Change Places with Me(12)

“I had to send you to Ms. Pratt. Nothing personal,” he added.

Nothing personal? He’d singled her out in front of the whole class for a trip to the school psychologist. “I’m here now—you can talk to me.”

“Why should I want to talk to you now?”

Mr. Slocum wasn’t making this easy. “Well, you’re a science teacher. Maybe you could tell me about . . . Mount Vesuvius.” She wasn’t sure why she’d said that; she’d never thought much about volcanoes, but for some reason it was there in her mind.

Mr. Slocum glared at her; his big, round, shiny head turned purple. “I wasn’t an eyewitness to the destruction of Pompeii, if that’s what you’re implying.”

“Of course not!”

“Miss Hartel, you need six hours of school service. That’s the tenth-grade requirement, unless I’m such an old ruin I’m remembering it wrong.”

Rose was afraid she might trigger another eruption here in the lab, but she pushed on. “Maybe you can tell me where you were born, why you became a teacher, that kind of thing?”

He looked at her intently. “You’re quite full of yourself.”

“Not true! I’m modest!”

“Don’t sound so proud of it.”

Maybe Rose should leave it alone, as Evelyn had suggested. Clearly Mr. Slocum wanted nothing to do with her. Still, it was important to try to get through, reach out to the humanity within. The best thing was probably to be direct. “You must be very lonely,” she said.

But Mr. Slocum looked at her as if she was the one to be pitied.

That night Rose and Evelyn went to work transforming the apartment. Selena had suggested battery-operated dancing skeletons and glow-in-the-dark pumpkins from Party-A-Rama. Rose had thought they could go shopping together, but Selena said, “Sorry, no time!”

Evelyn was hanging a disco ball from the ceiling light. At lunch Astrid had said disco balls add atmosphere; they’d gone to a Caribbean place. Rose made a point of telling them that next time they really had to bring more cash.

“Did you call the psychic?” Rose asked.

“I did,” Evelyn replied.

“I want to pay for her. Now that I have a job, I think that’s only right.” Evelyn really ought to get some sleep, Rose thought. Those bags under her eyes—she looked almost bruised. Evelyn was still relatively young and undeniably beautiful, and to look older and beaten up was just wrong. “The music—I wonder what kids listen to these days. Wow, I sound a hundred. Now that would be funny—that I could be an old lady at fifteen!” She started to laugh but for just a moment remembered how she had once felt old and bruised and— She shivered, chilled to the core.

“Rose?” Evelyn said.

“Yeah?”

“I’m sure a stream will be fine. For the music.”

Rose looked around, noticed the festive decorations, and snapped back cheerfully into pre-party mode. “Selena wants a DJ.”

“Selena can hire one, then.”

Rose was still wondering about Evelyn. Why hadn’t she ever remarried? She never even dated. A couple of years before, a man from her real estate office called for a while. But Evelyn never went out with him, and the calls stopped. “Do you think you’ll ever get married again?” Rose asked.

“What? No,” Evelyn said. “I’ve been married.”

“What about being in love?”

“I’ve been in love.”

“You make it sound like a driver’s test. You take it once and if you pass, you never have to take it again.”

“I . . . didn’t think I was capable of the depth of feeling I had for your dad. It’s highly unlikely I’ll feel that way again. And I don’t think I want to.” Evelyn untangled a skeleton, pushed a button, and watched it float around the room, slowly jiggling its arms and legs. “Not exactly dancing, is it?”

“Why wouldn’t you want to?”

Evelyn sighed. “Let’s just say my parents didn’t set the best example.”

Rose got distracted. The blue chair, her dad’s favorite place to sit and watch baseball, had been moved. But she and Evelyn hadn’t touched the furniture while getting ready for the party.

When Rose caught up with what Evelyn was saying, it was something about being in a house with a storm raging outside and her mother standing at the window, insisting it was a beautiful day.

“But that was nice of her,” Rose said. “Maybe it was a beautiful day and you just hadn’t noticed. That happened to me when I woke up on Sunday—it was so beautiful out. I’m so glad I noticed it.” She didn’t mention the red light, so obtrusive again the past couple of mornings, like the wrong kind of alarm clock.

“That’s not what I meant—”

“Did you move the blue chair?”

“What?” Evelyn glanced at the blue chair. “I was reading. The light from outside was bothering me.”

“It left a dent in the rug. See? It’s saying, ‘I was here, don’t forget I was here.’ It’s saying it as loudly as if it could actually talk. It wants to be put back where it belongs.”

Evelyn looked down at the spot. The skeleton swooped between them. “Rose, are you happy?”