The Reinvention of Moxie Roosevelt (13 page)

Between the stress and the stomach stuff and the lack of sleep, I didn’t wake up until nine on Saturday morning. And nothing sporty seemed remotely appealing.

But I was on a quest, and I couldn’t write off HHSE until I was certain I’d investigated the possibilities thoroughly.

After grabbing a quick but satisfying breakfast before the dining hall closed, I pulled on a pair of ancient navy sweatpants my mom had tried desperately to get me to throw away, a T-shirt of Spinky’s that said “Born to Run” and bore the image of a brown-haired, leather-jacketed geezer who looked like he’d been born to do anything but, and a Minnesota Vikings sweatshirt that I had borrowed from the lost and found. I laced up a pair of white sneakers and capped the look with a purple terrycloth sweatband with a peace sign embroidered on it (purchased over the summer at The Dollar Store). I particularly liked that last bit, since it allowed me to retain a portion of my MEGdom while experimenting with HHSE.

I trotted down the stairs enthusiastically, thrilled when I caught sight of the Mavix in the foyer.

“Hey there!” I called as I skipped past her, pitching my voice a little deeper than usual.

The Mavix looked up at me, then did a double take. I know. I
did
look pretty sharp.

“Just going for a run!” I said loudly, doing the quick-step down the rest of the corridor.

“YankEES!” I yelled. I think she responded, but I didn’t hear what she said.

Oh. Guadalupe was the Yankees fan, not the Mavix.

But that’s okay! I told myself. I’m an HHSE! Anything sports related goes! And as a zealous fan, I
should
be invading the personal listening space of others with loud verbal displays of support for my team. If Guadalupe was anything to go by, that was simply What One Did.

Sadly, I didn’t see anyone else I knew as I trotted across the quad toward the playing field. Nor was there anyone on the field itself, except for one lone figure walking a dog just beyond the far end. I began to question why I was there myself. It was so cold I could see my breath hanging in the air, and there was a frost on the grass. I stamped my feet and blew on my hands, but it didn’t really help. I’d better get this over with before I got frostbite.

I’d done my research, and I knew no serious runner would even think about starting a workout without a proper warm-up. Unfortunately, that was as far as my research had taken me. I did a few things that looked like stretches, but they felt all wrong, which was a good indication they probably looked wrong too.

Then I remembered my mother telling me (repeatedly) that the best all-over body stretch was the yoga position called Downward Facing Dog. Now
that
I could do.

I stretched out on the grass face-down and got myself into a push-up position, wincing at the cold grass between my fingers. Then I pressed up and back, planting my hands in the grass as I straightened my legs, lifted my butt to the clouds, and brought the crown of my head down toward the ground. I hung there in an inverted V—the perfect Downward Facing Dog. I could feel the chi doing whatever it was chi was supposed to do when a yogini practiced her craft.

I heard yelling from a distance behind me, and something that sounded like my name. (One of the few benefits of being named Moxie is there aren’t all that many words that sound like it.) I dropped to my knees and stood up, looking around. Way across the quad, three floors up on Sage, two figures were hanging out a window waving and gesturing. One had green hair, the other brown.

Haven and Spinky were cheering me on! I waved at them and did a quick jog in place, flexed a bicep, and waved again before getting back into Downward Facing Dog. Spinky was obviously a running fan—it said so right on the shirt she had lent me. Hopefully Haven could see my peace terrycloth sweatband, and anyway, what was more MEGgy than a little yoga on the fresh green grass?

This feels amazing, I thought. I took the stretch even further, lifting my butt higher and pressing my heels down into the earth. Awesome. I’d been too quick to consider getting rid of my HHSE potential. Why had I neglected my natural gift for athletics for so many years?

As I remained frozen with my head down, watching the upside-down campus through my knees, I saw a small figure walking toward me. From my perspective her feet were clinging to the earth and her head was hanging down into the blue sky. I began to imagine how if gravity let go, she would plummet into the sky never to be seen again, when I recognized her.

It was Ms. Hay.

“Moxie,” she was saying, walking kind of quickly toward me. She looked around, like she was checking to make sure no one else was there.

“Moxie, hi,” came her voice.

I stubbornly remained in Downward Facing Dog. I greeted her, but upside down it came out more like
huwuhay
.

“Nice Downward Facing Dog,” Ms. Hay said. “But if I could interrupt you a moment—”

I interrupted her instead, with the sound of my body collapsing and smacking onto the grass. It was harder to stay in that position that I thought.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeph,” I said, my voice muffled by the grass I’d planted my face in.

“Oh, good. I don’t want to embarrass you, but I really need to tell you something, Moxie . . .”

All of a sudden my so-called Amish life came back to me in a rush. She knew the truth! I got to my feet, poised to escape.

“Sorry, I’m on a schedule,” I said, pointing at the field, but Ms. Hay was undeterred. She was wearing jeans that looked so new, they had a crease down the front, with a good three inches of cuff rolled up. Her shirt had short puffed sleeves, tiny flowers, and a bow at the neckline. Yikes.

“Vikings fan, huh?” she asked.

I stared down at my sweatshirt.

“Well, they’re okay. But my team is the Yankees.They’re going to cream the Vikings this season!” I growled with gusto.

Ms. Hay paused.

“I’m not sure that’s possible,” she said.

“Forget the odds, forget what you read in the papers,” I said, mimicking something Guadalupe had said to me. “Read my lips: Yankees—World Series—this year. No Vikings are going to stand in their way.”

Ms. Hay nodded, a small smile on her lips.

“I’d have to agree, given that the Vikings are a football team,” she said.

Crud.

“Well, yeah. There’s that too, of course. That James Thurber book was pretty funny. What else has he written?” I maintained an innocent face during the rapid subject change I had initiated.

Ms. Hay moved closer to me.

“Moxie,” she said very quietly. “Listen—I couldn’t help noticing that your—”

“Actually, sorry, but I’m starting to lose the heat from that stretch,” I said hastily. Because I was pretty sure where she was going with her quiet, seemingly urgent advice. “Gotta run before my muscles cool down.”

I took off, running faster than I’d planned to.

Was it against school rules to refuse to allow a teacher to finish a sentence if that conversation took place outside of class? What was I running for, anyway? She was still going to know about the Amish thing when I stopped running. The question was, what was she planning on doing about it?

I kept running.

She was still standing there when I completed my first lap around the field. I could see her lips were moving and her brow was furrowed as I ran by, but I put my head down and ran faster. When I reached the far end of the field, I noticed she’d been joined by the Dean of Students, Mr. Werner, and his famous offspring, Luscious Luke. Luscious Luke looked particularly flawless this morning in a crimson fleece and faded jeans. His flaxen hair looked lightly tousled and was doing some outstanding flopping over one eyebrow. How was I supposed to jog realistically while he was standing there? As Dean Werner was talking, Ms. Hay glanced in my direction, then took the dean by the arm and guided him toward the quad in the direction of the administration buildings. Luscious Luke trailed behind.

This was much worse than I thought. Ms. Hay was talking to the dean. At this very moment I was probably being reported for False Representation of Religionality. Was this an expellable offense? How could I have ever thought it was okay to make something up to a teacher?

Now that no one was watching, I stopped running, and stood on the field gasping for breath.

I’m going to be expelled, I thought. I am totally going to be expelled!

What had I been thinking? Sea cows and sports teams and rumpspringers and Wicca . . . It was too much for any one person to keep straight, even with a Personality Log. Ms. Hay was clearly onto me. What if
everyone
was onto me?

Ms. Hay, the dean, and Luscious Luke had disappeared into Dempsey Hall. I headed for Sage. Should I call my parents now? Was the dean already calling them? I felt like hyperventilating.

Students were filing in and out of the dining hall when I reached the Sage lobby. Everyone seemed unusually cheerful. Loud laughter echoed through the halls, a sharp contrast to Auntie Sparkles’s severe gaze. I ignored everyone and sped up the stairs.

When I reached my room, Haven was still there with Spinky, and their concern was clear on both their faces.

Uh-oh.

“Are you okay? That didn’t look good,” Spinky said gently.

I knew it. I was in trouble.

“Ms. Hay came out to the playing field,” I said, my voice a bit wobbly. “And so did the Dean of Students.”

“And Luscious Luke,” Spinky said. “I’m really sorry, Mox. I felt your pain.”

So it was true. I had been kicked out of Eaton for impersonating the Amish.

“How did you hear about it so fast?” I asked, tears coming to my eyes.

“Hear about it?” Haven asked. She took my hand, and squeezed it. “We saw it with our own eyes. It was like that movie that came out last year—
The Beast of Bottomless Lake
—the one in 3D.” She looked from me to Spinky. “Did no one see that movie?”

I was too traumatized by my own tragedy to respond to Haven’s perplexing film reference. What was a Buddhist doing watching
The Beast of Bottomless Lake
?

“We tried to warn you,” Spinky said. “Didn’t you hear us yelling from the window?”

“No,” I said, a tear spilling down my cheek. “I thought you were cheering for me. Anyway, what difference would it have made?”

“Well, you could have changed into another pair of sweatpants, for starters,” Spinky said gently.

I looked from Spinky to Haven, confused. Haven was looking at my butt, though she averted her eyes quickly.

Wait a minute.

I reached back and swatted my hand in the vicinity of my backside. Where there should have been sweatpant material, there was only . . . air.

I rushed over to the mirror, turned my back to it, then craned my neck to look over my shoulder.

The seam of the material had given way, forming a rip that was a good eight inches long, creating a lighting-bolt-shaped window framing a section of my extremely orange underpants.

Like people I’ve seen interviewed about near-death experiences, a rapid montage of scenes flashed before my eyes. The Mavix doing a double take. Me trotting across the quad with a rip in my pants so large it was probably visible from space. And oh, no, Ms. Hay finding me in Downward Facing Dog . . . and Luscious Luke . . . How could I ever survive the humiliation?

Wait, though. Wait. This changed everything. Ms. Hay had not come to expel me. She had come over to warn me that my underwear was glowing like a beacon in front of the whole campus. And when Mr. Werner and Luscious Luke showed up, she had tactfully led them in another direction. Oh man, I was such a moron! I should have dropped the Hearty Hill Sports Confusiast weeks ago!

I took a breath. I was a moron, yes. But I wasn’t expelled.

I made a sound that was somewhere between a gasp, a sob, and a cry of relief. Ms. Hay had been trying to help me out, girl to girl, even after I had made up a story to get out of the talent show. I would never claim to be sporty or Amish again. I would cross that personality off the list immediately. And I needed to do some serious housecleaning on the rest of the personalities. Could I tell Guadalupe I was giving up the Yankees for Lent? When
was
Lent? Might I convince the Buckman twins that my Johnny Depp story was actually a working exercise in Self-Confidence Through Comedy, as opposed to actual fact? Oh no, had I eaten BACON this morning?!! Who had been at breakfast?
Who had seen me?

Spinky put her arm around my shoulder as I tried to catch my breath.

“Well,” she said, after a moment. “Orange you glad you wore underwear?”