Happy Birthday to Me Again (Birthday Trilogy, Book 2) (16 page)

“Cam, hey,” my
mom said, “I’ve got some clothes for you.”

“Oh… great…” I
didn’t turn around.

“Here you go.”

I could see her
in the corner of my eye reaching the clothes out to me.

No…

“Oh, could you
bring them to my room—”

“Come on, you
lazy bum!” she shouted. “Take them!”

I took a step
back. Then another. I was three feet away from my mom.

Finally I turned
around, purposefully knocked some socks down to the ground from the top of her
pile, and jumped to my knees. “Oh,” I said. “Sorry about that.”

I kept my head
down, just enough so that she couldn’t see my face. My mom, thankfully, didn’t
seem to notice my bizarre behavior. “Whatever. Here.” She set the rest of the
clothes down next to me, and I watched as Cinder, wagging her tail, looking
straight at me but not really caring about my different appearance, followed my
mom upstairs.

“Goodnight!” I
shouted.

“Goodnight,
Cam!” she shouted back before heading up to her bedroom.

Phew.

I picked up all
the clothes, made it to my bedroom, and closed the door, just in time to hear
Kimber start to play some more of her violin. And this time, it didn’t sound
like hardcore rap. This time, it sounded
perfect.

I kept my door
open a hair so I could listen to her playing as I put the clothes away and got
ready for bed. I had a long day ahead of me tomorrow. And I knew I needed to
get some sleep.

I tried Liesel’s
cell phone one last time. Again, it went to voice-mail.

“OK, Leese, I’m
getting really scared now,” I started saying after the beep. “What happened
today? First, I start getting sick again. And then you just up and disappear.
What the hell’s going on? Call me. Anytime. Please. Please, please, please.” I
took a deep breath and bit my bottom lip. “Leese, I’m going to pray for you.”

I set the phone
on the carpet next to my bed and hit my head against the pillow. I was asleep
within seconds, the heavenly sounds of Kimber’s violin slowly fading away.

6.
Fourteen

Five-five.

I was shrinking. The pimples had
disappeared, but I was a couple of inches shorter than yesterday. None of my
clothes could fit me now.

But, worst of all, my voice had started
changing. I remembered how excited I was back in the day, finally, in eighth
grade, when my voice started to crack, allowing me the opportunity to not sound
any longer like a three-year-old girl. Now, it was happening again.

But it’s going in the other direction.

I undressed and stepped into the shower.
I looked down. I didn’t have
any
hair
below the forehead now. I sighed, double checked to make sure the bathroom door
was locked, and took a twenty-minute shower, trying to figure out how I was
going to find Liesel.

One thing I knew for sure:
I can’t stay in this house anymore. Mom and
Dad will have a heart attack if they see me!

After brushing my teeth and spraying some
deodorant under my pre-teen arms, I tiptoed across the hallway, with only a
towel on, into my sister’s bedroom and shut the door. I was pretty certain that
Kimber was at school, but I made sure to lock her door, too. I gulped, loudly,
as I stepped into her giant closet.

OK,
I thought.
Anything?

Kimber’s closet was a palace of clothes
that just went on forever. The funny thing about the arrangement on this side
of the house was that I got the giant bedroom with a tiny closet barely big
enough to fit a shirt or two, while Kimber got a smaller bedroom, but with a
closet big enough to store a Jacuzzi. I always thought of Kimber as a tomboy,
but in the last six months she had really started becoming a little diva
princess, with a closet jam-packed with two times the amount of clothes there
used to be, or that she needed. I knew she’d kill me if she knew I was in here.

Extraordinary circumstances, sis.

I couldn’t believe I was doing this, but I
couldn’t deny the truth. My sister had shot up to about five-four, maybe even
five-five, in the last few months, and I was probably now about her same size.
The question was not if she had any clothes that would fit me, though; it was
if she had anything that would look appropriate on a boy.

Ugh… I guess I’ll be going without
underwear for a few days.

After sorting through her dozen or more
pairs of jeans, I found one near the back that looked no different than a men’s
pair. I tried it on. They were a little tight—if anything, I thought her
pants would be too loose—but they fit.

She had about two hundred shirts to pick
from, ones in every color and size I could think of. She had at least fifteen
pink shirts; I decided to pass on those. In the back of the closet were some
smaller, older shirts, which I decided to snag just in case I didn’t return
home tonight.

I picked out a light blue shirt, which
didn’t look too gender-specific, but after putting it on I decided I definitely
looked like a sexually confused fourteen-year-old boy. Thankfully, I found some
plain white t-shirts toward the back of the closet, and chose one that looked
the most masculine. It had a giant sword in the center of it, with the slogan:
VIOLINIST BY DAY, NINJA BY NIGHT. Again, it was a little tight for my figure,
but it reached over the jeans fine, and I decided it was the best I could do.

Now… time to find Liesel.

---

I returned to the park and sat on the
swings for two hours or more, trying Liesel’s cell phone every ten minutes. It
went to voice-mail every single time, no surprise there. Finally I swung as
high as I could go and leaped to the dirt with the finesse of a seasoned
gymnast. I patted my sides and started walking around the area in search of
clues.

I made my way to the parking lot. I
couldn’t see a single car besides mine. I inspected the ground for anything
unusual, something that might have been dropped yesterday. But I didn’t see
anything. I never took myself to be a Sherlock Holmes type, but I figured I was
adept at catching things out of the ordinary.

I caught just that when I looked out
ahead of me, at the Truckee River, and felt a chill run through my body. There
was no doubt about it: somebody was watching me. I turned around to look over
at the swings and jungle gym, but I couldn’t see anybody there. I turned back
toward the river.

“Is
someone there? I know you’re there!”
 

I heard a giggle, and I turned to my
right to see three young kids laughing, walking over to the baseball field
across the way.

It took me another minute to find who I
was looking for. It was a girl, and she was staring at me from behind one of
the trees that lined the sidewalk in front of the river.

“Hey!
You!” I shouted.

I started racing toward the sidewalk,
sprinting through the parking lot and past the street. I could still see her.
She wasn’t moving. The closer I got, the more I could make out that whoever
this girl was, she had a big, eerie smile on her face.

“Hey!
What—”

I planted my
feet against the sidewalk and turned toward the tree. She was gone.

No. It can’t be…

I turned around,
and then turned back toward the tree. I couldn’t see anyone.

But then I heard footsteps coming from
the dirt embankment next to the river. The girl was running away.

“Hey!
Come back!”

I could see her running at the bottom of
the embankment. I tried to make my way down it without falling, but I failed.
My right foot hit the side of a twig, and I fell on my back and started rolling
to the bottom of the hill. When I pushed my hand against the dirt toward the bottom
to stop myself, I scraped it hard against another set of twigs, these as sharp
as glass. I glanced at the bottom of my right hand to see blood, but that
wasn’t going to stop me. I jumped back up to my feet and started racing after
the girl.

“Stop!
Stop right now!”

As I got closer
to her, she didn’t pick up her pace. She appeared to
want
me to stop her.

“Goddammit,
stop!”

I reached out
and grabbed her arm, pulling her down to the ground.

“Hey!” she
shouted.

I jumped on top of her and straddled her,
ready to smack her in the face a few times before asking her a thousand
questions. But I stopped myself.

The girl was a total stranger, dressed in
fitness clothes, small headphones planted around her ears.

“Get off me, you psycho!” she shouted,
jumping up to her feet and racing down the dirt path much faster than she had
been before.

“Sorry!” I shouted at the top of my
lungs. “Thought you were someone else!” I shook my head and turned around.

I was halfway up
the dirt embankment, when my phone started ringing.
 

“Oh shit.” I
grabbed the phone from my pocket and slammed it against my ear. “Liesel?”

“Cameron?” It
was my mom.

My heart
dropped. “Oh. Hey Mom.”

“Hey, sorry to bother you. I know you’re
probably busy. I just wanted to check in with you… do you think you’ll be home
for dinner tonight?”

I had already started tuning her out. I
was eyeing that same tree from before, to see if that same girl was standing
there. She wasn’t.

“What?” I asked.
“Oh, uhh, I’m not sure. Why?”

“There’s
something important I need to talk to you and your sister about.”

“Oh? Really? Can
you just tell me now?”

“I’d like to do
it in person, Cam.”

“I don’t know, Mom. Liesel and I… you
know… we’re so busy with the wedding… and everything…”

“I know. I just
need a few minutes of your time.”

“OK. I’ll try.”

“Six o’clock?”

“I’ll try.”

I hung up and made my way back up to the
sidewalk and parking lot. My right wrist was bleeding more than I realized, and
it started aching. I found some paper towels in the back seat of my car and
applied pressure to it. I wanted the blood to go away. I didn’t want anyone to
think I had slit my wrists or something.

I sat down in the driver’s seat of my
car, which was making me feel like I was turning into Mini Me, and adjusted my
seat, again. I was barely able to reach the pedal. I figured I had another day
or two before I would have to give up driving completely.

I thought about what my mom had said on
the phone. What was so important?
Trust
me, Mom. What I’d have to say and show you is much more dramatic than anything
you have to reveal.
I didn’t want to worry my mom, or my dad, but I knew
now that I couldn’t return home—that is, until I solved my current
dilemma. I needed to come up with a lie. And I knew there was only one person
who could help me.

---

I always thought if I re-entered the
doors of Darrell Mope Middle School it would appear tiny and inconsequential,
the hallways filled with little children who still hadn’t broken into young
adulthood yet. I remembered how much of a grown-up I felt when I exited these
halls as a graduated eighth grader five years ago. I knew I never wanted to
look back but instead look forward to four years of high school that were going
to mark some of the best years of my life. Those tumultuous years certainly had
their ups and downs, particularly in those last three months of my senior year,
but it had all been worth it in the end. And the thought of ever going back to
high school, let alone middle school, seemed unlikely.

But here I was, traipsing through the
halls of my old middle school, looking just the way I did five years ago, as if
not one day had passed.

If
any of my old teachers remember me,
I thought,
they’re probably going to
faint, have a heart attack, or just start screaming.

“Son, shouldn’t you be in class?” two teachers
asked of me on separate occasions as I made my way through the halls, looking
in all the classrooms to see if I could find my sister. I had no idea what
classes she took. But this wasn’t that big of a school. There were only so many
places she could be.

I made my way up and down the left side
of the school, not having any luck locating Kimber in any of the classrooms. I
headed back toward the middle of the school, when I saw mean old Principal
Priss, a tall, gray-haired figure with a thick moustache, making his way toward
me. I had forgotten about him. He was almost as bad as Mrs. Gordon.

I wonder if he’d remember me.

I stepped back into the closest entryway
I could find and hid behind a door as the Principal walked past me to the other
end of the hall. He over-emphasized every one of his footsteps, like he was a
cocky old man on a mission. I saw him pull out a walkie-talkie as he turned the
corner.

“Ass,” I said
out loud.

“Excuse me?”

I turned around to see a library, one a
third of the size of Mrs. Gordon’s grand oasis at Caughlin Ranch High. I looked
past the bookshelves on the left to see nearly a dozen students sitting at
tables. I didn’t see Kimber, unfortunately.

“Excuse me, can
I help you?”

I turned to my right and almost fainted
from fright. The one element of the middle school I remembered was that of the
sweet, young librarian Mrs. Newt. In her early thirties, with a short build and
frizzy brown hair, she was that rare figure who never went out of her way to
make my life a living hell. I figured she’d still be here. I was dead wrong.

“I asked you a question!” the librarian
said, staring at me like I was a complete dummy. I didn’t look at her like she
was stupid; I looked at her as if she was a
clone
.

The librarian looked just like Mrs.
Gordon, only thirty years younger. She too wore an awkward business suit, with
big black glasses, and she too looked like she could be as young as twenty-five
and as old as forty.

“I’m sorry,” I
said. “I seem to be lost…”

“Keep your voice down! This is a
library
!” She rushed up to me and pushed
me against the wall. “Shouldn’t you be in class, young man?”

“I’m sorry… are
you…
”

“What?”

“Is your last
name…
Gordon
?”

“What?
Of course not!”

Spit came out of her mouth on that one,
hitting me on both sides of my nose, as well as my left eyebrow.
  

“I’m a married woman, unlike my mother. I
got to
change
my last name. I am Mrs.
Tough, the finest librarian in Reno.”

“Mrs.
Godon has a
daughter
?”

I didn’t want to faint. I wanted to find
and shoot the man who had actually had sexual intercourse with that old beast
of a woman.

I just shook my head and turned around. I
didn’t need to get out of the library. I needed to get out of the
school
.

I started
stepping toward the exit door. “Sorry for bothering you,” I said.

“Hey, where are
you going? Do you need a book, or don’t you?”

“I don’t!”

I opened the door and slammed it right
into Principal Priss, who had been standing in front of the library with his
walkie talkie pressed up against his mouth.

“Excuse me!” he
shouted. “What on Earth—”

“Sorry,” I said, and walked past him, but
before I could sprint down the hallway, he grabbed the back of my t-shirt and
pulled me up against his legs. I was barely as tall as his belly button. This
guy must’ve been six-six, maybe six-seven. I always thought he had been a giant
in middle school, and here I was, five years later, very much still thinking
the same thing.

“Principal Priss!”

“Call me, Sir!” he shouted. “What are you
doing out of class?”

“I, uhh… I just had to get a drink of
water.”

“There aren’t any drinking fountains in
the library. Are you stupid or something?”

He eyed me for a moment. I could see him
scanning his impeccable memory, trying to place who I was.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Uhh… I’m… uhh…”

“I don’t have all day, boy!”

Mrs. Gordon’s daughter stepped out of the
library and rubbed her hip up against Principal Priss’s. “Is this kid giving
you trouble, Sam?”

He turned to the woman. “He doesn’t seem
to know his own name.”

I laughed. “I know my name! It’s… uhh…
Burt.”

“Burt?” the librarian asked.

“I know who you are, boy.” Priss squinted
his eyes and leaned over, placing his hands on his knees. “Why can’t I place
you?”

“I’ve never seen him before in my life,”
the librarian said.

Priss bit down on his tongue. “You know…
you are the spitting image of a real troublemaker… a child who truly made my
life a living Hell.”

“I should get back to class,” I said,
sensing an imminent disaster if I didn’t escape soon.

“You’re not going back to class,” he said.
“You’re coming with me to the Principal’s office!”

Hell,
no, I’m not.

I turned to my right to see a familiar
face walking toward me. I figured it was now or never.

As Principal Priss grabbed my arm to
escort me to his office, I faked that I stumbled on my feet, causing me to fall
toward the floor and land on my stomach with a loud thud.

“Owww!” I shouted, even though it didn’t
hurt that bad.

“Oh my God!” a woman yelled in the
distance, running up to me. I was almost positive it was who I thought it was,
but she certainly looked different.

“That was…” Priss started. “That wasn’t
my fault!”

“Are you all right?” It was the soothing
voice of Mrs. Newt looking absolutely darling in a simple white shirt and
tanned slacks, with what looked to be a stethoscope around her neck.

“I hurt my hand,” I said. It wasn’t a
lie. It was still hurting from earlier when I slammed it up against that twig.

I showed her my right hand, which had
enough dried blood on it to suggest my fall on the blue hallway carpet probably
wasn’t the culprit. But Mrs. Newt didn’t seem to mind.

“Come with me, young man,” she said. “I’m
the school nurse. I can help you.”

The
school nurse? What?

“Umm… OK.”

“Come on.”

She helped me back up to my feet, and I turned
around, briefly, to see the tall giant and the beast’s horrific daughter
staring at me with confusion, both with their hands on their hips. They turned
to each other, like this wasn’t the end of their investigation.

I walked with Mrs. Newt all the way to
the front entrance of the school, where there was a small medical station next
to the welcoming desk. It only took her a minute or two to bandage up my right
hand. When she finished, she sat next to me on the dinky excuse for a bed and
smiled at me.

“So you’re the school nurse now.”

“That’s right, Cameron,” she said. “I
needed a change of pace.”

I stared at her in disbelief. I couldn’t
have heard her correctly. “I’m… I’m sorry?”

“So it’s happening again, huh? What next?
You gonna start aging
sideways
?”

I brought my hands to her. “Mrs. Newt,
you know who I am?”

“Call me Nurse Newt.”

“Oh. OK.”

“Cameron, not everyone in Reno is a
complete idiot. You were one of the most memorable troublemakers I ever had as
a librarian. I kept dibs on you. I called Mrs. Gordon at CRHS from time to time
to check up on you. You think I didn’t know about what happened to you last
year?”

“But how do you know…”

“The rapid aging… the sudden transition
back to normal… you and your girlfriend floating in the air for the whole world
to see…”

I brought my hands back to my lap. “You
know about all that?”

“Of course. And I figured it was only a
matter of time before something else crazy happened to you. Am I correct in
saying that now you’re aging
backward
?”

My jaw dropped. I had always taken Mrs.
Newt to be a smart lady, but little did I know she was one mile ahead of
everyone else in Reno.

“Cameron, part of the reason I decided to
become a nurse was to work part-time, so I could concentrate more on my
writing. I thought I was going to concentrate on fiction, but I decided last
summer to work on a non-fiction project.”

I waited for a point to come across.
“What?”

“My book is about
you,
Cameron. And I wondered if you had some time in the next few
weeks to do an interview.”

I
did not just hear her correctly.
“Come again?”

“I’ve already talked to your friend
Wesley a few times, plus Mrs. Gordon, Mr. Welch… let’s see… I got a hold of
your girlfriend Charisma, but she didn’t say much… your pal Ryan… I talked to
your dad…”

“You talked to my
dad
?”

“Yes. Your mom doesn’t want to talk to
me, nor does your sister, who I’ve cornered many times, I must admit—”

I stood up, my heart racing faster by the
second. I was confused, embarrassed, and humiliated, all at the same time.

“You’ve been doing all this behind my
back, Mrs. Newt?”

She shook her head and smiled. “I told
you to call me Nurse.”

“How about I call you a lying sack of
shit?”

Her mouth went wide. “
Cameron
…”

“You’re no different than all the rest.
You just want to make a quick buck off my crazy problems? Screw you, lady!”

“Cameron!” She stood up and blocked me
from the door. If I had been six-one, I might’ve been able to push past her.
But at five-five, I had no such luck.

“I need to see my sister,” I said.

“Cameron, I am here to help you. I am not
doing this for a quick buck. I got to know you for two years when you went to
this school, and I’m telling you now, I’m doing this because the world has to
hear your story…”

“I’ve heard that shit before. You’re lying!”

“I’m not!”

I felt bad pushing her away, but I had to
make an effort. I needed to get out of this claustrophobic room, and away from
this greedy woman.

“I expected more from you,” I said. “I
thought you were one of the good ones, Mrs. Newt.”

“Cameron…”

I opened the door and turned to her one
more time. “Hey, at least you have more material now, right? The boy who aged
into his eighties… now a year later starts aging backward…” I sighed and shook
my head. “It’ll make a hell of a sequel.”

I slammed the door and raced out into the
parking lot, across the street, all the way to my car. I got inside, curled up
into a ball, and waited for the tears to drop. They didn’t. I just stared out
the windshield, angry, trying to make sense of what happened.

First,
Wesley. Now, Mrs. Newt. What’s next? Is Steven Spielberg gonna come knocking on
my door to ask if he can turn my story into a big summer blockbuster?

I shrugged. I decided I didn’t so much
mind the Spielberg scenario.

The bell rang around noon, and I watched
from my car as hundreds of students flooded the outdoor corridors of the school
to take their lunch breaks. It was time to find Kimber. It was time to reveal
to her what I was going through.

Before
Mrs. Newt does, that is.

I opened the car door and stepped into
the blinding sunlight, still shaking with disorientation from just how low to
the ground I was. I didn’t feel like I was getting shorter. I felt like I was
slowly morphing into an animal, and that by the weekend I’d be down on all
fours, and a whole lot hairier.

I decided to walk around for a few
minutes, scoping the school grounds in hopes that I would see Kimber eating
lunch with her friends. But I walked a full 360 around the school and didn’t
see her anywhere.
Does she even go to
this school?
I made my way to the right side of the building and entered a
long hallway. This was the one stretch of the school I hadn’t visited yet.

A few students and teachers were walking
up and down the halls, but not too many. I thought it was funny that nobody was
paying attention to me. Here I was, a guy who looked like a seventh or eighth
grader, roaming the halls of a school he wasn’t enrolled in, and nobody even
seemed to notice.