Past Perfect Read Online Free PDF Page A

off his face. “I got a job here.” 28

    PAST PERFECT
    “I know that. I can see that. I mean . . . why did you get a job here? You knew that I work here.”
    He furrowed his eyebrows, looking puzzled in the light of the fire and the stars. “Last time we talked about it, you said you wanted to work at the mall this summer. You said you were through with Essex.”
    And is this sad, that my heart felt a little bigger, hearing him acknowledge that once we had talked, once he had listened to me say what I wanted to do over the summer? “But even if that were true, Ezra,” I said, “Essex is my place. It’s mine. You don’t see me joining the boys’ soccer team or the school paper, do you?”
    “Well, I wouldn’t stop you if you wanted to.” He grinned at me. When I didn’t grin back, he sighed. “Chelsea, I don’t see what the big deal is. We’ll probably run into each other even less here than we do at school. I’m not going to cramp your style. Promise. We’re friends, right? We never stopped being friends.”
    This had been one of Ezra’s big things when he broke up with me: how he still liked me, and liked spending time with me, and didn’t want to lose our friendship, and whatever.
    Except that we had never been friends before we started dating, so I’m not sure what exactly he was talking about.
    Anyway, I had said fine, so then we became the sort of friends who never talk or hang out.
    That was all I really remembered from our breakup con-29

    LEILA SALES
    versation. The rest of it, I just didn’t like to think about.
    “Look,” he said, “I was working at a coffee shop on weekends—”
    “I know,” I said. “The Diamond Café. I know .” It killed me to hear him act like this, like we were strangers.
    “Right, but The Diamond Café closed down, and I needed a summer job, and Lenny said he could get me something here. So, I don’t know, here I am. But if it really bothers you, Chelsea, I can quit. I don’t want to make you unhappy. If this is making you unhappy, just say the word, and I’ll take off.” I didn’t know what to say to that. Ezra had already made me unhappy, and I guessed his working at Essex couldn’t make that any better or worse. And I wasn’t going to make him quit his job just because we broke up two months ago and I couldn’t handle it. Because I should be over this. Obviously, I should be over this. So I shrugged and said, “It’s fine. Just stay out of my way,” and walked away. We are always drawing battle lines, between Patriots and Redcoats, between Civil War reenactors and Colonial reenactors, between Ezra and me.
    “Everyone! Eyes front!” Tawny Nelson hollered, clambering up on a large rock.
    Tawny is our General in the War this year. It was an obvious choice: she just finished her senior year, she’s worked at Essex for ages, and she’s clearly a warrior. I would not want to mess with Tawny Nelson. Last year she led a raid on Reenactmentland that successfully captured their Confederate flag.
    30

    PAST PERFECT
    I don’t know how she managed to do this without getting caught. That flag is always flying over there. Like, what did she do, scale their flagpole? In broad daylight?
    Tawny is also one of the few African-Americans to work at Essex. They can’t not employ interpreters of color, as that would be discriminatory hiring practices . But they also don’t hire hundreds of people to play black slaves because, while that would be authentic, it would also probably be offensive.
    So Tawny portrays a middle-class girl in one of the historical houses, and everyone acts like, sure, there were all sorts of black middle-class girls in the Colonies in 1774.
    “Yo!” Tawny shouted when we didn’t immediately quiet down.
    “Taw-ny! Taw-ny!” Nat started chanting, thrusting his fist in the air. The rest of us joined in. “Taw-ny! Taw-ny!” We raised our hands and marshmallow sticks up to her.
    She stood atop her rock, hands on hips, chin raised into