from behind the steering wheel of the most ridiculous car Fern had ever seen. It was an old pink convertible as long as a double-wide, with fancy white leather dashboard and seats. She remembered watching reruns of an old show called Stanky and Crotch or something, and there was a dude on that show with a cane who dressed in a purple fur coat and a hat with a feather in it. This was exactly the car he drove. Fern was almost sure of it.
“Aren’t you going to say anything? You were talkative enough a few minutes ago, when you were begging me not to report you for attempted larceny.”
Fern stuck her bent elbow outside the open window and rolled her eyes. She was beginning to think she’d made the wrong decision, and that child protective services—and maybe even the juvenile detention center—would be better than hanging out with this lady. “So how many minutes a day do we gotta spend together?” Fern asked.
“Minutes?” The Newberry chick laughed loudly and then smiled all fakelike again. Fern wondered why she did that. Did she think it made her look good? Because it didn’t. It made her look simple, like she’d been dropped on her head as a baby or something. But Fern knew girls like her always had a lot of boyfriends, and boys were so stupid that they probably couldn’t tell the difference between a real smile and a fake one, and they probably told this lady she was pretty no matter what stupid thing she did or how fake she acted.
Fern hated boys.
“We will be spending two hundred hours in each other’s company, doesn’t that sound fun?” The lady lifted her nose into the wind, like she was Queen of Hollarville. “And we can spread it out however you’d like, say, two hours a day for a hundred days, three hours a day for two months, or whatever. We’ll just have to go over our schedules.”
Fern felt her mouth fall open. She couldn’t have heard right. There was no way she’d heard right. Two hundred damn hours? With this loony-tune? God! And she thought Three-Gee was the fruitiest woman on earth—but that was before she’d met her new mentor.
“What would you like to do together?”
Fern closed her eyes against the wind and angled her face toward the early evening sunshine. Maybe if she just pretended to be hard of hearing Tanyalee Nutberry would leave her the hell alone.
“I know you can hear me.”
Fern let her head wobble around on her neck, suddenly feeling too tired to sit up. “I hear ya.”
“So? What would you like to do?”
“Nuthin.”
“Nuthin’s no fun, now is it?”
“Sure it is. It’s my favorite thing to do.”
“You’re a hilarious little kid,” the woman said, smiling again. Fern wished to God she’d stop doing that. Really. This chick was so annoying that Fern was tempted to whack her across her shiny, white-toothed, fake smile.
“Well, now, if you don’t make a contribution to this conversation then I’ll be forced to select fun activities based on what I, myself, enjoy doing. That won’t be fair to you, of course, but unless you help me out here, I’ll have no choice.”
There was only one thing Fern hated more than boys and that was child psychology. She sighed. “Yeah? Fine. Let’s see, I like jumping off roofs. I like shooting off the heads of snakes with my BB gun and letting spiders crawl around on the tip of my tongue so they can lay their eggs. And I especially enjoy wiping my butt with poison ivy leaves just to see what’ll happen.”
Miss Goofyberry said nothing. Fern dared a quick peek and saw that all the color had drained from the lady’s face. She shoots … she scores … the crowd goes wild! Fern felt her shoulders shake with silent laughter.
“Now, that was just plain mean.”
Fern crossed her arms over her chest and stared out the windshield. She figured this car ride would only last a couple more minutes, since they were almost at Three-Gee’s house. Maybe if she just ignored everything the stupid chick said right up until they pulled in the driveway then she could jump out of the car, run to her room, and not have to deal with this crap anymore today.
But Fern noticed the big car was slowing down. Goofyberry pulled into the gravel on the side of the road and cut the engine.
“What are you doing?”
Tanyalee leaned into Fern, and for a moment Fern thought she