Ronda raised her eyebrows and flipped through some files on her desk. I resisted the urge to ask to see mine. It sounded like it was full of details woefully devoid of context.
She wrote down a locker number at the bottom of a sheet of paper with a list of classes. “You need someone to show you around?” she asked.
It wasn’t like this was my first new school. Or my fifth, for that matter. “I’ll manage,” I said, taking the sheet. “You should drink the coffee.”
“Maybe I will,” she said as I left the office.
Schools usually felt the same to me. At the others, I’d never minded being asked by the teachers in every class where I was from and having to say, “Nowhere.” Or, sometimes to mix things up, “Everywhere.” My first two class periods at East Metropolis went exactly that way, except this time I had to hide how nervous I was.
My third-period AP lit teacher, Mrs. Garret, herded us to the library to do critical research on a poem before she remembered to ask the inevitable first-day question. I was settled behind a flat-screen computer to search the article database, like everyone else. “Lois,” she said, her updo held in place with chopsticks that could have served as a weapon in a pinch, “before we get started, tell us where you’re from.”
The rest of the morning had gone pretty well, give or take. So I went off script. “Here. Now I’m from here.”
The odd round of looks reminded me why you were supposed to stay on script when you were new.
But then I never had been much good at supposed-tos.
“A philosopher, I see,” she said.
“And a lady,” I quipped.
Stay under the radar.
No goofy jokes.
Mrs. Garret left to go chat with the librarian, and instead of starting on the assignment I pulled up a browser window. I typed: Journalism, history of.
But I hesitated before I hit enter. The history of women in any field was often separated out and I wanted that part of the story too. I changed the search terms to: Journalism, history, women in.
I glanced around and caught the girl in the seat next to mine taking in my screen. Her otherwise blond chin-length hair was streaked with bold crimson around her face.
She didn’t shrink away at being busted. “You should look up Nellie Bly,” she said.
Could she be friend material? Because making a friend here was part of the plan too.
I slid my notebook over. “Can you write it down? I’m one of the top five worst spellers you’ll ever meet.”
With a laugh, she took the notebook and wrote the words. The T-shirt she had on was for a band—Guerilla Bore. I’d never heard of them.
“I’m Maddy,” she said, and we both noticed that Mrs. Garret was watching us chat. Maddy pushed my notebook back.
“And I’m letting you work on the assignment so you don’t get in trouble,” I said. “Thank you.”
I typed in the new search term.
*
After school, I flagged over a taxi driver and flashed him the business card Perry White had given me.
“I need to get here,” I told him as I got into the backseat.
“So you will,” he said, adjusting the collar of his white tracksuit as he checked the rearview mirror. The car lurched into traffic.
I’d intended to track down Anavi and try for some observation of the Warheads during lunch, but after third period Ronda had been waiting outside the library to take me back to the office to fill out paperwork we’d neglected to do that morning. I ate from the vending machine, and my afternoon classes seemed to crawl by in slow motion. Because I could hardly wait for this—going to my first staff meeting at the Scoop.
I fidgeted, antsy to get there, and watched Metropolis speed by outside the window.
Most of the places where my decorated Army general dad got stationed—and our family then moved to, careful not to put down too many roots—were military towns. Places with wire fences around bunker-like buildings and clusters of three-bedroom homes that all had the same floor plan. The cities and schools were usually small, a low sprawl surrounded by desert or woods or strip malls.
Metropolis, so far, was all tall, shiny buildings and sleek, crowded subways, with the Daily Planet sold at every corner newsstand. I’d never lived anywhere like this before. Metropolis was different. It was supposed to be different. My plan was intended to make sure that it would be.
It wasn’t like I had wanted to not fit in at my other schools, to never come out of them with true friends . . . but I’d always been able to pretend that it didn’t matter. Soon enough we’d be headed somewhere else, and fewer goodbyes to say made leaving easier. My problem was that I had bad luck. And I spoke up when I saw something wrong. I did it because I could, without having to worry about the fallout lasting years. And yes, there was always fallout.
But this time, we weren’t leaving. We were here to stay. And I had a job. And a plan. The plan consisted of four things: