by Amy Ignatow
Nick fell asleep almost as soon as his head hit the pillow. It was pretty late and it had been a long day. The next thing he knew there was sunlight in his eyes and Jay was staring down at him.
“Dude,” Nick groaned, “are you watching me sleep? Because: weird and not okay.”
“I’m not watching you sleep, I’m waiting for you to wake up. Are you awake now?”
“Either I’m awake or I’m having a really terrible dream about you opening my window shades and not letting me sleep.”
Jay pinched himself. “I felt that, so I’m awake.” Then he pinched Nick’s arm.
“Ow!”
“Clearly you felt that, so you’re awake, too. Sorry, I just had to be sure.”
“Do we need to have another conversation about boundaries?” Nick groggily pushed himself up to a sitting position. He still felt grubby from yesterday evening’s quick nap in the muddy field. He looked at Jay, who was absentmindedly nibbling the cuticles around his nails. “I think I need a shower,” Nick said.
Jay leaned forward and sniffed him. “You do. I’m going to have some coffee with Angela and when you get out I want to hear all about what happened last night.”
“I don’t think my mom is going to give you coffee.”
Jay dismissed Nick’s comment with a wave of his hand. “Nonsense. We are civilized individuals and it is morning, which is when civilized individuals sit down with their morning mugs of coffee. See you in fifteen.” He bounced out of the room. There was no way that Nick’s mom was going to purposefully caffeinate Jay, but his confidence never failed to astound.
After his shower Nick came downstairs to find Jay and his mom engrossed in whatever was on her laptop. They had mugs in front of them, but after a brief moment of disbelief Nick saw that Jay’s was filled with orange juice. This didn’t stop Jay from reaching for Nick’s mom’s mug of black coffee. She batted his hand away without looking up from the screen.
“Nicholas, my good man!” Jay exclaimed as Nick came into the kitchen. “You’re famous.” He stole a deep gulp from Nick’s mom’s mug as she stood up to give Nick a tight good-morning hug.
Over her shoulder, Nick could see Jay’s eyes bugging out from the burning heat of the coffee. He stifled a laugh. “Excuse me?”
Jay swallowed quickly and turned the laptop around to show Nick an article on the local news site. It was a short piece about the crash, but no names were mentioned.
“Somebody start inking the deal for the movie rights,” Nick muttered as he poured himself a glass of water.
“But that’s not all!” Jay said, his eyes glowing. “Principal Jacobs herself called this morning to ask how you were!”
Nick looked at his mom, who nodded with a smile.
“Aaaaaand,” Jay went on, opening another window on the computer, “you’ve made The Hammer’s home page!” The Hammer was a local conspiracy theorist with a blog called The Daily Whut? that Jay was obsessed with. Nick used to read the blog all the time (“Muellersville School Board: What Happened to the Funding for Earthquake Preparedness???”) until he realized that The Hammer was just another person making up stories because he wanted people’s attention (or Jay’s attention, because Nick couldn’t imagine anyone else actually taking the time). He sat down to read.
When he was done, Nick looked up to see both his mom and Jay looking at him expectantly. “What?” he asked.
“What happened to the driver?” Jay bleated.
“I don’t know,” Nick said, and told them what he’d seen, even though his mom had already heard the whole story the night before. Jay was rapt.
“So an Amish man helped you out! That didn’t even make it into the article! We totally have the inside scoop! And you actually worked with Daniesha to SAVE LIVES,” he said in a voice that managed to be dreamy and loud. “How did she smell?”
“I was genuinely not paying attention.” Nick looked at the clock. “Come on, we have to go. We’re going to be late for the bus.”
“Oh, no no no,” his mom said, “you haven’t had any breakfast, and no buses for you today. I’m driving you to school.”
“Mom, I’m fine . . .”
She gave Nick her Resistance is futile look and he slunk back into his chair as she put frozen waffles into the toaster oven.
Jay was giddy. “This is going to be AMAZING,” he said. “You’re a celebrity, and we’re getting chauffeured to school!”
Nick heard his mom suppress a giggle. Jay was crazy, but you had to love the little nutball.
Cookie’s mom wanted her to stay home from school, but there was no way—her friends would want to see her to make sure she was okay. Also, she kind of wanted to see the look on Mr. Friend’s face when she showed up with the bandage on her head, which Cookie never would have had if he hadn’t insisted on putting her in harm’s way. She was pretty sure that she was off the hook for the whole temporarily-leaving-the-field-trip thing—Principal Jacobs hadn’t even mentioned it when she’d called to check on her.
Cookie also felt a strong urge to talk to Nick about that girl’s freaky-eye-color situation. It would be tricky, because of course she didn’t actually want anyone to see her talking to Nick, but Cookie figured that there would be some point in the day when he’d be alone.
Cookie’s stepfather drove her to school. George was usually okay, but he was doing that thing where he felt like he had to mention every turn he was taking. “Make a right here . . . Turn onto Lombard . . . Should I take Pleasant Street? I’m going to hit a light if I do . . . Oh, we have the time, let’s turn onto Pleasant . . .” He was giving her a headache. She turned the volume up on the radio and tried to ignore him.
The front entrance seemed especially loud, so by the time the warning bell rang, Cookie was beginning to wonder if coming in had been such a hot idea. She felt an arm around her shoulders.
“Oh my god, I can’t believe you’re okay!” Addison was hugging her tight. She pulled back and looked at Cookie, her face blanching at the sight of the small bandage on her friend’s forehead. “Holy crap, shouldn’t you be in, like, the hospital?”
“The doctors said it’s just a little cut.” Cookie’s voice sounded quieter than she wanted it to. She took a deep breath. “Does everyone know about the accident?”
“It was on the news last night!” Addison took Cookie’s arm and began steering her toward their homeroom. “My mom saw it and I immediately texted you—I guess you didn’t get my text? So I was freaking out and I texted Izaak and he didn’t know anything, so we thought about texting someone else who was on the bus, but seriously, was anyone else even on that bus?”
“Hardly,” Cookie said. She thought for a second about telling her that Terror Boy had been there, but Addison started chattering about how she and Izaak were so worried, and Cookie didn’t have the energy to interrupt her.
Things were quieter in homeroom even though absolutely everybody kept coming up to Cookie to ask what had happened and to look at her bandage and give her hugs and tell her that they were so glad that she was okay. Principal Jacobs poked her head into the room to see how she was, and even Mrs. Whitaker seemed happy to see her and appeared to have forgotten all about the previous day’s transgressions.
“Okay, okay, settle down,” Mrs. Whitaker said after the final bell. Everyone sat in their seats, but Cookie could tell they were still looking at her. She cocked her head and pulled her hair back, away from the bandage a little, so people could get a better look. That was when she saw the girl with the yellow eyes.
She was sitting closer to the back of the room. Cookie had never noticed she was in that class—she’d never really even noticed her at the school before. The girl had been doodling something in her sketchbook and now looked up at Cookie. She gave a little wave.
And her eyes turned from a perfectly normal brown to a distinctly not-normal green.
Staying home from school was never as fun as you thought it was going to be. Sure, it was great not to be at school, but that jus
t meant that your mom or dad had to stay home with you, so it’s not like you were going to get away with watching a lot of television or anything. And if they did let you watch television, they were going to be right there, so you kind of felt pressured to pick a documentary about font types or something other than a movie about ninjas kicking ass. Farshad was sure there were kids who didn’t care what their parents thought about what they chose to watch on TV, but his parents were some of the only people who still liked him, so he wanted their approval.
His father had lent Farshad his laptop, so he opened it up instead and did a search for the accident while his mother fussed over him. There wasn’t much information—mostly just a short article on Lancaster Online about how the bus went off the road. Farshad hadn’t read about the driver disappearing (weird), and some nut blogger went on and on about that, as if there were something more to it than just some cowardly jerk who had probably been drinking or something running away after he crashed a school bus full of kids. Or maybe the guy hit his head and stumbled away and was currently lying facedown in some ditch. Maybe he was trampled by the Amish guy’s horse.
Neither of the articles mentioned anyone’s names, which was kind of too bad, because Farshad had actually helped get Mr. Friend off the bus, and having some positive press out there would be a plus. He also couldn’t find out from the articles if anyone else had stayed home from school. That Nick kid had seemed to be doing okay, but Cookie had been bleeding from a head wound. Whatever. She was probably back at school, because the whole place would fall apart or something if she was absent for a day.
Farshad was pretty sure that all the adults were just going to conveniently forget that she skipped out on the field trip. There’s no way they were going to discipline someone who had just been in a major accident.
Some people were just lucky.
Cookie figured that one nice thing about being black was that, when she saw the weird girl change her eye color, she didn’t blanche. She was pretty sure that all of the blood had left her face, but she knew no one could tell.
Still. Cookie felt dizzy. Because EYES AREN’T SUPPOSED TO DO THAT. She turned away from the girl and raised her hand.
“Yes, Daniesha?”
“May I go to the bathroom? I’m not feeling great.”
Mrs. Whitaker looked worried. “Perhaps if you’re not feeling well you should head straight to the nurse,” she said, looking at the bandage on Cookie’s head.
No, because if I go to the nurse they’re going to send me home and I don’t need to be sent home, Cookie thought. I need to find that dippy kid Nick and confirm what we saw so that I know I’m not going completely insane. “I think I just need to splash some water on my face,” she said. “If I don’t feel better after that I’ll go to the nurse?”
Mrs. Whitaker pursed her lips. No teacher liked to give a kid an open-ended hallway pass. “Just sign Mr. Friend’s get-well card first,” she said, bringing it over to Cookie before writing out the pass.
In the hallway, Cookie actually did feel better. She was now away from the yellow-eyed girl, but she was also away from everyone, and for the first time since she woke up that morning, Cookie felt like she could breathe.
“Cookie!” Now Ms. Zelle was coming down the hallway toward her. Fantastic. “Are you all right?”
Don’t let her see that you’re losing it, Cookie told herself. Stay cool. “Hey, Ms. Zelle.”
The science teacher was looking worriedly at Cookie’s head. “I’m a little surprised to see you in school today.”
“The doctors said it was fine,” Cookie told her, trying to sound nonchalant. “Besides, the exam is next week. Gotta keep studying.”
Ms. Zelle smiled. That woman just loved statewide exams, probably because she still got paid to teach when all she was actually doing was reading magazines while the tests were being taken. “Of course, of course,” she said, “but don’t push yourself too hard, okay? And get plenty of rest. Rest is good for the brain.” Ms. Zelle tapped her index finger to her own temple.
“Sure, Ms. Zelle.” Cookie smiled back and turned to walk purposefully down the hallway toward the bathroom. As soon as she rounded the corner, she allowed herself to exhale.
Nick Gross. Where would a kid like that have homeroom? She couldn’t just start knocking on doors, looking for nerds.
But wait. Where did nerds hang out between classes? Cookie always spent her time near her locker, where people would come to talk to her, or in the girls’ bathroom, if she needed to freshen up or pee. I need to think like a nerd, Cookie thought. Where would I be if I were a great big loser with no friends who should probably just hide away until high school graduation?
She made a beeline to the staircase farthest away from the gymnasium. Cookie knew that she had to get there before homeroom ended. She didn’t want to deal with another crowded hallway.
Jay had discovered the understeps before they had even gotten to middle school. He’d insisted on coming in to school the week before it started so that he could get a lay of the land. “We can’t be stumbling AROUND like a bunch of sixth grade know-nothings!” he had explained to Nick. “Everyone will think that we’re complete IGNORAMUSES!” Nick didn’t know if people thought that they looked like ignoramuses, but there was no avoiding looking like sixth grade know-nothings, because at that point they clearly were in sixth grade and knew absolutely nothing. But Jay discovered the Understeps, and Nick had admitted that it was pretty cool. It was this little space underneath the back stairs where a couple of people could be without anyone noticing, and whoever had used the Understeps before them had left a little message carved into the cinderblock: Nolite te bastardes carborundorum. Jay had memorized it and looked it up on the Internet, and it was Latin for “Don’t let the bastards grind you down.” Not that Jay ever paid any mind to anyone trying to grind him down, but Nick did, and he was really fond of the carved message. Sometimes he wondered who wrote it, and how long ago, and how they were doing. Well, he hoped.
Nick would come to the Understeps between classes to listen to a song on his iPod for a minute without worrying that a hall monitor would catch him and confiscate his music, or to meet up with Jay to play cards or something during lunch if he didn’t feel like dealing with the cafeteria. Nick had just put his earbuds in when Cookie appeared.
“Nick, we need to talk.”
He blinked at her. Seeing Cookie in the Understeps was like seeing a teacher at the movies—it just didn’t seem right for that person to exist in that space.
Nick took his earbuds out. Cookie had a bandage on her head and a weird look on her face. “Um, okay,” he said. “How are you feeling?”
“I feel weird, Nick,” Cookie said in a tone that was both accusatory and exasperated, as if it were his fault that she felt weird and he was stupid for not knowing that. Jeez, she really could make a person feel small.
“I’m . . . sorry?”
“Well, don’t you feel a little weird?” She was kind of terrifying.
“I . . . I guess I feel a little weird. But I’m okay, you know, I didn’t hurt my head or anything.”
“It’s not my head wound that’s making me feel weird, Nick. It’s what we saw yesterday. Don’t you think that what we saw was a little weird, Nick?”
Had someone told Nick yesterday that he’d be having a conversation in the Understeps with Cookie Parker about some sort of shared hallucination, he would have thought they were totally wackadoo. He wasn’t sure if he even wanted to talk about what he had seen on the bus, let alone if he wanted to talk about it with her. The whole situation was too alien. He froze.
“Well?” Cookie asked. “Did you see something weird or not?” She had her hands on her hips and was impatiently tapping her fingernails on her belt. She seemed annoyed, but she looked . . . she actually looked a little scared.
“Yes,” Nick admitted. “I saw something weird.”
“I knew it,” Cookie said.
“Daniesha!” Nobody called Co
okie that. She looked up. Had Nick somehow told The Shrimp that she was here? No, impossible, he hadn’t known that she was coming. They just hung out here together because no one else wanted to be around them. Cookie certainly didn’t want to be around them. Particularly The Shrimp.
Get it together, girl. Just because Cookie wasn’t feeling like herself was no reason The Shrimp should be spared her wrath. If Cookie had had superpowers, lasers would have been shooting out of her eyes and incinerating him on the spot. She might not be at the top of her game, but Cookie could still cut with a look.
“Daniesha, my delicate black orchid, let me see your wound.” Did laser-beam eyes mean nothing to this kid?
“If you step any closer, so help me, I will drop you,” Cookie growled. She had never actually committed any acts of deliberate violence, but a secluded stairwell seemed like a good place to start.
The Shrimp held his shrimpy hands up. “I understand, I’m not a medical professional. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t have a gentle, healing touch.”
“Are you kidding me?” Cookie heard herself getting louder despite her aching head. “ARE YOU SERIOUS?” She whipped around to Nick, and trained her laser beams on him. “IS HE SERIOUS?”
And just like that, Nick disappeared. Sort of.
One moment she was screaming at him, and the next . . . nothing. No sounds were coming out of her mouth. Cookie was just staring at Nick with her eyes wide and her mouth hanging open, and Jay was next to her, looking equally shocked. They stood there, eyes locked on him.
“Um . . . hi,” Nick said after what was at least a full minute of slack-jawed silence. The late bell rang, but no one moved. “Shouldn’t we get going?”
“Did you see that?” Cookie asked, still staring.
“See what?” Nick asked.
“I saw it,” Jay said. Nick had never seen him look that way before. Jay looked serious.