EZRA MOTHA-EFFING FAULKNER, YO!
(you owe me for the Gatorade piss)
I couldn’t help it—I burst out laughing.
The room went deadly silent, and Toby grinned like he’d just won the Ping-Pong world championship. Ms. Weng frowned at me. I quickly turned my laughter into a fake coughing fit, and Cassidy leaned over and helpfully whacked me on the back. To my deepest shame, this made me actually start coughing in earnest.
By the time I got it under control, it had sort of become an event.
“Sorry,” Cassidy whispered.
I shrugged like it didn’t matter, but when she wasn’t looking, I scribbled her name onto the sign-up sheet in payback and then passed it forward. For the remainder of class, we worked in pairs structuring a parliamentary debate. Cassidy and I partnered together.
“What’s a picket fencer?” I pressed, when she made no move to start the assignment.
“It’s, well, it’s when you place first in every round at a tournament.” She sighed, fiddling with her still-capped pen. “Your cumulative’s a row of ones, like a little picket fence.”
I considered this, the idea not just of winning, but doing so without a single defeat, as Toby wandered over and pulled up a chair.
“Yeah, hi,” he said. “In case you were wondering, you’re not going to have to turn that in.”
“You’re sure?” I asked.
“I swear it on the grave of my sweet dead hamster Petunia,” he said, which wasn’t exactly reassuring since, to my knowledge, Toby had never owned a hamster. “Ms. Weng asked me to come up with a random topic during break as an exercise. Technically, I’m not in this class. I’m her student aide.”
“So you’re her Weng-man?” Cassidy asked.
The three of us laughed, and it struck me that Cassidy and Toby knew each other. That, if anyone was an outsider, it wasn’t the new girl, it was me.
When the bell rang, Ms. Weng told us to hold on to our debates, and Toby mouthed, “Told you so.”
The classroom began to clear out, and I watched Cassidy fasten the buckles on her satchel. Her hair was half pinned up into this crown of braids, and with the sharp planes of her cheekbones and her pale skin, she looked as though she’d stepped out of a different era, one where people bought war bonds and decamped to the countryside to avoid air raids. I’d never seen anyone like her, and I couldn’t help but stare.
“Come on,” Toby said, and Cassidy glanced up, nearly catching me staring. “Join me for lunch. You’re coming too, Faulkner. I could use a new sidekick.”
“Actually, I’m going to Chipotle,” I said. “With Evan and Jimmy and them.”
But it sounded ridiculous, and even as I said it, I knew I wasn’t really going.
“Sure you are.” Toby laughed. “I’m not taking no for an answer. Now let’s go, for my harem does not eat before I have graced them with my magnificence.”
7
THE MOMENT I entered the quad, I realized I’d made a grand miscalculation: Jimmy and Evan hadn’t gone to Chipotle after all. All of my old friends had stayed on campus. I could see them there, at the choice table near the wall that divided the upper and lower quads. The water polo and tennis guys were squished around the too-small table, balancing girlfriends on their laps. Charlotte’s Song Squad crowd sat on the wall, drinking Diet Cokes and swinging their bare legs. It wasn’t quite the same crew as last year, but the composition didn’t matter. It was still that table, the one where the laughter carried across the quad and everyone who heard it wished they were in on the joke.
“Yo, Captain!” Luke Sheppard called, catching sight of Toby and waving.
I could feel everyone watching as we crossed the quad: Toby in his bow tie, Cassidy in her crown of braids, and me, with the sleeve of my black hoodie pulled low over my wrist brace, trying to look as though I needed my cane less than I actually did.
Toby ushered us over to one of the better-placed tables in the upper quad, an eight-seater with a gray beach umbrella, half full of our year’s resident eccentrics. “Meet the rest of our school’s illustrious debate team,” he said, and for a moment I thought he was joking.
There was Luke Sheppard, the president of the film club, with his hipster glasses and signature smirk. The year before, our whole school had followed this blog called Auto-Tune the Principal, and while Luke had never outright claimed credit, everyone knew it was him. Sitting next to Luke was Sam Mayfield, looking like he’d gotten lost on his way home from the country club. Sam smacked of future lawyer, and even though he was a junior, he’d been head of the Campus Republicans for as long as I could remember. Across from Sam, drinking a can of Red Bull and playing some game on his iPad, was Austin Covelli, our school’s resident graphic designer. Austin was the guy who whipped up the yearbook cover and designed the school sweatshirts. Back during sophomore year, he’d launched an online T-shirt store.
Mostly, I’d been picturing Toby’s friends as a bunch of obscure honor-roll students, the sort who clubbed together out of social necessity and made it through high school largely unnoticed. Not these guys.
“Look who I found,” Toby said gleefully.
Luke’s jaw dropped. Sam let out an incredulous laugh.
“Well, well, if it isn’t Cassidy Thorpe,” Austin said, flicking his shaggy blond hair out of his eyes without looking away from his game. “What the heck are you doing here?”