Heaven Sent (9 page)

“Y
ou know, Pocky really is harmless,” Claire said as she sat down next to me on the damp grass in the middle of the quad. It was lunchtime.

“I know, don’t even worry about it,” I said. “That stuff, those songs, they were pretty funny. I got a kick out of it.”

“Yeah, that Pocky, he’s a hoot.”

Eating with Claire was the best. She never brought the same thing twice. And she always had a blanket to set her food out on and real shiny silverware. She, too, made her own lunches, but while I stuck to basics like cheese and bread, Claire fashioned these marvels out of food. Last week she had made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but with cake for the bread. It was the size of a large dictionary. Today’s meal consisted of a sprinkle sandwich and pink popcorn. And of course the best part was, she always shared.

“So what did you get on Mr. Zeitland’s paper?” asked Claire.

“An A. It was pretty cool.”

“You, Thalia, are exceptionally talented in the world of science. Why is that?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re good at it. You’re good at school. Is this school just so much easier than your old school or
what?”

“Um, it’s just real different?” I said.

“Different how?”

“Well, for one thing, I never had to deal with the whole note-passing issue before I came to Georgia. Not to say we didn’t have our share of witchy girls or dopey boys, but, I dunno, I didn’t have to see them, like, every day.”

“Yeah, well, the witch quotient went up here exponentially when the Backroom Betties came along a couple of weeks ago.”

Something about what Claire had just said made my blood run cold. “What do you mean? They haven’t been here for, like, aeons? When did they come to this school?” I asked.

“Just like a week before you three got here. They fit in alongside the jocks and the cheerleaders right quick. It’s funny that Teri was just hanging all over Tim at the Grit last night. When she first got here, he made a beeline straight for her, and she wouldn’t give him the time of day. Now look at her. Batting those big blue eyes.” Claire nodded to a spot across the quad.

And it was true, there was Teri cooing at none other than Tim Rhys himself as he serenaded her on his guitar. And
he
was definitely serenading her, that—that—that witch and that poseur-playing snitch!

“Your sister is just so much way cooler than that
chick.” Apparently she’d figured out that it wasn’t me who had the crush on Tim. “Well, I warned you, he’s a poseur.” But I hardly heard her.

“Argh!”

I watched in horror as Teri leaned over and kissed Tim on the cheek. I couldn’t take it. I got up and marched directly over to the two of them and asked him squarely to his face, “What the heck is your problem?”

“What the heck? What the heck? Are you nine? Jeez, Thalia, chill.”

“Um, chill? Chill? What on earth does that mean? What about my sister?”

He just laughed, laughed at me, and shrugged.

“Thalia?” Teri said in a smooth voice that made me want to explode. “It’s very sweet that you’re worried about your sister. But can’t you see that Tim and I are busy?”

I was speechless. Or virtually. “Ah, wha, pla,” was all I said. It was all I could do not to turn them both into slugs right then and there in the middle of the school quad.

“Look, Thalia, your sister’s all right, but honestly, dude, she ain’t pulling her weight on this project we got going on. I mean, I’m an artist, and I need to work constantly on my art, and Teri here is giving me feedback on my tune, which really is more than I can say for your sister.”

“You are a goat-faced little liar,” I yelled.

But they both just laughed. An infuriating, self-satisfied grin never left Teri’s face.

“Look, I got to be done with this by tomorrow, so can you leave me alone so I can finish my song?” said Tim.

His song? His song! Tim was quite possibly the biggest jerk I had ever encountered, and that’s saying a lot since I have known many, many jerks.
*

I walked away, feeling helpless and powerless. What was I going to do?

More important, what was I going to say to Polly?

B
oth Era and Polly were waiting for me at our spot after school.

“Why are you here, Polly? I thought you had practice with Tim,” I said. I’d really been hoping that I wouldn’t even have a chance to talk to her till tomorrow. I needed time to formulate my plan. But then I noticed that Polly didn’t look so hot.

“I gave him my poem at the beginning of class, and he just took it from me and sort of grunted,” Polly said in a shaky half whisper. “It was so odd. And then after class he just left. He started to walk down the hall with that horrible girl Teri, and he just left me standing there. I called to him, but nothing, he didn’t even turn around. I don’t understand. I thought he liked me. I should have never given him that poem,
never
!”

And then my beautiful, strong, oft-silent sister burst out into a chorus of off-key tears.

We walked, and she sobbed alongside us. I wondered what boy in his right mind would reject my sister’s love.

“Look, I don’t know what is up, but there has to be a reasonable explanation for this,” I said, rather reasonably, I might add. “What that is, right now, just remains to be seen.”

“I can tell you what it is,” said Polly between gasps
of air. “He doesn’t like me. He got to know me and found out I am not worthyyyyy.” And with that she let out a long and painful wail.

“That’s just downright silly,” said Era.

“Era’s right,” I concurred. “That’s more than silly.

That’s hilariously wrong. And on so many levels.”

“Well, then, explain it to me. Someone? It’s so obvious, and the only reason you two don’t see it is because you are my sisters. But face it, I have been completely unsuccessful at this whole earth-in-the-future school thing. I can’t even get one earth boy to like me. I’m a big, fat failure, and now what, now what?” And she sobbed some more.

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, so am I,” said Era.

I tried to get her to stop. “I don’t think that will make anyone feel better, Era,” I said through gritted teeth.

“Oh, and how are you a failure, Era, too many boys looking your way as you cruise down the halls?” Polly said, her face turning a pale shade of jealous green.

“See, I told you it wouldn’t make anyone feel any better, Era!”

“No, I’m serious. I’m a complete and total failure,” Era went on. “I haven’t done one thing on my own yet. I’ve just been thinking about boys and talking to boys and talking about boys, and not that that’s not fun and all, but I really kind of want to go home, and I just have no willpower whatsoever. And it doesn’t help to have everyone thinking that I’m the circus-freak alien clown’s sister. In fact, I think, no, I know, that not nearly as many boys have been checking me out as there were last week.” Era’s eyes started to well up with tears.

I scowled at her, but Polly, my ever caring sister, was so moved by our sister’s tears that she instantly became distracted by Era’s problems. Which helped her quickly to forget her own.

She comforted Era, who was now sniffling along at a snail’s pace. “Hmmm, I wonder if it
is
because of Thalia,” said Polly.

“Hello, I’m here, please don’t talk about me like I’m not. I didn’t do anything that would make people dislike me or call me a freak or an alien. I didn’t!” I whined.

At that point I thought I might as well throw all my sorrows into the pot and
really
distract the group. “Well, at least you don’t have a Mohawked, plaid-wearing, five-foot-tall boy following you around, ser
enading you with off-key tunes wherein he rhymes
Thalia
with
Taco Bell Value.
”

That got a smile out of them.

“I mean, what if you two had someone trailing your every move,” I said, and then I affected Pocky’s faux gangsta accent. “‘No one is as spicy as the hottest sister Era—next to her, chilis are weak, even the fiery habanera!’”

That got a few giggles out of them. I had to please my audience. I continued, “With her hair golden soft and her drawl so sugary sweet, her singing voice will make lorikeets go into super-heat.”

More smiles, more laughter.

“Do Polly, do Polly,” cried Era, wiping at her nose with her sleeve.

“Okay.” I thought for a moment. “But no one is as enchanting as the fair sister Polly—she is as pretty as the rare tigers of Bengali.”

Now they were really hysterical. They were still clinging to each other, in that clutched pose two sisters walk in when they comfort each other, but now they were rife with the giggles.

“For the sister who is smartest and cleverest of the pack—she deserves a ride home on a Rhodesian Ridgeback!” My sisters laughed and laughed.

And then for my big finale, I took the stance of Pocky, my back arched forward, my hands moving
quickly around me with no apparent purpose. “Boys are often clueless, boys are often lame—they can’t recognize a bad apple from a classy dame, but the worst one among them is the brownnoser, who goes by the name of hairy Tim the poseur.”

My sister’s face just went white. And then the flood of tears. I had gone too far.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you upset—I was being funny. Ha, ha? Oh, Polly, I am so sorry.”

“Waaahhhhhhhhhh,” cried Polly.

And with that, my short-lived career as an international rap star was over before it had begun.

W
ell, the one thing I could say for the next day was that it was Friday. Which meant that we’d soon have two whole days off before we had to be back in this little slice of Hades we were stuck in.

Was I bitter this morning? You betcha, by golly.

I really didn’t feel like being here today. A few people said hi to me, but it was beginning to dawn on me that the people at my new school, though they were mostly pretty nice, were still strangers. And some of them, the group of kids that always hung out with the Backroom Betties, were just downright rude. Claire was out—she and her mom had gone to visit her grandma for the weekend a day early. Pocky wasn’t anywhere to be found. I felt very alone.

That was until lunch, where, since it was Friday (hallelujah), I got to see my sisters.

We found a small, quiet corner of the quad and sat down. Polly hardly ate at all; she just stared at her plate. And I nibbled on my bologna sandwich halfheartedly. Earth food was really starting to bore me. In fact, earth was starting to bore me, period.

Well, maybe that wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t boredom that had me so down this morning. It was frustration. Sometime between Tuesday and today, Polly had closed herself up like a giant clam. She now looked even more miserable than when we got here.
And Era, well, Era was depressed because of Polly. And me? I was completely confused. How could Tim have turned out to be such a jerk? It was so unfair.

I looked at my two sisters and felt that old guilt creep back up on me, the guilt for getting them into this mess. I had to get us out of it. I just
had
to.

I pasted a huge, what I hoped was a genuine, smile on my face. “Okay, look, so Tim isn’t such a great guy. Right? Right. Well, who knew? Anyway, who cares? I mean, after all, boys aren’t important, anyway, right?” Polly and Era looked at me dubiously, and Polly bit from her sandwich as if it were sandpaper. “I mean, other than Tim, things are pretty good. It could be worse, right? We just need to refocus our efforts, and we’ll be back home in Olympus before you can say—”

The sound of the PA system cut me off. It rang with this awful feedback noise, something akin to Guy’s guitar last Monday at the Grit. Then a familiar voice came on the loudspeaker. “Attention, attention, everyone. I just wanted to read to you a masterful piece of art written by one of our very own Nova High students….” It was Tim, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

“It begins, ‘Dearest Tim.’”

My heart sank down into my gut of bologna.

“‘To this world I came a little gun shy,

Your voice, your song, are my life’s lullaby.

You became the familiar in a sea of unknown,

My heart quivers with ache deep

in my breastbone…’”

Era was wincing. Polly’s eyes welled up with tears. She just sat there, frozen in midbite.

“‘…for it is you, Tim, who makes me feel at ease,

And for you it is true, I wish to please,

Because I am Polly, I can be your sweet muse

your dancer, your scribe, your sweetest chanteuse….’”

The quad echoed with intense cheers and loud guffaws.

That’s when Polly got up and ran. Ran so fast, the heel on her shoe broke off and she went up in the air. Half-chewed bologna came flying out of her mouth, and she landed with a crunching thud right on the concrete in front of the Backroom Bettys’ own little bench, which was, luckily (or so I thought at the time), empty. The laughter was deafening. The whole school roared with a huge hurrah.

Polly’s face was flushed beyond any recognition; her knees were both bloody with scrapes and filthy with ground-in dirt. I’d never seen any one of my sisters bleed before. It was horrifying. Era and I both jumped up simultaneously and dashed toward her, but before we even got close, she was up and running again. This time she was successful in getting out of
the quad, out of the school, out of Dodge.

Era and I rushed back to our bench and collected our things as well as Polly’s books and bag. We could feel everyone’s eyes on us as they whispered and giggled. The whole school just buzzed, drowning out the last few lines of Polly’s poem, which was booming over the loudspeaker. And then the poem ended, and we heard Tim’s laugh, his unmistakable skanky, smarmy laugh echoing against the walls, louder than anything else.

As Era and I rushed through the halls, I was already planning what I was going to do to Tim when I next saw him. But then I heard another laugh ring out over the PA, and my heart just froze. And suddenly I knew why the Backroom Betties hadn’t been sitting in their usual spot at lunch. The laugh was made up of three voices, in fact. Three fiercely familiar female chuckles. Three fiercely familiar
evil
female chuckles.