Friday, October 8, 2013—West Hills High School Library.

  “Jesus Dude, you’re on your own.” Justin backed away from me. We were peering around a stack in the library, peering at Nora. She was leaning against a bookshelf, reading. She didn’t seem immediately threatening, but she was big in an Amazonian sort of way. That and she looked twenty-five.

  “She can’t be that bad, can she?” I asked, watching her push her straight dark hair back behind square shoulders.

  “You remember the entire sophomore wrestling team running laps last week at lunch?”

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “That was Nora. She shows up at tryouts, guys try outs, and they all laugh at her, and then she whoops all their asses. Every. Single. One.”

  I looked back at Nora. She was thumbing through a book—the book I needed—with a sort of amused sneer on her face.

  “Did they let her on the team?” I asked.

  “No, dude. She turned them down.”

  “Okay… Why’d she try out then?”

  “Coach Smith gave her a ‘B’ plus,” Justin whispered, shaking his head as his rotund body quivered beneath it.

  “What, in Gym?”

  “No, English. Coach Smith teaches English. My sister is in her class, said she was pissed about it.”

  “Wait… so you kind of know her then? You could talk to her, bring up your sister? Help me out.” I nudged him toward her.

  Justin dug in his heels. “No freaking way. I gotta go… to the bathroom.” He backed away from me, turned, and raced out the door, his underarms so dripping with sweat that they looked like they’d been hit by water balloons.

  If Justin was off to the large side of the body positivity scale, then I was off to the other, being a little short and a little thin… or rail thin really. Honestly, just about anyone could beat me up—well, any of the boys… and, if I’m being completely honest, a fair number of the girls, Nora definitely included.

  So, cowering and trying to look like I knew this, and that there was no point beating it into me, I took a step toward her, and then another and another—

  She spun, glaring at me. “Can I help you?”

  “Um, no, I mean—are you going to check that out?”

  “I was thinking about it. What’s it to you?”

  “That’s the ah—Emily Dickenson collection, right?”

  Standing straight up, she took a step toward me, making her four-inch height advantage brutally obvious.

  “Um,” I said, “I got assigned that for a report. I could ah—pay you for it?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “When’s this report due?”

  “Monday.”

  “Cutting it close there, aren’t you… You got a name?”

  “Um, Harper. My name is Harper.”

  She took an uncomfortable moment looking me over, before her expression dropped flat. “That’s more of a girl’s name these days, isn’t it?”

  Not this again. I groaned. “Yes, yes, it is. But I was named after my grandfather.”

  She shrugged. “Alright, Harper, what’s it worth to you?”

  “Five bucks?”

  She batted her eyes with smug amusement as her face pulled into a wolfish grin.

  “That’s all I’ve got.” I opened my wallet, forgetting about the extra dollar that was my bus fare. We both saw it, making my previous statement seem like a lie. “I can give you six, but…”

  “But what?”

  “Then I’d need to walk home.”

  “So, six bucks and a little exercise? Not a bad price for a grade.” She held out her hand.

  I gulped and emptied my wallet.

  She snorted, turning the bills over in her hand. “You really are desperate, aren’t you? You know who I am, right?”

  I nodded.

  “And you know what I do to little boys who bother me?”

  “Give them the books they need so they won’t fail English?” I eked out.

  She flinched, and I flinched back like she might hit me.

  “Only when they don’t take me seriously,” she said as I realized her flinch had been one of disbelief, not aggression.

  A prolonged groan later, she continued, “So, here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to give you this book, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickenson. And I’m going to give you your money back, and on top of that, I’m going to pay you six dollars. And for my six dollars, I expect you to take it home, and spend all weekend reading it, and then you’re going to get an ‘A’ on your report, or…”

  “Or what?”

  “Else.” She gave me a dirty look, stuffed my money into the book, added two bills of her own, and shoved it into my hands.

  I had planned on going over to Justin’s that evening to spend all night playing video games. Instead, I texted him I was sick, and spent all night reading… and then not sleeping as my mind raced with all the things that ‘else’ could mean.

  ???

  It was noon on Monday. I was sitting in the cafeteria, alone. Justin was pretty much my only friend, and he had lunch in another period.

  Something small and wet pegged the back of my head as a snicker of “she man,” rose from a few tables away.

  I don’t really want to explain this, but I probably need to… The thing is, I’m not exactly the most macho looking guy in the world. I have long hair. Between that, my name, and my slight build, I tend to get mistaken for a girl more often than—than I’m comfortable with. Some kids get their kicks making fun of anyone they can. They’re called bullies, and I was an easy target.

  I picked the wet, sticky thing out of my hair, thankful when it turned out to be a bean and, wiping my hand on a napkin, sighed.

  Then the dark-haired giantess I’d been dreading all weekend, sat down opposite me with a wolfish grin that ran ear-to-ear.

  “You’ve turned it in, correct?” Nora asked.

  “Um, no.”

  Her grin twisting into a sneer, she glared at me as I blurted out, “The due date got pushed back… to tomorrow.”

  She drummed her fingers on the lunch table, her expression going flat, pensive.

  “But it’s done. I finished it.”

  “Let me see.”

  I fished it out of my bag and handed it to her.

  “Alright,” she said, standing up. “And—those…” She jabbed her finger toward the source of the snicker. “Don’t let—those—get to you.”

  Still holding my report, she walked right past the lunch monitor and out the door.

  My relief at survival slowly turning to dread at what was yet to come, I looked up to see everyone in the lunchroom staring at me. A long moment later, they turned away and everything went back to normal.

  ???

  After class, Justin was waiting by my locker.

  “She’s in my study hall. She told me to give you this.”

  He handed me my paper, filled-in with red ink: Grammar corrections, spelling corrections, and notes jammed in the margins.

  When Nora found me again at the end of the week, I showed her the “A-” I’d gotten, and she only made me give half the money back.

  After that, I dreaded stepping foot in the library. Nora worked there the same period I had English, and my next assignment was on modern British literature. I had planned on doing it on a short book, an easy read, but Nora wouldn’t let me. When I handed her “Animal Farm” to check out, she handed me back “Brave New World.”

  This went on for months, and I was working up the nerve to complain to the principal, when one day, I realized my bullies had mysteriously stopped bothering me. They’d even stopped calling Justin ‘fatty.’ So besides being forced to read constantly by my guardian psychopath, life was tolerable.

  To be clear, Nora and I were not friends. We didn’t hang out. She’d just pop in from time to time to see how her little ‘project’ was going.

  ???

  Winter break of freshman year was hard. First Justin moved away, and then my mom suddenly decided to get remarried.

  She was a secretary at a tech firm. One week I was staying at my Aunt Agnus’s while Mom was away on a business trip, and the next day when she got back, her boss, Jack Grant, came by to have a man-to-man conversation with me, which for some reason he decided to do in his Porsche.

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  He was intimidating: tall and strikingly handsome with cold blue eyes and a well-kempt scruff of a beard.

  During the ‘conversation,’ he’d drive his points home, quite literally, by hitting the accelerator whenever he bragged about himself, and -stomping on the brakes whenever he felt like changing subjects.

  I didn’t say a word back to him, and he never asked me a question, going on and on with urgency, as though any pause in the ‘conversation’ might cause the car to explode.

  “…So, Harper,” Jack concluded as we were pulling back up to our apartment building. “Your Mom and I will be married as soon as the pre-nups come back from the lawyers. It makes sense just to get it done. Easier all around. There will be a civil ceremony at City Hall. You should come—for your mom,” he said, trying to sound inviting as he nodded without looking me in the eye. “Good then, that’s settled… Oh, you can get out now.”

  He paused just long enough to motion to the door.

  And, “I can’t. The door’s locked,” were the first words I ever spoke to him.

  ???

  The next day we were at City Hall. Inside, the air permeated with a harsh fluorescent light. One that somehow made the already stark concrete walls even more colorless, the right angles of the architecture even more square, and the dirt-colored tile floor, designed to last forever, look like it already had.

  I was waiting outside the ‘ceremony’ room, which doubled as the city council chamber, when I spotted an angry giant stomping toward me with a baseball bat.

  My butt cheeks clenched as Nora stopped in front of me. She put the bat down, handed me a large paper bag, and fumbled around in her jacket until she produced a cigarette lighter.

  “What’s up?” She chin-nodded with a sneer. “Come to see the show?”

  “What show?”

  “My dad’s about to marry some gold digger…” she grumbled. “Last name Watson…” And as she looked away, her tongue poked against her cheek, like she was thinking. “Hey… the name on your reports… Harper…?”

  “Watson…” I eked out.

  Sighing through gritted teeth, she grabbed back the paper bag and deposited both it and the bat into a nearby garbage can. “Well, let’s not do that then.”

  ???

  Mom and ‘New-Dad’ seemed very relieved when they found out ‘Lenora’ and I knew each other.

  “So, you two are friends?” Mom asked.

  My eyes darted to Nora, and she gave a long glance back, then shrugged her shoulders and nearly sent me into shock when she nodded in agreement.

  “Do you go to the same school? Is it a combined… high school, middle school?” ‘New-Dad’ asked.

  “Jack, they’re the same age,” Mom said.

  “Oh.”

  “Dad, we’re the weirdos,” Nora added, “Harper is normal-size for his age, and besides I’m almost a year older.”

  As ‘New-Dad’ nodded, I looked at Nora sideways, not quite trusting it, but still thankful for the way she had bent the truth.

  That weekend, we moved into Mr. Grant’s townhouse at the top of a glass tower overlooking the ocean. It must have cost a fortune, and although it was more stylish than huge, it was still easily three times the size of our old apartment. Everything was polished metal, with a sweeping staircase that arced gracefully down from a mezzanine. It was impressive, but felt impersonal in that same way an airport does.

  Nora pulled a “Harry Potter” on me the first night, showing me to my new ‘room’ in what looked like a storage closet, her face sporting that wolfish grin of hers all the while. But the next day, I found her clearing out the extra room she had been using as an office, a room next to hers, and I moved in.

  That night, Mom and ‘New-Dad’ had to go into work, so it was just me alone, with Nora. We ended up kind of staring at each other in the living room for an hour or so, her face with an annoyed look, while my own shifted between abject terror and utter confusion.

  “Would you relax?” She flung the remote at me. “Watch something.”

  After flipping through the guide for a good five minutes, afraid of picking a show that would earn Nora’s ire, she groaned at me and, startled, I started up the most recent episode of “Dr. Who”…

  And then… to my surprise… she made me go back an episode, because she hadn’t seen that one yet, and she didn’t want any spoilers.

  Nora, as it turned out, was a closeted geek. Besides English lit and poetry, she was completely addicted to sci-fi shows, and her room usually had cosplay clothes strewn about. She wasn’t much into video games, but she started watching me as I played and often back-seat drove, shouting loud enough so that Justin could hear her through my headset whenever we’d go on raids together.

  It still felt like I was a guest, just visiting their home, but Nora, at least, accepted my presence without much of a fuss. She helped me with English and History, and astonishingly, let me help her with Math.

  At school, however, things were different. She threatened to murder me if I told anyone we were ‘related,’ and she steered clear of me, even making me ride the bus home.

  Eventually, some of her classmates spotted us hanging out, and a rumor went around that we were dating. After that, she made sure to let everyone know we were brother and sister. She played it off like we were half-siblings, and that we always had been, to explain the different last names, which shut everyone up.

  And then one night, we got home from a movie, and caught Mom and ‘New-Dad’ in a yelling match.

  After I went to bed, there was a gentle knock on my door. I opened it to find Nora on the other side, wearing her night clothes: a long t-shirt and shorts; one hand grasping her journal, its cover now torn; the other with a white-knuckle grip on one of the clicky pens she usually wrote with, its ink smeared on her palm; her eyes simultaneously tired and alert.

  “I found out what they’re fighting over,” she whispered.

  I nodded silently. I’d never heard my mom that angry before.

  “Dad’s got to go away on a business trip this summer, all summer, outside the country. Your mom is... I don’t know… upset?” she whispered. “Not that I blame her. I mean, he doesn’t have much time for people. The wedding… She didn’t even get a honeymoon. So, I guess she’s feeling…”

  “Abandoned?” I whispered back.

  Nora leaned against the wall, sliding slowly down until she was sitting on the floor. She clicked her pen, turning it over. “Yeah well… I’ve felt that way before. I was thinking… what if she went with him?”

  “You think that’s a good idea? Aren’t they angry at each other?”

  “They’re okay… I think… I hope. Dad came by my room to apologize for the yelling. Said he was figuring out that some problems can’t be solved with money… It almost sounded like he was thinking about quitting his job.”

  “Yikes… Mom came by. She just said the fight wasn’t really anyone’s fault.”

  Nora jabbed the pen into the back of her journal, softly ripping the paper. “His work needs him. He loves his job, but this is the first time he ever had to go away for so long. It used to be a few weeks a year, tops… now it’s…”

  Not wanting to make her finish, I filled the silence, “And she’s got to stay here to look after us… Not that she’d admit it, but that’s got to be why… Couldn’t they just leave us on our own? No, I guess not, not legally. Unless they left us with… Aunt Agnus.”

  “How is she?” Nora snorted, giving a weak smile.

  “She’s weird, and strict, and she has cats,” I added.

  “I’m allergic to cats.” She glowered off into space, scribbling on the journal’s back cover. “I guess I can take pills.”

  “And she, she smells… funny.” I added, “I mean I will if I have to, but… don’t you have any family nearby?”

  Nora gave a long, slow shake of her head. Then after a minute of silence, a curious look popped onto her face. “Harper, how would you feel about summer camp?”

  “…Like in the woods?” my voice cracked. “I’m not exactly an outdoors person.”

  “It wouldn’t have to be. You know Dad’s loaded, right? I could get him to agree to just about anything.”

  “Well, if it means he gets to keep his job... I could give it a try…” I said, imagining ending up at the same camp as one of my bullies, and then felt my face go slack as I remembered the world was full of them.

  “What’s wrong?”

  I paused a long while. “I don’t like camping.”

  “Okay,” she nodded, “So, one camp, sans camping?”

  And at that moment, more afraid of an uncertain future than bullies, I nodded. “Okay.”

  ???

  The next morning, Nora cornered her father by grabbing his keys before he could get out the door.

  “Not so fast, Jack,” she said.

  “Lenora…?”

  “Harper and I were talking, and there’s this camp we’d like to go to this summer,” she said, spinning his keyring on her finger.

  “What, really?” he asked.

  “Yes, really.”

  “For how long?”

  “The whole summer, while you are away,” she replied, “Or rather, while you and ‘mom’ are away.”

  “What—where’s she going?” His eyes went wide.

  “With you…”

  “Oh… oh…” his voice lifted. “That sounds—great. What camp?”

  “We’ll let you know when we decide on one, but it’ll be expensive, very very expensive.” Nora dropped his keys into his hand.

  “Ohh…” He paused a second to take that in before giving her his own wolfish grin. “Fine by me.”

  ???

  That evening, I was sitting at the desk in my room when Nora entered.

  “So… ready to play ‘What’s the most expensive camp we can find’?” she asked, plopping down on my bed.

  “I’ve been doing some research, you?”

  “Horse camp?” she asked.

  “Do you even like horses?”

  “No, but it costs a lot… Why, what sort of camp do you suggest?”

  “How about a video game camp?” I asked, knowing it was a longshot.

  “Ahh... No.” She tore a page out of her journal, crumpled it up, and threw it at me.

  “I guess we don’t have to go to the same camp,” I said, sighing. If she wanted to go off and do her own thing, I’d make it easy for her. After all, she’d been forced into being my sister, so maybe she needed a break from me too.

  Her eyes narrowed. “Really? Computer games over me?” She looked annoyed, almost hurt.

  And that kind of freaked me out… I thought she’d be happy, relieved.

  “What?” she asked. “You’re looking at me funny.”

  “Fine, no computer game camps then.”

  “Okay,” she said, firmly. “So. No outdoorsy stuff for you… and no stuff only super-geeky boys like for me. Agreed?”

  “So then… not space camp?” I asked.

  She grasped another page in the back of her journal, like she was about to rip it out and throw it at me. “I’d never live it down. I mean, what do you really want out of a camp, ideally?”

  “Well, I’d like to not get up super early in the morning… or at all, that and hot showers, and wi-fi.”

  “So, more or less just sitting around like a couch potato?” she cocked her head.

  “Yep.” I smiled. “But I wouldn’t complain if there was more to do.”

  Her brow lifted. “There is this one camp… a school really. I was reading a blog about it, but I don’t know if you’d like it…”

  “Why not?”

  “You might think it’s dumb. Honestly, I think it’s more for girls.”

  “But they take boys?” I asked, trying to ignore a phantom bean as it pegged the back of my head.

  She pulled out her phone, swiping through it. “Well… yes, they do, but… I’ve been reading this one girl’s blog, and she said the boys there caused problems, at least the year she was there.”

  “Well, what is this magical mystery camp already?” I asked.

  She cleared her throat and read aloud, “The Galeton School of Intrigue. Classes run all summer long. Students stay at Galeton Manor, experiencing a life of nineteenth century leisure. They teach riding, dancing, etiquette, fencing… and they have—wifi.”

  She was trying to act all nonchalant. But the way her eyes darted between me and the website… she seemed genuinely eager.

  In a rush, she added, “They also teach marksmanship… do an escape room… and assassin?”

  “What’s assassin?” I asked.

  “That’s where you draw a name out of a hat, and that’s your target. You have to ambush them with a dart gun. That’s like a video game, isn’t it?”

  I made a finger gun, shot her, and mimed blowing away the smoke. “Cool. But—what time would I have to get up?”

  “The webpage says ten.” Nora pulled up a picture of a bunch of girls in fancy clothes sitting on a porch sipping lemonade. One of them was on a laptop.

  “Wifi and sitting around. Hmm…” For a moment I wondered if I could extort a new computer or console out of the deal. But looking at Nora, that she actually wanted to spend the summer with me…

  I shrugged. “I’m in.”

  And I really liked the theme too. The idea of a cosplay camp sounded… well, brilliant, even if I’d never admit it. After all, it sounded like just the thing that would get me made fun of, and I was still getting over the post-traumatic stress of trying to—ironically—dress up like a brony three years ago for Halloween, and then have the bullies take it at face value as they stole my candy, while chanting, “she man, she man.”

  Still, as long as no one found out… everything would be fine.

  It, the camp, was absurdly expensive, but ‘New-Dad’ didn’t bat an eye. He was too busy spending every moment he could with Mom, planning their trip, which I noted, made his face fluctuate between an anxious grimace and a genuine smile.

  Nora was so caught up in it that she handled all the arrangements… which was fine by me because, I’d rather play video games. Then one night, she came into my room with a measuring tape.

  “What’s this for?” I asked once she had me lassoed around the chest.

  “I need your measurements.”

  “Ah, why?”

  “Galeton, they provide all the clothes.” She lifted one of my arms, measuring it from fingertip to shoulder.

  “What-in-the-what now?”

  “Unless you’ve got a closet full of nineteenth century clothes.”

  “So, we don’t bring our own?” I asked as she stood me up and spun me around.

  “Just a few sets of street clothes…” Kicking my legs apart, she measured my inseam, though quickly enough to not be awkward. “But it’s part of the fun, they give us new outfits all summer long.”

  “Oh… now I get why you were so keen on it.”

  “Keen? Who says that?” She smirked, then wrapped the measuring tape around my neck and pulled it tight like a garrote wire. “But that’s one of the reasons it’s so expensive.”

  “So… the clothes… are like… a school uniform?” I asked, just slightly choking to death, and Nora released the tape.

  “Oh, sorry.” She tittered in an oddly menacing way. “I think there’s one set of uniform clothes, yes, going by the pictures, but most of it is individual, custom made.” She dropped the measuring tape and began writing it all down.

  “So, I don’t get to pick my own clothes?”

  “When I wrote the headmistress, she said that’s one of the reasons they ask for an essay.”

  “Essay—what essay?” I said as Nora’s journal fell out of her hands and hit the floor.

  She got all serious. “Harper, the application essay… The one you were supposed to write? You need to explain why you want to spend your summer in the nineteenth century… include references to your favorite books and shows about that time. And they’ll make clothes to match.”

  “So, like what, cowboys and the civil war?”

  “Well yes, and vampires, and steampunk. You can have fun with it. Those all work.”

  “Oh, so the essay is just for fun then, right?”

  “No.” She made a sour face. “Please don’t blow this off. The headmistress said she only accepts students who actually want to be there.”

  “This sounds like… a lot of work,” I said, suddenly feeling guilty.

  “It’ll be fine—once we get there. The essay is the only real work you have to do, so you better do a good job, or…”

  “Or what?”

  “Else,” she threatened with a wolfish grin.

  And then she spent the rest of the evening ‘helping’ me with ‘my’ essay. Which is to say she wrote it while I played video games.