This Is Me From Now On (6 page)

“And now it's mine,” Nisha said, making a cartoon mustache with her index finger. “All mine.”

“Plus whoever you're working with,” I said. Then I bit my lower lip. “So how are we going to decide who's working with who?”

“Maybe we don't have to,” Lily said in a soothing voice. “Maybe Espee will let us all work together.”

“She won't,” I insisted. “The assignment is to work in pairs. Meaning one attic, two people. Not three.”

Lily put her arm around my shoulders. “Let's talk to her tomorrow, okay? We'll explain how we are.”

I nodded. “What if she says no?”

“Then we'll deal with it,” Nisha said confidently. “Besides, what are you so worried about? After that answer you gave today, you're totally her pet.”

“I'm not—”

“Yes you are. You and Francesca. Who's all in favor of lying.”

Later, when I got home, Grace was sitting in the kitchen doing her AP Calculus. She immediately told me Francesca had called. Twice. And wanted me to call her back.

“Okay, thanks,” I said, not reaching for the phone.
Because I had a pretty good idea what the call was about: She wanted to pair up on the Attic Project.

Grace carefully erased something in her notebook. “So how was your first day?”

“I survived.” I opened the fridge, even though I wasn't hungry. “When you had Espee you had that Attic Project, right?”

“Oh, who remembers
seventh grade
?” She gave me one of her superior smiles. “Oh, riiiight. You mean where we had to find family junk in the attic and then do all this research?”

I nodded. “And was there anything?”

“Of
course
not. You think Mom would keep any of that stuff? The way she cleans?”

I closed the fridge and got a gigantic glass of ice cubes out of the freezer. “So did you look anywhere else? I mean, besides the attic.”

“Well, sure,” Grace said. “I called every single one of our relatives, and I spent the entire Labor Day weekend going through Grandma Nora's file cabinet. And you know what I discovered? We're probably the only history-free family in North America.”

I chomped on a cube. “So what did you do? The Mystery Box?”

“Yeah. And it wasn't even a box. It was just a stack of letters from a soldier in World War Two. Which I was positive Espee wrote herself.”

“How could you tell?”

“I don't know. They were handwritten, but the ink seemed too perfect, and he mentioned too many battles. And of course we had to analyze every little picky detail, so it was a ton of extra work.” She blinked at me. “Why? You're doing a Box?”

“I might have to. If I can't work with Nisha.”

“Well, make sure you work with Nisha, then. Because the Box was really evil. At least in my personal experience.”

The phone rang. I checked the caller ID:
S PATTISON
. Again.

“Don't answer that, okay?” I begged. “I'm sort of hiding from Francesca.”

“That's ridiculous,” Grace said. “She's right next door. What if she was watching through the window? What if she saw you come home just now?”

“It's really not my problem, Grace.”

She superior-smiled at that and reopened her AP Calculus book. Which meant the conversation was over because Grace Had to Study, even though the kitchen phone kept right on ringing and ringing.

No,” said Ms. Pierce when we went to her classroom at lunch the next day.

“But we're so
good
together,” Lily said. “We never fight.”

“And we always share the work,” I added. “And we respect each other's opinions.” That was totally overdoing it, of course, but I was starting to really freak.

“Sorry,” Espee said, shaking her strange hair. “I've been doing this project for eleven years now, girls, and I've learned the hard way that groups of three just never work out. Someone is always left in the cold.”

“Not us,” Nisha insisted. “You can ask Mr. Womack.”

I nodded at her. That was a smart thing to say.

But Espee wasn't buying it. “Sorry,” she repeated firmly. “I truly am, but I'm afraid this one isn't negotiable. Just figure out how you want to partner up, and then let me know by sixth period.”

“But that's impossible,” I wailed.

Espee pressed a cool, dry hand on my shoulder, the way she did the day before in class. “Come talk to me if it really is,” she said.

As soon as we were out in the hall, Nisha exploded. “She's so nasty! And condescending! The way she judged our friendship. Like she even knows anything
about
us.”

“Oh, well,” Lily said, sighing. “We'll figure something out.”

We went to the cafeteria, but by that time all the lines were a million miles long, and anyway, I wasn't super-hungry. Nisha and Lily were, though, so they got on the Wraps line while I saved a table and nervous-nibbled a bag of Sun Chips. Across the room I watched Francesca eating a slice of pizza by herself, which sort of gave me a guilty pang. The next table over, Zane was shoving around those jersey-wearing boys from yesterday, and for about two horrible seconds I thought she was going to go over
to him and ask for lunch recommendations. But she didn't. She just finished her slice and left the cafeteria, and I could tell one of the jersey-wearers even made some kind of gross Neanderthalish comment as she clomped past.

Then from out of nowhere Kayla showed up at Zane's table and started flirting and laughing, like they were suddenly such great friends. That was really weird, because everyone in the seventh grade knew that Kayla was sort-of-dating this semi-jock eighth grader named Ryan Esposito. Plus, when I ran into her and Gaby at I Scream the other day, she didn't even talk to Zane. Of course, she was behind me in line; so maybe they had a whole flirty conversation while I was outside with Francesca, gaping at her empty pockets.

“Well, so here's the problem,” Nisha announced as she and Lily sat down with their wraps. “You know I'd love to partner with you, Evie, and obviously so would Lily. But since Lily is doing homework at my house every afternoon, the only thing that makes sense for this stupid project is if she pairs up with me.”

I looked at Lily. She was turning hot pink and poking lettuce back into her wrap.

“Right,” I said slowly. “I totally forgot about the whole after-school thing.”

“Then you're not mad?” Nisha asked, watching me with worried eyes.

“Of course not. Lily's at your house, anyway. So yeah, it makes perfect sense.”

“We'll switch for the next assignment, okay?”

“Sure,” I said. But I was thinking:
Lily will still be at your house for the next assignment. And probably for all the assignments the entire rest of the year. So how will it ever “make sense” to partner up with me?

Now Lily was patting my arm. “Thanks for being so great about this, Evie. So who do you think you'll work with?”

I swallowed. “I don't know.”

“Ask Brendan Meyers,” Nisha said.

I made a face.

“What's wrong with him? He's using deodorant now; he's fine.”

“Well, maybe he doesn't
smell,
Nisha, but he has all this extra
spit.
And every time he talks—”

“Okay, whatever. We're trying to eat here. How about Katie Finberg?”

“She's very nice.” I sighed.

“But?”

“But I don't know. Don't you think she's a little too perfect-perfect?”

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Gaby sit down with Kayla and Zane.

Lily shrugged. “Maybe. But don't you
want
someone who works incredibly hard?”

“Yeah, I guess,” I said, crumpling my Sun Chips bag to drown out Gaby's horrible laugh. “And she might be the best person left. Anyway, I'll think about it, you guys.”

“Great,” Nisha replied, smiling at us both like everything was all decided.

In the hallway outside her classroom, Espee was talking to Mr. Rafferty. As soon as he saw me he said something in her ear, then walked away, grinning.

She swung her hair at me. “What's up, Evie?” she asked in a friendly voice.

So I told her what had happened, how I needed a partner. “I was thinking maybe Katie Finberg,” I added. “If she's free.”

“Unfortunately, I believe Katie's working with Brendan
Meyers. And you know, most of the pairs are set by now.” She smiled, her pale aquamarine eyes lighting up. “What about Francesca Pattison?”

“You mean as a partner?”

“Well, she's looking for one, and just this morning she asked me about you. Why? Is there a problem with Francesca?”

I shook my head. No problems at all, unless you counted the fact that the girl was a total liar. And wore weird costumes. And ran in front of sprinklers. “Isn't there anybody else?” I asked hopefully.

“Not that I know of,” Espee replied, with a little frown in her voice. “This is seventh grade, Evie; I'm not going to figure this out for you. You're welcome to ask around, but I'll need to know by the end of today.”

Then she turned around and speed-walked into the classroom. If she had come right out and called me
babyish,
the way Mom had yesterday at breakfast, it wouldn't have felt any worse.

“Hi, Evie, did you get my phone messages yesterday?” Francesca asked the second I sat down.

“Yes. Sorry. I've just been really busy,” I said, opening my Spush notebook.

“Me too. But I was calling about the Attic Project. I have this
staggering
old diary. From the San Francisco Earthquake!”

Nisha kicked me.

“You do?” I said, kicking her back.

“From my great-great-aunt Angelica Beaumont. She was sixteen when it happened, utterly gorgeous and fabulously rich, and absolutely
everybody
was in love with her.”

“Kind of like Paris Hilton?” Nisha asked innocently.

Francesca laughed. “Oh no, not at all. She was an artist. And an intellectual. And I believe a suffragette.”

“A what?” Lily said, leaning over.

“Woman who fought for the right to vote,” I told her.

“Cool,” Lily said, glancing at Nisha.

Francesca nodded proudly. “She was all alone in her mansion when the earthquake hit. Almost everything she owned was completely destroyed, but she never stopped writing in her diary. Even with all the chandeliers swaying.”

“Awesome,” said Nisha, trying not to laugh. “I mean, truthfully, Francesca, it almost sounds unbelievable.”

“I know,” Francesca said. “I'm blessed just to have it.”

Nisha rolled her eyes at me.

Right at that moment Espee started talking, and so class officially started. And I know this sounds exactly like that scene in every horror movie, where the heroine is about to walk into the haunted house, and you're yelling at the screen,
JUST DON'T. JUST WALK AWAY, YOU IDIOT, BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE.
And I swear, I completely understood that the sane thing to do at that point would have been to say,
So sorry, Francesca. I've already made plans, have fun with your diary,
and leave it at that.

But I thought about walking around the Spush classroom, begging unclaimed people to “partner up” on a Mystery Box. I thought about Nisha telling me who I was supposed to work with, and then making fun of Francesca for wanting to. I thought about Francesca eating lunch by herself, and how horrible I'd been for avoiding her, not even returning her phone calls, slipping out of the house super-early this morning so I could walk to school in private with Nisha and Lily.

Oh, and I thought about something else, too: the way she'd called me
boring
yesterday because I wouldn't go in the sprinkler. She was right; I was boring. My entire life was boring. And whatever else it was, this was a chance to make it unboring.

So I waited for Espee to be writing some long philosophical quote on the whiteboard. Then I leaned over to Francesca and whispered, “That diary sounds great. Of course I'll work with you.”

She gave me her dazzling smile. “Oh, I knew you would,” she said.

You're WHAT?” Nisha shrieked. We were at the lockers, where, like, the entire seventh grade was hanging out before dismissal.

“Katie Finberg was taken,” I whispered. “And Francesca needed a partner.”

“So why is that
your
problem?”

“It's not. But she has that diary—”

“If
she has that diary. Evie, I don't know how to tell you this, but you're making a huge mistake.”

“How do you know that?” I asked, pretending to fight with my jacket zipper.

“Oh, come on, Evie,” Lily murmured. “You said you
didn't trust her. Isn't there anybody else?”

“Not really. Espee said—”

“Hey, Evie, are you ready to go?” Suddenly Francesca was standing at my locker. She was wearing a rainbow-tie-dyed poncho, a purple miniskirt, and black tights with little silver stars on them. Oh yes, and cowboy boots. It was maybe the weirdest outfit I'd seen her in so far, and my eyes couldn't figure out where to focus.

“Um, Evie?” Nisha was saying in a strangely loud voice. “Did you forget what you just told me?”

“What?”

“You know,”
she said, her eyes shooting message-beams. “That doctor appointment thingy. That you just remembered was this afternoon.”

I stared back at her. “Oh, yeah,” I muttered. “The doctor appointment. Actually, Nisha, I rescheduled that.”

“Are you
sure
you should have?”

“Uh-huh. Definitely.”

“Because you were feeling so sick before.
Weren't
you?”

Okay, this was going way too far. Nisha was only trying to rescue me, obviously, and I knew I should have been grateful. But was she going to stand here and insist that I dump Francesca in front of everyone? And also act like I
couldn't make a decision for myself? “Well, I'm fine
now,
” I said firmly. “So stop worrying about me.”