chapter 5
For the next few days, there’s a break in the school weirdness. Things quiet down. I notice a lack of heart in the zombie imitations of me, and then they totally taper off. There’s no more strange weather and no more winks from Ambrosia. Ms. Pallas has gotten her classroom back under control. Pox is just Pox. Alix does her suspension time and comes back to school, a little less pumped up with anger and adrenaline than usual, it seems to me.
As far as my own venture into the world of shifting reality, it’s like the whole intense, swirling, humming, hating event only happened in a dream. I could almost believe that. The only tangible change I notice is Ms. Pallas, and maybe that’s not connected to any of this other business. Talk about intensity. She’s fine-tuning her reputation for toughness, piling on extra homework and deducting major points if we slough off in any way. Twice in the past two days there have been pop quizzes, and when Pox complains, she lashes out: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it!” She seems to be on a mission to make us as passionate about ancient everywhere and ancient everything as she is.
She’s also on a democracy kick, quoting Thucydides, a Greek historian whose famous quote is “The secret of happiness is freedom.”
For me, that raises a lot of interesting questions. Such as, what is freedom anyway? Can things ever truly be free or fair? What happens when one person’s right to do something bumps into another person’s right to have them not do it? Everything gets tricky as soon as real, live human beings are involved.
So I give Ms. Pallas a lot of credit for trying to make democracy work in high school. It’s definitely a major time suck. For instance, today half the class is eaten up with voting. Do we want weekend homework, or to have her pile it on during the week? By an 80 percent majority, We the People of Hunter High approve a resolution to limit oral reports to fifteen minutes. For our next major assignment, Ms. Pallas lets us work in groups with the freedom to pick our own partners.
She’s wearing a silvery, almost metallic tuniclike top over flowing black pants, and the shiny material swishes when she turns to read aloud the list of possible topics that are written on the board: “The influence of ancient architecture on our buildings today. The role of women in the visual arts of the ancient world. The great lovers of the myths. These are just suggestions. Use your creativity.”
“Ms. Pallas, does this mean we can report on anything we want?” someone asks.
“As long as there’s a sharp focus. Nothing like ‘A Huge Mishmash of Plagiarized Info about Greek Life.’”
“No fair! That was my topic,” one of the wiseasses whines.
She writes the due date on the board and underlines it twice. “No late papers accepted. Five to six references, but only two can come from the Internet.”
The Double Ds, who consider books to be dust collectors that cause their mascara to run, raise their hands, but Ms. Pallas covers her eyes. “No, no, no. I don’t see you. This is where democracy ends and teacher rule begins. We’re not getting into another discussion about why actual books with pages are necessary for research. They are.” Her attention returns to the rest of us. “Other questions?”
It’s the usual. Footnotes? Bibliography? Cover page? The Danish foreign exchange student asks, “Ms. Pallas, this project counts for exactly what percentage of the final grade?”
Another arm shoots into the air, and I find myself staring at it, the way the short sleeve of the tight black T-shirt shows off the mound of the bicep and the little tufts of dark hair on the knuckles.
“Question, Brendon?” Ms. Pallas addresses the arm.
This immediately raises a question I have for myself: What did I ever see in him?
Brendon might not have a nickname like his friends, but he’s still part of that surf crowd—Pox, Gnat, Rat Boy, Bubonic, collectively known as the Plagues. I order my mind to make a comprehensive outline of all the things I can’t stand about Brendon. For example, number one: He’s too cute. Yes, a guy can be too cute. It makes him stuck-up. Number two: He actually dated one of the Double Ds. Ick. His girlfriends are so predictable and his taste is so bad. Plus you know that he knows that he’s got those eye crinkles and the effect they have on girls. I don’t like the way he hardly ever smiles. He thinks he’s too cool to smile. He’s moody. I don’t like moody. And I don’t like the way his friends make fun of Raymond and anyone else who’s different. I don’t like the way the girls in his crowd lie on the beach sunbathing and pretend to be too scared to try surfing. Who you hang out with says everything about you.
Brendon’s arm shoots into the air again.
I don’t want to look at that arm. But I do.
I don’t want to feel my stomach flip. It flips. That arm is not sexy. I repeat to myself: not sexy.
I don’t want to think about how, whenever Brendon passes me in the hall, I’m hit with the smell of pine and ocean. I don’t want to think about his curly dark hair that corkscrews over his eyes. I don’t care that his back is broad and his waist is narrow. I don’t want to wonder if, just maybe, his coolness is really shyness. I don’t want to think about how his face sometimes takes on a whole different expression. I’ve seen flashes of it when he doesn’t think anyone is looking. His usual cool surfer-dude aloofness gets replaced by something else, a quiet intensity that makes me wonder if there’s an entire other Brendon locked away inside of him.
Stop thinking about him. Weren’t you embarrassed enough? I shake myself out of the reverie.
Inside the classroom, there’s a lot of noise as project teams start coming together. Chairs squeak. A group of girls laugh. The echo of high fives. Given free choice, we’re all totally predictable. Team Meg and Raymond, of course. We only need to move our chairs a little closer together. The Double Ds team up with their redheaded mutual best friend. The earnest Danish foreign exchange student sits with the president of the Future Leaders of America club. There’s Pox with the usual Plagues, Brendon in the middle of them. He and Rat Boy share a fist bump. I force myself to look away.
Across the room, I notice that Ambrosia’s followers have formed a semicircle around her. No surprise there, either. They are making a big fuss about her hair, which today is pulled back tight ballerina-style, the bun circled by a garland that has the shine and luminescence of real pearls. Then Ambrosia says something that puts them into a state of hysterical cackling. Only her expression remains flat, the sole sign of life a slow lifting of her left eyebrow that’s been plucked into a high, perfect arch. She shakes her head in a way that clearly means: I wasn’t joking. I’m serious.
The laughing stops like someone pulled the plug on them. One girl lets her jaw drop and it hangs open in a fly-catching pose. I can see right into her mouth, even her retainer. The others turn in the same direction, toward me, and all those eyes make my stomach jump. Their expressions are exaggerated, like they’re mimicking the Greek theater masks in our textbook. A mouth in a perfect O of shock. The wide-eyed look of surprise. The tense, squeezed brow of tragedy.
But it’s not me they’re looking at. Thank goodness. Their focus passes through me and lands way at the back of the room, last row, corner seat. Alix.
I don’t think there’s anyone who isn’t waiting to see what happens next. Ambrosia does that to people. I’m not sure how. She’s not even pretty in the usual way. But if she’s in a room, it’s impossible not to be aware of her—the high cheekbones; her close-set eyes that look right into you; the expensive, clinging black clothing; the perfectly manicured nails. You know that she knows things, grown-up and sophisticated things that you want to know about. Next to her, even the Double Ds, who can pass for at least nineteen, resemble sad, wilted flowers. As Ambrosia weaves through the rows of desks and chairs, I study the way she moves, like if I could pick it apart, figure out the formula, the relationship between the swing of her arms and the length of her step, the exact angle of the tilt of her head, I could understand the power behind everything she does. Maybe then I could get a little bit of that power myself. As she gets closer to me, I feel her, like an air conditioner on high, and then the temperature returns to its normal state as she slides past.
“You,” she commands, pointing a red dagger of a nail. “Wake up. What good are you asleep?”
Alix has her head on her desk. She stirs. She moans. She digs her fingers into her scalp, scratches, and sends a flurry of sand from morning surfing onto her arm. “Go away.”
“Wake up!”
Ambrosia spins, a startling 180-degree turn, and now I’m looking into the point of the same red-nailed finger. “You, too, wake up.”
What does she mean? My eyes are open. I am awake. But then she claps her hands, and in that instant, just for that instant, I swear: my hearing does seem sharper and colors more vibrant than usual. Every part of me, even my toenails, pulses. The space in my head expands and I have the strangest thought: I wasn’t awake before. That wasn’t awake. I’ve never been awake. But now? This is awake. Super awake!
The feeling, that amazing feeling, disappears as suddenly as it came over me.
How did she do that? What did she do?
I inhale sharply, the edges of my nostrils flaring. How do I become awake like that again?
So that’s how it happens, the formation of the least likely project group ever concocted under free will at Hunter High. Members include perpetually pissed-off Alix, aloof and worshipped Ambrosia, Meg the socially lame, and Raymond the brain. I insist on him, even though Ambrosia tries to ignore my suggestion. I find the courage to say, “No Raymond, no me,” and she relents.
One more member: Stephanie is sitting alone until Ambrosia leads her over by the hand. I make a space for her on the other side of me, and the five of us close into a tight circle.
“Meg will be our secretary and take notes,” Ambrosia announces. “She’s got elegant handwriting.”
I didn’t even think she knew my name, so I don’t know how she knows about my handwriting, and it makes me self-conscious, but secretly thrilled that she’s noticed anything about me. Plus, my handwriting is one of the things that I’m most proud of, not that I’ve ever told anyone that, not even Raymond, since it’s such a lame and pathetic thing for someone my age to feel superior about.
Ambrosia crosses her legs, slides the black pearl on her necklace back and forth on its thin gold chain. “Our topic should be theater.”
She is not someone you argue with, or question. On the top of a notebook page I write: Topic: theater. The letters roll out of the pen evenly, with style, elegant.
“But what exactly about theater?” she continues. “Let’s brainstorm. When I say ancient theater, the first thing that comes to your mind is…”
Alix stretches, makes a loud yawn. “Action. Write it down.”
Me: “Masks. Comedy and tragedy, happy, sad.”
Stephanie takes a sip from her stainless-steel water bottle. “Ancient plays are political. People stood up for what they believed back then.”
From Raymond: “Deus ex machina.” He watches me write it down, correcting the spelling. “It literally means god from the machine. There was an actual crane on stage. Sometimes the plot got so convoluted that an actor playing a god appeared out of the blue and helped a character get out of a jam.”
“Cool,” Alix says. “Everyone could use a god machine once in a while.”
“Definitely,” Raymond agrees. “It comes right down from the sky, a god who takes care of the problem. Stops a flood, drowns an army, rescues a baby—”
Ambrosia interrupts. “Kills off who needs to be killed off.” She pops the pearl into her mouth, runs it around her gums and cheeks, lets it fall back out like the dark pit of a fruit. “The best plays—those by Aeschylus, for example—are about revenge.”
Raymond nods. “True. What the ancients lacked in a fair and impartial justice system, they made up for in bloodthirsty feuds that decimated entire families for generations.”
“Huh?” Alix asks.
I translate: “Revenge is a big theme in the plays.”
Ambrosia presses her hands together by her chin, like she’s praying, and starts tapping the fingers in an increasingly fast rhythm. “Retribution. Payback. Getting even. Tit for tat. Eye for an eye. Tooth for a tooth. Settling a score.”
“A major theme!” I jolt at the voice from behind me. I hadn’t heard Ms. Pallas come up. She has this way of sneaking up on you that unnerves me. I twist around. She puts one hand on her hip; the other makes a fast sweep across the arc of her braided crown. “However, the plays also grapple with mankind’s glorious struggle for a moral and just civilization in the face of its darker, revengeful instincts.”
This interpretation immediately appeals to Stephanie. She nods enthusiastically, her head reminding me of a bell. Her long, dangling earrings make a clanging sound. “We must fight for justice. That topic is still important today. Look what the forces of darkness are doing to our planet.”
“Exactly!” Ms. Pallas says. There’s triumph in her voice.
“And I, too, agree.” Ambrosia directs this next statement to our teacher. “The past is definitely not old, dead business.”
This gives me an idea. I know it’s a good one, but my throat goes dry like it always does when I have to give my opinion in a group. “I have an…”
“Go on,” Ambrosia encourages.
“I have an idea. How about this as our topic: ‘Bad Blood in Great Theater.’”
Alix is chewing on her lower lip. “Topic after my own heart.”
Ambrosia rises. She passes in front of Ms. Pallas, a little too closely, close enough to bump her a little with her shoulder, close enough for me to know that it wasn’t an accident, even though she does offer the teacher a smile. Only it’s not a smile that’s an apology, but more of a sneer with challenge etched into it. I see that clearly. There is something going on between them. Does everyone else notice?
I try to catch Raymond’s eye, but Ambrosia positions herself in front of me, blocking the view, offering her full radiance. She takes both of my hands in hers and I feel myself sinking into the texture of her skin. It’s soft, but not like a baby’s, more soft and strong like well-worn leather. Her eyes lock onto mine and hold them there. No one has ever looked at me so deeply. I feel her presence in my knees, up my legs, my chest, my throat, at the point between my eyes. Her perfume isn’t a brand I recognize. I pick up hints of roses, mint, and damp, rich soil. It makes my head spin.
“You, Meg,” she says, “are a treasure. You are exactly what we need.”