Also Known As (7 page)

“Oh my God, I am so sorry!” The coffee fell from my fingers and flooded over the box of Kleenex and the desk, dripping into the secretary’s lap. I had made sure it was lukewarm beforehand, just in case of that. “Oh, no, let me help!”

She leaped up from her seat as the coffee continued to stream across the desk, flooding everything in its path. “It’s all right,” she said, trying to hold her soaked sweater away from her. “Just let me, um, get cleaned up here.” She tried to wipe the coffee off her desk, which was useless. Believe me, I know how to make a real mess. “Oh, geez.”

“I’m really sorry,” I said, which wasn’t a lie. “I’m such a butterfingers. Maybe too much caffeine this morning. I’ll totally pay for the dry cleaning.”

She nodded, already looking down the hall toward the restroom. “Why don’t you come back later this afternoon?” she said. “We can talk about your schedule then and …”

“Great,” I said, and made a mental note to send her an anonymous fruit basket. Detroit and Dakota would probably love it.

“I’m just going to go get cleaned up and … yeah.” She didn’t look thrilled with me, and I couldn’t blame her. I hate when innocents are in the line of fire.

As soon as she disappeared into the restroom, I slid into her seat and immediately pulled up the log-in screen. Her user name was still there, but the password was empty.

Hello, kiddos.

I tried entering “DETROIT” but it didn’t work. Then I tried “DAKOTA.”

Bingo.

Sometimes it’s so easy that it’s not even fun.

My fingers moved fast, pulling up my and Jesse’s class schedules. He had chem, French, calculus (which he was failing, I noted), English III, and AP US History. Also, despite the failing math grade, he was an A/B+ student. “He totally cheats,” I whispered to myself.

I opened up my schedule next and immediately put myself into Jesse’s French and calculus classes, dropping geometry for good. I thought about putting myself in AP English, as well, but come on. Like I have the time to read all those books and write the papers.

The secretary still hadn’t come back yet (coffee can be such a bitch to get out of cotton, I knew from my own clumsy experience), so I took a risk and opened up Roux’s class schedule. She had French, too, but I wasn’t about to move her into our class. I wasn’t going to spend an hour every day listening to Roux translate “Why is your uniform so boring?” or “What do you have against accessorizing?”

I logged out and slid myself away from the desk and out of the dusty office just as the bathroom door swung open. The secretary wasn’t thrilled to see me in the hallway. “So sorry!” I said again. “So klutzy! I’m amazed I haven’t spent half my life in traction!”

“You better get to class,” she said. “You don’t want to be late.”

First period was calculus with Jesse. “No, I definitely don’t,” I said. “Good call.”

Chapter 5

After my first week of high school, I was ready for it to be over.

I was exhausted from waking up at five forty-five every morning (while my parents got to sleep in, ugh), tired from trying to navigate crowded hallways filled with teenagers, and annoyed with the amount of homework I had. Did they assign so much just to keep us busy and off the dangerous streets of Manhattan? It felt like a conspiracy to me, and if I saw the words “Make sure to show your work” or “Why or why not?” written on assignments one more time, I was going to have a meltdown.

I had seen Jesse Oliver a few times in the hall, but I couldn’t figure out how to talk to him. He was always nodding at people, and one time he even nodded at me (I can’t lie, I was secretly thrilled), but by the time I figured out what to say to him, he had already walked away.

My parents, by contrast, were slowly going crazy at home. It was obvious that they weren’t used to not running
a job, so every day when I came home, they bombarded me with questions. Did you talk to Jesse today? Did you talk to other kids? What’s the geographical layout of the school? Does anyone seem suspicious?

“Everyone seems suspicious,” I answered that last one. “It’s high school.”

And at the start of the second week, I got an even bigger surprise.

“Parent-teacher conferences?” I said, looking at the piece of paper that had been distributed during first period. My parents had been assigned Wednesday afternoon at three o’clock. “Oh, no, this is not happening.”

“Tell me about it,” Roux said, coming up behind me. “It’s so elementary school. But hey, when you pay thirty thousand dollars a year for your kid’s education, I guess you want proof that people are earning their money.”

“When are your parents coming?”

“Oh, they’re not.” Roux examined one of her perfect cuticles. “They’re in London for the Frieze Art Fair. When are your parents coming? Do I get to meet them?”

Hell no
was my first thought, but I kept it to myself. “Um, I’m not sure they can make it, either,” I told her, deflecting the question.

“They should come. It’s a really big deal. Like, whose parents care the most.”

“So if they don’t come …”

“People will talk about you just like they’re going to talk about me.”

I sighed. “Fantastic.”

*

My parents, of course, were thrilled that they got to finally do
something
. “Here are the rules,” I told them on Wednesday morning before I left for school. (They were up early that morning, those crazy overachievers). “You do not embarrass me.”

“And?” my dad asked. “What else?”

“That’s it. Consider that rule number one, two, and three.” I gathered up my bag and my coffee. “And please, don’t wear anything weird, okay? Just look like regular Soho parents. This is the most basic assignment ever. Just be yourselves.”

But even I knew the truth: in high school, that was easier said than done.

By Wednesday afternoon at 2:45, I was a nervous wreck. “Did you have a triple espresso or something?” Roux said as we packed up at the final bell. “You look all wobbly.”

“Don’t tempt me,” I replied.

“Here,” she said, shaking a bottle in my direction.

“What is that?”

“Xanax, duh. Never leave home without it.”

“Are you crazy?” I snapped at her, throwing a quick glance down the hallway to make sure no one saw us. “You could get us both suspended for having that here!”

“Oh, relax. I have a prescription.”

“You do?”

“No, I lied. It’s my mom’s.”

I shoved the bottle back in her bag. “Here. Go. Do something.”

“I will. I have a massage appointment with Rosie the
Miracle Worker. It’s not her official title, but it should be. She’s way better than a parent-teacher conference.”

“Well, enjoy your relaxing life,” I said. “I’ll be here, dying of embarrassment.”

“Ta-ta,” she said, wiggling her fingers at me. “You probably won’t recognize me the next time we meet, I’ll be so mellow.”

“We can only pray,” I replied.

But when my parents showed up at school, I realized that I should have gone with Roux.

“Um, excuse me,” I said to them, “but what in the world are you
wearing
?”

My mom was wearing a Chanel suit and taller heels than I had ever seen her wear before, making her an inch or two taller than my dad. A double strand of pearls hugged her neck, and her makeup looked professionally done. She had a wig on, a blond bob that hid her black hair and looked completely natural. I smelled perfume, too, something strong.

“Too much?” my mom asked.

“Too much
perfume
,” my dad told her, waving his hand and wrinkling his nose. He had a suit on and kept tugging at the collar, but his shoes were polished and his hair looked newly cut. They seemed to be the perfect Upper East Side parents I had never had.

“One problem,” I said, then stopped myself. “Actually, there are multiple problems, but this is the main one. You look uptown and we live downtown.”

“Downtown is the new uptown,” my dad said. “Look, my socks match my tie!”

“He read that in the
Times
Style section.” My mom rolled her eyes. “Maggie, fix your hair.” She reached out to brush a lock of hair off my shoulder.

They may have looked different, but they were still my parents.

They were suitably impressed by the school building. “Wow, look at this masonry,” my dad said. “What is this, prewar, do you think? Or maybe—?”

“It’s old,” I said, cutting him off. “That’s what it is. And it’s worth thirty-thousand dollars a year, apparently.”

“Is that a community garden?” my mom said, peering out a window. “Do they do organic?”

“Sure,” I said. I wasn’t the only student hurrying their parents through the hallway, though. Several other kids were herding parents into classrooms and looking just as mortified as I felt. “All the organic you want.”

My parents were due to meet with my French teacher, Monsieur McPhulty, whose name my dad had a hard time swallowing. “I’m pretty sure ‘McPhulty’ isn’t in the original French,” he had grumbled when I first told him, but when I introduced them, it was all “
Bonjour
” this and “
Merci!
” that.

“I didn’t realize that Maggie had French-speaking parents,” Monsieur McPhulty said, shooting a glance in my direction. “Her accent is, well, terrible.”

Parent-teacher conferences, I decided, were the dumbest things ever.

I hung out in the hallway while they talked, dragging the toe of my boot back and forth across the floor. I could
hear someone banging on a locker and I finally got annoyed and went to inspect the noise. I found Jesse Oliver trying to get his Master Lock open. He would try, then bang it against the locker in anger, and try again.

If this wasn’t a sign from the heavens, I didn’t know what was.

“Hi,” I said. “Do you need help or is this just an extreme sport?”

“I’m fine,” he muttered through clenched teeth. “This lock is just broken.”

“Want me to try?”

“Be my guest,” he said. “I hope you enjoy frustrating experiences.”

“Oh, I live for them,” I said, then starting spinning the dial around. “Are you here for your parent-teacher conference?”

“Yeah, my dad’s supposed to be here soon.”

Armand was going to be here! My heart started to beat a little faster and I glanced toward the closed door of my French classroom. There was no way that my parents and Armand could see each other, not if I had anything to say about it. They would probably try to usurp the whole mission, and I wasn’t about to surrender my very first assignment. Not yet, anyway.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” Jesse said after I started to spin the dial back and forth, trying to feel the catch of the wheel.

“I picked up this talent in middle school,” I replied. “My locker was always busted. What’s the combo?”

“24-37-2.”

“Easy enough.” I spun it a few times, then felt the wheel catch on a 3. “I think it’s actually 24-37-3.”

“No, it’s not. The locker assignment said …”

I popped it open. “It’s three,” I said. “Trust me.”

“Wow.” He looked at the lock, then back at me. “That explains why I can never get it open.”

“You’re welcome,” I said.

“Sorry. Thanks. Thank you, that was awesome.”

I shrugged. “Like I said, easy enough.” Down the hall, the double doors swung open and I saw a dark-haired man heading toward us. He had the same build as Jesse and looked to be about the same height.

I didn’t need a dossier picture to know that it was Armand.

“Well, see you around,” I told Jesse, starting to walk backward. “Good luck with the conference. Hope you’re not failing calculus.”

He looked at me oddly. “I
am
failing calculus. How did you—?”

But I was already around the corner, ducking behind another row of lockers. “Stupid!” I whispered to myself. Why didn’t I just tell Jesse that I knew his entire school transcript? I had never tripped myself up like that before.

“Is Mom here?” I heard Jesse ask, and I pressed myself against the wall and tried to be as small as possible.

There was a pause before Armand said, “No,” and an even longer pause before he said, “I’m sorry.”

Where was Mrs. Oliver? As far as the dossier knew, they were still married. Was she out of town?

“It’s cool,” Jesse said, and I didn’t have to see his face to
know how disappointed he was. He was the aural equivalent of a kicked puppy.

“I’ll e-mail her an update,” Armand said. His voice was deep but not all villain-y. “I’m sure she’ll appreciate it. I’ll send it as soon as I get home.”

“No, don’t do that,” Jesse said. “If she wanted to know, she’d be there.”

“Son, I’m sure she—”

“Forget it. C’mon, you’re late.”

Armand sounded way nicer than I had imagined. I don’t know why I had pictured some gruff guy sitting behind a computer and chomping on a cigar, but it was clear that he was trying to make Jesse feel better about his absent mom.

I was tempted to follow Jesse and find out more, but I heard the door to the French classroom open and I hustled over as fast as I could. My French is so bad that I couldn’t tell what my parents or Monsieur McPhulty were discussing, but it sounded like they were long-lost friends by this point.

“Hey,” I said brightly. “How’d it go? Am I expelled?”

“Hardly,” my mom said.

“We should go,” I said. “Right now. Thanks Mr.—I mean, Monsieur—McPhulty.”

“En français, s’il vous plaît.”

Oh, brother.

“
Bonjour
. I mean,
merci
. Shoot, I mean,
au revoir
.” I was so eager to get my parents out of there before they accidentally ran into Armand that I would have had better luck speaking Swedish.

“What is wrong with you?” my dad whispered as soon
as we rounded the corner. “Did someone phone in a bomb threat?”

“Worse. Armand is here.”

“Did he see you?” both of my parents asked at the same time.

“No, but it was close. C’mon, let’s go.”

“That garden,” my mom said as we hurried out of the building, “really is just
darling
.”

Chapter 6