The Mutual Admiration Society(64)

That’s when Mrs. Cumberland goes back to playing “Holy, Holy, Holy” on the organ, and the greasers go back to snapping their Black Jack gum, and Butch Seeback starts bleating, and brownnosing Jenny Radtke hyena-giggles because a dare is a very big deal around here. Especially one that comes out of Kitten Jablonski’s mouth. She’s dared kids to stay overnight in the abandoned haunted house on 70th St. where a murder took place or jump offa the roof of school or steal real gold St. Christopher medals off of gravestones when jumpy and armed Mr. McGinty is just a few yards away or slam back so many potato pancakes that they throw up on one of the nuns on Fish Fry Friday.

Now that I know that Sister Margaret Mary is not dead and not been kidnapped, that means that the only mystery The Mutual Admiration Society has left to solve is finding her, which I really, really, really, really don’t want to do. For Birdie’s sake, wherever our overly strict principal she is, I hope she stays there forever. But because of Kitten’s dare, I really don’t have any choice in the matter now, do I. Her legion of snitches will be spying on me from every street corner and alley and from behind every tree and garage in the neighborhood for the next three days, and if I don’t look like I’m at least trying to find out what happened to our missing principal, those snitches will report back to her and I’ll be so far up shit creek without a paddle that it won’t be funny.

It’s one thing to try and fail at a dare—razzing for a month or so, some sittings on the bubbler, gum in my hair, etc.—but if a kid doesn’t give it her best shot, well. If Birdie and me don’t end up running away, I’ll never be able to leave the house or walk down the halls at school or the aisles of church or anywhere else in the neighborhood without some kid clucking and calling me a yellow-bellied chicken shit or throwing an egg at me. They inflicted so much cruel and unusual punishment on Mary Olson when she ignored one of Kitten’s dares that her family had to move out of the parish. To another state.

So before I disappear through the red velvet confessional curtain to tell Father Ted my sins, I do what I gotta do. Trying to hold back my tears, I look up to Kitten and croak out, “I accept your dare,” and then I spit in my hand and she does the same, and when we shake on it, my fate has been sealed.





19


CLOUD NINE


Maybe as a reward for letting Father Ted get out of the black box and over to his favorite barstool at Lonnigan’s faster, and for not farting, he goes easy on me for a change. After I get done telling him a short list of some of my real sins that aren’t that bad—being mean to my sister, not saying my prayers, only half following the Fourth Commandment to honor my father and my mother—he absolves me with the Latin forgiveness words and assigns me my penance. “Say three Hail Marys, Shirley,” he tells me from behind the black curtain. “Send the Jablonski kid in, and tell the rest of those delinquents to say the Stations of the Cross,” and then he slams the window shut in a very thirsty way.

I don’t want to do what Father told me to do, but to keep my soul from getting any filthier than it already is, when I come back through the red velvet curtain, I dutifully tell Kitten, “You’re up,” and then I give his instructions to the kids still in line.

Of course, there’s a rumble of grumbling and swearing, even though these greasers wouldn’t dream of sticking around to say the Stations. They’re only here today, same as me, because their mothers are probably paying Jenny Radtke a quarter to snitch on them, too. They’ll hang around long enough until that blond rat with the spelling medal that is rightfully mine leaves, and then they’ll all head up to the Milky Way Drive-In for a lunch of out-of-this-world burgers and to gun their engines and ogle girls and smear ketchup on one another and play mumblety-peg with their switchblades.

After Kitten enters the confessional, without her to stand between us, I can tell by the sneer on his face that Butch Seeback is itching to take a shot at me. I try to run, but in my weakened state, I don’t get very far before the missal he took out of a pew hits a bull’s-eye on the back of my head and almost sends me sprawling in the main aisle.

“Hey, Trigger, why the long face?” Charlie cracks as I squeeze into the pew between him and Birdie. “Did Butch threaten to rearrange your mouth to the back of your head again, or didn’t Kitten have any good information?”

“You could say that.” I rub the part of my head that got hit by Seeback’s missal missile, tell my fiancé that my sister’s bangs look very nice, and then I ask him to hold on for a second because I need to get my wits about me and update my most important list while everything is still fresh in my mind, or before I develop a case of amnesia from the noogie Kitten gave me and the smack on the back of the head that her new boyfriend treated me to.



TO-DO

1. Take tender loving care of Birdie.

2. Solve whatever happened to Sister Margaret Mary for big blackmail or reward bucks.

2. Hope that we don’t find out why Mr. McGinty kidnapped and murdered Sister M & M and concentrate on finding someone else who did.

2. Try to do Kitten’s dare and find Sister Margaret Mary.

3. Make Gert Klement think her arteries are going as hard as her heart.

4. Catch whoever stole over $200 out of the Pagan Baby collection box.

5. Practice your Miss America routine.