Change Places with Me by Lois Metzger

Author:Lois Metzger
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-04-05T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

Clara waited on a wooden bench next to Ms. Pratt’s office. The pale October sky was turning orange, and she could see a tattered net on the basketball court outside. It was quiet except for muffled voices behind Ms. Pratt’s door.

The door opened—and out came Kim Garcia. She had on a ruffled orange shirt and sweatpants. “What happened?” she said to Clara with a worried look.

“It’s nothing.” Clara had long fingers, and she tangled them like vines. “Just a misunderstanding.”

“Well, I’m here for something completely stupid. I was in the library when Nick Winter, that idiot, knocked over a lamp, because he and Dylan Beck were goofing around, shoving each other. The librarian collected everybody’s names in case she needed to talk to us later—about the ‘incident’—and I got mad because, you know, I had nothing to do with it, so I signed a fake name. Which made them think I was losing it.”

Clara didn’t mean to, but she couldn’t help asking, “What name did you use?”

“Alison Wanda Landa. It’s actually a girl in my building. Her dad’s a dentist, Dr. Landa, and he named his daughter Alison Wanda.”

There, Kim was doing it again, acting as if nothing had gone wrong between them. Usually Clara would just not respond; sometimes she would cut the conversation short, in order to remind Kim they weren’t close anymore.

But now, for just a second, Clara felt how it used to be with her and Kim, as if no time had passed, and the entire last seven years hadn’t happened yet. “That’s the dumbest name I ever heard,” she said with some energy.

“I know, right?”

The door opened. “You may come in now,” said a woman.

It wasn’t Ms. Pratt.

The woman looked as young as a teenager herself, in a corduroy dirndl and feathery ash-blond hair with two tiny floating butterfly barrettes clipped to her head. That was last year’s big thing. Selena had worn them all through ninth grade and wouldn’t be caught dead in them now.

“You’re not Ms. Pratt.” Clara jutted her chin at the door, which clearly said MS. PRATT.

“Ms Pratt had a family emergency. I am Ms. Gruskin.” She smiled, displaying a butterfly tattoo on her front tooth. She smelled like strawberries. “What is your name?”

Clara told her.

“Do you have an appointment?”

“I was sent.”

“Won’t you come in and have a seat?”

Clara knew this office—she’d been here a few times in ninth grade and once already in tenth. Evil Lynn had insisted that Clara make appointments with the psychologist in middle school and now in high school, too. Ms. Pratt was nice enough, but of course Clara had nothing to say to her.

She sat on the couch across from Ms. Gruskin at the desk and stared at tall flowers trapped in a vase filled with stones and water. The indentation in the couch fit perfectly, as if Kim, her friend from long ago, had made a point of breaking it in for her.

“Who sent you here?”

“Mr. Slocum.”

“And he teaches—?”

“Bio.”

“Why did he send you?”

“I couldn’t cut into a virtual frog.

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