Mr. Rausch, a tall, whippet-lean, long-limbed man, ducked through the door to Billy’s room and looked around with a sour expression. His narrow, tightly compressed lips were framed by a neatly trimmed mustache and a goatee that jutted from his chin like a black spike. His hair was slicked back and held in place by some sort of shiny substance. He was wearing black jeans and a white dress shirt fastened at the neck with a bolo tie. A sweet, spicy odor, like cloves steeped in rubbing alcohol, wafted off him.
A smallish white bulldog of opposite proportions waddled in after him.
“I am Ernest Rausch,” he said. “You may call me Mr. Rausch.” He gestured at the dog. “This is Gertrude. She is a French bulldog.”
Gertrude rolled her eyes and drooled.
“What is that smell?” I asked. I know it was rude of me, but sometimes the words just pop out.
Mr. Rausch gave his dog a reproving look. “Gertrude! Shame on you!”
“Not the dog,” I said. “It’s more like a cleaning product. Kind of clovey.”
Mr. Rausch drew back. “Are you referring to my Bay Rum?” he asked.
“It does smell sort of rummy,” I said.
“Bay Rum is a classic men’s aftershave. Discriminating people find it pleasing.” He examined me critically. “Are you Billy Bates?”
“Do I look like a boy to you?” I said, horrified. Clearly, Mr. Rausch and I were not destined to get along.
He pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes. “Despite your unflattering jeans and T-shirt, you appear to be a rather thin girl with extraordinarily curly, somewhat reddish hair and a large number of freckles, but I try not to make assumptions based upon physical appearance. Furthermore, the name Billy is not necessarily gender specific. Billie Holiday, for example, was a woman.”
“I’m Ginger, and I’m a girl.” I pointed at Billy. “He’s Billy.”
He turned his eyes to Billy.
“I understand you are having trouble with American history and language arts.”
“I was having a bad day,” Billy said.
“With my REMEMBER learning system, we can make sure you don’t have any more bad days.”
“Remember system?” Billy said.
“REMEMBER. It is an acronym for the Really Excellent Memory Enhancement Method by Ernest Rausch. It can enable you to memorize pi to ten thousand digits.”
“Cool!” Billy said.
“Wouldn’t that take up a lot of room in your brain?” I asked.
They both looked at me.
Mr. Rausch said, “And you are . . . ?”
“Ginger? Girl? Rather thin? Who you just met, like, sixty seconds ago?”
“Correct!” said the tutor, as if I’d just responded to a test question. “As for memories taking up physical space, that is not a problem. Even Gertrude, for example, has the capacity to remember tens of thousands of smells, sounds, and images, and her brain is less than half the size of yours.”
Gertrude looked up at the sound of her name and snorfled.
“She just radiates intelligence,” I said.
“She knows more than you can imagine,” Mr. Rausch said.
“I can imagine a lot,” I said.
He sniffed and returned his attention to Billy. “I thought we could start with history. Have you memorized the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution and its amendments?”
“Er . . . not exactly,” Billy said. “Isn’t that like a hundred pages?”
“Not precisely.”
“I don’t think that’s something we have to do for school,” I said.
“My method requires a solid foundation in the basics,” he said. “Furthermore, it works best when my tutee and I are able to work without constant interruptions. In other words . . . ”
“I was just leaving,” I said.
• • •
So much for Billy being my secret weapon. The mystery of Flinkwater would have to wait until he was done getting tutored, or REMEMBERed, or whatever. I was a bit peeved at him, to tell the truth.
After what happened to him later, I felt pretty bad about that.
• • •
On the way home I was trying to figure out how to write my paper for Mr. Westerburg’s class without subjecting myself to further mortification or library sneeze-fests, when I noticed I was being followed.
I’d been followed before, like a couple months ago when the Department of Homeland Security thought I was a terrorist.I Their black SUVs are easy to spot, but they hadn’t been bothering me lately.
But this was no black SUV following me. This was a familiar-looking gray cat.
“Mr. Peebles, is there something I can do for you?” I asked politely.
Mr. Peebles stopped walking, sat down on the sidewalk, and looked off at something utterly fascinating to him but completely invisible to me. The way one does, if one is a cat.
I continued toward home. Mr. Peebles let me get about twenty feet away, then continued to follow me. He followed me all the way to my front door, where I stopped to explain the situation to him.
“Mr. Peebles, inside this house there is a Siamese cat. His name is Barney, and he is a jealous cat who believes that all other cats are evil demons. You should go home.”
“Merp?” said Mr. Peebles, tilting his head.
“Yes, merp,” I said. “Now go home.”
If that cat understood what I was saying, he chose to ignore it.
“Scat!” I yelled, waving my arms vigorously.
Mr. Peebles backed up to the spirea bush and left his stinky calling card. He then trotted over by the maple tree, tucked his feet beneath his body, and closed his eyes to slits.
I. Oops. I said I wasn’t gonna do this.