The Dreadful Future of Blossom Culp (13 page)

“They’re . . . tubular. And what did you do with the goldfish?” she asked, staring him in the globe.

“They’re in the powder room sink,” he said, waving a kind of flipper. “They’ll be fine.”

His mama stood between us, but he still had her full attention. “If you don’t scoot,” she said, “you’ll be late. Maybe I ought to drive you, but I’ve got six window treatments to finalize this morning and a designer sheet luncheon.”

“No sweat,” Jeremy said quickly, swinging his large legs and taking two steps toward me and the back door. “Plenty of time.”

Not able to look back because of his glass head, Jeremy made steady strides. At the last moment he grabbed my hand, and we issued out the back door.

“Have a nice day, honey,” his mama called out, absorbed once more in the little exercise man inside the moving picture box.

There were no sidewalks in Bluffleigh Heights, and all the paved streets curved, seeming to go nowhere. Me and Jeremy made our way along in the ditch while he learned to walk in his costume. He soon got the hang of it, throwing one padded leg around the other.

There’d been progress of a sort in automobiles. They had glass in all their windows now and strictly modern headlamps. They could get up high speeds, too, though many slowed at sight of me and Jeremy.

“I begin to see your scam,” I told him as we
ambled on. “I’m to change into your Citizen of the Galaxy outfit and wear it to school, as nobody will see my face clear in that bowl. But what are you going to wear?”

He blinked like a fish wearing spectacles.

“Actually,” he said, “I’m going to wear this, and . . . you’re sort of in costume already. If you see what I mean.”

I looked down at myself: at Mama’s old fur piece with the fox face and bent ears. At my tarnished spelling medal. At my old patched princess dress that lapped down over my everyday boots. I saw what he meant.

“What about my face?” I asked. “I don’t have a mask.”

Even through the bowl, I met Jeremy’s gaze. I saw what he meant.

The way I figured it, a school is a school, throughout history.

But when Bluffleigh Heights Magnet Middle School hove into view, I couldn’t make head or tail of it. It was a low, flat-roofed structure crouching in a bald yard. There was no architecture to it. Miss Mae Spaulding, principal of Horace Mann, wouldn’t have run a worm farm in the place. But the usual crowd churned around outside, showing off. Most were in Halloween costumes, though in the 1980s it’s hard to tell.

Jeremy began to drag his feet. The costume was a
burden to him, and his bowl was fogged up from heavy breathing. “This is the part I hate,” he mumbled.

“If you’re worried about me,” I told him, “I can always nip down to the rest room for the day. This girl I know, name of Daisy-Rae, spends half her life in—”

He shook his bowl. “I didn’t mean you. I’m glad you’re here, Blossom. It’s . . . just going to school I hate.” His voice rang sorrowfully.

“That’s only natural,” I pointed out. “But shoot, Jeremy, you’re a right bright kid—Gifted, I mean.”

“It’s not the schoolwork,” he said faintly. “There’s nothing to that. It’s . . . everything else.”

I should have known right then why I’d found my way through time to Jeremy. The evidence had been piling up from the first moment. But it was too simple to see.

Many in the crowd stared our way and laughed like hyenas. One girl was dressed up as a pig in a picture hat. She was the durnedest-looking thing I ever saw. Pointing right at me, she remarked at the top of her lungs that I was so grody she couldn’t handle it.

As far as I could tell, we fitted right in. One of the boys had painted his face green and wore a cape with a stake through his heart. Some of them hardly wore enough to cover their shame, and I personally counted seven Darth Vaders. The smallest kid in the bunch, wearing a neat white suit, did nothing but
run in circles, proclaiming, “Da plane come, boss. Da plane come.”

It was a sight.

I’d decided to lay low and keep my mouth shut, always a good plan. But a rough type stepped into my path. “Awright,” he barked. “Take off your mask, so we can like see who you are.” He made a grab for my nose.

“Bag your face, honker,” I replied with dignity.

This could have led to fisticuffs; but a bell rang within the so-called school, and we were carried along with the tide. Jeremy reminded me of Alexander Armsworth, as he was never a step ahead of me. I began to wonder who was looking after who. Through the schoolhouse doors we swept, though I personally had little hope for the place.

I
T WAS A MADHOUSE
all morning long, and little learning took place. Every class period was a Halloween party, though I doubt things were much better on a regular day. As for decoration, they had no orange and black crepe paper. Instead, all the walls were brightened up with a thing called graffiti, much of it poorly spelled.

Before the first class, which may have been English, I mumbled to Jeremy in alarm, “I’ll be one too many when they take attendance.”

“Take what?” Jeremy asked, and into the room we ganged. There was much milling around in there, and I swear to this day I never spied the teacher. If this was the Gifted bunch, may I never see the slow ones.

But I soon saw a sight all too familiar to me: a gang of stuck-up girls sitting in a tight clump. Remembering the Sunny Thoughts and Busy Fingers Sisterhood, I meant to give this bunch all the free air they could breathe. When I settled into a desk, Jeremy drifted away. This being eighth grade, everybody steered clear of the opposite sex.

One stuck-up girl spotted me at once. She was pretty to a fault and wore a ballerina costume with a sickeningly pink tutu. In her hand she carried a wand with a glittering little star at the end of it. She waved it around in sweeping gestures.

“Oh, you guys,” she said to the girls, “like, look!” She waved her wand at me. “That is
so
grisly, like I am
sure
.”

“Ew,” said all her group, looking my way. “Gross us out,” they said in a chorus.

“That is so
ill
,” said the pig girl in the picture hat. “Gag me with a spoon. Really. Is that makeup or a mask? And what does the eighteen mean on her . . . hat?”

“Oh, I know what that means,” said the ballerina, wielding her wand. “On an Ugly Scale of one to fifteen, she’s an eighteen.”

The whole group rocked with laughter, like they were supposed to.

I had the durnedest feeling I’d been through all this before.

“But who
is
she?” wondered the pig girl.

At that the ballerina, quick to take charge, jumped up and began counting the noses of her bunch with the wand: “Melissa, Kelly, April, Chrissy, Michelle, Hilary, Heidi.” She sighed with relief. “
We’re
all here.” Then she flopped down, and the group closed ranks around her, losing all interest in me.

But I hadn’t lost all interest in them. I edged out of my desk and made my way across the littered
room to where they clustered like birds of bright plumage.

“Ew, get away,” said several.

“Like, no way is she going to sit with us,” said the pig person.

“For sure,” came a chorus, and they all looked to the ballerina for leadership.

Arranging my fur piece, I marched up to her.

She tapped her wand nervously on the desk, as all eyes were upon her, including my beady black ones. “Say, sister,” I said, “what’s your name?”

They all gasped in shock.

“That’s
Heather
,” said several, amazed at my ignorance.

“Is that a fact?” I remarked, taking a closer look. I had the odd notion I knew her.

“You must be like really new in town. Really,” breathed the pig. “Like a foreigner or something.”

“Oh, no,” I answered. “I’m an . . . old settler in these parts.” I grinned at them in Mama’s evil way. “Sort of the Spirit of Halloween Past.” They shrank.

“In fact,” I said, warming up, “I’m planning to tell fortunes and give readings and bring messages from various worlds to customers at a certain Halloween Festival . . . tomorrow night.”

I had them listening now. But Heather drew in her cheeks and said, “I’m sure,” in a mocking way.

“In fact, I feel one of my trances coming on right now.” I swayed slightly and let my eyes roll back in my head like Mama does.

I had them in the palm of my hand now, though
many threatened to rolf on the floor. “Barf City,” said the pig.

I swayed some more and let my long, bony finger reach out, drawing a bead on Heather’s forehead.

“She is so zeeked out,” said Heather uncertainly, “like, forget it, okay?”

By now my eyes were staring at the back of my skull.
“I have a message for a girl name of Heather that comes to her from the Great Beyond,”
I moaned in a truly hideous voice.
“This is your grandmother speaking, Heather, honey,”
I continued, squeaking like an old lady.

“I am
so
sure,” Heather said to her group. “How could she know my family, she’s so scruff. Besides, Grandma isn’t in the Great Beyond. She’s down in Sun City, Arizona.”

“It is I, Heather, honey,”
I squeaked hollowly,
“Grandma, down here in—ah—Sun City. Just wanted to say hello and . . . stay as sweet as you are, precious.”

“Wig me out,” said Heather, scratching at her little golden curls with her wand. “If you’re so smart,” she said to me, “what’s my grandma’s name?”

I had her there.

“Why, Heather, honey,”
I answered in a real far-off voice,
“you know my name as well as your own. We were always one of the First Families of Bluff City. Silly child, I am the former
LETTY SHAMBAUGH
.”

Heather’s wand clattered to the floor.
“Grandma!”
she shrieked, both wigging and zeeking right out. Even her tutu collapsed in a quivering pink mass.
As her group closed around her pale and trembling form, the pig girl rose up, shouting, “Somebody go for a guidance counselor for Heather!” The pig straightened her picture hat in a businesslike way, ready to assume command of the group.

I withdrew.

That was the only bright spot in a dismal morning. We moved from Halloween party to Halloween party, all at the taxpayers’ expense. After my run-in with Heather’s bunch nobody would come near me. Several whispered remarks, though, and pointed my way.

I noticed Jeremy wasn’t doing much better. In every class there was a bunch of boys in a tighter clump than the girls. But Jeremy was never one of them.

He sat forlorn and friendless at a desk while the others entertained themselves by pouring Halloween punch from paper cups on one another. Occasionally one of them would come over to drum on Jeremy’s bowl with a pencil. Otherwise, he seemed to be a perfect outcast.

I supposed Jeremy, being right smart, didn’t fit in. The dumb ones always make the best followers. Still, he was one lonesome kid. I know the feeling.

By noon I was up to here with Bluffleigh Heights Magnet Middle School. We all were following an evil cooking smell to a place called the cafeteria
when I remarked to Jeremy, “How’s about you and me playing hooky?”

“Playing what?” he said, stumping along on his big silver legs.