The Princesses of Iowa (22 page)

When the bell finally rang, I jumped out of my seat and grabbed a copy of the stories before hurrying to my locker. I had to get away before Ethan or Shanti could stop me, ask what happened to the story I’d been working on at Starbucks, call me out on not turning anything in. Moments later, I was speeding through the crowded hallways toward the front doors, the stories clutched in my right hand. I hadn’t even taken the time to stuff them into my bag. I pushed through the door into an autumn afternoon of groaning gray clouds and skittering red leaves.

Outside, I finally slowed my pace and took a deep breath, feeling something like relief. As I walked, I glanced down at the top paper in my hand.
I knew this strange girl once,
it began. My eyes flicked up to the top of the page.
Fairydust.
It was Shanti’s story.

“Paige!”

Ripped from my reading, I realized I had stopped moving altogether and now stood under an oak tree by the edge of the school’s lawn.

Lacey caught up to me, leaning heavily on her cane. “What are you reading?” She reached a well-manicured hand toward Shanti’s story.

Instinctively, I whipped the papers away, stuffing them in my bag. “Nothing. Just something for class.”

“Oh.”

We stood still in the middle of the moving swarm. Faces, bags, bits of conversation, and laughter all pushed past us in a flood of color and movement and sound as we stayed silent. As usual, Lacey surveyed the crowd as if at any moment she might see someone more interesting. I watched her, trying to see a hint of the person she’d been the night before, crying in my bedroom. There was nothing. Her face was an airbrushed portrait of itself. My mother’s voice scolded me in my head.
She needs a friend right now, Paige. She needs you.
After all, who knew better than I the difference between the face you showed to the world and what you were feeling inside your heart? Lacey looked perfect because she cultivated it, not because she was.

“Hey.” I took a deep breath. “About yesterday . . .”

Lacey jumped, turning to me as if caught. “There’s a homecoming committee meeting tomorrow during eighth. I need you to be there.” It was the voice she used when she talked to Dr. Coulter, the voice of a helmet-haired newscaster.

“Oh.” Why couldn’t I be like Nikki? Endlessly forgiving, endlessly sweet, Nikki would reach out, would ask,
Do you want to talk about it?
or,
Is there anything I can do?

“Hey,” I said again. “Do you —”

“I have to go,” she said abruptly. She turned away and limped toward the front doors of the school. I watched her shuffle through the crowd, nodding to some, greeting others, until the top of her head disappeared behind a group of band geeks carrying their shiny plastic cases. The band moved slowly, laughing, and I turned before they dissipated, but through the forest of
WGHS MARCHING BAND
sweatshirts and utilitarian ponytails, I could have sworn I caught a glimpse of my boyfriend in the space of Lacey’s wake.

I drove out to the springs to read the stories. The drive was full of questions, of voices and doubts, and my own words echoed in my head as I walked down the path.
You move through the world, see yourself being seen . . .
I wasn’t hoping to be seen. I wasn’t imagining how I’d look walking down the path from the perspective of someone sitting on the tree roots, his back leaning against the trunk, his feet planted firmly against the water-splashed stones. . . .

The springs were empty; no one else was in the secret clearing, and I told myself I was relieved. I settled myself against my usual rock with the stories, and soon the rest of the world fell away.

Ethan’s was good. It was very good. His story was long, but I hardly noticed. Once I started reading I was pulled into his world, a world where a computer had a sense of humor, and maybe even a soul, and gangs of Christians roamed the streets, committing acts of terrorism in the name of the Lord. Normally, I didn’t like sci-fi, but Ethan’s story was different. It wasn’t just about a computer; it examined the question of what it means to be human in the face of the technology we create. The story was dark and funny and sad. I was hooked from the very first sentence. Hooked, and intimidated.

Shanti’s story was just as good. Maybe even better. It was more like a poem than a story, just a few ephemeral moments in time, woven together in the language of magic and stardust. An accountant falls in love with a girl from another world, and when she goes away, the sun and the moon switch places. Not understanding what he has, he misses the wet little footprints in her room after a dream of water. He tries to hold on to her but he cannot, and she disappears in the echo of a speeding train.

The words hung in my head, slowly revolving like wind chimes. Just like that day in Mr. Tremont’s class, I had a flash of what my life could be. I wanted my life to be more than what my mother had planned for me — more than
I
had planned for me. I wanted to walk through that door.
As quickly and silently as moonrise. . . .
Alone in the woods, I sat watching little bugs skate across the creek’s surface until shadows stretched across the water.

Quiet piano on the radio accompanied me on the drive back to town. The music matched the afternoon. I drove with windows down, savoring the cool breeze against my skin. It was tinged with sharpness and smelled like distant fires, autumn smoke. Someone somewhere was burning leaves in their backyard. The long gray pavement stretched before me, curving around farmhouses. Deep-red barns stood out against the tawny sunset cornfields, and dove-colored clouds gathered behind the long bank of orange-and-gold leaves.

Something more. The something I had been looking for without exactly knowing it, the sense of the universe unfolded before me. Shanti and Ethan had found it, they’d captured it in their writing, and I couldn’t tell how I felt about it. In awe of their talent and a bit intimidated? Absolutely. Inspired? Excited? Maybe.

But most of all, I felt found.

In creative writing on Thursday, Mr. Tremont handed out pages photocopied from Ovid’s
Metamorphoses,
and he instructed us to write something new using only the words from Ovid. “It’s good to push yourself beyond your usual vocabulary,” he said.

Jenna raised her hand. “What if you don’t know some of the words? Like, what’s Phaethon?”

“I’m actually not that interested in meaning; I just want you guys to start experimenting with language outside your comfort zone.” He smiled. “But since you asked, Phaethon is just your average teenager — borrows his dad’s car, which in this case happens to be the chariot of the sun, and then crashes it, killing himself and setting half the world on fire.”

“Typical,” Jeremy muttered.

Mr. Tremont laughed. “Anyway, I chose Phaethon because I love the scene where his sisters are so paralyzed by grief that they start turning into trees, and their mother is trying to rip the bark off to save them, and they’re weeping because the bark is their skin: ‘The tree you tear is me!’ Amazing.”

I skimmed the poem on my desk to see if it was the one he was talking about, but mine was about Narcissus and Echo, not Phaethon.

“You really should read
Metamorphoses,
” Mr. Tremont said. “It’s like a soap opera: everyone’s always having secret babies and affairs, and then the gods get angry and turn them all into trees and birds. It’s the best.” My classmates must have looked as confused as I felt, because he laughed. “Anyway, for now, just pretend it’s a puzzle. Circle the words that jump out at you. Rearrange them, repeat them, see what you can come up with. And . . . go.”

We spent the rest of the hour working while Mr. Tremont walked around the room, looking over our shoulders and encouraging us. At first I was hesitant, worrying that I wasn’t doing it right, but by the end of class I was grabbing words and phrases from Ovid without worrying if they made sense, and by the time the bell rang I felt like I’d created something beautiful.

After class, I headed outside. I’d walked to school that morning, so I thought I’d run home, grab my car, and head to the springs. I would use the momentum from class to redeem myself in workshop. Mr. Tremont said he’d schedule me for later in the quarter, and this time I wouldn’t disappoint him. I walked slowly, maybe half hoping that someone would catch up to me and ask if I was headed out to the springs and maybe offer to drive us both.

But it was Nikki who caught up to me. She grabbed my arm. “Where are you going? We have a meeting with Dr. Coulter during eighth period, remember?”

I looked longingly at the parking lot. Other seniors were getting in their cars and driving away to eat Pop-Tarts and watch TV. I wanted to be one of them. I wanted to be walking away from school, not dragged backward by a girl who was shockingly strong given that she only ate things that were orange. Her fingers were bulldog teeth pinched around my arm. “Nikki. Hey. Arm . . . losing circulation.”

She strode forward without relaxing her grip. “Hey, Cindy!” she called. “Nice jacket!”

“Nikki! I’m coming! You don’t have to drag me.”

She didn’t look at me. “Oh really?” Her voice was low, pressed against her teeth. She sounded like Lacey. “Well, forgive me for worrying that you might run away again! After that night at your house!”

“Um,” I said.

“Hi, Nate!” She waved with her free hand, blowing a kiss that may or may not have been ironic, before switching back into iron-jaw mode. “I don’t know how to say this,” she hissed. “But you are like a different person lately! It’s like you’re . . . you’re not nice! You are not nice, Paige!”

“Whoa.” I wrenched my arm out of her scrawny claw. “
I’m
not nice?”

“That’s right, I said it! Lacey’s life is like, falling apart! And all you can do is give her mean looks! And you won’t talk to her! And she just really needs a friend right now!” Her voice got louder and louder, until she was practically shrieking. “And maybe I DO, TOO! IT’S NOT ALL ABOUT YOU, PAIGE!”

“Whoa,” I said. People were staring. “Calm down, Nik —”

She patted her hair nervously, suddenly aware of so many faces watching. She took a breath and gave me a giant Stepford smile. “It’s just,” she said. “I don’t like being in the middle. And I don’t like it when you fight. And Lacey really needs us both right now, Paige. But especially you. I don’t know how to talk to her. I mean, you were always her best friend. I know that.”

I started to interrupt, but she held up a hand.

“No, it’s true. I’m just, like, the sidekick. I know.”

“Nikki,” I said.

“Paige. Just, please. Come to this meeting. Be yourself again. Be nice. Okay?”

“Sure, Nik. Of course.” I tried not to think about Pop-Tarts or soap operas or the quick sweep of my pen across a blank page or anything but the light that came back into Nikki’s eyes the moment I nodded at her. She hugged me hard and led the way back into the dark school.

Lacey presided over the gathering of members of the homecoming committee and student council. Her face was perfectly smooth as she guided everyone through a neatly typed agenda, speaking to Dr. Coulter as an equal. Next to her, student council president Jeremy kept his finger on the bullet points as we moved through them.

“Next point,” Lacey said. “Bonfire tomorrow night.”

Randy and Chris threw their fists in the air and whooped. Jake caught my eye across the room and grinned.

Lacey smiled. “I know we’re all excited about it, because it has the potential to be one of the biggest nights of our lives. I want to go down the checklist, real quick, to make sure everything’s taken care of.” She glanced up at us, steely eyes above her wide smile. “One: JV team is in charge of gathering wood and building fire. Check?”

“Check,” Geneva said.

“Great. Two: Chaperones?”

“Coach Ahrens, Coach Wickstrom, Mr. Berna, Ms. Hoeschen, and Ms. Bailey,” Jeremy recited.

“That’s not enough,” Dr. Coulter said. “You need to have at least six.”

“Mrs. McConnell was supposed to chaperone, but I guess something came up in her family and she has to go to Wisconsin this weekend.” Jeremy checked his notes.

Dr. Coulter looked slightly startled, as if he hadn’t realized that his teachers had lives outside the walls of the building.

“So we need one more,” Lacey said. “Any suggestions?”

“I think we should ask Mr. Tremont,” Jeremy said.

Nikki leaned against me and giggled. Tyler and Chris looked at each other and smirked.
God.

Lacey frowned. “Why don’t we ask Mrs. Moore? I bet she’d —”

Jeremy shook his head. “I already asked her. Her kid’s birthday party is that night.” Jenna French spoke from the back of the room. “Mr. Tremont will do it. He’s really cool.”