Me, My Elf & I (16 page)

So now, after a torturous forty-eight hours, it’s finally Monday morning and I’m about to walk into school, where I know at some point I’ll see Timber. And yet, for some reason, I just can’t seem to open these big green doors in front of me.

“What are you waiting for, your handmaiden?” a voice says behind me. I turn around to see that awful pixie lady bustling up the steps, barking at me. “Overprivileged little princesses. Can’t even open doors for yourself. Or do you think it’s automatic? Wait till I tell the gals in the office about this one.” She pushes past me and swings the door open, bumping me off the top step in the process.

At first, I’m so shocked that I can’t think of anything to say. But then I’m mad enough to stomp through the door, ready to zap her. She’s disappeared, though. Maybe she really is a pixie and she scurried off to a mouse hole where she belongs with the other rodents.

I’m left standing alone right inside the doors. I scan the hallway for signs of Timber or, worse, Bella and her underlings. What will happen when I see Bella today? Did Timber tell her that we kissed? Did they break up? Is he my boyfriend now? The truth is, I don’t know how erdlers do this whole boyfriend/girlfriend thing. In Alverland there are strict rules about who can date (only people from different clans) and when you can meet (at festivals and celebrations when all the clans get together). Also, an elf would never secretly kiss someone if they were already dating another person! I have no idea if what happened in the park with Timber was typical erdler stuff. Who knows what they do! Maybe they go around kissing anyone they take a fancy to, which frankly I’m not into. And it worries me a little bit that I kissed someone else’s boyfriend. Maybe that’s just the nicey-nice elf in me talking. Because another part of me is really excited about it. I wanted so badly to ask Timber all of those questions at the picnic, but I couldn’t with my family around. It was maddening! I had to sit beside him wondering what was going on in his mind while he was singing with my family, then trading stories with Dad and Grove about being on the road with a band. Maybe today I can steal him away for a little bit and ask him what all of this means.

Since I don’t see anyone I know in the hall, I head for the courtyard. Luckily, the first person I see that I know is Mercedes. She’s sitting at a table in the sun with her headphones on, finishing her geometry homework. I plunk down in the chair beside her.

“Hola, chica! ”
she says, taking off her earphones. “Oh, don’t we look nice today. Getting dressed up for someone?” she asks with a knowing grin.

I look down self-consciously at my dark green tunic with deep pink roses embroidered around the hems. It’s true, I wore this on purpose because it fits a little bit more snug than some of my others and the color makes my eyes sparkle. I even put on my three favorite amulets: a hawk’s feather for luck, a clam shell for laughter, and a sachet of dried lavender for love.

Mercedes leans in close. “Did he call?”

I shake my head no.

“Figures.” She snorts. “Men! Always pigs.”

“But he doesn’t have my phone number,” I tell her.

She gives me the look with an eyebrow up and her lips crinkled to the side that means I’m being really dumb. “He could find it. Or he could have asked you for it. But he didn’t.”

My heart sinks and lands like a rock in the bottom of my belly. “But why did he . . . you know? The kiss. Is that, uh, normal?”

“For him it is,” she says.

“Is that good?”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know what to think!”

“Do you have ensemble with him today?”

I nod. My heart buoys back into my chest and starts thumping like a rabbit being chased by a fox. “What should I do?”

“Listen.” She grips my arm. “You play it cool, Zephyr. Act like nothing ever happened. He’s the one who kissed you, right?”

“Right.”

“Let him bring it up.”

“But what if I see Bella?” I whisper, glancing around to make sure she’s nowhere near.

“Who cares about her? After all the smack she talked about you? Don’t you get it yet? She’s evil, Zephyr. Pure evil!”

“But I don’t want to be mean,” I say.

Mercedes slaps my leg. “You gotta get over that right now,
mija
.”

The bell rings. I jump. Nothing new.

“Find me at lunch,” Mercedes says, shoving her book and tablet back into her bag. “Can’t wait to hear what happens.”

 

My legs are so wobbly on my way to ensemble that I’m afraid I’ll fall down in the middle of the hallway. My eyes dart everywhere, checking the faces of every kid who passes me, hoping and then fearing that I’ll see Timber on my way to class. Everybody else rushes by, but I can’t decide what to do. Should I go slowly, maybe stop in the bathroom and check on how I look so that I’ll get to the room after him? Then I can see if he saves me a seat. Or should I go fast so that I’ll get there before him and save him a seat? What if I save him a seat but he doesn’t sit in it? What if he saves me a seat, but I get there too late and someone sits in it and then he thinks that I didn’t want to sit next to him?

Oh for thunder’s sake I’ve got to get a grip! Where is Mercedes when I need her?

I pull over to the side of the hallway and lean against the wall to gather myself. Mercedes said to act like nothing happened. How can I possibly act like that? Elves are no good at hiding our emotions. That’s one of the drawbacks of elfin honesty in the erdler world.

I guess I’m going to have act like an erdler. I look out at the swarm of kids passing by me. First of all, most of them frown instead of smile. I wipe the goofy grin off my face and replace it with a scowl. Also, a lot of them stomp around, full of attitude, instead of bouncing along happily like I do. I start walking again, but this time I drag my feet. Most of them look down at their feet or up over everyone’s heads, instead of into the faces of the people they pass. I drop my eyes to ground. I also notice that instead of saying “Hi! ” like a chirpy little bird when they see someone they know, these kids just nod and toss out a quick, deep “Hey” or “What up.” That’s what I’ll do when I see Timber.

I round the corner toward my classroom, trudging along, glowering like a grouchy ogre. I’m working so hard on my erdler act that I don’t see who’s coming down the hall from the other direction until we both reach the doorway of our class at the same exact time. “Hey, Zeph!” Timber says brightly.

The minute I look up into his gorgeous eyes and hear his happy voice, my mouth blossoms into a huge, silly grin and I nearly sing, “Oh hi, Timber!” like the biggest possible goob in the universe. What happened to the nod? The grunting “hey” noise I was going to make? The frown?

“You okay? You looked like you were sick or something the way you were walking.”

“No,” I say with an embarrassed laugh as we enter the room. “I’m fine.”

I scan the seats. There are only two empty chairs and of course who’s sitting between them? Bella’s mangy lap dog who called me MooMoo. But Timber nods to her. “Hey, Chelsea,” he says.

“What up,” she says back, then looks at me and raises one eyebrow but doesn’t speak.

I look down at the ground and my cheeks grow warm. Does she know that something’s going on between Timber and me? Is it obvious by the way he said hello to me? Or what if nothing is actually going on between us and there’s nothing for her to know? Timber takes the seat on Chelsea’s left side. I have no choice but to slip into the other chair on her right.

“How was your weekend?” Chelsea asks him.

I stare hard at the top of my desk, straining to hear his answer over the other kids chatting.

“Boring. Bella was upstate with her dad, so I just hung out.” Timber says nonchalantly. “So you know, nothing special.”

When I hear him say this, I feel like someone punched me in the stomach. Then threw me off a bridge. Then ran over me with a truck. I want to die. Shrivel up and blow away like a little dried leaf.
Nothing special?
My eyes sting and my nose suddenly runs. He said his weekend was nothing special. I turn away and press my face into the sleeve of my tunic. My beautiful, stupid tunic. The one I wore for no reason except to look like a fool.

 

I drag myself through the next three classes (looking like an erdler now without even trying) just marking time until lunch, when I can fall into Ari’s and Mercedes’s laps and fully lose it. I walk slowly, head down, trying not to cry when once again, I hear my name. Only this time when I look up, it’s Bella. I swear to the high heavens, I’m so surprised that my heart actually stops and I can feel my entire body go numb.

“I’ve been looking for you,” she says.

I’m sure there is terror in my eyes. Why is she looking for me? To kick the crap out of me for kissing her boyfriend, who thinks kissing me was nothing special? Wow, this day is not turning out how I’d hoped.

“So listen.” Bella stands close to me. “You want to run lines today? I totally didn’t rehearse at all over the weekend.” She reaches out and lifts the hawk’s feather from my chest. “Cool. Is it real?”

I’m flabbergasted! I don’t know what to do so I stammer, “Are you serious?”

“Of course I’m serious.” She drops the feather. “I thought we were going to work on the audition together.”

“But you said . . . I mean on the . . . you don’t even . . . ” That’s when I get it, finally. I can’t say anything about the blog or the fact that Bella doesn’t actually like me. It’s a secret and if I let her know that I know then she’ll change the password and everybody will hate me because everyone loves to read it.

“What?” She lifts her chin and flips her hair over her shoulder.

“Nothing,” I mutter.

“So when’s your study hall? Who teaches it?” she asks.

“Last period,” I tell her, still entirely bewildered. “Ms. Crane.”

“No problem,” she says. “I’ll bail on my calc class and come find you. We can probably use one of the studios upstairs.”

“But, but . . . ,” I say. I didn’t actually mean to agree to anything.

“Don’t worry. Ms. Crane will totally let you out if I ask her.” A funny little electronic song plays and Bella snaps open her phone. “Gotta go,” she whispers to me, then says, “What up,” into the phone as she turns and saunters away.

I hurry off to the cafeteria. I need Ari and Mercedes. I don’t understand a single thing that has happened to me today. I always thought the erdler world would be so much simpler than the elf world. I mean, it’s not as if mushrooms can talk here and people can make themselves disappear. It’s not as if anyone uses magic. Life inside the walls of this tiny erdler school is so much more complex than in the whole of Alverland. But I guess that’s the thing. If you don’t have special powers you have to find other ways to get what you want. And for erdlers, that means confusing your enemies, then stabbing them in the back when they least expect it.

I’m almost running by the time I get to the cafeteria and I nearly knock over the three fairy girls as they come out the doors.

“Zephyr! Oh my God.” Jilly, the fairy queen, pulls me into their tight little circle. I notice they’re all wearing long silk shirts with flowing sleeves, sort of like tunics. Jilly’s is bright blue, Rienna’s is white, and Darby’s is salmon-colored. Of course, they have their wings on, too.

“We totally read what they wrote,” Jilly says in a low, serious voice.

“Who?” I ask, distracted by looking over their heads for Ari and Mercedes.

“You know who,” Rienna says, staring hard at me. “On the blog,” she whispers.

A pang of fear goes through me. “About what?” I ask. “This weekend?”

“Huh?” asks Darby. “What happened over the weekend?”

“I heard Bella got arrested at a rave in Redhook,” Rienna says.

“No, no. I’m talking about what they said about Zephyr’s clothes and the audition,” Jilly says, then turns to me. “Tell me you’ve read it.”

“Oh just that,” I say, relieved.

Rienna’s eyes open wide. “Wow,” she says, turning first to Jilly then Darby. “She doesn’t even care. How’s that possible?” Then she looks at me suspiciously. “Why don’t you care?”

“No it’s not that . . .”

“You’re absolutely right,” says Jilly. “I wouldn’t care either.”

Darby laughs. “Get a grip, Jilly. Last year when Bella called you a goth lesbo vampire slut, you totally stopped wearing black and we all got wings.”

“First of all, that doesn’t even make sense,” says Jilly. “How can you be a lesbo and a slut?”

“A lesbian can be slutty,” Darby argues.

“Whatever,” says Jilly. “But second, I didn’t stop being goth because of Bella.”

“Yeah right,” says Rienna.

“She just happened to say that right after we read
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
and I was ready for a change. The whole goth look is so over anyway,” Jilly insists.

“It’s not over,” says Darby.

“Then why aren’t
you
all gothed out anymore?” Jilly asks.

I don’t want to get involved in their weird argument about when they became fairies, so I wave to them and slip out of the circle into the cafeteria. I quickly spot Mercedes and Ari hunched over Ari’s BlackBerry. I jog over to them and drop down on the floor. “You guys will never guess what happened now!” I moan.

“This is so cool, Zephyr. Check it out,” Ari says without even looking up at me.

Mercedes is wiggling all around, smacking me on the arm, she’s so excited. I peer over her shoulder, certain that whatever’s on that itty-bitty screen is something terrible about me. “Ari’s band posted their song ‘Not Like You’ on YouTube like a month ago and then it started getting hits and today it got a featured video spot! Isn’t that slamming?” Mercy says.

“What?” I’m really confused now.

“His song is a featured video!” she repeats.

“Oh,” I say, because obviously this is important. But actually I had no idea a regular person could even make a video or why you’d hang it on a tube so other people can hit it or why any of that is so exciting and how all of this relates to the BlackBerry. I squint at the screen anyway and can just make out Ari playing the piano. “That’s you,” I say, amazed.