here you go, honey,” Lo says—to either me or the grub, I can’t tell—as she bowls the Frightworm at my feet.
It lands on the end of the balance beam with just enough weight that I have to jump off to keep from falling. I can hear the skittering sounds of it chasing me from one quintuple wall to the next—the grub cheats, cutting through the grass—but I can’t lose momentum by turning around to see it, or I’ll fall to the ground and have to go back to the beginning again. When I get one foot in the first stutter-step tire, the Frightworm bounces again, this time springing at my face.
The scouts scream. Tía Lo smirks. Jaxon yawns, looking at a cloud. Even if he were watching me, there wouldn’t be anything for him to see other than me swiping at the air with a mint leaf. And missing.
“Keep going, Miss Prue!” Tía Lo says. “The goal is to get to the end and banish the grub!”
I take the stutter steps sideways so that I can focus on not tripping rather than keeping my eyes protected. Claws catch at the hem of my shorts. I push aside the urge to panic or hurry. The rough veins of the peppermint leaf held between my thumb and forefinger are as familiar as the security blanket I was never allowed to have.
“We’re light on the balls of our feet,” Tía Lo says, her arms up and conducting me like an under-rehearsed orchestra. “And we’re smiling! We’re having fun! It’s just training! You can scowl when something tries to eat you!”
“That centipede is trying to eat her!” Kelsey shouts.
“Just a teensy Frightworm,” Tía Lo says breezily. “It can’t do more than scratch at you and make you un poco sleepy when it gets full absorbing your fear.”
The second my feet are free of the tires, I bend down and scoop up the grub as I run for the climbing wall. Its body is water-balloon heavy, distended on my fear of failure. Its rough legs scratch and scrabble against my bare forearms. I jab the mint leaf against the top of its head. As it poofs, I leap vertically to grab the top of the climbing wall and walk my feet up the planks. The low hurdles and agility ladder go by relatively easily with nothing chasing me.
“Three minutes, forty-seven seconds,” Avi announces. She holds up her watch to show the timer display.
“Well, at least you didn’t set an unbeatable record for your scouts, Dame Prue,” Tía Lo says with an encouraging smile. “Now! Everyone line up for a turn. Prudence, you’re welcome to have another shot if you’d like to shave off a minute or two—three minutes isn’t going to get you back on the leaderboard anytime soon!”
“I’m not trying to get on the leaderboard, Tía Lo,” I say, swallowing a wad of hot spit I’d rather hock at her feet. It’s bad enough that scouts are responsible for their entire town’s emotional well-being. Forcing them to compete against one another on top of that is ridiculous.
Ignoring me completely, Tía Lo turns around, aiming her phone at the outdoor speakers. For someone who hates people knowing how old she is, you’d think she’d stop openly pointing her phone to “catch” the Bluetooth signal. “Let’s get some music! I hope everyone likes Justin Bieber! I can’t help it! I still Belieb!”
The Beast hands me my sweatshirt as I try not to collapse behind her. As the inferior version of “Despacito” starts, loud enough for the entire neighborhood to hear, I hear Sasha mutter, “I have beheld true evil on this day.”
I zip back into my armor and nod. “And no amount of peppermint will ever make her go away.”
* * *
When I hear footsteps on the stairs, I leap off my bed to tidy the heap of sweaty workout clothes that hasn’t yet made it to my laundry hamper and kick my shoes under my bed. Mom never comes upstairs after work. She hasn’t even changed out of her heels yet. I can hear them digging divots into the stairs.
“Prudence?” she calls the moment before nudging the door open with her hip. She’s holding a small cardboard box with the flaps folded down. I watch as she pauses and scans for all the things in my room she wishes she could get rid of.
My windowsill garden of mostly live succulents and mostly dead peppermint.
The elaborate porcelain mermaid-riding-a-dolphin clock sitting next to my bedside peppermint plant.
My fish tank—decorative since Brewster Beta Fish went belly-up last year.
Me.
“Hi, hello,” I say, trying to stand casually next to my bed and not look like someone who has just been panic-cleaning. “Welcome home. No meetings today?”
She waves me off with one hand as she sets the box on my bed with the other. “Today was wall-to-wall meetings.”
“Right, sorry. I meant after-hours meetings. I know meetings can happen anywhere. Anytime.” Like right now. “What’s in the box?”
She sets her hand atop the cardboard box, patting it as though it is a very good box. “For you. So you can show your scouts what you’re best at.”
My heart squeezes, imagining the many things I consider myself to be good at that wouldn’t fit in a box. I wish I could show the babybirds how to stay soft in a rough world, how to pull the important people close to you and not let go.
Inside the box are strips of pink leather and hard molded Kydex. While anyone else might be more than a little horrified to get a leather harness from their mother, I recognize the straps as connected to a set of small scabbards.
