by Lee Strauss
MY COVER WAS BLOWN. I’d always expected this would happen someday—just not so soon. Sara motioned for me to follow her across the kitchen. Though bigger than most nineteenth century kitchens, it obviously lacked modern appliances and conveniences. No fridge or microwave, though there was a stove. It was an over-sized, cast iron, wood burning fancy looking thing. Water came from a pump in the yard.
The Watson house was bigger than most farm houses. Its large entry with nice oak doors opened up to a staircase with a run of mosaic carpeting down the middle. You could tell that, whatever it was that Mr. Watson did when he went away, he made money doing it.
I followed Sara up the stairs and down a hallway, until she opened the door to a bedroom that obviously belonged to her and at least one sister. Two beds with lacy canopies filled the corners of the room. An ornate wooden vanity desk with an oval mirror sat in between them, brushes and combs with pearl-like handles lay elegantly on top.
She turned around sharply and crossed her arms. “Please explain.”
“Well, I, uh, you see, my family is very large and come upon hard times, and I, uh, needed to seek work to help out, so because, of course, it’s not prudent to travel alone as a girl, I thought I should dress in my brother’s clothes….”
Sara put a hand up, rescuing me from my rambling. “I understand. You are making the most of a difficult situation, and I respect that. However, it is highly inappropriate for you to work alone with the men, and so from this moment on you shall assist me in the house.”
She walked to the wardrobe on the opposite end of the room and fished through a row of dresses, choosing one. “I will find you suitable clothing. There’s plenty of work for another woman around here. Indeed, your arrival is timely. With Mother bed-resting and Father off to London, there is plenty to do.”
She eyed my figure. “Here, this should be fine, though you are rather tall. Just hike the slip down a couple inches.” She tossed me a pair of shoes and I smiled. She had big feet, too.
“I’ll leave you to get dressed,” Sara said. “Meet me in the kitchen when you’re ready. Oh, and Casey isn’t suitable for a young lady. We’ll call you Cassandra.”
Cassandra. That was a mouthful. But I wasn’t about to argue with Sara Watson.
The dress was soft to the touch and I pressed it against myself as I studied my image in the mirror. I couldn’t help but break into a waltz and dance with the dress around the room.
I suddenly felt dizzy. I reached for the back of the vanity chair and let the dress drop onto the seat. I wasn’t about to go anywhere with Sara. I was about to exit stage right. Just in time I remembered to grab Nate's ball from my waistband.
I fell into a dizzying flash of white light and in a split second I was back—on the school field with Lucinda at my side and Nate right in front of me. They had no idea about my recent adventure. I was back in my regular clothes and the only change in my appearance, I knew, were the dark circles under my eyes that always appeared after I traveled. All they saw was me having just made a spectacular catch.
Nate’s expression morphed from congratulatory to perplexed in two seconds flat. Why, when I finally got to be this close to him, did I have to look like crap?
But he wasn’t looking at my face. He was looking at my hands, or rather, at the deflated object in my hands.
“What happened to my ball?”
I hate my life!
“Man!” Nate took the ball from me and examined the flattened mess. “There’s a hole right through Tom Brady!”
“I just caught it,” I whimpered.
All Nate’s friends surrounded me, and then to make matters infinitely worse, Jessica Fuller and her gaggle of cheerleaders pushed through. Jessica Fuller, aka Nate’s girlfriend, was a strawberry blond beauty queen with a great big toothy smile. She was Nate’s one flaw, which I attributed to Jessica’s bewitching deceitfulness and chose to ignore. Nate was new to Cambridge High, having moved from Toronto just last year, and Jessica had gotten her artificial claws into him before he could see what was coming.
“Ew!” She looked at me like I had just eaten a worm.
Her eyes squished into small holes, and she pursed her puffy lips together. She wouldn’t stop staring. It was like she was seeing me for the very first time, like a pimple that appears overnight. A miniature irrigation system embedded under my skin suddenly sprayed in each armpit.
“Casey?” Lucinda’s eyes were wide with near panic. “Are you okay?”
I cleared my throat. “I, uh, need to go.” Like the Red Sea parting, the football players and cheerleaders moved. With my sweaty armpits and black ringed eyes, I slunk away. Lucinda, because she was a great best friend, ran after me.
“Casey?” Her eyes scanned my face; the dark rings were a big giveaway. “You tripped?”
Trip was our slang for time travel. She was the only other person on the face of the earth that knew about my secret life.
This was because I'd accidentally taken Lucinda back once. That was how I'd learned about the dangers of skin to skin contact. We were ten, playing tag in the back yard. The air had been moist and warm, and we’d just finish drinking homemade lemonade. I'd tagged her saying, “you’re it” and off we went, down a spinning bright ride, but believe me, it was no Disneyland. It was the first time Lucinda had ever spent the night away from home. Also the first time she had to spend the night outside. No tent, no nothing. She freaked out so much she didn’t speak to me for a week afterwards. I apologized, explained to her that it didn’t happen very often, and promised that it would never happen to her again. She just couldn’t touch my skin.
And neither could anyone else. These were terms she could live with. Eventually.
“That was so humiliating!” I moaned.
“But are you okay?”
“Define okay.” Lucinda eyeball scanned me. “Well, you’re in one piece. How long were you gone?”
“Two days. Oh, Lucinda! When I imagined Nate Mackenzie finally noticing me, it wasn’t like this!”
Lucinda just nodded her head in sympathy. “Tomorrow is another day.” She flipped her long dark hair over her shoulder. “Everyone will have forgotten all about it by then.”
“Nice try, Luce. I wrecked Nate Mackenzie’s ball.”
“Um, yeah, that’s unfortunate.”
Understatement of the year! We parted ways when my bus arrived. I leaned my head against the window of the first available seat, closed my eyes and cruelly let the incident replay on the theater screen of my mind. Over and over. Each time the disgust I saw on Nate’s and Jessica’s faces grew, until practically gremlin-like.
Why did that have to happen to me? Why couldn’t I just be normal? I felt sick, a rock sitting heavy and hard in my stomach. When I got home, I checked all the rooms in the house, calling for my mom and Timothy.
Once I was completely certain that I was home alone, I shut myself in my bedroom, flopped on my bed and screamed into my pillow. I was a freak, a monster, an alien.
The only solution, I decided in that weak moment, was to quit school. So what if I was a sophomore still two months away from my sixteenth birthday?
Maybe I could do night school. Small classes, no jocks to distract me or cheerleaders to intimidate me. When I finally screamed myself out, I found that I felt a bit better. I put on my comfort clothes, SpongeBob Squarepants pajamas and monkey slippers, and shuffled downstairs to the sofa and the remote control.
I almost succeeded in pushing Nate out of my mind. After watching a series of mind numbing infomercials, I snapped out of my dark mood and came to my senses. Quitting school was a dumb idea, and besides I suddenly had a better one. Instead of loving Nate, I would hate him. Yes, Hate Nate Mackenzie. And that silly, stupid girlfriend of his, too. Suddenly, I felt lots better.
The next day, I went to school, more determined than ever to stay on the down low. Must avoid Nate. Must avoid Nate.
Unfortunately, his evil girlfriend cornered me after first class. “I remember y
ou,” she said. Yeah, duh. My public humiliation was just yesterday. So much for Lucinda’s prediction that everyone would forget about it. “You’re one of those losers who watches the football practices after school.”
Was she saying that everyone who watches the practices after school is a loser? My silence didn’t shut her up.
“You have a crush on Nate, don’t you?”
Finally, I found my tongue. “I do not.” In fact, I wanted to say, I now officially hate him.
“I can tell, you know. The way you and your sorry little friend stare at him all the time.”
First of all, Lucinda wasn’t sorry and she didn’t have a crush on Nate, even though she agreed that he was hot. Second of all, I couldn’t disagree with the last part about staring at him all the time, but I was determined to change.
“We stare at all the guys.”
“He’s mine. You stay away.”
“Yeah, sure.” I maneuvered away from her and her peeps. “He’s all yours.”
“And don’t forget that.” She added loudly, so all her little cheerleader peons could hear and laugh. “You’ll never be good enough for Nate Mackenzie.”
Did I mention how they laughed? Must avoid Nate and Jessica. Must avoid Nate and Jessica.
But now I had English, which, because Nate sat two seats in front of me, made a dizzying drop from my favorite class to my absolute worst class. I used to think that it was fate that put us both in the same English class. Nate, a senior, was in an English 11 class because his courses got mixed up when he moved here from Canada. I was in this class as a sophomore because the Advanced Sophomore English course was full, and so the powers that be bumped me up. Now I thought it was a curse.
My worries about how to avoid Nate were unnecessary, since he didn’t look at me once. Everything was back to normal. Normal meaning that he didn’t even register my presence but all my senses were completely and totally ignited. Hating Nate would take some work.
Lucinda was in line at the cafeteria and waved me over when she saw me walk in. We hadn’t talked since the incident. “I texted you,” Lucinda whined.
“Shush.” I pressed my finger to my lips in warning, motioning with my eyebrows that a certain someone was in the near vicinity. “Not so loud.”
“Oh, my bad.” She lowered her voice, “It’s just that I was worried about you.”
Fortunately we arrived at the front of the line and had to stop talking while the café worker poured the hot meal, I think it was chili, onto the plate. Lucinda, who was average in height, went first and then me, the lumbering giant. At least that’s how I felt next to her.
We met up again at our usual table, chosen so we could get a good look at the guys at the jock table. Not that we were completely boy crazy; we did retain our sanity slash dignity for, say, 75% of the day, but at lunch and after school practices, why not enjoy the scenery? An almost undecipherable musical tune came from Lucinda’s bag. Her cell phone. Lucinda could hear like a dog. With a hand-is-quicker-than-the-eye expertise she had it opened and hidden under a sheath of her long hair.
“My sister,” she mouthed, then started talking in wildfire fast Portuguese.
I took a bite of the chili. Not great but not bad either for caf food. I snatched the opportunity with Lucinda occupied to glance furtively around the cafeteria. I saw Nate with his friends at the jock table, but I only let my eyes linger for a nanosecond.
Lucinda snapped her phone shut, “So, like, what exactly happened yesterday?” She flung her long black hair and waited.
I envied Lucinda’s hair. It was so straight and shiny. “You already know, I tripped.”
“Yeah, but before that. You jumped up and caught his ball.”
A loud commotion from the middle of the room distracted us. Someone had dropped their tray, splattering chili all over the floor. It looked like vomit. From the cries of “ew” and “gross,” I knew I wasn’t alone in thinking it. Jessica made a big point of walking a wide circle around it, shouting, “That’s disgusting!” I watched for Nate’s reaction. He only gave it (and her) his attention for a moment before returning to a loud and animated conversation with Tyson and Josh about last night’s game on TV. Tyson’s black biceps flexed as he demonstrated a throw. Josh’s curly red hair seemed to spring with excitement. Must’ve been some game.
Jessica wasn’t the type who liked to share the spotlight. With Nate pre-occupied, she saddled up beside Craig Kellerman, and shamelessly flirted with him even though he was a sophomore.
“Why does Nate put up with that?” I said to Lucinda.
“She’s just trying to make him jealous so he’ll pay more attention to her.”
A large and colorful new poster hung on the wall near our table. I caught Lucinda’s eyes darting towards it repeatedly. “What’s up?”
“The Fall Dance is in two weeks,” said Lucinda.
With a mouthful of chili I said, “Yeah, so what?”
“I think we should go.”
I examined her dark eyes and wondered if she’d gone mad. “We never go to dances.” I sipped a bit of soda.
“But, this is our last chance.”
Did I miss something? “Our last chance for what?”
“It’s our last chance to practice for, like, the Junior Prom.”
I raised an eyebrow. “I wasn’t exactly planning on going to that.” I took another bite.
“Casey,” Lucinda wiped her mouth with a napkin. “If we don’t practice for the Junior Prom we won’t know what to do at THE Prom.”
“So, you want to go to the Fall Dance in order to practice for the Junior Prom in order to practice for THE Prom?” Lucinda nodded with a big wide smile. “But, THE Prom’s still two years away and I probably won’t go to it anyway.”
Lucinda blew her bangs out of her eyes. “You totally have to go to THE Prom. It’s like a rite of passage or something. The Fall Dance is a chance to learn, to see how it’s done.” She pulled a compact mirror out of her purse and checked her teeth. “Also, we don’t want to screw up due to ignorance at the Junior Prom and thus screw up at THE Prom.”
She had been thinking about this. A lot. “Okay. So, this is sort of a fact finding mission.”
“Yes, totally.”
“No actual dancing?”
“Of course not.” Lucinda shuddered.
“I don’t know.” I put all my garbage on my tray. “It sounds risky.”
Lucinda reached into her purse and pulled out two strips of thin, shiny cardboard.
“You already bought tickets?” I said through clenched teeth.
“Casey,” Lucinda cocked her head and said gently. “It will be fun.”
She thought it would be fun. I thought it would be a nightmare.
CHAPTER THREE