“Janna, hurry up or you won’t have time for breakfast before Molly gets here!” my mom called from downstairs.
“I’ll be down in a sec!”
It was Monday morning, and I was sitting on my bed, surrounded by rejected outfits. I looked around at the clothes scattered everywhere. Talk about boring. I couldn’t find a thing Janna Ika Ilka would find inspiring enough to wear. How could I possibly have spent my entire teenage existence dressed in such drab and predictable garb?
I glanced at the clock. Molly was picking me up in five minutes. I had to make something work here. I looked around again at my options. I was just going to have to make do with what I had, starting with … jeans. Everyone wears jeans, right? Even hip Europeans. I climbed into my hippest pair and started my search for a top. Black. The classic urban color. Those people in New York City are always wearing black everywhere they go, right? I scanned my choices and found a simple black T-shirt with three-quarter length sleeves and a ruffle at the bottom. A little last year, but it would have to do. Shoes. These had to make a statement. I got down on my knees and started rifling through the sea of shoes on the floor of my closet. I found a strappy platform shoe with a faux leopard-skin design I had worn, well, never, and slipped it on. I stood up and checked out my progress. Not bad. Plus, the shoe gave me another few inches, which was never a bad thing. Like a gambler in search of a missing lottery ticket, I frantically scrounged for the matching shoe, eventually finding it, but only after I’d broken into a full-fledged sweat.
Now we’re getting somewhere, I thought as I looked in the mirror once more. But something was still missing. I needed some flair. You know, a little extra somethin’ some-thin’. Europeans were always wearing scarves and hats and whatnot, right? Tucked away under my keepsake boxes on the top shelf of my closet, I spotted a piece of funky fabric my aunt had brought back from a trip to Santa Fe. I pulled out the fabric, wrapped it around my neck twice, and tied it in a loose knot, letting the ends hang down along the front of my shirt. The olives and golds in the pattern contrasted nicely with my black shirt. My look was almost complete. I popped open my jewelry box and fished for a pair of never-been-worn, dangly, red agate earrings I had received as a birthday gift last year. Poking them through my neglected ear holes, I leaned back for one last review.
“Hallo,” I said to the mirror. “I am Janna from Hungary. What do you sink of my outfit?” I stared hard at my reflection, waiting for a reply. When none came, I rolled my eyes at myself. Clearly I had lost it.
“Good morning, honey,” Mom said when I walked into the kitchen a minute later. She was obviously trying but failing to act as if nothing was different about me.
“Hey, Mom. I’m running late. I’m just gonna grab a Pop-Tart and take it with me.” I ignored the stares.
“Um, sis? Why are you wearing your bedspread for a tie?” Henry asked.
I looked at my mom in annoyance. Did she understand the torture I had to put up with on a daily basis in my very own home?
“Henry, leave your sister alone. I think she looks quite … nice,” my mom said dubiously.
Luckily, the sound of Molly’s horn beeping outside saved me from going on with this banal discussion.
“That’s Molly … gotta run. Viszlát!” I said, using the Hungarian for good-bye.
As I stepped down off the porch, Emmett got out of Molly’s car to switch to the backseat, doing a second take when he saw me but choosing to keep his mouth shut like any good friend suffering from an acute attack of disapproval would.
“Hey,” I said as I slid into the front seat. “Happy Monday!”
“Happy Monday yourself,” said Molly. She was unused to this level of cheer from me, especially at the start of the school week. She eyed me from head to toe before releasing the parking brake and pulling away. “Nice outfit.” Her voice bore a subtle trace of sarcasm, but I chose to ignore it.
“You like? I just felt this urge to freshen up my look a bit, you know? I have to go shopping, though. I don’t have anything decent in my closet.”
“That’s right. Damn those indecent clothes from Patagonia and the Gap. How dare they think they’re worthy of being worn by you,” Emmett said dramatically.
I laughed. I didn’t mind being poked fun at today. In fact, for some reason, I had awoke with an optimism I hadn’t felt in a long time. Nothing was going to change my mood—not even a pop quiz in physics (do these teachers not realize it’s the end of the school year? Come on, people!), odd looks from classmates, and a blister the size of Mount Rainier on my little toe resulting from infrequent use of hip sandals, all of which happened before lunch.
In the caf, I waited until Emmett was out of earshot and Molly and I were sitting across from each other, picking at our lunch, before bringing up the topic of the new men in our lives.
“So, have you heard from Spence?”
“No.” She sounded surprised I had even asked. “The requisite three days haven’t passed yet. I am expecting to hear from him tonight, though,” she said matter-of-factly. “Why? You haven’t heard from Julian, have you?”
“Actually, yes.” I hoped I didn’t sound like I was gloating. “I tried calling you. Julian came by my house.”
“He what?”
“Yeah, Julian stopped by my house yesterday. He just kind of showed up on his bike out of the blue.”
Molly was clearly shocked. “What did you do? I mean, what happened?”
I relayed the story to Molly in great detail, secretly thrilled by her response. I suspected that Julian’s surprise visit wasn’t par for the course, but I was so inexperienced, I couldn’t be sure.
“Wow, that’s so weird,” she finally said. “And great, I guess.” Molly didn’t exactly sound like she thought it was so great. Still, I knew she was happy for me, in her own way.
“You’ll probably hear from Spence tonight,” I said optimistically.
“I know I will.” Molly shrugged off the conversation as she gathered her lunch trash onto her tray. She stood up. “Hey, I’ve gotta talk to Mr. Thorngate about something before class. I’ll talk to you later?”
“But of course,” I said in accent with a wink.
Molly had a dentist appointment in the afternoon, so I took the bus home from school. I began hobbling the four blocks from the bus stop to my house, anxious to get out of my ridiculous shoes and give my feet some much needed relief. I also wanted to try and wrap up my extra-credit paper for cultural studies. Ms. Kendall was being uncharacteristically agreeable and had told me that if I turned in my report by Wednesday, she would read it over the weekend and give me my grade by Monday. Since Monday also happened to be the cutoff for when Molly’s mom had to confirm our flights, this was all the motivation I needed. Talk about coming down to the wire.
If it were possible, I was even more excited about the trip now that I was pretending to actually be from Europe. I was starting to love the way I felt when I was in character, and I had the feeling that traveling through Europe would give me more opportunities to tap into this more confident, more interesting Janna. Maybe Europeans would actually see me as a mysterious American? Wait a minute. Do Europeans even find Americans mysterious? No matter. The trip represented so much of what I wanted, I could barely stand it.
Visions of eating baguettes at outdoor cafés along the Champs-Élysées were swimming in my head when my cell rang. I grabbed my phone and smiled. Julian! I cleared my throat before answering.
“Hallo?”
“Hey, Janna, it’s Julian.”
“Hallo, Julian!”
“What’s going on?”
“I am walking to house from zee bus stop,” I said. “What goes on vis you?”
I heard Julian chuckle.
“What is eet? Why do you laugh?”
“Sorry. It’s the accent. It’s just so cute.”
“Oh, you sink so?” I said coyly. Um, hello. When exactly had I become an expert flirter? I almost felt possessed.
“Yes, I do think,” he said. “Just like you.”
I was at a loss for words. No guy had ever said anything remotely like this to me before.
“So, when can I see you again?”
“I don’t know. Zis weekend?”
“Well, yeah, definitely this weekend, but how about before then? I have a rugby game on Wednesday. Do you wanna come? Wait a minute, do you know what rugby is? Do they play rugby in Hungary?”
Yikes. Did they play rugby in Hungary? I did a quick mental scan of the printouts Molly had given me on Hungarian leisure and recreational activities. My mind drew a blank, so I flipped a mental penny and chose heads. “Of course vee have rugby in Hungary!”
“Okay, cool. Just checking. I’ll text you the info about my game. No pressure or anything. But it would be cool if you could come.”
“Okay. I try.” Was I ready to introduce Janna Ika Ilka to the student body of the Collins School? The idea of such a public outing made me extremely nervous.
By Wednesday morning I still hadn’t decided whether or not to go. On the one hand, I wanted to see Julian. That was a given. I mean, the idea of watching him running around the rugby field all sweaty and strong sounded pretty good to me. I also thought it would be interesting to see him in his element, that it might shed more light on who he really was. And the more insight I could get, the better. While we’d had a great time on Friday night, and since then he’d called, texted, and even dropped by my house, I still wasn’t sure why he liked me. Part of me was still worried he was just trying to score with the foreign chick. But I was more than open to being proven wrong.
The downside of attending the game was that the risks were high. Yes, Seattle was a big city, but it had a smalltown feel. The odds of running into someone I knew at a high school sporting event were pretty high. Not that I wanted this facade to last forever, but I was just starting to embrace my inner renaissance woman. I wasn’t ready to bid viszlát to her just yet.
The person I really wanted to get advice from about what to do was Emmett, but communication between the two of us had become increasingly awkward in the past week. I tried to bring it up last night after our rant, but I didn’t get very far.
“So, is everything okay, Emm?” I had asked him.
“Yeah, why do you ask?”
“I don’t know. You just seem kinda … distracted or something.”
“Distracted how?”
“You know, you’re, like, distracted. I mean, you haven’t even asked me how things went with Julian on Friday night.”
“Oh, I get it. I’m distracted because I don’t feel the need to know every detail about your double life.”
Where is this hostility coming from? “No, I’m just saying it’s not like you, that’s all. Usually you want to know everything that’s going on with me.”
“Sorry, Janna.” He sounded sincere. “I’ve been swamped trying to finish up the yearbook design. Don’t take it personally.”
I accepted his excuse, but it was clear to me after that conversation that talk about Julian was off the table, even if it wasn’t explicitly stated. I hated that I couldn’t get his take on the whole situation, especially because it was a lot of what I was thinking about these days. It’s almost as if something fundamental in my relationship with Emmett had changed, and I wasn’t sure why. Was it just my charade? For now, I decided to take his word that things were okay and act like things were normal, even if it was without the usual intimacy.
Since I wasn’t getting any guidance from Emmett, I had to rely on Molly when it came time to vote yea or nay on the rugby game. As it turned out, Molly didn’t actually feel the need to engage in a discussion about it at all. Our conversation went something like this:
Me: I’m still not sure about whether or not I should go to Julian’s rugby game today.
Molly: What do you mean you’re not sure? We’re going.
Molly: Of course we’re going. I already told Spence we’d be there.
Me: You did?
Molly: Yeah, I thought I told you.
Me: No, you didn’t. As far as I knew, I was still deciding.
Molly: Well, now you don’t have to worry about deciding. I did it for you.
I would get annoyed by Molly’s habit of making decisions for me without consulting me, except the choices she made on my behalf were usually ones I would have liked to have made but didn’t have the guts to. So, today, like every other day, I accepted the fate she handed down.
“Why is it so important that we go to the rugby game?” I asked Molly after she’d told me the plan.
“You know, it’s not all about you, Janna. After you told me about the game, I texted Spence and he said he was playing too. So I told him we’d be there to cheer them on.” She threw her hands up in the air and pumped them like she was holding giant pom-poms. “You know … Rah! Rah!”
Of course. We were going to the rugby match so Molly could scope on Spence. The fact that it was actually Julian who had invited me and that I was risking certain ridicule if my cover got blown were just minor details.
“What’s happening with Spence, anyway?” Unless she had forgotten to tell me (unlikely), she never did receive a call from him on Monday night. I knew she must be wondering if she was losing her touch.
“I don’t know. That’s why we’re going today—so I can find out. I figure he’s just really busy with finals and everything. The end of the school year can be extremely stressful, you know.” Molly was obviously trying to convince herself that Spence’s aloofness had everything to do with being overscheduled and nothing to do with her.
I couldn’t help but feel bad for her. When it came to guys, Molly liked being in control. She could write the handbook on the art of keeping guys waiting, wondering, and wanting more. So, I could only imagine her confusion at not knowing where she stood with Spence. And I could tell the way Spence was playing games with her just made her even more obsessed.
As much as I empathized with Molly, though, if I was going to spend the afternoon as a member of a two-person cheering squad, she needed to help me figure out how to get through the rugby match with my faux identity intact. As soon as she realized I had been swayed, she launched into strategic planning mode.
“Okay. Meet me after seventh period and we’ll drive to my house to get you ready.” She was speaking in the hushed tones of a spy operative.
“But what about art?” Skipping out on class wasn’t really my thing.
“Art schmart. Ms. Lenning won’t even know we aren’t there. She’ll be too busy inappropriately hitting on the boys in class.”
Molly had a point.
“Seriously. It’s not a big deal. It’s almost the end of the school year anyway. Everyone is so checked out at this place, we could get away with anything. Just be at my car by two fifteen. It will be fine,” she said.
“All right.” I shook my finger in her direction like a parent lecturing a small child. “But we’d better not get caught!”
“Sweetie, I’m not worried about it. And you shouldn’t be either. If someone says something to you, just say you have a doctor’s appointment. Trust me, no one’s going to give you a hard time.”
Once again, Molly was right. I could have paraded around the parking lot buck naked for all the attention I received when I walked out the front door two hours later. Molly was already in her car by the time I got there, diligently typing out a text message. A second later she hit send and looked up at me. “Hi!” She checked out my outfit and reached over to pull my hair out of my signature ponytail.
“Who were you texting?” I asked as she tried to style my hair. Apparently she’d forgotten that taming my waves was a losing battle.
“I was just letting Spence know we’re coming. You know, so he can be all jocklike and testosterone-y and a macho show-off for me.” She grinned.
“Do you seriously find testosterone-y attractive? Wait a minute. Is that even a word?”
“Totally! There’s nothing better than having a guy show off for you. Which is why our being at the game is perfect. Julian and Spence will get to be all cool for us, and we’ll get to be all girly and supportive and doting for them. Everyone wins!”
Hmmm. I definitely wasn’t into the girly-doting thing. Sometimes I thought Molly needed her own MTV reality dating show.
“Why do you think Julian invited you in the first place? He’s just trying to impress you so you’ll like him more.”
I wasn’t so sure I agreed with Molly’s explanation, but I did like the idea behind it. Because if Julian wanted me to like him, then that must mean he liked me.
“Okay, so here’s the plan.” She continued messing with my hair. “You’re going to go to the match incognito.”
“What do you mean incognito?”
“You know, just imagine you’re like a celebrity who’s going out to a club and doesn’t want to be recognized. A pair of sunglasses, a cool hat, a little wardrobe change, and some makeup, and we’ll be all set,” she explained.
“Sunglasses? That’s your grand plan?” Suddenly the nerves I’d managed to keep down since lunch started bubbling up again.
“Well, what did you expect on such short notice? Look, it’s the best I can do. Besides—what are the chances that someone we know will even be there?”
“They’re high enough,” I said. “And what happens if we do see someone we know?”
“We’ll have to come up with a code word or something. Something one of us says to the other to let them know we have to leave immediately. But it has to sound inconspicuous.”
“How about ‘The fat man walks alone?’” I suggested.
“Yeah, that won’t raise any red flags.” Molly rolled her eyes. “How about: ‘I forgot to walk the dog!’”
“But you don’t have a dog.”
“I know I don’t have a dog. I know you don’t have a dog. But nobody else knows we don’t have a dog. Anyway, we could always say we’re walking a neighbor’s dog who’s out of town or something.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Okay, works for me. But just so we’re clear on the rules here: If we see anyone we know at the game—classmate, childhood friend, even the guy who works at 7-Eleven—we’re out of there. The second that one of us spots a familiar face, we’ll say, ‘I forgot to walk the dog!’ and the other person will immediately drop everything. Even if they’re in the middle of a make-out session or whatever. Right?”
“Yeah, sure,” Molly said.
I gave her a look.
“Yes! Right! Definitely!”
That settled, I once again put my faith in Molly, and we headed off to her house to get into disguise.