Eyes on Me

by Rachel Harris

  Okay, then.

  With a shake of my head, I move to the front of the tent. “Well, thanks. For the free reading. That was…interesting.”

  I grab my bag and slip my feet into my sandals. As I slide my sunglasses on, I keep waiting for her to say something, anything, but she remains silent.

  This chick is two French fries short of a Happy Meal.

  I stop just inside the tent, a hand on the front flap, to look at her one last time. Even from this distance, Reyna’s eyes visibly dance with emotion. I give a stilted wave, and she nods again, but as I turn around, she whispers, “Latcho Drom, Caterina.”

  With chill bumps racing down my spine, I pull back the flap and step outside.

  My first thought as I take in my surroundings, squinting at the bright sunlight permeating my shades, is that I must’ve been in the tent for a lot longer than thirty minutes. My next thought is that Italians are crazy.

  The street is inexplicably filled with reenactors, dressed as if they’re at a Renaissance festival and taking their jobs way too seriously.

  I stand there blinking, watching a donkey-drawn cart full of produce roll past me down the narrow road. The clattering of the cart’s wheels on the cobblestones echoes off the buildings, and all of a sudden, I am hit with the powerful stench of animal feces.

  Lovely. Definitely time to head back to the hotel.

  Stepping away from the tent, I feel soft fabric brush across my leg. Absently, I look down and freeze.

  I’m wearing a flowing golden gown.

  What the heck?

  Flipping my sunglasses onto my head, I whirl back around to interrogate Reyna, but instead of the tent I just stepped out of, I see a goat. A freaking goat. Both the tent and Reyna are gone.

  What was in that gypsy tea?

  Mystified, I think back to the last half hour and try to make sense of what’s happened. All around me, people are dressed in similar period outfits, without a single badly dressed tourist in the bunch. The buildings look the same but cleaner, and somehow everything seems brighter, the colors sharper. There are no rumbling engines to drown out voices or the rasping click of cicadas.

  I wander absently down the road, past reenactors hawking food from makeshift stalls, searching for any type of reflective surface to look into—perhaps a sideview mirror of a car or a shiny window—but the polizia must have cleared the streets for the weird reenactment. Maybe it’s a national holiday. How that explains my wardrobe change, however, is completely beyond me.

  I spin around, disoriented, and my backpack slaps hard across my back.

  Normalcy.

  I’m not crazy. I have my backpack, my white-knuckled grip on sanity. I stoop down and tear into it, grateful it’s loaded with so much crap. I unzip my makeup case and pull out my compact. When I glimpse my reflection, I do a double take.

  The first thing I notice is that my zit is gone.

  Hallelujah for small miracles!

  Then I notice the scrubbed face. Every lick of makeup that I painstakingly applied a few hours ago is gone. I like to think of the face as just another canvas to paint on, and right now, mine is completely blank. It’s like I’m auditioning for a Neutrogena commercial. Tilting the mirror farther and sliding off my shades, I see my hair is twisted on top of my head in a braided crown, a vibrant red ribbon threaded through it. Definitely not the way I fixed it—I stopped doing ribbons in kindergarten.

  Maybe I’m dreaming.

  I pinch myself. Hard. “Freakin’ A!”

  Nope, not a dream.

  Enrapt in the enigma that is suddenly my life, I rub my arm and stare at my backpack, the one thing that still makes sense. I don’t hear the man dressed like a crazed Shakespearean fanatic until he is standing right in front of me. He touches my hand and looks at me with concern. “Signorina D’Angeli?”

  My spine tenses, and my teeth clench, but I paste on a sunny smile. Someone was bound to recognize me or see the resemblance eventually. I yank my hand back and open my mouth to inform him he’s wrong—that I’m not my mother—but out comes, “Vi sbagliate.”

  Holy crap!

  Do I know what I said? I think for a moment and realize I do. I’d said, “You are mistaken.”

  Since when do I know Italian?

  He gives me a puzzled look and motions with his cane toward a carriage that is sitting on the side of the narrow road. I look at the people traipsing about and realize I’ve become the center of attention—as if I’m the weird one!

  My worst nightmare is coming true, standing in the middle of their scrutiny with no place to hide. Having one parent in front of the camera and the other behind it, you’d think I’d relish the attention. Or at least be used to it.

  I hear their muffled whispers and understand every Italian word. Every witty comment made at my expense.

  It’s like my brain is automatically translating.

  I bunch the soft fabric of the dress in my hand and then reach up to feel the ribbon in my hair. I lightly skim my fingers over my chin and feel my lack of zit. I take in the costumes of the crowd, the stench of the animals, and the Italian I can now speak and understand. And suddenly it hits me.

  Reyna must have pulled some kind of gypsy mojo.

  Maybe this is one of those nifty “change your life” magic scenarios like in the movies. I mean, mostly I’m still expecting to blink and be right back in the midst of overpriced, gaudy tourism, but for now, the gypsy-time-warp explanation is infinitely better than thinking I’ve lost my mind. As I decide to go with that option, I feel my frantic tension melt away.

  The growing crowd seems to notice my change in demeanor and begins shooting one another amused looks, but I don’t care anymore. A smile stretches across my face. Evidently I was wrong earlier; Reyna is a psychic mind reader, because if this is her special brand of bibbity-bobbity-boo, than she made my exact daydream from earlier in the courtyard come to life.

  The long gold gown, the braided hair, the Italian merchant’s daughter, the time period. I am in Renaissance Florence.

  I stare dumbly at the ground, the words and reality sinking in.

  I’m in Renaissance Florence!

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