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"Don't leave me here," I pleaded with my sister, Sam. Our clanking, smoking, ancient brown Buick idled in the parking lot of Venice High. Sam and I had lived in Venice almost two months now, but today was my first day of tenth grade. I stared up at the sprawling brick building surrounded by cornfields; record-high heat had blanketed Indiana, and my legs stuck to the hot leather car seat like they were coated in Elmer's glue. I hadn't been this nervous about starting school since my first day of kindergarten at P.S. 11 in Queens, New York. My mom had walked me down Skillman Avenue, and I'd cried when she turned to go. "Don't leave me here!" my five-year-old self had begged her. Now I was fifteen, but apparently my attitude toward going to a new school hadn't changed much.

"I really think home-schooling sounds like a good idea," I told Sam.

She wiped the sweat off her forehead. "Unfortunately, reading In Style cover to cover and watching marathons of Trading Spaces and A Makeover Story doesn't give you a good education." She fiddled with the broken air-conditioning knob, as if sheer desire might miraculously bring it to life. "You're lucky to be going back to school," she said. "I wish I was."

Sam was supposed to be starting college, but our lives had become sort of complicated since our father died suddenly of a heart attack in July. Actually, you could probably trace the whole thing back even further, to when our dad had married Enid Gutmyre. Enid, who looked like a Popsicle stick with red fingernails and a balloon-size head, considered children to be a notch below mosquitoes on the evolutionary scale. Her idea of a compliment was "Nose jobs would make you girls so pretty." Our mother had died six years earlier, so after our dad died Enid stood to become our legal guardian, and inherit everything. Enid's plan was to ship me off to a boarding school in the Canadian wilderness, where I'd never be heard from again.

To avoid that fate, my sister managed to divert our dad's money into her own account, and, with the help of her best friend Felix in Queens, and his mentor, Tony Difriggio --- a major figure in the Midwestern criminal underworld --- we'd secured fake identities, left New York in the middle of the night, and driven across the country. In the process, Sam had gone from being seventeen to twenty-one, and had become my legal (well, not exactly "legal" --- Difriggio had printed offical papers declaring her to be legal) guardian.

Unfortunately I was still stuck at fifteen.

I sighed and slung my bookbag over my shoulder. "It was not a good idea to stay up last night watching Carrie."

"Venice High will be bubble gum and peaches compared to that. Just try not to burn down the school or anything," she said.

"Thanks for the advice."

I smoothed out my skirt and got ready to face Venice High. Sam and I'd gone shopping at the Gondolier Mall on Saturday for an outfit for my first day of school and some work clothes for her. I'd bought a black sleeveless shirt, black miniskirt, and new black sandals. I opened the passenger door just as Noelle McBride's new pink Cadillac pulled into the empty parking space next to us.

"Did you just come from a funeral?" Noelle's best friend Lacey Lanning asked me as she stepped out of Noelle's car, eyeing my outfit.

I rolled my eyes. Couldn't they come up with a creative insult? Noelle's crowd was always harping on my all-black wardrobe. People in Venice rarely wore black unless they were off joining a convent or were in mourning; they wore pastels --- mostly pink, yellow, and green. Maybe they felt they had to blend in with the corn and sunsets. I still hadn't adapted my wardrobe --- I guess it's true what they say about taking the girl out of Queens. In New York, everyone wore black. Maybe we felt we had to blend in with the dirt.

Noelle and her friends Tara and Claire climbed out of her car and stood next to Lacey. All four of them wore matching yellow t-shirts and cropped pink pants. I suppressed an urge to make a citizen's arrest for fashion crimes.

"Noelle seems back to her old self," Sam said. This was pretty remarkable considering the tumultuous events of the summer --- while attempting to pursue her dream of becoming a country music star (although her singing voice resembled a car engine in need of a tune-up) Noelle had been abducted by a person who had a few mental health issues, to put it mildly. When I got blamed for her disappearance, Sam and I, along with our friend Colin, figured out the whole thing and rescued her, clearing my name. For a little while afterwards, Noelle had stopped insulting me directly and addressed me with saccharine sweetness. Now she just smiled a painfully wide grin full of artificially white teeth and waved hello at us.

"Good luck," Sam told me. "You're gonna need it."

I hugged her, shut the car door and watched longingly as she drove off in a puff of exhaust. Our car was Paleolithic, but it was the best untraceable car that Felix could get for us. Under Sam's urging, I'd signed up for Mechanics class, so I'd have an inkling of insight into our car's near-weekly breakdowns. I hadn't put up much of a fight --- I figured there would be some cute guys in the class.

I clunked up the steps in my new sandals and into the crowd thronging toward the school doors. I'd never seen so many unfamiliar faces in my life. Where did all these kids come from? I knew Venice High drew students from all the surrounding smaller towns, farms, and rural counties, but I hadn't expected this many strangers.

If I were still in New York City, right now I would have been on the No. 7 train on my way to my old school, the LaGuardia High School of Music & the Arts, with my best friend Viv. She'd French-braid my hair during the ride, and then we'd get pastries from the cart on the corner near Columbus Circle and eat them by the fountain at Lincoln Center. We'd meet up with our other friends, Julien, Dika, and Elizabeth, and head to school together. Instead, here I was in Indiana, all alone, and none of my old friends had any idea what had happened to me.

I wished Colin was here. He was our closest friend in town, and a junior at Venice High. He'd been in London visiting his dad for a few days, and he wasn't due to get back until that night.

The front entrance to Venice High featured a bronze statue of a muscular farmer leaning on a pitchfork and staring hopefully at the horizon. Beneath the farmer's feet a plaque read:

"The Crossroads of America"

INDIANA STATE MOTTO

Adopted 1937

Oy vay. I wished there was a subway stop I could dive into with a direct route to Queens.

Security was incredibly lax at Venice High --- there were none of the ID cards, guards, or metal detectors that we had at LaGuardia. I moved with the throng through the front doors, down the air-conditioned lime green corridors, and then followed the signs to the registrar's office. I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding when I saw Fern --- finally, a friendly face. Fern spent summers working in the front office at the Rose Country Club, the same place where Sam and I'd gotten jobs when we arrived in Venice. The rest of the year she worked in the administration office at Venice High.

"Sophie --- your big day! I got everything ready for you --- course schedule, your records, everything's on file. I've been telling the whole office about you and your sister." She introduced me to the other women who worked there --- Dotty, Lulu, and the principal, Mrs. Philbert. "We're so lucky to have you here at Venice High, you're bringing up the grade point average of the whole sophomore class," Fern said.

I smiled, but felt a stab of guilt. Difriggio, our contact in Indianapolis, who'd given us new birth certificates and social security cards, had also created new school records for me. He'd upped my GPA from a 3.1 to a 3.9. It was pretty amazing to think about all the grades I'd labored and even cried over. That C in Sequential Math 1. I'd thought my dad was going to kill me for that grade and --- poof! --- now it was gone. Maybe relocating and assuming a completely new identity wasn't so bad after all.

"Here you go." Fern handed me my schedule on an orange piece of paper. "First period English, second Math, third Biology, then lunch, Mechanics, Gym, and Music. And you're not going to believe who your Mechanics teacher is."

"Who?"

"Well, Rusty McMailer, who usually teaches it, dislocated his shoulder at the pig-wrestling competition, so Mrs. Philbert went and asked Chester."

"Really? Chester?" Things were looking up. Chester Jones was the first person we'd met in Venice; he was the local mechanic who'd spent countless hours fixing our car. He'd taken a liking to me and Sam.

I made my way toward my English class, and found a seat in front. Tara, Noelle, Lacey, and Claire sat in a row in the back. To my right, a tall, pretty girl with long black hair read Pride and Prejudice at her desk. I loved that book. She wore a black T-shirt with the words "Venice Artists' Guild" on it, along with a denim miniskirt and black sandals that looked a little like mine. I eyed the sandals --- I had a theory that you could identify a potential kindred spirit just by her shoes.

I turned toward her. "Hey," I said. "What's the Venice Artists' Guild?"

She looked up and smiled. "It's an organization my mom started with other artists in the area. They want to revitalize Venice and have real art instead of the cheesy gondolier sculptures around town."

"Oh cool," I said. Although Venice intended to model itself after its Italian namesake, the town only had one canal and it was bone dry and strewn with garbage and stray cats. While staring into the canal sometimes brought back fond memories of parts of Queens, the town was having trouble living up to its "Europe of the Midwest" slogan. I'd never been to Europe, but I had a feeling that the biggest tourist attraction in Venice, Italy wasn't the chicken fried steak.

The black-haired girl put her book away. "I'm Mackenzie," she said. "What's your name?"

"Sophie."

"You're new here, aren't you?" she asked.

I nodded. "My sister and I moved here from Cleveland in July."

That was our story: as far as everyone in Venice was concerned, Samantha and Sophia Shattenberg of Queens never existed. Instead, Sam and Fiona Scott of Cleveland had arrived in town after a car accident had killed their parents. (Felix decided we had to change at least one of our names, since he didn't want two sisters listed on the books anywhere as Samantha and Sophia, and he'd always had a fondness for the name Fiona.) Lucky me. I had to tell people that Sophie was my nickname.

The bell rang, interrupting us. Mr. Nichols, the teacher, took attendance and scrawled the word HERITAGE across the blackboard. Then he read a poem titled "Heritage" by the African-American writer Countee Cullen. It was about missing your homeland, where your ancestors are from, even if you've never been there yourself.

"What do you think about this subject, heritage?" Mr. Nichols asked, as he sat on the corner of his desk.

Everyone gaped at him like a convention of zombies.

"Mackenzie?" he asked.

She shifted in her seat, and her ears reddened. "Well, I guess for me…well, my family's part Native American. We're Hunkpapa Sioux from the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in South Dakota....But I've never been there, so I guess I can understand what the poem's talking about. Sometimes I feel pretty removed from my ancestors, too."

"Good, good," Mr. Nichols said, nodding. "Great. Anyone else?"

Everyone seemed suddenly preoccupied with the corn growing outside the window.

I could feel his eyes on me. Why had I sat in the front row? What had I been thinking? The last thing I wanted was to be put on the spot in front of a room full of strangers.

He glanced at a paper on his desk, and then back at me. "Fiona?" he asked.

"Um, people call me Sophie," I said. I could feel my face flush. I wanted to say that I was Jewish, that my dad had been born in Poland and he and his parents had escaped the Holocaust. My sister and I'd never been to Poland --- we hardly knew anything about it. I was certainly removed from my ancestors and my heritage, too. But I couldn't say any of this out loud, because I was supposedly Christian, from Cleveland.

I struggled to come up with something to say. "I guess, I mean in general, even if you've never been to the place where your people are from, you probably still have some sort of connection to it, to your heritage, I guess…or at least it probably makes your feelings about your heritage sort of complicated."

I wanted to sink under my chair, but Mr. Nichols nodded, smiling. "That's a good point."

I sighed, relieved, and made a mental note to talk to Sam about the "heritage" of the Scott family. We'd come up with a story about our parents, but hadn't gone back any further than that. We had to invent some midwestern grandparents for ourselves pronto, in case the question came up again.

Mr. Nichols got up from the corner of his desk and passed out a sheet of paper that listed class expectations for the year. We were going to read Huckleberry Finn, Macbeth, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and short stories in a book called Contemporary Literature. The red-headed boy sitting next to me yawned at the prospect of these books, but I couldn't wait to read them. I liked Mr. Nichols. He seemed eager and enthusiastic, and about a hundred years younger than my English teacher at LaGuardia.

I had always loved books. Our house in Queens had been filled with them, from floor to ceiling in the living room, dining room, and hallways. I missed all those books, my parents' books. I used to love picking one off the shelves, sitting on the living room couch and devouring the whole thing on a Sunday afternoon. Now I did that at our friend Colin's shop. He and his father owned a store called Wright Bicycles, Etc., which was heavy on the "Etc." --- in addition to used bikes, he sold antique furniture, tchotchkes, pottery, gargoyles, pocket watches, and shelves and shelves of used books. Sometimes I'd sit on his comfortable sofas and read all afternoon. I couldn't wait for him to get back in town.

When the bell rang, Mackenzie leaned over and asked what I had next.

I looked at my schedule. "Math, Biology, Lunch…"

"Fourth period? I've got lunch then too. I'll look for you," she said.

"Okay." I smiled. I was relieved to have someone to sit with at lunch. Mackenzie seemed cool and interesting. Sam was always bugging me about how I could read intelligent books and then buy Lucky magazine --- as if it was impossible to have a brain and also love makeup and clothes. From Mackenzie's outfit and her pale pink eyeshadow, it seemed like she understood that the two could go together.

The bell rang for second period; we said good-bye, and I somehow made it through Math and Biology without falling asleep. Then it was time for lunch.

I walked into the school cafeteria, but I didn't see Mackenzie anywhere. I looked all over, and my heart began to pound. Entering a new school lunchroom was one of the most intimidating situations in life, I was sure. More intimidating than climbing Mount Everest or trekking across the Antarctic. I decided to get on the cafeteria line instead of standing in the middle of the room. My stomach sank when I saw the man behind the lunch counter --- it was my old boss Henry. Henry had fired me for showing up late for work at the Rose Club concession stand and flirting with the club's lifeguard (who was also Noelle's ex-boyfriend), Troy Howard. Henry had since forgiven me, but he was never exactly a ray of sunshine.

"Hello, Fiona," he said. Even though I'd told him a million times to call me Sophie, he never seemed to get that straight.

"Hi Henry."

His white apron was stained with ketchup. He gripped a large ladle with his hairy fingers. "What'll it be for you today? We've got potato glop, pea goo, mystery meat, and mayo sandwiches with a little bit of tuna."

"I see you're in a cheery mood as usual," I said.

"Fiona, it's hotter than a pig on a spit back here. I'm sweating a river and it's not even noon." He stared at my outfit. "Still dressing like an undertaker, I see."

"Thanks, Henry. I'll have the mayo sandwich please."

He put the sandwich on my tray and I turned to scan the cafeteria. Where was Mackenzie? She didn't seem to be in here. I squinted out the window and noticed people outside. The cafeteria opened out onto a lawn with picnic tables. The lawn stretched on for half a mile, a blanket of bright green grass dotted with trees. Groups of students picnicked everywhere, despite the heat. Several girls sun-bathed in halter tops; a group of guys sprayed each other with water guns.

At one of the picnic tables I saw Noelle and her crowd. Colin's friends Fred and Larry were hanging out by the edge of the lawn, but I didn't know them very well. I didn't know where to go. I clutched my tray tightly; sweat formed under my palms.

Then someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around and almost sagged with relief. It was Mackenzie.

"Sorry," she said. "Mr. Spector kept us late in Chemistry. He's half deaf and wouldn't believe us when we told him the bell rang. Want to sit by the Old Tree?"

"Sure!" I didn't know where the Old Tree was but I was so happy to see her, I didn't care.

We walked outside to where a weeping willow tree grew, its branches dipping to the ground, and sat in its shade. Mackenzie unpacked a lunch her mom had made --- a goat cheese and apple sandwich with two slices of blueberry cake for dessert. She took one look at my tray and gave me half her sandwich and a whole piece of cake.

"Were you around this summer?" I asked her. I wished that she'd been hanging out at the pool . . . maybe then I would've had someone to talk to.

"My mom and I were away for most of it. She had a residency at an artists' community in Russia, and I went with her."

"Russia, really?" Considering that Indiana was the farthest my sister and I'd ever traveled, Russia sounded like another planet.

"A far cry from Venice, that's for sure," Mackenzie said. "It's good to be back, but Venice High is a weird place."

"Yeah. It's really different from my old school." I stared at my lunch tray. Hopefully she wouldn't ask too much about it.

"I bet it's a huge change from Cleveland. We have so many cliques here," she said, shaking her head.

"Like what?"

"Well there's the Ag clique --- farmer's kids wearing flannel shirts and jeans and overalls even though it's ninety degrees. And over there, you've got the jocks and cheerleaders --- my brother hangs out with them, he's on the football team." She rolled her eyes at the words "football team."

As I looked over, I noticed that Noelle and her friends were part of that crowd, too. Troy, the lifeguard from the country club, sat beside them --- apparently he and Noelle were friends again.

"Is Troy on the football team?"

She nodded. "Of course."

I felt awkward looking at Troy --- I couldn't believe I'd been so in love with him over the summer, before I finally accepted that he had the brains of a fruit fly. I'd even gone on a date with him (well, sort of a date --- the purpose of it was to find out information that would help us find Noelle). But half an hour after he dropped me off at home, Sam and I caught him making out with another girl at the drive-in.

"Then you've got the nerds, and then the punk and goth kids," Mackenzie continued, gesturing at the groups. "There are the faculty kids --- children of professors from Wilshire College, that small liberal arts school two towns over." Colin's friends Fred and Larry were hanging out with those kids.

"So what's your crowd then?" I asked her.

"I'm friends with some of the Ags --- my parents have a farm, about fifteen miles out of town --- and the faculty kids, who are more into the arts than most people around here, but I don't know…I guess I don't really have one crowd. All the groups here are sort of…you know. Groups. Sometimes I just wish I was growing up in a big city. I'm planning to go to college in New York."

"Really?" I smiled. If only I could tell her that was where I was from.

"I want to go to N.Y.U., or maybe to an art school, like Pratt."

I nodded, pretending I didn't know anything about those schools at all. My sister was supposed to be starting N.Y.U. right now, although according to our new identities she'd already graduated from college.

I wished I could tell Mackenzie about LaGuardia. I picked a blade of grass and rubbed it between my fingers. I missed my old school. I'd really been looking forward to all the courses I was going to take in the Vocal program --- opera and musical theater workshops, and Italian, German, and French vocal literature. I missed the state-of-the-art concert hall and recording studio…and the fact that the seniors got to give concerts at Carnegie Hall. Somehow, performing karaoke at the Rose Country Club for the next three years just didn't seem like much of a substitute.

Mackenzie took out a compact and applied a coat of lip gloss --- MAC Lipglass, I had the same kind --- then looked at her watch. "What do you have next?"

"Mechanics," I said.

"I took that last year. It's a good class," she said. "I learned how to install new brakes on my mom's truck."

I was liking Mackenzie more every minute --- she wore lip gloss and knew how to fix a car. She showed me her class schedule, to see if we had any other classes together. We did --- 7th period Music.

"Great --- I'll see you then," she said. We walked through the cafeteria and toward the main hall, where the bulletin boards were filled with flyers announcing all sorts of clubs and events and sign-up sheets --- Chess Club, Drama Club, 4-H Fair, Bible Study, Rose Society Meeting, Sadie Hawkins Dance, Winslow Chamber Music Concert. Then a pink flyer caught my eye, and my heart leapt into my throat.

WILSHIRE COLLEGE HILLEL SOCIETY
AND THE DEPARTMENT OF ART HISTORY
PRESENT
Professor Leo Shattenberg
"Ivan Sebrid: Story of An Artist"
A Lecture
Jewish Cultural Center
Eight Wilshire Way
8:00 pm Friday, September 12

I ripped it off the board, my hand shaking.

"What's that?" Mackenzie asked.

"Um --- a lecture --- "

She studied the flyer. "Ivan Sebrid? I saw one of his paintings this summer. He's amazing," she said.

I'd heard of Ivan Sebrid --- I vaguely remembered seeing ads for an exhibit of his work at the Jewish Museum in New York. My heart raced so fast I could barely breathe. Our real name, Shattenberg, was not a common name --- I'd never met another Shattenberg before. Leo Shattenberg was the name of one of our relatives, who had supposedly died over fifty years ago, during the war.

"You're staring at that flyer as if it says you won a million dollars," Mackenzie said.

I struggled to get my heart back into my chest. "It --- it looks like an interesting lecture," I stammered, trying to sound casual. This was better than a million dollars. All I could think was that I might have just found our only living relative in the world.

Excerpted from Case #2: CHOCOLATE LOVER © Copyright 2004 by Margo Rabb. Reprinted with permission by Puffin Books, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. All rights reserved.

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