it, think about it, consider it from all sides, and then – only then – does it loom on the horizon: a cloud no bigger than your hand, but the rain’s still a long way off. I’m talking about lunch. We’d been driving for what seemed like hours and hours and hours. I was hungry. Worrying about Marty, thinking about all the things I wanted to tell Mom, organizing games – these things tired me out. But when I checked my watch, it was only eleven thirty. No way were we going to stop for at least another half hour. I went over the lunch routine one more time. I knew where the picnic hamper was, and what was in it. I knew where the bag with the sunscreen and bandaids was. I knew where all the hats were. What else would we need for lunch? Drinking boxes? In the hamper. Handiwipes? In the diaper bag and the sunscreen bag.
And on the subject of diapers … no, it wasn’t quite like a diaper. But there was something. I wondered what it could be. Familiar and strange at the same time. Not pleasant. Not pleasant at all. I was in the very back seat. It was coming from behind me. A very peculiar … a very pungent … I guess you’d have to call it a kind of … well, a kind of …
“Something stinks,” said Grandma.
Marty. I guess if you hadn’t had a bath in a while, and you were wearing clothes you’d slept in for a few nights, you’d start to smell a bit. It wasn’t so bad in the open air behind the gas station, but in the van, with the windows closed, Marty was free to tell his own story.
Bill was sitting in the middle seat beside Bernie. Bernie was walking his stuffed monkey back and forth along the arm of his car seat. Bill turned around and looked at me anxiously. He recognized the smell all right.
I craned my neck so I could see over the back of the seat, but there was no sign of Marty. He was buried beneath our pile of gear.
“I don’t smell anything,” I said. “I do,” said Bernie. “But I don’t know what it is.”
“I … don’t smell anything either,” said Bill. “Mind you, I have a stuffy nose.”
What a coward. I glared at him.
“Let’s open a window,” I said. “That should freshen things up.”
Bill opened his window. I opened mine. Unfortunately, van windows open only about an inch. I guess the designers don’t want kids falling out.
After a minute Grandma said, “It still stinks back there.”
“You’re right. Yuck. It’s almost like something died,” said Dad.
Bill and I looked at each other. “What if there is … a body in the car?” Bill asked. I gasped, but he went onquickly, “An alien body from the planet Schenectady – I mean, from another planet?”
Dad smiled. I breathed a sigh of relief.
“Look!” I pointed to a road sign. “Odessa is coming up.” I reached into my travel case to find my map, and pulled out a square package. Not my Walkman, which I usually keep there, but the bottle of cologne that Bridget had given me for my last birthday. I kept it on my dresser. I couldn’t remember packing it. I must have put it in the case instead of the Walkman.
A lucky mistake. The bottle came with a sprayer. I pointed it at the ceiling of the van, and pressed down. And again.
A minute later Bill turned around with an expression of disgust on his face.
“What?” I whispered. “What?”
“Perfume?” He wrinkled up his nose. “What do you call that stuff?”
“Summer Nights,” I said. Actually, it smells kind of nice.
“Yuck,” he said.
“Better than Eau de Marty,” I whispered.
It took a little while for the perfume smell to spread through the van. We passed Odessa. Bernie fell asleep.
“Smells different in here now,” Dad commented. “Less like a morgue, more like perfume.” He tapped one of the gauges on the dashboard. “Hmm,” he said.
Grandma sniffed critically. “Charnel Number 5,” she muttered.
Dad laughed. Bill and I exchanged a relieved glance. The pavement changed. The wheels had been saying
origami,
C. J. Fallowfield, Book Cover By Design, Karen J
Michael Bracken, Elizabeth Coldwell, Sommer Marsden