Coach Roycroft looked skeptical. He'd had me for two years of gym classes and he knew I wasn't an enthusiast. But he jerked his head toward the bleachers, and I sat out the rest of the period.
In the locker room, I made sure I was always in the middle of a cluster of girls so that Tiffanie couldn't corner me.
Which didn't prevent her from smacking me on the back of my head with her geometry book as we all funneled out in the hallway. She tried to make it look like an accident, like she was just waving her book around while simultaneously walking, talking, and looking for her journalism homework paper. I knew she'd been hoping to knock my glasses clear off my face. Luckily her aim wasn't as good as Kaylee's had been. If there hadn't been all those other people around, I suspected Tiffanie would have tackled me and ripped those glasses off.
Third and fourth period, Tiffanie and I had different classes, though I kept alert in the hallways. And, as the morning wore on, I tried to convince
myself that whatever was up with the glasses had worn off because everything looked as it should.
But then when I went to the cafeteria for lunch, I saw the tiny blue guys again—pushing the long serving spoons so the handles would fall into the vats of soup and rigatoni, loosening the shaker cap on the bottle of Italian dressing, sitting on the pats of butter—I can only hope simply to melt them with body heat.
And then there was Tiffanie—which did nothing for my appetite, because she still looked like the poster child for Dr. Frankenstein's Nursing Home for the Terminally Ugly. I hung so close to Shelley that when Nancy Jean, Anna, and Lisa—our usual lunch crowd—joined us, Nancy Jean asked, "You two a couple?"
I spotted Julian paying for his lunch. I was all for getting a boy to join our table. Especially a gorgeous boy. Even if he only looked gorgeous through my lenses. I was just raising my arm when Tiffanie flounced up to him.
Look out,
I wanted to warn him.
I don't think I'd ever seen the two of them even notice each other before, but now I saw her witchy fingers clutching his sleeve. She stood on tiptoe and he leaned down so she could get closer to his ear.
Tiffanie Mills whispering something to Julian York?
He looked up.
Right at me.
Then, as though that had been coincidence, he continued to glance around the cafeteria, his gaze stopping at the table where he usually sat, like,
Oh, yeah, THERE'S my table.
Tiffanie drifted away as though she'd never stopped him.
The whole thing couldn't have taken more than five seconds.
My arm fell back to the table. Nancy Jean, who'd started a story about Mrs. Robellard's fourth-period class, was still talking. Nobody seemed to have noticed anything amiss.
They know each other,
I thought.
All this year, they've been pretending to be strangers, but as soon as she realizes I can see her as she really looks, she goes to HIM—the one other person who looks different through my glasses.
I remembered how nice Julian had been outside of Mrs. Starr's office, worrying about a concussion, feeling my head for bumps.
But then I remembered that I'd had the glasses up on top of my head. I remembered our hands knocking against each other as he, helpfully—casually—tried to remove my glasses.
Had his kindness all been a ploy? Had he, too,
realized—before Tiffanie had—that I could see things differently through these glasses?
Had he simply been trying to get them from me?
I realized he and Tiffanie must somehow be in this together. Whatever
this
was.
And I wasn't in this with anyone.
"Earth to Wendy," Nancy Jean said. "Earth calling Wendy."
I turned from gawking at Julian York and saw that my friends had all been watching me watch him.
Shelley told the others, "Wendy has developed a sudden fascination with Julian."
"No, I haven't," I protested. I didn't want Lisa, who can be helpful to the point of being annoying, to decide that it would be a friendly thing to wave Julian over to our table.
But I didn't need Lisa to complicate matters.
"Hi, Julian," Anna said.
Let her be teasing,
I hoped.
I turned around, and there he was.
"Hi, everybody," Julian said. "How're you doing, Wendy?"
My friends all wore that
ooo-a-boy
expression that we should have outgrown after first grade.
When, before, had Julian ever approached a tableful of girls and tried to strike up a conversation? Fortunately, we weren't the only ones there: Besides the five of us, five ninth graders had taken over the other half of the table, and they'd unrolled a huge posterboard chart that they were frantically writing on, coloring in, and gluing stuff to, all at a level of frenzy that indicated they needed to have it finished by next period, if not sooner. With their stuff spread out, there was obviously no way for Julian to squeeze in.
Which didn't stop Lisa from glancing around as though searching for a nearby stray chair which she could invite him to pull up. I brought my foot down hard on hers.
"Hi, Julian," I answered, about two beats after all the others had already said hi, and at just about the same time Lisa cried, "Ow!" Then, since he'd asked and might use my not answering as an excuse to hang around, I said, "I'm feeling much better."
Fortunately, though he'd glanced at Lisa at her
outcry, he didn't inquire into the state of her well-being.
I was smiling and nodding like an idiot, but he wasn't moving on. I added, "Thanks." Then, indicating the others, I said, "Support group." What did it take for this guy to catch a hint? "
Girls
support group." I was still smiling like someone without a brain in her head, and nodding like one of those bobble-head dashboard ornaments.
Lisa was scowling and rubbing her foot, and the others—even the ones I wasn't within kicking range of—had caught on not to say anything. They just grinned at Julian, not looking that much more intelligent than me.
"Okay," he finally said. "Good. Well ... see you."
"See you," we all chanted, except for Lisa, who was still sulking.
He finally carried his tray over to the guys he usually sat with.
"What was that all about?" Shelley asked. "I thought you liked the looks of him."
"I changed my mind," I explained, sounding sharper than I'd intended.
Shelley raised her eyebrows at me.
Nancy Jean said, "He's not bad. We wouldn't make fun of you if you liked him."
Anna said, "Not the way we would if you liked ... say..." She paused as though to consider, but finished in a tone of self-satisfied glee: "Nicholas Bonafini!"
"Nicholas Bonafini was
hot
in kindergarten," I protested over their laughter. Anna and Nancy Jean and Lisa had gone to a different elementary school and had never seen him in his prime. I added, "And that's the last time I share
anything
private with any of you."
We were all laughing, even Lisa now that she'd gotten sidetracked from my—as far as she could tell—unwarranted attack on her toes. And I knew they were good and faithful friends and that they would not treat any serious mental disorder on my part as lightly as they would treat a kindergarten crush on a guy who hadn't aged gracefully.
But I couldn't tell them about what I'd been seeing. I couldn't have any of them try on the glasses to see if they worked for everyone, or just me.
Because I was suddenly afraid of Julian York and Tiffanie Mills. They knew I knew their secret. Well, obviously not all of it, but certainly what had to be an important part of it. Having my friends put on those secret-revealing glasses might put them in danger, too.
I might not have the nerve to talk back to a teacher, but I'm not such a coward that I'd endanger my friends.
N
EITHER
J
ULIAN
nor Tiffanie made any further attempts to talk to me that afternoon. Of course, that could have been because I kept myself surrounded by people.
Or it could have meant, I realized as I got on the bus to go home and noticed Julian—sitting in the back, casually reading a paperback—that they could afford to wait. Julian lived only one street over from me. He knew which was my house.
While I was worrying about that, Tiffanie—who normally rides a different bus—got on ours, in all her wrinkled, sagging, spotted croniness. "I have a note from my mother," she said, waving a sheet of paper at the driver. "I'm supposed to go to my aunt's house, so you can drop me off on the corner of Highland Avenue and Meadowbrook."
Oh, what a coincidence: Julian's stop. And how far is that, again, from where I live? Oh yeah. One block away.
Check the handwriting!
I wanted to scream at the driver.
Her mother never wrote that!
Then I thought,
Her mother?
And I wondered
what kind of mother does a hundred-year-old crone have?
That thought was so bad, I had to look at her over the tops of my glasses.
The driver, who'd no doubt lost a good deal of his morning giving the police his accident report, wasn't in the mood for chatting. He didn't even glance at the note and waved her on.
Tiffanie greeted various friends as she walked down the aisle. "Hey, Lilly. How's it going, Hannah? Hiya, Wendy. I didn't know you rode this bus."
Yeah, right.
And because Shelley was staying after school—Wednesdays she works on the school paper—there was an empty seat next to me. Tiffanie plunked herself down, flashing a big, yellow-toothed grin.
They were going to follow me home, I knew it. To do what? I had no idea—I just knew that these two had something to hide, and I didn't want to find out how desperate they were to keep their true appearances secret. And I wouldn't even have the theoretical help of my wicked stepsister to protect me because she was meeting Mom at the nursing home.
Except that
that
thought was a help.
"Stop!" I shouted as the bus driver closed the doors and started to pull out of his parking space.
We'd traveled about two feet, and he slammed on the brake so hard, I had no doubt that he'd mentally flashed back to the scene this morning: the car striking down the woman in the crosswalk.
I scrambled to my feet and over Tiffanie, who couldn't very well tackle me in front of about forty witnesses. I was talking as I made my way to the front of the bus: "I forgot. I'm supposed to get on bus seventy-four ninety to go to the nursing home to visit my grandmother."
From his expression, I'm pretty sure the driver was considering telling me,
Tough luck.
I said, "She's not doing well."
Which was true enough, but then she hadn't been doing well for the last year.
I couldn't believe I was announcing personal stuff for the entire busload of kids to hear.
The driver said, "Then you should have gone directly to bus seventy-four ninety."
"Sorry," I said. Maybe my real desperation made me sound pathetic. Maybe he was so relieved that he hadn't been about to run someone over that he figured nothing else was important. He put the bus in park and opened the doors. "Cross the parking lot carefully," he said, the emphasis making his tone more hostile than the words should have sounded.
"Thank you," I said. I went down the stairs, and heard the hiss as the doors closed behind me. I was pretty sure neither Tiffanie nor Julian had followed. What could they do? Tiffanie admit that her note was forged? Julian claim that he, too, was supposed to visit an elderly relative, though he had no longstanding dispensation from the office?
But I turned just to make sure.
Only me out there on the pavement.
I waved at my driver, who jerked his thumb backward down the line of buses that were waiting for him before they could go anywhere. So that I wouldn't be walking while buses were moving, he didn't start until I'd reached number 7490, the fifth bus in line, and tapped on the door for that driver to open up and let me in.
"Having trouble making your mind up?" 7490's driver asked.
I figured she didn't really want an answer, so I simply started down the aisle.
"Hey!" the driver called. "I need a note."
Why do some adults feel they have to treat us like we're little kids trying to get away with something?
Not, of course, that I
wasn't
trying to get away with something. But still...
"There's a standing order for me to be able to
visit my grandmother at Westfall Nursing Home," I said.
The driver looked at me as though I was asking her for money.
"I've been on this bus before." When was the last time? April? No, it had to be before spring break.
From a quarter of the way down the aisle, Gia called, "She's my sister. There's a note for both of us on file in the office." Pretty helpful, for a wicked stepsister.
Maybe the driver remembered that I, too, did occasionally ride this bus, though not as regularly as Gia, or maybe she just didn't really care and had only been giving me a hard time out of force of habit. In any case she said, "Find a seat," and almost simultaneously closed the door and pulled out into traffic.
I staggered down the aisle, holding on to the backs of seats to keep from ending up in anyone's lap.
"Thanks," I muttered as I passed Gia.
She was sitting next to Kaylee Shipperd, the two of them with their heads bent over a teen magazine survey. Gia grunted at me, but didn't ask why I'd changed my mind about visiting Nana. Kaylee never looked up.
The only empty seat was way in the back of the bus, next to this big, ugly upperclassman who'd taken
off his shoes and was sitting sideways with his bare feet on the seat.
"Do you mind?" I had to ask.
He sighed loudly before taking his feet down, leaving sweaty little prints behind. And he never did put his shoes back on.
Gia and I got off the bus at Westfall Nursing Home, and I would have defied anybody watching us to guess we knew each other. The day being so nice, we encountered various old folk making their way—mostly via wheelchair, walker, or cane—round the drive and the paths of the front garden, or sitting on the front porch. There was a backyard enclosed by a high brick wall for those residents who needed supervision, those who were more easily confused and apt to wander off and not remember how to get back.