This Isn't What It Looks Like (3 page)

Yes, chocolate was the culprit.

Cass’s doctors had not been particularly surprised to find traces of chocolate in Cass’s stomach—she was a kid, after all—and
had quickly dismissed it as a possible cause of her condition. Chocolate allergies were very rare, they said. And they hardly
ever induced such severe reactions.

Max-Ernest could attest to that last point. His allergy, at any rate, had turned out to be a phantom. Nonetheless, he, and
he alone, knew that it was a bite of chocolate that had brought on Cass’s coma.

Not just any chocolate, of course. Not chocolate like he ate every night from the hospital vending machine. Not
chocolate
chocolate.

No, this was extra-chocolaty chocolate.

Extreme chocolate.

Extremely dark, that is. The darkest chocolate of all time.

Chocolate made with the legendary Tuning Fork—the magical (there was no other word to use, although it made Max-Ernest wince
to think it) cooking instrument of the Aztecs.

Time Travel Chocolate, as Cass and Max-Ernest had come to think of it.

Chocolate that sent the eater back into her ancestral past. (Although whether or not Cass had in fact gone back into the past
was debatable. After all, her body was still in the present. It was her mind that was gone.)

As the Secret Keeper, Cass held knowledge of the Secret—the very secret that the Terces Society was sworn to protect—buried
in her ancestral memory.

The wicked master chef, Señor Hugo, had made the chocolate specifically for Cass so she would reveal the Secret to Hugo’s
colleagues, those cunning alchemists known as the Masters of the Midnight Sun. (The Masters believed the Secret was the key
to immortality and they would stop at nothing to uncover it.)
^*

The first time Cass ate the chocolate, she’d been tricked into it and had only escaped giving away the Secret by the narrowest
of margins. This last time, Cass had eaten the chocolate voluntarily—and against Max-Ernest’s explicit advice, as he often
reminded himself—in order to learn the Secret herself.

As far as they knew, only a specially prepared antidote—a mysterious milky-white substance whipped up with the Tuning Fork—could
bring her back to present-day reality. Cass had left the Tuning Fork with Max-Ernest so he could administer the same antidote
the second time around.

But it didn’t work. She had eaten too much of the chocolate. Or he had made the antidote incorrectly. Or he had waited too
long to give it to her (only five minutes, though it seemed like five hours). Or… Max-Ernest could think of dozens of things
that might have gone wrong.

Before he could try again, Cass’s mother had unexpectedly arrived at Max-Ernest’s house to pick up Cass. As soon as she saw
Cass lying unconscious on the floor, she called an ambulance—and she’d barely left her daughter’s side since. Max-Ernest never
had another chance to be alone with Cass.

Tonight was different. Tonight, Max-Ernest was determined to give her the antidote once more.

Not for the first time since Cass’s collapse, he wished their friend and fellow Terces member Yo-Yoji were there to help.
But Yo-Yoji was back in Japan for two months with his family. Yo-Yoji had tried to persuade his parents to let him stay with
Max-Ernest, but of course he wasn’t able to tell them the real reason he didn’t want to leave the country. Any mention of
the Terces Society was strictly forbidden.

They’d e-mailed each other from time to time, encrypting their messages, naturally, with their usual keyword code. (Hint:
keyword = first part of Yo-Yoji’s band name.) But the e-mails had only made Max-Ernest feel more isolated. The last one from
Yo-Yoji had been particularly discouraging:
^*

From:
[email protected]

Subject:
fuji-bound

To:
[email protected]

Euen, gust jnttfmc u hmow f wfjj ln obbjfmn bor a wh. Lakpfmc w tdn ’rnmts om Kt Bugf so eae iam bfmfsd tdat pojjutfom stuey
bruk jast yr. You hmow tdn rujn—mo njnitromfi motdfmc fm maturn. (Mot nvnm kusfi!!! Aaarcd—
Suihacn!) Wfjj idnih u out soom as F’k laih. Dopn Lass oh ly tdnm.

Stay cool, yo. Y-Y

\m/ (>.<) \m/

(Rock On!)

It was up to Max-Ernest to do the job alone.

For a moment, after he entered Cass’s room, Max-Ernest just stared. At the tubes going in and out of her. At the jagged green
line on the monitor measuring her heart rate.

Eyes closed, lips still, her face was so expressionless she could have been anyone. Only the big, pointy ears were indisputably
Cass’s. They twitched every once in a while as if to reassure Max-Ernest that, yes, in fact, this was his friend lying in
front of him.

“Hi… Cass,” he said. Speaking was such an effort that his voice came out in monosyllabic squeaks. “It’s… me… I’m… here.”

He exhaled, relieved that the talking part was over. Then he pulled an ancient two-pronged
instrument—the Tuning Fork—out of his jacket pocket, located a pitcher of water, and went to work.

Absorbed in his task, Max-Ernest didn’t notice his friend’s lips forming the word
ghost
again…

and again…

and again…

and again…

and again…

I
f I am a ghost, I must be dead.

The girl glanced down. To the rest of the world she might have been transparent, but to her own eyes her limbs looked solid.
There was nothing she could see that indicated a death, whether recent or long ago. No sign of accident or bodily trauma.
No evidence of decay or flesh-eating maggots. She looked nothing like the walking dead in a horror movie.

She tried holding her breath. Logically, a dead person should not need to breathe, but she soon found herself coughing for
air.

She jumped up to see whether she would float or even fly—

“Ow.”

Alas, the laws of gravity were in full effect.

(Actually, it didn’t hurt very much. Her exclamation was an instinctive reaction to a slight twist of her left ankle as she
landed.)

As for her surroundings, they looked lifelike enough, even if she didn’t recognize where she was. If this was some kind of
otherworldly limbo, it wasn’t what you’d imagine. There were no spooky wisps of fog. No lost souls wandering the streets.

She certainly didn’t
feel
dead. (Although how would you know what you would feel?) And yet she didn’t feel fully alive, either. She felt very little
at all,
really—very little physically, very little emotionally. It was as if her invisibility insulated her from the world, separating
her from all experience.

She kept walking. What else was there to do?

Finally, a town—well, a few houses and a horse—appeared on the horizon. She quickened her pace.

Her first thought was that she had entered one of those Renaissance faires where people dress up in velvet tunics and green
tights, or sometimes just burlap sacks and Birkenstocks, and say “Hear ye, hear ye!” over and over. She couldn’t remember
the details, but she had a vague recollection of just such an event. (A school field trip, maybe? Did she go to school?) But
here there were far fewer lords and ladies and far more peasants. Also, there were no funnel cakes or deep-fried Twinkies
for sale, just muddy carrots and wilting cabbages. Mangy turkeys and scrawny chickens wandered loose, running in and out of
the stalls and under carts. It could have been market day in a town square hundreds of years ago. The small thatched huts
that surrounded the square looked surprisingly authentic. Perhaps it was not a faire but a movie set?

Whatever it was, it was very crowded, and the girl kept bumping into people as she walked.

There was the meat-pie vendor whose pies she caused to land on several unlucky shoppers: “Beslubbering boar-pig!” “Swag-bellied
lout!” they complained.

And she nearly started a fight between two young fops in plumed hats and flouncy collars: “Clay-brained coxcomb!” “Mewling
milk-livered maggot!”
^*

Momentarily she forgot about her transparent condition and asked a kind-looking woman for the name of the town they were in.
Rather than responding, the woman walked straight into her, crashing their heads together. Then she spun around in confusion,
cursing loudly.

The girl hardly felt the impact—her senses were still quite dull—but it was disconcerting nonetheless. She felt a bit guilty
about wreaking such havoc, and yet she couldn’t help admiring how skilled everyone here was at staying in character. (A theater
camp for adult actors—could that be it?)

Avoiding further collisions as best she could, she made her way across the market, ducking here, weaving there, hoping for
some sign that would tell her where she was.

She noticed that a small crowd had gathered in the center of the market. They cheered and jeered and generally seemed to be
having a good time. Afraid
she might start a riot if she pushed her way in, the girl stood on tiptoe and tried to see who or what was causing the commotion.

First, she caught sight of three potatoes sailing in and out of view as they were repeatedly tossed in the air. Then she saw
the silvery shimmer of bells dangling from the three pointed ends of a hat. Finally, she made out a wiry young man in a diamond-patterned
outfit—a jester—standing on a box of some sort.
^*
He was juggling and telling jokes that were, judging by the groans of the crowd, more confusing than they were funny.

She strained to listen.

“What dost thou say—that I have not sense?” he shouted at a heckler. “No, I have better, I have a sense of humor!”

The girl felt an unexpected jolt of recognition. What was it about him that seemed so familiar? Had she been a jester in her
former life? She looked down at her jeans and sneakers—it hardly seemed likely. Perhaps she was raised in a circus, bouncing
on the knee of a clown? That seemed like a better possibility. If she’d spent her childhood performing on a trapeze, that
might explain why she was such a skilled climber. Then again, she really couldn’t imagine herself in a sparkly leotard.

*     *     *

When she reached a quieter corner of the market, she stopped to consider her options.

What to do next? She felt a sense of urgency, as though she had only a limited amount of time to accomplish a specific task.
And yet, for all she knew, her time was infinite.

“Hail, young traveler.”

The girl turned to see an old, straggly-haired woman sitting on a tree stump under an old, straggly-limbed tree. In front
of the woman were a larger tree stump that served as a table and another, smaller stump for a companion to sit on.

With a start, the girl realized the old woman was staring directly at her.

“You can see me?”

The woman nodded. “I am a Seer. I have what they call
second sight
…. Sit. I will tell your fortune.”

The woman was so fair-skinned, her hair so white, she was almost colorless. She was barefoot and wore a plain cotton shift.

Her only ornament: a gold-rimmed monocle that magnified her pale, watery blue eye.

“I don’t really believe in that,” said the girl, backing away.

“In what? Sitting?”

The girl hesitated. Who knew what she believed in? And what did it matter anyway? She might not believe in ghosts, but that
didn’t mean she wasn’t one.

She felt in her pocket. “I don’t have any money.”

The woman smiled as if this were a grim joke. “Your money is no use here, I think. Please—” She motioned to the smaller tree
stump. “What is your name, child?”

“I-I am…,” the girl stammered, sitting. “I’m sorry, I don’t know who I am.”

“Don’t worry, the cards will tell us.”

“Am I… dead?”

The girl waited, tense. She was not at all certain she wanted to hear the answer.

The Seer peered at the girl through the golden monocle. While the Seer’s left eye was closed, her right eye seemed never to
blink.

“I don’t think so,” the Seer said finally. “In my experience, the dead are much more sure of themselves. They can be very
tiresome that way.”

“So then I’m not a ghost?” asked the girl, relieved, but only just.

“There are many kinds of ghosts. Only some are ghosts of the dead. Others are simply the appearance
of someone far away. A few even come from the future.”

“The future?” repeated the girl, growing more confused by the minute.

Looking down, she noticed the multitude of concentric rings that made up the large tree stump in front of her. From somewhere
in her past, she heard a kindly man’s voice (whose? she couldn’t remember) telling her that each ring represented a year’s
passing and that you could read the age of a tree by counting the rings.
^*

“What year is it, anyway?” she asked.

But the Seer was no longer listening. Her eyes were closed and she was passing her hand over a deck of cards. The cards were
well-worn and decorated with a pattern of moons and stars on their back sides.

As the girl watched, the Seer arranged ten cards facedown on the table. The girl rubbed her eyes. Unless she’d missed it,
the Seer had never once touched the cards. Her hand had simply hovered over them.