Past Perfect

  Fiona just shook her head, looking massively pissed off. And yes, I felt bad, but I would have felt worse if she knew the truth.

  “You know what’s so great about your hickey?” Maggie said to me. “You would be a shoo-in for the role of lady of the night, if we ever made those costumes. You’d look so authentic.”

  “You’re still on that, huh?” I said.

  “Can’t those Civil Warriors be on time to anything?” Patience complained. “It’s already six forty-five!”

  “They must run on Confederate time,” Bryan joked.

  Ezra groaned. “What’s Confederate time, Bryan?”

  Bryan looked confused, as usual, to find that he knew a fact that the rest of the world did not. “You know,” he said. “The Confederacy ran about half an hour behind the Union. Because they relied on apparent solar time, while the North used mean solar time. This was before there were standardized time zones. So that would explain why the Civil Warriors are late today, get it?”

  “Yet more proof that time is just a social construct,” I commented. And I wanted to ask why Bryan knew this esoteric piece of nineteenth-century trivia, but most likely it was because he had already run out of esoteric pieces of eighteenth-century trivia.

  Tawny stomped in the door to the ice cream parlor. Other than the stark white bandage on her arm, it would have been impossible to tell that she had just been in the hospital. There should be a video game made about Tawny. She’s that indestructible. “Where’s the enemy?” she snapped.

  “Running on Confederate time, apparently,” I replied.

  “How are you feeling?” Patience flew to Tawny’s side. “Do you need anything?”

  “I just need those farbs to show up,” Tawny growled, shaking off Patience. “If this weren’t a War Council, I’d kick their asses right here.”

  “And if your arm was working,” Bryan added.

  Tawny glared at him. “I’d kick their asses with both arms tied behind my back.”

  “We’re getting ice cream,” Patience said, clearly bummed that Tawny the Victim was no more vulnerable or needy than Tawny the General.

  “Try the Mudslide,” I suggested to her. “It’s a total eight.”

  “My strawberry is an eight point five,” Fiona countered.

  “No. That is, in fact, impossible,” I said. “Excellent strawberry cannot compare to excellent chocolate, and this is notably excellent chocolate. Strawberry spans the scale from maybe two through seven. But even the worst chocolate can’t be less than a four, and the best chocolate, well, that’s a ten. That is straight-up a ten, Fiona.”

  “This sounds more confusing than Confederate time,” Maggie muttered. She, Patience, and Anne headed to the counter, but along the way, they encountered a group of girls with slender tanned legs, either tiny sundresses or booty shorts, eye shadow, flat-ironed hair. It was immediately apparent to me that these girls had never sweated a moment in their lives. They had never dealt with an unsupervised five-year-old trying to yank off their petticoats. And I guarantee that none of them had ever been unable to date a boy because he came from the wrong time. I could not figure out what they were doing in an ice cream shop, since they couldn’t possibly eat actual calories. I imagined they just fed off the misery of less cool people.

  “Oh, God,” sneered the one with the most fashionable sunglasses. “It’s some of those history losers.”

  She looked Patience up and down, and immediately the three milliner girls caved in on themselves. “Hi,” Patience, Maggie, and Anne murmured in unison, eyes cast downward.

  The girl sighed loudly and tossed her hair. “Let’s get out of here,” she said to her friends. “This place is just overrun with them tonight. Freaks.”

  The group of girls sashayed away, leaving Patience, Maggie, and Anne staring longingly after them. They were so entranced, they didn’t even remember to get their ice cream.

  The whole scene was mind-blowingly phenomenal. There is nothing like real popular kids to put Essex’s popular kids in perspective. I gave Fiona a nudge, but she seemed not to feel it.

  I caught Ezra’s eye for a brief moment, and, before we both looked away from each other, I noticed the small smirk on his face.

  He and I had had our own encounter with our school’s popular clique, a few months ago. One of the girls—the one who always wore tube tops, even in the depths of winter—accused Ezra of having a crush on her. And I do mean accuse. It was a very Salem Witch Trials moment.

  We had been in chem lab, centrifuging some stuff, when she extended her arm, dramatically pointed a finger at Ezra, and said, “This guy is obsessed with me. He’s like constantly staring at me. Give it a rest, psycho, I am way out of your league.”

  I remember watching this with my mouth hanging open. How are you supposed to respond when a girl says that to your boyfriend? And I remember Ezra laughing in her face and saying, “Actually, I’m good,” and then dipping me over our work station and kissing me for the whole lab to watch.

  Maybe Ezra was remembering that moment too as we watched those girls stalk away.

  Or, maybe he wasn’t.

  The door hadn’t even closed behind the real-world popular kids when the Civil Warriors marched in. They were all wearing matching Confederate flag armbands, which I had to admit looked good, if a bit National Socialist for my tastes.

  Dan stood in the thick of the Civil Warriors. He was wearing jean cutoffs, a scruffy T-shirt, and the hoodie that I’d returned to him. It was a soft, comforting hoodie. I kind of regretted giving it back. His mouth was set in a hard line, a soldier off to battle.

  The Mudslide churned in my stomach. There’s something nerve-wracking about seeing someone in public after you kiss them. How were we supposed to act now? The same as we had before? Was that even possible? Something changes after you kiss someone. You can’t ever again really act the same as before.

  I gave Dan a small smile, but his eyes swooped past me. Like he didn’t even see me. Like I was the same as every other Colonial.

  “Let’s get this War Council started,” said the short girl who had orchestrated my kidnapping that first night, weeks ago. I assumed she was the Civil War’s General. With her leathery skin, upturned nose, and hicktown accent, she reminded me of a pit bull. A Southern pit bull. “Unlike y’all, we got War plans to take care of, so we don’t have all night to hang around and chat.”

  “We’re not the ones who are twenty-six minutes late,” I heard Patience whisper.

  “Okay,” Tawny said, staring the Civil War General straight in the eye. “For starters, what happened on Saturday can’t happen again. We can’t tell our bosses and our parents that there isn’t a War going on when I suddenly show up with a sprained wrist.”

  “Maybe y’all should have thought of that before you decided to attack us with crap,” the Civil War General replied.

  “Oh, please,” Maggie interjected. “There’s a difference between throwing around some manure and physically assaulting someone. In one, the worst that happens is your shoes get dirty. Boo-hoo. In the other, someone can get seriously hurt!”

  “It was self-defense,” spoke up one of the Civil War boys. “You infiltrated our land; we protected it.”

  “That’s not self-defense!” Nat argued.

  “In case none of you had noticed,” said a Civil Warrior, “this is War. We work at a Civil War living history museum. We spend all day demonstrating weapons and talking about battle formations. If you’re surprised that we know how to fight, then you’re a pack of idiots.”

  “We are not idiots!” Anne squawked.

  “We didn’t do anything outside the rules of the War,” Ezra said. “We spread around horse shit. Big deal. You’re so anachronistic, we could have been spreading around video game consoles and no one would have noticed.”

  “And you’re so anachronistic, you let her be your General,” one of the Civil Warriors sneered, jabbing a finger at Tawny.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” P
atience screamed. “This isn’t the 1860s. You can’t just say stuff like that!”

  Then everyone started yelling at once. Except for me. I was horrified into silence. Dan’s voice won out. “You’re saying you didn’t do anything outside the rules of the War?” he said. “That’s bullshit. My kid sister has barely been able to get out of bed for the past two days. One of her eyes is swollen shut, her lip won’t stop bleeding, our mom is freaking out, and you didn’t do anything against the rules?”

  “She started it!” Patience protested.

  “I don’t give a shit who started it,” Dan spat out. He looked around the room at everyone, his gaze again slipping right over me. “You’re all hooligans. Get it together. It’s just War.”

  He headed for the door.

  “Where are you going?” demanded his General.

  “To take care of my sister.” And he left without a backward glance.

  The room erupted into more shouting, but I tuned it out. I kept staring at the door, like he might turn around and come back in. I wanted to run after him. But everyone would notice. And I didn’t even know if he would want me to chase him down, anyway.

  Two nights ago, Dan had been kissing me so desperately that I hadn’t been able to focus on anything else since then. And tonight he wouldn’t look at me once.

  This was good, of course; this was for the best. No one could know there was anything between us. No one suspected a thing. And that was the goal. Wasn’t it?

  Chapter 16

  THE VANDALS

  “Excuse me, miss. When in the course of human events does it become necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another?”

  This was a moderner in my graveyard, talking to me. He had a Southern drawl way thicker than Dan’s, a plaid shirt, a self-satisfied smirk, and three friends with him.

  It had been three days since the War Council, and we were in a temporary détente. Tawny’s vowed revenge on Reenactmentland was on hold until she got back more of her energy, and until we thought of an awesome act of warfare that would be sufficiently vengeful. Tawny wanted to make them pay, and a simple act of sabotage wasn’t going to accomplish that. She was thinking more along the lines of launching a nuclear warhead across the creek.

  I hadn’t heard from Dan since the War Council, either. I texted him afterward just to wish his sister a speedy recovery and to ask if there was anything I could do. He didn’t reply. I didn’t know what that meant, and if he were any other boy, I would have brought the issue to Fiona and analyzed every possible explanation for Dan’s silence. But he wasn’t any other boy.

  So for now, it was just me in the burying ground, turning the issue over and over in my mind. Me and some modern men with attitude.

  “That’s an interesting question, sir,” I lied, while gazing longingly to the other side of the burying ground, where Linda was entertaining a batch of delighted-looking youngsters. I wanted to delight youngsters. I wondered if she would swap places with me.

  “And?” the moderner prompted me.

  I quickly ran through the rest of the Declaration’s opening sentence, but it turns out that our Founding Fathers didn’t exactly tell us when it becomes necessary to dissolve political bands. Just that it does, sometimes.

  Thanks a lot, Founding Fathers.

  Fortunately, Plaid Shirt Man wasn’t looking for my answer. He had an answer at the ready. I am accustomed to that style of questioning. “Would you say,” he boomed, “that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of the ends of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it?”

  “Yeah!” his friends cheered. Presumably as in, “Yeah, our friend has memorized the Declaration! What a cool guy!”

  “I might say that,” I replied. “I can’t think of a particular instance where I have said it, but . . .”

  “And would you say that time is now?” the man went on. “Would you say that this left-wing, hippie, socialist Congress is ruling without the consent of the governed? Would you say that it is tyrannical? Would you say that it is our duty, as Americans, to resort to arms to fight for our liberty?”

  Another day, another moderner who ought to be committed to an insane asylum.

  “With all due respect, sir,” I said, “I am a lady. We ladies do not participate in the menfolk’s talk of politics and war. Furthermore, I know not of this ‘hippie,’ ‘socialist,’ or ‘Congress’ of which you speak.”

  The moderners were silent, looking disappointed.

  “Also, I am a Loyalist,” I added. Which, again, I’m not, but it’s a handy claim to whip out sometimes.

  Plaid Shirt Man shrugged and walked off with two of his buddies, presumably in search of a more militant Patriot. The third friend lingered for a moment. “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Elizabeth Connelly, sir.” I curtsied.

  He smirked. “Elizabeth Connelly, huh? Yeah, I see that. I like me an Irish girl. They’re feisty.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Nice dress,” he went on. “That Colonial look is hot. Makes you wonder what’s under all them petticoats. What about your boyfriend? Does he like your dress?”

  Enough was enough. This wasn’t the worst thing I’d ever heard from a moderner. They’ll say anything to you if you’re in costume. But on this particular afternoon, I didn’t need sexist libertarians asking after my nonexistent boyfriend.

  “Sir,” I said. “I’m not really Irish. Essex is a tourist destination; I don’t know if you’ve noticed. Everyone here is an actor. Also, I am still in high school. I’m sixteen. My parents work down the road. And they’re strong. My father was a wrestler in college. Now get the hell out of my graveyard.”

  He did.

  Of course Linda had come over just in time to hear the end of my spiel. “Elizabeth,” she said in an exasperated tone.

  “I know, I know, but he was hitting on me!” I protested. “It was gross!”

  “Nonetheless, we must never break character,” Linda said. “Our job is to give every tourist an authentic experience of the past, no matter who that tourist is.”

  “If we want to give him an authentic historical experience, then I’ll tell my father to challenge that guy to a duel,” I said. But Linda was, predictably, unmoved.

  In my next life, I want a job that never requires me to interact with the public. Like maybe I’ll pursue a career as a hermit.

  I called Fiona after work to tell her stories about the day’s sexual harassment, but she didn’t answer her phone. I called her again after dinner, but she still didn’t answer, and so then I called her once more, intending to leave a detailed message, but this time she picked up.

  “You realize you’ve called me three times over the past three hours, right?” she said. “That’s an average of one phone call per hour, every single hour.”

  “Wow,” I said. “Division, Fiona? Really? What’s next, exponents?”

  She didn’t laugh.

  I opened my bedroom window so I could better hear the rain. “This is the value of friendship,” I explained to her. “I can call you whenever I feel like it without coming off as crazy and obsessive. This is why friends are better than boys. Can you imagine if I had a crush on someone and I called him three times in a row? He’d think I was a psychopath. But you already know me, which is why it’s okay.”

  “You mean I already know you’re a psychopath.”

  “Sure. But you love me for it, I promise.”

  “You used to try to call Ezra three times in a row,” Fiona pointed out. “I had to physically restrain you.”

  I chose not to respond to that. Instead I said, “So what have you been doing all evening that was more important than taking my calls?”

  “Hanging out with Nat.”

  “By ‘hanging out,’ do you mean ‘making out’?”

  “No. If Nat and I had spent the past three hours making out, you can rest assured that I
would just tell you about it.”

  As with her comment about Ezra, this struck me as a pointed jab straight at me. I made a face at my reflection in the mirror on the back of my door. “So explain to me why you and Nat were ‘hanging out’ but not ‘making out.’”

  Fiona was momentarily silent. “I don’t know,” she replied at last. “I think he and Rosaline are still hooking up. I think he doesn’t like me that way.”

  “Really?”

  “Plus, maybe I don’t like him that way either.”

  I rolled my eyes so hard that it hurt. “Really?”

  “We had a great conversation, though. I was telling him about this theater group I’m trying to start. It’s going to be loosely based off the British pantomime style, but also drawing inspiration from big sketch comedy shows like Saturday Night Live. The other Essex Cheerleaders are all about it, and Nat had a lot of ideas for me tonight.”

  “Oh.” I frowned.

  “‘Oh’?” she repeated.

  I tried again. “That’s awesome, Fi. I mean it, it sounds really amazing, and you know I’ll cheer you on in every single performance. It’s just . . . I didn’t even know you were working on this at all.”

  “Well, it’s still in early stages. There’s not much you could have known about it at this point. And . . .” I heard her take a deep breath. “You’ve just seemed so caught up in your head this whole summer, Chelsea. We spend eight hours a day down the road from each other, but there are always other people around, and I feel like you’re always working on the War or thinking about something that has nothing to do with me. So this theater project I’m working on, well, it never really had the chance to come up.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. I couldn’t tell Fiona the reason why I’d been so distant, but I was sorry.

  “Okay,” said Fiona, her voice still sounding small.

  “Want to come over on Saturday night? My mom will make dinner and we can just hang out. We can have all the Fiona-Chelsea quality time we want.”

  “By ‘hang out,’ do you mean ‘make out’?” Fiona asked.

  “Only if you’re very lucky,” I said.