Me, My Elf & I Page 5

  Mercedes gives me the look of exasperation and amusement that I’m growing accustomed to. “That’s where you go to school, Boo. Brooklyn Academy of Performing Arts High School.”

  “So what’s a welcome wagon?”

  “Never mind,” says Ari. “I’m just saying, Timber isn’t known for being Mr. Friendly.”

  “Unless he wants to hit dem skins,” Mercedes says. Then before I have to ask, she turns to me and says, “That doesn’t mean playing the drums, Zephyr. It means, you know, getting with you.”

  “You mean like boyfriend and girlfriend?” I ask as a blush creeps up my neck into my cheeks. Will he be at the movie and coffee shop with me someday?

  “Bella is his girlfriend,” Mercedes says. “But that doesn’t stop him from messing around.”

  Before I can ask for a more detailed explanation, Ari lets out a shriek from the very back of my closet. I’m afraid he’s come face-to-face with one of Bramble’s blind mice or three-legged squirrels, but he emerges with an armload of my Alverland clothes. “Jackpot!” he yells, and tosses tunics, leggings, and boots onto my bed. “Look at this, Mercy!” He holds up my favorite robin’s-egg-blue tunic with indigo and brown embroidery around the neckline and sleeves.

  “Dang!” Mercedes says, fingering the soft linen. “That’s fine, girl. Where’d you get this?”

  “My grandmother made it,” I tell them.

  “Put it on! Put it on!” Ari says.

  “Fashion show,” Mercedes sings and shoves the tunic at me.

  I hold it in my hands and shake my head. I know how erdlers act when they see us in our Alverland clothes. Anytime we leave our village in the woods to go into Ironweed for supplies, we get stared at, yelled at, called names. “Oh, I get it,” I say coldly, understanding for the first time what Mercedes has been trying to teach me. This is where I have to hold my own and protect myself. “You’re trying to convince me to wear something stupid so you guys can laugh your heads off when I show up at school looking like a freak.” I crumple the tunic in my hands and toss it to the floor. I’d truly convinced myself that Ari and Mercedes might be my friends, but obviously, like everything else I’ve thought I understood here, I’m wrong.

  “Zeph!” Ari says. “We’re totally serious. This is amazing. I bet you look like a freakin’ goddess in this thing.”

  Mercedes says, “My aunt Nina would kill for this.”

  “Nobody has anything like it,” Ari adds.

  “Exactly,” I say.

  They both nod. “That’s just it,” Ari tells me. “This is the kind of thing everyone at our school would die for. To have their very own style. We all try to be so original, but look at us, we’re just copying somebody else in the end. But this! This is hot.”

  “No it’s not, really,” I tell them. “It’s very lightweight. My grandmother wove it out of linen from the flax we grow.”

  They both shake their heads and chuckle. “Timber would be slobbering all over you if you showed up dressed like this,” Mercedes says.

  I shiver at the mention of Timber. “Really?” Maybe they aren’t trying to trick me.

  “Really,” Ari says resolutely.

  A little bell rings and I look around the room, confused. Did I set an alarm? Is someone ringing our doorbell downstairs? The dinging continues as Ari rummages through his messenger bag. “My BlackBerry’s pinging,” he mumbles, and I wonder if he’s a little bit crazy. I mean, first off, blackberries aren’t in season and second, unless he knows some magic that I don’t, blackberries don’t make noise. But then he holds up a small machine and stares at its tiny screen. “Hey, check it out! ” he says to Mercedes. “Bella’s blogging.”

  “Move over,” Mercedes says, grabbing the thingy from him.

  I squirm in beside her so I can see what they’re looking at. “Oh wow! ” I say. “It’s like a little, tiny computer!”

  Ari’s mouth hangs open. “Are you telling me that you’ve never seen a BlackBerry?”

  “This thing?” I ask, to make sure he’s not really talking about the fruit.

  Mercedes asks, “What about a Palm Pilot or a Treo or an iPhone?”

  I just shrug.

  “Do you even own a computer?” Ari asks.

  Once again my face burns with embarrassment. I’m starting to think I’ll go through the rest of my life here looking like I have permanent sunburn. “I’ve seen computers,” I tell them. “Sometimes we went to the library in the town nearby to use them.”

  “Whoa,” Ari says. “It’s like you’re Amish but you’re not.”

  I look away from the BlackBerry and stare out the window like Willow. Blackberries, boysenberries—everything I understand is so different from what’s here.

  Ari comes to stand next to me. “Hey, so what, Zephyr. It’s no big deal. Actually, computers are a huge pain in the ass. Mercedes doesn’t have one either.”

  “Shut up, pandejo. That’s not true. My parents both have laptops.”

  “Yeah, but you don’t personally have one.”

  “I’ve seen a freakin’ PDA before,” Mercedes says.

  Ari sighs. “Jeez, Mercedes, I’m trying to make her feel better, you nimrod. Get it?”

  “Oh, I get it all right, pinche pito de pitufo. Make the Puerto Rican girl seem like a bass-ackward loser so the new girl doesn’t think she’s all alone. My family didn’t just row over from the islands, you know. Both my parents are lawyers.”

  “God, Mercy, don’t get all ACLU on me.”

  “Are you guys really fighting?” I ask. My breath gets short and my head spins. We don’t speak to each other like this in Alverland unless someone is extremely angry, and then watch out because the spells start to fly and someone is going to end up looking like a toad.

  Mercedes is the first to stop. She punches Ari on the arm, then smiles broadly. “Nah,” she says. “Just giving each other a hard time. Let’s see what our little enemies have to say today.”

  Ari holds up the small screen so all of us can look at once. “Whenever Bella and her clique start blogging, I get pinged.”

  “Most people just have a MySpace or Friendster page with a blog, but Bella has to be special,” Mercedes says in a whiny voice. “She has her own Web site. I heard her daddy hired the same company that designed Britney Spears’s Web site. Which is, you know, totally gross because Britney is such a ho dog and a has-been.”

  “And of course Bella has a blog, because who doesn’t have their own blog these days? I swear my cat could have his own blog,” says Ari.

  Bella’s pretty face stares out at us from the screen while soft music plays in the background. Next to her picture is something she wrote, which I read through quickly.

  BAPAHS is the coolest school on earth! We just found out that in two weeks the O’Donnell Casting Agency is holding auditions for a new ELPH camera Web ad at our school. I can’t wait to audition for this part. I’ve done a few TV commercials and had a few small speaking roles on TV and in movies, but I would love the opportunity to work in Web-based advertising.

  “What a load of crap!” Mercedes says. “If you want the real story, you have to go to the secret blog.” They both grin.

  “There’s a hotspot,” Ari explains. “If you click this picture of Bella’s stupid dog in the corner . . .”

  “Which is appropriate because it’s a female dog, if you know what I mean,” Mercedes adds.

  Ari navigates the blinking dot on the screen until it touches the little fluffy white dog’s face. “You find a secret link.” Ari clicks and a new blank page with a white box in the center opens up. “And voilà, here’s the secret blog.”

  “Or so they think,” says Mercedes.

  “Someone leaked the password on another blog called I-Hate-Bella,” Ari says. “And the password is . . .” He pauses dramatically then bellows, “Belladonna! ” as he types.

  “How stupid and self-centered is it to call yourself beautiful lady?” says Mercedes.

  “That’s what ‘belladonna�
�� means in Italian,” Ari explains.

  “Belladonna is also the name of a plant,” I tell them. “My mom uses it for sore throats or sprains but you have to be careful because it’s poisonous. The berries are really sweet but they can kill you.” Ari and Mercedes both stare at me like they’re interested so I continue. “It’s also called deadly nightshade or devil’s cherries,” I tell them with a half laugh. Now they look at each other with their mouths hanging open.

  “Dang, that’s sick,” says Ari.

  “That girl is messed up, calling herself the devil’s cherry,” Mercedes adds.

  We all turn our attention back to the screen, which has changed again. Now it’s full of pictures of Bella and her friends from school. In some pictures, the girls are all holding brown bottles or smoking cigarettes. In others they look really tired, draped over furniture, half-asleep. Then sometimes they look almost crazy, jumping around, sticking out their tongues, dancing. There are also a few pictures of Timber. When I see his smile, I get fluttery inside.

  “Everybody reads it,” Ari tells me.

  “They put up pictures of themselves partying and say rude stuff about other people at school,” Mercedes says.

  “Do Bella and her friends know everyone reads it?” I ask. Mercedes and Ari both shake their heads and snicker. “They don’t know that you read it?” I say, eyes wide. “Isn’t that snooping?”

  “Oh puh-leeeeze! ” says Ari. “Don’t be so naïve. They’re probably the ones who leaked the password in the first place. And anyway, if Bella was smart she could go check out her user stats on her Web hoster and find out who’s been on her blog.”

  “But they act all innocent so they can be like, ‘Oh we have this exclusive, private blog where we can say any snarky thing about anybody we want!’ But no one else can say, ‘I saw what you said on your blog,’ because they’ll be like, ‘What are you doing reading my private blog?’ Like anybody cares anyway,” Mercedes says.

  “But you guys care,” I say, totally confused.

  “Only because it’s so funny to see what they’re bitching about and then make fun of them for being such jerks,” Mercedes snaps.

  Now I read Bella’s entry in the secret blog.

  My agent called O’Donnell, the casting agent running the ELPH audition. He says the audition at school is definite. Why am I paying that a-hole agent if he can’t get me an exclusive? It’s not like it’s even a real commercial. Some dumb Web thing. Yet, once again I have to go through the whole stupid audition with every loser at school, then I get the part. Why can’t they just skip a few steps and give me the part to begin with?

  And speaking of losers at school! OMG who’s that new nancy w/ urkel pants pulled up to her pits? Another grubworm with no fraz. Can’t wait to get out of this place and move to LA!

  Below that are comments from her friends. It’s easy to see who said what because each comment has a picture of the girl who wrote it. I recognize them from the cafeteria. One has short black hair, a hoop through her eyebrow, and bright red lips. That’s ZoEzOe. LadyBug has straight blond hair that brushes her bare shoulders. CH3L-C has red hair, a nose ring, and a scowl on her face. And BELLA is the girl with those mean cat eyes.

  —Gag. That outfit was so velveeta.

  Posted by: ZoEzOe

  —U mean the yatch in the caf the other day who said ‘My name’s not Nancy’? Um der.

  Posted by: LadyBug

  —TLC thought it wuz hilar . . . nearly popped a head vein laughing.

  Posted by: CH3L-C

  —Thought Bella would hi-ya his A.

  Posted by: ZoEzOe

  —As if.

  Posted by: BELLA

  “You know they’re talking about you, right?” Mercedes asks me.

  “Really?” I try to read it again, but I’m completely confused by all the unfamiliar words and weird abbreviations. “What’s it mean?”

  “It’s hard to understand at first because they use a lot of their own slang,” Ari explains.

  “‘Yatch’ is their word for bitch, from bee-yatch. And a ‘nancy’ is a nice girl,” Mercedes explains.

  “Are you a nancy, too?” I ask her.

  “Hell no. ‘Nancy’ means a dorky nice girl, which I’m not.”

  “But how can someone be a yatch and a nancy at the same time?” I ask, confused.

  “Good question,” Ari says. “But then again, we’re not dealing with the brightest bulbs in the pack.”

  Mercedes points to the screen. “Zoe calls you Velveeta which is their word for cheesy.”

  “What’s cheesy?” I ask.

  “You know, tacky, nasty, cheap, tasteless,” Ari explains.

  “And, dang girl!” Mercedes says. “Bella calls you a ‘grubworm with no fraz.’ Translation, a lowlife with no style. Mmm, that’s gotta hurt.”

  She’s right, it does hurt and my eyes sting from holding back the tears. “Why are they being so mean to me? They don’t even know me. Just because I put my tray down in the wrong place yesterday? That’s so unfair.”

  “But, Zephyr, don’t you see? ” Ari asks. He and Mercedes stare at me with little smirks. “Right here they talk about Timber.”

  “TLC,” Mercedes says, pointing to Chelsea’s comment.

  “Chelsea knows that it bugged Bella when Timber laughed about what happened in the cafeteria,” Ari says. “Chelsea’s always rubbing it in when something annoys Bella. Sometimes I wonder if Chelsea even actually likes Bella.”

  “Right,” says Mercedes. “And then Zoe says she thought Bella would kick Timber’s ass for laughing, but Bella acts like it didn’t bother her.”

  “Only it did,” says Ari. “Because if it truly didn’t bother her, then she wouldn’t bother to write about you, but she did, so you got under her skin.”

  He and Mercedes laugh meanly, but I don’t think any of this is funny.

  “Now let’s check out BellaHater!” Mercedes says.

  “This is awesome.” Ari makes a new screen appear. “A few months ago, somebody started this I-Hate-Bella blog, only nobody knows who does it.”

  “But everybody has a theory,” says Mercedes.

  “Every time Bella posts on her blog, BellaHater puts up some hilarious response,” says Ari.

  “I think it’s the fairy girls,” says Mercedes.

  “No way,” says Ari. “They’re clueless.”

  “Jilly—she’s the head fairy girl, you know, those girls who always wear wings?—hates Bella,” Mercedes points out.

  “So do a lot of people,” says Ari.

  The new screen is filled with awful pictures of Bella that have been changed. Her teeth are blacked out of her smile. In some she has horns on her head or a mustache. I giggle, because it is funny to see her looking so ridiculous, but then I feel bad for laughing at something that’s so unkind.

  “I don’t know how she does it, but sometimes BellaHater gets pictures of Bella when she’s messed up,” says Mercedes.

  “What do you mean, messed up?” I ask. “Like her hair is messy?”

  “No, as in she’s had a few too many,” says Ari.

  “A few too many what?” I ask.

  Ari and Mercedes look at each other and sigh.

  “Moving on!” says Mercedes.

  She reads the day’s entry aloud to us:

  So apparently, Bella thinks the ELPH audition should be handed to her on a silver platter, like everything else in her life. Well, the smella’s the fella, Bella, and I know b.s. when I catch a whiff of it. Would someone please kick her butt this time?

  “That’s going to be you, Zephyr,” Ari says.

  “What’s going to be me?” I ask.

  “The person who kicks Bella’s butt,” says Mercedes.

  I gasp. “I can’t do that! I can’t fight someone.” They have no idea how gentle elves are. I couldn’t kick someone if I wanted to.

  “No, no, no,” says Ari. “Kick her butt means beat her at the audition. That’s what you’re going to do.”

>   “With our help,” Mercedes adds.

  I squirm, uncomfortably. I should tell them that I’m having misgivings about the whole thing, but before I can figure out how to say it, Ari says, “Listen hombres, sorry I can’t stick around for more dastardly plotting to end the evil reign of Bella.” He clicks the BlackBerry off and stashes it inside his bag. “But I have rehearsal.”

  “For what?” I ask.

  “My band,” he says with a small shrug.

  “Yeah, I should get out of here, too,” Mercedes says. “My abuela hates it when I come home past five.” She gathers her things.

  “Yeah, I guess I have some homework and stuff to do,” I mumble, trying to seem as busy as they are.

  As they walk out of my room, I see them grin at each other. “This is going to be fun,” Ari says.

  “Oh yeah.” Mercedes rubs her hands together. “Total blast.”

  chapter 4

  THE NEXT DAY the fairy girls eye me when I walk through the green BAPAHS doors and I get the sneaking suspicion that I’ve been duped into wearing my Alverland clothes to school. Why oh why did I trust Ari and Mercedes when they said that a long, handmade tunic and deerskin boots would be cool in a place like New York City? Even the weird girls who wear fake wings over their strappy tank tops and flouncy skirts are looking at me like I’m the freak! I wish I could be like my dad—proud and confident when he’s onstage in his elf clothes. Then again, this isn’t a stage and I’m not playing to my adoring fans. I’m back at BAPAHS, where evil lurks in the form of Bella Dartagnan, who already called me a “nancy with no fraz.”

  The fairies are in a huddle, gossamer wings flittering as they whisper together and glance over their slender shoulders at me. I know I’m going to have to make a move, either back outside past all the kids on the steps leading up to the school or forward, deeper into the jaws of the BAPAHS beast. Before I can make up my mind which way to go, the big green doors open behind me. A warm breeze ruffles my tunic, reminding me how ridiculous I must look next to everyone in their soft worn jeans, funky tops, and little flat slipper shoes. A guy and a girl pass me, holding hands. “Hey, cool dress,” the guy says nonchalantly over his shoulder. The girl glances at me and nods. “Nice,” she says, and they go along their way, leaving me in a puddle of gratitude and relief.