Imagination…
As soon as she faced the board, it happened again.
Turn and stare. It was still. Look at the board. It humped up. As if something were wriggling inside it.
It must be waves of hot air, or something wrong with her eyes.
Very slowly and carefully, Cassie edged her foot over to the backpack. She stared at the blackboard as she lifted her foot and then brought it down suddenly on the “hump.”
All she felt was the flatness of her French book.
She hadn't realized she was holding her breath until it sighed out. Her eyes shut in helpless relief…
And then something beneath her foot writhed. She felt it under her Reebok.
With a piercing shriek, she leaped to her feet.
“What is the matter?” the teacher cried. Now everyone really was staring at her.
“There's something-something in my backpack. It moved.” Cassie had a hard time not clutching at the teacher's arm. “No, don't-don't reach in there…”
Shaking her off, the teacher held the backpack open. Then she plunged her hand inside and pulled out a long rubber snake.
Rubber.
“Is this supposed to be funny?” the teacher demanded.
“It's not mine,” Cassie said stupidly. “I didn't put it there.”
She was gazing, mesmerized, at the flopping, bobbing rubber head and the painted black rubber tongue. It looked real, but it wasn't. It was unalive. Dead meat?
“It did move,” she whispered. “I felt it move… I thought. It must have just been my foot shifting.”
The class was watching silently. Looking up, Cassie thought she saw a flash of something like pity on the teacher's face, but the next moment it was gone.
“All right, everybody. Let's get back to work,” the teacher said, dropping the snake on her desk and returning to the blackboard. Cassie spent the rest of the period with her eyes locked on those of the rubber snake. It never moved again.
Cassie looked through the glass at the cafeteria full of laughing, talking students. French class had passed in a blur. And the paranoia, the feeling that people were looking at her and then deliberately turning their backs, kept growing.
I should go outside, she thought, but of course that was ridiculous. Look where going outside had gotten her yesterday. No, she would do today what she should have done then: walk up and ask somebody if she could sit next to them.
All right. Do it. It would have been easier if she hadn't been feeling so giddy. Lack of sleep, she thought.
She stopped, with her filled tray, beside two girls eating at a square table built for four. They looked nice, and more important, they looked like sophomores. They should be glad to have a junior sit with them.
“Hi,” she heard her own voice saying, disembodied but polite. “Can I sit here?”
They looked at each other. Cassie could almost see the frantic telegraphing. Then one spoke up.
“Sure… but we were just leaving. Help yourself.” She picked up her tray and made for the garbage can. The other girl looked dismayed an instant, gazing down at her own tray. Then she followed.
Cassie stood as if she'd taken root in the floor.
Okay, that was too bad-you picked somebody who was just leaving, all right. But that's no reason to be upset…
Even though their lunches were only half eaten?
With a supreme effort, she made herself walk over to another table. A round one this time, seating six. There was one seat empty.
Don't ask, she thought. Just sit. She put her tray down at the empty place, shrugged her backpack off her shoulder, and sat. She kept her eyes glued to her tray, concentrating on one piece of pepperoni in her slice of pizza. She didn't want to seem to be asking permission of anyone.
All around her, conversation died. Then she heard the scraping of chairs.
Oh my God I don't believe this I don't believe this is happening it's not true…
But it was. Her worst nightmare. Something so much worse than dead dolls or rubber snakes.
In a daze of unreality she looked up to see every other occupant of the table rising. They were picking up their lunches; they were leaving. But unlike the two nice sophomore girls, they weren't heading for the garbage cans. They were just moving to other tables, one here, another there, anywhere they could fit in.
Away from her. Anywhere so long as it was away from her.
“Mom… ?” She looked down at the shut eyes with their thick black lashes, the pale face.
She didn't know how she'd made it through the rest of school today, and when she came home, her grandmother said her mom had been doing worse. Not a lot worse, nothing to be worried about, but worse. She needed peace and quiet. She'd taken some sleeping medicine.
Cassie stared at the dark circles under the shut eyes. Her mother looked sick. And more than that, fragile. Vulnerable. So young.
“Mom…” Her voice was pleading but hollow. Her mother stirred, a twinge of pain crossing her face. Then she was still again.
Cassie felt the numbness sink in a little deeper. There was nobody to help her here.
She turned and left the room.
In her own bedroom, she put the chalcedony piece in her jewelry box and didn't touch it again. So much for luck.
The creaking and rattling of the house kept her up that night, too.
On Thursday morning, there was a bird in her locker. A stuffed owl. It stared at her with shining round yellow eyes. A custodian happened to be passing by, and she pointed it out to him mutely, her hand shaking. He took it away.
That afternoon, it was a dead goldfish. She made a funnel of a sheet of paper and scooped it out. She didn't go near her locker for the rest of the day.
She didn't go near the cafeteria, either. And she spent lunch in the farthest corner of the library.
It was there that she saw the girl again.
The girl with the shining hair, the girl she'd given up on ever meeting. It was hardly surprising that Cassie
hadn't seen her at school before this moment. These days Cassie slunk around like a shadow, walking through the halls with her eyes on the ground, speaking to no one. She didn't know why she was at school at all, except that there was nowhere else to go. And if she had seen the girl, she'd probably have run the other way. The thought of being rejected by her as Cassie was rejected by everyone else at school was unbearable.
But now Cassie looked up from her table at the back of the library and saw a brightness like sunlight.