Me, My Elf & I (3 page)

“Right, hold my own.” Then I realize that again I’m lost. “Hold my own what?”

This time Mercedes cracks up. She leans into me and shakes my arm as she laughs. “Girl, you crazy! ‘Hold my own what?’ ” She imitates me perfectly again. “You really are from someplace else, aren’t you?”

“You have no idea,” I tell her. “No idea at all.”

chapter 2

I’M OVERJOYED TO
see Mercedes waiting for me after my algebra class. “Mercedes! Mercedes!” I jump up and down and wave. Everyone around me moves away and stares. I stop hopping.

“Dang,
chica
,” Mercedes says. “Simmer down.”

“Sorry, I just got so excited,” I say. “What are we doing now?”

“Lunch, I guess. How exciting is that?”

I think about this. “Can I eat with you?”

“If you promise not to jump around,” she says, starting down the hall.

I promise, but I’m still excited. I follow her. I’m so grateful that she’s letting me come with her that I want to give her something. A garland of wild roses to wear in her hair. A bouquet of sweet sage and honeysuckle to tuck into her belt loop. But those are the kinds of things we do in Alverland and I have no idea how erdlers show their appreciation. So I just say thank you, over and over again until finally Mercedes stops short.

“Jeez, Zephyr!” she says loudly. The crowd of kids parts around us. “Stop with all the thank-yous, would you? I get it! I get it!”

“Sorry.” I hang my head.

“Man, you apologize more than anyone I’ve ever met. ‘Sorry, sorry, so sorry,’” she says, mincing around, bobbing her head, exactly like I do. Then she jabs me in the ribs with her elbow and howls with laughter. “You got me bugging, girl! But it’s all good.”

“Mercy, Mercy, Mercy me! ” someone bellows from behind us. I turn around to see a chubby boy, not much taller than Mercedes, with wild dark strands of hair over his eyes. He’s wearing black baggy clothes from head to toe, and has even painted the fingernails of his right hand a dark smudgy color. He zigzags through the other kids, singing Mercedes’s name.

“Ari!” Mercedes screeches, and holds open her arms. They envelop each other in a long embrace, then begin to dance, hips close together, cheek to cheek, sliding elegantly across the floor. He dips her dramatically and looks up at me through his messy bangs.

“Is this her?” he asks.

Mercedes pops upright. “That’s right. This is Zephyr.”

“Are you Mercedes’s boyfriend?” I ask, full of romance and envy, but also a little bit relieved to think that I finally understand something. But from their reactions, clearly I’m wrong. Mercedes and the boy snort and howl, slap their knees, and nearly fall down they’re laughing so hard. People passing by us stare and snicker.

“She’s funny,” Ari says to Mercedes.

“Yeah,” says Mercedes. “She’s all right.” They each loop one arm through my elbows and pull me down the hall.

“So you’re not?” I ask, confused again.

They both crack up, then Ari asks, “Is she for real?”

“I don’t know,” says Mercedes. “But she’s a trip.”

“And gorgeous!” Ari runs his fingers through my hair.
“Oy vey es mir.
What I would give for such hair. And that
punim
?” He tweaks my cheek. “Look at that bone structure! ”

“Stop with the Jewish granny routine,” Mercedes says.

“I love your hair, too.” Ari reaches around to tousle Mercedes’s pretty curls.

“Get your grubby hands off my head.” Mercedes shakes viciously, but I can see the grin lurking on her lips. Ari takes that as an invitation to slip behind her and maul her with his fingers deep into her hair, massaging her scalp. Mercedes leans into him, purring like a cat.

“She loves it,” Ari says to me. And as suddenly as their shenanigans started, Ari stops. They both stare at me. “I think we should make her our mascot,” Ari says. I can feel a stupid grin frozen on my face because I’m so excited that they want to be my friends. Sort of. I try to rearrange my mouth and eyes into something less “nice,” but I can’t really. Nice is who I am. So I shrug, helplessly grinning at them.

“Good golly, Miss Molly!” Ari says with overexaggerated zeal. “Just how tall are you anyway?”

“She’s gotta be like six feet tall,” Mercedes says, peering up at me as if I’m a tree.

“And those legs. Up to her armpits with those legs.” I slouch a little, trying to seem less tall as Ari rubs his chin and eyes me. “No boobs.” I cross my arms over my chest. “No butt either. You’re a model, aren’t you?” he asks.

“You’re teasing me, right?” I venture from my tight self-hug.

“For real, you a model?” Mercedes eyes me suspiciously.

I have no idea if they’re trying to compliment me or if they’re being mean, so I stay quiet.

“If you’re not, you should be,” Ari says.

“You could make mad money,” Mercedes tells me as we join the last few stragglers on their way to lunch.

“We should get her on
America’s Next Top Model,
” Ari says.

“Can you see her talking to Miss Tyra?” Mercedes asks. “‘Yes, Tyra! Oh thank you, Tyra! I’m so sorry, Tyra!’ Then Tyra’d be like, ‘Cut the crap, girl, and pose!’” Mercedes shoves one hip out to the side with her hands in the air and sucks her cheeks in.

Ari pretends to take pictures of her while shouting, “Work it! Work it! ” as Mercedes hits silly pose after silly pose, making her way down the hall. I scurry behind them, desperate not to be left behind.

When they’re tired of the strange Tyra game they’re playing, Ari turns to me and asks, “So, not a model. Why’d you come to this school then?”

“I want to perform,” I say.

“Duh,” says Ari. “What kind of performing?”

I stare at them blankly.

“Music? Dance? Drama?” Mercedes asks.

“Everything!” I say. “All three!”

“A triple threat,” says Ari. “I get it.”

“Broadway bound,” says Mercedes.

“But which do you like the most?” Ari asks.

I think for a moment. “Music,” I say.

Ari brightens. “I’m a musician, too.”

“So is my dad,” I tell him.

Mercedes rolls her eyes and blows a puff of air into her bangs. “Musicians,” she snorts.

“Mercy here wants to be a
theater diva
,” Ari says with a British accent, and Mercedes bows deeply. Ari shoves her and she flings herself across the hallway, arms flailing, bumping into passing kids, who bump her back, so that she ends up banging noisily into lockers.

“Oh, I’d love to try acting!” I tell Mercedes, thinking back to that big black binder of auditions in Ms. Sanchez’s office. “I’ll try anything new.”

“Whatever,” says Ari. “Let’s talk about real art. What instrument do you play? Wait. Let me guess.” He studies me again for a moment. “You sing.”

“Hey, how’d you know?”

He wiggles his fingers in front of his body as if he’s playing the piano. “I’ve got an accompanist’s sixth sense.”

Before I can ask him what he means or tell him that I also play the lute, Mercedes flings open the double doors that lead into the cafeteria. A deafening roar overtakes us. Talking, laughing, shouting, and singing jumble together over music pumped through speakers in the ceiling. Kids are everywhere. In chairs, on the floor, on top of tables, slouching against the walls, dancing in the corners. I’ve never seen so many different kinds of people together in one place. From dark-skinned to light-skinned and every shade in between. Brown hair, blond hair, blue hair, no hair. Earrings, nose rings, pierced eyebrows, cheeks, and probably lots of places that I can’t see. Three girls in a little huddle are even wearing fairy wings. I want to stand quietly in the doorway for a long time getting used to it all, but Ari comes back to my side, grabs my wrist, and drags me to the lunch line.

 

With my tray full of fruit and salad I push into the seating area. Ari and Mercedes hang back, surveying the scene. “Hey! ” I point to an empty bench on one side of a long table in the center of the room. “Here’s a free space big enough for us.” I hurry over to plunk my tray down before someone else gets the seats, then I turn around and wave my hand over my head to make sure Ari and Mercedes see me. “Over here!” I call. They both stay absolutely still, staring at me with wide, intense eyes. “What?” I ask, and jerk around to see what I’ve done wrong. Am I stepping in a big puddle of spilled milk? Is the table covered with something disgusting? Did I accidentally pee my pants and not notice?

“Uh, can I help you?” the pretty girl sitting across from my tray says, although she doesn’t really sound like she wants to help me at all.

“With what?” I ask.

“Look, bee-yatch,” the girl says, shaking her head so that her long shiny black hair moves like a curtain across her shoulders. She stares at me with cold, calculating eyes—green and almond-shaped, like a cat’s.

I look carefully all around. “I don’t see anything,” I tell her, and the guy sitting on her right starts to laugh so hard that orange soda sprays from his mouth.

“Jesus, Timber,” the girl says to the guy, and shoves him hard on the shoulder. Then she wipes tiny drops of his soda off her bare arm while muttering, “Disgusting,” to the three girls on her left.

“Who the hell is this nancy at our table? ” one of the girls asks while all three of them stare at me. The girls seem a lot less happy to see me than the guy who is grinning so fiercely that I think of a wolf.

“I’m Zephyr,” I say. “Not Nancy. Who are you?” But they must not have heard me over the din in the room because nobody answers.

By then Ari is right behind me. He touches the back of my arm and stands on his tiptoes to say firmly into my ear, “Not here, Zeph.”

“Oh.” I pick up my tray and smile at them. “Sorry.” The wolf boy leans on his elbows and smirks. I think he’ll lick his lips as he watches me walk backward, bowing and repeating, “Sorry, sorry, so sorry,” until his intense gray-blue eyes make my skin itch and burn.

I join Ari and Mercedes huddled in a corner far away from my mistake. They both writhe on the floor, screaming with laughter as they recount over and over again what just happened.

Mercedes sits up tall and arranges her face in the exact look of near horror that the girl at the table gave me. “Uh, can I help you?” she says in a dead-on impersonation.

“With what? ” Ari asks breathily, hand pressed against his chest, big eyes blinking in a way that I’m guessing is supposed to be me.

“Look beeee-yatch,” Mercedes spits, wagging her head.

Ari pretends to look all around, up and down, under the table, inside his shirt, then straight back at Mercedes as if challenging her. “I don’t see anything,” he deadpans. “And my name’s not Nancy!” They howl with laughter before playing the entire scene again.

No matter how many times they go over it, I have no idea what I did, or why it was so terrible, or so terribly funny, anyway. All I can think about is the boy called Timber who looked as though he wanted to devour me. I shiver.

When they’ve exhausted themselves, Mercedes grabs both my shoulders with her hands and says, “That was off the hinges, Boo! And what’s so great is, you don’t even know why, do you?”

I shake my head miserably.

“First of all,” says Mercedes, “that’s where the seniors sit.”

“Except for Timber, he’s a junior,” Ari adds.

“Secondly, two words,” says Mercedes. “Bella Dartagnan.”

This sounds like the beginning of a healing spell my mother might mutter when someone has a rash.

“She does commercials, TV, and movies,” Ari says, and I realize that Bella Dartagnan is the name of the girl with the cat eyes.

“She missed five weeks of school last year because she had a speaking part in some new Disney movie,” Mercedes says. “Plus she knows Mary Kate and Ashley.”

Those must be the three girls sitting next to her on the bench.

“Not that that’s cool,” says Ari.

“No, we hate them. But still,” says Mercedes.

“And the guy? Timber Lewis Cahill? You remember him, right?” Ari asks, checking to see just how lame and clueless I am. I shake my head because I’ve never heard of him.

“He had a boy band when he was twelve,” Mercedes says.

“We’re talking major-label record deal,” Ari adds.

“TLC Boyz,” Mercedes says as if I should know.

Ari shimmies his shoulders and sings in falsetto, “Baby want to walk my dog.” Then he turns and yells, “Pure crap!” over his shoulder.

“We hate him, too. But still,” Mercedes says again.

“And you!” Ari says. “Sauntered right on up to their lunch table, where no mere mortals dare to venture.”

A pang of panic darts through my body when he says “no mere mortal.” Did I give myself away? Was it that easy to guess? On my first day?

“Oh my God! Oh my God!” Mercedes is up on her knees shouting and I cringe deeply into myself. If they’ve figured me out, I’m doomed. That’ll be it for me. I’ll have to leave and never come back.

“What? What?” Ari asks breathlessly.

“Zephyr!” Mercedes points straight at me, her eyes wild.

I am freaking out. I’ll have to make a run for it. Get away. Hide in the subway like a rat. But what if I get caught? Where will they take me? What will they do to me?

“What about her? ” Ari demands.

“The ELPH camera! ” Mercedes yells.

At the mention of the word “elf ” I spring to my fingers and toes in a runner’s stance. When I hear the word “camera” I scan the room for recording devices, then locate the doors, planning my escape, praying I can outrun whatever surveillance they’ll use to track me so I can get home in time to warn my family. We’ll have to flee. This is terrible. My mom and dad were right. This was too much for me to handle. I should’ve never thought I could be normal. Now I’ve ruined everything. Just as I push into my feet to take off, I slip on a paper napkin and wind up sprawled on the floor like a squashed bug.