Past Perfect Page 6

  Chapter 7

  THE TELEPHONE WARS

  Tawny got right on everyone’s case to come up with an awesome plan of attack that would prove to Reenactmentland that we were serious contenders. “They’re just resting on their laurels!!!” she said in an e-mail to all of us on Monday night. “They think we don’t have any game!! Let’s prove to those farbs that they have underestimated us!!!!”

  But so far they hadn’t underestimated us, because so far we hadn’t come up with any awesome counterattacks.

  Of course we had Tawny’s fantastic Undercover Operation battle plan, but according to the people constructing and sewing the uniforms, that was at least two weeks away from being ready to go. They needed materials and fabric to make the costumes, and they could work on them only when their supervisors weren’t around. Tawny had sent another e-mail asking, “Can’t this happen any faster???” to which Patience, the milliner girl and self-appointed costume designer, replied, “look tawny, we are not going to half ass this. just because theyre farbs doesnt make it ok for us to show up in some safety pinned old sacks. sewing is an ART & like any art it takes TIME & when you rush us like this i feel like you dont RESPECT OUR CRAFT.”

  So that’s why we didn’t have Civil War uniforms yet.

  But Tawny was right that we had to do something. We couldn’t afford to wait two weeks while Patience embroidered Confederate jackets.

  As I was riding my bike home from Essex on Tuesday, I stopped by my favorite junk shop to see if anything cool had come in recently. You might think that because I spend all my time with antique goods they would no longer interest me, but I love junk shops; there’s always the chance I might find a treasure buried in all the old crap.

  As I coasted to a stop in front of the store, I saw an employee struggling out the door with a big trash bag filled with some sort of electronic gear. “What’s in there?” I asked.

  “Bunch of broken phones,” the guy said, letting me peer inside the bag. “Rotary, touch-tone, whatever. They don’t work anymore. The boss thought we could sell ’em as paperweights or something, but they were just takin’ up space, so we’re trashin’ ’em.”

  I waited until he’d shuffled back into the junk shop, then I called Tawny. “Get down here,” I said as soon as she answered her phone. “Bring your car. I have an idea.”

  Tawny and I sent emergency text messages telling everyone to meet outside Reenactmentland promptly at five thirty the next morning. Going there at night was too risky; the Civil Warriors might stay late, plotting strategy or just hanging out. Very, very early morning seemed safer.

  I woke up at five a.m., feeling weirdly awake and pumped for the day. I put on my PUMAs and cute jeans and even ran a brush through my hair, all of which is a lot of effort in the middle of the night, but there was a small chance I might run into Dan at Reenactmentland, in which case I thought I should look like a person who wore real clothes instead of pajamas. I even found myself wanting to run into Dan while we were on our Telephone Mission, which was, as Fiona would have said, very Benedict Arnold of me, since if Dan were there, he would stop us because he was the enemy.

  Also, he wasn’t going to be there. He was going to be asleep. Get a grip, Glaser.

  I ran downstairs and let myself out, locking the front door behind me as quietly as I could. Fiona was waiting in her convertible a little ways down the block, so my parents wouldn’t hear her.

  “Hi,” I whispered, climbing into the passenger seat.

  She grunted. “This plan sucks.”

  “It’s going to be awesome.”

  “I hate it. And I hate you for coming up with it. And I hate myself for voting for you to be second-in-command.”

  Fiona hates a lot of things. Mostly mornings.

  We drove in silence for a few minutes. I don’t know how this is possible, but Fiona seemed to be driving with her eyes entirely closed. Finally she rubbed them and looked at me like she was actually seeing me.

  “Why are you dressed like that?”

  “Like what? Fi, I’m wearing jeans and sneakers.”

  “You’re wearing your cute jeans and cute sneakers. God, Chelsea, is this because Ezra is going to be there? And at five thirty in the goddamn morning you want him to see you in your goddamn PUMAs and realize that he was a fool to let you go?”

  “No,” I said, even though this had, in fact, been my plan for the past two months, every day that Ezra and I had class together. “How crazy do you think I am? Anyway, Ezra won’t be there. He’s even worse at mornings than you are.”

  I said this and had a sudden flashback to the morning I woke up in Ezra’s bed. We weren’t allowed to spend the night together—“Not while you’re living under my roof,” my dad had said—so I had only this one memory, from March, when my parents were out of town at a historical interpreters convention in Philadelphia. (Yes, there are conventions for historical interpreters. There are conventions for everything.)

  So I went over to Ezra’s house, because his parents were almost always out of town, and we didn’t do anything. That was the best part. We didn’t eat a fancy dinner or go to a party or anything. We baked brownies and watched a couple hours of reality TV, and I remember leaning against his chest and feeling like we had all the time in the world. We had hours until the next morning, and we could spend every minute of those hours together, just us. We weren’t doing anything except lying together on his couch, and it felt like the most exciting night of my life.

  We fell asleep in his bed ridiculously late at night, his arms wrapped around my waist, his breath tickling the back of my neck. But we came apart in the night, and when I woke up a few hours later, the sun was shining through the windows and we were on opposite sides of the bed. I watched him sleep for a while, the hypnotic rise and fall of his bare chest.

  Eventually I got bored, and I couldn’t fall back asleep with him there. I whispered, “Ezra. Ezra,” a few times. He didn’t stir. I tried cuddling up to him, but he shrugged me off. “Leave me alone,” he mumbled. “Stop it. Can’t you just let me sleep?”

  He probably wasn’t awake enough to know what he was saying.

  I lay on my side of the bed and stared at the ceiling for a while. I texted some friends. I finished the book in my purse. Ezra slept on like a dead man. Finally I just left.

  When he called me later that day, we had a fight. He was mad at me because when he woke up I was gone, and I was mad at him for refusing to wake up, and I think both of us had pictured this perfect morning together, like the perfect night before it, and we were both mad at each other for ruining it. It was a stupid thing to fight about, and if I could go back in time, I would just let it go. I would lie right next to him for as long as it took him to wake up, even if it took all day. Because that way, whenever he woke up, at least we would be together.

  I remembered all of this as Fiona pulled into Essex. I could still feel his arms around me, if I tried. “Yeah,” I said to Fiona. “Ezra really hates mornings.”

  In the Essex parking lot we met Tawny, Nat, Bryan, two out of three milliner girls, and a half dozen other Colonials. The trunk to Tawny’s car was open and filled with plastic bags of telephones. “Let’s do this,” she said in her commander’s voice. “Time to show those farbs they’ve reached the wrong number.”

  We each grabbed a bag of telephones and marched across the street and into Civil War Reenactmentland. Although they keep the main gate locked overnight, nothing prevented us from just walking in through the woods. They really should pay more attention to their security.

  Once inside, we split up. We had a lot of ground to cover and not much time in which to do it, since we had to get out before any Civil War reenactors showed—and I had to be home before my parents woke up.

  Other than my kidnapping, I had never been to Reenactmentland before. I usually played more of a backstage role in the War. But I quickly found a big field of canvas tents. I peeked inside one and saw a few cots, kitchen supplies, and clothes. This must be whe
re they lived. Perfect.

  I placed a hot pink wall phone on one of the cots. I took a bludgeonlike rotary phone and stuck it in a big saucepan. I perched a cordless phone atop a pair of boots.

  I loved this plan. I wished only that I could stick around to see the expressions on those farbs’ faces when the first moderner asked, “So, like, do you guys make a lot of long-distance calls while you’re out defending the Confederacy?”

  I hid a few phone cords in a trunk, hoping some reenactor would be stunned to find them weeks from now, long after the rest of the plague of telephones had been forgotten. I opened another trunk and found in it a music magazine and a copy of The Great Gatsby. Far be it from authentic, indeed. Throwing in a telephone on top of that seemed unnecessary; these reenactors were screwing themselves.

  I flipped over the magazine and read the subscriber’s name: Dan Malkin.

  It felt like the whole morning skidded to a stop, just for that moment. Like the birds took a breath between their chirps and the sun paused in its rising. This was where he lived.

  I moved aside the reading material to see what else was in his trunk. For some reason, I wanted to know more about this guy. Anything more. I uncovered some clothes—though not, of course, his gray hoodie, which was still in my bedroom. Whoops. I found an iPod, which would be serious contraband at Essex. And I found a photograph, styled to look like a daguerreotype, of Dan leaning against a tree, his arm draped over the shoulders of a girl I didn’t recognize.

  “Chelsea?”

  I dropped the photo as though I’d been caught shoplifting and whirled around.

  “Oh, hey, Nat.” It was just Nat, holding a telephone and tugging at the end of his ponytail.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Nothing.” I threw a Mickey Mouse–shaped phone into Dan’s trunk, on top of the photo, and closed the lid. “Let’s head back, it’s getting late.”

  Nothing’s wrong, Nat, because what could be wrong? I just learned that some guy who was already off-limits might have a girlfriend and therefore be even more off-limits?

  “That guy had an iPod in his trunk,” I said as we walked out of Dan’s tent.

  Nat snorted. “Farb.”

  Of course, Dan was just a nineteenth-century farb who was probably some other girl’s boyfriend. Of course he was; I’d known that all along. There are no surprises here. Suddenly my good jeans felt too tight, and my PUMAs looked ridiculous as I stared down at them.

  We met up with the others in the parking lot.

  “Done?” Tawny asked.

  Everyone nodded solemnly. Fiona yawned.

  “Good.” Tawny smiled for the first time all morning. “I’m proud of you guys. These telephones are a super act of modern vandalism. And, Chelsea,”—she turned to me—“great idea.”

  Tawny’s compliment was like a flower blooming in my heart, crowding out any thoughts of that stupid farb with his fake daguerreotype. I beamed the whole car ride home.

  The rest of the day, in between telling moderners tales of the dead baby hill, I daydreamed about the Civil Warriors discovering telephone after telephone. I pictured the adults at Reenactmentland yelling at them. And the junior interpreters would feign ignorance, blame the moderners, or even own up to it—whatever they had to do to keep the adults from finding out about the War. But as soon as their bosses were out of earshot, the Civil War kids would curse us and our brilliance, and they would plot their revenge. That’s how war goes.

  By the time work ended for the day, I had already been awake for twelve hours, and I had taken to sitting down and yawning directly in moderners’ faces. Linda didn’t say anything, just looked at me disapprovingly before she left. But she has a disapproving face, so I didn’t take it personally.

  The burying ground was empty, and I was about to go home and pass out for the night, when Ezra walked in through the gate. He was by himself, which made this the first time we’d been alone together since . . . Oh, right, since he broke up with me. I could hear Fiona’s voice in my head, reminding me: Is it August seventh already, Chelsea? Well, is it?

  “Glad you’re still here.” He tipped his hat.

  I hated to think it, but Ezra looked good in Colonial costume. Really good. I guess he just looks good in everything.

  I tried to will myself into looking alert and non-sweaty. “How may I assist you, sir?” I asked, hoping that, whatever Ezra wanted, it could be accomplished quickly and professionally. Unemotionally.

  But he didn’t get right to the point. He looked around a little, read a couple headstones. “So this is where you work, huh?”

  “This is where the magic happens. Hope you’re not scared of ghosts,” I joked.

  He laughed. “No worries. I don’t believe in ghosts.”

  Of course, Ezra didn’t believe in ghosts. I knew this. It made me sad to hear him tell me, like I didn’t already know. I remembered the exact brunch when we’d discussed this. I was eating French toast. He was eating an omelet. We’d seen an advertisement for some horror movie, and the next thing I knew we were discussing the afterlife, or lack thereof.

  “When you die, you just die,” Ezra had said that day in the diner. “No ghosts, no reincarnation, no heaven. People want to believe that their ‘souls’ live on or whatever, but that’s only because they can’t handle the idea of the world going on without them.”

  I didn’t share Ezra’s certainty. Not like I believed in a bunch of Caspers floating around and saying “boo.” But I also couldn’t believe that a person could live and then die, and suddenly it would be as if they’d never lived at all. An ending couldn’t be that abrupt. When I pictured ghosts, I mostly pictured memories. Aftereffects. Ezra didn’t get it, and told me I was being silly.

  “I like this place,” Ezra said now, glancing around the graveyard. “I can see why you wanted to work here.”

  My game plan for dealing with Ezra had been the same for the past two months: stony silence. Stoicism. Maybe the occasional death-glare, but mostly ignoring him to the point where he would wonder if he even existed at all.

  That was the game plan. But when it was a beautiful summer day, and I was riding on the high of a successful military campaign against Reenactmentland, and Ezra was acting so nice, then I defaulted to plan B.

  In plan B, I just try to make him happy. In plan B, I turn into a one-woman Entertaining Ezra Gorman show.

  “You see this hill?” I asked him. “This is where the unbaptized babies are buried. Hundreds of them.”

  “Seriously? That’s awesome. It looks too small for that, though.”

  “Well, babies are small,” I pointed out. “That’s, like, what they’re known for. But this isn’t even the best grave. Come look over here.”

  He followed me to Elisabeth Connelly’s headstone. “See,” I said, “she has my name!”

  Ezra’s expression was as blank as Linda’s had been when I’d shared this with her. “I mean, my Colonial name,” I clarified for him. “But it’s the same thing. So random, right?”

  “Sure,” Ezra said, nodding.

  Hearing him say sure was like swallowing a weight. I knew there had been a time when Ezra would have been excited about this, if only because I was excited about it. When he would have gotten it, gotten me. I could remember that time so clearly. But it wasn’t now.

  That just about pulled the curtain on the Entertaining Ezra show. It’s a short show, and it doesn’t get any applause, these days. I turned and walked out of the graveyard, him falling into step beside me.

  “I came over to congratulate you on the telephone thing,” he said. “The guys at the magazine can’t stop talking about it. It sounds awesome.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Thanks.”

  All I ever wanted was for Ezra to be like this, to choose to talk to me, to compliment me. But when he did, that made it even harder. Because I couldn’t hear him say just, “Nice job with the battle plan.” The ending I heard to that sentence was, “. . . and therefore I want to get b
ack together.”

  I would take him back, if he asked me. I told Fiona I wouldn’t, I told myself I wouldn’t, but, walking side by side with him now, I knew that I would. Since we’d broken up, I’d constructed countless fantasies in which he asked me to give him one more chance, and in these fantasies I made him beg, or I lectured him on the despicable way he had treated me, or I gave him a long list of conditions and requirements—but in the end, I always said yes.

  He adjusted the brim of his tricornered hat and said in a self-satisfied way, “See, I knew you’d be a good Lieutenant.”

  We reached the parking lot. My bike was locked to a sapling in the corner. “What do you mean, see?” I asked.

  “Nothing. Just that I predicted you’d be a good Lieutenant, and, see, I was right.”

  “Are you taking credit for me coming up with this telephone plan?”

  “No, I’m just taking credit for nominating you for this position.”

  “Okay, well, then congratulations to you.” I unlocked my bike and strapped on my helmet. “You win again. Yay.”

  “Jesus, Chelsea, I just came to tell you that you did a good job. Why are you acting like such a bitch to me?”

  My nose and throat felt pinched. “I guess I just keep acting like some girl who used to be your girlfriend. I don’t know why I do that. That is pretty bitchy of me.”

  I hiked up my gown, pulled on my helmet over my mobcap, swung my leg over my bike, and pedaled away. The air rushing past felt good on my eyes.

  The answer, Ezra, is that you broke my heart, and I want to hurt you even one-tenth of how much you hurt me.

  But I wasn’t going to tell him that. Because then I would have to tell him just how bad I felt about him, and I didn’t want him to know he had the power.

  Before I went to bed that night, I found myself sitting at my desk, wrapped in Dan’s oversized gray hoodie and looking through my Ezra file. There’s not much in my Ezra file. It’s much skinnier than, say, my geometry file, which is depressing, because Ezra has had a far greater impact on my life than geometry ever will.