Leap Day

  Missy Hiver only half-listens to what Josie is blabbing on about. When she sees an opening to cut in, she does, even though she really doesn’t think it would be cool if Christmas came in the summer. Once it’s out of her mouth she wishes she hadn’t said anything. She glares at the back of Josie’s head and is filled with a familiar feeling in the pit of her stomach. When Missy was born, she had a twin who died within the day because her lungs were filled with fluid. Her parents had named her Jocelyn, and her mom said they would have called her Josie for short. Missy mourns the loss of this twin, this missing half of herself, every day. She hates that Josie Taylor is here instead of her Josie. It just screams unfairness and mocks her every time she has to hear Josie’s name being called. She and Josie even look sort of alike. They both have long hair, but Missy has a larger nose and Josie has a small mouth that reminds Missy of a fish. For a brief second in art class last year Missy considered sneaking up behind Josie and cutting off her hair with one swift snip of the scissors. She actually had to sit on her hands until the urge passed. She cried herself to sleep that night without even realizing it.

  Missy knows people think she is very immature to be obsessed with Mary-Kate and Ashley at her age, when most girls outgrow them by the time they are twelve. But she also knows that Mary-Kate would understand her pain if she had to be without Ashley. They are never apart. They do all the same things she and Josie (her Josie) would do. They shop together and work together and study together and go on double dates. They are BEST friends. Missy listens to that pretend goody-two-shoes, holier-than-thou Amelia Peters recite the seven deadly sins and almost laughs when she hears the word envy. Missy envies everybody. But especially Mary-Kate and Ashley. Plus, no one wrote happy birthday to her on the blackboard when she turned sixteen last month.

  Amelia Peters swears she can feel the gold cross around her neck burning her flesh. How well she knows those seven deadly sins. Her parents have been reminding her of them since the day she was born. When she was younger she tried to be so good, so pure and righteous. Everyone else is copying down the list so they can record each time they commit one of them. Amelia doesn’t need to. She can think of twenty times off the top of her head that she’s committed these sins. In fact, she tries to commit each sin at least once a day. Her favorites are lust and gluttony. They work well together. Anger is a waste of energy, so she saves that for when she sees some sort of injustice in the world. Which, in high school, usually happens by lunchtime.

  Jeff Grand figures out how he can do a favor for Josie to show his appreciation. He can ask Josie’s friend Katy to the prom! He figures Josie has a date already, but Katy probably doesn’t because she seems to hang in Josie’s shadow. With a best friend like Josie, who is kind of shiny and glowy and has a brother on the football team, Katy must feel like second fiddle. If he asked her to the prom, then she’d feel more special and Josie wouldn’t have to feel guilty about hogging the spotlight all the time. Excited about the cleverness of his plan, Jeff sticks a Post-it note on Josie’s homework before handing it back to her at the end of class.

  Mitch Hurley watches Josie as she stands in the hallway reading a Post-it note with a strange expression on her face. She pauses like she’s deep in thought and then suddenly takes off down the hall at full speed, almost knocking him to the floor. He watches her go and wishes he had the nerve to talk to her. He wishes he had given her that Valentine’s Day card in eighth grade, but after his mother saw it he threw it out and now he’s not sure why. He’s seen every play Josie’s been in since grammar school, even the show where she played some kind of round vegetable. She still smiled valiantly like a true professional. Last fall he saw The King and I three times. It was about time she got the lead role. He doesn’t think he’s obsessed or anything, he just knows a quality person when he sees one. He feels that he is an excellent judge of character and can size up a person’s motivations in under a minute. He thought he was going to pass out when Josie looked at him in class before. He couldn’t imagine why she was looking at him, and she was even smiling. He had immediately covered his nose, sure that he had something hanging out of it because that would be just his luck.

  On the other end of the school, Katy Parker is running through the halls, totally freaking out. All she can think about is getting that note back from Josie. She didn’t hear a word her French teacher said all period. She’s pretty sure Josie wouldn’t have tried to read the note in Mrs. Greenspan’s class, so as long as she can catch her before her next class she should be okay. She runs up to the photography lab but Josie hasn’t gotten there yet. She waits at the door, scanning down the hall in both directions. If she doesn’t leave now, she’ll be late for her American History class, and there’s a test today. Reluctantly, she heads in the direction of class and prays she’ll run into Josie on the way.

  A few steps ahead of Katy, Grant Brawner is walking to his next class with his friend Stu.

  “Just cut with me, Grant. Don’t be such a loser.”

  “Are you trying to peer-pressure me?” Grant asks.

  Stu grins. “Is it working?”

  “Nope. I’m not cutting class and that’s final.”

  “Wuss.”

  “Delinquent.”

  Stu pushes Grant into the row of lockers, and they laugh the kind of laugh that only guys who have been friends since first grade can. Grant opens his locker and throws his calculus book inside, and they continue walking.

  “Hey,” Stu whispers, jabbing Grant in the side. “Here comes that girl who follows you everywhere.”

  Grant ignores Stu and keeps looking straight ahead.

  “She’s so determined, dude. And she’s kind of cute, even though she comes up to, like, your hip!”

  “Shut up,” Grant tells him. He’s about to say hi to Josie, but Josie’s friend comes out of nowhere and pulls her away. Stu laughs and pushes Grant into their classroom.

  After accosting Josie in the hall, Katy sits down in her seat in American History and waits for her heart to stop pounding. She is very relieved that the note is safely clenched in her fist. She just didn’t feel ready to deal with Josie’s reaction to its contents. She opens her hand and lets the balled-up note roll onto the desk. Then her eyes open wide. She hurriedly opens the folded piece of paper and silently reads,

  Dear Whomever It May Concern,

  Please excuse Josie Taylor from school today at 10:45. She will be taking her driver’s exam and will return as soon as it’s over.

  Sincerely,

  Mrs. Laura Taylor

  Oh my god! This is the wrong note! If she has this one, that means Josie will have handed her note to the office.

  Katy jumps out of her seat and runs up to Mr. Maron, her history teacher. “I have to go somewhere,” she tells him, trying to keep the panic out of her voice. “It’ll just take a minute.”

  “The test is about to start. You know the rules. No one leaves until the last person hands in his or her paper.”

  “But I —”

  “No buts.”

  “But —”

  “Sit.”

  Katy debates making a mad dash from the room but knows she could never do it. She returns to her seat and taps her foot incessantly instead.

  9:40 A.M.– 10:30 A.M.

  Chapter 3A: Josie

  “Stop,” demands the too-much-power-for-his-own-good hall monitor. I screech to a halt only five doors down from the photography lab.

  “Do you have a hall pass?” he asks, holding out his hand palm-up. He’s actually wearing a sash across his body like he’s running for Miss America. Except, instead of Miss Florida, his sash says: Official Hall Monitor, 2nd Floor. I’ve seen him before. He’s only a freshman. He should fear me.

  “I’m late for class,” I tell him. I have to pause to take a breath between late and for. I really need to start working harder in gym. “It’s just right over there.” I point. He doesn’t even turn to look.

  “Why are you late?” he asks, which of course is
only making me later.

  I can’t very well say I was stalking Grant Brawner or that Katy just cornered me, so I stand there staring at him. He takes out his little pad and ever so slowly writes me a detention note.

  I can’t believe this kid. “Are you serious?”

  “Very serious. No one in the halls without a pass. You know the rules.”

  I consider pulling the old “but I just got my period and I have to run to the bathroom” excuse, but I don’t have the nerve. So instead I say, “But it’s my birthday!”

  “Here you go,” he says, handing me the slip. “Don’t forget to bring it to the office to schedule your detention. Oh, and happy birthday.”

  With those words, evil Official Hall Monitor, 2nd Floor walks away. No, saunters away. Well, that sucked and now I’m really, really late. I need to plan my entrance carefully. Okay. The door is open, which means no one’s in the darkroom yet. I sneak closer to the door and can hear Mr. Simon talking. Maybe he’ll be writing something on the board and I can grab one of the stools in the back of the lab. I peek into the room just as Mr. Simon appears directly in front of me. He’s even cuter up close. Did I mention how cute he is? All the girls — including me — have crushes on him. He looks like a younger version of Tom Cruise.

  “Why, Ms. Taylor. I almost closed the door on you.”

  I slink past him into the room. “Sorry,” I say in a small voice. “I had a run-in with a power-hungry hall monitor.” I love how he calls me Ms. Taylor.

  He closes the door. “Well class, does anyone think I should reprimand Ms. Taylor for being late on her birthday?”

  A chorus of “no’s” rises up from the room.

  “Guess you’re off the hook,” he says and starts handing out the strips of negatives that we developed last week. I had told him about my Leap Day birthday a few months ago, but I didn’t think he would remember. He’s been a little out of it ever since Christmas break, when he married Ms. Robinson, the biology teacher who none of the girls like now. Personally, I think he should have waited seven years and married me, but he didn’t ask my opinion. Ms. Robinson seems so cold and uptight and Mr. Simon’s so...so... not those things. He used to have a ponytail but she made him cut it off. As my mom once said, there’s no accounting for attraction, although she was referring to the huge sheepdog down the street who trails longingly after Mrs. Mulvaney’s old poodle.

  A list of other memorable Mom-isms:

  1. It’s just as easy to love a rich man as a poor man. (Summer of sixth grade when I told her I had a huge crush on a boy in camp who wore the same shorts every day.)

  2. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. (This was when I planned on calling my grandparents on their fiftieth anniversary but forgot because Clueless was on TV and I love that movie.)

  3. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. (When she made me swallow a mixture of echinacea, zinc, and ground-up vitamin C when the flu was going around.)

  4. You’ll thank me later. (Following anything that I didn’t want to do/buy/say/wear that she makes me do/buy/say/wear anyway.)

  5. Why have hamburger when you can have steak? (In response to discussion about teenagers having sex or waiting until they are older and preferably married. I didn’t mention that I like hamburgers better than steak, because I didn’t think that was the point.)

  6. Beauty comes from within. (The day of my eighth-grade yearbook picture when I had a pimple on my cheek the size of Space Mountain.)

  Only six people can use the darkroom at once, and unfortunately Mr. Simon calls my group first. Even though photography is my second-favorite class, I was hoping to practice for the audition. One can never ask “Wherefore art thou Romeo?” too many times. I grab my negatives and follow the others into the small room. If the darkroom were any darker, I’d be afraid, but I love its soft reddish glow. I even love all the trays and tongs and the sweet, slightly acrid smell of mysterious chemicals. The whole thing seems romantic and full of creative potential. Like things are being born in here. The lab and the darkroom are very high tech. The whole room was donated by a rich man whose son had graduated from here and had just started his career as a photojournalist when he was killed in the Balkans. It’s called the Hunter Koenig Jr. Room. Poor Hunter Jr.

  “I cannot work without gloves,” Becky Dickson exclaims. “And the box is empty.”

  “That’s why we saved the gloves from last week,” Mr. Simon says, reaching under the counter and pulling out a box filled with the yellow gloves.

  “I can’t wear those! Anyone could have had their hands in there. Do you know how unsanitary that is?”

  The rest of us try not to laugh. Becky takes her hygiene very seriously. Laughing only urges her on. The last time we laughed at her she’d told us that every time you flush the toilet, germs fly across the room and land on your toothbrush. Ever since then I can’t brush my teeth without thinking of her. She and I used to play together when we were little, but we drifted apart. The only reason I can think of is that Katy and I started getting to be better friends around that time. Maybe Becky got jealous and didn’t want to hang out with us.

  Mr. Simon appears stumped. “I guess you could wrap your hands in paper towels. That’ll offer some protection.”

  “Fine,” she says, and proceeds to do just that. Now she looks like Minnie Mouse, with skinny arms and big puffy hands. “And what about the fumes?” she says, wrapping tape around her hands to keep the “gloves” in place. “You told us the air filter would be fixed over the weekend.”

  I can tell Mr. Simon is getting irritated. “We haven’t even opened the chemicals yet.”

  “C’mon, Becky,” Greg Adler says. “Can you give it a rest? Some of us want to actually start the class.” Greg and Becky always make this big show of hating each other, but personally I think they have the hots for each other.

  Becky glares at him in the inky darkness. “You only want to hurry up so you can go practice your half Torah like the other thirteen-year-olds.”

  “It’s a Haf Torah,” Greg growls. “And it’s not my fault I had mono when I was thirteen!”

  “Maybe it was your fault,” she says.

  “Enough,” Mr. Simon says. “I swear you two are worse than an old married couple.”

  That shuts them up fast and we finally get started. I feed my negative strip under the enlarging machine and slide it through until I find the picture I want to make. I took this particular shot outside at the picnic tables at lunch last week. Zoey is holding up a hot dog and Katy is laughing. Zoey’s in the shade and Katy’s in the sun, so it’s a good study in contrast, which is what the assignment was about. Greg peers over my shoulder.

  “Interesting picture, Josie,” he says with a little smile on his face. “They look very excited about that hot dog.”

  “I guess they were hungry,” I tell him, adjusting the machine so the picture will be as big as possible. “I think the lighting came out really well.”

  “Right. The lighting.”

  I look up at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?” I know everyone else is listening but there’s nothing I can do about it. Luckily one of the Davis twins — either Tom or Tyson, I can never tell which one especially since they are in all the same classes — freaks out because his negative is blank and everyone rushes over to comfort him. They are sensitive boys. In fifth grade Tom (or maybe

  Tyson) cried when our class tadpoles got washed down the sink by mistake. “They’ll never be frogs now,” he had wailed. Our fifth grade yearbook was later titled Now We Are Frogs.

  “It doesn’t mean anything,” Greg says. He glances in Mr. Simon’s direction. “Just forget it.”

  I’m about to insist that he tell me when I remember that Greg played Seven Minutes in the Closet with Zoey at a party the first summer after she moved here. He must like the picture because Zoey’s in it. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell Zoey you ogled her.”

  “That’s not it, Josie,” Greg says between gritted teeth. “
Can we please just forget it?”

  I shrug and use the tongs to lay the piece of photo paper into the first pan.

  “Ten more minutes,” Mr. Simon announces. I move my picture carefully from pan to pan and then use the rubber clips to hang it from the overhead rope. I hope it will be dry by the end of class so I can show it to Zoey and Katy at lunch.

  We file back into the bright light of the lab and the next shift goes in. Mr. Simon asks Greg if he can monitor things in the darkroom because he has to run out for five minutes.

  “But Mr. Simon,” Greg pleads. “I have to practice.”

  Mr. Simon groans, picks someone else, and dashes from the room. Greg pushes a stool into the far corner and digs out some folded papers from his bookbag. He spreads them out over his knees and begins chanting quietly in Hebrew. It’s very soothing, actually. A Davis twin comes over and sits next to me.

  “So it’s your birthday?” “Uh-huh.”

  “Cool.”

  “Yeah.”

  Silence. Then, “Are you getting your license today?”

  “Oh, no!” I jump to my feet. “I forgot!”

  “You forgot to get your license?”

  “No, I forgot to hand in my absence note this morning.” I pat my pocket and feel the bulge of the note. At least I didn’t lose it.

  “It’s not a big deal. Just hand it in now. Mrs. Lombardo is cool, she won’t mind.”

  “Yeah, but I can’t leave until Mr. Simon gets back.” I guess teachers need to use the bathroom, too, sometimes. It is turning into a long bathroom trip though. Normally I’d take this time to write a note to Katy, but after she so strangely took hers back I decide not to. Finally, Mr. Simon runs back in and apologizes for being gone so long. I go up to the front of the room and tell him the situation. He tells me to take my stuff with me so I can go straight to my next class since there isn’t that much time left before the bell. Mr. Simon is the best.