Excerpt: Good Is A Bad Word

Emotions were just so messy and inconvenient. Miranda acknowledged that people had them, but she wasn't quite sure why.

The juniper bushes blocked Huntington street from her front yard. They were scratchy and smelled like disinfectant, but they were thick and she was sure no one would observe her spying mission. Most importantly, Dad wouldn't see her.

The bushes, genus juniperus to be exact, were between three foot, five inches and three foot seven inches wide, depending on who trimmed them. Wide enough that she could sit in the middle and watch the whole street without being seen. Huntington was a dead end, but her house was close to the exit corner, so she could witness a lot of action.

Aught, the fifth smallest town in Virginia, had exactly thirty-two streets. Miranda's dad, thought there were thirty-four, but he hadn't tracked the county lines correctly. She'd pointed that out, but Dad didn't listen so well.

She never really fit in in Aught, but she expected not to. She'd been home-schooled since she was five and had only just started going to public school this year. She was considering taking classes at the community college next year when she had a learners permit and could get Southwest Virginia Community College a couple towns over. If she got all her elective out of the way in the next two years, she could go to grad school when she was twenty. She was too smart for a town this small. Probably too smart for a town whose name meant "Nothing."

She watched the neighbor's house with a modified spyglass she'd gotten from a cereal box. It was only plastic, but the lenses were real glass--although terribly designed. She'd re-ground the lenses with her dad's grinder and then polished each with finer and finer sandpaper and then polishing rags till each lens worked together to make a reasonable 10X telescope, acceptable for the spy work she was currently engaged in. She hoped to find another just like it so she could make a matched pair to tape together as binoculars.

The neighbors were named Bauteil, or at least that was Cindy's last name. Miranda didn't like to assume until she had full data. None of the dads next door had ever used a last name and she'd never seen formal paperwork. If only she could spy some paperwork. She was thinking about going through their trash.

The infuriating thing was that Cindy had five dads. Five. People talked. Mirianda had herself heard Cindy call three of them dad. This wasn't the kind of town where even two dads would go without note. They mostly kept away from everyone, so who knew if there'd be a confrontation.

Actually, that there were five dads was unconfirmed. Most people in town knew the three because the main Bauteils, as Miranda called them, shopped together occasionally, but Miranda swore she'd seen two more unaccounted for in their back yard.

She wanted to collect visual evidence but her dad wouldn't let her borrow the digital camera. She'd already begun on the adapter for her spyglass and everything.
"Stay away from that house." He'd said. He didn't like anything weird. Since they'd stopped traveling, Miranda's life had gotten increasingly boring.

She used a pilot ballpoint to take notes in her recycled paper notebook. Other kids had iPhones, but her family couldn't afford one.

The summer wind made the bush branches itch at her arms. So far Cindy turned out to be a very boring subject to spy on. She just sat in her room brushing her hair. Miranda noted that Cindy's room had no posters. The walls had small framed pictures, but she couldn't see what they were. At least the room wasn't pink. Except for the pictures, a single dresser, and what must be the bed she sat on--invisible underneath the window--the room looked bare. Miranda was surprised she didn't have pictures of dragons. Cindy was the kind of girl who didn't dig through the woods or get her--always--pink dresses dirty. Miranda didn't quite know what to make of Cindy, but it bugged her that she thought of her at all.

How did one have five dads? Miranda was clear on how reproduction happened, and she was sure there must be a mother in there somewhere.

Cindy was a social pariah at school, for all she noticed. She seemed perfectly content to drift from class to class. Miranda noted that her grades were nothing to take notice of either.

Of course that was Miranda's problem. She was the top of everything in her class and people treated like she was the class uber-nerd. She put down the spyglass. It wasn't her fault she had good genes.

The dad who walked Cindy to the front door every day was named Bill. Miranda had the most notes on him. All the dads had genero names. Bill, Tom, John. She hadn't figured out the names of the hidden dads, yet, but she was guessing something like Steve and Bob.

Miranda's own dad was deadly boring and, yes, sometimes Miranda wished she could trade with Cindy. Her dad had to be the world's only boring fireman. The only thing interesting about her dad was that he was hiding something. She didn't know what, but she intended to drag it out. Her mom was another story but she didn't like to think about her too much.

If someone had bothered to ask Miranda why she was collecting all this data on Cindy's family, she would say, "Through the thoughtful collection and study of information we take control of our own lives." But no one noticed or ever bothered to ask.

Cindy was still brushing her hair. Sometimes Miranda wondered if Cindy did anything but brush her hair.

Cindy finally finished and set the brush on the dresser. Her hair kind of flew a little bit in the wind, probably lifted by static electricity. It was kind of a golden blond brown--it bugged Miriam that there wasn't a technical term for the color. It had a little bit of green that she knew came from hard water and copper pipes. Still the green kind of worked. Miriam's hair was kinky and she wished for long straight hair, even if it was a little green.

Cindy sat down on the bed again and as if on cue Cindy's Bill dad came into the room holding a golden cage.

She wished she had a audio spying device. She'd seen plans for bug transmitters in science magazines in the library, but her family didn't have money for the parts. She'd need to swallow her pride and do more babysitting jobs.

Bill and Cindy were probably talking about something boring anyway.
It was only luck that she put the spyglass up to her eye at that moment. Bill set the cage on Cindy's bed and Cindy put out her finger. Bill jumped at her hand and seemed to almost fold upon himself, compressing until he was a little bird. As he landed on Cindy's finger, the single functioning part of Miranda's brain identified him as serinus canaria, a canary.