Wanting Sheila Dead(10)

“It’s the wrong thing for you,” Dennis had said, over and over again. “You don’t belong with those people. It’s like you want to change into one of the pod people. You’re going to start going on about world peace—”

“Of course I’m not going to start to go on about world peace,” Ivy had said.

“—And about helping other people,” Dennis had continued. “You know how those people talk. How all they really want, besides world peace, is to help other people. We talked about it. We agreed. It’s stupid.

“Of course it’s stupid,” Ivy had said, but then her mind had wandered, and she had known that Dennis had noticed it. It wasn’t that she had changed her mind about the pod people. It was just that she didn’t necessarily want to spend her life holed up in an emotional bunker, keeping the world at bay by looking as weird as possible and talking in a code nobody but other geeks could understand.

By the time the woman had come to take her cell phone, Ivy had been ready to hang up on Dennis and turn the damned thing off. The only thing stopping her was the knowledge that she would surely have to go back home someday. She didn’t want the scene she knew would come if Dennis got her voice mail every time he tried to reach her.

The woman who had come to take their phones was holding back the canvas flap. Ivy stepped into the little interview area and looked down the table at the judges. She knew all the judges. At home, they watched the show and threw popcorn at the screen when something really stupid came on.

The judge in the middle was Sheila Dunham herself. Ivy thought she was trying to look fierce. What she actually looked like was . . . desperate.

Somebody cleared his throat. It was one of the men. Ivy wasn’t sure which one. If she’d had to guess, she would have said Pete Waldheim. The other two of the men were gay.

Sheila ruffled the papers in front of her and ran a hand through her thick black hair. Her face had the hard angles of someone who’d had too many lifts after taking too many drugs. Her mouth was the mouth of a world-class bitch.

“So,” she said, “tell us something about yourself.”

Ivy put her hands behind her back. “My name is Ivy Demari. It used to be Demaris, but my father changed it—”

“Your father changed it?” one of the men said. That was Johnny Rell. He was the gay guy who practically screamed gay. The other one, Mark Borodine, you only knew was gay because he said so.

“My father changed it,” Ivy said.

“Why?” Mark asked.

“I don’t know,” Ivy said. “I was a baby at the time.”

“Do you think he was trying to hide something?” Sheila said. “Had he been in jail? Was he covering up for something he did?”

“It wasn’t much of a change,” Ivy pointed out. “If he was covering something up, he’d have changed it to Smith or Petrelli or something, I think.”

The only other woman was Deedee Plant. Ivy was not old enough to remember when any of Deedee’s television series had been on the air in real time, but she’d seen all of them anyway. The Family Tree, that was one of them, about a family whose last name was Tree and there were seven children. Everybody had terribly serious teenaged problems, like whether people liked them or what they were going to do if they didn’t get a date for the prom.

Deedee Plant was leaning in and staring. “Is that a real tattoo on your neck,” she said, “or one of those temporary ones?”

“It’s a real one,” Ivy said.

“Do you have a lot of those,” Deedee asked, “you know, all over your body?”

“I have a few,” Ivy said.

“Where?” Sheila asked.

“Well,” Ivy said, “I’ve got one in the small of my back that’s a picture of the one ring that binds them . . .”

“Star Wars,” Sheila said.

“Lord of the Rings,” Ivy said. “It’s J. R. R. Tolkien. He’s—”

“Where are you from?” Sheila asked.

They weren’t really like questions anymore. They were more like demands. It was very stuffy in here, and very hot. Ivy thought she was sweating. She knew she was having trouble trying to breathe.

“I’m from Dallas,” she said.

Suddenly, Sheila Dunham was leaning so far forward, she was nearly climbing over the table.

“Dallas,” she said. “That’s where they tried to kill Kennedy. They did kill Kennedy. He died. I’ve seen the pictures. Are you a racist?”

“Excuse me?”

“That’s what they’ve got down there in Dallas,” Sheila said. “Racists. That’s why they killed Kennedy. They didn’t like it that he gave all those rights to black people. Are you a racist? Do you think racists should be superstars?”