by Nancy Werlin
Take that, buffoons! Marnie stabbed her imaginary hatpin in the air.
The cafeteria was nearly empty—people skipping breakfast in favor of packing. Jenna Lowry, however, sat alone at one end of Marnie’s usual table. She was reading a paperback book that she held open on the table with one hand. Half a bagel sat untouched on her tray.
Marnie knew she could plunk herself down anywhere; there were no seating arrangements for breakfast. But something in her was stubborn. She placed her tray directly across from Jenna, who scowled. Marnie lifted her orange juice glass in a mocking little salute. Jenna’s nostrils flared with disdain before she returned, theatrically, to her book.
Silence.
Marnie ate and pretended to be deep in reviewing history notes. She ate more than she wanted, actually, because she sensed Jenna stealing quick looks at her and she wanted to appear unconcerned. The words on the notebook pages were a dull, meaningless jumble. She turned a page at random. Her mind wandered.
Jenna’s dorm room was on the floor below Marnie’s, the ground floor. Marnie found herself wondering how different the room locks could possibly be from each other. In movies and books, people were always sliding in bobby pins or credit cards and jimmying doors open. How hard could it be? She could practice on her own door first. Maybe there were even instructions up on the Net somewhere for easing locks open. She could look on … oh, no, she couldn’t.
For a moment the horror of it all swept over her again.
Still, the idea of somehow getting to Jenna’s computer wouldn’t go away. Marnie found herself glancing over at her—and saw Jenna staring back, eyes narrowed.
“What are you looking at?” Jenna’s palm flattened on her book.
There was something defensive about the gesture. Marnie fixed her raccoon eyes on the paperback beneath Jenna’s hand. Little Miss Lit/Crit usually toted around thick classics: Dostoyevsky, Wharton, Flaubert. But this book was slender. Without thinking, Marnie blurted, “What are you reading?”
To Marnie’s astonishment, Jenna blushed. It was not a faint tinge of pink that touched her face, but a full-bodied red that spread slowly and inexorably upward from her neck all the way to her hairline.
Deep inside Marnie, unexpectedly, amusement and a kind of warmth bubbled up. For a moment she forgot everything else and said, “That good, huh? Can I borrow it when you’re done?”
Jenna snapped the book shut and whisked it away beneath the table. “No!” she said. To her clear horror, a little spit came flying out with the word. She jumped up from the table. “I really hate your guts,” she said rapidly to Marnie. “You think you’re so superior, but you make me sick, do you know that? Sick!”
Superior? All at once Marnie was enraged too. She was just trying to get by! “Get a life, Jenna. You’re obviously not satisfied with the one you have, or you wouldn’t be obsessing about what you think about me, and what I think about me.” She narrowed her eyes and took aim, knowing with infallible instinct what would hurt this particular girl terribly: “And you wouldn’t be reading trashy books. Don’t tell me. Harlequin romance?” She knew instantly she’d hit her target. Dead center.
Jenna hissed like a snake. “Don’t you dare criticize my reading habits, you—”
“Oh, please. Spare me.”
“I have a life! I have friends, which is more than you do! I even have a boyfriend, and this weekend we’re going to—” Jenna stopped talking so abruptly she bit her own lip.
“Go on,” Marnie said after a second. “Things were just getting interesting. I see that you were reading for academic purposes, then. Sort of. Although I’m not sure what kind of technique a Harlequin romance will—”
Jenna grabbed her uneaten bagel and hurled it at Marnie. Marnie dodged slightly left and the bagel went sailing over her right shoulder, bounced off the far wall with a muffled thud, and landed on the floor. A couple of kids turned and looked, but most didn’t notice.
Jenna stormed out.
Marnie got up, retrieved the bagel from the floor, and threw it out. Then she bussed Jenna’s abandoned tray and sat down again. She was surprised to find she was shaking.
You should only alienate folks when you mean and want to do it.
When had she, Marnie Skyedottir, become a person who meant and wanted to? How? It wasn’t like her. Was it?
Marnie wrapped her arms around herself. She needed a computer, she just needed one. When she was online, she didn’t have to think about herself.
Oh, Skye, she thought. Where are you? But she knew the answer. Memories, recordings, books … all the quotes in the world … they were not Skye.
It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter.
CHAPTER
7
There was a single message, a short one, waiting in Marnie’s e-mail box.
It was from the Elf.
Marnie’s heart leapt. Other worries faded from her mind as she stared at the one-line listing as if it were a beautifully wrapped present.
The Elf had a very interesting address, she reflected. [email protected]. St. Joan’s was a prep school near Boston. So the Elf didn’t live far away, relatively speaking.
FRD. Fred? No, that couldn’t be the Elf’s name. The Elf’s name had to be something like—well, Marnie didn’t know. It was impossible to think of him as anything but the Elf.
It didn’t matter what his name was. Nearby or not, she was not going to meet the Elf in real life. It would spoil everything. In fact, it was almost too much to be exchanging e-mail.
Instead of opening the message, Marnie looked around Jenna’s room. When a quick inspection from outside had ascertained that Jenna had left her window unlocked, Marnie had been unable to resist. Now, inside, she sat at Jenna’s desk. It was dark—she didn’t dare turn on a light—but she was well accustomed to seeing only in the glow from the monitor.
She could see, for instance, that Jenna was sort of a slob. Two pairs of jeans were lying on the floor near the unmade bed. A couple dozen paperback romance novels were stacked near them. And dust lay everywhere, except on a nicely framed photograph of a teenage boy in a hockey uniform. Jenna’s famous boyfriend, Marnie supposed. She studied the picture, which Jenna had placed next to the computer monitor. She wondered, were this boy and Jenna right now—no, stop. Marnie really didn’t want to imagine that scenario.
She returned her attention to Jenna’s computer screen. She opened the Elf’s message, and immediately all thought of Jenna vanished from her mind.
You can’t be flunking out? What’s the problem? It looks like I’m going to be allowed to graduate next month—can I help? I’ve tutored before and we can do it all online. My prices are reasonable. Your spellbook would do.
There was no signature.
A senior, Marnie thought. He’s a senior at St. Joan’s. She didn’t know why she felt so triumphant at having the little nugget of information—almost the way she’d felt at recovering the spellbook in Paliopolis. She clicked Reply and typed, Yes, I’m in serious danger of flunking. They have tutors lined up for me already. I’ll be stuck here studying this weekend and all next week during break. Don’t worry, though—I’m not dumb, just bored. Do you like St. Joan’s? I’m a junior at Halsett.
She paused, tapping her fingertips lightly on the keys. She wanted … she had the impulse to write more, lots more. Details. But she knew it wasn’t wise. The Elf wasn’t a friend; she had to remember that. This was quite enough communication.
On a whim, however, she signed the e-mail: Marnie. It would encourage the Elf to tell her his real name. Which she sincerely hoped was not Fred.
She clicked Send. She stared at her lonely little inbox, with its single message now flagged “read.” She thought about deleting it but didn’t. She thought about entering the Elf’s address into her empty address book but didn’t do that either. She wondered when the Elf would reply. By tomorrow, surely? Could she sneak back in here in the morning? She wouldn’t have to clamber dangerously through the window again; she’d
simply leave the door unlocked.
At that moment a reply arrived. The Elf was online right now!
Hey, there you are. Halsett, eh? I know where that is. Yeah, St. Joan’s is okay. I’ll be glad to move on, though. What subjects are you having problems with?
Marnie found she was embarrassed. She simply couldn’t list all of them. What if the Elf thought she was stupid? Carefully, she typed, Chem’s the worst. Paliopolis was occupying too much of my time, that’s all.
A reply came almost instantly. Are you really giving the game up?
For now, anyway, Marnie answered.
The Elf’s reply was so long in coming that Marnie began to think he had rudely logged off without saying good-bye. But then it did come.
I just checked the Halsett server. Couldn’t resist. Do those idiots know how insecure it is? I got right into their records. There’s a back door off the Web site that any minimally competent hacker could find. Listen—there’s only one Marnie listed, and I couldn’t help noticing your last name. Cool. I’ve read a couple of your mother’s books. She was a pretty interesting thinker, although I’d disagree with her concept of personal revelation. Anyway, you’ve got an A in Algebra II, Ms. Sorceress, but you’re flunking everything else. I really can help. No charge. Well, maybe some Paliopolis pointers.
Marnie felt as if she’d been kicked in the stomach. I couldn’t help noticing your last name. She couldn’t answer. She stared at the message and she couldn’t answer. And after five minutes another message arrived. For a moment she thought she couldn’t open it, but then she did. It said only: Hey, are you there?
She couldn’t answer that, either.
Then, after another five minutes, another message came. Okay, you probably just had to go. I’m going to bed—Paliopolis is no fun without you. E me back when you can. And find some way to tell Halsett to make their g-d server secure. Take a look. All student records are completely accessible.
That was great, Marnie thought wearily. That was just great. Halsett incompetence. Well, too bad for them. She wasn’t going to help them one little bit.
Moving slowly, as if she were pushing through water, she used the mouse to disconnect and then turned off Jenna’s computer. Even without the glow from the monitor, the room wasn’t completely dark; a little light filtered in through the windows from the streetlamps outside the dorm.
I couldn’t help noticing your last name.
Thank you, Sherlock Holmes. How dare he? How dare he pry around like that? People had no right to go mucking around in other people’s business. And she’d given him—given him!—her first name, not her last. And he hadn’t even bothered to sign his own message….
Marnie came abruptly to the realization that she was no longer sitting at Jenna’s desk. She’d jumped up and begun pacing back and forth, had even absently kicked one of Jenna’s pairs of jeans under the bed as she moved. She sighed and fished it back out with one foot, pushing it to approximately its previous location on the floor. She thought vaguely about grabbing one of Jenna’s romance novels and reading it. She could use another form of escape. She sank down on the bed.
Marnie, of all people, had no right to criticize the Elf for breaking in anywhere. Look where she was sitting. Still …
Exhaustion crashed down on her like a wave. Her eyelids felt weighted; her limbs strengthless. She was tempted to collapse right here on top of Jenna’s bed. She didn’t feel like going back to her own room. Maybe for just an hour or two …
No. If she was smart, she’d leave now, and she’d firmly lock both the window and the door behind her. She’d go upstairs to her own room and sleep as blamelessly as a baby. She’d do her work tomorrow, and the day after, and all next week, and never, never, never e-mail the Elf again.
I couldn’t help noticing your last name.
Suddenly it didn’t seem so awful for the Elf to know. It was who she was, after all.
Behind her lids, all at once, Marnie could see Skye’s face. She held her breath. At one time, it had been common in her life to feel Skye near. But not these days.
Yet now Marnie could almost hear her voice, low and sweet, as she softly sang a lullaby. And then added, still softly: I’ve never understood how children can sleep after hearing that one. Pretty music, though. Don’t worry about the lyrics, sweet pea. I’m here to catch you.
A lie, Marnie thought as she drifted. A lie … oh, but a good lie …
CHAPTER
8
Marnie awoke just before dawn in a great sweat of inchoate fear. She put her hand to her chest and literally felt her heart jump against her palm. She’d been dreaming … the Elf, faceless (but she’d known it was him), holding Jenna in a romantic clinch from the cover of a paperback romance … A cyber-construct hawk, red-eyed, soaring dangerously through the alleys of Paliopolis … Ms. Slaight waving a book on the chemistry of DNA, shouting at Marnie, Skyedottir, Skyedottir! … Weird, mixed-up stuff.
Marnie took a deep breath, and then another, and felt herself begin to calm. She swung her legs over the side of Jenna’s bed and put her head down between her knees.
Sleeping here! Why had she done that? She knew better.
This was how she’d felt after Skye died. Those awful months living with Max and Mrs. Shapiro in New York. Max had been afraid, too; Marnie had known that instinctively. She had only been eleven then. Boarding school had been the only possible answer. It had been Marnie’s idea and she’d refused to change it. Max wasn’t her father, after all. She had actually asked him. Stupid, yes—she knew that now.
“No,” Max had said. He’d added, hesitatingly, “I wish I were,” and had begun saying something else. But somehow it had all been too much, and Marnie had run out of the room. He had tried to talk about it once, no, twice since then, but Marnie had not allowed it.
Very likely Skye had had her from a sperm bank. It was the kind of choice the author of Spiritual and Emotional Self-Determination would have made.
The Elf probably had a regular set of parents, down there in Boston. Maybe siblings, too. A little sister in middle school who he had to share the computer with. Here was a funny thing: Marnie couldn’t imagine what the Elf looked like, but she could see the little sister clearly. She was thin, with sticklike legs, and had long straggly dirty-blond hair and glasses and a big crush on one of her older brother’s friends. Her name was … Hannah. The Elf really loved her. Sometimes he let her hang out when his friends were over. He helped her with her homework, too, but she didn’t need much help, because she was a smart little girl, Hannah. All A’s. They were a smart family. Both parents taught at Harvard. No. The mother taught at M.I.T. Something technical. The father taught Spanish. The whole family spent summers in Madrid. No. Barcelona. No; the father taught classics, and they summered on archeological digs all over the Mediterranean. One time the Elf actually dug up, um, something important. Actually it was Hannah who found it….
Marnie drifted off into an elongated daydream that was part The Swiss Family Robinson and part Raiders of the Lost Ark. It was only the realization that the room had become considerably brighter that roused her again. What was her problem? She had to get back upstairs. But she paused anyway, to log back on and write the Elf a message.
Yes, I’m Skye’s daughter. I think I agree with you about personal revelation being bogus, but she really and honestly believed in it.
What subjects can you help me with? At this point I just want to pass some tests. Chem, European history. Oh, and I have a couple of English papers to write. I don’t suppose you have any you’d be interested in selling?
Marnie almost clicked Send, but then went back and added a smiley face icon at the end, so the Elf wouldn’t think she was serious.
She got upstairs and safely inside her own bleak, computerless room without incident.
“You see how much is possible when you focus?” said Ms. Slaight just after noon on Monday.
“Yeah,” said Marnie uneasily.
With Ms. Slaight standi
ng guard, Marnie had spent the entire morning in the teacher’s empty classroom, toiling through three chapters of chemistry and taking the quizzes at the end of each one. Somehow she’d managed to ignore Ms. Slaight, who, Marnie thought, was being as careful of Marnie as Marnie was of her. Once Marnie had caught Ms. Slaight watching her, but then both of them had quickly looked away. Marnie didn’t want any trouble. Maybe Ms. Slaight didn’t either.
Still, the woman made her itchy.
Marnie had passed all the quizzes. But her head was now overstuffed with atomic structures, molecular weights, and balanced equations, and she knew she wouldn’t retain the information for long. “I want to review tonight and take the section test tomorrow,” she said, and Ms. Slaight nodded.
Why not see if she could make this awful woman crack a smile? “On to history!” Marnie declared, pumping one fist in the air. But Ms. Slaight only compressed her lips.
Really, Marnie thought. Why had she volunteered to help her? Were they paying her more to do so? Maybe she’d use the bonus to buy some new clothes.
In point of fact Marnie was not due to visit her history teacher until one o’clock. That left time for lunch—or, if she was careful, a quick check-in at Jenna’s room to see if the Elf had replied.
She sprinted.
He had. Sort of. He’d sent an address for a college Web site that featured an outline of important dates in European history, along with several lengthy student bulletin-board discussions. But there was no note; just the URL. Had Marnie offended him with her question about English papers? Carefully, she wrote back, Thanks for the URL. Looks good. I’m off now to write my first English paper, on Wuthering Heights, which I hated. She hesitated, then added, Stupid Cathy, so he would know she’d read the book. Then she closed. Talk to you later, I hope. Can you be online at midnight?
Marnie sent the message and lingered, checking incoming mail several times, in hopes there’d be a quick reply. But there wasn’t.
