Chapter One
It didn't take long to find out. News travels fast in Jumbo. Even on a hot Saturday morning when the world is moving slow. I was making my usual rounds with my litter stick and my binoculars, and I was at the old Dixie Dog Drive In picking up trash left by the teenagers who hang out there on Friday night. Bug and Tootie McKelvey came and told me.
"There's a new retarded boy," Tootie blurted out, and Bug pushed at her for stealing her thunder. Tootie has more freckles than face and that's all there is to say about her. "He's funny looking," she added, icing on the big-news cake.
This was not a surprise to me. I knew Biswick was coming practically before he did. I felt it deep down in my dry bones that morning. A change was on its way and I didn't like it one bit. Not one bit.
"Humph," I snorted. "Marvelous." Lately my brain's been grabbing words and just throwing them out there to the world. My thoughts are clear. But when I try to speak, sometimes it sounds as if I picked up my words secondhand, like bits of tattered lace at an estate sale. And my voice sounds odd, too. Mama says I sound like an old soul while Bug is always screaming at me to stop "talking like a granny."
Anyway I have a tight schedule on Saturdays and I don't like to be interrupted, which Bug well knows. I lead a Very Ordered Existence, VOE for short. Everything is all lined up in my life and if anything is out of order, I get all "nervy," which is what Grandma calls it. It mostly feels like being on fire. I stared vacantly at Bug and Tootie, hoping that would be enough to make them go away.
"He's eight, supposedly, but Mary Alice Augustine saw him and says he looks more like a kindergartner. And he doesn't have a mother, and his daddy writes commercial poetry," Bug stated with the authority of a professional gossiper. "Which means Mama will invite the daddy over for dinner to get him to do a reading at the bookstore, which means we'll get to meet the kid first. And I bet they are gonna have to bring that funny little bus for retards over from Whiskey."
Whiskey is our sister town about ten miles away. It's got more stuff than we do, though, like the rinky-dink hospital where I was born and even a drive-thru McDonald's.
Bug's eyes got all big as she glanced down at my red high-top sneakers.
My "uniform" is a source of extreme embarrassment to Bug and she is always trying to mess with it. I wear the same things every day—a yellowy-orangey shirt with the words Dilley's Chicken & Feed emblazoned on the front (Daddy brought it back from some agricultural conference and I took to it), a pair of army green cargo pants, and my (rain or shine) red high-tops, which Bug calls retardo shoes because they have Velcro flaps instead of laces.
I had been missing my high-tops for several days because Bug had snuck in my room in the middle of the night and stole them. But this morning I found them sticking out of the Dumpster behind the Rexall Drug. Bug was pissed.
"You are an idiot!" she spewed, all flustered. "I bet the new kid dresses just like you."
"Spectacular," I muttered, spearing a Big Crush can with my litter stick.
"Spectacular? Oh Merilee! You are such a spaz!"
To which I replied, "It's controversial, not commercial poetry."
Bug stuck her tongue out at me, pulled Tootie along with her, and off they went to spread the exciting news to more enthused and grateful recipients.
I pulled the can off my stick and began looking for my next prize. I devote thirty minutes daily to picking up litter, two hours on Saturdays—9:12 to 11:12. I'm saving the world one Crush can at a time.
It's Merilee Monroe, my name. I know. Isn't it terrible? I would probably even snicker, too, and I'm as polite as you can get. You can't imagine how many times I've heard "Mer-i-lee we roll along, roll along, roll along!" sung at my back. I'm not the least bit merry and everyone knows it. In fact, Grandma Birdy scolds me to get my butt off my shoulders and smile once in a while. Mama says I'm the moral compass of the whole wide world, and that I try to hold every sad thing there ever was in the palm of my hand. It's true. I think life is one big dream-squasher.
I also, by the way, don't look anything like Marilyn Monroe. My nose is so big and fat that if I lay down you could land a 747 on it. When Mama's not around, Grandma says someone hit me with the ugly stick up in heaven and the only time I should venture out is on Halloween.
Merilee. According to Grandma Birdy, my mother, high on the birthing drugs, spouted out this monstrosity of a name (or something similar), and the ding-dong candy striper wrote that down without consulting any of our kin. This all happened thirteen-and-a-half years ago. It could have been worse. Grandma Birdy thought for sure my mother said, "Mercy," which would have most surely stamped me with a holy name. I'm glad that didn't happen 'cause God knows I don't believe in him.
There's no middle name. I guess that candy striper thought Merilee was a mouthful and didn't ask for anything more, or maybe Mama finally passed out. The story has a murky-water tinge about it, like so many other old family stories.
When my little sister came along, Mama, being the visionary and stir-the-pot lady that she is, continued the dumb tradition she had started in her delirium, three-and-a-half years earlier. Mama has . . .
Excerpted from The Very Ordered Existence of Merilee Marvelous by Suzanne Crowley Copyright © 2007 by Suzanne Crowley. Excerpted by permission.
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