Seeing Cinderella (15 page)

“If you’ve got some grand plan for these glasses,” I continued, “then you should’ve given them to someone else. Someone smarter. Someone braver. Someone who could make a difference.”

“Who’s to say
you
aren’t that someone?” Dr. Ingram said softly. “Sometimes vision correction takes time. Fear not, Calliope Meadow Anderson. I am sure the glasses will reveal their purpose in due course. For it’s not that I have ‘some grand plan,’ as you say, for these glasses. But perhaps these glasses have some grand plan for you.”

“Whatever,” I said. “You’re talking in puzzles again.”

The bell jingled, and I stood up at the sound of Mom’s voice.

“Promise me you’ll think about what I said,” Dr. Ingram said as I turned to leave.

“I promise.” I hesitated, and then asked, “Ellen tried on my glasses. How come she couldn’t see what I see?”

Dr. Ingram thought for a second. “I suppose there are those who see, and those who do not want to see.”

My optometrist, the philosopher.

As I walked out the door, I heard Dr. Ingram grumbling to himself. “One thing I always liked about that Cinderella. She was always so thankful to
her
fairy godmother.”

I said good-bye to Mrs. Dillard then, and made a decision: Next time I needed to get my eyes checked, I was heading to the mall.

Chapter 15

Super Freaky Glasses Rule #
₁₄

One very unwise use of the glasses: spying on people when they’re lost in Coupleland. Can you say ewww?

W
HEN YOUR BEST FRIEND GETS HER FIRST BOYFRIEND, IT’S
a total bummer. Especially when you have a crush on said boyfriend. Ellen had always been time conscious, but now she took it to a whole new level. Our conversations were all about minutes now. How many minutes Ellen spent on the phone with Scott. How many minutes until Ellen got to see Scott. How many minutes since Ellen had last seen Scott.

Oh, and get
this
: Scott wrote Ellen poetry. That’s right. Last year, I dreamed about receiving a romantic haiku from Scott. This year, Ellen actually did.

We had conversations about Scott. We had conversations about Scott’s feelings. We had conversations about Ellen’s feelings about Scott’s feelings.

Scott and Ellen had been dating for a few weeks, and they were practically one person now. In my head (and in the stories I wrote), I secretly called them Scotlen.

Scott and Ellen walked each other to class, ate lunch together, and hung all over each other in drama class. I started sitting with Ana in drama, safely away from Scotlen’s lovesick aura.

“Don’t look at them,” Ana advised me one day after we’d taken seats on the floor of the multipurpose room to practice our lines.

“I’m not looking at them.”

“I’m just saying. They’re being all—what are the words you said?—flirty faced. They’re being flirty faced, yes?”

“How would I know if they’re being flirty faced? I’m not looking at them, remember?” I glanced across the room. Stacy and Charlie—both of them looking uncomfortable and slightly embarrassed—sat on either side of Scott and Ellen, who giggled at a private joke. “Yep. They’re being flirty faced. It’s totally disgusting.”

Ana grinned. “Like, totally, for sure.”

We cracked up, and I felt a little better. Ana and I ate
lunch together more often, on account of me feeling the urge to barf whenever I ate with Scotlen. On the days Ana wasn’t tutoring me in Spanish, I’d started tutoring her in the all-important tongue of California Valley Girl.

I peeked over at Ellen and Scott again and pulled my glasses out of my backpack.
Use your glasses wisely.
I’d been thinking about what that meant, but after a few weeks, I still had no clue.

I slipped the glasses on. The air shimmered and the screens appeared, showing me Scotlen’s dopey love thoughts. Yuck. Definitely not a wise use of the glasses.

“I told you not to look at them,” Ana said.

“I’m not looking at them.” I turned my attention back to my script.

Ana nudged my shoulder and said, “Look.”

I turned, and saw Stacy walking toward us with a tentative smile on her face.

“Can I sit with you guys?” she asked.

“Why?” I blurted out, and then heard Ana hiss,
“Callie!”
in a disapproving tone of voice.

Stacy didn’t say anything, but the air shimmered, and a screen sprang up next to her and a couple of images flashed by: of Stacy in the cafeteria, quietly eating her lunch while Ellen and Scott giggled next to her. Then of Stacy looking
bored in Ellen’s room while Ellen talked on the phone (to Scott, I figured).

I moved my backpack. “I mean . . . sure, sit down.”

“Thanks.” Stacy sounded relieved.

“So how are things over in Coupleland?” I asked.

“Oh, you know, it’s sort of like
The Scott and Ellen Show
.”

We all turned to look at Scotlen—who continued to flirt and giggle. Charlie smiled at us, looked at Scott and Ellen, and rolled his eyes. Then he pretended to choke himself. Ana, Stacy, and I busted up laughing.

“Girls! Are you practicing your lines?” Mr. Angelo asked.

“Yes, Mr. Angelo,” we answered, and went back to our scripts.

We studied our lines silently, and I looked up when I heard Ana sigh. I wasn’t trying to spy on her thoughts. But I had the glasses on, and by now it was just habit.

The air shimmered, and the blue screen appeared. Inside was an image of Ana and me, and a few other girls from school—girls from Ana’s ESL class, I thought. We were in a diner eating hamburgers and french fries and chocolate shakes. Ana and I had never gone out for hamburgers before—so this couldn’t be one of her memories. Was it a daydream, I wondered, staring at the faraway look
on Ana’s face. Was Ana wishing she were somewhere else instead of drama class?

She wouldn’t be the only one, I thought, glancing around the room and reading the screens hovering next to the other students. It was Friday afternoon, and with only ten minutes to go until the bell rang, mostly everyone had moved on from drama class. Mentally, anyway.

I peeked at Scotlen again and saw they were still lost in Dopesville. Ellen was daydreaming about Scott while
I
had a weekend of nothing to look forward to except my mom’s Post-it notes of chores. But it didn’t have to be that way, right? I didn’t have to spend the weekend sitting around waiting for Ellen to call. I looked over at Stacy. Ellen had made new friends this year. I could too. And I wasn’t going to feel guilty about it anymore.

“Hey,” I whispered to Ana. “Do you want to hang out this weekend? Maybe my mom could drop us off at the movies, and we could get hamburgers or something afterward?”

In the screen hovering next to Ana the image of the diner vanished and was replaced by tons of Spanish words scrolling across. Ana looked surprised, and I thought she was about to smile. But then her expression changed, and she said, “I can’t. I have a lot of homework this weekend.”

“Come on, it could be a lot of fun. Like totally,
por favor
?”

I thought it was funny, combining Spanish and California Valley Girl, and I purposely said it to make her laugh.

But Ana stared at me like I’d just spoken Chinese. “No.” Her voice reminded me of steel—hard and unbending.

“Oh, okay, no problem,” I said, backing off quickly and looking down at my script. Sometimes I felt like Ana and I were friends, like when we ate lunch together or hung out in drama class. But sometimes—like right then—I wondered if she was just being nice to me because we were neighbors.

A few days later, I felt like a vandal, even though I stood in front of my own locker. Twenty minutes had passed since the final bell rang; twenty minutes I spent hiding in the bathroom, trying not to look like a weirdo, while girls breezed in and out to gossip or apply lip gloss. Finally, certain Raven had left for the day, I’d escaped the bathroom and headed for our locker.

Use your glasses wisely,
Dr. Ingram’s voice rang in my mind. Finally, I thought I’d found one way to use them wisely.

Furtively looking down the hall, I slipped on my glasses, took a blue flyer from my backpack, and opened my locker. Then I did the unthinkable.

I touched Raven’s stuff.

Her English textbook rested at the bottom of the locker, along with a broken pencil, some dusty Red Hots, and a couple of homework assignments I thought I’d lost. I grabbed the textbook and scanned the flyer one last time:

RESOURCE TESTING AND TUTORING
.

I’d found it in the library a few days before. Ellen had a club meeting during lunch, and Ana had been absent that day, so I’d avoided the cafeteria completely and spent the hour hanging out in the library. The flyer advertised a program designed for students diagnosed with dyslexia.

The librarian had come up and asked me if I needed any help.

“What’s dyslexia?” I’d asked. “I’ve heard of it, but I’m not sure what it means.”

“It’s a learning disability,” she’d said. “It makes it difficult for someone to read—they have trouble interpreting letters and words.”

I wished Raven had seen the flyer. I didn’t know if she had dyslexia. But from spying on her thoughts I did know she got herself kicked out of English class earlier that day because she felt too terrified to read out loud.

The librarian asked me if I would like to take one, and I had said no, I was only looking at it because of a friend.

“Oh, a friend. I see.” She had given me a knowing smile, like she was keeping a secret, then handed me a flyer. “Well, maybe your friend would like one.”

Now I folded up the flyer and glanced once more down the hall. Then with trembling hands I opened the textbook. If Raven caught me—

“Callie, hello!”

I jumped and spun around, smacking into Mrs. Faber and the ginormous shoulder bag she carried. Raven’s textbook tumbled to the floor with a loud
thunk.

“Sorry, Mrs. Faber,” I said, reaching down and retrieving the textbook.

“No problem. I meant to tell you earlier, you did a great job in class today.”

“Thanks,” I said, hoping she’d leave. Earlier in the morning it seemed like Mrs. Faber had gone out of her way to ask me a gazillion questions—even though I never once raised my hand. All of which I answered correctly, thanks to my super freaky magic glasses.

Mrs. Faber began rummaging through her shoulder bag. “I was going to give this back to you tomorrow morning, but . . .” She pulled out a paper and handed it to me.
It was my latest homework assignment, inked in red with a huge C.

“Callie, are you feeling under challenged in my class?”

I looked at the paper, and then back at Mrs. Faber. “Huh?”

“What I mean is, does the homework bore you? Or is this class too easy? Perhaps we should discuss moving you to advanced algebra? Because no matter when I call on you, you always know the right answer. And yet your homework—when you bother to turn it in—shows a definite lack of attention.”

Okay, I didn’t know what to say to that. I was almost hoping Raven would appear and catch me touching her stuff. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Faber,” I said. “I guess sometimes I just forget.”

The air shimmered and a screen sprang up next to Mrs. Faber:
Something’s not right. Half the time she isn’t even paying attention in class—so how does she know the answer when I make her participate? And those glasses. She’s always taking them off and putting them back on and staring at her classmates. That kind of behavior just doesn’t seem normal.

“Um, Mrs. Faber, I really have to get home soon,” I said. “But I’ll try harder, I promise.”

“You do that, Calliope.”

I caught the last of Mrs. Faber’s thoughts as she left:
I wonder if maybe she’s really gifted, and doesn’t want anyone to know? Oh well, I’ll continue asking her questions, and if this keeps up, I can ask to have her tested next semester.

Right then I made a mental note to myself. Effective immediately: answer all questions in math class incorrectly.

Before anyone else could interrupt, I quickly tucked the flyer into Raven’s textbook, wedged it back into our locker, and shut the door.

Another glance up and down the hallway, and I sighed with relief. I hadn’t been caught. Maybe when Raven opened her book in English class tomorrow she’d see the flyer and think it was a sign or something. Maybe someone would help her, and she could stop feeling so scared all the time.

Chapter 16