Time to start homework, I tell myself. I usually like working in the kitchen because I can lay out all my binders and see everything I have to do. Plus, I’ll know as soon as anyone else comes home, which won’t be for hours now.
I pick up my phone, hoping for a text from David. An apology, maybe, or an explanation. But the screen is blank. I slide under the covers, trying to get warm, and scroll through my contacts, looking for someone I can talk to. They’re all boys—David, Jefferson, Andrew, Kai, Max, Spencer. No one who would understand. Of course, I do have Carli’s number, and Sarah’s, from before, when we were friends, but what would I say? And what would they say? I flash on Sarah, in the girls’ bathroom. He’s got a thing for you. Do you like him? She wouldn’t get it either.
I grab my purple squishy pillow and my stuffed bunny, and curl up under the covers.
“It was nothing,” I say out loud. “It didn’t mean anything.”
Then I do the stupidest thing ever: I bury my face in Bunny and start crying.
DAVID
I drop my backpack by the kitchen table and go right to the refrigerator. Sometimes, Inez makes Brazilian desserts, like brigadeiros, which are these yummy chocolate fudge balls rolled in chocolate sprinkles, or quindim, which are little coconut-topped custards. They’re my favorite. I open the fridge and there’s nothing sweet and delicious, but I keep standing there like I’m looking for something, and what I see is me, leaning in toward Sammie and—
I slam the fridge door shut. “Inez?” I call. “Inezzz!”
In the basement, the dryer clangs shut, which means she’s doing laundry. I know she can hear me but she doesn’t respond because she doesn’t like it when I holler for her. It’s disrespectful, she says. I don’t want to be disrespectful, but I also don’t want to be alone. I want her to stay with me, to talk to me, to take care of me.
I wait, listening as the dryer hums to life and Inez clomps back upstairs.
“You’re waiting on me to get you a snack?” she asks.
“Please?” I say. “I know I can get it myself, but I want something you make.”
“What?”
I want something special, something that will taste really good, something I can’t even name. I think and think about all the great things Inez cooks, and I finally decide. “A broiled banana. Please.” Inez makes the most awesome broiled bananas, with butter and brown sugar.
“All right,” she says, and then in a singsong voice, adds, “since you asked so nice.”
While the banana cooks, I turn on the little TV that my parents installed in the kitchen for Inez, so she can watch her favorite Brazilian shows on Netflix. She clomps over and turns it off. “No TV on school days. You know that.”
The “no TV on school days” rule is one of my parents’ stupidest rules.
“It’s Friday,” I plead. “The weekend. I’ve spent the entire week doing schoolwork. I need a break.”
“Then go outside and run around, get some fresh air.”
First, I am a person who likes stale, indoor air, preferably breathed in while watching TV. Second, yesterday’s warm spell was followed by a cold front so everything that melted has refrozen, including my entire backyard, and playing outside could lead to a broken arm or even frostbite. But when Inez decides something, even reason and fact won’t sway her.
I sigh, and yank my binder out of my backpack, slamming it down on the kitchen table maybe a little too hard because Inez, who’s been preparing my broiled banana, stops and turns slowly and looks at me with her special warning look. I take a breath and very gently, I open my binder.
But I can’t concentrate. I think about telling Inez what happened on the bus, asking for her advice, but I can’t imagine saying the words I would need to say out loud, to Inez. Instead, I pull out a stack of drawing paper. I don’t plan on it, but my pencil just goes, and I’m drawing a little boy, his father’s hand gripped tightly onto to his shoulder, and a ball rolling toward him. I fill the paper with the scene, then take a clean sheet and draw the girl, running, a cloud of hair streaming out behind her. I draw her from the boy’s perspective. I draw the boy and a baseball tee, swinging and missing, the ball flying right past his bat. I draw and draw and draw, turning the memories in my head into scenes on paper. The drawings feel stronger and truer than what happened on the bus. They’re the real story, the story I want to remember. I’m so caught up in them that I don’t even notice when Inez sets my snack down next to me. When I finally look up, I’ve got half a dozen sheets of paper strewn over the table, and the melted brown sugar on my banana has hardened into a shiny coating.
Monday, February 9
DAVID
On Friday night, right before I got into bed, I texted Sammie, I’m sorry. But I hit delete instead of send because the whole thing was an accident, and I knew Sammie would know that, and it would be weird to apologize for something that was just an accident. I texted her about hanging out on Saturday, but she never answered. She didn’t answer last night either when I texted her about the math homework.
So just in case, if she is mad, I’m going to tell her the truth. About how I didn’t mean it like maybe it happened, and about how Luke ruined everything. Because the real truth is that it was all Luke’s fault.
At the bus stop, I joke around with Kyle and Kevin Jenkins, who’re twins and in eighth grade, and even though I can’t exactly hear what they’re saying because there’s a funny pounding sound in my ears, I crack silly jokes and laugh at whatever they say back to me.
When the bus pulls up, I’m planning how I’ll sit in my regular seat, next to Luke, and Sammie will get on two stops later and sit in her regular seat, across the aisle, and I’ll tell the elephant fart joke, and Sammie and Luke will laugh.
Except when I step into the bus, Luke’s in Sammie’s seat, and I know they arranged it this way. They texted each other last night when Sammie was ignoring me, and she likes him and not me. So I walk right to that seat and sit down next to Luke so Sammie can’t.
“How come you’re sitting here?” I ask.
“I just felt like it,” Luke says. “Hey, great game last night, huh?”
I don’t even answer him because he’s such a liar. Instead, I pull out my phone and start playing Candy Crush, and I ignore him the entire rest of the bus ride. Even when Sammie gets on and sits in the front row, next to the bus monitor, which is a really weird thing to do, I don’t say anything.
SAMMIE
It will be like it never happened, I tell myself. And besides, it was just a joke. One of David’s stupid jokes. But when I step up into the bus and they’re both in my seat, I feel like I’ve been punched in the face. The two of them. A team. Ganged up against me. Again.
Without thinking, I sit down in the very first seat, next to the bus monitor.
No one sits in the front seat. Ever. The empty space next to the bus monitor is like the no-man’s-land between two opposing armies.
I turn and look right at her, ready to give her a big smile to show that I’m completely normal and there’s some kind of logical reason that I’m sitting next to her. But she won’t even look in my direction. Every time she stands up to survey the rest of the bus and holler at the kids who are messing around, she completely ignores me.
At school, I shut myself into the girls’ bathroom by the main office, where no one ever goes, until the bell rings for first period.
I make it through the morning, spend lunch in the girls’ bathroom, and am on my way to math when I remember where I sit: right between the two of them. My stomach clenches into a small, hard knot of fear, and it’s not even a lie when I go to the nurse’s office and tell Mrs. Sirkin that I feel really sick.
She has me lie down on one of the cots, and pulls the curtain around me.
As long as I’m lying down and not thinking about math class, I feel okay. But when Mrs. Sirkin pokes her head in and asks, “On a scale of one to ten, how bad is the pain?” the knot returns.
“Seven,” I sa
y. That’s not totally true, but I triangulate between the real-pain score, which is a four, and the fear-of-math-class score, which is a ten.
So she calls Dad. “No fever,” she tells him. “The pain seems to come and go. But Sammie’s not a frequent flyer here. This is only the third time she’s been in my office in a year and a half. I’d give her the benefit of the doubt.”
She hangs up and comes to tell me that Dad has a break in patients and can pick me up in twenty minutes, and I don’t protest.
In the car, Dad waits until I’ve got my seat belt on, then hands me a plastic bin, in case I’m going to puke. “I’m seeing a lot of stomach bugs in the office,” he says. “Usually it’s a twenty-four-hour thing.”
I think about trying to explain what’s going on, but I don’t know how to. I glance over at him. He’s loosened his tie and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. A few white chest hairs poke out.
“David and Luke,” I say.
“Are they sick too? No surprise you’ve got it, then.”
“On the bus,” I try.
A picture pops into my head, of Dad and me at the beach, maybe four or five years ago. My mother and the Peas are lying on towels, all reading their summer beach books and working on their perfect tans. Dad and me? We’re in the water, with our boogie boards. It’s up to my chest, and there’s a giant wave heading straight toward us. I’m scared but I don’t want to show it. Dad shouts, “Paddle, Buddy!” I climb up onto my board, turn to face the shore, and start paddling as hard as I can. But the wave catches me and crashes right on top of me and I’m tumbling underwater, over and over. I’m lost and choking, and I don’t know which way is up or where the ocean floor is. When I finally surface, salt water in my nose and the back of my throat, hair plastered all over my face, Dad is right there, grinning, ready to drag me back out to the deep water and the big waves. And I go.
“What about the bus?” Dad asks.
“Nothing,” I say. “I just—I started to feel sick this morning on the bus.”
He reaches over and pats my knee. “It’ll pass.”
Tuesday, February 10
DAVID
Sammie’s not at lunch or in math on Monday, and not on the bus home. Then this morning she does that weird thing of sitting in the front row, next to the bus monitor. I want to ask Luke if he knows what’s going on with her, but I don’t want him to know that I care. Or that she’s not talking to me.
I walk into school with Luke, past the Corey-Markus crew (“’sup,” “word,” “dude”), trying to figure out some way to get Sammie alone, and thinking about faking stomach cramps so Luke will go to first period without me. But then he says, “I have to go to the guidance counselor’s office. I’ll catch up with you in social studies.”
The office is in the west wing, down the hall from Sammie’s first-period science class, so I say, “I’ll walk with you.”
“It’s okay,” Luke says. “I’ll just meet you in class.”
“No biggie,” I say. “I have to pick up something in the science room anyway.”
We’re on our way there when we pass Spencer and Kai, standing by their lockers.
“Hey,” I say.
“What are you guys doing over here?” Spencer asks.
Luke mumbles something about picking up a form and keeps walking.
I stop, wondering why Luke is being so weird about going to the guidance office. “I’m looking for someone,” I tell Spencer and Kai.
“Sammie?” Spencer asks. “Are you looking for Sammie? I heard about you guys on the bus on Friday.”
“What do you mean?” I say, my voice sounding odd. Guilty.
Spencer blushes. “You and Luke and Sammie. On the bus.”
“We heard—” Kai interrupts. Then he stops, and starts to blush too. “You guys were teasing her.”
“Touching her,” Spencer says. “Like—”
“No,” I interrupt. “Nothing happened.”
Andrew appears, with Jefferson and Max trailing behind.
“What happened?” Andrew asks.
“Nothing,” I say. “Nothing happened.”
“On the bus,” Spencer says. “David says nothing happened on the bus on Friday, but we heard—”
“Oh yeah,” Jefferson says. “I heard about the bus on Friday. You and Luke with Sammie.”
Andrew chimes in. “We heard you had Sammie trapped between the two of you, and—”
“No,” I say. “I didn’t do anything. I was just . . . trying to give her something. And then the bus stopped short, and I kind of bumped into her.”
“The girls on my bus,” Kai insists, “said you kissed her, and you and Luke were, like, grabbing—”
“No,” I say. “I mean, Luke was flirting with her, but I—”
“Who was I flirting with?” Luke asks, appearing out of nowhere.
“Sammie,” Kai says. “Did you kiss her on the bus? On Friday?”
Luke makes a psht noise. “On the bus? Why would I try to kiss her on the bus? I was just flirting. Fooling around a little. Girls like that stuff. They like the attention.”
I was on the bus, and I know Sammie didn’t like it. But if I say that, I’m back in the story. So I keep my mouth shut. The rest of it doesn’t matter. The person I need to explain things to is Sammie.
SAMMIE
It’s the only way I’m going to be able to get through math class. So before school, I go straight to Mrs. Knell’s room and knock on her door.
She looks up from her computer and smiles. “Come on in, Sammie. What can I do you for?”
“I was wondering if I could move my seat.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Fine,” I say. “I just . . . want to be closer to the board.”
Mrs. Knell loves me. I’m not the best math student in the class—Sean Cibelli is—but I always do my homework, and I always raise my hand.
“What’s going on?”
I can’t tell Mrs. Knell about the bus or the boys, so instead I lie. “I think I might not be seeing the board clearly. I think it would help to be closer.”
“Have you had your eyes checked?”
“My dad made an appointment for me,” I lie some more, “but it’s not for a couple of weeks.”
“Let’s see, then,” Mrs. Knell says, pulling out her seating chart. She looks at the paper, then at the desks in the room. “How about here?” she asks, pointing to Amanda Archer’s desk in the second row, between Haley and Sean.
Amanda Archer gets whatever she wants, including choosing her seat in every class. If she’s sitting in the second row between Haley and Sean, that’s where she wants to be. But I figure Mrs. Knell knows what she’s doing.
“I think it’ll be a nice change for you,” Mrs. Knell says as she erases Amanda’s name and pencils me into that spot. “Nice for Haley too.”
“Sounds great,” I say. I wonder why Mrs. Knell thinks it’ll be nice for Haley, and if she’d still think it was nice if she knew about our “stuck-up” conversation.
After lunch, I’m in my new seat when the first bell rings, and still in it when Haley arrives. She sits down and gives me a quick smile.
“Mrs. Knell moved my seat,” I say. I try to smile a friendly, not-stuck-up sort of smile.
“Oh,” says Haley. “Nice.”
She leans over and pulls a binder out of her backpack. The whole front is decorated with stickers and washi tape. There are three silhouette stickers of softball players, a couple of quotes, and a cute kitten photo. My binder is completely plain and boring. And yellow. Which suddenly seems like a dumb color. I’m wondering whether the Peas have washi tape and might help me decorate my binders, when Haley pulls out her planner and opens it. Everything is color coded. I kind of gasp.
“Wow,” I say. “That’s the most organized planner I’ve ever seen.”
Haley smiles. “I love my planner.”
“Me too,” I say, then roll my eyes. “I mean, I love my planner.” I pull it out to sho
w her. “But I think you have me beat with the color usage.”
“Hey, Sammie,” Sean says from the other side of me. “How come Mrs. Knell moved your seat? Are you failing math?”
I know Sean’s not trying to be rude. He’s just wired differently. I turn and smile at him, but he doesn’t notice because he’s drawing some kind of bird in the white space of his math homework paper. There are four colored pencils neatly lined up at the top right corner of his desk.
“No, I’m not failing math,” I say. “I asked to sit closer to the board because I was getting headaches. I kind of have one right now, actually.”
“You should take some Tylenol,” Sean says.
“Thanks,” I say.
“I like sitting in the second row,” Sean says. “I sit in the second row in all my classes. I have an accommodation for it. I don’t like the front row.”
“Same,” I say. “About the front row, I mean.”
Amanda walks into class, and stops when she sees me in her seat.
“What’s going on?” she asks no one in particular.
I figure it’s not my job to explain the seat change to everyone, so I take out my pencil case and dig around to find my favorite pencil, a mechanical one with a really nice, squishy purple grip.
“Where am I supposed to sit?” Amanda says.
Mrs. Knell, who has been writing the Do Now on the board, turns around.
“Oh, Amanda,” she says, “I made a few seat changes. You’re right there.” She points to my old seat.
Amanda stares right at me, stabbing me with her eyeballs. She stomps to her new seat.
“Whoa,” I say under my breath, kind of to Haley, “if looks could kill, I think I’d be dead.”
Haley grins and whispers, “Off with your head!”
I start to laugh, and turn it into a cough.
At that moment, Luke and David walk in. The two musketeers. My stomach clenches up and I try to focus all my attention on copying the Do Now into my notebook. I keep my head down and work the problem out. Then I look up and keep my eyes on the board. I don’t turn around at all. The entire class. But I can feel them, behind me, together.
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