The Reinvention of Moxie Roosevelt (15 page)

And as Ms. Hay got more comfortable on the floor, I told her the whole story from the very beginning.

So
that was a good thing. I had unburdened myself, and now there was one person at Eaton who knew the whole truth about me. Ms. Hay hadn’t chimed in with any advice or an opinion. She had just listened to what I had to say, and nodded. And that was that. She had actually seen the real me, and the world had not ended. My list of problems was still hefty. Kate still loathed and despised me. Any number of things might suddenly blow up in my face. And I wasn’t at all ready to perform Variation 28 in less than a week. But I felt like Ms. Hay had my back now. Which was weird, but good. Things were straight between us.

I had to do the same thing with Spinky and Reagan and Haven. Just fess up and get things straight with them. If I was very honest, and very lucky, maybe it would all unfold pretty much the same as it had with Ms. Hay. I’d tell them how I’d wanted to reinvent myself, and how it had started spinning out of control. We’d laugh about it. It would all be out in the open.

Yep. I had to come clean with my friends.

But not just yet.

I had to keep juggling my personalities for just a little while longer. Just until I found the Personality Log and got rid of it. It was the final loose end that needed to be tied up. I had to make sure that my personality experiment was explained to my friends, in my own words.That way I could make them see that I’d meant well the whole time—that it wasn’t the pointless pack of lies that it looked like on paper. Because the time was now—I had to decide once and for all who I was going to be.

And there was something else I wanted to do too.

In spite of her sneering and her mocking and her “I’m not going to tolerate this,” I needed to let Kate know that regardless of what she thought, I was not holding her secret over her head.

In spite of the hurt Kate had caused me, telling me I was nothing more than a huge joke to the school, part of me knew that only a miserable person will lash out unprovoked at someone like that.

I knew in my heart Kate was a bitter, unhappy girl.

And part of my making up for my personality deception had to be to reach out to her. After all, who better than I could understand why a person might want to pretend to be someone they were not? I was practically the Ambassador to Fictionalized-Character-Land. And in all likelihood Kate really only hated me because I knew the truth about who she was. I had to be like a Ms. Hay for Kate. I’d help her get things straight with one person at Eaton. Then she’d see that everything was okay.

I had to do all of those things, just as soon as I found that Personality Log and tore it to pieces before anyone read it without my explaining it to them.

Except when I got back to my room, I searched every crevice for my Personality Log for over an hour.

I couldn’t find it anywhere.

I held out hope the rest of the week. Every time my schedule took me someplace I hadn’t been for several days, I took the opportunity to search. I searched the bio lab. The library. The lost and found by the admissions office. The gym locker room. And every time my search came up empty, I thought of Kate. But she had been steering well clear of me all week. If she by some crazy chance had gotten my Personality Log, she certainly would have done something about it by now. Right? I’d just have to keep looking.

I dealt with the stress of the missing Personality Log by avoiding as many people as I could. I holed myself up in my practice room and obsessively played Variation 28—badly, I thought. But just working at it, working at anything, made me feel better. I holed myself up in my bedroom, trying to do algebra—also badly, which did
not
make me feel better. I knew if I talked to people, though, I’d probably end up adding facts to my personalities and getting myself in deeper just when I was ready to get out.

So when Reagan came by to talk about starting her club, I pretended to be asleep. When Haven invited me to come watch
The Haunting of Gothic Manor
on TV, I was momentarily caught off guard. Her unexpectedly robust appetite for B-horror-movies made me curious. But then I remembered my situation, and told her I had too much homework. When Spinky offered to take me to Jumble Thrift Gems to revitalize my wardrobe, I told her I’d spent my allowance already. Midterm exams were coming up, so everyone was lying low a little bit. I just lay lower than most.

But not completely out of sight. I ran into Reagan in the afternoon when I was leaving the phone room and she was going in.

“Mox!” she exclaimed, grabbing my arms and looking so pleased to see me, I almost backed out of her reach from sheer guilt. “So I’ve got a date!”

“A date?” I asked her. “With a boy?”

I had an absurd flash of Reagan holding hands with Luscious Luke.

“With the dean,” Reagan corrected.“Moxie, hello? What have I been living and breathing for weeks?”

“Oh, the appointment to pitch your club!” I exclaimed. How could I have forgotten about that? It only meant the entire world to Reagan.

“And I have this great idea. Do you want to come along? I was thinking you could talk about the sloop, and the sea cow. You know, not that many people know about the sea cow. I think it could really have an impact if I show up with another student—somebody like you—who is already serious and committed about animal rights. Somebody who’s already shown that she’s willing to devote time and energy like you did on the sloop this summer.”

Oh no. No no no.

Reagan wanted me to walk into the office of the person ultimately in charge of all discipline issues at Eaton, and lie through my teeth to him—and to her. Again! I couldn’t do it.

“Oh Reagan, I really can’t. I’m sorry.”

“Oh.”

Her face fell.

“I’m really, really sorry. I just . . . It’s complicated. I can’t talk to the dean. Not right now. I can’t . . . talk about it yet.”

Reagan’s eyes met mine. She looked at me carefully, and an expression of concern crossed her face.

“Is something wrong? Are you okay?”

I nodded. “I am. I will be. Like I said, it’s just . . . complicated.”

Reagan held my gaze.

“Moxie, you know you can tell me anything, right?”

I nodded again.

Tell her.
Tell her now.

But no. I was determined to get the log back first. I’d give it one more day. If it still didn’t turn up, I’d confess. Reagan would be the first person I went to.

“It’s fine, Reagan. Seriously.”

She let it go, and she let me go, and I went upstairs feeling as small as a dwarf lima bean. I redoubled my efforts to find the Personality Log. And I felt I actually,
finally
knew where it might be. I had chosen a photographer named Margaret Bourke-White for my midterm history project, and I’d taken out a bunch of books on her from the library. When Charnay came knocking to ask if she could borrow them, I lent her the whole stack. Now I realized that I had to have accidentally included the Personality Log in the pile. All I had to do was find Charnay, and get the books back.

The only things that kept me from completely falling apart worrying about all this stuff—the log, the talent show, the Kate thing,
every
thing—were the meditation lessons I’d gotten from Haven, and the fact that I now had Ms. Hay to talk to. She was my Oprah. I poured it all out to her every time we got together, with no pauses for commercial interruptions. Sometimes we spent more time talking about The Reinvention of Moxie Roosevelt than we did about comedy. She didn’t offer any theory about Kate. She never told me what to do at all—she just listened. But when I said that I planned to junk the whole personality experiment and explain to my friends what I’d been doing, she nodded vigorously.

“Yeah, I agree with you, Moxie. That’s a good idea, and the sooner, the better.”

We were sitting at adjoining desks leaning toward each other like two freshmen passing notes. The comedy essay she had photocopied for me to read lay ignored on my desk.

“I’ve just got to find the Personality Log first. So I can rip it up and throw it away and no one will ever see it. I want to explain things to people on my terms, without worrying that the book will show up to haunt me.”

Ms. Hay looked thoughtful.

“And that needs to happen before you talk to your friends?”

I nodded. “But I did make some progress this morning. I left a note for Kate, saying we needed to talk as soon as possible. I’ve been thinking about it, and I’ve realized I need to take action and try to make peace with her. Because I’m pretty sure she’s been thinking all this time I was holding her secret over her head, but I wasn’t. She’ll see it’s all okay when I explain it to her. See, ’cause I’ve learned my lesson about all this, so I have to be the bigger person with her now, and . . . what do they call it? Pay it forward to Kate, or whatever.That sounded lame, but you know what I mean.”

“Hmmm,” Ms. Hay said, her tiny lips pressed together.

“What?”

“I just think you need to be careful,” she said.

“Oh, no. Of course. I’ll be careful,” I said.

I guess Ms. Hay thought I might give in to the temptation to gloat a bit to Kate after she realized I knew who she really was. But Ms. Hay would see. I had seriously learned my lesson. I would not be smug while Kate learned hers.

“Maybe we should talk about this Steve Martin piece. Since you were supposed to have read it.”

“Sure, sure,” I said. “And I did read it. He’s funnier on TV.”

“And I’m supposed to be following up with you on your prep for the New Student Talent Show,” Ms. Hay added. “We only have a few days left.”

I squirmed. Honesty was my new policy with Ms. Hay, but the truth was I hadn’t done any work on preparing at all. I’d done plenty of inner belly-aching and freaking out, but no actual writing.

“Is it required that I figure it out by a certain date?” I asked.

She gave me a scrutinizing glance.

“No,” she said slowly. “But I highly recommend you not leave it till the last minute. Which is almost here already.”

“Oh no,” I said. “Not to the last minute. See, that’s the thing about me, Ms. Hay—I always do what I say I’m going to do, eventually. I’ll be ready for the talent show.”

“At the risk of sounding very boring and very ancient, Moxie, there’s an old saying that goes ‘Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.’ Something you might want to keep in mind.”

I beamed at my teacher.

“I will,” I said.

And I meant it. I intended to.

But it was already too late.

I was
actually in a really good mood after EE, and I hurried back to my room, full of plans about how I would go to Kate and we would talk and fix our misunderstandings. But as soon as I opened the door to my suite, I saw that something was very wrong. There were a bunch of people there. People I knew. Reagan. Sage was there, and Guadalupe, and the Mavix. And standing, closest to the door was Kate Southington, who was looking at me through narrowed eyes.

“And speak of the devil, here she is now,” said Kate. “Why don’t we just ask her to explain it to us herself?”

I looked around at the faces in the room, confused. What were all these people doing in my room, and where was Spinky? Haven gave me a small smile, but Reagan looked very upset, and the triumphant expression on Kate’s face was making me very nervous.

“Go on, explain,” Kate said. “Maybe this will help jog your memory.”

She tossed something toward me, and by reflex I caught it.

It was my Personality Log. I had not lost it. Kate had stolen it from me.

“That’s my . . . book,” I said flatly, looking only at Kate. So I had left the book in my room then. “You came into my room and took this?”

“Oh, so I’m the criminal now? Give me a break. I read all your little lists, Moxie, if that’s even your real name.”

“It
is
my real name.” Who in the known universe would invent such a name?

“If you say so,
Moxie
. You’re quite the identity thief. So I took the liberty of tracking down some of your victims. I think you owe them all an explanation.”

My face was burning as I locked eyes with Kate. How dare she, of all people, call me out on things I’d made up about myself? And not even in private. She had bided her time going through the lists of lies I’d told, and gathered the people I’d told them to in my own room! My stomach lurched. I felt like throwing up. I was the one who knew
her
secret! Didn’t she realize I could just blurt her true identity out to everyone right now? Or did she think my credibility would be so damaged no one would ever believe anything I said again?

“Can we speed this along, people?” asked the Mavix. “I’ve got an extra-help trig session scheduled that I can’t be late for.”

“Fine,” Kate said. She pointed at the Mavix. “She told you she had extra toes.”

“Oh please, this is about toes? You underclassmen don’t know the meaning of the words
academic pressure
. You kids figure this out yourself.”

She was out of the room in a flash, but Kate looked undaunted. She pointed at Guadalupe.

“She told you she was a Yankees fan,” Kate declared.

Guadalupe looked from Kate to me, frowning.

“You’re not a Yankees fan?” she asked.

“They’re fine,” I mumbled.

“She doesn’t know anything about them,” Kate said. “She made it all up. She was making fun of you.”

“I wasn’t making fun of anyone!” I protested. My voice sounded thin and weird. My face felt funny, and my head seemed huge, like one of those aliens from Roswell. Where was Spinky?

“But that’s . . . why would anyone do that? What’s your problem?”

“I don’t have a—I just wanted to . . . I’m sorry, Lupe. The Yankees really seem very interesting.”