What If... All the Rumors Were True
CONTENTS
ENDLESS SUMMER
Fall has a certain appeal come the dog days of summer.
“I
wonder if there's a way to make the music play backward.”
Haley Miller, slumped on the couch in her father's study in a pair of cutoff overalls and a tank top, snapped her head toward her seven-year-old brother, Mitchell, who was busy fiddling with her MP3 player. “What did you just say?”
“Nothing.”
“Say it again.”
Mitchell didn't reply.
“Come on, Mitchie. Humor me.”
“I mean, if I took your MP3 player apart and put it together backward, would it play music, you know, in reverse?”
Haley could hardly believe her ears. She was so amazed she barely noticed that her brother was about to ruin her carefully programmed listening device. “One more time, Mitchie.”
“Why?”
It wasn't what Mitchell said, but how he'd said it. For the first time in over a year he'd used complete sentences and spoken in a normal, human voice. Up until that very minute Haley's brother had insisted on speaking in a robotic monotone. Just. Like. This. It had worried Haley's parents no end, and of course drove her crazy.
“Mitchell, what happened? You spoke. And not like an alien.”
“Duh. Why shouldn't I?” Mitchell said. “I don't live on an asteroid.”
“Dad! Mom!” Haley jumped up, grabbed Mitchell's hand and ran into the kitchen, where she found her father, Perry, and her mother, Joan, scraping corn kernels off three dozen ears. They were making creamed corn to freeze for winter. Freckles, the family's excitable dalmatian, stirred from a nap and began barking, caught up in the excitement of the moment. “Listen to Mitchell!”
“Please, Haley,” Joan said. “Between all the tests, exercises and recordings we've done with him, I can't take another sentence.”
“Just listen.” Haley dragged Mitchell by the hand and stood him in front of her parents. “Okay, Mitchell. Go. Talk.”
Mitchell, who sometimesâmake that alwaysâseemed to enjoy bothering his big sister, just smiled and said nothing.
“Talk or I'll break both your thumbs!” Haley snapped.
“No!” Mitchell cried. “I need them for playing video games.”
“Exactly.” She smiled triumphantly at her parents. “Did you hear that?”
“I don't see what the big deal is,” Mitchell said. “I didn't grow purple wings and fly.”
Joan's mouth fell open. Perry fell to his knees and hugged his little boy. “It's true!”
“Oh, thank God,” Joan said. “Just in time for second grade, when the teachers don't take to eccentricities quite so kindly.”
“What happened, Mitchell?” Perry asked, tousling Mitchell's hair. “Who deprogrammed you?”
“Yeah,” Haley said. “It must have been hard to keep that robot gag up for a whole year.”
For much of that time, Haley's parents had been dragging Mitchell from expert to expert, trying to understand their son's quirky stutter. Psychologist after psychiatrist after speech therapist had tested Mitchell and declared, much to Joan and Perry's dismay, that the robot voice was probably just a phase. “Just a phase?” Joan kept uttering. “His imaginary friend, Marcusâthat was a phase. The only-eating-brown-foods bit one winterâa pretty time-consuming but ultimately harmless phase. But this? I've never seen anything like it. And I've read all the textbooks.”
Since no one seemed to be able to help little Mitchell, the Millers finally just decided to let it go for a while and see if, in fact, he would outgrow his strange and annoying speech patterns. And, much to everyone's relief, it looked as if he finally had.
“This is quite a milestone,” Perry said as he jumped to his feet and left the room, returning a few seconds later with his camcorder. As a documentary filmmaker, he liked to record every event in the life of the Miller family, no matter how tedious or embarrassing.
“Are you going to make a movie about me?” Mitchell asked, looking into the camera.
“Do you want me to?” Perry asked. “I could make you my freshman class project,” he teased. After taking the summer off, Perry was about to return to his job as an adjunct professor at Columbia's film school.
“What do you think is my best angle?” Mitchell asked, suddenly posing like a Mexican wrestler. “Look, Dad, I'm like one of your trees,” he added, holding his arms up like branches and swaying to a make-believe breeze. Perry's most recent documentary was on the life cycle of deciduous trees.
“You're certainly a natural,” Perry replied, chuckling from behind the camera as he captured Mitchell's performance.
Haley thought she still heard a slight jerkiness in her brother's speech occasionally, but whateverâthis was a huge improvement. “Thanks, Mitchie.”
“For what?” he asked.
“You've already improved all our lives a gazillion times over. You have no idea how annoying it was listening to you at the dinner table night after night.”
“I'm glad I could be of assistance,” Mitchell said, and bowed. With that, he snatched Haley's MP3 player from where he'd left it on the counter and ran out of the room.
“Oh, Mitchell,” Haley called after him. “If you try to take that thing apart, I really will break your thumbs.”
Haley doubted her brother would listen, but unfortunately she was too sweltering hot to chase after him. The Millers didn't believe in air-conditioning, or as Joan called it, “That carbon-hogging contraption that anesthetizes you from feeling the effects of climate change.” Summer was dragging on into its last days, and the muggy New Jersey weather had Haley's brain in a fog. For starters, she could hardly believe she was about to enter the junior class at Hillsdale High. This time last year, when the Miller family was in the process of moving cross-country from Northern California, her future had seemed completely open. Unknowable. A blank slate.
But now everything was different. Haley knew who her friends were. Or at least she thought she did. She understood the lay of the land at her new school, Hillsdale High, and she only very rarely got lost in the maze that was the math wing these days. And yet, a lot of loose ends had been left hanging when she finished up her sophomore year and plunged into summer. With school about to start in just a few days' time, Haley was once again unsure of where she stood in the Hillsdale hierarchy.
Everything and everyone had changed so much in the past year. When she came to Hillsdale, Coco De Clerq, Whitney Klein and Sasha Lewis were the social queen bees who lorded it over the class and much of the rest of the school. Now Coco was obsessed with the gubernatorial campaign of Eleanor Eton, the mother of her boyfriend, Spencer. Perpetual beta girl and Coco-sidekick Whitney was coming into her own as a local fashion designer, and Sasha had abandoned the populette life for soccer and rock 'n' roll.
At the other end of the spectrum, supernerds Annie Armstrong and Dave Metzger had gone to Spain over spring break and returned a coupleâthe trip abroad had completely transformed the bookworms into Latin lovers. But after a brief flirtation with bohemian rhapsody, they were inching back to their old grade-grubbing selves. The two had spent the summer in a kind of academic cyberspace. Dave went to computer camp in Washington, D.C., learning videocasting, while Annie studied creative writing and grammarâof course, how could she leave out grammar?âat a workshop in upstate New York. The college race was getting serious, and Annie and Dave were not about to let any opportunities slip through their fingers. At least they were dressing slightly better and were way less uptight nowadays.
As for the artsy rebel crowd, Irene Chen, Shaun Willkommen and Devon McKnight were mellowing in their antisociety stance. Shaun had even taken up track and field the previous spring. Haley never thought she'd see pudgy Shaun voluntarily participating in a sport, but she suspected that part of the attraction was the clothes. Shaun had bought seventies track suits from Jack's, the vintage clothing store where Devon worked after school. He accessorized the outfits with capes and headbands and gold lamé, making him look like Hillsdale's own Evel Knievel. That comparison was actually not so far off base, since Shaun had, after all, launched himself through a flaming heart on Valentine's Day to prove his love for Irene.
On the other hand, thanks to all the shenanigans, the rebels had done so poorly in their classes (apart from Mr. Von's art seminar) that they'd all had to go to summer school. Haley shuddered at the thought of weeks alone in a classroom with Principal Crum. Absolute hell on earth.
Then there was Reese Highland, the boy next door, who was really more like the Greek god next door. Reese was just home from this summer's tour of athletic camps, and Haley could once again see him from her window, shooting hoops in his driveway. Shirtless. She could also sometimes see him shirtless upstairs in his bedroom, which was directly across from hers. That was one good thing about the heat, at least. It meant wearing a lot fewer clothes. Reese was all-star material. He aced every sport he played, from soccer to basketball to track, and he was brilliant too. By all accounts, the perfect guy. But was he the perfect guy for Haley? And how would she ever know for sure? With Reese away for so much of July and August, they'd had a hard time keeping in touch. A few postcards had flown back and forth, and there had been that hasty phone call over the Fourth of July. But now, Haley wasn't sure if they were friends, boyfriend and girlfriend, or just neighbors with a little history who happened to be in the same class.
Haley didn't know who she was going to be this year, but she did know one thing: whoever she was, she needed a new pair of jeans, something that would make just the right statement on her first day back on campus.
“Mom, I think it's time for some back-to-school shopping,” Haley announced, snapping out of her daze and looking disapprovingly down at her cutoff overalls.
“Ooh, ooh, ooh, me too,” Mitchell said, racing back into the kitchen. “I need some fancy second-grade clothes. Sports jackets, ties, stuff like that.”
“Well, I don't know about sports jacketsâ¦,” Joan said. “But I guess we can go to theâ¦theâ¦mall.” Joan shivered, her eyes filling with terror. Haley's mother had an almost physical intolerance for shopping of any sort. Well, of any sort that didn't involve young tomato plants, gardening tools, compost bins or bean sprouts.
“Does Mitchell have to come?” Haley complained.
“Sorry, honey, I don't have time for two trips,” Joan said. Actually, the look on Haley's mother's face made it clear she would likely have trouble getting through just one.
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Haley left Mitchell and Joan in the boys' department at the anchoring department store, and went in search of jeans she wouldn't be mortified wearing. As she stepped off the escalator in the mall's main pavilion, she nearly ran smack into bubbly, blond Whitney Klein, who was loaded down with shopping bags.
“Haley!” Whitney air-kissed each of Haley's cheeks. “Finally losing those California hippie overalls once and for all?” Whitney added, giving Haley's denim a dismissive glance.
“Uh, I guess,” Haley said, feeling self-conscious as she eyed Whitney's shopping bags. Haley hoped Whitney had paid for all that stuff. Whitney, as everyone in Hillsdale well knew, had developed something of a shoplifting habit the previous school year, and Haley had never quite figured out whether she had really gotten over the obsession.
“I'm stealingâI mean borrowingâideas for next season. Never too early to start sketching the spring line! Don't worry, I paid for everything,” Whitney clarified.
“That's great,” Haley said, relieved to know that a dozen mall cops weren't about to descend on them, Tasers drawn.
“You know, copper's really in this fall.” Whitney reached into a bag and flashed the toe of a new pair of metallic copper-colored boots. “It's this season's lime green.” Everyone had been sporting the neon shade all summer in Hillsdale. “You should really get a copper-colored bag, Haley. It would look awesome with your hair!”
Haley tugged at a strand of her long auburn mane. She'd been thinking of getting a new bag, and Whitney's color selection was actually not half bad. “Maybe,” Haley said.
“Hey, did you hear about Zoe Jones?” Whitney suddenly asked, leaning close to Haley and dropping her flighty voice to what was internationally known among sixteen-year-old girls as gossiptone.
“No,” Haley said. She'd been pretty out of the loop on rumors all summer.
“I heard that she became a total groupie with that new band Motormouth from Saddle River,” Whitney said. Haley had actually heard of Motormouth, at least. Anyone within listening distance of an SUV with booming bass speakers that summer probably had. The rising New Jersey rap-rock group, led by a charismatic singer named Pi-Rex, had seemingly captivated every DJ in the tristate area.