Past Perfect

by Leila Sales

  When Ezra broke up with me, Fiona told me that I was not allowed to talk to him again. I asked, “Ever?” and she said, “No. Just not for three and a half months.” Then she marked the date in her phone.

  Now she whipped her phone out of her skirt pocket, checked its calendar, and said, “It looks like, hmm, about forty-three days until you’re allowed to talk to him.”

  “Fiona, August seventh is a completely arbitrary time constraint.”

  “Absolutely.” She bobbed her head up and down. “It is an arbitrary time constraint. So what’s your point?”

  “I will talk to him for one minute,” I promised. “Less than one minute. Just don’t watch.”

  She bit into her marshmallow and its innards oozed down her chin. “Good luck.”

  I slowly walked around the campfire to where Ezra stood, and I placed myself directly in front of him, so he had to look at me. I refused to speak to him first, though. I have my pride. My pride is small and halting and bitter, but I have it.

  “Hey, Chelsea.” He gave me a polite smile, like we were coworkers.

  The inside of my mouth felt cottony as I said, “What are you doing here, Ezra?”

  The smile faded off his face. “I got a job here.”

  “I know that. I can see that. I mean . . . why did you get a job here? You knew that I work here.”

  He furrowed his eyebrows, looking puzzled in the light of the fire and the stars. “Last time we talked about it, you said you wanted to work at the mall this summer. You said you were through with Essex.”

  And is this sad, that my heart felt a little bigger, hearing him acknowledge that once we had talked, once he had listened to me say what I wanted to do over the summer? “But even if that were true, Ezra,” I said, “Essex is my place. It’s mine. You don’t see me joining the boys’ soccer team or the school paper, do you?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t stop you if you wanted to.” He grinned at me. When I didn’t grin back, he sighed. “Chelsea, I don’t see what the big deal is. We’ll probably run into each other even less here than we do at school. I’m not going to cramp your style. Promise. We’re friends, right? We never stopped being friends.”

  This had been one of Ezra’s big things when he broke up with me: how he still liked me, and liked spending time with me, and didn’t want to lose our friendship, and whatever. Except that we had never been friends before we started dating, so I’m not sure what exactly he was talking about. Anyway, I had said fine, so then we became the sort of friends who never talk or hang out.

  That was all I really remembered from our breakup conversation. The rest of it, I just didn’t like to think about.

  “Look,” he said, “I was working at a coffee shop on weekends—”

  “I know,” I said. “The Diamond Café. I know.” It killed me to hear him act like this, like we were strangers.

  “Right, but The Diamond Café closed down, and I needed a summer job, and Lenny said he could get me something here. So, I don’t know, here I am. But if it really bothers you, Chelsea, I can quit. I don’t want to make you unhappy. If this is making you unhappy, just say the word, and I’ll take off.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. Ezra had already made me unhappy, and I guessed his working at Essex couldn’t make that any better or worse. And I wasn’t going to make him quit his job just because we broke up two months ago and I couldn’t handle it. Because I should be over this. Obviously, I should be over this. So I shrugged and said, “It’s fine. Just stay out of my way,” and walked away. We are always drawing battle lines, between Patriots and Redcoats, between Civil War reenactors and Colonial reenactors, between Ezra and me.

  “Everyone! Eyes front!” Tawny Nelson hollered, clambering up on a large rock.

  Tawny is our General in the War this year. It was an obvious choice: she just finished her senior year, she’s worked at Essex for ages, and she’s clearly a warrior. I would not want to mess with Tawny Nelson. Last year she led a raid on Reenactmentland that successfully captured their Confederate flag. I don’t know how she managed to do this without getting caught. That flag is always flying over there. Like, what did she do, scale their flagpole? In broad daylight?

  Tawny is also one of the few African-Americans to work at Essex. They can’t not employ interpreters of color, as that would be discriminatory hiring practices. But they also don’t hire hundreds of people to play black slaves because, while that would be authentic, it would also probably be offensive. So Tawny portrays a middle-class girl in one of the historical houses, and everyone acts like, sure, there were all sorts of black middle-class girls in the Colonies in 1774.

  “Yo!” Tawny shouted when we didn’t immediately quiet down.

  “Taw-ny! Taw-ny!” Nat started chanting, thrusting his fist in the air. The rest of us joined in. “Taw-ny! Taw-ny!” We raised our hands and marshmallow sticks up to her.

  She stood atop her rock, hands on hips, chin raised into the breeze. “Soldiers!” she said once our cheers had died down. “I am proud to lead you into battle this summer. We will show those Civil Warriors no mercy. We will teach them that there is only one time in American history that matters, and that is the Colonial period. That is us.”

  “Yeah!” a bunch of people shouted. “Get ’em!”

  “And we are not afraid to fight dirty!” Tawny continued. “We will overrun their territory with historical anachronisms. We will cut off their supply chains. We will do whatever must be done, anything at all, as long as the bosses don’t find out about it. We will fight on the beaches, we will fight on the landing grounds, we will fight in the fields and in the streets, we will fight in the hills. We will never surrender!”

  That last bit was definitely Winston Churchill, not Tawny Nelson, and it came about two hundred years too late. Nonetheless, the applause crescendoed, and Tawny had to wait another minute before she could go on.

  “To get you all psyched for this year,” she said, “I present to you the Essex Cheerleaders!”

  Three theater kids bearing pom-poms pranced in front of Tawny’s rock. They were two girls and a femme guy who had played the doo-wop girls in our community theater’s spring production of Little Shop of Horrors. They were in Colonial Essex’s dance program, which meant they spent the summer gallivanting around, demonstrating minuets. Last year, they had placed themselves in charge of leading fight songs against Reenactmentland. There was no question in my mind that Fiona would join them before this summer was out. She can’t get enough of stuff like that.

  Pom-poms aflutter, the Essex Cheerleaders chanted:

  United we stand, divided we fall

  Just watch us as we beat y’all.

  You say “brother against brother”?

  Well, my brother screwed your mother

  And she liked it!

  We’ll kick your shins and break your knee

  ’Cause all you got is Robert E. Lee.

  Farbs!

  They jumped up and down and kicked their legs and showed off some jazz hands, while everyone else hooted and hollered, “Farbs!”

  Farb is a terrible thing to call a reenactor. My dad says it’s shorthand for Far be it from authentic, but in the War, we just use it to mean that a reenactor is sloppy in his historical details. Or we use it when we just don’t like someone.

  The Essex Cheerleaders skipped back into the crowd to much applause, and Tawny resumed her speech. “As you know, soldiers, we are at a slight disadvantage this year. Because of the Barnes Prize.”

  We all booed. The Barnes Prize for Historical Interpretation is awarded by the National Register of Historic Places, very occasionally, to historic sites that are especially important, and that do an impeccable job of presenting the past.

  Inexplicably, last summer the farbs at Reenactmentland won a Barnes. They found some letters or building specs or something proving that the Confederacy had built there a top-secret ironclad battleship, the CSS South Carolina, to send into the Battle of Hampton Roads. The bo
at sank before seeing any naval action, and it wasn’t until Reenactmentland discovered this paperwork that historians could even confirm the existence of a CSS South Carolina. There were a million news articles about it, and suddenly photos of Reenactmentland’s stupid battlefield were appearing on the covers of travel magazines. Even the Travel Channel filmed a show there, and they mentioned Essex at the very end, as an “additional attraction to visit if you have an extra day.”

  “Some might say we are at a disadvantage,” Tawny continued. “But I say that just makes us the underdog. And no one ever expects how much damage the underdog can cause!”

  Massive cheering.

  “What I need now,” she said, “is a second-in-command. Someone to keep track of our manpower and our resources. Someone who knows everyone and notices everything. A strategist, an ideas man. Someone who has Essex running through his veins. Who do I need?”

  “Me!” Bryan shouted. He swung his hand in the air and jumped up and down a little, in case Tawny couldn’t see him. “Pick me, pick me!”

  But then Ezra shouted, “Chelsea!” and everyone turned to stare at me.

  I gaped at him through the fire. What was this? Did he think he was doing me a favor? Was he trying to play a prank on me? And how was this his idea of staying out of my way?

  Then Fiona piped up, “Chelsea would be great at it!” And I would like to know what made my best friend and my ex-boyfriend, both of whom had never worked here before, suddenly feel that they were experts on what Essex needed in this War.

  Everyone picked up the cry of “Chel-sea! Chel-sea!” with the exception of Bryan, standing near me with his lower lip stuck out, who kept mumbling, “Bry-an, Bry-an,” like that was going to catch on.

  “Chelsea?” Tawny looked down at me. “I would be thrilled to have you as my Lieutenant, and it seems that everyone here agrees.”

  “Yeah!” Loud cheering.

  “What do you say?”

  I locked eyes with Tawny and considered it for a moment. It would mean getting in more trouble than anyone else, if we got caught. But no one ever got caught. All the real employees at Essex and Reenactmentland turned a blind eye, just as long as no one got seriously hurt, which people barely ever did.

  And it was such a high honor. The greatest honor anyone could have at Essex was to lead the War efforts. I felt overwhelmed that everyone here would trust me with that responsibility. These were my people. This was my community. And as I heard them all chanting my name, I wondered if I had ever seriously intended to trade this in for a retail job. There was nothing the mall could offer that would rival this moment.

  So I said, “Yes. General Tawny, I accept.”

  Fiona shrieked and hugged me like I had just been crowned Miss Teen U.S.A. Then Bryan tried to hug me too, as if he were happy for me, even though he obviously was not and just wanted an excuse to touch me with his toadlike arms. Tawny reached a hand down toward me, I grabbed it tightly, and she pulled me up onto the rock with her.

  Still holding my hand, Tawny hoisted our arms high, like we were already victors in this War. I gazed out over my cheering friends and coworkers and ex-boyfriend, and the fire and the fireflies and the brook and the trees and the summertime. And I felt happy, for a moment. For a moment, everything felt perfect.

  And then it all disappeared as I was grabbed from behind, knocked over, pulled backward and down into nothing.

  Chapter 5

  THE KIDNAPPING

  At first I could hear a lot of people screaming, but I couldn’t distinguish any individual voices or words. I couldn’t see at all because someone had hastily tied what felt like a strip of cloth over my eyes. And probably I would have been able to pull the cloth down, except that people were gripping my arms and legs, so I couldn’t move at all. They were running with me, running fast, and I had no idea where. Soon my friends’ screams faded away, so they must have carried me pretty far. Whoever “they” were.

  I tried to kick my legs, but the people holding on to my ankles and knees were too strong. I twisted my head around as much as I could, hoping I could bite someone’s hand, but I couldn’t find anything. Then I realized that my mouth was unbound—no strips of cloth, no attackers’ hands—so I started screaming. Loud.

  “Help me!” I screamed. “Help! I’m being kidnapped! Help! Help!”

  “Shut up,” someone said. He didn’t sound much older than me, and I couldn’t decide which was worse, getting kidnapped by professional criminals, or getting kidnapped by a gang of underage amateurs. Either way, this was bad, so I kept screaming and thrashing, hoping that I could slow them down, or that someone would find me.

  But instead they just kept running with me until, after some time—maybe five minutes, or maybe twenty—I was thrown down on top of something. A chair? My arms and legs were bound before I had the chance to figure it out, or to make a run for it.

  Once they had ensured that I was firmly tied to whatever I was sitting on, my captors removed my blindfold.

  It took my eyes a moment to adjust. When they did, I could see that I was in a grove of trees, not that different from the grove of trees where I’d been kidnapped. There were no lights other than the stars and the moon. And I was encircled by two girls and four guys around my age, all of them strangers to me.

  “Who the hell are you?” I demanded.

  “We’re reenactors,” said the shorter of the girls with a wicked smile. “And this is War.”

  I twisted in my chair, trying to loosen my hands. “Oh, come on! Are you kidding me? Work doesn’t even start until Monday.”

  “Well, War starts today,” replied a sandy-haired guy in Birkenstocks and cargo shorts.

  “We were listening to you all,” added the other girl. “With your ‘we will overrun their territory’ and your ‘farbs.’ That hurts, by the way.” The rest of the Civil Warriors murmured their agreement. “That hurts. We earned our Barnes Prize fair and square. I’ll have you know we are extremely conscientious about historical authenticity.”

  “Really?” I raised an eyebrow at their flip-flops and T-shirts. “You don’t look it.”

  “Work doesn’t start until Monday, remember, dumbass?” The shorter girl cuffed me on the arm. “Plus, you don’t look it either, Miss Elizabeth Connelly.”

  I jerked my head toward her. “How do you know my name?”

  “I visited Essex as a moderner last summer, to scope it out,” the tallest of the boys volunteered. “You told me your name then. Congratulations on being selected as the Colonials’ Lieutenant, by the way. What an honor. I hope that’s living up to your expectations so far.”

  I glared at him. “You came all the way to Essex just to spy on us?”

  “Yeah.” He smirked. “I crossed the street. It was really rough.”

  “That’s creepy,” I said.

  “War’s creepy, darlin’,” the short girl told me. Then, all business, she turned to her compatriots. “Okay, we have to go guard the entry points. Those Essex bitches are going to be swarming the place soon, trying to free the hostages, so we need all men at the front lines. Not you, Dan. Stay here and guard Elizabeth Connelly. Call my cell if there’s any trouble.”

  The guy who had admitted to spying on me rolled his eyes. “I can’t imagine what trouble she could cause.”

  “Just in case, don’t let her out of your sight.” The girl turned on her heel and disappeared into the trees, with the others following her, leaving only my guard and me.

  He sat down on a tree stump and pulled a paperback book out of his back pocket, but he didn’t open it. Instead he just watched in silence as I tried to wrestle free of my bonds. No luck. That’s the thing about reenactors—they’re into skills that no one learns anymore, like calligraphy and knots. Whoever had tied me up had probably been practicing these knots on his little brother ever since first reading a picture book on pirates.

  And having this guy staring at me wasn’t making my escape attempts any easier. He had this fascinated look on his
face, and it was making me self-conscious. Also, he was kind of cute. Not really, of course, since he was the enemy, and the enemy cannot possibly be cute. He was only cute enough to make me wish I could free my hands so that I could fix my hair. I mean, fix my hair, then punch him in the face, and then run.

  “You’re not going to be able to get out of those,” he said after I’d struggled for a few minutes.

  “Wow, thanks for letting me know,” I said. All that twisting around was making the rope cut into my skin. “I kind of figured that one out on my own.”

  “I’m just saying, you’re not going to get out of here, so you might as well relax. Enjoy our quality time together. I’m Dan Malkin.” He stretched out his hand as if to shake mine, then said, “Whoops, I forgot. You don’t have any free hands right now.” He pursed his lips. “Awk-ward.”

  “For some reason, Dan Malkin, I’m finding you incredibly annoying.”

  He looked offended. “You don’t even know me, and you’ve already decided that I’m annoying?”

  “I know you.” I took in his cutoff jeans, threadbare Sex Pistols T-shirt, messy hair, and unopened copy of The Sun Also Rises. “You’re a music and book snob. Which means you’re probably no good at basketball, which further means that your height is a complete waste. You’re important enough in the War to go on a kidnapping mission, but still unimportant enough that you’re stuck guarding a hostage while everyone else is out fighting. You’re annoying and you’re a dumb Southern hick.”

  Dan didn’t argue with my analysis. He just laughed. “Right on. I couldn’t have said that better myself. Only what makes you think that I’m a dumb Southern hick, my dear, cultured daughter of the silversmith?”

  I shrugged. To be honest, I didn’t really believe that he was. But I replied, “Your accent. Ah’m a-fixin’ to go catch me some Colonials.”

  “For sure.” Dan nodded. “That is for sure what I sound like. Don’t I feel put in my place now.”

  “Well,” I said defensively. “You know what I mean. You have an accent.”