Crossing Over Read online

  “Aw!” the J-squad cried, rubbing Melman’s back.

  “You’re, like, allergic to being pretty,” Jamie said. “I mean, you’re already so pretty, but you know what I mean.” Melman ignored the insult with a sneaky eye roll to Slimey, but Slimey was busy testing nail polish colors on her thumb. Seeing that no one else was physically reacting to the cabin like it was a war zone, Melman wondered if she really was different. Even more so than she’d thought.

  The J-squad led Melman arm in arm toward a blow-up chair. “Welcome to Faith Hill Spa, where the past is the past and the future is gorgeous,” they purred, out of sync. Melman hoped the toxic beauty products hadn’t permanently destroyed their brain cells.

  Jenny waved her hand over the chair. “Please, take a seat, and we’ll start your consultation.” She snapped her fingers and looked expectantly toward the bathroom. Nothing. “Missi!” she hissed.

  Missi shuffled out in Jenny’s red heels and black skirt. Her frizzy hair was pulled back in a tight bun and she clutched her purple clipboard to her chest. “Welcome to—”

  “We welcomed her already,” Jenny said drily.

  “Oh, sorry!” There was an awkward silence. “Um . . . Wait, what do I say?”

  “You don’t say anything,” Jenny said, pointing to the clipboard. “You write what we say.”

  “Oh, cool!” Missi nodded so apologetically, she nearly lost her balance.

  Jenny paced around the blow-up chair, and Jamie followed, sizing up Melman as if she couldn’t decide which part of Melman to attack first, since her whole body looked so deliciously unfeminine and in need of prettification. “Brows, ’stache . . . then facial,” she dictated, looking at Missi like Are you writing this down or what?

  Melman self-consciously smoothed back her sweaty wisps of hair and hid her bitten nails and torn cuticles in loose fists. What is Jenny going to do to my eyebrows? “ ’Stache” as in “mustache”? What the heck’s a facial? She’d never been so hyperaware of her looks her whole life.

  Jenny handed Melman a terry-cloth robe. “Just put this on over your bathing suit, and when you’re ready, I’ll lead you to Station One.” Melman glanced up to where Jenny was gesturing and read the slogan: Unibrows are for Cyclopses. She pet the fuzzy hair above the bridge of her nose.

  As she lay down on Missi’s bed wearing Jenny’s robe and gripping Slimey’s hand so hard it turned white, she felt like she was at Dr. Singh’s getting a shot. Only, shots didn’t scare her. Tweezers did.

  “Ow,” Melman mumbled instinctively after each tweeze.

  Jenny accidentally pinched her skin, and Melman shot up with a yelp. Where is Scottie? she thought, holding back stupid tears. She suddenly remembered Scottie was making a phone call. Maybe having less supervision as Upper Campers wasn’t always a good thing.

  “Sor-ry,” Jenny sang, completely undermining her apology. She pushed Melman back down like the prisoner of war she was and finished. Melman reached for Missi’s handheld mirror on the dresser to check herself out, but Jamie slapped her hand away.

  “No looking!” she said. “Right, Jenny? No looking?”

  “Right. Not until the end.”

  Melman shook her head. Jenny and Jamie, of all people, weren’t letting her look in the mirror? Wasn’t vanity one of the defining characteristics of a princess? Unless . . . Melman swallowed hard and traced her eyebrows with her finger. Thank God. They’re still there.

  Melman allowed herself to be rotated from station to station, trying to have a sense of humor about it all, but losing herself bit by bit. While the girls clapped and “Oohed,” Melman started to doubt she was ever good enough the way she’d been before.

  Station 2, they bleached the mustache she never knew she had.

  Station 3, they blotted her nose with a blue oil-absorbent sheet that, post-blotting, looked like a cool piece of artwork, so she gave it to Slimey for their collage wall.

  Station 4, they papier-mâchéd her chin with a canvas strip, then peeled it off, lifting up blackheads. Also cool for the wall.

  Station 5, they applied a green mud mask. Melman apparently looked like the Wicked Witch of the West, or, as Sophie pointed out, Elphaba from the Broadway show Wicked, which Slimey then pointed out was the same character.

  Station 6, they painted her nails pink, then pink again, then glittered them, then shellacked them so they’d make it through the campout chip-free.

  Station 7, Jenny massaged Melman’s back with hot rocks. Jamie had collected them from the gravel road by the kitchen and then tossed them in a steaming shower, likely using up all the hot water for the rest of the day.

  Station 8, Jenny unknotted Melman’s hair with Missi’s brush (lice was contagious, and she didn’t want to risk her own getting infected). Then she used her flat iron to straighten Melman’s hair even though “the boys had borrowed it for their devil robot and now it might be cursed.”

  Station 9, Missi shaved her left leg and Jamie shaved her right. Below the knee, but still, Melman lost a lot of hairy friends to Jenny’s ruthless blade. They floated, dead, in a plastic cup of water.

  Station 10, makeup. The three girls attacked her face at all angles with shadows and glosses and blushes and liners, and it was . . . the worst. Melman might have developed a twitch after all the poking and prodding and accidental eye stabbing.

  And lastly, Station 11. Two words: Princess dress. Melman changed out of her bathing suit in the “changing room,” also known as “behind Missi’s kitty sheets.” There wasn’t much privacy because the J-squad was behind the sheets with her, zipping her up and fluffing the sleeves and untucking the scratchy netting that had gotten caught in the back of her underwear.

  Jenny snapped her fingers again, Jamie flicked the overhead light on and off so that it strobed, and Missi dropped her sheet to the floor, revealing . . . Princess Bethany.

  Melman was welcomed with clapping and “Oooohs” and “Ahhhhs” and a wash of compliments.

  “You look amazing!” Jenny cooed. “Like, omigod amazing.”

  “Yeah, you look like a real princess,” Jamie said. “Like a model princess.”

  “Like one of those model princesses every girl wants to be!” Missi cried.

  Melman had heard of models and had heard of princesses but had never heard of a model princess. She turned to Slimey and gave her a nervous What do you think? look.

  Slimey smiled and gave her a thumbs-up. “Honestly, I know you’re gonna hate me for this, ’cause this isn’t your thing”—she looked Melman up and down—“but you do look really beautiful.”

  Melman sighed, wanting to feel at ease, but instead she felt twisted inside. How could Slimey like her looking like someone so far from who she was? But if Slimey said so, she wondered whether there was some truth in it. Was Melman the one who was crazy?

  “The real question is . . .” Jenny crossed her arms. “How do you feel?”

  “Well, let’s see . . .” Melman was feeling a lot of feelings and wasn’t sure where to start. She checked out her nails. They were even and dirt-free, and her cuticles weren’t bleeding, but the pink color kind of made her sick. She took a quick whiff of the lotion that bathed her arms. It smelled coconut-y, like her mom’s perfume, so the familiar scent put her nausea at ease. She bent over, lifted the scratchy netting of the dress, and felt her legs. There were a few cotton balls under Band-Aids soaking up bloody nicks, but otherwise they were as smooth as her baby cousin’s butt. As for her face, Melman knew she wasn’t allowed to touch it, but the foundation smelled like a hospital, and the Very Berry lip gloss was making her hungry.

  So, overall, how did she feel? Sick, but comforted, and soft like a butt, and smelly like a hospital, and starving for fruit. But after all the work the J-squad had put in, she didn’t want to confuse them or make them feel bad. “Um . . . good, I guess . . .”

  Jenny smiled, flashing her metal. “That’s ’cause I’m a genius artist. Not everyone is natural at knowing fashion and beauty, you know?”
/>   Melman didn’t, but apparently Missi and Jamie did, seeing that they were nodding profusely.

  “I think you’re ready,” Jenny said, guiding Melman toward the full-length mirror in the bathroom. Melman held her breath like she was riding past a graveyard. Like, somehow, she’d have better luck that way.

  She stepped in front of the mirror and locked eyes with the reflected version of herself. The squeals and stupid girly giggling behind her settled into white noise. How does this look pretty? she wondered. Her eyes were shadowed blue, and her cheeks were clown-nose red, and her lips were gooey, and her lashes were sticky and long, and her skin looked thick and fake, and her hair drooped flat and sad, and the dress . . . the dress made her look like a full-size Barbie. Does Slimey really think I look pretty? she wondered. Is this what normal people think looks pretty? Sneaky tears welled up in her eyes. Three days was a long time when you looked like a freak.

  Just then, Scottie entered Faith Hill Spa like her typical jolly self. Melman took the turning heads as an opportunity to blot her eyes dry. She used the scratchy sleeve of the dress. It smudged her mascara. Now I really look crazy, she thought.

  Scottie spotted Melman and let out a hoarse scream. “What did you do to my girl, oi?” she said to the others, moving toward the victim.

  “You can’t touch her yet,” Jenny said, stepping in front of Melman.

  “Why?” Scottie asked. “She’s not a painting. She doesn’t need to dry first.”

  “Actually, she does. She has wet nails and an unpowdered face.”

  Scottie put her hands up like she was surrendering and tiptoed backward.

  The girls dispersed, and Melman went off to the bathroom stall to be alone. She put down the toilet lid and sat, the netting poofing all the way to her neck.

  She heard a knock. Over the stall door, three pudgy fingers appeared like puppets. “Hey,” Scottie whispered from the outside. “You can survive this.”

  “Can I?” Melman asked. “I mean, would you ever let them do this to you?”

  “Not in a million years,” she said with a gentle laugh. “But you, my friend, are special.”

  “I just wish I was good enough without all this stuff.” Saying it out loud made her heart sink.

  “‘Good enough’?” Scottie scoffed. “Are you kidding me? You’re better than good enough! Girl, you don’t have to do this. But if you do decide to go through with it, it won’t kill you or change who you are. Three days, Melman, and then you’ll be back to you.”

  Melman swallowed back tears and felt her lips turn up ever so slightly. She still felt bad, but at least someone understood.

  After sloshing through puddles and hurdling over tree trunks and clawing through bushes, Steinberg and his bunkmates had finally reached a line of abandoned cabins in the middle of Camp Polio. We meet at last, Steinberg thought.

  He was still carrying the excitement from the last twenty-four hours:

  First, he’d struck a deal with TJ: the Hamburger and Faith Hillers could camp out at the abandoned camp just so long as he could ensure the experience was well-planned, safe, and sufficiently frightening.

  Second, he’d done the research. He’d interviewed camp veteran Millie Janowitz who ran the main office and had been at Rolling Hills for forty-eight years. He’d also used Rick’s password on the staff computers to get an aerial view of the place on Google Earth.

  Third, his cabinmates had canoed across the lake.

  Fourth, they’d pitched their tents on a flat-ish hilltop around an old fire pit.

  Fifth, they’d staked out another flat-ish hilltop for the girls to pitch their tents. (They were joining the boys after their phone calls home, but who knew when that would be—they always went over their allotted seven minutes each.)

  And now, they were about to explore the creepy, abandoned cabins of CAMP POLIO!

  Steinberg checked his stopwatch and then looked up at the orange sky. “We only have eleven minutes,” he said. “We need to be back at the campsite before sundown. Yoshi’s orders. Can I get a confirmation?”

  “CONFIRMATION!” the guys shouted. It echoed in the wind.

  “This way,” Steinberg said, leading the guys to the cabin at the end of the bunk line.

  “How do you know where you’re going?” Play Dough asked, shaking a broken compass. The arrow was stuck on NORTH.

  “Do you have a navigation chip in your brain?” Dover asked.

  “Or a sixth sense?” Wiener asked. “DO YOU SEE DEAD PEOPLE?!”

  Steinberg smiled to himself. Telling his cabinmates about all the research he’d done would kill the magic. “I don’t see them, but I hear them,” he said. “They guide me, and in turn, I guide you.”

  “Huh?!” The guys trailed behind him, shooting questions so fast they were slipping past Chaim.

  “You can hear them?”

  “Wait, what are they saying?”

  “Are you their friend?”

  “Are we gonna get polio?”

  “What about the landowner? Are you scared?”

  Chaim caught the last two questions. They were easy:

  (1) No. These days, people were vaccinated, and, regardless, the disease lived only in the feces or spit of the infected, and no way could it be passed on more than half a century later.

  (2) Yes. The maniacal landowner . . . He was scary. Steinberg hoped that one part of the legend in particular was false: the faceless face. Facial disfiguration in the womb, from a fire, from a gorilla attack . . . all logical explanations. But a completely faceless face with no passageways for breathing? It broke the rules of science. But hey, Steinberg thought, T.A.I.T. Thank Adonai it’s Tuesday. Let’s seize the day!

  But before Steinberg could give them any answers, the guys arrived at their destination: the farthest cabin in the row. It was better not to answer, he thought—it amped up the mystery. From the outside, the abandoned cabin looked like a haunted version of Hamburger Hill. The wooden porch was missing panels and looked like it had been gnawed on by generations of termites. There was a lonesome hiking boot on the equipment crate. The windows were shards of glass. The cabin’s burgundy and green paint was peeling. A weathered sign was nailed to the door: BUNK 1. Actually, it read: B NK 1. The u was missing.

  Steinberg walked up the rickety porch steps and held the rusty doorknob. Waited three seconds for ideal suspense. The guys were breathing heavily behind him, eager to explore. He pushed open the creaking door and . . . Holy ghost turds, was this a sight. The guys shouted, “Whoa!” and “Cool!” and “Awesome-sauce!” and all sorts of other sauces.

  Steinberg took inventory: dusty sheets tucked into deteriorating mattresses. Faded laundry detergent bottles that seemed straight out of an old-timey commercial. The ceilings were draped in cobwebs, and the floorboards were filled with gaping holes where who knows what species of skunk-munk lived. He took a whiff and coughed. It smelled like dead people and rotting wood.

  “Did you know it would be like this?!” Dover asked Steinberg. His mouth was agape, and his eyes were bulging.

  Steinberg shrugged coolly, but he was just as surprised as they were. “Yeah, I knew.” He checked his stopwatch. Seven minutes and twenty seconds. Time to crank up the spook level, he thought. “The tour begins”—Steinberg waited for their shifting eyes to shift to him—“now.”

  He started with the ceiling fan that lay shattered and cobwebbed in the middle of the floor. While Chaim fired up, Steinberg looked out, as if he were channeling the ghosts. “Little Jake Jacobson thought he might be infected with the virus,” he began, “but he was scared to face the truth. His counselor was trying to drag him to the infirmary, but Jake was doing everything in his power to avoid a prognosis. In manic desperation, he scaled the walls and grabbed hold of the fan, clinging to it while it spun. Around and around and around. His counselor tugged at his legs, until finally, the weight was too much. The fan crashed down onto poor little Jake Jacobson and, SPLAT! He was dead upon impact.”

  Stein
berg watched them cock their heads.

  “Wait, so he didn’t die of polio?” Dover asked.

  “He was murdered by his counselor?” Wiener asked.

  “So he would have died anyway, but he died from the fan?” Smelly asked.

  Again, Steinberg ignored the questions and carried on with the next part of the tour. The confusion, the holes in his story . . . they were all part of the intrigue. He led them to a bunk-bed in the corner. He thrashed his finger in the air like it was on a possessed Ouija board, finally landing on a wood chip on the floor below a broken window. “Gary Appleman watched his friends disappear one by one, so as soon as he started to display the symptoms—fever, vomiting, diarrhea—he knew he had no chance. He wanted to tell his dear parents good-bye and his little sister that he loved her. ‘Keep playing the ukulele,’ he wished he could say to her. ‘You’re excellent!’ He found this very wood chip by his bed, and just as he was about to carve a note into the wall, his hand went stiff. The virus was attacking. He involuntarily threw the wood chip and it shattered the window. ‘Nooooo! Not yet!’ he cried. ‘I love you, my sister!’ And then he croaked.”

  “What about his sister?” Totle asked. “Did she keep up with the ukulele?”

  “Why was he obsessed with his sister?” Dover asked. “That’s gross.”

  Steinberg felt himself losing his audience, but he knew defending his stories wouldn’t help. He checked his stopwatch. Three minutes and twenty-six seconds. He had time for one more spook. Come on, Chaim, you got this.

  He led the guys into the bathroom. He stepped into the shower and pulled the cruddy shower curtain closed. He threw himself against the three shower walls, pretending to be tossed around by maddened ghosts. “I’m sorry!” Steinberg called to the ghosts. “I thought you wanted me to tell my friends your stories! Owwww!” Chaim, you’re an improv genius! he cheered himself on. Go, Chaim! Go, Chaim!