When school let out, Sue Ellen didn't bother to place the diary in her bag, but
carried it in her hand as she walked back to her house. She found her mother
bent over in front of the potted saw palmetto, moistening the soil with a small
sprinkler.
"How was school, dear?" asked Mrs. Armstrong without looking up from the plant.
"Fine, Mom." Sue Ellen dropped her book bag and diary, pulled off her coat, and placed it on the rack. "Francine showed me her new journal. She's keeping a diary now."
"That's lovely." Mrs. Armstrong straightened up and smiled at her daughter. "What else happened?"
"George bought me a box of chocolates," Sue Ellen continued, "but the bullies got to him before he got to me."
"Oh, that's too bad." Mrs. Armstrong was wearing a bandanna similar to the one that held Sue Ellen's hair in place, but with an Aztec calendar pattern.
Sue Ellen followed her mother into the kitchen, where a batch of macadamia nut cookies had been prepared. "I wish the bullies would leave him alone," she said earnestly. "He's a nice boy. He never hurts anyone. He's just like Dad."
Mrs. Armstrong picked up a plate of cookies from the counter and lowered it in front of Sue Ellen, who snatched one and took a bite.
"Mom, why would anybody want to hurt Dad?" asked Sue Ellen with a mouth full of cookie crumbs. "He does so much good for the world."
"Let's not talk about that, dear." Mrs. Armstrong's words sounded more like a command than an attempt to soothe her daughter's fears.
"Mom, I'm worried," said Sue Ellen in her best helpless child voice.
"I picked out a costume for you today," said her mother, who was clearly trying to change the subject. "Would you like to see it?"
"Costume? For what?"
"Your renaissance maiden costume." Mrs. Armstrong seemed astonished at her show of ignorance. "For the SCA convention. It's pink, and it comes with a tiara. It's really pretty."
"What's SCA?" asked Sue Ellen naively.
"The Society for Creative Anachronism." Mrs. Armstrong put down the plate of cookies, and set about sharpening the kitchen knives. "You went last year, remember? Except I couldn't find a costume that fit you in time, so you wore a kimono."
For a moment Sue Ellen forgot her attempt to glean knowledge about her father's enemies, as her mind dwelt on the possible fashion horrors she would have to endure in her new body...
----
"I'm serious, Mom," said D.W. with an anxious, paranoid tone. "I think that story about Van getting hit by a car is made up. I think Quinn's feeding him poison and keeping him sick."
"Don't be silly," replied her mother, who was dragging her by the hand up the access ramp leading to the Coopers' front door.
She knocked three times. An instant later the door began to slowly swing open. D.W. was horrified to see that nobody was standing on the other side...the door was moving on its own! Was Quinn opening it with her evil mind powers? Or was it the ghost of one of her unfortunate victims?
"It's haunted!" she cried, jumping behind her mother's leg and burying her face in the hem of her dress.
"No, it's not," Mrs. Read reassured her as Dallin scampered toward the doorway, followed closely by Van in his wheelchair. "It's an automatic door. It makes it easier for Van to get in and out."
"Come in, D.W.," Dallin welcomed her warmly. "You've never been inside our house before."
Mrs. Read gently pushed on her frightened daughter's back, pressuring her to walk into the Cooper house. D.W. gaped in terror, expecting that at any moment Quinn would leap out from behind a piece of furniture, attach electrodes to her forehead, and sap her of her free will. "Don't be afraid," Van and Dallin encouraged her.
D.W. stared blankly into the distance, too terrified to move or breathe. She barely noticed when her mother closed the door behind her, trapping her inside the strange duck house.
Then she heard, and saw, something that renewed her courage. "You...you have a TV?" she stammered.
Indeed, a modest-sized television set stood in front of a nearby wall, broadcasting a music video. Logan, wearing a dingy red shirt, tattered jeans, and no shoes, was seated on the couch, swaying his head to the beat of the rock song. When he heard D.W.'s voice, he turned his head, revealing the new stud in his upper beak. "Dude," he said thoughtlessly. "Uh, I mean, girl dude."
"Of course we have a TV," said Dallin. "Everybody does. What is this, the stone age?"
"What's your favorite show, D.W.?" Van asked her, although he was sure he already knew.
"New Moo Revue!" D.W. exclaimed, hopping with excitement.
"That's trippy stuff, girl dude," Logan remarked.
Van pointed down at his lap. "Wanna ride in my chair?"
"Sure!" D.W. quickly and eagerly raised herself onto Van's legs, and the boy took his chair for a spin around the living room.
"Does Quinn live here, too?" D.W. asked Van as they rounded the coffee table for the third time.
"Yeah, she does."
"And she lets you watch TV?"
"I can't really do anything to stop them," came an older girl's voice. D.W. gasped when she saw the figure of Quinn Cooper standing at the other end of the room, the light from the west-facing kitchen window creating a backlit glow around her.
Then her attention was distracted by the strangest-looking duck she had ever seen. Odette had emerged from her bedroom, wearing a light blue ballet outfit with sparkling slippers.
Van drove the wheelchair across the room to meet her. "D.W., have you met my sister Odette?"
D.W. moved her wondering eyes up and down the girl's eighteen-inch neck. "Yes, I'm a swan," said Odette peevishly. "No, I wasn't adopted." Then she smiled and pinched the little girl's cheek. "You're cute."
"I like swans," said D.W. with glee. "I have a toy swan that I put on a glass of water and it goes up and down and drinks the water."
"Like this?" Odette began to gracefully bob her head up and down, pecking D.W. on the head at the bottom of her arc.
D.W. giggled and smiled. "Wow, a real swan girl!"
"So, how do you like our family?" asked Quinn, who had walked up behind Van's wheelchair where D.W. was seated. "I'm not a babysitter here, so the rules aren't the same. You can watch TV, you can eat junk food, you can even whine and sulk, but I can't think of any reason why you would want to."
The scent of baked tuna wafted into the room, and all eyes turned toward the kitchen, where Mrs. Cooper had placed a casserole on the dining table. "Dinner's ready," she called out. "And there's no spinach in it."
"Awesome!" yelled D.W., who leaped down from Van's lap and rushed into the kitchen. The Cooper children followed after her as Mrs. Cooper dished out portions of casserole onto their plates.
Soon D.W., Quinn, Logan, Odette, Dallin, and Mrs. Cooper were seated in wooden chairs, while Van sat in his wheelchair and baby Megan squirmed in her high chair. The rich-smelling food tempted D.W., and she immediately laid her napkin over her lap and took up her fork. "Not yet," Mrs. Cooper cautioned her. "We haven't said grace."
"Grace," said D.W., and then she stuffed a forkload of casserole into her happy mouth.
Van began to snicker. "It's not funny," said Quinn, elbowing him.
"Odette, say grace," said Mrs. Cooper.
"For what we are about to receive, O Lord..." Odette began, then burst into uncontrollable giggles.
Shortly Odette, Van, Logan, and Dallin were shaking with laughter, while Mrs. Cooper and Quinn watched indignantly, and D.W. wondered what the big deal was.
A minute later the laughter died down, and Odette bowed her head to continue the supplication. Then Quinn had a suggestion. "I think we should let Winnie say the blessing on the food," she said, smirking.
Murmurs of approval went up from around the table. "This should be good," said Logan expectantly.
Mrs. Cooper, after a second's thought, nodded her head approvingly. D.W. closed her eyes and assumed a reverent posture.
"For what we are about to receive, O Lord, we give thanks," she prayed. "But we would appreciate it if you would help out in the kitchen a little more. Amen."
----
Sue Ellen's bedtime was an hour earlier than Francine's, owing to the fact that Francine had a teenage sister with an active social life. Still, she was determined to finish the diary before sleeping, as she might discover some clue as to what danger her father faced, and from who. Her eyes grew fatigued as she pressed on, shining a flashlight on the current page underneath the bulky quilt.
"I found out today that I have the HIV virus. This is the same virus that causes AIDS, but the doctor says that some people get HIV but don't get AIDS. We went to the pharmacy and got some medicine. It will protect me from getting AIDS. I'm not afraid. My dad is so sweet. I love you, Dad."
The words started to run together as she kept going, page after page after page.
"Something really creepy happened in school today. George and Fern were having an argument. Then George floated up into the air and started bouncing off the walls. Then he fell on the floor and his antler broke off. Poor George. Then we all went to Prunella's place and Prunella's sister hypnotized Fern. There was a ghost inside Fern that looked like Fern, and she was the one who made George bounce around. She said she was sorry, and then she disappeared."
"Muffy is missing. Fern thinks she ran away. She didn't like going to the private school. She was failing fourth grade. I like Muffy. She used to be a real snob, but now she's better. I hope she's all right."
Finally she reached the last page, and slowly closed the journal. She wondered why the old Sue Ellen had kept its contents secret from all of her friends. There was nothing that would have made them her enemies, or at least, nothing for which they wouldn't have readily forgiven her. She had expressed many intimate sentiments, but mostly in the sort of bland prose that one might expect to encounter in a romance novel. Her yearning for Arthur made entertaining reading, and her frank descriptions of the arm injury and subsequent treatments could easily give one nightmares, but other than that, there was little of lasting note in her writings.
The new Sue Ellen switched off the flashlight, laid it and the journal on the nightstand, and rested her head on her pillow. As drowsiness overcame her, she asked herself whether what she had just read would ultimately make any difference in her life. She was Sue Ellen on the outside, but inside she didn't feel at all like the girl whose personality was embodied in those two hundred or so handwritten pages. If she ever decided to pour her own soul into a book, it would be much different. Much shorter...
Then a sudden thought aroused her. She recalled something that Francine (her former name, which now belonged to another) had told her a few days earlier:
"Don't get me started on that. I wrote more than twenty pages in my diary about that subject alone." The subject of whether an HIV-positive girl could ever hope for the love of a boy.
She couldn't remember having read twenty pages on that subject. For that matter, it didn't seem like she had even read one page about it. There were forty-odd pages following the discovery that she had HIV, but they were mostly dedicated to trivial matters. She felt a desire to pick up the flashlight and re-check the journal, but she trusted her memory--the pages in question simply were not there.
Had it been a mistake? Or a lie?
(To be continued...)
"How was school, dear?" asked Mrs. Armstrong without looking up from the plant.
"Fine, Mom." Sue Ellen dropped her book bag and diary, pulled off her coat, and placed it on the rack. "Francine showed me her new journal. She's keeping a diary now."
"That's lovely." Mrs. Armstrong straightened up and smiled at her daughter. "What else happened?"
"George bought me a box of chocolates," Sue Ellen continued, "but the bullies got to him before he got to me."
"Oh, that's too bad." Mrs. Armstrong was wearing a bandanna similar to the one that held Sue Ellen's hair in place, but with an Aztec calendar pattern.
Sue Ellen followed her mother into the kitchen, where a batch of macadamia nut cookies had been prepared. "I wish the bullies would leave him alone," she said earnestly. "He's a nice boy. He never hurts anyone. He's just like Dad."
Mrs. Armstrong picked up a plate of cookies from the counter and lowered it in front of Sue Ellen, who snatched one and took a bite.
"Mom, why would anybody want to hurt Dad?" asked Sue Ellen with a mouth full of cookie crumbs. "He does so much good for the world."
"Let's not talk about that, dear." Mrs. Armstrong's words sounded more like a command than an attempt to soothe her daughter's fears.
"Mom, I'm worried," said Sue Ellen in her best helpless child voice.
"I picked out a costume for you today," said her mother, who was clearly trying to change the subject. "Would you like to see it?"
"Costume? For what?"
"Your renaissance maiden costume." Mrs. Armstrong seemed astonished at her show of ignorance. "For the SCA convention. It's pink, and it comes with a tiara. It's really pretty."
"What's SCA?" asked Sue Ellen naively.
"The Society for Creative Anachronism." Mrs. Armstrong put down the plate of cookies, and set about sharpening the kitchen knives. "You went last year, remember? Except I couldn't find a costume that fit you in time, so you wore a kimono."
For a moment Sue Ellen forgot her attempt to glean knowledge about her father's enemies, as her mind dwelt on the possible fashion horrors she would have to endure in her new body...
----
"I'm serious, Mom," said D.W. with an anxious, paranoid tone. "I think that story about Van getting hit by a car is made up. I think Quinn's feeding him poison and keeping him sick."
"Don't be silly," replied her mother, who was dragging her by the hand up the access ramp leading to the Coopers' front door.
She knocked three times. An instant later the door began to slowly swing open. D.W. was horrified to see that nobody was standing on the other side...the door was moving on its own! Was Quinn opening it with her evil mind powers? Or was it the ghost of one of her unfortunate victims?
"It's haunted!" she cried, jumping behind her mother's leg and burying her face in the hem of her dress.
"No, it's not," Mrs. Read reassured her as Dallin scampered toward the doorway, followed closely by Van in his wheelchair. "It's an automatic door. It makes it easier for Van to get in and out."
"Come in, D.W.," Dallin welcomed her warmly. "You've never been inside our house before."
Mrs. Read gently pushed on her frightened daughter's back, pressuring her to walk into the Cooper house. D.W. gaped in terror, expecting that at any moment Quinn would leap out from behind a piece of furniture, attach electrodes to her forehead, and sap her of her free will. "Don't be afraid," Van and Dallin encouraged her.
D.W. stared blankly into the distance, too terrified to move or breathe. She barely noticed when her mother closed the door behind her, trapping her inside the strange duck house.
Then she heard, and saw, something that renewed her courage. "You...you have a TV?" she stammered.
Indeed, a modest-sized television set stood in front of a nearby wall, broadcasting a music video. Logan, wearing a dingy red shirt, tattered jeans, and no shoes, was seated on the couch, swaying his head to the beat of the rock song. When he heard D.W.'s voice, he turned his head, revealing the new stud in his upper beak. "Dude," he said thoughtlessly. "Uh, I mean, girl dude."
"Of course we have a TV," said Dallin. "Everybody does. What is this, the stone age?"
"What's your favorite show, D.W.?" Van asked her, although he was sure he already knew.
"New Moo Revue!" D.W. exclaimed, hopping with excitement.
"That's trippy stuff, girl dude," Logan remarked.
Van pointed down at his lap. "Wanna ride in my chair?"
"Sure!" D.W. quickly and eagerly raised herself onto Van's legs, and the boy took his chair for a spin around the living room.
"Does Quinn live here, too?" D.W. asked Van as they rounded the coffee table for the third time.
"Yeah, she does."
"And she lets you watch TV?"
"I can't really do anything to stop them," came an older girl's voice. D.W. gasped when she saw the figure of Quinn Cooper standing at the other end of the room, the light from the west-facing kitchen window creating a backlit glow around her.
Then her attention was distracted by the strangest-looking duck she had ever seen. Odette had emerged from her bedroom, wearing a light blue ballet outfit with sparkling slippers.
Van drove the wheelchair across the room to meet her. "D.W., have you met my sister Odette?"
D.W. moved her wondering eyes up and down the girl's eighteen-inch neck. "Yes, I'm a swan," said Odette peevishly. "No, I wasn't adopted." Then she smiled and pinched the little girl's cheek. "You're cute."
"I like swans," said D.W. with glee. "I have a toy swan that I put on a glass of water and it goes up and down and drinks the water."
"Like this?" Odette began to gracefully bob her head up and down, pecking D.W. on the head at the bottom of her arc.
D.W. giggled and smiled. "Wow, a real swan girl!"
"So, how do you like our family?" asked Quinn, who had walked up behind Van's wheelchair where D.W. was seated. "I'm not a babysitter here, so the rules aren't the same. You can watch TV, you can eat junk food, you can even whine and sulk, but I can't think of any reason why you would want to."
The scent of baked tuna wafted into the room, and all eyes turned toward the kitchen, where Mrs. Cooper had placed a casserole on the dining table. "Dinner's ready," she called out. "And there's no spinach in it."
"Awesome!" yelled D.W., who leaped down from Van's lap and rushed into the kitchen. The Cooper children followed after her as Mrs. Cooper dished out portions of casserole onto their plates.
Soon D.W., Quinn, Logan, Odette, Dallin, and Mrs. Cooper were seated in wooden chairs, while Van sat in his wheelchair and baby Megan squirmed in her high chair. The rich-smelling food tempted D.W., and she immediately laid her napkin over her lap and took up her fork. "Not yet," Mrs. Cooper cautioned her. "We haven't said grace."
"Grace," said D.W., and then she stuffed a forkload of casserole into her happy mouth.
Van began to snicker. "It's not funny," said Quinn, elbowing him.
"Odette, say grace," said Mrs. Cooper.
"For what we are about to receive, O Lord..." Odette began, then burst into uncontrollable giggles.
Shortly Odette, Van, Logan, and Dallin were shaking with laughter, while Mrs. Cooper and Quinn watched indignantly, and D.W. wondered what the big deal was.
A minute later the laughter died down, and Odette bowed her head to continue the supplication. Then Quinn had a suggestion. "I think we should let Winnie say the blessing on the food," she said, smirking.
Murmurs of approval went up from around the table. "This should be good," said Logan expectantly.
Mrs. Cooper, after a second's thought, nodded her head approvingly. D.W. closed her eyes and assumed a reverent posture.
"For what we are about to receive, O Lord, we give thanks," she prayed. "But we would appreciate it if you would help out in the kitchen a little more. Amen."
----
Sue Ellen's bedtime was an hour earlier than Francine's, owing to the fact that Francine had a teenage sister with an active social life. Still, she was determined to finish the diary before sleeping, as she might discover some clue as to what danger her father faced, and from who. Her eyes grew fatigued as she pressed on, shining a flashlight on the current page underneath the bulky quilt.
"I found out today that I have the HIV virus. This is the same virus that causes AIDS, but the doctor says that some people get HIV but don't get AIDS. We went to the pharmacy and got some medicine. It will protect me from getting AIDS. I'm not afraid. My dad is so sweet. I love you, Dad."
The words started to run together as she kept going, page after page after page.
"Something really creepy happened in school today. George and Fern were having an argument. Then George floated up into the air and started bouncing off the walls. Then he fell on the floor and his antler broke off. Poor George. Then we all went to Prunella's place and Prunella's sister hypnotized Fern. There was a ghost inside Fern that looked like Fern, and she was the one who made George bounce around. She said she was sorry, and then she disappeared."
"Muffy is missing. Fern thinks she ran away. She didn't like going to the private school. She was failing fourth grade. I like Muffy. She used to be a real snob, but now she's better. I hope she's all right."
Finally she reached the last page, and slowly closed the journal. She wondered why the old Sue Ellen had kept its contents secret from all of her friends. There was nothing that would have made them her enemies, or at least, nothing for which they wouldn't have readily forgiven her. She had expressed many intimate sentiments, but mostly in the sort of bland prose that one might expect to encounter in a romance novel. Her yearning for Arthur made entertaining reading, and her frank descriptions of the arm injury and subsequent treatments could easily give one nightmares, but other than that, there was little of lasting note in her writings.
The new Sue Ellen switched off the flashlight, laid it and the journal on the nightstand, and rested her head on her pillow. As drowsiness overcame her, she asked herself whether what she had just read would ultimately make any difference in her life. She was Sue Ellen on the outside, but inside she didn't feel at all like the girl whose personality was embodied in those two hundred or so handwritten pages. If she ever decided to pour her own soul into a book, it would be much different. Much shorter...
Then a sudden thought aroused her. She recalled something that Francine (her former name, which now belonged to another) had told her a few days earlier:
"Don't get me started on that. I wrote more than twenty pages in my diary about that subject alone." The subject of whether an HIV-positive girl could ever hope for the love of a boy.
She couldn't remember having read twenty pages on that subject. For that matter, it didn't seem like she had even read one page about it. There were forty-odd pages following the discovery that she had HIV, but they were mostly dedicated to trivial matters. She felt a desire to pick up the flashlight and re-check the journal, but she trusted her memory--the pages in question simply were not there.
Had it been a mistake? Or a lie?
(To be continued...)
