This Isn't What It Looks Like

  Ah well, then I wouldn’t be the same person now, would I? Our hard-luck knocks define us. Those peas in our thighs, they make us who we are.

  But I digress from my digression.

  Both my parents worked, and neither had time to take care of me. And yet, due to my incessant crying, they were unable to find me a nanny who would stay more than a week. Some lasted less than an hour. One, memorably, quit after only a minute. By the time my first birthday came around, there were no nannies or babysitters or even semi-responsible ten-year-olds left within a hundred-mile radius who would put up with me.

  And so the unthinkable happened: my parents were forced to take me along on my birthday dinner.

  They should have known better.

  While, as usual, my parents spoke nary a word to each other, my crying grew so loud at the restaurant that the waitress begged my parents to let her take me into the kitchen.

  Naturally, I only cried louder once she took me away from my parents. The waitress tried giving me all kinds of sugary, salty, and otherwise unhealthy treats, but nothing would shut me up. Thinking maybe I needed a diaper change, she rather roughly threw me onto the hard, cold, wet, stainless-steel kitchen counter and lifted my tender little baby legs. I wailed and wailed, but lo and behold, she found what no one had found before:

  the pea.

  By now, however, it had been there so long that it had practically grown into my skin. It looked like some kind of blackish-bluish-brownish-greenish wart—something you were more likely to find on a witch’s cheek than on a baby’s thigh—and it gripped into me so hard the waitress even wondered if it wasn’t a sort of parasite or leech. Unable to remove it with her bare fingers, she searched desperately for a lubricant, preferably industrial-strength.

  Can you guess where this is going?

  The nearest item within reach: a vat of mayonnaise the size of a smallish garbage can, just large enough, in other words, to hold a baby.

  In her defense, she sought only to dunk my lower body. But when my toes hit the cold mayonnaise, I started wriggling like an eel. She simply couldn’t hold me. Once I fell in, there was no way to pull me out with her hands. I was far too slippery.

  I waved and waved, I shook this way and that, but I only succeeded in sinking further. I coughed and sputtered, gasping for air but sucking in mayonnaise. It went up my nose and got into my eyes. It filled my ears and got under my nails.

  Soon I was entirely submerged in the chilly, slimy, smelly, gelatinous, high-caloric, cholesterol-raising, bacteria-collecting, botulism-inducing, absolutely disgusting, and utterly gross white goo.

  In only seconds, I would be no better than a tuna sandwich: drowned in mayonnaise.

  Luckily, the sous chef happened to be working on his famous Thousand Island salad dressing at the time, and—thank the gods, or rather, the Green Goddess—he needed an extra cup of mayo. Just as I was about to suffer the humiliating fate of a fish stick, he reached in and gripped me by the neck with his salad tongs.

  While I wriggled in the air, crying like a newborn, the sous chef deftly squeezed the pea between his thumb and forefinger and twisted hard. The pea snapped off of my thigh, leaving a red-raw circle about the size of a dime. (Just like twisting the end off a string bean, the chef said.) It hurt, of course, but the relief was immediate.

  I stopped crying and stared with fascination at the object that had caused me so much pain and distress. Shrunken to the size of a peppercorn, it sat on the stainless-steel counter, taunting me with its very smallness.

  Perhaps because I felt a desire to vanquish my enemy in a dramatic fashion, or more likely just because it was there, I reached for the pea and, before anyone could stop me, I did what babies do: I swallowed it.

  That’s when I started crying again. Not because the pea bothered my stomach, but because, free of other distractions, I noticed I was still covered with that slimy white substance I’d nearly drowned in. Sensing my discomfort, the sous chef hastily wiped it off. Then he handed me over to the grateful waitress and went back to work.

  Now I don’t want to brag, but everybody complimented him on his salad dressing that evening. It seems I added a certain piquant je ne sais quoi to the flavor—not to mention a certain yellowness to the color—that only a baby can provide.*

  Ever since then, I have felt a warm affinity for sous chefs—and a morbid fear of mayonnaise.

  Cass wasn’t sure she’d heard the Jester correctly.

  “Really? You don’t know the Secret?”

  “I promise, I don’t know the Secret. I have never heard of the Secret,” said the Jester. “You are the invisible girl. You are the time traveler. You are the only secret I know. I should be asking you for the Secret.”

  Yes, unfortunately, she’d heard him correctly.

  She was crestfallen. Here she’d come so far to ask him the question, and he didn’t know the answer. He seemed barely to understand the question. Her mission was a failure. Beyond that, her role in the Terces Society—her whole purpose in life—would now be in jeopardy. How could she be the Secret Keeper if she had no secret to keep?

  She glanced around the woods, as if the Secret might be hidden behind a tree. But she saw nothing more illuminating than a pinecone sitting on a rock.

  “But what about the Terces Society?” she persisted. “You’re the founder of the Terces Society. And the whole point of the Terces Society is to protect the Secret. It’s the secret society of the Secret!”

  “Sorry, I know nothing of any secret society. If I am the founder, I have not founded it yet.”

  “Well, what about my parents? Who are they?” asked Cass, increasingly desperate. “At least you must know that. I came all this way to find out who I am. I thought you knew. All I know is I’m supposed to be the Secret Keeper.”

  “If you come from the future, how could I know who your parents are? You haven’t been born yet,” said the Jester with indisputable logic. “You make no sense—even a fool like me can see that!”

  “You’re serious, you don’t know anything? I don’t understand—”

  The Jester shook his head, muttering. “Either you are not here, after all, and I am nothing but a madman talking to the wind. Or you have been sent on purpose to make me go mad. It is the same either way.”

  Cass slumped against a tree trunk. “I can’t believe I came all this way for nothing! What am I supposed to do now?” She tried to choke back a sob, but failed.

  “Oh, it can’t be so bad as that,” said the Jester. The sound of her crying had shaken him. “Where are you? Give me your hand so I may pat your head.”

  Reluctantly, Cass nudged him on the arm.

  “Oh, there you are—you can’t keep moving around like that! It’s disorienting. Now, there, there—”

  He patted her invisible head as promised. “How is that? I have not much experience comforting little children. Only making them laugh until they get tired and cross. When they start to cry I send them away—’tis bad for business.”

  “I’m not a little child, but you’re doing fine,” said Cass, sniffling.

  “Here’s an idea,” said the Jester. “Are you sure it is not another jester you are looking for? I hear the King of France has a very funny fellow in his employ.” His face clouded. “And that lucky dog still has a job!”

  Cass shook her head. “No, it’s you. We’ve met before. I mean, I think we have. But it was different, you were older, some of the time, anyway….”

  “Ah, well, that explains it, then,” said the Jester, brightening. “You’ve simply come back in time too far, that is all. It may be that I will discover the Secret tomorrow, or next year, or not until I am an old man. And this society of yours may not arise for many moons after that. You just have to go home, then come back again—to my future!”

  “I’m not sure I can do that,” said Cass sadly. “I don’t even know if I can go home in the first place.”

  Home. She wanted to go home now. Desperately. Even if she was going hom
e empty-handed. There was no sense delaying any longer. It would only make the disappointment worse.

  But how? How was she supposed to go home?

  She was depending on Max-Ernest to bring her back, but shouldn’t he have done it by now? He’d made the antidote before. How hard could it be to make it again? Or had it not really been that long?

  How much time had passed in her own world since she’d left? She had no way of knowing whether it had been seconds or minutes or hours or years. In her real life, she could be ninety years old by now, for all she knew. Her friends and family might all be dead. She might not recognize her own home—or even her own self.

  Max-Ernest had warned her there might be a problem like that. Why hadn’t she listened? She, not the Jester, was the true fool.

  By the time they heard the barking it was too late.

  The regal beagles, roused from their velvet pillows and made for once to work for their roast beef, had sniffed out the bandits’ trail and had led the King’s soldiers directly to the campsite. The bandits had been taken by surprise—the man on watch had been drunk on mead, Cass gathered from Anastasia’s cursing—and they were outnumbered.*

  Now the camp was surrounded, and all the bandits had bayonets at their backs. The regal beagles circled watchfully, as if they were herding sheep.

  Only the Jester and Cass, about forty feet from the camp, remained free, unseen by the soldiers and as yet unsniffed by the beagles.

  “How proud you must feel, hounds, catching your prize fox!” cried Anastasia. (By hounds, mind you, she referred not to the beagles but to the soldiers.) As scornful as ever, she seemed oblivious to the fact that her throat could be cut at any second. Cass couldn’t help admiring Anastasia’s bravery under pressure. “I see the King needed only to send one hundred of his best men to capture ten thieves! And you call yourselves soldiers?”

  “Soldiers, yes, and trained killers each of us. Tell us where the treasure is and we will make your deaths quick and easy,” declared a rather pompous soldier with thick gold braiding on his uniform and beads of sweat on his brow, clearly the Commander. “And if you lead us to that two-foot-tall dung heap they call the homunculus, we may even spare one or two of you. Lord Pharaoh has offered a big reward for his little monster.”

  “Come on,” the Jester whispered urgently. “Let’s get out of here before they see us.” He nodded in the direction of the nearest soldier, who was shifting on his feet, perilously close to turning around. “Or smell us—” The Jester nodded toward the beagles, who were sniffing the ground suspiciously, as if they were just then catching the scent of a renegade jester and an invisible girl.

  “What do you mean—we can’t just leave them!” Cass sputtered.

  “Easy for you to say—you’re invisible.”

  “But that’s just… wrong.”

  “Why? Did not the Bandit Queen command me to leave? I am but following her orders.”

  “Yeah, but she freed us from the dungeon, remember? And she gave us her horse. We owe her our lives!”

  “Lent us the horse, you mean, and very grudgingly, I might add.”

  “I kind of thought you liked her.”

  “Liked her?”

  “Yeah, you know, like liked,” said Cass, automatically raising her eyebrows to make the point, even though the Jester couldn’t see them. (Having a conversation when you’re invisible is like talking to a blind person; you have to communicate everything with your voice.)

  “Like liked? What does that mean—that I like her twice? But I don’t like her even once—I loathe her thrice!” protested the Jester, but he made no further movement toward leaving. It was clear Cass’s words had had their intended effect.

  “OK, you go stall them,” she said, going into the operations mode she had practiced so often with Max-Ernest and the Terces Society. “I’ll try and see if I can untie anybody.”

  “And how do you expect me to do that?”

  “I don’t know… go juggle or tell jokes or chase your tail or something. You’re a jester, right?”

  The Jester opened his mouth to reply but remained silent. He sensed Cass might have already gone, and while it was one thing to be perceived as talking to yourself, it was quite another actually to do it.

  He took a breath and then boldly stepped forward.

  “Soldiers! Salutations!”

  The dozen closest soldiers reeled around, drawing their swords. The beagles ran toward him in a pack, yapping madly.

  “Who goes there?” shouted the Commander.

  “What—? Who—? Nobody!” cried the Jester, jumping to and fro to keep the beagles from sinking their teeth into his ankles. “I mean to say, ’tis I who go there! You see, here… I… go!”

  The soldiers laughed.

  “Look, men—the King’s jester! More lately the King’s prisoner!” shouted a young soldier. “And now he is the beagles’ dinner!”

  “What happened, Jester?” shouted another. “Why did you reject our hospitality? Was the dungeon floor too hard for your liking? The food too cold?”

  “Oh the floor was fine, and the food, too,” the Jester offered, moving aside just as a beagle was about to bite into his shoe. “It was the prison guards—their smell offended!”

  “You’re a cocky one to joke when you are surrounded by so many men!” snarled the Commander.

  “Men? And yet you tie up a lady?” The Jester gestured toward Anastasia, who was shaking her head in disbelief. Evidently, she didn’t think the Jester was helping her cause.

  “Do not worry,” replied the Commander. “She will not be tied for long. It is only her head the King wants. We brought this platter special—”

  He raised his hand in the air and a younger soldier ran up with a silver platter. “We are instructed to bring back her head sitting on it. Perhaps there is room for yours as well.”

  “My head would be honored to be in such noble company. But please do not face her toward me. I fear she will bite off my nose—if these beagles do not get to it first.”

  The Jester grinned at Anastasia, who glared back with ferocity. Indeed, it looked as if she might bite the Jester if she could.

  Hear ye! Hear ye! Attention, all lords and ladies, brave knights and beautiful maidens, the Renaissance Faire is just a month away. After your day of frolic and revelry, come for a royal repast at your local Medieval Days Family Restaurant!”

  It was Glob and Daniel-not-Danielle, dressed as not quite medieval, not quite Renaissance, not quite modern-day heralds, in green tights and jester hats. They held plastic trumpets in their hands and wore sandwich boards over their shoulders advertising Medieval Days Family Restaurants:

  It’s not just for dinner,

  it’s joust for dinner!

  Kids walking by on their way into school snickered and jeered.

  “Nice tights!”

  “Are you supposed to be lords or ladies?”

  “Laugh all you like, dudes—they’re paying us a hundred bucks each to do this, plus free soda all day!” shouted Glob, holding up a can. “What part of mucho dinero don’t you understand? And what are you getting for wearing your old, smelly jeans? That’s right—the big zero. Nada!”

  “Will you stop shouting? You’re just making it worse,” whispered Daniel-not-Danielle, who was busy arranging his dreadlocks so not a centimeter of his face showed to passersby.

  “They’re not going to like it when they see what I write on my blog,” grumbled Glob. “I’m going to live-blog Ren-Faire, and none of them will escape my wrath!”

  “They don’t care about your blog, man.”

  “Do you know how many direct hits I had last week? Like, thousands,” replied Glob, outraged. “Hey, Max-Ernest, you want in? I’ve got another one—” Glob pointed to an extra sandwich board leaning against the wall, a pair of green tights hanging over it.

  Max-Ernest shook his head violently and kept walking.

  “Fine. See if I ever offer you a job again!”

  Max-Erne
st had returned to school with a sense of dread.

  Benjamin had been his only hope for saving Cass. And now he knew that Benjamin was their worst enemy. According to Yo-Yoji, Benjamin had been Dr. L’s student at the New Promethean Academy. And now he was a spy—a mole—for the Midnight Sun in their very own school.

  Given the choice, of course, Max-Ernest would have avoided ever seeing Benjamin again—or school, for that matter. But even if he couldn’t get inside Cass’s head, her voice was always in his, telling him not to give up, to remember the Terces Society and the vows they had made to protect the Secret.

  Why, Max-Ernest wondered frequently, does she have to be just as bossy in my imagination as she is in real life?

  At this very moment, he was having a silent conversation with Cass that went something like this:

  C: Don’t let Benjamin out of your sight. If the Midnight Sun went to the trouble of training him and planting him in our school, he won’t give up so easily.

  M-E: How am I supposed to tail Benjamin? As soon as I get near him, he can read my mind!

  C: Just concentrate on different thoughts. Pretend that you don’t know about him. That you’re still friends.

  M-E: But I don’t even know how to be friends. I was never friends with anybody.

  C: Oh, you weren’t?

  M-E: You don’t count.

  C: Thanks a lot.

  M-E: You know what I mean.

  C: No, I don’t. And I think Yo-Yoji would be pretty insulted to hear that, too…. All I know is, you better find out Benjamin’s next move before he finds out yours.

  M-E: Easy for you to say. You’re just lying there doing nothing.

  C: Doing nothing?! You mean in a coma? You want to trade places?