Me, My Elf & I Page 2

  “So you made it,” Ms. Sanchez says as she perches on the edge of her desk.

  “Barely,” I admit.

  Ms. Sanchez pulls a red file folder off her desk. I see my name printed on the tab. “So you’ve never been to a regular school?”

  I shake my head, more embarrassed now. “I didn’t realize everyone in the universe would know that about me.”

  Ms. Sanchez laughs. “Only your teachers and I know that about you. And you’re not the only homeschooled student we’ve ever had. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Especially with test scores like yours.”

  “Thanks,” I mumble. “But being smart hasn’t stopped me from being an idiot today.”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” she tells me. “It’s tough coming to a new school as a sophomore, especially a week after everyone else started.”

  “Oh no,” I groan and clutch my knapsack to my chest. She makes it sound so terrible!

  “You’re going to do just fine,” she assures me as she flips the pages in the red folder. “Let’s see where you’re supposed be now and get you started.”

  Ms. Sanchez knocks on a classroom door and goes inside. I wait in the hallway but I hear people murmur, papers shuffle, and someone laughing inside the room. “Settle down,” an adult says, then a girl comes out in the hall with Ms. Sanchez.

  “What’s up, Aunt Nina?” the girl asks. Ms. Sanchez frowns for a moment until the girl rolls her eyes and says, “Ms. Sanchez,” in a silly voice that makes Ms. Sanchez snicker.

  “Mercedes, this is Zephyr. Zephyr?” She turns to me. “This is my niece, Mercedes. She’s also a sophomore here and she’ll be your official tour guide today.”

  When Ms. Sanchez steps aside, Mercedes and I face each other as if we’re looking in an opposites mirror. I am tall. She is short. I’m as pale as milk. Her skin is the rich, beautiful brown of acorns. My stick-straight, so-blond-it’s-nearly-translucent hair hangs down below my shoulders. Her thick, dark ringlets are cropped just above her chin. I am all points and angles: cheekbones, collarbones, elbow, knees; she is soft curves from her round cheeks down to her feet.

  And it’s not just how we’re built, it’s how we’re dressed. I’ve taken great care today not to look like some hippie wood sprite straight off the commune (which is what most erdlers think of us when we leave Alverland). I purposely left my soft deerskin boots and handwoven tunic dress at home. I didn’t even wear my hat or the amulets my grandparents made for me. I gaze at Mercedes in her red-striped tank top over a white T-shirt and skinny jeans riding below her hips and pegged above her silver ballet flats. I realize I look nothing like a regular erdler kid. My navy blue pants are too fitted, too new, too stiff, too high up on my waist. I have on a bona fide blouse, aquamarine with pearly buttons all the way up to my chin. And I’m wearing white sneakers. I’m so embarrassed that I wish someone would turn me into a bird so I could fly away and never ever see these people again.

  “My aunt told me about you,” Mercedes says. “You’re the girl from Michigan, right?”

  “The U.P.,” I say hopefully, but Ms. Sanchez and Mercedes look at me blankly. “See, Michigan has two parts.” I hold up my right hand like a mitten with the thumb sticking out to the side. “This is the main part where Detroit and stuff like that is.” I hold my left hand sideways over the top of my right fingertips. “And this is the Upper Peninsula, the U.P.” They blink at me. “All this space between my hands is the Great Lakes. And up here? ” I point to the pinky knuckle on my left hand. “That’s where I grew up.”

  “Close to Canada then?” Mercedes asks.

  “That’s right!” I say, impressed with her grasp of geography. Most people in Michigan have no idea how close we are to Canada.

  “Yeah,” she says, smirking. “I can hear your accent. ‘Out and about.’” She laughs because she pronounces it like “oot and aboot.”

  I press my lips together as my cheeks grow warm, embarrassed by how obviously weird I seem, even in this school where the brochure says diversity is a good thing.

  “But that’s okay, yo, because I’ll have you talking Brooklyn in no time flat.” Mercedes snaps her fingers in front of her face and grins at me, this time nicely.

  Ms. Sanchez hands Mercedes a green slip. “Here’s a hall pass. Show Zephyr her locker, the cafeteria, her homeroom, then escort her to her classes for the rest of the day.”

  Ms. Sanchez turns to me. “You can stop by my office anytime if you have a question.” She slips her arm around Mercedes’s waist. “Mercy will be a great tour guide, won’t you?”

  Mercedes wiggles out of her aunt’s embrace, but I see her smile. “Yeah, yeah, Aunt Nina.”

  “Ms. Sanchez,” Ms. Sanchez says playfully over her shoulder as she walks away.

  First I ask to stop in the bathroom so I can do something about how I look. I stand in front of the mirror and sigh. “I look like . . .” I say to Mercedes.

  She sits on the countertop, kicking her feet into the big rubber trash can stuffed full of used paper towels. “A dork,” she says. “Which is weird because, you’re like, so freakin’ gorgeous and everything. Does your mom make you dress like that so boys won’t be looking at you?”

  “No. I mean, I just didn’t know what to wear.” I untuck my shirt and undo the top button. I take off my belt and shove it in my bag. (A belt! She’s right. I am a total dork.) I try to squiggle my pants down around my hips, but it’s hopeless. “Is that better?”

  Mercedes raises her eyebrows. “Yeah, better, but . . .” She hops down from the counter. “I don’t know what kind of malls they have up there in the U.P., but girl, we’re gonna have to take you shopping or something.”

  I follow her out of the bathroom. “Please,” I beg. “I would really, really appreciate that.”

  Mercedes snorts a little laugh. “‘I would really, really appreciate that! ’” she mocks, and I have to give her credit, she truly does sound like me. “For real you talk like that?”

  I stop and tower over her. “How am I supposed to talk?”

  She shrugs. “I don’t know. However you talk, you talk, I guess. It’s sweet, kind of. Real nicey nicey. Polite sounding.”

  “Is that a bad thing?”

  “Naw, just different,” she assures me. “But maybe you want to tone it down a little bit with people you don’t know. Otherwise, you know, they might get the wrong idea.”

  “That I’m nice?” I ask. “What’s wrong with being nice?”

  “Too nice. Like people can take advantage of you. Push you around. You know. Like that. You gotta be able to hold your own here.”

  “Right, hold my own.” Then I realize that again I’m lost. “Hold my own what?”

  This time Mercedes cracks up. She leans into me and shakes my arm as she laughs. “Girl, you crazy! ‘Hold my own what?’ ” She imitates me perfectly again. “You really are from someplace else, aren’t you?”

  “You have no idea,” I tell her. “No idea at all.”

  chapter 2

  I’M OVERJOYED TO see Mercedes waiting for me after my algebra class. “Mercedes! Mercedes!” I jump up and down and wave. Everyone around me moves away and stares. I stop hopping.

  “Dang, chica,” Mercedes says. “Simmer down.”

  “Sorry, I just got so excited,” I say. “What are we doing now?”

  “Lunch, I guess. How exciting is that?”

  I think about this. “Can I eat with you?”

  “If you promise not to jump around,” she says, starting down the hall.

  I promise, but I’m still excited. I follow her. I’m so grateful that she’s letting me come with her that I want to give her something. A garland of wild roses to wear in her hair. A bouquet of sweet sage and honeysuckle to tuck into her belt loop. But those are the kinds of things we do in Alverland and I have no idea how erdlers show their appreciation. So I just say thank you, over and over again until finally Mercedes stops short.

  “Jeez, Zephyr!” she says loudly. The crowd of
kids parts around us. “Stop with all the thank-yous, would you? I get it! I get it!”

  “Sorry.” I hang my head.

  “Man, you apologize more than anyone I’ve ever met. ‘Sorry, sorry, so sorry,’” she says, mincing around, bobbing her head, exactly like I do. Then she jabs me in the ribs with her elbow and howls with laughter. “You got me bugging, girl! But it’s all good.”

  “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy me! ” someone bellows from behind us. I turn around to see a chubby boy, not much taller than Mercedes, with wild dark strands of hair over his eyes. He’s wearing black baggy clothes from head to toe, and has even painted the fingernails of his right hand a dark smudgy color. He zigzags through the other kids, singing Mercedes’s name.

  “Ari!” Mercedes screeches, and holds open her arms. They envelop each other in a long embrace, then begin to dance, hips close together, cheek to cheek, sliding elegantly across the floor. He dips her dramatically and looks up at me through his messy bangs.

  “Is this her?” he asks.

  Mercedes pops upright. “That’s right. This is Zephyr.”

  “Are you Mercedes’s boyfriend?” I ask, full of romance and envy, but also a little bit relieved to think that I finally understand something. But from their reactions, clearly I’m wrong. Mercedes and the boy snort and howl, slap their knees, and nearly fall down they’re laughing so hard. People passing by us stare and snicker.

  “She’s funny,” Ari says to Mercedes.

  “Yeah,” says Mercedes. “She’s all right.” They each loop one arm through my elbows and pull me down the hall.

  “So you’re not?” I ask, confused again.

  They both crack up, then Ari asks, “Is she for real?”

  “I don’t know,” says Mercedes. “But she’s a trip.”

  “And gorgeous!” Ari runs his fingers through my hair. “Oy vey es mir. What I would give for such hair. And that punim?” He tweaks my cheek. “Look at that bone structure! ”

  “Stop with the Jewish granny routine,” Mercedes says.

  “I love your hair, too.” Ari reaches around to tousle Mercedes’s pretty curls.

  “Get your grubby hands off my head.” Mercedes shakes viciously, but I can see the grin lurking on her lips. Ari takes that as an invitation to slip behind her and maul her with his fingers deep into her hair, massaging her scalp. Mercedes leans into him, purring like a cat.

  “She loves it,” Ari says to me. And as suddenly as their shenanigans started, Ari stops. They both stare at me. “I think we should make her our mascot,” Ari says. I can feel a stupid grin frozen on my face because I’m so excited that they want to be my friends. Sort of. I try to rearrange my mouth and eyes into something less “nice,” but I can’t really. Nice is who I am. So I shrug, helplessly grinning at them.

  “Good golly, Miss Molly!” Ari says with overexaggerated zeal. “Just how tall are you anyway?”

  “She’s gotta be like six feet tall,” Mercedes says, peering up at me as if I’m a tree.

  “And those legs. Up to her armpits with those legs.” I slouch a little, trying to seem less tall as Ari rubs his chin and eyes me. “No boobs.” I cross my arms over my chest. “No butt either. You’re a model, aren’t you?” he asks.

  “You’re teasing me, right?” I venture from my tight self-hug.

  “For real, you a model?” Mercedes eyes me suspiciously.

  I have no idea if they’re trying to compliment me or if they’re being mean, so I stay quiet.

  “If you’re not, you should be,” Ari says.

  “You could make mad money,” Mercedes tells me as we join the last few stragglers on their way to lunch.

  “We should get her on America’s Next Top Model,” Ari says.

  “Can you see her talking to Miss Tyra?” Mercedes asks. “‘Yes, Tyra! Oh thank you, Tyra! I’m so sorry, Tyra!’ Then Tyra’d be like, ‘Cut the crap, girl, and pose!’” Mercedes shoves one hip out to the side with her hands in the air and sucks her cheeks in.

  Ari pretends to take pictures of her while shouting, “Work it! Work it! ” as Mercedes hits silly pose after silly pose, making her way down the hall. I scurry behind them, desperate not to be left behind.

  When they’re tired of the strange Tyra game they’re playing, Ari turns to me and asks, “So, not a model. Why’d you come to this school then?”

  “I want to perform,” I say.

  “Duh,” says Ari. “What kind of performing?”

  I stare at them blankly.

  “Music? Dance? Drama?” Mercedes asks.

  “Everything!” I say. “All three!”

  “A triple threat,” says Ari. “I get it.”

  “Broadway bound,” says Mercedes.

  “But which do you like the most?” Ari asks.

  I think for a moment. “Music,” I say.

  Ari brightens. “I’m a musician, too.”

  “So is my dad,” I tell him.

  Mercedes rolls her eyes and blows a puff of air into her bangs. “Musicians,” she snorts.

  “Mercy here wants to be a theater diva,” Ari says with a British accent, and Mercedes bows deeply. Ari shoves her and she flings herself across the hallway, arms flailing, bumping into passing kids, who bump her back, so that she ends up banging noisily into lockers.

  “Oh, I’d love to try acting!” I tell Mercedes, thinking back to that big black binder of auditions in Ms. Sanchez’s office. “I’ll try anything new.”

  “Whatever,” says Ari. “Let’s talk about real art. What instrument do you play? Wait. Let me guess.” He studies me again for a moment. “You sing.”

  “Hey, how’d you know?”

  He wiggles his fingers in front of his body as if he’s playing the piano. “I’ve got an accompanist’s sixth sense.”

  Before I can ask him what he means or tell him that I also play the lute, Mercedes flings open the double doors that lead into the cafeteria. A deafening roar overtakes us. Talking, laughing, shouting, and singing jumble together over music pumped through speakers in the ceiling. Kids are everywhere. In chairs, on the floor, on top of tables, slouching against the walls, dancing in the corners. I’ve never seen so many different kinds of people together in one place. From dark-skinned to light-skinned and every shade in between. Brown hair, blond hair, blue hair, no hair. Earrings, nose rings, pierced eyebrows, cheeks, and probably lots of places that I can’t see. Three girls in a little huddle are even wearing fairy wings. I want to stand quietly in the doorway for a long time getting used to it all, but Ari comes back to my side, grabs my wrist, and drags me to the lunch line.

  With my tray full of fruit and salad I push into the seating area. Ari and Mercedes hang back, surveying the scene. “Hey! ” I point to an empty bench on one side of a long table in the center of the room. “Here’s a free space big enough for us.” I hurry over to plunk my tray down before someone else gets the seats, then I turn around and wave my hand over my head to make sure Ari and Mercedes see me. “Over here!” I call. They both stay absolutely still, staring at me with wide, intense eyes. “What?” I ask, and jerk around to see what I’ve done wrong. Am I stepping in a big puddle of spilled milk? Is the table covered with something disgusting? Did I accidentally pee my pants and not notice?

  “Uh, can I help you?” the pretty girl sitting across from my tray says, although she doesn’t really sound like she wants to help me at all.

  “With what?” I ask.

  “Look, bee-yatch,” the girl says, shaking her head so that her long shiny black hair moves like a curtain across her shoulders. She stares at me with cold, calculating eyes—green and almond-shaped, like a cat’s.

  I look carefully all around. “I don’t see anything,” I tell her, and the guy sitting on her right starts to laugh so hard that orange soda sprays from his mouth.

  “Jesus, Timber,” the girl says to the guy, and shoves him hard on the shoulder. Then she wipes tiny drops of his soda off her bare arm while muttering, “Disgusting,” to the three girls o
n her left.

  “Who the hell is this nancy at our table? ” one of the girls asks while all three of them stare at me. The girls seem a lot less happy to see me than the guy who is grinning so fiercely that I think of a wolf.

  “I’m Zephyr,” I say. “Not Nancy. Who are you?” But they must not have heard me over the din in the room because nobody answers.

  By then Ari is right behind me. He touches the back of my arm and stands on his tiptoes to say firmly into my ear, “Not here, Zeph.”

  “Oh.” I pick up my tray and smile at them. “Sorry.” The wolf boy leans on his elbows and smirks. I think he’ll lick his lips as he watches me walk backward, bowing and repeating, “Sorry, sorry, so sorry,” until his intense gray-blue eyes make my skin itch and burn.

  I join Ari and Mercedes huddled in a corner far away from my mistake. They both writhe on the floor, screaming with laughter as they recount over and over again what just happened.

  Mercedes sits up tall and arranges her face in the exact look of near horror that the girl at the table gave me. “Uh, can I help you?” she says in a dead-on impersonation.

  “With what? ” Ari asks breathily, hand pressed against his chest, big eyes blinking in a way that I’m guessing is supposed to be me.

  “Look beeee-yatch,” Mercedes spits, wagging her head.

  Ari pretends to look all around, up and down, under the table, inside his shirt, then straight back at Mercedes as if challenging her. “I don’t see anything,” he deadpans. “And my name’s not Nancy!” They howl with laughter before playing the entire scene again.

  No matter how many times they go over it, I have no idea what I did, or why it was so terrible, or so terribly funny, anyway. All I can think about is the boy called Timber who looked as though he wanted to devour me. I shiver.