“This is ridiculous,” I said. “This is absurd.”
“This is life,” she said. She went back to her fingernails, carefully applying lavender flower decals over a pearly pink base coat. When I kept standing there, she said, “Pardon me, but you’re in my light.”
When lunchtime rolled around, I retreated to the library. I needed to be away from everybody. I needed time to figure things out.
“Hello, Jane,” Ms. Cratchett said, looking up from a stack of index cards.
“Hi, Ms. Cratchett,” I said. Was it my imagination, or was even she regarding me a little frostily? I surprised myself by approaching her desk.
“So … are you still having problems with those cats?” I asked.
Her mouth creased in displeasure. “It’s a travesty. Cat hair all over my keyboard, and this morning, excrement by my coffee pot. Excrement! It’s getting so they think they own the place.”
I nodded sympathetically, not knowing exactly where I was going but plunging forward nonetheless. “You should see Ms. Lear’s class—they’re seriously everywhere. Poor Ms. Lear, huh?”
“Lurlene?” Ms. Cratchett said. “Lurlene doesn’t give a damn, pardon my French. I’ve told her, ‘Come see the mess they made of my periodicals. Then try telling me they’re your furry little beasties.’”
“She calls them her furry little beasties?”
Ms. Cratchett pursed her lips. She shuffled her index cards. “Don’t you have work to do? Don’t you need to trot off to your hidey-hole and pretend to be busy?”
I blinked. Her frostiness was not in my imagination. Even so, I made myself push on.
“But about Ms. Lear …”
“Yes?”
I didn’t actually know what I wanted to ask. Is she a madwoman? What does she do in that back room, in that eerie, ghoulish temple? Why does she smell like tuna?
Finally, I said, “How long has she been here, anyway? At Crestview.”
Ms. Cratchett cackled in an on-the-brink kind of way. It occurred to me that she should probably consider new employment. “Since the dawn of time—that’s why she’s got her claws in so deep. She was a student here herself, you know.”
My stomach dipped. “Ms. Lear went to school here? As a student?”
“Not too bright, are you?” Ms. Cratchett said. “I suggest you try studying sometime instead of reading your dog-eared baby books. Now, shoo!” She flapped her hand at me. “Go on!”
I backed away from her desk, then made a beeline for the far bookshelves, over in the “Alma Mater Pride” section. There were old yearbooks there. Rows and rows of them.
How old was Lurl, anyway? It was impossible to tell. I flipped through 1979, then tried 1973, then 1972. Bingo. “Lurlene Lear,” it said in the index. And then a listing of the pages she appeared on.
Dread made my limbs feel heavy. Did I really want to look? Then again, what choice did I have?
I sat on the floor and turned to page forty-eight, where I found Lurl’s class picture in the senior section. If she wasn’t labeled by name, I wouldn’t have recognized her. She was beautiful, with glossy brown hair and glowing skin. She wasn’t wearing glasses, and her eyes were luminous. A strand of creamy pearls circled her neck.
I flipped to another page. “Big Kid!” read the caption, and the picture showed Lurl reclining on one of the benches outside Hamilton Hall. She wore a baseball cap pulled low, and she was grinning at the camera. The print beneath the picture said, “Senior Lurlene Lear relaxes between classes. She’ll always be a kid at heart!”
I looked at one more. This one was a full-page spread of a beaming Lurl wearing a tiara and clutching a bouquet of white roses. She was in Crestview’s gym, I could tell, although it had been transformed by silver icicles and sparkling silver trees. A banner draped behind her said ENCHANTMENT IN THE SNOW.
I read the paragraph beneath the picture. “Lurlene Lear shines as Ice Maiden of the Winter Carnival. ‘I am so blessed!’ gushed Lurlene as she accepted her crown. ‘I will never be happier in my whole entire life!’”
I closed the yearbook. I felt ill. How could Lurl have been … ? And how could she now be … ? What had happened to her? What had she turned into? And what the fuck was the deal with the cats?
I exchanged the ’72 yearbook for the ’71 one and checked out Lurl as a junior. Younger, and with shorter hair, but just as pretty and just as busy. One picture showed her on a hayride. “Yehaw!” read the caption.
In the ’70 yearbook, Lurl as a sophomore cuddled a fluffy white cat, their cheeks pressed together. The cat looked vaguely panicked in that way animals do when they’re held too tight. “Awww, how sweet!” were the words underneath, and then a bit about Lurl’s volunteer work for the Humane Society. I didn’t like looking at that one, and I shut the yearbook right away.
I pulled down the yearbook from 1969. In this one Lurl would be a freshman, just like me. Only when I checked the index, there was no “Lurlene Lear.” There was a “Sandra L. Lear” listed, but no “Lurlene.”
Something stilled within me, and the page numbers went out of focus. Sandra L. Lear. Sandy. The girl who had died?
My stomach turned upside down. I blinked to get my eyes working again and flipped to page twenty-three, the sole listing for Sandra L. Lear. And there she was, in the small rectangular box that framed her class photo. She stared out blankly, with no expression giving life to her features. Her eyes were dark empty holes.
Sand in the oyster—the thought came unbidden. And what had Lurl said? “Because I’m such a gem.”
The stillness inside me broke into a million pieces, because Sandy hadn’t died after all. She had just … changed. And come back as Lurl.
I stood up, letting the yearbook spill to the floor. I walked quickly out of the library and headed for the cafeteria. I broke into a run. I had the sense that someone was following me, and my nerve endings jangled with adrenaline. I had to tell people about this. I had to let them know.
But when I got to the lunchroom, I stopped at the door and stood there, panting. Because there was Camilla, sitting with the Bitches at the soccer jocks’ table. Her face was glowing. Her eyes were luminous. She said something that I couldn’t hear, and Anna Maria punched her on the shoulder. Debbie gave her an affectionate noogie, and everyone laughed.
Okay, I thought that afternoon. Fine. There was a whole lot of wrongness going on, things that were sick and creepy and unnatural, but the past was the past and the future was now. And I wasn’t about to roll over and play dead just because the Bitches wanted me to—no way. They didn’t get to decide who I was. Only I got to decide that. And I was not going to be a freaking toad.
I went to the mall and bought a pair of shit-kicking black boots. They cost a fortune, and they were even cooler than Bitsy’s. I wore them the next morning along with the denim mini-skirt from my coming-out party and a fuzzy white V-necked sweater. I looked hotter than hot.
I waited for Nate at his locker, because what had Mary Bryan said? He’s yours if you want him. He wants to be your prince. Well, today was Nate’s lucky day. I was finally going to make it easy on the poor guy.
I leaned sideways against the locker, my hip cocked and one arm up so that my sweater stretched over my chest. Then I decided that was a little too come-hither, so I switched positions and propped my back against the locker’s metal grates, my arms folded over my ribs. I saw Nate come in through the front entrance, and a sick, zingy feeling started up inside me.
Relax, I coached myself. Feel the power.
“Hi,” I said as he approached. “What’s up?”
He seemed surprised to see me, but he didn’t shut me out.
“Not much,” he said. “You?”
“Oh, you know, just life as normal.”
His eyes darted down the hall, which could have been wariness or could just have been nerves. I tried to remember to breathe.
“So anyway,” I said, “I was just wondering … I mean, if you aren’t busy or anything …”