by Richard Peck
I sighed. “If you’re talking about your machines, Jeremy, that’s not quite the kind of need I meant.”
Then, while I was resting my eyes, it was suddenly daylight in the room. A shock of red hair and two eyes appeared by my pillow. Jeremy hooked his spectacles over his ears and gave me more close looks. We were about nose to nose, but still he stared. He even studied Mama’s old fur piece around my neck like it might be growing on me.
“You’re still . . . here,” he said quietly. “I guess we better consider your . . . bodily functions.”
“Whoa!” says I. “Listen, where I come from we don’t discuss that type thing in mixed company.”
“Well, my bathroom’s right through that door if you need it, and . . . do you eat?”
What did he take me for? I gave him a disgusted look, and he decided to check out the house, darting for the door in a pair of pajamas printed all over with moons and airships.
As I was climbing down the ladder from my so-called bed, Jeremy ran into his sister in the hall outside. I froze to hear her greet him in her rude way. She called him both nerd and honker and invited him to bag his face. Then she lumbered off down the stairs. The house rocked as Tiffany banged out the front door.
Jeremy popped back into the room. “The coast is clear,” he announced. “I heard Mom’s Trans Am tool out of the garage before I got up. She’s an interior decorator.”
Though this meant little to me, it seemed to calm him. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s find some breakfast.”
I hung back, not scared exactly, but a little uncertain.
“It’s okay,” he said, but still, I was far from sure. He walked over to where I stood, digging my toe into the carpet. “Don’t worry.” A little shy himself, he put out a hand and took mine.
It was quiet then, but for the cheeping of a bird or two outside the window. At least they haven’t done away with birds, I thought.
Jeremy peered at me in his thoughtful way. “I guess you’d be a real old lady now if you . . . I mean, you know what I mean.”
I nodded. “I guess I’d be a real old lady or . . . out of the picture entirely.” I pointed to the ceiling. In the mornings I tend to be moody.
“Well, anyway,” said Jeremy, “come on. We can’t hang around up here all day. I don’t have a chance of sending you back till I can give my equipment a little TLC. We’ve got to go to school.”
I hadn’t thought of that.
“School? I’m a fugitive from 1914, Jeremy. They’d drop a net over me and put me in a sideshow!”
“Oh, just chill out on that, Blossom,” he said. “I got that part all programmed. You can leave that to me.”
So having little choice, I followed him out into his world, though my spirits were not high. There was more trouble ahead. It stood to reason.
12
AS FAR AS I COULD SEE, every corner of the old Leverette farmhouse had been brought up-to-date. Though it was not to my taste, it was all strictly modern.
In my opinion, the kitchen went too far. It was one machine after another, each with its own name: Cuisinart and Frigidaire and Hotpoint and Whirlpool. It was all microwave this and radar control that.
I looked for the drainboard where Alexander was going to stretch out Champ Ferguson for a monster. In its place were big double sinks and a drain that chopped up the garbage and ate it.
When Jeremy showed me how this so-called garbage disposal worked, I remarked, “You don’t leave much for the hogs.”
He shook his head. “It’s against the zoning to keep livestock in Bluffleigh Heights. I guess you people in the olden times kept a lot of hogs and chickens around.”
“I have handled no hogs,” I replied, “but I’ve kept a chicken or two.”
We were to eat our breakfast on high stools drawn up to a slick counter. Jeremy slid a bowl before me. “This is basically a high-fiber whole-grain product with dried fruit and wheat germ additives and minimal preservatives.”
“It looks like fodder to me,” I said suspiciously.
“What’s fodder?”
“It’s what you’d find in the nose bag of a horse,” I said. “Tastes like it, too.”
We washed this mess down with a couple glasses of what Jeremy called a vitamin C concentrate. I’ve personally had better grub out of Mama’s kitchen, which is only a cookstove and a cupboard, basically.
The little clock on the counter flashed the time in red numbers. Jeremy noticed and said, “Just stay here, Blossom. I’ll be right back. Then you’ll see how we’re going to pull off going to school together. It’ll be a real scam. Trust me.” He charged out of the kitchen in his airship pajamas.
What could I do? I was a stranger in strange parts. I sat waiting as the high-fiber whole-grain product settled like a brick in the pit of my stomach. The clever little so-called clock flashed 8:07, then 8:08.
I wondered how I was to pass unnoticed in Jeremy’s magnet middle school. I thought of Daisy-Rae holed up in her stall of the rest room and wondered if that was a possibility for me. Away my mind wandered.
It’d been a hard night, and my guard was down. Maybe I heard a noise outside the house, maybe not. Suddenly footsteps sounded on the back porch. I about jumped out of my skin and fell off the stool.
A key fumbled for the back door lock. There I sprawled in a heap on the kitchen floor, and in the wrong decade altogether. The key turned. I’d never make it to the dining room. There was a big double door electrified icebox nearby. With any luck, I might squeeze in between it and the wall. I made one of my giant leaps.
Planting one boot in the little space, I was knocked nearly senseless by a collection of brooms and mops that keeled out on my head. There was hardly room for them, and none for me. When the kitchen door opened, I was standing right by it in full view.
A woman entered. She carried a ring of keys and a large paper bag of supplies. It hid her face from me and mine from her. She wore pants like a man and high-heeled shoes, which is one odd combination. Staggering under her load, she brushed past me.
I never moved, though I slewed my eyes around to the door. If I budged, she’d notice. But I might make a clean getaway. Still, I didn’t like leaving the house on my own, never knowing what new threat might wait for me outside.
The woman eased her bag onto the counter and began taking various grocery items out of it. She had Jeremy’s red hair, and I figured she was his mama. I was about to surrender myself to her and hope for the best, though it’s always difficult to explain anything to a mother. I took one brave step forward and began to clear my throat.
At that moment she reached into her grocery bag and hefted out a cardboard container, labeled “LIGHTLY LUSCIOUS LOW-FAT MILK.” She jerked open a door on the icebox, and it caught me square in the face. I slammed back into the corner by the brooms. My nose seemed mashed level with my cheeks, and it hurt too bad to cry.
The woman continued with her tasks, jamming various items into cupboards. She reached up and turned the knob of a small device sitting on a high shelf.
Though my nose was throbbing, I gaped in wonder. In the window of this gadget a tiny man appeared. The kitchen filled with the sound of his piping voice. It was some kind of improvement on the Bijou Picture Show moving pictures, with color and noise added. The cheerful little man on the screen was doing exercises to music, much as Miss Fuller operates in Girls’ Gym. The midget man danced about like a cunning monkey. He had a head of hair as frizzy as my own.
“Well, now I’ve seen everything!” I exclaimed, but Jeremy’s mama never heard me. Her hands were busy with her chores, and her eyes were glued on the little exercise man. But she was about to get a shock. And so was I.
A fearful figure entered from the dining room. Though the creature was not tall, it filled up the door from side to side. Its skin was silver, and its arms and legs were ringed like thick snakes. Its knees were large shiny circles, and its boots were of tremendous size. Something like a fishbowl served for its head. It grunted.
I was speechless, but Jeremy’s mama took one look and let rip an almighty scream. In her hand had been a box labeled “FRUIT LOOPS.” This object went soaring through the air, narrowly missing me.
Her hands clapped over her heart, and she slumped. “Oh, Jeremy,” she said, “what are you doing in that thing, and why aren’t you in school?”
His voice came from far off inside the fishbowl.
“Hi, Mom. We’re wearing costumes today. It’s the school Halloween party. I’m just leaving.”
By squinting, I could make out his face blurred behind curved glass. It was Jeremy’s voice, too, more or less. His eyes shifted to me, and he sized up the situation. I saw he was going to keep his mama talking while we got out of there somehow.
“Did Tiffany wear a costume to school?” she asked.
“Mom, you know those high school kinds think they’re too grown-up for that. Besides, Tiffany looks like Halloween all year long.”
“Now, Jeremy.” His mama sighed. “And what are you supposed to represent?” She planted a hand on her hip and examined his outfit.
“I’m a Citizen of the Galaxy, of course,” Jeremy said in a hollow voice. “You’re definitely not up on your Robert Heinlein, Mom. I made my knees but of hubcaps. What do you think?”
“They’re . . . tubular. And what did you do with the goldfish?” she asked, staring him in the globe.
“They’re in the powder room sink,” he said, waving a kind of flipper. “They’ll be fine.”
His mama stood between us, but he still had her full attention. “If you don’t scoot,” she said, “you’ll be late. Maybe I ought to drive you, but I’ve got six window treatments to finalize this morning and a designer sheet luncheon.”
“No sweat,” Jeremy said quickly, swinging his large legs and taking two steps toward me and the back door. “Plenty of time.”
Not able to look back because of his glass head, Jeremy made steady strides. At the last moment he grabbed my hand, and we issued out the back door.
“Have a nice day, honey,” his mama called out, absorbed once more in the little exercise man inside the moving picture box.
There were no sidewalks in Bluffleigh Heights, and all the paved streets curved, seeming to go nowhere. Me and Jeremy made our way along in the ditch while he learned to walk in his costume. He soon got the hang of it, throwing one padded leg around the other.
There’d been progress of a sort in automobiles. They had glass in all their windows now and strictly modern headlamps. They could get up high speeds, too, though many slowed at sight of me and Jeremy.
“I begin to see your scam,” I told him as we ambled on. “I’m to change into your Citizen of the Galaxy outfit and wear it to school, as nobody will see my face clear in that bowl. But what are you going to wear?”
He blinked like a fish wearing spectacles.
“Actually,” he said, “I’m going to wear this, and . . . you’re sort of in costume already. If you see what I mean.”
I looked down at myself: at Mama’s old fur piece with the fox face and bent ears. At my tarnished spelling medal. At my old patched princess dress that lapped down over my everyday boots. I saw what he meant.
“What about my face?” I asked. “I don’t have a mask.”
Even through the bowl, I met Jeremy’s gaze. I saw what he meant.
The way I figured it, a school is a school, throughout history.
But when Bluffleigh Heights Magnet Middle School hove into view, I couldn’t make head or tail of it. It was a low, flat-roofed structure crouching in a bald yard. There was no architecture to it. Miss Mae Spaulding, principal of Horace Mann, wouldn’t have run a worm farm in the place. But the usual crowd churned around outside, showing off. Most were in Halloween costumes, though in the 1980s it’s hard to tell.
Jeremy began to drag his feet. The costume was a burden to him, and his bowl was fogged up from heavy breathing. “This is the part I hate,” he mumbled.
“If you’re worried about me,” I told him, “I can always nip down to the rest room for the day. This girl I know, name of Daisy-Rae, spends half her life in—”
He shook his bowl. “I didn’t mean you. I’m glad you’re here, Blossom. It’s . . . just going to school I hate.” His voice rang sorrowfully.
“That’s only natural,” I pointed out. “But shoot, Jeremy, you’re a right bright kid—Gifted, I mean.”
“It’s not the schoolwork,” he said faintly. “There’s nothing to that. It’s . . . everything else.”
I should have known right then why I’d found my way through time to Jeremy. The evidence had been piling up from the first moment. But it was too simple to see.
Many in the crowd stared our way and laughed like hyenas. One girl was dressed up as a pig in a picture hat. She was the durnedest-looking thing I ever saw. Pointing right at me, she remarked at the top of her lungs that I was so grody she couldn’t handle it.
As far as I could tell, we fitted right in. One of the boys had painted his face green and wore a cape with a stake through his heart. Some of them hardly wore enough to cover their shame, and I personally counted seven Darth Vaders. The smallest kid in the bunch, wearing a neat white suit, did nothing but run in circles, proclaiming, “Da plane come, boss. Da plane come.”
It was a sight.
I’d decided to lay low and keep my mouth shut, always a good plan. But a rough type stepped into my path. “Awright,” he barked. “Take off your mask, so we can like see who you are.” He made a grab for my nose.
“Bag your face, honker,” I replied with dignity.
This could have led to fisticuffs; but a bell rang within the so-called school, and we were carried along with the tide. Jeremy reminded me of Alexander Armsworth, as he was never a step ahead of me. I began to wonder who was looking after who. Through the schoolhouse doors we swept, though I personally had little hope for the place.
13
IT WAS A MADHOUSE all morning long, and little learning took place. Every class period was a Halloween party, though I doubt things were much better on a regular day. As for decoration, they had no orange and black crepe paper. Instead, all the walls were brightened up with a thing called graffiti, much of it poorly spelled.
Before the first class, which may have been English, I mumbled to Jeremy in alarm, “I’ll be one too many when they take attendance.”
“Take what?” Jeremy asked, and into the room we ganged. There was much milling around in there, and I swear to this day I never spied the teacher. If this was the Gifted bunch, may I never see the slow ones.
But I soon saw a sight all too familiar to me: a gang of stuck-up girls sitting in a tight clump. Remembering the Sunny Thoughts and Busy Fingers Sisterhood, I meant to give this bunch all the free air they could breathe. When I settled into a desk, Jeremy drifted away. This being eighth grade, everybody steered clear of the opposite sex.
One stuck-up girl spotted me at once. She was pretty to a fault and wore a ballerina costume with a sickeningly pink tutu. In her hand she carried a wand with a glittering little star at the end of it. She waved it around in sweeping gestures.
“Oh, you guys,” she said to the girls, “like, look!” She waved her wand at me. “That is so grisly, like I am sure.”
“Ew,” said all her group, looking my way. “Gross us out,” they said in a chorus.
“That is so ill,” said the pig girl in the picture hat. “Gag me with a spoon. Really. Is that makeup or a mask? And what does the eighteen mean on her . . . hat?”
“Oh, I know what that means,” said the ballerina, wielding her wand. “On an Ugly Scale of one to fifteen, she’s an eighteen.”
The whole group rocked with laughter, like they were supposed to.
I had the durnedest feeling I’d been through all this before.
“But who is she?” wondered the pig girl.
At that the ballerina, quick to take charge, jumped up and began counting the noses of her bunch with the wand: �
��Melissa, Kelly, April, Chrissy, Michelle, Hilary, Heidi.” She sighed with relief. “We’re all here.” Then she flopped down, and the group closed ranks around her, losing all interest in me.
But I hadn’t lost all interest in them. I edged out of my desk and made my way across the littered room to where they clustered like birds of bright plumage.
“Ew, get away,” said several.
“Like, no way is she going to sit with us,” said the pig person.
“For sure,” came a chorus, and they all looked to the ballerina for leadership.
Arranging my fur piece, I marched up to her.
She tapped her wand nervously on the desk, as all eyes were upon her, including my beady black ones. “Say, sister,” I said, “what’s your name?”
They all gasped in shock.
“That’s Heather,” said several, amazed at my ignorance.
“Is that a fact?” I remarked, taking a closer look. I had the odd notion I knew her.
“You must be like really new in town. Really,” breathed the pig. “Like a foreigner or something.”
“Oh, no,” I answered. “I’m an . . . old settler in these parts.” I grinned at them in Mama’s evil way. “Sort of the Spirit of Halloween Past.” They shrank.
“In fact,” I said, warming up, “I’m planning to tell fortunes and give readings and bring messages from various worlds to customers at a certain Halloween Festival . . . tomorrow night.”
I had them listening now. But Heather drew in her cheeks and said, “I’m sure,” in a mocking way.
“In fact, I feel one of my trances coming on right now.” I swayed slightly and let my eyes roll back in my head like Mama does.
I had them in the palm of my hand now, though many threatened to rolf on the floor. “Barf City,” said the pig.
I swayed some more and let my long, bony finger reach out, drawing a bead on Heather’s forehead.
“She is so zeeked out,” said Heather uncertainly, “like, forget it, okay?”