The bell rings. Anyone who enters at this point is officially tardy.
Before the teacher can numb my brain with an hour of droning, the door creaks open, and a new kid slides in. New Kid is kind of a big deal because people don’t move to Farmburg, Illinois, by choice; you can guess what’s around here by the name of the town. He’s almost as tall as Ryan with a mop of brown hair, not curly, but messy and hiding most of his face. Though it’s late September, he’s got on an old army surplus jacket, which pretty much hides any sense of chest and shoulders. His legs are long, though, feet encased in battered boots. They’re not Docs, more like something soldiers would actually march in. His jeans are faded, torn up and down one leg, but in his case, I don’t think it’s a fashion statement. You can tell intentional grunge from pure wear. He keeps his head down as he hands a slip to Mackiewicz.
The math teacher skims it, then drops it on his desk. “Please welcome Shane Cavendish, transferring in from Michigan City. Take any empty desk.”
What Mackiewicz hasn’t told New Kid Shane is that he’ll be stuck wherever he sits for the rest of the year. I wish I could warn him. Shane never looks up entirely, his shoulders hunched like this is a horrible ordeal. Though I was thirteen when I first hit JFK, I still remember that awful feeling, like a pit in my stomach, because starting over just sucks so hard, especially when other stuff is bad, too.
Shane skims the room and then he’s coming down the aisle one over from me. He drops into the desk with the uneven leg. It rocks a little, making it annoying to write, but he doesn’t move even after he discovers the fault. It’s like he just wants to disappear, but people watch him get his supplies out like it’s fascinating.
Finally, Mackiewicz gets started on the lesson, and I tune out. Fifty minutes later, my brain switches back on. My notebook is empty. As the bell rings, I scrawl the assignment, which I’ll make a mess of, into my work diary. I’d like to say something to the new kid, but before I can, he’s up like a shot. At the door, Dylan Smith, one of the jocks, shoulder slams Shane into the jamb, and his buddies do the same on the way out. Yeah, I guess they’ve decided where he fits in the pecking order. Because he doesn’t have the right haircut or the right clothes, he’s an auto-reject? It totally sucks.
“You all right?” I ask, but if he heard the question, he’s ignoring me.
He doesn’t turn. I tell myself it’s because if he acknowledges my concern, then the bad junk is real. To face the day at the new school, he told himself, This time it’ll be different. You can lie to yourself about all kinds of things. Until you can’t, anymore. Until reality pounds a hole through your fantasy castle and the reality check must be cashed.
But he must be fronting because nobody ever wants to be lonely. You just pretend not to care if anyone talks to you because otherwise, you’re the desperate loser begging for friends. Whatever, Shane’s gone, long strides eating up the hallway, and he’s not even rubbing his shoulder, like he’s used to pain.
For some reason, that bothers me.
CHAPTER TWO
After school, I stick a Post-it on Emily Franklin’s locker. Seeing as she dumped her lunch tray everywhere in the cafeteria, I figure she could use an ego boost. I don’t always stick around to watch people read like I did that first time. Sometimes I have places to be.
Like today.
I unlock my bike from the rack out front. My house is two and a half miles from school, not an easy distance, but I’m determined. Riding five miles daily should keep me fit, but it’s bulked up my thighs while doing little for my butt. There are probably other exercises I should try, but I don’t care enough. Pedaling doggedly—while responding to the occasional greeting—carries me home.
Aunt Gabby is still at work when I arrive. She manages a new age place, where they sell healing crystals and hand-dipped candles. You’d think there wouldn’t be much market for that in a small Midwestern town, and mostly, you’d be right. Which is why she spends a lot of time filling Web orders. There’s a light walk-in business, but mostly she parcels things up and takes them to the post office.
Home is a two-bedroom bungalow, the exterior painted a cheerful robin’s egg blue. The house has pine-green shutters and a fanciful menagerie of statues in the front yard. Now, in early fall, the garden is bright with orange and yellow mums, an explosion of color curling around the side of the house. The lawn itself is browning around the edges, as we’re in a bit of a drought.
We live in a western subdivision, not far enough from the town center for the farms to take over. Once you leave Farmburg, drive four miles in any direction and fields are all you’ll see. It’s a fair drive to the interstate from here, so we don’t get highway traffic often. In the spring, there’s nothing but fertilizer and in the fall, there’s the scent of cut hay. This is a peaceful place, I suppose, better than where I’ve been. Most of the houses around ours are bigger, but they lack the quirky charm my aunt has cultivated. I imagine our neighborhood looks like a patchwork quilt from above, but since I’ve never been on a plane, I wouldn’t know.
After parking my bike in the shed out back, I let myself in, passing the hand-carved umbrella stand and driftwood coatrack. Aunt Gabby has a thing for primitive arts and crafts and natural furnishings, so our place looks like a roadside museum. The result is bright and cozy. My room is nestled at the back of the house, past the bathroom. It’s small, so I’ve got a battered bureau, a bookshelf made of reclaimed lumber and cinder blocks, painted scarlet and yellow for cheer, and a daybed that we bought at the thrift store downtown, and then sprayed a shiny gold. I’ve piled the bed with tons of throw pillows in all manner of fabrics, mostly inspired from watching Arabian Nights, as there’s lots of satin and sparkle. I never crafted or sewed before coming to Aunt Gabby, but she taught me, so I made the pillows myself. My closet is tiny, too, but that’s fine, as I don’t have many clothes. I hide that fact by rotating my skirts and leggings with different tanks and shrugs.