Once Upon a Changeling

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  My car was trashed. It sat in the senior parking lot where I’d left it that morning. Someone had smashed my headlights and taillights, put dents in my hood, and poured yellow paint all over my windshield. The paint was dry, so it had been done hours ago. I’d have to scrape the paint off. Somebody had painted a message on the hood in case I didn’t know why they’d done this to my car. It said, “It takes two to tango.”

  It had been a really long day. One of those days when I thought I was going to snap at any moment. Just stand up in the middle of class and scream, “I can’t take it anymore!”

  Then I saw my car. So, yeah. Bad day. Hell. Bad month. Bad year.

  I dropped my book bag.

  I wanted to throw my fists into the air and yell. I wanted to go find whoever had done this and smash in his nose.

  Screw it. It might take two to tango, but I hadn’t actually done any of the tangoing. I didn’t know where the guy who actually had been tangoing was—read screwing my girlfriend. If I did, I’d be destroying his car. Whatever.

  “That your car?”

  I whirled. A girl stood behind me in the parking lot. She was one of those punk chicks, but she was attractive in a weird way. Except for two thick strands of blue hair framing her face, her head was shaved. Usually, I thought haircuts like that made girls look masculine and ugly, but she looked … delicate. Rings and piercings covered her face, but I kind of liked the tiny diamond stud in her nose.

  I picked up my book bag. What was the use denying it? “Yeah. That’s my car.”

  The girl sauntered over. “Whoa,” she said, circling the car. “Someone really doesn’t like you.”

  I yanked open the door to the car and grabbed an old CD case. Maybe I could use it to scrape the paint off the windshield. The car would be drivable then, at least.

  “You know who did this?” asked the girl.

  I started to scratch at the paint with the case. It didn’t do much. “Take your pick. I’m kind of not real well liked, if you know what I mean.”

  Last year, up until the prom, everything was okay. I had friends last year. When I walked into school, I’d see them hanging out on the benches in the corner of the common area. That was our spot. The basketball team. We were always tight, off season and on, and we always spent time together. Last year in September, something like this would never have happened. I would have been hanging with the guys somewhere. We’d have been talking about whatever video game we were playing. What girls we thought were hot. Which teachers were getting on our nerves. This September, no one was talking to me at all.

  “Did you piss someone off?”

  Who was this girl anyway, and why did she care? I kept trying to scrape paint off the windshield. Maybe in a half hour, I’d have a peephole I could see through to drive. “You’re new around here, aren’t you?”

  “Today was my first day. Well, half day. I got here around lunch.”

  I nodded. “Ask anyone. They’ll tell you. I’m public enemy number one.”

  “How come?”

  I threw the CD case on the ground. This wasn’t working. “People are jerks, I guess.”

  The blue-haired girl pursed her lips in thought. “I know a little about cruelty for no reason. I guess I thought things would be different here.”

  Where was she from? Were there cesspools worse than Sarasota, Florida?

  The girl offered me her hand. “I’m Gabriella Puck,” she said. “You can call me Puck. Everyone else does.”

  I shook her hand. “I’m Russ Knight. I’m usually more polite. It’s just my car and this day—”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I might be able to help you with your car. I know someone who could probably fix this up. Give me an hour or two.”

  I gave her a funny look. “An hour or two?” It probably needed to be repainted. Who was she kidding?

  “Yeah,” she said. “I’d like to help. To show you not everyone is a jerk.”

  This girl was weird. “I’m supposed to be at work right now.”

  “I’ll give you a ride,” she said, smiling. She really was kind of hot, despite all her piercings.

  Puck drove me down the street to my job at the Sub Stop. I clocked in, put on my apron, and took my place at the counter. Later on, I would switch to working the condiments, asking customers whether they wanted lettuce and mayo or jalapenos and honey mustard. Someone ordered that once, I swear. But for the first two hours or so, I would ring customers up, smiling and saying, “Will there be anything else?” I would take crumpled bills and hand back pennies that no one would want. So I would answer the question, “Do you have a penny tray?” over and over. Some people would say, “Do you have a penny thing?” My answer would always be no. “The corporation has forbidden it,” I would explain, apologies written all over my expression.

  The door of the Sub Stop opened and in walked Mr. Regis, the journalism teacher. I was supposed to have been the editor of the school newspaper this year, but last year after prom, I’d switched my schedule. Last year, my plan had been to go to college, play college basketball, and major in journalism. I planned on having a career in sports writing. Maybe something big time, like professional leagues, or if nothing else, maybe covering high school sports for a local newspaper.

  But not anymore. What was the point of journalism class if you knew nothing could come of it?

  “Russ,” said Mr. Regis, sounding surprised.

  “Mr. Regis,” I said.

  “So,” he said, “you work here, huh?”

  Way to state the obvious. “Yeah. Over a year now.”

  Mr. Regis nodded. “Well, that’s great.” He approached the counter and leaned over it, close to me.

  This sucked. I couldn’t leave. I was trapped here, with Mr. Regis. I’d been avoiding him since school started.

  “I haven’t seen you all year,” said Mr. Regis. “I’ve been trying to run into you, so this is just great. What a happy coincidence. How are you doing, anyway?”

  “Fine,” I said. “How are you?”

  “Gotta tell you, Russ. I’d be a heck of a lot better if I had a decent editor for the newspaper. Did you know that nobody came back for year three of journalism?”

  I shook my head. “No.” I really hadn’t known. That wasn’t too good for Mr. Regis. With all first and second year students, the paper seriously lacked experienced staffers.

  “Is it my breath?” Mr. Regis asked. He grinned. “You can still add the class, you know. I’d still have you as editor.”

  I didn’t smile back. “Look, Mr. Regis, I—”

  He backed away from the counter, hands in the air. “I know what happened, Russ. I’m not totally out of the loop. And I can see how it could be traumatizing. I can understand that. But that is no reason to throw away your future. You aren’t taking upper math this year or a foreign language, and you need those things to go to college. You know that, right?”

  I looked down at the counter. “I’m not going to college.”

  “You know that being a teenage parent is not a death sentence, don’t you? You can go to college.”

  I just shook my head. Mr. Regis wouldn’t understand. No one understood. “I don’t want to.”

  “That’s just not true,” said Mr. Regis. “I know you, and that’s not true. Listen, I can help you. I want to help you. You’re a great student, and I like you. You really have a bright future. Don’t limit yourself because of one mistake. You know we all make them, and the consequences you’re facing are too harsh. You don’t deserve—”

  “Are you
gonna order a sub, Mr. Regis? Because there are people in line behind you.”

  Mr. Regis turned around. There was no one behind him. He looked back at me. “If you don’t want to talk to me, just say so, Russ.”

  I took a deep breath and looked at the ceiling. “I don’t want to talk to you,” I whispered.

  He nodded. “That’s too bad.” He walked away from the counter. I guess he’d lost his appetite. One hand on the door, he looked at me. “If you change your mind … .”

  After work, my car was waiting for me in the Sub Stop parking lot. The car looked brand new. What the hell had that Puck chick done anyway?

  Puck appeared in my weight training class the next morning. She was just there, with everyone else, in the weight room, wearing cut-off sweatpants over leggings and several layers of holey tank tops. There weren’t any other girls in weight training class, but I guessed her being there was cool.

  Before she showed up, my class consisted of eleven guys including myself. They were all either football players, or guys who wanted to get buff, or even guys who needed a gym credit. We were supposed to have spotting partners, but I ended up being the odd man out since I was probably the most unpopular guy in Sarasota High right now. One of the guys was supposed to help me out, and he never did. I didn’t rat him out to Coach Miller, who taught the class, for two reasons. One, I didn’t really care, and two, it would end up being more trouble than it was worth. The guys were already assholes to me. They even played some not-so-nice tricks on occasion. Once, while I was in my gym clothes, one of the guys took my regular clothes and doused them in bleach. That ruined them. I had to wear my gym clothes all day. That sucked.

  Another time, the guys loosened my weights, so my foot nearly got broken when they fell off. Thankfully, I wasn’t actually injured.

  Today was no exception. I’d left my gym clothes in my gym locker overnight, which I thought would be a bad idea. But I’d told myself not to worry about it, that everything would be fine, and that I was being paranoid. I might have been paranoid, but that didn’t mean people weren’t actually out to get me. Anyway, someone had taken a pair of scissors to my T-shirt. They’d cut out words. The words spelled “Baby Killer.” I wore it anyway. I only had the one shirt. But I really kind of wanted to point out that I wasn’t the baby killer. I was actually the baby killer’s boyfriend. And anyway, no babies had actually died.

  So, that morning I sauntered into the weight room in my newly shredded shirt with its oh-so-catchy message and was met with the sight of the strangely appealing girl with blue hair, Puck.

  “Hey,” she said. “I hear you don’t have a spotting partner.”

  I liked her voice. It was breathy and girly, but it still somehow sounded tough. But I had to watch myself. Couldn’t actually be really attracted to this girl. I’d sworn off girls. Girls were trouble. Nothing but trouble. “Are you in this class?”

  “Yup,” she said, grinning.

  “How did you do that to my car?”

  “I told you. I know someone.”

  The other guys in the class gathered on the opposite side of the weight room, staring at the girl as if they couldn’t believe she was there. When they saw me, they burst out laughing, pointing at my shredded excuse for clothing.

  “Nice shirt,” snickered Dave Lawrence, quarterback of the football team

  I smiled. “Yeah. You did a good job.”

  “She’s your spotting partner, Baby Killer,” said Dave.

  “You know … .” I said.

  “What?” said Dave.

  I wanted to really let him have it. Tell him just what I thought about the stupid shirt and what really happened last year at the prom. But I didn’t. I thought better of it. Things were easier if I just kept my head and butt down. Nobody was going to feel sorry for me. Not anymore. “Never mind.”

  I went back to Puck. “The car looks awesome.”

  The girl shrugged. “You’re welcome.” She lay down on the bench. “They said this was your bench, right?”

  “Uh huh. But those are my weights and there’s no way—”

  She lifted them as if she were lifting feathers. “You gonna spot me?” she asked from underneath the weights.

  I tried to close my mouth. I was sure the dropped jaw look wasn’t very attractive. “Um, sure,” I said, moving around behind her.

  “Thanks,” she said, looking up at me. “Why does your shirt say ‘Baby Killer’?”

  For some strange reason, I told her. We didn’t do any more weight-lifting that period and the other guys left us alone.

  “It’s complicated,” I said. “There was this girl I dated. She turned out to be a real head case.”

  Puck raised her eyebrows. “That connects to the shirt?”

  “She’s the baby killer.” I sat down on the bench. “I mean, sort of. The thing is, no one actually killed any babies.”

  She brought her eyebrows together in confusion. “Maybe you should start at the beginning.”

  The beginning, huh? I took a deep breath. “Everything started at the prom last year.” I rubbed my face with my hand. “Or that’s not really true. It started way before that. It started when I met Cindi. Sophomore year. Journalism class. I was a first year student—because freshmen aren’t allowed to work on the newspaper—and so was Cindi. She’d taken the class because she needed an elective. I’d taken it because I liked to write. We didn’t have much in common, honestly. But Cindi was on the girls’ volleyball team, and girls who played sports were socially acceptable dating material for guys on the basketball team. We had friends in common. And she was beautiful.”

  “So Cindi is the head case?”

  I nodded. “We dated for two years. We were the golden couple of our group of friends. We’d been together the longest. Our friends would come to us for relationship advice. Hell, once or twice, we even talked off-handedly about our wedding. Thank God that never happened.”

  “Because she killed babies?”

  “She didn’t kill anyone,” I said. “She tried, but she didn’t. In some ways, I’m glad it all went down when it did. Otherwise, I might never have discovered how crazy she was until much later in life, and getting out would have been harder.”

  “What went down?” said Puck.

  “I’m getting to it,” I said. “It’s not easy to talk about.”

  “Sorry.” She did look sorry. But she also looked curious.

  I looked away from Puck. I told the floor instead of her. Because I was afraid to look at someone while I talked about it. What if it really started to hit me, how screwed up my life was? What if I started to, like, get upset or something? “It hit me out of left field. I never would have expected it. There were no signs. There were no hints. She didn’t act any different. She didn’t do anything different. Everything was exactly the same. I could never have known. Sometimes, I wonder if I should have known. If I should have been able to tell. But I didn’t. I was freaking clueless.”

  I paused for a breath, but I didn’t look at Puck, who wouldn’t have any idea what I was talking about yet. I plowed on, words starting to pour out of my mouth. Maybe some part of me wanted to talk about it. Everyone in town already knew the story. It wasn’t as if anyone was banging down my door, begging for my side. “We went to the prom together. I didn’t even have to ask her. We’d been dating long enough that both of us knew we’d be going together. I don’t remember a lot about the preparations. The basketball team had made the championship playoffs that year, so I was distracted by other stuff. A few weekends before the prom, I rented a tux. A few days before, I bought a corsage. I bought white flowers so they’d go with anything.

  “Thinking about it now, I ask myself how I didn’t notice. Cindi was a beautiful girl, and she looked beautiful that night. She fit perfectly into her prom dress. She didn’t even look as though she’d gained any weight. I don’t think she did, anyway. If she did gain weight, it just made her look better. More curves, more … I swear to God, I couldn’t tell. I
didn’t know. I really didn’t know.” My voice cracked. Crap, Knight, I thought to myself. Pull yourself together.

  Puck put her hand on my arm. “Russell, if you don’t want to—”

  I interrupted her with more of my story. Words were coming even faster now. “Cindi’s dress was red. I don’t remember if it was frilly or simple. I don’t remember if it was short or long. I just know it was red. Deep red. Crimson. Lifeblood red. The dress made her hair look blonder. Her eyes look bluer. It made her look … not so innocent. Not that I thought Cindi was innocent—

  “Well, hell, I guess I did. I thought she was innocent, because I was innocent. We were young then. Bad things didn’t happen to us. We were the golden couple of the eleventh grade. We were star sports players, popular kids, and beautiful people. A thing like what was going to happen couldn’t happen to us. If you would have asked me then, I would have said there was no way it could happen.”

  I looked at Puck.

  She gave me an encouraging look. “Are you going to tell me what happened?”

  I swallowed. “I’m working up to it.”

  She waited. Then she said, “So you went to the prom?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “We danced. At one point, she excused herself and went to the bathroom. She was gone a long time. Maybe a half an hour. When she came back, she looked a little flushed, but fine otherwise. We danced again. We drank punch. And she said she didn’t think she wanted to go to the hotel room I’d booked for us. She said she just wasn’t feeling up to it but that she’d make it up to me.” This part was a little embarrassing. “But, I mean, I’m not a bad guy or anything. It was just that we had been, you know, working up to that hotel room for quite some time. And then she didn’t want to go. And I got mad at her, and we argued. And in the middle of all of that, Irene Mulady, who was wearing this god-awful blue dress, stalked over to us, pointing at Cindi. Two policemen followed her. Irene said, ‘Did you leave something in the bathroom, Cindi?’

  “And Cindi looked at me and said, ‘I’m sorry, Russ.’ And then she started crying.” I got up off the bench.