by Amy McAuley
“Come inside. Something bad is happening!” I want to shout, but her face disappears below the window ledge before I can utter a word of warning.
To my relief, it bobs back up. It slowly inches higher and higher as if she’s drawing up on her tiptoes. I reel backwards. Diana can’t be standing on her tiptoes. I watch in horror as her dismembered head, impaled on a pike, is paraded past the window–
I wake up pressed flat against the mattress, and breathe hard against my pillow a few times. A terrified moan slips past my lips. Another dream. About Diana. This is getting really bad, and I don’t understand what my brain is trying to tell me. Di ticks me off sometimes, but it’s not like I want to kill her or anything. Of course, if those feelings were subconscious, how would I know about them? What kind of person has dreams like this about their best friend? It’s not right.
My alarm clock reads 2:36. I can’t analyze my psychotic dreams right now. With my eyes shut tight, I breathe slowly through my nose and count fat, woolly sheep. By the time I reach four hundred, I’m too pissed off at the sheep for not doing their job properly to fall asleep.
3:02. I watch the ceiling fan go round and round, and listen to the mournful whistle of the wind.
Something strange is happening to me. It must be Margie’s fault. The dreams started right after she gave me her “psychic” reading. In one dream, Di told me that the dreams are glimpses of a past life. There. That goes to show that Margie messed with my head and kicked my imagination into overdrive. But … that doesn’t really explain my outburst in History. What was that about? I’m pretty sure I didn’t have knowledge of Louis the Sixteenth’s sex life squirreled away in my brain just waiting to get loose. And I don’t know anybody named Hans. Did I make him up? Did I also make up the name on Di’s nametag, Princess Mary de Lampball something-or-other?
I close my eyes. I see Di’s head on a blood-streaked pole. I open my eyes.
Sleep is highly overrated. Who needs it?
3:27. I roll onto my back and massage my temples. Think, think, think.
Women speaking French, corsets, a castle, a guy named Hans, a bloody princess, Louis the Sixteenth, and my death by guillotine. What does it all add up to?
Bathed in powder-gray moonlight, the fan whirls above me, blurred to a circular, rotating blade. In my mind’s eye I see the blade plummet, to sever my head with a swift and brutal chop.
* * *
How do you tell your best friend that you’re insane and casually fit it into everyday conversation? Should I say, “In a previous life, I was the queen of France. My husband was king, but I liked a guy named Hans. And you were my best friend, Di. You were a princess. I’m not sure yet, but from what I gather, you were ripped to pieces by an angry mob. Yeah, I know it all sounds unbelievable, and I’m totally going Shirley MacLaine on you, but I swear every word is true. Well, I’m off to Biology.” I don’t think so.
I rub the back of my hand over my eyelids in a vain attempt to moisten the red, dried-out orbs that are my eyeballs. If I could lay my head on the cafeteria table and take a nap without being ridiculed or drawn on with permanent markers, I would. Heck, I’m so tired right now I might take my chances. Maybe I’d look good with a mustache or unibrow.
Di takes delicate bites of vegetarian pizza. “You didn’t sleep well last night?”
“I didn’t sleep, period.” Through the open cafeteria doors, I see Mr. Lamont hurry into an adjacent classroom, and it gives me an idea. “I’ll be right back.”
With pizza in her mouth, Di mumbles something incoherent when I race away.
From the doorway of the classroom, I peek inside. “Mr. Lamont?”
He glances up from his desk. “Hi, Penny, come in.” Laying a smooshed peanut butter sandwich on a napkin, he says, “What can I do for you?”
With my every step toward Mr. Lamont’s desk, my cheeks flare hotter. “I have some questions about the French Revolution.”
“Great,” he says, all enthusiastic. “Fire away.”
I clear my throat. “Did Marie Antoinette know a guy named Hans?”
“Yes, she did. How do you know that? Doing more research, Penny?”
Whew, my cheeks just got even hotter. Thought it wasn’t possible, but I was wrong. “Yeah, I’ve been doing research. Could you tell me about him?”
“I know a few things about Hans, but let’s take a look in here,” he says, hoisting a gigantic book out of his desk drawer. The pages flap noisily as he thumbs through them. “Here we go. Hans Axel von Fersen was a Swedish soldier. He was transferred to the French Army and also fought in America during the War of Independence.” His finger skims down the columns of tiny text. “He was a close friend of Marie Antoinette’s, and when she and the king tried to escape Paris after the Revolution, he drove the coach that carried the royal family. But the escape failed and the family was captured. I’m sure you already know that Louis and Marie were both sent to the guillotine.”
Shudder. “Yes. I know that.” My hands clench to keep from fanning my scalding hot face. “How close of a friend was he?” I ask, staring intently at the sandwich.
He coughs out a laugh. “Well, I’m not sure, I wasn’t there.”
I think I was there, you see, and they may have been very close, if you get my drift.
“But seriously,” he continues, “there are books that say they were lovers and there are books that say they weren’t. The French people made up many rumors about Marie because they disliked her so much. It’s hard to know what’s fact and what’s fiction.”
“Why didn’t they like her?”
Mr. Lamont shrugs his broad shoulders. “There were many reasons. She favored her home country, Austria, rather than France. And during the first years of her marriage, she didn’t produce an heir. The people blamed her because they didn’t know about Louis’s impotence. She was also the victim in a scandal over a diamond necklace and that hurt her reputation, even though she was innocent. And she had a very close group of friends that she spent all of her time with, which ticked off important members of the court. They said she had affairs, she gambled, she spent France’s money like it was water. By the time the Revolution came along, she was already despised.”
She was despised. Searing anger pounds inside my tightening chest, and I lean against the desk, trying to catch my breath. I want to raise my fists and scream that I was a teenager forced to marry a stranger. I was blamed for things I didn’t do. I loved my friends. I loved having fun. I wasn’t evil. Speckles of light dart in front of my face, and I clutch Mr. Lamont’s desk to steady myself. My fingers sink into the soft mushiness that must be his sandwich.
Mr. Lamont’s desk chair scrapes loudly against the floor. “Penny, are you all right?”
“I think I’m gonna faint,” I whisper, as my peripheral vision closes in. I feel him grab my arms. He lowers me onto the padded seat of the chair.
His face hovers in my small circle of vision. “Do you need me to go get the nurse?”
“I’m fine.” The blackness fades back, and then I can see again. “Can’t say the same for your sandwich, though.”
He smiles and dangles the flat sandwich in the air to peek through the holes my fingers made—clear through both slices of bread. “You’re lucky I didn’t take the leftover chili my wife told me to bring for lunch.”
I push the chair back. My head is fuzzy, but I confidently walk to the door like I’m back to normal.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” Mr. Lamont asks.
My gaze wants to roam around the room, but I force myself to look him in the eyes and smile. “I didn’t eat breakfast or lunch. I’ll go get something right now.”
“That sounds like a good idea,” he says, wrapping his sandwich in the napkin. “I hope I answered all your questions about the French Revolution. Anything else you want to ask me before you go?”
My mouth opens to say “nope,” but then one more question pops into my head. “Whatever happened to Hans?”
; Mr. Lamont tosses the sandwich in the garbage can. “It’s pretty gruesome. Sure you want to hear it?”
I nod after a couple of seconds of hesitation.
“Hans lived through the French Revolution. But during the Swedish Revolution, he was killed by an enraged mob.”
All the saliva in my mouth seems to dry up at once. “He was? Wasn’t Marie’s best friend killed that way, too? The Princesse de Lam…?” I pause, struggling to recall an image of Diana’s name tag in my mind.
“Princesse de Lambelle?” he says, and I nod vigorously. “Yes, she was killed by a mob, too. Her severed head was paraded past the queen’s jail window.” Mr. Lamont crosses his arms and gives me an impressed grin. “You sure know your history. I may have to give you extra credit.”
I laugh, like I know he expects me to, and hope it doesn’t sound phony.
“I guess it wasn’t good luck to be best friends with Marie Antoinette, eh?” he says.
I guess not.
4
For the past ten days, I’ve been nightmare-free. Maybe all the Marie Antoinette garbage is finally finished. I can only hope. Lack of sleep was taking its toll on my appearance, and I don’t have much room to slide backwards on the beauty scale.
After school, I drop my backpack in the middle of the laundry room.
“Great, I’d love that,” Kalli says in the kitchen. “I will for sure. I’m so excited.”
What’s the dimwit excited about?
“I miss you lots, too. Penny just got home,” Kalli says, and I perk up at the mention of my name. “Penny! Dad wants to talk to you!”
I jog into the kitchen and make slicing motions across my throat to signal “Shut up!”
“Dad, I must have heard wrong. She’s not here.” Kalli sticks her tongue out at me.
“What did the jerk want?” I ask after she hangs up.
Kalli opens a cupboard door, but slams it hard without looking inside. “He’s not a jerk,” she says, staring into the sink. “I don’t care what you and Mom say, he’s not.”
“What did he want, Kalli?”
“It’s something good. Why should I tell you?”
I yank open the fridge door. “You know what, I don’t even care what he said.” Through the sides of a clear plastic container, I spy furry green stuff. “What was this?” I say, tossing the entire thing into the garbage can behind me. “Kalli, remind me to buy Mom a new plastic food container-thingy.”
“Dad’s renting a house.”
“Mom has no good food in here.” I squat to open the crisper drawer.
“He lives in a place called Kincardine.”
I push the drawer closed and grab a can of Diet Pepsi. “I don’t know where that is and I don’t care. I’ve got money upstairs, let’s order pizza for supper.”
“We get to go visit him for the whole summer.”
I slam on the brakes halfway to standing. “What?”
“You heard.”
I close the fridge with my foot as I spin around. “You’d better be lying.”
“Nope.”
“Well, I won’t go,” I say nonchalantly, even though my heart is threatening to kick its way out of my chest.
“Maybe you won’t have a choice.” Kalli smirks. “Dad said it’s a custody thing.”
My apathetic attitude crumbles at the word custody. This could be a problem.
* * *
“Penny, I’m at work.” Sigh. “We’ll talk about it when I get home.”
I hold the phone away from my ear and glower at it, hoping my boiling hot anger will surge through the tiny mouthpiece holes, travel along the phone lines with the electrons, and blast out on her end. Mom’s breathy, annoyed tone of voice ticks me off, but not as much as the underlying message in her response.
“You don’t even sound surprised?” I squeak. “It’s true, isn’t it? You knew all about Dad taking us for the summer and you didn’t tell me.”
The dial tone buzzes in my ear.
I thought I was angry before, but no, that was a wimpy emotion compared to what I’m feeling now. I pull the receiver of the phone back past my shoulder and smash it against the base that’s attached to the wall. A small chunk of plastic cracks off with an awful splintering sound and whizzes past my face, narrowly missing my eye. “Stupid, cheap piece of crap,” I grumble, hanging the phone up properly.
When I turn around, the first thing I see is Kalli, gawking at me with wide eyes. She looks frightened, like she thinks she’s next in line to get smacked.
“Remind me to buy Mom a new phone.” I brush past her and jog into the laundry room. I can barely pull on my jacket.
The screen door clatters shut behind me. Four faded wooden steps lead up to our back door, and I leap over all of them at once, landing on the grass below. I walk. My arms whoosh back and forth, swinging like pendulums that propel me down our driveway.
In my peripheral vision, I see a car roll into view alongside the curb. It keeps pace with me as I speed down the sidewalk.
“Hey, where are you going?” a deep voice calls from inside the car.
I stop, hoping I’m not the intended fresh meat for some murderous psycho, and peer through the open passenger-side window. Ryan grins back at me.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, quickly replacing my pissed-off expression with one that’s not so scary.
“I was on my way to your place to see if you want to go out for a drive, and then I saw you leave. Are you going somewhere?”
“I just needed to get out of the house for a while.”
“Get in. I’ll take you wherever you want to go.” When I’m seated in the car, he says, “You look bummed out.”
I stare at the daffodils and tulips in the flower garden beside the sidewalk. “I found out I might have to go to my dad’s this summer.”
“Oh. That’s not a good thing?”
“I’d have to go for the whole summer.”
“Oh,” he says, clearly disappointed. “Want a hot fudge sundae?”
“That sounds great. Thanks.” If Ryan thinks bingeing on chocolate is the best way to solve one’s problems, then I’m sinking my claws into him and not letting go.
The car gets rolling down the street. I continue to stare out the window. “My parents can be such morons,” I say, not really to Ryan, just out loud.
“In what way?”
I have plenty of reasons for thinking my parents are morons. But I wasn’t expecting to list them. “Well, you know. Doesn’t everybody think their parents are annoying?”
“Not me. My parents are awesome.”
I add a helping of embarrassment to my bad mood, and look at Ryan to gauge his expression. He’s staring straight ahead, eyebrows furrowed like he’s concentrating on the road.
“Your parents are great.” I inhale deeply. “Your dad’s hilarious.”
Ryan shakes his head. “I can’t believe he told you that joke about the one-legged nun at dinner the other night.”
I laugh, remembering the punch line. Ryan’s dad has a definite raunchy streak. And he’s good looking, too. For an old guy. “You look a lot like your dad.”
“I know. We get that a lot,” he says. “Which is weird, since I’m adopted.”
Well. That came at me out of nowhere. “You are?”
“Yup.”
I go back to staring out the window.
“Sorry I didn’t tell you before,” he says. His hand settles on my shoulder, and I jump. “I hardly ever think about it, so it’s not something I remember to tell people.”
“That’s okay.” I smile. “Do you know anything about your birth mom? Have you ever met her?”
“No way. Don’t want to know who she is. Don’t want to meet her.”
The tension inside the car is getting thick. Luckily, the drive-thru is upon us. As we’re pulling in, Ryan and I exhale loudly. We glance at each other and start laughing. Already we’re turning into one of those spooky couples who say and do things in unison.
“I don’t want to meet her,” Ryan says, while we’re waiting in line, “but I would like to thank her somehow. If she hadn’t given me up, I wouldn’t have my family, the life that’s perfect for me. It’s like something out there, fate or whatever, searched around for my real parents and gave me to them. I lucked out.” He watches his fingers tap the steering wheel. “I’m rambling. Sorry.” His cheeks blush a color of red I thought only I could achieve, and he gives me an apologetic smile. “How cheesy can I get?”
I smile back, to let him know I don’t mind at all that he’s a cheese-ball. Looks like we both need some cheering up now.
“We should get double fudge,” we say at the same time.
Downright spooky we are.
* * *
“Where were you?” Mom calls from the living room, as I close the back door.
“Out with Ryan.” I slip my shoes off, preparing to make a hasty break for my room.
The couch creaks.
“I know I’m in trouble, Mom. No need to get up.”
But, of course, she has to get up anyway. She’d hate to pass up an opportunity to rag on me, especially an opportunity as good as this one.
“Do you have any idea how embarrassed I was to have you ranting on the phone while I was at work?” she says from the doorway where the kitchen and living room meet. “I had to pretend to be in a good mood in front of a huge line of customers. And my boss was standing right beside me.”
Most of the time, Mom looks pretty and lots of people mistake her for my older sister. Right now, her hair is limp, her face is pale, and from head to toe she seems to be sagging, like somebody cranked up the gravity level in the house. I feel a twinge of guilt because it’s probably all my fault she looks hideous.
“I’m sorry.”
“And you broke the phone, for crying out loud.”
“Sorry.”
“And then you ran out on your sister, you didn’t tell anybody where you were going, and you didn’t call.”
“Sorry.”