Fairy Tale (4 page)

"Oh," I say, realizing I haven't seen the little blond, pigtailed girl tricycling on the sidewalk opposite us in a while, "That's so sad."

My mother nods and continues to clip a coupon for twenty cents off fabric-softener sheets. "Are the Brownes having company? I saw a young man there."

Thank God my parents have no clue about my psychic abilities, or else they'd probably have me envisioning the futures of half the residents of Oak Court, which, considering the number of geriatrics on this street, would be enough to put me into a coma. I contemplate taking my breakfast somewhere far, far away, like Pluto, but I know we'll just end up yelling the rest of the conversation to one another from our respective planets. I reluctantly pull up the chair across from her and say, "What young man?"

"He was very handsome," she says reflectively.

"Um, are you sure it wasn't Cam?"

"It was a blond boy."

I shrug. "Maybe it was someone selling Bibles or something."

She thinks for a moment. "Well, he did have a suitcase. But I saw them in their backyard, drinking iced tea, and Ingrid had her arm around him. She seemed rather agitated."

Oooh, drama. "Is Mrs. Browne having an affair?" I say, raising my eyebrows. "With a younger guy? Sweet."

My mom shoots me a disapproving look. "Mr. Browne was there, too."

"Oh." My interest plummets. "Maybe they're adopting a Scandinavian orphan?"

She sighs. "Well, maybe you can ask Cameron when you see him next. I would invite Ingrid over for coffee if I thought it would do anything, but she's so tight-lipped."

Smart woman,
I think. I like the Brownes. In a way, they're just like Cam... perfect. In all the years we've lived next door to each other, they've been model neighbors. I've never seen so much as a maxi-pad wrapper sticking out from their garbage or heard the slightest noise from an argument wafting over the picket fence separating our backyards.

I'm glad when my cell phone rings, interrupting the conversation. When I check the display and see Cam's name, my heart jumps into my throat, I flip it open and say, in my sweetest voice, "Hi, baby."

"Hey."

The gruffness of his voice startles me. Total Mr. Grouchy Pants.

''How are you? Do you feel okay today?"

"Yeah. Listen, I can't walk with you today. I've got something to take care of before school." His voice is so serious that the pile of worry I'd just buried quickly resurfaces.

I try to remain calm. "Oh, sure. What?"

"Can we talk about it later?" He sounds rushed.

"Urn, yeah. But, Cam..." Should I tell him? Should I say that I know about the tumor? Or should I just let him go? I'm not sure if I would be able to stem the tide of tears and snot before they shorted out my cell phone.

As I'm contemplating, his voice comes across, rough:

"What?"

"Are you okay?" My voice is a squeak.

"I said I was fine."

"But you are a terrible liar."

He laughs, a short, hardly-there laugh. "Can't you just let me pick up my mail-order bride at the post office in peace?"

There he goes again, using humor as a disguise. Though it helps to ease the tension a bit, I can't bring myself to laugh.

"Okay. One, two-" I begin, but the line goes dead. I pull the phone away from my ear and see Call Ended flashing, taunting me.

IF I'D HAD someone other than Tanner for geometry, maybe I could have gotten away with it. If it had been later in the year, maybe Tanner would have understood that being late is so not me. Or maybe he would have been so awed by my mathematical capabilities that he would have let me slide. But Tanner didn't get the nickname Beast for nothing, and since we're barely out of September, I haven't had enough face time to secure the place in his heart as teacher's pet. I hung my head in abject remorse and tried to explain to him that my locker was stuck, that it would never happen again, et cetera, et cetera, but he continued to scribble out the pink slip. When he ripped it from the pad and handed it to me, I tried to ask him where I needed to report, in hopes that I'd subtly get him to realize that I'd never gotten a tardy slip before, that this was all just a huge mistake and he was tarnishing the record of a possible future nuclear physicist. But I stopped midsentence, since his eyes were so demonic that I was surprised his head didn't do a 360.

Now I'm sitting in the front office, with a bald Goth girl in a Kill Your Mother T-shirt and a dude who appears to have forgotten to wear his pants today, since he's just wearing white boxers. Despite their obvious problems, the bunch of ancient women in rhinestone-studded sweatshirts who work in attendance keep inspecting me over their bifocals like I'm a tinfoil-wrapped package found in the back of their freezer.
Me.
I'm probably the only student in the room who doesn't do meth as an extra auricular activity, and yet I get the dirty looks.

''Morgan?" the largest of the three grannies asks, pushing a paper over the counter toward me.

I stand up and take the paper from her.

"You can go back to class. Principal Edwards doesn't want to waste time with you, since this is your first offense. Just don't let it happen again," she growls, with more force than I'd ever have believed an Auntie Em type could muster. If this is how they treat their honors students, I expect Goth Girl and Mr. No-Pants may be thrown into a pit with rabid wolves.

I turn to leave and catch the pantsless guy checking out my legs and making a rude gesture. Which only makes me think of Cam and how if I didn't have him, I would have become a nun years ago. Startled, I drop my geometry book. As I lean over to pick it up, very demurely, so as not to give the psycho a free show, the door to the office opens, and I see a pair of Keds shuffle in, topped by horrible floods that reveal white sweat socks. There's no excuse for that fashion disaster. I scan upward, way, way upward, and see that the fashion faux pas belongs to a basketball-player frame. The disaster isn't just below the knees, though. The cords he's wearing are way too tight in, uh, certain places, and he's wearing a plaid farmer shirt.

"Yo, man, Halloween's like a month away," No-Pants hisses at him. Not like he should talk, but he does have a point. I mean, why else would anyone wear cords from the kids' department and put enough oil in his hair to power a Hummer?

I'm so taken aback by the sight that I lose my balance as I'm straightening and nearly fall headfirst into No-Pants's lap. Luckily, I manage to steady myself.

"Excuse me," I hear the geek say to Auntie Em in a prepubescent voice, "I can't seem to figure this out."

I'm happy when I hear her use the same gruff tone of voice that she used with me. "What? Your locker combination?"

His voice wavers. "Yes. And I am not sure where I am supposed to go. Is
it...
Mr. Tanner?"

I stop at the door and turn to him. "You have Tanner for geometry?'

He turns around, eyes wide. I've scared him. Wiping his nose, he nods, but his eyes never really meet mine.

"That's my class. I can take you," I say, looking over to Auntie Em to make sure she approves. I figure that once she sees I'm the Girl Scout type, she'll feel bad for ever using that harsh tone of voice with me and apologize profusely. But, unfortunately, she just shrugs and waves us off.

I lead him out the door as No-Pants and Goth Girl stare after me like I've just offered to sell my soul to the devil. But it never hurts to be nice, right?

As we walk down the hall, I notice he's not. Walking, I mean. He shuffles, toes pointed outward, like he's sweeping the floor with his sneakers.

Swish, swish, swish. He's like a human Swiffer.

Thank God the hallways are empty, so I don't have to explain why I'm with him. He's clutching a paper bag in his pale hands, and a little red plastic box. Is that a... wait. Is that a pencil box? Like the kind we used in first grade? Oh, hell.

"Um, so...," I start as we swish along. "I guess you're new."

I steal a glance at him and realize he's so flushed, you can see the red of his scalp peeking out from between the greased-back shards of hair on his head. "Er, no, I'm fifteen years of age," he says softly.

"I mean, like, new to the school?"

"Ah. Er. Yes. This is my first day at this facility," he says.

Facility? Who refers to a school in the same way they'd refer to a toilet? Huh, he has a point. Still, I'm convinced I saw this guy profiled on
America's Most Wanted
last Sunday. "He was a quiet kid, always kept to himself," they'd said.

I'm holding his locker-assignment slip by one crumpled comer, since it is still kind of-ew-clammy from being in his hands. We pass a hundred aqua-colored doors in the science wing, finally landing at number 16S. "Here you go," I say. I reach over and fiddle with the knob. "See, all you have to do is go fourteen this way, then one full turn to twenty-eight, and then back this way to zero. Simple."

He watches, completely perplexed, as I lift the handle and the door swings open. "I see," he mumbles, and it's obvious that he doesn't.

I demonstrate the technique another three times and then have him try. He fails on the first attempt but gets the hang of it after I talk him through it.

"Didn't they have lockers in your old school?" I ask, though I'm guessing they must carry their books from class to class on his home planet.

He shakes his head and blushes clear through to his scalp once again. It's kind of cute, in a pitiful way.

"Where are you from?" I ask a generic question, since we have nothing, nothing, nothing, in common. At least, I hope.

"Up north," he answers.

I laugh. "Like, North Jersey... or the Arctic?"

"Oh, uh...," he stammers. "The Arctic."

I stare back at him, waiting for him to laugh, to tell me he's just joking. Nothing; total poker face. Fine, I'll play along. "It must be very cold up there."

He nods and closes the locker door. Uh-huh. Fascinating conversation.

I look down at the bag and pencil box in his hands and realize he hasn't put a thing inside. "You want to put your lunch in there?"

"My?" he asks, confused.

I point at the paper bag. "Isn't that your lunch?"

"No, it's my..." He pauses just long enough for me to mentally fill in the blank with some scary thoughts:
bodily fluid; severed human head; science experiment ("I'm breeding slugs!"),
Finally, he says,
"Yes,
it's my lunch," which is a dead giveaway that it's not.

"Don't you want to put it in your locker?"

He shrugs and I again help him to open it. He carefully lays the paper bag on the top shelf, his eyes lingering on it for a moment, and then closes the door.

We walk to the other side of the building in silence because I'm wondering if I could be charged with aiding and abetting for telling him to dispose of his victim's severed head in a locker. Finally, we stop outside the door to Tanner's geometry class.

I figure it's time for a final goodwill gesture, since I plan to never, ever, ever have any contact with this guy again. I extend my hand. "Well, welcome to Stevens."

He looks at it for a moment, then gently takes my fingertips and gives them a little shake, as if he's afraid of catching
my
cooties. "My name is Pip Merriweather."

He says this very properly, like a gay English chap. Pip. Like Pippi Longstocking? What the hell? I search the far corners of my brain to find a normal male name that Pip could possibly be short for and come up with nil.

I contemplate giving a fake name, but he'll figure out the truth anyway, since we're in the same class. Basically, I'm screwed either way. "I'm Morgan. Morgan Sparks."

He turns to me. "I know."

I TRY TO sneak into the room as James Bond-ily as possible, but Mr. Tanner stops his entire lesson. "The area of a parallelo-'' is still hanging in the air as I sit at my desk in the back of the classroom. The entire class is staring at me. Tanner's look could melt faces a la the last scene in
Raiders of the Lost
Ark
which is just perfect. I bet I could be Master of Pi from here on out and he'd still want to murder me.

Goofy just stands in the doorway, looking like he wants to bolt. I can see his red scalp shining gloriously from halfway across the room.

Tanner, oblivious, begins again. He booms, "The area of a parallelo-" but is again cut off, this time by Pip's fragile "Ahem?"

Eden sways back and forth in her seat, trying to get a better look, like a second grader who's about to pee her pants. Then she leans over to me. "Is that him?" she whispers, nearly falling out of her seat.

Tanner, a little round man with a dark helmet of hair that makes him so closely resemble a penguin, waddles up to Pip and snatches the paper from his shaky hands.

"Him who?"

"The new kid," she says, as some other people turn and snicker. If they think Pip is snicker-worthy now, wait until Tanner announces his name.

I nod as Tanner scowls and motions for Pip, who is now almost convulsing from fear, to sit in an empty seat at the front of the room. "Wait. How did you hear about him?" I ask her.

She looks at me as if I'm a moron. "Uh. From Cam?"

"You saw Cam? Today?"

"Uh-huh."

I'm jealous. But what would Cam have to do with a freak like Pip? "What did he say?" I bark out, much louder than intended.

Tanner, who has been trying to find an extra textbook for his newest student, jerks his head up. "Miss Sparks? See me after class."

Oh hell. Face reddening, I straighten like an exclamation point. This is not my life. I am the student teachers adore, dammit! I give them reason not to go home after a hard day's work and drink themselves into a stupor! I am the one they remember fondly during their retirement dinners!