by Ann Angel
“We’re okay.” I rub his arm and he nods, calming down, his face going from red to pink, color draining from his temples as the adrenaline fades away, leaving him paler than before. “We’re okay.”
He starts to drive again but timid, scared, so nervous he’s going to draw attention. People notice someone reeking of anxiety, even if they don’t know why they noticed him.
He passes the school and turns onto a side street. Parking lots are dangerous. They’re the first place people will look, and this school’s lot could easily be blocked. He pulls over and parallel parks between a beater of a truck and a shiny VW Bug. He surveys the area before shutting the car off. A spot chosen for its lack of foot traffic and directional advantage facing the fastest route out of town on this side of the train tracks. Used to be Kit trusted this, us, more.
“I know you didn’t mean to blow it in Toledo,” he says, the closest we’ve come to talking about this. “I’ve been there, in the middle of a job and something gets screwed up and you panic.”
I fiddle with the bracelet — Hannah’s bracelet, not something I’d ever choose for myself — so he’ll think I’m feeling guilty and agreeing with his assessment. He never was good at reading people, but his head is so far up his ass now, he doesn’t even see the tells anymore. He doesn’t see anything.
“With us in the same school, you blow your cover and we’re both sitting ducks.”
“I know.” He has no idea.
“Good.” He smiles at me, and I don’t know whether to hug him or hit him. Claw his face. Scream in frustration. Shake him until he sees me, really sees me, and we can just have this out for real. But he’s not ready. “Okay,” he says, finally turning off the car. “We’re the Evanses. You’re Hannah, Mom is Kelly again.”
“Complete with the stupid accent.”
“And Dad is now our stepfather, Mike.”
If he ever shows up. “And you are?” I ask.
He grasps for it. Fights for it. Holds his breath and reaches for it, then blows out his breath in defeat. “Screwed. I’m screwed.”
“No,” I say, “but close.” I open my door and allow my body to transition from Liv to Hannah. Hannah’s walk and the way she holds her head. Her combination of self-consciousness and lack of awareness. Shorter than Liv thanks to a little slouch. Hannah’s nervous habits and restless movements.
I can hear him say my name, my real name, then my current name, but I’m down the sidewalk and crossing the street, fully transformed into Hannah, before he catches up.
“Please?”
“You’re gonna wish you were Chad again.”
Vice Principal Bertolucci’s office smells like permanent markers and lemon-scented-ammonia cleaner, with a dash of flavored coffee.
“As we discussed when you came in with your mother, we get a lot of transfers, so . . .” She trails off like we’re supposed to understand what she’s saying. We nod and she smiles. “You’ll both get the hang of it in no time. Here are your schedules.”
She hands me a half sheet of paper and then leans across the desk to hand one to Kit. I pretend to read mine while reaching for a pen from the cup on her desk, timing my movements with the moment her eyes focus on Kit.
“Sorry,” I mumble, scrambling to right the cup and all the spilled pens, knocking a stack of papers to the floor. “Sorry, sorry.”
I steal a glance at Kit. He’s staring at his schedule.
“It’s fine.” She smiles, waving me back down into my seat before I can do any more damage. She points to my schedule and rights the cup, picking up the spilled pens.
English. Biology. Algebra. “Life Skills?” I ask.
“Required for all freshmen,” Bertolucci says with a suck-it-up smile. “The room numbers are the first column . . .” She drones on about the rooms and numbers, and I glance around the office, feigning nervousness and checking out Bertolucci at the same time.
Kit’s rubbing his temple, scrutinizing the schedule like the answers to all his problems are hidden between the classes and room assignments. Oblivious. Unbelievable. He clears his throat, leans forward in his chair, but then slumps back without asking any questions, glancing reflexively at me, twice. Whatever he wants to ask, he doesn’t want me here.
“Oh,” I say. “My mom sent a note I’m supposed to give to you?” I lean forward and take out the note I wrote this morning, sliding my treasure into the front pocket of my bag at the same time. “Here.”
She opens the sealed envelope — good paper I lifted at a B&B in Iowa. The flowing script that imitates Mom’s purposefully loopy suburban-soccer-mom script well enough. Kit’s eyes are wide. Bertolucci reads the note — nodding, nodding, sympathetic look. “That’s fine. Just go to study hall instead of physical education seventh period. And if you have any . . . issues, I’ll alert the school nurse to your situation.”
I look down and squirm, the picture of the mortified sheltered girl, embarrassed by her own body. “Thanks,” I mumble. Darling brother looks equal parts curious and furious.
A knock at the door and then it opens. A girl with braids and glasses, whose mother clearly still picks out her clothes — from some sad catalog.
“Janet Nichols, this is Hannah Evans and her brother, B.J.”
I barely hold back the snicker.
“Hi,” the girl says, smiling at me but ducking her head when she looks at “B.J.”
“Hannah, Janet is in your homeroom, first period, and lunch. I’ve asked her to walk you to homeroom and then on to your first period, and if you are looking for someone to eat lunch with, I’m sure Janet would be happy to have you join her.”
Janet looks less than thrilled, which almost makes me want to accept the foisted invite. But even as I smile and nod, I know there’s no way I’ll be sitting with her at lunch.
“B.J.,” Bertolucci says causing Kit to cringe, “I want to talk to you about the guidance department. I’ll give you a pass to class when we’re done.”
Out in the hallway, it’s mayhem. Bodies rushing everywhere. Slamming lockers. Garbled talk from every direction. Three girls squealing and jumping up and down like they thought they’d never see each other again. And they probably saw each other yesterday, and the day before that, and pretty much every school day for months.
“Ya mind?” Goth girl. Bad wig. Nice piercings. “That’s my locker,” she tries again, less sure, like she isn’t used to being stared at. I smile and step aside but make sure to note her locker combination. Might come in handy.
Let’s see who Hannah will be.
The morning classes are boring but nothing I can’t simper through. No one will expect much of Hannah until next week, at least. If I play this first week well, pour on the overwhelmed-doe look, do enough homework to get by, maybe I can stretch that to a month. With any luck, I’ll be out of here before anyone starts pushing for effort.
Lunch is the usual stench and humiliations, but at least here the lunchroom is comfortable and they sell plenty of prepackaged stuff. In between lunch periods one and two, I hide out in the bathroom down by the library, planning to plead first-day jitters if I’m caught.
Once passing time is over, I emerge from my stall. I perch my book bag on the radiator and step back, turning, watching how it looks when I slouch, shift my weight, lean. This is the part I love, how the subtlest shifts in body language make all the difference. The contacts are bugging me, but I don’t dare take them out to rinse them, not when there’s any chance someone might come in and see my green eyes. It really would have been better if I had brown eyes. Less memorable. Even if Sienna says they’re gorgeous. I smile in the mirror, a very non-Hannah smile, thinking about Sienna. I wonder what scam she’s in the thick of today. Maybe she’s spending the afternoon gathering pocket money on quick changes so she can splurge on a decadent dinner. No one’s better at the quick change than Sienna. It’s her smile — the cashier is so swept up in the flirt he can’t keep up with the back-and-forth math. Or maybe she had a good run, and today s
he’s just wandering the Louvre, lost in the art.
“Oh,” a girl says, banging the door open and stopping short. “Hi.”
“Hi,” I say, just friendly enough to put her at ease but looking down, shy. I add drops to my tired eyes and then touch up the liner that keeps them looking narrower than they are.
She looks around the shelf near the paper towel dispenser, the floor, the sink. She pretends to check her hair in the mirror, but she’s still looking. She wants me to leave. I could have a little fun, practice my cold-reading skills to figure her out, but then I might have to give up my newest treasure. Instead, I wait just long enough to make her eager for me to leave, and then sigh as if I guess I have to go to lunch now. She’s so relieved I’m leaving, she doesn’t even look at me.
After lunch I go to my fifth-period class and find it empty except for the teacher, as expected. I stand in front of the door, staring at the schedule clutched in my hand, mouth turned deliberately down, until the teacher looks up.
“Where are you supposed to be?” he asks, one of those teachers who tries to be a pal.
“I’m not sure. I thought I was supposed to be . . . here?” I look tearfully around the empty room.
“You wouldn’t by any chance be Hannah Evans, would you?”
“Yes, sir.” I gulp for effect.
“Yeah, you were supposed to be here for fifth period.”
“It’s not fifth period now?”
“No, now it’s sixth.” He motions me over to his desk. “Where were you after lunch?”
I look down and shuffle my feet. “The bathroom,” I say, adding a bit of quiver for good measure.
He clears his throat. “It’s okay.” He smiles and reaches for my schedule. “Let’s just get you to the right class now, and tomorrow you need to pay better attention to the schedule or ask for a pass, okay?”
“Okay,” I whisper.
He hands me back my schedule and takes the pen from his chest pocket and reaches across the desk, but he stops, and his mouth puckers in confusion. “Huh.” He pats his pockets, looks around the desk, then lifts a book and a notebook.
I stand there, waiting, until he swears under his breath and tears a piece of paper out of the notebook. “Here’s a pass to your sixth-period class. Go straight there.”
“Thank you, Mr. Sweifert. I promise I’ll do better tomorrow.”
“It’s fine, Hannah.” He hands me the folded handwritten note. “See you tomorrow.”
After school, I watch the morons make their way to the buses and cars and bike racks.
“Hey, Hannah, need a ride?” Todd from English asks, shuffling his feet. Todd from freshman English.
“You drive?” He is cute, in a white-bread kinda way. All squishy moldability, no nutritional value or substance whatsoever. Still, a boy might be nice this time. Especially one unlikely to cause any lasting impressions.
“Yeah. We moved a lot when I was little. So, uh, I’m sixteen.” Red blush races past his hairline. Definitely cute.
Hannah is nice, nicer than Liv. Liv would rock his world. “I know how that is. If Mom hadn’t homeschooled us, I’d have been behind, too.” Nice-girl smile to cement the cover. And maybe more? I’d have to play him carefully. Experience would scare him away. Hannah would have to be overwhelmed by his sweetness. Maybe not. I hate playing the virgin. “Thanks, but my brother’s gonna give me a ride.”
“Okay, well, see ya tomorrow?” Todd says, walking away slowly, like I might change my mind.
“See ya!” A smile. A nod. A wave good-bye. Nice. When we move on, he’ll remember that Hannah was nice.
“Hey,” B.J. says, appearing from nowhere. I hate when he does that. “Already?” he asks, scowling. “I thought we agreed no complications while we’re lying low.”
“Uh, no worries. Just being nice. Let’s go.”
I’m barely buckled in before he has the car in gear and is pulling away.
“So, B.J., rough first day?”
“Ben.”
“Huh?”
“I changed it to Ben. No way am I going another day as B.J.”
“Oooh, unauthorized name change. Not sure how Mom’s gonna feel about that one.”
“Well, Mom can bite me. I went through the whole day with blow-job jokes, on top of the usual crap.”
“I love first days.” I ignore his grunt and stretch my back, anxious to get home and change into my own clothes and work out some of the kinks. Being Hannah with her shuffles and slouch has my body all tied in knots.
I run back through the prospects. Todd’s off the list, but there were other contenders. Brice, quiet, studious Brice from Bio. He was cute. And goth girl, once she got past the locker confusion, was actually pretty hot. She’d have to take that hook out of her lip, but I’d be all in favor of the tongue ring.
I’ve got to do something to keep from being bored to death while waiting for the all clear. Mom and Kit are both distracted enough not to notice, if I keep it casual. Bet goth girl would be up for some easy fun.
He’s still brooding.
“Was it really that bad?”
“No.” He flexes his hands on the steering wheel, cracks his neck. “I’m just tired. New name, new place, new life.”
Same fear.
“And I’m starving. I missed lunch.”
I noticed. “Let’s go to the mall,” I say. “We should check it out, and I could eat.”
“I’m broke until Mom breaks out the emergency cash.”
“My treat. I made eighteen bucks today.”
“Made?” He pulls to a stop at the light.
“Yes, made. I didn’t lift any of it. All freely given.”
“Do I even want to know?”
“Hey. I’ll have you know these are good people in a good town. No way any of them were gonna let the poor formerly homeschooled girl go without lunch simply because her mom didn’t know she had to have money.”
I give him my innocent look.
“Eighteen dollars in one lunch? How’d you —?”
“Pshaw. One lunch.” Amateur. “I went to every lunch. Why not?”
“Liv . . .”
“Hey, no one caught on. I went to the class I missed later and explained I got confused. No big.” I shuffle the bills, turning the faces to line up. “And it’s Hannah, my unfortunate named-after-a-sex-act brother.”
“Look. You can’t mess around. You have to go to your classes and do your homework and not screw around.”
“Why? It’s not like any of this matters.”
“But —”
“I bet Daddy’s already finished the bait and switch. All he has to do is detour to wash the cash, make some contacts, and we’ll be gone. A month. Maybe two.”
“You can’t know —”
“And,” I cut him off, “if things went south, we’d know by now. He got out. If he got the full payout, you know Mom will insist on some downtime, and not in any suburban beigeland.” Not a minute longer than necessary. “We could all use some downtime. Maybe Europe.”
If Sienna’s still in Paris by then, we could have some real fun. A target-rich city full of unsuspecting rich boys who would love to wine and dine some wealthy American tourists, maybe advance us some cash or cover a weekend in Italy. We could get lost for weeks in Venice or Florence on one weekend’s take in Paris. I’d have to full-out ditch Mom and Daddy. Mom would never let me go by myself, and Daddy says Sienna’s persona non grata since our little side job in Oregon. Daddy was spit-flying mad. Called Sienna a “feckless dilettante,” which just made his ranting even funnier. Like he never has a little something going on the side. He got all bent over the age difference, but that wasn’t his real issue. It was Sienna, that she has game of her own and won’t just be his shill, playing some small stooge in his con for whatever cut he deems fair. That we pulled our own job, with our own payoff, right alongside his own, without asking his permission. If he only knew how many modified glim-drops, badger games, and lottery proxies Sienna and I hav
e pulled on the side of his grand schemes. Sure, it was our first fiddle game, but it went exactly as planned.
Kit clears his throat, his signal that he’s about to offer brotherly advice he knows I’m unlikely to follow but can’t help himself from giving. I wait for the second throat clear, turn my head so he can’t see my smile when he completes the ritual with the third and final guttural stall. “Don’t you want to actually learn something?” he asks. “Maybe actually work your way through school?”
He’s serious. He’s actually serious.
“The next time a job requires a high-school cover, I’ll probably be a freshman again. I’ll go to my classes then. Even ‘Life Skills.’” Like they can teach me anything I’ll need in my life.
“If you screw this —”
“Give it a rest! No one will care if I miss some classes or blow off my homework. Frankly, they’d probably be more suspicious if Hannah didn’t have some trouble adjusting. I’m good at this, Kit.” He looks over before turning onto the main road. “I’m really good at this.”
“You weren’t so good at it in Toledo.”
I was so good in Toledo he didn’t even see the real con. He doesn’t even suspect. None of them do. That’s how good I am. But I pretend to be hurt and ashamed for his benefit.
“Sorry,” he says when my act gets to him.
“Why’d you miss lunch?” I ask, like I’m accepting his apology.
“Because it was the only time the guidance counselor had open.”
“Guidance?”
“Playing the part,” he says too fast, with the too-practiced tilt of his head and that partial squint that gives it away when he’s trying too hard.
“Does B.J. want to go to Harvard or Yale?” I laugh. He doesn’t.
Oh. My. God. “Don’t be stupid, Kit.” He grits his teeth, which makes me want to knock some sense into him. “Whose name is going on the applications? Where are you getting records of your grades? Who are your parents? Whose Social Security number are you going to use?” He looks ready to cry. Unbelievable.