It was hard to imagine Ali’s homebody father at school. He spent his days poking around the house or working on his art, only leaving on the rare occasions he found work. Last week he’d gone down to the port to draw caricatures of the cruise-ship tourists. He was supposed to be there all day, but came home at lunchtime because conversations with strangers, and staying in his human form all day, was just too hard. School must have been torturous. She could relate to that.
Ali’s mom leaned over the steering wheel as the car crept along. Now and then she eyed the dashboard clock and bit her lip. The fog lights haloed other vehicles and pedestrians in their eerie glow. Ali stared out the window at the nothingness, startled when a boy emerged from the mist. He swung his knapsack as he walked, as if he didn’t have a care in the world. If Ali was a Copycat like Digger was, she’d copy someone like him. He looked so happy.
Her mom must have sensed her mood. “It’ll be okay. We’re here to stay.”
Ali wanted to believe that, but didn’t. “Digger gave me ‘the talk’ this morning.” Then she did her uncanny impression of her father, right down to his deep baritone and furrowed brow. “Be yourself, Ali-Cat.”
“Oh, dear. He just wants things to go well for you today.”
Unlike the last few schools. Ali was glad her mother didn’t try to rehash her failures; she did that enough herself. Like how she’d skipped school last year because her friends had dared her to, and got detention for a week. Or when she cut her hair in fifth grade so she’d look like her new friend, Caitlen, who was so furious she’d refused to speak to Ali for the rest of the school year. When she was younger it had been easier to change schools, but now it was a nightmare. Her attempts to fit in always failed. Would this time be different? Ali doubted it.
To stop her mom from worrying, she asked, “What advice would Maya have for me?”
Maya was Maya Angelou, a famous dead author and poet who was very much alive to Ali’s mom. Maya’s number-one fan, she believed there was no problem Maya’s wisdom couldn’t fix. The opportunity to dole out Maya advice always put her in a good mood, so Ali wasn’t surprised when her mother’s shoulders relaxed.
“She once said, ‘If you can’t change it, change the way you think about it.’ Maya would tell you to march into that school like you own it, like you’re doing them a favor by going there.”
Ali grunted, but her mom was on a roll. “Maya also said, ‘You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.’”
There was no chance to ask what that meant. Princess Elizabeth School appeared out of the thick haze like a fairy-tale castle. And just like in a fairy tale, Ali knew that the world inside its brick walls promised potential happiness or wicked treachery. Ali’s mom eased into the drop-off lane and gave Ali a quick peck on the cheek. “I’ll send you happy thoughts all day.”
Ali nodded. But the truth was, she didn’t want happy thoughts. She wanted a friend.
Two
Ali survived her morning classes and only got lost once, but the mornings were always easy when she started a new school. It was the cafeteria at lunchtime that was the real beast, with kids rushing to claim a table and shouting at one another in excitement after summer break. Ali stood in the doorway, one foot in and one foot out, a silent sentinel. And she did the same thing she did at every new school: she wondered if there were any Copycats.
Gigi and Digger believed that around one percent of the population had Copycat abilities. One time she and Digger had passed a stranger on the street in Campbellton, and he and the man had high-fived. When she’d asked Digger who the man was, he’d said they could both tell the other was a Copycat. When she’d pressed him on how he could tell, he’d said, “Because both of our features shifted slightly, like there was a magnetic pull that wanted us to change into the other. It happens so fast and is so subtle that someone who isn’t a Copycat doesn’t notice. But we do.” The other man appeared to be a Constant to Ali, the term Copycats used to refer to people who couldn’t change. Now, standing in the doorway to the cafeteria, Ali did a quick calculation. More than a hundred kids meant that at least one could be a Copycat.
Despite her years of experience as a new student, Ali had never gotten used to the blur of unfamiliar faces and the dreadful realization that they were all strangers. She took a deep breath, straightened her spine, and forced herself to step into the cafeteria. Everything would be fine if she followed her rules.
Ali liked rules. In third grade, she’d discovered there were scientific laws for things like gravity, time, and the orbit of planets, which helped people understand the world around them and create order from chaos. Ali decided she needed her own laws to make sense of things she couldn’t control, like Digger’s Copycat powers and her family’s constant moving. Laws sounded too fancy, so Ali called them rules, and copied each one into a tattered green notebook in her spidery cursive handwriting. Gigi said cursive writing was a dying art, but that Ali should master it, because someday she might have to write a thank-you note to a king or queen. Over time, there were so many rules she was forced to put them into categories, like New School Rules or Digger Rules, which pleased her because the laws of nature were categorized, too.
The most important new school rule was: Sit at a table closest to the teachers when you don’t know anyone. That way no one could try any monkey business. She’d learned that at Milltown Elementary School in grade three, when a boy covered in freckles named Carl stole her lunch. Which wasn’t a big deal because that was the year her family was on welfare, and all Carl got was half a peanut-butter sandwich on stale rye bread. He never bothered her again. Ali scanned the cafeteria, spotted the teachers’ table, and dodged her way through the crowd until she reached the table next to it. She was pleased when her homeroom teacher, Ms. Ryder, smiled and waved.
ALI’S NEW SCHOOL RULES
Sit at a table closest to the teachers when you don’t know anyone.
Sit between groups of kids.
First day outfit: T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers.
Get the lay of the land before you make friends.
Always carry a book.
Try not to tell people that you don’t own a television or a computer.
Always act like the popular kids. They’re popular for a reason.
Join a club to meet people. Ideally, a swim team, except there never is one.
FIT IN!
The next thing was to snag a seat in the center of the table between two groups of kids. This was a trick learned at Port Elgin Regional School in grade four, when she’d realized that sitting at the end of a table by yourself was a recipe for unwanted attention. And not just of the bullying kind, but of the look-it’s-a-new-kid-let’s-be-her-friend kind, which led to: Get the lay of the land before you make friends. It had taken her months in Port Elgin to extricate herself from a group of girls who talked about nothing except their favorite TV shows, something Ali couldn’t do because her family didn’t own a TV.
The spot she found today was perfect: to her right were two kids—a boy and a girl—who smiled at her when she sat down, then resumed their heated debate about interstellar travel. They seemed familiar, which meant they were probably in one of her morning classes. To her left, three girls whispered and painted their fingernails. They didn’t glance up when Ali sat down next to them. She’d chosen well.