He sang his la-las over and over again, eventually lulling himself to sleep.
FIVE
There was a split second when I first woke up the next morning that I didn’t feel like I was going to vomit. But then I remembered where I was, and what I faced. I hadn’t heard from Reesa all weekend. No calls, and no email since we hadn’t had a chance to set it up yet. No cell phone meant no texts, either. Reesa and I always used to text each other in the morning—what we were wearing, how horribly our hair was behaving. Reesa saw things in her breakfast cereal and would send me pictures: DO THESE CORNFLAKES LOOK LIKE STONEHENGE OR IS IT JUST ME?
But she’d been silent, and it felt like I’d moved to another planet.
The morning was a jumble as my family got in each other’s way dodging and reaching for cereal, milk, toothbrushes, shoes, coats, backpacks. I had calculated that our new home was about the same total square footage as my parents’ bedroom, bathroom, and closet in our old house. We now lived in about one-tenth the space we had before. The strangeness of it confused Brady. It must’ve reminded him of a vacation house we once rented in Sea Isle—which had an outside shower but only one bathroom inside—because he kept asking, “Which way the beach?”
“Which way to the beach,” I said, tying his shoes.
My parents hadn’t corrected his speech in days—which was bad because of the way he locked onto things. It was hard for him to unlearn something once he’d gotten it wrong.
“Which way to the beach?” He smiled, proud of his good sentence.
“No beach here, buddy. But I’ll take you to the playground after school. Okay?”
He gave me one of his signature kisses—a press of wet lips to my cheek, followed by a smacking sound. He hadn’t quite coordinated the two yet. I kissed him back, extra hard.
My plan was to slip out by six twenty, retrieve the bicycle, and get to school before the buses. I figured Mom and Dad would be too distracted to realize I was leaving a half hour early. But I hadn’t counted on Kaya watching my every move.
“Where are you going?” She stood blocking the top of the stairs that led down to the front door, arms crossed and hip jutting out.
“School,” I said.
“It only takes three minutes to get to the bus stop. I timed it.” She tapped her pink glitter watch.
“I like to be early. Just in case.” I avoided her lie-detector gaze.
“Since when?”
“What?” This conversation was wasting precious time. I pulled my backpack onto my shoulders.
“Since when do you like to be early?”
I sighed heavily. “Since none of your business. Can I get through here, please?”
She stepped aside and waited until I reached the bottom step to cup her hands and call down to me, “Have a nice ride!”
“How did . . .” I spun around but snapped my mouth shut. Maybe she was referring to the bus ride, not bicycle. I was being paranoid. “Thanks,” I managed. “You too. Let the bus driver know if anybody messes with you or Brady, okay?”
She nodded and disappeared into the living room, and I flew out the door like a claustrophobe escaping an elevator. It was much darker at six thirty than I’d expected. I stumbled around the woods searching for the Schwinn, which I’d hidden so well, nobody would ever find it. Including me. Using my not-a-phone-anymore as a flashlight, I swept its beam across the trees until I spotted my trusty getaway vehicle. The handlebars were cold against my bare hands. I flung a leg over the seat and steadied myself, then kicked off and pedaled across the playground toward the road.
The bike groaned beneath my weight, rattling over the gravel. My legs seemed to be groaning, too, after all the stair climbing I’d done over the weekend. But I picked up speed once I hit the paved road, the wind whipping my hair into my eyes. I hadn’t thought to tie it back. At the first stop sign, I yanked my hood up and cinched it tight around my face, tucking every last stray brown curl inside.
God, I hoped nobody saw me.
The transportation office at school had given Mom a map of our new bus routes, which I’d used to figure out the most direct route by bicycle. It seemed easy enough, only one right turn and one left . . . but it all looked so different on the ground in the dim light of dawn than it had on the map. Every car that passed sent a shiver through me. Nobody knew I was out here. Someone could knock me off the road or kidnap me, take me to a soundproof cell in their basement and imprison me there. I’d never see my family again.
Maybe I was exaggerating the dangers of bicycling through Lakeside. Or maybe I should’ve just sucked it up and taken the bus.
I pedaled faster, swerving to miss potholes I swear were big enough to swallow small children.
My thighs were burning as I made my final turn and saw Vanderbilt High looming ahead, the lights of the parking lot casting an eerie glow through the morning mist. No buses in sight, though. Still, I didn’t want to ride up to the front of the school on this thing, so I headed to the loading dock out back by the faculty parking lot. There was a hedge along the side that looked like the perfect hiding spot. I swerved toward it, bumping onto the grass and squealing to a stop. The gap between the hedge and the wall was only about ten inches wide, but if I turned the handlebar sideways a bit, the bike slipped right in. I shoved it far enough back that nobody could see it, then scanned the parking lot to make sure I wasn’t being watched.
A sleek black sedan pulled in, so I crouched low and waited, wondering which of our teachers drove such a nice car. But it wasn’t a teacher who stepped out, at least not one I’d ever seen before. It was a guy. Tall-ish, blond-ish, cute-ish. If he was a new student, Willow would probably be dating him by lunch. He pulled a messenger bag from the trunk and threw it over his shoulder, then walked in my direction. I ducked farther behind the wall. Why was he parking there? Maybe nobody had told him this lot was for teachers and staff only. Or was he worried his fancy car would get scratched in the student lot? I heard his footsteps approaching and, realizing I was about to be discovered squatting behind shrubbery, leaped to my feet as he rounded the corner. He jumped sideways, his startled eyes flashing to mine.
“Sorry,” I squeaked. My face felt so hot, I was afraid there might be steam rising from it. “I . . . uh . . . was just . . . um.”
He took in the scene of me and my bicycle hiding in the bushes, and one of his eyebrows shot up.
I went catatonic. He was standing so close and he had beautiful, pale-blue eyes. They rested on mine for a second, then drifted up to my hair, which was crammed into my hoodie.
“Oh, God.” I fumbled with the drawstrings under my chin and shoved the hood back. My hair sprang out like a can of rubber snakes. I tried to flatten it down.
He took a step back and looked at his feet, like maybe he was trying to give me a moment to collect myself. But I was pretty much uncollectible at this point, so I just stood there staring at him, all sweaty and panting like a dog.
When he looked up, he tipped his chin toward the bicycle crammed into the hedges behind me. “You, uh . . . do this every day?” A sweep of sandy-blond hair fell across his eyes, and he pushed it back.
My face went redder than it already was. I didn’t need a mirror. I could feel it. “I, no . . . I just . . . my bike . . .”
He teetered back on his heels a bit, hands shoved in his back pockets.
“This is the first time,” I said, finally managing to form a complete sentence.
“Oh. Cool.” He looked anxiously toward the front of the school. Probably eager to get away from the crazy girl in the bushes. “Well, I better go.”
I nodded. “Right. Okay.”
But he didn’t go right away. He hesitated, like he was going to say something more, then just smiled. “Bye, then.”
“Bye.”
As he walked away, I felt a trickle of sweat drip down the small of my back. He must have thought I was a complete idiot. At least he was new and didn’t know anybody he could blab to about my unfortunate a
ppearance and bizarre behavior.
I knelt beside the hedge to deal with my perspiration situation, unzipping my sweatshirt to let the cool air dry my damp skin. I found a tissue in my backpack and dabbed it across my face. When I pulled it away, I saw a brown smudge. With legs.
I whimpered, shoving the dead-bug tissue into my pocket and hoisting my backpack to my shoulder. School buses were arriving. I moseyed out of my hiding place like it was perfectly normal to enter the campus through a hedge, and merged onto the sidewalk.
I was almost home free, zombie-shuffling toward the building like everyone else, when someone fell into step directly behind me. I scooted to the side to let the kid pass. But whoever it was stepped sideways right along with me. Assuming it was Reesa goofing with me, I stopped abruptly.
And then Lennie Lazarski sidled up beside me and murmured in my ear. “Hi, neighbor.”
I stopped, sucked in my breath, inhaling the dead-giveaway, burnt-leaf scent of a pot smoker.
“You really should wear a helmet, you know.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said, picking up my pace.
He laughed. “Okay. But I still saw you.”
I stopped and glared at him. “Saw me what?”
“Hiding your bicycle.”
“I wasn’t hiding it. I, uh . . . don’t have a lock, so I parked it back there so nobody would—”
“Steal it? You think someone’s going to steal that thing?” He barked out that annoying laugh of his, a single, loud “Ha!” Everyone walking within a five-mile radius turned and gawked.
My face burned for the second time that day, and it was barely seven o’clock. “It happens to be a classic Schwinn. People pay a lot of money for vintage bicycles like that, you know.”
He chuckled. “Looks more like something you found, oh, I don’t know . . . lying in the trash by the side of the road?”
“It wasn’t in the trash, it was . . .” I snapped my mouth shut. “Why am I even talking to you?”
“Just being neighborly?”
I ran up the stairs, hoping to distance myself from him before we reached the entrance. But he took the steps two at a time and lunged to open one of the double glass doors for me.
“Thank you,” I muttered.
“You’re very welcome.” There were two sets of doors, and he leaped ahead of me to get the second one as well. I told myself he’d go away then. He’d go his way and I’d go mine, and . . .
“So, how’s life in Turd Tower so far?”
“In WHAT?” I immediately regretted the volume of my reply as another dozen people registered me talking to Lazarski. I imagined tiny little cameras snap, snap, snapping away, like paparazzi. “What are you talking about?” I asked, trying to speak without moving my lips.
“Your house,” he said. “Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed it kinda looks like a giant turd. A very tall one.”
My mouth dropped open, but I was too stunned to cough up a clever retort. He was absolutely right. My new brown-on-brown-on-brown home looked like shit. And I was living in it.
Having it rubbed in my face by Lennie Lazarski was more than I could bear. My eyes started to burn with hot tears. I spun around to escape him and marched down the hall toward my locker.
Where Willow and Wynn were waiting for me.
SIX
“I-vy!” Willow waved to make sure I’d seen her, in case I missed her shouting my name with her megaphone voice. Wynn greeted me with a more delicate wiggle of her fingers, lashes fluttering. I knew better than to be fooled by their sweetness.
“Hey.” I continued walking, hoping they’d go back to their usual favorite pastime of admiring themselves. But the clomp of their heels followed in my wake. When I reached my locker, they pulled up on either side of me, like tennis players preparing to volley.
“New boyfriend?” Willow nodded toward the entrance.
“Huh?” My eyelid twitched.
“We saw you talking to Loser Lazarski,” said Wynn.
I pressed the knuckles of my right hand to my twitching eye. “He’s not . . . I wasn’t talking to him. He opened the door for me and I said thank you. It’s called being polite. You should try it sometime.”
“To him?” Willow gave a fake shudder. “No thanks.”
Wynn reached over and plucked something out of my hair. A leaf. “Nice. Were you rolling around in the grass with him or something?”
I grabbed the leaf from her hand and let it fall in crumbled bits to the floor. “No! I barely spoke to him.”
“We’re kidding,” Willow said in a monotone. “God, lighten up.”
I wasn’t sure that was possible, what with the quicksand of my life swallowing me whole.
“Where were you this weekend?” Willow twisted a stray hair around the dancer bun she always wore. “You didn’t return our texts.”
Wynn made puppy-dog eyes. “Are you mad at us or something?”
“No, I . . . uh . . . lost my phone.”
“That sucks,” said Willow. “When are you getting a new one?”
I shrugged. “I’m thinking maybe I don’t really need a phone—”
“Right.” She laughed, then realized I might actually be serious. “Tell me you’re kidding.”
For a few seconds, an alternate conversation went through my head in which I confessed the truth of my situation, that my family was broke and living in Lakeside, next door to a drug dealer. But the look of disgust on Willow’s face at the mention of no cell phone was so horrible, I just wanted to make it go away. I broke into a smile. “Of course, I’m kidding. My dad’s ordering a new one through his work. It might take a few days.”
Willow sighed. “Don’t joke like that.”
Wynn yanked me into a hug, then quickly pulled away. “Ew. You’re all sweaty.”
“I, uh . . . had to run for the bus.”
They glanced sideways at each other. Willow put her fingertips on my sleeve. “Text us as soon as you get your phone, ’kay?”
“Sure.”
Wynn air-kissed my cheeks, both sides as she had been doing ever since her family went to Europe last summer. Then they were gone.
An irrational sense of relief flooded over me, like I’d successfully tiptoed through a minefield. My hand smoothed nervously over my unruly curls, which seemed to have picked up even more altitude than usual. I quickly opened my locker, got the books I needed for first period, and hurried to the bathroom. Windswept was not exactly a good look for me. Wetting my hands, I combed through my hair, then dried my damp arms with a paper towel.
My exterior appeared almost the same as usual, but it didn’t feel that way on the inside. In homeroom, I stood for the pledge and pretended to listen to announcements, certain everyone was staring at me. Was it on my face in some way?
I caught up with Reesa on the way to first-period AP English. “Do I look different to you?”
“What do you mean?” She dabbed some gloss on her lips.
“I don’t know.” I dropped to a whisper. “Poor?”
Her gaze swept from my head to my toes and back up again. “Nope. Same as always, you skinny bitch.”
I smiled. “Thanks, Rees.” Reesa was always complaining about her curves, and I was always complaining about my lack thereof. The only thing I had that wasn’t straight was my hair, and Reesa was the opposite.
We walked into AP English and took our seats as the bell rang. Mr. Eli wrote The Canterbury Tales on the board and underlined it three times. There were a few sputters of nervous laughter. Our assignment had been to memorize the opening part of the prelude, as it was originally written in Middle English, and recite it in front of the entire class.
I sat as still as possible and kept my eyes on the floor. Mr. Eli strolled the aisles between our desks until everyone was settled and quiet. “Now, don’t strain yourselves volunteering all at once,” he said.
The door opened and I said a silent thanks for the disruption, then looked up. It was the guy from the
hedge this morning. He had this adorable way of tipping his chin down and looking out the top of his eyes, through his hair. He was doing it to Mr. Eli right now.
“Can I help you?” Our teacher took a step toward him.
Sitting next to me, Reesa sucked a breath through her teeth. “Be stillith myith heart.”
The boy handed Mr. Eli a paper. “I’m new,” he said. “Is this AP English?”
Mr. Eli nodded. “Yes, uh . . .” He looked at the paper. “James Wickerton?”
James nodded. Mr. Eli said, “Welcome, James.” Then he turned to the class and said, “This is James. Find him a seat.”
There was an empty desk on the other side of Reesa’s. She nearly dislocated her shoulder trying to alert James to its availability. He smiled at her and started walking toward the desk, his eyes sweeping the room. I dropped my forehead to my hand and looked down at my notebook in a classic don’t-call-on-me-I-have-a-terrible-headache stance.
Mr. Eli picked up where he’d left off. “The Canterbury Tales. The first eighteen lines. Who’s ready? Who hath learned thy Middle English?”
I peeked out over my hand to observe that I was not alone in dreading this assignment. While my stage fright only reached paralytic proportions when I was standing on an actual stage or otherwise attempting to sing for an audience, I still got very nervous for anything remotely performance related. In classes, going to the board definitely made my palms sweat. I was usually fine answering questions, as long as I could remain seated safely at my desk. It was best if I didn’t have to sit there anticipating my turn and getting worked up over it. But that didn’t mean I wanted to go first, either.
Mr. Eli lifted a book from his desk and walked over to James. He flipped to the correct page and laid it down. “We’ve been studying The Canterbury Tales,” he said in a low voice. “I won’t make you memorize since you’re just starting with us, but maybe you’d like to start us off today by reading from the book?”
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