by Carol Snow
Angel rolled her eyes. “MySpace is over, Dad. Duh.”
“Even I knew that,” Mother said.
* * *
Angel’s door was closed, but Freesia could hear music, so she knew she was awake. She knocked and then knocked some more. Finally, the door swung open.
“What?”
Angel had washed her hair, taken off her makeup, and changed into pajamas, baggy bottoms patterned with rosettes and a lavender tank top. Her skin was smooth, her eyes wide and clear. She looked so much like her younger self that Freesia half expected her to fall to the floor and start playing with dolls.
“I need to borrow clothes,” Freesia said. “Also makeup and a hair dryer. Tweezers, if you have them. I can’t show up at school looking like this.” She had showered in the bubblepod and put on yet another pair of stretch pants and a boxy T-shirt. Her hair was still damp.
Angel didn’t speak. Didn’t move.
Freesia took a deep breath. “From what I’ve seen, you have absolutely no fashion sense. But with all those clothes in your closet, there’s got to be something on the larger side that’s not too odious.”
“When did you see my closet?”
“Today. Mother said I could use your computer as long as you didn’t find out.”
“You used my computer?”
“No, I couldn’t find it. But I like your room. It made me think of my little sister in Agalinas.”
At last the door opened all the way. An odd expression on her face, Angel retreated to her canopy bed. She picked up a silver tablet and began tapping at some keys. The people in this family spent a lot of time tapping and poking.
“Do you still dance?” Freesia asked, remembering the photo in the hallway.
Without looking up, Angel shook her head.
“Why not?”
“I tried out for the freshman dance team and didn’t make it.” Her fingers tapped.
Freesia was confused. “You mean you want to dance, but they won’t let you?”
“Yes.”
“That’s nonsensical.”
Freesia turned on the closet light and started pushing through the clothes, pausing to pull out a scratchy fuchsia lace minidress with an uneven hemline.
“That won’t fit you,” Angel said.
“Did you actually wear this? Out of the house?” Freesia fully extended her arm so the dress was as far away from her as possible.
“I wore it to my friend’s fifteenth birthday party. Except we’re not friends anymore.”
“No wonder! That is the most odious dress I have ever seen. I’d tell you to burn it, but I think it’s made of plastic.” She chucked the dress on the floor and returned to the closet.
She caught sight of her dumpy reflection in Angel’s full-length mirror and shuddered. How unfair that Angel, with the same parents, had turned out so much prettier. And what a waste! Angel always had a sour look on her face, and her clothes were inexcusable.
Freesia returned to the closet. “Ick. Ick. Ick … holy mother of Todd!” Freesia pulled out another dress, this one made of some slippery material patterned with lime, turquoise, and black splotches. “Did I say that last one was the most odious dress I’ve ever seen? Because this one is worse.” She chucked it on top of the first one.
“I look hot in that dress!” Angel rescued the garment from the floor and shoved it back in her closet. Then she rummaged in the back and pulled out an armful of clothes. “Stop going through my stuff. You’re too fat to fit into any of it, anyway. Here. These are hand-me-downs from our cousins. They’re too big for me.” She pushed the clothes into Freesia’s arms and pointed to the doorway.
“Did I hurt your feelings?” Freesia asked, leaving the room. “When I said your clothes were ugly? Because I was only trying to—”
Angel slammed the door.
“That was short of triumphant,” Freesia said to no one.
But something did work: a long, thigh-hiding gray cardigan with a plain white blouse and—there was no way around it—black stretch pants. Freesia returned to her sister’s room and knocked … and knocked … and knocked until she answered.
“What?”
“Do we wear the same size shoes? I need boots. Also a long string of chunky beads and a scarf. Plus maybe you have some foundation I could borrow? You don’t need it, but I clearly do.”
Silently, Angel handed the items over.
“I’ll see you in the morning, then,” Freesia said from the hall.
Angel shut the door. But at least she didn’t slam it.
Father was coming out of Freesia’s room. “I put sleepy juice in your cup. And I reclined the recliner, just in case. Maybe you’ll wake up in Agalinas and this will all seem like a bad dream. Though not too bad, I hope.”
He forced a laugh. Freesia forced a smile, and they said good night.
21
Freesia’s Bubble World account was not reinstated during the night. She didn’t wake up to ocean sounds, coffee smells, and peacock songs. Instead, she was jolted into consciousness by her mother, who flung open her bubble door and snapped, “Aren’t you up yet? You leave in thirty minutes!”
Freesia was painfully fuzzy from the sleepy juice she’d taken the night before, but she knew better than to ask her mother for a coffee cloud.
Less than an hour later, Father’s car pulled into the staff lot next to a long, low, nearly windowless building surrounded by concrete walkways, spiky plants, and gravel. The stars and stripes fluttered high on a pole above the Arizona state flag.
When Father turned off the ignition, Angel said, “Give me twenty seconds.” Almost, but not quite, running, she fled from the car and crossed the lot to a side door.
Beyond the school’s tennis courts and dusty fields, a sea of red rooftops and white stucco walls stretched for miles. In the distance, jagged gray-brown mountains loomed against a baby blue sky.
The parking lot was hot for such an early hour.
“Supposed to hit ninety today,” Father said, as if that were a good thing.
They rounded the front of the school, weaving among groups of chattering students, and went right into the guidance office.
“It’s a shame she doesn’t have a transcript,” said Mrs. Appel, the guidance counselor responsible for students with last names N through S. “It would make the transfer process easier.”
Tall and angular, Mrs. Appel wore a brown blouse with pleated tan pants and brown boots. A plastic cylinder crammed with red licorice sticks sat on the front of her giant desk. The room smelled lemony, but not in a good way.
Nervous perspiration soaked Freesia’s palms and armpits. Even in the air-conditioning, the gray cardigan was much too warm. She wanted to go home—if not to Agalinas, then at least to that bland stucco house with the cranky mother and the baffling television set.
“How long has Freesia been out of the public education system?” Mrs. Appel asked.
“Since eighth grade. Though her program was affiliated with a public high school in Alabama.”
While Freesia remained silent, Father and Mrs. Appel put together her class schedule: AP Calculus BC; AP American History; AP English; Honors Physics; AP French. Mrs. Appel stood up. Her tan slacks were wrinkled already, and it was just past seven A.M.
“It’s a demanding load. But from what you’ve said, Mr. Somers, I’m sure Francine will have no problem. In fact, her classes may be too easy. We can talk later about getting her registered for the upcoming SAT test. And again—sorry about the locker situation.” Due to overcrowding, Francine would have to wait till next year to get her own locker. As if she’d still be here next year. Ha!
The counselor glanced at her computer. “One last thing for our records, Francine. May I have your cell phone number?”
“My what?” At last, she spoke.
“She doesn’t have a cell,” Father said. “The academy frowned on any technology that could detract from the learning process.”
The counselor sighed. “The academy
sounds like a wonderful place. I only wish…”
“I know,” Father said.
Mrs. Appel held out some papers. “Here’s your schedule and a map of the school, Francine. Welcome to Tumbleweed High.”
* * *
The only thing Tumbleweed High School and Agalinas Learning World had in common was—well, nothing. Outside the relative calm of the guidance office, Freesia plunged into a heaving, chattering mass of teenagers, easily twice as many as a building this size, massive though it was, should hold. The long hallways turned this way and that in no discernible pattern. On the plus side, at least there were no stairs.
Her first class of the day was Advanced Placement American History—which sounded utterly borrifying, but Freesia was too nervous to ask if Tumbleweed had a course in lip gloss techniques or the origins of freak dancing that she could take instead. Since Father was a history teacher, his room was on the same wing, so he walked her to class. To calm herself, she stayed half a step behind him, focusing on the stripes of his shirt. Blue, white, purple. Inhale. Blue, white, purple. Exhale.
She hadn’t taken any happy juice that morning. Her father was too concerned it would make her sleepy or dopey. But her breathing was shallow, and her head buzzed from fear. Sleepy and dopey were sounding pretty good.
Her father smiled. “When you were little, you used to ask me to take you to work with me. And now I am.”
Freesia tried to smile back, but she was too nervous.
Blue stripe, white stripe, purple stripe. Exhale.
At last, after several turns that left Freesia with no sense of where she was, they arrived at the history wing and Freesia’s first classroom, where Father introduced Freesia to a storklike woman named Ms. O’Leary before hurrying off to his class.
“So, Francine,” Ms. O’Leary said, standing in front of a white board covered with homework assignments, “what’s your favorite period in American history?”
Freesia’s throat was so tight that when she spoke it came out like a croak. “Um … now?”
“Ah! You’re a current events gal!”
And then an earsplitting alarm went off and Freesia hit the ground and covered her head.
“Oh my goodness! Francine! Francine?”
Rubber footsteps surrounded her. She peeked beyond her arms and saw a sea of sneakers, a forest of blue-jean-clad legs.
“Didn’t you have bells at your old school?” Ms. O’Leary said, leaning down.
Freesia wanted to crawl into a hole. Unfortunately, there was no hole in the floor (and if anyone could see one, it was her). She got on her hands and knees, retrieved the binder she had dropped, and then pushed herself to standing.
“No,” she said with dignity. “We didn’t.”
Once she took a seat in the windowless classroom, in a chair-desk about three-quarters of the way back, things got better—which is not to say good, just less awful. There were so many students in this class (including herself, Freesia counted thirty-seven) that no one paid much attention to the new girl. They just listened as Ms. O’Leary talked about something called the Industrial Revolution and wrote things in their notebooks.
Well, the kids in the front listened and wrote, anyway. Back where she was, two girls played with their cell phones (she knew what they were called now) while one boy doodled battle scenes: tanks, guns, soldiers.
She thought of Taser. She hoped he was okay.
When the bell rang again, she jumped a little, but at least she didn’t dive to the ground. She was making progress.
“You know how to get to your next class, Francine?” Ms. O’Leary asked. How Freesia hated that name.
“I have a map, but … isn’t there a break before the next class?”
Ms. O’Leary glanced at the clock. “If you consider four minutes a break. You’d better hurry.”
Freesia followed the swarm of students out the door and into the hall and along the lockers until the hall split and she stopped dead. A boy bumped her from behind, mumbled “sorry,” and continued around her. She found refuge against a cold metal locker.
She pulled out her school map. It had lines, numbers, boxes—all of them, apparently, corresponding to rooms and hallways within the school. But which ones?
After a few more wrong turns, the bell rang. Freesia was the only one left in the hallway. She stared at the map. It remained incomprehensible.
“Lost?” She opened her eyes to a gangly boy a whole head taller than her. Sandy bangs fell in his gray eyes. His nose was long and slightly crooked. When he smiled, two comma-shaped dimples framed his wide mouth.
She was still clutching the map. “Extremely.”
“Where do you need to be?”
“Room…” Dash it—she’d forgotten the number. She pulled out her schedule. “Five thirteen. AP French.”
He looked at her schedule. “That’s a pretty intense class load.”
“It is? I mean—yes. Utterly.”
“Foreign languages are on the other side of the school. I’m headed that way. I’ll show you.”
“Don’t you have a class now?” she asked him.
“Film studies, yeah. But I spend so much time in the editing studio on nights and weekends, the teacher lets me come and go whenever. So—where did you move here from?”
“What do you mean?”
“Since you don’t know your way around the school, I just assumed…”
“Oh. Right. My move. It was … local.”
“I’ve been here since August,” he said. “Moved from Portland.”
She gave him a blank look.
“Oregon,” he said.
“I knew that!” (She didn’t.)
“Well, there’s a Portland in Maine, too.”
“I knew that too.” (She actually did.) “Do you like Arizona?”
He looked at the ceiling, considering. “I miss the rain. I know that sounds weird, but it’s true.”
She nodded. “Yeah, the sunshine here is awfully … sunny.” She wasn’t just saying that. After spending the last few years indoors, the bright sky made her eyes ache. And for someone who’d lived all her life in the Valley of the Sun, her skin was a shocking shade of pale.
He shrugged. “I guess I miss my old friends, too.”
“I know what that is like.” Freesia’s eyes stung. If only she were going to Spanglish class with Jelissa instead of French class with a bunch of people she didn’t know. She could use a good giggle right about now. She wouldn’t mind a big plate of nachos, either.
They turned another corner, and the boy stopped. “But people here have been pretty cool. People are people, right? Anyway. Room five thirteen—here you are.”
The door was shut. She wished she could walk on by and keep talking to this gangly boy.
He held up a hand. “I’m Adam, by the way.”
“Freesia,” she said, forgetting for the moment that she was supposed to be Francine. “Thanks for getting me here.”
“No problem.” He shot her a final grin before turning around and heading back the way he had come.
Freesia straightened her long gray cardigan, took a deep breath, and turned the doorknob. Inside the classroom, the young woman standing in front of the whiteboard—according to Freesia’s schedule, her name was Mademoiselle Chu—stopped whatever she was saying and glared. The students all looked at Freesia, too, though with curiosity rather than irritation.
Fighting an urge to flee, Freesia croaked, “Bonjour.”
“Qu’est-ce que c’est?” Mademoiselle Chu was small and tidy, with thin lips and piercing black eyes.
“English, please.”
The teacher’s thin lips got thinner. “What is it? I am in the middle of teaching.”
“I’m a new student.” Hands shaking, Freesia held out her schedule.
The woman gave it a quick look before handing it back. “D’accord. Assieds-toi.”
Not understanding the teacher’s instructions to sit down, Freesia remained where she was. She scanne
d the room, hoping to see some food laid out or perhaps a door to an outside patio. Advanced Placement French sounded like a cultural immersion class, and yet—
“Quel est le problème?”
Freesia’s tummy grumbled. “Where are the snacks?” she whispered.
“Pardon?”
Maybe the teacher hadn’t heard her. She raised her voice. “Les snacks. They must be here somewhere. I haven’t eaten anything but a bowl of fruity cereal today, and I could really use a crepe or maybe a warm baguette with a hunk of cheese.”
Giggles rippled through the classroom.
With a poisonous glare, Mademoiselle Chu pointed to the field of desks. “Assieds-toi.”
Head down, Freesia scurried down a row of students. The only free seat had a wobbly desk arm. Freesia folded her body into the chair, put her binder on her lap, and didn’t look up again until the bell rang.
Map reading skills improving, Freesia made it to the rest of her classes without any more student assistance, but she cringed every time she had to stand in front of a class and introduce herself to a new teacher. Also, she was hungry, and she had to go to the bathroom.
At last fifth period ended: only one more class to endure before her father would take her back to the beige house. Clutching her binder and map, she wound her way through the school, ending in a classroom across the hall from noxious Mademoiselle Chu. Relieved to have made it through the door before that frightful bell, she scurried over to the English teacher’s desk.
“I’m new.”
Mr. Janz was eating a sandwich. He blinked at Freesia a couple of times, held up a finger, chewed, and swallowed. “Um—hi.”
Younger than her father but older than Mademoiselle Chu, Mr. Janz had close-cropped blond hair and pale, wide-set eyes. He wore a beautiful silver watch and a platinum wedding ring, a starched shirt in a lovely shade of royal blue, and perfectly pressed gray trousers. He was the best-dressed person Freesia had seen in school. No, he was the best-dressed person she had seen in Arizona. On the spot, she decided that he was her favorite teacher.