Past Perfect

by Leila Sales

  Bryan puffed out his chest in a way that was maybe intended to look self-important, but actually just resembled a toad preparing to ribbit. “After Chelsea undermined the Undercover Operation, I stopped seeing her appeal.”

  “Hey, my parents are the ones who trashed our Civil War uniforms!” I protested. “Do you think I wanted that to happen?”

  “Well, you let them.” Bryan shrugged, like there you have it. Everyone else nodded along.

  “I should never have trusted Chelsea with the uniforms,” Patience said for the millionth time since Wednesday. The look on her face implied that not only had I lost the costumes, but also I had probably handed the Civil Warriors a kitten with a sign tied around its neck reading, “Please torture me.” Patience went on, miserably, “We worked so hard on them. I should have given them to someone who would have been more careful.”

  I wondered if Lieutenants during the Revolutionary War had to put up with this sort of bullshit too.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, also for the millionth time. “It was my parents’ fault, but I’m sorry.” And I did feel sorry because, even though it was ninety-eight percent my parents’ fault, it was two percent my fault. My fault for thinking about Dan so much that I forgot to think about the War.

  Fiona said, “Even if she weren’t sorry, Bryan, that’s no reason for you to take her out of your Top Five!”

  Because obviously my standing in Bryan’s list of hottest girls was the real issue here.

  Fiona was correct, though: Top Fives are supposed to be purely appearance based. The rules are that you’re not allowed to account for things like personality or intelligence or whether someone’s parents destroyed a top-secret military operation. It’s not a list of “people you want to date.” Top Fives are exclusively superficial. But Bryan’s too dense for superficiality.

  “Ezra’s turn,” Patience decided.

  “Where is Tawny?” I muttered, since if there was one thing I really didn’t need today, it was to hear my ex-boyfriend’s Top Five list. I could just stand up and walk away. Except that there were a dozen of us sitting in a circle, having this conversation together, and everyone would notice if I left, and everyone would know why. Chelsea Glaser, the bitter loser. Chelsea Glaser, the girl who can’t get over anything.

  “This girl here, for starters,” Ezra said, draping his arm around Maggie. “Obviously.”

  She giggled and leaned into him, resting her head on his shoulder.

  So they were officially together now. They had cuddled during fireworks, and they had gone out on a date, and now they were a couple. Boom.

  I had assumed as much, of course. I wasn’t shocked. But it was harder, seeing it in action. It was harder to know it for a fact.

  “Four more,” Patience prompted him. When it comes to Top Fives, Patience does not kid around.

  Ezra rubbed Maggie’s arm with his hand as he listed, “Elissa, Rosaline, Chelsea, and Dahlia.”

  Chelsea.

  He said my name. He said it. I was still in Ezra’s Top Five.

  And I knew that Top Fives are about physical appearance only, that you can hate someone, want nothing to do with them, and still include them in your Top Five. . . .

  But still.

  And I knew that being in Ezra’s Top Five was meaningless, because he was dating Maggie now, so everyone else on his list was just space-filler. . . .

  But still.

  And I knew that he could have been lying even, could have been including me in his Top Five just as a pathetic little consolation prize for pathetic little me. . . .

  But still.

  Ezra didn’t find me abhorrent. And that was worth something, right? That was worth something to me.

  Fiona was watching me for a reaction, so I showed none. I’m not an idiot. I knew it didn’t mean anything real. It felt like it meant something, but I knew it didn’t.

  “Chelsea’s turn!” Patience ordered.

  “Why is it never your turn?” I shot back.

  Luckily, it was nobody’s turn. Tawny showed up then, so it was back to War business.

  “Let’s get this meeting started!” she said. “We’re running late enough as it is.”

  This is what makes Tawny such a stellar General: We were running late because she was late, but she wasn’t going to apologize. The General never says sorry because the General’s never wrong. Meanwhile I could apologize over and over for inadvertently ruining the Undercover Operation, but no one was going to forgive me.

  I stood a little bit behind Tawny. Because I was her Lieutenant, I was supposed to be up front, helping to run this meeting, but I wasn’t the greatest public face of our army at this moment in time.

  “First order of business,” Tawny began. “I know a lot of you have been feeling discouraged over the past few days.”

  A few nods and glares, mostly directed at me.

  “So it’s time to boost our morale,” Tawny concluded. “Bring on the Essex Cheerleaders!”

  Everyone applauded as the three cheerleaders raced to the front, pom-poms ablaze. Wait, actually—four cheerleaders. I had been right. Fiona had totally joined the squad.

  Breaking into synchronized dance, the cheerleaders chanted,

  We don’t need no muskets.

  We don’t need no swords.

  We’ll hit you where it hurts you.

  We’ve got class you can’t afford.

  We don’t need your cotton.

  We don’t need your slaves.

  We don’t need your ugly chicks

  ’cause we’ve got all the babes.

  Keep your Emancipation Proclamation

  ’cause we proclaim:

  You’re farbs!

  From my vantage point, I had a clear view of not only the cheerleaders, but also the audience. I watched the way Nat watched Fiona, how he didn’t take his eyes off her as she shimmied and strutted. Fiona’s captivating when she’s performing, it’s true. She stands in front of a crowd and she’s immediately taller, her skin clearer, her eyes brighter. No one could help noticing that. But the way Nat watched her was special. It was as if no one else was there at all.

  But of course other people were there. Like the other cheerleaders, and me, and Rosaline, who, everyone knew, had made out with Nat in the stables over the weekend.

  Fiona and Nat were clearly meant for each other, and I wished they could both stop hooking up with randomers for long enough to notice that.

  After the motivational cheering portion of the strategy meeting, Tawny said, “Next order of business—”

  Patience raised her hand and said, without waiting to be called on, “Tawny, what are you going to do about Chelsea?”

  “Do about her?” Tawny narrowed her eyes.

  “Well, she totally screwed up the Undercover Operation,” Patience whined. “And a lot of us are really upset about that. It was going to be our best attack!”

  “Look,” Tawny snapped. “All of you. We are going to accept the casualty and move on. Chelsea Glaser is your Lieutenant, and you will treat her with the respect due a Lieutenant.”

  I let out a breath that I hadn’t known I’d been holding. Tawny is not usually so forgiving.

  “How long will it take to make new uniforms?” Tawny asked.

  Patience’s jaw dropped. “We can’t! They’re incredibly hard.”

  “It’s okay if it takes more time,” Tawny said. “If we could have them within two weeks . . .”

  “Two weeks?” Patience shrieked.

  Maggie spoke up, “But this time can they be girls’ costumes?”

  “Hey!” Bryan objected. “Boys didn’t even get the opportunity to go!”

  Because of course Bryan would have been the first man picked for the job.

  “We could dress as ladies of the night,” Maggie proposed. “That would give us a lot of, ahem, inside access. The Civil Warriors would take us into their confidence.”

  “That means whore, right?” Ezra asked. “You’re proposing dressing up as
whores?” He threaded his fingers through her hair and yanked it lightly.

  “‘Whores’ sounds so tasteless,” Maggie objected. “Courtesans.”

  “Harlots,” Anne said.

  “Strumpets,” Maggie said.

  “Slatterns.”

  “Women of ill repute.”

  “We could have really shiny, colorful dresses,” Anne pointed out.

  “With fantastic hats,” Maggie added.

  This is who Ezra is dating now. He is now into girls who are into dressing up as nineteenth-century prostitutes. For the hats.

  Suddenly, I thought of Maggie in her lady-of-the-night costume prancing into Reenactmentland. I thought of her in a shiny dress and a fantastic hat running into Dan and taking him, just as she had already taken Ezra.

  It was stupid, I know. She hadn’t taken Ezra from me, and she couldn’t take Dan from me, because neither of them were mine at all.

  Nonetheless . . . “We’re sticking with the original plan,” I decided. “Men’s military uniforms. Have them ready in two weeks.”

  “In the meantime,” Tawny spoke above Patience’s groans, “let’s get something simple in motion. Here’s the plan: Late tonight, we go over there and dump horse crap in their tents.”

  “Ewww,” the milliner girls squealed.

  “That’s how I hope they’ll feel about it too,” Tawny said. “Now! All together! Who is going to help me collect shit from the stables?”

  If I asked that, I know exactly how many people would raise their hands: zero. But when Tawny said it, it sounded like a really vital duty, perhaps even an honor. A full three Colonials volunteered.

  “Chelsea?” Tawny said.

  “Hmm?”

  “You’re in, right?”

  Make that four volunteers.

  I would gladly gather horse turds with my bare hands if it would prove to Patience and Bryan and everyone else that I was dedicated to the War effort, and that my parents finding our Civil War uniforms had been a mistake, nothing more.

  “Absolutely, I’m in!” I said, with a wide, shit-eating grin on my face.

  Not literally, of course.

  “That’s what I like to hear,” Tawny said. “Team, meet by the stables at twenty-two hundred hours. If you have any old backpacks that you don’t mind getting a little dirty, bring them along. As for the rest of you . . .” Tawny continued, but I stopped paying attention when I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket. I pulled it out to see what my parents needed. They were the only people who might want to talk to me who weren’t at the creek with me right now.

  Only it wasn’t my parents. Instead, my phone screen said, 1 NEW TXT FROM DAN CIVIL WAR.

  Chapter 14

  THE RENDEZVOUS

  I didn’t open Dan’s text while I was at the strategy meeting. I didn’t open it while I was in Fiona’s car, heading home. I didn’t open it until I was alone, sitting on my front porch. This took monumental self-restraint, but I didn’t know what his text was going to say, and I wasn’t sure I could handle it calmly.

  I opened it. “U around?” is what it said.

  So, that was an anticlimax.

  “Yup,” I texted back.

  My phone buzzed again. “Want 2 hang out 2nite?”

  “I thought we shouldn’t see each other again,” I typed back.

  “We shouldnt. So is that a Y or a N?”

  I paused for a while, staring blankly down my driveway. Yes, I do want to. No, we shouldn’t. Yes, I honestly think this could be something real, something new. No, I’m supposed to be busy scattering horse manure in the tents where you and your friends work. Yes, no, Y, N, this is my life.

  I didn’t reply until after my parents and I had eaten dinner, after they had gone up to their room for the night. I didn’t reply because I didn’t know what to say, and I think I was subconsciously hoping that, if I gave it a couple hours, the right answer would present itself to me.

  It did not.

  And maybe I should have taken the loss of our undercover costumes as a sign, a warning of what could happen to our War efforts while I was focusing on Dan. Maybe I ought to have seen a sign there, but I didn’t. Around nine o’clock I texted, “Y.”

  Dan wrote back almost immediately: “Where r u? Ill meet u there.”

  I sent him my address, then another text that said, “I’ll wait for u outside so we don’t wake up my parents.” My dad had never specifically set any rules about Civil War boys coming over after dark. But I could imagine what the rule might be.

  Then I texted Tawny to say, “Sry cant make it tonite after all. Family stuff came up. Good luck w operation horseshit! ”

  She could handle this without me for one night. She was Tawny Nelson, for Lord’s sake.

  I sat out on my porch and pretended to read a book, but my head jerked up every time a car drove by. After a dozen cars had passed, it occurred to me that maybe Dan wasn’t coming at all. Maybe this was just a War prank, like he had said, “Guys, the Essex Lieutenant totally digs me! Let’s mess with her! I wonder how long she’ll sit outside alone, getting eaten by mosquitoes, before she figures out that I’m not coming.” And then all of his friends were like, “Haha, what a dumb Colonial bitch!”

  By the time Dan’s car finally pulled into my driveway, I had fully convinced myself that the only reason he was here was because he had a pack of his friends trailing behind him, all ready to vandalize my house or kidnap me again or who knew what. There was no question in my mind. And I had only myself to blame, because I had invited him. I had invited this.

  “Hey.” I stood up, and he made a move as if to hug me, but I kept my arms wrapped tightly across my chest, so he didn’t.

  “Hey. Uh, is everything okay?”

  “Sure. Are you alone?” I scanned the road behind him.

  “Of course. Was I supposed to bring someone?” Dan’s forehead wrinkled, and I started to think that maybe he was a really talented drama kid, or maybe I was just being kind of . . . paranoid.

  “No, no, never mind.” I put a smile on my face and walked down the front stairs, but he got it anyway. He got it, and he got mad.

  “Oh, you mean, like, did I bring the entire rest of the Civil War with me? Is that what you meant?”

  “No, of course not—”

  “God, Chelsea. What kind of person do you think I am?” he spat out.

  “Look, I don’t know. It’s War, okay? Sometimes people do things like that. They want to win. You do what you have to.”

  “Well, that’s not what I’m doing. Jesus. Is it so hard for you to believe that I just like you? That I just wanted to see you?”

  I paused. “Yes,” I said at last. “It is so hard.”

  Dan sighed. “Do you want me to go?”

  “No,” I said. “Sorry. I want you to stay.”

  “Okay, then.” He exhaled again, some of the anger leaving his face.

  “Since you’re not planning on smashing the windows of my mom’s car or booby-trapping my trampoline or whatever, then I want you to stay.”

  “Dude, you have a trampoline?” Dan’s eyes lit up. “Can we jump on it or something?”

  “Yes,” I answered, relieved to have something neutral between us. “In fact, that is exactly what we can do with it.”

  We ran around to the backyard, kicked off our shoes, and climbed on to the trampoline. It was a warm, clear-skied night, with an almost-full moon overhead. The air felt cool rushing into my lungs as I started jumping.

  “I’m sorry I snapped at you,” Dan said. He jumped up, landed on his butt, rebounded to his feet, then did it again.

  “No, I’m sorry.” I started doing seat drops too, facing him. “I was being ridiculous.”

  “It’s War. We’re enemies. I’d react the same way, I think.” He did a few more seat drops. “This is good,” he said, as if to himself.

  “The trampoline? It should be. It’s a top-of-the-line backyard trampoline.”

  He laughed. “Yeah, I don’t know, the trampo
line, the weather, everything. I’ve had a crappy day. It’s nice to know things don’t have to suck all the time.”

  “What happened?” I asked, still jumping back and forth between sitting and standing.

  “Nothing, really. Nothing important.”

  “It doesn’t have to be important,” I told him.

  “I don’t know, it was just . . . I called Nevin—he’s the lead guitarist in my band—and they’re having this amazing tour, apparently. They played Philly last night, and the crowd loved them, and one of the other bands on the bill invited them to go to New York and open for them.”

  “That’s great,” I said.

  “Sure, it’s great for them.” Dan sounded dubious.

  “But not for you,” I supplied.

  “Right. Because I’m not there. I wrote some of those songs that they’re playing, but I’m not there.” Dan stopped jumping and lay down, staring up at the sky. I kept going, so his body bounced above the trampoline every time I landed. “Nevin says they’re all crazy about the bass player who they brought in to replace me on tour. He’s really funny and a really great musician and whatever. I’m getting the sense that they want to keep him in the band permanently, instead of me, and they just haven’t figured out how to break the news.”

  “Bastards. Traitors. I hope that’s not true.”

  “Me too.”

  “I guess this is just an off week for everybody,” I said.

  “For you too?”

  I nodded.

  “Want to talk about it?” he asked.

  I paused in my jumping for a moment, thought about it, then shook my head. “No. It’s War stuff.”

  “Forget it, then.”

  I returned to my seat drops.

  “Anyway, look, I didn’t come over just to complain to you,” Dan said. “I don’t have anyone in my life to talk to about this, which is why you, lucky girl, are the beneficiary of all my whining.”

  “I’m not in your life?” Sitting. Standing. Sitting. Standing.

  “Not officially, no. Why, am I officially in your life?”

  “Nope,” I answered. “No way.”

  “Great. Glad we’re on the same page. Anyway, I’m not going to say anything to the band, because what kind of asshole would that make me? ‘Psyched you guys are having so much success on the road, but I wish you were having a worse time because I’m not there’?”