She and I turned as one. My eyes scanned the kids coming up the stairs until I landed on the boy who was waving enthusiastically at us. Nell laughed and waved back.
“You missed school last week, I was worried,” he said, huffing as he jumped up the last two steps. I stared at him, eyes growing wider by the second. Every single bit of the clothing he wore—socks, shoes, pants, shirt, sweater, hat—was a bright shade of blue.
“Is everything okay?” he asked, then did a double take as he saw me. “Were you that upset about the play?”
“The play?” I repeated, and it was only then that the kid seemed to notice me.
“The school play,” he clarified. “Who are you?”
“Why would you be upset about the school play?” I asked Nell, something tickling at the back of my mind.
She ignored me, as usual. “Everything’s fine, Norton. And he’s my cousin. He’s temporarily enrolling for the next few weeks while his parents travel the world.”
The kid stuck out his hand, gripping mine in a crushing shake. If he noticed that the other kids were giving him a wide berth, he didn’t seem to care.
“Nice to meet blue—er, you,” I said. “Um…sorry about that, it’s just…”
He was…so…blue…?
“Norton is participating in a performance-art piece,” Nell explained. “He only wears one color a day, and it reflects his mood.” She turned back to Norton, watching him dig through his brown lunch bag. “Why so blue today, Nortie?”
He dug a hand into the lunch bag and fished out a plastic sandwich bag. “Mom only had bread ends left.”
“That does suck,” I agreed.
“Anyway, nice to meet you—maybe we’ll have some classes together?” he said, with hope curling in his voice.
“I have no idea,” I told him honestly. “Nice to meet you, though.”
At the top of the steps, just before we reached the door, Nell reached into her backpack and pulled out a red file folder.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Your new life,” she said.
The first bell rang, but neither of us moved.
“Hey, I know this has been…really awful is kind of an understatement, isn’t it? But I just want to say…” Her lips pressed together. “I just wanted to say that you should listen to what my dad said and see this as a fresh start. You aren’t a Redding here. No one knows your name. Maybe it’ll be easier for you to act like the person you want to be, instead of the person you think you are.”
“So I’m just supposed to pretend to be something I’m not?” I demanded. “What if I don’t know how to do that?”
“It’s easier than you think,” Nell said. “It’s method acting—you become the character, living and breathing life into him, creating him from what bare-bones info we’ve given you. There are no mistakes, just constant creation.” Nell opened the file for me to see. “Your name is Ethan White, and you were born in Portland, Maine, on December twenty-second to Mary and John White. The rest is up to you to decide.”
The doors to the school opened with a burst of warm air, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the file, even as Nell continued her lightning-tongue pace. “It’s easy once you get used to it. And I’ll be here to help you. Because, you know, it doesn’t matter how great the lead cast is if the supporting actors don’t back them up.”
The folder was filled with a xeroxed copy of a birth certificate for one Ethan White, who was definitely not a twin. A fake list of vaccinations was stapled to it, along with fake report cards from some middle school in Portland, and copies of two driver’s licenses—one for Mary Elizabeth White, a dark-haired woman with a too-perfect smile, and another for John Adams White, six-feet-two-inches and 220 pounds of pure stranger.
“You know, it’s okay to pretend to be braver than you are,” Nell said, stepping inside. “I do it all the time.”
It was a good thing that I liked Nell okay for the most part, since we had every single class together—well, every class but one. An elective. Nell was enrolled in theater, but I was stuck with a study hour in the library during the last hour of the day.
“Ready or not,” she said, handing me a printout of my schedule as we walked down the hall. “Here we go.”
And just like that, I was shaking hands with Mrs. Anderson, my new science teacher. I had her first thing in the morning for homeroom to listen to announcements and do the whole Pledge of Allegiance thing, but I wouldn’t be back until later that afternoon for real class. I sat with Nell at the very back of the classroom, staring at the two aquariums that lined the side of the bright room: one with swarms of rainbow fish, the other with an extremely large, extremely hairy tarantula named Eleanor.
Thinking of my task from Uncle Barnabas, I pointed to it, raising my brows.
Nell shook her head, writing down on her notebook, Find one we don’t have to steal, you idiot. Then she added, Eleanor isn’t what you think. Try a lizard or frog.
A frog! It was the first time Al had spoken since earlier that morning. His presence had turned into a hum of static in my body. Sometimes it intensified, like he was trying to listen or do something. Other times, it was so quiet I could almost forget he was there at all.
I walked through the day in an overwhelmed daze. I had the weirdest feeling that I was outside my own body, watching myself move through the yellow-tiled hallways and their red lockers. From door to door, class to class, hour to hour.
Second period was language arts, with Ms. Mell—a young, blond teacher who had the nervous habit of lecturing about pronouns to the floor instead of to us.
Then it was off to third period for pre-algebra with Mrs. Johnson, who called on me for every single question, either because she was trying to force herself to learn my name, or just to torture me.
Fourth period was humanities with Mr. Gupta. Redhood Academy had combined language arts and humanities into one class—English—so it was actually kind of awesome when I found out that the class was dedicated to studying all kinds of famous works: writing, poetry, mythology, and actual art. And no boring grammar rules.
Mr. Gupta drummed his hands against his desk. “It’s time…for another round of It’s All Greek to Me! Which team will reign supreme and ascend to the heights of Mount Olympus and feast on the ambrosia of a magnificent pizza lunch?”
Mr. Gupta really loved teaching his Greek mythology unit.
Around me, Nell and the other students were shifting their desks, reluctantly scooting them so there was a clear divide between each side of the room. My team was slumped in their chairs or sneaking looks at their phones in their backpacks.
“We never win,” Nell explained in a whisper. “I know that’ll be a change of pace for you, but try not to sulk.”
A change of pace for me…? The last thing I’d won in life was a Silence Cake–eating contest, and only because the guy next to me barfed in his mouth and was disqualified. But before I could explain that, the trivia battle began.