by Amy McAuley
Hans. Sweat drenches my forehead and the insides of my gloves.
“Don’t I look good?” Di says, spinning in a graceful circle to display her beauty.
Attached to the beaded bodice of her gown is one of those tacky sticker name tags that read, “Hello, my name is:” and the white space beneath is jam-packed with tiny lettering. Leaning closer, I see that each line is a name, and each name is smaller than the one before it, reminding me of the vision chart the eye doctor uses. Only the first name is large enough to read clearly: “Hello. My name is: Marie-Thérèse-Louise de Savoie-Carignan, Princesse de Lamballe.” What a very long and unusual name Diana has.
When I back away and look around, we’re standing alone in the stone room. The room with the gigantic bed. My heart races at the sight of it.
Torchlight flickers off Diana’s face. “These dreams you’re having are flashes of another life you lived,” she says, tugging her hair loose from the fancy, piled-high-on-the-head style she’d been wearing at the party.
I take a seat on the end of the bed, sinking deep into the mattress. “Okay.”
“But when you remember them, you’re stuck seeing things through Penny’s eyes, which includes her experiences and preconceived ideas.”
I fall back onto the silky blankets. “Is that why you were wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and the walls in here are stone because I think all castles are like that?”
Stretched out on the bed, I wait for an answer. With each second of silence that passes, the tension in the room rises. I don’t think Di is with me anymore. I don’t sense her at all. But at the same time, I don’t feel alone.
A frigid breeze tickles my bare arm, raising goose bumps. Invisible fingers of ice ruffle my hair and caress my cheek. When they fumble with the top of my corset, I manage to squeak out Diana’s name, but she doesn’t answer. Lifting my head slightly off the sheets, I see that the room is empty. A kiss so cold it feels hot envelops my mouth and pushes me back onto the bed, trapping a call for help.
When the kiss draws away, I lift my head and see a man standing at the end of the bed, his face hidden behind a golden lion mask. He lays a red rose on the blankets and slinks across the end of the bed, holding himself over me with his powerful arms. The mask lifts away, and though my mind gazes upon his face, seeing his beauty, my eyes do not. No matter which way I turn my head, I’m unable to see anything but a ghostly smudge where the mask had been.
Monday morning, I arrive at school still damp from a speedy shower, wearing two different colored socks and a wrinkled pair of jeans I found in the corner of my room. Mom was wrong about the chamomile tea All it did was wake me up to go to the bathroom. That, combined with another castle dream and a nightmare about Di chasing me around with her own severed arm, made it way too tempting to repeatedly smack the snooze button this morning.
I grab my books, hustle to my History classroom, and take my seat as the bell rings.
“Close call, Miss Fitzsimmons,” Mr. Lamont says to me, shutting the door.
Mr. Lamont is the hottest teacher I’ve ever seen. He’s the only reason I enrolled in Modern Western Civilization. I know he’s a teacher, and I shouldn’t scope him out, but I can’t help it. Usually, I spend most of History class staring at Mr. Lamont’s rear end as he scribbles on the blackboard. Or I time how long I can hold my breath. I can last over a minute now, and when I started I could only hold it for twenty seconds. That’s something to be proud of.
Mr. Lamont writes “The French Revolution” on the board. I know all I need to know about the French Revolution, which is basically zilch, so I inhale deeply and watch the red second hand move around the clock.
“Louis the Sixteenth and Marie Antoinette.” He pauses to write on the board again.
“She’s the one who said, ‘Let them eat cake,’ right?” I hear Claire Wilson ask.
The second hand ticks past the thirty-second mark. I’m not even getting woozy yet.
“That would be the infamous quote, yes.”
Yeah, whatever.
The second hand approaches the minute mark. My lungs burn. In the background haze, I hear Mr. Lamont talking about Versailles. I fade out of his lecture, focusing on the clock. When I think I’m about to die from lack of oxygen, I quietly exhale. My head floats around in a circle like it’s not attached to my body. I catch sight of Louis’s name on the blackboard in glaring white chalk. Why are we even wasting time on him?
“Louis was a fat moron who couldn’t even get it up.”
My palms throb. I unfurl clenched fists to expose a row of crescent-shaped marks left by my fingernails. Then it hits me that I just said something out loud, and the room is silent. I slowly lift my gaze. Everybody, including Mr. Lamont, is staring at me.
“Penny, I’d like to see you after class,” Mr. Lamont says, and my cheeks flare red hot.
What did I say? I can’t remember.
When Mr. Lamont’s back is turned to the class, Moira Ezzo, the girl who sits in front of me, turns around to give me a wide-eyed look of shock. “That was amazing.”
I swallow hard, unable to whisper back. I just nod, and she turns to face the front. When the bell rings, I keep my head down and pretend to be writing something in my notebook. People snicker as they walk past me to leave the room, but I don’t look up. Then I see Mr. Lamont’s dress pants beside my desk.
“Penny, it’s not like you to be rude in class.”
Am I sensing a hint of amusement behind his disappointment? Maybe I’m not going to rot in detention after all. I doodle a flower on the cover of my binder. “I’m sorry,” I say, not sure what I’m apologizing for.
“I’m curious to know how you knew of Louis’s”—he clears his throat—“ailment. Most people don’t know that he was impotent for the first seven years of his marriage.”
Oh my God, is that what I said?
“I did some extra reading on the French Revolution. I’d like to do well in your class, Mr. Lamont.” I cross my fingers and pray that was just the right amount of butt-kissing to get out of trouble.
“I appreciate your interest in history,” he says, giving me a smile on the way to his desk, “but you’ll have to refrain from blurting out your findings during class.”
How can I refrain from blurting out findings that I didn’t even find in the first place?
“I promise I’ll never do that again, Mr. Lamont.” I hope.
* * *
“Pen, I heard about what you said in History,” Diana says, cackling in my ear.
I stuff my math textbook inside my locker. “I think I blacked out, because I don’t remember saying it at all. What if I have some rare disease where I blurt out stuff?”
“You think you have a disorder that causes you to hurl insults at dead historical figures?” Diana doubles over, cracking up. When she comes up for air she cries, “Christopher Columbus sailed big ships to compensate for his microscopic penis!”
“Stop making fun of me. I’m serious.” It’s way too hard to keep a straight face when your best friend is nearly peeing her pants right beside you. I crack up, too, and Di gives me a weak high five. “Thanks. I don’t even know what I was worried about now.”
“C’mon, let’s go eat,” she says, tugging on my arm. “I get to buy a treat today.”
Di’s body is her “instrument,” which is why she eats healthier than any person I’ve ever met. It makes me ill. Every Monday, she rewards herself with a bag of chips, and then out of guilt eats only five. Sometimes I want to scream, “Just eat the damn chips!” But if Di ate them, I wouldn’t get my free bag of hand-me-down chips, so I keep quiet.
“I should have skipped dance class the other night to go to your mom’s psychic party. I’d love to know what’s in my future,” Di says. “What’d she tell you?”
“She asked if I have a friend named Donna or Diane.”
Di grips my arm. “She didn’t!”
“She did.”
“Did you tell her she was right?”
<
br /> I wriggle free of Di’s bony fingers. “She wasn’t right. Your name is Diana.”
“Close enough,” she says, excited. “What else? Tell me everything.”
I could tell Di everything, if I wanted to. But I feel silly, talking about something that shouldn’t be taken seriously. Nothing the psychic told me was even accurate.
I was in the spare bedroom, across the card table from Margie, when she waved me over. For a minute or so, she just smoked a slender cigarette, filling the air with the scent of burnt mint, and said nothing. I squirmed in my seat and monitored the tube of ash that dangled precipitously over my mom’s flammable tablecloth.
Eventually, she flicked the ashes into the ashtray. Tendrils of smoke curled from her nose and mouth as she said, “Honey, do you believe in destiny?”
I shrugged, wondering how Mom managed to finagle me, a skeptic, into seeing the psychic. Everybody else at her party was in the living room, sipping wine and playing dumb party games, while I was getting cancer from the clouds of mint smoke descending on me like nuclear fallout.
“Everything happens for a reason,” Margie said. “Have you noticed this before?”
When I was twelve, Mom didn’t have enough money to send me to my favorite summer camp. At the last minute, she sent me to a cheaper one. That’s where I met Di. We’d spent our whole lives in the same city, separated by only four blocks, and we had to travel a hundred miles away from home to meet each other. It felt like we’d been best friends forever and picked up where we’d left off.
I wasn’t sure if that was the kind of thing Margie meant, but I nodded anyway.
“Do you have plans to travel soon, Penny? Are you going away this summer?”
“I don’t think so. I can’t go anywhere because I’ve got a job at Super-Saver.”
“No, I see you traveling,” she said. “Do you know a girl named Donna? Diane?”
“My best friend’s name is Diana,” I blurted, accidentally feeding her information.
“There is another girl who is linked to you. I’m picking up a strong personality.” Margie opened one eye only long enough to safely guide her cigarette to her mouth. “This girl is unique, set apart from almost everyone she knows. I see you take her black hair in your hands. You tie it in a knot,” her hands acted out tying the knot and pulling it tight, “and weave the hair that falls to her waist into a braid. Sadly, a rift pulled the two of you apart. A rift that only time could heal.”
The reading dragged on for another five minutes, and as soon as it was done, I jumped up to leave, eager to get back to the dessert tray before the brownies disappeared. The chunky bracelet on Margie’s wrist bounced against my arm as she held me back.
“Have you ever tried to read someone?” she asked.
“You mean like psychically read them?”
“Yes, like that,” she said, pulling me closer. “I can see many things about you, Penny. But I’ll let you find them out yourself.”
On my way out, I paused. “If I meet the guy you told me about, who I’ve been in love with for a thousand years, I’ll know?”
“Oh, honey, you’ll know all right. He’s charismatic and attractive, in a majestic way. I’m getting the initial U in his name. Only the letter U, though, the rest is unclear.” She pawed the air around her face. “The word lion is coming to me.”
Her calm expression suddenly tightened into a grimace. I wondered what she saw, but didn’t ask. I guess I’ll never know.
“He has the initial U?” Di says, after I tell her the short version of what happened. “What’s his name? Uterus?” The word uterus punches a hole through my eardrum. “I guess that means Ryan isn’t your past-life lover-man.”
“Nobody’s my past-life anything. He can’t possibly be a real person.”
Di tugs a lip balm from her pocket and slathers on a veneer of sparkly gunk. “Who knows. Maybe he is real and you’ll meet him when you’re ancient. Like thirty.”
Inside the cafeteria, we take our usual seats at a table we share with Amanda and Valerie, the girls we hang out with at school.
Amanda wrinkles her nose at me. “You look terrible. Are you sick?”
Great, in one day, I’ve gone from looking tired to terrible. At the exact same time a guy is finally interested in me.
“I’ve been having weird dreams that keep me up at night,” I say, scanning the lunch specials board. “Plus I feel awake during them, like I’m only half sleeping.”
“That’s called lucid dreaming,” Valerie says.
I turn abruptly at the unexpected response. Val is so quiet we sometimes forget she’s there. She must know about lucid dreaming or she wouldn’t have said a word.
“Do you lucid dream?” I ask her, and she draws a sci-fi novel away from her face.
“All the time. You controlled what happened in your dreams?”
“Not really. It was more like I was awake and thinking. But I knew I was dreaming.”
“I think dreams are a way for our brains to tell us things we don’t or can’t normally think about. I have a dream journal beside my bed. If I write dreams down it helps me remember them and figure them out. And it makes me a better lucid dreamer.”
Uh huh. That’s all I’d need. Bigger, better nightmares.
3
I don’t know how long I’ll have to suffer through panic and euphoria every time I’m around Ryan. My brain function grinds to a halt, my speech patterns alter drastically, and my heart does whatever it wants. Di told me it takes about a month to get comfortable with someone, but I’m not sure if I can tolerate myself for that long.
To make movie night more like a real date, Ryan and I went out to dinner, and I sweated over my table manners the entire time. Having a boyfriend is going to be the death of me.
Ryan holds the door of his house open for me. I step inside and wipe my feet on the butterfly-shaped mat. This isn’t the first time I’ve been in his kitchen, I ate lunch here yesterday, but his mom wasn’t home at the time.
“Mom, this is Penny,” Ryan says to the short, dark-haired woman loading plates into the dishwasher. “Penny, this is my mom, Linda.”
“It’s lovely to meet you, Penny,” she gushes, extending her hand.
My hands are cold and clammy, like dead fish, but I slap one of them against her palm anyway, and she gives it an enthusiastic jerk.
“It’s nice to meet you, too,” I say, sounding like a frog with laryngitis.
“Ryan has told me so much about you.” Linda releases her overzealous-mom death-grip on my hand. “He says you both have the same taste in movies and music.”
I give her the polite smile I know moms love best. “That’s right.”
“Ryan loves music. He’s a talented guitar player. But you probably already know that. And he’s quite the swimmer. His dad and I are stunned by his lap times this—”
“Mom,” Ryan says, laying a hand on her arm. “We’re gonna watch the movie now.”
“Sam doesn’t mind if you use his DVD player, Ryan, but be out of his apartment before he gets home at eleven-thirty.”
“I know, Mom.”
Ryan’s warm fingers slide around mine. With his mom muttering in the background, he tugs me out of the kitchen and opens a door in the hallway. The staircase ahead of us leads down into pitch darkness.
I’m sitting in History class. Mr. Lamont stands at the front of the room, waggling that cute butt of his around at the chalkboard. I glance around the empty room, wondering where everybody is. But then Moira turns around in her desk in front of me. That’s weird. She wasn’t there two seconds ago.
Leaning toward me, she whispers, “The crowd is totally crazy out there.”
I boost myself up to peek out the windows at the back of the room. Smoke drifts past the windows, coiling through the air like a snake.
“What’s the crowd doing?” I ask.
“Surely you must know,” Moira says in French. “Who are you kidding?”
I think hard. “No, reall
y, I don’t know.”
“You used her. She loved you like a sister and you used her in your treasonous exploits. Did you not care about her?”
In a way, I know what Moira’s talking about, but at the same time, I feel clueless. It reminds me of the game of Hangman, when the word is nearly filled in but your brain can’t quite put it together.
“Okay, we can play hangman if you want,” Moira says, already slashing white lines of chalk across the blackboard.
“Hang her!” Mr. Lamont cheers from the other end of the board.
Moira taps the chalk impatiently. “It’s a three-word phrase. Go!”
I choose the letter Y. Moira smirks and draws a circular head at the bottom of the noose. She writes the Y above the word so I’ll remember I already chose it.
My next choices, E, I, O and U, are all correct, and when I choose the letter N, Moira spears me with an angry glare before filling in the fourth space.
“You’ll never be hanged at this rate,” she says.
“How about D?”
“Nope!” She attaches a stick body to my head.
The phrase is nearly complete. I choose T, and it’s the last letter of the last word. When I call out L, hate flares into Moira’s face and the chalk snaps. White dust flutters from her fingers to the floor.
Only one spot remains blank. I will not hang. “It’s G.”
“That it is,” Moira says, grimacing in defeat.
The phrase reads: LIE, NO GUILT.
“So, what does it say?” Mr. Lamont calls.
“It says…” I stop in surprise. The letters in the hangman’s phrase have rearranged themselves into one word. It now says: GUILLOTINE.
The vowels fade from the word guillotine and burrow beneath the board. Vein-like ripples surge toward the letters Y and D–my incorrect hangman choices. Red trails drip into the metal chalk tray as the vowels push forth from the board.
Moira claps her hands. “Would you look at that. It says YOU DIE!”
Wake up, wake up, wake up!
Without moving, I find myself at the classroom windows. Screams rattle the glass in front of my nose. In my peripheral vision, I catch a glimpse of blond hair, and then Diana’s face bobs into view, with only a pane of glass separating us.
