Lucinda carefully places the tray that’s just been delivered on her bed and picks up one of the cups. “Here. Drink this,” she orders. “It’ll make you feel better.”
Sniffling, Beth wipes the last tears away with her sleeve and obediently grasps the cup, taking a large swallow. She nearly gags. “What is that?” It looks like liquid plant food.
“Double espresso.” Lucinda hands her a napkin. “I know … I know … it’ll make your teeth beige if you drink too much of it, but I figure just this once it’ll be OK. It’s good for your nerves.”
Good in what sense? Every nerve Beth has is ringing like an alarm bell. “I— I’m sorry, but it’s so strong.” It’s only a guess, of course, but she’s fairly certain that it tastes like liquid plant food, too. She wipes coffee from her chin and dabs, futilely, at the stains on the silk pyjama top. “I don’t think I can drink it.”
“Well, do you want my skinny latte?” Lucinda holds out her own cup. “You should have something. You’re pretty frazzled.”
She is that. Frazzled as an overloaded circuit. “No, thank you. It’s OK.” She swipes at the last few tears. “Really. I’m all right now.”
“Are you sure? I’ve never heard anybody cry like that except in a movie. You know, when all hope is lost.” Because Lucinda has her sleep mask pushed up on her head, she looks as if she has two pairs of eyes that are staring down at Beth – one blankly and one with concern. Her smile is sympathetic. “You scared me even more than when the bear got into the garbage that time and I thought it was a terrorist or something. I didn’t know what was going on when I heard you bawling.”
“I’m so sorry. It must have been awful—” Every time Beth speaks she hears a voice that isn’t hers. Compared to that, the bear doesn’t sound very scary at all. “I just… I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you up.”
“Oh, that’s OK. I had to get up anyway, right?” Lucinda’s smile shrugs. “It’s you I’m worried about, Gab. Are you sure you’re all right? You’re not sick, are you?”
“No.” And whenever she moves her head, a curtain of hair that also isn’t hers sways with her. “I’m not sick.”
“So why were you crying like that? It sounded like you woke up with a pimple as big as Bangor or that somebody stole all our clothes or something. What happened?”
Beth blows her nose on the napkin. Now there’s a good question. What’s she supposed to say? I’m really, really sorry, but I woke up in the wrong body and it kind of got my day off to a bad start?
Lucinda fiddles with her hair. “Did you have a nightmare? Is that what happened?”
A nightmare. Of course. The number of people who have nightmares has to be a lot greater than the number of people who transmutate like this. With that thought, Beth suddenly realizes that there must be one other person in this very hotel who knows exactly what she’s going through. Gab. Gabriela Menz. For the love of Zeus! That, if nothing else, makes sense. Why didn’t she think of that before? If she’s in Gabriela Menz’s body, then it stands to reason that Gabriela Menz must be in hers! Right at this minute, Gabriela must be in Beth’s room, in Beth’s pyjamas, probably sitting on Beth’s bed – and probably wiping the tears from her eyes, too. And all at once Beth, who a second ago wanted only to crawl back into bed, has a plan of action: she has to talk to Gabriela.
“Gab?” Lucinda’s voice is slightly raised, as though she’s repeating herself. Possibly not for the first time. “Gab? So what was it? A bad dream?”
“Yeah.” Beth gives herself a shake, trying to concentrate on the girl in front of her and not the girl in the room with Delila. “Yeah, I had a bad dream.”
“And?” prompts Lucinda. “What was it about? Were you being murdered or something?”
“No, no… I wasn’t being murdered. I … um…” This may be one of the few times when having so many anxiety dreams is actually a benefit. While part of her mind tries to figure out how she can get to see Gabriela alone, another part automatically launches into a slightly edited version of the dream she had last night.
“So that was when I started crying and woke up, I guess,” Beth ends.
Lucinda is looking at her as if she’s been speaking in a language Lucinda knows, but not fluently. “You dreamed you were reading a story to a lot of people? That was your dream?”
“Uh-huh.” Beth nods. “It was in this enormous auditorium.”
“And that’s why you were crying like that? Because you were reading a story?”
“Yeah.” The curtain of hair swings past Beth’s vision. “The auditorium was completely packed out and—”
“But why were you so upset?” It’s clear from her expression that Lucinda is trying, but failing, to understand. “Were you wearing your pyjamas or farmer’s overalls or something like that?”
“No, I—” Beth catches herself before she can launch into more explanation about the doggerel and the Nobel Prize winner and Professor Gryck. She doesn’t need to explain anything. She just needs to find Gabriela. “Oh, look, it doesn’t matter. I’m all right now.”
“You don’t look all right.” Lucinda pulls off the sleepmask and tosses it onto the floor where it makes a three-point landing on the clothes she wore last night. “You’ll have to do something about those eyes, Gab. They’re all red and puffy. You have a bath with you?”
It’s Beth’s turn not to understand. “A bath?” They’ve brought enough things with them for a month, but do these girls really travel with portable tubs?
“Yeah, you know. For your eyes? Because I think I have something with me if you don’t.”
“Oh, that’s OK.” Beth stands up. She has to get out of here. “I’ll just splash some cold water on and—”
“Really?” Lucinda smiles, in case she’s being teased. “Just plain water? You mean like from the faucet?”
“Yeah, just plain water.” Although she feels more like screaming, Beth forces herself to smile in a casual, friendly, everything’s-right-with-the-world kind of way. “Actually, do you know what? I think that’s just what I’ll do. And then I’ll throw on some clothes and go down for breakfast.”
“Throw on some clothes? Go down for breakfast? Now?” Lucinda reaches for her phone on the bedside table. “Geez, Louise! Will you look at the time? I had no idea! It’s eight o’clock already! You can’t go downstairs. We only have an hour till the car comes.”
And Beth and Delila are meeting the others for breakfast at eight. She can’t possibly talk to Gabriela in front of everybody, but maybe if she hurries she can intercept her before she reaches the restaurant. “I won’t be long.” Beth eyes the piles of clothes around the room, wondering which belong to Gabriela. “I—”
“Are you nuts?” Lucinda, too, is on her feet now, and starting to pull things from the closet and fling them on or near her bed. “We have to shower and do our hair and put on our make-up and get dressed. I know everything went really well last night, Gab, but we’re meeting some really important people today. And it’s like you said, we have to push our advantage, not lose it. Taffeta really digs you. She looked like she wanted to adopt you! So—”
Beth can’t help herself. “Taffeta?”
“Ye-ah.” Lucinda manages to make it sound like two words, with the additional words “um, duh” unspoken but audible. “Taffeta Mackenzie? The head of the college?”
Someone named after a luxury fabric is the head of a college?
“I was just kidding,” lies Beth. “Of course I know who Taffeta is.”
Done with throwing things out of the closet, Lucinda is now rooting around in one of her bags. “And anyway, the other girls were really impressed too. Even if they didn’t want to be, right?” She looks up for a second to wink. “So they’ll be doing everything they can to win points today. I bet they’ve been up since dawn getting ready.”
The other girls… Of course, there are more of them.
“So do you want to take your shower first?” Lucinda is checking the time again. “Because I need to iron my skirt. And I’d better text my mom or she’ll be griping that I only get in touch with her when I want something.”
Mom! Beth’s mother will be up by now; up and calling her only child. Beth makes a sudden lunge for her pillow, but of course her phone isn’t there.
“What are you doing?” The puzzled expression has returned to Lucinda’s face.
“I just— You know— I thought I put my phone—”
Lucinda gestures to the enormous satchel on the floor beside Beth’s bed. “It’s in your bag.”
“Oh, right.” Even to Beth’s ears her laugh sounds like the screech of a panicked owl. “I should text my mom, too.”
“I thought you fixed up to call her tonight.”
“I did? Oh, I did.” A new wave of defeat breaks over Beth. Taffeta Mackenzie… Other girls… Mom… Important people to meet… Gabriela and Delila downstairs right at this minute probably, under the watchful eye of Professor Gryck. And here is Beth, trapped like a bird in an oil spill. There’s really nothing she can do but cry. “All right,” she says, more or less hurling herself towards the bathroom. “I’ll go first.”
“What about your robe and underwear?” calls Lucinda, her gesture including the foot of Gabriela’s bed and the hillock of things on the chair by the window. “You’re not putting your pyjamas back on, are you?”
Beth has no way of knowing whether or not bafflement is Lucinda’s normal expression. When she finally gets inside the bathroom, the door locking behind her is the best thing Beth’s heard all morning.
She can’t possibly take a shower. She can barely look at “her” face in the mirror; she definitely doesn’t want to look at the body that’s attached to it. Or touch it. She runs the water for Lucinda’s benefit, but washes her face and hands at the sink with her eyes closed, and dries herself on the pyjama top since she doesn’t know which towel is Gabriela’s. Beth’s underwear is functional; Gabriela’s is decorative. She closes her eyes again as she puts it on.
“That was quick,” says Lucinda when Beth emerges. “Last night when we were getting ready for dinner, I thought you’d drowned in there.” She steps inside. “I won’t be two shakes, either. The last thing we need is for them to be waiting for us.” She gives Beth a little wave as she shuts the door. “Why don’t you order us some more coffee? I’m a skinny latte grande.”
Beth just stands there like a pillar of salt. What is she going to do? What she’d like to do is go home. Well, not home. Her ticket’s not valid till tomorrow. But she could go to her aunt’s. She could pick up the phone, dial her number and say, Aunt Joyce, you have to come and get me! But then what? Her aunt wouldn’t recognize her. She’d think she was crazy. She’d call Beth’s mother. Her mother would probably call the FBI. And then Beth remembers Gabriela’s phone. Of course! She’ll call Gabriela; call herself. It’s just as well that Beth is such a worrying and overcautious person, because it means that she is one of the few people on the planet who actually knows her own number. Just in case. She gets the voicemail. “It’s me,” she says. “Beth.” And then, using a line she has heard a million times but never thought she’d say herself, she adds, “We have to talk.”
The shower shuts off, and Beth drops the phone back into Gabriela’s bag and jumps into action. Lucinda will be out soon. She has to get ready. Find something to wear. Do something about her hair. Do something about her face. Beth sighs. She has never worn make-up, unless you count the Halloween she went trick-or-treating as Morgan le Fay (and had a rash for the next two weeks), but maybe she should put some on, as Gabriela would. She opens the metal case with the initials GM engraved on the side. It concertinas out into so many trays and levels holding so many tubes, compacts, bottles, pots and sticks that she might as well be staring into the engine of a car. What is all this? The girl must have to get up at dawn just to get to school late. Beth slams down the lid and moves over to the closet. There’s nothing to wear. Gabriela’s skirts are all short; her tops are all skimpy; the dresses look like cummerbunds with minimal straps or sleeves.
When Lucinda comes out from her shower, Beth is still standing more or less where she left her, gazing, transfixed, into the closet as if it might speak to her and tell her what to do there.
“Oh my God, Gab! You haven’t even started getting ready!”
“I’m sorry.” Beth looks over her shoulder. “I didn’t order the coffee either.”
Lucinda rolls her eyes. “You really are acting weird this morning.”
Who’s acting?
“What the hell are you screaming like that for, woman?”
Gabriela turns. Standing in the doorway – looming, more like – is a girl who has to be at least six-feet tall, and who is definitely built like a member of the team whose shirt she wears. Not only does her hair stick up all over her head like each strand has a mind of its own, she doesn’t shave her legs either and her toenails are more like claws. No polish, needless to say. She is, in her way, an impressive sight, especially with the bedside lamp held menacingly over her head.
It would be stretching it to suggest that the sight of Delila has a calming effect on Gabriela, but it does bring her to her senses rather sharply. “Who are you supposed to be?” she snaps. “Xena, Warrior Princess?”
“From the way you were screaming, you sounded like you needed Xena.” The girl lowers the lamp. “I thought somebody was killing you.”
“I didn’t mean to wake you up like that.” Gabriela gives one of her silly-me laughs, but it doesn’t sound as charming coming from Beth as it does from someone with a musical voice, sparkling eyes and dimples. “I just— You know … I just had a fright.” Two if you count the sudden appearance of Beth’s room-mate.
Delila puts the light back where it belongs. “You had a fright? You could’ve cut my promising young life short by decades carryin’ on like that!”
“I said I didn’t mean to.”
“Ooooh…” Delila makes a well-excuse-me face. “Somebody sure got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning.”
No, just the wrong bed.
Gabriela takes a deep breath and tries again. “Something scared me, that’s all.”
“Oh, I’m sure something scared you, all right.” Delila laughs, though not unkindly. “So what was it? You suddenly remembered you forgot your malaria medicine? You thought there could be somebody hiding in the shower?” She shakes her finger as if she’s tapping something out of a jar. “I know! You were practising screaming just in case there’s some kind of emergency later.”
Gabriela may have shared a class with Beth since they started high school, but all she knows about her is that she’s a brain, that she talks so softly the only way you could tell what she’s saying would be if you read lips and her name: Beth Beeby (which has occasionally been rhymed with “creepy”). She knows nothing about the fears and anxieties that follow Beth around like an especially aggressive pack of paparazzi; or about Lillian Beeby, the poet laureate of angst. Which is why she’s beginning to think that, on top of everything else, Delila is clinically insane.
“What are you talking about? I was still half asleep, that’s all.” Gabriela intends to stalk out of the bathroom, but Delila just stands there, watching her with amusement and blocking the way, so she squeezes past her instead. And then realizes, of course, that there is nowhere to go – just the one small room. A room that seems to be getting smaller by the minute.
“You don’t need to get all snippy with me,” says Delila from approximately an inch behind her. “I was only fooling around. I’m on your side, remember?”
“Right. Of course.” Gabriela gives her a wan smile. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me this morning.” At least that much is true.
“Major discombobulation,” judges Delila. “Don’t worry about it. I know you’re really stressed out. Last night was OK and everything, but there were moments.” She rolls her eyes in a long-suffering kind of way. “I swear those preppy types make my butt hurt like I’ve been sitting on rocks for seventy-two hours. They’re so damn full of themselves—” She squashes her lips together and wrinkles her nose as though some unpleasant odour has been let loose in the room. “Man, if those girls’d dropped any more names the floor would’ve caved in.”
All Gabriela really registers is the major-discombobulation part. That’s putting it mildly, if you ask her. She’s like that story about the ugly duckling in reverse. Yesterday she was a beautiful swan and now look at her! Beth Beeby in shades of brown and grey. Quackquackquack.
“You’re right,” says Gabriela. “I am really stressed out.” If she were not a resilient young woman but the heaviest duty polyester thread, she would already have snapped. And she’s not going to feel less stressed until she gets rid of Xena here. Science may not be Gabriela’s best subject, but she does remember that Somebody’s Great Law says that two things can’t occupy the same space at the same time (which, let’s face it, doesn’t take a big brain to figure out – anybody who’s ever tried to find a place for a couple of new pairs of shoes in her shoe rack could tell you that). Which means that if Gabriela is in Beth’s body, then there’s a pretty good chance that – as a further example of just how heart-crushingly ironic (and unfair) life can be – Beth is in hers. Which means that she has to talk to Beth. Alone. “That’s why— That’s why I think maybe I need some personal time.”
“Personal time?” Many people, hearing such a ridiculous statement, would laugh. Delila folds her arms in front of her, pursing her lips: a warrior princess assessing unfamiliar terrain. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know, that I need some time by myself.”
“Some time by yourself.” Delila cocks her head to one side. “Today. Of all the 365 days in the year, this is the one when you want time by yourself?”
Gabriela, accustomed as she is to being agreed with and indulged, not questioned, ignores Delila’s sarcastic tone and seeing-through-concrete gaze.
“Yeah, you know… I don’t really feel up to hanging out with everybody. I think I’ll just skip—”
“Skip? Am I suffering from some sudden hearing defect, or are you suggesting that you skip today?”
“It’s not like anyone’s going to miss me.” After all, Beth Beeby’s been at Jeremiah High School for three years and most of the staff and students don’t even know that she’s there.
“I’d miss you. And you can bet your last printer cartridge that Professor Gryck would miss you, too. And she’s not gonna buy that ‘personal time’ dog-dooh, either. You can’t skip today. Not one infinitesimal part of it. Not unless you’re being hauled off in some vehicle that has a siren.”
“Professor Gryck?” repeats Gabriela.
“Yeah, you know.” Delila’s fingers tap against her upper arms. “She’s the one organizing everything? Built like a water tower? You sat next to her at dinner last night and had a big talk about tension headaches.”
Gabriela does her oh-silly-me laugh again. “Oh that Professor Gryck.”
“Yeah, that Professor Gryck. And she’s not going to be too happy to find out you came all the way to LA just so you can spend the day in bed.” Delila gives her another scrutinous look. “What’s wrong with you, Beth? I thought you said this was the most important thing that ever happened to you. I thought you said you would’ve made it here if you had three migraines and body-hives.”
What a difference a day can make.
“Well, I am here. Only now I need some time by myself. It’s a lot more stressful than I thought it would be.” Which is certainly true.
“Well, it’s not gonna happen.” If Delila were a warrior princess, she would definitely be one who takes no prisoners. “Santa Claus doesn’t sleep through Christmas, and you’re not sleeping through the biggest weekend in your life. There’s no way I’m letting you lunch it because your nerves are all a-jitter. Your nerves are always a-jitter. Eat an onion and chill out. Because unless they have to put you on life support, you’re coming.”
This is insane. Who is this girl to stand there like a prison door? Gabriela not only likes to keep the things in her mental closet limited to what she actually needs, she only deals with them one item at a time. She can’t think about what’s happened to her and what to do about it and deal with whatever it is Beth and the Moving Mountain are doing here.
“Excuse me,” says Gabriela, “but in case you didn’t notice, you aren’t my mother.” She may not know who this girl is, but she at least is sure of that much in what seems to be a very uncertain world. “You can’t—” An old-fashioned phone starts to ring – bringggbringggbringgg – sounding as if it’s coming from under Gabriela’s pillow. She looks towards the bed.
“Speak of the devil…” mutters Delila. She, too, is looking at Gabriela’s bed. “Tell her you can’t talk now.”
Gabriela moves her attention back to Delila. “Tell who?”
“You know who. Tell her we have to get down to breakfast. Pronto.”
Breakfast? Gabriela hasn’t eaten breakfast since she was nine, when she went on her first diet. “Oh, look, I’ll come later. I promise. But I think I’ll mis—”
“No, you won’t,” corrects Delila. “We said we’d meet the three witches at eight sharp. Since we seem to be the ones who got stuck with them. The bus isn’t leaving till nine-fifteen so that gives you enough time to order stuff and send it back if you think it’s been contaminated.”
“The bus?” She should have known. Fashionistas ride in Cadillacs; geeks ride on buses.
“Yeah, the bus. We’re having a tour of the cultural highlights of Los Angeles, the Paris of the West Coast. Remember?”
This day’s already too long.
“And anyway, you can’t miss breakfast. We have the big daddy of big days ahead of us. You don’t start a cross-country trip without putting gas in the car, do you?”
Gabriela blinks. Even at her best, she’d have trouble following Delila’s conversational style, and she definitely isn’t at her best right now.
Delila answers for her. “Of course you don’t.”
Necessity may be the mother of invention, but the mother of inspiration is desperation. “OK, I agree with that,” says the desperate Gabriela. “But it’s not just gas a car needs, is it? You have to make sure it’s got oil and whatever. And you have to wash the windows and vacuum the seats and the floor and give it a wax shine and all that kind of thing…”
Delila’s hands move to her hips. “Where is this going, exactly?”
“What I’m saying is, there’s more to a car than gas, and there’s more to a person than breakfast.” She almost has to shout to be heard over the ringing of the phone, which seems to get louder the longer she ignores it. “So if I’m coming today, I need time to put on my make-up and—”
“Make-up?” This does make Delila laugh. Almost hysterically. “What’s with you? You’re acting freakier than a guy about to change into a werewolf. You don’t have any make-up, Beth. All you have is eczema cream.” She points at Gabriela’s pillow. “Now you’d better answer that phone. You know your mom’s not going to stop until you do.”
“How do you know it’s my mother?”
“Are you kidding?” Delila is still laughing. “Who else would it be at this time of the morning? I’m just surprised she let you sleep through the night.”
Gabriela retrieves the phone. It’s Mom.
She turns her back on Delila’s smirk. She takes a deep breath. “Hi,” she says, sounding brighter than a studio light. “Mom. What’s up?”
“What’s up? You mean besides you? At last.” Unlike her daughter, Lillian does not whisper. Indeed, she seems to be under the impression that Beth is actually deaf. “Do you have any idea how worried I was when you didn’t answer? I thought they had to rush you to emergency and you left your phone in your room. It just kept ringing and ringing—”
“I was—”
“Well, you weren’t thinking about me. I know you’re having fun with all these new people, but you did know I’d be calling.”
“I—”
“You remembered to take your vitamins, I hope.”
“Ye—”
“And what about breakfast? Have you already had your breakfast?”
“No, w—”
“Well, make sure the juice is freshly-squeezed. I know you don’t like to ask, Beth, but you really don’t want something out of a carton.”
“I—”
“So how did you sleep…?”
Lillian Beeby’s words are like a waterfall, tumbling forward under their own power and stopping for no one. Why didn’t Beth call her first thing this morning…? Did Beth have trouble getting to sleep…? Did she need any medication…? Did she remember to take only half of the yellow pill…? Was the mattress too hard…? Was the mattress too soft…? Was the room too cold…? Was the room too hot…? Did her room-mate snore…? Are her allergies playing-up…? Has she thrown up yet…? What is she having for breakfast…? What if they don’t do poached eggs…? What if they don’t have wheat-free toast…? Has she checked the pollution levels…? She did bring the sunblock, didn’t she…?
Gabriela holds the phone away from her ear. What’s wrong with this woman? She barely stops to breathe. All Gabriela wants is to hang up – maybe even make a break for freedom while Delila’s getting dressed – but Lillian doesn’t give her a chance. Though what she reminds Gabriela of isn’t a waterfall; what she reminds her of is her uncle’s parrot. He’ll talk for hours, on and on and on and on, using every word and phrase he’s ever heard again and again and occasionally breaking into song or impersonations of doors closing and timers going off, until finally someone throws the cover over his cage. My God, thinks Gabriela, how am I ever going to shut her up? No wonder Beth hardly ever says anything in class; she’s probably never had the chance to really learn how to speak.
All the time this monologue is going on, Delila thumps around getting dressed, stopping every few minutes to shout things like: Tell your mom you can’t talk too long! Tell your mom you’re not dressed yet! Tell your mom everyone’s waiting for us! Beth! Beth! We’re gonna be late! But although Delila’s voice is loud enough to be heard in Tuscaloosa, Lillian rolls on.
And while she rolls, Gabriela gets up and looks through Beth’s clothes in the closet. If she’s going to leave the room, she’s going to have to get dressed. There’s not exactly a big choice. If everyone were like Beth, the fashion industry would be one factory in Jersey. Grey trousers or a darker grey skirt. A white blouse with a round collar or a white blouse with a bow. One grey dress as stylish as a paper bag. The black shoes or the other black shoes. And that’s not even mentioning the underwear she finds neatly folded in Beth’s bag. She can hardly bear to touch it. Plain white cotton underwear. Gabriela didn’t even know they made stuff like that any more. And then she remembers Beth’s legs. What is she supposed to wear to cover them? Tights? In April? God help her, if she’s hit by a car and rushed to emergency. She’ll die of mortification before they get her on the operating table. And Delila is right; there is no make-up. Gabriela, accustomed to checking her appearance with the regularity of a soldier on patrol checking each door and gate, can’t believe that somewhere in Beth’s extensive collection of bags there isn’t at least some lipgloss and an eyeliner pencil. The girl is human, isn’t she? Surely she can’t go out into the world with naked skin every day? Doesn’t she care what people think? But the answers to these questions are obviously: no, yes and no. There are a lot of pills and essential oils, and a bag filled with tubes of ointment for everything from mosquito bites to rashes – as if she were going to the jungle for the weekend, not the coolest city on the continent – but there isn’t so much as a stub of pencil or an old tube of lipstick flecked with dust.
Good Lord. If Lillian ever lets her off the phone, she’s about to go out in public with no make-up and wearing clothes bought not for what they say about you (trendy, hot, gorgeous, fashion know-it-all) but for how much of your body they cover (all of it).
Her only consolation is that no one will ever know that it’s her.
Remedios has been talking incessantly since she and Otto left their suite. Discussing how they slept, asking him how he’s adjusting to the human body, commenting on the carpet in the halls and the smoothness of the elevator ride… How awesome is this? You don’t even feel like it’s moving. She has read the menu to him, given her opinion on the décor of the restaurant and told a long story about living among the Tongvas before the arrival of the Spaniards, when the Los Angeles area was called Yaa. Through all of this Otto has, at best, only half-listened. He knows Remedios well enough to know that her aim is not to communicate or even entertain, but to distract. And in this, of course, he is two-hundred-percent correct. Every minute spent in the hotel is a minute when Otto may figure out what she’s done. She wants to lull (or bore) him into a pliable state where she can get him to leave. She doesn’t like the way he keeps looking behind her; she should have sat facing the door. But it hasn’t yet occurred to her that Otto is a lot smarter than she has given him credit for.
“You know, I was thinking,” Remedios says now. She stabs another hunk of blueberry pancake with her fork. “Why don’t we drive back to Jeremiah after all? We can take the scenic route. You know, through one of the national parks? All those old-growth trees and majestic mountains…”
Otto sips his coffee. “Does this mean you’re planning to leave me in the wilderness?”
“Well, pardon me for trying to do something nice to make up for the plane.” Remedios wipes syrup from her chin. “I thought you’d enjoy it.” She watches him cut a slice from his bagel – yet another thing about him that annoys her. “And who knows, Otto. Maybe you’ll be able to save somebody who’s about to throw themselves into a canyon. That should cheer you up.”
So she’s not going to leave him in the wilderness; she’s going to leave him up a mountain.
Otto chews the piece of bagel slowly and thoroughly, gazing past her head as though the best movie in the world is being shown on a screen behind it. “Um…” It isn’t a movie that he’s watching, of course, but Beth. She’s seated at a table near the door with several other Tomorrow’s Writers Today finalists. Beth looks as she always looks – plain and earnest in her grey slacks and prim white blouse, and as if she’s decided to jump from childhood straight into middle age. There’s a bowl of fruit salad (barely touched) and one of those foamy coffees (her second) in front of her. The others are all eating and talking, but Beth just pokes at her food and sits there as if she died smiling. Otto cuts another slice of bagel. Like a man a few seconds before discovering that there are sharks in the water, he senses that something’s wrong, but he doesn’t know what.
Remedios, meanwhile, is shovelling pancakes into her mouth and continuing to talk, her lips stained with berry juice and syrup dribbling towards her chin. “We might have to go a little out of our way, but I really think it’d be worth it.” Hundreds of miles in each direction out their way. Anything to lure him out of the hotel and away from LA. “We can see those, what do they call them? You know the ones I mean – those really big, old trees. You like trees.”
“Sequoias…” Otto wipes crumbs from his mouth with his napkin.
Across the room, Beth suddenly realizes that one of the girls at her table is calling her name.
“Look! Look at these trees.” Remedios shoves something in front of Otto’s face. There are sticky fingerprints on the casing. “They don’t grow trees like this any more.”
She’s finally got his attention. “What is that?” Otto stares down at the screen being held under his nose. On it is a picture of a redwood forest; excepting the smudges of maple syrup, the image is so vivid and sharp you can almost see the leaves rustling and hear the branches groan. “Is that one of those pad things?”
“Isn’t it fantastic?”
“Where in the name of the starry firmament did this come from?”
“A store in the lobby.”
She does it on purpose, he knows that – pretending to misunderstand him. She wants to confuse him, to get him to look in one direction while she does something he won’t approve of in the other. “That’s not what I meant and you know it. I meant why? Why did you buy that contraption?”
“Because we need it.” Remedios dips the fingers of her free hand in her water glass and dries them on the tablecloth. “You saw how useless the SatNav in the car was just trying to get here from the airport. But with this we can’t possibly get lost. And that’s not all. Wait till you see what else it can do.” She starts tapping the printed keyboard. “Internet … email … maps … directions … limitless in—”
“Remedios!” Otto shoves her hand away. “Heavenly hosts, you’re an angel not a teenager.”
“Not right now, Otto. Right now I’m more or less a teenager.” Remedios slips the pad into her bag. “And anyway, I was just trying to make things pleasant.”
“No, you weren’t. You were trying to bamboozle me. But it’s not going to work.” He pushes back his chair, so irked by her that he’s forgotten he vowed not to leave until he knows what she’s done. “I don’t know what you’re up to, but we’re not going to waste days looking at trees. We’re going back to Jeremiah. Now.” That seems to be what she doesn’t want, so that’s what they’ll do. Otto tosses his napkin onto his plate and stands up. “Now. I’ll clear out the room. You take care of the bill.”
“Whatever you say, Otto.” Remedios looks down at the table so that he doesn’t see the look on her face. “You’re the boss.” Her smile is so bright that if her plate weren’t covered with blueberry-pancake debris, he would see it reflected up at him. Gotcha again. Manipulating Otto is as easy as picking a flower. Possibly easier. It’s definitely a lot more fun. “I’ll meet you in the lobby.”
Remedios finishes her coffee, and then gets up to go. She is feeling pretty pleased with herself. She has accomplished what she came to do, and she has pulled it off right under the nose of Mr Holier-than-thou. If anything should go wrong, which it won’t, she will be safely back in Jeremiah when it does. But pride, as we know, is often one step ahead of a really big fall – a saying that Remedios is about to prove.
She is so full of self-congratulation that as she reaches the door, she almost walks into Otto. He is standing just outside the restaurant, watching a group of girls near the hotel entrance. There are six of them, and each one is more attractive than the next. Make-up flawless. Hair perfect. Clothes to die for (assuming you’re a teenage girl). As they peer through the window for a sign of their car, which has been delayed by traffic, they look like a patch of highly cultivated flowers turned towards the sun. They could be models or pop stars. Only one of them isn’t smiling as though she’s looking at a camera; she’s smiling as though she’s waiting to be arrested.
“Otto! What are you doing?” Remedios gives him a friendly push. “I thought you were going to get our stuff from the room. You know, so we can check out?”
“Just wait a minute,” says Otto.
A very large Cadillac is pulling up in front of the building. Shimmering with excitement, the girls start towards the doors, all of them striding forward as if they’re on a runway. All, that is, but one. She moves unsteadily, as if she isn’t used to heels. And now he can see that she isn’t quite as perfectly turned out as the others. Her face is bare of make-up. Her hair is wriggling out of its pins. She gives the impression that she’s uncomfortable in her clothes.
“Otto.” Remedios gives him another, less friendly, shove. “Let’s go.”
He holds up one hand. “Not yet.”
For the love of Lazarus! She doesn’t think he’s quite figured it out yet, but he will if the girl who’s never walked in four-inch heels before stumbles before she gets into the car.
“Otto!” Remedios jerks him around to face her. “Let’s—”
There is a sudden and audible gasp behind her – of horror, or surprise, or both – and then a girl’s voice screams, “Wait!”
Remedios doesn’t bother turning round. She knows what she’ll see as well as Otto does; she’ll see Beth Beeby, as she’s never been before, probably with a look of anguish on her face.
“Remedios.” Otto clamps a hand over her wrist. “I believe you have some explaining to do.”