Absolutely Truly (5 page)

“Good luck,” Hatcher said to me, rolling his eyes as he went into his class.

“Thanks,” I said. I was going to need it. My brother knows exactly how I feel about the first day at a new school.

“Ms. Ivey is a great teacher too,” Annie continued, turning
to look at me. Her braids bounced around on her head like a bouquet of antennae. “She's young and really pretty, and she's funny, too. At least that's what my brother, Franklin, says. He's in your class. I have Mrs. Ballard, who's okay, I guess.” Without pausing to take a breath, she chattered on. “So you're from Texas? They say ‘howdy' there a lot, don't they? I went to Texas once, to San Antonio for the national spelling bee championship—I'm the best speller in the school, and I won first place in the Grafton County tournament, not that I'm bragging or anything.” The girl gave me a sidelong glance to see if I was impressed, but didn't wait for a reply. “I guess our mountain is named after you, huh? Well, your family, I mean. And the college and the bookstore and the lake and everything?”

I nodded silently, wishing the little magpie would shut up.

She didn't, of course.

“I love the lake! I go to Camp Lovejoy every summer,” she continued. “Last year, I was in a cabin with this girl from Connecticut—that's spelled C-O-N-N-E-C-T-I-C-U-T—and she wet her bed almost every night.”

As Annie chattered on, I tuned her out, wondering instead what Mackenzie was up to. It was two hours earlier in Texas, but I decided to send her a text anyway:

SEND HELP! TRAPPED IN HICKSVILLE, USA!

There was no reply. She was either asleep or in the shower. I sighed and slipped my cell phone back in my pocket. Ever
since I'd woken up this morning, I'd been hoping this would all go away, and I'd find myself back in Austin. But it was painfully obvious that that wasn't going to happen.

It was time to go into stealth mode.

Hatcher calls this my defense mechanism. It's not that I'm shy—I'm not. Quiet, yes. Shy, no. My growth spurt has put me in the spotlight, though, which is my least favorite place to be. Stealth mode helps, but there's no way I can be completely invisible. I'm too hard to hide. There aren't too many seventh-grade girls who are almost six feet tall—it's like trying to hide a Winnebago in a parking lot full of Mini Coopers. Still, it's not impossible to fade into the wallpaper if you really try. I just stay quiet, speak when spoken to, and generally try to keep a low profile.

So far, it's worked pretty well. Of course, I've had plenty of time to perfect it. This is the sixth school I've attended so far. I went to kindergarten in Alabama, spent first and second grade at Fort Hood near Killeen, Texas, third and fourth in Germany, fifth and sixth in Fort Collins, Colorado, and half of seventh in Austin, Texas. I think it's fair to say that when it comes to stealth mode, I'm a pro.

“This is it,” said Annie, her dark braids bobbing again as she skipped ahead to hold my new classroom door open for me.

“Thanks.”

“You're w-e-l-c-o-m-e,” she replied, smiling broadly.

Despite the fact that my stomach was churning and Annie was mildly annoying, I couldn't help smiling back. I'd have to remember to introduce her to Lauren. I had a feeling that the two of them would really get along.

“Welcome!” said Ms. Ivey, coming over to greet me. Annie was right; Ms. Ivey was really pretty. Her slightly upturned nose crinkled in a friendly way when she smiled.
Definitely a chickadee
, I thought as she took the enrollment form I was holding.

“Trudy Lovejoy, is it?” she said, glancing at it.

“Truly,” I corrected her.

“What a pretty name! Truly original.” She smiled at me again, and just like with Annie I couldn't help smiling back, even though it's kind of a dumb joke and I've heard it a zillion times before. I felt myself relax just a teeny bit. Pumpkin Falls might be a hick town, but so far the people I'd met were all really nice.

“Truly Gigantic,” said someone from the back of the room in a stage whisper.

Okay, maybe not all of them,
I thought, reddening.

“That's enough, Scooter,” Ms. Ivey said sharply, and the ripple of snickers ceased. “Is that any way to welcome a new classmate? Where are your manners?” She scanned the room. “Let's see, Truly, why don't you take a seat next to Cha Cha Abramowitz.”

She propelled me toward a petite girl who was curled up
in her chair with her legs folded gracefully under her. No bird here—Cha Cha Abramowitz was all cat. She had catlike eyes, too, large and green, and a short fluff of dark hair. Ms. Ivey introduced us, then made a beeline for the back of the room, where an argument had broken out. I was guessing the boy named Scooter was at the bottom of it.

“Truly, huh?” said the girl, who had a surprisingly deep voice for such a small person. “That's kind of unusual.”

“And Cha Cha isn't?”

She grinned. “It's Charlotte, actually. My little brother couldn't pronounce it when he was a baby, and his nickname for me kind of stuck. Plus, my parents own a dance studio, so it fits. I don't mind, really.”

“I don't mind my name either,” I told her, which was a total lie. It's a pain to always have to explain to people that no, it's not a typo, my name isn't Trudy, it's Truly. It
should
have been Trudy, but the moron who was processing immigrants the day my great-great-great-grandmother got off the boat from Germany couldn't read. He took one look at her passport—which our family still has, framed on a wall at Gramps and Lola's house, which even I can decipher, which proves the guy really
was
a moron—and wrote down Truly instead of Trudy on her official papers. There's been a Truly in the family ever since. My Aunt True is really a Truly too, but she's always gone by True. Which is probably a good thing, now that we're both living in Pumpkin Falls. Too many
Trulys in this tiny town might make it explode or something.

“Looks like you could use a little help with pre-algebra,” Ms. Ivey said, not unkindly, when she looked over the results from the math section of my placement tests a little while later.

“Uh, yeah. My father's going to tutor me.”

She nodded. “Excellent.”

Behind us, the door to the classroom flew open.

“Lucas?” trilled a blue sleeping bag. Or what I thought at first was a blue sleeping bag. On closer inspection, I saw that it was actually a slender woman in a puffy, ankle-length down coat. Her face was partially hidden by its hood, but I caught a glimpse of bright blue eyes. As they came to rest on a pale, skinny boy sitting near Cha Cha and me, I thought,
Blue jay.
Her gaze had that same intent look I'd seen on jays just about everywhere we'd lived.

“There you are!” said the woman, sounding relieved. “The weather forecast is predicting more snow, so I thought I'd better stop by on my way to work and bring you some extra mittens.” She held up a pair of red ones.

“Thank you, Mrs. Winthrop,” said Ms. Ivey, neatly intercepting the boy's mother as she started across the classroom toward him.

“Be sure Lucas puts them on before he leaves this afternoon!”

“I certainly will, Mrs. Winthrop,” said Ms. Ivey, plucking the mittens away and gently maneuvering her back toward the door.

“I'll have hot chocolate waiting!” Mrs. Winthrop promised, waving at Lucas.

Ms. Ivey closed the door firmly behind her. But Mrs. Winthrop wasn't done yet. She tapped on the glass window and blew her son a farewell kiss.

Scarlet-faced, Lucas slunk down in his seat.

“Lucas!” mimicked someone from the back of the room, his voice going all high and squeaky. “Did you remember to put on clean underwear this morning?”

“Stuff a sock in it, Scooter,” boomed Cha Cha, “or I'll remind everybody about the time you came to school wearing Jasmine's tap shoes.”

“I think you just did,” I blurted, the words popping out before my stealth-mode filter had a chance to activate.

The classroom erupted in laughter. Lucas shot Cha Cha and me a grateful look. I glanced over my shoulder at the boy called Scooter. He was looking directly at me, scowling. Definitely a bird of prey.

So much for stealth mode. I'd just made my first enemy in Pumpkin Falls.

“A bunch of us are going sledding after school,” Cha Cha told me a little while later, as we were heading downstairs to the cafeteria. She was as short as Mackenzie, and I could tell by the looks some of the other kids were giving us that we made a funny-looking pair. “Want to come?”

I hesitated. Stealth-mode protocol called for me to lie low until I was part of the school scenery, instead of a very tall novelty. I'd been trying that all morning, though, and Cha Cha wasn't letting me get away with it. She was determined to be friends.

“It will be fun!” she urged.

“I can't,” I told her. “I have to go to the bookstore.”

Cha Cha knew all about Lovejoy's Books. It turns out she and her family had been at the going-away party for Gramps and Lola. Pretty much everybody in town had been invited, I guess.

She frowned. “Can't you go later?”

You don't know my father
, I thought. Lieutenant Colonel Jericho T. Lovejoy doesn't do later.

“There's this tutoring thing,” I replied, and then, as Cha Cha looked at me expectantly, I caved, spilling the whole story about my math grade, and my father's reaction, and how it meant I'd be tutored every day for the foreseeable future.

“Well, if you have to be stuck someplace, the bookstore isn't such a bad spot,” she said when I was done.

I looked at her in surprise. Cha Cha didn't strike me as the bookworm type.

“It's one of my favorite places in town,” she continued, holding the cafeteria door open for me. “When I was little, I used to like their Story Hour better than the one at the library, because your grandmother made treats to go with whatever we were reading. You know, like cupcakes with little candy carrots on top when we read
Peter Rabbit.
Plus,” she added, “my brother and I love Miss Marple.”

Miss Marple is Gramps and Lola's golden retriever. Named after the elderly detective in Agatha Christie's mystery series, she's the store mascot. Her picture is on the bookmarks given out with every purchase.

“Everybody loves Miss Marple,” I agreed as I followed Cha Cha to a table by the window.

“Hey, Cha Cha, can I eat with you?”

I looked over to see a tiny boy standing beside us. His face,
which barely reached the tabletop, wore a hopeful expression.

“Sure, Bax, have a seat,” Cha Cha told him, patting the bench beside her. “This is my brother,” she told me as he clambered up. “Baxter, this is Truly.”

“Hi,” said Baxter shyly.

“Hi back,” I replied.

“Tell Truly what grade you're in,” Cha Cha said, and her little brother proudly held up one finger.

Baxter Abramowitz was kitten to Cha Cha's cat. He had the same slight build, the same curly dark hair and green eyes and dimple in his cheek. As I watched him eating his peanut-butter-and-jelly-sandwich, it struck me how different Daniel Webster was from any other school I'd ever been at. Not just because all the grades were together in one building, but because it was obvious that what my brother Hatcher calls “the universal cafeteria classification system” didn't seem to have made it as far as Pumpkin Falls. I looked around at the tables, trying to sort out who was who. Usually the jocks sit together, and the drama kids sit together, and so do the gamers, and the skateboarders, and the band kids, and so on. This was the first cafeteria I'd seen since elementary school where everybody sat together in a jumble.

Across the room, I noticed that Annie and my sister had found each other on their own. The two of them were talking a blue streak over their sandwiches. Or more accurately, Annie was talking, and Lauren was listening. What
was weird, though, was that they were sitting at what I would normally have thought of as the jock table. Hatcher was beside them, and although Pippa was perched on his knee, he was talking to a bunch of guys who were clearly athletes, including Scooter Sanchez.

“Over here!” boomed Cha Cha all of a sudden, her deep voice making me jump. She waved wildly at a girl just entering the cafeteria, a girl who looked familiar, which was odd, since I was pretty sure we'd never met.

“Jasmine of the tap shoes,” Cha Cha told me as she introduced us. “She and Scooter are twins.”

My eyebrows shot up. “Ohhhhhh.”

“Don't judge me,” Jasmine replied quickly, flashing me a smile.

Raven,
I thought, resisting the urge to reach out and touch her shiny dark shoulder-length hair. I smiled back. “I promise I won't.”

“Where were you this morning, Jazz?” asked Cha Cha, and Jasmine bared her teeth at us.