A Week of Mondays (23 page)

Tristan Wheeler was not allowed to walk back into this party with
me.
The planet was not allowed to be knocked that far out of orbit.

But for some miraculous, impossible-to-explain reason, I didn't care what they thought. Maybe it was because Tristan didn't care. Heck, he didn't even seem to notice. He was the wolf in this room and they were his sheep. And wolves don't lose sleep over the opinions of sheep.

He guided me up the stairs and into a bathroom off the main hallway. He didn't let go of my hand the whole time. Not even when he closed the door behind us, which he had to do with the elbow of the arm that was holding my shoes.

“I thought the deal was I got my shoe back when I told you my favorite song,” I objected.

He dropped my hand then and reached for the first shoe he stole from me. “You're right. Here you go.” He handed it over but still clung tight to the second sneaker. “This one is for the performance.”

He pulled back the rubbery shower curtain with a
swish
and stepped into the tub. He sat down cross-legged near the faucet, making himself comfortable, cocooning my shoe in the gap between his legs.

He patted the base of the tub in front of him. “Come on. Plenty of room.”

I choked out a laugh. I couldn't believe this was happening. Less than thirty minutes ago I was resigned to driving home and watching a rerun of
Law and Order
, maybe two if I was feeling especially bold, and now I was about to get into an empty bathtub, fully clothed, with Tristan Wheeler.

This doesn't just happen to girls like me. This doesn't just happen to
anyone
.

Reluctantly I placed my sneaker on the sink counter, stepped into the tub, and slid down the back wall until my knees were under my chin.

Tristan slid the shower curtain back into place, sealing us alone in this little fiberglass heaven. Then he looked at me and waited.

“Do I really have to do this?”

He motioned around us. “We're in the shower. No one sounds bad in the shower, remember?”

I took a deep breath. My hands were shaking. My heart was pounding at Mach speed.

I opened my mouth and hesitantly let the lyrics of the first verse tumble out.
“I don't like you, but I love you…”

The melody was so soft, so convolutedly tangled up in my sporadic breathing, I wondered if he could even hear it. I prayed he couldn't.

But his gaze was trained on me. His jaw hanging in a slack smile. His eyes dancing. I closed mine tight. I couldn't bring myself to look at him while this was happening.

I'm singing! To Tristan Wheeler! What is this parallel dimension of my life?

As I neared the chorus, I thought about ending it right there. He didn't say I had to sing the whole song. But then suddenly my voice was lifted. It sounded richer somehow. Fuller. I realized it was because someone with a much deeper register was harmonizing with me.

I opened my eyes and our gazes crashed together for the second time that night. A collision that I was sure I would never survive. Not even with four seat belts and all the airbags in the world.

We sang the chorus together. Me taking the melody, him taking the lower third.
“You really got a hold on me.”

When we reached the end of the stanza I squinted suspiciously at him. “I thought you said you didn't know it.”

He tossed my sneaker to me. I caught it.

“About that,” he said, grinning. “I may have lied to get you in the shower.”

 

THE FOURTH MONDAY

 

Papa's Got a Brand New Bag

7:04 a.m.

Bloop-dee-dee-bloop-bloop-bing!

I sit up with a start, rub the sleep from my eyes, and gaze around my room.

Carpet. I can see my carpet.

Bookshelf. Every title is back in its proper, alphabetized place.

Desk. Papers stacked in neat piles.

Wall. Posters pinned up in perfect alignment.

Everything is as it should be. Everything is perfect. It's like last night's Hurricane Ellie never even happened.

THIS IS SO COOL!!!!

Bloop-dee-dee-bloop-bloop-bing!

I shove the covers from my legs, stand up on my mattress, and start dancing. Dancing and singing and jumping and squealing and kicking the air like a mixed martial arts champion.

Hadley bursts into my room a moment later. She stops in the doorway, staring up at me in utter bewilderment. I do a karate chop in her direction, belting out a
“hi-ya!”

“Um,” she begins warily. “What are you doing?”

“Life is amazing, isn't it?” I call out at the top of my lungs. Bounce. Bounce. Bounce. “How come I never knew how bouncy this mattress is?! Hads, you have to try this!”

“Ummmmmmm,” she repeats, elongating the word until it's way too many syllables. “I'll pass.”

I stop bouncing, drop my head back, and let out a loud, witchlike cackle.

“Are you on drugs?” Hadley asks.

“Nope!” I drop onto my butt and spring to my feet, sticking the landing with my arms up like an Olympic gymnast. “9.6 from the Russian judge!”

“Mom!” Hadley yells into the hallway. “Ellie's on crank! She's a crankenstein!”

I hoot. “Crankenstein! Good one!”

My sister takes off and I close the door and start getting ready.

Forty minutes later, I've been totally transformed.

I took a black lace tube top that I usually wear under lower-cut shirts to make them “school appropriate” and turned it into a miniskirt. I paired that with a formfitting black long-sleeve shirt that I attacked with a pair of scissors, making it a crop top. I caked my eyes with dark shimmery eye shadows, rimmed my lids with heavy black eyeliner, stained my lips a deep, sensual red, and painted my fingernails black.

Yup. Extreme Makeover: Ellie Edition is in full swing.

The only thing I'm missing is the shoes. But I think I know exactly where to get them. I swing my schoolbag over my shoulder and head into my parents' bedroom. My mom keeps all her old Halloween costumes at the back of her closet. I find the vampy lace-up boots from when she went as a Spice Girl four years ago and slide them on over a pair of fishnet stockings I wore for a camp play once. The boots fit perfectly, but it takes me about a year and a half to lace the darn things up. Once I do, my outfit is complete.

I stare at my reflection in Mom's full-length mirror, admiring the brand-new me. The
improved
me. I am no longer Ellie Sparks. I am
Elle
, the confident, sultry, ready-for-anything vixen. There's no way Tristan—or any other guy on this planet—will be able to resist Elle.

Ooh, which reminds me. I dig my phone out of my bag and see the two text messages from Tristan.

Tristan: I can't stop thinking about last night.

Tristan: Let's talk today.

I quickly tap out the response I spent an hour formulating last night as I was trying to fall asleep.

Me: Oh, I'll give you something to talk about, Tristan Wheeler.

I press Send with a giddy squeal and start down the stairs. I saunter into the kitchen like I'm on a fashion week runway in Paris. The Family Circus comes to a screeching halt. Hadley slams her book closed. My dad's iPad nearly falls from his hands. My mom—who is about to slam a kitchen cabinet closed—lets her arms fall limply to her sides.

I grab an apple from the fruit basket and take a big, luscious bite.

Toast is for softies. New girl. New diet.

“What?” I ask, my mouth full of pulpy fruit.

I wait for the protests to begin. This is the part where my dad says, “There's no way you're leaving the house wearing that, young lady!” Or, “Go back upstairs and try again, missy!” Or, “Honey, I think you forgot to put your pants on.”

But it never comes.

Every member of my family is way too stunned to say anything. Well, except Hadley, who whispers, “Told you,” to my mom.

I grab my umbrella and swagger to the garage door, stopping long enough to turn around and say, “Oh, Mom. I borrowed your shoes. I hope that's okay.”

She nods dazedly.

“Aren't they bitchin'?” I ask Hadley, staring down at my feet. I pull my phone out and take a quick picture. “Shoefie!”

Then I disappear into the garage.

What I wouldn't give to have a hidden camera in that kitchen right now.

I settle in behind the wheel of my car, start the engine, and click on my seat belt.

Bloop-dee-dee-bloop-bloop-bing!

I pull out my phone, grinning when I see that Tristan has responded to my last message.

Tristan: Is this Ellie?

I laugh aloud and press Shuffle on my “Wowza! Yowza!” playlist. “Good Golly Miss Molly” comes on and I crank up the volume.

No, Tristan,
I think as I back out of the garage.
This is most certainly
not
Ellie.

 

Get Back to Where You Once Belonged

8:01 a.m.

“Wow, it's really chucking it down out—” Owen stops midsentence and stares into the car, dumbfounded.

“Yes?” I ask, pouting with my red-stained lips.

He doesn't get in. Instead he closes the door, locking himself outside in the rain.

“Owen!” I call to the closed door. “What are you doing?”

I watch through the sporadic swoosh of the windshield wipers as Owen walks around the front of the car, bending down to examine something on the bumper. Then he gets back in, spraying water onto the dash with a flick of his hair.

“Well, it's definitely her license plate,” he murmurs to himself.

“What was that about?”

“But it's certainly not her driving the car.”

I roll my eyes. “Owen.”

He twists his mouth in concentration as he peers around the interior of my car. “That doesn't leave a lot of credible explanations, apart from the obvious one.”

“Owen.”

“The aliens have finally made contact. They've taken Ellie to their home planet for a series of very invasive, yet admittedly sexy, experiments and left a robot decoy in her place.”

I sigh. “Ha ha. I get it. I don't look like myself.”

He continues to ignore me, working out his theory like a detective in a film noir. “It was a very advanced humanlike model, of course, as the alien race was clearly light-years ahead of Earth in the technology race. But the decoy evidently wasn't given any instructions on the proper attire or mannerisms of the human it was replacing. So it simply Googled the word ‘teenager' and came up with this”—he gestures to my outfit—“staggeringly unrealistic representation of the modern adolescent.”

I groan and back out of the driveway.

“Or maybe—” Owen says with a stroke of inspiration.

“Owen.”

“Yes, Ellie impersonator?”

“If I tell you something, do you promise not to think I'm crazy?”

“I would never make a promise so impossible to keep.”

I turn left out of the subdivision and onto Providence Boulevard. “Something kind of strange has been happening to me.”

“Clearly.”

“I didn't tell you about it yesterday but I told you the day before and now I want to tell you again.”

“And,” Owen says, transitioning back into his detective voice, “it would seem the robot decoy—let's call her Paral-Ellie—is malfunctioning. A faulty wire in its programming, perhaps? A circuit shorted by the rain?”

“Can you be serious for a minute?”

“Can
you
?”

“I am being serious!”

“It's hard to believe that when you look like you just stepped out of a music video.”

“I'm just … trying something new today.” I release a breath.

“Clearly,” he says again.

“I want to tell you this time because, I don't know, yesterday it felt kind of lonely without you in it. I mean, in
on
it.”

He reaches behind me, fiddling with the back of my top. “There has to be a control panel back here somewhere. If I can just pry it open and—”

“I'm reliving the same day over and over!” I finally yell. “I wake up every day and it's Monday.
This
Monday. Where it's raining and you say ‘It's really chucking it down out there' and it's school picture day and I have to give a horrible election speech and the cheerleaders are having a bake sale and lying about the ingredients, and a bird commits suicide outside my Spanish classroom, and Coach tries to psych me out with a curveball, and it's the last night of the town carnival, and Tristan dumps me, and I'm going to get a ticket right”—I glance up to see the light turn yellow at Avenue de Liberation just ahead. I slam down on the accelerator, speeding through the intersection as the cameras start flashing—“now.”

I peer over at Owen. He's quiet but not looking at me. He's staring at his hands.

So I keep talking. “And I don't know why. I mean I
think
I know why. And I've been trying to fix it and it hasn't been working, so now I'm trying something extreme, because I don't know what else to do.”

He opens his mouth to interject but I cut him off. “And before you say anything, last night you had a dream you went skinny-dipping in the school pool with Principal Yates.”

His mouth stays open but no words come out. We drive in silence for what feels like hours. Seasons change outside. The earth makes a complete rotation around the sun. And yet it's still Monday.

I turn in to the school parking lot and park in an empty spot, keeping the motor running. “Say something,” I urge him.
“Please.”

“He dumped you?”

I scrunch up my face. “Really? Of all the things I just told you, that's what you're clinging on to?”