The Blonde of the Joke by Bennett Madison Page A

was what she usually called me, and I had gotten used to it.
    “Vendela, Vickie, Velma, Valentina—it’s all the same to me,” Ms. Tinker said. I think it’s possible that she winked when she got to my actual name, but it was hard to be sure, she was such a twitchy person to start with. “I must say that Vendela suits you better than Vickie these days,” she went on. “Forgive an old woman for getting mixed up.”
    Ms. Tinker really wasn’t even that old, but she was always acting like she had one foot in the grave. “I’m going to be late to my next class,” I told her. I was sick of herbullshit. I zipped my motorcycle jacket all the way to my chin and pulled away. She grabbed me again.
    “Hasn’t seemed to bother you much lately.”
    “Can I go?” I asked.
    “I’m worried about you,” Ms. Tinker said. “Doodles all over your work. Talking back. And you know I don’t tolerate tardiness. You used to be one of my best students.”
    “How could I have been one of your best students? You don’t even know my name,” I said. I jerked my elbow from her spindly, gnarled hand and pushed out through the door.
     
    At the mall, Francie was making big plans. I sat next to her on the edge of the fountain, half listening as she mused on and on about impossible topics. It was a drone that I liked. The infiniteness of her ambition was reassuring. “We should steal the Holy Grail,” she was saying that day, dragging her cupped palm through the water and drawing small whirlpools as she stared into space. “Now that would be a score.”
    “I doubt they have the Holy Grail at Montgomery Shoppingtowne,” I deadpanned. “I definitely haven’t spotted it at Wet Seal. Bebe maybe?”
    Sarcasm was always lost on Francie. “You never know,” she said. “You never know. We haven’t even scratched the surface of this place. And if I had the Holy Grail, I’d hide it in an unlikely location. Wouldn’t you? I mean, no one’s found it yet after, what, two thousand years? It has to be someplace no one’s thought to look. What hiding place couldbe more unlikely than this fake-o palace? Who would ever imagine you could find something real here?”
    “There’s the Armani store,” I said. “That’s real Armani.”
    “Armani Exchange,” Francie corrected me. Francie was the type of person who could tell you, in detail, the precise difference between Armani and Armani Exchange, right down to the pattern of the stitching. “A-fucking-X; black ribbed fifty-dollar T-shirt Eurotrash crap. It doesn’t count. Face it, Val. There’re two and a half real things in this whole entire place. You, me, and the Holy Grail—the Holy Grail only counts half because it’s just a suspicion that it’s here. And even myself I’m not so sure about all the time, when it comes to realness. Who’s to say I’m not a robot, or a hologram? That leaves you.”
    “Ha!” I said.
    “Don’t laugh, Val,” Francie said. “You are, like, so for real.”
    If she had told me the same exact thing a few weeks before, I wouldn’t have believed her, or even really known what she meant. But sitting there with her, I could feel my blood pumping, pumping against skintight leather. I knew that she was right. “Thanks,” I said.
    “Well, it’s true,” she said. “And we’re going to find the Holy Grail. I’m not sure why I think it’s here, but I do have a feeling.” Francie took out her eyeliner and carefully extended her curlicues in a silent show of determination. “My feelings are usually reliable.”
    “What does the Holy Grail even do, anyway?” I asked. “It has something to do with Indiana Jones, right?”
    “Indiana Jones and Jesus,” she said. “And it’s, like, totally valuable. But the main thing about it is that it lets you live forever. You take a drink from it and boom, instant immortality.”
    “So it’s a cup or a mug or something?”
    “Well, it’s actually technically a chalice, I guess, but supposedly it’s