Camellia Chameleon
Donna Farley

 

 

I didn't mean for my little brother Gabe to find out about my freaky new ability to change shape. But when I saw him standing there on the corner of Spruce and Rowan, a dorky little kid with big ears and glasses, surrounded by a trio of taunting hyenas from my tenth-grade class, I had to do something. Fast.

The boys hadn't seen me come round the corner, so I ducked behind the thick cedar hedge, dropping my book bag. To face down three of them, it would take somebody a lot bigger and more imposing than Camellia Jaeger, age fourteen, five foot nothing. I hardly had to think about it - like the rest of the girls at school, I'd spent the whole week admiring Danny Richardson, after he led the Weston High Coyotes football team to a smashing victory at the first home game of the year.

So I borrowed his looks. Stats: 6' 2", 180 lbs., eyes blue, hair blond. I felt my legs stretch and bulk up, my shoulders rising and broadening like bread dough on fast-forward. My scalp prickled as my shoulder-length brown curls receded into my head and turned to bristle, and Danny's smudge of a mustache sprouted on my upper lip.

"Leave me alone!" I heard Gabe say. No time to be sure I had all the details right; I charged out of the bushes like Danny going for a touchdown.

The bully boys looked pretty silly with their jaws hanging down and their eyes big and round as a spooked cat's. I drew up short, planted my feet wide and folded my arms across Danny's massive chest. I glared. Danny was the school hero, and these little jerks weren't even in his league.

They broke eye contact - but not to look away. Instead, they stared me up and down, and one of them sniggered.

I unfolded my arms and looked down at myself. Pink sparkly big-eyed kitten T-shirt, all stretched to heck across Danny's muscleman pecs, washboard abs showing in the gap between the bottom of the T-shirt and the waistband of my. . . skirt. A petite tartan pleated skirt, with Danny's stumpy hairy thighs and knees sticking out underneath.

I looked like Braveheart in a shrunken kilt.

"What's with the outfit, Danny?" one of them asked.

I glowered back at them, quelling the smiles sneaking onto their faces. "It's a - a frat initiation," I said. "And none of your business. So beat it!" I worked the glare again - coming from someone of Danny's bulk and rep, it apparently packed enough of a punch. The three jerks sidled off down Rowan Street, leaving Gabe looking up at me, half awed, half puzzled.

"You need to get some friends, kid," I advised him.

"Cam!" he said.

Crap. He hadn't seen me come round the corner, had he? My intake of breath finally popped the button off my straining waistband. "I borrowed this outfit from your sister -"

"That's totally lame!" There is no contempt like an eleven-year-old's. "Cam, you still got your own voice!"

"Oh, crumbs!" I glanced after the bully trio, but they were rounding a corner ahead without looking back.

"I think they prob'ly figured it was part of the act - the initiation thing you said," Gabe assured me. "But sheesh, Cam - how long have you been able to do that? You must be a mutant or something!"

"I am NOT a mutant! There's no such thing!" I turned and dashed back beyond the hedge. I felt my body shrinking in on itself, my minuscule female curves replacing the mountain of football-player muscle.

"There are so mutants!" said Gabe, poking his nose through a gap in the greenery.

I shouldered my book bag, and hoped my skirt wouldn't fall down before I got home. I prepared to be patient with Gabe. "Real mutants are not like in your comic books, Gabe. They're only flowers that turn out to be a different colour, or cats with extra toes and stuff like that."

"But how did you do it?" he asked, trotting to keep up beside me as I headed for home along Spruce Street. I was suddenly ravenous, almost lightheaded with hunger.

"I don't know, I just did it," I said crossly. I wasn't going to tell him I'd discovered what I could do during the annual nightmare of swimsuit shopping. The suit I had my heart set on didn't fit me, so suddenly, just by wanting to. . . I managed to fit the suit.

After that, I'd spent the summer doing little experiments - just making myself a bit taller, prettying up my face or changing my hair, mostly. Once, when my friends were late meeting me at the pool, I decided to look like Ashlee Simpson. When they got there, they walked right past without recognizing me. It was only after I realized people were starting to stare, thinking I might be the real Ashlee, that I ducked into the washroom and changed back into plain old Cam Jaeger. Or at least, the Cam Jaeger who was curvy enough to look good in that suit…

Gabe wasn't quitting. "Is it magic or something? Do you, like, just turn into people sometimes - like the wolf-man at the full moon?"

I said nothing. He tried again. "If you aren't a mutant or magic, did you get, like, exposed to radiation or something?"

"No, Gabe. Radiation gives you cancer and crap, it doesn't give you -"

I hesitated a moment too long, and Gabe, in tones of whispered awe, supplied "Super powers!"

I broke into a run, my throat lumpy and my eyes hot with tears. I left him far behind, and burst breathless into the house through the kitchen door. I was supposed to baby-sit Alicia Laliberté today, three houses down; without stopping to change my wrecked outfit, I grabbed an apple and a big bag of cheesies, then stumbled out the door again. I was inside Alicia's before Gabe even made it into our cul-de-sac.

* * *

The next morning I woke up with the flu. What a waste of a Saturday. Dad was away on business, and Mom had a shift to do, so before she left for work, she propped me up in bed with my homework, my CDs, a box of tissues and a big thermos of chicken soup.

The math and history only took an hour. I was sitting there sniffling and staring at my Jonas Brothers poster, volume on my CD player turned lower than usual because my head was aching so bad, when Gabe stuck his face round the door. I took my earphones out.

"I brought you something," he said, and came in and sat on the end of the bed, leaning forward to slip a felt-penned sketch onto my lap.

"Oh, Gabe," I sighed, putting a hand to my pounding head.

"You need a proper costume!" he insisted. "One that changes shape when you change!"

"There's no such thing! Only in comic books!" I flung the sketch back toward him, but he left it where it landed on the bed. Gah. If I were going to wear a costume, would it be a skin-tight livid lime green leotard, featuring a googly-eyed lizard with its tail curled into a "C" on the chest? Not to mention the fire-engine red cape and gloves?

Gabe bit his lip, frowning stubbornly for a moment, then took a breath. "Don't you think it's, like, destiny?" His voice dropped to a hush. "Fate?"

"Fate?" I frowned at him.

"You know -" His gaze went to the sketch again. "Camellia, Chameleon?"

Now I lost my temper. "Don't be stupid! A camellia is a flower, nothing to do with a stupid lizard!" I snatched up the sketch, crumpled it, and threw it at him.

Gabe's nostrils flared, and his brows went down. He leapt up in a fury and dashed from the room.

I jammed my earphones back in, but a second later I took them out again when Gabe marched back in, his arms full of comic books.

"You can't just do nothing," he said, setting the pile on the bed with great deliberation. "People with powers only have two choices - be a hero, or be a villain."

I scooped up my CD player and pelted it at him. He ducked; it smashed against the edge of the door, and the disc flew out. I froze, gaping, shaken by my own action. I didn't usually do anything so. . . violent.

Gabe bit his lip. Not meeting my eyes, he picked up the disc and player and set them on the foot of the bed, beyond the pile of comic books. Then he backed out, pulling the door closed behind him.

The CD player was broken. Great. My parents had promised me an MP3 player, finally, for Christmas. What was I going to do till then?

Boredom is a powerful force. So I started to leaf through the comic books.

These people were unreal. If Fate had supplied me with this weird shapechanging ability, it had forgotten I was also supposed to be provided with a genius I.Q. to build myself a personal rocket or supermobile, and a really disgustingly large fortune to be able to afford a secret hideout. And oh yeah, of course the comic book super people had these funky costumes that never got too small or popped buttons, even if the super people caught fire or turned into monsters.

And they always managed to beat the villains.

Yeah, right. In real life, people get killed like Alicia Laliberté's father in everyday stuff like car accidents, never mind in a fight with a super-villain. I couldn't even change my voice to make my disguise as Danny Richardson work, so why would I want to go looking to tangle with criminals and evil masterminds?

I threw the pile of comics on the floor. I was not going to do this. Fate, or whatever, couldn't make me change shape ever again, not if I just plain decided I didn't want to. And if I never changed shape again, it would never matter why I could do it - even if I really was a mutant or magic or radioactive.

* * *

Gabe didn't say another word about it. And I kept my promise to myself to quit changing - even when I was tempted, a week later, to disappear a big fat zit from my chin before the fall dance.

A couple weeks after that, I came home from school to find Mom madly ransacking her sewing room.

"What's up?" I asked.

"Oh, Cami, good - help me decide on a Halloween costume for Alicia."

Her eyes looked red around the rims, I noticed. "Mom - what - "

"It's Gina, Cam. She's back in the hospital. . ."

My stomach clenched. Gina Laliberté, Alicia's mom, had been having cancer treatments. Poor little Alicia. Only six - her dad killed in that car accident just a few months ago, and now her mother so sick.

Mom pawed distractedly through a bag of fabric scraps. "Cami, look, I hope you won't mind - you know I'm working Halloween, and your dad will be out of town again then. Well, Jim has to work that night too, so I said you could probably take Alicia trick or treating."

"That's fine," I said. Jim was Gina's new boyfriend - he'd moved in with her and Alicia the first time Gina went in for chemo - and Alicia wasn't too keen on him replacing her own dad. She kept saying she saw her dad in crowds at the mall. Sure, it was awfully soon for a stepdad, but I could see how Gina needed the help. "So what about the costume?"

Mom gave me a grateful look and emptied a bag of colorful remnants on the sewing table.

"There!" I said, seizing a bath-towel-sized length of bright red flannel, left over from pajamas Mom had made for the whole family last Christmas. "She can be Red Riding Hood!"

"Brilliant!" said Mom, relief on her face. "I'll dig out an old Easter basket. . ."

"Mom!" I said, excited by a sudden idea. "Can you throw together, like, a lacy sort of nightcap? And let me wear your Victorian night gown? I'll get my old wire specs with the lenses taken out, and be Red Riding Hood's grandma. Alicia will get such a kick out of it!"

"Cam, that's wonderful!" She beamed at me. "Honey, you are just amazing sometimes. No wonder you're Alicia's hero!"

My stomach dropped suddenly, and I felt the blood drain from my face. I'm not her hero, I wanted to say; I'm just her friend. A babysitter, not a mutant or magic or anything like that. . .

But Mom didn't notice my reaction; she was already searching her notions box for a scrap of lace. I left her to it, and went to bury myself in my homework.

* * *

Halloween afternoon, Alicia squealed with delight when I came to her house in the grandma outfit. Jim hustled off to work, Alicia not sparing him a glance while I fastened the cape around her. The hood was miles too big - what had Mom been thinking? - but Alicia refused flatly to let me bobby pin the edges to her wispy blond hair. We sat at the table in our costumes and ate the pizza Jim had ordered us, Alicia picking off all the peppers and mushrooms as she nibbled.

"I hate that man!" she said suddenly, flicking away a morsel of pepper in exasperation.

"Why?" I said. Obviously we were talking about Jim.

"He's mean to me."

Cripes. Alicia was on the verge of tears. Jim had never seemed the mean type to me; he was short and slight, with a face about as threatening as a panda's. "How is he mean?"

She put down her crust. "He's going to marry my mom!" she wailed.

Oh. My. Did that mean Gina wanted a stepdad to look after Alicia - because Gina wasn't going to get better?

I put an arm around Alicia. "I'm sorry, sweetie. Don't cry." I handed her a paper napkin to blow her nose on. I was getting a knot in my stomach. "Alicia, what does Jim do to you that's mean? Does he yell at you or something?"

She sniffed and picked up the crust again. "No," she said grudgingly. "He makes me eat ucky veggies and wrecks my pizza like this! Look, there's hardly any cheese left after I pick the icky stuff off!"

I wanted to laugh, but I took another bite of my own pizza. After chewing in silence awhile I said, "Want me to read to you until it gets dark?"

"Okay." She stuffed the last bit of her crust in her mouth and hopped down.

I finished my pizza and went to the couch in the living room. Alicia brought a big glossy picture book and snuggled up beside me. There was Red Riding Hood on the cover, though her hood was more of a cap with no cape attached. The title read Charles Perrault: Le Petit Chaperon Rouge.

"But it's in French, Alicia!" I said. I've always sucked at French.

She reached over impatiently and flipped the book open. "You're as bad as Jim, Cami. I'll read," she said, and launched into a stream of what might as well have been Greek to me.

It was weird, listening to a story you know, in a language where you can only catch a word here and there. Knowing that Le Loup was the Big Bad Wolf, whose slavering jaws grinned at us from page after page.

It ended quick. I frowned. I didn't understand the French, but I could see from the pictures this wasn't the same as the version my Oma, my German grandmother, had read to me from the Brothers Grimm when I was Alicia's age. "Alicia, isn't there a hunter? He comes and rescues Red Riding Hood and her grandma, I'm sure he does…"

Alicia shook her head. "The wolf ate them aaaaaaaall up."

"Well, the way my grandma told it to me, the hunter cuts open the wolf's belly with scissors and Little Red and her grandmother jump out alive and well! Not only that, the little girl helps fill the wolf's belly up with stones, and they're so heavy, when he gets out of bed he just falls down dead!"

Alicia laughed, a shuddery laugh at the gruesome yet happy ending. Honestly, these fairy tales were as ridiculous as Gabe's comic books. But the happy ending version, even though it was unrealistic, had to be better for a kid Alicia's age than Mr. Perrault's depressing one.

Alicia posed a question in French.

"I don't understand French, Alicia. Only petit peu," I reminded her.

She looked disgusted and closed the book. "I said, 'Do you know why Red Riding Hood's father wasn't there?'"

I sighed. "Maybe he was on a business trip, like my dad. It's just a story, Alicia." I glanced out the window. "Come on, it's almost dark. Go brush your teeth and go to the bathroom so we can go."

As she went off to obey, she grumbled, "My papa used to talk French to me all the time."

* * *

I locked the door behind us, lights out so that trick-or-treaters wouldn't come while we were out. The cul-de-sac was filled with miniature versions of Batman and Snow White, giant bumblebees and two-legged black cats. They flitted from house to house in the dusk, like moths drawn by the orange glow of jack-o-lanterns along the driveways and in the windows. Choruses of "Trick or treat!" echoed from all sides, punctuated by the occasional distant rat-a-tat-a-bang of firecrackers - illegal, but every Halloween some big kids would get hold of some and set them off in the walkways and back alleys of the neighborhood.

Alicia gripped my hand tight with excitement, the basket on her other arm. I held the flashlight, thinking it didn't really match my granny gown.

"Brr, it's nippy out here," I said. "Too bad I don't have fur like the big bad wolf."

Alicia giggled. "I'm not cold!" she said, which was because I'd told her that her mom would be upset if she didn't let me put both a sweater and jacket on her underneath the red cape.

"Look, there's my brother!" I said, and flashed the light at a trio of kids a couple doors down. You couldn't mistake the red and blue Spider-Man costume my mom had made for Gabe. He didn't care how corny it was that he went as a different superhero every year, but at least he'd taken "Danny's" advice and gotten some friends. Not that bullying was a big worry tonight - the cops kept pretty visible on Halloween, and there were kids and grownups everywhere you looked.

I took Alicia through the trick or treat routine for over an hour.

"I'm not tired!" she kept saying. "One more street. Pleeeeeeease, Cami?"

I was getting tired. We'd been all over, streets I never normally went myself even. "That's all," I said at last, when things started falling out of her basket because it was so full. "Careful there, Alicia, you're leaving a trail of candy like Hansel and Gretel with the bread crumbs."

She chuckled, then looked around her, a wrinkle of worry between her eyebrows. "Do you know how to get home, Cami?"

"I know exactly. Let's go," I said, and led her back the same route we had come along. She dragged her feet now - not only was she tired, it was less interesting when you weren't stopping at every house to collect candy. We were two streets from home when a bunch of big boys in skeleton masks jumped out at us from behind a hydro box, yelling "Boo!"

Alicia shrieked, but I rolled my eyes at them and drew her firmly along the lane, leaving them cackling and hooting "Nice nightie, Granny!" Both of us jumped when they let off a string of bangers, whooping like idiots.

"Just keep going," I told Alicia brightly. I didn't want to let her know that it had rattled me even a little bit.

Between our cul-de-sac and the next one there's a little path that leads along the creek and through a small field - a quicker way home than going all the way around the block. On an ordinary night I would be scared of drug addicts or teen gangs cutting through the field, or maybe coyotes in the bush by the creek - we did hear them howling some nights - but tonight there were loads of kids and parents coming and going through there. Alicia and I even met Gabe and his friends coming out of the path as we went in.

We passed the wooded creek and turned into the field. Lights from the backyards on either side cast shadows here and there on the grass, though it wasn't very dark, really. But I jumped when a man's voice behind us called "Alicia!" We both turned around.

"Papa?" Alicia dropped her basket, licorice nibs and gum packets spilling on the ground. "Mon pére!"

She ran shrieking and babbling into his arms, and I stood there staring, absolutely stunned, at a slim man dressed in a dark, loose-fitting track suit. I recognized Jean-Guy Laliberté's long, high-cheekboned face; I had seen him leave Alicia's house every day since before Alicia was born. Every day until he was killed in the car accident. I stepped closer, and my skin began to prickle.

He was laughing and patting Alicia on the back while she prattled at him in French. She was talking French - but he wasn't.

My insides churned, but it wasn't just from fear and horror. I felt kind of like a magnet must feel when there's another magnet nearby, side by side with it, and it wants to be attracted to the opposite pole, but it's also repelled by the like pole. I shuddered.

Jean-Guy Laliberté was dead. This wasn't him. This was… somebody else, somebody who didn't speak French like Jean-Guy, somebody whose very presence made my skin crawl with attraction/repulsion. Somebody like me, the me I'd worked so hard not to be… a chameleon.

And not like me: he wanted to hurt Alicia.

He met my gaze. "Thanks for looking after her," he said breezily, and turned back towards the wooded creek, carrying Alicia in his arms, playfully pulling the red hood over her eyes.

He hadn't noticed, or was ignoring, the magnetic prickling - I felt sure it had to be happening to him too. I had to do something - now!

The man wearing Jean-Guy's face stepped into the shadow under the trees. I dropped my flashlight and plunged after, jaws lengthening, teeth sharpening to wicked points. Just like the pictures in Alicia's book. I stretched out newly-bristled arms, sharp-taloned fingers, and reached up and around to clap my wolf-girl hands over his eyes, like somebody playing "guess who?" But this wasn't a game; the imposter had Alicia, and I couldn't let him keep her. My claws, quick and sharp as the hunter's scissors, snikked into his eyeballs.

His scream tore up the night. He dropped Alicia, and she tumbled about, tangled and blinded by folds of red flannel. She gave a yelp of pain and shock and began to cry. Oh, God, please don't let Alicia be hurt! I thought.

The imposter swung his arms blindly, roaring and swearing at me. Instantly, I shrunk back from my half-wolf shape to the shape of Camellia Jaeger. I scooped up Alicia, muffling her shrieks against my shoulder, and retreated with pounding heart up the hill. But then I stumbled over a root, and we landed in damp leaves at the edge of the half-lit field.

The man/chameleon thrashed about, groping toward us; I hugged Alicia tight against me and whispered "Shh!" in her ear. I could see him in the dappled leaf-light - he too had changed to what must have been his own shape, that of a beer-bellied, big-jowled man, nothing like Alicia's slim, smiling father.

While we held our breath, he unzipped his sweat jacket and tore it off, then loosened the drawstring at his waist. I hid Alicia's face against me, pulling the red hood over her. And then his face changed into a snarling muzzle. He dropped to all fours, kicking off the track pants behind him, fur and tail sprouting. His eyes were still ruined - but now that he had a wolf's form, did he have a wolf's sense of smell and hearing to help him find us? What if I couldn't outrun him, carrying Alicia as I fled along the path?

Trying to keep silent, I eased to my feet. I could change again - but how could I get Alicia to safety? Just then, I saw the wolf-ears prick up. The better to hear you with, my dear…. My heart leapt into my mouth, but a second later I heard voices at the entrance to the path. Firecrackers snapped and banged, and I recognized one of the voices - it was the same group of skeleton-boys who had teased us earlier.

"Help! Wolf!" I yelled, not taking my eyes off the wolf. Alicia whimpered, burying her face deeper in my granny gown. "Wolf!"

The shape changer growled, making as if to spring at us, and I screamed for help again. Feet pounded on the path nearby, and a second before the skeleton-boys appeared, the blind wolf turned tail and stumbled back down toward the creek.

As I released Alicia, one of the boys picked up my flashlight and shone the beam on us. The others swore at the blood on my granny gown - not much, some had spattered from my claws I suppose, but it showed a startling red on the white gown. I knew there had to be more blood on Alicia, the imposter had still been holding her when my wolf-claws did their work, but the red flannel made the stains invisible.

One of the boys tipped his mask up and whipped out a cell phone. "Emergency - yeah - the creek by Laurel Avenue -"

"Look! There he goes!" said the boy with the flashlight, playing the beam over the dark four-legged figure making its way up the creek bank opposite and away into the hydro field.

Another scoffed. "There's no wolves around here!"

"Coyote," I said breathlessly. "It must have been a coyote!"

Alicia wailed, "Cami, I want my papa!"

* * *

The cops couldn't make heads or tails of Alicia's story about how her dead father came back and then a wolf took him away again. It was the cruelest part of it all, and I was sorry she was so traumatized, but I couldn't explain what had really happened.

I called Jim to come home, but I got Alicia into bed before he arrived. The cops left soon after, and I went home to wait for Mom, who was picking up Gabe at his friend's after her shift.

They arrived as the story came on the news - a reporter was standing in our own cul-de-sac talking to the cops.

"The girls are both fine - a little shook up, is all," the cop said reassuringly. "We figure they must have stumbled on the coyote and startled it, after it killed a rat or a rabbit in the field, and that's where the blood came from."

Mom gasped and tsk'ed and said "thank heavens you're okay!" but Gabe kept looking at me with a frown on his face. I pretended not to notice.

* * *

I was still worrying about the imposter next morning, though, and I didn't stop until another story made the local paper three days later. They'd found an unidentified naked man wandering around in the park, several miles downstream from our little creek, with his eyes scratched out. They figured he'd done the injury himself, and they would be sending him to the mental hospital soon. I sighed in relief. I'd thought about it, and he must have targeted Alicia a long time ago - found her dad's picture and her name as a survivor in the obituaries, maybe, and planned his chance, counting on the Halloween atmosphere to help him. When Alicia thought she saw her dad at the mall or somewhere, it had been the imposter…

I still didn't know how I felt about what I'd done. Nails like knives, plunged into a person's eyes, even such a horrible person - was that really me that did that? But I did know I felt good that the imposter was no longer a threat to any other little kid.

"Creepy," said Gabe, rattling the newspaper where he sat on the living room couch and giving me a suspicious glance.

I ignored him steadfastly. I figured the less he knew, the better.

Why can I change? Maybe I am a mutant, like Gabe said. But now I know I'm not the only chameleon in the world. If one could show up in my own neighborhood like that, who knew - there might be hundreds, thousands of them. Of us.

And how many more of them were villains like the one impersonating Alicia's dad?

I might find out, some day, if I happened past them and felt that magnetic push-pull-tingle. I might have to be a hero again.

For now, well… I think maybe I'll just make myself a little bit taller.