by Kari Maaren
The secretary’s expression turned a bit sceptical, but she dutifully replied, “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.” She gave Freddy the printout, though not with much grace.
Freddy made it to English five minutes late. Everybody watched her as she entered the room, and a lot of the kids started whispering. Keith had been smiling when she came in; she saw the smile vanish. Freddy went to an open seat near the front of the room and sat down. She nodded at Josiah and wondered if she would be able to give him the slip today.
Mr. Dillon was staring at her as if he didn’t quite know who she was. “Sorry,” she said.
“Um,” said Mr. Dillon, “no worries. Does anyone have anything to say about the poem I asked you to read?”
“I thought it was fascist,” said Josiah. Mr. Dillon’s eyes shifted nervously to Freddy, but she just sat back and let Josiah get on with disrupting the class. It seemed to be his favourite thing to do. She wasn’t really sure what the point was.
There were more whispers and edgy glances on the way to science class. In the classroom, Freddy saw Rochelle frozen, wide-eyed, at her bench. Oh, right … she had knocked Freddy unconscious yesterday. “What are we doing today again?” Freddy asked Josiah, who was slumped on the stool beside her.
“I would say I didn’t remember, but I remember everything,” said Josiah in his favourite world-weary tone. “We’re starting a unit on evolution. I can confirm from personal experience that Darwin was right, so it doesn’t hugely interest me. Then again, nothing does.”
You’re not fooling anyone, thought Freddy, though she kept her expression neutral. Josiah knew she knew who Three was.
The look Ms. Treadwell gave Freddy was less vague and more puzzled than the look Mr. Dillon had, but she didn’t comment. So far, no one had. Maybe Cuerva Lachance had been right about people seeing what they wanted to see. Freddy sat through the class, though the lesson seemed abruptly stupid. Ms. Treadwell wasn’t telling them anything interesting about evolution; she was framing everything in the vaguest terms possible. Freddy didn’t remember grade nine science being this simplistic yesterday.
A few seconds after the bell rang to end class, she accidentally knocked her books onto the floor. Well … maybe it hadn’t been accidental. Maybe she was ever so slightly hoping Josiah would just leave with the others and give her a chance to slip away. But Josiah waited for her to pick the books up. They were the last two people out of the classroom.
Rochelle and a few of her friends were waiting for them outside. Freddy twitched. She didn’t have time for this.
“So you think you can just slap on some makeup and high heels and suddenly fit in?” said Rochelle. “You know we’ll never let it work, right?”
Freddy was looking over Rochelle’s shoulder for most of this. “Yeah, okay.”
“You are such a freak, Freddy,” said Rochelle.
“Didn’t you say that to her yesterday just before you put her in the hospital?” asked Josiah.
“I didn’t do anything to her,” said Rochelle, her voice about half an octave too high.
Freddy sighed and finally looked straight at Rochelle. She could do that now; they were almost the same height. Unexpectedly, Rochelle didn’t seem angry. She seemed scared. Her face was white and pinched and nervous. “I need to get past you,” Freddy said.
“I didn’t do anything to you,” Rochelle insisted. “Admit it, okay? Admit I never touched you.”
“But you did. Look, I really need—”
Rochelle shoved her against the row of lockers. “Just admit it!”
Freddy glanced down at Rochelle’s hands, still pressed against her shoulders. She removed them with her own hands one by one. Her time travelling had, at the very least, given her the opportunity to build up some muscles.
“I don’t think there’s any point in me admitting it,” said Freddy. “I didn’t tell anyone, if that’s what’s bothering you. I’d like to go now, so if there’s nothing else…”
Rochelle was staring in disbelief at Freddy’s hands, which were holding her own hands easily imprisoned. Freddy gave her a meaningless smile and pushed past her. She couldn’t waste time worrying about Rochelle right now. Josiah or no Josiah, she had to find Roland.
“Your approach to social dynamics has shifted,” Josiah observed.
“Has it?” said Freddy. “Look, I’ll see you later, okay?”
“Oh, no, you’ll see me now. I don’t know what you’re up to—”
“Nothing,” lied Freddy blandly. “It’s just … well, we just spent a year and a half together, didn’t we?”
“You’re breaking up with me?” said Josiah. “Really? Your gossipy little classmates will be so disappointed. There may be texting.”
She stopped in the middle of the hallway and faced him. “I have to go to the bathroom,” Freddy announced. “You can’t come. If you try to come, you may end up expelled, which I know you want, but I doubt you want it today.”
“Okay, yes, good point.” Josiah threw up his hands. “Do go and pretend to empty your bladder. I’ll see you in the cafeteria, which is, I suspect, where you will put your diabolical plan into action.”
“There isn’t any diabolical plan,” said Freddy.
There wasn’t any diabolical plan. There should have been. Sitting in a bathroom stall, Freddy chewed her lip and ran over her options. Cuerva Lachance and Josiah knew she and Mel and Roland knew who Three was, and it was only a matter of time before one of them slipped up and revealed the truth. Would that be so bad? asked the rebellious part of Freddy’s brain. She was pretty sure it would be so bad, but she had only slivers of evidence that she was right. She knew it couldn’t be as simple as it seemed. I mean, what’s the point? These two people live for thousands of years, with this one other person being reincarnated again and again and every time having to make one little choice. It’s not even a complicated choice. Just: are you on the side of order or of chaos? It can’t even make all that much of a difference. It must balance out in the end. Then why do I keep feeling as if it’s so wrong? Why does Roland think he’s being hemmed in and trapped? Why is Ban sniffing around, flicking mysterious hints at me? Ban is the same person as Cuerva Lachance, so why would she even want to do that? Doesn’t Cuerva Lachance remember doing that as Ban? She may have attention deficit disorder, but she puts a lot of it on. She really remembers things at least as well as Josiah. Wouldn’t she remember being all contradictory?
“Are you sitting in there musing about how to get the better of us?” asked Cuerva Lachance, who had apparently just materialised in the third-floor girls’ bathroom for reasons of her own.
Freddy sighed, flushed, and emerged. She sometimes thought nothing would ever truly surprise her again. “Get the better of you?” she asked as innocently as she could. “Why would I need to do that?”
“Well, it’s a mystery to me,” said Cuerva Lachance, tapping a finger against the brim of her hat. “I have a feeling you may think we’re criminal masterminds. Do you? I’ve often wanted to try being a criminal mastermind, though I’ve never quite had the opportunity.”
“That’s nice.” Freddy turned on the tap.
“If I were a criminal mastermind,” said Cuerva Lachance, who evidently just liked saying “criminal mastermind,” “I would call myself Zorbon and grow a moustache. Zorbon is also a good name for a Dark Lord in a fantasy epic. Does your stepbrother play role-playing games?”
Freddy was pretty sure her face gave nothing away as she said, “What? Why?”
“It’s just a random and completely innocent question,” said Cuerva Lachance. “I found a twenty-sided die under a chair the other day and thought he might have dropped it while he was being terrified in our living room.”
“I don’t pay very much attention to him. Could you get out of the way so I can dry my hands?”
“With alacrity,” said Cuerva Lachance, and moved aside.
“You’ve followed me to school,” said Freddy as she teased out a paper towel. “Y
ou’ve never done that before. Is it going to become a thing?”
“I hope not,” said Cuerva Lachance. “I’ve never been very good at school. I can’t go home yet, though. I’ve misplaced my keys.”
“Oh yeah?” said Freddy absentmindedly, drying her hands. She would have expected Cuerva Lachance to have lost interest by now.
“I have a lot of keys. I don’t have the least idea what any of them are for. I go out of my way to lose them over and over again, but Josie always finds them and brings them back.”
Freddy thought, The last time she went on about her keys to me was that day in the park when I was ten.
This time, her face did give her away, though Cuerva Lachance was peering into the mirror and didn’t see. Freddy threw out the paper towel and picked up her backpack. Inside, her brain was screaming at her. Cuerva Lachance was the crazy lady in the woods! Why haven’t you ever seen that before? It should have been obvious right away; no one talks like Cuerva Lachance. No one acted like her, either, or was as liable to turn up in the middle of a forest without anybody being able to tell how she had got there. More clearly than ever before, Freddy saw herself running towards that bench. That empty bench. Of course there had been no one on it when she had sat down.
“I always want to go into the world behind the mirror,” said Cuerva Lachance. “Alice didn’t explore half the possibilities.”
There was no excuse for her not having seen this before, Freddy told herself as she shrugged the straps over her shoulders. Well, okay, it had been four years ago, or five and a half on her personal timeline, and she didn’t think about the crazy lady much. She didn’t remember what she had looked like at all. The woman’s face had been hidden behind hair practically the whole time, and she hadn’t been wearing a hat or a trench coat. Even so, she had been Cuerva Lachance.
It had been obvious right away. Before Freddy had gone time travelling, she had made her mind slide away from impossibilities.
I hate to bother you, said the annoying rebellious bit of Freddy’s brain in polite but sarcastic tones, but the really important question right now is: does she know? Does she remember being there? Did she mention her keys just now for a reason?
That’s three questions, Freddy informed her brain. However, it had a point. The crazy lady had said, “Whatever you do, don’t tell me I’ve given you that.” It didn’t make sense. Cuerva Lachance did have a memory. And the key … was the key important? Freddy had always thought of it as just a key. It was inconceivable that Cuerva Lachance should have turned up when she was ten, years before she and Josiah had begun to sense Three, just to give Freddy something meant solely to make her feel better. There was yet another something going on here.
Cuerva Lachance could travel in time. Would she give Freddy the key later, though still four years ago? Why would she do that?
It had been better, thought Freddy as she sidled away from Cuerva Lachance and back towards the hallway, when the key had been just a key. It almost had to mean something now, and she wasn’t sure whatever it meant was going to end up being a good thing. If Cuerva Lachance had had it all along and gone back in time after the fact to give it to Freddy, would the key really be meant to help her? What if whatever way it seemed to help Freddy really helped Cuerva Lachance?
It was no good thinking like this. That was the problem with time travel; it turned everything twisty. It didn’t help that Cuerva Lachance was involved, as she could make anything mean anything at all.
* * *
“Where’s Roland?” Freddy asked Todd and Marcus, who were sitting in the cafeteria, staring at her in disbelief.
It was only afterwards that she realised how many invisible lines she must have crossed. She had walked calmly into the section of the cafeteria usually occupied by the Deaf kids, gone straight up to two boys who were widely known to be geeks, and spoken straight to them as if the three of them were friends. The social implications hadn’t even occurred to her. She’d just wanted to find Roland before he did something irreversible.
Todd and Marcus exchanged glances. Todd shrugged.
“No, really,” said Freddy, “where is he? I need him.”
“Uh,” said Marcus, “why?”
“Because I do. Just tell me,” said Freddy.
Marcus shot a nervous look out towards the kids who were staring avidly at the lunchtime theatre from seats all around the caf. “Only he specifically said he didn’t want to talk to you.”
Todd pointed at her hair, her face, her chest, her hips, and quirked an eyebrow interrogatively.
“Haircut. I know he doesn’t want to talk to me,” said Freddy, “but it’s important.”
They exchanged glances again. If they did it a third time, Freddy decided, she was going to bang their heads together. “Important, like, as in girl stuff? With boyfriends and clothes?” asked Marcus.
Freddy decided it was her steady, piercing glare that eventually made them both go red. Marcus was fiddling nervously with his plastic fork.
“Do I ever talk about boyfriends and clothes?” Freddy demanded when she had reduced the two boys to squirming piles of agonised shame.
“Don’t know,” said Marcus. “Don’t you? Have you ever said two words to us before in your life?”
She probably hadn’t. Freddy was becoming less and less sure she liked the person she had been yesterday. For the first time, she really looked at Todd and Marcus, who were over at her house for hours every weekend and tended to pop up frequently throughout the week as well. She’d always thought of them as a sort of collective: Todd-and-Marcus, Roland’s geeky friends. They weren’t a collective. Marcus was the shouty one with the hearing aid. He put it in every morning before school and took it out once classes started because he found a world with too much sound in it confusing. This was what he’d told Roland, anyway. Roland thought it was because Marcus felt different from Roland and Todd, who were both profoundly deaf, when he wore the hearing aid. Freddy knew this only because she’d overheard Roland telling Mel. Everything else she knew about Marcus was what she could see, which wasn’t all that much. She thought he was mixed-race, white and Indian or Middle Eastern, plus tall and skinny and more athletic than anyone had ever admitted. Todd was smaller and quieter. He rarely spoke aloud. She’d seen him signing a lot, though. He had reddish-brown hair and glasses, and he had grown noticeably fatter in the past year or so. And it was stupid that this was all she knew about the pair of them.
“I know. I’m sorry,” said Freddy, prompting a third exchange of glances and a signed, What’s happened to her? from Todd. Freddy tucked her hands behind her back. “And later,” she continued, “I’ll have a whole conversation with you about it if you really want me to and don’t just think I’m boring, but right now, I honestly have to talk to Roland.”
They looked at her. She thought about role-playing games and pleasure-domes and desperate battles against tentacled monsters, and she added, “It’s a matter of life and death. Sort of like a quest. Um.”
“What kind of a quest?” asked Marcus after a moment, cautiously.
“Well,” said Freddy, “let’s say Roland is hiding a … a deadly secret that could bring about the end of the world if he, uh, tells it to the wrong person. But he’s convinced himself the end of the world is coming anyway, so he’s gone all, you know, self-destructive. And I’m the one who has to jump in at the last minute and convince him not all hope is lost.”
Todd and Marcus looked at each other yet again, this time because Todd wanted to sign for a bit. It all went a little fast for Freddy, though she caught the initials “GM” … game master. Were they talking about…?
“We didn’t know you were into RPGs,” said Marcus. “Are you and Roland doing a LARP or something?”
Freddy hadn’t the faintest idea what a LARP was. “Yeah, or something,” she said.
“Cool,” said Marcus, and abruptly, he was about a hundred times friendlier. Freddy felt as if she had passed a test. “Roland’s eating lunch in th
e courtyard,” Marcus said. “He told us not to tell anybody, but I bet that was part of the game, right?”
Freddy tapped the side of her nose, something she had never done before in her life, and left. Dozens of eyes followed her out of the room. She looked back over her shoulder once, so she knew.
She knew Josiah was trailing her, and Cuerva Lachance could easily have been nearby, too, but as there was nothing she could do about it, she simply walked to the courtyard and tried to pretend she was alone. The courtyard was occupied by the usual tight bunches of smoking Deaf kids, all of whom ignored Freddy as she slipped through the door. It had rained during morning classes. The ground was damp, and little puddles had collected on the benches. Roland was sitting on one of them anyway. He tensed when he saw Freddy, but he didn’t get up.
She wiped off as much of the water as she could with her hand and sat down beside him. Roland looked away, and Freddy had to bite back an impatient sigh. For a Deaf person, looking away at the beginning of a conversation was the equivalent of covering your ears and going “La la la la la!”
She touched his shoulder. He still wouldn’t look at her. Freddy heard a snigger from a group of smokers. Okay … she had been feeling sorry for Roland, but it could only go so far.
Freddy got to her feet, moved around in front of her stepbrother, bent down, took his chin in her hand, and said, “I know you’re afraid of what’s going to happen. I can help.”
She let go and sat down again. There were more sniggers, but Roland was looking at her now.
“I’m not afraid,” said Roland.
“Josiah’s following me around,” said Freddy, keeping her expression casual. “Cuerva Lachance is here, too. They’re trying to find out what we know.”
“So this is a stupid conversation for us to have. Go away.”
“We can be careful,” said Freddy. “Look, all I want is for you to agree to talk to me and Mel about it tonight. There’s no use in running away—”
“I’m not running away. Jesus.”
“And you can stop taking everything I say the wrong way, too.”
