“No one who’s actually read a Princess Snugglewarm graphic novel in its entirety could ever possibly resist becoming a completely dedicated subject of her kingdom, or princessdom, or whatever it’s called,” I said.
I was lying in bed with the book fanned open on my chest. I’d finished reading Charm School Dropouts after dinner, which meant I could probably read it at least five more times before I had to give it back to Trey at the library on Saturday morning.
The house was quiet; Dylan, Evie, and Mom and Dad had all gone to sleep. Karim stood with an arm resting on the sill of my (as usual) open window, with his head turned so one ear was pointing out in the direction of the Screaming House. Just in case. Also, he’d brought his Teen Titans pajamas, which I could have given him a hard time about, but I let it slide.
Regardless: Princess Snugglewarm > Houston Astros > Teen Titans.
“I have read one from start to finish,” Karim said. “It was the one about the vampire impalas or antelopes, or something.”
“Oh! Princess Snugglewarm versus the Vampalas and Vampelopes. That was a good one. It had a Gobblepotamus in it too.”
I’ll be honest: Princess Snugglewarm versus the Vampalas and Vampelopes had tested my enduring commitment to Princess Snugglewarm. It’s all because in that particular volume, Princess Snugglewarm confessed her deep hatred for mayonnaise. It would be one thing if she had made it specifically clear that jarred—or, worse yet, plastic-squeeze-bottle—mayonnaise was disgusting and could possibly turn someone into an eternally undead bloodsucking creature of the savanna, while real, fresh homemade mayonnaise (or, better yet, aioli) was one of the greatest culinary achievements of humankind.
If Princess Snugglewarm only knew!
I had been so disheartened by that particular anti-mayonnaise episode that I’d even written a letter of protest to A. C. Messer, author-illustrator of Princess Snugglewarm, which he’d never answered. And then, by the time the next Princess Snugglewarm graphic novel had come out, which was about a ring of homework cheaters, I had forgotten all my doubts about her magnificence, because who doesn’t want to see cheaters who copy homework get gored by a unicorn, right in the middle of math class?
“I don’t know. Stabbing people in the heart with Betsy just because they put mayonnaise on cooked macaroni and call it a pasta salad seems a bit rough.”
“It won’t seem rough fifty years from now when everyone in the world wakes up, Karim,” I said. “It just shows how far ahead of her time Princess Snugglewarm really is. And anyway, it was jarred mayonnaise. I wrote to the author and asked him if there’d be a follow-up about how handmade mayonnaise is outstanding.”
“Did he answer?” Karim asked.
“Well. Not in writing,” I said.
Karim nodded and looked out the window. There was nothing to see, and the night was devoid of bloodcurdling screams, or if there were any screams going on, they couldn’t be heard over the whirring chorus of cicadas and tree frogs. Karim said, “I broke up with my last significant other over mayonnaise, as a matter of fact. Because every time we’d kiss, well, the thought of mayonnaise would just about make me gag. Mouths that touch mayonnaise will never touch mine, Sam.”
I should mention here that I have never kissed anyone who wasn’t my mom or my dad, whether they ate mayonnaise or not, so the thought of kissing someone was terrifying to me and filled me with all kinds of awed respect for Karim, to whom kissing other people was as unremarkable as looking both ways before crossing a street. I didn’t get it. And I never wanted to grow up if the toll to get past that particular marker meant kissing someone when you weren’t required to, mayonnaise or not.
Also, I should probably explain that for nearly as long as I’d known him, Karim had been a boy who constantly had a steady significant other. He had gone out with no fewer than four girls this past school year, and Karim was only just about to start seventh grade. I’d lost track of the most recent significant others after he’d broken up with Hayley Garcia, who’d been president of our middle school Science Club, but I could always tell when Karim was experimenting with his independence, because those were the days when he’d spend more time with me—like now, when he was practically living at my house. And knowing that Karim had broken up with one of his girlfriends over the mere prospect of having to go to a school dance with her made it seem all the more reasonable that he would break up with someone else over an emulsion of egg yolk and oil—mayonnaise.
“So it was mayonnaise that got between you and Hayley Garcia?” I asked.
Karim made a kind of clucking sound. “No. Hayley was a long time ago.”21
And Karim continued, “I didn’t tell you, but I started going out with Brenden Saltarello at the end of April. Brenden puts mayonnaise on everything, even corn dogs. Corn dogs. Can you imagine? Putting mayonnaise on a corn dog is like using the flag of Texas to wipe your feet. I stayed over at his house on his thirteenth birthday, and his dad even made a chocolate cake with mayonnaise in it. I just couldn’t take it anymore. It was mayonnaise insanity. It was like living on Planet Mayonnaise. I still really like Brenden a lot, but I had to break up with him, all entirely due to mayonnaise.”
There was suddenly so much I wanted to say to Karim, not the least of which was this: Chocolate mayonnaise cake is delicious.
Instead what I said was this: “Wait. What?”
I sat up in bed and my library book plopped to the floor.
I wondered if Princess Snugglewarm would be mad at me for that.
Karim looked out the window and shrugged. He said, “Yeah. Mayonnaise broke us up.”
“No. I mean, Brenden Saltarello?”
Brenden Saltarello was a year older than Karim and I. He was going into eighth grade. Brenden was super-popular and wrote for the school newspaper, the Mustang, and he played pitcher on the baseball team. Also, I had seen Brenden wearing a Princess Snugglewarm T-shirt a few times at school last year, which placed him squarely in the “people who are okay as far as I’m concerned” category, so I totally didn’t mind if my best friend was going out with him.
“Yeah. Well, sorry I never said anything about it. But you’re the first person I told, Sam. I mean besides my mom and dad, and Bahar. It was Brenden who asked me if I wanted to go out with him too, not that it matters. He told me he had a crush on me. I never even really thought about it until Brenden asked, but I guess I’ve also always been kind of interested in going out with boys, too, you know, what that would be like. And Brenden always made me feel like it was no big deal, which it isn’t. And then I realized that I liked going out with Brenden more than I ever liked going out with anyone else.”
Then Karim looked at me. It was dark, but I could tell by the sound of my friend’s voice and the way his eyes changed shape in the charcoal reflection of the night sky that Karim was telling me the truth, and that he was sad about breaking up with Brenden too.
Friends can tell these things about each other.
And I was so confused about this crush thing that everyone else apparently knew about, like what it felt like, and how to know if you were having one.
I sighed, thinking about tea with Bahar and not saying anything to anyone.
And Karim added, “We both cried when we decided to split up. But you know—Blue Creek. And, I don’t know, the other boys who go out with boys at Dick Dowling, or the girls who go out with girls, they’re all way braver than I am. Besides, Brenden plays baseball, and those kids can be… well, you know.”
I said, “Oh.”
Karim just cleared his throat and turned again to look out in the direction of the Purdy House—the Screaming House.
He said, “You’re not jealous, are you?”
And I have to say that unlike Karim, I am not a good liar, and I would especially never lie to my best friend. But I felt confused about so many things.
I said, “Well, I am kind of jealous of Brenden Saltarello because you’re my best friend.”
“We’ll never not be best friends, Sam.” Then I could hear the smile in Karim’s voice when he said, “Besides, long distance relationships never work out, and Oregon’s, like, two thousand miles away.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know.”
“But it’s dumb to break up with someone you really care about over something as unimportant as mayonnaise. Or baseball.”
Karim said, “It just… No. Gag. And besides, Blue Creek is a town that makes kids be what Blue Creek wants them to be. You know that. That’s why you’re going to Oregon for high school. It’s why James left too. Brenden’s going to be a baseball player, or a news reporter in Dallas or something, and I’m just going to be here in Blue Creek, alone, texting you guys who are all so far away.”
I’ll admit it that I was sad when James left Blue Creek.
The whole town—James’s dad especially—wanted James to be a great football player (which he was), but he only wanted to study dance (and he was such a talented dancer, and he loved dancing and hated football, besides). So his mom took him away from Blue Creek, so she could let James be James.
Maybe Karim and Brenden would get their chance too.
It seemed like a couple of minutes passed without Karim and me saying one word to each other. We just listened to the sounds of the insects and the frogs outside in the muggy night.
I said, “Well, I bet you anything it’s jarred mayonnaise that Brenden always uses. One of these days, I’ll make homemade mayonnaise for you. It will change your world, Karim. Maybe you could bring some to Brenden. He’d never eat the jarred kind again. And you’d live happily, and bravely, ever after. The end.”
“Thank you, Sam.”
“Karim?”
“What?”
“Did Brenden Saltarello ever make fun of you for wearing Teen Titans pajamas?”
“Shut up, Sam.”
21. To correct the record here, Hayley was only a few months ago.