Sleight (8 page)

After reading what was nothing more than a biographical sketch, an essay in list form, I had a very clear sense (and knotted stomach muscles from laughing) of who Henry Dmitri was, though I was wary. How much of what he said was rooted in some soil of truth?

It was damn funny, sure, but I suspected that Henry was a private guy who didn’t share much. And his relationship with his father seemed uncomfortable, just based on the few answers in which he was mentioned. Then again, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to get a weird vibe from Lucian Dmitri. The guy creeped me out in a big way.

I was compeled to email Henry and ask him how he managed to get away with turning this in as an essay. And how close to fact was this? Was his mother realy dead? I couldn’t remember Ted ever mentioning if Lucian was married. Or divorced. Henry had a nanny?

Stil? And why didn’t he have a close friend? The most pressing question—how did he know he’d have a close friend in the future whose name started with the letter G? As amused as I was by his sily catalog of personal trivia, I couldn’t help but feel played. Why the letter G? Had he edited that part to make me feel good, hinting that he wanted me to become his friend? Or had the meat of the document been left unaltered, in its original state from its creation two years prior?

What I did glean from Henry’s “essay” was that he was a kidder with a rebelious streak. And he hated Shakespeare, my number-two, al-time idol behind Niccolò Paganini, arguably the best violinist who ever lived. (I recognize that admitting this makes me the biggest nerd on the planet.) Henry’s hateful denial of Shakespeare’s genius could be the nail in the coffin of our infant friendship. Best friends with a hater? Even if my name does start with the letter G. I needed to spend more time with him to make an educated decision.

Staling on my own paper for a few more minutes, I set to work combing the Web for arguments in support of the Bard’s authenticity. No one caled Wil Shakespeare a fraud on my watch and got away with it.

:9:

Let every eye negotiate for itself and trust no agent.

—Wiliam Shakespeare

The alarm of my bedside clock enmeshed itself with my dream, and I woke up annoyed that no one was answering the damn phone. 7:02 am. My last glimpse of the clock had been less than five hours ago at 2:12 am, just as I was wrapping up the conclusion on the lit essay. Good thing I had loads of adrenaline and access to an unlimited supply of caffeine.

At breakfast, Junie was in rare form. I regretted coming into the tent as soon as I sat down with my oatmeal.

“I wonder if Henry wil extend his buddy duties into today,” she chirped. I flashed her a shut-your-face-or-die look. The table was ful of the usual suspects—Ted, Marlene, Irwin, a sulen Ash—and I didn’t want anyone to read more into this than what it was. Henry had made a deal with the attendance lady; he served as my buddy for Monday. Tuesday was a new buddy-less day. End of story.

“Not likely,” I said.

Junie ignored my visual subtext and wrinkled her face in defiance. “I’m just saying…’cuz Henry sat with you at the assembly and stuff, something none of the other buddies did. Even you have to admit that was sweet, Gems!” I kicked her under the table, but she just flinched and smiled wider. “And he sure perked up last night when you finaly came out of the kitchen.”

“Junie, please, it’s too early for this.”

“Gemma,” she beamed, “I saw the way he looked at you.” Junie’s running on at the mouth was pissing me off, but a smal part of me wanted to believe that what she said was true. Did Henry look at me in some extraordinary manner, or did he just feel sorry for the new friendless girl who couldn’t control her face from advertising her emotions?

“Oh my God, he’s nice and good looking. His smile sorta takes the strength outta your knees when you first see it,” Junie gushed.

“Oh, and rich, too. Rich is good.”

This last statement was the limit for Ash’s tolerance. He slammed his fork onto his plate, the clash of stainless steel on porcelain drawing the table’s attention to him.

“Junie, you’re making me gag,” he said, teeth clenched. “If you’l excuse me.” He rose from the table and pitched his plate into the dirty bin.

“Wow, somebody’s jealous,” Junie murmured as her twin sulked out of the tent. “My new friend Kayla said that Henry is Eaglefern’s most eligible bachelor and that he doesn’t—”

“Gemma.” Ted’s voice was sharp. It was the first thing he’d said to me today and he’d interrupted Junie to do it.

I was looking down at my bowl and felt his eyes boring in the top of my head. I knew what was coming.

“Henry Dmitri is a fine boy, but his father is our new boss. You be careful with this one,” Ted said.

“Sheesh, Ted, she’s only had lunch at school with him. It’s not like they’re planning their wedding,” Marlene said, crumpling her napkin and dropping it on her plate. “And you saw him last night.

He’s an upstanding kid, and so polite. It wil be good for Gemma to get to know a boy other than Ash—no offense, Junie.”

“None taken. Oh, and Henry’s cute,” Junie said. I kicked her again.

“Yes, and he’s cute,” Marlene said to her. The two of them giggled like first graders.

“Wel, it sounds like day one was successful, Miss Gemma,” Irwin said, breaking the weird tension among the three of them. I looked at the others seated around the table and saw that not only had Ted put his fork down but he was staring right at me, his face white as a sheet. I felt like I’d done something wrong.

The table grew quiet. Marlene fumbled with the paper from her muffin. Ted stood and walked away from the table without bothering to clear his plate.

“Did I say something wrong?” Junie said.

No one answered her; only Marlene offered a polite curl of her mouth and a shake of her head in reassurance.

With the sudden shift in the ambience at our table, I’d lost my appetite. Again. Seemed to be happening a lot lately. We needed to leave for school, anyway, so I excused myself to go to the trailer to grab my junk. As I walked away, I heard Marlene and Junie resume their conversation, though with less zest than before. I dropped my plate, and Ted’s, into the wash bin and meandered out of the tent.

You be careful with this one. Yeah, Ted. No problemo.

:10:

Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies.

—Aristotle

I had Marlene drop me off ten minutes early so I could avoid walking through the thick crowd out front of the school. It was too much to put on a brave face and strol past the gossip mongers. I didn’t care what they were saying. These people didn’t know anything about me. But the discomfort was real, and I wasn’t ready for it this morning. It was reassuring to see the three shade kids by the old part of the school again—weird, as this was their second appearance—but at least they seemed friendly. Dead, but friendly.

I walked straight to my locker, glad I’d remembered how to find it. Henry was nowhere to be seen, though I don’t know why I thought he would be. His job was done. In a shining moment of forethought on the way to school, I’d used a Sharpie to jot down the three-digit combination on one of my fingers. Just in case. It took three attempts, but I conquered the dial and managed to get the locker open. It must’ve been nerves getting to me—under ordinary circumstances, I was a skiled lock-pick, and though combination locks weren’t my specialty, I could totaly do it, given the time and the tools. Doors and safes were more my speed.

Useful skils a girl picks up hanging around a circus.

As the locker door swung open, a folded piece of paper dropped to the floor. I looked around to see if anyone was watching, and then unfolded it—a copy of my essay that I’d emailed to Henry just after 2 am, with a handwritten note scrawled across the bottom: “Perkins wil eat this up. Nice! —HD.” I smiled.

Not a bad way to start my second day in the trenches.

Mr. Poole scraped his floppy brown loafers against the tile as he handed out study guides for the pre-calc midterm, scheduled six weeks from today. When he noticed me at the door, he pointed to a desk he had brought in from another room and wedged between two others in the last row. Before I could start toward the seat, he gestured for me to come talk to him.

“In speaking with Ms. Spitzer, I understand much of what we’re doing might be review for you. If you find it too easy or boring, just let me know and we can see about moving you to a higher-level course,” he said. He was sweaty and the light from the overhead fixtures shined off his bald forehead, creating quite the distraction.

That, coupled with a prevalent tic in his left eye, made looking directly at him a hard thing to do. I felt my own eye start to twitch.

I thanked him for his concern and took my seat as other students wandered into the class, gathering in smal groups around a few select desks until the bel rang. Henry slid in at the very last second, just before Mr. Poole clicked the door closed and locked it from the inside.

“Cutting it close, Mr. Dmitri,” Poole said. Henry nodded and made eye contact with me before taking his seat. He offered a smal wave helo. I waved back, my cheeks alight in their first flush of the day.

The girl seated next to me, who looked as though she were dressed for a catwalk rather than a classroom, leaned over. “Looks like somebody’s in love,” she sniped.

Mr. Poole carried on with his lecture, providing examples of tangent and cotangent functions on the dry erase board. I noticed my friendly neighbor was busy practicing her signature on a piece of notebook paper rather than copying Poole’s formulas. Becca Bristol, it said, heavy with flourishes and kindergarten-style flowers and baloons. The simple act of writing her name told me al I needed to know about Becca Bristol: we would not become pals.

“Stop staring at me, circus freak.” She caught me watching her draw.

I adjusted in my seat so she’d see I’d heard her loud and clear, doing what I could to ignore her for the remainder of class. But she made it difficult. When she wasn’t doodling, she was texting under her desk, complete with intermittent giggles and gasps and a few sideways glares at me. I opened the textbook Mr. Poole had left on my desk and pretended to be interested in the content, but I couldn’t shake the niggling feeling that Becca Bristol was slamming me via text.

Seconds before the bel rang, she put her phone down and exchanged it for a cosmetic compact. In my peripheral vision, I saw her pucker her lips into the mirror.

“Sit somewhere else tomorrow,” she said into her reflection. “I don’t want to catch anything from you.” I didn’t make eye contact with her but focused on gathering my book and notes so I could make a hasty exit.

Henry startled me as I strode through the door and into the halway. “Morning, Gemma Flannery. How’re you feeling considering you had, what…,” he looked at his watch, “fewer than six hours’ sleep?” He walked beside me down the hal to my locker.

“Five.”

“What?”

“I didn’t fal asleep until after 2, and I woke up just after 7. I missed the five-hour mark by a few minutes,” I said, spinning the lock. It opened after the second try this time. Progress!

“Harsh.” He grimaced. “I beat you by an hour. I slept until 8.”

“So that’s why you’re such a frequent flyer at the tardy slips desk.”

“Pretty much,” he chuckled. “So, I see you were making BFFs with Becca Bristol.”

“Yeah, she’s a real charmer. We’re planning a girls’ spa-n-sleepover weekend.”

He laughed. “Don’t let her get to you. She’s a total bitch to everyone except her shadow.” I gave him a half-hearted smile as I traded my math book for the lit anthology.

“Wel, if she wants to be nasty, I can always sit behind her, snip a lock of her hair, and make a voodoo dol. That’l teach her to mess with us circus freaks.”

Henry’s eyes widened a bit.

“I’m kidding,” I said. “Wel, sort of.”

“Hey, I need to hit the little boys’ room before lit.” He poked my upper arm with the eraser end of his pencil. “Save me a seat, wil you?” He then jogged in the opposite direction of class. Yeah, I’d save him a seat. Right on my lap. Geeze, Gemma, get a grip.

Mrs. Perkins paced around her podium, antsy to get started. Per his MO, Henry sidled in at the very last second, just as he’d done in pre-calc, but instead of a reprimand, he received a smile and a wink. Et tu, Mrs. Perkins? Et tu?

“Before we get started, people, please pass forward your essays. I can’t wait to read them!” I opened my folder and a wave of panic flooded over me. After formatting and saving last night, I hadn’t printed because I didn’t want to wake Marlene and Irwin.

And I’d totaly spaced it this morning before leaving for school.

A hand touched the upper part of my left arm and with it came that strange sensation of calm I’d experienced during the pep assembly. I looked down at my arm to see Henry’s right hand cupped around my triceps. In his left hand, he held up a printed, stapled copy of an essay bearing my name.

“I didn’t know if you had a printer, so I ran an extra one, just in case,” he whispered, handing our papers over the shoulder of the student in front of him. When he released my arm, the warmth dissipated but the soothing influence lingered, no hint of panic left behind.

“Thank you so much,” I said. Mrs. Perkins steamed ful speed ahead into her discussion of Thomas Hobbes, but concentrating on her words was a chalenge. I could only think about Henry’s hand on my arm, his hand on my ankle at the assembly, that weird sensation that surged through me when his skin made contact with mine. How did he do that? What was it he was doing? Did other people experience the same thing when he touched them?

I’d spent my life with some oddbals, remarkable, magical people with cool talents and nifty tricks hiding up their sleeves. But never had I experienced anything like this—it felt almost spiritual. Is this what people meant by otherworldly? Total peace and warmth emanated from his hand…what was that? Whatever it was, I only heard about seven words coming from Mrs. Perkins’ mouth. “Blah blah blah social contract theorist…blah blah blah paper due next week.”

Al I wanted was for Henry Dmitri to touch me again.