by Dyan Sheldon
“It’s only been, like, an hour,” says Kristin. “He’ll turn up.”
Sicilee sighs. “Yeah, right.” On the arm of some other girl. She yanks open the door to their room. And stops dead.
Cody Lightfoot, lately of Northern California, has not only turned up at last, but has turned up in Sicilee’s English class. His canvas book bag is on the desk directly in front of the teacher’s – and Cody himself is to one side of it, talking to Mrs Sotomayor in a relaxed, almost intimate manner.
He’s in her class! It was starting to look as though the gods who normally smile down on Sicilee and shower her with gifts had turned the other way, but clearly they were only momentarily distracted. Here he is, where she will see him for nearly an hour every day, where she will sit next to him and talk to him and whisper witticisms and lend him a pen or borrow his. Sicilee couldn’t cross the room any faster if she were on skates.
Oblivious to the fact that she has let the door slam shut on Kristin, Sicilee drops her own bag on the desk next to Cody’s.
“I’m sure you’ll catch up in no time,” Mrs Sotomayor is saying as Sicilee arrives on her other side, wearing a polite and patient smile on her face. And, in an atypically generous gesture, adds, “We do have an unassigned book report due on Monday, but naturally I won’t expect you to do that.”
Cody looks straight at Mrs Sotomayor, which means that, since Sicilee has moved closer to the teacher, he is almost looking straight at her as well. With only a few feet and a desk between them, Sicilee now sees that she was wrong about him. He isn’t merely extremely good looking, he is awesomely, spectacularly and uniquely gorgeous. If he were a geological feature, he’d be the Grand Canyon.
“Oh, that’s not a problem.” Cody’s voice is warm and mellow and sounds like a hug. His eyes, it turns out, aren’t blue like the eyes of regular boys, but the aquamarine of an unspoiled tropical sea. “I had some free time on my hands over Christmas so I read War and Peace. Man, there is a novel that really deserves to be called great – it just has everything going for it, doesn’t it? You know, once I got started, I couldn’t put it down – maybe I can do a report on that? I get that we’re supposed to be zoning in on American fiction this year, but maybe just this once…”
Mrs Sotomayor, who in her fifteen years of teaching has no memory of a student ever volunteering for work he or she could avoid, recovers enough from this shock to say, “Well if you’re certain you have the time…” And, possibly because Cody is still looking into her eyes, she drops her pen on the floor. Which is when she notices Sicilee, hovering beside her like an exceptionally brightly dressed ghost.
“Sicilee?” Sicilee is not a girl her English teacher has ever been tempted to describe as ethereal, but she does look as though she may be having an out-of-body experience. “Sicilee? Is there something you wanted?”
Sicilee returns to reality with a start. “What?” She drags her smile from the scenic experience that is Cody Lightfoot to the dingy alley that is the head of the English department. “Oh, yeah, right, yeah. I just wanted to check with you about the book report? I know we’ve got a minimum length, but is there a maximum? You know, because the book I’m doing, it works on so many levels…?” Sicilee steams on like a runaway train, hoping to impress Cody Lightfoot with her sophistication and intelligence. She doesn’t distract herself by glancing over to see his reaction. She’ll wait until she’s done, and then she’ll turn and give him one of her biggest smiles. And as they sit down, she’ll introduce herself and welcome him to Clifton Springs. “…I picked it because it really is a modern classic, and I think you could say not just an American modern classic but a world—”
“You write as much as you want, Sicilee,” cuts in Mrs Sotomayor, who knows very well that Sicilee picked this particular book because she can watch the movie and not have to read it. “Now if you’ll take your seat, I think it’s about time we started this class.”
“Oh, sure, right…” Sicilee turns, her smile bright as sunshine. It is, perhaps, a testament to the indefatigable human spirit that Sicilee’s smile doesn’t dim when she realizes that Cody Lightfoot is not at the desk next to the one that holds her orange backpack. He is sitting at the back of the room. Between Kristin and Farley Hubble. Which is where Sicilee usually sits.
“Sicilee?” prompts Mrs Sotomayor.
Sicilee takes her new seat. She is still smiling.
This, of course, is not further evidence of the indefatigable human spirit. It is simply to stop her from groaning out loud.
Chapter Six
This is how stalkers are made
Within minutes of her first sight of him, Maya Baraberra decided that it wasn’t a 747 that brought Cody Lightfoot to Clifton Springs, but Fate. They were destined to meet. Didn’t she have a feeling that this year was going to be seriously significant? Didn’t she say? It made total sense.
But when Cody didn’t materialize in her homeroom or her first class of the day, Maya realized that if she wanted to get him into her group before someone else claimed him, she was going to have to give Destiny a hand.
Which is why, at this very moment, she and Alice are slouching away from school in the rain, following the figure in the old army parka (winter issue), hood up, several yards ahead of them.
“I can’t believe that I let you talk me into this,” grumbles Alice. “I feel like a stalker.”
“Don’t be so melodramatic. We’re more like spies. We’re having an adventure.”
Alice isn’t really the adventurous type. “What if he turns around and sees us?”
“I wouldn’t worry about it.” Unlike Sicilee, Maya doesn’t feel she always has to smile. “I don’t think he’d notice me if I was wrapped in Christmas lights.” Wrapped in Christmas lights and holding a flaming torch between her teeth. “Besides, what if he does? We just happen to be going in the same direction. It is a free country, you know.”
Alice’s sigh is drowned out by someone shouting behind them. “Cody! Cody, man! Wait up!”
Cody stops and half turns around, and Maya stops breathing. If proof was needed that either she is invisible or he is blind, he waves amiably at someone behind her. Maya’s heart resumes beating as Clifton Springs’ two token goths splash past them.
“He may be seriously gorgeous and charming and charismatic and everything,” says Alice, summarizing the general opinion of a large percentage of the student body as they resume walking, “but he sure isn’t picky about who he hangs out with.”
“Maybe he’s a true free spirit, you know?” says Maya. “I mean, it’s kind of Christ-like, isn’t it? He hung out with whoever he wanted to, too.”
“I guess.” Alice’s shrug suggests that she isn’t convinced. “But, he’s new here. Aren’t you supposed to try and fit in when you’re new?”
And, as Maya knows only too well, the people Cody Lightfoot should be trying to fit in with, of course, are Maya and her friends.
But Cody has changed schools before, and fitting in – even with the hippest and coolest group in the school – is not his way. He prefers that things fit in with him. Although Clifton Springs is a school with a social hierarchy slightly more rigid than that of feudal Europe, he has already made it clear that he has no intention of aligning himself with any one group. He is friendly to everyone in a laid-back, effortless way – as likely to eat lunch with the Emos as the jocks, as likely to walk down the hallway with the class president as the class clown. This is a method that has always worked for Cody in the past, and, on the whole, it is working now. The girls like him because, despite his break-your-heart good looks, he is neither arrogant nor aloof. The boys like him because, despite the several ways in which he stands out (he’s into qigong, t’ai chi, all-weather climbing, yoga, swimming and white-water rafting – not football, basketball, baseball or wrestling), he is neither competitive nor threatening.
Indeed, the only person who has had a negative word for Cody is Jason Coombs, until a few days ago probably the hippest bo
y in their class. Jason thinks Cody’s a little weird because of the yoga. All that standing like a tree and omming, said Jason, is pretty much a girl’s thing. Maya, who has been on the brink of dating Jason for the last few months, said nothing but eyed him critically, noticing new flaws.
At the end of the road the goths turn left and Cody turns right, away from town.
“What did I say?” Maya’s nails dig into Alice’s arm. “Didn’t I say I had a hunch he was going home?” Maya has it all planned. As Cody reaches his front door, she’ll suddenly call out, Hello? Excuse me, but my friend and I are lost. And then he’ll turn around, eager to help, and she’ll act all surprised and say, Hey, don’t you go to Clifton Springs? Haven’t I seen you at school? He’ll hurry back to the sidewalk to talk to her, amazed that he doesn’t remember seeing her before. Yes, he’ll say, I just moved to town. She’ll hold out her hand. Well, welcome to Clifton Springs. She’ll smile. My name’s Maya. He’ll say that his name’s Cody and invite her in.
“I just hope it isn’t too far,” mutters Alice. “My feet are already soaked.”
But, as so often happens in life, Alice’s hope is not to be fulfilled. Block after block goes by, but Cody never turns up a path nor breaks his stride. Instead, he marches straight through puddles in his vintage galoshes like a man on a mission, but the girls, whose footwear is less rugged, have to scurry around the larger pools and leap across the smaller – all while trying to keep him in their sight and them out of his. Maya, warmed and protected by her fantasies, is oblivious to the distance and the weather, but as the blocks become a mile and then another, their adventure loses the little interest it had for her friend.
“This is ridiculous. Where the hell does he live?” Alice gasps. Her feet are so wet now that she feels like she’s wading. “In the next town?”
Maya, deep into imagining Cody asking her if she’d like a cup of coffee, smiles into the distance.
“Maya!” Alice’s voice is far too loud for surveillance work. “Did you hear me? Where is he going? To visit his mother in England?”
Maya comes back to the moment with a scowl. “Shhh!” she hisses. “He’ll hear you.”
“I don’t care any more.” Alice comes to a stubborn stop under the relative shelter of a large tree at the kerb. “I’m tired of this. I want to go home.”
“But we’re almost there,” pleads Maya. “I’m sure we are.” She tugs on Alice’s arm. “Come on, he’s crossing—” What she was going to say was that Cody is crossing the road – something Alice could actually see for herself if she weren’t staring forlornly at her feet – but the realization of what road it is that he’s crossing cuts the flow of words. “Gott im Himmel…”
“What?” Alice has added shrillness to the volume. “Now what’s wrong?”
“Look. Can you believe it?” Maya points beyond the traffic to where a sprawl of venerable grey buildings rise from a tree-lined lawn. Students fill the paths that wind between the buildings and the quad. Cody Lightfoot has already disappeared among them, just another hooded figure with a book bag hurrying through the rain.
Alice’s frown deepens. “Is that the university?” This is an accusation, not a question.
Maya nods. “I guess he wasn’t going home after all.” Fate is toying with her. If she hadn’t been so busy jumping over puddles and trying to keep out of sight… “He must be meeting his father.” But maybe all isn’t lost. She’s sure the senior Lightfoot teaches history or sociology – or, possibly, anthropology – something like that. If they can find the right building, there’s still a chance they could run into Cody. She could stumble and twist her ankle in front of him. Probably his father would offer them a ride home…
“Forget it, Maya.” Alice straightens up, adjusting herself in the manner of someone about to jump ship. “There’s no way I’m wandering around that campus for the next hour looking for him. I’m out of here.”
“But we’ve come so far. If we just hang around a little longer—”
Somewhere not far enough away to be reassuring, a dog starts to bark in a way that even someone less close to tears and exhaustion than Alice would describe as ferocious bordering on hysterical.
Chapter Seven
There’s a chance that reality begins in dreams
Sicilee and Maya are both convinced that once they catch Cody Lightfoot’s attention they are as good as on their first date with him, if not actually engaged. These assumptions, of course, are based on who they are (the most popular girl in the most popular group and the coolest girl in the coolest group) and what they look like (model pretty, and attractive in an alternative, arty way). In contrast, Waneeda – who doesn’t even register on the radar screens of popularity or cool – is a large, ungainly girl with runaway, tumbleweed hair and the instantly forgettable kind of face that would only be an advantage if she decided to commit a crime. She’s not a fool. Waneeda knows that the only way she could attract Cody Lightfoot’s attention would be to dump her lunch on his lap. But she still can dream.
Waneeda’s dreams used to centre around her favourite TV shows and arguments with her mother, but now she dreams about Cody every night. In dreams, she walks with him and talks with him and sometimes even holds his hand. In these dreams, Cody is the funny, kind, sensitive and intelligent boy she imagines him to be – and Waneeda is someone else. Instead of shambling the way she does in real life, she sashays; instead of dragging her heels and always complaining, she is energetic and always laughing. She looks different, too. Prettier and brighter – her hair like a dark cloud around her head; her smile like the sun.
In last night’s dream, Cody saved Waneeda’s life. She was drowning in an angry sea under a hard, ash-coloured sky. “Help! Help!” she was shouting. “Help! Help!” But, of course, there was no one to hear her desperate screams. There was no land in sight, no boat in the distance, not so much as a gull wheeling overhead. And then, as the icy fingers of the sea were pulling her under for the last time, Cody Lightfoot (in his pinstriped suit and black T-shirt) suddenly dove in beside her. His arms were strong and warm around her. “It’s all right,” he murmured. “Don’t worry, dear Waneeda. Everything’s going to be all right.” She woke up tangled in the blankets, a pillow clutched against her.
Even now, so many hours later, as she and Joy Marie walk home together on Friday afternoon, last night’s dream keeps replaying itself in her mind, making Joy Marie’s chatter no more than background noise. Until Joy Marie says something that makes Waneeda almost choke on the candy she just put in her mouth.
“What?” asks Waneeda. “What did you say?”
“God, Waneeda…” Joy Marie makes her why-don’t-you-ever-listen-to-me? face. “I said that Clemens says that Cody Lightfoot seems pretty solid. You know, interesting and intelligent and kind of a mensch.”
“Clemens,” repeats Waneeda. “Are you saying Cody Lightfoot talks to Clemens?”
Clemens Reis is the geek’s geek. Waneeda, who lives behind Clemens, has known him since they were in diapers, and so can attest that he was always a peculiar child (in the video of her earliest birthday parties, Clemens is the scowling one who refused to wear a party hat or sing), but puberty has made him even more peculiar. He has an eccentric nature and an independent, argumentative mind. Physically, he is thin and gawky, with hair that is long not as a statement of cool or rebellion but because he never remembers to get it cut. His glasses are held together by a paper clip. Clemens is the kind of boy who can tell you how many helium balloons you’d need to make a cat fly (depending on its weight, of course) and who will tell you (whether you ask or not) what percentage of global greenhouse-gas emissions is caused by cows. He wears a hat knitted by his grandmother and saddle shoes. It is miracle enough that two such different examples of a carbon-based life form as Cody and Clemens should inhabit the same planet, let alone speak to each other.
“He talks to Clemens all the time,” says Joy Marie. “At least he isn’t a snob like everybody else in this school.�
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“I guess that’s true.” Waneeda has, in fact, seen him talk to people even she wouldn’t talk to.
Waneeda chews on a cherry-flavoured ball of corn syrup and sugar in the way of someone considering the possible origins of life. No one expects less of Waneeda than Waneeda herself. Indeed, you could say that one of her strengths is that her lack of ambition is comfortably matched by her lack of expectation. But now something shifts ever so slightly, and she starts to consider the possibility that, maybe, there might be a chance that – someday, somehow – Cody Lightfoot will talk to her somewhere that isn’t in her dreams.
Chapter Eight
Sicilee doesn’t understand it when things don’t go the way she wants
Since the social hierarchy of Clifton Springs High is slightly more rigid than that of feudal Europe, every group has its own table in the cafeteria.
Sicilee’s group sits in the centre of the room, which is both symbolic (she and her friends, after all, are at the centre of the school’s social life) and practical (so they can both see and be seen).
Today, Ash, Loretta and Kristin are discussing the weekend’s trip to the mall.
“I have to take back that dress I got,” Loretta is saying. “I mean, it looked great in the store, but ohmigod when I tried it on at home? I looked enormous. You should’ve seen my butt!”
Ash nods knowingly. “It’s the mirrors. They have special mirrors that make you look skinnier than you are.”
Kristin doesn’t think it’s the mirrors. She thinks the fault lies with mass production. The clothes are made to fit everybody, so they fit no one.
Loretta looks impressed. She never thought of it like that before.
Ash says that doesn’t mean she’s wrong about the mirrors. Everybody knows about it. She saw it on TV.