***
The next thing I know I’m in my room––my puma den. My puma poster hangs above my bed in the house I know, the house I’ve grown up in. Well, I haven’t totally grown up yet. I press play on my iPod and I hear my Technodancefantasy party mix that I used to think made me feel more alive because nothing in the world was able to make my heart race with excitement. I used to be just sort of there. In the world but not really a part of it. But all that’s changed.
I miss the Hayden I left behind. I feel cheated like I just started to know myself and love my life and then had it all ripped away from me. I know what lies ahead. I’ve lived it. I know what being seventeen and being in high school is like. I’ve had my first kiss and I know about lots of other things too. I can’t wait four years for it. And I wonder about Hayden and if we really will go to a dance together. If he will be my first kiss. If we will ever be like we were on Planet Popular. Or if I’ll never feel at home in this world.
I let out a huge sigh. And after everything, I didn’t unravel any great mystery. The treasure marked on the map is still buried. I can’t imagine a world where Adrianne isn’t a peacock. Where she doesn’t win in the end. I can’t believe Hayden isn’t a peacock either. And the worst part is, I can’t tell anyone what happened because when you don’t follow the rules of Planet Popular bad things happen. And the super-weird part is I still might get struck by lightning for doing what I’ve done. The day is young.
I want to talk to Ally. I need to talk to Ally. Bad.
After Mom and Dad stop freaking out, telling me over and over that I’m grounded for life and that I’ll have to put in a million volunteer hours feeding the animals at the zoo to help pay for the prank I pulled, and freaking out because Mitch has gone missing I finally get to call Ally. But she sounds, different. Even though it feels like I’ve been gone a year, I find out everything, all of it, happened in one night. One. Night.
“Ally?” I say over the phone.
“Yeah,” she says.
“It’s Roxie.”
“Oh, hi.”
“What are you up to?” I say, not knowing what to say, how to begin.
“What do you mean what am I up to?”
Great. Now I need Cliff Notes about this life.
“Listen, I got to go,” Ally says. Giggles drown her voice out on the other end of the phone.
“Who’s that?” I ask.
“Adrianne.”
And then it hits me. Hard. Monday is Twin Day and Ally and I didn’t make plans. So I freak out and say, “So what are we wearing tomorrow?”
“Ah, yeah, about that,” she says.
And I close my eyes like that will make her stop talking. Like closing my eyes will undo everything that I did to screw this up.
“Since you didn’t want to come over, Adrianne and I already planned our outfits, sorry.”
Really? I just lost my best friend all because I wanted to be a peacock. This totally blows. And all I want to do is see Hayden more than ever.
“You’ve changed Roxie,” Ally says.
She has no idea.
“Oh, and don’t worry I’m sure the rumors about Hayden aren’t true,” she giggles and then hangs up.
There are a few knocks at my bedroom door.
“Come in,” I say. Wow so formal. What happened to the family that used to just barge in my room for any reason at all? They sort of changed too. I was just gone like the span of the time for a sleep over and now, everyone is treating me weird. And what the freak was Ally talking about? What happened to Hayden?
“Hey,” Brian says. He stares at the floor.
“Hey,” I say trying to catch his eye. He never looked so down.
I think about the cage and what sometimes happens to animals that have been with humans or around them. It’s never good. And I hear Mitch again in my mind, I’ll die. He didn’t say he’d turn into a freaking puma.
Brian stares at the floor and rubs the back of his neck with his hand over and over again. “He left to save you,” Brian said. “Lola didn’t want him to go, she knew what would happen.”
“What are you talking about,” I say. Brian knowing more than me about what happened drives me freaking crazy. I need him to spill all of it. Now. I needed him to actually talk, which Brian never likes to do.
Besides, I’m the one who lost her best friend. I’m the one who killed her brother. Or at least turned him into a puma. I’m the one who woke up in a freaking cage. I’m the one that astral projected away from the one life that felt right. I deserve to know. I’ve earned the right to know. The truth. I’m the one that knows what happened on Planet Popular. I’m the one who turned into a woman overnight. I don’t need Brian filtering things from me. I kick the covers off my bed and put my robe on. My head still hangovery, not that I’d know how that feels, but the word fit me perfectly.
Brian sits on my bed and he doesn’t say a word. He just stares at the floor and keeps rubbing his neck. A Brian specialty. I’ll have to pry whatever-it-is out of him. But I just stare, like he does. I stare at my birthday cards. Mom set them all out on my desk like she does every year. This year the cards aren’t just from family. This year, there is a card from The Peacocks. The one tied to a purple and black bow. The one that says “To Roxie, Happy Birthday.”
Before my birthday, I wanted to be a peacock. I wanted to be a teenager as fast as possible, because life in-between is so incredibly boring. I was too young for all the firsts I had left to look forward to, so I just wanted to sort of skip it all and get to the good part. And because that’s what I wanted, that’s what Planet Popular gave me. Hayden told me it was different for everyone.
I thought being a peacock and being a teenager was golden, this perfect wonderful thing. I couldn’t wait to drive and to make my own decisions. But when I all of a sudden got everything I wanted, it isn’t what I imagined at all.
See, nothing is perfect. Not even peacocks. Or teenagers. Or getting to that place your think is totally golden. I can’t do anything about growing up. But I can do a lot about what I really want. And I guess I just want to be me. With weird lucky outfits. And dodo tendencies. I mean I can’t bring Mitch back from the dead, but I can turn into my own kind of peacock to honor him. And what I realize about being a peacock is that it isn’t everything. The only thing that matters is what feels right––my friends, even if I don’t have very many of them. And staying away from as many star-nosed-mole moments as possible.
But there were cool things on Planet Popular. If only Hayden and I had a chance to go on the treasure hunt, then I would have donated the Homecoming Dance money to help The Society Against Cruelty to Animals. I wouldn’t have had the power to do that unless I wore the tiara. And, I would have succeeded where Adrianne failed, if I had more time. I want to know what is buried under the X. Bad.
And then it hits me, like some sort of meteor out of the sky. That big. That epic. I have to save Mitch.
“We don’t have much time,” I say.
“What are you talking about?” Brian says.
“Listen, Mitch is in trouble and you and I are the only ones who can save him.”
Brian lifts his head for the very first time. “You know where he is?”
“Turn around,” I tell Brian. So he does without complaining at all which is as weird as me not caring about getting dressed in the same room as Brian. I get into my jeans and pull on my puma sweatshirt to remind me that I have the powers of the puma. That the puma is who I am. Who I need to be. What I’ve always been. Puma’s can’t be peacocks.
I run down the hall and Mitch’s door is locked. Double, triple, quadruple locked. I punch in a bunch of random numbers.
Brian stands so close to me as I punch in numbers that I feel his breath on my neck.
“I have the combination,” he says all calm, in a whisper.
“Well, give it to me.” I say, feeling like a fool.
“3-8-2-4-3-6-1-7-1-8”
“Got it. How the hel
l did you remember that?”
He raises his eyebrows when I cuss. It’s just so different being thirteen again.
“It’s Lola’s measurements, her age and Mitch’s age.”
I run into Mitch’s spookily clean room, to his desk and open the very top drawer. The skinny drawer. I grab his car keys and head for the garage. Brian’s two steps behind me.
“What are you doing?” he says.
I grab my coat out of the hall closet and bundle up.
“Look come with me or not. But I’m going.”
He grabs his coat and follows me out the door.
I press the button that beeps the car open. Mitch would never let me even touch his precious Mustang, he named Sally. Why is it that nothing can make a person angrier than a brother? That no one on the planet can embarrass a person more than a brother but when that same brother is in trouble, there’s no one who will help him faster than the sister he teased mercilessly all his life.
Somehow, and I really have no idea how, Brian and I are about to slip out of the house without alerting Mom and Dad who have been helicoptering ever since I got home, when they weren’t searching for Mitch themselves. I place my hand on the door handle and am about to pull up on the latch. But, we’re instantly surrounded. Mom walks up beside me and Dad flanks Brian with a million questions.
I slide the keys into my jean pocket so Mom and Dad won’t see. Brian gives me a look like it’s over. He stares back down at the ground and rubs his neck with his hand again and I follow him up the stairs to my room We don’t have very much time to talk. After my mom tucks me in bed, Brian walks into my room and whispers, “We tried.” Then he walks back out again.
“One more day, Mitch, just hang on,” I whisper to no one who can hear. And as I fall asleep I can’t stop wondering about Hayden. Why he hasn’t come over.