A Charter to That Other Place Read online

  Chapter Eight: Mia

  She and Beatrice agreed that age difference wasn’t the main reason that their class started a mentor program with the Kindergarteners. They could have worked with the first or second graders, and the Kindergarteners could have apprenticed with any of the grades in the upper cluster, but there was a mutual respect between Mrs. Ojeda and Mr. Benton.

  “I hear that some teachers might be replaced next quarter,” Beatrice said as they walked toward the main building to put in an hour of mentoring along with a half dozen of their classmates.

  “Me too,” said Mia. “You heard any names?”

  “All of them except for Ojeda and Benton. You?”

  “Same. They’re the only safe ones.”

  “Not gonna happen,” Kimmy caught up to them and walked next to Mia, who glanced over at Beatrice. They shrugged at each other with their eyes.

  “Nobody’s getting fired,” Kimmy continued.

  “How do you know ?” Beatrice asked.

  “I have to go by the office every morning so Miss Wendy can measure the length of my skirt. I hear things.”

  “And Mr. Copeland said all the teachers are coming back?” Beatrice pressed her.

  “Nah,” Kimmy said. “He’s just totally convinced the computer thingy he’s working on stops teachers from being shitty.”

  Artie materialized behind them.

  “Shitty?” he repeated, the word apparently calling to him like some sort of beacon.

  “Yeah,” Kimmy crackled. “Rhymes with ‘Artie’.”

  “Kind of,” Artie rolled with it. “You need more than just the last syllable for a good rhyme. Two is better. Like ‘fartie’ or ‘Bacardi’ or ‘party’.”

  “Or ‘pity’ or ‘ditty’ if we’re talking ‘shitty’,” Beatrice jumped in.

  They all cracked up, even Kimmy.

  “Or ‘titty’,” blared Artie.

  The girls stopped laughing and sighed. They veered away from him, while Josh caught up to Artie and put his arm around him as if to explain something.

  “Good to know, I guess,” said Mia as they re-established their trio.

  “What rhymes with ‘shitty’?” Kimmy joked.

  “That nobody’s getting fired,” Mia clarified. “I feel bad for them. A lot of it’s just a bunch of parents bitching and moaning.”

  “Not ours,” Beatrice said. “Everyone loves Mr. Benton.”

  “Especially Mia’s Mom,” Kimmy teased. Beatrice joined her in making some ‘oohs’ and ‘ahs’.

  Mia paused at the door to the building and spun a look in their direction.

  “So she’s helping out with the class,” she narrated her exasperation. “So what?”

  “Hey, I’m rooting for them,” Kimmy said. “How cool would it be to have Mr. Benton as a stepdad?”

  “I’d say that would be very cool,” Beatrice replied.

  “It wasn’t really a question,” Mia said to Beatrice as she held open the door to the dealership for her and Kimmy. “You’re not supposed to respond.”

  “Thanks, but I felt like it.”

  Beatrice gave her an air kiss as she and Kimmy accepted her offer of an open door.

  “Close it before the boys get here,” Kimmy told her.

  Mia obliged with a giggle and the three of them made their way across the showroom floor toward Mrs. Ojeda’s class.

  “Speaking of people getting it on…” Kimmy said.

  “Would you stop it already,” Mia groaned.

  “What’s with Artie getting all fresh these days?” Kimmy finished her thought.

  “Oh…” Mia backed off.

  “I know, right?” said Beatrice.

  “He is?” Mia asked.

  “You haven’t noticed?” Kimmy added yet another question to the exchange.

  “It’s like he’s trying to be more mature,” Beatrice offered a statement. “And he thinks being some sort of player is the way to show it.”

  “Only he’s got no moves,” Kimmy snorted.

  “What, grabbing butts and pulling bra straps doesn’t do it for you?” Beatrice laughed.

  Kimmy joined her and Mrs. Ojeda appeared at her door with a gentle signal to keep the noise down.

  While the two girls tried to lower the volume on their laughter as they waited outside the room, Mia tried to recall any perverse incidents involving Artie that she may have overlooked.

  Artie and Josh caught up with them, along with the other sixth graders who were scheduled for mentoring. As they lined up waiting to be called in, Mia stole a glance at Artie. He didn’t seem capable of the kind of behavior Beatrice and Kimmy described. Perhaps, she thought, he just didn’t act that way around her. And if that was the case, was it out of respect for her, or because he didn’t find her attractive?

  He caught her looking at him and she turned away. After a few seconds, she checked to see if he was still looking at her. He was. Only instead of making a goofy face back at her, which she had come to expect, he was smirking. His cocky expression wasn’t exactly a butt grab, but nonetheless provided a hint that Beatrice and Kimmy were not guilty of slander.

  During their time amongst the Kindergarteners, however, Artie acted like his old childish self, but in the best possible manner. He related to the kids beautifully, his sense of humor just their speed. It helped that the kids in his group had all seen episodes of his web series. Mia kept looking over at him and his little cult, a bit jealous of how fun he was able to make the lesson. Artie didn’t have a chance to practice any more of his steely new stares on her, as he was so absorbed with the silly voices and sound effects he utilized to hold the kids’ attention on the chart showing how to spell out the numbers one through ten.

  Kimmy, meanwhile, played on her group’s worship of older kids. She complimented the little girls on their most flattering features, while giving them age-appropriate beauty tips, like how to add a splash of color to their hair by wrapping a piece of yarn into it. The little boys did whatever she said, because they wanted to make sure they had a chance with her when they grew up, even if they weren’t yet conscious of that hankering.

  Mia borrowed a voice from Artie and some flattery from Kimmy and had a productive session. When Mrs. Ojeda called her students’ attention back to the front of the room for a five-minute class-wide exercise that would lead to some more individual work, Mia spent the break in satisfaction. She was proud of herself for learning something from two people she considered the two most annoying in the school. She saw it as a sign of growth, evidence of a maturity that they all wanted so badly but chased in so many bad ways.

  This glint of development motivated her to raise her hand right away when Mrs. Ojeda asked for two volunteers, before she even knew what she was volunteering for. She was the only one to submit at first, but then Mrs. Ojeda explained what she needed, and more hands rose, including Artie’s, whose hand she chose.

  She wanted them to set up an obstacle course in the “adventure ‘garage’” (as she called it) for their next task, which would involve each kid pausing at an obstacle to answer a question before they could move onto the next hurdle upon providing a correct response.

  “I’m glad she picked you,” Mia said to Artie as they walked over to the play area. “You’ll be good at this.”

  Artie responded with nothing but a quick nod, which she assumed was part of the new image he was crafting.

  “You’re so good with the kids,” she added, trying to poke through the screen.

  “I know,” he said mournfully.

  “Oh, come on, Artie,” she scolded him. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of. I think it’s wonderful.”

  “Me, too,” Artie said. “Or, at least, I do now.”

  They reached the adventure grounds and he started pulling items to use.

  “We should make two courses,” he spoke as he tossed and rolled the recycled bits of industry toward the middle of the garage. “That will keep more kids on the move at the same time.”

&nb
sp; Mia was still too baffled by his tone to jump in with wholehearted help.

  “What’s up?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” he shrugged as he rode the back of a shopping cart into the expanding mass of obstacles.

  She grabbed a refrigerator box and flung it into the center, not far from where he came to a stop on the cart. He turned and glared at her. She held his gaze.

  “Having some regrets over the new cool routine?” she sassed him.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “Cool routine?”

  “Never mind,” she shook her head and made her way to the pile in order to start construction.

  “But I do have some regrets,” he confessed.

  Mia was stunned. She may have been the first in her class to witness him in a sincere moment, adrift between wacky and snooty.

  “About what?” Mia proceeded with caution.

  Artie stared at the gathering of discards as though it were on fire.

  “I made some new episodes,” he said.

  “So?”

  “The kids don’t like them. They told me.”

  “Why don’t they like them?”

  “I tried something new.”

  “Really?”

  “They’re about real buildings. I play it straight, build them and talk about them. I thought maybe my audience could grow up.”

  “I’m sure some of them have. You’re widening your audience. Playing to all ages.”

  Artie blew a short laugh through his nose and finally looked over at her.

  “You know what kind of older people like it?” he asked.

  Mia shook her head.

  “Social lepers,” he answered himself. “Just like me, when I get older.”

  “You don’t know that,” she said.

  “Oh, I know it,” he explained. “They send me emails and leave comments.”

  “I mean you,” Mia clarified. “You don’t know you’re going to be like that.”

  “Everyone knows that,” he said.

  He returned his attention to the pile, then set upon it to start building the course.

  Mia said “Nonsense” as she joined him, and tried to think of something more to say as they proceeded to fulfill their obligation.

  “You did a nice job of not letting the kids see your disappointment,” she decided on as she strung together a line of obstacles next to his. “I had no idea until we came out here.”

  “It’s not their fault,” he said, remaining focused on the project. “I’m actually grateful to them. Now I know what’s up.”

  She would have liked to learn more about what he meant by that, what exactly was ‘what’, and what exactly was ‘up’, but Mrs. Ojeda brought out the class, and Artie fell back upon his expertise as a clown.

  He had created the most involved obstacle for himself. The other sixth-graders merely stood by their section and asked their question, then let each kid pass when they got it right. Artie tied a rope through the hole of an oil drum lid, and when each kid earned their ride, he would pull them as they sat on the lid as though wakeboarding over the cement floor. The kids ended up as exhausted from laughter as Artie was from pulling them.

  All the mentors from Mr. Benton’s class stayed behind to break down the course before the morning recess. Mia spent some time lying alone inside her refrigerator box, contemplating the Artie Paradox. Each end of the box was open, creating a cardboard culvert that the kids had crawled through. There was a knock on the roof that wiggled the flimsy tunnel, then Kimmy’s head popped into frame on one end.

  “I’ve got a question,” Kimmy said.

  “I already know how to spell numbers one through ten,” Mia snapped, a little miffed at her quiet time being interrupted.

  “Wanna come over Friday after school?”

  “To your house?” Mia tried not to sound astonished.

  “No, to the next obstacle,” Kimmy smirked.

  “Um, sure…let me check with my Mom.”

  “Cool.”

  And she popped back out of frame. Mia sat up and processed what had just happened.

  “It was weird hearing her say ‘cool’ instead of ‘fine’,” she told Beatrice later on as they sat on their preferred picnic table at recess.

  “And that’s the only thing that struck you as weird?”

  “Should I go?”

  “Why are you asking me?” Beatrice looked at her askew.

  “I don’t want to hurt your feelings.”

  “We can have other friends.”

  “I know…”

  “And besides, I’m really curious. Aren’t you?”

  Mia smiled.

  “Very.”

  “Good,” Beatrice bobbed her head once in a conclusive nod. “I want a full report. Behind the scenes of The Kimmy Show.”

  “You think she’s trying to turn us against each other?” Mia asked.

  They turned their attention to Kimmy and her current crew as they fended off some boys who seemed to be on a sugar high from flirting with them.

  “She might be,” Beatrice said. “But it doesn’t matter, because it won’t work.”

  Mia was relieved, and wanted to tell her that was the nicest thing anyone besides her parents had said to her, but figured it was safest just to smile. Beatrice smiled back, and they continued to watch the boys perform for Kimmy. They had run out of tricks, and were down to weird noises and sudden movements.

  Asking her Mom for permission to go to Kimmy’s house turned out to be fun. Like any parent volunteer, her Mom was not a fan of Kimmy. But like any parent, she didn’t want to come across as uptight, either, so there was an entertaining struggle that led to her saying yes.

  As an added bonus, her Mom still had to pick up Zoey on that Friday, whose second grade class was late being excused, so Candice was stuck for the arrival of Kimmy’s grandmother, who dressed like a mother who was hoping someone would ask if she and her daughter were sisters. By the brevity of her kiss goodbye, Mia could tell her Mom was trying to duck out before introductions were inevitable, but Kimmy’s grandmother caught her.

  “Hey there!” she extended a hand and when Mia’s Mom haltingly reciprocated, gave it a masculine shake. “I’m Kile, but the kids call me Grandma i.”

  “Candice,” Mia’s Mom introduced herself.

  “They call me Grandma i because my husband’s name is Kyle, too, but he spells it with a ‘y’ and I spell mine with an ‘i’. So we’re Grandma i and Grandpa y. G.I. and G.Y. for short. Kimmy made that up.”

  Everyone looked over at Kimmy, who smirked and curtsied and asked if they could get going.

  “I’ll have her home by dinner,” said Kile.

  “Thank you,” replied Candice.

  “And when is that?” Kile followed up.

  “Oh, um…six?”

  “We’ll be there. And what are we having?”

  Kile laughed heartily enough at her own joke so as not to notice the brief look of panic on Candice’s face. Zoey’s class filed out and her Mom power-walked over to greet them while waving over her shoulder to tell Kile it was nice to meet her.

  At first Mia couldn’t figure out why Grandma Kile turned on the radio in her truck to a talk station, because she rarely stopped talking during the entire drive. She would ask Mia a question, and Mia’s answer would remind Grandma i of a story of her own, or a point she wanted to make. Mia rode next to her in the front passenger seat, so she wasn’t able to gauge Kimmy’s backseat reactions to her Grandma’s one-woman show. But it wasn’t hard to imagine.

  Eventually Mia learned the purpose of the talk radio. When one of Mia’s replies didn’t inspire G.I., she could respond to the agitated voice blurting on the radio, sometimes with her own burst of temporary rage, or at the very least with a shake of her head and some muttering along the lines of “those people these days in this country,” which served as something of a breather for her while still allowing noise to come from her mouth.

  They lived off the
grid on a ranchette, a couple of acres littered with piecemeal projects of metal and wood that baked under the sun in a variety of broken angles, weeds sprouting through every opening. Two dusty ruts carved more of a path than a driveway, leading to a modular home that was surprisingly well-manicured, especially in consideration of what surrounded it.

  “Can you tell which part of the ranch I take care of and where Grandpa y does his thing?” Kile chuckled as they bounced along the trail. “I tease him. I tell him, ‘Don’t worry, hon. Just get out there and finish something. Nobody from the state disability office is gonna take videos of you.’”

  She upped the intensity of her laughter, then felt obligated to explain. “He used to work at the state hospital. Got jumped by a child molester. Twice! The same guy! I told Kyle, ‘You should be flattered. He must have thought you looked really young.’”

  Her laughing turned to wheezing as they pulled in front of the house, and with a final throaty coughing fit, she yanked on the emergency brake and bid them farewell.

  “See you in a bit, girls. Keep an eye out for G.Y.. Never know where he might pop out from. Don’t let him startle you.”

  Kimmy jumped out from the back seat and beckoned Mia to follow her. Mia thanked G.I. for the ride and caught up to Kimmy, who was on her way around to the back of the house.

  “See why I didn’t invite you to sleep over?” Kimmy said once they were side-by-side.

  “What do you mean?”

  “My Grandma.”

  “She’s nice,” Mia maintained her manners.

  “She talks too much.”

  “Maybe a little.”

  “She does it so she doesn’t have to think.”

  Mia found the statement odd.

  “About anything?” she asked.

  “Let me show you something,” Kimmy said, and veered away from the house toward a line of scrub oak and willows on the other side of a field where some of her grandfather’s projects peeked through the tall grass.

  The line of wispy trees marked the shoreline of a dry creek about the width of a four-lane highway. There was a slightly deeper trench carving its jagged way down the center of the sandy plain that made up most of the thirsty bed. The girls hopped from the miniature cliff face into the grit.

  “Over there,” Kimmy nodded upstream.

  Mia saw an abandoned car far enough ahead to be imperceptible if it hadn’t been pointed out. Kimmy led the way toward it. The loose footing heated up Mia’s calf muscles by the time they reached the car, which turned out to be a Honda Civic of no discernible color thanks to years of sunlight and dusty wind. Apart from the rinsed-out body, it appeared to be in decent condition.

  “It was my Mom’s,” Kimmy announced. “She and my Dad lived here after I was born. They were really young. Grandpa put it here when he got tired of asking her family to come get it. I think they liked her better than their son. My Dad.”

  She looked up at the tree line and Mia followed her gaze. There was a section of shrubbery half as high as the rest, and as wide as the car, with a dent in the ridge just below it.

  “So she died?” Mia asked.

  Kimmy nodded. “Car accident. Her friend was driving. There were four of them and they were heading home from a Girl’s Night Out, some barn dance thing that used to happen in an empty section of Dos Santos Ranch, sort of a redneck rave. Some of the families tried to sue, but they had no case since everyone brought their own alcohol and drugs, and the driver wasn’t even high. Just going too fast on a crooked back road.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Still a baby. Which is good, I guess, since I didn’t really know them.”

  “What happened to your Dad?”

  “Went downhill. Ended up in prison after about a year.”

  “Don’t you have any contact with him?”

  “My grandparents tell me they try to get him to keep in touch, but he says I would bring back memories. I don’t think they try too hard. I can tell they’re ashamed of him. He married a new woman, some skank who gets off on being part of this prison wives group. They post pictures on visitation days and write lame little notes to each other on their web site about how people just don’t understand them and how it doesn’t matter, because they’re so strong. When I search my Dad’s name online, that’s what I get. At least the other women were already with their guys when they got busted. I don’t know what the deal is with this bimbo.”

  Kimmy stared in the car window and seemed to have forgotten Mia was there.

  “Sorry,” Mia said.

  “It’s okay. Like I said, I didn’t know them.”

  She looked over at Mia.

  “I just wanted to explain my grandparents to you. Or at least my Grandma, so you know why she won’t shut up. Who knows if we’ll see my Grandpa.”

  Mia focused back on the car.

  “Why don’t they sell it? Or give it to charity?” she wondered aloud. “I get why they don’t want to see it, but this doesn’t make sense.”

  “What happened to their son and daughter-in-law doesn’t make any sense either,” Kimmy answered. “That’s what Grandpa said when he drove it in here.”

  Mia noticed that the front was bent upward a bit from the impact. She imagined the car pushing over the scrub oak and diving into the creek bed. A breeze ruffled the leaves lining the shore and made a sound like water flowing.

  “Does this creek ever run high enough to wash it away?” Mia asked.

  “Grandpa said it would take the storm of the century.”

  “So it does.”

  “Yeah,” Kimmy seemed to have never considered it. “I guess it does. Once a century.”

  They contemplated the car a while longer before Kimmy interrupted the silence.

  “You wanna paint our toenails or something?”

  Mia shrugged.

  “Sure.”

  The two of them walked back through the tall, brittle grass, retracing the trampled route they had left behind on their way in.

  Mia followed Kimmy’s lead as long as she could in trying to pass herself off as being seasoned in the girly arts, but Kimmy caught on. Mia felt her staring at her as she once again tried to smooth out the globs of polish clumping onto her latest nail. She concentrated all the more, knowing she was being evaluated, and nearly fell off the bed from trying to hold her bent position for that long.

  “You’ve never done this before, have you?”

  “No,” Mia admitted, relieving the tiny brush back into the tiny bottle.

  “I should’ve known. Your fingernails are never painted, either.”

  “Sorry.”

  Kimmy laughed and put her brush back into the bottle, too.

  “Why didn’t you just say so?” she friend-slapped Mia. “You’re usually so honest.”

  “You just told me about your parents and stuff. I didn’t want to hurt your feelings.”

  “Aw, you’re sweet,” Kimmy said. She then gestured to the pedicure supplies.

  “So, what do you think?

  Mia feigned deliberation as she surveyed the spread.

  “Still don’t see the point,” she confessed.

  “It’s not about the toes, girl,” Kimmy said. “We’re supposed to be talking, not going for the perfect nail. Here, let me finish for you.”

  “You don’t have to…”

  “C’mon. There’s just a few more.”

  “Really, I’m fine.”

  “Don’t hurt my feelings,” Kimmy grinned.

  Mia sighed and grinned back.

  “Fine,” she said in a slight Kimmy imitation, then wondered if she should tell Kimmy about the running joke regarding her and the word ‘fine’. She thought it best to include Beatrice in that decision, and let the impulse pass.

  “What about boys?” Kimmy asked as she started to work on Mia’s toes.

  “What about them?” Mia was trying to get comfortable with the division of labor that had developed.

  “Let’s start with the most obv
ious candidate. Any thoughts on Josh?”

  “He can be mean.”

  “Everyone can be mean at our age.”

  “That’s not true. Artie’s not mean.”

  Kimmy stopped in mid-brush stroke and looked up incredulously at her.

  “I guess he hasn’t grabbed your ass yet.”

  “Oh. Yeah,” Mia had forgotten the accusations.

  “Do you want him to?”

  “No!”

  “Careful. Keep your toes still.”

  “I’m disappointed he started doing that. Not that he didn’t do it to me.”

  “Blew that great image of his, eh?”

  “Better to be goofy than mean.”

  Kimmy kept quiet as she finished her work with a small grin. She capped the polish and swept her hands dramatically over Mia’s feet.

  “Ta da!”

  Mia leaned back and lifted them up for a better look.

  “It’s easy to tell which ones you did. Thanks.”

  “No problem.”

  Mia spun around and hung her legs over the side of the bed.

  “Ah,” she breathed. “I was getting tired of being in that sit-up position.”

  Kimmy lifted her knees toward her chin and wrapped her arms around them.

  “You really like him, don’t you?” she asked.

  “Who?” Mia replied.

  “Artie.”

  “What?”

  “C’mon. You brought him up out of nowhere when we started talking about boys.”

  “We were talking about being mean.”

  “Still…” Kimmy leaned back onto her elbows. “Suddenly, there was Artie.”

  Mia laughed off the probe and avoided eye contact. If it was true that Kimmy’s Grandpa could pop up anywhere, Mia hoped he would suddenly tap on the window or burst from the closet holding a broken support rod he had just replaced. Any diversion Mia could self-generate would be flagrantly obvious, so she had to sit there and push through the interrogation. She thought of Kimmy’s earlier compliment, how honest she was, and Mia agreed with that assessment without feeling the least bit conceited, because it also meant she was a terrible liar.

  “I just had a nice talk with him the other day, that’s all,” she figured being as transparent as possible was her only way out. “It was fresh in my mind.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “Nothing much. I was just surprised at how, I don’t know, not-goofy he could be.”

  “Hmm.”

  Kimmy seemed to plotting her next move. Mia decided to get the jump on her.

  “Kind of like with you lately.”

  “What?”

  It worked. Kimmy was caught by surprise.

  “I just think it’s really cool that right close together, like in the same week, I got a chance to see another side of Artie that’s not so ridiculous, and a side of you that’s not so bitchy.”

  Kimmy looked as though she was debating whether to be angry or flattered.

  “Thank you for showing me,” Mia pushed her in the preferred direction. “I’m honored.”

  However Kimmy decided to feel, she covered it with an all-purpose smile.

  “I still think you like him,” she said.

  “Whatever,” Mia slumped, using that word without applying a Kimmy imitation for the first time since she’d met her.

  “Nice try, though,” Kimmy crept forward and started tickling Mia’s side.

  Mia fought back and within seconds they landed on the floor in a heap of laughter. With the wider spaces of the floor to work with, their grappling grew more intense, and the laughter devolved into gasps for air. They rolled over each other several times, and when they ran out of room against the closet door, Mia found herself on top. She had Kimmy pinned.

  “I totally get it,” Kimmy breathed. “He’s rich.”

  Mia went for her sides.

  “Okay, okay!” Kimmy squealed. “I won’t say anymore.”

  Mia collapsed next to her and they caught their breath, each to a different beat. After a dozen or so huffs, their rhythms happened to match for a few mouthfuls, which turned the gasps back into laughter.

  There was a knock at the door and Kimmy’s Grandma asked from the other side if everything was okay. Kimmy said they were fine, then turned and whispered to Mia.

  “Jeez. A little late there, Grandma.”

  Mia started to giggle harder, doing her best to stifle the noise.

  Kimmy kept it up.

  “What, was she waiting to see if we broke through the door?”

  Kimmy giggled at her own joke and looked over at Mia as if to learn some tips on how to smother laughter, but seeing each other with tears rolling down their cheeks only made them struggle more.

  The rest of the afternoon passed easily by, more so than the rest of Mia’s weekend. Saturday and Sunday felt like January and February. She couldn’t blame the valley this time, or the company of her mother and sister. It was the thought that maybe Kimmy was right. Maybe she did like Artie. Maybe it was more than pity that moved her to think of him so often.