This Is Me From Now On (7 page)

And then, with probably the whole school gawking at us, plus Nisha and Lily whispering and frowning, I left the building with Francesca Pattison.

As soon as we were outside, I wanted to get down to business, ask about the “staggering old diary” and also about her great-great-aunt's incredibly unboring life. But before I could even open my mouth, Francesca said something that almost made me choke on my Bubblelicious: “Okay, Evie, so tell me
all
about Zane.”

“Excuse me?”

“Zane. Your boyfriend?”

“He's not my boyfriend.” I spat my blobby gum into a tissue, then stuffed the tissue into my jeans pocket.

“But I told you, I'm psychic about these things.” Francesca was smiling. “And I can tell you're madly in love with him.”

“I'm not—”

“Okay, let me put it this way: You have a massive passionate
crush.
But you don't have the slightest idea what to do about it. Am I getting warmer?”

I felt my cheeks burning. “Okay. Um, no offense, Francesca, but it's kind of none of your business. Can we please just talk about Angelica Beaumont?”

“Of course! If Zane is a painful subject, let's
absolutely
talk about Angelica.” She did the heart attack thing. “Don't you adore her name, Evie? Although I wonder what her friends called her. Maybe Angie. Or Angel.”

“You don't know?”

“How would I?”

“You have the diary, right?”

“In my hands? Oh,
no,
Evie, my great-grandmother does.”

“Who?”

“Angelica's baby sister Isabel. In San Francisco.”

I blinked. “Well, so how are we going to get it, then?”

“We'll write to her. This afternoon.”

“Shouldn't we call? Wouldn't that be faster?”

“Well, yes, but Isabel doesn't hear well on the phone. Believe me, I've tried, and so has Aunt Sam. It's utterly hopeless.”

“What about e-mail?”

“She's ninety-four years old, Evie. I sincerely doubt she e-mails.”

A few minutes later we were standing in front of our two houses. A teeny frantic voice in my head was whispering:
JUST GO HOME, EVIE. IT'S NOT TOO LATE FOR A MYSTERY BOX, EVEN IF YOU HAVE TO WORK ALL BY YOURSELF
. But I told the voice to shut up; I was going to do this thing with Francesca. Starting now.

“We could write the letter at my house,” I offered, not very enthusiastically. “As long as we're super-quiet. Grace has an SAT tutor this afternoon.”

“On the second day of school?” Francesca said. “Help, how alarming. Let's just go to Aunt Sam's.”

“Is she home?”

“Yes, I think so. Wait, hold it, she's in the city this afternoon, auditioning for a soap. Reading for the part of the vixen scientist. Isn't that hilarious?” She turned her key in the door. “Topaz? Tourmaline? Hey, little girls, I'm home.”

I expected two miniature poodles with pedicures and poofy haircuts to come yapping over to greet her, but the house stayed dark and quiet. So then Francesca pulled off her poncho, kicked off her cowboy boots, and turned on every light in the entry. Way down the front hall I spotted
something lumpish and gray, like a dusty old bedroom slipper. Suddenly it hopped away.

“Topaz!” Francesca cried. “Have you been chewing up the rugs again?”

“Was that a
rabbit
?” I practically shrieked.

She nodded, laughing. “Aunt Sam's true loves. Other than gorgeous Tristan, but alas, he broke her heart.”

“Wait. Wait. Her heart was broken by a
rabbit
?”

“What? No, Evie, don't be an imbecile. Tristan Royce is an
actor.
Was. In the play that just ended.” Francesca walked into the living room, which had huge, cream-colored pillows, and CDs, all over the floor, and the heavy leftover wine-and-perfume smell of Samantha's party. One corner of the coffee-colored rug was in shreds; Francesca got on her knees and tied the wool strands into little knots, then tucked them underneath.

“So, anyway,” she continued calmly, as if covering up for rabbit vandalism was something she did all the time, “now they're both looking for new acting jobs. And new relationships, too. It's all so deeply tragic, don't you think? Oh well, c'est la vie. Are you hungry?”

“Starving.” All I'd had for lunch was Sun Chips, and I'd
barely eaten those. I followed Francesca into the stainless-steel kitchen, which looked shiny and empty, as if it had been used maybe a total of three times. She opened the enormous fridge.

“Take what you want,” she said, waving her hand. “We're absolutely loaded from the party. None of those actors ever eat anything, so we'll be living off this junk
forever.
”

I looked inside. Someone—was it Samantha?—had crammed in all the leftovers without wrapping anything, so it was like this one big cheese puff/sushi/guacamole/salsa/ shish-kebob stew. Plus in the way back of the fridge there were huge Glad bags of lettuce leaves, which I guessed was what Topaz and Tourmaline ate when they weren't gorging on wool.

“Uh, thanks. Maybe later,” I said.

Francesca looked disappointed. Then suddenly her eyes widened. “I know,” she said.

She opened the freezer and pulled out five quarts of I Scream—Triple Fudge Marshmallow Chunk, Golden Brownie with Caramel Fudge Ripple, Peanut Butter Chip Cookie Dough, plus two others with the labels peeled off—and then grabbed two spoons.

I stared in shock. “More party food?”

“Oh, no. Actors don't eat
ice cream
. Well, actually, Aunt Sam sneak-eats it late at night when she thinks I'm asleep. Here.” She handed me a spoon. “So does Grace sneak-eat?”

“Grace? Of course not. She's way too self-disciplined.”

“Oh, I bet she does, Evie. To work off all that academic stress. What about your mom?”

I laughed. “
Never.”

She pulled off all five lids and licked the insides. “Veggie burgers and salad every night for dinner, right? God, you must be so sick of it.”

“Well, sometimes,” I admitted. “But of course it's good for you. I mean, you're supposed to eat that way, right?”

“I guess.” She screwed up her face. “But I really just detest all those bloody
rules.
”

I dipped my spoon into the Triple Fudge Marshmallow Chunk: just the perfect temperature, slightly melty, but not soup. “Was that why you left your old school?” I asked casually.

“Because of the food? Don't be silly.” She took a gigantic spoonful of Unlabeled. Then she grinned at me. “Evie,” she said. “Here's a burning question: Do you think Espee sneak-eats?”

I laughed so hard, a gob of marshmallow went up my nose.
“What?”

“Because I'm positive she does. Here's my theory: I think she's desperately lonely, but she throws herself into her work. And then late at night when she simply can't bear to confront her romantic yearnings, she eats a pint of—what is this? Dark Chocolate Snickers Truffle.”

“Are you psychotic? Where did you get that from?”

“I'm psychic. Not
psychotic
, Evie. Slight difference.” She stuck her spoon in the Triple Fudge Marshmallow Chunk. “Don't you wonder about her? I do. Because she's obviously a deep person. So I can't imagine all she cares about is teaching boring U.S. History to boring seventh graders. Especially in Blanton.”

“Hey, Blanton's not so bad,” I protested.

She ignored that. “You've seen those posters on her walls. She's traveled all over the world. So why is she wasting her life
here
? Unless,” she added dramatically, “she has some dark, romantic secret.”

“Like what?”

She leaned forward, breathing chocolate in my face. “I'll tell you, but you can't tell anyone else.”

I nodded.

“I'm convinced,” she practically whispered, “that she's passionately in love with Mr. Rafferty.”

“WHAT?”

“Yesterday I saw them chatting in the main office. And I saw them right before dismissal today, in the hall outside her classroom. She was gazing into his eyes as if her soul was on fire. Or don't you believe me?”

“I believe you,” I said, laughing. “I just think you're crazy.”

“Why?” She raised one eyebrow. “Just because she's cool and deep and intellectual, you think she's incapable of crushing on the one truly gorgeous male in the entire school?”

“That's not what I meant! And frankly, I don't even want to be thinking about this!”

She pointed her spoon at me. “Okay. I've figured out your problem, Evie. You're terrified of your own romantic imagination.” Then she tossed the spoon into the sink. “And that's why you're so paralyzed about Zane.”

“Excuse me?”

“I'll shut up now. See? Lipstotallysealed. Can'teventalk. Omigod.” She jumped up. “I forgot about the vitamins.”

She ran out of the kitchen without even putting the ice
cream back in the freezer. I had no idea what was going on, but I guessed that, since she got rid of her spoon, she was done eating. So I put the lids back on the pints and lined them up on the middle freezer shelf. Then I walked out into the living room.

Which was empty.

Uh, Francesca?” I called. “Hello?”

No answer. From somewhere I could hear the air conditioner rumble on, like a huge lion snoring. It made the house seem bigger. And emptier.

“FRANCESCA?” I called again.

“Shhhh,” she answered from over my head.

I looked up. She was standing on the second-floor landing holding a tiny bottle of something. “Come upstairs,” she whispered.
“Qui-et-ly.”

I kicked off my sandals and climbed the stairs. Just as I got to the top, she suddenly lunged. “GOT YOU,” she shouted, grabbing a white puffy bedroom slipper.

Only it wasn't—it was a rabbit. The other one. Tourmaline.

She squirted something from a little dropper into the rabbit's mouth. Then she opened her arms and it hopped frantically down the hallway.

“One down,” she said, grinning at me. “Now for Topaz. Oh, Tooo-paaaz,” she sang in an Elmer Fudd sort of voice. “Come and get your din-din.”

Laughing our heads off, we tiptoed from room to room, searching for the dustball-colored, rug-chewing little beast. I realized that while I was wabbit-hunting, I was also getting an up-close tour of Samantha Pattison's house, and it shocked me how normal it was: just a bunch of sand-colored guest bedrooms no one seemed to be actually using. It occurred to me that one of those rooms belonged to Francesca, but really, they were all so blank, you couldn't even tell which one.

Finally Francesca sighed. “She's probably in Aunt Sam's boudoir. Which is strictly off limits to rodents, but Topaz is kind of a free spirit. Are your feet clean?”

“My
feet
?”

“Sorry to ask, but Aunt Sam's a bit compulsive about her
room.” She opened the door very slowly, and we tiptoed in.

And I gasped. I mean, literally
gasped.

Because it was the most amazing room I'd ever seen, like a contest in one of Lily's magazines: “Enter Our Sweepstakes and Win the Bedroom of Your Dreams!”

Samantha Pattison had a gigantic canopy bed. With an actual canopy. Not some dorky Hello Kitty canopy, either—this one was deep purple and gauzy, with matching deep purple sheets and, like, a million rose silk pillows. She had a cream-colored vanity with a chair—a throne, really—covered in that same gorgeous rose color, and a curvy-legged writing desk facing rose-curtained windows. And hanging from the ceiling was an enormous crystal chandelier, which was going
plinka plinka plinka
from a light perfumy breeze.

“Oh. My. God,” I said, stepping carefully on the velvety cream-colored carpeting. “Whoa, Francesca.”

“Staggering, huh?” She yanked me inside. “Look at this.”

She led me through Samantha's private bathroom, which had floor-to-ceiling mirrors and a circular whirlpool bath and perfectly folded rose-colored towels all monogrammed . And then before I realized we'd even left the
bathroom, we were in another room—which wasn't even a room.

It was a closet. I swear: a giant room-size
closet.
With racks and racks of clothes—dresses, gowns, nightgowns, you name it, some of them in colors I'd never seen except in Lily's magazines. Also fabrics: satin, velvet, lamé. Against one wall was a tower—sort of a bookcase, actually—full of shoes. (A lot of them were super-fancy, so it was obvious where Francesca got her stilettos.) Stacked up against the other wall were, like, twenty huge wicker baskets with handwritten labels:
gloves. wraps. clutches.
sarongs.
Sarongs?
I tried to remember if I'd come across any
sarongs
in Lily's magazines, but I was too gaga to even think straight.

“Why does she have so much stuff?” I managed to ask.

“Oh, you know,” said Francesca vaguely. She lifted a coppery gown from the rack and held it against herself. But it only came up to her shins, and didn't make it all the way across her waist. “She's been in lots of plays. And soaps, of course. And she knows a lot of costume people, obviously.”

She started dancing around in big loopy circles. “Evie, can you imagine genius Espee wearing something like
this
?”

“No, I can't,” I said quickly. “Of course not.”

“Me neither. Alas.” She re-hung-up the dress, not noticing that one shoulder slid right off the hanger. “Wouldn't it be so epic if she did, though? Wonder what Theo Rafferty would say. Oh, wait a sec, look at this.”

She pulled down a wicker basket labeled
VINTAGE
. Inside was one giant tangle of silver chains and stretchy bracelets and earrings.

“Oh, help,” said Francesca, looking embarrassed. “What a disaster.”