She clears her throat again. “It might snow.”
“It is too cold to snow,” I inform her. I refrain from saying “you moron,” even though, living in Pennsylvania, she should know that.
“I love snow,” says Sam, wiping the coffee off his chest with a wet napkin, leaving a trail of shredded paper like snowflakes. Maybe he should not drink coffee. Are Quakers allowed to drink coffee?
I shake my head. He must have Quaker Oats for brains.
“Don’t you like snow?” he asks me. His blue eyes twinkle and his curly blond hair looks even bouncier than normal. A grown man should not have bouncy blond hair. Or eyes that twinkle like a two-year-old’s. Or be in love with snow.
“Snow sucks,” I say, as coldly as I can muster.
Jessica coughs. “Mattie, I need to ask you to watch your language, especially with Rory in the house.” She looks down at the Blob sitting on the floor.
“In case you had not noticed,” I inform Jessica, “he does not speak.”
“He will,” she shoots back.
I raise my eyebrows and say “you moron” with my eyes.
Sam and Jessica look at each other again. They do this a lot. I believe it is Quaker-speak. Or they are aliens.
What makes them Quakers, anyway? They do not quake. Except Sam’s belly when he laughs.They do not speak Religion like Loopy. In fact, they do not seem to speak Religion at all. Still, I am not exactly overjoyed at this current hostile takeover situation.
The Blob starts banging a blue pot on the floor. He is a drooling land mine planted on the mold and mustard linoleum to torture me. He reaches for me with his grubby hands. I step away. Jessica gives him a sticky roll of kiwi-watermelon-simulation fruit product so his fingers, face, and the floor can get covered with more gack.What is she thinking?
“He’s communicating,” she says.
I look at her. I want to say, “With what alien life-form?” but her eyes are red and droopy, and she is holding her head at a funny angle.
I guess I am staring at her because she says, “I have a migraine.”
“News flash,” I say. “Banging pots do not help migraines.”
As if he hears me, the Blob stops for a second and utters the sound “duh.” Duh is right! Even the Blob can figure it out.
Sam sits his overly large self down on the floor next to the Blob. The floor shakes. Four-point-nine on the Richter scale.
Sam grins at the Blob. “You’re starting to talk already, aren’t you, bud? Ror-y. That’s you. Ror-y.”
The Blob lets out a grunt.
Sam claps like he is a kid at the circus.“That’s right! Rory!”
The Blob is five years old but looks like two and acts even younger. He has some kind of “severe developmental condition,” according to Sam and Jessica. I believe he is a lost cause but they think they can reach him. I do my best to stay out of his reach. But his eyes follow me like a helpless fawn’s, trapped in an awkward body. I try to never let his eyes catch me because I do not like helpless and trapped. It makes my stomach queasy.
The Blob catches my eye and I clutch my stomach with one hand, grab my backpack with the other, and head for the front door.
“Don’t you want breakfast?” Jessica calls out after me.
“No, thanks.”
“Mattie—” Sam starts.
“And do not call me Mattie.” I turn to give them my Stay Away stare. “My name is Matt.”
I let the storm door slam behind me. I do not like people calling me Mattie. It is Matt. Just Matt. I like it because it sounds like a guy’s name and that always throws people off. They do not know what to say, which is good, because I do not wish to talk with them, anyway.
And, of course, Matilda is not an option. That is like a freak-show name. Or so I have been told on numerous occasions. I believe my father named me that as a cruel joke. He was into jokes. And cruelty. Most of the time I hid under the bed.
Oh, good.The bus. Right where Loopy said it would be. I get on and receive a few choice stares. I walk past one girl who says hi. She should save her breath. Nothing personal, but I am not into relationships. You would think that the Black Widow spider painted on my face with mascara would give you a clue. Or my hard stare. Or my outrageous outfit in varying shades of black. I bet you did not know that you can wear pants and a skirt at the same time. With oversized boots from the Goodwill store.
“Weirdo,” I hear someone say. I have been called worse.
That is all the attention I get because of what is happening in the back of the bus. I recognize the sneer. The ruthless mocking.The callous laughter.The aching silence of the Victim. It is not me. This time.
I join the lot of the squirming potentialVictims as I strain to look away and put myself in another place altogether. It is the universal language of violence. The bully. I shudder and make note of where he is, hoping he sits there all the time. So I can sit far away.
Please.
Stay away.
CHAPTER THREE
I
am wedged into my guidance counselor’s office. It has the size and ambiance of a janitor’s closet. And a worse stench. You can get a nicotine fix from the cigarette odor. The large, bearded guidance counselor is clicking away on his computer. “You took some, uh, tests before you left your last school, and we need to look at those before we place you.”
I do not know why only Loopy will call them IQ tests. Perhaps everyone else wants to hide what they really are in case I fail them.
His fingers stop, his eyes open wide, staring at the screen. He whistles.
Oh, God, I failed them.
His eyes dart over to me then back to the screen. He coughs. He puts a hand over his mouth. He looks at me again and then quickly away.
“Am I going to be sent back to middle school?” I ask, unable to bear the silence any longer.
He laughs loudly and awkwardly. “And you’re a joker, too, huh?”
Elementary school?
“I think it’s safe to say that you’re eligible for the accelerated program we have here at Franklin.”
Excuse me? Is he saying I am actually smart?
He looks at me over his glasses. “You’ve been skating by, haven’t you? Well, you might actually have to do a little work for a change.” He looks back at the screen.“You have to take World Civ with the other ninth-graders because that’s a required course to graduate . . . and, hmmm.” He raises his eyebrows so high I think his eyeballs might rise above his glasses. “Playing around in math class, were we? Pre-Algebra twice?”
Well, Mr. Jefferson was calm and predictable. And he left me alone. Why would I want to leave that? So I wrote the wrong answers on tests. But really, I like solving equations. Math problems always have a right answer. Unlike my own.
“We’ll put you in regular Algebra, but if it’s too easy, we can move you up to the accelerated class. All your other classes can be Honors or AP.”
“AP?” I whisper. Can I be inconspicuous and AP at the same time?
“A . . . P,” he repeats slowly. “You know, advanced placement?”
I nod jerkily.
He types away at the keyboard. “Okay, got to take PE twice a week . . . AP English, AP Biology, and . . . let’s see . . . we can’t fit Spanish in your schedule, but we’ll put you in Honors French.”
The implications of being AP are just dawning on my newly enlightened brain. “Does this mean I can graduate early?”
“Yes.” He glares at me over his glasses. “But you don’t need to rush it.”
But if I rush it, I could be done by, say, sixteen and get a job. Or go to college. Or move to Canada. I read on the Internet that you can be declared an adult in Alberta at age sixteen. I could be on my own officially, instead of by default.
“How fast can I graduate?”
He sighs. “You kids, you have no idea how lucky you have it. Like I tell my own kids, you’ll realize how tough it is when you’re out in the world and don’t have Mom and Dad around anymore.”
I stare at him like he is the blind man and I am the seeing-eye dog.
“You’re only fourteen, right?”
In people years, maybe. In dog years I am ninety-eight. I have lived an entire lifetime.
He shakes his head and hands me my schedule.“One day at a time. It’s Friday, so World Civ is your first class. He’s expecting you, and he’s got a . . . a short fuse. Don’t irritate him.” He reaches over his desk to open the door. “Go on, now. Hurry. Oh—enjoy your first day.”
Enjoy? I am not sure which is worse, first days or nightmares. Actually, first days are nightmares. I have been through enough of them to know that. And this time I get to start with the teacher who has a “short fuse.” Exactly the type I try to avoid.
I run all over the stupid school looking for the right room. The building is huge. And not well marked. Since when did
C
come before
A
in the alphabet? And what are purple lockers doing in the “Blue Quad”? And why is the “quad” actually a triangle?
When I finally find 3B01, I peek through the window in the door first. The World Civ teacher is balding even though he is not that old. He is talking but he keeps stopping to squeeze his lips together like he is trying to keep his head from exploding. His face is red and I wonder if it always looks that way or if his short fuse is already on fire. I think about not going in at all and, instead, arriving at my second class early. But then I notice that his lips have stopped moving altogether and he is staring straight at me. Through the small window in the door. Which is focusing his beam on me with increasing intensity. His face looks even redder. I want to run but I know that I am trapped.
Slowly I open the door, my heart pounding.
It is still and hot and smells faintly of rotten garbage. All eyes are on me, not just the teacher’s. I cannot stand the spotlight but it is shining on me so hard it makes me sweat. Desperately, I lunge for the desk in the back row, out of the teacher’s eyeball range. It is just a few steps away but I manage to bang into every other desk and flop into the chair, tipping it noisily.
There are snickers all around me and I hold my breath, hoping the class will just go on. A horrible silence follows. Then the teacher’s nasal voice. I swallow so hard my ears are momentarily blocked and I panic, not knowing if he is talking to me, about me, or what.
“. . . was saying, I’d like a report on the local, uh, political debate over our role in the Middle East.” He clears his throat and I finally breathe.
Until I hear the sneer from a few desks forward and one row to the left and I shiver. I recognize the cruelty in that voice. The bully. From the bus. Why does he have to be in my class?
And then he speaks. “You mean, like, between the real Americans and the pro-terrorist scum?” He snorts.
I look up, surprised that even a bully would talk that way to a teacher.
Amazingly, the teacher is smiling. “I suppose that’s one way to put it.” He squeezes his lips together again.
I hear a murmur somewhere near me. A murmur of discontent, I am sure.
The bully’s black shirt stiffens, his back arches, and he sits up straight. His dark hair is rigid and sticks out at the back of his neck. He raises his head and his nose twitches, sniffing the air, smelling his prey. His head whips around and his small Rat eyes catch me.
I look down fast. Please, let him not have seen me! I was not even the one murmuring, for God’s sake. I shift in my seat, leaning on my right hip, to hide behind the boy in front of me.
“Yeah,” he says slowly, “I’d put it that way.We’ve got soldiers fighting to stop the terrorists and keep America safe. Then we got these assholes who won’t fight—won’t even support our troops—because they’re just chicken-shits.” He pounds his desk and I jump. “They’re trying to stop the war and
help
the terrorists.” He snorts, an angry snort. “And they call it
peace
.”
He spits the word out but lets the ending hiss linger. It makes me shudder. I remember what Loopy said:
You know how Quakers are into peace
.
I can hear the Rat breathing. I wish he would turn around. Is he still looking at me?
“Yes,” the teacher sharply agrees. “People have different ideas about peace, don’t they? So, who would like to report on what’s happening in our town? Actually, in a lot of towns across the country.” He stops to squeeze his mouth shut momentarily. “How do some of the rest of you feel?”
I feel nothing. I just want this class to be over. Someone, please, volunteer to do this report so he does not think to call on the new girl.
For some reason, I look over at the Rat. He is hunkered down and grinning at a student next to him in my row. The Rat squeezes his lips together to the point that his entire face scrunches up in a horrible sneer and turns red. There are muffled snorts of laughter. Is he making fun of the teacher? I wonder if the teacher saw. I glance at the front of the room but the teacher is not looking.
Oh, God, what did the teacher say? Did he just say
Quakers
? I think he did.
Any Quakers?
Why would he say that? And why is he looking at me? Does he know? How could he know? I am not a Quaker, I just live with them. It was not my choice!
“How about our new student, Misssss . . .”
Oh, God! He knows! I refuse to look up.
“Hmm?” he insists.
The only sound is the static hum from the fluorescent lights. Their
buzz—crack!
makes my ears throb. My eyes are blinking as frenetically as the lights flicker. My arms and legs are starting to shake. That familiar, awful feeling. I wind my legs around each other, grip the edge of the desk, and stare at the gouged-out blob in the middle of it.
At the front of the room, papers rustle and finally snap. “Matil—”
“No,” I squeak-scream before the teacher even has my name out.
“Excuse me?” His voice goes up. “No?”
I shake my head, still looking down at the gouge on my desk.“I—I—” I cannot even think, much less speak.“Not—I—I—am—um—not—”