I grab his hand, stagger, and the world dizzies around me. Ian wraps his arm around my waist, steadying me. My dad used to put his arm around me like that and I liked it, liked the comfortable feeling. Some part of me notices that his arm isn’t even warm. It’s cold. It makes no sense.
“You’re amazing,” I tell him. “I’ve never seen anyone that fast.”
“I do okay.”
“Okay?”
“Lots of training.”
My eyes lock with Nick’s eyes. He’s not winded, but he is sweaty, musky smelling. He glares at me and I’m suddenly super conscious of Ian’s arm around me.
“Everyone is an amazing runner here,” I pant, bending over again. “I can’t believe how good everyone is.”
“You were too,” Ian says. “You need a little Maine training, that’s all.”
The gym teacher pounds me on the back. “I want you on the team. That time! That’s a minute better than the girls’ Maine state record. I can’t believe it.”
I nod and smile. My heart lifts and starts to settle. The world loses its blurry edges. Ian still hangs onto my waist. He says something, but I’m too tired to hear it. Nick stands near Devyn, hands on his hips. There’s a little sweat on his forehead and he wipes it off with his hand before his eyes sear into mine.
That’s all it takes. I’m hooked.
Sitophobia
fear of eating
The PE teacher is tallying up everyone’s times and giving them out. Nick’s eyes are still locked with mine. He mouths the word again, “User.”
I open my own mouth to say something. But before I can he turns his back to me and walks away.
Ian scowls and points at Nick. “He bothering you?”
“I don’t know,” I answer honestly, pulling away.
Ian’s face clenches. “Ignore him, okay? He’s a jerk. He’s got this cop-complex thing going on.”
“Cop complex?”
“Thinks he knows everything. Thinks he’s better than everybody else. He isn’t. He’s just an overgrown thug who can run. He’s been a freak ever since Devyn’s accident, and then this other kid ran away last week and Nick’s all ��there could be a serial killer.’ I swear he watches way too many crime shows. It’s no wonder his parents took off.”
“Took off?”
“Supposedly on some photography work. They do nature movies. I don’t know. I like your shirt.”
I glance down at my U2 T-shirt. Sweat mars the light gray of it and it seems crumpled, all used up after a hard run. The title of their old album, War, has started to flake off. I can’t stop thinking about Nick. “He seems so . . . I don’t know . . . stressed.”
Ian takes me by the shoulders. Maine people are way too intense. I try to back away. His fingers sink in and hold.
“Zara, just ignore him,” he repeats. His fingers relax and he flicks some lint off my shoulder. “He’s a jerk. Okay?”
Nick stands by Devyn. He taps the wheel on Devyn’s chair with his foot. I meet his eyes.
“Okay,” I say to Ian.
But I know I’m lying.
I know I don’t want to stay away.
The rest of the morning goes fine, as far as the first day in a new school goes. There’s a lot of gawking at me and whispering. Issie tries to explain who everyone is, but the names and connections don’t stick. I can’t remember anything.
“Is the blond guy Jay Dahlberg?” I ask Issie as we charge down the stairs to the cafeteria.
“No, that’s Paul Rasku, who makes the pumpkin bombs,” Issie explains for the eight hundreth time. “Jay Dahlberg is the skater who made this sound-cannon thing out of a nine-foot-long cardboard tube. It’s super cool. He trumpets through it during basketball and soccer games and stuff.”
“I give up.”
“You’ll get it,” Issie reassures me.
I can’t believe I live here now.
But Issie is terribly sweet. She and Devyn sit with me at lunch, which, having watched enough Disney tween movies, was what I worried about the most. The whole “new girl alone in the lunch room” thing.
I’m pretty content, actually.
I bite into my veggie sandwich and stare at Devyn’s happy face. “So, you guys have always lived in Maine?”
Devyn nods. “Yep. But Issie moved up here from Portland.”
“In first grade,” I remember.
Issie laughs and points at Devyn with her carrot stick. “I already told her.”
She yawns a ferocious yawn—I can see down to her tonsils—and stretches her arms over her head.
Devyn reaches over and covers Issie’s mouth as she yawns. “I wonder where Nick is?”
I must have made some sort of frightened face because Devyn explains, “Nick’s cool. He just has this weird protector thing going on.”
I open up my sandwich. The lettuce is limp against the bread. I shut it again and twirl the string on my finger.
“Do you have an Amnesty International chapter here?” I ask, changing the subject. I wipe my mouth and pluck a cucumber out of my sandwich.
“I have always wanted an Amnesty chapter. Are you in Amnesty?” Issie pops up. She’s been staring at her pizza slice, picking off the pepperoni. Devyn scoops them off her plate and gobbles them down. She smiles at him. “He always does that. He’s so into protein. He eats raw meat.”
“Like sushi?” I ask.
“Yeah, like sushi . . . ,” Issie’s voice trails off.
“Some people are afraid of fish. It’s called ichthyophobia,” I say, and then cover my mouth with my hand. I try not to give people useless phobia information, but Devyn is into it.
“Hey, that’s better than ideophobia,” he says.
My hands drop down. “You know what ideophobia is?”
Issie answers for him. “Devyn knows everything about phobias and mental conditions.”
“My parents are psychiatrists,” he explains. “Ideophobia is the fear of ideas.”
“Duh, even I could get that one.” Issie wiggles her nose at him. “But anyway, about Amnesty. We should start a chapter, shouldn’t we, Devyn?”
He nods and wipes the pepperoni grease off his fingers.
Life here could be okay after all, really, if it weren’t so cold.