Me, My Elf & I (6 page)

“No, I could say the same thing about my family eating gefilte fish and drinking Manischewitz. All I’m saying is, every family’s a little bit weird. Besides, this is cool. This is Drake Addler’s house,” Ari says with a big silly grin.

Mercedes laughs. “You’re whipped already, boy.”

I hear my mom coming toward the kitchen again so I grab Ari and Mercedes to make a break for the back stairs. They don’t need any more evidence that we’re not like other families.

 

In my room, we find Willow slumped in the windowseat, hugging a pillow and staring into the blue sky. Even though it’s nearly four o’clock, she’s still in her white sleeping tunic with her hair pulled back in a long messy braid that brushes her waist. She’s been like this since we arrived in Brooklyn. All she does is sigh and mope around, missing her boyfriend, Ash. Some days I feel bad for her. She’s too old to go to high school here, not that she’d want to anyway, and she doesn’t want to try an erdler college. What she wants is to be back in Alverland with Ash and her friends. Even though I miss Alverland, especially my cousin Briar, who’s my best friend, I don’t want to go back. There’s too much to do and see and experience here. But Willow would rather everything stayed the same. I nudge her. “Hey, will you go in Mom’s room, please?”

She glances up at us and stares at Ari and Mercedes as if she can’t quite figure out what they’re doing here. Reluctantly, I introduce everyone. “This is my older sister,” I tell Ari and Mercy. “And these are my friends,” I tell Willow. Her eyes get misty at the mention of friends.

“Aunt Flora called today,” she says.

“Mom told me,” I say.

“Briar wanted to talk to you.”

“Sorry I missed her.”

“Ash was there.” She sniffs and wipes a hankie under her nose. “He walked all the way to Ironweed so we could talk.”

“You must’ve been so happy to hear his voice,” I say, but she lets out a little sob. “Oh, Willow,” I say, and rub her shoulder. I hate to see her so lonely so I say, “You can stay in here with us, if you want.” But Willow shakes her head, grabs a pillow, and shuffles out of the room. “She misses her boyfriend,” I say to Ari and Mercedes.

“Dang, it’s like
Little House on the Prairie
, walking ten miles for a phone,” says Mercedes.

“Is she okay?” Ari asks quietly.

“Looks like she needs Prozac,” Mercedes mutters.

“Who’s Prozac?” I ask.

“What, not who,” Mercedes says. “They’re happy pills.”

“Really!” I say. “Do you have some?”

“No,” she snorts. “Do I look like I need medication?”

“Adderall, maybe,” Ari says.

“Shut up,” Mercedes says and pushes him.

“Willow is fine,” I say. “She doesn’t really like Brooklyn, that’s all.”

“How can you not like Brooklyn?” Mercedes asks.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I love it here!”

“Maybe she’s homesick,” Ari points out, and I know he’s right, but I’m tired of Willow getting all the attention because she’s sad. “She’s like some gorgeous, pouting goddess,” Ari says. “Between the two of you, you could have half of Brooklyn on their knees.”

“Really?” I ask. “In Alverland, Willow and I are nothing special, but ever since we moved here, people stare at us and tell us that we’re beautiful all the time. She hates it.”

“You like it?” Mercedes asks me.

I shrug. “Not really, but you know, there are worse things people could say.”

“Why aren’t you dressed like the rest of your family?” Ari asks. “They all have those cool long shirt things with all those necklaces. Your dad dresses like that, too. I thought it was just some kind of costume for the band, but it’s for real, isn’t it?”

“They’re called tunics and I didn’t wear mine because I wanted to look normal.”

“You think that looks normal?” Mercedes points to my decidedly dorky pleated skirt and sweater vest.

I shrug helplessly.

“Let’s look in her closet.” Ari opens the double doors next to my bed. I plop to the floor and munch on almonds as they rummage through my clothes.

“Why’d Timber walk you out of school yesterday?” Mercedes asks as she scoots hanger after hanger of my new erdler clothes across my closet bar.

“I don’t know,” I say. “He just stopped by to properly introduce himself.”

Ari narrows his eyes. “Yeah, right. Suddenly he’s the BAPAHS Welcome Wagon.”

“What’s BAPAHS?” I ask.

Mercedes gives me the look of exasperation and amusement that I’m growing accustomed to. “That’s where you go to school, Boo. Brooklyn Academy of Performing Arts High School.”

“So what’s a welcome wagon?”

“Never mind,” says Ari. “I’m just saying, Timber isn’t known for being Mr. Friendly.”

“Unless he wants to hit dem skins,” Mercedes says. Then before I have to ask, she turns to me and says, “That doesn’t mean playing the drums, Zephyr. It means, you know, getting with you.”

“You mean like boyfriend and girlfriend?” I ask as a blush creeps up my neck into my cheeks. Will he be at the movie and coffee shop with me someday?

“Bella is his girlfriend,” Mercedes says. “But that doesn’t stop him from messing around.”

Before I can ask for a more detailed explanation, Ari lets out a shriek from the very back of my closet. I’m afraid he’s come face-to-face with one of Bramble’s blind mice or three-legged squirrels, but he emerges with an armload of my Alverland clothes. “Jackpot!” he yells, and tosses tunics, leggings, and boots onto my bed. “Look at this, Mercy!” He holds up my favorite robin’s-egg-blue tunic with indigo and brown embroidery around the neckline and sleeves.

“Dang!” Mercedes says, fingering the soft linen. “That’s fine, girl. Where’d you get this?”

“My grandmother made it,” I tell them.

“Put it on! Put it on!” Ari says.

“Fashion show,” Mercedes sings and shoves the tunic at me.

I hold it in my hands and shake my head. I know how erdlers act when they see us in our Alverland clothes. Anytime we leave our village in the woods to go into Ironweed for supplies, we get stared at, yelled at, called names. “Oh, I get it,” I say coldly, understanding for the first time what Mercedes has been trying to teach me. This is where I have to hold my own and protect myself. “You’re trying to convince me to wear something stupid so you guys can laugh your heads off when I show up at school looking like a freak.” I crumple the tunic in my hands and toss it to the floor. I’d truly convinced myself that Ari and Mercedes might be my friends, but obviously, like everything else I’ve thought I understood here, I’m wrong.

“Zeph!” Ari says. “We’re totally serious. This is amazing. I bet you look like a freakin’ goddess in this thing.”

Mercedes says, “My aunt Nina would kill for this.”

“Nobody has anything like it,” Ari adds.

“Exactly,” I say.

They both nod. “That’s just it,” Ari tells me. “This is the kind of thing everyone at our school would die for. To have their very own style. We all try to be so original, but look at us, we’re just copying somebody else in the end. But this! This is hot.”

“No it’s not, really,” I tell them. “It’s very lightweight. My grandmother wove it out of linen from the flax we grow.”

They both shake their heads and chuckle. “Timber would be slobbering all over you if you showed up dressed like this,” Mercedes says.

I shiver at the mention of Timber. “Really?” Maybe they aren’t trying to trick me.

“Really,” Ari says resolutely.

A little bell rings and I look around the room, confused. Did I set an alarm? Is someone ringing our doorbell downstairs? The dinging continues as Ari rummages through his messenger bag. “My BlackBerry’s pinging,” he mumbles, and I wonder if he’s a little bit crazy. I mean, first off, blackberries aren’t in season and second, unless he knows some magic that I don’t, blackberries don’t make noise. But then he holds up a small machine and stares at its tiny screen. “Hey, check it out! ” he says to Mercedes. “Bella’s blogging.”

“Move over,” Mercedes says, grabbing the thingy from him.

I squirm in beside her so I can see what they’re looking at. “Oh wow! ” I say. “It’s like a little, tiny computer!”

Ari’s mouth hangs open. “Are you telling me that you’ve never seen a BlackBerry?”

“This thing?” I ask, to make sure he’s not really talking about the fruit.

Mercedes asks, “What about a Palm Pilot or a Treo or an iPhone?”

I just shrug.

“Do you even own a computer?” Ari asks.

Once again my face burns with embarrassment. I’m starting to think I’ll go through the rest of my life here looking like I have permanent sunburn. “I’ve seen computers,” I tell them. “Sometimes we went to the library in the town nearby to use them.”

“Whoa,” Ari says. “It’s like you’re Amish but you’re not.”

I look away from the BlackBerry and stare out the window like Willow. Blackberries, boysenberries—everything I understand is so different from what’s here.

Ari comes to stand next to me. “Hey, so what, Zephyr. It’s no big deal. Actually, computers are a huge pain in the ass. Mercedes doesn’t have one either.”

“Shut up,
pandejo
. That’s not true. My parents both have laptops.”

“Yeah, but you don’t personally have one.”

“I’ve seen a freakin’ PDA before,” Mercedes says.

Ari sighs. “Jeez, Mercedes, I’m trying to make her feel better, you nimrod. Get it?”

“Oh, I get it all right,
pinche pito de pitufo
. Make the Puerto Rican girl seem like a bass-ackward loser so the new girl doesn’t think she’s all alone. My family didn’t just row over from the islands, you know. Both my parents are lawyers.”

“God, Mercy, don’t get all ACLU on me.”

“Are you guys really fighting?” I ask. My breath gets short and my head spins. We don’t speak to each other like this in Alverland unless someone is extremely angry, and then watch out because the spells start to fly and someone is going to end up looking like a toad.

Mercedes is the first to stop. She punches Ari on the arm, then smiles broadly. “Nah,” she says. “Just giving each other a hard time. Let’s see what our little enemies have to say today.”

Ari holds up the small screen so all of us can look at once. “Whenever Bella and her clique start blogging, I get pinged.”

“Most people just have a MySpace or Friendster page with a blog, but Bella has to be
special
,” Mercedes says in a whiny voice. “She has her own Web site. I heard her daddy hired the same company that designed Britney Spears’s Web site. Which is, you know, totally gross because Britney is such a ho dog and a has-been.”

“And of course Bella has a blog, because who doesn’t have their own blog these days? I swear my cat could have his own blog,” says Ari.

Bella’s pretty face stares out at us from the screen while soft music plays in the background. Next to her picture is something she wrote, which I read through quickly.

“What a load of crap!” Mercedes says. “If you want the real story, you have to go to the secret blog.” They both grin.

“There’s a hotspot,” Ari explains. “If you click this picture of Bella’s stupid dog in the corner . . .”

“Which is appropriate because it’s a female dog, if you know what I mean,” Mercedes adds.

Ari navigates the blinking dot on the screen until it touches the little fluffy white dog’s face. “You find a secret link.” Ari clicks and a new blank page with a white box in the center opens up. “And voilà, here’s the secret blog.”

“Or so they think,” says Mercedes.

“Someone leaked the password on another blog called I-Hate-Bella,” Ari says. “And the password is . . .” He pauses dramatically then bellows,
“Belladonna! ”
as he types.

“How stupid and self-centered is it to call
yourself
beautiful lady?” says Mercedes.

“That’s what ‘belladonna’ means in Italian,” Ari explains.

“Belladonna is also the name of a plant,” I tell them. “My mom uses it for sore throats or sprains but you have to be careful because it’s poisonous. The berries are really sweet but they can kill you.” Ari and Mercedes both stare at me like they’re interested so I continue. “It’s also called deadly nightshade or devil’s cherries,” I tell them with a half laugh. Now they look at each other with their mouths hanging open.

“Dang, that’s sick,” says Ari.

“That girl is messed up, calling herself the devil’s cherry,” Mercedes adds.

We all turn our attention back to the screen, which has changed again. Now it’s full of pictures of Bella and her friends from school. In some pictures, the girls are all holding brown bottles or smoking cigarettes. In others they look really tired, draped over furniture, half-asleep. Then sometimes they look almost crazy, jumping around, sticking out their tongues, dancing. There are also a few pictures of Timber. When I see his smile, I get fluttery inside.

“Everybody reads it,” Ari tells me.

“They put up pictures of themselves partying and say rude stuff about other people at school,” Mercedes says.

“Do Bella and her friends know everyone reads it?” I ask. Mercedes and Ari both shake their heads and snicker. “They don’t know that you read it?” I say, eyes wide. “Isn’t that snooping?”

“Oh puh-leeeeze! ” says Ari. “Don’t be so naïve. They’re probably the ones who leaked the password in the first place. And anyway, if Bella was smart she could go check out her user stats on her Web hoster and find out who’s been on her blog.”

“But they act all innocent so they can be like, ‘Oh we have this exclusive, private blog where we can say any snarky thing about anybody we want!’ But no one else can say, ‘I saw what you said on your blog,’ because they’ll be like, ‘What are you doing reading my private blog?’ Like anybody cares anyway,” Mercedes says.