Past Perfect (15 page)

I already explained this to you.”

“Ah, yes.” Mom sighed. “Now that you mention it, it seems that I do remember something about ice cream connoisseurs.”

“And we can’t be connoisseurs if we don’t
eat ice cream
,” Fiona continued.

“Then we will just be like
normal people
,” I agreed.

“And no one will respect our expertise,” Fiona concluded.

So we ordered a scoop of every flavor on the menu. The vanilla was the best, which was surprising. Usually vanilla provides a good base for hot fudge or nuts, but unadorned vanilla rarely impresses me. I once read that vanilla is the most popular flavor of ice cream, but I don’t believe that—if vanilla is the most frequently ordered, that must be because it’s the most readily available, not because it’s truly the most
loved
.

“Is this vanilla bean ice cream?” I asked the waitress.

“I’m not—” she began.

“Well,
obviously
it’s made from vanilla beans; it’s vanilla flavored,” Fiona said, rolling her eyes.

“I know that, but vanilla and vanilla
bean
are two different flavors, and vanilla
bean
is a much more intense experience.

Is this vanilla bean?”

The waitress looked uncomfortable. “I can ask the chef—”

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“Is it gelato?” Fiona demanded. “It feels much softer and meltier than normal ice cream. Like gelato.” Fiona’s family went to Italy two years ago, and ever since then she hasn’t shut up about Italian gelato and how it is this amazing taste sensation and how no American gelato knockoffs can even pretend to compare.

“Fiona, if this were
gelato
, don’t you think they would have mentioned that on the menu? Don’t you think that would be a selling point?”

The waitress said, “I’m not sure I know the difference between vanilla ice cream and vanilla gelato . . .” Fiona’s and my jaws dropped. “Oh my God,” I said.

“They are two totally different things,” Fiona said.

“See, when you talk about freezing points . . .” I said.

My parents dragged us away.

“That waitress was flirting with me,” Dad announced once we were out of the restaurant. He said it in his “whispering voice,” which meant it was still loud enough for the waitress, all of her coworkers, and the shoppers at every other store in the mall to overhear.

“Ew,” I said. “She was not.”

Dad chuckled with delight over how hot and eligible he imagined himself to be. “She kept coming over to ‘try to collect my plate’ . . .”

“Because that is her job,” I reminded him.

“And the way she looked at your mother? Pure jealousy!”
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Dad slipped his arm around Mom’s waist. “Poor thing. I left her a big tip.”

“Mom, are you going to let him get away with imagining this nauseating
affair de coeur
with the nineteen-year-old waitress at Basta Pasta?”

But for no good reason, my mother doesn’t mind that Dad is delusional. “He’s a handsome man.” She kissed his cheek.

“I wouldn’t blame any woman for flirting with him.” Fiona giggled. This must all be so hilarious when you don’t live with it every day.

Once in the parking lot, we let my parents get ahead of us so we could talk without them overhearing. “You’re in a good mood tonight,” Fiona said to me.

“What makes you say that? The part where I didn’t scream at my father in the middle of a crowded restaurant?”

“Sure, that part. I don’t know, you just seem unusually smiley. Kind of soft around the edges.”

“Hmm,” I said.

“Anything going on you want to talk about?” She nudged me with her hip. “Any
boys
?”

I looked at her. I wanted to tell her,
Yes, I went to Reenactmentland, and I had a really great time with a really great guy.
I had never in my life
not told
Fiona about a kiss.

Except I knew what Fiona would say. She would accuse me of being Benedict Arnold again. She would worry about the War, and if I had told Dan anything that they could use
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against us.

And as much as I was excited about kissing Dan and wanted the world to know, I also didn’t want anyone to know. I didn’t want to admit this to anyone, because it was wrong.

So I just laughed at Fiona and said, “
What
boys? I still don’t know any. You’re spending too much time with the milliner girls. I’m in a good mood because we’re winning the War, that’s all.”

“Sending those British troops over there on the Fourth was a genius move,” Fiona agreed.

“You know what they say: the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

“Except in this instance, I think it’s like, my enemy is actually my friend if I have another enemy who is also the enemy of my first enemy.”

“Totally,” I said. “That’s totally what it’s like.” We got in the car and my father began to drive toward Fiona’s house. “Chelsea,” Dad said, all of a sudden putting on his somberest, most silversmith-ish voice. “Your mother and I need to talk to you about something.”

“Am I in trouble?” I asked. It definitely sounded like I was, only I hadn’t done anything wrong recently. Other than

. . . Oh, right. Going to Reenactmentland. To visit a boy who could never,
should
never be mine. My guilty conscience kicked into high gear. I would make a terrible criminal. My
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father hadn’t even accused me of anything yet, and already I felt like throwing up and confessing to everything. Or maybe confessing first just to get it out there, and saving the throwing up for afterward.

“Chuck, I thought we were going to wait until we had dropped off Fiona,” my mother murmured.

“Don’t worry about that,” Fiona said. “Whatever it is, Chelsea will tell me all about it later. So you might as well talk about it while I’m here, to spare her some time.” She smiled at me reassuringly.

This is my parents’ favorite tactic, by the way. To go through all of dinner acting like everything is fine, and then to bring up a serious, horrible issue once I’m trapped in the car with them.

That’s their guarantee that I can’t run away. They broke the news to me about how “Someday, you will be a woman, and you will get your period” on a three-hour road trip to Washington, D.C.

“Chelsea, we found something in your room,” Dad said.

From his tone, the only follow-up I could imagine was

“drugs” or “pornographic magazines.” Except that I didn’t own any drugs or porn.

“What were you doing in my room?” I demanded, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned from the War, it’s that the best defense is a good offense.

“I was looking for my gray belt,” Mom replied.

“Well, that’s not even
in
my room.”

“I noticed that. Where is it, by the way?”
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I pondered that for a moment. “I don’t know. Fi, is it at your place?”

“Maybe?” Fiona said.

“Can we focus on the issue at hand?” Dad snapped.

“Right. Okay, so you snuck into my room, into my
private
space
, to look for something that
wasn’t even there
, and you found . . . something.”

“But not my belt,” Mom contributed.

“We found two historical costumes that look remarkably like . . . Well, there’s no way to couch this in polite terms.

They’re Civil War uniforms, Chelsea.” Dad cleared his throat.

“You have two Civil War uniforms in your closet.”

“Oh,” I said. “Those.” I had a sudden vision of my closet door hanging wide open, the Undercover Operation uniforms center stage, with all my clothes spread out on my bed as I tried to decide what to wear to see Dan.

“Chelsea, do you want to stop reenacting the Colonial times and start reenacting the Civil War?” Mom asked, and I could hear in her voice that no question could pain her more. “I know you were thinking about not coming back to Essex this year, but I just never imagined . . . Were you trying to tell us that you didn’t want to work at Essex because you wanted to work across the street?” She paused. “Over
there
?”

“No!” I protested.

“Denial,” Dad noted, gung ho about staging this inter-vention. “You’re sixteen years old, and that’s mature
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enough to make your own decisions,
some
of the time, but in this instance your mother and I both feel that you’re making a serious mistake. Which war fought for equality and democracy, the foundation of our society? Meanwhile, which war had casualties exceeding the United States’

losses in all our other wars combined? Which document do you hear quoted more often: America’s Declaration of Independence or the Southern States’ Declarations of the Causes of Secession?”

Okay,
whoa
, attack of the rhetorical questions!

“Who’s pictured on the penny?” Dad went on. “Abraham Lincoln! Who’s pictured on the quarter? George Washington! A quarter is worth twenty-five times as much as a penny, just as the American Revolution is worth twenty-five times as much as the American Civil War!”

“Oh my God,” I said. “Dad, do you have porphyria or something?”

Next to me, Fiona was shaking with silent laughter.

Mom’s turn: “Honey, we love you, and we’ll love you no matter what. But I feel so disappointed that you would choose the Civil War over the community that you were raised in, that has always supported you.”

I wanted to bang my head against a hard surface. This thing with Dan was making me careless. That was the problem. I saw one cute boy, and then all of a sudden I couldn’t even remember how to keep a secret from my parents.

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“Wow,” Fiona spoke up. “Chelsea and I
had
been thinking about joining the Civil War. We weren’t sure, but we were considering it. But you’ve brought up so many persuasive points that we hadn’t thought of. I’m really feeling now like I
don’t
want to quit Essex.”

And this is a credit to Fiona’s talents as an actress: she sounded one hundred percent genuine. That is how good she is.

So I took the cue and said in
my
best acting voice, “Gosh, I feel silly now for even thinking about leaving Essex.” We dropped off Fiona, who gave me a
good luck/I’m so
sorry
pat on the shoulder, and my parents continued their pro-Colonial propaganda the rest of our drive home. I bit my tongue and agreed with everything they told me. This is probably what it’s like when you’re a heroin addict, and your parents try to convince you to quit smoking cigarettes.

At the end of the drive, I said to them, “I’m really not going to join Reenactmentland. I promise. It was just a dumb phase. You know how teenagers are.”

We went into our house. I paused on the stairwell up to my bedroom. “Um,” I said, all casual, “where
are
those Civil War costumes now?”

“We gave them to Reenactmentland,” Mom said.

Dad snorted and muttered, “As if they deserve them.”

“Oh, Mom,” I said, horrified. “No, you did not. Please tell me you’re joking.”

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“We’d want them to do the same for us. These are wonderful costumes and they belong with people who will wear them well,” Mom said firmly. “That’s just not you.” I stared down at her for a moment, but I didn’t speak.

There was nothing I could say. Then I retreated to my room to call Tawny and report that our army had lost some ground.

155

S
aturday evening, after Essex had closed for the day, and we were having a War strategy meeting.

Okay, no. Not quite true. It was indeed Saturday evening, and we were
going
to have a War strategy meeting. But Tawny was running late. Until she showed up, we were all waiting for her out by the creek, playing Top Fives.

“Lenny, Nathaniel, Ezra, Robert, and, um . . .” Anne twirled a strand of hair around her finger and gazed up at the night sky, trying to think of her fifth name. “Bryan,” she said at last.

I made an involuntary gagging noise. Both Anne and Bryan glared at me.

“Well, you
have
to have five,” Anne defended herself.

PAST PERFECT

“Bryan’s turn,” Patience declared. Patience is usually the person in charge of Top Fives.

Bryan squinted his eyes and rested his chin on his fists, deep in contemplation. “Hmmm,” he drawled. Hardly anyone ever asked for updates on Bryan’s Top Five because no one cared. Now that his moment had come, it was obvious he was going to drag it out for as long as possible.

“Fiona,” he began at last, “Rosaline, Caitlin, Patience, and Anne.”

“Whoa,” Fiona said. “Stop the presses. When did Chelsea get knocked out of your Top Five, Bryan?” I wasn’t going to complain, but I had been wondering the same thing. When the boy who has had an untreat-able crush on you since you were eleven years old suddenly ousts you from his Top Five, you know you’ve hit rock bottom.

Bryan puffed out his chest in a way that was maybe intended to look self-important, but actually just resembled a toad preparing to
ribbit
. “After Chelsea undermined the Undercover Operation, I stopped seeing her appeal.”

“Hey, my
parents
are the ones who trashed our Civil War uniforms!” I protested. “Do you think I
wanted
that to happen?”

“Well, you let them.” Bryan shrugged, like
there you have it
.

Everyone else nodded along.

“I should never have trusted Chelsea with the uniforms,” Patience said for the millionth time since Wednesday. The
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look on her face implied that not only had I lost the costumes, but also I had probably handed the Civil Warriors a kitten with a sign tied around its neck reading, “Please torture me.” Patience went on, miserably, “We worked so hard on them.

I should have given them to someone who would have been more careful.”

I wondered if Lieutenants during the Revolutionary War had to put up with this sort of bullshit, too.